“No—none of that. Mine is a solitary path—in
this
life,” he added deliberately and watched the other’s expression, which remained affectionately inquiring, for Sir Arthur was deaf to the implication. “I have a small flat in Bloomsbury,” he added.
“Well, good luck,” said Sir Arthur, who had missed both breakfast and lunch while struggling to arouse Celia, and was thinking longingly of his own elegant Mayfair mansion where his cook would immediately produce a cheese omelet. “Give me a ring if there’s any change. And I’ll check in tomorrow.” He moved majestically along the corridor, ignoring the flutter of nurses and lesser doctors who had hoped for a word with him.
Akananda went down to the waiting room and found Lily Taylor staring at a closed copy of
Punch.
“Any news?” she asked hopelessly. Her anxious face without make-up, her bright gold curls hanging limp, the simple heather tweeds she had flung on at Medfield yesterday when the tragedies began, all made her look young and defenseless.
“Nothing new,” Akananda said gently. “I’m going to try my experiment later. For that I must be alone, but I know you want to stay near here. Get yourself a room in town—Claridge’s?”
“Can’t I do
anything?
” she cried. “It’s awful just to wait.”
He nodded. “Of all unhappy human stresses, inactive suspense is probably the worst. I suggest that you do
do
something.”
“But
what?
” she cried. “I don’t want to see people, go to a movie, distract myself. Can’t pray either, I’ve tried. Celia’s dying in some horrible way nobody understands; Richard has gone crazy, or at least insanely cruel; this nightmare
can’t
be real.” She folded the glossy edge of the magazine cover and began to tear off little scraps, staring at the bits of paper as they fluttered to the carpet.
Akananda watched her, frowning. He stepped quickly to the nurses’ desk and gave an order. He came back with decision. “Mrs. Taylor, I want you to take a taxi to some church, some spiritual place where you will sit quietly for at least one hour. Where do you wish to go? St. Paul’s perhaps?”
“No, no—” she murmured. “Too much bustle, too many tourists.”
“One of the smaller churches?”
She shook her head, still pleating and tearing at the magazine cover.
“Lily Taylor, look at me!”
She raised her head slowly and met his stern, concentrated eyes, the dark brown irises were focused on her like two beams until the fog of misery and utter weariness was pierced, and an image slipped into her mind.
“There
is
a church,” she whispered, “I might like to pray in. I was there once years ago on an earlier visit.”
“Yes,” he said, “go on!”
“It’s across the river, Southwark—a cathedral. I liked it. They call it St. Saviour’s, I think, but that isn’t its real name.” She stopped, startled by a shiver down her back, like the shiver from hearing a strain of nostalgic music. She tried to look away from Akananda, but she could not.
“What used to be the cathedral’s name, its old name?” he asked. “Quickly! Don’t think!”
Her voice obeyed him without volition. “St. Mary Overies. Next to Montagu’s priory.”
“Ah-h—” murmured Akananda on a long breath, “Montagu.” She had given him a clue he needed to help Celia. During his internship at Guy’s Hospital he had lived in Southwark, and had himself been drawn to St. Saviour’s and its history. He had been uncertain how to guide Celia in his attempt to penetrate her past life. That Celia had been a part of some Tudor period seemed likely in view of the facts given in the Marsdon Chronicle, and the name “Stephen” so strangely heard or imagined by Arthur, but there was no other lead aside from her behavior at Ightham Mote. He knew that “Montagu” provided one, and that it came from the unhappy mother’s own buried memory.
A nurse hurried in with the sedative he had ordered.
“Take this, my dear,” said Akananda, giving Lily a large red capsule. “It’ll calm you. Then go over to Southwark Cathedral, which was indeed, as you say, once called St. Mary Overies. You should be able to pray there.”
Lily nodded mutely. The whole terrible situation had receded; she had entered a state of abeyance where only Akananda and his directives were real. She put on her gloves and rose, giving the Hindu a polite smile. She went out to the cab stand. He followed slowly; saw her enter a taxi, then got one himself which he directed to the British Museum. There he spent two hours consulting Collins’s
Complete Peerage
and the
Dictionary of National Biography.
Considerably enlightened, he walked to his Bloomsbury flat where he settled himself in the Asana position and gradually immersed himself in profound meditation.
