“Did not,” I contradicted him. “You’ve had the wrong history teacher. The chap on the tapestry with the arrow through his eye isn’t Harold. Harold gets hewn down with a broadsword, or something, a little further on.”
“Whatever. The point is, comets always meant bad luck. The historical antithesis of your bloody starlings, if you like. Did anything else in the diary sound familiar?”
“Not really.” I shook my head. “There were a few things he mentioned, early on in the year, that rang off bells in my brain, but when he writes about the summer months, with people dropping like flies in the streets, I don’t feel anything.”
My brother smiled at me, that particularly self-satisfied smile that usually meant he was about to be clever. “Well, you wouldn’t, would you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Assuming that you were, in some former lifetime, this Mariana person, then you could hardly be expected to remember what London was like at the height of the plague. You’d been sent out of London by that time, hadn’t you? To the country.”
“To Exbury,” I mused. I caught myself and smiled a little ruefully. “It all sounds rather far-fetched, doesn’t it? Shades of the penny dreadful.”
“Oh, I don’t know.” Tom shrugged. “It sounds rather fascinating, to me. I’ve set our local librarian on the scent, by the way, so we’ll have to wait and see what he manages to dig up on the subject of reincarnation.”
I smiled at him. “He didn’t think it an odd topic for the local vicar to be researching?”
“Heavens, no.” Tom brushed off the suggestion. “I told him I needed the information for an upcoming sermon.”
Which was, I decided upon reflection, a wholly logical and plausible excuse. Tom’s sermons were notoriously unorthodox, and when he stood in the pulpit he was as likely to discuss cricket as he was to quote biblical texts. No doubt his parishioners had grown used to his eccentricities, and accepted them now without question.
“I’ll have to dig out some of my old textbooks on comparative religions,” my brother had continued. “There should be some information on reincarnation in there. Both the Hindu and Buddhist faiths believe in it, I know that much.”
“Well, I’m not sure that I’m entirely convinced, myself,” I told him. “But whatever is happening, it’s definitely connected to my house.”
“And you’re certain you want to go back?”
I thought of my beautiful sunlit study; of the companionable atmosphere of the Red Lion pub, with Ned perpetually reading his paper at the end of the bar; of Geoffrey de Mornay, and the way his eyes darkened when he smiled…
“Yes,” I said, “quite certain. It’s almost as if—and I know this is going to sound idiotic—but it’s almost as if I’ve been drawn to Greywethers for a reason. That I somehow belong there.”
“Hardly idiotic. I believe everything happens for a reason.” That was the vicar speaking. “And I think you’re right. You need to go back and face up to this thing, if you’re ever going to have any peace. You need to find out everything you can about this Mariana person. If you can do that, then you might learn why all this is happening to you now. Some bit of unfinished business, maybe, that needs to be completed.”
“It’s possible, I suppose.”
“Or,” he added with a grin, “maybe my past-life theory is all wet, and you are just going quietly insane, after all. Like Great-aunt Sarah.”
I pulled a face. “A comforting thought.”
“What are big brothers for?”
“Although,” I conceded, “perhaps the insanity defense is the most practical one. I’m still not sure I believe in the concept of reincarnation. It does seem a little unlikely, don’t you think?”
Tom flicked me a sideways glance. Seemingly dismissing the subject, he turned his gaze back out over the wide green lawn, where the long shadows of the early evening were spreading across the freshly mown grass like gentle caressing fingers. “Sixteen sixty-five, you said, was the plague year? Who was on the throne then?”
I frowned. “Charles the Second, I think.”
“Oh, right. Another of the ill-fated Stuart kings, wasn’t he? Did you read the bit about his coronation?”
“No. I didn’t go back that far.”
“Well,” Tom leaned back, “you want to talk about bad omens. It rained the whole day, cats and dogs.”
I shook my head vaguely. “It didn’t rain until that evening,” I corrected him. “After the ceremonies were over.”
“It was a Saturday, I believe.”
My answer came more slowly this time. “No. A Tuesday.”
“And the ground was carpeted in red.”
“Blue…” I turned my head, stunned, to meet his knowing eyes.
“You’re right,” he told me. “There probably isn’t much point in exploring the reincarnation angle.”
I had stared back at him, unable to reply at first, my mind amazed and numb. “Bloody hell,” I had said slowly. For, after all, vicar or no vicar…
“Precisely,” Tom had said, and, smiling, he’d returned to his sermon.
The traffic cleared ahead of me, and the sudden blare of a car horn pulled me instantly out of my reverie. Still wrapped in warm serenity, I coaxed the little Peugeot into the faster lane and depressed the accelerator, squaring my shoulders against the driver’s seat with a barely audible sigh. I drove the rest of the way in silence.
As I bumped across the little bridge that marked the approach to Exbury, the blanket of contentment tightened and a small thrill of anticipation raced through my travel-weary body. Almost home. The words filled my brain like a spoken voice, soft and soothing.
