A sharp, imperious knocking at the back door startled me out of my ponderings, and I thrust the bracelet back into the lap desk before moving to answer the summons. My mind had not yet fully abandoned its train of thought, and the distraction must have shown plainly on my features when I pulled open the door to face the man who stood on the step outside.
Iain Sumner filled the door frame, blocking out most of the sunlight, his expression accusing.
“You’ve been weeding,” he said flatly, “haven’t you?”
He was undoubtedly preparing to launch into one of the animated lectures that Vivien had warned me about, but I was saved at the last moment by a quite extraordinary occurrence—for the second time in as many weeks, I began to cry.
It was, I admit, not nearly as spectacular as my outburst at Tom’s house in Hampshire, but nonetheless my eyes grew misty and my mouth trembled a little, and Iain abruptly stopped frowning to stare at me in concerned contrition. It was almost comical to see the self-possessed Scotsman so completely at a loss for words, and I couldn’t stop my lips from curving into a small smile.
“I’m sorry,” I said, wiping my eyes, “it’s not you. It’s just that…” I hesitated, searching for an explanation, before deciding that there simply was no easy way to explain my overemotional state. “Well, anyway.” I sniffed. “Yes, I have been weeding in your garden. Did I make an awful mess of it?”
Iain looked silently down at a limp, withered bit of greenery he held in one hand, considering, then seemed to think the better of it. Putting his hand behind his back he let the plant fall to his feet, and met my eyes levelly.
“No, it’s not too bad, really,” he said.
He was a charming liar, and I told him so. Laughing, he put his head to one side and, satisfied that I had regained my composure, said, “Look, I tell you what. If you’re bent on helping me with my work, why don’t you come on out for a minute and let me show you what everything is?”
“I thought you didn’t like people mucking about in your gardens.”
“It’s an ugly rumor, that.” He smiled. “Come on, it won’t take a moment.”
As I stepped across the threshold, following him, I bent to pick up the mangled plant that he had so gallantly discarded. “This wasn’t a South African something, was it?” I asked cautiously.
He looked at me with eyes that twinkled only slightly.
“It was not,” he assured me emphatically. “If you’d pulled up one of those, you’d have heard about it, tears or no.”
It was, I realized afterward, exactly what I had needed—a half hour of messing about in the dirt, feeling the dry, dusty feel of earth against my fingertips and smelling the pungent sweet scent of leaves and flowers warmed by the sun. It comforted me, reassured me, grounded me once again in reality. Iain proved to be quite a good teacher, actually. With painstaking thoroughness he identified each flower and plant in the garden, pointing out the almost invisible shoots of flowers that would not be seen until late summer. He told me what needed to be done, and showed me how to do it, so that when he had finished I felt quite confident in my ability to at least weed the garden without destroying it.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” he promised. “It just takes practice.”
“You’re sure you won’t mind?” I wrinkled my forehead skeptically, and he turned an impassive face towards me.
“D’ye not trust me?”
“Well, Vivien and Geoff seemed to think that I was taking some sort of mortal risk…”
He grinned, and reached to snap a dead blossom off a nearby stalk of iris. “I won’t mind,” he said. “Besides, it’ll do you good to get out here once in a while. Keeps you healthy, gardening does.” He checked his wristwatch and stood up, stretching. “I’ll leave you to it, then. Time I was getting home.”
I had no idea myself what time it was, but the sun was lying low in the sky and it must have been close on seven o’clock. I stood up with him.
“Thank you,” I said. I was thanking him for a number of things, really. For not being angry with me, for understanding my mood, for being so damnably nice…
He just shrugged, and smiled.
“It’s no trouble.”
He took his leave of me and strode away across the field, while I turned to face the dying sun, fitting my back to the smooth, crumbled stone wall behind me, half closing my eyes dreamily. It was a perfect, fairy-tale sunset, golden red with cotton-wool clouds whose gilded edges gave them an almost artificial appearance, as though they belonged in one of my own illustrations. To complete the picture, all that was missing was the rider under the oak, a romantic dark knight on his noble charger, watching the distant hills for dragons. I turned my head to look towards the hollow with eyes that were almost hopeful, but there was nothing there.
