“Oh great, now you treat me like an old man. What’s next? Asking if I remembered to pull my hose on this morning?”
Just as I thought he was right and I was being overbearing, Richard interrupted me.
“Actually, maybe I should sit down,” he said. “Just for a bit.”
I led him to the closest bench.
As soon as the backs of his knees touched the marble of the bench, I felt his weight slump onto me.
I panicked. And screamed.
Richard, who had been talking until just a second before, all of a sudden wasn’t able to say anything. In the back of my mind I knew he had lost consciousness, but in the fear of that moment, I couldn’t access the logical part of my brain. I was so scared. I thought he had died.
And with the logical part of my brain nowhere to be found, I didn’t know what to do. So I sat there, and screamed, and screamed. I clutched at Richard’s body, pulling it close to me as if that would do something.
CPR. First aid. None of my modern knowledge came to me. It was as if a plug had been pulled when Richard lost consciousness. That plug turned me off too, and I couldn’t function anymore.
I knew I had to snap out of it, but it took me far longer than it should have.
When I came back to reality, the first thing I saw was the man in the distance start sprinting toward me. The woman clutched at her skirts and ran after him, but he reached me first. It was Lord Dormer. I was so thankful.
“He . . . he just dropped.”
“We have to get him to bed and call the physician.”
I felt helpless, and grabbed at Richard’s clammy hand. It was turning cold quickly.
Just then the woman rushed up to us. I had to blink twice. It was the countess. It didn’t make sense that she was alone with Lord Dormer, especially after she had told me that no woman went out with a man unchaperoned, but I couldn’t think of that now.
“Good, you’re here,” Lord Dormer said to the countess. “Keep his head propped up, so he doesn’t choke on the blood, and I’ll go and find someone.”
He ran off and the countess took her place at Richard’s head.
Richard’s body was slumped lengthwise across the bench. He was as white as ever, and I now saw what Lord Dormer had been talking about—at the corner of his mouth, a bit of red seeped out. His lips parted in the middle of his mouth, but the edges were stuck together with a rusty color.
If I hadn’t screamed before, I would have at that moment. There was nothing left in me.
Two men dressed in livery took Richard away. I wanted to go with them, but the countess pried my hand away from his and told me I would only get in the way. I stood there, staring at the shapes her lips made as she talked at me. She held my hands, and sound was coming out of her mouth, but I could barely hear what she said.
“Let’s get you back.”
I wasn’t quite sure how the countess managed to get me back to my own room. Did my legs actually move? I wasn’t sure of anything, but I was suddenly aware I was now sitting in my own bed.
As soon as the countess left the room, Henley took over. It didn’t matter what he said, it was more the sound of his voice, and knowing that he was there, that comforted me.
He’s going to get better, Henley said.
“You can’t say that. He’s dying.”
I hated to admit that, but even Richard himself had said it. By finally saying it out loud, it made it seem all the more true. It was something I couldn’t take back or change anymore.
He’ll find a way to pull through. You’ll find a way to pull through.
“You can’t promise that. This is consumption. No one survives consumption. Not in this time, anyway.”
Henley was quiet, and I had even shocked myself with my bald statement.
I wish I could make him better. But even I knew wishing wasn’t enough.
I stood up. “I need to go and see him.”
Are you sure that’s a good idea?
“As opposed to not seeing him? Miss Hatfield told me I have nothing to worry about in terms of getting sick or getting infected by diseases. Immortals can’t get any of that.” I knew that wasn’t what he was objecting to, but Henley didn’t respond.
I walked out of the door, passing the countess on my way. She didn’t try to stop me. I figured she knew where I was heading.
When I stepped outside into the corridor, it struck me that I didn’t know where Richard would be. I had never been to his rooms, and didn’t know where they were. I thought back to Richard’s comment about how Lady Sutton was the only family-like person he had at court. If anyone knew where he was, she would.
I walked with deliberate, sure steps. All the faces I passed in the corridor were turned toward me. That’s the girl who almost died with the candelabra, they seemed to say. That’s the girl who’s different. I shrank away from their eyes.
My knuckles hit the wooden door with a thud. I felt almost too weak to knock. Luckily Lady Sutton opened her door herself.
“I had a feeling it was going to be you,” she said. “Hurry, come in.”
This time, when I walked into her parlor, the garish colors didn’t faze me.
“Where’s Richard?”
“I had the men bring him into my chambers. They’re far more comfortable.”
I made for the first door I saw, but Lady Sutton laid a hand on me.
“The physician is attending to him,” she said. “We must wait till he’s done. That would be best.”
I had to see Richard for myself, but I knew she was right. That was best for Richard.
I sat down on one of the brightly upholstered chairs near the window.
“You were in the garden when it happened?” Lady Sutton asked, taking a seat across from me on the bench Richard and I had sat on during our last visit.
I hated the way she said “it.” It made my blood curdle. “Yes.”
