The Witch from the Sea by Philippa Carr

have the gibbets busy.”
    Fennimore suggested that often innocent women were accused of witchcraft simply because they were old, lived alone, had a cat, a squint or a few warts.
    “If they be innocent they must prove it,” said my father vehemently.
    “People are too ready to accuse others,” commented my mother. “Perhaps they should look to their own shortcomings before being so ready to condemn them in others.”
    “By God, woman,” said my father, “we are talking of witchcraft!”
    He was a very intolerant man. He had a code and there was no diverging from it. He had been guilty of rape, I knew. There was Carlos to prove it—the result of a raid on the Spanish coast. What Colum Casvellyn had done to me was exactly the sort of trick he would have played on a woman; and yet he would be outraged because this had happened to his daughter. As my mother had said so often, there was no reasoning with him.
    Now he talked fiercely about what he called the cult of Satan. My mother said that witchcraft had stayed with us; it belonged to the days before Christianity came to our land. It was a part of the religion of the ancients. It was anti-Christianity; it was worship of the Horned God whom Christians called the Devil.
    She, who had studied the subject, was knowledgeable about it. She said that the Sabbats were in fact a kind of religious ceremony in which the Horned God was worshipped; and because there was a need to people the earth, the dances performed at the feet of the horned God were in fact fertility rites.
    My father watched her sardonically as she talked—a mixture of pride and derision in his glance. Fennimore said that this was so and the way in which to wipe out witchcraft was not to torture and kill defenceless old women but to lure them from their beliefs in this old pagan religion and make Christians of them.
    “Oh, you are a reformer,” said my father with a laugh.
    “Well, perhaps that is not such a bad thing to be,” replied Fennimore.
    “It is a very good thing to be,” said my mother, smiling at him warmly. There was no doubt that she was very fond of Fennimore.
    She managed to turn the subject back to the ever-interesting one of trade and the new project for it was clear that my father might become too dogmatic and introduce a discordant note.
    And so the unfortunate incident of the witch’s hanging was forgotten and the rest of the day passed pleasantly.
    In the morning the Landors left. Plans had been made; ships were being converted, the new enterprise was about to begin.
    I was now certain, and as the fearful truth dawned on me that as a result of that extraordinary night I was going to have a child I felt as though the bars of a cage were forming round me.
    I knew of course that I must tell my mother. My father had left on a short voyage and I chose the time while he was away. I asked her to come to my bedchamber as I had something very important to say to her.
    I faced her there and blurted out: “Mother, I am with child.”
    She stared at me in disbelief and I saw the colour leave her face.
    “Linnet. No!”
    “I fear it is true.”
    “Fennimore …” she began. “I am surprised …”
    “No, not Fennimore, Mother.”
    I was trying hard to find the right words and they would not come.
    “Not … Fennimore!” She was frankly bewildered.
    Then the words started to tumble out. “It was that night. He … he took me to Castle Paling. It was there …”
    “ That man!” she cried.
    I nodded. “You … he … You love him?” she demanded.
    I shut my eyes and shook my head. I could hear his mocking laughter. Did I remember it from that night? Had it penetrated my drugged senses?
    “He took me to his castle and there … I don’t know what happened. I was exhausted. He had a room made ready for me … a room with a four-poster bed. He took me to a room where food was laid out. He said he was sending his servants to find you. I ate and drank … and that is all. The next morning