Mariana (24 page)

She might have been my mother, taking me firmly by the arm and leading me out of the Great Hall and down the long corridor to the kitchen, all the while keeping up a steady stream of cheerful talk. I didn't really hear anything that she said to me, but the quiet strength of her voice calmed me, and by the time she deposited me in one of the kitchen chairs my tears had subsided into small, hiccuping sniffles.

"There, now.' She patted my shoulder reassuringly. 'What you need is a nice strong cup of tea.'

A nice strong cup of tea would, I felt certain, be Alfreda Hutherson's first reaction to any crisis.

She put the kettle on the stove and looked at me, her eyes sympathetic. 'Bit of a jolt for you, I expect, having it happen like that.'

'He kissed me,' I said, as if that explained everything.

'Yes, dear, I know. Now, give your face a wipe with that,' she instructed, handing me a damp cloth. "The men will be in from the garden any minute.'
I wiped my face and dried it, pulling myself together with an effort. I suddenly remembered something, and looked up sharply, troubled by the thought. 'I couldn't stop it from happening,' I told her. 'I've been able to stop it before, but this time I just couldn't stop it from happening.'

'Well, now.' Her blue eyes were very wise. 'You've learned a valuable lesson from this, then, haven't you? You can't cheat fate, Julia. If you don't go looking for the lessons of the past, then the past will come looking for you.'

Twenty-four

I remembered those words often over the next few days, and thought long about their meaning. Not that I had any idea, then, what the lessons of the past might be. I knew only that the past—my past—would not be ignored, and that the longer I delayed the journey the more difficult the trip back would be, both physically and emotionally. And after my most recent experience, I wasn't sure I wanted to delay the journey any longer. However disturbing it might be, I had to admit that the memory of a man long dead had a more powerful influence over me than anything I could touch in the modern day.

If the thought disturbed me, it horrified Tom. I could feel the force of his disapproval over the telephone line.

'It's too dangerous,' was his judgment.

'Well, it's hardly my decision anymore, is it?' I challenged him bluntly. 'It's going to happen whether I like it or not.'

'I thought you said you could control it. You said you'd found some way of blocking it out, making it go away.'

'It doesn't always work,' I admitted. 'Look, Tom, I promise I'll be careful. I'll lock all the doors and hide the
keys, if you like. I'll stay inside the house. And I'll only do it once a week, I pro—'

'No, don't promise,' he said smiling, finally. I could hear it, and I felt myself relaxing in response. When he spoke his voice was less uncompromising. 'I don't like the idea,' he told me. 'I still think you're taking too great a risk. But if you're cautious and sensible, and try to keep things in perspective, then I guess I can't really object, can I? I mean, like you say, there don't seem to be a lot of alternatives.'

It was my turn to smile. 'Exorcisms don't apply in this sort of situation, do they?'

'No.' He laughed. 'You're all right otherwise, are you?'

'Perfectly,' I assured him. 'My work is coming along wonderfully, and I've no complaints with the house so far.'

'You're still going around with that Geoff fellow, I take it?"

I replied in the affirmative, and was grateful when he dropped the subject. I had not yet confided in Tom my suspicion that Geoffrey was really Richard. Nor had I told him about Mrs. Hutherson. I suppose I was afraid that, by telling him I was in effect consulting a psychic and chumming with the reincarnation
of
Mariana's lover, I might stretch the bounds of my brother's credulity. And I very badly needed him to believe in me.

So far, it appeared that he did. 'Take care of yourself was the only advice that he gave me before I hung up the phone. I kept it in mind.

I selected a convenient hour of the morning, when few other people were yet awake. I slid all the furniture in my studio into one corner, so that there was nothing to impede Mariana's progress from the doorway to her bed and from there to the window. I locked the dead bolts on both doors, from the inside, and buried the keys among the bills and letters in my desk drawer. Then, and only then, did I settle myself at the kitchen table and light the candle.

My first journey back lasted less than half an hour, which, after such elaborate preparations, was something of a
disappointment to me. It was also, I conceded, deadly dull. For nearly all that time, Mariana was simply peeling vegetables at the kitchen table, while Caroline nursed the baby John by the fire. Neither woman spoke. When I returned to the present I felt utterly discouraged.

