Fallam's Secret

by Denise Giardina

  “Sounds pretty fatalistic,” Lydde observed.

  Uncle John shrugged. “Physicists talk about something called the instanton. It had four dimensions at the Big Bang and then proceeded to inflate into an infinite universe. Everything existed in the instanton; it determined future time.”

  “Everything was meant to be?”

  “Yes.”

  “And is our being here meant to be?”

  “Yes,” Uncle John said. “When I came back the second time I knew I wanted you to come back here with me. That’s why I tried to get you to go back home when I came to visit you in England. But you wouldn’t come, so I ventured it alone the third time. I thought I’d take advantage of Lavinia still being in Arizona.”

  “Why didn’t you bring her here? Does she even know about a wormhole?”

  He shook his head. “No,” he admitted. “I know it was wrong of me. But I was going to tell her at the same time I told you and see if either of you wanted to come with me. That you’re here and not Lavinia is part of the flow of events.”

  “So you came back here before you visited me?”

  “Yes. I returned better prepared, with the cloak and an outfit of clothes that matched the period. And an understanding of where I was headed. I found John Soane again and we became fast friends. Which was logical, since we appeared identical.”

  He sighed then, and fought back tears. “When I couldn’t get you back to West Virginia, John Soane was so curious I agreed to let him trade places with me. I was expecting him back anytime. He was a good man, I was growing fond of him. It was like having a twin brother. Or more. Now it’s like facing my own mortality.”

  She put her arm around him. “Was he so much like you?”

  He turned. “Lydde, more than that. Maybe he was me. I’m still sorting all this out myself. But I think we may be in more than just the past. We may be in a parallel universe.”

  HE continued to talk as they walked along the Pye toward Soane’s Croft.

  “John Soane hid me away,” said Uncle John, smiling at the memory, “as much to study me, I think, as to shield me. I lived in the garret. Not even Mother Bunch was told who I was. Mother Bunch is the widow who cooks at Soane’s Croft, and she supplies herbs for the apothecary. The place couldn’t run without her. Anyway, she thought that I was a mysterious patient being hid because of a disfiguring illness.

  “But after John had heard my story over and over, and asked a thousand or so questions and grew to trust me, he was as convinced I told the truth as I was of his kindness. He would change places with me so I could get out and explore. His main disappointment in life was to be cut off from the new developments in science by living in Norchester. He longed to be in Oxford or London. But he was also devoted to his patients. And he was a good physician for this time and place. As you can guess, however, I knew a lot he didn’t know, even though I’m a physicist, not a physician. He’d no idea of bacteria, or sanitation, not even that he should wash his hands before and after examining a patient. So I taught him some things about medicine and he helped me adapt to this place. We made a good team.

  “But a bit of doubt remained, and curiosity too. So I let him go back in my place. Lavinia was in Arizona, so he wouldn’t need to fool her. It was getting harder and harder to hide from Mother Bunch that there were two Johns in the house. So I tried to prepare him for what he’d find and he wrote out instructions for getting back. I thought he’d be back here and I’d take his place at Roundbottom before anyone noticed.”

  “Aunt Lavinia came home early,” Lydde said, remembering. “She said you were acting strange. No wonder! She said you seemed afraid to drive the car. Poor man, it must have been terrifying to even ride in it.”

  “I told him about cars, but the reality would have been a shock,” Uncle John agreed.

  “And he insisted on sleeping in a bedroom by himself. That upset Aunt Lavinia.”

  “Bless him for that,” said Uncle John. “But how did he die?”

  “Heart attack. That’s another thing. The doctor was puzzled because his heart was in such bad shape.”

  “He would have aged, just like we’ve gotten younger coming in this direction. But he was in his forties here, same as me. I didn’t think the extra years would hurt him.”

  “Maybe he wasn’t in as good health as you are,” Lydde pointed out. “If this is really the seventeenth century, then he didn’t grow up with all the nutritional advantages we have. He’d be an older forty than you are.”

  “That’s true,” said Uncle John, shaking his head, “and I didn’t take it into account. Poor John. He’s dead and it’s all my fault.”

