The wine and good food helped me to keep both resolutions. Catherine glowed as our hostess; Robert was merry, Thomas smoothly entertaining. By common consent we kept away from any topic that might spark discord.

The following day, May Day, dawned bright and fair after the chill of April. There was a procession from the manor into the village, led by the Jack in the Green, with the foresters carrying the tree that had been chosen to be the maypole. On the lawn in front of the inn were the mummers and the Morris Men, with plays and dance and music and ribaldry. The sun shone and we laughed and feasted. Catherine washed her face in the dew of the May morning and wore green to mimic the fecundity of the earth and to bring good luck in conception. Robert seemed to find this amusing. He swept her up in his arms and kissed her heartily in front of everyone and when they slipped away hand in hand, an approving roar went up from the villagers for their young squire and his wife.

And that is how I always like to remember Catherine, on that bright May morning enveloped with hope and happiness and the sun on her golden hair as she outshone the May Queen.

Nine

Lucy

Lucy ate one of the village shop’s chickpea salads for her supper, taking it out onto the terrace so that she could enjoy the last of the day’s warmth. Although both the house and the valley were peaceful now, she didn’t feel inclined to stay indoors. The weirdness of feeling herself taken over by that intense sense of desolation had shaken her badly. Thinking it over, it felt as though the sensation had come on as soon as she had been filled with grief for her lost music career. It had felt as though her despair and loss had connected to someone else’s; to something far larger and more powerful. It had been a mirror for the feeling she had experienced when she had dreamed of being Catherine, lost in the maze of the deserted manor in winter, seeking something or someone...

She gave a convulsive shiver. She was starting to think that there was more to these experiences than simply her imagination. The only possibilities she could think of were that she was having some sort of belated reaction to her medication—she had been on it for three months now without major side effects, but she supposed it could have triggered something—or that she was going mad, or that there was something supernatural happening at Gunpowder Barn. She decided to discount the idea of madness; she had been ill and she was tired and sometimes emotional, but there was a difference between that and insanity. Though perhaps she should ask Cleo for a second opinion. A doctor would be the best person to ask about it anyway, along with the likelihood that she had developed a reaction to her medication. Perhaps she should go back to London to consult her GP.