‘Finish your drink while I pour the soup. I hope you’re partial to French onion?’ Nothing could have been more casual than her tone of voice.
‘It’s my favorite.’ Tom was determined to be pleased. Valerie had gone to some trouble on his behalf; the least he could do was put a stopper on a too-vivid imagination.
As he raised his glass to drain it the doorbell rang. It kept on ringing, persistently.
When Valerie failed to appear, he called, ‘Shall I answer it?’
‘Let it go. I’m not at home to anyone else this evening.’ Maybe the distance and closed door to the kitchen had muffled her voice, giving it that strained sound.
The bell kept on ringing, drilling into his brain. Tom hesitated. Finally his need to respond got him out of the chair. He went to the door and opened it.
‘Phil!’
‘Hi, pal. You’re looking a mite chewed ‘round the edges. Isn’t it a bit early to be hung over?’
Phil’s grinning face had never looked so good to Tom. ‘What are you doing here? I thought you’d be at home packing your bags.’
Phil looked shamefaced. ‘As it happens, I came to apologize to you and Valerie for my unprofessional behavior this morning – my unfriendly behavior, as well. Once I’d calmed down I realized what a louse I’d been. I’m really sorry.’
‘There’s nothing to apologize for. We all got a bit excited, and your disappointment was perfectly natural.’ Tom closed the door and drew him into the living room.
Valerie emerged from the kitchen, her face tightly unwelcoming. But Tom ignored that. ‘Look who’s here. Do we have a martini to spare for a penitent therapist who wants to rejoin our circle?’
Valerie filled another glass and silently handed it to Phil, who accepted it and the rather rigid smile that went with it, then sank into the nearest lounge. He took a long swallow and sighed.
‘Sit down, folks, and listen to my little dissertation. It won’t take long.’ He looked at Tom. ‘You know I’ve been thinking along the lines of your involvement with Valerie, and while I know you reject this, I want you to hear what I’ve got to say. I think you’re both in a very dangerous position.’
Valerie moved to the edge of her seat, her attention fixed on Phil. Tom rolled his eyes to heaven.
Phil grunted, as if to say: just what I expected. ‘Look here. Are you going to give me my five minutes or are you going to sit there like a stuffed monkey with your ears blocked up and that thing you call a mind tuned right out? Don’t I deserve a fair hearing?’
‘Okay, okay. I’m listening.’
‘Let’s go back to Valerie’s first life as a supposed witch or wise woman, where you were the prosecuting priest. I know it was only in a dream that you took on the role, but look how it fitted in. You really feared her powers. You reacted like a superstition-ridden man of those times. Let’s say that you were Valerie’s opponent in that lifetime.
‘Next, the life where she deliberately killed a man, and found she couldn’t live with the knowledge. He was someone she hated and feared, just as in the previous existence. He was her opponent. If we analyze every life sequence she’s been through where she came to an untimely end – and note that there are many more of these than there are uneventful lifetimes – in every case she’s been battling an opponent who either brings about her death, or is killed by Valerie, prior to her own suicide. It’s a pattern that we’ve all recognized.
‘Now, you haven’t exactly said so, but I think you are ready to admit that these experiences are genuine, that Valerie really has lived them before. Tom, if this is so, then you also have to admit to a belief in the immortality of the soul. If Valerie has reincarnated all these times, so have you, and I, and every other person now existing on this planet. It’s commonly held that we return in mortal guise in the company of other souls close to us, perhaps in different roles, but still in near relationships. Together, we work out our patterns, sometimes quickly, sometimes gradually, over a number of lifetimes; but always and inevitably we are forced to deal with them.
‘Valerie has been avoiding dealing with a major problem, and so, I think, have you. I believe you two are karmically linked in a very strong pattern. I think you are Valerie’s opponent. If you don’t both break the pattern here and now, it will be repeated and you’ll destroy each other once again.’
