Reincarnation (15 page)

Elizabeth May flushed with embarrassment. "I thought this only because you have been

known to prescribe unusual cures for neighboring people."

"She learned it from my mama," Lily offered. "She was the cook for the Pritchards in Barbados."

"It's true," Miss Pritchard agreed. "Lily's mother taught me her island ways. When I was a girl, I believed everything she taught me. As I grew older, I came to realize that she believed

many superstitious things that were not true. But she also knew many natural cures that

worked."

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"Mama taught you to heal by touch like she did," Lily reminded her.

"Life force, healing energy, runs through all living things," Miss Pritchard explained to Elizabeth May. "I have used my hands to direct this life force into a diseased or injured

area."

"Do you believe in witches?" Elizabeth May asked.

"St. Augustine, a Catholic theologian of the ninth century, argued that only God can control

the mechanisms of the universe. Neither the devil nor any human being has that same

ability. That is what I believe."

"Are you a Catholic?" Elizabeth May asked.

"I do not believe in one religion or the other. I worship God privately and in my own way,"

Miss Pritchard replied. "God is God whatever you call him, or her."

Her? This idea hit Elizabeth May forcefully. "You think God could be a her?" she asked,

leaning excitedly across the table. Despite all the teaching she'd received to the contrary,

she'd always suspected God could be a female.

"Perhaps God is not he or she. Perhaps God is a force so vast it combines the sexes or

disregards sex altogether," Miss Pritchard proposed.

God was
neither
male nor female? This was a new idea to Elizabeth May. She could not

imagine a being or force beyond the confines of male or female. It gave her the feeling that

her brain was being twisted, stretched in a manner

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that was almost painful. "I'll need to think further about that idea before I can rest easy with it," she admitted.

"Thinking deeply never killed anyone," said Miss Pritchard.

Lily laughed bitterly as she poured the tea for them. "I'm not so sure
that's
true," she commented.

After their tea, Elizabeth was full of questions regarding island cures. She and Lily followed

Miss Pritchard into a small, disheveled study where Lily, under Miss Pritchard's direction,

searched among books stacked in disarray. Despite the apparent chaos, she quickly found

what she was looking for.

"These two books are the best ones I have," Miss Pritchard said. "Lily's mother gave them to me shortly before she passed away."

Elizabeth May took the books. Both were so frayed and faded with age that she worried that

they might crumble to dust in her hands if she attempted to open either of them.

"You can borrow them for as long as you like," Miss Pritchard offered.

"Thank you. I should very much like to read them. It would be interesting to study medicine

and become a doctor, though I realize no such opportunity is available to women."

Miss Pritchard sighed. "I know. It's so foolish and wrong. Women throughout history have

been midwives and healers,

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delivering babies, caring for the sick. Why they should not be doctors is a mystery."

"It is no mystery," Lily disagreed. "It's because men won't let them. They want to keep all the power and knowledge for themselves."

"Lily," Miss Pritchard said. "Could you find me my special deck of tarot cards? I would like to do a reading for Elizabeth May."

Lily turned to Elizabeth May. "Miss Pritchard has special cuts in the cards that tell her which is which, even though she can't see them. There's no better card reader than Miss Pritchard.

Even Mama said she was the best, although Mama herself taught her how to do it."

"I've never seen a tarot deck," Elizabeth May said.

Back at the kitchen table, Miss Pritchard spread the cards facedown with the assurance of a

sighted person. She told Elizabeth May to select thirteen cards and leave them facedown,

then she arranged them.

The first card she turned over was called The Lovers.

"This is your immediate past," Miss Pritchard said. "The card is upside down. You have lost a true love."

Elizabeth May gasped but said nothing. It was true, though she tried to push it from her

mind and not dwell on the past.

Miss Pritchard stroked her hand consolingly. She turned the next card. "You will meet this

love again," she said.

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As she continued to turn cards, she revealed a tower being hit by lightning. "The tower

card predicts a sudden upheaval, abrupt change."

"What will happen?" Elizabeth May asked.

"You will soon find out," said Miss Pritchard.

Abby stood at the bottom of the winding stairs and winced at the sounds of crashing as Mr.

Wheldon threw things against the wall from upstairs. It was disconcerting how easily his

temper flared. And no one got him angrier than that wife of his -- a pretty young thing, to

be sure, but with no sense whatsoever. Any other woman would consider herself lucky to

have him, yet all she ever did was to resist his wishes at every turn. She'd try the patience of

a saint -- and he was far from saintly.

"Has she come back yet?" asked Helen, the kitchen maid, stepping out of the kitchen door.

Abby shook her head.

"I hope he calms down by the time she returns," Helen said.

"He told her not to go out but she went anyway. I don't know what she expected," Abby

answered as another resounding crash hit.

Helen sighed anxiously and went back into the kitchen.

Abby gazed up the stairs. A man in a rage did not frighten her. In her day, she'd seen more

than her share of

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them. She could handle him and maybe do herself some good in the process.

This latest upset had given her an idea. This wife of his would not last. The awful marriage

would end sooner or later. Why shouldn't Abby nudge it along?

Abby knew men found her attractive. In Ireland or England it would be unheard of for a man

such as Mr. Wheldon to think of marrying a maid -- an indentured servant, at that. But her

indenture was almost over and Americans were a practical people. A woman known to be a

good housekeeper and pleasant, obedient company might make a swift and sensible

replacement for a first wife who had deserted him -- or who had been sent packing because

she was thought to be unfaithful by her husband.

Of course, Abby did not know for certain that Elizabeth May had been unfaithful, but she

had seen something that could serve as evidence that there was another man in her life. It

might be enough to inflame an already agitated husband. Possibly, this was the

perfect moment to show it to him.

