She mentally shrugged. ‘Oh, well, out of the frying pan …’
Then the women were herded off down to the cellars while the soldiers made free with Tristan’s stock of wine and spirits.
* * *
The doctor peered at Denny in an officious manner. ‘How are we feeling today?’ he asked.
‘Why do doctors always have to talk to you as if there were two of you?’ wondered Denny. (Although in Denny’s case, he was not far off the truth.)
‘Weird,’ said Denny. ‘I keep feeling as if I’m not who I think I am.’
‘Probably the concussion,’ said the doctor crisply. ‘I wouldn’t worry about it son.’ He had heard it all before. He thought Denny was bucking for a section eight discharge (for insanity).
‘Or maybe it’s incipient schizophrenia,’ joked Denny. The doctor gave him a black look.
‘Or maybe not,’ said Denny hurriedly, wondering what he had said.
The truth was he had been having slightly schizophrenic thoughts. Ever since his bang on the head, he had been having odd memory flashbacks of things that he knew had not happened to him. Yet they felt real, like memories, not dreams. It was as if the concussion had placed a dark stain on his consciousness, and opened a door in his brain, a door to another place. A place from which he was being visited by messengers whose words just escaped him. By a glimpse of a world that he could never quite grasp.
And just to confuse matters further, Tamar seemed to be in most of the memories that he saw. A different Tamar, different and yet the same. There were also other familiar faces, Stiles, for example (and this only compounded his feelings of déjà vu, and the déjà vu made him certain that the memories were somehow real). And he saw other faces – faces that he did not know, and yet he did.
He looked at his face in a pocket mirror, his familiar face. ‘Maybe it was the concussion,’ he thought. But that didn’t mean anything. He still felt sure that he wasn’t who he thought he was.
* * *
Ophelia had gone quiet – unnaturally so. She sat in the corner and rocked back and forth. Tamar ignored her. She was also silent, thinking – about what had happened of course, and also about Cindy. She had always scoffed at the idea of déjà vu and all that sort of thing, but it was such a strong feeling that she could not shake it off, and then there was the curious incident of knowing Cindy’s name before she had been told, although she could not be certain of this, but she thought …
Cindy herself was calm now that the violence seemed to be over – for now. She intended to be out of here before it started again. As soon as these two women were asleep, she would teleport out of here. The soldiers’ arrival had been fortuitous in a way – for her at least – Now the only person who had known her secret was dead. She intended to make sure that no one ever found it out again.
Tamar troubled her though. There was something … something! Cindy could not put her finger on it, but it bothered her. She put it down to guilt; she knew in her heart that she should take these women with her to safety. She felt as if Tamar somehow knew what she was planning, which was clearly ridiculous. It was her conscience that was making her imagine these things.
Tamar was also planning an escape although in a far less dramatic way and involving far more work, not to mention, peril. To her credit, she had no intention of leaving anyone behind, although she was sorely tempted to leave Ophelia, who was now muttering to herself and clearly on the point of beginning the gibbering. She would definitely be more of a hindrance than a help. But Tamar could not help that. She would have to come. And Cindy? Well Tamar did not intend to let her out of her sight if she could help it. Cindy had not been entirely wrong when she had thought that Tamar knew what she was planning. While having no idea what Cindy was actually planning, Tamar’s considerable intuition told her that Cindy was definitely up to something.
Which was why, several hours later, when Ophelia had finally fallen into an exhausted slumber, Tamar was only pretending to sleep. Cindy was also pretending to sleep. The two women were actually watching each other like cats, Cindy ready to dash, Tamar, to pounce. The tension was palpable.
Eventually Tamar sat up. ‘Okay,’ she said, ‘this is ridiculous.’ She grabbed a terrified Cindy by the shoulders and starting shaking her. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘Who Are You?’
Cindy had been impressed by Tamar’s handling of her former cohorts. Now, she decided, was not the time for prevarication. ‘I – I ‘m a witch,’ she admitted as clearly as her wildly nodding head would allow.
