She had dark hair and eyes and wore a large sparkling jewel around her neck. Her face seemed kind and she held an elegant hand out towards me. It seemed uncannily like my own. She whispered my name in a soft, French-accented voice. ‘Elizabeth,’ she said, plainly, adding no title or honorific. I sat up and reached for her hand, but just as we were about to touch, she snatched hers back and pointed to her throat. Blood was oozing from the skin, but from no wound that I could see. It ran, red and glistening, from the base of her neck, down the cleft of her breast and under the edge of her bodice. Her white hands were stained with it and suddenly I could smell its thick, metallic odour and taste it, sticky and meaty inside my mouth. Another dream or, perhaps, delirium: a man on a fine white horse riding away from me along a cliff road. The sky very blue, the grass green, the wind whipping at his clothes, his hair and the glossy mane and tail of his horse. I cannot make out his face, but I know I must catch him.
