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No, not because of it. She had died in childbed. Many women did. A husband could not be blamed for that.
I kept hearing her mother’s fierce murmur: She was murdered. I must make allowances for a mother’s grief. And how strange that she should have been Fe
What were the Landors thinking now? They would know that I, whom they had chosen to be Fe
What had they thought? How strange that my mother who had seen them since my marriage had not mentioned this fact to me. It would have been so natural for her to do so.
I was betraying too much interest in my husband’s first wife. Je
“It were in the Red Room she died, Mistress,” she told me. And I must go to the Red Room.
How dark it was. How full of shadows, and there was the big four-poster bed. I went to the window and looked out to the stark drop to the sea. I could almost feel her then. It was as though a voice whispered: Yes, I thought often of throwing myself down. It would have been quick … anything better than my life with him.
Fancy, sheer fancy! What was the matter with me? It was the room with the dark red bed curtains—heavy, embroidered in red silk of a darker shade than the background. I pictured her shut in behind those curtains, waiting for him to come to her.
“Her room were the Red Room,” Je
I was ashamed of allowing Je
I pictured his hatred of her. He despised weakness. He liked me best when I fought against him. She was too gentle, too meek, and she was terrified. His only interest in her would be that of procreation. Because of her position she was his wife and on the material side it would have been a suitable marriage; it was only those two who were unsuitable.
He would have his mistresses there in the room which I shared with him now doubtless, and in the dark Red Room she would be visited now and then.
There was terror in this room. It lingered. I could imagine her so well. When she was pregnant she would be afraid of death and when she was not she would be afraid of him.
And how was she equipped to fight against her fate? Poor child, brought up in the gentle Landor home where life went on smoothly and people were kind and polite to each other. I had seen something of life. I knew and had grown to love my father who was such another as Colum. I was prepared. I was the fortunate one, the loved wife who had not failed him and in less than a year had given him the son on whom he doted.
I wished that I could get her out of my mind. I could not. I could never go near the Red Room without looking in.
“Poor Melanie,” I would murmur. “I hope you are at peace now.”
Edwina who was descended from a witch on her mother’s side had certain powers. Once when Carlos was at sea and involved in a fight with a Spanish galleon she had had a vision of it and known that he was in danger; sometimes she foresaw events. It was a strange unca
I now wondered whether Melanie had left something of this behind. I lacked those special powers but perhaps because I was in her place, I could sense something here.
I half hoped and half feared that she would return in some form. Perhaps that was why I went to the Red Room so often.
I liked to go there at dusk, at that time of day when the daylight is fast fading and it is not quite time to light the candles. Then the room was at its most ghostly.
It was November, the a
I had dressed myself in a russet velvet gown, and wore my hair loose about my shoulders—quite unfashionable but the style most becoming to me; and on that very day I could not resist going along to the Red Room at dusk.
I stood there. There were dark shadows in the room. Soon the light would be gone altogether.
“Melanie,” I whispered, “are you there?”
And as I stood there, I felt the hair rise from my scalp for the door was slowly opening.
I stood watching it. Then it was flung back and there stood Colum.
“In God’s name,” he cried, “what are you doing here?”
For a moment I could not speak. He came to me and taking my by the shoulders shook me.
“What ails you? What is wrong?”
“I thought you were a ghost.”
He caught my hair in his hands and tugged it hard. Colum liked to mingle a little pain with his caresses.
“Who has been talking to you?” he demanded.
“I pick up bits of gossip here and there.”
“I’ll have any whipped who have been pouring poison into your ear.”
“You will do no such thing,” I said, “or I shall tell you nothing.”
“You will tell me what I ask,” he said.
“Not here in this room.”
“Yes,” he said. “Here in this room, with your ghost smirking in the shadows.”
There was something grand about him. He was not afraid of anything or anyone. One of the Seaward men had told Je
“I know that this was the room in which your first wife died.”
“Well, she had to die somewhere.”
“You never told me that she was a Landor.”
“She had to be someone.”
“But the Landors … Fe
“Of course. At one time you had plans to marry that man.”
“How strange that you should have married his sister.”
“Not strange at all. It was a suitable marriage in some ways. The girl was of good family and brought a good dowry with her.”
“And you took the dowry and cared nothing for her.”
“I had no reason to care for her.”
“She was your wife.”
He grasped me firmly and pressing me backwards kissed me firmly on the mouth.
“There is only one wife for me,” he said. “Praise God I have her.”
“I wish you had told me that she was a Landor.”
“Why? It meant nothing to me that you once had a fancy for that lily-livered boy.”
“You malign Fe
“Much good will they do him.”
“There speaks the buccaneer.”
“This is a buccaneer’s world.”
“It is changing,” I said. “Trade will take the place of war and those who persist in making war will suffer and those who live peacefully will prosper.”
“By God,” he said, “you repeat your lessons well. I will have no more of Fe
“Why? Does your conscience fret you?”
“My conscience?”
“Yes, for what you did to the Landors.”
“You are mad, wife. What I did to the Landors was to marry their daughter. She died in childbirth as others have done before her.”
“But she was sick and ill and you persisted that she should give you a son.”
“God’s teeth, girl! Has a man no right to a son?”
“Not if he must kill his wife to get one.”
There was a brief silence; the ghostly shadows had crept farther into the room. For a few seconds—and a few only—Colum was shaken. I knew then that he had ignored Melanie’s pleas, that he had forced her as in the begi