Come Back to Me by Jody Hedlund
~ 5 ~
“MARIAN?” Harrison’s voice came from behind her again. Fingers circled around her hand and pressed her flesh. “What is it, love? You look as though you’ve seen a ghost.”
She glanced down to find him in his wheelchair right beside her.
Her gaze shifted back to the horse and rider. But they had disappeared. She searched the manor entrance and driveway, but the man and beast were nowhere to be found. The trees on the lawn were gone, the grass was trimmed, and the side wings of the house stood in place. All the decorative architecture had returned, and the shield that bore the coat of arms was no longer in the spot above the center arch.
Hadshe seen a ghost?
She swayed and grabbed on to Harrison, suddenly so tired she felt as though she might collapse.
“Bojing, go get Drake.” Harrison motioned to his driver standing next to the Bentley, which was parked in the same spot as before. “Inform him I need his assistance right away bringing Marian inside.”
She wanted to tell Harrison she’d be fine, that she didn’t need any help. But once again a breeze wafted over her, bringing with it the odor of horseflesh and the distinct sound of a neigh. The lower manor window winked with light for several seconds then went dark.
What was going on?
She caught sight of the outline of a broad figure once more, but then he was gone and Harrison’s butler, Drake, took his place and was hurrying toward her, out the door before Bojing could summon him. Immaculately attired in a suit, vest, and bow tie, Drake looked as though he’d stepped out of the 1850s like Harrison. With thin stooped shoulders and graying hair, the butler had always struck Marian as grandfatherly.
Before she could protest, he scooped her up into his arms and was carrying her as easily as a baby. He might appear old and weak, but his years of assisting and lifting Harrison had given him strength that belied his age.
“I can walk, Drake. Really.”
“It’s no trouble, miss.”
“Jet lag is catching up to me.” She knew she should wiggle to free herself, but a wave of exhaustion crashed over her, and she gave way to a yawn.
As they crossed into the entrance hall, she couldn’t keep from peering around for a glimpse of the stranger. Somehow she sensed he was there, though she didn’t see him. The hall was big enough to be a room in its own right. It had a shiny white marble floor and was lined with oak paneling milled from trees once grown on the estate. Most impressive, however, were the dozen columns that supported a center dome decorated with stained glass circles depicting local game birds.
One side of the entrance hall opened to the main drawing room, and the other side led to the staircase hall, which contained wide oak steps that rose to a balcony with more of the richly carved dark oak.
While Harrison steered his wheelchair toward the elevator, Drake carried her up the spiraling stairway past paintings of the long-deceased people who’d once roamed the halls of Harrison’s home. At one of the guest chambers, a maid met them and ushered them into a large room with a marble fireplace taking up one wall and two long windows curtained with thick tapestries on another. A hall branched off into a boudoir complete with a private bathroom, walk-in closet, and a mirrored room that contained a settee, dressing table, and a jewelry armoire.
Drake deposited her onto the canopied bed with a lush blue spread and curtains. The color reminded her of the eyes of the man she’d seen outside the entrance.
“There you are, miss.”
“Thank you, Drake.” Marian yawned again, fatigue rushing in and making her tremble.
The maid tried to pry the papers and ampulla out of her hands, but Marian wasn’t ready to let go. She wanted to examine everything again, especially the ampulla, and try to figure out what had just happened to her. But the thick heaviness of slumber settled over her. Her eyes closed, and even as she fought to stay awake, she fell asleep in an instant.
* * *
Marian’s lashes fluttered open. For several seconds, she couldn’t make sense of where she was. But as she focused on the canopy overhead, images flooded her mind—the strange changes to Chesterfield Park, the large horse riding down the driveway, and the ruggedly handsome man with the knife.
“Marian? Are you awake?” Harrison spoke from her bedside.
She shifted to the sight of him, disheveled and haggard in his wheelchair, his dark hair mussed, his bow tie gone, and the top of his dress shirt unbuttoned.
Her fingers made contact with a silky bedspread before sliding to the satin nightgown she was wearing. Who had undressed her? The maid? And what had happened to the items from her dad’s safety deposit box?
Her gaze darted around.
“They’re right here.” Harrison cocked his head to the bedside table to the stack of wrinkled papers and the ampulla.
She released a breath. “Thank you.”
“How are you faring?”
“I’m fine. How long have I been asleep?”
“Twenty-four hours.”
“What?” She rose to her elbows and glanced to the windows. The heavy draperies were half open, revealing the faded light of the evening and darkening sky.
