Chapter 6
Stuck Up!
It was just as Queen Mary was handing back the earbuds that a page arrived. Dropping to his knee, he announced in a trembling voice that seemed to crack every few words, “Your Majesty, the royal goldsmith has arrived to consider alterations to the crown required for your comfort.”
The royal goldsmith! Dad! Here? She had only met her father twice and now he was here again.
“He awaits you in the privy chamber.”
Privy chamber! Privy chamber! Where the heck is that? Whitehall was such a sprawling palace. She had to find out. Perhaps she could follow the queen and her retinue as they made their way to the privy chamber. It seemed terribly unfair that the queen could see her dad whenever she wanted but Rose had to sneak around. Well, she would sneak if she had to!
Little did Rose imagine that her father was having precisely the same thought. Why do I have to invent ruses to see my own daughter? Nicholas Oliver did not know much about fatherhood, but this much he did know—it should not be dangerous for him to seek out his own daughter. His own flesh and blood. He had tried to get a message to Rose’s friend Bettina of his impending arrival so she could alert Rose. But he was not sure it had gotten through. He waited impatiently in the privy chamber, where a few of the queen’s ministers were also waiting for her to sign a stack of documents and proclamations.
Rose, meanwhile, had come up with a perfect excuse to get into the chamber at just the right time. The queen had been wearing the blue gown, which Rose had only that morning made adjustments on. The reason the queen had come into the sewing room in the first place was to make sure it all fitted just right. Distracted by the earbuds and the ivory panel discussion, that had been forgotten. Just after the queen left the sewing room, Rose had turned to Sara and gasped, “Good grief! I left those pins in the back ruching of the dress. Her Majesty might get stuck by them. Which way is the privy chamber?”
“Go out, turn left into the corridor that leads to the portrait gallery, then take another left at the end and cross the courtyard. If you run you can catch up with them.”
It was at least a quarter mile to the privy chamber. When she burst into the room, the half dozen or so people within looked up in astonishment at the flush-faced young girl. She immediately dropped to her knees.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but there are still pins in the dress. Pray don’t sit down. Just turn around so I can get at the ruching.” There was a slight titter as almost everyone present had an image of this stiff, cranky old queen having her bottom stuck full of pins. Nicholas Oliver indeed almost burst out laughing himself, for he was the only person in the chamber who realized this was a complete fabrication. What a clever daughter I have! he thought. He could not take his eyes off Rose as she dropped to her knees and began to scan the back of the dress, but not before giving her father a wink that seemed to say it all. They would meet afterward. She was hidden now by the voluminous skirts of the dress, and no one could see that she was simply pretending to remove pins and had had the forethought to wear her wrist pincushion and stick the phantom pins into it.
“There we go!” she said briskly, and popped up from her kneeling position.
“You got them all, I trust,” the queen said grimly.
“Every last one, Your Majesty.”
“You are dismissed, then.”
Rose left, and as she was passing close to her father, she tripped—just a bit. Her father caught her elbow. OMG, she thought. This is just like the lunchroom, except Marisol didn’t pretend to trip. She really did. And it happened because someone stuck their foot out. And that someone had to be Tinker Bell! She knew it. “By the horse guards. Blacksmith yard,” she whispered as her father helped her stay on her feet.
A quarter of an hour later, she heard footsteps against the paving stones. She peeked out from around the corner, near the posts where the horses were tethered when the blacksmith shod them. No horse stood between the posts. The yard was completely empty, and the only sounds were the occasional neighs of the dozens of horses in the stables.
She held her breath. Her father was a tall man, and with the low angle of the late afternoon sun, his shadow stretched long across the paving stones of the blacksmith yard.
“Dad!” she called out softly. The advancing shadow stopped and she streaked across the yard, leaping over the shadow of his head and into his arms. The rough cloth of his jerkin rubbed her cheek and then there was the familiar scent of rosemary. He always wore a sprig of the herb in his waistcoat in honor of her mom, whose name was Rosemary.
