Endless Time

by Frances Burke

  She saw the anguish in his face and heard it in his voice. ‘If I could but believe it! But I fear that you delude yourself, and me. How can I bear to risk what we have now for a future that might not exist?’ He gripped her fiercely, hurting her. They both gasped for breath as smoke curled around their faces and was drawn into their lungs.

  The voice of the fire had risen to a dull roar, filling the space where they lay – a savage reminder of what was to come.

  ‘We may not have the choice, my love. I’m sorry that you still haven’t accepted the truth, but I believe, and I can look on death more easily than I did.’ Tears began to flow down her cheeks, but her eyes held his, bright and steady. ‘Kiss me, Antony. It may be for the last time in this life.’

  As he kissed her deeply, she shut her mind to all else, twining her arms desperately around him as if she could somehow imprint the feel of him there forever.

  ‘My lady sweet. Remember those words when I come to you again. If this is farewell –’

  With a thunderous force, piled timber exploded into a million sparks, leaving a sulphurous gaping hole in the rubble. The fire came rushing through. A forked dragon’s tongue of flame licked out and brushed Karen’s foot. She screamed.

  As Antony thrust her across his body, Erik’s great hands appeared in an opening overhead. He wrenched at the wreckage. The bell swung. With the strength of terror, Karen twisted aside, dragging Antony with her. The bell crashed down where his face had been seconds before, giving one last iron knell as it cut deep into the earth, dragging Karen’s foot with it.

  She didn’t faint. After that one moment of agony, she felt nothing. Antony lay half on top of her. She watched as Erik took a grip under his armpits and started to drag him upwards through the gap. His head lolled, and she saw he was almost senseless with the pain of being moved. Cold air fell on her face, and a few flakes of snow. The fire had almost reached her.

  So, this was the reality, the fulfillment of Amanda’s prophecy, the consummation of her life’s plan. Had it been inevitable, after all? Was all her struggle a vain pitting of the small self against the grand plan of another?

  It was neat, no doubt about that. Immolation as Jenny, and again as Caro. However, this time around there was a difference. She knew why it was happening. She’d put herself in this position voluntarily – or, rather, made her decision at a deep level where choice didn’t exist. The truth she had come so far to learn was too much a part of her to be ignored, even in the face of death.

  Love – genuine, selfless, empathetic, the passionate touchstone of existence – was all that had ever mattered. Whatever name men gave it, love, in all its forms, powered the material world and raised it closer to the eternal planes. For it she would give all she had.

  Watching Antony being drawn to safety, she silently said her goodbye.

  He opened his eyes. He looked down at her and began to struggle in Erik’s hold. ‘Let me go to her! Do not leave her! My God… My God… Caro!’

  Erik heaved mightily and they both fell backward, out of sight.

  With the crash of field guns firing, the wreckage of the tower collapsed completely. The hole in the rubble had disappeared.

  *

  Valerie was on her feet, her voice a barely recognizable screech.

  ‘You bastard! You shall not escape. That is not the way I planned it. The bitch has gone, and you will follow her to the devil!’

  ‘What in hell…?’ Phil barely had time to voice his bewilderment before she’d passed him in a whirlwind of fury, brandishing the brass poker like a sword.

  Tom had started up, only half aware. ‘Sybilla! How can you be here? Caro said you had died.’

  ‘You will never say that name again,’ panted Valerie, and swung the poker down on him with all the power at her command.

  His up flung arm took the blow. He heard it crack as he fell. Through a haze of shock he heard Phil’s voice as he struggled with the demented woman.

  ‘No you don’t. Give me that.’

  A shriek, the sound of a body hitting the floor, and wild sobbing. Phil’s hands gently feeling his arm, his breathless cursing. Then total, blessed silence

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Friday, December 21

  Tom’s apartment was cozy and firelit. Habbakuk sat on the hearth washing meticulously. Tom occupied his favorite chair, slouched with his chin on his chest, as usual, his broken right arm supported in a sling. Phil had hung up his dripping raincoat in the entrance and now he squatted by the fire, rubbing his hands. Outside the drainpipes filled and gushed over. Christmas hovered, four days away.

