Chapter 28
GOLDENWYCH, PRESENT DAY
Caitlin breathed in the scent of the herbs: sage, rosemary and henbane, combined with honey from her hives.
A brew created from her mother’s recipe, but, for the first time, she was apprehensive about ingesting one of Miranda’s teas.
Henbane was not a plant she had used before in her blends.
She knew it was a hallucinogenic and, in certain quantities, it could be poisonous.
Until an hour earlier, she had considered cancelling the ritual but a text from Stan asking if she required his forgiveness yet followed by a laughing emoji had put her in a reckless mood.
She had felt a rush of heat and fury, solidifying her desperate desire to escape her present misery and it had pushed her onwards in her endeavours.
When she had returned to the cottage two weeks earlier after her row with Lee, she had poured herself an enormous glass of wine, sat on the bed in the spare room and pulled the two boxes of her mother’s notebooks beside her.
She had tumbled the volumes onto the bed before sorting them into colour, then size order, enjoying the variations of clarity: some were bright and reasonably new, while others were ancient, faded to shadows of their former glory.
She had decided to work through them in rainbow order – red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet – for no reason other than this was the way she had arranged them on the bed.
Many of the books contained recipes for cakes, tea blends and the delicious quiches and pies her mother had made for the café.
Others were sketchbooks, a myriad of images of Caitlin, Gillian and Rachel as children.
In others were drawings of her father, several self-portraits of her mother and numerous faces of their friends from when they were younger.
There were animals, too, alongside swirling designs and patterns, inspired by Celtic imagery.
In one book, a series of images of women gazed at her.
All wore robes and their faces were uncannily familiar, even in their strange aloofness they held echoes of herself, Gillian and Rachel.
As she studied them, Caitlin felt a cold shiver as she realised these were the women from her strange, quest-like dreams, faces that appeared not only in her sleeping hours but in moments of distraction when they would flash into her mind.
As she had turned the pages, she had gasped in surprise, staring at the detailed pictures depicting scenes from her dreams, images of the castle, the lake, the tiltyard and even the horse, Valour.
How is this possible? she had thought.
She had been halfway down the bottle of white wine, but it was losing its appeal, the crisp iciness from the fridge was fading and with it the flavour had soured.
She had put it to one side, then spent a long time studying the drawings, flicking backwards and forwards through the scenes from her dreams that had been captured by her mother many years earlier.
The final pile of books looked old-fashioned, the deep violet covers were padded and the pages edged in gold.
They were more formal than the other books, which ranged from school-style exercise jotters to brightly patterned spiralbound volumes.
The violet books seemed out of place among the exuberant colours of their fellows.
‘What have we here?’ Caitlin had murmured.
She had piled the cushions behind her and pulled the five notebooks onto her lap. Her mother’s writing was as familiar to Caitlin as her own and when she had opened one, on the first page was a tea recipe she had never seen before:
Henbane infusion – for problems (shamanic).
A shiver had run down her spine.
When she had turned the page, she had felt another unexpected lurch.
Copied by Miranda King from the diaries of Esther Maydman, 1687:
These are my dreams, the story I visit every night, the sisters and their quest, again and again. My plan is to capture it on this page and hope to free my heart and mind. The third daughter of the third daughter, forever caught in the cycle of three, over and over, this is my story…
Who was Esther Maydman? she had wondered.
She had flicked through, reading the headings of each new section:
Copied by Miranda King from the diaries of Margaret Valentine, 1730
Copied from the diaries of Alice Farringdon, 1763
more names followed, coming up to the present day with first her grandmother, using her maiden name, Dolly Jeeves, and her mother, Miranda Tempest, using her maiden name, too.
As Caitlin had read each tale, she had realised they were all the story of three women on a quest. With each page, Caitlin had become more confused, each of the writers had claimed she was a third daughter of a third daughter, the same as her grandmother, the same as her mother, the same as her.
