I wasn’t interested in what a doctor could tell me and I wasn’t impressed by the new local man who had recently replaced the other. This one was tall and young and full of himself and looked down his nose as he prodded me a bit, took my blood pressure, stuck a needle in my arm and gave me a plastic bottle to pee into. He took it back gingerly from me with his rubber gloved finger tips and muttered a few things I didn’t listen to before he left.
Three days later he phoned me up. I was in the kitchen scrambling eggs but since I’d forgotten to light the gas, the eggs weren’t cooking very quickly. The sudden squeal of the telephone still startled me. I picked it up and held it at a tentative distance from my ear. “Mrs. Walding?”
“Miss Susans.” I suppose most people thought it odd that I seemed to be living with my ex-husband. They would have thought it a dammed sight more odd had they known even more about me.
“Ah, yes, Miss Susans. Well, the results of your tests have come back. I thought you’d like to know.”
“What tests?”
“The blood tests and the urine sample I took the other day, Miss Susans.” He probably thought I was a little backward. “Well, I’m delighted to give you the news.”
“What news?”
“You’re pregnant, Miss Susans,” he said. “Probably two months along. If you’d like to make an appointment to come in and see me next week -”
I had dropped the uncooked eggs and the slippery yellow liquid was all over my fluffy pink slippers. I left the mess where it was and kicked off the slippers and went upstairs to my attic and lay on the bed and closed my eyes and told Vespasian he was going to be a father.
For several glorious long days I nursed my stomach, and although it gave me nothing but bilious attacks, I cuddled it as a precious and miraculous event in waiting. I traced the gentle hillock that would swell and bloom and give me back some of the joy I so longed for. I wondered, quite desperately, whether my baby would look like its long gone sire. I dreamed of a daughter, a little girl who might never know her father, but who would be as beautiful and as beloved. Then I dreamed of a son, who would be dark and charismatic, and who would by right be the Baron de Vrais, which made me laugh. It was a long time since I had been able to laugh.
I thought I understood then what my mother had meant, and how I would get him back as she told me I could. Not in person, but in kind. So I acknowledged and accepted the pleasure this would bring me, in spite of the terrible bleaching pain of the loss. I opened myself to a new happiness and disciplined myself to think less of the father and more of his child. I did not tell Bertie.
It was the eighteenth of June when Bertie came to tell me he was leaving. I had still not told him about the pregnancy and now I knew why instinct had kept me quiet. If he’d known, he might have felt he couldn’t abandon me. He wouldn’t have left. “You look so much happier these days,” he said, “In fact, you’re blooming, so I thought it might be safe to tell you, sweetie. The thing is, well, you know me, I’ve met this girl. She’s really nice. You’ll like her.”
“Bring her over one evening,” I said. “I’ll make dinner.” I knew that I glowed. I could feel it inside.
“Well, it’s a trifle more than that,” said Bertie. “Of course, we have to take it slow but I’m fine now. And she came out yesterday.”
“You met her in hospital?”
” Yes, but she’s not crazy or anything, just depressed. It can happen to anyone. Well, you ought to know.”
“I do know.”
“She lives with her parents, but they’re old and need looking after.” Bertie wore a hopeful smile. “We’re engaged.”
I was very pleased for him. It didn’t matter if it worked really, since, knowing Bertie, it might not. There was the eternal instant, and happiness in the hand was what mattered, and never mind about the bush until you fell into it and discovered the thorns. “I’m delighted,” I said.
“So I’m going to live with her,” said Bertie. “You’ll be alright now, won’t you? You can always phone if things go wrong, and I’ll drive up. You know I’d do anything for you.”
“I’ll be fine, honestly I will,” I told him. “I’m very fond of you Bertie, but it will be nice to have the house to myself.”
“I thought you’d say that,” he grinned. “So, I’m off tomorrow.”
“I hope you’ll be very happy,” I assured him. “Invite me to the wedding.”