  ‘You don’t have to worry about Valerie,’ Phil said. ‘She’s in a nursing home, under sedation for the present; but with the treatment program I’ve arranged, she’ll come out of it okay. I’ve promised to stick with her until she’s fully recovered.’

  ‘Good. Thanks for taking care of everything, Phil.’ For the first time in his working life a patient’s interests came secondary to Tom’s own. He simply had no space to accommodate anything other than the astounding experience of last night.

  Astounding was too mild a word. Earth-shattering? No. For he didn’t feel in the least shattered. He felt enlarged. The time journey had expanded his understanding to galactic proportions. He had actually experienced his own immortality.

  ‘How does it feel, having been another man in another time? Pretty chaotic at first, I suspect. Tom?’

  ‘Sorry. I guess I won’t be making much sense at the moment. Can we talk later? Do you mind?’

  ‘Hell, Tom! I went through it with you, and only heard one half of what was going on. Have a heart. At least tell me who this Sybilla woman is.’

  *

  Tom’s whole arm was a nagging ache, and he was in a fever to return to the hospital, and Karen. Still, he owed Phil an explanation. It must be frustrating to be the only one excluded from such an extraordinary episode.

  ‘I’ve ordered a cab, and when it comes, I go. Agreed?’

  ‘Agreed!’

  ‘Right. Here goes. Sybilla was a nasty piece of work who killed off my first wife in the lifetime I regressed to.’

  ‘Which century?’

  ‘Early nineteenth. Jenny died in 1806. Sybilla was her cousin and mine. I remarried in 1809, Caroline, an enchanting archwife of the highest order.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Regency speak for bitch. Sybilla pushed Caro downstairs and – here’s the hard part – when she died, the spirit of another woman entered her vacated body. This other woman came from the future, from our present. We had just fourteen months together, and I learned to adore her more than my life.’ His voice broke. The memory of Caro’s death would always tear him apart, whether or not they recognized each other and loved again. Nothing could erase such a recollection. The girl lying in a coma might die tomorrow, or she might awaken and know him. Whatever came, he could never experience greater suffering than he had in his life as Antony Marchmont.

  As was the case with Valerie’s episode as a witch woman, he recalled the whole of that past experience. He’d believed Caro’s tale of being from the future to be a delusion, and lost all hope of finding her again. The miracle that returned his Jenny to him as Caro could never be repeated. His last words to her, about encountering one another in some different dimension of time, were more a desperate prayer than a belief; and he’d been lost in despair for months afterward, until shown by Amanda that he was destroying two lives, his and Chloe’s. For his child’s sake he’d put on a semblance of normal living; but when an inflammation of the lungs finally carried him off ten years later, he’d been more than glad to go.

  Phil coughed and looked distressed. He’d been in on that final scene in the ruins of the church tower, Tom remembered. He’d know what an appalling loss he, Tom, had suffered.

  ‘You’ll probably have to think about that for a while, Phil, but it will make sense, eventually. Cases of possession by a wandering spirit are not unknown. The next hurdle
is the fact that Caro, my beloved wife, had lived before, as Jenny.’

  ‘I don’t believe it! I mean… If you say so. But, Jesus… Guirdham and his Cathars have nothing on you. Holy shit. What a story!’

  Tom grinned wryly. ‘Don’t get too excited. I’ll bet you anything you like no one believes it outside of you, me Valerie… and Karen.’

  ‘Karen! There’s another one?’

  ‘I told you she came from our present. Karen/Caro/Jenny, my wife, is at this moment lying in University College Hospital in a deep coma. For all I know her soul is wandering between lives, searching for me. She may even be reliving the past as another woman entirely. I don’t know. What I do know is that she means everything to me, and I’ll never give up on her. I’m going to her now. There’s the cab, Phil. Hang out the window and tell him I’m on my way, will you?’

  Phil followed him down the stairs and helped him into the cab, talking all the time. ‘So Valerie was Sybilla, and you were her opponent in that life, also. What a build-up of karmic debt between the two of you. I suppose the stress of her immense unresolved hatred, and seeing you relive your love for your Caro, jerked her back into the past; and as Sybilla she tried to kill you.’