Each had experienced the same convoluted dream, but none had ever reached its conclusion. The entries ended along similar lines:
There have been no dreams for several months now, not since The Queen entered the cherry blossom orchard and was offered the secrets of the castle…
It was this that had made Caitlin slam the books shut and shove them back in the box because the previous night, she had dreamed of the cherry blossom orchard.
Her mother’s final words had read:
My dreams are more than a coincidence, there is a pattern here.
The henbane recipe has been passed down through the centuries, I wonder if this holds the key.
One day, I shall share these books with my little Caitlin Moonbeam and perhaps we can unravel their meaning together.
She might be the one to solve this riddle.
Underneath was a small line sketch of the woman from her mother’s earlier notebooks, the genius loci of the stream, followed by:
I’ve just remembered, she was wearing an amethyst necklace – the dig Granddad mentioned? Could it be the one?
Caitlin had felt a shiver run down her spine as she thought about the day she had lost the doll’s shoe. Pulling out her phone, she had typed in:
Amethyst necklace, Goldenwych, archaeological dig
An image of the jewel had appeared, with several academic papers explaining its significance, as well as blog pieces and newspaper features.
Caitlin’s breath had caught in her throat: she had seen this necklace around the throat of the woman in her dreams, the woman with the antler headdress and the silver marks on her arms. The necklace found in Goldenwych hundreds of years ago that now resided in the British Museum.
Caitlin’s asthma, which was usually under control, had taken her unawares as she had stared at the pictures of the pendant and she had been forced to call Lee for help.
‘You haven’t had an attack this bad for years,’ George Glossop had said, concern in his eyes when he had arrived with Lee. They had both attended because Lee was staying with his parents while his new home was being redecorated and George would not let him go alone.
‘It’s probably the dust from moving all the boxes,’ she had wheezed.
‘Or stress,’ Lee had suggested.
‘What’s happened?’ asked George.
‘Stan’s been having an affair,’ Lee had said before Caitlin could stop him. ‘Caitlin’s ended their engagement.’
George had looked at Caitlin, who confirmed Lee’s statement with a sharp nod.
‘I’d prefer it if someone could stay with you.’
‘Who?’ she had said.
‘One of your sisters, perhaps.’
She had shaken her head.
‘I’ll be fine,’ she had replied and insisted they leave.
* * *
‘Are you sure about this?’ asked Sindy, bringing her back to the present.
It was dusk, the purple shadows of night were claiming the edges of the world, drawing it down into the blackness of the velvet night.
The sky’s glorious display of gold and red, pink and silver was fading as the darkening line on the horizon swallowed the day.
They were in the stone circle and Caitlin was laying out candles and wreaths of autumn leaves around the Three Sisters.
‘We’ve never done a ritual at the autumn equinox before,’ said Sindy. ‘What’s prompted this?’
‘A passage I read in one of Mum’s diaries,’ Caitlin replied as she placed an ornate, stoppered glass bottle in the centre of the circle she had created.
‘And this new tea,’ Sindy said, sniffing the flask Caitlin had placed to one side, ‘what’s in it? It smells heady.’
‘It’s a recipe for meditation,’ she said. ‘Mum used it, now I’m going to use it to go into a trance.’
‘What?’ Sindy was shocked. ‘Caity, is this wise? You’ve been very poorly.’
‘I’m fine,’ snapped Caitlin, then softened her tone when she saw Sindy’s surprised look. ‘Sorry, Sind. My asthma attack was a two weeks ago and it was because of the dust.’
Sindy gave her a long look and raised her eyebrows. ‘Whatever you say.’
‘Please, not you too,’ Caitlin sighed. ‘The rest of the family give me constant grief about nearly everything I do, challenging my decisions and treating me as though I’m incapable of rational choices because of my asthma.
I’m the one who’s had it since childhood, the medication works and attacks are few and far between—’
‘But, they do come,’ Sindy interrupted. ‘The night you collapsed after the dance for your grandfather, we all thought you were dead. It was the most terrifying thing I’ve ever seen and no one who was there will ever forget it.
George was doing CPR on you for twenty minutes before the ambulance arrived. ’