‘Of course.’ His voice was so gentle that I wanted to kiss his feet.
‘I’m sorry I rushed off without seeing you, but I just didn’t know…’
‘I understand.’
I tried to brace myself. ‘If I were to ask you to go now, this evening, not as far as Arelanópli but farther than Nuvakastra, and wait there for me to join you, and if I said it was very important to both of us for you to do that, would you go?’
‘After being told nothing more? Not even just how important “very important” is?’
‘Meaning we… might never see each other again.’
‘“Might”?’ he said, still gently. ‘How likely is “might”? Nine chances in ten? One in a hundred?’
‘Oh, darling…’ I felt great tenderness for him, and great exasperation. ‘You’d have to have it all spelled out, wouldn’t you?’
‘Yes. Otherwise I might feel I was being got out of the way for some sinister purpose.’
‘Sinister? I don’t understand, Stephen.’
Now his look was stern. ‘Neither do I. Last night I saw the funeral of Baron Aleku Valvazor in the year 1891.’
‘You were remembering the picture in my sitting-room. That sort of thing often happens in dreams.’
‘This was no dream. I saw it.’
‘That’s impossible,’ I insisted.
‘It happened. I watched it from your bedroom window. At least that’s where I started.’
‘How could you see anything?’ I asked in bewilderment. ‘It was dark.’
‘Outside it was light. When the… performance was over I found I was standing in a strange, completely bare room in some other part of the castle. I had the devil’s own job finding my way back, in fact—’
I interrupted him. ‘All right, what if it did happen? How could it have anything to do with me and my sinister purposes?’
‘It has something to do with you all right. You were there. I recognized you.’
‘I was where?’
‘At the funeral. In 1891.’
‘Nonsense,’ I said coolly. ‘I was in somebody’s dream in 1925. Somebody I had just made a certain impression on, if I’m not flattering myself. But I’m going to humour you. Let’s suppose you’re right: you weren’t dreaming, you saw Aleku’s funeral, though I’m far from sure what that means. You couldn’t have seen me at it, because I wasn’t born then. But you might quite well have seen this person.’ And I opened my locket and showed him mummy’s picture. ‘My mother. She was there.’
‘It was you,’ he said, but he said it with lessened conviction.
‘You took it to be me. Of course you did. You would take it to be me rather than a person you’d never so much as thought about. Aren’t we always doing that? Taking someone for a person we know, even when the person doesn’t look anything like the someone? Haven’t you often done that? In your dreams?’
The truth of that observation obviously struck him with some force, and turned him almost sullen for the moment. ‘Well, how did I get to that strange room?’
‘Darling, you walked there in your sleep. How else could you have got there? I couldn’t have carried you.’
‘No’, and a rueful grin.
‘That’s better,’ I said, trying to sound as much like an English governess as I could. ‘Now let’s have no more childish talk of sinister purposes.’ With that I kissed him in a very ungovernessy fashion.
A little later he said, ‘All right — devilish odd, though,’ but I knew already that I had disarmed his suspicions. With his cheek against mine he went on softly, ‘But what was your real purpose? In trying to get rid of me?’
‘That was rather silly. I wasn’t trying to get rid of you. Did I sound like it?’
‘Not much, no.’
‘What I was doing was giving you the chance of ducking out if you wanted to. Making it easy for you.’
‘But why should I have wanted to duck out, as you call it?’ he went on as before.
‘I don’t know. Well, you might have. I had plenty of time for thinking on my trip, maybe too much, and in the cold light of day I found I just couldn’t believe in last night. For myself I could, but I couldn’t quite for you. I don’t know why, you gave me no cause.’
‘I say, Lukretia, really,’ he rebuked me.
‘Yes, I said it was silly.’
‘Was that what was wrong when you first came in tonight? My God, what an absurd question.’
‘I wasn’t thinking.’
‘You were not.’ He drew away a little and looked me in the eyes, smiling. When he smiles his mouth stays firm; it would not be quite so lovely otherwise. He has a little scar shaped like a V on the left side of his chin. Perhaps he got it playing some game in school, in that ‘quite decent’ school in Sussex county. I looked back at him and he said, ‘Would you like me to show you just how silly you were being?’
‘Oh yes,’ I said, ‘I would. I’d like that very much.’
What followed was joy, unlike anything he or I have ever had in our lives before or have ever thought about, but still very simple joy. Afterwards there was peace, for me the first I can remember; I cannot speak for him. But it had to end. I got out of bed, put on a robe, went behind the screen and opened the champagne.
I could hear him laughing. ‘Why all the concealment?’ he asked.
‘I was afraid if I didn’t arrange it this way you might be distracted.’ Back in bed I raised my glass to him and said in my native language, ‘I wish you happiness your life long.’
‘May your good fortune never fail,’ he responded at once, raising his own glass. His Dacian is very correct, but his consonants are heavy in the English way. A delightful way.
There was one more thing to be done. I fetched the small scissors from my dresser and snipped away a lock of hair. ‘Now your turn,’ I said. ‘No, let me do it for you.’ When I had taken a lock of his, thick and strong, I held on to it and handed him mine. ‘We’re official lovers now and can only cease to be by exchanging these again. Is that English? By giving them back.’
‘I follow you.’ There was a sadness in his eyes which at another time might have troubled me. ‘I’m glad we’ve done that. Is it a peasant custom?’
‘Well, a custom anyhow, though it’s dying out, as what isn’t? But I’m fond of it. I’ve never done it before. You needn’t go on holding that; the ceremony is concluded.’
I went back to the dresser and left the two locks and the scissors. Stephen was comfortably settled against the pillows with his eyes shut.
‘Well, what do we do tomorrow?’ he asked drowsily.
‘Tomorrow we prepare for England,’ I replied. ‘And the day following we leave for England. And after however many days it is we arrive in England. And we go to London and see the churches and the palaces and the people, and we walk in the park and sail on the river. And in the country we go riding and we sit in the garden early and late.’
I cried then, but there was no one to hear me; Magda’s potion certainly acted fast. Soon I made myself stop crying, for I had work to do, and tough work at that. I put on a gown of blazing scarlet and bedecked myself with my finest jewels. On my way out I bent and kissed Stephen’s forehead. As I did so it occurred to me that there was really no hurry; those with whom I had business would stay till I came. I settled myself at Stephen’s side and kissed his cheek, once, twice. By slow degrees a delicious languor stole over me; as I lay there I could no longer feel the pressure of the bed against my body; my vision clouded, so that I saw only vague coloured shapes without any meaning, and in my ears there was the sweetest melody I ever heard, in some sense under my control and yet at every turn delightful in its unexpectedness, always about to come to rest in a cadence of supreme poignancy before miraculously passing into fresh unbounded rapture. There was no name for the instruments that played it, nor for the bewitching odours that drifted to my nostrils. An inviolable warmth enfolded me. My well-being and happiness were both of them exquisite, and to be made perfect needed only a single small action on my part. And for its performance no volition would be necessary, nothing more than surrender to the onward flow of ravishment. Oh paradise, oh abode of the blessed…