“Mind you, once I’m gone you’d better employ a cleaning woman,” he nodded. “Honestly, Mol, you’ve become a real slut. I had a shocking mess to clear up the other day when I got home from the pub. Sloppy egg stuff all over the kitchen floor and your silly slippers all covered in gunge. I threw them out.”
“I’m much, much happier now,” I said. “I promise I’ll be alright.”
Then he pulled a small pewter jar from his trouser pocket and popped it on the kitchen table in front of me. “One more thing, sweetie, before I forget again. This is yours, I think.” It seemed as though, for reasons he did not understand himself, he did not like touching it, and he went and wiped his hands on a tea towel. “I found it in my pocket all those months ago, when they took me off to hospital. I woke up with it and they took it off me, along with everything else I had. They gave it back when I left of course, and by then, I couldn’t remember where I got it. It’s got some sort of gravely stuff inside. Weird if you ask me. It’s not mine so it has to be yours.”
I had stopped breathing. “Yes,” I whispered. “It’s mine.”
“Well then,” said Bertie. “Now we’re all clear. I’ll be off in the morning, pet. Just don’t forget, phone if you want me. I’ll come back and visit of course. I’ll bring Philippa with me. You’ll like her.”
“I shall,” I said. “I like most of your girlfriends. Including me.”
It was Thomas Cambio’s jar and it contained the pellets which had previously taken me from this world, back to Tilda and to Vespasian. I took it with me the next day. I’d already collected the dew that night, there in the garden under the soft haloed moonlight. I’d mixed it with coarse salt, rosemary needles pounded into powder and added to the other herbs I’d collected. I’d sealed the mixture in a plastic container with a tablespoon of hot water and both it and the pewter jar were in my jacket pocket. I said goodbye to Bertie and I locked my cottage door in case something happened and I never returned. I didn’t know, really, what might happen. But I knew something would.
I walked through the woods, enjoying the sun on my face, the dazzle between the trees and the rich scent of loam. I walked until I came to the hollow yew tree and then I sat there for a while under the spread of its boughs. I called on the old divinities, very softly, for I knew they were not far away. Then I took the two containers from my pocket and added one of the small grains from the pewter jar to the herbal mixture. It sank, smoked a little, and dissolved.
I did not drink it as I had before. I had no wish to return alone into the misery of a medieval life without Vespasian. Instead I waited until the mixture was misty with steam and then I hurled it against the trunk of the yew. It splattered up the bark in smoky streaks.
“Open,” I commanded. “I have claimed back my keys. Janus and Thoth, Cernunnus and Hermes shall relinquish to me. I demand my rights. I choose to unlock the doorway of sequence and duration once again, and I call forth the man who was stolen from me. If he will come to me of his own free will and if he does not wish to go on the other pathway alone into the future, then I command time and space to bow before him. As it is above, so it is below and the power is mine to unbar the way. Open for him now, and for me.”
I stood there with the empty pot in my hand, staring at the great bulbous trunk of the tree and the shadows of its own warts and cracks. Nothing happened and the song of the wood lark was the only sound in a surreal hush. I have no idea how long I stood. Time did not exist. The planet stopped. No leaf fluttered and the trill of the water had faded. I neither moved nor breathed.
Then
a voice, very, very soft behind me, said, “You called, beloved, and I have come.”
I spun around. He was not quite real, still a gleam in the spangle of light and shade, and through him I could see the rushing of the stream. I reached out both hands, and they passed through him. I was trembling and crying and laughing.
“You must give me Time,” he murmured. “But see, I am here.”
I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t look away. He was golden and beautiful and true and I drank in his face and his reality. “Can you really stay?” I whispered, although afraid to ask. “Do you – want to?”
“It is why I am here,” he said. “Though there will be a great deal to learn and this time, you will have to teach me.”
There was no bloody wound, no blind eye sockets and no pallor of death. He was alight, the shimmer of his smile tilted soft. He wore the clothes I had always known him in when he was the Vespasian of the early days, rough linen shirt and worn leather belt, threadbare woollen hose and his black hair dishevelled. “I’ll have to get you some modern clothes,” I said, the words tumbling out though it was perhaps the most irrelevant of all things to say and my voice was unsteady, struggling through the tears.