The silence in the room seemed to echo Phil’s words, resonating long after he’d finished speaking. Valerie’s quick drawn-in breath cut across it like a shout. Tom had stiffened, but he held Phil’s gaze for a time before looking away, down at his own tightly clasped hands. He knew sincerity when he heard it. It was pointless to mock a man’s honest reading of a situation. He no longer wanted to.
‘No comments?’ Phil watched him closely.
‘What is there to say? Obviously you believe in this karmic link-up…’
‘So do I.’ Valerie, too, stared at him, her eyes so wide that he could see the whites all around the iris. ‘I’ve felt the strongest pull between us, right from the beginning. And yet, I wondered whether I really liked you.’ There was hostility in her tone, its edge blurred with fear. She’d drawn herself back in the chair, away from Tom. He could practically see the aura of rejection she put out.
He turned to Phil. ‘There’s no way to prove or disprove your theory, except by waiting to see if violence flares between Valerie and me.’ His lips twisted, but he couldn’t have said whether he derided himself or his friend.
‘You’re wrong. There is a way. I could regress you.’
Tom felt the jolt from heel to crown. For a crazy moment he thought his spine had actually telescoped into half its length. ‘You’re not serious!’
Phil looked at him.
Tom licked his lips. ‘How do you know you can do it?’
‘I don’t, until I try. Will you co-operate?’
It was then that Tom really astonished himself. ‘Yes,’ he said.
*
‘You will remember everything you see, everything that happens to you. You will have total recall. You are now descending the steps, one by one. You are counting each step down from twenty… nineteen… eighteen… seventeen…’
Tom could hear Phil’s voice counting, but only distantly. He felt the steps beneath his feet. They were solid, real. He knew he was about to enter another place, but already he had forgotten where he’d come from. He was in limbo, an in-between world, moving slowly downward.
He became intensely aware of himself in a new way. Nerve endings prickled and tightened, his ears sang on a high sweet note. A peculiar upsurge of energy from his toes and fingertips through to the crown of his head left him feeling lighter than a cloud, yet in some way more real and dense – a million atoms whizzing about their appointed paths to create the body pattern that was Tom Levy – but with a further dimension. He knew who he was, yet he also knew he was more. He took another step down.
‘What is this place? So hot. Can’t breathe. Must get out.’ He was lying on his back, pinned down. He let out a muffled cry. ‘Damn! My leg! The cursed thing must be broken. Now there’s the devil to pay.’
*
Dust filled his throat and lungs, and every time he coughed something tore in his chest. He strained his eyes, but couldn’t see anything.
‘What is this place? So hot. Can’t breathe. Must get out.’ Antony let out a muffled cry. ‘Damn! My leg! The cursed thing must be broken. Now there’s the devil to pay.’ He clenched his teeth and twisted experimentally to one side, then lay back, sick and sweating. He couldn’t think what had happened. He couldn’t remember. With a dreadful feeling of having taken a step into space, he realized that he didn’t know who he was.
Out of the darkness a hand came into his, a soft, small hand, and with it a voice he knew and loved. ‘Antony, are you all right?’
He jerked half upright, unable to suppress a groan.
‘What is it? Are you hurt? Antony, tell me, for the love of God!’ The hand travelled frantically up his arm to his
face, pausing at his neck pulse.
Antony? He strangled the cough and tried to breathe shallowly so that he could speak. ‘Caro? Is it really you?’ The blank space in his mind took on shadowy shape. He knew Caro. In a moment he’d remember his own name. ‘There is something lying across my legs. I cannot move, my love. Can you come to me?’
He heard her rustling movements and felt a warm body nestling beside him. Her lips were gritty against his cheek. A great wave of protective love flowed over him, reaching out to his unseen companion.
‘What happened, Caro?’
‘I don’t know. I think it must have been a bomb.’
A bomb! Now he remembered! The appalling, head-splitting sound of air under tremendous pressure, the explosion of gases vaporizing, the concussion in his head. He suddenly knew where he was and who he was – Antony Marchmont, heir to the Earldom of Roth, representative of the British Crown on a mission of the utmost urgency – and husband to Caroline. And they were both buried in the ruins of a church tower somewhere close to the middle of Sweden, almost certainly victims of a plot by Napoleonic supporters.