Tamar dropped her arms. ‘O – kay,’ she said slowly, as if thinking this over. A thought occurred to her. ‘So …’ she said, ‘who am I?’
~ Chapter Ten ~
Where does the truth lie? Where does it hide? In people’s heads? In their hearts? Perhaps it all depends on what truth it is you are looking for.
Tamar and Denny knew the truth about themselves, but only one truth. There was another truth, just as true, one that they had forgotten. That they had been made to forget. Where was that truth? Where was it hidden? And if that was the truth, was the truth that they knew, really a lie? And was it really forgotten, or was it just hidden?
Now that Tamar and Denny were looking for the truth, it surely could not remain hidden much longer.
* * *
Cindy was nonplussed, which was, by the way, a common state of affairs, but this time she really had some excuse.
On the other hand, she had an inkling, just a feeling, of what Tamar was getting at. So, she answered. ‘I have no idea what you are, but perhaps Hecaté will know.’
‘Who?’
‘Hecaté, the goddess of witches.’
‘On speaking terms with her are you?’ asked Tamar sarcastically. She could hardly believe she was having this conversation.
‘All witches can call on Hecaté for help,’ Cindy told her. ‘She’s very accessible.
‘Oh.’
‘First I think we should get out of here.’
‘How?’ said Tamar with some of her old asperity, ‘by magic?’
‘Of course.’
Tamar digested this. It was not easy. ‘What about Ophelia?’ she said. ‘She’ll have a nervous breakdown.’
‘What do you mean, she will? She already has.’
‘So …?’
‘So, we’ll take her with us. Drop her off at a hospital somewhere. She’ll be okay, better than here anyway.’
‘Okay good. And where are we going to go?’
‘We’ll go to my place. I need to get some things anyway. To summon Hecaté.’
* * *
Denny was planning to go AWOL. As much as he needed to get back to Tamar, he also needed some answers, and home was the place to get them. Captain Stiles might have been another source, but, unless he was a most consummate actor, it was fairly evident that he knew as little about what was going on as Denny himself.
He laid his plans carefully and slipped out of the hospital in the early hours of the morning. That would give him a good four hours before his absence was noticed, and, by the time it had been reported and verified and the MP’s had been notified, he would have another hour at least maybe two. Denny grinned. Thank God for good old army efficiency. With papers made up for him using Karl Morris’s tags he hoped to get as far as the air field. From there it would be easy. And, since they would be looking for Corporal Sanger, even if he was stopped, so what? He was Private Morris, and he could prove it.
This was getting ridiculous, he thought. Just how many people could one man be in a lifetime? He was already two of him.
* * *
Tamar took to the teleporting like a Djinn to a bottle, so to speak. It felt disturbingly familiar. Also, it was fun.
With Ophelia safely deposited in hospital, Tamar felt like she could breathe easier. She wondered vaguely what the soldiers would think when they found their captives mysteriously flown, but she had other things on her mind.
Cindy’s house was a surprise. She had expected s
omething a little more austere or perhaps even gothic. Certainly not the abundance of pink roses and chintz that met her eye. Cindy was, after all, by her own admission, a witch. And she favoured black for clothing as most witches do. (Cindy also liked black because it showed off her bright hair nicely.) But as far as interior décor was concerned, she apparently preferred the feminine approach. Her living room was the only thing that might have given away her true age – it was firmly stuck in the 1980s.
Cindy had that look on her face, that look of modest pride, which some women have when they are showing you their baby. Tamar was evidently expected to gush and say: ‘Oooh, how lovely.’ But Tamar never said anything that she did not mean (which is not the same as saying what you do not mean– sometimes silence is golden). Instead, she got right to the point. You might think that under the circumstances, Cindy would have been in control of the situation, since it was her goddess that they were summoning, and her idea to summon her. Not to mention that she knew how to do it, and Tamar did not. But this was not the case. Tamar had never found herself in a situation that she was not in command of, and this was no different.