“Oh, Dad!”
“Rosie! Rosie!”
“Dad, come back with me.”
“But how can I?”
“I think I can figure it out somehow. I mean, I cross over. So you can too.” They had had this conversation once before, but her father had hesitated. How could he fit in a century five hundred years from where he was? What would he do? Rose sensed those same thoughts racing through his head now. “Dad, you told me before that you would go with me to the end of time, to the end of space, and place. That you would cross oceans and borders—borders between centuries and between Kentucky and Indiana or Ohio or Michigan. Those were your exact words.”
“I know, dear. I know that, and I meant it, but these are very dangerous times. You should not even be here. The worst is yet to come.”
“I know that, Dad! I know better than you what is to come.”
At that moment the blacksmith entered the yard, leading a large charger.
“Git yourselves out from the posts unless you want me to put a shoe on you,” he shouted.
“We shouldn’t be seen together,” her father said quickly. “But darling girl, you need to go back. Soon. It’s simply too dangerous.”
There was no sense starting a scene with her dad here in the blacksmith yard. Rose stepped back and thrust her hands into the deep pocket of her kirtle. She crossed her fingers. “If you say so, Dad.”
“Really?” He looked at her closely. It was hard to guess what he was thinking. “You are no better a liar than your mum was.” The trace of a smile crossed his face and the corners of his eyes began to crinkle up as if he were about to laugh. “Very clever of you, that ploy with the pins. Pins sticking into her butt!”
“Well.” Rose shrugged. “She is rather stuck up.”
“Is that a pun?” her father asked. She could tell he did not quite get it.
“I suppose,” Rose replied. “You know, full of herself. Conceited. Stuck up.”
“A very twenty-first-century pun, I imagine.”
“Maybe not that new. I think the expression’s been around for a while.”
“As have I.” Nicholas Oliver sighed.
“Dad! You don’t look a day over forty-five. Honestly.”
“That’s five hundred and forty-five, in your time.”
“No. Not a day. So will you come?” Rose asked.
“Will you go?” he replied.
“Outta the way now, you two. This is one skittish stallion.”
They planned to meet again the next day if possible. How would she ever sleep that night?! She was so excited. She simply had to persuade her father to cross back with her. She was sure her gran would love him. She and her gran together would figure out how to . . . to . . . to work him into their century. She was sure.
Chapter 7
Eternally Youthful
Sara and Rose shared a tiny bedroom stuck up beneath the eaves of York Place, in Whitehall Palace. York Place was the very heart of this sumptuous palace. It was to be the dream home of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, before he chopped her head off. Queen Mary delighted in ensconcing herself in its endless luxury. The shattered dream of the stepmother she could not stand. To Rose it seemed totally freaky. But that was Queen Mary—a total freak show if there ever was one. There was no end to her vindictiveness about Anne Boleyn.
“Isn’t it all so exciting?” Sara said as she slipped into her nightgown and sleeping hood
. She then leaned in toward the scrap of mirror they had hung over the washbasins. “Look at us. Here we are, seamstresses to the queen, and now getting two washbasins and a mirror. We have status, Rose. Status!” Rose turned toward her so that both their faces were reflected. “Oh dear!” Sara gasped.
“What is it?”
“A wrinkle, I think.”
“Ridiculous,” Rose replied. “You’re not old enough yet for wrinkles.”
“What do you mean? I’m almost thirty.”
“No, you aren’t.”
“I’m twenty-eight.”
How could that be? Rose wondered. But it suddenly hit her—hit her like a ton of bricks. Sara was twenty-eight. When Rose had first arrived at Hatfield and they had both served Elizabeth, Sara was eighteen. The year was 1544, but now it was almost ten years later in Sara’s time. It was 1553. She had to tread very carefully here. And just as she was thinking that, Sara said, “Look at you, Rose. You haven’t changed a bit since you first came here. No wrinkles, just the occasional spot. I thought you would have outgrown those by now.” She sighed. “You seem eternally youthful.”
