The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  Smoothing a fold of the dressing gown, I let the weight of the dark-red silk slip through my fingers and marvelled again at the power the mind had to make things seem real. It was one thing to read a psychiatrist’s paper on how hallucinations could deceive a person’s senses. It was quite another thing to wear a dressing gown that wasn’t there – to feel the fabric plainly in my hand, and see the little imperfections in the stitches of the sleeve.

  Even the chair I was sitting in couldn’t be real, but I felt every bump of its low slatted back. There were two chairs, with curving arms, set facing one another by the window in this room that, while a vastly altered rendering of Uncle George’s study, still appeared to be a masculine retreat. Between the two chairs was a little table of dark wood that held a tray of pipes for smoking, one of which sat on its own and clearly was a favourite. There were no shelves for books but there were books stacked on the one free-standing cabinet that appeared to have a locking door, and books again at one end of the long and narrow table set against the wall, and on the table was a bottle that the man was lifting now to fill a pewter cup with something that both looked and smelt like brandy.

  ‘I’m not going to faint,’ I promised as he set it on the table.

  ‘I did not imagine that you were.’ He took the other chair and with one elbow on the table tipped the bottle over his own cup. ‘But it is clear your health has been affected by the shock of your arrival, and you would be wise to guard it.’

  ‘I haven’t arrived anywhere,’ I corrected him. ‘You’re the one who keeps turning up, and you’re not even real.’

  ‘Am I not?’

  I hadn’t yet adjusted to the difference that a smile made to his face. I’d been too overwhelmed before to take much notice of his looks, beyond the broader details, but now that I’d relaxed more I was very much aware he was a very handsome man, for an illusion. His hair was not plain brown, but brown with glints of gold that caught the light. Close up, I now could see that his light-coloured eyes were green, so clear that at some angles they appeared transparent, and beneath the roughness of a day-old growth of beard his cheek and jaw were shaped with strength. A handsome man. But when he smiled he bordered on the irresistible.

  I drank my brandy.

  Thankfully, it had a taste. And even better, an effect. If I was going to have hallucinations, I decided, I would have to try to make them less distracting.

  This one studied me with eyes that seemed to weigh the possibilities. ‘You clearly are no ghost, and I do not believe in witches.’

  ‘Well, I don’t believe in you,’ I told him. ‘Go away.’

  I might as well have swatted at a fly. He didn’t vanish this time, either. All he did was settle back, the cup of brandy cradled in his hand, and watch me quietly a moment as though trying to decide how he should deal with me. ‘Where are you from? I only ask because your speech is strange,’ he said. ‘Your accent is not of this place.’

  ‘Yours isn’t, either.’

  ‘I was born and raised in London.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘You do not believe me?’

  ‘You’re not real,’ I reminded him. ‘You can be born where you like.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Now he looked amused.

  How long was this going to last, I wondered? All my previous hallucinations had been brief ones. This was going on for far too long. Maybe, I thought, if I took more charge of what was happening, controlled the situation more, I’d speed things up.

  I drained my glass and told him, ‘Look, I can’t just sit here, I have things to do.’

  He stared at me. ‘You do?’

  ‘Yes. So if you’ll excuse me …’

  As I stood, he stood as well as if by reflex, and when I went out he followed. Happily the corridor looked very much the same as in the real Trelowarth, and I headed for my bedroom door.

  The man behind me asked, ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘To my room.’ The old thumb-latched door handle actually fit in quite well with the age of the other things I was imagining, though the room itself looked a bit different inside when I opened the door. Unfazed, I stepped across the threshold, turned to face the man who wasn’t really there, and told him, ‘Look, you’re being very nice, but really I just want to be alone, so go away.’

  I put as much force as I could into those words, but as before he only stood and looked right back at me instead of disappearing as he was supposed to.

  With a sigh I said, ‘Oh, fine,’ and closed the door between us.

  There were voices in the next room.

  One was now familiar to me, but the other was a stranger’s who was making no great effort to be quiet. His was not a Cornish voice. It sounded Irish, and impatient.

