‘That which is buried here is best left buried,’ the jarl told her with certainty — almost as if he knew about the curse. How could he know — the demon? ‘My men will fill the gaps between the stones with soil and that will be that.’
Tianna brushed away her tears and her jaw clenched. ‘There is nothing binding me to you now, I would rather die where I stand than marry you. Take everything I own if you wish, you’ve already dispatched everyone I ever cared about.’
‘Not quite.’ Thorkell grinned, eyeing the ruins. ‘This sad affair looks like a revenge killing to me. I have an eyewitness who saw Edwin Ryder leaving the premises after arguing with Madam Marchard, right before the house went up in flames.’
‘Edwin would never harm my aunt, or me!’ Tianna’s strength appeared to crumble, as she realised there would be no escaping Thorkell. The jarl was the hand of the king, no one was going to doubt his conclusions.
The jarl raised both brows in a pitiless, bored fashion. ‘If you would rather die than marry me, there is really nothing more I can do for you both.’
Tianna shook her head, perhaps in protest at her own pending submission. ‘Why are you doing this? Why me?’
‘Because I can,’ he replied calmly. ‘No one tells me no . . . no one.’
‘Then I shall marry you,’ Tianna said through gritted teeth. ‘But leave Edwin be.’
‘My wedding gift to you,’ he conceded. ‘But your wedding gift to me had best be your complete bliss and devotion. Any sign of unwillingness to please me will sign Edwin Ryder’s death warrant. Agreed?’ Tianna could not hide her sorrow, but forced a smile, as her betrothed gripped her chin and forced her to look at him ‘Agreed?’
‘Yes . . . agreed,’ she conceded, whereupon Thorkell forced a kiss upon his bride to be — Tianna’s clenched fists betraying her desire to recoil.
‘Now, be content, woman.’ He shoved her aside and made for his mount.
Tianna’s worst fear — being forced into a marriage with a man not of her choosing — had been realised, and to watch her niece forced to bend to the will of the man ultimately responsible for the death of her parents was beyond heartbreaking and a misery surely worse than any curse.
I must fix this.
‘You don’t have the experience . . . yet.’
The voice drew Rosalind’s attention to a slender, dark-skinned fellow who wore a turban and had three stripes on his forehead — one red stripe, with a white stripe either side. He was wearing a simple white cotton shirt and pants, and no shoes at all. In his right hand he held a large wooden staff with one end planted in the ground like a post. He stood on only one leg — his right foot rested against his left knee. His right arm was fully extended to grip the staff for a counterbalance and his left arm hung relaxed at his side.
Rosalind had seen men like him in Constantinople, the Arabs called them Hindustani. But what was he doing here, looking so decidedly out of place in the English countryside?
‘Am I dead?’ Rosalind wondered. To the contrary, she felt suddenly aware of being physically present and manifest. She heard herself speak and felt her body over with her hands — she had form! It was the same wrinkled, saggy old body she’d left behind, but it had no weight to it, no pain.
‘For some days now,’ the Hindustani replied with a kind smile.
‘You are spirit?’ Rosalind understood at last. How else could they be having this conversation?
‘I am a wanderer,’ he replied. ‘Guardian of the curse.’
‘The curse!’ Rosalind’s sights shifted to the statue of her husband’s forefather, smashed by debris, beneath which the stones lay buried. ‘I am cursed.’ She wondered after the true meaning of that plight.
‘I am afraid so.’ The Wanderer raised his brows in sympathy.
‘That is why you are here.’
‘Here?’
‘Beyond the cycles of samsara, in a realm of ghosts. And here you shall remain, until such time as the Eyes of Karma are returned to the Eternal Shrine of my Lord Shiva at Somnath.’
‘In Hindustan?’ She assumed he spoke of a place in his homeland.
‘Bha¯rata,’ he corrected with a nod.
The enormity and gravity of her situation began sinking in. ‘How am I ever going to see that accomplished? I know nothing of the place you speak of and I am dead and buried, along with your treasures!’