Above the oak, a hawk drifted lazily in an aimless circle, and his voice was a lonely cry.
***
The days passed, quickly and quietly, and I applied myself to my illustrations with a diligence that was completely foreign to my character. I was procrastinating, and I knew it. In a strange way, learning that I had the power to transport myself into the seventeenth century at will had made me reluctant to do so. All that week, while I sketched and painted and carried on with my normal routine, I think I was secretly hoping that something would just happen in a nice, spontaneous way, so I wouldn’t be consciously responsible for what might follow.
But of course, nothing did happen, although by the end of the week I was completely surrounded by watercolors in various stages of the drying process, which made me feel—if nothing else—terribly productive. On Friday, Geoff telephoned to let me know that his week up north had been stretched to two weeks, and did I mind waiting a little longer for that dinner? I told him of course not.
To be perfectly truthful, dinner was the furthest thing from my mind at that moment. My preoccupation with my work was, as usual, making me antisocial in my habits. For several days I slept and worked and saw no one, eating my meals from tins and crawling off to bed in the small hours of the morning. When Vivien rang me up shortly before lunch on the following Tuesday, she couldn’t resist commenting on the rusty quality of my voice. My explanation—that I hadn’t spoken in three days—only made her more curious.
“Don’t you even talk to yourself?” she wanted to know.
“No.” I smiled against the receiver. “I have a cousin who does that, and I’d rather not be bracketed with her, thanks all the same.”
“I see. Well, do you fancy getting out for a bit this afternoon? Or is the creative flow flowing at the moment?”
“Oh, I’m sure I could be persuaded to tear myself away for a few hours,” I told her. “What did you have in mind?”
“Tea at Crofton Hall.”
I frowned. “Geoff’s not back yet, surely?”
“No, no, he’s still up north. Actually, the invitation comes from my aunt Freda. She’s been after me for several days now to bring you round for a chat, but this is the first day I’ve been able to take the time off. Ned’s been down with the flu, you see.”
So the White Witch of Exbury was inviting me round to tea. It sounded a thoroughly delightful prospect.
“I’d love to come,” I said.
“Wonderful. Is three o’clock all right with you? You can drop by here if you like, on your way, and collect me.”
“Fine. Shall I bring anything?”
“Just yourself. And a healthy appetite,” she advised me. “Aunt Freda’s teas could sustain a hardworking family of four, and we’ll be expected to eat what we’re served.”
At three o’clock that afternoon, I was glad that I had taken Vivien’s advice and skipped lunch, as I doubted whether I’d have had room to put everything otherwise. The table in front of me groaned beneath the weight of heaping plates of cakes and sandwic
hes and pickled relishes and cold ham pie.
“You don’t have to eat it all, child,” Mrs. Hutherson assured me. She topped up the teapot with freshly boiled water and sat down facing me. “No matter what Vivien’s told you, I’m not quite as nasty as all that.”
We were sitting in the kitchen of Crofton Hall. Not the great, echoing kitchen that I’d seen during my tour of the manor house, but a smaller, more functional room in the private north wing, with scrubbed pine floors and lace curtains and plants spilling from every windowsill. Alfreda Hutherson obviously spent a great deal of time in this kitchen, and the room had absorbed much of her personal energy, radiating warmth and friendliness and comfort.
I found her quite fascinating—a tall, spare woman in a plain dark dress, with laughing blue eyes that were so like Vivien’s that I wondered how I could have missed the resemblance before. She moved with a regal, wholly natural grace, and though her hair was nearly pure white I found it impossible to guess at her age. Like her niece, she was a wonderful conversationalist, intelligent and well-read, with a deliciously sly, quiet wit that surfaced from time to time.