“I was getting so worried about you, I debated phoning my doctor to come have a look, but then you roused and insisted you were fine.”
“I did?” She didn’t have any recollection of waking up. Apparently the past few stressful days and sleepless nights had caught up to her.
“I hope you’re feeling better now?”
“Much.” She stretched her legs, but then froze as she remembered why she was at Chesterfield Park in England to begin with. “Dad? How is he?”
“His condition is unchanged.”
She dropped back against a mound of pillows, unsure whether to be relieved he wasn’t worse or disappointed he wasn’t better. Either way, she needed to get to the hospital and be with him again.
As though sensing her urgency, Harrison pressed her hand. “I’ve spent a few hours with him today and instructed the hospital staff to phone immediately if there’s any change whatsoever.”
“Thank you. I suppose you called Ellen?”
“I considered it, but there’s too much danger here now. And I’m not keen on her walking into the middle of it.”
“Good point.” Marian was just glad she’d been the one attacked outside the bank and not her sister or Harrison.
“What happened when we arrived home yesterday?” Harrison’s question cut through her haze. The dark circles under his eyes attested to his sleeplessness in the midst of her long hours of slumber.
Her thoughts flew back to when she’d stepped out of Harrison’s car, the startlingly real encounter with the man, and then the exhaustion afterward.
Harrison picked up a gold-rimmed porcelain cup from the bedside table, blew on the steam rising from it, and took a sip. When he replaced it to the saucer, his expression was grave. “For a while, I couldn’t keep from wondering if you were going to fall into a coma like Arthur.”
She wanted to pretend the incident had been nothing more than a dream, but how could she deny what she’d seen, especially in light of everything she’d learned since emptying the safety deposit box. “I tasted some of the residue left in the ampulla.”
Harrison sat up straighter. “What about it?”
“It caused me to have a vision.”
“One of the realistic visions of the past Arthur mentioned?” Harrison nodded again toward the papers on the bedside table.
The sights, smells, and sounds of her experience lingered, perhaps had stayed with her during her slumber. Could she really describe what had happened as merely a vision? But what else could it have been? For several minutes, she described to Harrison the horse and man and old manor and surrounding yard. When she finished, Harrison watched her with wide eyes.
“I don’t think I was just seeing it. Everything was so real, almost as if I was standing in the past.” Did Harrison think she was crazy? She certainly felt like it. “What do you think?”
He was silent before expelling a breath. “I can only conclude Arthur’s research is solid. The water in that flask was indeed original holy water. Since you’re already healthy, the slight bit you ingested passed through you without any inhibition from illness or disease. Without the friction from the diseased cells, it began to vibrate at a frequency and wavelength that shifted you to another time. There’s absolutely no other way to work it out.”
For a heartbeat, she waited for Harrison’s solemnity to dissolve into laughter, for him to say he was jesting and then launch into what he really thought based on solid empirical and scientific reasoning.
But his eyes didn’t contain any mirth. And his lips didn’t twitch into even the barest of smiles.
She stared up at the rich blue bed canopy, her brain working frantically to come up with another answer. “Surely as scientists, we can discover something more plausible, more realistic. Perhaps the drug from the ampulla has some kind of hallucinogenic property.”
“Or perhaps it truly contained the holy water related to one of the two ancient seeds Arthur suspected came from the Tree of Life. Perhaps a water source came into contact with the seeds and gained properties that can heal illnesses.”
“I don’t know . . .”
“In trying to make sense of the ampulla and the healing water, I’ve done loads of researching.” Harrison waved at the stacks of books piled on the floor around his wheelchair. “I discovered there are two primary locations in the UK for many of the miraculous healings that occurred over the centuries.”
Her dad’s library in his terraced home was nothing compared to Harrison’s, which at one time housed over fifty thousand books. During past visits, Marian always wandered through the library looking at the built-in wall shelves with a sense of awe. Most of the books were as ancient as the house.
Harrison bent and retrieved the top book, a crusty volume with a spine curling up at the edges. “One of the spots is in Walsingham in Norfolk where there are several wells once believed to cause visions and heal illnesses. In 1061, a wealthy noblewoman by the name of Lady Richeldis de Faverches claimed the well water gave her three visions in which she saw the Virgin Mary and the house Mary lived in when the angel appeared to her in Nazareth.”
“But what does this have to do with the ampulla and the healing water?”
