The Mask of the Enchantress (21 page)

During the weeks that followed my feelings were mixed. I did not know whether I regretted this decision or was glad of it. But I did see the point of it.

When I told Cougabel that I was going away to school her reaction was violent. She stared at me with great flashing eyes and they seemed filled with hatred.

come. I come,she kept saying.

I tried to explain to her that she could not come. I had to go alone. My parents were sending me because people like us had to be educated and most of us went to school to receive that education.

She was not listening. It was a habit of Cougabel to shut her mind to anything she did not want to hear.

A week before the ship was due my mother and I had made our preparations for departure. It was August. I should go to school in September and in December come back to the island. It was not a very long separation, my mother kept saying.

Then one morning Cougabel was missing. Her bed had not been slept in. She occupied a small bed in the room adjoining mine, for she wanted to sleep in a bed when she saw ours. In fact she wanted everything that I had and I was sure that if it had been suggested that she go away to school with me she would have been happy.

Cougaba was frantic.

here she go? She have taken her ornaments with her. See her smock here. She go in shells and feathers. Where she go?

It was pitiful to hear her.

My father calmly pointed out that she must be on the island unless she had taken a canoe and gone to one of the others. It seemed sensible to search the island.

he go to Giant,said Cougaba. he go to him and ask him not let Little Missy go. Oh, it is wicked wicked to send Little Missy away. Little Missy belong Little Missy not go.

Cougaba rocked to and fro chanting: ittle Missy not go.

My father impatiently said that he did not doubt Cougabel would come back now she had given her mother a fright. But the day went on and she did not return. I was hurt and angry with her because she had shortened the time when we could be together.

But when the second day passed we all became anxious and my father sent search parties up the mountain.

Cougaba was trembling with terror and my mother and I tried to reassure her.

frightened,she said. very frightened, Mamabel.

e will find her,soothed my mother.

telled Master Luke,mourned Cougaba. said, o sleep in Master big bed for whole month. Dance of the Masks to be at new moon.And Master Luke he laugh and say, ot for me and you. Do as I say, Cougaba.I tell him of Grumbling Giant and he laugh and laugh. Then I sleep in bed. Then the night of the Mask Dance and I stay in Master Luke bed and then I am with child. All say, h, this child of Giant, Cougaba honored lady. Giant came to her. But it was not Giant It was Master Luke and if they know they kill me. So Master Luke he say, et them think Giant father of child,and he laugh and laugh. Cougabel not child of the Mask. And now I frighten. I think Giant very angry with me.

ou mustn be afraid,said my mother. he Giant will understand that it was not your fault.

e take her. I know he take her. He stretch out his hand and draw her down down to the burning stones where she burn forever. He say, icked Cougaba. Your child mine, you say. Now she be mine.

There was nothing we could do to comfort Cougaba. She kept moaning: at old man Debil was at my elbow, tempting me. Ie wicked. Ie sinned. I told the big lie and the Giant is angry.

My mother warned her to say nothing of this to anyone and that was a relief to poor Cougaba and something she was ready to listen to. I had seen the natives benign since they had accepted my father as an emissary of the great Giant, but I wondered what they would be like if they turned against us. And what Cougaba had done would certainly be considered an unforgivable sin in their eyes.

That night Cougabel was found. My father discovered her on the mountain. She had broken her leg and was unable to walk.

He carried her back to the house and set her leg. The islanders looked on in wonder. Then he made her lie down and would not let her move.

I sat with her and read to her and Cougaba made all sorts of potions for her distilled from plants, for she had great skill in these matters.

Cougabel told me she had gone to the mountain to ask the Giant to stop my going away and then she had fallen and hurt herself. She took this as a sign that the Giant wanted me to go and was punishing her for doubting the wisdom of his wishes.

We accepted that explanation.

