Remembrance

When my maid entered with a tray she placed over my knees, I kept looking at her very hard. Had I known her in the past? As far as I could tell, I hadn’t.

“Will there be anything else, madam?” she asked.

“No, nothing. I feel much better after a night’s sleep.”

At that the maid smiled. “You have been asleep for two nights and a day. His lordship gave orders that you were not to be disturbed.”

After the maid left, I ate everything on the tray and was tempted to eat the flowers in the vase. Two nights and a day, I thought, smiling. No wonder I felt as though I’d slept under a thousand pounds of blankets.

As I finished the food, my husband came into the room. For a moment I trembled with emotion as I looked at him and remembered all that we had been to each other. He had not wanted to live without me and I would not live without him.

“I am glad to see that you are better,” he said formally.

I knew now what he was really like, how vulnerable, how soft he was inside. Like me, I thought. People think I’m hard-hearted and cynical, but I’m not.

“Tally,” I said without thinking and reached out my hand to him.

He did not take it. “Now you have forgotten my name.”

“No, I haven’t. It’s just that—” That what? That I know so much more now? “Tavey, I want us to try again. We love each other. I know you love me. You have always loved me and you always will.”

For a moment it looked as though there were tears in his eyes, but he recovered himself. “Yes,” he said in a harsh voice. “I have always loved you but you and I cannot…We cannot…” When he couldn’t finish the sentence, he turned and hurriedly left the room.

“Yes,” I said aloud to the silent room. “I know. We cannot.”

“May you never love anyone but me,” is what Talis had said.

“May you always love me and want me but never have me,” was what Callie had said.

Nora had told me that curses were involved in keeping my soul mate and me apart and it was because of these curses that we did not trust each other in this life. And unresolved differences in Edwardian times were why we couldn’t find each other in 1994.

After what I had seen in the Elizabethan Age, of how other people manipulated Talis and Callasandra, I was ready to forgive and forget.

“I hereby rescind my curse,” I said aloud, half in jest, but there was an odd little tightening of my skin that made a chill run through me. I think curses said for real were stronger than curses removed in jest.

So how did I remove the curse?

My first thought was that I wished Nora were here to tell me what to do. Did the removal of curses involve crystals and little dolls that looked like a real person? How about dead frogs and powdered unicorn horns?

While I was entertaining myself I noticed that a newspaper had been placed in the pocket of the breakfast tray. I’ve never read newspapers much, but when I moved the tray to the side, I noticed the date. The eighth of June. For a second I wasn’t sure why that date startled me so much, but then I remembered.

Today Tavistock and I die. Today someone kills us or we kill ourselves and my body is never found.

At that thought all humor left me. Murder is serious.

The question uppermost in my mind was, How can I stop these deaths? And if I can’t stop them, how can I get out of here before they happen?

I remembered something Nora had told me. “You will be very happy together. But you have many things to learn before you find him.”

Learn, I thought. What was I to learn? That past lives affect everything? That you shouldn’t put a curse on anyone’s head no matter how angry you are?

As I lay there it came to me that I knew what I was to learn: Love is everything in life. Nora had been right: I wanted to marry Steven because I was afraid I had only a few fertile years left and if I was going to marry it had better be now. I hadn’t actually loved Steven. Proof of that was that I thought he was perfect. Tavistock wasn’t perfect. In fact he was about as imperfect as a person could get. He was vain, arrogant, proud, and he thought I was an extension of himself. All in all, he was horrible.

At that thought, I put my hands over my face and began to cry. Maybe he was awful, maybe he was exasperating and unfair. Maybe he expected a thousand times more from me than he gave, but he was mine. He was mine as no one else had ever been or ever would be.

“May you never love anyone but me,” he’d said and I didn’t and I wouldn’t.

“I must get rid of that curse,” I said aloud. “I must!”