  “Maybe not. Dr. Khan said it was amazing he’d not died years earlier. So he might not have lasted much longer here either. Life expectancy here isn’t so hot. If what you’ve been telling me is correct, he was meant to die. And look at it this way. He had some kind of experience before he went.”

  “It doesn’t make me feel any better at this moment.”

  Uncle John stopped and sighed.

  Then Lydde remembered something else Aunt Lavinia had told her. “She said he watched a lot of television. Stared at the set for hours.”

  Uncle John looked at her. “I wonder what shows,” he said.

  Then they both started to laugh and were soon hugging each other for comfort.

  “And the people here think you’re him,” Lydde said.

  “Yes. We thought it best. Now I wonder if it was a mistake. I should have tried to pass as a long-lost twin or something. It’s damn hard to pretend to be someone else. We had to invent a medical condition for John Soane, one that would explain why sometimes he talks normally and other times has a terrible stutter. That covered my accent, since I’m not actor enough to fake it. Plus there were my inevitable lapses of memory, not recognizing people or knowing customs and so forth. All explained by my malady, one that comes and goes. Of course, we could never be seen together. But it hasn’t been hard to fool people. These people don’t get out much, you know, so they’ll believe you’re Irish, or have contracted some sort of brain fever from the Indies, and not doubt it.”

  Then Lydde thought of something that had puzzled her. “But how could you have met John Soane fifty years ago and then come back and he’s only in his forties?”

  “Relativity again. From here, time there seems hardly to pass, so if I would go back to West Virginia after a few months here, it’s the next day. And a year or two there, come back here, maybe a week would have passed. From each perspective, time passes more slowly in the other place. Think of it as mutual Brigadoon, if you want to put it in theater terms.”

  Lydde shook her head. “It’s just so hard to wrap my mind around. You could live to be old here and go back home and hardly any time would have passed? It’s like living several lifetimes.”

  He nodded, and a tentative smile returned to his face. “That’s exactly what it’s like. And very tempting on this end to stay around, rather than face a few short years back home, especially if I can convince Lavinia to join me. Even if we caught the plague and died, we’d probably have more time than we do back home. And I’ve got work to do, here and back there. I only hope it’s not some horrible offense to the way God has set up the universe. But if it was, I don’t think we’d be here.”

  They came to Soane’s Croft, which was as lovely as Lydde remembered it from her years in Norchester. If Hawthorne’s famous house had seven gables, Soane’s Croft had it beat with eleven. And three large chimneys—which meant, Lydde realized with a shudder, that much of the house would be cold in winter. It was a rambling Tudor structure of three stories set in front of a large walled garden. There the house had fronted the paved street, surrounded closely by pleasant Victorian buildings. Here it was in a dirt lane, and its neighbors were more distant thatched cottages. At the smaller of the two doors that fronted the lane, where Lydde recalled a chalkboard posting the hours for the Soane’s Croft restaurant and gift shop, a rough hand-painted sign h
anging above the entrance read JOHN SOANE, APOTHECARY & PHYSICIAN.

  “I’ll bet you’re hungry,” Uncle John said.

  “I feel like I haven’t eaten for three hundred years,” Lydde admitted. She still had a thousand questions but was so hungry and suddenly tired she was willing to wait before asking them.

  “Mother Bunch had a mutton stew on the hearth when I left,” he said, “and bread in the oven. Plain food, but if you don’t let it spoil, it’s good. The folks back home into natural foods would love it. One of my projects has been to convince people to avoid spoilage and boil their water,” and he went on in this enthusiastic fashion about reforming the health habits of the good folk of Norchester while he led her around the corner to an iron gate which stood open. This, he explained, was the entrance for patients. A very long cord ran into his own bedchamber above, where a bell rang at night in case of emergencies. The house extended back into the garden, and the rooms there, somewhat separate from the rest of the house, served as the physician’s waiting room and surgery. There was also a split door between kitchen and garden where people entered to pick up medicines, herbal in nature, prepared fresh each day by Mother Bunch.

  “Wait here,” he said, “and I’ll speak to Mother Bunch. We don’t want to give the poor woman a heart attack.”

