25

Other memories came: flashes from a past life of the kind Brian Douglas had once hoped he’d get in his bath—although now, presumably, he didn’t remember whether he’d had them or not. I saw a hermit living in his shack in the woods at St Albans and looked after in his dotage by the monks; that was during the thirteenth century. A beggar travelling throughout Germany, ragged and hirsute, during the sixteenth. A gambler in Italy the century after. I had a glimpse of him in 1772 sitting for his portrait in Belgium. God knows how I knew it was 1772. There wasn’t any calendar.

And—yes—I saw him, too, in Powys, in fifth-century Britain. Chieftain of a warring tribe.

Although these were simply glimpses, I felt an affinity towards the man, maybe not a liking but an interest in his welfare and an immediate acceptance. The empathy I felt for such as Isaac Laquedem in Brussels, Solomon in York, Arthur at Tintagel and even Cartophilus in Jerusalem was so strong, so instinctive, it could only have been inspired, I realized, by direct experience. I sat there feeling no longer nauseous, but dazed—utterly dazed. I had a mug of strong black coffee in my hand, yet I was hardly aware of it, and lifted it to my lips only absent-mindedly.

It seemed that every time I did so, however, I saw reflected in the depths of that dark liquid a further facet of my own personality.