I had fallen on a clear patch of floor directly beneath the bare west window, which accounted for the cool draft I felt on my face and neck. Outside, the first faint rays of daylight illuminated a sky so pale that it appeared almost colorless. I was still wearing the same clothes I had worn to Vivien's the night before, my cotton sweater and skirt crumpled and creased as though I had slept in them.
I was alone in the room.
I pushed myself slowly to a sitting position, paused for breath, and rose carefully to my feet, leaning on the drawing board for support. I felt as dazed and disoriented as Ebenezer Scrooge must have done, when he finally awoke on that famous fictional Christmas morning. There was the corner where my bed had been, I thought, looking around; there the place where I had undressed and laid away my dusty green gown; there the doorway where the girl Rachel had stood, smiling her quick, shy smile.
Wandering into the hallway, I descended the stairs on unsteady legs. The kitchen seemed smaller than I remembered, and I stood frowning a moment until the explanation struck me—the kitchen I had been in last night had had no pantry. My kitchen had probably not been divided in two until Victorian times, if the pantry's cabinets and wood trim were anything to go by.
I moved into the pantry for a closer look, and stopped to run a hand over the north wall. There were no windows here, and the plaster felt rough and uneven, as if it had been slapped on over some existing architectural feature. An open hearth, perhaps ...
'What is happening to me?' I barely whispered the words, but they echoed in the silent space.
Feeling suddenly suffocated, I stumbled back into the kitchen and yanked open the back door, nearly falling into the yard in my rush to get out of the house. A short distance away from the building I stopped, wrapping my arms around my shivering body and taking deep, sobbing breaths of the damp morning air.
Even before the hair lifted along the nape of my neck, I knew that I was being watched. I wheeled to face the oak tree in the hollow, and the dark rider on the gray horse that I knew would be there. A sudden tide of anger, blind and furious, swelled within me.
'Go away!' I shouted at him. 'Go away and leave me alone. I don't want you here!'
Slowly, reluctantly, horse and rider retreated a few paces, and the gray morning mist rose up to fill the place where they had been. Still shaking with the force of my emotions, I hugged myself tighter and lowered my eyes.
Beneath my feet, a sprinkling of delicate blue wildflowers, wet with dew, nestled in the long grass. The ground was level here, and firm, and it was simple enough to see the slight depression where, long ago, someone had once planted a garden....
*-*-*-*
The rectory at Elderwel, Hampshire, was a solid Victorian building of deep-red brick, set close to the road, facing the graceful fifteenth-century church of St. Stephen's. Ivy had gained a foothold on the north side of the house, and the twisted tangle of vines, bursting into leaf, climbed with a steady purpose almost to the sills of the upper windows. Beyond the ivy's reach, the gabled windows in the steeply sloping roof gazed out over the village like kind, benevolent eyes.
Inside, the rectory was a rabbit warren of narrow, dark rooms, designed to accommodate the large families of the previous century. Since my brother Tom was unmarried, he contented himself with the main floor of the rambling house and gave the upper stories over to the use of his curate, and the occasional guest or homeless parishioner. Most of the housework he did himself, but on Mondays his cleaner, Mrs. Pearce, came in to do a proper job.
It was Mrs. Pearce, duster in hand, who answered my knock at the door that morning and showed me through to the comfortably masculine study. Mrs. Pearce, I marveled, had a remarkable amount of tact. I looked like hell, and knew it. I'll never know how I made that drive from Exbury to Elderwel without damaging myself or the car, but when I reached the rectory it was fully an hour before breakfast time.
By now the shock was beginning to wear off, and I was shaking so badly I could scarcely control it, but if Mrs. Pearce noticed, she made no comment. She opened the curtains, saw me settled in Tom's favourite armchair, and withdrew in her quiet, efficient way to put the kettle on.
Tom arrived a few minutes later, still buttoning his shirt. He had, no doubt, intended to make some joke about my early-morning invasion of his sanctum sanctorum, but when he first caught sight of me the mocking smile died on his lips.
'What's wrong?' he asked quickly.
My last tenuous thread of control snapped, and I burst into tears. I later wished that I'd had a camera with me, to record the expression on Tom's face—I doubt whether his look of pure, unmitigated horror had been equaled anywhere other than in silent films.
His reaction, though comic, was wholly understandable. I never cried. I rarely even whimpered. The last time Tom had seen me in tears was almost twenty years earlier, when he'd accidentally slammed the car door on my hand. Even then, the flood had been modest, nothing like the terrifying outburst of great, soul-wrenching sobs he was witnessing now.
'Julia?' His tone was uncertain. It was several minutes before I could recover myself sufficiently to answer him.
'I'm fine, really,' I told him between sniffles. 'I'm just losing my mind.'
Tom took a seat opposite me, frowning. 'What?'
'Going insane,' I elaborated. 'Cracking up. There's no other explanation for it.'
'You've lost me.'
The tears had subsided now, and I took a deep, shaky breath, wiping the dampness from my face with the heel of my hand. 'You wouldn't believe me if I told you,' I said.