I believed him immediately. The relief was incredible. I stopped shivering and my shoulders relaxed, but I wasn’t entirely satisfied yet. “Aren’t you one of them? Part of the group? Arthur and Malcolm and the others – you work with them or for them. They tortured Isabel. They killed Richard.” I suddenly realised then just how much I longed to trust him.
I thought he might ignore me but then his own face relaxed and his voice was gentle again. “Arthur, and his cult are my enemies,” he said, “as they are Tilda’s. I am not one of any group. I have no group. I work alone.”
I took a deep breath and said what I had not intended to say. “But you raped Tilda.”
His voice altered again. “Listen to me now,” he said, “I have warned you as I have warned her. You are in great danger. You should not meddle. There are far worse dangers than torture, rape and death.”
“I can’t think of any,” I objected. “But I don’t choose to meddle, and I didn’t want any of this. I got sucked in and I haven’t the faintest idea why. Have you heard of reincarnation?”
He smiled as if I was a two year old who had just discovered his first book and asked his parents if they knew anything about reading and writing. “You think Tilda might be your past? It’s a possible explanation,” he said. He was still holding my tarot card. “This is the symbol of reincarnation.”
“Yes. I think you said that last night,” I nodded. “I heard you though I didn’t see you. Did you know that was me, and not Tilda?” And then, as an urgent afterthought, “And who were the other two people?”
“They are beings of great power and evil,” said Vespasian. “You cannot have met either directly, though no doubt you will, unless you choose now to step away. Mine is a game you can neither comprehend, nor hope to control.”
I sighed. “Everyone speaks in riddles,” I said. “I’d hoped you might help me understand everything.”
“Everything?” He smiled. “That would be expecting a little too much.”
“Well, at least something,” I muttered. “You’ve told me you didn’t murder Sammie. Although a murderer would lie in any case, I do believe you. Strangely enough when you bother to talk sense at all, I usually believe you. But there’s such a confusion in my head and I desperately need to understand.”
“A pathetic and sad assumption,” he smiled absently. “What is happening is not of this logical, material world and yet you expect to understand it with a logical, material intellect.” He was lying back now, his head resting on his clasped hands, surrounded by the little dark tangle of the wild thyme and the fronds of the fennel. Beyond the rise and fall of his slow breathing, I watched the pool ripple silver as the fish jumped and the leaves floated dark red from the overhanging branches. Further, part glimpsed through the trees, my living room still stood like an alien boundary, a doorway between worlds and a reminder of the magic that surrounded us. Vespasian was right. No logical explanation would serve, nor bring understanding.
“I know someone,” I said. “In my world, he’s called Thomas Cambio. He’s told me a great deal and he doesn’t talk in code like you do. In your world he’s Abbot Bernado of the convent of The Little Sisters of Angelica and you knew him in Italy.”
Vespasian twisted around and stared at me, frowning. “I know the abbot,” he said. “How do you know him?”
“Tilda knows him in your time,” I answered, “and she went to his convent, but he told her to leave. But in my time he’s Thomas Cambio.”
Vespasian sat up, looking intently at me from beneath hooded lids. “I doubt the abbot has the capability of either transmutation or metamorphosis, though there are other systems of alteration and absorption less pleasant, such as the incubi and succubae.” He paused a moment. “Thomas stands for doubt. Cambio means change. I do not trust the sound of your friend.”
“Names don’t have to mean anything,” I said crossly. “You appear to change your own whenever you want to.”
Vespasian seemed to relax, settling back again. “And time I changed it again,” he smiled at the sky. “Poor Jasper, Baron de Vrais had to disappear, wanted for the terrible slaughter of his wife. Now Vespasian is wanted for murders just as foul. The Roman Emperor Vespasian was a man who believed in inspiration and peace after centuries of war, but it seems that peace eludes me. And Fairweather? Well, the weather is fair no longer.”
“Because you’re a magician,” I accused. “You study black magic.”
