The Last Beginning

by Lauren James

  After a little while, her tears stopped. She wiped her face. The skin around her eyes felt sore and swollen. She hiccupped.

  She was freezing.

  Her head hurt.

  She wanted a painkiller.

  As carefully as a newborn foal, she pulled her rucksack out of the tangle of the suit. She opened it with trembling fingers, pulled out a bottle of water and then unzipped her first-aid kit.

  She was thirstier than she’d realized, and she gulped down the whole bottle after she’d taken a paracetamol.

  Clove sat under the willow tree and watched the sun climb the sky, feeling pathetically sorry for herself. She was so tired; she could just lie down on the riverbank and sleep for hours.

  Eventually she found the energy to move. She stretched tentatively, and discovered that while she didn’t hurt much any more, she was starving. She repacked her rucksack, filled with a sudden determination to find some kind of town or village, so she could work out where she was − and also get some breakfast.

  After pulling off her T-shirt, Clove took her freshly printed dress from her bag and put it on. The long sleeves would hide her watch. Then she wrapped the suit around the helmet and stuffed the bundle into the bottom of her rucksack.

  Clove had arranged with Spart – the version of him that she had left on a memory card in the lab – that at an agreed time in a week she would use her watch to broadcast a radio signal. Spart-in-the-Lab should be able to pick this up and use the signal to find her exact location. Then he could reopen the wormhole. It should work − if she didn’t lose the suit or the watch.

  Telling herself firmly that she could definitely, absolutely do this, Clove began walking.

  CHAPTER 14

  LuckyClover 23:14:38 What was it like the first time you time travelled? Please tell me you passed out too.

  Ella-is-swell 23:15:12 I’m not sure I can remember the first time. Time travel’s not such a big deal now. But I must have been about six, I think. Maybe younger. I can remember thinking I’d been turned inside out.

  Ella-is-swell 23:15:43 Kind of like how I felt the first time I saw you.

  LuckyClover 23:15:57 Oh, SMOOTH.

  File note: Chat log, dated 5 November 2058

  Clove hadn’t been walking for long when an outraged “WAIT!” came from somewhere behind her. Clove turned to see a girl hurtling towards her.

  A girl with blonde hair that glowed in the sun.

  It was the girl from her dream − and she wasn’t Meg. The girl chased after her, skirts lifted to her knees and a basket hooked over her arm.

  For a second Clove considered running away, but instead she resigned herself to the conversation. She brushed down the skirts of her dress and straightened her cap. Then Clove stopped walking to let her pursuer catch up. She double-checked to make sure she wasn’t wearing anything outrageously modern, and, as the girl pulled up in front of her, panting heavily, Clove remembered at the last minute to shove her sleeve down over her watch.

  “Where … are … you … going?” the girl gasped.

  She had thick blonde hair pulled back in a bun under her cap, arching eyebrows, and the sharpest chin Clove had ever seen. She was wearing an old-fashioned dress made of a dirty brown material that looked like it had endured a long history of ill-treatment. The more Clove looked at her, the less she could see the resemblance to Meg. The similarities slipped from her grasp as she tried to pinpoint them.

  “Um,” Clove said.

  “I can’t believe you are leaving. I thought you were dying.” The girl dropped her basket on the ground and rested both of her hands on her knees, still catching her breath. Her hair was collapsing out of her bun in slow motion. “You are not dying, are you?”

  “I don’t think I’m dying,” Clove mumbled, staring down at herself to check. Then she shook herself. “I’m sorry, who are you?”

  “Elenore,” the girl said, in a way that implied Clove should have known that already. “I saw you lying by the river and I thought you were dead. But then you started walking away, so clearly there’s nothing wrong with you at all. I’m sorry for bothering you.”

  “Um. Right. Elenore. Well—”

  “You may call me Ella.”

  “I’m Clove,” she said, too tired to do anything but answer honestly. Had she imagined this girl rescuing her from the river after all? Everything was so confused in her head. She couldn’t work out what had actually happened and what was a hallucination.

