Mariana

by Susanna Kearsley

  I found I could not take my eyes from his face. Each nuance of expression, each flutter of an eyelid, seemed more precious to me now than life itself. There had been several long moments when he had scarce seemed to breathe at all, but I fancied he looked stronger now.

  It had been a terrible shock to see him stretched long and gray upon his cloak, on the cold stone floor of the narrow alcove beneath the tower, his head resting against the base of the ancient baptismal font, his chin lolling awkwardly against his shoulder. I hadn’t seen the blood at first—it did not show upon the black cloth of his coat—but his shirt was stiff with it, and the smell of it clung sickly to my nostrils.

  His were brave wounds, and bravely won. The king, I’d heard, had been warned in time, and with Richard had faced and scattered the traitors in my uncle’s charge. Four men lay dead upon the downs, the king was safely on his way to Oxford, and Richard… I dared not finish the thought. Some might have called it a fair exchange, for a king’s life. I did not.

  Above our heads, glass saints gazed down impassively upon us from the arched stone tracery of the window. The church felt somehow different in the dead of night, and it was not the cold alone that made me shiver. Richard felt it, too, and smiled faintly in the flickering light.

  “When I was a lad,” he mused, “I feared this place after sunset. I thought the tombs might open up beneath my feet, if I did step upon them. And the chancel seemed alive with the ghosts of monks and priests long dead. If I screw my eyes up I can see them still, come to visit with me. Perhaps they would have me join them.”

  “Don’t talk foolish,” I said. His voice was coming from very far away, and it frightened me.

  “’Tis only talk,” he assured me, grinning. “And I’d think it unlikely that the priests would welcome a heathen like myself into their number. Besides, my ghost will be busy enough, watching over you.”

  “Do you mean to haunt me, then?”

  “Ay.” His eyes were very warm on mine. “You’ll not be rid of me so easily.” His gaze slid away again, this time beyond my shoulder to the altar. “What a mystery is death,” he said, slowly. “‘The undiscovered country,’ Shakespeare called it, and we do fear to travel to new lands. But surely foreign shores are filled with possibilities?” He frowned. “I met a man once, at the French king’s court, who claimed he’d lived in Roman times, and dined at Caesar’s table. I thought him mad,” he recalled, vaguely, “and like as not he was. But what if he were not?”

  I shivered again. “Must we speak of death?”

  “If it is true that men have souls that do survive them,” he went on, ignoring me, “and if those souls are born again to life, you need not worry that my ghost will haunt you. I’ll haunt you in the flesh, instead.”

  My eyes were gently skeptical. “And how would I know you, pray, in another body?”

  “’Tis simple.” He brought his hand up with an effort, turning his fingers round to show me the heavy crested ring he wore. “Look you here, and remember. ’Tis the hooded hawk of the de Mornays. The hood may blind it, and yet it sees more clearly than the sighted.”

  “You mean that I should trust my heart.”

  “More than your heart. Your soul.” His hand lifted higher, and clasped mine strongly. “Feel that, love. There’s nothing can break that. We are two parts of the one whole, you and I. The hawk mates for life, and our lives are but beginning. Faith,” he said, smiling, “d’you think I’d let a little thing like the grave come between us?”

  “I’ll not lose you.” My voice wavered.

  His large hand loosed its grip on mine. “Take this ring from my finger.”

  “Richard…”

  “Take you my ring,” he repeated, “and keep it with you.”

  His tone was stubborn, and so I obeyed, sliding the great ring from his outstretched finger. The ring was cold, as his hands were cold, and I held it tenderly in my palm, blinking back the rising wetness of my eyes.

  “Remember that hawk, Mariana Farr,” he told me gently, “and seek me not with your eyes, but with your soul. The soul sees what truly matters.”

  A single tear spilled hotly from my eye and trailed a path down my cheek, and he caught it with one finger. I tried to smile at him but could not, and as my mouth began to tremble a flash of pain burnt briefly in his eyes and he slid his hand behind my head, drawing me down to him.

  I tasted the salt on my own lips, and the bitter taste of blood on his. It was a desperate kiss, the sort of kiss that marks a lovers’ parting, a kiss of sorrow and regret and a kind of blind and wordless promise. I would have risen up when it was finished, but he held me close, his hand stroking my hair.

  “I’ll hurt your chest,” I protested, but he shook his head.

  “I am past pain,” he lied, “and I’ve always had a fancy to die in my lover’s arms. ’Tis most romantic.” His words slurred ever so slightly, and after a few minutes the movement of his hand on my hair slowed, then stopped altogether.

  My own chest tightened. “Don’t leave me.” The plea broke from me in a tortured whisper that I could not stop. “Oh, please, Richard… please stay…”

  “Don’t be afraid,” he told me, brushing my hair with a kiss. “I am indestructible, remember? I do but sleep a little while.”

  I raised my head and looked at him. Even in that poor light, I could see the truth that I had dreaded. “No,” I whispered painfully. “Oh, please God, no. Richard…”

  “Another time,” he promised. He smiled and closed his eyes.

