Sands of Time

  ‘It was a warning.’ Louisa shrugged.

  ‘So, will the fire stop it coming again?’ Sarah stared down at the small heap of ashes.

  Louisa nodded. ‘I think so.’ She gave a grim laugh. ‘Fire would appear to have a cleansing effect on most things.’

  And so it seemed. In the days that followed the household settled into calm. Louisa unpacked. She forced herself to check the house minutely. There was no sign of anything missing. The only place she did not look was the davenport. There was no need.

  News came from Scotland that Mr Dunglass had been arrested in Glasgow. He had, it appeared, been quietly salting away a fortune in cash and valuables from the castle and the authorities looked no further for a cause of the fire. The case was closed. The two Carstairs boys, they heard, had been sent to a distant relative in the far north of Scotland for the rest of the summer. There was still no news of the absent lord.

  In October came a letter from Augusta Forrester. The Fieldings had returned home, it said, with the wonderful tidings that Venetia had met a widower in Edinburgh and agreed to marry him. He had both a title, although not one as exalted as that of Lord Carstairs, and a small fortune as well as a goodly estate and she was content. Reading the letter Louisa smiled. Poor Venetia. If only she knew the fate she had been spared had she won her noble lord.

  With many hugs and kisses and promises that they would meet again in Scotland the following year Sarah said her farewells and left and Louisa’s two boys returned from their grandmother. Her eldest son David was beginning his second year at Eton; his brother John returned to the schoolroom with George Browning. The staff was completed by the return of Louisa’s man servant, Norton, from a holiday with his family in Hertfordshire.

  The day after Sarah left, Louisa’s nightmares about Egypt returned. But this time she did not dream about Hassan. Instead she was standing on the banks of the River Nile, the scent bottle in her hand, about to throw it into the water, when she realised there was a man standing in front of her. A tall, swarthy man dressed in the skins of a lion. ‘Do not dare to throw it!’ His mouth did not move but she felt the strength of his thoughts as though he had screamed them at her. ‘Do not throw! What you hold is sacred.’

  She woke up with a start and sat up, shaking. The priest of Sekhmet had returned in her dream. His face was stern and forbidding, his eyes piercing, as he stood over her. The following night she was not on the banks of the Nile; he was here, in her room, bending over her bed.

  Her screams brought Mrs Laidlaw and Sally Anne running from their bedrooms, just above hers in the attic. Luckily John and George Browning had not heard her and were not disturbed.

  The next morning she went into the studio and stared at the davenport. Why had he returned? What did he want her to do? The answer to that came very swiftly. Two nights later she was preparing for bed, standing dreamily in her room, brushing her hair by the light of a bedside candle, when she became aware of someone standing near her in the shadows. The brush fell from her hand as she turned.

  ‘Egypt. Take it back to Egypt.’ The voice rang in her ears. ‘The tears of Isis belong in her own land; the ampulla must return whence it came.’ She could see him in the shadows.

  ‘How can I? How can I take it back?’ she stammered, but already he had gone.

  As the autumn nights drew in Louisa felt her strength waning. She found it hard to eat and coughed incessantly, but she returned to her painting. Day after day she retired to the studio and embarked upon a new series of pictures of Scotland. The magic of loch and mountain could not however drive her demons away and at last she found herself painting the priests of ancient Egypt, Hatsek and his one time colleague and eternal enemy, Anhotep, who haunted her dreams, as though by capturing them on canvas she could exorcise them from her brain.

  It didn’t work. Still they returned, sometimes apart, sometimes together, arguing with each other, arguing with her, every time coming closer, appearing more threatening, more inexorable. In her misery she wrote to Sarah, to the Forresters, even to the Fieldings. Then one night as sleep failed yet again to come and she sat up in bed reading, the one person who had not haunted her dreams in London appeared once more. Carstairs came back.

  She looked up from her book to see him standing at the end of the bed watching her. He was dressed in an open necked voluminous white shirt and baggy trousers with a broad sash into which was thrust a scimitar.

  ‘So, clever Mrs Shelley. So devious. So cunning. You have hidden the ampulla from me, set a priest to guard it and you have destroyed my life’s work into the bargain. But don’t think you can continue to outwit me. I shall have that bottle. I know it is here.’