‘Well, you have all eternity to find a solution,’ he encouraged.
‘My Lord is very patient.’
‘But I have unleashed a demon on my niece!’ Rosalind panicked.
‘Yes, I know.’ The Wanderer was wide-eyed with sympathy. ‘You begged for a guardian spirit to protect your loved ones, and your wish has been granted.’
‘Praise the Creator!’ Rosalind was most relieved to hear some of this burden would be lifted from her shoulders.
‘You shall see to their protection personally,’ the Wanderer seemed most happy to advise.
‘What? How?’ Rosalind despaired at the news. ‘I know nothing of this realm, or of the means at my disposal here.’
‘Of course you don’t,’ he said. ‘You are but a newborn, but you will learn by trial and error, just as you do every time you are reborn.’
‘But if I could incarnate, I’d have more influence—’
‘You would forget everything,’ he politely shot down that notion. ‘But rejoice; you have an advantage that not many who occupy this realm have. For as one of the cursed you have no direct influence on the land of the living unless invited by one of the living to do so, but as a guardian spirit you do have some powers of influence.’
Rosalind slumped onto the ground overwhelmed, and buried her face in her hands. ‘Then Leonardo was telling the truth . . . I shall not be joining him in the afterlife.’
‘It wasn’t your beloved that told you this, it was the demon.’
The statement got Rosalind’s full attention; she hadn’t been destined to die at all! ‘How do I know you are not the demon?’
‘You don’t. But consider that you are the greatest threat to its survival. It desired to protect its new host from reinheriting the curse when you died and passed it onto your niece.’
‘So Thorkell is aware of the curse.’ Her eyes narrowed in spite.
‘His demon is well informed, and is as beyond death as you are.’
‘That’s why Thorkell looks so much younger.’
He nodded. ‘It is an immortality of sorts.’
Rosalind could feel herself burning with rage. ‘He manipulated me.’
‘You were open to be manipulated; such is the consequence of all desire,’ he said. ‘Rage will not help your cause, nor will any other negative emotions birthed from an inability to accept the way things are. Be in harmony with the natural order and act accordingly. For only through dharma is karma overcome.’
‘What does that mean?’ She was bewildered by the advice.
‘If karma is the reaction, then dharma is the action of deliberately, actively and consciously, doing whatever must be done, to progress along your spiritual path.’
She looked to the foreign gentleman, curious about his part in all this. ‘Are you also cursed?’
‘I hardly think so.’ The Wanderer found the assumption most amusing and Rosalind looked away as his laughter seemed to mock her. ‘It is my blessing and honour to serve my Lord Shiva as his messenger.’
‘Messenger?’ The job description troubled Rosalind. ‘But I thought you were to instruct me.’ She looked back to find the curse’s guardian fading from view as time again began to speed up around her.
‘If I may be a demon, would it be wise to seek my guidance?’ He served her a cautioning look. ‘Only you can discover how your dharma will best be served. Namaskar.’ He bowed and vanished altogether as days and nights became flashes of light and darkness.
TEN HUNDRED YEARS TO NOW
The blinking light turned into a rush of consciousness that found Jon up on his feet and wandering around his roo
m in a dazed panic. In the grip of the heavy dream hangover, it took a moment observing the familiar surrounds of his bedroom for him to calm down. A rub of his face and eyes managed to cement his waking state.
‘What the hell?’ Jon looked back at the chair he’d fallen asleep in — he’d never had such an elaborate dream.
He’d been aware of seeing the story from many different points of view; mainly that of an old woman through whom he’d seen himself and the woman from his painting. The whole sordid story was still clear in his mind. He’d even seen his agent in the guise of the Lord de Moray, who aided Jon’s nemesis in the affair by selling him the chairs.
Heart still thumping in his chest, and in sympathy with the old woman’s predicament, he flopped backwards onto his bed, greatly relieved not to be embroiled in her nightmare any longer.
