‘I have never seen him do that before,’ I confessed. ‘Do you have some magic in you?’
‘No magic,’ he said. ‘It is all in the hands, and in the voice.’ The words were innocent enough, but he made them sound disturbing. Something in his smile set heat squirming in my belly, sent it flooding into my cheeks, and I made myself look away.
‘Let me see your horse,’ I said.
‘Certainly,’ said Edmund. ‘He is very well-mannered.’
I thought I heard a faint stress on that ‘he’, which I guessed was directed at me, but I decided to ignore it. I followed Edmund to the end of the stable, where a magnificent horse, easily as big as Genet, was tethered. He greeted his master with a whicker and bent his head graciously to me.
‘Oh, you are very comely indeed,’ I told him, and I slid a glance at Edmund under my lashes. ‘May I ride him?’
‘No,’ said Edmund, not even pretending to be polite. ‘Well-mannered he might be, but Bale is too strong for you.’
‘I ride Genet,’ I lied, and he raised his brows and clicked his tongue.
‘Isabel, Isabel . . .’ he chided.
I lifted my chin. ‘I could ride him! I can ride any horse,’ I said. ‘I will race you.’
‘A race?’ Challenge lit his eyes. ‘I do not think you dare.’
Judith moaned. She knew how I would react to that.
‘Do I not?’ I asked, and my heart thrummed with excitement.
‘Isabel!’ Aghast, Judith looked from me to Edmund and back again. ‘You must not! How can you think of it?’ She wrung her hands, a bad habit of hers when she was anxious. ‘If your uncle finds out you even talked about riding that horse . . . !’
‘They will be sitting over their wine for hours yet,’ said Edmund. ‘They are talking politics and trying to work out where they all stand with the Scottish queen.’
‘Very well then.’ Afire with the challenge, I would not listen to Judith, who followed, vainly trying to persuade me to change my mind, as I ordered a stable boy to put my saddle on Genet, staring him down when he voiced a timid objection, and lead the horse out to the mounting block. ‘We’ll race up to the cross on the moor,’ I told Edmund.
And where might that be?’
‘You need only follow me,’ I said loftily. ‘Genet and I will show you the way.’
Edmund laughed. ‘So be it.’
The stable boys gawped as I hopped up on the mounting block and scrambled into the saddle, thrilled by my own daring. It was not a very elegant mounting, but Genet was bigger than any horse I had ridden before, and it was all I could do to get on him at all. Edmund was already mounted, his horse turning in restless circles, and Genet shifted edgily as I rearranged my skirts over my breeches and took a firm hold of the reins. I wasn’t used to being so high, and Judith seemed tiny and fragile from my position atop the saddle.
‘Isabel, please!’ she begged. ‘What if you fall?’
‘I will not fall,’ I said dismissively. ‘I never fall.’ But out of nowhere a chill ran through me, and I shivered in spite of myself.
I shook the feeling aside as I concentrated on mastering my uncle’s horse. Truth to tell, I could barely control him. The feel of his powerful muscles beneath me was terrifying and exhilarating, but with Edmund’s eyes on me, I assumed an expression of nonchalance and managed to guide him through the stone gateway. Judith watched, pinch-faced, her hands folded tightly in front of her stomacher.
Once through the village, we let the horses have their heads. The tracks up to the moor were dry, baked hard after nearly a month without rain, and the dust rose around us as the horses’ hooves thudded on the ground. I felt as if I were flying atop the powerful horse, as if at any moment he might launch into the sky and gallop through the high, thin clouds that streaked across the blue. My blood was singing, and I laughed, reckless and unrepentant.
Even the fact that Edmund’s horse nudged ahead to the cross at the very last second could not spoil my pleasure in the moment. The smell of dust and heather. The moors rolling gaunt and golden to the horizon and the huge light. Genet’s flanks heaving as we slowed, his neck twitching against a fly. My thighs, cramped with the effort of staying in the saddle, my hair wild about my shoulders. And Edmund, high on his horse, laughing with me. He had lost his cap, and his hair was tousled, his eyes an intense blue that reflected the sky.
I will never forget this moment, I thought. Never.