“Your own,” he eyed my short skirt and bare tanned legs, smile tucking deep, “are certainly interesting.”
I was bubbling, simmering with excitement, not quite believing. “Not just an hour, like Samhain? Not just a day? You can really stay – and come to live? You won’t like all the changes,” I babbled, yearning to touch him and wind myself around him. “But there are things like electricity and cinemas and planes and plumbing to make up for it. Somehow I can’t imagine you wearing jeans and driving a car.”
He was growing in solidity. His eyes were vivid with intrigue and delight, his smile now secure. His hands had become hard and brown and strong, and he had taken one of mine in his. “If I knew what either of those things were,” he said, “perhaps I might be able to put your doubts to rest. Do you imagine me so shockingly inept? I believe I can grasp most skills, if given time.”
I laughed, clutching the hand that held mine. “I don’t suppose there’ll ever be anything you can’t do, if you want to.”
“What benign faith,” he said, the sparkle of irony and the wandering twitch back at the corners of his mouth. “I am flattered.” I could no longer see the water through his body. He drew me closer, then pulled me down on the grass beside him and sat with me under the yew, stretching out his legs, his back to the trunk. The warmth of his thigh muscle was hard against my skin, his hand was alive, his pulse strong. He turned my palm over, lifting it to his mouth. “A small hand,” he said. “I see you carry Tilda’s injury. But of course you are still her, and whichever face you wear, anima mia, it is the woman who combines you both that I love.”
“And look, I have your ring,” I said, drunk with delight. “It came to me. I woke with it on my wedding finger though I don’t understand how. Did you send it, as you did the ouroboros? Must I give it back?”
“Did I send it?” His voice drifted on sunbeams, and he frowned, as if still unsure of where he was. “Perhaps. I don’t remember. Some memories are vague. But now it is yours, and symbolic, as all things are. Perhaps I shall find another, since new life brings new symbols.”
“I’ll have to write more books,” I said, “and make enough money for us to buy everything we want and do wonderful things together. Modern life’s rather expensive. It’s not just silver pennies anymore. But there’s a whole world for us to explore.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Have you forgotten me so quickly?” He pulled me back against his shoulder where I nestled, his fingers crawling into my hair and smoothing my cheek. “Don’t you remember that I make my own gold, when I wish?”
My arm crept happily around his waist.” Now, that should prove interesting,” I said. “I wonder how we’ll explain it to the taxman.” Through the stuff of his shirt I could feel his heartbeat and the smooth, muscled strength of his breast. His shirt was partially open and I kissed the little warm hollow between his collarbones.
It was becoming believable, all the glory and the magic of it. I couldn’t stop touching him, smoothing my skin against his, searching for the expression in his eyes. “Will I wake up?” I said. “Will all this light go out? I don’t think so, not anymore. I think you’re truly real, truly returned. But you were dead, Vespasian. How did I bring you back from the dead?”
His hand in my hair, he lifted my face up to kiss. “No, bien-amie, I was not dead.” He smoothed the ball of his thumb under my eyes, gently wiping away the smear of spent tears. “The gatekeeper can open the paths for the dead on Samhain, but has no power to resurrect ghosts permanently from their Hades on the other side. None of us have that power. Did I die afterwards? Yes, perhaps, but I had already left my body as I have done before, coming into this future world of yours many times. I saw Lilith howling down upon me, but I was already leaving. I had neither strength nor magic sufficient to overcome Lilith’s fury in that moment, so before she could touch me I was on my way here, where I believed I would find you. She slaughtered an empty carcass, while I was already spinning through time.” He smiled wide, eyes alight. “But then, amorcito, I had to wait for you to find the keys and let me in. You were slow and I remained in limbo, slipping between your dreams. No matter, I’ve learned patience. Now Vespasian is gone into history, but you have your Jasper.”
