Mariana Page 9

  Even before the hair lifted along the nape of my neck, I knew that I was being watched. I wheeled to face the oak tree in the hollow, and the dark rider on the gray horse that I knew would be there. A sudden tide of anger, blind and furious, swelled within me.

  “Go away!” I shouted at him. “Go away and leave me alone. I don’t want you here!”

  Slowly, reluctantly, horse and rider retreated a few paces, and the gray morning mist rose up to fill the place where they had been. Still shaking with the force of my emotions, I hugged myself tighter and lowered my eyes.

  Beneath my feet, a sprinkling of delicate blue wildflowers, wet with dew, nestled in the long grass. The ground was level here, and firm, and it was simple enough to see the slight depression where, long ago, someone had once planted a garden…

  ***

  The rectory at Elderwel, Hampshire, was a solid Victorian building of deep-red brick, set close to the road, facing the graceful fifteenth-century church of St. Stephen’s. Ivy had gained a foothold on the north side of the house, and the twisted tangle of vines, bursting into leaf, climbed with a steady purpose almost to the sills of the upper windows. Beyond the ivy’s reach, the gabled windows in the steeply sloping roof gazed out over the village like kind, benevolent eyes.

  Inside, the rectory was a rabbit warren of narrow, dark rooms, designed to accommodate the large families of the previous century. Since my brother Tom was unmarried, he contented himself with the main floor of the rambling house and gave the upper stories over to the use of his curate, and the occasional guest or homeless parishioner. Most of the housework he did himself, but on Mondays his cleaner, Mrs. Pearce, came in to do a proper job.

  It was Mrs. Pearce, duster in hand, who answered my knock at the door that morning and showed me through to the comfortably masculine study. Mrs. Pearce, I marveled, had a remarkable amount of tact. I looked like hell, and knew it. I’ll never know how I made that drive from Exbury to Elderwel without damaging myself or the car, but when I reached the rectory it was fully an hour before breakfast time.

  By now the shock was beginning to wear off, and I was shaking so badly I could scarcely control it, but if Mrs. Pearce noticed, she made no comment. She opened the curtains, saw me settled in Tom’s favorite armchair, and withdrew in her quiet, efficient way to put the kettle on.

  Tom arrived a few minutes later, still buttoning his shirt. He had, no doubt, intended to make some joke about my early-morning invasion of his sanctum sanctorum, but when he first caught sight of me the mocking smile died on his lips.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked quickly.

  My last tenuous thread of control snapped, and I burst into tears. I later wished that I’d had a camera with me, to record the expression on Tom’s face—I doubt whether his look of pure, unmitigated horror had been equaled anywhere other than in silent films.

  His reaction, though comic, was wholly understandable. I never cried. I rarely even whimpered. The last time Tom had seen me in tears was almost twenty years earlier, when he’d accidentally slammed the car door on my hand. Even then, the flood had been modest, nothing like the terrifying outburst of great, soul-wrenching sobs he was witnessing now.

  “Julia?” His tone was uncertain. It was several minutes before I could recover myself sufficiently to answer him.

  “I’m fine, really,” I told him between sniffles. “I’m just losing my mind.”

  Tom took a seat opposite me, frowning. “What?”

  “Going insane,” I elaborated. “Cracking up. There’s no other explanation for it.”

  “You’ve lost me.”

  The tears had subsided now, and I took a deep, shaky breath, wiping the dampness from my face with the heel of my hand. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you,” I said.

  “Try me.”

  I gave him a long, measuring look, heaved another unsteady sigh, and started talking. I began at the beginning, from the moment I’d first seen the man on the gray horse, through the incident in Blackfriars Lane, to my discovery of Mariana Farr’s headstone in the churchyard and my waking dream of last night. Mrs. Pearce drifted noiselessly in and out of the room, depositing pots of tea and plates of biscuits and whisking the remains away without once interrupting the course of my narrative, while my brother sat quietly in his chair, listening. When I had finished, he leaned back and lowered his eyebrows in contemplation.

