Endless Time

by Frances Burke

  They stood looking down at her, seeing the transformation take place. Her cheeks plumped out, features subtly altered and aged. Valerie had returned. Tom brought her slowly back up to consciousness.

  She opened her eyes and tears ran out and down her cheeks. For a full minute she cried, unable to speak. Tom supplied tissues, patted her shoulder and waited gravely until she was ready.

  ‘That was the most horrible experience of my life.’ She laughed and hiccupped at the same time. ‘What am I talking about? Which life? It all came back to me, you know. I remembered exactly who I was and how I came to be in such a fix.’ She blew her nose violently. ‘Well, there can’t be much doubt now, can there? I never could have made up such a ghastly episode. I’d never want to put myself through that. What a monstrous evil those witch hunts were, and how twisted the men who took part in them in the name of a loving God.’

  ‘Are you all right? No lasting effects?’ Tom could feel the thud of his heartbeat against his chest wall as he realized how close they’d come to disaster. If Valerie had headed for a window and he’s been a split second farther behind her…

  Phil had been doing things with a stethoscope and rolling a cuff bandage on her arm. Now he put these away and pronounced her unharmed. He looked at Tom. ‘I told you you might come to the death experience, and that it could be quite traumatic. This one was a lulu.’

  ‘It certainly appeared to be a suicide attempt. What did you do, Valerie? Jump off a cliff?’

  She nodded, her gaze still turned inward, viewing the horror she’d experienced. She spoke as if her throat were raw and hurting. ‘I escaped while they were all still reeling from the curse, and ran towards the swamp. It was night, and I was running from the flares into the dark. The path went from under me. I fell through the air and down into the bog, and it sucked me under. I suffocated.’

  ‘Extraordinary!’ Phil seemed fascinated, rather than appalled.

  Tom looked at him curiously. ‘A dreadful experience, Valerie. I’m sorry you had to go through that.’

  She shook her head. ‘No. It was necessary. Meaning has come out of it. It’s my karma to make amends in some way for that terrible curse.’

  Tom groaned. ‘Not you, too! Valerie, listen to me.’

  ‘No. You listen to me. All this week I’ve been reading up on this sort of thing. It’s fascinating. And now we’ve got actual proof. We’ve simply got to face it. I mean, the natural law that says everything in this universe occurs as a result of cause and effect.’

  ‘Exactly!’ Phil started up out of his chair, his face alight. ‘The law that says we are born with a basic blueprint laid out for a life, but within this pattern of destiny we do have free will. In other words, we can change our destiny, but only within the bounds of a pattern chosen before birth.’

  Tom frowned. ‘But how does that affect what happened here?’

  ‘Simple. Matters not dealt with during a particular lifetime are stored away in a kind of memory file in the higher regions of our souls, to be worked on later. Strong desires, unfulfilled wishes and, above all the effect of our actions will be taken out of the file at the appropriate time and carried forward to be dealt with in a future life. These things are all a form of energy, and energy doesn’t simply disappear with the death of the body.’

  Valerie smiled at Tom’s expression. She leaned forward and took his hand in her large white one. ‘It’s true. The law says things must balance. Uncompleted or very strong relationships with people keep drawing us back to them time after time, life after life.’

  ‘And you think that your relationship with this priest was a real one, centuries ago; and that now, in this lifetime you must make amends for having cursed him?’

  Both Valerie and Phil nodded.

  ‘I think I must be dreaming this!’ Tom detached himself from Valerie’s hold, got up, and stood before his painting, his back to the room. ‘And if I accept this theory, where does it take us? What will you do in the practical sense, Valerie?’

  ‘I don’t know yet,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t think we have all the information we need to formulate a plan.’

  Tom stared at the whirling sun in his painting and felt it grow larger and more vibrant until it seemed to fill the room. He could feel it pulsating, glowing within him. Its warmth pervaded his mind and body drawing on his senses until he no longer knew what or where he was. He drifted in a delicious, euphoric cloud, mindless and insensible. Then gradually he became aware once more. Feeling returned, and a consciousness of time and space. Utterly against his will, he found himself back in his office, facing the painting – a two-dimensional piece of art, not a magic mirror into another sphere. Slowly he turned to face the others.

