Oxford Shadows (9 page)

Greensleeves was all my joy,

Greensleeves was my delight,

Greensleeves was my heart of gold,

And who but my lady Greensleeves?

Madison pedaled down Woodstock Road. Her early morning tutorial couldn’t have been over too soon, and she could swear she still had pieces of the pencil she had been chewing stuck between her teeth. Telling Jackson about “Greensleeves” had been her top priority since waking up that morning. Well, not exactly true: her top priority at alarm-bell time had been making love. Thank God she had been lucky enough to score Rupert. If she had waited twenty-two years to have sex and ended up with an average-performing lover, it would have sucked. Big time.

The gravel on Jackson’s driveway crunched underneath the wheels of her bike. Since her return from Louisiana, his house had become a second home. With Ollie as her partner-in-crime, they had turned Jackson’s bachelor pad into their headquarters. What the oh-so-sophisticated and mature Professor Jackson McCain thought about their Scooby Gang invading his personal space remained TBD. To be determined.

Madison caught her breath while she waited for him to answer the door. She would have to kickstart that fitness regime of hers.

Jackson half-opened his door. “Madison?”

She had always known her tutor and mentor was an attractive man. What she hadn’t expected was that his bare chest would look quite so impressive. She swallowed. Hard. What was he doing with tousled hair and wearing ripped-off jeans at ten in the morning? The explanation came when a female voice called his name in the clipped manner of the English upper classes. Madison relished that kind of accent in Rupert, but with this woman, whoever she was, the effect was nerve cringing.

“I can come back later,” Madison managed to articulate while heat set her cheeks on fire. While she had been feeling guilty about Jackson’s broken heart, he had proceeded in sexing-up Oxford’s female population.

“Come in, please. We were finished.” He ruffled his hair, which accentuated his out-of-bed look.

Finished with what? Sex on the sofa? In the kitchen?

When Madison reached the living room, she got a better view of what had kept him occupied the night before. The girl could have been described as both curvy and leggy, which in Madison’s book was a terrible combination. What else to expect when her schoolmates had always used the adjectives “short” and “flat” to describe her.

“Elizabeth, this is Madison, one of my students.”

Elizabeth arched one expertly plucked eyebrow and threw out a “How do you do?” without giving Madison a second look. After Elizabeth had slid her pedicured feet into a pair of designer flats, he accompanied her to the entrance door.

Jackson McCain had sex. He was a sexual being. Madison had never really seen him that way before. It would have been like imagining her own parents active in the sack.
Yuck.
Well, actually, Madison knew her mom had one-night stands; she didn’t come home every night. Still, the thought wasn’t as unsettling as imagining the man Madison had put on the pedestal of wisdom and infinite knowledge getting down and dirty, hot and sweaty.

“Coffee?” Jackson asked, without meeting her eyes.

Madison accepted the offer while she pretended to admire the original artwork hanging from the walls. When he stepped back into the living room with two foaming hot cups in his hands—and a shirt covering his lickable abs—Madison breathed again.
Back to normal.
She brought the cup to her lips and swallowed the hot liquid. It was strong enough to float an iron wedge.

“Too strong?”

She wasn’t sure if Jackson was assessing her reaction to the coffee or to his one-night stand. Or maybe it wasn’t just a one-night stand. She answered with a shake of her head, still digesting the Elizabeth encounter.

“I need your help,” she said. “You said that if I found out anything about the vision at the concert, I should tell you.”

“You can tell me anything, Madison, you know that.” He perched on the edge of his sofa and crossed his bare feet.

“I caught something in one of my dreams. It happened last night, and I don’t remember everything but enough to know what brought that man to me.” The two faces of the English ghost came to her: the one smeared with blood, and the other one Liliana had been so enamored with. “It was the music, the music they played at the concert.”

“Did you recognize it?”

She could have explained how Rupert had been the one who had provided the crucial piece of information, but that would have hinted at the fact that they had shared the same bed. Not that Jackson cared at all about her sleeping arrangements.
But hey, no kiss and tell.

“Have you heard of ‘Greensleeves?’ ”

A spark of interest ignited in his brown eyes and without a word he moved toward a CD rack standing in the opposite corner of the room. Ollie had spent many hours drooling over Jackson’s stereo and music collection. Now came the moment to put it to good use.

Soon the ballad played throughout the room, its melody both familiar and foreign to her ears. The words talked of broken vows and hearts, of deception and undying love. The combination seeped into Madison and squeezed her lungs so tightly she gasped for breath. Her hand flew to her chest and she rushed toward the stereo to click the red stop button. When the music stopped, a groan exploded from her lips. She covered her mouth to repress the noise and the wave of nausea threatening to splash over Jackson’s polished wooden floors.

He reacted fast. He engulfed her in his arms and forced-marched her toward the tiny bathroom lodged beneath the staircase. She crashed down onto the tiles, her forearms resting on the sides of the toilet seat, and vomited up her breakfast. Jackson kept her hair from falling over her face. Once she had emptied her stomach, Madison shifted and leaned back against the wall. She shut her eyes and cut herself off from her surroundings, from the noise of the toilet flushing, from Jackson moving around.

The touch of a wet cloth over her lips softened her wounded senses and dragged her back to the here and now.

“Have a sip of water.”

Jackson brought the glass to her lips and she managed to swallow a couple of sips. Her guts kept clenching and unclenching, while spasms rocketed through the rest of her bruised body.

“I’m so sorry,” she sputtered. Jackson had spent the night with an elegant and mature woman and now he had this poor, stupid student of his throwing up in his downstairs toilet. “I swear I’m not hungover or anything like that. It’s that song.” Her voice quivered on the last word. She sat huddled against the wall with her arms wrapped around her knees.

