Miss Ruth Ableside was my counsellor and I called her Ruth though she was considerably older than me. I liked her taste in furnishings. She owned a small cottage not far from mine and its thatched roof reminded me of my other life. I was supposed to visit her every week but I kept cancelling. If only I’d turned up to each appointment, the commitment would have been over by now. Bertie had arranged it all as he’d used her services himself, trusted her and promised she could help. The police encouraged me too. Well, they would, under the circumstances. I knew no one could help but it was often easier just to let other people make the decisions.
Three days after meeting Thomas Cambio, I went to see Ruth because it was my final appointment and I wanted to get it over with. I had paid in advance and I took her a bottle of wine as a Thank you. I had nothing to thank her for but it wasn’t her fault that I was no better after meeting her than I had been before. After all, I never told her the truth. Tell anyone the truth, and I’d have quickly found myself in a straight jacket, probably sleeping in the bed next to my mother.
Ruth and I sat and drank the wine I’d brought. It was five thirty and the evenings had closed in to early darkness. Ruth had a sweet face, a baby face, although she was in her late fifties. She had lit the fire. I sat in the big wing chair where the firelight scorched one side of my head and played shadow games on the striped wallpaper. Ruth’s cherubic mouth pursed though she wasn’t drinking much. “This is very cosy. So pleasant. Perhaps, since we are so delightfully relaxed, you have something more to say to me today?”
I suddenly decided I liked her. I had never really bothered one way or the other previously, it hadn’t mattered. Perhaps I had liked her anyway, without specifically noticing it, or I would not have taken her the wine. “I’m never talkative about myself,” I said. “I write. I don’t talk.”
“I’ve read some of your books,” she said, which was always a statement that warmed me to people. “Some of your heroines are extremely talkative. In your books, you seem to believe talking helps unblock emotions and releases inner demons. Shoos away the ghosts.”
“Ghosts and demons,” I muttered incoherently. It was my third glass of merlot.
“Tell me about them,” said Ruth.
With an idiocy of intoxication and pent up stress that seemed almost like a delirious compulsion, I began to talk. “Well, I suppose it’s the murders that set it off, but it all started before really. Even as a little girl.”
“I must admit,” smiled Ruth with a rather overpowering smile of reassurance, “that I do know something of your childhood problems. It can’t have been easy for a little girl. Mr. Walding told me something of the situation when he came here for counselling. Your dear husband and I got on very well.”
“He said so,” I mumbled. “Actually Bertie recommended you.” I finished the dregs in the bottom of my glass and Ruth leaned over and refilled it for me. It now smelled quite glorious which was surprising really, since it had been quite cheap.
“Go on. Tell me a little more. This is so cosy.”
“Well, it’s hard to explain,” I explained. “I drift off into other worlds sometimes. No, that’s not entirely true. I don’t drift. And it’s not other worlds, it’s just one specific one. I stay there and I become another person. She’s me or maybe I’m her. Do you believe in reincarnation?”
“I keep an open mind, dear,” she said, professionally diplomatic.
“Tilda’s much younger than I am,” I went on, “and she’s – well – this must all sound so hopelessly ridiculous – but she’s in incredible danger. I don’t understand everything that’s going on. It’s all to do with witchcraft. It links up to the murders. There have been awful murders there too. I suppose you think it’s all subliminal subconscious auto-suggestion or something.”
“Oh, what I think doesn’t matter,” smiled Ruth from her shadowed corner. She topped up my glass, which impressed me, since I had thought the bottle must have been finished ages ago. “But it’s so exciting. So interesting,” Ruth was saying. “You must go on and tell me more.” She refilled her own glass and I thought perhaps the bottle had an endless capacity with more inside than outside, like a tardis. I kept drinking and lost myself in verbal diarrhoea.
Chapter Twenty Eight
It was coming out from Ruth’s house that I bumped into Thomas Cambio. I barely remembered who he was. Besides, I was in such an inebriated condition that I barely remembered who I was.
“What a pleasant surprise,” he said, tapping his walking stick at me. Everyone was so damned charming these days.