  Louisa clutched her wrap around her shoulders, shivering. ‘If you have not found it by now, my lord, I think it unlikely you ever will,’ she said defiantly. She held his gaze. ‘So, where have you been? Where are you now? Still in America? Or have you returned to Scotland? Or are you really here, in the flesh, having walked up the stairs like a mere mortal? Did you ring the bell and ask Norton to show you up? I must confess, I did not hear a knock at my door.’

  ‘A walker between the worlds does not knock.’ He folded his arms. ‘Anymore than does a priest of the old gods.’ He narrowed his eyes. ‘When I leave here I shall set something to guard the sacred bottle from you and from the priest. Wherever it is my serpent will protect it. I cannot guarantee the safety of your household or your children, Mrs Shelley. Please do not sacrifice another life for the sake of something so trifling. You have no interest in my bottle save to thwart me. Is that not so?’

  She shrugged. ‘You are probably right. It is just that I cannot rid myself of the notion that whatever power lies in that bottle should be used for good, if it is used at all. And you, my lord, intend to use it for your own evil purposes.’

  ‘So, you would risk your sons’ lives?’

  ‘There will be no risk.’ She continued to hold his gaze defiantly. ‘I can send John back to his grandparents at any time. He will be safe there – ’

  He shook his head. ‘Do you still underestimate me so grievously, Louisa?’

  ‘I don’t underestimate you. Far from it. But I have realised that I can fight you. Remember your priest of Sekhmet, my lord? Remember the lion goddess? The lioness is invincible in the protection of her children. You threaten my children and I will unleash more rage than you can ever contemplate.’

  Without realising it she had risen to her knees on the bed. He took a step backwards. ‘If there is a snake in my studio I will banish it. If there is evil in this house I will destroy it and you with it.’ She paused. ‘Where are you, Lord Carstairs? Are you still in America with your Indian braves?’ And now she realised that she recognised the costume he was wearing. ‘No, of course, you are in Egypt.’ She smiled. ‘Is the call so strong?’

  ‘The priest of Sekhmet wants his ampulla returned. Tell me where it is and I will leave you in peace.’

  ‘No! Hassan gave me that ampulla. It was his gift. It contains all I have of his love. So, you will never set eyes on it. Never!’ Her voice had risen desperately almost to a shout and seconds later there was an urgent knock at her door. ‘Mrs Shelley? Is something wrong, madam?’ It was Norton’s voice. ‘Shall I call Mrs Laidlaw?’

  ‘Thank you, Norton. I am all right. I am sorry to have woken you. Please go back to bed,’ she called over her shoulder. When she turned back towards the room. Lord Carstairs had gone.

  And so had the golden snake. The next morning when Louisa went downstairs into her studio the statuette had vanished from the shelf where she had put it above the table where she worked. She did not even bother to call the staff to enquire as to its whereabouts. She knew who had taken it.

  She searched the studio from top to bottom, not for a golden snake, but for a live one, alert every second to the possibility of the sound of scales slithering on the floor or over the shelves. None came and slowly she settled down to her day’s painting, conscious of the sounds around the
house – the servants going about their business, John and George working in the small morning room which had been set aside for their studies, the distant rattle of wheels and hooves upon the roadway outside and the rustle of wind in the golden leaves in the garden.

  The figure of Lord Carstairs cast no shadow as he stood between her and the sunlight flooding through the window. ‘Where is it?’ His voice was a hiss of fury.

  She did not make the mistake of glancing at the davenport. Slowly she stood up, the paintbrush still clutched in her hand. ‘Nowhere you will ever find it!’

  She realised suddenly that they were not alone. Two other figures hovered in the room. Two priests. The guardians of the bottle. He spotted them almost as soon as she did and whirled to face them. ‘So, the moment of confrontation has come! I am sure, my lords of the ancient world, that you are as anxious as I to return the sacred ampulla to the place it rightfully belongs. I can take it there. I can transport it over time and space.’ He stepped closer to Louisa. ‘Only one person stands between us and our hearts’ desire, my lords.’

  ‘Do not touch her!’ The voice seemed so loud it appeared to fill the spaces of the room, the house, even the sky outside.