  ‘Have you no sense left at all? ’Tis not your battle, and you know it.’

  ‘And whose battle is it, then?’ That was the man in brown, I recognised his level tone.

  ‘Not yours.’ The Irishman was firm. ‘Not mine.’

  Half an hour or more had passed, or so it seemed, and I was still as deep as ever in the same hallucination, in this room that was my own, yet not my own. The walls were plaster-white, not green, and where the wardrobe should have stood there was a simple washstand with a bowl and pitcher on it. Gone, too, were the rocking chair and chest of drawers, replaced by two low trunks and a small writing desk tucked in the window alcove by the fireplace. But the fireplace was the same one, and the wide-planked floor still creaked when I set foot on it, and the bed was where it should be. Not the same bed, to be sure. This was a larger one – a tester bed with wooden headboard and high posts and railings set with rings to hold the curtains that hung drawn back to the posts at all four corners. With the canopy above it looked like something that belonged in a museum or historic home.

  I was sitting on it now. I’d heard the footsteps in the next room as the man in brown went into it, and several minutes after that a different man – the Irishman, presumably – had climbed the stairs and come along the corridor, and now the two were arguing.

  The Irishman went on, ‘When did the flaming Duke of Ormonde ever think to do you favours? Never, that’s when. Did he think to put his hand in when they had you up to Newgate? Did he come to pay you visits?’

  ‘Fergal.’

  ‘Did he?’

  ‘I am bound to him by blood.’

  ‘Well fine,’ the man named Fergal said. ‘Let him go spill his own, then, and leave us a bit of peace.’

  A low laugh answered him. ‘You will remind me not to ever cross you?’

  ‘Sure if I’d thought you ever would, you’d have been dead before now.’

  ‘’Tis a comforting thought.’

  ‘Jesus, you need to be thinking now. Fine if you’re putting your head in a noose, that’s your business. But not for those bastards.’

  ‘I thought you were all for the king.’

  ‘So I am. ’Tis the men he keeps around him I’ve no faith in. They’ve had nearly one full year to bring him back since Queen Anne died, and they’ve done nothing.’ I heard footsteps cross the floor, and heard the handle of a door turn. ‘Just you think on what I’ve said, now.’

  ‘Do you mean to roast the squabs tonight?’

  I heard the footsteps pause. ‘Now what the devil does that have to do with anything?’

  ‘I think more clearly when I’m fed.’

  ‘Is that a fact?’

  ‘You might do well to roast an extra bird.’

  ‘I’ll roast the flock for you,’ the Irishman said drily, ‘if it helps you find your sense.’

  He didn’t slam the door exactly, but he closed it with a force that gave his final statement emphasis. I heard his footsteps tramping down the stairs.

  Now where on earth, I wondered, had I conjured him up from? And why was his name Fergal? I had never met a Fergal.

  From the hall below, the Irishman called up the stairs, ‘The constable is coming!’

  Oh, terrific, I thought. Someone else to
join the party. I’d have stayed exactly where I was, except I caught the faint sound of a horse’s hooves above the wind and couldn’t help but wonder if I’d actually hallucinated horses, so I rose to have a look.

  I heard the floorboards in the next room creak as though somebody else were doing likewise, crossing to the window, looking out towards the road.

  The horse and rider coming up The Hill had an official look – the horse a gleaming bay, the man who rode him middle-aged and wearing black clothes with a hat that slanted down to hide his face. From the next room I heard an exhaled breath that might have been annoyance, and then footfalls crossing back again, the opening and closing of the door, and steps that took the stairs by twos on their way down.

  I found it strange to stand there at the window where I’d stood so often and gaze out upon a scene that looked the same yet not the same, as though an artist had gone over it again but lightly, painting trees where none had been before, erasing roofs and buildings from the village of Polgelly and retexturing the road to rutted dirt.