“I have to get home,” I said, less charming. “Sorry. Can’t stop.”
“I’ll walk you home,” he said. “No, please – no arguments. We know what troubles there have been lately, no point taking risks. And you don’t live far from here if I remember rightly.”
I let him. “Been to see Ruth whatshername,” I muttered. “Talked too much.”
He nodded, a bit like a tortoise from within the turned up collar of his mackintosh. “I know dear Ruth. She’s a good friend of mine. But I suppose she does tend to chatter a little too much.”
“Not her. Me.”
“Oh well, no harm done,” said Thomas. “Professional visit perhaps? She’s a good counsellor. Not that she usually makes appointments for such a late hour.”
“Half past five. What’s it now?” It was deep night and no moon. “Seven? Eight?”
“It’s midnight,” said Thomas. “In fact, ten past.”
“Good God,” I said, stumbling over the doorstep to my own cottage. “Can’t believe it. Must get to bed.”
He had to help me with my key. “Perhaps I should come in and make you a coffee?” he suggested.
Ghastly idea. It was the very last thing I wanted. “Perhaps you could come in and help me make the coffee,” I said, tongue not obeying brain.
We sat in my living room and he sat on the couch where Bertie used to sleep and I sat in my big leather chair with the foot stool and we drank coffee. Thomas made extremely good coffee and I began to wake up. “I don’t want to seem ungrateful,” I said, less slurred now. “But this has to be brief. I’m desperately tired and I’ve already talked enough tonight. Thank you and everything, but five minutes, and I’m afraid you’ll have to go.”
“The choice is yours, of course,” said Thomas, “but I believe I could help.” I was in the middle of shaking my head when the coffee and the slow return to sobriety actually got through to me and I realised something. Thomas was unscrewing the top of his walking cane and something strange was coming from the open cup. The man sitting rather taut and upright on the couch in front of me, silver haired and neat, was not after all a polite but ineffectual old gentleman whose presence was pure coincidence. I stared. He was filling my little room with a kaleidoscope of rainbows.
The room had been cold for I’d been out, no time to light the fire and my central heating was on the blink. Now it was wondrously warm, like a summer balm dancing straight through ice and into sunshine. The colours were so beautiful that I had no time to be afraid. And anyway, magic had become such a normal part of my life these days. “Who are you?” I asked, as if he might just say, ‘Joe Bloggs the refuse collector,’ or ‘Mr. Smith the accountant.’
“I’m afraid I can’t answer that yet,” he said, “but there are a lot of other things I can tell you. Of course, it is rather late but if you aren’t too tired, perhaps we could discuss one or two matters.” The strings of colour were enclosing the room.
So for the second time that night I did what I never did, and I talked about myself and the magic of my life. Thomas Cambio became Tom and the colours he spun kept glistening and turning the night into timeless fascination. “You know Vespasian, don’t you?” I said, not a sudden guess but a sudden certainty.
He smiled. “Time travel,” he said, “is more common than you think. I have been to many places in many times during our history and I’ve been to medieval England on several occasions. In my li
ne of expertise, it would have been impossible to go there and not meet Vespasian. He’s quite an interesting fellow.”
I had never thought of Vespasian as a fellow. “He’s a magician?”
“He has many talents,” said Tom. “But I’d call him an alchemist rather than a magician. At least, that’s certainly what he’d call himself.”
“And Arthur and the others?”
“I have no idea,” said Tom, shaking his head. “I’ve never met them, I’m afraid. Perhaps one day, but it’s impossible to know everyone.”
“But you have your own magic. You’re a magician yourself.”
“Am I?” Tom leaned back in the couch and the colours from his stick began to concentrate around his head in a swirl of opaque pinks like an aura. “In one sense, you could say that. But that isn’t really what I am.” He smiled. “Now, let me tell you what you need to know.”
“Something special?” Were time travellers so incredibly common that I had just coincidentally happened to meet one in my own neighbourhood? And – of course – coincidentally someone who had met the increasingly suspicious Vespasian?
