Slumber Page 5

  He slipped his reading glasses back on and opened Science of the Experience of Consciousness once more. Somewhere within its pages, he hoped, were the answers which would support the theory on which he had been working for days now. The Princess was undeniably in a state of Slumber, However, Gilbert was certain it was not the curse itself but her belief the curse was real and had power over her which had caused Clementine to fall under its spell. Even though Gilbert fervently believed curses were not real, he readily accepted that those who thought themselves to be ‘under a curse’ might unconsciously manifest that condition. The mind was a powerful force in and of itself.

  He was deep into the philosophical arguments set forth in the book when a sudden bang startled him. A book was lying on the floor. Gilbert picked it up and felt the heaviness of it. He examined the bookshelf. There was no reason for the book to have fallen.

  A knock sounded at the door, “Come in!” Gilbert called, castigating himself for jumping like a nervous schoolgirl. Mrs Finn put her head round the door. “Will you be wanting your dinner in here, Mr Thackeray?”

  Gilbert glanced at the clock in surprise. “Sorry, Mrs Finn. I must have lost track of the time.”

  “I thought you probably had,” the housekeeper smiled indulgently. “I can bring it in to you if you’d like.”

  “No, please don’t go to any trouble. I’ll eat in the parlour.”

  “Go on with you then,” Mrs Finn fussed, shooing him out. “Hetty lit a fire for you a little while ago so it’ll be nice and toasty in there.”

  Obeying Mrs Finn’s instructions, Gilbert made for the parlour. He was completely oblivious to Clementine who, still relishing her success at knocking over the book, followed him down the hallway.

  Clementine sat opposite Gilbert, resting her head on the palms of her hands as she watched him eat his lonely meal. He wore no jacket or cravat today, just a white shirt, which was unbuttoned at the neck, and a waist coat. His hair, usually so neat, was yet again in disarray. Clementine smiled. She liked him like this.

  “Look at me, Gilbert Thackeray,” she ordered him and he did - though his gaze went straight through her.

  If only she could move things at will, she thought. Knocking the book off the shelf had taken tremendous effort and, even so, Clementine wasn’t sure how she had done it. Reaching across the table, she tried to push the salt cellar but her hand simply passed right through it. She slumped back on her chair and nibbled her bottom lip as she watched him.

  “Please see me, Gilbert Thackeray,” she sighed. A frown crossed Gilbert’s face. He put down his knife and fork.

  “Clementine?” he said quietly.

  “Yes, Gilbert! It’s me!” Clementine beamed. “Can you hear me?”

  Gilbert sat by the fire and stared into the flames. Kneeling at his feet, Clementine touched his hands. “Look at me, Gilbert Thackeray,” she implored him.

  He seemed to look right at her. She blew on his face. “Do you see me?” she asked. Gilbert touched his cheek. “You can feel me!” Clementine cried excitedly. She blew again. There was a tap at the door and Mrs Finn entered.

  “Can I get you anything else, Mr Thackeray? Maybe some tea?”

  “No, thank you, Mrs Finn. I’m fine.” He stood up wearily. “In fact, I still have some work to do.”

  “Very well, if you must,” Mrs Finn tutted. “I’ve lit the lamp in your study. You’ll not do your eyes any good squinting in the dark.”

  Gilbert smiled at her fussing. “You’re right, as always, Mrs Finn,” he told her, patting the older woman’s arm.

  Clementine drifted down the hallway after Gilbert. She knew he could sense her on some level, even hear her. Now, she just needed to figure out how to make him believe he wasn’t imagining it.

  Gilbert selected a book from his bookcase and sat down at his desk as Clementine peered at the title: A Dissertation On The Influence Of The Passions Upon The Disorders Of The Body. Pushing his reading glasses up his nose, Gilbert quickly became absorbed in his reading.

  “You won’t find the answers there, Gilbert Thackeray,” Clementine whispered sadly. She placed a spectral hand upon his shoulder. Without taking his eyes from his book, Gilbert brought his own hand to where Clementine’s rested and absent-mindedly covered it with his own.

  Once Gilbert had retired for the night, Clementine wandered restlessly around his home. Why was it, she wondered, that, of all the people with whom she had tried to communicate, only Gilbert seemed to hear her? Although she had tried her hardest, her father hand’t heard her and neither had her cousin nor her aunt. Only Mr Thackeray had heard her calls - and he refused to take notice.

  She needed to find a way to make him listen. Some way where he could not ignore her and explain her away as a draughty room or tiredness of mind. If what her father had told Mr Thackeray was correct, she didn’t have long before she would be trapped in this limbo or gone forever. It was so unfair that, just as Sir Hugo was on the point of proposing, she should be snatched away into this nether world.

  Well she would not allow Gilbert Thackeray to shut her out. She would simply have to make his life very difficult until he acknowledged her presence. The trouble was that, in order to do that, she would need to do more than call to him or blow little puffs of air on his neck. What she needed was to harness whatever it was that had enabled her to knock that book of the shelf.