  Clove wished the girl would leave, but she showed no signs of doing so. Her attention was fixed intently on Clove, as if she was endlessly fascinating.

  “You do still rather look as if you may be about to collapse.” The girl – Ella – said. “When was the last time you ate?”

  Clove’s stomach gave a sudden pang. “Why? Do you – do you have food?” She eyed Ella’s basket. Something that looked like a loaf was sticking out of the top. “Is that bread?”

  “It’s my luncheon. I was saving it for when I arrived in Carlisle,” Ella said. “But do you think eating would make you feel better?”

  “It would,” she reassured her. Clove tried to frown in a way that indicated how likely she was to faint at any second, and how much she needed some food.

  Ella visibly softened. “Then let’s eat.”

  Clove sat down on the ground, watching with increasing delight as Ella unpacked a full picnic.

  “Are those pork pies? Powerful!” Clove bit her lip. Did they use the word “powerful” in whatever time this was? What time even was this? This girl behaved nothing like she had expected people in the olden days to behave. “By the way, could you tell me the date, please? I’ve been travelling for a few days now and I seem to have lost track of time.”

  To Clove’s relief, Ella didn’t question her query. “It’s the tenth of September, seventeen five and forty,” she replied.

  Clove was delighted. That was the exact date she’d programmed into the wormhole. Success. She grabbed a pork pie and bit into it with relish. It was the best thing she could ever remember eating.

  When she’d finished the pork pie, two chunks of bread and butter and four cold boiled potatoes, she realized Ella was talking to her. She tuned back into the conversation, chewing on a sausage absently. She wondered if Ella had any crisps. Were crisps even a thing yet? Surely they had crisps here. People couldn’t survive without crisps, could they?

  “Are you going to Carlisle too?” Ella asked, picking up some kind of hairy vegetable and biting into it. Clove had thought it was a weed that had accidentally got into the basket. It was pink. “Radish?”

  “Sorry?” Clove said, trying to look like she hadn’t been daydreaming about smoky bacon crisps. “I mean, yes, Carlisle! We’re near the city?”

  “I have just explained all of this,” Ella said, frowning. She looked extremely disappointed in Clove, which was strange for someone who had only met her that day.

  “I’m sorry for … me. I think I’ve got concussion, probably. I’m not normally like this,” Clove lied, thinking guiltily of the furious argument she’d had about quantum mechanics with that undergraduate, and her mother’s face when she’d called her Jen, and Meg’s, when she’d shouted at her about Alec. She had been really horrible recently. Maybe her parents had actually had a reason to be worried about her. She wasn’t so bad that she needed counselling, though − was she?

  “Anyway, can I come with you to Carlisle?” Clove asked. “Please?”

  “Well. I suppose now that I’ve tended to you and brought you back to life from the cusp of death, I can’t abandon you,” Ella said, grinning. “You may accompany me to Carlisle.” She stood up, brushing grass off her skirts and running a hand over her hair to check it was tidy. A hank of hair fell out of the back of the bun. She didn’t seem to notice.

  “Thank you,” Clove said, intensely grateful. “Thank you so much.”

  Ella smiled down at her basket. “It’s my pleasure.”

  “How did you get here?” Ell
a asked, as they walked along the riverside.

  “I took a carriage from Scotland,” Clove said, thinking quickly and wondering if Ella had seen the wormhole. Before Ella could ask any difficult questions, like how long the journey had taken or what the carriage’s make, model and registration number had been, Clove changed the subject. “Why are you going to Carlisle?”

  Ella, who had been smiling at Clove, stopped abruptly. “For private, personal reasons.” It was clear from her tone that Ella wasn’t willing to divulge anything further.

  “Right. Um.” Clove floundered for another conversation topic – one which wouldn’t bring up anything she couldn’t answer. “How old are you?” she asked finally.

  “I turned eighteen this spring,” Ella said. “What age are you?”