  After a long moment I turned my face against his shoulder and let the sorrow claim me in great racking sobs, feeling nothing save the hollow ache of grief. I tried desperately to hold him, but he would not stay. The fine thick coat beneath my cheek stiffened, grew colder, and finally turned to flat, unyielding stone. I clenched my hand more tightly round his ring, but that, too, dissolved into emptiness. Behind my closed eyelids, the light changed subtly and I felt the first faint touch of sunlight warm upon my skin.

  I was alone in the church.

  ***

  I don’t know how long I lay there, with my face upon the damp stone floor, grieving against the wishes of a man who had been dead for more than three centuries. At length I pushed myself, slowly, to my feet, brushing the lingering tears from my face with an absent hand and lifting my eyes to the sad-eyed saints in the glowing window above me.

  “Julia.” The voice, coming from the shadowed porch behind me, made me jump. “Julia,” Mrs. Hutherson said again, quietly authoritative, “it’s time for us to go.”

  I turned round, confused.

  “There’ll be Holy Communion at eight o’clock,” she explained, “and it’s nearly seven, now.”

  Of course, I thought. Sunday morning. I did not think to question Alfreda Hutherson’s presence in the church—it seemed quite logical that she should be there, waiting. I had no urge to question anything. The open wound of grief had numbed my mind. Blankly, I nodded at her, and took a few dragging steps along the nave towards the altar, reading the worn names beneath my feet. “Where is he?” I asked.

  “There.” She pointed. “Beside his father.”

  “There is no name.”

  “Yes, well.” She smiled faintly, stepping forward. “There is an explanation. It was the plague, you see. A month from Richard’s death the plague came to Exbury, and the village mason was among the many who died. It was more than a year before they found another mason, and by that time Richard’s nephew Arthur was installed at the manor house, and did not wish to spend his money to have the stone carved.”

  “The plague came here?”

  “Oh, yes. It was quite devastating. One out of every three people died of it, I believe. Nearly wiped the village from the map.”

  “But Mariana lived.” I smiled humorlessly at the cold stone slab beneath my
feet.

  “Yes. Of course,” she qualified, “she was not here, then. She went away, with Caroline, for several months.”

  “I see.” I was only half listening. “What happened to the ring?”

  “Which ring?”

  “Richard’s silver ring, with the crest upon it. He gave it to Mariana, to remember him by.”

  “Oh, that.” She nodded. “Come, and I’ll show you.”

  I followed her out of the stale, silent church, and into the clear morning sunlight. The rain had stopped at last, and the world was fresh and clean and sweetly scented. High overhead the hawk was sailing, shrill-voiced and graceful, feathers spread to catch the rising currents in the air. By the churchyard wall, Mrs. Hutherson stopped walking and pointed downwards. “There,” she said. “That’s where the ring is, now.”

  We were standing on Mariana’s grave.

  “She wore it always,” she continued. “On a chain around her neck. John Howard found it when she died, and had her buried with it.”

  “John…” I shook my head slightly, trying to clear my muddled thoughts. “But John Howard died in infancy. Jabez killed him. I saw it happen.”

  “Yes.” She slanted an odd look at me. “Curious, isn’t it? Come along, now. It’s time you had a cup of good, strong tea, and something to eat.”

  I obeyed mechanically, without really thinking, and a short while later found myself once again ensconced in my chair in the manor-house kitchen, facing Mrs. Hutherson across the familiar teapot. The breakfast she made me was large and appetizing, but I chewed my food without tasting it, my mind drifting stubbornly back to that single point.

  “John Howard died,” I said again. And yet, John Howard had lived to bury Mariana, some sixty years later. And John Howard had once owned the lap desk that I had bought at the estate sale, the desk that had held the gilt bracelet ringed with blue-eyed birds of paradise…

  “Five people knew of the child’s death,” she pointed out, counting them off on her fingers. “Jabez Howard, who also died that night. Mariana and Caroline, who concealed it. And Richard de Mornay’s two servants, the steward and the maid, both of whom kept the secret.”

  I shook my head. “But why? Why would anyone bother to…?” The answer struck me suddenly, and I lifted my eyes, startled. “Oh, Lord.”

  Mrs. Hutherson refilled my teacup. “Could you not feel the child, inside you?”

  “No. I mean, I didn’t pay much attention to it.”

  “Caroline knew.” Her tone was firm. “She even helped in her own way. She went away with Mariana, into the country, just the two of them. And when they returned to Exbury in the spring, to Greywethers, they brought with them a baby called John. There was hardly anyone left who could remember the child, or judge with certainty his age. So Mariana kept Richard’s baby, and her reputation, and Caroline—Caroline kept her Johnnie.”

  I stared silently into my untouched cup of tea. “I’d love to have seen him,” I said, finally. “Richard’s child.”

  “You can see him, if you want to.”

  “How?”

  “My dear,” her eyes were kind, “you are not stuck in time, though it may seem that way. It’s true your recollections have all followed a chronological order—what happened in September then, will happen in September now, that’s true. But you have already skipped ahead, on one occasion.”

  I blinked at her. “I have?”