Chapter Eight
But I did forget. Now that the memory is pouring back in a blessed rush, the relief of remembering is so intense that it catches in my throat. It is as if I am seventeen again. Of course, I sigh to myself. Of course that’s how it was. How could I ever have forgotten when I had been so sure that I never would?
Edmund was as breathless as I. He brought Bale round until the two horses were side by side but facing in different directions. Now I could see the dust and sweat on his skin, the creases in his cloak, the way his ruff had turned limp and faintly grubby with his exertion. ‘I like you better this way,’ I told him, and he grinned.
‘I only dressed like this to impress you.’
I gaped at him. ‘To impress me?’
‘You are an heiress,’ he pointed out. ‘My father was very clear that I needed to win your approval. How was I to know that I should have turned up in scuffed jerkin and muddy boots if I wanted to make a good impression?’
We turned the horses for home and let them walk to cool down after the wild ride. I was smiling, remembering the thrill of it, the sense of flying, of freedom. Nothing was said between Edmund and I, but I knew. It was as if my past was gathering, tensing itself for a leap into my future, as if from the moment I had pulled myself into the saddle my life had changed course. It seemed to me then that I had turned onto a track and found Edmund, and we would ride side by side forever.
We talked easily as we rode back through the village, past the humped cottages, squat beneath their thatch. They were dark and noisome inside, I knew, but the women called to me cheerfully as they sat in their doorways, their hands busy. Children stared at us from the dust, hens scuttled out of the way of the horses’ hooves and dogs ran after us, barking and snarling. From the forge came the unmistakable sound of clanging and hammering.
I think we had both forgotten all about everyone at the Manor, but when we turned in through the stone gateway, we found my uncle and Lord Vavasour waiting for us in the yard. My uncle’s face was thunderous and Lord Vavasour looked grim.
I glanced at Edmund.
‘Now, what roused them from their politics, do you think?’ he murmured, his blue eyes cool and faintly wary. I wondered if he would be beaten, the way I surely would. ‘Did your little maid tell on you?’
‘My maid?’ I did not know who he meant at first. ‘Oh, Judith . . . No,’ I said firmly. ‘Judith is my dear friend. She is like a sister to me. She would never do anything to hurt me.’
Gradually my eyes focus on the screen, where the detectives are questioning a new suspect, but I’m not really seeing them. I’m thinking about my prickly reaction to Edmund, and the wild, forbidden thrill of riding my uncle’s horse. I feel again the bunched power of Genet’s muscles, the exhilaration of speed and strength and the golden, giddy sense of freedom, the heat that burned in my belly when Edmund looked at my mouth, and I realize that I am smiling.
But as the implications dawn on me, my smile retreats slowly. I didn’t care for Edmund’s fancy Venetians or the short cloak tossed over his shoulder, but I hadn’t thought that he looked odd, any more than it had seemed strange to have to pin my sleeves to my bodice. I frown at the screen, where the male detectives wear trousers and rumpled jackets, their ties wrenched askew to indicate their frustration. Not a doublet or clocked stocking in sight. They eat burgers, not roasted lark; drink coffee, not spiced wine.
Pointing the remote at the television, I switch it off and stare at the blank screen. It reminds me of my memory, which is as dark and impenetrable, except for those
few moments which wink at the edges of my mind, vivid as jewels, brilliant and impossible to ignore. Memories which I know Oliver Raine will tell me are not really memories at all.
But if they are not memories, what are they? Hallucinations? An elaborate fantasy I choose for some reason to enact in Tudor costume? They don’t feel like fantasies; they are too real. The world I remember is not one created by a fevered imagination. It is grounded in the everyday details of touch and taste, of the smell of the horses, the foam at their bridles, the fine hairs glinting on the backs of Edmund’s hands.
I swallow. What am I thinking? That those memories are real after all? Chewing my lip, I turn the remote over and over in my hand. I may not know much about my life now, but I know that if I start claiming somehow to remember a life from over four hundred years ago, eyebrows will be raised. There will be muttered consultations with Oliver Raine. As far as the Vavasours are concerned, I have already tried to kill myself, and although I cannot believe that is true, they will no doubt be looking for signs of another breakdown.
