by Anya Seton
He licked his mouth and gaped at her. She kissed him again, uncaring by what method she could force him to stay.
He gave a strangled gasp, and grabbed her, while slobbering on her cheek. She knew that she had won.
“Loose me, Dickon,” she said in a voice of calm control. “Loose me ’til I return to you. Bide with the horse!”
His grip on her slackened, his arms fell limp. He put a tentative dirty hand on Juno’s saddle. “Dickon bides here?” he said, and when she nodded sternly he gave his mindless giggle and squatted by Juno’s browsing head. As Celia stumbled towards the dune she heard him crooning, “Dickon bides . . . Dickon bides . . .”
She had picked up the hamper to insure her welcome, nor minded the weight—before the last years of soft living, she had lifted many an ale keg—besides, the bite of the wooden handle under her clenched fingers emboldened her, kept down the edging fear.
She reached the top of the dune and realized that the hut was not immediately below, where every high tide would have swamped it, but set cannily back in an unexpected crevice of brown rock, which was further protected from the sea by still another large dune, dotted with scrubby shore bushes. The hut was made of wattle and daub, like all those in the fens, but as Celia neared it she saw that the hard clay between the wattles was studded with cockleshells. The smoke rose from a small squat chimney—a refinement which astonished Celia.
She floundered on, then stopped as she saw the plank door open and a gray seal come slithering through it, giving sharp little barks.
“The familiar,” Celia thought, and stifled a spurt of hysterical laughter when a woman’s clear voice called out, “Ne va pas trap loin, chéri!”
Celia didn’t understand the words, but the meaning was plain, just like her own admonitions to Taggle when she let him outdoors.
She walked resolutely up to the shut door and knocked.
There was dead silence inside. She knocked again, crying, “Good day, mistress, I’ve got your hamper!”
Again silence, then a muffled “Go away!” which held a note of outrage.
“No,” said Celia, “I’m alone, I came to see you, brought your provisions.”
The door opened a crack, Celia trembled a little for she knew she was being inspected, but could see nothing except a long, billowing, whitish mass.
“Damoiselle . . .” said the voice, “you are brave . . . Enter, then!” The door was flung wide, and Celia shrank back.
The water-witch was naked, except for thick, wavy white hair which partly covered her as it fell to her thighs. The nakedness was Celia’s first shock; she saw the outline of firm breasts and belly, slightly rounded like a young woman’s, and there were certainly two legs—not a mermaid. Shock mingled with disappointment until the woman tossed back her hair, swept it back with a defiant movement of her long arms, and advanced a step into the sunlight.
Then Celia saw the scars. The knotted yellow welts on the legs, the distorted feet, where several of the toes were only stubs. And the face—ravaged on one side by livid bumps, the mouth twisted up towards the right ear.
“Holy Jesu . . .” Celia whispered. The hamper fell from her limp hand. “St. Mary . . . what happened to you?”
“Le feu . . .” said the woman quite casually. “Us m’ont brûlé pour une sorcière. Ah, j’oublie . . .” she paused, searching for words. “Longtemps . . . long time I ’ave not speak Eenglish, no speak to anyone except Odo—my phoque—” she gestured towards the shore where the seal had disappeared. “I was burned for being witch in France,” she said. “My English lovair save me.”
Celia started, her mouth went dry. “Horrible,” she whispered. “The cruelty . . .”
“Cruauté,” repeated the woman as though examining the word. “Possibly justice,” her large brilliant eyes fixed ironically on Celia, “since I am a witch!”
Celia expelled her breath on a long gasp. This was no prank, no interesting venture undertaken for a reason she could not remember. She wanted to flee, and yet her feet seemed rooted. She was terrified, fascinated. “I—I brought your hamper . . .” she said feebly.
“Ah-h—” said the woman. “You came not only for zat reason—you want my help.” Her twisted mouth could not smile, but her eyes softened into a gleam of amusement. “You need not fear me,” she said quietly, “if your heart is pure.” She had beautiful tapering hands, they were unmarred, for they had been tied behind the stake as her burning began. She put one on Celia’s arm. “Enter,” she said softly. “It is good to talk . . . so many years I have not.”