But my next few attempts were more fruitful. Curious, I tried my candle process in the lounge instead of the kitchen, and found myself sitting over an embroidery frame, listening to Caroline and Rachel discuss wedding plans. It was rather a one-sided conversation, actually. Caroline talked of flowers and gowns and guests in an animated voice, while Rachel bent low over her needlework and mumbled inaudible responses. She kept her expression hidden from her sister, but behind the fall of flaxen hair her face was flushed and miserable.

The wedding feast was to be held at Greywethers, the home of the bridegroom being too small to hold all the guests—and from Caroline's talk I gathered every soul in the village had been invited. Bride and groom would spend their first night beneath my uncle's roof, before removing to the bailiffs house in the village. It was difficult to picture Rachel living with Elias Webb in that narrow, bleak little house with its dark chimneys and cheerless windows; more difficult still to imagine wedding guests dancing in my uncle's parlor. I was trying to conjure the image when my aunt's voice broke my thoughts.

'... and of course we must have my lord de Mornay, for courtesy's sake, although Jabez will not brook the man's presence on any other day. And I do not doubt but that my lord will bring that Gilroy fellow with him, for all he is not invited. "Tis the trouble with the gentry,' she complained. 'They may do what they will, and we bear the consequences.'

Beside me Rachel caught her breath as the needle bit painfully into her finger, and I saw a tiny drop of blood fall onto the linen she was working....

That particular excursion into the past ended there, and
I waited a few days before trying again. By restricting myself to the inside of my own house, and repeating the process in various rooms, I found I was gaining a fairly complete picture of Mariana's daily life, and the lives of those around her. The pity that I felt for Caroline deepened as the days passed. Rachel told me that Caroline had once been as lively and spirited as herself. That the spirit had gradually been beaten out of her by Jabez was a realization that dawned on me gradually, a suspicion strengthened by the sometime appearance of a bruise on Caroline's pale face, or a newfound temerity in her gaze, as she held and rocked the squalling babe. The babe I pitied, also. There was no love in Jabez Howard's eyes, no hint of tenderness when he looked upon his son, only a cold and distant form of loathing. I thought of my own father, and what he'd taught me, and my heart wept for baby John.

To me, Jabez Howard remained brusquely courteous, frequently indifferent, and irritatingly enigmatic. There were days when he was absent on business, and other days when a knock would sound at the front door and I would be summarily ordered to my room, to spend hours in pious silence. I did not mind overmuch, for it was then that I read the Shakespeare, drawing the precious borrowed book from its hiding place beneath my bed.

Once, though, filled with reckless bravado and a burning curiosity, I left my room and stole to the top of the stairs as my uncle's guests arrived. Peering through the balusters, I could see only the back of my uncle's head and the face of the black-eyed bailiff Elias Webb, Rachel's betrothed, although the voices of other unseen men filtered up to me. After exchanging greetings, they moved into the parlor and closed the door, and their voices were lost. Defeated, I slunk back to my room, none the wiser about my uncle's strange activities.

Of course, because I never left the house during these backward trips in time, I never encountered Richard de Mornay, although I did see him several times riding in the
fields behind the house. I also knew that Mariana had, on at least one occasion, returned to Crofton Hall. I knew this because the book I was reading changed from Shakespeare to Fletcher, and because I held in my mind the memory of Richard's company on my last visit, when we'd walked to the center of the great maze, thick with the smell of rain-washed yew, then lost our bearings on the way out again so that we turned laughingly this way and that, seeking in vain the elusive opening.

He had kissed me then, too, as he had that day in the Great Hall, and the memory of that kiss brought a burning flush to my cheeks. I had run the whole way home in the rain, and Rachel had taken one look at my dripping gown and shining eyes and deduced instantly where I'd been. She smiled at me, a sad, forgiving little smile, and I knew she would not tell. 'One
of
us, at least, should have some happiness,' she had said.

But while Richard de Mornay had undoubtedly kissed Mariana Farr, and on more than one occasion, they were not yet lovers. I was so certain in my own mind that they were destined to
become
lovers, that I found myself increasing the frequency of my trips backward. What had started as a weekly ritual became a daily one, and by the last week of July I was spending two or three hours each morning lost in the seventeenth century.