  Carstairs shrank back. Then he put his hand to his belt and Louisa realised that a wickedly curved broad-bladed sword hung there. As he pulled it free she dropped her paintbrush and fled towards the door. Her shout for help died on her lips. Glancing round as she groped for the doorknob she saw the raised scimitar catch the sunlight in a blinding flash. There was a huge crash. It was not her he had attacked, but the two priests, spirits from another world, and as suddenly as they had come, all three men disappeared.

  Shaking with fear she took a step forward. Then another. Nothing in the room appeared to have been touched. The only sign of the interruption was the small splash of bright colour on the thick watercolour paper, where her hand had smudged it, and the paintbrush lying on the floor.

  She never saw Lord Carstairs again. Nor the priests, and if a snake appeared in her studio to guard the sacred ampulla she was never aware of it.

  That wasn’t the end of the story of course, for the ampulla remained in her desk. She never forgot it, but neither did she think about it. If one day her sons or one of their descendants wanted to take it to Egypt that would be up to them. The portrait of the two priests she pushed into a dark corner. It was not shown in any of her exhibitions. It never occurred to her that someone, some day long after her time, might think the little bottle a pretty trinket suitable to give to a child.

  What Price Magic?

  ‘Why move?’ they had said. ‘Let him be the one to go. He’s found a new life, a new woman; let him find a new home somewhere else.’ But she knew she couldn’t do it. The house was their house; the garden their garden; the furniture mostly their furniture that they had chosen together. She wanted to move on, to start again with nothing to remind her of the past and how happy they had been.

  It had been very hard when she knew she was losing him. Shock, pain, outrage, anger had all taken their place in the queue with loss of self-esteem, but she had forced herself to come through it, and now here she was in a small Victorian terraced cottage instead of a large modern house, in a town instead of the country, with new furniture and even – especially – a new bed. She had defiantly chosen a huge king-size bed. It took up most of the bedroom and came with a gloriously comfortable mattress – not the iron-hard orthopaedic job Steven had needed for his back. She smothered it in a bright duvet and dozens of pillows, and had a TV in the bedroom.

  That part of being divorced was good. She could watch her choice of programmes all the time and take her supper to bed if she felt like it. Or breakfast. Or lunch. And she had independence and freedom. And a new-found ability to make decisions and realise that they were perfectly valid. And time for herself. And money.

  It might have been better had she needed to work, but Steven had been generous – guilt, she supposed – and that was the problem. A delightful town, a picturesque street, pleasant neighbours, but no friends. She was lonely. She should have stayed where she was, where her friends had been supportive and sympathetic and angry on her behalf. But they had been too angry. Angrier than she was. They kept on about Steven and what he had done, and they wouldn’t let her move on. She wanted new friends who hadn’t known him. People who would show her how to get over that one last hurdle: the feeling that she hadn’t been good/ beautiful/successful/young enough to keep her man. But how to meet them? And how to feel a different person?

  She stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror and surveyed herself critically. Figure – not bad. Skin – quite good. Legs – still definitely an asset. Eyes – beautiful, or so Steven used to say, and presumably they had not changed. Hair – neat, quite attractive. But even naked the overall effect was demure. How could one look demure naked? She tried a few un-demure poses. No, she had to admit, demure seemed to come naturally.

  She went into her bedroom and threw open the cupboard. Smart/pretty. Mid-length hems. Court shoes. Demure. And – she had to face it – middle-aged! But she wasn’t middle-aged! It came out as a wail inside her head. Was she?

  Steven obviously thought she was. The new wife was twenty years younger than she was. But also, to her astonishment when she had finally seen (not met, not allowed to meet) her successor, she, too, was demure. So that proved that she had been the wife Steven had wanted her to be. The wife he had conjured out of the malleable young girl she had been. He had made her demure, and she, Janet, didn’t want to be demure any more. She went back to the bathroom and stared at herself again. What could she do about it?

  Strangely, it hadn’t occurred to her to throw out her clothes when she began her new life. They had escaped the blitz intact, to every last Jaeger sweater and Jacquemar scarf. The trouble was, how did she want to look? She wasn’t sure.

  She put on some clothes – a sensible skirt, tailored shirt, double row of cultured pearls – brushed her hair neatly, and slotted her handbag on her arm. She set out purposefully for the centre of town, where she veered away from the stores she usually frequented and headed for the network of medieval lanes behind the cathedral, looking for the smart ‘little shops’.

  Meeting Annette was providential.

