The Rose Garden

I drank my brandy.

Thankfully, it had a taste. And even better, an effect. If I was going to have hallucinations, I decided, I would have to try to make them less distracting.

This one studied me with eyes that seemed to weigh the possibilities. ‘You clearly are no ghost, and I do not believe in witches.’

‘Well, I don’t believe in you,’ I told him. ‘Go away.’

I might as well have swatted at a fly. He didn’t vanish this time, either. All he did was settle back, the cup of brandy cradled in his hand, and watch me quietly a moment as though trying to decide how he should deal with me. ‘Where are you from? I only ask because your speech is strange,’ he said. ‘Your accent is not of this place.’

‘Yours isn’t, either.’

‘I was born and raised in London.’

‘Really?’

‘You do not believe me?’

‘You’re not real,’ I reminded him. ‘You can be born where you like.’

‘Thank you.’ Now he looked amused.

How long was this going to last, I wondered? All my previous hallucinations had been brief ones. This was going on for far too long. Maybe, I thought, if I took more charge of what was happening, controlled the situation more, I’d speed things up.

I drained my glass and told him, ‘Look, I can’t just sit here, I have things to do.’

He stared at me. ‘You do?’

‘Yes. So if you’ll excuse me …’

As I stood, he stood as well as if by reflex, and when I went out he followed. Happily the corridor looked very much the same as in the real Trelowarth, and I headed for my bedroom door.

The man behind me asked, ‘Where are you going?’

‘To my room.’ The old thumb-latched door handle actually fit in quite well with the age of the other things I was imagining, though the room itself looked a bit different inside when I opened the door. Unfazed, I stepped across the threshold, turned to face the man who wasn’t really there, and told him, ‘Look, you’re being very nice, but really I just want to be alone, so go away.’

I put as much force as I could into those words, but as before he only stood and looked right back at me instead of disappearing as he was supposed to.

With a sigh I said, ‘Oh, fine,’ and closed the door between us.

There were voices in the next room.

One was now familiar to me, but the other was a stranger’s who was making no great effort to be quiet. His was not a Cornish voice. It sounded Irish, and impatient.

‘Have you no sense left at all? ’Tis not your battle, and you know it.’

‘And whose battle is it, then?’ That was the man in brown, I recognised his level tone.

‘Not yours.’ The Irishman was firm. ‘Not mine.’

Half an hour or more had passed, or so it seemed, and I was still as deep as ever in the same hallucination, in this room that was my own, yet not my own. The walls were plaster-white, not green, and where the wardrobe should have stood there was a simple washstand with a bowl and pitcher on it. Gone, too, were the rocking chair and chest of drawers, replaced by two low trunks and a small writing desk tucked in the window alcove by the fireplace. But the fireplace was the same one, and the wide-planked floor still creaked when I set foot on it, and the bed was where it should be. Not the same bed, to be sure. This was a larger one – a tester bed with wooden headboard and high posts and railings set with rings to hold the curtains that hung drawn back to the posts at all four corners. With the canopy above it looked like something that belonged in a museum or historic home.

I was sitting on it now. I’d heard the footsteps in the next room as the man in brown went into it, and several minutes after that a different man – the Irishman, presumably – had climbed the stairs and come along the corridor, and now the two were arguing.

The Irishman went on, ‘When did the flaming Duke of Ormonde ever think to do you favours? Never, that’s when. Did he think to put his hand in when they had you up to Newgate? Did he come to pay you visits?’

‘Fergal.’

‘Did he?’

‘I am bound to him by blood.’

‘Well fine,’ the man named Fergal said. ‘Let him go spill his own, then, and leave us a bit of peace.’

A low laugh answered him. ‘You will remind me not to ever cross you?’

‘Sure if I’d thought you ever would, you’d have been dead before now.’

‘’Tis a comforting thought.’

‘Jesus, you need to be thinking now. Fine if you’re putting your head in a noose, that’s your business. But not for those bastards.’

‘I thought you were all for the king.’

‘So I am. ’Tis the men he keeps around him I’ve no faith in. They’ve had nearly one full year to bring him back since Queen Anne died, and they’ve done nothing.’ I heard footsteps cross the floor, and heard the handle of a door turn. ‘Just you think on what I’ve said, now.’

‘Do you mean to roast the squabs tonight?’

I heard the footsteps pause. ‘Now what the devil does that have to do with anything?’

‘I think more clearly when I’m fed.’

‘Is that a fact?’

‘You might do well to roast an extra bird.’

‘I’ll roast the flock for you,’ the Irishman said drily, ‘if it helps you find your sense.’