  With that thought in mind, she hurried back to Gilbert’s study.

  Chapter Six

  Gilbert surveyed his study. Papers lay scattered across the floor; books had been thrown from the shelves and, even as he stared about him, his globe rolled across the floor and came to rest at his feet. He darted a look in the corner of the room and sighed in relief when he saw his father’s telescope still sitting untouched on its stand.

  He stormed from the room, down the hallway and into the kitchen. The Master’s sudden appearance startled both Mrs Finn and Hill, the cook. “Is there something you wanted, Mr Thackeray?” Mrs Finn asked in alarm.

  “Has Hetty been in my study?” Gilbert demanded.

  “No, Mr Thackeray,” Mrs Finn reassured him. “Not since that last time when she thought she’d seen a mouse and dropped the tray over your desk. You gave very specific instructions afterwards that she was not to be allowed in. Why? Is there something the matter then?”

  He shook his head to clear the vision of his globe rolling across the floor towards him. “No, everything is fine,” he said, having no wish to alarm the two women. He turned away and so missed the worried frowns of his housekeeper and his cook. Back in his study, Gilbert started to pick things up and return them to their rightful places. Who or what could have done such a thing without anyone noticing anything amiss? Everything had been orderly - or at least orderly to him - when he had gone to bed the night before.

  He bent to pick up the globe and it rolled violently away from him. He straightened in alarm and watched it turn around and roll back towards him.

  “What the hell is going on?” he muttered aloud. Again he reached for the globe. This time, it rose from the floor and hovered about his head, Desperately, he made a grab for it and it flew across the room out of his grasp. Yet it didn’t crash to the floor. It was as though someone were holding the little world aloft.

  Then he heard a familiar giggle.

  “Princess Clementine,” he said in a strangulated voice, shaking his head in disbelief. “It’s official. I’ve gone mad!”

  “No you haven’t, Mr Thackeray. It’s really me!”

  Still holding the globe in her hands, Clementine was bouncing up and down with sheer excitement. All that Gilbert Thackeray could see was his globe bobbing around, apparently of its own volition. Edging backwards, he found his chair with the backs of his knees and sank into it.

  “Do not look so perturbed, Mr Thackeray! It’s only me!”

  “It’s impossible,” Gilbert told himself. “This is all a figment of my clearly overwrought i
magination.” Suddenly, he jumped to his feet. “A walk - that’s what I need. Some fresh air will soon clear this nonsense from my head.” And so saying, he practically ran from the room, grabbed his hat and coat and slammed out of the house.

  “Oh Lord!” Clementine said and hurried after him. Gilbert struck out across the fields. He needed to put as much distance between him and the house as he could. He would not give into madness. Good country air would see it off he was sure. He sucked in long, deep breaths.

  “Where are we going, Mr Thackeray?” Clementine asked him curiously.

  “No. I did not hear that,” Gilbert said aloud and increased his pace, his long legs eating up the ground at a good clip. Clementine was grateful she didn’t actually have to stride alongside him.

  “You know you will have to acknowledge me sooner or later,” she told him firmly.

  “Old King Cole was a merry old soul,

  And a merry old soul was he;

  He called for his pipe, and he called for his bowl,

  And he called for his fiddlers three.”

  Giggling at Gilbert’s singing, Clementine joined in as Gilbert launched into the second verse.

  “Every fiddler, he had a fiddle,

  And a very fine fiddle had he.”

  Gilbert clapped his hands over his ears and sang even louder.

  Oh there’s none so rare, as can compare,

  With King Cole and his fiddlers three.”

  Clementine applauded enthusiastically when they finished. “Let’s sing the one about the old woman who lived in a shoe next, Mr Thackeray,” she implored.

  “Tiredness and anxiety can lead to overwrought imaginings, even hysteria,” Gilbert told himself. He snapped his fingers. “Yes! That must be it. I haven’t slept well of late and I have been keeping long hours. Any good doctor would prescribe rest and an absence of stimuli.”

  “I think you are being excessively stubborn, if you don’t mind me saying so,” Clementine told him crossly. “If anyone has good reason to be overwrought then it is me - not you!”

  Striding purposefully and taking deep, cleansing breaths of pure country air, Gilbert ignored her. Clementine sighed.

  Mr Thackeray was proving to be even more stubborn than she had first credited.

  While the rest of the household slept, Clementine sat in the parlour and watched the dying embers of the fire. She wasn’t sure whether to admire Mr Thackeray’s determination to ignore her or to hate him for it. Of course, she understood that, being the sort of man he was, his natural inclination was to turn away from anything which he could not rationally explain. But he was her only hope and she needed him to understand and accept the fact.

  It was now, when everyone else was at rest, that Clementine felt the loneliness of her situation the most keenly. Although her body lay in Slumber, her spirit had no such solace. During the daytime hours, she could console herself that there were others who were trying to help: her father; her cousin; Gilbert Thackeray himself. But, as night descended, she had only her thoughts and it was then when the reality of her situation swamped her. She was all alone.