Celia slowly followed her into the hut, which smelled of the sea and was very clean; the floor was covered with sand only a trifle yellower than the witch’s abundant white hair. There was a wide couch in the corner made of sacking stuffed with crumbled dry kelp. The little fire was burning driftwood, the flames flickered blue and green. On the hard mud hearth there stood an iron pot and skillet. Celia’s eye was then caught by the round central table and an X-shaped folding armchair, because both were so incongruous in the isolated little hut. They were exquisitely carved, and had been painted, though the gilding and the colors were faded now. Even at Cowdray, Celia had seen no furniture so delicate.
The woman watched Celia, and nodded. “Milor’—from love—then pity, tried to give me some comforts. Afterwards, he left. He was noyé . . . drowned, sailing back.”
“How could you know?” Celia, puzzled, tried to fight a growing sense of helplessness. She understood that the lover who had managed to rescue the woman from the stake was an English lord, that he must have had this hut built for her and then abandoned her.
“I know much, I know much others cannot, I am Melusine,” said the woman with a proud lift to her chin.
Celia thought the name pretty, though she did not comprehend why it was spoken with such meaning. She now saw that the long eyes that were fixed on her—mockingly, tenderly—were not dark, as she had thought. They were green, the yellowish green of a cat’s, and the pupils too seemed long instead of round.
Again fear touched her, a wish to escape.
“Nenni . . . ma belle—” the pretty hand tapped her arm. “We will know each other better when we have shared. . . . les fleurs de rêve.”
Melusine brought the hamper indoors. Celia noticed how she teetered on her deformed feet, lightly touching the wall for balance. This no longer seemed pitiable. The nakedness had ceased to shock her, but Melusine went to a huge oaken coffer which stood in the shadows, and took out a filmy gown. It was gray, and decorated around the neck with little pearls—made, Celia recognized, in a fashion long forgotten, like an old one of Ursula’s. The looseness, the flowing sleeves bordered with pearl bands, the demure cut of the bodice. “This is how I was,” said Melusine, “many men loved me. Alone I feel better to be nude.”
Celia stood tentatively by the table, watching as the woman slipped into the gown, then said, “Alors, m’amie—Take and eat!” She opened the hamper and extracted the packet which Dickon’s grandmother had said was hemp leaves, they were mixed with dry flowerets. She poured some in Celia’s palm. “Lie down,” said the woman, “put them in your mouth!”
“I—I don’t wish to,” Celia said, but she obeyed. She found her mouth filled by brown morsels. They were little different from the drying sage or thyme she occasionally tasted in her herb garden. One part of her thought, this is ridiculous, the poor woman is mad—so long here alone . . . and yet she obeyed.
She lay down beside Melusine on the kelp mattress. She chewed and swallowed the hemp leaves. Melusine did the same.
She did not touch Celia.
Presently, a soft dreamy state overcame Celia, she ceased to think at all, she raised her head on an elbow to see the twinkle of colored flames as they became vivid jewels, more lovely than any she had ever seen. She smelled amidst the fragrance of the sea, what must be perfume from Melusine’s gown, a sweet musky smell, sweeter than any rose. She heard Melusine’s voice, and did not know in which languag
e the soft languorous tones were being uttered. They had become a distant music which needed no translation. She knew that the woman was talking of herself. Melusine de Lusignan, that there had always been a Melusine back and back beyond the reaches of time. Melusine was born of a fountain, but she took mortal lovers. Melusine knew many enchantments, but she had received a mortal soul. She went daily to Mass, she did no harm, she resisted the blandishments of the devil. Until one day she was tempted—tempted by a promise. There was a duke who wished to be king. If Melusine, using her great powers, would insure the king’s death, then coffers of gold would be hers, and the duke would raise her to be his maîtresse en titre—even, perhaps, his queen.
So small a matter it was, she had but to make a waxen image of the king, pierce it through the heart with a needle which had been dipped in the brains of a hanged murderer, then say certain holy words of power backwards. Well, she had done so. And the very next night the king began to sicken.
Melusine’s voice ceased. She took another pinch of the dried hemp, chewed on it slowly, voluptuously. Celia stirred a little. It was like hearing the old time romances Ursula used to read her at the priory. They, too, had kings, and murders and fairy spells, and was there not even a water sprite called Melusine in one of them?