  Janet was staring at a strikingly attractive narrow window display on the corner of St Anne’s Lane, featuring a dress of the kind she secretly coveted but had never had the courage to buy, when she noticed another woman apparently rapt in admiration of the same dress. She gave her a shy glance. ‘It’s pretty, isn’t it?’

  The other woman was, Janet saw in the quick scrutiny she allowed herself, stunningly attractive. She was slim, dressed in a style not dissimilar to the clothes in the window, and had an enviably relaxed elegance. Janet gave her another surreptitious, admiring look. The woman smiled. ‘I’m glad you like it. I’ve just finished arranging it. That’s why I was checking what it looked like.’

  Janet felt herself blush. ‘It’s your shop?’

  The woman nodded. ‘I’m Annette.’ She indicated the sign on the fascia. ‘Do come inside and look round if you like.’

  It was the first shop Janet had entered on her quest for a new identity and she looked round curiously, made an instant assessment of Annette’s obvious grasp of style, and, as the shop was small and empty at that moment of other customers, and the smallness and emptiness fostered a feeling of confidence and confidentiality, she told Annette everything.

  And found herself trying on long, soft dresses with plunging necklines, shoes with platform soles, ropes of beads and fringed scarves. She was made to bend from the waist and comb her hair up the wrong way until it stood round her head in a wild ruff which made her look – and feel – twenty years younger. She was bullied into trying new eye-shadow and lipstick out of Annette’s own cosmetic bag, and at last she was allowed to look at herself in the full-length mirror. She was speechless.

  ‘Pleased?’ Annette tried to hide her own delight. The
transformation was stunning.

  Then Janet hit a problem. The trouble was she couldn’t bring herself to wear her lovely new clothes outside the house. However much the image was one she had dreamed of, she just didn’t have the courage to step outside dressed like that. Disparaging phrases like ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ floated through her head, phrases which she was sure no longer made sense in a world where everyone, except perhaps her, could please themselves as to how they looked. The image just did not fit her, however much she longed for it to.

  She did wear the dress when Annette came over to see her – their bond in the dressing-room had gelled instantaneously into friendship – and she felt exotic and free in a world full of new possibilities. But when Annette and her bubbling enthusiasm went home Janet, crossly aware that this was Steven’s legacy but finding herself incapable of overcoming her inhibition, guiltily crept back into the boring anonymity of her demure image.

  On one visit Annette showed Janet how to rinse her hair with nettles and rosemary and how to scent her skin with rose and jasmine (making herbal potions was her hobby when the dress shop was shut), but when she had gone home Janet angrily brushed her hair back into its neat, permed order, and with the neatness came her old submissive, demure personality. And it made her furious with herself.

  * * *

  Her life might have gone on like that were it not that one Saturday Annette persuaded her to go to the natural healing exhibition in the town hall. It was not at all the sort of thing Janet would normally have gone to, but Annette was selling some of her prettily bottled mixtures there. Janet desperately wanted to wear her new dress and was perplexed as to why it felt so wrong. She took it off and decided that, as it was so hot, Annette wouldn’t find a floaty summer dress – demure, but cool – too odd. But she went convinced she wouldn’t enjoy herself.

  The place was packed. She began to wander around and was soon lost among the crowds whose dress, she noticed, was completely eclectic. Jeans, dresses, skirts. Long, short, mini. Anyway, you could hardly see what people wore because of the crowds. Comforted by the lack of conformity and the general bonhomie, she forgot to be demure and soon found she was enjoying herself enormously. She loved the sheer dottiness of it all. She loved the people and the things. She bought herself a beautiful ring with a healing amethyst set in knotted silver, a book of cookery recipes to keep her young, and, when at last she found Annette in a small corner stall between a man selling biorhythm charts and another selling runes, she bought herself some bath-oil in a blue bottle tied with a pale pink ribbon. She watched demonstrations of Tai Chi, yoga and Japanese sword-fighting, and stood absorbed by an Adonis who was practising inversion therapy by hoisting a beautiful woman, mercifully clad in jeans, upside down into the air and balancing her on his hands while he lay on his back and peered up into her cleavage with a look of serene transcendence. She had a cup of herbal tea and a flapjack with sufficient roughage to pave the town square, and then wandered over to look at the Buddhist stand.