  The rider had turned off that road now and halted his horse at the front of the house, and was shifting as though to dismount when the front door banged below me and the man in brown – still hatless, but wearing his jacket again – came in view.

  With my window tight shut and the wind beating hard on the glass I heard nothing of what the men said, but they didn’t shake hands, and the constable stayed in the saddle. I couldn’t see anything of his face under the hat, but his gestures had an arrogance I found unpleasant, and from their body language I’d have guessed the two men didn’t like each other. As the man in brown shrugged off some comment the constable made, the sun glinted on something and I saw that he’d put on more than his coat before coming outside. He had strapped on a sword belt. The sword itself hung at his left side, a deadly thing partly concealed underneath the long jacket but meant to be seen.

  I was focused on that when the constable lifted his head.

  He was looking up, scanning the windows. His gaze landed squarely on me and without really thinking I took a step backwards …

  The room slowly melted.

  And just as before on the coast path, I found myself back in the same place I’d been when the vision had started. This time I was standing at the desk in Uncle George’s study, with my hand outstretched to switch off the computer, with the carriage clock in front of me still chiming off the hour.

  The final chime fell ringing in the silence as I noted that the clock’s hands were still pointed to the same position: Five o’clock.

  Incredible, I thought, that the hallucination could have taken no real time at all. Yet here I was, and there the clock was, showing me the proof.

  I turned off the computer and sank gratefully into the green chair, propping both elbows on the desk for support as I lowered my head to my hands. Then in sudden confusion, I stopped.

  Raised my gaze again. Stared at my sleeve. Touched it, just to be sure.

  The red silk of the dressing gown ran smoothly through my fingers, still as dark as wine. And somehow now as real as I was.

  CHAPTER NINE

  It was still there the following morning, when, having locked my bedroom door, I pulled the wardrobe open and drew the garment on its hanger from the very back, where I had hidden it. Not something I’d imagined, but a real, substantial dressing gown, a little faded now and frayed a bit around the seams, but still the same one I had worn while I was … well, that was the problem, because now I didn’t know what I’d been doing.

  All I knew was that, whatever had occurred, it must have happened in the blinking of an eye. The carriage clock on Uncle George’s desk could not be argued with. Even if I’d fallen into some kind of a trance for that brief instant, and the dressing gown had been there in the study – which it hadn’t, I was sure of it – I’d scarcely have had time to put it on before the clock had finished chiming.

  But if that wasn’t what I’d done, then that would mean that what I had experienced was real. The man in brown was real.

  I shook my head. It simply wasn’t logical. I couldn’t wrap my thoughts around it. Travelling through time was something people did in books or films. It didn’t really happen. Yet the dressing gown here in my hands, and its obvious age, seemed to stand in denial of that line of reasoning, and I couldn’t think of how else to explain it. I’d tried. I had spent the whole night trying hard to come up with another excuse for the dressing gown’s being here, and I’d come up empty-handed, with nothing to show for the effort except a real headache in place of the fake one I’d used last night as an excuse to miss supper.

  I would have skipped breakfast this morning as well, if there hadn’t just then been a knock at my door.

  ‘Eva?’ Susan’s voice.

  Thrusting the dressing gown back in the wardrobe I crossed to the door and unlocked it to open it.

  ‘Still have the headache?’ she guessed when she saw me. ‘Poor you. I’ve made tea and some toast. You can’t go without eating.’ She brought the tray in with her, setting it down on the bed. ‘Is there anything else I can get you?’

  ‘No, really, this—’ Looking down at the tray, I deliberately dragged my mind back from my own worries, into the here and the now. ‘This is perfect. And so thoughtful. Thank you. You have to stop spoiling me.’

  ‘Well,’ Susan said, ‘you’re our guest.’ And when she saw me start to protest, she put in, ‘Besides, it’s not as though you’re doing nothing in return. You’ve spent the past week building us a website.’ With a smile she said, ‘That’s likely how you got your headache.

  ‘No.’ But since I couldn’t very well explain how I had got it, I took a bite of my toast instead. Then I remembered, ‘It’s ready, by the way. Your website.’

