Chapter 16 #2
He grimaced into his whisky glass. He knew he wouldn’t sleep any time soon and although he didn’t particularly want to indulge in a post-mortem of the night’s disaster, he suspected he was going to do it anyway.
He remembered how convinced he had been when Rachel had first called him that it must all be a huge mistake.
At that point he had been reacting on instinct, he realised, and on the deep sense he had that he knew Jenna and that she would never behave in the way Rachel was describing.
He’d been shaken by his sister’s confirmation that Jenna had confessed to the grave-robbing expedition, and further doubts had set in when she had also raised the possibility of a link to the thefts.
It was at that point, Owen realised, that he had allowed his analytical mind to take over from his intuition.
It was a hard habit to break when analysis was, in so many ways, what he did for a living – crunching numbers, considering opportunities, weighing risks.
He’d sifted through the evidence against Jenna and it had looked bad.
He’d always felt that she was keeping something from him and it had turned out that he was right.
She had admitted opening the tomb. She had come up with an explanation that was preposterous for which, unsurprisingly, she could provide no proof.
She had lied about a previous visit to Winterhill Hall.
When he had mentioned the thefts, she hadn’t seemed surprised, saying only that they were nothing to do with her.
Yet he was the one who was left feeling bad, as though he had in some way betrayed her rather than vice versa. It was extraordinary.
He put on some music very softly, turned down the lights and waited for the mellow taste of the whisky to soothe his mood. It didn’t work so he took out his phone and googled Anne of Cleves. Extraordinary as Jenna’s story had been, there was something compelling about it.
His knowledge of Henry VIII’s fourth wife was pretty basic, but he was fairly certain that she had neither been executed nor borne any children.
His research confirmed as much. But then, Jenna had said that the child – Richard Swan – had been a secret.
Was her reference to the Swan surname another bit of manipulation, trying to draw him in and make him believe that this in some way affected him and his family? Owen shook his head in frustration.
He moved from the superficial information on Queen Anna to a more in-depth historical website where Marris Sharington was mentioned as one of her ladies in waiting.
There was so little information on Marris; she was a woman in the footnotes of history, Owen thought, yet evidently influential and important in her own time.
If Jenna had been descended from her, as she had claimed, it might make sense that a family obligation could make her feel she had to protect a centuries-old secret.
But that was another odd thing about Jenna’s story.
She had admitted that she had lied to him about being Marris’s descendent.
‘It’s more complicated than that,’ she had said, although Owen realised that he had cut her off before she had explained why.
The whisky had kicked in now and his mind was starting to feel cloudy.
The light in the room seemed dimmer. Owen’s thoughts moved on to Marris’s portrait and to the crush he had had on her.
He’d told Rachel that he was in no danger of confusing his teenage infatuation for a long-dead woman with his feelings for a living one.
Yet he realised now he had got that completely wrong because they were one and the same thing.
They were indivisible, Marris and Jenna, Jenna and Marris.
It was a sacred trust… I know, because I was there when it was made…
Try asking yourself why you felt as though you knew me before. Try opening your mind to the possibility it could be true. Try to remember…
They were the last words Owen heard in his mind before he slid into sleep.
He awoke hours later when the greyness of dawn started to creep into the room. He felt cold and cramped, still lying in the chair, a crick in his neck. Gingerly he sat up and winced as all his muscles protested.
What had happened last night? How in hell had he gone from being wide awake to sleeping so deeply?
Owen checked the whisky bottle but it was reassuringly full.
His mind was still full of the remnants of dreams, visions that flitted around like ghosts.
It was as though the very house had come alive during the night, peopled by memories of the past.
His watch told him it was five-thirty. Rubbing his face, he went over to fill the kettle and brew some coffee whilst he took a shower.
The hot water helped and the hot coffee helped even more.
As he drank it, he sat looking out of the big windows at the view across his fledgling garden to the fields and slopes of White Horse Hill beyond.
Last night he had dreamed of riding with Marris North, bringing a baby from Winterhill to Swan Court.
Richard Swan. It was the name Jenna had told him had been given to Queen Anna’s child.
His rational mind was telling him that he was tired, that he had simply jumbled up everything that had happened the previous night and dreamed about it.
Yet he knew the truth as he had done in that moment of clarity before he had fallen asleep and no amount of reasoning could dislodge it. Marris and Jenna were one and the same.
His hands tightened about the coffee mug. He remembered Rachel telling him about the tomb in the parish church, of Marris and Will Sharington, hands clasped in eternity.
Love will transcend death and time…
Owen thought about the irrefutable sense of recognition he had felt for Jenna the moment he had seen her in the coffee shop.
He had even called her Marris, he remembered now.
Throughout the past few weeks, he had had the feeling that although they had only just met, he knew her heart and soul.
How often had he had the sensation, especially at Winterhill, that there was something important he had forgotten, something on the edge of his consciousness that he was trying to recapture?
And in focusing on Jenna, and Marris, he had ignored the obvious, the hands entwined in stone, the love that transcended time.
Will Sharington.
Reincarnation.
Owen knew the truth with a blinding certainty that could not be overturned by any amount of analysis and logic.
Jenna had been Marris and he had been Will.
The knowledge exploded in his mind. He felt a mix of incredulity and awe, as though he had previously only seen a part of the pattern of his life and now he saw the whole.
Try opening your mind, Jenna had said. Try to remember…
And now he had. There was nothing but wisps of memory and faint recollections, but Owen realised that was not important.
Reincarnation, he suspected, was not a matter of having perfect recall of past events.
It was about understanding the kind of life he had lived, the choices he had made and what he could learn from them going forward.
And at the heart of that was Jenna. He needed to talk to her.
Regardless of the fact that it was only seven o’clock, he reached for his phone.
Then he stopped. Another memory had flashed across his mind, a box made of dark brown wood that had glowed with a deep purple sheen.
There had been a pattern of two swans of iridescent pearl decorating the lid, a clasp of iron, and a small, intricate key.
The box Jenna had spoken of. Owen felt his pulse jump.
Quick on the heels of that memory was another one – a string of pearls so beautiful and iridescent that they had seemed to glow with an inner light.
Will Sharington had given them to Marris on one memorable night…
Owen rubbed the back of his neck. Recovering the memories was disconcerting, but more disturbing still was the realisation that he had seen those pearls recently, once in the display cabinet at Winterhill from where they had apparently disappeared, but also on the wrist of the woman who had accompanied Peter Cox to the reception the previous night.
What had Peter called her? Jo? No, it had been Mo.
She had given Owen an appreciative glance, flicked her blonde hair over her shoulder and walked away whilst he had still been trying to work out why she seemed familiar.
Owen had immediately forgotten about her, but now he remembered.
Mo. Molly. She must be Jenna and Bree’s younger sister.
He’d never seen a picture of her, as he had of Bree, but he was willing to bet that he was right.
The family resemblance was elusive but enough to make him sure.
What was it that Jenna had said a few weeks ago when they had had dinner at the pub and she’d been talking about her disreputable family? Her father had been a petty – or not so petty – criminal and Molly had gone through a kleptomaniac phase.
And Rachel had said that thefts from museums were often an inside job, or at least an inside job with outside help.
The box. The pearls. The thefts.
Owen knew he was reaching but it was worth checking out. He typed out a quick message to Rachel and then rang Jenna. The call went to voicemail. Owen grabbed his car keys and went out.