Cougaba said no more about the deception she had practiced concerning her daughter birth. The Giant could not be very angry, my mother told her, because he had merely broken Cougabel leg, and my father had said that as her bones were young and strong he could mend her leg and none would guess it had ever been broken.

So the days before my departure were spent mostly with Cougabel and when the time came for me to go she was calm and resigned.

My father was very sad at our going but I knew he thought it was the right thing to do.

So we came to Sydney, my mother and I, and my delight in the beautiful harbor and perhaps my even more intense enchantment by the big cityor I was accustomed to scenic beauty-reconciled me to this new phase in my life. I was excited by all the people. I loved the streets, which wound about in a haphazard way because they had grown from the cart tracks of earlier days. I loved the big streets best and in a few days I knew my way about. I shopped with my mother in the great shops such as I had never seen before. I had never realized there was so much merchandise to be bought.

We should have to buy clothes for my school, said my mother, when we were in the room in our hotel. irst though,she added, e must find the school.

My mother made inquiries and we looked at three before we decided on one. It was not far from the harbor, right in the heart of the town. My mother saw the headmistress and explained that we had lived on a Pacific island and she had taught me until now. I was given tests from which I was glad to say I emerged in some triumph, so my mother had been a good teacher. Then it was arranged that I should become a boarder at the start of the term, which would give my mother time to leave me at school and catch the next ship back to Vulcan Island.

What weeks they were! We shopped madly. I knew the names of the streets and how to find them. We were able to buy my school uniform in Elizabeth Street. The headmistress had told us where to go. We bought clothes and stores and drugs to be sent to the ship en route for Vulcan Island; and when we had done our shopping we took great pleasure in exploring the town, watching the ships which came into the harbor, visiting the spot where Captain Cook had landed; and I felt I was a child again going with Anabel on a jaunt after she had picked me up from Crabtree Cottage.

Then the day came when I was taken to my school and we said good-by to each other. I was desperately unhappy and missed my parents and the island so much.

Then as the weeks passed I settled in. My strangeness was an attraction. The girls would listen for hours to stories of the island. I was an oddity and as I was bright and able to stand up for myself I began to enjoy school.

By Christmas when I returned to the island I had changed. Everything had changed. Cougabel was better and her leg showed no sign that it had been broken. Another triumph for my father!

But she was no longer a suitable companion for me. She was just an islander and I had been out into the big world.

I questioned a great deal now. What were we doing here? My mother had talked to me and made allusions to the past but she had always been able to brush aside awkward questions. She could do so no longer. I was getting curious. I wanted to know why we must live our lives on a remote island when there were towns like Sydney, when there was a whole world to explore.

I remembered the castle I had seen years ago. It had always held a magical quality for me. Now I became obsessed by it and there was so much I wanted to know. School had aroused me from my lazy indifference to the past. I was consumed by a desire to know what it was all about.

That was why my mother had decided to write it all down to tell me.

When I next returned for my holidays she showed me her account of what had happened and I read it avidly. I understood. I was not shocked to learn that I was a bastard and that my father was a murderer. I wondered a great deal about what had happened after my father left. I thought of Esmond and Susannah. They were the ones who interested me. I wondered if I should ever see them and I was filled with a desire to go to that magic castle and find them.

The Dance of the Masks

I was at school for two years and was past sixteen when it was decided that I should leave and go back to the island. In the meantime I had made the acquaintance of the Halmers. At school Laura Halmer and I had become close friends. She had been drawn to me at first by the strangeness of my unusual background and had been an avid listener to tales of the island. I had been attracted by her sophistication. She knew Sydney well and the shops were her happy hunting ground. Her family were farmers and owned a large estate to which they always referred as he property.This property was some fifty miles north of Sydney. Laura, as the youngest of a family of brothers, was somewhat indulged and it was natural that during my second term at school she should suggest that I go home with her for the half-term holiday, which was just one week and thus not long enough for me to go back to the island. This I was glad to do.