“Oh . . . er . . . I’m sure it will catch up with me when I’m least suspecting it.” Rose forced a laugh.
“Well, we’d better get to sleep. We have the third banqueting gown to work on tomorrow.” She gave another sigh. “She’s such a joy to work for.” She turned on her side.
“Who?”
“The queen, of course.”
A joy to work for. She must be nuts!
“I do worry about her, though. Her health. So frail. And she’s so thin.”
“Do you think she has an eating disorder?”
“What? What are you talking about, Rose? I’ve never heard of such a thing—an eating disorder?”
“Never mind.”
“Well, I just wonder if she’s too frail to bear a child.”
“I think she should bear a husband first,” Rose said.
“Rose!” Sara sat straight up in bed. “That is a shocking thing to say. What are you talking about?”
“I mean, she needs to get married. Being a single parent and raising a child is no picnic.” I should know. That’s why I’m here to see my father again now that my mom, the single parent, is dead.
“Rose!” Sara giggled. “You have the oddest way of putting things. They are looking for a husband for her, Rose.”
That was the understatement of the year! Rose thought. Talk about a manhunt. There’d never been one like this. It was the topic of conversation throughout the palace. There were all sorts of rumors as to who might be a contender for the hand of the queen of England. There was Charles V, the Holy Roman Emperor, then his cousin Felipe, prince of Spain, said to be rising in popularity in the court. And Edward Courtenay, Earl of Devon—a real slimeball in Rose’s mind, though she hadn’t ever seen the others.
“All I’m saying is it’s best to have a husband before having a child.”
“What you are saying is scandalous, Rose. Of course she will have a husband, and they will live happily ever after and bear many children.”
But, thought Rose, the real question is not whether Queen Mary can bear children but whether a husband can bear Queen Mary.
She soon heard the soft snores of Sara. She wished Franny were here. She wished her dad would come across with her! He was here in London, in Whitehall, and yet she had never felt so alone. Loneliness, she thought, was like an impenetrable stone wall that grew up around a person, cutting them off from everything. She suddenly realized that she’d seen or felt that loneliness in Marisol. She saw it in her large liquid brown eyes. Why did Marisol have walls up? And now she was sure that Jenny, aka Tinker Bell, had tripped her on purpose. Probably part of the initiation ritual into the twenty-first-century Mean Queens. Their special ops unit of wrath and destruction. You always had to prove yourself. They had done that with Sibby Huang when they put her up to sabotaging Joe’s skates. But Sibby had thankfully realized how awful they were and how awful she had been. Now she wouldn’t go near them.
There was so much Rose could never talk about with Sara, but she could with Franny. What would Sara think if Rose had replied that of course she hadn’t changed. You see, Sara, I haven’t really grown any older from when you last met me. Perhaps a few minutes at most. But she couldn’t say any of this.
But Franny knew all her secrets, because Franny too was a time traveler. She knew where Rose came from. She had tried to help Rose find her father in the first place. Franny would never betray her. Bettina, the dwarf, also knew who Rose’s father was, but not that she was a traveler. Bettina was a good person. She had delivered the message to Rose, the one telling her to go to the garden at Hampton Court at midnight, to meet her father at the circle of the damask roses. It was the first time they had ever met. Bettina had also been stolen by Queen Mary from her sister, Elizabeth, for her own amusement. It was absolutely terrible in Rose’s mind that dwarves were considered objects for amusement in the court.
Rose thought about the scene in the sewing room when the queen had entered. It had been such a shock to see the locket around her scrawny neck. The damask rose that was the thread that connected them all—her mother, her grandmother, and her father, who had made the locket. It was gold, an inanimate object, but it was more than that. In her mind the rose of the locket seemed to wilt as it hung around Queen Mary’s neck. Rose’s eyes opened wide in the darkness of the small room beneath the eaves. It was as if the brightness of a dawning revelation were flooding through her. Mary Tudor, queen of England, might wear that rose locket, but she would never own it. Just as Elizabeth had never owned it. She touched the hollow of her neck again where the locket had once rested. She felt herself dissolving into a dream—or was it perhaps just another reality?