“It’s entirely possible one of the sacred seeds from the Tree of Life ended up in Walsingham and was eventually planted so that its life-giving properties infiltrated the ground and seeped into a natural wellspring. It would certainly explain the realistic visions as well as the many miraculous healings that occurred there.”
“Supposed healings.”
Harrison picked up another book. “The Pynson Ballad, thought to have been written in the 1460s. It documents the healings at Walsingham.” He carefully turned the brittle, yellowed pages until he reached one marked by a sticky note. Then he began to read. “Many sick have been cured, the dead revived, the lame made whole, the blind have had their sight restored. Deaf-mutes, lunatics, and lepers have all been made well. People troubled by evil spirits have experienced deliverance. Also souls suffering from inner problems have found comfort. Every human suffering, bodily or spiritual, can find a remedy here.”
Marian’s own suffering soul warred within her. She didn’t want to believe in such tales. But why would an ancient historian make it all up?
Harrison closed the book, discarded it, and rummaged through a different stack. “I know the healings sound strange, love. But everything I’ve read supports Arthur’s theory.”
If she hadn’t experienced the realistic vision for herself yesterday, she would have scoffed at Harrison. But there was a part of her now that needed to understand the intricacies of her dad’s research.
Harrison picked up the thick tome St. Thomas, His Death and Miracles and began paging through it. “This book documents the writings of two monks, Benedict of Peterborough and William of Canterbury. They recorded over seven hundred miracles between the two of them in separate documents.”
“In Canterbury?”
Harrison nodded.
“So you think the second seed from the Tree of Life ended up in Canterbury?” What was she saying? Did she believe in the seeds now too? Was she going crazy right along with Harrison and her dad?
“After Thomas Becket’s death,” Harrison said, “the monks began to sell holy water to the pilgrims. That’s when the miracles started happening.”
“What if they made up the miracles to sell more holy water?” Yes, she had faith God could intervene and perform miracles when he chose to. But she also believed too many frauds worked for their own benefit and fame just as much in the present as they had in the past.
Harrison flipped through more pages. “The accounts of the two monks are quite amazing. If they’d just wanted money, then why record hundreds when a dozen would have sufficed?”
This whole conversation was insane. “If a seed from the Tree of Life ended up in Canterbury, why wasn’t it discovered earlier? Why at Becket’s death?”
Harrison dug through the books again and pulled out another. “It’s possible that like in Walsingham, the seed somehow ended up in the ground, distributing its life-giving qualities into a nearby underground spring. Thus the wellspring in Canterbury could have been in existence long before Becket’s death.”
He opened the brittle pages to a place with a sticky note. “I found the account of St. Mildred, an abbess in 690, who was rumored to have miraculous healing powers. It’s possible she stumbled upon the Canterbury wellspring and used the water in mixing herbal remedies.”
Marian was silent, trying to digest everything Harrison had researched while she’d been sleeping. He seemed convinced the miracles recorded at Walsingham and Canterbury were somehow related to the mythical seeds from the Tree of Life.
“If there really were wellsprings that contained traces of residue from the Tree of Life, then why can’t people be healed from the springs today? After all, people still make pilgrimages to the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham and to Canterbury Cathedral.”
Harrison picked up his cup of tea and leaned back in his wheelchair. “I’ve made a study of that. And while I’m still a bit muddled, my guess is that things changed drastically when King Henry the VIII destroyed the holy places during his Reformation. He had the wells at Walsingham filled in completely with the rubble from the shrine. The entire place sat in disrepair for so long that perhaps the original wellspring dried up or was buried deeper in the earth so that it’s no longer readily available.”
“And the same happened to the wellspring in Canterbury?”
Harrison sipped his tea before responding. “Some say a natural spring exists beneath the crypt of the cathedral. Other speculations point to a wellspring at a priory which was a short distance away from the cathedral.”
Marian stifled a yawn, surprised to discover she was tired again. “This is all very interesting, Harrison. But you know we sound like we’re spouting nonsense from a science fiction novel, don’t you?”
Harrison nodded somewhat sheepishly. “I feel as mad as I’m sure I sound.”
She wanted to dismiss everything he’d told her as easily as she’d always tossed aside her dad’s ramblings. But she needed answers. And right now, Harrison’s propositions were certainly logical.
A gust of wind whistled in the fireplace at the same time the windowpanes rattled, startling her so that she pushed up from the mattress. Suddenly chilled, she pulled the covers up to her chin. The bedside lamp was on, but it didn’t reach the corners of the large room. Out of the corner of her eyes, she thought she saw a shadow and movement near one of the curtains, but when she looked, nothing was there.