Her languorous gaze moved from the fire and rested on a pattern of seashells on the opposite wall. The shells formed a star, and there was a rosy whelk in the middle. How beautiful it was—the glossy convoluted pink shell! It glowed and pulsated. She stared at it.
Melusine began again to speak. Now the voice had more urgency, the tone disturbed Celia’s trance.
The king would have infallibly died, Melusine said. But they caught her with the wax image. That Medici woman caught her, for she, too, was versed in the black arts.
“The Medici woman?” said Celia, jolted from her dreams.
“La reine . . .” answered Melusine, “Catherine . . . the pawnbroker’s daughter . . . she had me burned . . . c’etait juste.”
Celia swallowed hard. Her head cleared. The expanding walls, the rosy shell, the colored flames all turned dull, ordinary, as her own chamber at Skirby Hall. The woman’s story was real, the king was real—he was King Henry who lived in a palace called the Louvre in Paris on the other side of the water which washed the shores below them right now. And this strange woman, mutilated, half crazed by the horror she had undergone, whether witch or not—Celia jumped up from the couch.
“’Tis getting late,” she said, “Dickon’s waiting, I didn’t mean to stay so long.”
Melusine’s eyes widened to their sad, mocking look. “First . . . the love philtre you came for! Some gallant who spurns you, even though you are so fair?”
“No, no—” cried Celia, “not that. My husband . . . he can’t . . .”
“Ah-h—” said Melusine. “L’impuissance . . . you came to help him?”
Celia bowed her head, though at that moment she could not see John’s face.
“Do this!” said Melusine. She took a faggot from the hearth and drew a pentacle on the sand. “Five points like this. Then take this powder—” she drew a tiny vial from a sack near the window. “Put it in the center, then say, ‘Ishtareth, Ishtareth’ three times. Place the powder in his drink. He will lust for you . . . avec tout son corps, he will make a son in you, for this powder is from the mandrake root.”
Celia frowned, she stepped back, staring from the vial to the pentacle. “It might harm him . . .”
“Ah, you fear me, and what I have done,” said Melusine, “but God has forgiven me, believe me . . . voyons petite—you have a crucifix in your pouch—ah, you jump. But I know these things . . . Take it out!”
Celia, whose heart had resumed the hammering she had not felt since entering the hut, slowly did so.
Melusine took the beads reverently in her hand, she bent and touched her deformed mouth to the cross. “Je jure que si ton coeur est pure, if you wish only good . . . to your husband . . . there’ll be no harm. Now repeat the word of power. ‘Ishtareth.’ It is old as Babylon . . . Ishtar was goddess of love.” She put the little vial in Celia’s reluctant hand.
“Adieu,” she said, “we shall nevaire meet again. Quand vient la grande marie—the great tide on All Hallow’s Eve—I go with it.”
“Melusine!” cried Celia, struck anew by pity, by a momentary yearning which was almost love.
But the woman pushed her through the door. “Bonne chance. Adieu,” she said inexorably.
Celia walked up the dune. When she turned at the top, she saw Melusine naked again in her doorway, and heard her calling softly to her seal, “Odo . . . Odo, reviens, mon ami, je t’attends.”
By the time Celia reached Skirby Hall the whole episode with the water-witch had become painful. She was ashamed of it. She started to throw away the little vial of brown powder, then dropped it in her coffer along with the crucifix. She blotted both from her mind.
During the next days before John returned, her servants were amazed at the bustle she instigated, a perfect rage of housekeeping; floor rushes renewed, though they were scarcely a month old; furniture polished with beeswax until brawny arms ached; the brewer and the baker harassed into making ale and loaves enough for a castle.
John came home and she welcomed him warmly. But she never gave him the water-witch’s powder.
Fifteen
IN THE SUMMER OF THE year of grace 1558, John Hutchinson died, and Celia returned to Cowdray. The letter which summoned her arrived in August, and was brought by an elegant young equerry named Edwin Ratcliffe, one of several gentlemen ushers now attached to Lord Montagu’s enormous household. Like Wat, nearly four years ago, Edwin had other commissions in Lincolnshire—to the Clintons, to the Cecils—and found this sidetrack amongst the eastern fens a bore. He was, moreover, upon arrival, startled to see that Skirby Hall was a house of mourning.