I explained my morning seclusion to everyone by saying that I was working
on my
drawings, but nobody seemed
to
take much notice, anyway. Geoff rarely rose more than an hour before midday—his excuse being that he stayed up late at night reading—while Tom was kept unusually busy with his parish, and Iain applied himself so diligently to his farming that I hardly saw him. Vivien, too, had begun to disappear some mornings, although no one was entirely sure where she went. On occasion, her disappearances extended into the afternoons, and when Geoff and I stopped in at the Lion on the last Saturday of July, we found Ned tending bar by himself.
'No good asking me,' Ned told us, pulling our pints with a disgruntled air, 'I haven't a clue where she is. No one ever bothers to tell me anything.' He returned to his newspaper, and since there was plainly no more conversation to be had at the bar, Geoff and I retired to a table by the window.

Jerry Walsh did not share his son's taciturn nature. He hailed me cheerfully from the crowded corner table. 'Hullo, love! How's life been treating you?' he asked me, in a voice robust with drink.

I smiled back and assured him that life had been treating me fine.

'Hooked up with this troublemaker, have you?' He jerked a thumb at Geoff, and shook his head in mock sympathy. 'You want to watch out for him, darling, he's a real heartbreaker, he is.'

Geoff grinned. 'You mind your words, Jerry,' he warned the older man good-naturedly, 'or I'll tell the girl the stories I've heard about you.'

'Fair enough,' Jerry said. He winked broadly at me, and turned back to his rollicking table-mates, several of whom glanced with interest in our direction as they drank their pints, no doubt speculating on the potential of this latest piece of gossip. 'I saw young de Mornay with that artist girl in the pub today ...' would, I wagered, be the opening to many a teatime conversation that afternoon.

'So,' I said to Geoff, continuing the conversation we'd begun on our way to the pub, 'you'll be off to France again in September.'

'For six weeks.' He nodded. 'Some of that will be business, unfortunately, with our office in Paris, but then I'll be headed down to Antibes, and the boat. And my mother might be in Spain, in September, or so she says. I may nip down and visit her for a few days. I don't know.' He hadn't often mentioned his mother, in the months I'd known him.

'Does she have a house in Spain, then?' I probed, in my best casual tone.

'No.' Geoff shook his head. 'She lives in Italy, mostly,
these days. But she mentioned something about Spain last time she rang—Pamplona, I think it was.'

'Where the bulls are?'

'Yes.' His mouth twisted wryly. 'Rather an ordeal, visiting my mother, most of the time. She's always trying to fix me up with her friends' daughters, trying to get me married off. I expect she means well, but it's bloody tiring.' He changed the subject. 'What would you like me to bring you back, for a present?'

'I don't need anything.'

'Rubbish. Now, what would you like?'

I thought about it. 'Well,' I told him, 'you might bring me back a couple of those huge coffee cups that they use over there. You know, the breakfast cups, that hold gallons of coffee. I've always wanted some of those.'

'Then,' Geoff promised grandly, 'you shall have some. How would an even dozen suit you?'

I laughed. 'Two would be plenty, thanks. Besides, they'd never let you back on the plane with a dozen of the things.'

'I don't fly commercial airlines, my dear,' he reminded me, his eyes forgiving my ignorance. 'I can carry whatever I like. Besides, you've got that huge dresser in your dining room, and no dishes to fill it with, so it's a dozen coffee cups whether you like it or not. Any other requests?'

I smiled wickedly at him. 'Somehow, I have a feeling this would be the perfect time
to
ask for that Louis Vuitton luggage I've always coveted, but I won't push my luck.'

'Whyever not?'

'I'm afraid God might strike me dead for being greedy,' I explained, and Geoff laughed.

'It's not always a sin, you know,' he said, 'being greedy.'

I sent him a long, motherly look. 'You need to have a talk with my brother,' I advised him. 'Your soul's in mortal peril.'

Vivien sailed into the pub on a wave of energy and radiant good health, her fair hair whipped by the wind into a
tangled mass of gold. 'Who's in mortal peril?' she asked, pausing beside our table with interest.

'I am,' Geoff informed her. 'Or at least, my soul is, according to Julia, here.'

Vivien nodded agreement. 'Past redemption, I should think,' she told him.

'Then another drink won't spoil it.' He drained his glass and held it up hopefully. 'That is, if you're serving.'

'You might give a girl a chance to get her coat off,' Vivien laughed, snatching the glass away from him. 'Have you missed me that much? I'd have thought Ned would be keeping you entertained,' she teased, and the barman glanced idly up from the pages of his newspaper, not missing a beat.