Cottage by the Sea (35 page)

   Hesitantly, and as accurately as she could remember, she began to recount to the psychologist details of the encounters her namesake had had with the heartbroken, sword-wielding Kit, with Garrett, who had emerged from behind the secret bookcase, with Collis Trevelyan, when he announced Blythe's forced betrothal, and even with Ennis at the amorous rendezvous in the leafy glen near Hemmick Beach.

   "And then, of course, there was the wedding night from hell!" said Blythe as Valerie listened sympathetically. Briefly she described the unhappy events in the room that contained the Bawdy Bed of Barton. "When it was over, I felt wretched for everyone involved! Isn't this too weird for words?"

   "I think it's splendid!" Valerie declared.

   "Well, I think it's pretty loony," Blythe responded fervently. "Do you think this is past-life stuff? Reincarnation? Am I having a nervous breakdown—or what?"

   "Do you strongly identify with the first Blythe Barton?" Valerie asked.

   "Sort of. Actually," Blythe amended, "but frankly, I identify with
all
of them, which is what's got me so confused. I even see why Collis Trevelyan wanted to join his property to the Barton lands. From
his
perspective it made perfect sense. Obviously he was no feminist. What did he care about such things as women's rights two hundred years ago, when, in his world, women were simply chattel, like cattle or silverware? Looking back, I find his behavior repulsive, but I understand his motivation…"

   "Without judging him as harshly as you would a man living in our era, correct?" Valerie inquired.

   "Exactly!" Blythe agreed. "And it made me think a lot about my own relationships. It's made me want to understand what might be behind the… the things that have happened in my life that have been—painful."

   "Wouldn't it be marvelous if one could learn what had transpired in the lives of one's ancestors," Valerie mused, "and discover how and why they responded to events and the consequences flowing from their actions and reactions in the past? If we could unravel their emotional history, perhaps we could avoid repeating their mistakes."

   "I've thought that too… but what if we're driven by these forces… unconsciously driven to make decisions in our lives in some endless, predestined game of tit for tat?"

   "'Sins of the fathers' and all that?" Valerie replied. "I don't think that's it. I think that if I knew—and gave serious consideration to—the mistakes and missteps of my forebears, I could learn from that, don't you think?"

   "What I wondered, Valerie," Blythe proceeded earnestly, "is if you knew—or had heard—of anyone else having this kind of thing happen to them. I thought maybe in one of your past-life therapy journals you might have come across something."

   "Nothing quite like this," Valerie admitted. "From what you've told me, it's a bit different—and very exciting! Rather than your being the re-embodiment of someone who lived before, you appear to be a
descendant
who has the ability to peer into the past, as it was lived by specific ancestors whom you select by means of Luke's genealogy chart. What a wonderful gift!"

   "My
supposed
ancestors," Blythe corrected her. "I've found no definite proof that any of the Bartons of Barton Hall ended up in Wyoming." Then Blythe shook her head. "I don't know, Valerie. Of all the places in the world, I decide to come here just because my grandmother filled my head since I was a child with a bunch of family lore that's probably half made up, anyway." Blythe shook her head ruefully and laughed. "Lucinda Barton was quite a character. She was known to spin some mighty 'tall tales,' as we say out west."

   "Oral history!" Valerie nodded enthusiastically. "The story of a tribe handed down through the spoken word! Shamans and wandering storytellers can be found in every culture. Certainly we've had our share here in Cornwall. Everything you've told me is simply fascinating!"

   "But don't forget, Valerie," Blythe reminded her with a wry smile, "what's been happening to me comes in words and pictures. When this vision stuff starts, it's almost as if I'm watching TV, only I can empathize emotionally with all the people whose lives I'm seeing revealed each time I push against his or her name on the chart. It's very different than an oral history, believe me!"

   Valerie remained silent, deep in thought.

   "Do you suppose," Blythe ventured into their silence, "that the glass on the chart provides a medium for that 'scrying' business you talked about that day at the fete?"