  They looked at him enquiringly.

  ‘Well?’ said Phil. Clearly Tom’s unsettling experience had left no outward mark.

  He leaned forward onto the desktop to support himself. ‘We go on. There’s nothing else we can do. If you and Valerie are right, we should eventually perceive a pattern to this thing.’

  ‘I know we will.’ Phil turned to Valerie. ‘Do you feel okay to be alone? Would you like to spend the night with Carla and me?’

  ‘No, thanks all the same. I’ve got some thinking to do, and I do it best in my own bed. Don’t worry. You’ve confiscated my pills and I’ve thrown out all the liquor. I’ll be back for the next round on Tuesday.’ She grinned at Tom.

  He had an uneasy feeling. She was too pleased with herself. The waters got deeper and muddier, and he was already in far beyond his depth. Maybe he should have heeded the impulse to back out before they reached this stage. But it was far too late, and Valerie had gone.

  Phil picked up his discarded jacket and prepared to leave. ‘That’s quite a lady, Tom. When you think what she’s just gone through, wouldn’t you expect her to be a mess of quivering nerves? Instead, she’s gone off to do some serious thinking. I believe I’ll do the same… unless you’d like to have lunch at some pub?’

  Tom shook his head. ‘No thanks. I need some time to myself.’

  ‘Fair enough. I’ll give you a bell in a day or two.’ At the door he hung on his heel. ‘Er… Sorry I wasn’t much help to you. I think I panicked. I’ve never seen anything quite like that before.’

  ‘It’s okay. I don’t think you could have done much. Ciao, friend.’

  When he had the room to himself Tom deliberately turned back to the painting and fixed his eyes on the whirling sun. For ten minutes he stood immobile, waiting. Nothing at all happened except that his strained eyes began to water.

  It was his habit on a Saturday to go hiking somewhere out in the country. Today he locked the office door and went home to hibernate and try to sort out the tangled ball of yarn in his head.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Karen sat at her desk in the small parlor, dealing with her mail. She was alone, Antony having left the house early, and the ladies keeping to their beds until the sun was well up. She enjoyed this time of day, when she planned what she would do, most likely at either the studio or the dispensary, and blithely discarded most of the invitations which arrived in a steadily increasing stream.

  Caroline Marchmont might not be approved, but her blood was of the bluest and, as such, conferred on her an impeccable aura of ton. As the daughter of the late Marquis of Shelton she might go anywhere and, notwithstanding Amanda’s advice, now chose to go practically nowhere, if she could help it. Her ‘mother’ lived in the country, a self-absorbed, hypochondriacal existence. Caroline Marchmont had no brothers, and her only sister having married a German Baron and gone to live in Saxony, there was no awkwardness there for Karen. She didn’t have to have to hide from people who knew her really well, nor obey the dictates of parents who might have wanted her to occupy a greater presence in society.

  And obviously, Antony didn’t care.

  A good deal of fulfillment now came her way through personal service. Having turned against the mindless activities of the polite world, Karen had looked fo
r occupation, something apart from her painting. Her social conscience had been stirred by her memories of that terrible day when she’d found herself unprotected and vulnerable in the back streets of a great city; and there were daily reminders of the discrepancies between her comfortable existence and that of the majority of the population. Enquiries about hospitals brought her answers that disgusted her. Not simply places to cure people, they were charitable reforming institutions, piously and constantly reminding the patients of their lowly station in life and their obligations to God and their social betters. She wanted more than that.

  Expressing her dissatisfaction to Amanda, she heard about a recent development in public health. The London authorities had set up a number of dispensaries for the poor, primarily as centers for smallpox inoculation. Amanda, herself, gave a good deal of her time to one of these centers in Holborn, and had actually been returning home from there on the day she found Karen on her knees in the gutter.