  “These… experiences,” he said finally, “do they come on suddenly, or do you have any warning?”

  I tried hard to think back. My first inclination would have been to say that there was no warning whatsoever, but… “I sometimes hear a ringing in my ears,” I told him, “or I feel a little dizzy. Or both.”

  “And you’re definitely a participant in the action. It doesn’t feel like you’re in the audience watching a play?”

  “Definitely not. I don’t even feel like a cast member, come to that. Cast members have scripts, but I never have the slightest idea what’s going to happen next. It’s just like real life… just like this.” I spread my hands, palms upward, in a gesture that encompassed the room and the two of us. “Even the time and space they occupy is real. I obviously move around, since I started off outside the house last night and ended up in the studio this morning.”

  Tom thought about this. “And when you have these experiences, you don’t remember anything about being Julia Beckett?” I shook my head. “But when you come out of it again, you can remember clearly being this other woman?”

  “I remember everything.”

  “Setting aside the insanity theory, for the moment,” he said slowly, “what do you think is happening?”

  “I suppose… I suppose it could be the ghost.”

  “This Green Lady that everyone talks about, you mean?”

  I nodded. “The dress I was wearing last night, when I was her… when I was Mariana… was green. I don’t know. Could a ghost take possession of a living person, do you think?”

  “I’m hardly an authority on the subject,” Tom admitted. “I suppose it’s possible, but in your case I wouldn’t think it likely. Not unless the ghost followed you to London last weekend.” He frowned. “There is one possibility that you haven’t considered, yet.”

  “Which is?”

  He raised his head and looked at me. “That everything you’re seeing, everything you’re experiencing, may actually come from your own memory. That you may, in fact, be Mariana.”

  “You can’t be serious.”

  “Why not? Reincarnation is an accepted phenomenon in lots of cultures. There are even a few distinguished Church of England types I could name who support the theory.”

  “And what do you believe?” I challenged him.

  “Well…” He smiled. “It’s one of the requirements of my job that I believe in the eternal life of the human soul. And where that soul goes after death is a question that only the dead can answer.”

  “So you think I may have lived in that house in some sort of past life?” It sounded ridiculous, but Tom’s expression was serious.

  “I think it’s an idea worth exploring, yes. After all, if you feel like you’ve been somewhere before, the logical explanation usually is that you have been there before.”

  I frowned. “It could explain why I was drawn to the house, I suppose.”

  “And why you knew where the old garden had been. And why you chose to make your studio in that tiny back room, instead of using one of the better rooms at the front.”

  As he spoke the words, an image rose swimming in front of my eyes, of the mover’s young assistant holding my bedroom chair and asking, in a puzzled voice, “Are you sure you meant the first room on the right…?”

  I shook myself back to the present. “Good Lord,” I said flatly.

  “I could try to find out more about the subject for you,” T
om offered. “We’ve got a wonderfully eccentric librarian here who delights in ferreting out odd bits of information.”

  “You honestly believe that past lives are possible?” I asked him, and he shrugged.

  “The Lord moves in ways mysterious,” he told me, smiling.

  “Oh, that reminds me,” I said, sitting upright. “Have you ever heard a biblical passage that starts, ‘Blow the trumpet in Zion,’ or something like that? I don’t recall the rest of it, something about people trembling and the day of judgment.”

  Tom rolled his eyes. “Sounds like one of the doom-and-gloom Old Testament chaps,” he speculated. “Micah, maybe, or Joel.” Rising from his chair, he crossed to his desk and picked up a well-thumbed copy of the King James Bible. For several minutes he silently leafed through the pages, and I was on the verge of telling him that it wasn’t that important, after all, when he suddenly jabbed one page with a triumphant finger. “Aha! It was Joel. Chapter two, verse one. Here you go.”

  He passed the Bible to me, open, and pointed to the place. As I read the brief, cheerless passage, Tom sat down again, scratching his forehead idly. “My former curate used to love reading texts from Joel,” he recalled. “Real hell-and-damnation stuff, hardly inspiring for the congregation. Though I seem to remember that old Joel was writing during a plague of locusts, so I suppose he had a right to be dismal.”