‘So, let’s get started then.’ It was a command, not a request.
‘Well, I ought to do it in private really,’ Cindy demurred.
‘Why?’ said Tamar flatly.
‘Well …’
‘We’re summoning this god person for my benefit aren’t we?’
‘Yes, I …’
‘So, I ought to be in on it, oughtn’t I?’
‘It’s just that I …’
‘Anyway, two heads are better than one.’
‘I really think …’
‘I should be there. Why are you being so secretive, what have you got to hide?’
‘Nothing, I just …’
‘I want to see you do it. Anyone would think you were making the whole thing up, the way you’re going on. Come on, let’s get on with it.’ She propelled Cindy into the kitchen. ‘In here, is it?’
Cindy made a last ditch attempt to assert some authority. ‘Look, it really …’
‘Now!’ insisted Tamar.
‘I knew I’d see it your way,’ sighed Cindy. ‘No, not in there, we’ll try scrying first, it’s quicker.
‘Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?’ intoned Tamar sarcastically.
The embarrassed look on Cindy’s face strongly indicated that this was, in fact, what the mirror was usually used for, as Tamar would have seen, had she been able to see her from this angle.
She continued to gaze into the mirror with an expression of acute concentration on her face. From Tamar’s point of view, she did not actually appear to be doing anything. Then the mirror went cloudy.
The scrying had a peculiar effect on Tamar. For one thing, the actual business was bringing on the déjà vu in the worst way. And then there was the fact that she only half believed it. And when Hecaté actually appeared in the mirror Tamar was overcome with a mass of conflicting feelings. She did not believe it, and yet she had to. She was overawed and, at the same time, frankly sceptical. And worst of all, the appearance of Hecaté brought on the worst déjà vu of all. She had seen her before; she knew she had. And yet, she also knew that she could not have. She was sure she would remember something like that. But memory had become a treacherous thing.
Hecaté’s opening line was encouraging. She looked Cindy squarely in the eye, and said: ‘You took your time did you not?’ She glanced at Tamar and added. ‘Both of you.’
She answered their gaping looks with a tinkling laugh. ‘What did you expect?’ she said. ‘I am a goddess, you know.’
‘So, you know then?’ asked Tamar.
‘Oh yes, pretty much everything. That is, I can see what has happened, but not how it has happened. But it does not matter I suppose …’
‘What has happened?’ interrupted Tamar. Cindy trembled, but Hecaté just smiled – austerely – remotely. ‘Ah, but you already know, do you not? Look inside yourself. These are answers that you have to find for yourself. If I tell you, you will never be sure whether they are your true memories, or those that I have given back to you.’
‘Can it really matter?’ asked Tamar.
‘It matters very much,’ Hecaté told her. ‘Why should you believe anything I say? You would never be sure. And you will need to be sure.’
Tamar shook her head. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Think of it like this,’ said Hecaté. ‘Suppose you had had a terrible accident and lost your memory. You cannot remember anything, not even your own name. Somebody – a person you were close to, but whom you cannot remember, tells you your name. So, you now know your name, but you have not remembered it for yourself. You only have this person’s word for it. Understand?’
Tamar nodded.
‘And you do not even know this person. As far as you are concerned, he could be anybody. Until you regain your memory, you have no idea if this person is telling the truth or not. And anything he tells you about yourself has to be taken on faith, because you have no memory of it. It is not real to you. But it becomes real. You assimilate it into your mind until it almost feels as if it is a memory. But it is not. Then your memory begins to return, how then do you differentiate between the real memories, the ones from your own consciousness and those that you have been given?’
‘I can’t,’ Tamar supplied the answer.
‘Exactly. And thus you will never be certain how much of your memory is actual memory and how much is information that you have been supplied with.’
‘Have I had an accident?’
‘In a way, although I would characterise it as more of an attack really. It was certainly done deliberately.
‘Can’t you tell me anything?’
‘Oh, yes, you would not have summoned me if I could not help you at all.’