There was that word again, I thought. Home. It sprang so easily and naturally to mind, almost as if…
“I don’t know,” I said aloud to the spotted windscreen, “have I lived here before, really, in some other life?” The reply flowed back, prompt and simple, from what might have been either my imagination or the deepest recesses of my subconscious: Yes.
The road curved and my house rose majestically from the landscape to welcome me, beautiful in the late-morning sunlight with the forsythia bursting into bloom along the north wall. It always came back to the house, I thought, as I turned up the narrow drive. I had not chosen this house, as others choose, with a free and rational mind; the house had chosen me. And if I had indeed been drawn here for a purpose, then I had better do my best to find out what that purpose was, starting today. Starting now.
“All right,” I said firmly, lifting my chin to a determined angle. “I’ve come back. Now show me what it is you want me to do.”
It was a shameless bit of bravado, really. I wasn’t even sure as I spoke the words whether I was addressing a ghost, the house, or myself. And I certainly wasn’t expecting an answer.
But as I parked in the converted stables at the back of the house, a glimmer of movement caught my eye, and turning my head, I saw the figure of a young woman standing in the dovecote garden. The still, poised figure of a young woman in green.
For a moment I panicked, my chest tightening, and then the woman turned and smiled and waved, and I saw that it wasn’t a ghost at all, only Vivien wearing a shapeless old green coverall, with her fair hair tumbled anyhow around her shoulders and her face glowing with healthy color. Relieved, I walked slowly across the long grass towards the ruined dovecote. Vivien stopped working and leaned on her rake, watching my approach with friendly eyes.
“You’re home, then,” she said, unnecessarily. “Is everything all right with your family?”
“Yes, thanks.” News traveled quickly. She looked as though she wanted to know more, but I changed the subject. I never had liked lying, much. “I didn’t know you dabbled in gardening, as well,” I said.
“I don’t normally. I’m just lending Iain a h
and with the weeding. Such a beautiful morning,” she explained, gesturing up at the flawless blue sky. “I hated to be cooped up indoors.”
“You’re not lending much of a hand, love,” Iain Sumner’s voice said dryly. I couldn’t see him for the stone wall, but as I drew nearer the garden he stood upright and stretched. “You’ve been raking that same bit of soil for the past twenty minutes,” he accused Vivien.
She took the dig good-naturedly. “So I’m thorough.”
“Aye. I’ll not argue with you there.” His eyes slid sideways away from her, and he smiled a greeting at me, pitching a handful of dirt-encrusted weeds onto the heaping mound beside him. He was looking the proper countryman this morning, in rough trousers and a faded blue flannel shirt, with the leather gauntlet gloves pulled up over his forearms. He was also looking exhausted. His gray eyes were strained and deeply shadowed in his stoic face. I thought of my cousin Ronald, in Cornwall, who rose at four every morning to milk his thirty cows, and wondered for the hundredth time why anyone would choose to be a farmer.
Iain yanked off one of the weathered gloves and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a large sunburnt hand. “I gave your message to Geoff,” he informed me. “There was no problem. He’s been called away himself, up north on business, for the next few days, but he said he’ll give you a ring when he gets back.”
“Oh, yes?” Vivien cocked her head mischievously.
“He promised me a tour of the Hall,” I explained, hoping no one would notice my blush in the strong sunlight. For the second time, I changed the subject. “The garden looks lovely,” I said.
It truly did. The orderly rows of tiny green shoots were now surrounded by verdant clumps of hyacinth and primrose. He had added a climbing rose as well, perhaps a transplant from the famous rose gardens at Crofton Hall, its sleeping tendrils trailing lazily over the sun-warmed stones. In a month or so, the small plot of land would be positively bursting with life and color.
Iain followed my appreciative gaze, and shrugged his broad shoulders. “It’ll do,” he said modestly.
I glanced down at my wristwatch. It was nearly half-eleven. “Would anyone like a cup of tea?” I offered.
“Lovely.” Vivien abandoned her rake with evident relief, and Iain gave her a look of indulgent affection before his tired gray eyes met mine and he smiled.
“I’d not say no,” was his reply.
I wouldn’t have admitted it to a soul, least of all to myself, but I was glad that I was not alone when I unlocked the door of the silent gray house and, with a deep breath of determination, stepped across the waiting threshold.
Chapter 11
I need not have worried, after all. The remaining days of the week passed in quiet, perfect normality, dull as ditch water. Perversely, I was disappointed. It was not a rational reaction, but I could not help myself. Patience, as my family would wholeheartedly attest, was never my strongest characteristic, and now that I was prepared—even eager—to experience another scene from Mariana Farr’s life, I found it frustrating to be denied the opportunity. Even the watcher on the gray horse had deserted me, and the place beneath the old oak tree, whenever I had the courage to look, was empty.
By Friday morning I had grown restless in my impatience, and I looked to my work for diversion. It was high time I started working, anyway, I told myself in resolute tones. Seated in my familiar pose at the drawing board, with the marked page of manuscript clipped to the top bar and a fresh sheet of drawing paper spread beneath my pencil, I felt instantly more focused and relaxed.