   "Well… the glass inside the gilt frame is a reflective surface," Valerie mused, "and when you stared at it in such a concentrated fashion, as you've described to me, perhaps it created an atmosphere conducive to self-hypnosis." She made a note on a pad in front of her. "I'll check through the professional literature and see what I come up with." Then Valerie looked at her inquiringly and bit her lip. "Would you have any objection if I took down some more notes from our meeting?"

   "I-I suppose that's all right," Blythe said warily, "if you agree it's just between the two of us and you won't have me committed—or sell your memos later to some tabloid."

   "Heavens!" Valerie exclaimed. "I would never break my vows as a health practitioner!" Then she went on, "Here I am, totally fascinated by all this, and nothing unusual ever happens to me. I'm too rational, I'm afraid. You creative types are much more likely to experience this kind of thing. It's probably inscribed in your DNA!" she added jokingly.

   "You said before that it's pretty well established that stress and trauma affect the chemistry of the body and brain," Blythe mused. "Now, I'll grant you that's possible. I've sure had more than my share of stress this year," she added ruefully. "But what I don't understand is, how could someone's altered body chemistry, in turn, alter their DNA? How do you account for what's been happening to me?"

   "This is all highly theoretical, of course," Valerie replied, pulling an anatomy text from the shelf behind her chair. She turned to a page illustrating the body's various systems. "If you are confronted by a tiger in the jungle, your adrenal glands, here," she said, pointing, "secrete excess adrenaline to provide the energy you need to run away fast."

   "Your body accelerates and kind of goes into overdrive?"

   "Very much so. Your heart pumps faster. Body chemicals like serotonin, catecholamine, and dopamine increase—or decrease, as the case may be. Your electrolyte and T-cell levels change. And it's thought that these changes may cause new configurations in the cells themselves, and for some, the changes are permanent. They're there to be passed on to the next generation."

   "In other words, being really scared by the tiger might change you on a 'cellular level,' so to speak?" Blythe queried.

   "Perhaps." Valerie nodded. "And that could change the DNA. Some brain scientists theorize that a traumatic or significant event—let's say, confronting the tiger—could be scratched, so to speak, on a chip of DNA and passed on."

   "Like a recording on a music CD or a file on a computer hard disk?"

   "That's the theory. DNA is housed in the cells, after all. The question is, could these changes—or these 'records' of past events—somehow be encoded and passed down to the next generation in their DNA? The trick is in decoding what may be there."

   "And you think that when a person's in a trance state, she can decode the information in her genes?"

   "
Possibly,"
Valerie emphasized. "But it could be an explanation for what's going on when you inadvertently put yourself into a hypnotic trance by staring at the chart so intensely and concentrating your thoughts. Maybe you have the ability to decode your own genome!"

   Blythe recalled the image of the baby she'd seen in Valerie's crystal ball, and the fleeting visions that had appeared when she'd stared at Ennis's paintings above the fireplaces in Luke's sitting room and at her cottage.

   "No one knows, exactly," Valerie continued, "what is the source of the information that's being accessed when one is in an altered state of consciousness." The psychologist closed the anatomy book. "Is it a forgotten memory from one's current life stored in the back of the brain somewhere? Or is it like a dream state… a clever parable or metaphor the mind invents to solve problems in daily life? Or, as these cutting-edge brain researchers postulate: is it a record from an earlier time, imprinted on the DNA, just waiting to be fully recalled—but only in a hypnotic trance?"

   "It's true…" Blythe mused aloud, "each time I was totally focused on a particular name, it was as if I had pushed the right button to retrieve information about that part of the story…" She sighed once again and cast Valerie a searching look. "But that sort of makes it forever yesterday inside a person's genetic code."

   "That's rather a good way to phrase it." Valerie nodded thoughtfully.

   "But why should I be the one suddenly experiencing this?" Blythe protested. "Why me? Why now?"