Did she need to accept the possibility she’d had more than a hallucination or vision yesterday? That her body had spanned two eras, and she’d stood directly in the past? If her father was right about the Tree of Life, then she couldn’t overlook his speculations about breaching the time-space continuum, could she?
“I’ve been a complete cad for going on so long.” Harrison frowned, powering his wheelchair in reverse toward the bell pull on the wall. “You need nourishment. I’ll ring for the maid.”
“Harrison, tell me the truth. Do you really think the residue shifted me to another time?” The idea made her skin prickle. She peered into the corner again, expecting to see more shadows or fluttery movements. But everything was motionless.
His wheelchair tire bumped the wall. He switched off the motor before tugging on the bell pull. “Full disclosure. I’m not an expert on the physics of time and space, but from the little I’ve studied, physicists agree that time is not sequential but is simultaneous.”
“Not sequential?”
“Time doesn’t happen in a straight line from beginning to end. Rather it exists in a block universe, where past, present, and future are equally real and present. Thus, those who claim to have had so-called ghost sightings may in fact have stumbled upon an overlap, putting two structures of reality together.”
“If that’s true, then people could overlap with the future too.”
“You’re quite right. Think about the prophets in the Bible who had glimpses of the future. The Apostle Paul claims to have been taken up to the third heaven, possibly outside of his body. And the writer of the book of Revelation is said to have witnessed the future happenings firsthand as they were unfolding.”
She cracked a smile. “Are you sure you’re not a physicist? You sound like you have it all figured out.”
He smiled in return. “No, I’m nothing more than a deluded chemist.”
A soft rap on the door was followed by a maid poking her head inside. “You rang, Lord Burlington?”
As Harrison gave instructions to the servant, Marian snuggled back into the pillows, relishing the softness of the bed and warmth of the comforter. Her eyes ached with the need for more sleep, and she almost closed them, except once again a movement by the window caught her attention.
This time when she looked, she didn’t see a shadow. She saw the outline of a man standing and peering outside. The curtains were gone. Instead, long wooden shutters had been thrown open, revealing a starlit sky. An early moon gave enough light for her to realize she was looking at the man she’d encountered yesterday. The square jaw, muscled cheekbones, and strong nose were all the same. His head was devoid of a covering, revealing shoulder-length dark hair pulled back with a leather strip.
Unlike previously, she wasn’t afraid. She knew now what was happening. But she was too utterly and completely fascinated by what she was seeing to do anything but stare.
He lifted a hand to rub his eyes, and the muscles in his arm rippled in the moonlight. Only then did she realize he was bare from the waist up, wearing pants that looked more like tights that ended at the knees. His chest was every bit as sculpted as his arms, broad and taut, with strength emanating from every bulging muscle.
Wow. He was gorgeous. In fact, he had the kind of body that belonged to a firefighter or boxer or hockey player. The kind of body that could turn heads and weaken knees. The kind of body that deserved to be on the cover of Men’s Health magazine.
As though sensing he was no longer alone, he shifted away from the soft glow coming in the window, shrouding his face in darkness. She couldn’t be sure if he saw her, but he remained motionless, and from the intensity of his stance, he seemed to be staring at her.
A breeze from the open window ruffled her unbound hair and brought with it an unfamiliar woodsy-smoky scent, as if someone was having a late spring bonfire. The chill in the air was distinct, unlike the warm coziness from moments ago.
The stranger stepped away from the corner. Though the darkness still veiled his face, the tenseness of his posture, the rigidness of his spine, the angle of his head were signs he was very much aware of her presence, that she was as real to him as he was to her.
“I’ve ordered a meal for you.” Harrison’s voice was faint, as though he was speaking from a distance. Could Harrison see the man too?
She shifted only slightly, but in that instant, the man disappeared.
Where had he gone? She stared hard, hoping her vision would clear, waiting breathlessly for him to materialize.
“You saw him again, didn’t you?” Harrison’s quiet question came from right beside the bed.
Only then did she realize she was sitting on her knees, her hands clutched at her sides, and her body stiff with anticipation. “He was in the room.”
“Is he still here?”
She strained to see anything, even just a shadow, in the spot where the man had stood. But the curtains were back, the window was closed, the air was warm with only the lingering scent of Harrison’s Earl Grey tea. “No. He’s gone.”
Harrison’s expression was serious, and she had no doubt he believed her, although she wasn’t sure why any sane person would.