  ‘What’s that?’ said the cabbie, sticking his head through the slide window.

  ‘A bedtime story I’m writing for my kids,’ snapped Phil, closing the door. ‘I’ll be on your doorstep tomorrow, Tom, and you’d better be ready to talk. Give her my love.’ He grinned and waved as the cab moved off.

  Tom sat back and tried to sort out his feelings. Excitement, trepidation. He could never have described the joyful anticipation filling him to bursting point. He was going to see his Caro. Yet he was afraid – terribly afraid that she might slip through his hands again. The thread holding her to the earthly plane seemed so tenuous, just a thin silver cord connecting her with the wandering soul somewhere out there in the cosmos.

  How could he bring her back? He’d tried so many times, even before he knew how dear she was to him. Strange. He should have known that first night at the gallery when he felt so drawn to her, and attributed the feeling to fascination with her work. Karen, herself, had been the lodestar – Karen/Jenny, whom he’d known as Caro, his wife and love over who knew how many eons?

  Dashing through the hospital entrance he met Theo, a vision in striped lime green slacks and an ochre-colored sweater from Gianni. Like some exotic insect, escaped from its Amazonian habitat, he looked totally out of place in the clinical atmosphere.

  ‘Tom Levy, you look as if you’ve gone ten rounds with Mohammed Ali. What have you done to yourself?’

  Tom glanced down at his sling. ‘This? A blonde attacked me with a poker. Have you been up to see Karen?’

  ‘I have. She’s much the same. I thought I’d bring in her Bella Donna portrait to hang on her wall, just in case she opens her eyes – so she’ll see something familiar.’

  ‘A nice thought, Theo.’ Tom looked across at the bank of elevators and felt a tightening along the muscles of his spine. So much depended on the next few minutes. All at once he wanted to back off, to keep Theo there talking, or take him out for a drink – anything to avoid going upstairs and plunging into his future.

  Theo had already turned away. ‘Here’s my car. I’ll say goodnight, and good luck with our little lady up there. You know, I have a lot of time for her. She’s made of the right stuff.’ Looking a bit pink about the ears, he made a dash through the rain into his chauffeured Bentley.

  At least he doesn’t expect his man to hold an umbrella over him, thought Tom. Some people would. He moved over to the lifts and pressed the call button.

  *

  Billie met him at the door of the dimly-lit room. Her face was masked by shadows, but she was clearly near exhaustion and gradually deflating like a child’s balloon left out in the weather.

  ‘Mon Dieu! What has happened?’

  ‘My arm? It’s a long story, and it’ll keep. But I’m assured the break will heal without trouble. You look all in. Why don’t you go home to bed? I’ll stay with Karen.’

  He felt like a pistol on a hair trigger. It wouldn’t take much to set him off. Gunpowder in the pan, ready for the touch light, that’s me, he thought, surprised by the outdated analogy. Go, Billie. Go home, now.

  ‘I shall go, but not before I tell you something of importance.’ She drew in a deep breath. ‘I have decided to fight Humphrey for Adele, for the sake of her mother. There will be no expense spared at the next hearing.’

  Tom touched her hand in swift compassion. ‘You’re trying to make amends for the lost years, is that it? Billie, keep faith. We’re going to win through, all of us.’ He held her eyes with his, projecting a certainty that had come to him from nowhere, filling him with power. He knew that future was assured. There was no room left for doubt.

  She startled him by rising on her toes to kiss his cheek. ‘Thank you, my dear. You, yourself, are so worn. Promise me you will stay for a short time only.’

  ‘I promise. Good night, Billie.’ He kissed her quickly and almost pushed her out the door. He turned to Karen.

  Past and present blended. His gaze blurred. The face on the pillow was a long oval, pale, the mouth wide, with a slight sad droop, the hair a frame of dark silk strands. For a split second he felt cheated. Then another face superimposed over the original – a gamine expression, small, bird-like features, brown skinned, topped with a knot of curls. Great brown eyes looked up at him, projecting the loving nature that had been Jenny.