And if they suspect I am losing my grip on reality, what is to stop them having me sectioned? My parents are out of contact, Michael is dead, and Felix is a little boy. Who else is there to care enough to believe in me? Angie is my friend, but she is fiercely loyal to the Vavasours too. If they are worried about me, she will worry too. I don’t think she would protest if they said that I needed help.
The thought of not being let out sends a wave of panic rolling through me, churning in my stomach and knotting my entrails. I have endured all these months in hospital; I cannot bear the idea that I might have to stay here. I am yearning to breathe the moorland air, to feel the wind in my face. I cannot let anyone suspect madness.
No, wait. I put a hand to my head. Madness was Isabel’s fear . . . I am getting muddled. I make myself breathe slowly in and out until my racing heart steadies, but the dread is still there. I must be very careful. I won’t tell anyone what I have remembered. Judith, Edmund, my life as Isabel: I will keep them all to myself for now.
The last time I saw Oliver, he told me that being in familiar surroundings should help trigger my memory. ‘I’ll come out and see you at Askerby when you’ve had a chance to settle back into some kind of routine,’ he said. ‘I’ll be able to assess your progress much more effectively there.’
Perhaps, I tell myself, Oliver will be right. Perhaps when I get to Askerby and see Felix in the flesh everything will fall into place and I will remember my life as Kate. Perhaps then I will understand why Edmund and Judith have sprung so fully formed into my imagination, and this desperate sense of urgency quivering at the corners of my mind will fade.
I hope so.
I have longed to leave this room, where the squeak of wheels on the meal trolley and the smell of tea have driven me to distraction, but when the moment comes, I find myself ridiculously close to tears.
Philippa brought in some clothes for me a couple of days ago: a long, Indian print skirt in muted reds and oranges, a camisole top, a chunky cardigan. I stroked the skirt wonderingly as I lay it out on the bed.
‘Is this what I usually wear?’
Philippa tipped her hand carelessly from side to side. ‘You’re more of a jeans girl, I’d say, but we thought a skirt would be easier to put on with your leg.’
The cast is off, and I have been doing my exercises, but even with the steel pin in my leg I still can’t walk without a stick.
‘You should have seen Ma’s face as she looked through your wardrobe.’ Philippa lounged in one of the chairs, her legs hooked over the arm, and mimicked Fiona wrinkling her nose. ‘She’s stuck in the eighties and thinks nice girls should still be wearing twinsets and pearls and a velvet headband.’
‘She must have been very disappointed when Michael brought me home,’ I said, looking at the skirt. I may have lost my knowledge of fashion along with everything else, but even I can see it wouldn’t work with a twinset and pearls.
‘They should have known he would go for someone unsuitable,’ Philippa said. ‘He always said Askerby was a time warp and he didn’t want to live in the past. We’re always boasting of our “centuries of tradition”. Michael hated that. He had a huge row with Pa once. He said if the Vavasours put as much effort into thinking about the future as they did into obsessing about preserving the past, we’d be a much healthier family, but of course, Pa couldn’t have that. The whole point about Askerby is that it never changes.’
I can’t work Philippa out. There’s a cynical edge to everything she says, and sometimes she seems to actively dislike everyone at Askerby, but when I ask her why she doesn’t leave, she says she can’t be bothered. ‘I get to live in a house with a cook and a whole army of cleaners, and I spend all day with horses,’ she says. ‘Why would I give that up to live in a poky flat, get a grotty job and do my own washing-up?’
It feels strange getting dressed, like putting on someone else’s clothes, and I keep smoothing the skirt over my knees, trying to find something familiar about it. There’s a mirror over the basin in the corner. I stare at my reflection for a long time. The bandages around my head have gone, and my hair is starting to grow back in a fine, dark fuzz. It is never going to grow into red curls, I can see that, but my mind refuses to accept that the woman in the mirror is really me. She looks like a refugee, thin and hollow-eyed, with a bruised, shell-shocked air. That isn’t me. Where are the pockmarks on my cheeks, my big nose, the clear green eyes I know from the looking glass?