“I am not a magician, I am an alchemist,” he corrected me. “Alchemy is perhaps the highest goal a man can aspire to. And names do matter. Remember symbolism, even if you choose to forget most else. Until you can be sure, if you are capable of such judgement, I suggest it would be better not to let this man Thomas into either your confidence or your life, especially on any more – intimate basis.”
I glared. “Are you trying,” I demanded, “in a rare diplomatic manner, to try and tell me not to welcome this man into my bed? Because, let me tell you, apart from being a disgusting thought and none of your damned business, Thomas is very elderly and a gentleman.” I was going to try and be dignified and leave it at that, but I couldn’t resist a final remark. “And I,” I said, still glaring, “am a lady.”
He laughed. “The hypocrisy of any woman’s ladylike behaviour impresses me no more than that of diplomacy,” he said, now smiling at me with the usual sardonic malice that irritated me so much. “So, you have a title, or simply claim lady as a symbol of refinement. Absurd. I spoke of what I know to be important, but you are a comparative stranger to me and I’ve no authority to order you. Besides,” his smile widened, “it seems in this future time of yours, men have abandoned authority over all the women in their lives. A form of equality has been established. I consider it delightfully challenging. I am fully aware, of course, that you and your attitudes have a quite fascinating influence on my innocent Tilda.”
“I would like to influence her more. She still obeys you too often.”
He frowned, though did not turn to look at me. “At the time which has come, and that which is coming, obedience to existing wisdom is greatly advisable, and you would do well to copy Tilda’s.” Then he did turn, and looked straight at me. His eyes were so black and I read a haunting sadness, which contradicted the amused malice of his voice. “As a woman capable of travel between worlds,” he said, “and with the power of transmutation, holding within her my Tilda’s life, and the existence of others far greater, I am puzzled by your ignorance. I am rarely puzzled by anything anymore. But you lack understanding. How does power and ignorance blend?”
Now he had asked me a question I could not answer. I mumbled, “But it’s you who misunderstand. I have no power at all,” and stared back at him.
He sighed, and stretched. “So now, dear Mistress Molly, I have to leave you, before your time pulls me further in. There’s a great deal I have yet to do. A climax is closing in on my world, and it’s there I expect to meet you again. You claim neither power nor knowledge, but you travel where you should not, and have skills you should not have. Just remember what I’ve told you, whether you consider it my business or not.” He stood up and I hurried to scramble up beside him.
“Hang on,” I said. “There’s so much more. What climax? Why should I be there? And the snake, the little wooden carving of the serpent that eats its own tail. Do you know about that? How do I destroy it?”
“The ouroboros,” Vespasian said. His voice remained soft but his eyes were stern. “And you must not attempt to destroy it, though I doubt you could, however much you tried. It is there to protect you.”
“But it’s – horrible,” I said, dismayed. “Malcolm put it in my room.”
“He did not,” said Vespasian. “He does not have that power.”
My own world was moving inwards and the forest fading. The bookshelves had pushed back the trees and the colours of my carpet were under my feet, the scent of the herbs lost. “Then who, what?” I demanded. “What is it? Where did it come from? What di
d you call it?”
“The ouroboros is the alchemic symbol of infinite eternity,” said Vespasian, “and it was I who sent it to you. Now it is bound to you. It would be wise not to trust those who are afraid to touch it.”
“But I’m afraid to touch it,” I said, my voice rising in panic as Vespasian began to disappear into the growing shadows.
“Ah yes,” he said, very faint now, “but you see, you are one of the most dangerous of us all.”
I was left standing in my ordinary modern living room feeling absurdly out of breath and clutching a handful of little dead flower heads, periwinkle, vervain and henbane, and a pack of damp tarot cards with number eighteen, the card of The Moon missing.
Chapter Thirty Six
It felt shockingly mundane at first, and terribly flat, as if four dimensions had suddenly shrunk into two. I tugged my old cardigan tightly across my shoulders and sighed. All the lights seemed to have gone out. The air smelled stale. Then Bertie rumbled in with lunch on a tray and I had to be myself again. I mumbled at him with my mouth full for half an hour before extricating myself and trudging back upstairs. I sat on the little couch beside the window in my bedroom and looked out at the chestnut tree. It seemed absurd that such a peaceful world was just a veneer hiding a thousand dangers. ‘Peace eludes me,’ Vespasian had said. Indeed, it was barely a memory.