“I must say,” she said now, passing the sandwiches round for the third time, “it is nice to have company in the house. I always feel at a loose end when Geoffrey is away.”
“You’ve been feeding Iain instead, this week—he told me so,” Vivien said accusingly. “He’ll be putting on weight.”
“He works hard,” her aunt rationalized. “He’ll keep it off. And it’s nice to see someone who appreciates good food.”
“You still live here, then?” I took a sandwich. “In the manor house?”
She smiled. “Oh, no. No, I have a small house of my own in the village. I just work days here, do the cleaning and watch over the younger girls, then before I leave I put Geoffrey’s supper in the oven for him and he does the washing up. It’s a very informal arrangement.”
“Aunt Freda’s house is just the other side of the old vicarage,” Vivien put in. “It was my gran’s house, when she was alive. Little stone house with green shutters. Is that the phone?” She cocked her head suddenly, listening. “Yes, it is. No, stay where you are, I’ll get it,” she told her aunt, pushing her chair back and disappearing down the long dark passageway. She returned a moment later, shaking her head.
“Crisis,” she pronounced. “That was Ned. The taps have apparently stopped working, and the lads are getting sober. I’d better run over and see what I can do. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
“No hurry, dear,” Alfreda Hutherson told her with a wink. “Plenty of food to go round. We’ll save some biscuits for you.”
Vivien laughed. “I’ll bet you will.”
The door closed behind her, and the woman across from me raised her teacup, her eyes suddenly thoughtful as they watched me over the brim.
“You look very tired,” she said, unexpectedly. “Has it all been too much for you?”
I hesitated a minute before answering, not sure how to interpret the question, and struggling with a question of my own. I met her eyes uncertainly and she smiled, setting her teacup down in its saucer.
“You want to ask me whether I know, and what I know, and how I know it,” she said calmly, “but you’re afraid I’ll think you’re mad if you speak first. So I’ll save you the trouble. Yes, I do know. I’m well aware of what’s been happening to you since you moved here. I’ve been quite concerned about you, as a matter of fact,” she told me frankly. “That’s why I had Vivien bring you round to see me. I wanted to see for myself how you were getting on.”
After which remarkable speech, she lifted her teacup once more and waited for my response. She didn’t have to wait long. I had been sitting bolt upright in my chair, staring, but now I blinked at her and smiled, raising my eyebrows.
“They said you were a witch.”
She laughed, but did not deny it. She poured me a fresh cup of tea and leaned back, folding her arms expectantly. “You have questions.”
“Dozens of them,” I admitted. “But I’m not entirely sure I want to know the answers.”
She nodded, just once, but with emphasis. “Nor should you. It’s a kind of journey that you’ve begun, Julia, and no one can show you the way of it. You must find your own direction.”
“But, surely you could…”
“I could tell you certain things, yes. But my interference might be more of a hindrance than a help to you.”
“Oh.” I was disappointed, and she smiled at my expression.
“Don’t look so crestfallen, child,” she said. “You’ve come this far without me, and you’ve done very well. You know something about Mariana, and you’ve accepted a reality that many people would be unable or unwilling to accept. And more importantly, you’re beginning, I think, to understand that you have more control over the situation than you realize, are you not?”
I nodded.
“Well, then.” She spread her hands in an expressive gesture. “It seems to me you’re doing fine all on your own. You must be patient, Julia, and trust the process. You will have your answers soon enough, and without my help.”
“I bought something last weekend,” I told her, running a finger along the rim of my cup. “A sort of box.”
“The lap desk. Yes.”
I raised my head. “It was inscribed with a letter H.”
She tilted her head, birdlike, and studied me. “The H, of course, is for Howard. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes. But…”
“Which one? Well, I don’t suppose I can do any harm by telling you that much.” Her eyes slid away from mine. “It belonged to John Howard.”
“John?” I turned the name over in my head. “John? Caroline’s baby, John?” I thought of the tiny, red-faced baby, and then of the faded bracelet set carefully away in the lap desk’s secret drawer. “But how did he…?”
