Mariana (10 page)

'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 "ER.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 tale 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.

Ten

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 with 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 dreamed 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.'

'Did not,' I contradicted him. 'You've had the wrong history teacher, love. The chap on the tapestry with the arrow through his eye isn't Harold. Harold gets hewn down with a broadsword, or something, a little further on.'

'Whatever. The point is, comets always meant bad luck. The historical antithesis of your bloody starlings, if you like. Did anything else in the diary sound familiar?'

'Not really.' I shook my head. 'There were a few things he mentioned, early on in the year, that rang off bells in my brain, but when he writes about the summer months, with people dropping like flies in the streets, I don't feel anything.'

My brother smiled at me, that particularly self-satisfied smile that usually meant he was about to be clever. 'Well, you wouldn't, would you?'

'What do you mean?'

'Assuming that you were, in some former lifetime, this Mariana person, then you could hardly be expected to remember what London was like at the height of the plague. You'd been sent out of London by that time, hadn't you? To the country.'

'To Exbury,' I mused. I caught myself and smiled a little ruefully. 'It all sounds rather far-fetched, doesn't it? Shades of the penny dreadful.'

'Oh, I don't know.' Tom shrugged. 'It sounds rather fascinating, to me. I've set our local librarian on the scent, by
the way, so we'll have to wait and see what he manages to dig Up on the subject of reincarnation.'

I smiled at him. 'He didn't think it an odd topic for the local vicar to be researching?'

'Heavens, no.' Tom brushed off the suggestion. 'I told him I needed the information for an upcoming sermon.'

Which was, I decided upon reflection, a wholly logical and plausible excuse. Tom's sermons were notoriously unorthodox, and when he stood in the pulpit he was as likely to discuss cricket as he was to quote biblical texts. No doubt his parishioners had grown used to his eccentricities, and accepted them now without question.

'I'll have to dig out some of my old textbooks on comparative religions,' my brother had continued. 'There should be some information on reincarnation in there. Both the Hindu and Buddhist faiths believe in it, I know that much.'

'Well, I'm not sure that I'm entirely convinced, myself,' I told him. 'But whatever is happening, it's definitely connected to my house.'

'And you're certain you want to go back?'

I thought of my beautiful sunlit study; of the companionable atmosphere of the Red Lion pub, with Ned perpetually reading his paper at the end of the bar; of Geoffrey de Mornay, and the way his eyes darkened when he smiled ...

'Yes,' I said, 'quite certain. It's almost as if—and I know this is going to sound idiotic—but it's almost as if I've been drawn to Greywethers for a reason. That I somehow belong there.'

'Hardly idiotic. I believe everything happens for a reason.' That was the vicar speaking. 'And I think you're right. You need to go back and face up to this thing, if you're ever going to have any peace. You need to find out everything you can about this Mariana person. If you can do that, then you might learn why all this is happening to you now. Some bit of unfinished business, maybe, that needs to be completed.'

'It's possible, I suppose'
'Or,' he added with a grin, 'maybe my past-life theory is all wet, and you are just going quietly insane, after all. Like Great-aunt Sarah.'

I pulled a face. 'A comforting thought.'

'What are big brothers for?'

'Although,' I conceded, 'perhaps the insanity defense is the most practical one. I'm still not sure I believe in the concept of reincarnation. It does seem a little unlikely, don't you think?'

Tom flicked me a sideways glance. Seemingly dismissing the subject, he turned his gaze back out over the wide green lawn, where the long shadows of the early evening were spreading across the freshly mowed grass like gentle caressing fingers. 'Sixteen sixty-five, you said, was the plague year? Who was on the throne then?'

I frowned. 'Charles the Second, I think.'

'Oh, right. Another of the ill-fated Stuart kings, wasn't he? Did you read the bit about his coronation?'

'No. I didn't go back that far.'

'Well'—Tom leaned back—'you want to talk about bad omens. It rained the whole day, cats and dogs.'

I shook my head vaguely. 'It didn't rain until that evening,' I corrected him. 'After the ceremonies were over.'

'It was a Saturday, I believe.'

My answer came more slowly this time. 'No. A Tuesday.'

'And the ground was carpeted in red.'

'Blue ...' I turned my head, stunned, to meet his knowing eyes.

'You're right,' he told me. 'There probably isn't much point in exploring the reincarnation angle.'