The long June daylight was fading into violet shadow; the myriad lights of London glinted like topazes when he left the flat and returned to the hospital where Celia lay.
The night staff had come on, but Sir Arthur’s orders had been relayed and he was received with politeness and veiled curiosity.
“Lady Marsdon’s condition seems quite unchanged, Doctor,” said the capable Irish nurse who accompanied him to Celia’s room. “I’ve kept a sharp eye on her, but not touched her, of course. Sir Arthur said not. Will you be wanting medications? Or glucose? We’ve the IV drip ready.”
“Nothing,” he answered smiling, “except no interruptions for
any
reason. I shall lock the door and take all responsibility.”
The nurse’s sandy eyebrows twitched, but she only said, “Very well, sir.” Then added in a rush, “Good luck, Doctor. I pray you can save her, I’ve seldom seen so sad a case, ’tis worse ’n death, ’tis like her spirit’s stifled—gives me the shivers. Uncanny. May the Blessed Lord and His Holy Angels have mercy.” She shut her lips and flushed. “Sorry, sir.” She went out and shut the door.
Akananda locked it after her. He pulled a chair up to the bedside and took Celia’s limp, chilly hand in his. He gazed at her calm upturned profile, an alabaster effigy as remote and passionless as those on medieval church tombs. Her dark curls, gummy and matted from the electrodes, looked no more alive than painted hair.
Under the cotton hospital gown her chest did not move. Akananda was dismayed. Had the tiny flicker of life really been snuffed out? Was it hopeless? He clasped her hand tightly, trying to propel vital force down his arm through his hand into her body. His firm grasp encountered cold resistant metal, and he saw that she was wearing a heavy amethyst heart-shaped ring over the plain gold wedding band. The Marsdon wives’ ring. He had casually admired it on the night of his arrival at Medfield, and Sir Richard had said smiling, “That’s the Lady of the Manor’s badge of servitude, complete with baleful cockatrice!” They had all laughed, and surely Richard had thrown his wife a teasing, affectionate glance, yet even then Akananda had noticed tension in Celia, she had swallowed several times and the look in her gray eyes had seemed apprehensive.
Frowning and uncertain, Akananda slipped the ring off the small cold finger and laid it on the bedstand. He was watching intently, and thought he saw a tremor flit across the ashen face. But, he knew how easily intense desire could deceive one. Tentatively he moved the wedding ring. There was no doubt of some reaction this time. The hand quivered under his fingers, and he apprehended a faint resistance, though the quiver vanished at once.
Groping, yet greatly relieved, he spoke to her. “The Marsdon ‘badge of servitude’ is gone from you, Celia. But you wish to keep the wedding band?”
There was no further response to his touch. She had slipped back into her faraway void. He sighed and put his other hand on her forehead.
“Celia . . .” he said as he had before, in the Sussex hospital. “Celia . . . where are you?” There was no response.
“You must let me in, Celia,” he said very low. “Take me back to where you are. Trust me.” He thought of one of his master’s teachings. There was no such thing as circumscribed time. Time was a dimension. Even as Einstein had proven to those in the West who could understand him. All time existed
now.
The master had spoken of the “Akashic Records,” as well, the imperishable etheric recordings of all events, and explained them to his young disciples as vaguely like a storage-housing motion picture film which might be selected and viewed at will by those sufficiently enlightened and instructed to do so. But
how?
Sweat gathered on Akananda’s forehead as he sat in the hospital room, dimly hearing the sound of London traffic; muffled creakings and voices from the tumultuous hospital life outside this quiet room.
He spoke to Celia again, using the power of the words which he felt must reach her. “Is
Stephen
with you?” he asked urgently. There was no response. “Montagu . . .” he said, “Cowdray . . . Ightham Mote . . . Are you afraid, Celia?”
The skin under his hand grew colder, and he knew again an overwhelming sense of defeat. The many years of his Western training gathered themselves together to jeer at him. What a credulous fool Arthur Moore would think him, and their professors at Guy’s. The brain surgeon—Mr. Lawrence—“Now, Mr. Akananda, kindly dissect this pineal gland for us, we wait with bated breath to see you disclose that mystical third eye you keep talking about, and maybe you can find the soul, or at least its erstwhile habitation, for I must be
fair
and grant you
this
brain’s as dead as mutton.”
