A Lady Under Siege (9 page)

“I hit it!” she exclaimed proudly.

“Good for you. Now you’re hooked. Are you holding the club properly?”

“Why is it called a club? It looks like a stick.”

“Just a minute.” From a tangle of junk in the back corner of his yard he extricated an old kitchen chair, the kind with a vinyl seat and chrome legs. He carried it to the fence and stood on it so he could look over the top and watch her. She had retrieved the ball and was preparing to whack it again, aiming at the fence, directly at him.

“Wait wait wait. I’m in the line of fire here,” he told her. “Turn so I can see you from the side. That’s the best way to advise you on your form. Aim toward your house.”

“I might hit a window.”

“Ha! I don’t think you have the biceps to do damage. Keep your hands close together. Choke up a little on the grip.”

“What’s that mean?”

“Never mind, just swing away.”

She gave it her best. Putting aside apprehension and doubt, and drawing on all the strength her girlish arms could muster, she spanked the little white sphere as hard as she could. To her surprise she connected cleanly, solidly—the ball rocketed out of the grass toward the house, and with a delicate
crack
it struck and splintered one of the dozen small panes of glass in the back door. Shards tinkled onto the deck floor.

“Holy shit! Lookit! I broke it,” she screamed. “Thanks to you I broke it!” She rushed up onto the deck to check the damage.

“Not thanks to me,” Derek said. “I didn’t break it, the ball broke it. Who knew you had such power? You’re a natural. Don’t worry about the glass. I’ll fix it, I promise. I’ll get right on it.”

Betsy looked anxiously at the jagged splinters that radiated from where the ball had struck the glass. One splinter hung like a loose tooth. She gingerly took hold and tugged on it. It came loose in her hand. She dropped it carefully to the floor.

“Don’t be messing around,” Derek warned. “You’ll slice your finger off—those things are razor sharp.”

“I’m being careful,” she replied. She pulled another shark’s tooth shard loose, then another, driven by an impulse to hide the damage from her mother by tidying up the mess. If all the splinters are removed then the broken pane won’t look broken, it’ll look clear, like all the others, she thought. She extracted two more splinters, then tugged on a smaller one that refused to budge. Her grip slipped and she felt a sharp pain. She held her hand up and saw blood dripping down into the V between her fingers. She turned to Derek and showed it to him, like a helpless, frightened toddler.

To Derek at the fence it looked like a bloody peace symbol, a crimson V for victory. A thin rivulet of blood trickled down to her elbow and dripped onto the deck. He muttered, “Jesus Christ,” then said firmly, “Go get your mother.”

“She’s not home.”

“You told me she was home.”

Betsy shook her head.

“Go run that thing under cold water in the kitchen sink. I’m coming over.”

She stood frozen by panic, too shocked by the sight of blood to move.

“Do it now!” he shouted. That reached her. He watched her disappear into the house, then placed his hands on the cross beam of the fence, and vaulted up to balance one foot atop it. He swung his other foot up and over, but miscalculated and felt the momentum of his body pitching him forward, then downward, head first. Like a rider thrown from a horse he felt the fence give out under him, an eight-foot panel of slats ripping from its poles and collapsing in a clatter of planks onto Betsy’s garden. He came down on top of it, and rolled onto the lawn, unhurt, picked himself up and headed toward the open back door. He found her at the kitchen sink, shaking. He called out, “Betsy! Do you have bandages?” and realized he was yelling.

13

“S
o what I’m hearing you say is, you don’t believe you’re dreaming. Instead, in your sleep, you’re observing this young woman, this Sylvanne, as she goes about her real, actual life in some other time and place.”

“That’s it, exactly.”

Jan had proved as good as her word—she had phoned Anne Billings and begged her to investigate the curious case of the Lady under siege, who came each night to Meghan in an unbidden, relentless, haunting dream. The psychologist had been intrigued enough to suggest a meeting, and by chance had a cancellation for the next day, a Saturday afternoon. Meghan had jumped at the offer, even though it meant leaving Betsy alone at home again. Now the two women sat in comfortable high-backed armchairs in a book-lined office.

“All right,” Anne continued. “Now, while you’re sleeping, and watching all this, do you experience any of the sorts of surreal tangents we commonly associate with dreams?”

“None,” Meghan answered. “Everything that happens happens at the pace of real life, and there are no weird or bizarre dream-like moments at all, ever. Everything is consistent, and precise, and detailed, and just,
real
. It’s like I’m in her head, experiencing everything she goes through, feeling all that she feels.”

“So you become her?”

“No, not exactly. I’m still aware of myself too, like I’m inside her, but not her.” Meghan paused. “I do know she looks like me, because when she looks in a mirror it’s my face looking back at me, but she is definitely not me. She’s Sylvanne, a different person entirely, and I’m just in there, watching. I can’t influence her, or communicate to her at all. She never acknowledges me. I’m sure she doesn’t even know I’m there.”

Anne took notes. Meghan watched her for a moment, then said, “Is it common? Is it a condition with a name?”

“Not to my knowledge.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“Can you dream something you’ve never even heard of, then later discover it actually turns out to exist? The story of Judith I told you about, I researched it online—Judith and Holofernes. It’s accepted in the Catholic Bible, but most Protestant ones keep it separate, in the Apocrypha. Considered apocryphal, I suppose, not to be trusted.”

“Maybe you have heard Judith’s story before,” Anne suggested. “You may have forgotten, at least your conscious mind might have. And it’s popping up in your dreams.”