I lift a hand; the reflection lifts a hand. I stretch my lips into a ghastly smile; the reflection does the same.
It is me.
There is a buzzing in my head. My mind rears and bolts, like a horse faced with a hedge too high to leap, but before I can fumble my way back to the chair, Jasper has appeared in the doorway, and Fiona is smiling her cool smile behind him.
‘Ready to go?’
The nurses who have lined up to say goodbye blush and bridle with pleasure when Jasper and Fiona shake hands with each of them and thank them for looking after me so well. Then it is my turn, and overwhelmed at the prospect of leaving the only place I can remember, I hug them tearfully. Fiona’s smile stiffens as she watches. Clearly, overt displays of emotion are not the Vavasour way. Good manners, yes. Tears and hugs and reassuring pats, definitely not.
I don’t care.
Jasper offers me a wheelchair, but I insist on walking out by myself. The stick helps, but I haven’t reckoned on how long the hospital corridors are, and by the time we reach the car at last, I am exhausted and shaky. Jasper drives a mud-splashed Range Rover and he has to help me up into the front passenger seat.
It is my first glimpse of the world outside the hospital and everything is startling and strange. The roads are crowded with vehicles moving at extraordinary speeds, and I shrink back into my seat, flinching as cars and huge trucks hurtle towards us. I am convinced they must hit us, that the road isn’t nearly wide enough, but they flash past in a seemingly unending stream, with a muffled whooshing noise.
I am glad when we leave the worst of the traffic behind and Jasper turns onto the quieter country lanes. It is a fickle June day, fiercely bright one minute, spattering the windscreen with a short, sharp shower the next. The greenness of the hedgerows is so intense that it hurts my eyes, and I have to keep blinking as the countryside shimmers in and out of focus.
Sensing that I am struggling, Fiona keeps up a desultory conversation with Jasper from the back seat, and I am grateful that neither of them tries to draw me in. The roads grow progressively smaller, and it is only when Jasper slows to turn into a narrow lane that he glances at me.
‘We’re nearly there. Does anything seem familiar yet?’
‘No,’ I say, but that isn’t quite true. Something about the landscape is chiming inside me. The road dips and climbs, and as we crest the rise, I see the moors spread out before me in a great golden sweep up to the sky. Patches of dark shadows race over the hillsides as clouds are blown br
iskly over the sun. It is like coming unexpectedly on the sea, the sea I don’t remember ever seeing but which I can imagine so clearly that I must have done: the space and the glittering light and the restless movement of the waves. I feel as if I am teetering on the edge of something enormous, and I catch my breath.
‘I remember this,’ I say.
I remember how Edmund drew his horse to a halt at the top of the hill and turned in his saddle to wait for me.
‘It is not much further,’ he said.
All day the country we passed through had been hidden behind a curtain of dense, dark rain, but as we rode up the hill it eased to a drizzle and I gasped at the sight of the moors spread out ahead of me. They made the familiar hills by Crabbersett seem tame. Looking out beneath the brim of my hat, where the raindrops funnelled into a steady stream, I saw a thin shaft of golden light split the heavy black clouds in the distance from the tops of the hills. The vastness and wildness of it made me feel small, but at the same time my heart swelled at the sight of the open sweep of country. No trees or hedgerows or copses, nowhere to bind you or enclose you.
It had been a long, hard ride from Crabbersett, and it had rained all the way, crashing through the leaves and battering onto the ground in an implacable downpour that beat onto my hat until it was limp, and I was saddle sore and weary, although I would have died rather than admit it.
‘How do you, wife?’ Edmund asked.
I wiped the rain from my face with the back of my hand. ‘I am wet,’ I told him, but I was smiling. I took off my hat and laughed at the jaunty feather, which was now bent and bedraggled out of all recognition.
They had brought a coach for me, but I would have none of it. ‘I do not want to be shut up in a chest on wheels,’ I told Edmund, snapping at him like my aunt’s old lapdog whenever anyone tried to help it. ‘I will ride with you.’
‘It is like to rain,’ Edmund had warned.
‘What do I care for a bit of rain?’ I said scornfully. ‘I will not melt.’
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