‘Okay, what can you tell me?’
‘That you are not who you think you are, but you know that, do you not? The world has been changed. Once you find the truth within yourself, you will know how to put the world back as it was.’
‘How do you know all this?’
‘I am not mortal. I have been unaffected by the change in the world. I still have my memories of the world as it was. I can see both the new world, in my memory, and the old.’
Hecaté sighed and looked wistfully at Tamar. ‘And I know it is within you also.’ she said. You are a far more powerful being than I.’
Then her manner changed suddenly. She looked at Tamar with pity and love as she said: ‘He is not dead. There was a mistake. He knows of it, and he is on his way back to you.’
Tamar’s head spun. But it never occurred to her to doubt that it was the truth. As soon as the words were spoken, she knew, realised that in some deep part of her soul she had always known. If he had really died, would she not also be dead by now?
Then another thought struck her. ‘What do you mean, I’m far more powerful than you?’
She glared into the mirror. At her own reflection. Hecaté had gone
‘Who was she talking about?’ asked Cindy.
* * *
News from home was so hard to get now that the Americans were in occupation, but Denny had ascertained that many of the country’s large estates had been taken over. So there was at least a chance that the Buffington-Smythe home was now in the hands of the enemy. This was worrying. In any case, that was where he intended to head for, but, under these circumstances, it might be prudent to change his identity again. His American accent needed very little improvement, the American culture being such a large part of the British one these days. Denny had seen every single episode of “Friends”. And, after all that he had already been through to get this far, stealing an American uniform should not be too difficult.
He was currently in France, having blagged a ride on a troop transport from Italy. He had reached Italy in much the same way, only by plane. Troops were being moved about all over the place at the moment. It made Denny very awa
re of the scale of this war.
But getting to England from here would not be easy. There were no troops headed for England except American ones. Well, he intended to become an American sooner or later anyway – why not make it sooner?
~Chapter Eleven ~
Second Lieutenant Jamie Adams was not a happy man. This was not the army he had joined. He had been shocked at the callous way his commanding officer had shot those three English guys. And, like most of the participants, he did not understand this war. What had the English ever done to America? He liked the English; he had nothing against them. But he hated the English weather being a Californian by birth, with the typical Californian looks, tanned and fair-haired, with blue eyes. Although his tan was fading, in the endless rain of European weather, and he was beginning to look washed out
And he wandered through the house (and it was the house) feeling like a trespasser. So, he had many reasons for wishing in his secret heart that he was not here.
He was also concerned about the women in the cellar. Some of these guys had had enough booze as was good for them; most of them were good lads, but you always got a few bad apples, and the women’s good looks had not escaped attention. He went down to the cellar and made sure that it was locked. It was, so he never thought to check that the women were still there. Then he pocketed the key. They would be safe for the night now, he thought. Tomorrow they would be moved to a prisoner camp, and their fate would no longer be his concern. But as long as it was, he intended to see that nothing happened to them. Not on his watch.
As he made his way back up the stone steps, a silvery gleam just above his head caught his eye. He stepped back to get a better look. There was a small alcove set into the stone wall at an inconvenient level. Had it not contained something shiny, no one would ever have noticed it. That, he thought, was probably the idea. A hiding place. Intrigued, he reached up, although he was a tall man, his hand only just brushed the lip of the alcove.
‘A dammed good hiding place,’ he thought.
He thought for a moment and reached for the rifle slung on his back. Raising it above his head, he poked about with it in the alcove until he managed to dislodge the shiny thing. It fell with a clatter on the step. He picked it up curiously. It was some type of large dagger in an intricately patterned sheath. The sheath was dull as if it had developed a patina over silver. It was the handle that was shiny. He drew it out and looked at it. The blade was also a dull silver grey colour. In the dim light, it did not look particularly interesting. Jamie shrugged and sheathed it again then slung it in his pack. He would take another look at it later maybe, in a better light.
The Day Before Tomorrow Page 4