I had brought the tarot cards upstairs with me and I spread them out on the bed, looking at their design. Then something occurred to me and I turned them back, shuffled them, and cut the pack. I picked up the card I had cut. It was number eighteen of the major arcana, the card of The Moon. I smiled. The card was no longer there for Vespasian had still been holding it when he disappeared into his own time and I into mine. Downstairs, back in my own living room, this card had been missing. Now it was back. Everything was unreal. Reality had taken a different shape.
I scattered the cards onto the floor, letting them fall as they wished, some turned upwards, others down. Then I climbed into bed and closed my eyes. I would not use Thomas Cambio’s system for returning to Tilda. Her life was in increasing danger and I needed to build up strength and understanding before going back to help her. So I slept and hoped to dream.
It was not the dream I expected. I did not dream of my other self, nor of any of the people I had met as her. I did not link to Thomas, to Vespasian or to anything that explained the things I so desperately wished to know. I went back to my own childhood.
My mother was standing over me with the knife upraised. I was nine years old and huddled cold in bed, the sheets soaked beneath me where I had urinated. The knife caught the sudden moonlight like a white fire. It was almost a full moon, half way perhaps between the turn of its first quarter and its halfway peak. My bedroom curtains were flimsy and never fully closed and the moon often lit my nights; a friend when other friends left.
I screamed for my father. When he was at home, he protected me while my mother raved into manic excess. But I knew now what I had not known on that night when I was nine and my mother appeared at my side, that in fact my father had already left for good. I never blamed him. He had tried very hard for many years and he was a simple soul. Such a small, tired man to cope with a crazy woman and a sad little girl who needed so much more than he could give. I don’t think she ever tried to kill him – only me – but he just couldn’t bear it any longer, and he ran away. Just like Tilda.
My mother hadn’t tried to kill me that night, though I expected her to. Wild eyed, drooling and spitting, she had cut all around me, splitting open the pillow beneath my head so that a thousand feathers spun around, into my eyes, my nose and my gasping, crying mouth until I was half suffocated and half delirious. She had cut the blankets into shreds of thin, unravelling wool. She had ripped at my nightdress and sliced through the curls of my hair. Then, when the mood left her, she had slumped at my bedside and begun to heave until she choked and vomited at my feet. She had fallen asleep there.
When I was sure she slept, I had crept downstairs and that’s when I found my father gone, all his clothes taken, his pipe from the table, his slippers from beside the chair, his coat from the peg. I telephoned the police and they came and took my mother away. She was still in the same hospital where they had taken her all those years ago. I never saw my father again.
My dream retraced each step, each heartbeat. I woke crying and it was half past six in the evening and the stars outside were already clear and bright. The moon was all shimmer and almost full, halfway between the turn of its first quarter and its halfway peak.
I got up and washed my face. Bertie had gone out and left me a cold dinner beside the microwave. I didn’t bother to heat it up. I put my coat on, turned up the collar and went down to the Smith and Joker. Thomas Cambio was already sitting beside the fire, talking to Ruth Ableside and another woman. I bought myself a tomato juice and went over to them. They made room for me at the table and I sat down.
The woman I did not know stretched out her paisley shawled arm and shook my hand. “I’m Sarah Ableside,” she said. “Ruth’s sister. I’m a counsellor too in my spare time but during the day I work at the little herbal nursery just outside the village.”
I wanted to talk to Thomas alone but I thought perhaps he would walk me home afterwards, and I could ask him in for coffee and we could talk then. In the meantime, I tried to be polite. I’d liked that pretty perfumed nursery once, it had a good reputation and I knew Wattle had bought some of her aromatherapy supplies there. “I buy pots of basil at that place every summer,” I said. “I used to love cooking with basil, though I rarely bother cooking anything anymore.”