I had stared back at him, unable to reply at first, my mind amazed and numb. 'Bloody hell,' I had said slowly. For, after all, vicar or no vicar ...

'Precisely,' Tom had said, and, smiling, he'd returned to his sermon.

The traffic cleared ahead of me, and the sudden blare of a car horn pulled me instantly out of my reverie. Still
wrapped in warm serenity, I coaxed the little Peugeot into the faster lane and depressed the accelerator, squaring my shoulders against the driver's seat with a barely audible sigh. I drove the rest of the way in silence.

As I bumped across the little bridge that marked the approach to Exbury, the blanket of contentment tightened and a small thrill of anticipation raced through my travel-weary body.
Almost home.
The words filled my brain like a spoken voice, soft and soothing.

There was that word again, I thought. Home. It sprang so easily and naturally to mind, almost as if ...

'I don't know,' I said aloud to the spotted windshield, 'have I lived here before, really, in some other life?' The reply flowed back, prompt and simple, from what might have been either my imagination or the deepest recesses of my subconscious:
Yes.

The road curved and my house rose majestically from the landscape to welcome me, beautiful in the late-morning sunlight with the forsythia bursting into bloom along the north wall. It always came back to the house, I thought, as I turned up the narrow drive. I had not chosen this house, as others choose, with a free and rational mind; the house had chosen me. And if I had indeed been drawn here for a purpose, then I had better do my best to find out what that purpose was, starting today. Starting now.

'All right,' I said firmly, lifting my chin to a determined angle. 'I've come back. Now show me what it is you want me to do.'

It was a shameless bit of bravado, really. I wasn't even sure as I spoke the words whether I was addressing a ghost, the house, or myself. And I certainly wasn't expecting an answer.

But as I parked in the converted stables at the back of the house, a glimmer of movement caught my eye, and turning my head, I saw the figure of a young woman standing in the dovecote garden. The still, poised figure of a young woman in green.
For a moment I panicked, my chest tightening, and then the woman turned and smiled and waved, and I saw that it wasn't a ghost at all, only Vivien wearing a shapeless old green coverall, with her fair hair tumbled anyhow around her shoulders and her face glowing with healthy color. Relieved, I walked slowly across the long grass toward the ruined dovecote. Vivien stopped working and leaned on her rake, watching my approach with friendly eyes.

'You're home, then,' she said, unnecessarily. 'Is everything all right with your family?'

'Yes, thanks.' News traveled quickly. She looked as though she wanted to know more, but I changed the subject. I never had liked lying, much. 'I didn't know you dabbled in gardening, as well,' I said.

'I don't normally. I'm just lending Iain a hand with the weeding. Such a beautiful morning,' she explained, gesturing up at the flawless blue sky. 'I hated to be cooped up indoors.'

'You're not lending
much
of a hand, love,' Iain Sumner's voice said dryly. I couldn't see him for the stone wall, but as I drew nearer the garden he stood upright and stretched. 'You've been raking that same bit of soil for the past twenty minutes,' he accused Vivien.

She took the dig good-naturedly. 'So I'm thorough.'

'Aye. I'll not argue with you there.' His eyes slid sideways away from her, and he smiled a greeting at me, pitching a handful of dirt-encrusted weeds onto the heaping mound beside him. He was looking the proper countryman this morning, in rough trousers and a faded blue flannel shirt, with the leather gauntlet gloves pulled up over his forearms. He was also looking exhausted. His gray eyes were strained and deeply shadowed in his stoic face. I thought of my cousin Ronald, in Cornwall, who rose at four every morning to milk his thirty cows, and wondered for the hundredth time why anyone would choose to be a farmer.

Iain yanked off one of the weathered gloves and wiped the sweat from his forehead with a large sunburned hand. 'I
gave your message to Geoff,' he informed me. 'There was no problem. He's been called away himself, up north on business, for the next few days, but he said he'll give you a ring when he gets back.'

'Oh, yes?' Vivien cocked her head mischievously.

'He promised me a tour of the Hall,' I explained, hoping no one would notice my blush in the strong sunlight. For the second time, I changed the subject. 'The garden looks lovely,' I said.

It truly did. The orderly rows of tiny green shoots were now surrounded by verdant clumps of hyacinth and primrose. He had added a climbing rose as well, perhaps a transplant from the famous rose gardens at Crofton Hall, its sleeping tendrils trailing lazily over the sun-warmed stories. In a month or so, the small plot of land would be positively bursting with life and color.