  “The stables,” she said. “Remember? You went inside the stables once, and saw Richard’s horse. Well, that was a memory out of order. It happened in May, as I recall, but at that time in 1665 Mariana hadn’t even arrived in Exbury.” She looked at me to make certain I was following along. “The scene that you remembered was a later one, from the following year.”

  I tried to remember the exact incident. I had gone inside the stables, and I had seen Navarre standing in his stall. That much I remembered. And then…

  “Someone was whistling,” I recalled suddenly. “Outside. It sounded like Evan Gilroy.”

  “Anyhow,” she went on, “it is possible to see episodes from different times in your life as Mariana Farr, if you want to. Just try it, and you’ll see. But,” she warned, “you haven’t much time left.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She leveled her gaze on mine. “You remember I told you that your journey was a circle?”

  “Yes.” I nodded. “You said that I had to go all the way round before I’d understand the purpose of it all.”

  “Right. Well, the circle is almost closed. And in a short while, perhaps a very short while, you won’t be able to live Mariana’s life anymore.”

  I stared at her. “You mean I’ll forget what happened?”

  “Heavens, no.” She hastened to reassure me. “No, those memories are a part of your essential makeup, Julia, you’ll never forget them. You just won’t be able to live them anymore. You understand?”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “It’s too easy, you see, to get trapped in the past. The past is very seductive. People always talk about the mists of time, you know, but really it’s the present that’s in a mist, uncertain. The past is quite clear, and warm, and comforting. That’s why people often get stuck there.”

  I struggled to absorb the thought, unhappy.

  “It’s better this way,” she told me gently. “Really it is. Otherwise you might go on reliving that single summer, year after year, when you ought to be getting on with life in the here and now.”

  “And how much longer will it be,” I asked, “before the circle closes, as you say?”

  Mrs. Hutherson smiled. “Not long. You’ll know the moment, when it comes. Are you finished with your breakfast? Yes? Well, then it’s time you were home, in bed. You’ll feel better once you’ve slept, and so, for that matter, will I.” She stifled a yawn. “I’ve had a busy night, keeping up with you.”

  Of course, I thought, a little shamefaced. Someone must have been following me around, opening the doors of the manor house for me, seeing that I came to no harm. Someone had even gone to the bother of oiling the lock on the courtyard door, in preparation for my coming, so that my key would turn.

  I apologized for putting her to such trouble, but she brushed the apology aside.

  “I found it fascinating, to tell the truth,” she admitted. “You never spoke aloud, if you want to know. You only stood, and looked, and reacted. And in the Cavalier bedroom you were the very image of the ghost I’d seen all those years ago. It was Richard’s return that you saw, wasn’t it, that caused you such pain?”

  I nodded. “He fell from his horse, you see. He fell, and then…” I bit my lip, the pain resurfacing, and she leaned across the table to cover my hand with her strong one.

  “I am so sorry, my dear. I forget that you lost him only this morning.”

  I smiled, gathering the pieces of my composure round me like a shield. “It’s odd,” I told her, “that his burial wasn’t noted in the church register.”

  “Not so odd, really.” She rose to clear the table, practical as always. “It was a time of great confusion, the plague year. It’s hard to keep a written record when the world is tumbling down around you. Besides, it’s all worked out for the best, this way.”

  “How’s that?”

  “It was better, I think, that you did not know ahead of time what happened to Mariana and Richard,” she explained mildly. “Better to find out certain things by living them, not by reading them in a book. Would you have been as anxious to go back, do you think, if you had known that Richard would die young?”

  “Perhaps not.” I considered the logic of her argument, and accepted it. “May I ask you something?”

  She smiled. “If it concerns Geoffrey, I’m still not interfering on that front.”

  “It’s nothing to do with Geoff. Actual
ly, it’s about you.”

  “Oh?”

  “The other day, when we were talking, you were about to say something. About you and Jabez Howard, and how you knew his temper.”

  She hesitated, but only for a moment. “He was my brother.”

  I stared at her, realization dawning. “Then that makes you… you must have been…”

  “So you see,” she said, “why I had to help you through this. I’d left you once, when you needed me. Left you to the mercy of my brother, and as a spirit I could only watch and suffer with you when you suffered. This life is my way of making up for that.”

  It should have been a glorious reunion. I should have hugged her, kissed her, wept over her. But I merely sat in my chair, and she went on wiping dishes, and somehow the love and comfort and understanding flowed between us anyway, like waves washing back and forth along a windswept beach. There would be time for talking later. For now, the knowing was enough.

  The plain truth was, I had no more emotion to give at the moment. My grief for Richard was still a living pain, my nerves were strung like tightropes and my eyes were raw and dry with weariness and unshed tears.

  When I finally left the kitchen, instead of leaving by the back door, I went back through the main passageway and out into the courtyard. The air was still, there, and nothing moved. The ivy on the wall had changed color in the autumn air, no longer green alone, but green tinged with vivid crimson and gold, so bright it almost hurt the eyes to look at it. I pushed aside the ivy and stooped, looking for the door.

  It had been oiled, as I suspected. Not just the lock, but the hinges as well. My key was still protruding from the lock, and when I turned and withdrew it the oil came with it and clung to my fingers. I pulled open the little door and stepped out into the lane, closing my hand possessively round the key.