  She rose and drifted out of the parlour and up the stairs. She needed to be near the one person who knew she was not in the Tower Room. She slipped through the doorway into Gilbert’s bedroom and took the chair near the fireplace. She watched him sleeping. His gentle breaths were a comfort in this dark hour.

  “Oh, Mr Thackeray,” she sighed despondently. “If only you would allow yourself to let go of your convictions and believe in my presence.”

  Gilbert stirred in his sleep. “Hush now, Do not wake: you need your sleep,” Clementine told him gently. “Perhaps in the morning you will see things a little more clearly. Perhaps you will even understand that hearing me gives you the power to help me. What do you say, Gilbert Thackeray? Will you at least allow yourself to explore that possibility?”

  When Gilbert’s breathing grew even again, Clementine settled back and allowed his nearness to comfort her and give her some rest too.

  For the first time in days, Gilbert woke feeling well rested. He surprised Mrs Finn with a request for a hearty breakfast and a pot of hot coffee. Delighted at the prospect of feeding her beloved employer, the housekeeper bustled off to tell Hill.

  “Breakfast? Our Mr Thackeray never takes breakfast!” the cook exclaimed as she pulled out her skillet.

  “I know! Isn’t it wonderful!” Mrs Finn agreed as she started to grind the coffee beans.

  Unaware of the excitement he was causing in the kitchen, Gilbert entered his study in a determined mood. “Ah ha! I see that all is as I left it last night!” he proclaimed triumphantly. Clementine harrumphed.

  “What’s the point if you are so close-minded you refuse to acknowledge it as anything more than the work of a violent draught or crazed cat which has, no doubt, escaped from the cat lunatic asylum?”

  “Now then, Princess, there’s no need to sulk.”

  It took a moment for her brain to catch up with her ears but then Clementine, who had been slumped dejectedly in Gilbert’s chair, realised what he had just said. Excitedly, she rose and crossed the study to stand in front of him. “You can hear me, Mr Thackeray!” she shrieked.

  “Yes, Princess Clementine. There’s no need to shout. I am stubborn not deaf,” he replied drily.

  “Oh, this is wonderful!” she cried happily. “What changed your mind?”

  “It occurred to me, as a man of science,” Gilbert said, as he began to pace with his hands behind his back, “that perhaps this situation, while admittedly unusual, can be approached by using inductive reasoning. Are you familiar with the concept of inductive reasoning, Princess Clementine?”

  “I think we can safely say I don’t have the first idea what you are talking about, Mr Thackeray.”

  “Quite.”

  Gilbert resumed his pacing. “One can think of it in simplified terms as: if B, C, and D are observed to be true then A might be true. In other words, if I am able to hear you and I am able to bear witness to your ability to move physical objects and yet I know your body is back at the Palace, then maybe there is a probability that spirit exists and it can survive independently of the body.”

  Oh my! thought Clementine. He’s certainly back on form. “The other probability, of course,” she supplied, unable to resist teasing him, “being that you are crazy.”

  “Yes, well the thought has certainly occurred to me on more than one occasion over the last few days,” Gilbert admitted, “but when I considered it in more depth, I realised that, if I can indeed hear you, that puts me in the unique situation of being of assistance to you.”

  Clementine had to resist the urge to giggle as she listened to Gilbert repeat back her words of the night before. She wondered briefly whether she should enquire as to his thinking on the suggestibility of the unconscious mind but, reluctantly, decided against it.

  “I shall require your help of course,” he said, taking a seat at his desk and dipping his pen in the ink well. “We will need to go over everything. I shall need to know your state of mind when you fell into the Slumber; what you imagine is happening to you now; how it feels to be separated from your body; the limitations you experience and anything else that might help me to understand how this condition manifested itself.”

  In the time it took Gilbert to complete his list of requirements, Clementine went from excitement to a state of utter weariness. “Mr Thackeray,” she said, “perhaps we could go for a walk and I could simply tell you what happened that day.”

  “Princess Clementine,” Gilbert replied insufferably, “it is imperative that I not only understand this condition but record it in full if I am to be of help to you.”

  “Yes, I understand that but I am not one of your academic projects or a new hypothesis,” she said irritably. “So, please would you put your pen down and just let me tell you what I know?”

  Gilbert just stared at her, He was clearly completely fla
bbergasted that she wasn’t as enthusiastic as he was about tackling the problem. “But - surely you understand the urgency …” he began when a knock at the door interrupted them and Mrs Finn, somewhat hesitantly, entered the study.

  “Your breakfast is ready, Mr Thackeray,” she said, peering surreptitiously around the room.

  Gilbert looked thoughtful for a moment and then announced, “If it’s not too much trouble, Mrs Finn, I think I should like to breakfast in the garden.”