  ‘Really? Can I see it?’

  I was hesitant to go back into Uncle George’s study after what had happened last time, but I couldn’t think of any good excuse to make. My indecision must have shown on my face because she said, ‘If you’re not up to it this morning—’

  ‘No, it’s fine.’ I squared my shoulders slightly. ‘I’m fine. I’d love for you to see it.’

  She insisted that I finish off my toast first, but I brought the tea along with me and sipped it for its steadying effect as we ran through the different pages of the site.

  It wasn’t until later, when we’d finished with the website and we’d talked about the next step of publicity – the press release – and she’d gone off to fetch some details of the gardens’ history to include in it, that it suddenly occurred to me that history might be one thing I could use to help shed light on what had happened to me yesterday.

  The Irishman, as I recalled, had said a name: the Duke of Ormonde.

  Though it had meant nothing to me then, and didn’t now, it sounded real enough. And real dukes would be mentioned in Burke’s Peerage.

  There were, in fact, two Dukes of Ormonde listed on the Internet, but since the man named Fergal had said something about Queen Anne, too, I chose the second duke, who’d lived through Queen Anne’s reign.

  I wished my mother had been here to give me one of her amazing history lessons, but she wasn’t, so I settled for the basics, starting off in 1714 with Queen Anne’s death and the dispute over who should inherit the throne – her half-brother James Stuart, who was Catholic and living in exile near France, or the properly Protestant German Prince George, a more distant relation. I read the accounts of how deeply divisive the politics were at the time, with the Tories who favoured the rights of young James locking horns with the Whigs who supported Prince George. And I read of the riots and public unrest that had followed George’s coronation as the King of all Great Britain.

  Which brought me to the spring of 1715, when Jacobites – the followers of James – were plotting armed rebellion, making plans to rise in arms and bring young James himself across to claim his throne.

  It seemed most people’s sympathies in Cornwall had been squarely with the Tories an
d James Stuart, and they hadn’t tried to hide the fact. And so King George’s parliament, controlled by Whigs, had swiftly moved to stamp out any smoulderings that might ignite the fires of a dangerous rebellion.

  The Duke of Ormonde, hero of the people, had been right there in the thick of it. Three years earlier, when the mighty Duke of Marlborough had fallen out of favour, the dashing Ormonde had replaced him as commander of the British armies fighting on the Continent, and his patriotic exploits had increased his popularity to the point that the Whigs had grown uneasy. When Ormonde had taken the side of the Jacobites, the Whigs had moved against him, too. He and another leading Tory, Lord Bolingbroke, had been charged with High Treason, and though both men had managed to evade arrest and imprisonment by fleeing the country, Parliament had gone ahead and impeached them in their absence, stripped them of their rights and status, left them both as marked and wanted men.

  I had his portrait on the monitor when Susan came back.

  ‘Who is that?’ she asked.

  ‘James Butler, second Duke of Ormonde.’ A man I’d never heard of until yesterday. A man who was as real as the red dressing gown. And how could I have even known his name, I wondered, if I hadn’t travelled to the past?

  ‘And who is he?’ asked Susan.

  I gave her a summary of his biography, adding, ‘He played a big part in the Jacobite uprisings down here in Cornwall. Maybe I’ll find he’s connected somehow to Trelowarth. You never know.’

  She frowned. ‘I thought the Jacobites were Scottish.’

  ‘So did I. But there were lots of them in England, too, apparently.’

  She leant closer, studying the picture. ‘Nice wig.’

  ‘Yes, well, most men wore them back then.’ I knew one man who didn’t, or at least he hadn’t worn one either time that I had met him, but I couldn’t say that, either. Instead I looked more closely at the portrait, searching for some small resemblance to the man in brown who’d said, about the Duke, that he was ‘bound to him by blood’. If they were relatives, that blood appeared to be the only thing they shared. The Duke of Ormonde’s face was soft and overfed, his nose too long and large, his gaze too proud and condescending.