Like ships passing in the night, Rose was slipping into her dream just as her grandmother was waking. Something had disturbed Rosalinda Ashley. And she did something that night that she had not done in a long time. She got herself out of bed without calling for Betty, her caretaker, in the next room. Then, bundling herself up in not one but three shawls, taking her cane, she made her way to the stair lift. At the bottom of the stairs was her walker. She had sensed that another damask rose was about to bloom. It must be moved to the sunroom. “Now!” she muttered. The damask roses began to bloom around Christmas. Rose had been in charge of moving them to the greenhouse. But Rose was asleep now. She didn’t want to wake her . . . for, she thought suddenly, she might have gone “a-wander.” That was what Rosalinda called it when she herself used to slip through time, back to that other century. Rosalinda did not pry into those activities of her granddaughter. That really wasn’t her business anymore. What was her business was taking care of Rose as best she could at her advanced age. But nevertheless, she wanted to tend to this damask rose that was about to bloom. It was a special one. It was one that she had grafted in anticipation of the birth of Rose’s mother. To think that her daughter, Rosemary, would now be almost forty-five years old, if she were alive. Time flies, she thought. Or gets all tangled up. When she’d heard that Rosemary had been killed and that her own granddaughter would be coming to live with her, she had grafted another rose for this new Rose. It seemed proper. The hopeful thing. She, of course, had never told Rose—not yet. The cuttings for grafting could often fail. She hoped this little graftling, as she called them, would make it. But she would not know for a while. Their first blooms did not come for two to three years. Rose would be fourteen or fifteen by then! Rosalinda wondered if she herself would be alive three years from now.
She heaved herself out of the stair lift and grasped the walker waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs. As she began to move slowly toward the greenhouse, the air stirred around her like a tropical breeze. She made her way toward the graftling. It was a lovely time to be in the greenhouse. She looked up through the room’s glass ceiling. She saw Orion rising through the cupola overhead. The tip of Orion’s sword hung almost directly above th
e new graftling for her granddaughter, Rose.
“Don’t you dare snip it off, you star warrior, you!” She giggled to herself. The graftling didn’t look like much right now. Just a spindly little thing. But the old saying slipped into her mind. “First year they sleep. Second year they creep. Third year they leap!”
“Gran, what are you talking about?” She looked up and saw Rose walking toward the seedling table.
Chapter 8
A Bitter Wind
“Oh dear. I’m just one of those doddering old fools talking to herself. Ready for the loony bin, I suppose.”
They looked across the seedling table at each other.
“You’re no fool, Gran.”
“And I guess you’re just back,” Gran said casually, and began poking at the soil in the seedling cup.
So she knows where I’ve been, Rose thought. The key word was “back.” One didn’t get back from one’s bedroom. One came back from five centuries ago. Rose tried to figure out what to say. Did one say, Yeah, and jeez, is that Mary a witch! But I’ve made good progress on her coronation gown. But instead, she looked at the spindly little seedling that her grandmother was poking with an old chopstick. The seedling was tied to another chopstick. She and Gran collected them, as they were perfect for staking young plants.
“What’s that, Gran?”
“Oh, just an experiment in grafting.”
“What’s the plant?”
“Uh . . . a new kind of . . . er, rose.”
“Will it make it?”
“One never knows, now do they? So fragile at this stage. But speaking of which, you came back in the nick of time.”
Came back. Well, thought Rose, she wasn’t denying that she’d been “a-wander.”
“What am I in the nick of time for?”
“Might you take that other damask rose to the conservatory? I think it’s ready to bloom. Put it in a dish at dawn, of course. That’s when the greenhouse ones always open up.”
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