  He left Lydde to wander the well-tended garden. The preservationists of her twenty-first-century Norchester had done a good job, for it was much the same, the paths lined with plantings of columbine, roses, and irises. But there was far less grass than Lydde recalled and much more of a barely tamed flowery tangle. A corner of the garden was given over to a plot of herbs: thyme, rosemary, sage, and parsley in neat rows. Mother Bunch had an outsized green thumb, it seemed. Lydde was admiring her work when Uncle John returned.

  “The food’s almost ready,” he said. “While we’re waiting I’ll show you the surgery.”

  Inside, Soane’s Croft was all dark wood paneling, as Lydde remembered, but like the people she’d met, it smelled. Not so offensive though, Lydde thought, just pungent. The predominant odor was smoke, wood smoke and something else—candles? herbs?—and food, the smell of stewing meat coming from the nearby kitchen.

  “Look here.” Uncle John took her on a quick tour. The waiting room was small and lined with rough benches. The next room held two tables, a small one for examinations, Uncle John explained, and a larger one where surgery was performed.

  “You don’t actually cut people open? Not without anesthetic?” Lydde shuddered.

  “Not unless there’s nothing else for it,” Uncle John replied. “I’ve already done an amputation. Not much to that, actually, I could teach you in half an hour. The poor fellow whose leg I took was pretty well soused by the time I got the saw out, and I don’t mind telling you I’d had a nip or two myself.”

  “Uncle John!”

  He shrugged. “John Soane himself would tell you he did the same. Easier to handle the screams and to saw away with abandon. Beyond that, it takes four strong men to hold, a good tight tourniquet, a hot poker for afterward.”

  “But can you really pass yourself off as a doctor?”

  He put his finger to his lips and said, “I’ll show you my secret weapon.”

  The next room was at the front of the house, and Lydde remembered it as holding the restaurant where she’d often lunched. Here it was the doctor’s study, with several shelves of leather-bound volumes that Lydde guessed was quite a library for its day. Uncle John went to a cabinet in the corner, unlocked it, and took out two books. The Good Housekeeping Family Health and Medical Guide and The American Medical Association Handbook of First Aid and Emergency Care.

  “Brought them from home. John loved them. And I treat them like holy scripture. Surreptitiously, of course. We never let the patients see them.” He patted the books. “In fact, I blame these for John’s curiosity about where I came from. I think he wanted to learn more about medicine. The funny thing is, I’m just as interested in the concoctions Mother Bunch puts together. I’ve seen them work too many times. Put them to good use myself. I’d hate to suffer through a cold again without chamomile, and willow bark tea works well on a headache.” He clapped his hands. “Speaking of Mother Bunch and her concoctions, let’s eat.”

  HE had prepared her well, for when Mother Bunch saw Lydde and her strange outfit, she raised an eyebrow and said, “They do dress outlandish in Ireland, do they not?” then turned to ladle stew into bowls.

  It was mutton and root vegetables, Uncle John said. “Parsnips, carrots, potatoes, leeks, whatever’s available. Typical fall meal.”

  Lydde chewed appreciatively. “Is that spiced with sage?” she asked.

  “It sure is. Mother Bunch is the best with herbs.”

  He was talking freely, without trying to fake an impediment, and Mother Bunch ignored them as she tended to the hearth. She was a short, stout old woman with a round red face that looked as though it had been scrubbed too hard. Throughout the meal she made appropriate clucking noises over Lydde: Oh, the poor lad, to have been so mistreated by those dreadful papists! So Lydde was officially male, though she and Uncle John agreed it better to be good English Lewis than Louis.

  Lydde tried awkwardly to manage the large chunks of mutton with her spoon, then looked around. “Where are the forks?”

  “No forks,” said Uncle John. “That’s a French affectation that only the rich have adopted so far. Good solid Norchester folk use their fingers.”

  “Which explains,” Lydde said, “why so many good solid Norchester folk walk around with grease stains on their clothes.”

  “You’ll learn to lick your fingers well,” Uncle John said. “But don’t look so dainty when you’re doing it.”

  Lydde propped her elbows on the table and dug in.

  “Where’s Mary?” Uncle John asked.

  “She went on her rounds delivering medicines,” said Mother Bunch, “and planned to end up at Carter’s inside West Gate to visit little Gwen. She’ll have her supper with them.”

  Uncle John nodded. “I know Lyd—er—Lewis will want to meet Mary. They should be great friends.”

