Page 58 of Mesmerized

“But I have. And I am quite certain that you are not mad.” Stephen reached over and took her hand and squeezed it, gazing down into her eyes.

Olivia gave him a wobbly smile in return, her eyes unexpectedly filling with tears. Stephen pulled her to her feet and into his arms, holding her lightly. “No. Don’t cry. None of this is worth your tears.”

Olivia leaned her head against his chest. It was amazing, she thought, how easy this was becoming. It felt so good to be near him, to let him encompass her with his strength. She was growing accustomed to their chats every evening in his study, to seeing him at breakfast and dinner, to walking with him in the garden or sharing tea with him.

It was foolish, she told herself, weak and foolish. Soon she would be leaving, and she would not see him again. She would return to her normal life, a life he did not share. She would be on her own again, pursuing her enthusiasms with the help of only Tom Quick. She would no longer discuss the happenings of the day with Stephen or see his smile...or feel the touch of his hand on hers.

She blinked away her tears, calling herself all kinds of a fool. She straightened and moved from him, turning her back and surreptitiously wiping away her tears. It was time to stop acting like a ninny.

“I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice came out a little husky, and she cleared her throat. “I am afraid I have an abominable headache. It makes me a little weak. I do not usually give in to tears that way.”

“You have had a good number of shocks the past few days,” he said. “We all have.”

“I am having a bit of trouble,” she admitted. “What I seem to be seeing and feeling goes against everything I believe in. I cannot believe that these visions are real, that these are ghosts!” She turned and looked at him, her eyes wide. “In all the investigations I’ve done, I have never seen a ghost. I have never had a dream like the ones I have had recently, or—or seen people who are not there. And not only that—I have felt so clearly what they were thinking and feeling.”

“I cannot explain it.”

“Nor I. Even though I do not believe it, let us suppose that Madame Valenskaya or one of the others is amazingly expert in the practice of mesmerism, or hypnotism. And let us even say that it is possible, if one is so expert, to make a person believe they see something that isn’t there, or to make them have dreams about a particular subject. And let us also imagine, since we are saying that they can do these other things, that they are able to implant in us the successful suggestion that we forget when and where and how we were hypnotized.”

“All right. Given all those unlikely things...”

“There are still logistical problems. When and where did they do this hypnotizing? You had your first dream about this couple in London, before Madame Valenskaya came here. Before you even met her. Isn’t that true?”

“Yes.”

“And since we have been here, there have generally been other people about, including the servants. I cannot see how anyone could have hypnotized me or you without someone else noticing. Unless they did it in the dead of night. And there have been so many details to the dreams—words and feelings and the minutiae of the people’s appearance, what their clothes were, what the box and its contents looked like—and there have been so many visions. How could they have implanted all of that in both of us?”

“It stretches the limits of credibility,” Stephen agreed.

“But even if all that could somehow be explained away or believed, there is still this problem—how could I have known what the box looked like or what it contained or what any of the contents were? I had never seen it before, and neither has Madame Valenskaya or the other two. Yet I saw the box and its contents down to the last detail. I knew its size, and I knew that it had engraving around the edge. I knew exactly how the rosary looked, even though I didn’t know it was a rosary and thought it only a necklace. Madame Valenskaya could not have described it, because she has never seen it. There is no way she could have seen it before, is there—a drawing or anything?”

“No. She has never been in this house, and as far as I know, that box has never left it. I know my father never removed it, and I don’t think Roderick would have, either. As I said, it’s something of a superstition in the family. None of us would have risked losing it. And I have never heard of any drawings of the box or its contents. As far as I know, it is not even known outside this family.”

“Then I cannot believe these things could have been the product of hypnotism. And if it isn’t that, what is it?”

They looked at each other for a long moment, neither of them wanting to actually say it. Finally Stephen sighed and said, “Ghosts? I feel like an utter fool saying it, but I cannot see how any of this could have been engineered. The dreams...the visions...”

“Mr. Babington’s fit?” Olivia offered.

“Do you think it is part of this?”

“I don’t know. But it seems to me that we have two sets of events. On the one hand, we have Madame Valenskaya’s séances and the things she says—the idea of the lost souls, the Martyrs’ treasure, the music and raps and the supposed voice of your brother.”

“The monk in the garden. The crying in the sitting room,” Stephen added.

“Yes. All of those things can be explained, and they all pertain to the gold casket. Then we have had an entirely different set of things: the apparition of the medieval woman in the great hall and the dreams you and I have had about this woman and her lover and husband. All of those are disturbingly inexplicable by any rational means.”

“That would mean that we have Madame Valenskaya and her daughter and Mr. Babington and their tricks, none of which are real. And an entirely different set of ‘spirits,’ which do seem to be real. Completely disconnected,” Stephen said.

“Not completely, though. The gold casket figures in both of them. And Mr. Babington at the séance the other night—his talking as if he were possessed, the seizure, the coma. That all seemed quite real, as well.”

“Yes. This casket.” Stephen walked over to the desk and stood for a moment looking down at it. “It was part of the Martyrs’ treasure. And that was in the sixteenth century. Yet you dreamed about the medieval woman holding the box and its contents. When you held the box, you saw a very clear vision of the woman and her husband and the strong sense that the husband was evil. And those people appear to be from four hundred years earlier than the Martyrs.”

Olivia was silent for a moment, thinking. “Perhaps the treasure that Lord Scorhill hid consisted of family heirlooms. Maybe the box and even the contents had been handed down for generations. They could have felt, as your family does, that they were more precious than even more expensive jewels.”

Stephen nodded thoughtfully. “That could have been why they hid them away so securely. They could have taken their other valuables or sent them to family or friends, but they wanted these oldest, most precious objects to stay here in Blackhope where they belonged, even if it meant that no one ever found them again.”

“What about the room where your family found the casket? Are you sure that the martyred Lord Scorhill built it?”