Jackson slid down by her side, mimicking her posture. “I know.” He conveyed his comfort by encircling her shoulder, and she nestled her head in the small of his neck. “We’ll have to work at making you stronger because I can’t stand seeing you like this.”

“I’m scared of failing again.” She kept her confession to a whisper.

“We’ll make this trip back to the Tudors short and sweet. Count on me.”

Madison raised her head. “The Tudors. What do they have to do with all of this?”

12

“VAUGHAN WILLIAMS is supposed to be the official composer, but Henry the Eighth is believed to have written ‘Greensleeves.’ Before you shared that story with me, I thought it was unlikely the music itself was by him because of its Italian origin. Now I guess it could make sense. The lyrics are thought to be his attempt at courting Anne Boleyn.”

“He can’t be my ghost.”

“You sound awfully certain.”

A giggle eased the pent-up tension inside her. “Let’s put it this way. The guy I saw in my dreams wasn’t fat, or greasy, or yucky. A bad boy, yes, for sure.”
But a swoon-worthy one. Without the blood, of course.

“Maybe the ghost is connected to Henry,” Jackson ventured.

“There’s a girl in my dream, too. They speak in Italian. Don’t ask me how I can understand what they say. It’s one of those mysteries. She’s the one who wrote the lyrics.” The facts she knew about Henry the Eighth didn’t reconcile with the glimpse of the love story Madison had stolen from the lovers. “And she wrote the lyrics for him.”

“Let’s get you back on your feet, then we can go and do a bit of research.” He stood up and extended his hand to pull her up too.

Her feet were reasonably steady. A quick check of her watch and Madison knew that she wouldn’t uncover the secret that morning. “I promised I’d help my aunt. She wants me to give an inspirational speech to her girls at school.” She muffled a bitter laugh. “I’m hardly a role model.”

They left the bathroom and returned to natural daylight. She squinted, her eyes blinded by the sudden brightness. Jackson now stood several steps away from her, and she resented the vertigo the distance triggered. Whatever he did with his time and nights, she needed his support; she needed
him
.

“Is your aunt settling in okay?”

Madison followed him back along the corridor that led to the entrance. “She’s already kicking my butt, so I assume it means she’s doing fine.”

She grabbed the satchel she had left at the foot of the table next to the door … that she expected Jackson to open for her. When he didn’t, she asked, “What’s up?”

“Have you asked yourself why your aunt chose to transfer to Oxford? You never mentioned the possibility before.”

The question took her aback, and she swung her bag over her shoulder to express the sudden burst of anger. Why did the people she loved the most seem so suspicious of each other? Rupert of Jackson; Jackson of Aunt Louise; Aunt Louise of Rupert. They were going full circle.

“Please, Jackson, don’t,” she pleaded. “I’m so happy to have her around. It’s a blessing, especially if I stay in England.”
For Rupert.

Jackson nodded, but there was no doubt in Madison’s mind that he would be watching her aunt closely. She dropped a light kiss on his cheek and ran out. His question lingered in the back of her mind during her ride home. Sometime soon she would have to ask the question: Why had Aunt Louise moved to Oxford?

Hampton Court had been Henry the Eighth’s home: a palatial, grand stately home, but his home nevertheless. Madison’s blood had stilled when she walked under Anne Boleyn’s Gate, the second gatehouse into the palace itself, with its still functioning astronomical clock. The skin on the back of her neck tingled, right on the spot where the hatchet must have severed Anne’s own.

“They’ve made the place look like a Disney World to the glory of Henry the Eighth.” Ollie nodded toward their tour guide in his courtier costume. Even some of the visitors had decided to borrow antique gowns from the Information Center.

“The guy was a fat, misogynistic, murderous asshole,” Madison lashed out. “Why everyone is so hung up about him is beyond me.”

After her vomiting moment at Jackson’s, she had set out to establish the link between her hottie, homicidal ghost, and the overweight and just as homicidal king, and where the song “Greensleeves” fit in with the whole thing. Dragging Ollie along was a bonus. He needed some distraction. The guy was buried so deep in grief that he could even depress the devil.

They had now stepped into The Chapel Royal. Madison tilted her head backward to admire the vaulted ceiling with its rich and colorful layers. Of all the places they had visited in the palace, the chapel was the one she connected with the most. Incense floated around her, and she knew kings and queens had breathed that same scent. She extended her hand, palms facing upwards. The past caressed her skin, and she let the emotions of those who had lived and died here wrap around her and seek solace. She closed her eyes, opened her heart, and consoled their errant souls.

When she came back to the present, the electric tension that had wired the air before had diminished. But Ollie was already walking away, and she had to follow him. When they left the chapel, Madison resented the crowd and the loud babbling.

“Did you feel anything spooky in the Haunted Gallery?” Ollie scrutinized her face like a doctor counting zits on a chickenpox-ridden kid.

The alleged adulteress Catherine Howard—Henry’s fifth and penultimate wife—was said to haunt the gallery, which was where she had run looking for her husband to plead her innocence. Her attempt had failed, and her guards had caught up with her. Within days she had been executed in the Tower of London.

“This is all BS. She’s not there at all, or my spookiness radar has gone brain dead.”

“Should we see one last exhibition before heading back to Oxford?” Ollie pointed at a sign that read:
The Young VIII
.

Madison had had enough of the place and of the royal dude, but, hey, Ollie was the one driving. “Sure.”

The exhibition was located within neutrally decorated rooms, their white walls offering a powerful backdrop to the selected artifacts. Two people as well as Henry dominated the exhibition: Thomas Wolsey, who had been his chief minister and trusted ally; and Katherine of Aragon, his wife for over twenty years.