But why were there two chairs in the dream? And why imagine them cursed, and then destroyed? What were his subconscious choices trying to tell him about himself? Jon couldn’t reason any sense from it, but then deciphering dreams was not his forte. Odd that it was so intricate and detailed; archaic names, places, terms. As he ran over them in his mind he became curious to see if any of it had any basis in history. Notepad.
As Jon sat up to check if he had the said item in his bedside drawer, he noted the time and how dark the room was becoming. He’d been out to it for most of the afternoon. The date on the clock confirmed it was still the same day, although it felt as if he’d been out to it for considerably longer! That was what set this dream apart from every other he’d had — most dreams seemed to unfold in an instant and were fragmented into tiny, unrelated segments, completely abstract by the time he awoke to consider them. This dream was more like a collective memory, unfolding in sequence.
Past life memory? He’d heard this term bandied about at parties by those hippy, spiritual types and never paid it much heed; yet that seemed the perfect description of what he’d just experienced.
Unable to find a notebook, Jon decided to head straight for his computer to do a little research.
* * *
It was four o’clock in the morning and Sara was not going back to sleep. Curled up in bed with a pillow, she couldn’t stop staring at her mysterious chair, lit by the glow of streetlight beaming through her unshaded window.
A dream didn’t seem a very apt way to describe what she’d just experienced. The episode had seemed more like a recollection of a bygone life. Sara had perceived the events of that time from the point of view of several of the people involved, yet at the same time she understood that she was Tianna Marchard — and that observation disturbed her. If not for the ungodly hour, she would have been straight on the phone to Willie to get his opinion on the event.
‘Poor Rosalind.’ Sara couldn’t prevent the tears of empathy rolling down her cheeks, no matter how many times she wiped them off on the pillow. ‘Why would I imagine my fiancé to be such an evil character while seeing some man I’ve never met as my true partner?’
Allowing the scenario to churn over in her mind was making her feel physically nauseous — perhaps the chair truly was cursed?
‘Now you really are just being ridiculous,’ she scolded herself. If she wasn’t going back to sleep, then best to go and get a cup of tea and find something constructive to do, until the uneasy feeling her sleep-state had induced passed.
* * *
Into the wee hours of the morning of the following day, Jon researched every fact he could remember from his unconscious jump into the past.
There was no record of Edwin Ryder, Tianna or Rosalind Marchard, but Jarl Thorkell had certainly existed at around the turn of the eleventh century. There wasn’t a lot written about Thorkell. He had raided England with the Danes, before agreeing to fight for England against his invading kinsmen. But when his brother was killed by an Englishman, he went home with a score to settle and returned to England with the forces of the warrior Canute, who finally succeeded in taking the throne and declaring himself King of the North Sea Empire. At this time, Thorkell was named Jarl of East Anglia and right hand of the king. Thorkell fell out of favour with King Canute after only a few years, when the jarl’s second wife was accused of killing Thorkell’s son from his first marriage. Thorkell had insisted she hadn’t committed the crime, but when she was convicted, he was banished from England by the king, returned to his homeland in Denmark, and vanished from the pages of history. There was nothing written about his death, a fact that Jon had found slightly disturbing. Given the Hindustani’s claim that the man’s demon awarded him a kind of immortality, the fact that the death of such a prominent warrior was never recorded seemed a rather odd coincidence.
Perhaps he was just making a mountain out of a molehill? Maybe he’d learned about Thorkell in a long-forgotten history lesson, or while watching a documentary? Not that he ever watched television.
A little more research revealed that Bha¯rata was the ancient name of India and there was indeed a temple dedicated to the Hindu Lord Shiva in Somnath on the northwestern coast. It was known as ‘the Shrine Eternal’, as it had been destroyed and rebuilt so many times. This fact completely blew Jon’s mind, as he knew for a fact that he was completely ignorant of Hindu culture or religion, much less the native name for India more than a thousand years ago! How could he possibly dismiss that as a coincidence?