Bernadotte! The Tsar’s kinsman. Both safe. The last missing fragments had returned, along with a feeling of tremendous relief.
‘Thank God you are alive.’ He felt a teardrop on his face and said in sudden alarm, ‘You are unhurt?’
‘Not a scratch,’ she assured him, shakily. ‘I’m covered in dust and my boots are gone, but that’s all. Antony, can you try to shift whatever is trapping you if I help?’
Before answering he felt about him, around and above, his hands pausing briefly overhead. ‘It would not be advisable. Listen.’ In the silence he heard again the ominous creaking of settling rubble, and a sifting, slithering sound like a thousand tiny feet running.
‘What is it? Rats?’
‘Grit and minute particles. The wreckage is shifting under its own weight. We must not disturb it.’ He drew her close with one arm in a futile attempt at protection. ‘It must have been a large bomb, perhaps more than one. Your Frenchmen were close indeed. ‘Tis God’s mercy they were just too late to trap Bernadotte and the Russian.’ He felt her quiver.
‘Hush. There is nothing we can do at present. Tell me what occurred after the accident?’
‘Why, nothing. I waited until I’d got my breath back, then set off on foot.’
‘You walked through the snow?’
‘It seemed like miles, and I dreaded I might be going in circles. But it wasn’t so far. Erik very nearly made it the whole way.’
Antony pictured her struggling through the drifts, lost, alone, and probably desperately afraid of so many things, from wolves to French assassins, but never giving up. She’d almost died of exposure and exhaustion, yet she had finished the long journey magnificently. What man could have done more?
His voice was soft with love. ‘Caro. I have tried to demonstrate all that you mean to me. You will always be my life’s joy. But now I revere you. Your little body has the heart of an Alexander, a Boadicea. You are magnificent.’
The rubble shifted, and the bell above his head clanged and fell a few inches. Dust spattered his face. He tried to thrust Karen away, but she clung to him. He peered up into the darkness and waited, but nothing happened. His pulse slowed, then quickened again.
‘Caro, I have changed my mind. I should like you to try and make your way out of this wreckage and go for help. It may be that people are already on their way. Even one of the sentries might have survived the blast.’
‘No. I can’t leave you here, trapped.’
‘You will not help me by remaining. You could do more good by – ’
‘No. My movements might bring down the bell on top of you. Oh, my dear, I know that you’re thinking of my safety, but I will not leave you alone. If you die, I die with you.’
‘Caro, I could never allow you to forfeit your life so needlessly.’
‘You have no choice, my dear.’ She chuckled and wormed her way even closer. ‘At least we are warm underneath all this wood.’
Despair colored his voice as he gathered all his strength of will to use against her.
‘Caro, you are warm because the wreckage is afire. I have heard the flames for some time without realizing what they were. Listen.’
She listened to the crackle and snap of wood exploding. A vision of searing heat and pain filled her mind. He could feel her dread, almost taste the metallic bite of it.
‘Fire! Antony, we’ve got to get out!’ She crouched down at his feet and began tugging uselessly at the beam pinning them.
Tormented by his helplessness and fearful for her, he said harshly, ‘Leave it. Get out, Caro, now!’
She ignored him. He heard her grunt and strain. Something moved overhead, and the bell muttered. Orange and red light flickered in amongst the fallen timbers. Firelight.
‘Caro!’ It was a cry of desperation. He felt her turn and knew she’d seen the flicker, too. The rubble overhead shifted again. More dust fell.
He heard her begin to sob. ‘I can’t move it. I can’t move it.’
‘Will you go! I don’t want you here.’ Painfully he struggled into a half-sitting position, thrusting her away from his feet, driving her off with hands and words.
She avoided both, ducking beneath his arms to attack the beam with more vigor. Smoke had drifted into their small space and he could clearly hear the crackle of burning wood. He realized there was a soft red glow about Caro. He could see her outline.