She cut me off with a shake of her head. “That is for you to find out,” she told me. “And you will. Would you like another biscuit?”
She passed me the plate and I took a chocolate wafer, feeling a little dazed. It was strange, I thought, to be sitting here in a perfectly ordinary, cozy kitchen, discussing reincarnation with a witch. In these normal, plain, everyday surroundings our conversation seemed oddly surreal, like people discussing dress patterns at a funeral. And yet, here I was, placidly munching my biscuit and sitting not three feet away from a woman who could read my thoughts as easily as I might read a printed page. She was reading me now, I could tell by the way her eyes met mine.
“I’m sorry if it disturbs you,” she said quietly. “My knowing things that you don’t. But I’m not an old woman for nothing. I’ve seen a good deal of time, and I’ve watched it passing, and if I’ve learned nothing else, I’ve learned that fate works to a schedule of its own making.” She sat back in her chair and faced me, philosophically. “It’s all rather like a circle, you know,” she went on, “life is. You start off in one place, and choose your path, and when you finish up you find you’re right back where you started from. And that’s what you’re doing now, with Mariana’s life. When you’ve gone all the way round, when you’ve closed the circle, then and only then will the purpose of your journey become clear to you.”
“And you’re absolutely sure,” I asked her, “that I’m her… I mean, that she’s… that Mariana Farr and I are the same person?”
“Oh, yes.” Her eyes were gentle. “I recognized you at once.”
“Recognized me?”
“I’d seen you before,” she explained. “Not you as you are now, of course, but you, all the same.”
“Of course,” I said, remembering. “The Green Lady.”
“And the woman in the Cavalier bedroom upstairs,” she added. “Mariana haunted both places, for a long time.”
I frowned. “But I thought that t
he ghost upstairs was still in residence. It’s impossible, isn’t it, for a soul to be in two places at once?”
Alfreda Hutherson shook her head patiently. “There is no ghost upstairs,” she told me. “Not anymore. What you felt up there was simply the aura of what had been. She left that in the room, you see, much as a person casts a shadow on a wall.”
I was silent for a moment, thinking.
“I see a man, sometimes,” I said slowly. “A man on a gray horse…”
“Richard.” She nodded. “He is a kind of shadow, too, when you see him like that. Under the old oak tree in the hollow, isn’t it? Yes, he spent a good deal of time there. It’s natural that something of him should linger. Part of it, you must understand, is a projection of your own mind. When you stare at the sun too long, you see it everywhere.”
Then my instincts were correct, I thought. If Richard de Mornay was not a ghost, then he, like Mariana, could be alive and well and living in Exbury. He could even, I postulated, be living at Crofton Hall. What was it that Tom had told me before? That people who chose to be born into new lives tended to surround themselves with people from their previous lives. We were all of us connected, somehow. Vivien and Iain and Geoff and I… and perhaps even…
“Have you and I ever met?” I asked Mrs. Hutherson, suddenly curious. “Before, I mean. Were you someone I knew?”
She smiled at that, but it seemed to me a sad little smile, and her eyes, when they met mine, had a faraway look in them. “Ah, well,” she said, turning her gaze away towards the window, “we were all somebody, once.” She cocked her head, listening. “That’ll be Vivien,” she said, in a decided tone. “I’d best put the kettle on for a fresh pot of tea.”
I myself could hear nothing but the wind and a faint twittering of birds, but I wasn’t in the least surprised a moment later to see Vivien come bounding through the kitchen door as the kettle came shrieking to a boil on the cooker.
Chapter 19
That night I dreamed of my mother. I dreamed I was a small child again, with skinned knees and pigtails, playing in the garden of our home in Oxford, while my mother sat on the lawn beside me, reading. In my dream, my mother’s eyes were blue. She is very dark, like me, and I remember thinking how very odd that was, that her eyes should have suddenly turned blue in place of their normal brown, but when I asked her about it, she merely smiled, and kissed me, and sent me off to play.