Mariana (11 page)

Iain followed my appreciative gaze, and shrugged his broad shoulders. 'It'll do,' he said modestly.

I glanced down at my wristwatch. It was nearly half-eleven. 'Would anyone like a cup of tea?' I offered.

'Lovely.' Vivien abandoned her rake with evident relief, and Iain gave her a look of indulgent affection before his tired gray eyes met mine and he smiled.

'I'd not say no,' was his reply.

I wouldn't have admitted it to a soul, least of all to myself, but I was glad that I was not alone when I unlocked the door of the silent gray house and, with a deep breath of determination, stepped across the waiting threshold.

Eleven

I need not have worried, after all. The remaining days of the week passed in quiet, perfect normality, dull as ditch water. Perversely, I was disappointed. It was not a rational reaction, but I could not help myself. Patience, as my family would wholeheartedly attest, was never my strongest characteristic, and now that I was prepared—even eager—to experience another scene from Mariana Farr's life, I found it frustrating to be denied the opportunity. Even the watcher on the gray horse had deserted me, and the place beneath the old oak tree, whenever I had the courage to look, was empty.

By Friday morning I had grown restless in my impatience, and I looked to my work for diversion. It was high time I started working, anyway, I told myself in resolute tones. Seated in my familiar pose at the drawing board, with the marked page of manuscript clipped to the top bar and a fresh sheet of drawing paper spread beneath my pencil, I felt instantly more focused and relaxed.

It had been over a month since I had last worked on the storybook illustrations. I had been too excited after buying the house, too busy during the move, and too distracted by the events since to even contemplate drawing my goblins
and queens. The little characters had waited, brooding, all that time, and now they fairly ran from my mind to the tip of my pencil and onto the pristine page, bringing to life an adaptation of a Korean folktale about a disgruntled dragon.

The story required four illustrations in all. By early afternoon I had completed the pencil sketches, with the almost fussy amount of detailing that was my trademark. The sketches would still have to be painted over in watercolors, but that could wait until tomorrow. I leaned back in the high, padded, specially made chair, stretched my arms above my head to loosen the knots between my shoulder blades, and looked around the room with pleasure.

I could not have chosen a better spot in which to work. The room was small, and square, and low-ceilinged, but the walls were painted a pale sunrise yellow and coaxed an answering glow from the wide polished floorboards. It was a comfortable, cheerful little room.

By swiveling my chair I could command a clear view, through the window, of the dark line of trees marking the slow, winding curve of the river to the west of my property, and beyond that the clear patchwork farmlands and low rolling downs. To the southwest, just within my line of vision, the squat, crenellated tower of the village church stood sentry over the village, and the tall brick chimneys of Crofton Hall rose majestically above the green canopy of trees.

I had not yet heard from Geoffrey de Mornay, and so I assumed that he was still away on business. Up north somewhere, Iain had said. Lancashire, maybe, I speculated, or Northumberland. Morland Electronics had factories in both places.

At any rate, I reminded myself, I wasn't holding my breath, waiting for his phone call. After all, I wasn't some lovesick adolescent, and I had plenty of other things to occupy my time. Besides, I thought, as I went downstairs to brew a long-overdue cup of tea, I had only known the man a week.

Which did nothing to explain why, when the telephone
finally
did
ring, I nearly vaulted over the kitchen table to answer it. Or why my voice suddenly turned sultry, conjuring up images of Greta Garbo in her prime. 'Hullo?' 'Julia?'

'Oh, it's you,' I said, my disappointment showing. 'Sorry.' Tom sounded taken aback. 'Who should I be?' 'No one." I recovered my normal voice. 'What's up?' My brother paused, decided not to pursue the matter, and went on somewhat cautiously. 'I just got back from the library,' he informed me, 'and I thought you might be interested in some of the stuff my librarian has managed to scrape up for me.'