Lifting her skirt daintily, she ascended the stairs.

Charles stood in the kitchen awaiting his wife's return, sure she would sneak in through the

back door. He paced, agitated and ready to spring at her. It was nearly dark. What had she

been doing all this time?

In the purple grayness of dusk, he caught sight of her trekking across their backyard in the

falling snow, huddled

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into her cape. She saw him watching her at the back window. She stood stock still, and for a

moment he thought she would run. He prepared himself to chase her, but after another

second she continued toward the kitchen door.

"Where have you been?" he asked angrily as soon as she entered.

"I had to warn Miss Pritchard to be careful. I know she is no witch; she doesn't even believe in witches," Elizabeth May defended her actions.

"I do not know that you were even at Miss Pritchard's house. Maybe you are lying to me.

Perhaps you have gone out to meet a lover. I have sent Abby over to Miss Pritchard's right

now to check."

"What are you talking about?" she asked, astonished.

He had been certain she'd gone to warn the old blind woman and had been upstairs

venting his rage. He was fed up with having such a defiant wife. It hadn't occurred to him

that she was unfaithful to him until Abby had come in and shown him what she'd found.

Charles took a crisp, white handkerchief from his jacket pocket. He unfolded it, displaying

what it held. Elizabeth May gasped when she saw what he had wrapped with the

handkerchief.

"Where did you get those?" she asked.

A pair of dark green peridot earrings in the shape of teardrops lay hooked together in the

center of the handkerchief. They glistened brilliantly.

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She reached for the earrings but he yanked them back to his side. "I did not give them to

you. I am sure of that."

"They were among my private possessions," she said. "You had no right to pry!"

"Abby thought they were from me to you. She came into our room to return them. She told

me she'd found them on the floor and thought you'd dropped them. Thinking she was

giving me a compliment, she said a loving look comes into your eye whenever you wear

them. I have never seen you wear these. What man gave them to you?"

Elizabeth May seemed unable to speak, but stood there looking like she wanted to flee.

He was now sure she had a lover. It explained everything -- her coldness to him, the fact

that she had defied his instructions to go out in a snowstorm. And now he had the proof of

her love affair in these earrings -- a lavish gift, to be certain.

And that soft look in her eyes that Abby had described: There it was at this very instant.

"Tell me!" he shouted, slamming his hand on the table. "I demand to know!"

Elizabeth May sat at the maid's table in the kitchen. Under her snow-flecked cape, she

clutched the books Miss Pritchard had lent her. To produce them now would simply fan the

flames of his rage.

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Brian. She remembered a pair of hazel green eyes set in a pale, handsome face; how his

thick, nearly black hair settled in a wave across his forehead. She could hear his Irish brogue

as he pressed the earrings into her hand: "There's a story to these earrings. My great-great-

great-grandfather found them in the Irish Sea as he was swimming for his life. He was a

Spanish sailor aboard the ship
Girona,
part of the Armada sent by Philip the Second of Spain to conquer England. His ship had been sunk by the English and he was swimming for shore

as fast as he could when there in the water, no doubt stirred up from the bottom by the

battle, these earrings floated right toward him. They were hooked together just as they are

now."

Her father imported goods from Ireland and she had accompanied him to port one day. She

had first laid eyes on Brian as he unloaded goods from the ship on which he'd worked as a

sailor. The attraction between them had been instant. He lost no time in sitting down beside

her on a bench while her father conducted his business elsewhere.

From then on, she accompanied her father to the port whenever she could. Brian sometimes

came to London and found his way to her bedroom window. They would sit

out on the porch roof until the morning. It was on a night such as that when he gave her the

earrings. "I want you to have them," he'd said. Minutes after he'd spoken those words, the window to her bedroom was flung open and her father

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stepped onto the roof, firearm in his hands. Without asking a question, he'd shot just

slightly over Brian's head.

Elizabeth May had screamed as, terrified, he'd slid from the roof, crashing into the bushes

below. "If you ever come near my daughter again I'll blow your head off!" Henry Harrington shouted after him.

Shaking, Elizabeth May had slipped the earrings into the pocket of her skirt just before he

whirled around on her, red-faced with anger. "Get inside, you shameless girl. Who else

knows of this? If anyone hears of this, your reputation will be ruined -- if it's not ruined

already."

"But, Father, we didn't do anything wrong," she said, her voice quivering.

"Going out in the middle of the night with a sailor is enough!" He pointed to the window.

"Get in, I say!"

From that moment on, life had been unbearable. Thanks to her father's shooting and

shouting, gossip swirled around the family. Speculation ran rampant. Someone had seen

Brian running from the house.

Elizabeth May's mother had simply averted her eyes in embarrassed disappointment

whenever her daughter came into the room. Her father would not speak to her either;

naturally, he would no longer take her to the port with him. There was no way for her to

contact Brian, even though she thought of him constantly.

She felt as though she might die if she could never see him again.

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It was shortly thereafter that Charles Wheldon had visited with his father, an importer of

goods from the colonies to London. He was in town to arrange for a shipment of tobacco

and to be introduced by his father to London Society.

Mr. Harrington had moved quickly to foster the match, inviting Charles and his father over

frequently and ordering Elizabeth May to present herself in a favorable light. When Charles

had finally proposed, Elizabeth May had accepted as a way to get as far away as

possible from her tattered reputation, her disapproving parents, and all memory of Brian.

Now she looked up at Charles, almost having forgotten that he was there glowering at her,

arms folded, waiting for her explanation. "Someone gave them to me long ago and I treat