“I suppose you didn’t know to what extent he was ill,” she said. “Poor girl. I suppose no one did. Not entirely, at least. But have no fear, the physician is the best in the country. When Lady Boyle had complications with—”
“I-I’m sorry.” I didn’t mean to cut her off, but Lady Sutton looked as if I had slapped her.
“What was that?” She pronounced her words slowly.
“I can’t listen to that right now. The gossip. Not when Richard’s going through what he’s going through, and we’re sitting here unable to do anything.”
“The gossip.” Her voice was low and somehow dangerous. “That’s what people think of me, isn’t it?”
I opened my mouth, but promptly shut it again.
“Do you think I don’t know what people think about me?” She looked straight at me. “I’m not as much of an idiot as everyone thinks I am. I need this—the gossip, the news—to have staying power in this world. To not be forgotten. This is what people use me for, and yes, I’m conscious of the fact that they’re using me, but it’s better to be used, and know that you’re being used, than to be forgotten. In a harsh world like court, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”
I took a shaky breath.
The door behind me opened.
“If anyone would like to see the boy, I suggest they do it now. He’s fatigued and should get rest.”
Lady Sutton nodded to me.
When I rose to enter the room, the physician tapped my arm. “Only a short while,” he warned. He didn’t seem to mind that I was going in unchaperoned. Maybe he’d had lots of experience and knew how important this sort of visit was to someone.
This room was unlike most of Lady Sutton’s other rooms. It wasn’t flamboyant in any way at all. The only color in the room came from the walls, which were a robin’s-egg blue. Everything else was white.
In the middle of it all was Richard, propped up on countless pillows and swaddled in white blankets.
“You came.” There was a sigh to his voice that was new to me. He was normally so lively and passionate. It hurt to see him bedridd
en.
“Of course I did.” I tried to muster up a smile.
Richard patted the side of the bed, and I walked over to sit by him.
“They have me so swaddled, I feel as though I’ve regressed to a baby.”
Richard looked lost in the sea of blankets and comforters. He needed me. I began to realize I couldn’t leave him like this, clock or no clock. Maybe I didn’t have to leave as soon as I obtained the clock? But this wasn’t the time to think about this, so I pushed those thoughts out of my head.
Seeing the sweat on Richard’s brow, I was about to ask if he was hot, but a violent chill ran through him. I settled for covering his hand, the only thing besides his face that peeked out from beneath the blankets.
“How do you feel?”
It was pointless, but that was all I could ask.
“I think you know the answer to your own question,” he said. “Remember, I see through you all the time.” He tried to laugh, but he started coughing, unable to catch his breath.
Richard turned away from me and covered his mouth, but I could see the fresh blood that smeared his hand.
The physician rushed in, helping Richard sit up further while he coughed. He looked at me and gestured for me to leave.
“He needs his rest now,” the physician said.
Richard didn’t even look at me as I left.
TWENTY-THREE
DAYS WENT BY as I visited Richard. He was too ill to visit the clockmaker to see if the clock he’d commissioned was finished, but I almost didn’t care anymore. I ignored the increasing tension in my stomach caused by staying in one time for too long and went to his bed every day, hoping that by some miracle he would be better than when I last saw him. And every day Lady Sutton would give me a sympathetic look as I emerged from his room.
“My Lord, he’s only a boy. Such a good boy,” I found her saying one day. I didn’t know whether she was talking to herself or praying.
Visiting Richard kept my mind off the discomfort that was taking hold of my body. Fifteen twenty-seven was trying to reject what did not belong.
Sometimes Richard was awake, but often he was asleep or wracked by a fitful dream. Though he would shiver, his fever climbed high. He had night sweats and complained of a pain in his chest, as he grabbed at it and struggled to breathe.
I much preferred it when he was asleep, for though he had lost weight and his skull showed through his face, he was still Richard, and when I closed my eyes, he was the same.
“The physician said that there’s nothing he can do anymore. He’s leaving with the king to accompany him on a hunting expedition tomorrow,” Lady Sutton said.
“Then he shouldn’t go hunting,” I replied. “Richard needs him. He’s a physician. He’s supposed to make him better.”
“There’s nothing he can do anymore.”
I didn’t want to hear that. Those were the last words that were said before people died. They couldn’t be said now. It was not time. Richard would live. He had to.
Lady Sutton shook her head, as if she had heard my thoughts. “The best we can do for him now is make him feel comfortable.”
“No.”
I turned from Lady Sutton and ran out the door.
Rebecca!
I was vaguely aware that Henley tried to say something, but soon I was in a corridor filled with people. I pushed and shoved them aside to get air. I ran into the countess’s chambers just as tears flooded my vision.
I swallowed them and tried to compose myself.
“My own dear.” The countess came at me with outstretched arms. “There, there. I know this must be hard.”
I wondered if this was how the countess had felt when she had lost her husband. It was as if the earth was coming alive and consuming me.
“I know this is a difficult time, but there’s something we need to discuss,” the countess went on. “I know Richard is . . . a dear friend. But I’m afraid it’s not seemly for you to go on seeing him like this.”