  Tom’s own eyes filled with tears. His heart seemed to move within his chest. But as her image shifted and dissolved he said goodbye. He knew it was time to give her up, as he should have done long since.

  It was no surprise when Caro’s charming porcelain features made their appearance. The cloud of glorious red hair seemed to vibrate with a life of its own. Slumberous blue eyes held an invitation he remembered too well. He choked on the emotion that threatened to cut off his breathing. She’d been so lovely, and so loving. How could he bear to give up the memory of her? Yet he knew he had no choice. Life wasn’t for looking back. It was to be lived in the here and now. All the joys and tragedies, the beauty and the ugliness, comprised an ongoing experience for the learning soul. He had recognized and finally accepted this truth. He had to move on.

  ‘Goodbye, my darling,’ he whispered, as the image that was Caro shimmered and faded, leaving the still, pale face of Karen to emerge once more.

  He sat down on the bed, gazing at the woman who meant everything to him. ‘Karen’ he whispered.

  Her breast continued to rise and fall evenly. He knew there was no one to hear him.

  The image of those last moments together in the rubble of the church tower filled his mind. They had each made a vow, to meet somewhere, some time in the future. Now the moment of fulfillment had come.

  ‘Caro, I’m here, my lady sweet. I’ve kept my promise. Come back to me, Caro. It’s Antony.’

  The room waited with him. He felt the shrouded silence cutting them off from the rest of the world. In the soft glow of the night light he studied her features with an intensity he’d never given to any other matter. His whole life balanced between heaven and hell as he waited on his destiny.

  Dark lashes moved and trembled. A sound like a sigh came from between parted lips. Karen opened her eyes.

  *

  A curtain of haze shifted between her and the world. She felt strangely muffled, as if swathed in layers of gauzy mist, cut off from sight and sound. Yet, surely she’d heard Antony calling her.

  The mist drifted and thinned, until her straining eyes found a light, a dim glow whose source was concealed, but enough to show her the bed she lay in, and four walls – and a man’s shape in silhouette beside her.

  She flinched against the pillow as he moved. ‘Who is it?’ Her voice felt and sounded rusty. What was wrong?

  ‘Don’t you know me, darling? Look closely. See with the eyes of the soul.’

  He br
ought his face down to hers, only inches away. She stared into features that were only vaguely familiar.

  This has happened before, she thought. I have wakened in a strange room with strangers around me. I know this feeling of disorientation. Who am I? Caro. My name is Caro. For a brief instant a scene flashed into her mind, of a cramped place, dark and hot, with danger all around. Feelings flood over her, terror mixed with elation, then a bitter-sweet sadness. Finally came peace. She closed her eyes and shivered. Tears seeped from beneath the lids and crept down her cheeks.

  A hand gently brushed them away, and a voice that was both deep and tender said, ‘Don’t be afraid. You are loved and cherished. This is your rightful place. It will all be clear to you in time.’

  She forced herself to look at him. Through her tears the outline of his features blurred. For a moment she thought she saw… ‘Antony!’

  ‘Yes, I’m Antony.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘I said that when we met again you would know me by these words: ‘my lady sweet’. Oh Caro, can’t you see past this face and into my heart?’

  ‘It can’t be! You’re nothing like…’

  He leaned across to the bedside table and picked up a hand mirror. Holding it face down he said softly, ‘We are no longer in the same bodies as Caro and Antony. We have moved on, my dear. Look, and you will believe me.’

  She took the mirror, supported by his hand, and looked at her reflection.

  Her first reaction was disbelief, and almost at once, the same déjà vu feeling of having had this experience before. Her mind felt unsteady. She wanted to put up her hands and hold it in place. She raised imploring eyes, seeking reassurance, and hesitated. Moving on… another time, another life… crossing time… She felt her wavering mind split into several sectors, each part running through a series of scenes like movie reels. There was no sequence, no past or present or future. They all ran simultaneously, and the people portrayed were all familiar. She saw herself as Jenny and Caro and Karen, and a host of others, men and women. She saw Antony as himself – and as Tom Levy.