“Oh you should,” smiled Ruth. “It’s so rewarding, amongst the sweetest pleasures of life.” Everyone was smiling. The conversation pattered inanely into smiling platitudes. All the time Thomas watched me patiently from his corner and the firelight turned the pupils of his eyes red with dancing shadows. I stuck it out until closing time. By then I had added vodka to the tomato juices and was drinking Bloody Marys. I had a headache.
When finally the pub shut and its customers drifted off into the darkness, I expected the two cherubic sisters to trot off together but Thomas took an arm each and insisted on walking them home. With increasing unchristian irritability, I trudged behind. At their front door, they turned with a glow of genteel generosity heightened by an evening of sherry around the pub fire.
“Please come in,” said Ruth, “and have a little something with us before you have to go home in the cold again.”
“It would be so nice,” said Sarah. “We left the fire burning low, so the room will be nice and toasty.”
“We have our own elderberry wine,” said Ruth, “and a little of last year’s nettle wine too. Do come, we’d be so pleased.”
“I made gingerbread earlier,” said Sarah, “and I’ll make a pot of camomile tea.”
It all sounded hideous. “I can’t, really,” I said. “It’s already late. Thank you, but no.”
Then Thomas messed it all up by saying, “But why not? My dear Molly, I’m sure it would do you good. We won’t stay long and then I’ll walk you home afterwards.” So I scowled and turned it into a smile and tramped back into the William Morris cottage which I had not intended to visit ever again.
It was while I was sipping the nettle wine and pretending that I liked it but no thank you I really didn’t want anymore, that I ended up staring at the mantelshelf. I had not been listening to the chatter. I had been thinking about my mother. The dream had brought back all the dull misery that had smoked my childhood. It was two full years or more since I had visited my mother in the asylum and I wondered if I was being sent a sign that I should go again. Symbolism, said Vespasian. I should look for symbols.
The sisters had built up the fire again. The heat flickered, distorting visibility of everything close so the carriage clock and the green vase of dried rosemary and pussy willow all appeared to shimmer and move. In the centre of the little row of ornaments, between two b
rass elephants, was a small wooden carving of a serpent that ate its own tail.
“I see you’re looking at my little ouroboros,” said Ruth. “Do you like it? It’s quite a rarity. I found it in the antique shop in Tramper’s Lane a couple of days ago.”
“Yes,” I said. “I like it. What did you call it again?”
“The ouroboros,” said Sarah. “The symbol of infinity. I’m sure you know about such things.”
I stared at her. “Why should I?” I demanded.
“Because,” smiled Ruth, all dimples, “we believe you are the veleda my dear. More nettle wine? Or shall I make more tea?”
I stared at her. “I’ve never heard of a Veleda.”
“The veleda,” interrupted Thomas, leaning back in his chair and watching me closely from his flaring shadows, “was the seer and channeller who lived during the reign of the Roman Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasian, in the year 74 A.D. She was considered divine, but although she was a powerful alchemist, I’m afraid divinity actually escaped her at the end.”
“I have no idea what any of you are talking about,” I said, panic rising like bile.
Thomas sat forward suddenly with a reassuring smile. “I’m sorry to have broken your confidences without your permission,” he said, “but Ruth and Sarah are great friends of mine. I’ve known them for many years. I always come to them to recount my experiences when I return from my – how would you call them – journeys into time. You can trust them as you trust me, of course. We will help you with anything we can.”
“Trust isn’t that easy,” I pointed out. “If I make mistakes about who to trust then it could be very dangerous.”
“How true,” said Sarah. “You are quite right. And of course, Ruth and I don’t have the power to go travelling and inhabiting other people in history as you and Thomas do, so we’re just small fry in the scheme of things. But we can still help.”
“You see,” continued Thomas, between sips of elderberry wine which made his pale lips glossy crimson, “the veleda, searching for different paths to ultimate divinity, became associated with Janus, the keeper of the gates.”
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