The premise played on his mind as he lay down to sleep that night, and again when he awoke the next morning. His recollection of eleventh century events had not faded at all overnight; he slept normally and remembered nothing of what he’d dreamed after his research session. Whatever was going on it was certainly linked to the chair, since he had had several odd episodes with it now, that all involved the same woman. It was insane to consider that a piece of furniture might be trying to communicate with him, but even if that were the case, in the vision he’d seen the chair destroyed, so how then could it be here?
But as intriguing as it all was, his contemplation was not getting his exhibition completed.
By the time Simon made an appearance that afternoon, Jon had made progress on a few of his major works, and was touching up the picture of ‘the unknown woman’ — while he waited for the paint on the other works to dry.
Simon entered the studio and, placing his briefcase on a bench where he always left it, he clapped his hands together and blew on them in an attempt to dispel the cold. ‘Good afternoon, what’s news? Any paranormal happenings I should know about?’
Jon shook his head in response, not looking up from his work.
‘So I was right, it was just the booze,’ Simon pushed.
‘Right . . .’ Jon droned in a non-committal fashion.
Pleased to hear this, Simon approached to take a look at what Jon was working on and his happy face soured. ‘If it was just the booze, then why are you still working on this?’
‘I started painting this before the ghost in the chair incident.’
Jon didn’t like Simon’s tone. ‘And I intend to finish it.’
‘Not for this exhibition.’ Simon put his foot down, referring to every other work in the room. ‘This is what the gallery are expecting. Not some conservative piece of shit featuring a woman who doesn’t exist!’
‘How do you think the Mona Lisa came into being?’ Jon’s temperamental artist side came booming forth. ‘I’m the artist, you’re the agent. If I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it!’
Simon bit his tongue and held up his hands in truce, then retreated to retrieve his briefcase and left the studio. A few moments later, the front door downstairs slammed closed.
Jon immediately regretted losing his temper. Had he become so reclusive that he could no longer tolerate someone else’s opinion? Simon was just telling the truth. Jon knew this painting and its subject were a distraction he didn’t need right now. Time to set the mystery woman aside and focus on the work that was going to pay the bills.
* * *
Although Sara had managed to get some work done on her
collection, today even her passion felt like a chore. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt this low and her attempts to reason why kept bringing her back to her dream of yesteryear. The experience was so tragic and yet she yearned to return there. She’d always had a deep, wistful longing for times long gone and last night’s dream journey had tapped into that yen.
She’d been of a mind to call Willie, but as the morning went on, she’d decided against it. It just seemed silly to make a big fuss — nothing really drastic had happened, she’d just had a dream. If she told Willie she was fantasising about another man, he’d only get the impression that she was getting cold feet about marrying Robert. Which she wasn’t — she didn’t think.
‘No,’ she told herself firmly. ‘I’m not. I’d be a fairly fickle woman to let a figment of my imagination influence how I feel about the man I am going to marry.’ She returned to removing pins from the garment she had just sewn together, determined to put the episode aside.
The trouble was, images of her dream man kept recurring in her mind, and after the third time she caught herself spaced out and grinning at a daydream about him, she lost patience with herself.
‘Oh for pity’s sake!’ Sara stood and turned circles, annoyed.
‘Have a little focus!’
It was eleven o’clock in the morning, but because she’d been up since four. she realised she needed to cut herself some slack. ‘You’re just tired.’ Sara sat back in her seat and removed her glasses to give her eyes a rub. She was out of sorts and a nap seemed to be the only solution. You could take a nap in your chair? See if it happens again.
‘Absolutely not!’ Her logical side was appalled by the idea of actively pursuing the further destruction of her own peace of mind.
The first rule of science is repeat the experiment. Her irrational mind gave a rational argument. If nothing happens, then it was just a dream.
‘But what if it does happen again?’ The premise made her panic inside, and yet she couldn’t wipe the smile from her face, for she would get to see him. It scared her that it wasn’t her fiancé that was playing on her mind.