'Already? That was certainly quick of him.' 'He's a terribly industrious young chap. Anyhow,' Tom carried on, 'apart from digging up a huge list of names of famous people who believe in reincarnation—everyone from Plato to Voltaire—he also managed to find the official religious line on the matter, in both the Hindu and Buddhist faiths. Pages of information, really. The basic theory runs that the human soul is sent back to live on earth again and again until it has learned the lessons necessary to pass into a higher state of being.'

'And what lessons are those?'

'It doesn't specify. There
is
the law of karma, which says that what you do in one life affects what happens in your future lives, so if you're a real schmuck in this life, you'll have a miserable time in the next. But of course,' Tom qualified, in his usual rational way, 'that's just the religious angle. There's a lot of investigative research here that supports the phenomenon of reincarnation without delving into the religious aspects.'

'Investigative research?' I echoed. 'You're pulling my leg.' 'No, really.' I could hear the sound of shuffling papers in the background. 'Some people are dead serious on this. For example, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Virginia has collected seventeen hundred cases of people who
have conscious memories of past lives. Mostly young children, who say out of the blue that they were so-and-so in a past life, and can identify their former homes and even their former friends and spouses. Very strange stuff. There's a fascinating case from India ...' He coughed, and the papers rustled again. 'But I digress. The other main body of research seems to come from hypnotherapists, if you believe in that sort of thing. They've regressed literally thousands of people into the past, and found that most people were just ordinary folk living ordinary lives. Oh, here's an interesting bit. This is an article on spontaneous recall of past lives, and it says that the people in the study all reported hearing a ringing in their ears, accompanied by a sensation of dizziness, just before the incident occurred. Sound familiar?'

'It sounds like you've got quite a bit of material, there,' I commented, trying to ignore the faint shiver that swept across my skin.

'Reams of it,' Tom concurred. 'Listen, why don't I send you the whole packet and let you read it for yourself, instead of rambling on over the telephone?'

'Fine. You've got my address, have you?'

'Somewhere.'

Not trusting my brother's memory, I gave it to him again, and listened to the scratching of his pen as he wrote it down. When we resumed our conversation, he seemed as disappointed as I was that nothing had happened since my return.

'Nothing at all?' he checked. 'Not even an unusual dream?'

'I haven't had any dreams, that I remember.'

'Maybe you're trying too hard.'

'I'm not doing it on purpose, Tom.' My voice was clipped and short-tempered. 'I'm just as eager to have something happen as you are, you know.'

'I know. Sorry.' Even through the telephone line, I could sense his smile. 'Rather funny, when you come to think of it.'

'What is?'

'Well, on Monday you were upset because things
were
happening, and now we're both upset because they
aren't]

'Oh, I see. Well, it doesn't feel very funny from this end. It feels rather ominous, if you must know.'

'The calm before the storm?'

'More like ... like I'm being watched,' I told him. 'Like somebody's standing behind me, watching me. And waiting.'

'Waiting for what, do you think?'

f shook my head, not caring that he couldn't see the gesture. 'I don't know. I don't suppose you have any useful suggestions in that bundle of information you got from the librarian?'

'Not really, no.' He flipped through the papers again. 'Oh, but there were a couple of other statements I thought you'd find interesting....'

'Yes?'

'There seems to be a lot of evidence that we surround ourselves with the same people in each life—that your father in one life becomes your friend in the next, and so on. They're
sometimes
referred to as soul mates, those people to whom you take an instant liking without really knowing why.'

'So you could have been my brother in a past life.'

'Or your husband,' Tom teased. 'Or your son. Or your daughter, come to that. Sex doesn't appear to remain constant from one lifetime to another.'

'All right.' I accepted the information. 'And what was the other point you thought would interest me?'

'Ah,' Tom said. 'Well, the next bit is a little touchy, but ... most of the people involved in one of the studies said that they had actually
chosen
to be reborn; that they had sort of stayed in limbo, if you like, until an opportune moment presented itself.'

'So?'

'So you said that this ghost, this Green Lady in your garden, hasn't been seen by anybody for about thirty years?'