With a loud crack, the beam across his ankles shifted and gave way. Karen was thrown backwards, her startled cry cut off as she disappeared into the blackness.
‘Caro! Caro!’
*
She heard him, but she couldn’t answer. Her mouth was full of dust and her head spinning from hitting the ground with force. Something seemed to be holding her down. She felt numb from her waist to her feet. When she opened her eyes she could see the fire glow, still some distance away, but growing brighter.
As her head cleared she realized that she was now the one trapped. She could move only her upper body and arms. The rest of her was pinned down in some way. Antony’s frantic voice came to her more loudly and urgently, and she cleared her throat and answered, ‘I’m here. I’m all right. Just give me a minute to pick myself up.’
She knew he would have come to her if he could, which meant his legs must be badly hurt. She didn’t want him trying to drag himself to her through the rubble, damaging himself further.
She called as steadily as she could, ‘Don’t worry, my love, and please don’t move. That bell is still unsafe. I will be with you as quickly as possible.’
The terror that had driven her to such a stupendous effort of shifting the beam now hovered perilously close. Its wings fluttered at the doors of her mind, seeking entry. She knew if she gave in to it, she was totally lost. She had to think. What could she do?
Sitting up carefully, she felt the waistband of her dress rip as she pulled against whatever held her. Fearfully she ran her hands down her body – and broke into wild laughter.
‘Caro, what is it?’ Antony’s anxiety pierced her near hysteria, bringing her back to her senses.
‘It’s nothing. It’s only… I’m not trapped at all. A post has pinned down my skirts, pulling them around me tightly, like a shroud. If I tear them off I’ll be free.’ She began to work at the fabric, tugging at the tough weave with fingers that felt stiff and awkward. She noted with detachment that they were torn and bleeding in several places.
While she worked she came to a decision. Antony must get out of this trap, whatever else happened. He was too important to so many people – Chloe, Lord Edward, his own countrymen – and she knew she couldn’t watch him die and stay sane herself. If there was any chance at all, he must take it. And if he couldn’t be got out, then she’d stay, too. Life, on any terms, would be quite unbearable without him.
The word ‘sacrifice’ didn’t cross her mind. There had been so many barren years
without love. Now she had had the best; and while life remained in her she’d fight for that love. Perhaps she would have to carry on alone in other lifetimes. There were no guarantees. She had no choice but to rake the risk. Death was a doorway to the future, and she would step through it gladly to wait for Antony on the other side. The promise would be redeemed; the karmic cycle would eventually bring them together again. The energy of love would survive the destruction of the body, and go on to its many appointed rendezvous in endless time.
Her skirt ripped and gave way, leaving her free, if in tatters. She crawled and scrambled across the jagged pieces of timber, back to Antony.
He was on his elbows, straining to drag himself forward. She went down on her knees beside him, as a voice overhead bellowed, ‘Hola! English lady, you are there?’
‘Down here,’ shouted Antony. ‘Go carefully, or you will crush us. And for the love of God, make haste.’ He dragged Karen up into his arms and held her there, fiercely.
Her voice cracked. ‘Erik! It’s Erik! He’s all right.’
‘Certainly he has a thick Swedish accent. I believe it is your friend. Now pay attention, Caro, and do not argue with me. When he reaches us you will allow him to lift you out to safety. Then he can return to help me.’
She shook her head, knowing he could see her clearly in the glow of the approaching fire. Sweat ran down her back, and she felt slippery in his hold.
‘I come, Englishman,’ roared Erik. The wreckage shifted violently almost above their heads.
Karen took her husband’s face between her hands and looked deeply into his eyes. “I’ve already said I will not leave you. I don’t want to go on living without you.’
‘Do you think I could watch you die – again? A man cannot exist when his heart has been split in two for the second time. No one should be asked to bear such agony. I beg you, my dearest…’
‘Antony, don’t let us waste these moments arguing. Just remember that if we are parted now, it will not be forever. To the universe our lives are just a blink in time, and tomorrow, or the day after, we’ll be together again.’
Endless Time Page 40