His kiss was as intense and as hard as love and desire had ever made it. I felt his breath hot in my throat and the pressure of his hand behind my head. “I just pray you won’t hate it here, in this modern world,” I said, catching my breath. “It’s so different. People are different. It’s a plastic world, my love. You might find it boring.”
He laughed. “Must I learn then,” he said, “to be tolerant and not autocratic? To adopt diplomacy instead of arrogance? Accepting the jargon of equality and forget impropriety?”
“Good gracious,” I said. “I doubt you’ll ever be capable of all that.”
His eyes narrowed and the sparkle deepened. “Oh my beloved,” he said, as if reciting poetry. “When my strength returns, I’ll show you how to find true delight in this or any world. Without fear or boundaries, I’ll show you more pleasure and glory, across continents and oceans, than you have ever imagined. I will show you the inner meaning of true mysticism and the great wheel of alchemy. I will lead you into paths unknown, rich in all the perfumes of natural beauty and the secrets of the eternal soul.” He paused, and leaning down, lifted my chin, kissing me again, quick and hard, his tongue against mine. “Love is a pathway more exciting than any you have opened as the wife of Janus,” he said, his voice becoming husky in my ear. “As the wife of Jasper de Vrais, speranza mia, I believe you will discover a deeper and a greater magic.”
“Even in this bland modern world?” I clung to him, gasping with all the exhilaration of his words and the belief I had in him.
“As you adapted to your past in my world, so I shall enjoy new opportunities in yours. I’m well aware that fashions change.” He laughed, a gentle chuckle as he traced one finger up the length of my thigh where my short cotton skirt had crumpled. “As long as fornication has not yet gone out of style?”
“Are we still married?” I asked, holding up my finger with his ring bright in the sunlight. “Even after eight hundred years?”
“Tonight we build a fresh union,” he whispered to my eyes. “And I shall show you what a new born is capable of.” He slipped his hand down past the buttons of my shirt onto my breast. “Do you still carry the dragon of the fifth essence?” He smiled at the curve of my body where his fingers slipped deep into my cleavage, gently exploring. “I see that you do. And this body is a little more charmingly – developed – than Tilda’s,” he said. “It will be the start of a whole new adventure.”
I took a deep breath and looked up rather shyly. “There’s another reason for that,” I mumbled, “and I have something rather unexpected to tell you.”
His eyes were black sunshine. His breath was sunbeams. He seemed unable to wait and as I yearned to touch him, so he reached to hold me. His long fingers had begun to undo the buttons of my shirt. Now he paused, smiling, waiting for me to continue.
“You might be even more surprised than I was,” I gasped, “though I think, I hope, I truly believe, you will be just as pleased.”
His breath was in my eyes and his fingers cradled my breasts. “Come closer, mona mia,” he whispered to me, though indeed, we were already tightly entwined, “and tell me – everything.”
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Also by
Barbara Gaskell Denvil
Satin Cinnabar
Sumerford’s Autumn
Blessop’s Wife
The Flame Eater
A White Horizon (Stars and a Wind, Book one)
A Wind from the North (Stars and a Wind Book Two)
Between
Blessop’s Wife
1483, and England is in turmoil. But there are those who work behind the scenes to bring peace, order and prosperity. Tyballis escapes an abusive husband but finds herself in the midst of a great mystery. Who is Andrew? And what does he intend?
The King is dead. Rumour whispers. City backstreets are shadowed and dangerous with watching thieves, prostitutes and spies. But not all these characters are what they seem, and Tyballis finds new friends amongst those she would once have feared.
Andrew strides ahead. But Tyballis still does not know where he is leading her, nor from what direction the danger will leap next.
About the Author
My passion is for late English medieval history and this forms the background for my historical fiction. I also have a love of fantasy and the wild freedom of the imagination, with its haunting threads of sadness and the exploration of evil. Although all my books have romantic undertones, I would not class them purely as romances. We all wish to enjoy some romance in our lives, there is also a yearning for adventure, mystery, suspense, friendship and spontaneous experience. My books include all of this and more, but my greatest loves are the beauty of the written word, and the utter fascination of good characterisation. Bringing my characters to life is my principal aim.
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