Then there was the great Christmas dinner with various meats—turkey, chicken, ham and beef, with so many pies made in all sorts of shapes, that the table was weighed down with food. There was plum pudding and plum porridge—this last I had not seen before. It was like a soup made with raisins and spices.

Afterwards we played all sorts of games including hide-and-seek all over the house. We did charades too, but that was a mistake because it reminded us of Harriet. Priscilla quickly suggested another game. We danced to the fiddlers and some of us sang. Several of our neighbours had joined us and we were a large party, but I was sure some of the family were greatly relieved when the day was over.

‘Christmases after a bereavement must necessarily be shadowed by sadness,’ said Anita.

We lay awake again that night and I told her more about Harriet.

‘She was an unusual person,’ I said. ‘People like her can’t go through life without having a marked effect on others.’

I was thinking of people like my mother and Hessenfield—the beautiful people—and I wondered if I would be one of them when I grew up.

At last we slept and rose fairly late the next morning. The household was already astir and when we went down to breakfast it was nine o’clock.

One of the servants told us that Damaris had gone over to Enderby. She wanted to see that all was well and she wanted to tell Smith that we had been persuaded to stay on for a while.

Anita and I were still at breakfast when Benjie came in. We told him that we were going to ride over to Enderby that morning and that Damaris had gone already. She had walked, for she did not ride nowadays. She was taking great care. But she enjoyed walking, even though the doctor had said she must not go too far.

Benjie chatted with us for a while and later we all rode out together to Enderby. We tethered our horses and went into the house. The door was open, but there was nothing unusual about that as we knew Damaris was inside.

I was struck immediately by the quietness of the place. Usually when I came in Damon would bark and come bounding towards me, or Damaris would call, or Jeremy or Smith perhaps. But the silence sent a pricking horror down my spine. I couldn’t say why. The house seemed to have changed. It was as though I were seeing it as the servants saw it—a house in which evil things could happen, a house haunted by the spirits of those who had lived violently and unhappily in it.

It was a passing feeling. Obviously Smith was out. He often was. He took Damon for long walks through the lanes and over the fields.

‘Aunt Damaris!’ I called.

There was no answer. She must be upstairs and could not hear, I told myself.

I said: ‘Come on. We’ll find her.’

I looked at the other two. It was clear that they had not felt that frisson of fear which had come to me. I started up the stairs ahead of them and saw Damaris’s shoe lying at the top of the stairs.

‘Something has happened,’ I said.

Then I saw her. She was lying there in the minstrels’ gallery; her face was white and her legs twisted under her.

Anita was on her knees first. ‘She’s breathing,’ she said.

I knelt too, looking at my beloved Damaris. She gave a little moan.

Benjie said: ‘We must get her out of here.’

‘Let’s get her to one of the rooms,’ said Anita, and Benjie picked her up. She moaned and I guessed that something had gone wrong about the baby. It was far, far too early for it to be born yet. Oh no, I prayed. Not this one too.

Benjie carried her very gently. I opened a door and he laid her on a bed. It was the room which she had recently had refurnished, replacing the velvet with the damask.

‘I’ll go off at once and get the doctor,’ said Anita.

‘No,’ interrupted Benjie. ‘I’ll do that. You stay with her… you two. Look after her until I come back with the doctor.’

Anita had had some experience of nursing for she had looked after her father for several years before his death. She covered Damaris up with blankets and told me to get warming-pans. I hurried down to the kitchen. A fire was burning there. Oh, where was Smith! If only he would come back he would be a great help. But I knew he walked for miles with Damon and it could be an hour before he returned.

I took up the warming-pans and Anita laid them beside Damaris.

Anita looked at me sadly. ‘I’m afraid she will lose the child,’ she said.

Damaris opened her eyes. She looked bewildered. Then she saw me and Anita.

‘We came over and found you in the gallery,’ I said.

‘I fell,’ she replied; then she looked up and saw the damask hangings round the bed.

‘Oh no, no,’ she moaned. ‘Not… here… Never… never…’

Anita touched her forehead and although she closed her eyes her expression was disturbed.