   "Because, my dear Blythe," Valerie said gently, "your defenses are down. You've been exhausted by the recent upheavals in your life. The rational part of you has not been able to explain why such a tragedy should happen to you. I imagine you came to Cornwall seeking answers. Seeking a way to put your life back together after the traumatic events in Wyoming and California."

   "I take it you watch CNN?" Blythe asked resignedly.

   "That, plus some oblique remarks Luke has made over the summer when we've exchanged pleasantries in the village."

   "Ah… yes… your cousin Luke," Blythe said softly. In the course of their conversation she had not disclosed to Valerie that she and Luke had become lovers. She was reasonably sure that the discreet Englishman would not reveal their relationship to anyone, even to his kinswoman.

   "Has Lucas told you who originally drew that ornate Barton-Trevelyan-Teague family tree?" Valerie asked quietly.

   "I had supposed it was done by some professional genealogist in this century," Blythe replied. "It's completely up-todate. Even young Richard's name is inscribed."

   Valerie rose and flipped the switch of her electric kettle, which was perched on a side table. Immediately it began to gurgle as the water inside heated up. As the psychologist placed two cups on their saucers, she explained, "Luke's wife, Lindsay Teague, had a friend who was a calligrapher. Within two days after the lad was born, he added Richard's entry, and he matched the script of the earlier ancestors' names as best he could. You should take a closer look at the chart. You'll see it has a consistency in ink and writing style up to about the year 1890."

   Valerie deftly put three scoops of loose tea in a plain brown pot and poured boiling water into it. Then she looked over at Blythe and announced brightly, "My ancestor, the Reverend Randolph Kent, was the principal calligrapher on that family tree."

   "Kent!" gasped Blythe. "The vicar who married Kit and Blythe in the church… St. Goran's! He's your direct ancestor?"

   "Yes. He wrote it all down in one sitting… in 1795, I believe. But how did you know that he performed the marriage?" Valerie asked, amazed.

   "I went to the wedding," Blythe laughed uneasily, realizing that she had neglected to tell Valerie about her brief glimpse of that joyless ceremony. "But how could he write out a genealogy chart in one sitting—and far beyond the date he, himself, must have died? That's impossible!"

   "Well… the good reverend was also a scryer," Valerie revealed. "He foretold the fate of generations to come."

   "You can't be serious!"

   Lucinda Barton would certainly have enjoyed meeting the Reverend Randolph Kent, Blythe thought wryly.

   "Indeed, I am most serious," Valerie assured her. "As the story goes, he used his powers as a scryer to predict the future of the Teague line. It got him in a terrible row with the Methodists back in those days. They called him a tool of the devil—and worse! He was a cousin by marriage to Garrett Teague's father, Donald Teague, and a reluctant ally of both Donald and Collis Trevelyan in the smuggling activities in the region."

   "I know that. But how do you know he was a scryer?" Blythe demanded more forcefully than she intended.

   "I inherited Reverend Kent's diary," Valerie disclosed. "There are pages and pages of descriptions of his employing the technique. Apparently his scrying revealed visions that led him to believe he should not have married Kit Trevelyan to the Barton heiress."

   "He didn't need a crystal ball to see that!" Blythe scoffed. "He felt guilty as hell when he was reading the words of the church service. He was just afraid Collis would turn him over to the authorities if he didn't do what Blythe's guardian wanted, which was to marry Trevelyan's son to James Barton's daughter and thereby join the two properties."

   "I see," Valerie replied, pondering the realization that Blythe, in one of her trances, had learned information about her ancestors' past that could be verified, even today. "In fact, those fears you just described can be found written about in his own hand."

   "Oh, my God," Blythe breathed. "Did Randolph Kent's diary say that he could forecast Kit and Blythe's future? Did he use his—what was it—a crystal ball?"

   "He employed some sort of murky mirror to do his forecasting," Valerie explained. "You must read his diary sometime. But as I recall, Reverend Kent is not at all specific about what he saw happening in the future to Kit and the first Blythe Barton."