  “Sixteen.”

  “That means I am in charge,” Ella said, with great satisfaction.

  “What? No!” Clove objected reflexively. “Why?”

  “I’m the eldest.”

  “And?”

  “Obviously that means that I shall be the leader.”

  “We’re practically the same age!”

  Ella shrugged, unconvinced. “Two years makes a big difference. You don’t look very worldly.”

  As Clove blew out an annoyed breath, Ella bent down to pluck a violet from the edge of the cornfield.

  “I don’t need looking after,” Clove said. “Besides the lunch,” she added.

  Ella twisted the violet between two fingers. “Of course you don’t.” She handed Clove the flower before turning away.

  Clove looked down at it and then without really knowing why, tucked it carefully in her pocket.

  CHAPTER 15

  An Unauthorized Biography of Clove Sutcliffe

  The earliest documented work of Clove Sutcliffe took place in Carlisle, Cumberland, in 1745. The city was the last place in England to have a castle under siege by enemy forces. Originally a Roman fort, the castle was built in 1092, after the Scottish region was invaded by English troops.

  For the next seven hundred years, the border city was the focus of endless territorial disputes and invasions between the neighbouring countries. The castle itself was besieged ten times, the most recent of which was during Sutcliffe’s time there, in the 1745 Jacobite Uprising, when Carlisle was besieged on 15 November 1745.

  By this time, the castle was a shadow of its former self, but with the help of Colonel Durand and his garrison, the castle succeeded in holding its defences until the surrender of the city five days later. History Control subjects Katherine Finchley and Matthew Galloway were instrumental to this project. Innocent of their part in history, the couple helped to maintain the defences through their work as civilian volunteers. At a time when every second meant more English forces could be gathered to fight the invasion, these five days were crucial in the eventual defeat of the Jacobites, as Sutcliffe would have been aware.

  It was on one of the last sunny days of the summer when Sutcliffe entered Carlisle. It was there that the famous History Revisionist met one of the most important people in her life, a person we know very little about: Elenore Walker.

  One of the few things we do know about their time in time-landscape 1745 is that a flower was given to Sutcliffe by Walker. This was saved out of sentimentality by Sutcliffe, and has since been cryogenically preserved for historical posterity by the Museum of History Control, New London. The pair’s time in Carlisle was a significant event in both of their timelines, and will be studied further in Chapter 15.

  The violet (viola sororia) is native to the British Isles, and is a traditional romantic gift exchanged by lesbian and bisexual women. The custom dates back to Sappho of Ancient Greece, who said in her poetry:

  How fair and good were the things we shared together,

  How by my side you wove many garlands of violets.

  File note: Extract from An Unauthorized Biography of Clove Sutcliffe, first published in 2344

  Carlisle, England, 1745

  Clove and Ella arrived in Carlisle after hours of walking through endless countryside. Clove was amazed. The roads were paved with cobblestones and scattered with manure from the horse-drawn carriages. Hand-painted signs, advertising the wares of the greengrocers, pawnbrokers and cobblers, hung from intricately scrolled metalwork on the sides of crooked buildings.

  From Spart’s Folios, it seemed that the Matthew Galloway who existed in 1745 was working as a coachman for Katherine’s aunt and uncle, with whom Katherine had lived following her grandmother’s death.

  For the whole journey to the city, Clove had been thinking about what she was going to do when she got to the house where they lived. She had decided that the best plan was to try to get a job as a maid in the household. That way she would be working alongside Matthew, and would have a chance to get some of his DNA. She’d probably be able to get some of Katherine’s too, when she was cleaning her room or serving her dinner.

  “I need to get to Annetwell Street,” Clove told Ella. “I have to visit a house there, to ask if they need any new maids. It was nice to meet you, but I’ll leave you now to do your … private, personal things.”

  “Oh, I can come with you!” Ella said amiably. “I am also searching for a position as a maid.”

  Clove was a bit annoyed, but she let Ella follow her. She did feel safer walking through the city with someone else.