  “Indeed,” said Mother Bunch with a twinkle, “they may be more than friends.”

  “Now, Mother Bunch!” Uncle John wagged his finger at her. “You must let the young people alone.”

  Lydde tried to ignore this and plunged her fingers into the stew.

  SHE was shown to an upstairs bedroom that overlooked the garden, though she could only see it in a haze through the milky glazed windows. There was a rope bed that held a feather mattress, a wooden chest for clothes, a chair, and a stand for washbowl and pitcher.

  She felt worse than jet-lagged—time-lagged—and sank gratefully into the feather bed for a nap. There she dreamed of falling, and that Mother Bunch was in the kitchen at Roundbottom Farm engaged in a hair-pulling match with Aunt Lavinia. She woke to an insistent tugging at her arm. When she opened her eyes, she found herself staring at a face from her photographs of her sisters.

  “Oh, my God!” she exclaimed, still groggy.

  The girl stepped back in alarm and put her hand to her neck. “Please, sir, have I offended or has God?”

  “No, no.” Lydde sat up. “I was having a nightmare, that’s all. Please, what is your name?”

  But she already knew. The girl was about thirteen, with long dark hair parted in the middle and pulled back from her face, her eyes wide-set and her mouth dainty.

  The girl dropped a curtsy. “I am Mary. I’m your cousin.”

  “So you are.” Lydde could barely speak. “And what is your last name? I mean—what is it called?—your Christian name?”

  “Soane, sir. Same as the good doctor.”

  “Well, Mary, I see the resemblance.”

  In fact, Lydde had always thought Mary’s face, so grave and intelligent in the black-and-white photo, most resembled the pictures of her mother Margaret, who had also looked much like her brother, Uncle John. And here was the girl in the fles
h. Overcome, Lydde fell back against the pillow and began to sob.

  “Oh, sir, I didn’t mean to frighten you. I only came from Mother Bunch with your clothes. They are all in an upset downstairs, for there is a disturbance at St. Pancras Church.” She held out a pair of breeches, stockings, a shirt, and boots.

  Lydde covered her face with her hands for a moment and regained control of her emotions. When she looked up she said, “Will you send the doctor to me at once?”

  Mary curtsied. “I will. Are you ill, sir?”

  “No, Mary, not ill. Just very tired. And please. Call me Lewis, and no more curtsies. We must be friends.”

  “If you say so,” Mary said, obviously pleased. She went to the door, then turned. “Will you be my brother? It will be so nice to have a brother again. All my brothers and sisters died of the scarlet fever.”

  Then she disappeared. Lydde said to the empty door, “And mine died of a fire.”

  Chapter 6

  St. Pancras Church

  CONSTABLE BAXTER AND Jacob Woodcock ran a tight race to see who could first carry news of the strange arrival to Lieutenant Major-General Noah Fallam. Woodcock the blacksmith wound his way through the warren of little streets between East Gate and South Gate, calling out to those he recognized that he was on a mission to inform the lieutenant major-general of “some devilish mischief come among us.” Baxter was more deliberate but, like the tortoise, more purposeful, and he avoided the curious to make his steady way to the Pye, then along its bank past Soane’s Croft, unencumbered except to dodge the occasional swan. So he reached his object first, and in less of a lather than Woodcock, who came along the gravel walk of the cathedral close in an agitated state just as the constable was lifting Fallam’s door knocker.

  The lieutenant major-general was comfortably established in the former Bishop’s Palace at the cathedral, now closed, since Puritans held cathedrals to be un-Christian dens of iniquity, the “gaudy whores of the Antichrist’s Church of England,” as Jacob Woodcock was fond of saying. Woodcock chafed to see Pastor Fallam set up housekeeping in the shadow of such a monstrosity, yet had to admit as he waited with Baxter that it was indeed a handsome residence, all mellow brick with large windows, and therefore fitting for Cromwell’s representative. Let this former habitation of sinners be thus redeemed by the presence of a godly man, he told visitors to his smithy. Though he also wondered at the isolation of Pastor Fallam. The deserted cathedral and its grounds presented a silent and indeed eerie atmosphere that frighted even good Christian men certain of their place among the elect. Fallam must be assured of the unassailable state of his soul.