“How to control where you go, of course,” said Tom. “How to switch from past to present whenever you wish. And, very importantly, how to leave the door ready and open behind you as you pass. Then you’re never trapped, and can always return, in both directions.”
I woke up feeling deliciously alive. I had a quick very hot shower (I didn’t take baths anymore) and a quick breakfast, got dressed and settled back in the living room with a cup of tea. I sat in the leather chair that I had sat in for many hours the previous night, and looked at the empty couch where Tom had sat when he told me the things that had changed my future.
I could remember very little of what had happened with Ruth Ableside. Perhaps she had counselled me to the best of her ability, but it was getting me drunk that had helped the most. Not that she really got me drunk. I did it myself. It was what I had needed, loosening the attachment to the material, which allowed Tom to enter. He explained it later. Most of what he said I could remember very clearly indeed though some of it was a little blurred, after all, we had talked for almost five hours. He’d offered to stay the night in order to help with the transference, but my common sense had reasserted itself and I’d thought it an unnecessary suggestion, even from an elderly magician. I had refused quite firmly and he just smiled and left.
There was no discomfort about Tom. He was so essentially benign, so reassuring, like homemade bread and the smell of vanilla custard. And I thought the excitement, after he left, would make me restless but it had not. I got to bed eventually, slept dreamlessly, and was awake six hours later with no headache and no confusion.
So there was more magic in the world than I had ever imagined and just because people didn’t talk openly about it, didn’t mean that they weren’t having experiences just like my own. I didn’t talk about it either. Now I hoped I was closer to controlling my little part of it.
I also knew a whole lot more about Vespasian. And now I trusted him even less.
I finished my tea and washed my cup. I dithered a little as if preparing for a long absence. I made my bed, tidied up, left the phone on answering machine and made sure the front door was locked from the inside. Then I went back into the living room and sat on the floor. Part of me was still nervous and some senseless paranoia stuck in my throat like fish bones. I wasn’t having trouble believing things, I was just having difficulty deciding whether I should be frightened or excited. It seemed they tasted almost exactly the same.
I was going to have to do without the sulphur and mercury which Tom had recommended but I had the little pile of rosemary needles from my own back garden and the small glass bowl of dew that we had collected together that night, which had now been absorbed into the teaspoon of sea salt he had carefully measured for me. And I had the sealed pewter jar he had given me tucked into my pocket. I had slept with it. It contained the final ingredient, the one I could not produce myself.
I was lucky – not that there was any such thing as luck as I reminded myself – that there had been a new moon that night, deep blackness and a fresh feeling of potential beginnings. Everything else was ready.
I opened the pewter jar and took one tiny hard grain of the calcified substance from inside. It felt dry and hot between my fingers. I put it into the glass bowl and added the rosemary. I resealed the jar and put it back in my pocket. Then I took the bowl to the kitchen. It smelled sweet and had begun to smoke. I waited patiently until the kettle boiled, and added one tablespoon of hot water to the mixture.
I drank it immediately and closed my eyes.
“It’s time to get up now,” said the woman’s voice. “Abbot Bernado wishes to speak to you urgently.”
Chapter Twenty Nine
“You must understand that you’ve been living with a man capable of great evil,” said the abbot. He sat behind his desk; a small cluttered slope of polished wood whose height dwarfed him.
Tilda stood in front of the desk and stared. “He’s capable of great kindness too,” she muttered, almost inaudible. “I thought you said he was your friend.” She knew about the evil too. But I still felt some wavering loyalty.
“Originally, yes indeed. But he’s a man who despises morality,” said the abbot. “I should know. At one time, I was his pupil.”
It made no sense. I wondered if engineering the switch myself had made the transition too abrupt. I was having trouble assimilating. The abbot stared at me as if he expected a reaction that Tilda wasn’t giving. “I’ve known him for seven years,” Tilda said. “Seven and a half now - that he’s looked after me and most of the other children before me. He didn’t have to care for us. He took us in when we had nowhere else to go and he had little enough just to keep himself alive. But he shared everything with us. That’s kindness, isn’t it?”
