Click.

The room was flooded with light. Electric light.

The wrenching change left him gasping, gagging. A moment ago he'd been lying on the stone floor of a castle, with the Queen of England on the floor beside him, trying to warm his dying body with her own. Now he was sitting in a straight-backed chair, in...in...the drawing room of Collinwood...

A dream?

No! Impossible!

"Barnabas?"

Elizabeth, framed in the doorway. In pale blue nightgown and robe, she looked for a startling moment like a young girl. A very specific young girl, in pale blue nightgown and robe, who'd run into his arms long, long ago, and every fiber of his being ached with wanting her...

"Barnabas, I had a bad dream - something about you being in danger. I had to come down and check..." Her voice trailed off, and he realized she was staring at him. "Barnabas? Wh-what's going on? Why are you dressed like that? And what - what are you doing with a handful of dirt?"

He gazed stupidly down at himself. Sixteenth-century clothes. Oh God, sixteenth-century clothes. And the soil from Ralegh's Virginia colony - real, all too real. Still clutched in his hand, sifting out from between his fingers.

"I'm sorry, Elizabeth," he heard himself saying in a strangled voice. "I didn't want to frighten you. That's why I waited until after you had gone to bed to change."

Think, man, think! "I...I was attempting a sort of ritual. Sympathetic magic. Harmless, quite foolish really - trying to attune myself better to past time, in the hope it would help me reach Victoria. It didn't work. This dirt is -" Something, anything. "Earth from the grave of Sara Collins. I thought it might help, since she's obviously connected with all this."

"But those clothes. They appear to be the wrong time period. Or perhaps... not..." What did that mean?

"I know, the costume is all wrong." Lies flowing easily now - from long practice, God forgive him. "The outfit I wore to your costume ball would have been perfect. But of course, that was a rental. And I didn't have this idea tonight until after the rental shop had closed. So I had to make do with the one costume I own. This is something I wore in a college play." A wild impulse. "It was a play about the youth of England's Queen Elizabeth - the first Elizabeth. I played the role of her lover, Thomas Seymour."

"Really. The first Elizabeth. How...interesting." Had some memory stirred behind her eyes?

"You look exhausted, Barnabas. I worry about you... It's almost daybreak. I'd ask you to spend the rest of the night in one of the guest rooms, but I know you never will. So don't you think you should go home now? Get some rest?" Moving away from him.

What would happen if he swept her into his arms, kissed her, made passionate love to her? Could he reawaken his Elizabeth, the tempestuous Queen of England, in this worn, frightened woman?

Would he be doing her any favor if he did?

Almost daybreak. Elizabeth had turned toward the stairs. The stairs of her home, not his. A wave of weariness washed over him, and he knew it was too late, too late...why had he not been born in Collinwood...

Now he felt the irresistible pull of other needs. His home. The Manor House. The "Old House" that was newer than the "new house." The house in which he had been born, and in which he had died died died died died died died

The house where his coffin waited in the basement.

x

x

x

The End

x

x

x

Author's Afterword: The film referenced here is of course the Fifties movie Young Bess, which starred Jean Simmons as Elizabeth and her then husband, Stewart Granger, as Tom Seymour. Young Bess isn't historically accurate; but it's great romance, and my only goal was to be faithful to the film.

My title "Native Soil" has a double meaning, since Jean Simmons was British, as is Ben Cross. A story set in England deals with their "native soil."