  Plague… the word struck a sudden chord in my memory, and I lifted my eyes from the page. “When was the Great Plague in London, do you know?”

  “There were several, I think,” Tom replied. “There was the Black Death, of course, in the 1300s.”

  I half closed my eyes, replaying the scenes in my mind, trying to focus on the clothes that people were wearing, the style of their hair, the furniture in the house…

  “No.” I shook my head. “The plague I’m thinking of was later than that.”

  “There was a big one in the mid-seventeenth century, then, just before the Great Fire.”

  “That’s the one.” I wasn’t sure how or why I knew, but I knew.

  “What would you like to know about it?”

  “Everything.” I lifted my shoulders expansively. “I don’t know much about the history of that period. And that’s the time in which Mariana lived, I’m sure of it. Her mother died of the plague.”

  “Well, I’m rather rusty on the seventeenth century myself. I remember the Civil War bit well enough, and the beheading of Charles the First, and Cromwell, of course, but when it comes to the plague… Hang on,” he interjected, brightening. “I’ve got a copy of Pepys’s diary lying about somewhere. He kept a fairly good account of the plague year, I think. Let me see if I can find it for you.”

  He rose from his seat a second time and made a close examination of the overstuffed bookshelves on the far side of the room. After a long hunt, he extracted a wedged volume and flipped open the cover. “Here it is. Quite a nice copy, actually. I picked it up at a book sale in Oxford.” He handed it to me, a small book that nestled comfortably in my open hand, and turning to the title page, I read aloud:

  “The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Esquire, F.R.S. What does the ‘F.R.S.’ stand for?”

  “Fellow of the Royal Society,” Tom supplied. “He worked in the Admiralty office, and kept a diary from 1659 to ’69, when his eyesight started going. It runs to several volumes, in its original state. Mine’s the edited version, I’m afraid, with all the racy bits taken out, but it’s still very interesting reading.”

  “Thanks.” I closed the book, holding it tightly.

  Tom eyed me thoughtfully. “You’re welcome to stay a few days, you know,” he told me. “That is, if you want—”

  “Thanks. I’ll wait and see how I feel.”

  Mrs. Pearce materialized in the doorway. “I’ve made up the bed in the blue guest bedroom,” she said matter-of-factly, as though it were a normal thing for the vicar’s sister to drop round before breakfast and sleep through the day. “Do you need to use the bath before I start in there?”

  “No, thank you.” I smiled. “Bed sounds heavenly.”

  “Marvelous woman,” Tom said, as the cleaner departed. He looked at me and grinned. “I’ll bet even the lord of Exbury manor doesn’t get treatment like that from his staff.”

  “Oh, Lord!” I sprang to my feet. “What time is it?”

  “Just past noon. Why?”

  “Can I use your telephone?”

  It took several minutes for the operator to locate the number for Crofton Hall, another few minutes for her to make the connection for me, and eight long rings for someone at the other end to answer the telephone.

  “Hello?”

  “Hello. Is that Geoff?”

  There was a small pause. “No, I’m sorry,” the voice said carefully, with an unmistakable Scottish accent. “He’s not at home right now. Can I take a message?”

  “Iain,” I said, “it’s Julia Beckett. Could you please tell Geoff I won’t be able to take the tour this afternoon? He’ll know what I mean. There’s been a… minor family emergency, and I’ve had to come to my brother’s place in Hampshire.”

  “Nothing serious, I hope?”

  He sounded concerned, and I felt guilty about the lie.

  “Oh, no,” I responded. “I should be home tomorrow morning.”

  “Right. I’ll pass the message along, then.”

  “Thanks.” I rang off feeling somewhat easier in my mind, and turned to find my brother watching me.

  “Everything all right?” he asked.

  “Fine.”

  “Then let’s get you settled in,” he said. “You look like you’re about to fall over.”