She raised a hand, seemingly to comfort me, but I flinched away.
“I love Richard.” I was surprised by how easily those words came out of my mouth. “I love Richard.” It sounded right. “I have to see him.”
“Visiting the bedside of someone ill once is admirable, but visiting repeatedly raises eyebrows. I don’t want you to get involved in this any more than you are already,” she said.
Thinking quickly, I remembered the night the falling candelabra had almost killed me. “My lady, I believe this is my duty—a calling bestowed upon me by a power greater than either of us.”
She stood in awe. “A calling bestowed upon you by the Lord?”
“I heard a voice one night, instructing me that I must do this,” I said.
She stood dumbfounded, and I figured she wouldn’t try to stop me any longer.
With Richard’s health getting progressively worse, mine did as well.
It was close to the middle of the night, yet I was awake in a cold sweat. I felt a pressing pain all over, and I tried not to moan out loud. I wondered if Richard was awake in a similar manner. I hoped not.
The nervous feeling in the core of my body from being in one time too long had progressed beyond a queasy uncertainty and into a permanent dull pain encompassing my whole body. At times, tremors shook my hands, and I tried to hide them in the folds of my skirts.
I had never let it progress this far before. Miss Hatfield had always moved us from one time period to the next, even before we started feeling much discomfort.
The one time it had come close to feeling as bad as this was when I had left Henley in his time period. I remembered the heightened nausea I had felt day in and day out, and trying to fight it for one more day with Henley. But still, that couldn’t compare with what I was feeling now. This was the first time I had felt actual pain associated with staying too long, and it frightened me all the more.
I missed Henley. I wanted to talk to him about this, about everything, but I knew he would only worry and insist we find a way to leave this time period immediately after the clock was made. He always thought about what was best for me. And of course I couldn’t talk to him about my confusion with my feelings about Richard. I didn’t want to hurt him more than I already had.
I knew I had two choices: leave before the murderer found me or stay with Richard. As soon as I realized that I needed to make a decision, I knew that I had already made the choice long ago. I would stay with Richard.
Henley wouldn’t like it. Actually, Henley would hate it. He would try to talk me out of it if he knew I was making this decision. That was why I wasn’t going to tell him yet and he didn’t have to know at least until I had the clock. Damn Henley for looking out for me.
I thought back to the last night I’d spent with Miss Hatfield, in front of the old television coated with dust. I didn’t know why that memory came to mind, but it made me smile.
I remembered how we had bickered over the characters and what we thought of them. Miss Hatfield always thought that any way other than her way was foolish. And for once, I missed hearing that.
I remembered the family on the show—the older father, his two kids, and their respective new families. I loved that though they had their own complexities and issues, they always managed to come together as a family in the end. It didn’t matter how long it took them to realize that their problems were small compared to the family and support they had, because when they did, they knew they didn’t need anything else.
I remember wanting—craving—that so badly. I wanted a family. I just hadn’t realized at the time that I already had one. Once in Miss Hatfield, and now still in Henley. We’ll always bicker, but we’ll also always find our way back to each other.
Henley was my family.
I turned over, and threw up.
TWENTY-FOUR
THE NEXT MORNING, as I readied myself to go to Richard’s room again, Henley spoke.
Are you really in love with him?
There wasn’t
anyone else he could be talking about, but it seemed he couldn’t bring himself to say Richard’s name.
“I do love him,” I said, quietly. “I realized it even before I knew he was sick, but that only confirmed my feelings.”
But are you in love with him?
Love, in love, did it make a difference? I hated that Henley knew and could see the effect that Richard had on me. I hated that I couldn’t turn it off like a switch.
So you’re not in love with him . . .
I still couldn’t say anything.
If you’re not, I still have a chance.
“I can’t think about this right now with Richard dying. It’s not the time or the place.”
So you’ll talk about this after he’s dead?
I grabbed the first thing I saw—the washbasin on the bedside table—and threw it toward Henley’s voice.
Helen came running in, throwing open the door.
“My lady, are you all right?”
“I’m fine. I’m fine.”
Her eyes darted from me to the ceramic washbasin now in fragments by the wall.
Helen had already thought something was suspect with me today, when she had seen that I had thrown up in the chamber pot last night. I had convinced her that nothing was the matter and there was no need to inform the countess of a minor upset stomach from dinner last night. But I supposed there was no convincing her to keep quiet about this.
“Is the countess up?” I asked, walking past her into the sitting room.
“In her room, my lady.”
“Very well,” I said, walking in that direction.
The countess was sitting at her vanity with her back toward me, as usual.
“I trust you had an eventful morning already?”
I figured she had heard the crash of the washbasin, so I didn’t try to hide it.
“I’m sorry about that,” I said.
“Nonsense. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” she said, running a brush through her hair. “When my husband died, I went through about twenty plates. There wasn’t a piece of china that was safe from me.”
The Time of the Clockmaker Page 21