It had been over a month since I had last worked on the storybook illustrations. I had been too excited after buying the house, too busy during the move, and too distracted by the events since to even contemplate drawing my goblins and queens. The little characters had waited, brooding, all that time, and now they fairly ran from my mind to the tip of my pencil and onto the pristine page, bringing to life an adaptation of a Korean folktale about a disgruntled dragon.
The story required four illustrations in all. By early afternoon I had completed the pencil sketches, with the almost fussy amount of detailing that was my trademark. The sketches would still have to be painted over in watercolors, but that could wait until tomorrow. I leaned back in the high, padded, specially made chair, stretched my arms above my head to loosen the knots between my shoulder blades, and looked around the room with pleasure.
I could not have chosen a better spot in which to work. The room was small, and square, and low-ceilinged, but the walls were painted a pale sunrise yellow and coaxed an answering glow from the wide polished floorboards. It was a comfortable, cheerful little room.
By swiveling my chair I could command a clear view, through the window, of the dark line of trees marking the slow, winding curve of the river to the west of my property, and beyond that the clear patchwork farmlands and low rolling downs. To the southwest, just within my line of vision, the squat, crenellated tower of the village church stood sentry over the village, and the tall brick chimneys of Crofton Hall rose majestically above the green canopy of trees.
I had not yet heard from Geoffrey de Mornay, and so I assumed that he was still away on business. Up north somewhere, Iain had said. Lancashire, maybe, I speculated, or Northumberland. Morland Electronics had factories in both places.
At any rate, I reminded myself, I wasn’t holding my breath, waiting for his phone call. After all, I wasn’t some lovesick adolescent, and I had plenty of other things to occupy my time. Besides, I thought, as I went downstairs to brew a long-overdue cup of tea, I had only known the man a week.
Which did nothing to explain why, when the telephone finally did ring, I nearly vaulted over the kitchen table to answer it. Or why my voice suddenly turned sultry, conjuring up images of Greta Garbo in her prime.
“Hullo?”
“Julia?”
“Oh, it’s you,” I said, my disappointment showing.
“Sorry.” Tom sounded taken aback. “Who should I be?”
“No one.” I recovered my normal voice. “What’s up?”
My brother paused, decided not to pursue the matter, and went on somewhat cautiously. “I just got back from the library,” he informed me, “and I thought you might be interested in some of the stuff my librarian has managed to scrape up for me.”
“Already? That was certainly quick of him.”
“He’s a terribly industrious young chap. Anyhow,” Tom carried on, “apart from digging up a huge list of names of famous people who believe in reincarnation—everyone from Plato to Voltaire—he also managed to find the official religious line on the matter, in both the Hindu and Buddhist faiths. Pages of information, really. The basic theory runs that the human soul is sent back to live on earth again and again until it has learned the lessons necessary to pass into a higher state of being.”
“And what lessons are those?”
“It doesn’t specify. There is the law of karma, which says that what you do in one life affects what happens in your future lives, so if you’re a real bastard in this life, you’ll have a miserable time in the next. But of course,” Tom qualified, in his usual rational way, “that’s just the religious angle. There’s a lot of investigative research here that supports the phenomenon of reincarnation without delving into the religious aspects.”
“Investigative research?” I echoed. “You’re pulling my leg.”
“No, really.” I could hear the sound of shuffling papers in the background. “Some people are dead serious on this. For example, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia has collected seventeen hundred cases of people who have conscious memories of past lives. Mostly young children, who say out of the blue that they were so-and-so in a past life, and can identify their former homes and even their former friends and spouses. Very strange stuff. There’s a fascinating case from India…” He coughed, and the pap
ers rustled again. “But I digress. The other main body of research seems to come from hypnotherapists, if you believe in that sort of thing. They’ve regressed literally thousands of people into the past, and found that most people were just ordinary folk living ordinary lives. Oh, here’s an interesting bit. This is an article on spontaneous recall of past lives, and it says that the people in the study all reported hearing a ringing in their ears, accompanied by a sensation of dizziness, just before the incident occurred. Sound familiar?”
“It sounds like you’ve got quite a bit of material, there,” I commented, trying to ignore the faint shiver that swept across my skin.
“Reams of it,” Tom concurred. “Listen, why don’t I send you the whole packet and let you read it for yourself, instead of rambling on over the telephone?”
“Fine. You’ve got my address, have you?”
“Somewhere.”
Not trusting my brother’s memory, I gave it to him again, and listened to the scratching of his pen as he wrote it down. When we resumed our conversation, he seemed as disappointed as I was that nothing had happened since my return.
“Nothing at all?” he asked. “Not even an unusual dream?”
“I haven’t had any dreams, that I remember.”
“Maybe you’re trying too hard.”
“I’m not doing it on purpose, Tom.” My voice was clipped and short-tempered. “I’m just as eager to have something happen as you are, you know.”
“I know. Sorry.” Even through the telephone line, I could sense his smile. “Rather funny, when you come to think of it.”
“What is?”
“Well, on Monday you were upset because things were happening, and now we’re both upset because they aren’t.”