'That's what I'm told.'

'And has it never occurred to you,' Tom said slowly, 'that it was about thirty years ago that you were born?'

*-*-*-*

Tread lightly, she is near....
The words sprang, naturally and unbidden, to my troubled mind as I stood alone in the walled churchyard, gazing down at the overgrown grave of Mariana Farr. The poem was an old one, by Oscar Wilde. I'd had to memorize it once at school, and even now, years later, I could still remember the final, haunting line:
All my life's buried here, Heap earth upon it.

But surely, I told myself, that was wrong. I ought to be digging to uncover the past, not heaping earth upon it to cover it up. Frowning, I thrust my hands deeper into the pockets of my jeans and stared hard at the plain little stone.
All my life's buried here....

A chill breeze lifted the hair from my forehead and I turned away, lowering my head in silent contemplation as I trudged with heavy footsteps toward the church. As before, the huge wooden door opened easily to my touch. Standing in the hushed, cool interior, I marveled once again at the exquisite stillness of the place, and the romantic, abandoned aura that permeated it. Like the ruins of Glastonbury Abbey, with the grass growing atop the high roofless walls, this little church gave one the impression that all the people had left a very long time ago.

Which was silly, I thought, since come Sunday the pews would probably all be filled with the faithful of modern-day Exbury. But the impression lingered, nonetheless. I would have sat awhile myself in one of the scarred and burnished pews, enjoying the peaceful, undemanding atmosphere, but a sound from outside the church caught my attention. It was, at first, a faint sound, filtering through the thick stone walls like the insistent tap, tap of a tree branch against a windowpane, but it drew closer and grew steadily in volume, until I could clearly hear the sound of a horse's hooves
pounding the tightly packed earth of the path that wound behind the church—the path that led to the manor house.

Curious, I stepped outside again and rounded the west wall of the church, walking the short distance across the grass to the low gate that led on to the manor-house path. Although I could hear the horse quite plainly, I could see nothing, and I stepped
out
onto the path for a better view.

The dizziness came upon me rather suddenly. I barely had time to lift my fingers to my throbbing temples, closing my eyes against a blinding explosion of light, when I heard a loud explosive oath behind me and turned to see a massive pair of hooves neatly slicing the air just inches from my face. Stunned, I fell back, bruising my hip against a stone as I did so. Pinned by the tangled weight of my gown against my legs, I could only stay there, half sitting and half lying in the dirt, staring up at the man whose expert horsemanship had no doubt just saved my life.

I couldn't see his face—the sun was to his back, and F had only the barest glimpse of a hard profile as he worked to steady the dancing gray horse. But while I couldn't see his expression, I was certain that he wasn't smiling.

'Christ's blood, woman!' he swore again, confirming my suspicions. 'Can you not watch where you are going? D'you wish for death?'

Wide-eyed and silent, I shook my head, unsure as to which of the two questions I was answering. The outline of his jaw tightened, as if he were preparing to give a lecture, but he only exhaled a tight, exasperated sigh and looked away for a moment, letting me see that hard, finely drawn profile in greater detail. When he looked at me again and spoke, his voice was quieter, and almost kind.

'Are you hurt?'

Again, I shook my head, and sensed his smile.

'Can you not speak, Mariana Farr?' he asked. 'I'd heard that girls from London were uncommonly good at it.'

My blood chilled nervously. 'I am not from London, sir. I come from Southampton.'

'Tis odd,' he said, lightly. 'I stood a drink to a man not a week ago who claimed he was a coachman come from London. He told me he had brought hence but one passenger, and that a girl with hair as fair as ripened barley. He waxed poetic in his cups, this coachman did, but he did not impress me as a liar.' I said nothing, and he went on speaking, still in that light and careless tone. 'You need not look so frightened—I'll not tell. I am no peasant, mistress, to cross myself and mutter prayers when someone whispers "plague," and I would not see you driven from the town by those who have no wit to see you carry not the sickness.'