  The Finchley house was set back from the street. A neat stone driveway curved from the main gates up through a well-tended flower garden to the front door. Clove was incredibly impressed. If the family who lived here really were her relatives, then Clove had some very well-off ancestors.

  She swallowed. This was it: the moment of truth. She was so close to finding out whether it really was her parents who had been alive in 1745, 1854, 1941 and countless other dates.

  The two girls walked around the side of the house, looking for the servants’ entrance. They walked past a herb garden, scattered with foraging chickens. Clove stooped to run her hand along the top of a knee-high box hedge that had been trimmed completely flat.

  The back door was split in half across the middle, and the top section was open. The smell of cinnamon and fresh bread drifted out into the garden. Clove breathed in deeply, feeling instantly at home. She peered inside, catching a glimpse of a cook kneading dough in an immaculate kitchen.

  Clove knocked on the door frame. A dog napping on the hearth lifted his head to look at them, and then dropped it back onto the flagstone.

  The cook walked over, smiling and wiping her hands on her apron. Her face was scattered with freckles, and her dark hair was brushed neatly back off her high forehead under her cap. “Good afternoon,” she said, leaning on the bottom half of the door and looking over Clove and Ella with interest.

  “Good day to you,” Ella said, before Clove could speak. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I was wondering if you knew of anyone in the area looking for a maid? Our last master was arrested in Glasgow for supporting the Rebels. It took us completely by surprise. We were abandoned in Scotland, without references, and it is only through the kindness of strangers that we have managed to return safely to England. Since then we’ve been adrift, waiting for someone to take it into their hearts to help us…” Ella trailed off with a sniff, twisting her skirt between her fingers.

  Clove realized she was gaping at Ella in amazement. She shut her mouth with a snap. Ella had lied so easily! She had sounded so sincere that if Clove didn’t know better, she would believe she was telling the truth.

  “Oh, poor dears,” the cook said, drawing in a horrified breath. “You must have had such a terrible journey.”

  Ella looked off to the side, as if she was so traumatized that she couldn’t bear to remember, and dipped her head in a weak half-nod.

  “You are lucky to be alive. Let me speak to the mistress of the house. We shall see if she can’t find a spot for you both. What are your names?”

  “Elenore Walker,” Ella said.

  The cook
turned to Clove.

  “Cl—” She stopped. She couldn’t call herself Clove. That didn’t sound right. It was too modern for 1745, even though everyone at school teased her about it being old-fashioned. It was modern and old-fashioned all at the same time, and completely inappropriate for right now. If only she’d thought to change it sooner, before she’d met Ella. She’d been so confused by the wormhole that she had let her guard down completely.

  “Anise,” she said. It had always been a joke with Meg, that as they had a “Clove” and a “Nutmeg”, they only needed a friend called “Aniseed” to be able to call themselves the Spice Girls. It made her heart hurt to say it, but the name was much more suitable than Clove. “My name is Anise. Anise Sutcliffe.”

  “I’m Mrs Samson,” the cook said.

  When she had left, Clove turned to Ella. “How did you do that? Make all of that up on the spot?”

  Ella hitched up a shoulder in a breezy shrug. “I have a natural flair for storytelling. Just follow my lead.”

  “I don’t need to – I can look after myself!” Clove hissed. “Who are you? Why are you so good at this?”

  “It’s lucky for you that I am, Anise.” She shot Clove a knowing glance. “You would never have made it past the—” Ella stopped talking, her expression morphing into a timidly hopeful smile. Mrs Samson had returned with a serious-looking older lady who introduced herself as the mistress of the household, Mrs Elizabeth Finchley.

  She listened carefully to Ella and asked lots of questions. She wanted references, and Ella had to explain again how they didn’t have them. She then asked for “characters” from their parish clergy. Ella had one of these – whatever it was – but Clove didn’t. “We had to leave our old place in such a hurry,” Ella explained miserably. “It was so awful.”