A Lady Under Siege - By B.G. Preston Page 0,24

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

Meghan 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.

Before getting up from the computer she gave in to an urge to google Thomas of Gastoncoe, not for the first time. In fact she had done this every time she had used the computer lately, typing his name and Lady Sylvanne’s into every search engine she could think of, but she had never turned up anything meaningful. Browsing absently through the results, she heard Betsy heading downstairs. Time to get dinner started.

In the kitchen she rubbed some skinless chicken thighs with olive oil, slid them into a Pyrex dish, sprayed them with concentrated juice from a plastic lemon, slathered on some honey, and popped it in the oven. Betsy came in and stood watching her sheepishly, but Meghan didn’t pick up on it. “Can you get me some spinach out of the fridge, hon?” she asked.

It was only when Betsy brought the packet to her at the sink that Meghan noticed the clumsily fashioned mass of bandages that encased the girl’s index finger. In alarm she cried, “What did you do to your hand?”

“It got cut,” Betsy said timidly.

“How?”

“I was practicing golf with Derek.”

“Derek.”

“From next door.”

“I know who Derek is, thank you very much. And where exactly were you golfing?”

“In the back,” said Betsy, wincing in anticipation of what was surely to follow.

“In our back? Derek came over to our back lawn?”

Betsy nodded. “Kind of by accident.”

Meghan looked out the kitchen window and with a shock saw that her garden had been violated. A dozen or so heavy