  Karen immediately volunteered. She found she enjoyed teaching the elements of hygiene and basic child care to women who had never been shown either. Their appalling lives were more of a revelation than she’d imagined, and their courage and ironic humor earned her admiration. She also enjoyed giving over her extremely generous quarterly allowance from Antony to the needy. It might be a Lady Bountiful act, but she did it in a spirit of respect and human sympathy for others more disadvantaged than she. It was all she could do, at present.

  Charles knocked at her door and entered smiling broadly. She regarded him with interest. Had Amanda at last consented to be his bride?

  ‘Lady Caroline… ’

  ‘Caro, Charles.’

  ‘Er, yes. You will want to deal with this immediately. It bears the Prince Regent’s insignia.’ He handed her the elaborately patterned card.

  It was a message bidding Lord and Lady Marchmont to a grand summer fete to celebrate the renovation of Carlton House Palace, the Prince’s greatest pride.

  Karen felt a flutter of excitement. Because of her self-imposed retirement from the more snobbish events of the social calendar, she’d never met the Prince Regent; and although she’d heard he was a convivial man, ladies were excluded from the sort of revels which made him a byword with certain prim elements and provided his enemies with much ammunition. Some of the cartoons so widely circulated must have made him blench.

  She also wanted to see Carlton House. It was the talk of London – its splendor and extravagance even a matter of parliamentary discussion since its restoration had overrun the future king’s allowance by hundreds of thousands of pounds.

  ‘How exciting! Charles, will Antony be at home on this date? I mean, he will not be away on business?’

  He looked up at her sharply. ‘As far as I know, Lord Marchmont will be at home on that date. Do you wish me to forward an acceptance, my lady?’

  ‘Charles, you disappoint me. I had thought we were friends. Yet still you will not give me my name.’

  He stiffened at the reproach, then smiled reluctantly. ‘It is difficult to break the habit… Caro. I fear that protocol is ingrained in my nature, and an awareness of my place.’

  Her quick ear caught the faint bitterness. She patted the couch companionably and waited until he had, with some reluctance, seated himself beside her. His large square hands moved uncomfortably on his thighs and he didn’t meet her eyes.

  ‘Tell me, Charles, what is your place? I have never understood the relationship between you and Antony, which seems so much more than that of employer and employee.’

  Her evidently genuine interest acted as a key in a lock. She saw him make the decision to open a very private door to a friend and allow her in.

  ‘My place is difficult to define, since it is usual to base one’s position in life according to one’s father’s place. I do not know my father. My mother was Annie Hastings, a farm girl on one of the Marchmont estates. Her parents turned her out when they found she was with child, and she tramped the roads, almost starving, before being taken in by Jonas Frewin, my stepfather. They eventually wed – he was a lawyer in a small town, and not unsuccessful – and although burdened with a rapidly multiplying family, Jonas charged himself with my upbringing and training at law.’

  He sighed and looked down at his hands. ‘I could never like him. Seeing him as a psalm-singing, patronizing do-gooder, I would not accept his name. He turned the other cheek admirably by educating me as the son of a gentleman. Yet precisely because I knew gratitude was due, I withheld it. Now he is dead, and I may not thank him even if I would. No doubt he did his best for me, but gratitude, like love, cannot be bought.’

  She put a hand on his, lightly, and left it there for a moment. ‘Believe me, I know exactly what you mean. To the young there is nothing more galling than a sense of obligation to a person one dislikes. It’s a constant chafe that can work itself into a running sore. I expect you suffered a good deal from your contemporaries, boys who knew your circumstances?’

  She’d always thought his face pleasantly nondescript, but now it had taken on a satiric expression that changed him entirely.

  ‘I had my full share of taunts, and a broken nose to prove it.’

  ‘It adds character to your features.’

  ‘Thank you.’ He bowed slightly. His face had resumed its normal pleasant mien.

  ‘My mother is quite beautiful. Certainly she cannot be responsible for such a protuberance of, er, character.’

  ‘I gather she is still alive.’

  ‘Living in that same little town, along with my six younger half-brothers and sisters – Jonas’ revenge upon me.’