It seemed a long time before Benjie came back with the doctor.

When he saw her he said: ‘She will lose the child.’

Those were sad days at Enderby. Damaris recovered but she was in despair.

‘It seems I shall never have my own child,’ she said.

Priscilla came over constantly to see her but it was Anita who nursed her and made herself indispensable in the household. Benjie stayed on. He would not go until he knew that Damaris was out of danger.

I heard the servants whispering.

‘It’s this house,’ they said. ‘It’s full of ghosts. How did the mistress come to fall? I reckon it was someone, something—that pushed her.’

‘There’s never going to be no luck in this house. There’s tales about it that go right back into the past.’

I began to wonder whether there was anything in it. When it was quiet in the house I would stand below the minstrels’ gallery and fancy that the shadows up there took shape and turned into people who had lived long ago.

Benjie rode over often during that spring and summer, and during one of his “visits Anita came to me in the schoolroom looking radiant.

‘I have news for you, Clarissa,’ she told me. ‘I’m going to be married.’

I stared at her in amazement and then suddenly the truth dawned on me. ‘Benjie!’ I cried.

She nodded. ‘He has asked me and I have said yes. Oh, most joyously have I said it. He is the kindest man I ever knew. In fact, he is a wonderful man and I can’t believe my good luck.’

I hugged her. ‘I am so pleased… so happy. You and Benjie. It’s obvious… and absolutely right.’

I felt that a great responsibility had been lifted from my shoulders. This concentration on responsibility was becoming an obsession. Benjie was no longer someone to whom I owed something. He had lost Carlotta and myself—well, now he would have Anita.

Arabella’s comment was: ‘Harriet would have been pleased.’

They all agreed that it was the best thing possible for the pair of them.

‘Of course,’ said Priscilla, ‘we shall have to think of getting a new governess for Clarissa.’

‘We shall never get anyone like Anita,’ sighed Arabella.

Damaris said she would teach me in the meantime and added that Anita must be married from Enderby, which was, after all, her home.

So the wedding took place. The preparations absorbed Damaris, for she was determined that Anita should feel that she was one of the family. I think we were all especially happy for Benjie’s sake. He had changed; his melancholy had dropped away from him, and it was wonderful to have something happy taking place.

So they were married and Anita left Enderby Hall to set up house with Benjie at Eyot Abbas. I had passed my eleventh birthday when the Treaty of Utrecht was signed. There was a great deal of relief about that because it meant that the war was over. Great-Grandfather Carleton discussed it constantly and at the dinner table at Eversleigh Court we heard little else. He would bang the table and expound on the iniquities of the Jacobites and how this was their coup de grâce.

‘Best thing that could have happened,’ he said. ‘This will teach those traitors a lesson. Louis will have to turn them out of France now. There’s no help for it. We shall have them sneaking back to England.’

‘Everyone has a right to his or her views, Father,’ Priscilla reminded him.

He looked at her from under his bushy eyebrows and growled: ‘Not when they’re treacherous Jacobite ones.’

‘Whatever they are,’ insisted Priscilla.

‘Women!’ muttered Great-Grandfather Carleton.

We were all glad that the war was at an end, and as Philip of Anjou was now King of Spain it all seemed pointless that it had ever taken place. Priscilla’s brother Carl would probably be home now, for he held a high position in the army, and that would be a source of delight to Arabella and Carleton.

The year passed peacefully. I went in the summer to Eyot Abbas and was delighted with the change since my last visit. There was no doubt that Anita and Benjie were happy. The house was more like it had been when Harriet was alive.

It was September, a rather chilly day, for the mists had continued through the afternoon and we had not seen the sun. I had ridden over to Eversleigh Court as it was a Sunday and it became a habit for us to dine there on that day. Grandmother Priscilla was insistent that we keep up the habit. It cheered Arabella, she said, who had never really recovered from Harriet’s death, and whose health was not as robust as it had been.

Even I could see the change in both great-grandparents. Arabella looked very sad sometimes, as though she were looking back into the past, and her eyes took on a misty look as she remembered. My great-grandfather made a show of being more irascible than before but at times he was a little unconvincing.