At the HalmersI was in yet another world. I was received with warmth into the family as a friend of Laura and in a few days I felt as though I had known them for years. The property was an exciting place to be as there were so many activities going on. They were up at dawn and the Halmer men would be out early and come in at eight olock for a breakfast of steak or chops. There were many hands about the place, all with their various duties to perform. It was a very big property.

There I first met Philip Halmer. He was the youngest of Laura three brothers. The two elder ones were big bronzed men and I could not tell one from the other during those first days. They talked of sheep constantly, for sheep were the main business of the property; they laughed a great deal; they ate a great deal; and they accepted me as one of them since I was a friend of Laura.

With Philip it was different. He was about twenty at that time. He was the clever one, his mother told me. He had soft fair hair and blue eyes; he was sensitive and when I discovered that he was training as a doctor I was immediately drawn to him. I explained that my father had gone to the island to study tropical diseases and that he hoped to build a hospital there. I was very enthusiastic about my father work and Philip and I were often together talking about the island. It made a special bond between us.

During that mid-term week I spent at the HalmersI learned a great deal about life in the bush. We would ride out, Laura, Philip and I, and make a campfire in the bush where we brewed tea in a billycan and ate dampers and johnnycakes; and few things had ever tasted so good. Philip used to tell me about the trees and foliage, and I was fascinated by the tall eucalypts, whose branches could fall so swiftly and silently from their great height that they could impale a man, and so they had earned the name of widow-makers. I saw trees and earth scorched by the terrible forest fires and I heard of all the plagues which could beset settlers in this sometimes unwelcoming land.

So after that short week at the Halmersanother change had come into my life.

I went back to school and then Christmas was looming.

hey all want you to come back and spend Christmas with us,said Laura.

But I couldn, of course; they were expecting me on Vulcan.

When I was on the island now I felt shut in, restricted. It was the first time I had ever been less than contented with my family.

My mother knew what was happening. We spent a lot of time together. h, Suewellyn,she said one day, oue changed. Youe seen something of the world. You know that being cooped up on a little island is not all there is to life. I was right to send you away to school.

was happy before.

ut knowledge is always desirable. You couldn live your life here on a small island. You won want to stay here when you grow up.

hat about you and my father?

doubt we shall ever leave here.

wonder what is happening there,I mused.

She did not have to ask where I meant. She knew I was thinking of the castle. For I had read what had happened there, and through her words I had seen it all so clearly.

fter all this time I went on.

e should never feel safe if we left here,she said. our father is a good man, Suewellyn. Always remember that. He killed his brother in hot blood, and he will never be able to forget it. He feels he has the mark of Cain upon him.

t was great provocation and David deserved to die.

t true, but there are many who would say that no wrong is righted by another. I feel guilty in a sense. It was because of me that it happened. Oh, Suewellyn, how easy it is to become involved in horror.

I was silent and remembered those words later. How right she was!

She went on: ne day, perhaps youl go back to England. You could go to the castle. There is nothing against you.Then she started to talk about the castle, and the picture was in my mind as clear as it had been when she showed it to me. I could see it then as I saw it on that day long ago, with its battlemented drum towers and great stone walls.

Then she talked about the inside of the castle. She described those rooms: the main hall, the stone undercroft, the picture gallery, the chapel. It was almost as though there was some purpose in this. I was there experiencing it all, seeing it through her eyes. It was as though I were being prepared and the Devil was making it easy for me to fall into temptation. I was superstitious perhaps. Was it surprising, living as I did on the island in the shadow of the Grumbling Giant?

My parents liked to hear about my stay on the Halmer property. They were delighted. This was exactly what they wanted for me. They loved me dearly. I had always known that I had the best father and mother in the world; and that my father loved me partly because I was hers as well as his. Our devotion had been more marked because we had been parted in the beginning; and they were ready to let me go because they believed they knew what was best for me. My mother told me this, for now that I knew their secret there was complete confidence between us.