“I don’t think so. I’ve never much troubled with the Bible.” She paused. “God—I’m starting to sound like her. That’s exactly what she told her husband.”

“It isn’t necessary to have read the Bible,” Anne suggested. “Perhaps it reached you from another source. You said you were a designer—ever study art history?”

“I did, actually. And I still do from time to time, just looking for inspiration, when I’m designing book covers or promo materials.”

“You’re very lucky. I’d love to do something like that,” Anne said. “I love art, but I have no talent in that direction. So I remain a fan, not a practitioner. I do know that a great many artists have painted Judith and Holofernes. Caravaggio, for one. I saw the actual painting in Rome—I remember thinking the model looked a little too ambivalent in the act to be convincing. If you’re going to chop a man’s head off, then you need to commit to it totally at a certain point, don’t you think?”

“I’ve never really thought about it,” said Meghan.

“There’s a better version by Artemisia Gentileschi, another Italian from about the same era, a woman painter, which was rare,” Anne continued. “She tackled it several times, I think to a certain extent as therapy—she was raped by her art teacher. Her Judith is all business, getting down to the job as though she worked in a butcher shop.”

“I have a ton of art history books at home,” Meghan said. “I’ll look for it.” She thought for a moment. “It’s funny, you saying you’d love to be doing something else. I’d have thought your job would be fascinating, but I suppose it’s hard, listening to all the weird crap that comes out of people’s minds.”

“Not as hard as it must be to have the weird crap in your mind.”

“Right,” said Meghan. “We’re here to talk about me, not you.”

Anne said nothing, and wrote in her notepad.

“I was hoping you’d say more,” Meghan said.

“Unlock the mystery for you? I’m afraid it doesn’t work like that.”

“What about first impressions? Give me a little.”

Anne considered for a moment. “This Sylvanne. Since you began to dream of her, and let’s call it a dream for lack of a better term, it would seem she has never been in control of her destiny. She’s been the victim of a siege, laid for unclear reasons by a power unseen, namely this Thomas of Gastoncoe. On that front, progress is being made. You are being taken to meet him, and for better or worse, good or bad, there’s a goal in mind when you get there.”

“
She’s
being taken. And the goal is in her mind, not mine.”

“In any case, you’re on your way to a resolution. Maybe when she meets Thomas, it will become clear.”

“I hope so,” said Meghan. “I wish she’d hurry up and get there. Why couldn’t I be in the head of someone modern, they’d just drive over in their car.”

“Yes, it would be nice if they could just straighten it out with a phone call,” Anne agreed. They shared a smile. “I think that’s enough for today.”

“Good,” said Meghan. “Sorry if I jump up and run, but I’m really antsy to get home. I’ve left my daughter alone for the second time in three days, and last time was the first time ever, so I’m feeling super guilty about it. My life is chaos.”

“Maybe next time we’ll have to talk a little bit more about you,” Anne said. “There might be two ladies under siege in this equation.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Meghan said. “Could be projection.”

“I think there’s more than that going on,” Anne suggested. “I’m actually quite fascinated by your case, and I do want to see you regularly while we try to get to the bottom of it. I might like to write a paper for a journal of psychology about it, which could make you the star example of an unheard-of condition. Would you be alright with that?”

“Sure,” said Meghan. “Do you think I might be channelling a past life?”

“First I’d have to believe in past lives, then in channelling them. Unfortunately I don’t.”

“Sorry. I know it’s unrealistic, but I guess I was just really hoping I’d come here and there would be a breakthrough, in terms of answers.”

“Well. Our Lady Sylvanne is on the move. The answers you’re so eager for might be coming soon enough, in your sleep.”

14

M
eghan came in the front door and called out, “Hi sweetie! I’m home.” She heard Betsy call from upstairs that she was getting changed, so she headed up to check on her, and also to check the art history books in her studio. She poked her head in Betsy’s bedroom and said, “Sorry I got late. Parking was a nightmare, there was some kind of street fair going on. I did phone. Why didn’t you pick up? You scared me half to death. You were supposed to look at the call display and pick up.”

“I was in the bathroom.”

“Well why didn’t you call back when you got out?”

Betsy didn’t answer.

“Why are you getting changed?”

“I just felt like it.” Meghan heard irritation in her daughter’s voice, a leave-me-alone tone. She put it down to resentment at being left alone again.

“I’ll make some dinner,” she said. “Lemon honey chicken, your favourite. With white rice, not brown. But first I need to check on something.”

She went to her studio office, the middle room of the three upstairs, and scanned the bookshelves for a particular title. Italian Renaissance Painting. She plopped the massive volume on her drafting table and flipped through it randomly. There it was:
Caravaggio—Judith and Holofernes
.

Her eyes roamed the image for a moment. From the first glance she agreed with Anne: Caravaggio’s Judith looked too diffident, too decidedly
detached
for someone in the midst of decapitating a general in his own bed, in his own tent, in the midst of his mighty army. Curious to see the other painting Anne had mentioned, she moved to the computer and googled Artemisia Gentileschi. As easy as that, she found the female painter’s version of the same event, and again, like Anne, found it more satisfying, more believable. This Judith looked to have righteousness on her side, giving her the strength and certitude to do what needed done. But to Meghan’s mind the most striking difference between the two paintings was in their portrayals of Judith’s accomplice, her maid Abra. In Caravaggio’s version Abra was an old crone waiting patiently like a granny in a buffet line up. Gentileschi’s Abra, on the other hand, is part of the team—she plants her full weight on the brute’s chest, pinning his arms down while he struggles against the blade Judith slices across his neck.