The windows were draped in black cloth; Sir John’s painted hatchment was nailed over the gate until it could be transferred to the parish church where his tomb was being prepared.
A shabby old gardener acted as porter, and when he gave Edwin the dolorous news, Edwin tried to leave the letter, supposing that the sorrowing widow must be in seclusion, and himself anxious to explore the pallid entertainments of Boston before continuing his journey. The gardener gainsaid him, and insisted on ushering Edwin toward the Hall, saying that her poor ladyship wanted company. There’d been only a handful at the funeral—scandalous few considering what Sir John’s position used to be—and they’d all gone home.
Edwin, a jaunty youth of twenty who had entered the powerful viscount’s service as a stopgap before assuming his majority, gave an irritated assent. He was thunderstruck when he entered the Hall and the widow rose gravely to meet him.
“Blessed Jesu!” said Edwin, staring.
Celia, in her cheap mourning robes, the plain black coif frilled with a touch of white, her wan cheeks, her great somber eyes, reminded him of a nun. There were now a few nuns to be seen in London since Queen Mary was reestablishing the convents. But never a nun so beautiful.
Edwin dropped to his knee, and silently extended the folded parchment with its red seal.
Celia took the letter and examined the buck-head signet. “From Lord Montagu?” she said in a quiet, considering voice. “’Tis long I’ve not seen that device. Kind of him to condole with my loss, though I wonder that he heard so soon . . .”
“I b-believe—’tis not that, Lady.” Edwin blushed to the roots of the curly brown hair on his forehead and the fringe of beard cut in the fashionable Spanish manner. “I think it is another matter, I have several missives to deliver.”
“Ah, to be sure,” said Celia. The last weeks to her were a shadowy haze. In truth, she thought, John died, really died, only ten days ago. He is in his coffin under the pall in the church. There are tapers burning. I bought them, though he didn’t want them. He said they were papist. The last day—was Saturday week, when he spoke to me a moment. For so long he d
idn’t speak. I thought of him as dead then. When was that? Yuletide? Nay, before that. Michaelmas? Nay, later. Must have been Martinmas because we slaughtered the ox, the mart ox, and I was stirring the blood puddings when we all heard him give that horrible cry. Even in the kitchen we heard the cry he gave. I thought he would die then, his face was purple as his pall is now. I hoped he would die. But he got better for a while. He fretted so over our new war with France, cursing the Spaniards—King Philip—and the Queen. It was February when he got the news of the fall of Calais. He wept, poor soul, he said Calais had been ours for two hundred years; he lost warehouses in Calais. He wept and ranted, and that night he gave another great cry in his sleep. When I rushed in I thought he’d turned to stone. He could not move, except to flick one eyelid. He never moved his limbs again.
“Lady . . .” said Edwin, “will you open my lord’s letter?”
She started. She smiled faintly. She looked at him with deliberate effort, and became aware that this was a comely young man whose sword, slashed satin doublet and tall plumed hat betokened a gentleman; that there was a kindling in his round blue eyes—an expression she had not seen for so long.
“But, you must have drink!” she cried. “I’ve made you no welcome. Forgive me. There’s plenty of ale, bread at least . . .” She moved suddenly to the bellrope and jerked it, listening for the distant jangle. “There’re only two servants now. I can pay no wages. You see, there was nothing left. Naught but debts. Sir John’s heir, ’tis the nephew from Alford—he leaves me here on sufferance a while, but he is angry.”
“How could he be—the wretch!” Edwin cried, shaken by a surge of feeling so unaccustomed that he did not recognize it as chivalric. He was no bookish man. He had heard nursery tales about King Arthur and his knights rescuing beauty in distress and thought them dull. Hawking, hunting, archery, tennis, a few scuffling romps with willing wenches, these contented him. He had been betrothed since he was thirteen to the daughter of a neighboring squire at Petworth. Anne would be fifteen and marriageable by the time he reached his majority in November and came into his dead mother’s inheritance. There would be a dual celebration, and at the wedding Anne’s manor would be joined to his. He had known the girl all his life, and thought her pleasing—when he thought of her at all. She inspired none of the odd sensations evoked by the lovely widow.