“Well, it rather depends on motive,” said the abbot. “But I’m not saying he’s devoid of human kindness. Just that it doesn’t come first with him. His capacity for evil and terror is the greater.”
“I’m sorry to sound curious,” I said, “but you said you were his pupil.” Personally, before the move to the forest house, I had only known Vespasian teach one thing, and that had been how to steal. It was hard to believe that the abbot had ever been one of his thieving brats. For one thing, the churchman seemed a great deal older and probably at least in his forties or fifties. Vespasian had also taught us self defence whilst living in the forest, but that seemed as unlikely a tutorship for this small plump Italian. “Was he once a teacher?” I asked. “I know he lived a very different life when he was younger.”
“Indeed he did,” said the abbot, “but I’m not here to tell you about another man when he’s not even present. I only wish to warn you, and then set you on your way.”
“But how did you know who I am,” I insisted. I probably wasn’t as polite as it should have been but I extremely puzzled and even a little alarmed.
“That’s easy,” said the abbot, unoffended. “I knew you when you lived in London. And of course, I knew Vespasian. I saw you several times. You stole our charity collection once from poor dear Sister Rosamund, and I went to Vespasian to complain. He asked me to overlook it, and I did. I’ve also seen him after he left London and took you all to the de Vrais estate in the forest, though it’s some months now since I’ve seen him at all. The last time he came here asking about Gerald, his step son. So, you see, I guessed what you were doing here, cold and hungry and all alone. I shall protect you from him, if that’s what you wish.”
“I don’t need protection,” said Tilda, hanging her head. “He won’t come after me.”
“Then you may stay here for the time being,” continued Abbot Bernado. “You’ll be made welcome. But I think you should forget about joining our convent on a permanent basis. Holy orders are not your calling, I think.”
“I made that part up,” admitted Tilda.
“Just remember,” said the abbo
t, standing up to show me to the door, though not much taller standing than he had been sitting, “should you fall under Vespasian’s influence again, that his adopted name of Fairweather is hardly an apt description. He despises Holy Church, and is sunk in blasphemy, idolatry, and other wickedness, with some sins even worse which I will not utter in this sacred house.”
The room they had given me looked out over the gardens. Tilda had never known a garden before, unless it joined the kitchen and was used for growing herbs, salad and vegetables. Here the convent was surrounded by sloping greenery, almost unnaturally peaceful. I wondered if spirituality had something to do with it. Already I found the medieval world deliciously quiet. In spite of the convent’s obvious wealth, here it was silent. It was what both of us needed and the simple austerity was soothing. I had a lot to remember and Tilda had a lot she wanted to forget.
The bed was wooden framed, no curtains, straw stuffed mattress and a feather pillow on a linen sheet. The bedding was sparse but sufficient. The window was fine oiled sheepskin parchment with strong wooden shutters that I kept down. Mid autumn, the nights were chilly but I liked the glitter of star shine. There was a low box chest in the room, unlocked and empty, waiting for my belongings, should I have any. There was nothing else in the room except the wooden cross on the wall over the bed.
I left the room only for meals and for necessity. For two days I did little but sit on the bed and stare from the window. I watched the sun rise each gorgeous heartfelt dawn and watched it sink again each evening into fleeting glory. Still within the dark of new moon, night magic was hidden but I watched the breeze take shape through the autumn mist and slink down the slope behind the trees. I thought a great deal about Vespasian.
Tilda had run away to escaped Vespasian but it was impossible to forget him, so we thought about what he had done and what had happened because of him and in spite of him. I knew considerably more about him and his strange past now but no one was speaking about Arthur. I had recently met two men, one in each world, both of them mightily unexpected, both of them ambiguous. Neither of them should have known anything about a man such as Vespasian, but both of them claimed to know him intimately. One claimed to like and admire Vespasian, but had told me many things about him which troubled and sometimes frightened me. The other evidently held Vespasian in contempt and distrust, but I suspected the abbot’s concealed envy. In any case, I trusted both Thomas and the abbot a great deal more than I now trusted Vespasian.
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