  In a remarkably short space of time I found myself neatly tucked between the cool, sweet-smelling sheets of the wide brass bed in the blue guest bedroom upstairs, wearing one of my brother’s roomy nightshirts with the sleeves rolled above my elbows.

  Mrs. Pearce had drawn the blinds down to darken the room for sleeping, but there was still enough light for reading.

  I sighed, comfortably drowsy, and reached with a languid hand for the small book I’d left on the bedside table. Opening the diary of Samuel Pepys to a random page, I read the entry for 6 April 1665:

  Great talk of a new Comet, he had written, and it is certain do appear as bright as the late one at the best, but I have not seen it myself. Two comets…

  I shifted involuntarily against the pillows, and the back of my neck tingled as though an icy hand had brushed across it. All weariness forgotten, I grasped the book more tightly and began to read.

  Chapter 10

  I had expected to feel any number of emotions as I made the drive back to Exbury the next morning. Apprehension, certainly, and fear, or even excitement. But I was unprepared for the feeling of complete serenity that settled over me like a comforting blanket, almost before the spire of my brother’s church had been swallowed up by the trees in my rearview mirror. It was a strong feeling, strong and calming and pervasive. And entirely illogical, given the disturbing events of the day before.

  I let my eyes follow the erratic movements of my fellow motorists as they maneuvered themselves through the rush-hour shuffle, while my mind drifted idly back to the previous morning.

  I had managed to read almost one whole year of the Pepys diary before my own weariness had defeated me. When I woke, it was late afternoon, and through the half-open window the air smelled gloriously clean and fresh. My clothes, newly washed and pressed by Mrs. Pearce, lay spread across a nearby chair like a waiting playmate. I rose, bathed, and went downstairs in search of my brother.

  I found him on the long patio at the back of the house, absently chewing the end of his pencil while he sat, lost in thought, staring with unseeing eyes out over the wide, manicured lawn. Surfacing at the sound of my approaching footsteps, he looked up wi
th a smile, removing the pencil from his mouth and setting it on top of the open notebook on the small table beside him.

  “Well, you’re certainly looking better,” he greeted me. “Maybe you ought to stay on a couple of days, get yourself rested up.”

  “Thanks, but no.” I took a brightly cushioned chair, facing him. “I have to go back tomorrow. What are you working on?”

  He tilted the notebook, letting me see the heavily scribbled pages. “Sermon. You’re good with words, as I recall. What’s another word for ‘spontaneous’?”

  “Extemporaneous?”

  “Perfect.” He made a few more illegible marks with the pencil and set the notebook aside a second time. “Did you manage to read any of the Pepys?”

  “Mmm.” I leaned back, crossing my leg and swinging one foot in a lazy motion. “I read nearly all of the plague-year bit. Sixteen sixty-five, by the way. Pretty horrific stuff.”

  As nearly as I had been able to make out, the plague had started slowly, crossing over from Holland on the merchant vessels that freely sailed the waters of the English Channel from Amsterdam to London and back again. Having once taken hold, it had caught and festered like a dripping wound, spreading through the overcrowded suburbs with deadly purpose until it reached the City itself. It was with a sadness born of twentieth-century hindsight that I read how the Londoners had, in their superstitious ignorance, quickly slaughtered all the dogs and cats that they could find, animals that might have been able to curb the rising population of plague-carrying rats. Even today, with all our modern medicine, an outbreak of bubonic plague would be a terrifying spectacle. To the people of the seventeenth century, it must have seemed like the very apocalypse.

  “Find anything of interest?” Tom asked.

  “Several things. Do you remember my telling you that I’d dreamt of two comets? Well, it turns out there actually were two comets seen over London, one in December of 1664 and the second in the spring of the plague year. Made quite a stir, according to Pepys. Very portentous.”

  “Yes, I can imagine.” Tom nodded. “Comets were seen as signs of impending doom, in those days. Not without cause, really. The Bayeux tapestry shows a comet appearing when poor old Harold was crowned king, just before William the Conqueror plowed the English army into the ground and put an arrow through Harold’s eye.”