How the other students had laughed, taking their cue from the elegant, supercilious professor. And I laughed with them. Fearful of their scorn. Apostate, lickspittle, coward! I made a brilliant mockery of that dissection, repudiating all my teachings and my certainties. Deserting the two students who had believed in me. I remember their startled disappointed eyes. I wanted to curry favor with Lawrence, I wanted him to pass me.
A little thing, a trivial incident, but . . .
“You behaved like that before, and the outcome was not trivial.”
Akananda heard the accusation. And the words were in Bengali. He opened his tight-shut eyes and saw a glow on the yellow-painted hospital wall beyond the patient’s bed. Through the glow appeared a luminous white figure. From it flowed pity and authority. Akananda prostrated himself on the bare wooden floor.
The communion now was wordless. A series of questions and commands. When St. Marylebone’s bells rang ten o’clock from around the corner, the presence vanished. Akananda raised his head, his face was wet with tears, and he knew with certainty, at last, what he must do to redress the wrongs he had inflicted and help those now again in danger. He could not stand aside from bygone sufferings. He must take part and relive with them the past.
He must negate his present selfhood and enlightenment. He must watch the transcendent film unroll, in full identification with each character.
Akananda rose to wipe his face and damp hands on his white linen handkerchief. He walked to the water carafe on the night table and drank. Then he returned to the bed and pressed his bunched fingers between Celia’s eyebrows.
“Where are you, Celia?” he asked for the third time, but now with assurance. “
Answer me!
”
In a moment she sighed, her bluish lips moved and he heard a faint whisper.
“In the Great Buck Hall, we are waiting for the young King. The family is in sorrow, but we must hide this. There’s gay music from the minstrels’ gallery. I smell thyme and lavender amongst the new rushes on the floor. I’m afraid for Stephen . . . they’ve locked him up.”
“Yes . . .” said Akananda. But there was one more question, one more link necessary.
“Who am I, Celia?” he said quietly. “Am I there?”
He felt the faint nodding motion under his hand. “Then who
am
I?”
He waited a long time while her lips twitched feebly. He exerted no will power, no internal commands. He waited.
At last she spoke. “You are Julian, Master Julian.”
As she spoke the name he stiffened once. The gap was bridged. He shut his eyes and leaned his head against the wall.
(1552–1559)
A
T COWDRAY CASTLE,
Monday, July 25 of the year of Our Lord 1552, the Great Buck Hall was garnished and decorated as it had never been in the five years since old Sir Anthony Browne had completed it; by erecting the lofty bay window, and extravagantly glazing its sixty lights, then vaingloriously placing on high brackets the wooden statues of eleven life-size stags as reminders of the Browne crest. From the buck antlers now dripped flowery garlands; wreaths of roses encircled their necks. The entire Hall was fragrant because yesterday the old rushes had been swept out into a fetid heap behind the cowbyre, and on the oaken floor planks there was a carpeting of sun-dried green rushes from the River Rother, strewn with crumbled lavender and thyme. So fresh was the scent that it counteracted the usual smells of sweat and musk exuded by the long-packed Court dresses worn by the guests and household assembled by young Sir Anthony for welcoming their King.
Celia Bohun gloried in a new gown, lovingly made for her by her aunt, Lady Ursula Southwell, out of old treasured lengths of peacock brocade and cream satin. There was even a small lace ruff, and a demure heart-shaped cap which framed the soft shining ripples of Celia’s corn-colored hair. The new finery was one of Ursula’s many kindnesses to the orphan girl who shared her blood, and also shared her anomalous position at the Castle. Ursula and Celia were de Bohuns. Their family had lived here for nearly four centuries. The magnificent Brownes, for all their careless generosities, were upstarts, usurpers of Cowdray.
It was true that the Browne men had great swashbuckling charm, coupled with loyalty which King Henry had rewarded in the elder Sir Anthony, who had been a trusted emissary and Master of the Horse, despite his staunch Catholicism. It was also true that the Brownes had counteracted their obscure origins by a number of shrewd marriages with younger daughters of noble houses, like the present marriage of young Anthony to Lady Jane Radcliffe. And Anthony’s maternal grandfather, Sir John Gage, was even now Constable of the Tower, a fearsome old man. He had quarrelled bitterly with his son-in-law, so that though Sir John lived at Firle Place in East Sussex, Cowdray never saw him.