  ‘I see. You have made yourself responsible for them, as Jonas Frewin did for you.’

  ‘Exactly. Do you suppose he looks down from whatever heavenly cloud he occupies and laughs silently at my plight? Or is it perhaps forbidden for angels to enjoy a sense of irony? Jonas will definitely have qualified for angelhood. My mother’s nightly intercessions on his behalf would buy grace for Lucifer himself.’

  His relationship with his stepfather might have been unhealthy, but Karen detected a note of loving tolerance in his attitude towards his mother. There was fondness there. Charles was revealing himself more than he knew, and turning out to be quite a complex character. Certainly she had discovered the reason for his air of stiffness, as if on the alert for a snubbing.

  ‘How did you meet Antony?’

  ‘By leaping over the wall of my school and running back to Ashbourne Manor as often as I could. I was obsessed with the notion that I could find my father in the place where I was conceived. In fact, I was sure that Lord Edward himself was the man, and Antony my own half-brother.’

  ‘Oh, no! Surely not. How cruel.’

  His hands clenched, then he deliberately relaxed them. She could see the effort he made to calm himself.

  ‘Of course it was a boy’s dream, quite unfounded. I never did discover my father, and my mother’s lips are sealed upon the subject. But I had managed to bring myself to Lord Edward’s attention. He saw the liking between Antony and myself and invited me to make my home with them, attend the same schools and generally be a companion to his lonely son. You see, Antony had just lost his older brother in a tragic accident. His mother having died at his birth, he had no one, apart from Lord Edward.’

  ‘It was amazingly generous of him.’ Karen liked this side-light upon her father-in-law’s character. It made him far more human than the description given by Sybilla.

  ‘He is generous, like his son; and for one who occupies a great position, he is also astonishingly democratic in his outlook. Who else would do as much for a nameless nobody?’

  ‘And so you and Antony grew up together. No wonder he trusts you so.’

  Again he looked at her sharply. ‘The trust is mutual. I also admire him greatly. He is everything that makes a true gentleman, a man of honor. I know I can count him my friend under all circumstances.’

  ‘That is praise indeed.’

  He h
esitated, as if he wondered whether to go on. Karen almost bit her lip in anxiety. Surely, now she would learn something of her husband’s background. He couldn’t stop now!

  ‘Antony is changed from the young man he was. You did not know him before the tragedy that struck at the very foundation of his life.’

  ‘People have told me that he loved his first wife very much, and that she died young in a terrible fire.’

  ‘Jenny was almost too perfect. I never saw her in a temper. I never heard her speak an unkind word. She could be firm, but always in a pleasant manner. Because she adored Antony she was prepared to have his uncle and aunt living in her home, even when patronized so odiously by that woman. Fortunately, Antony soon had their measure. They were asked to leave the Manor after he was wed, and offered a home in Lord Edward’s London house. He naturally continued to support them.’

  ‘Why, naturally? Did the Honorable George have no source of income?’

  ‘Only what derived from the Jamaican estates, which he had effectively ruined by mismanagement. That is why he brought his family home, to live off his brother’s bounty. But that is an unedifying tale. I was saying that Jenny lit her husband’s life. After her horrible death he seemed to abandon interest in all his old activities. His music was lost through an injury sustained in the fire. A burning beam fell upon his arm when he tried to carry out a rescue. His voice also was affected by the heat. So then, all that remained to him was his child, who reminded him painfully of his lost wife and was too young to try to heal the wound with her love.’

  ‘How awful.’ Karen’s eyes filled tears. It was so easy to picture the tragic rending of the little family. Love such as Antony and Jenny had experienced was a rare commodity, precious beyond price. Its loss must have crippled Antony.

  ‘Awful, indeed. His friends and family feared for his reason. However, when the first grief passed he did recover his mind, if not his happy nature. He could never return to the Manor, yet would not have the ruined tower repaired. It still stands derelict, attached to one of the loveliest homes in southern England. Lord Edward resides there, but is forced to travel to another of his estates if Antony is to visit him.’