Alice Payne Rides

by Kate Heartfield

  To Colonel John Payne,

  Sir, I write with sad Tidings of our mutual Friend, Captain Robert Greene. He died in his sleep, so says his good Wife, and did not suffer over much.

  As for me, the Doctors say I have only a few months still upon this Earth, although I hope to prove them wrong at least until Christmas. I have been reading your last Letter over again and it strikes me that you have taken God’s Judgment upon yourself for Actions in 1780, Actions whose full Import could not have been known at the time to any Mortal. It is Folly to imagine that your Orders on the evening of May 11 were the deciding Cause of the horrible Event four Days later and Hubris to sit in Judgment. There is only one Judge, and I go shortly to meet him.

  In hopes of a reunion in that Glorious Land,

  Your humble Servant,Lt. Archibald Morse“Or Glory”Saint John, New BrunswickAug 22, 1785

  Alice frowns, the paper creasing in her grip.

  “What is it, darling?”

  “My father had a letter. Four years ago. It makes reference to some horrible event on May 15, 1780. Do you remember what that might have been?”

  Jane’s brow furrows. “That was during the war. Horrible events were quite frequent, and of course we learned of them so long after they happened. If we saw some old newspapers—”

  “My father kept a diary,” says Alice, standing and rummaging in an open steamer trunk.

  “Do you think he’d want us to read it?”

  “I don’t care one way or the other. I must live with his legacy now, the good and the bad, and if the old tosspot did something that could cause some lawsuit, I must know about it.”

  Alice finds the diary, its pale brown leather worn smooth, and flips through the pages. “Here we are. There’s an entry for May 12, which reads only: ‘Victory at Charleston.’ The next entry is not until February of the following year.”

  She closes it.

  “Sometimes I wonder whether I remember Father as being kinder and better before the war because he truly was, or because I was a child then, and unable to see just what a shite-hawk he was all his life.”

  Jane hesitates, then says, “My mother taught me never to speak ill of the dead. My mother is a superstitious woman, and wrong about many things.”

  Alice smiles despite everything, smiles at her Jane.

  CHAPTER EIGHT: In Which Our Lovers Take Each Other by the Hand

  1789

  Jane lets the warm weight of her hand be the conversation. When she first came to Fleance Hall to be Alice’s companion, they sometimes walked hand in hand, or rested their heads on each other’s laps as they read books and ate apples. In those moments, the world paled, and their pulses beat together.

  It quickly became clear that Jane’s prospects were not much better at Fleance Hall than they had been at home. Colonel Payne had hoodwinked Jane’s mother into believing they would be. Jane cared little for prospects, anyway. She found an old telescope in the top room of the tower, and cleaned it and pointed it out the open window at the stars, and found it a very good prospect indeed. No one went into that room, except her, and Alice, when she was invited. Jane made it her own, adding whatever outdated equipment she could purchase with her allowance.

  When she was eighteen years old, Jane was courted. There was nothing wrong with William, which frustrated her to no end. He took her hand in his, and there was nothing natural or true in it. She refused him, and everyone said it was very sad. Baffling. A girl from a down-at-heel family, refusing a perfectly good proposal? A girl without prospects.

  Then Colonel Payne went to war, and Alice and Jane settled happily into a quiet steadiness that survived his return. She can’t say precisely when they slipped into the habit of resting their heads on each other’s shoulders at every opportunity, or reaching out to stroke the other’s arm out of affection, in the candlelit hours. How Jane interlaced her fingers in Alice’s and leaned to kiss her cheek, as Alice sat on a sun-warmed stone bench watching Havoc graze. How they heard the Colonel coming up the stairs, raging at no one about nothing, and Alice put a finger to Jane’s lips to say, quiet, and the finger remained, weighing Jane’s lower lip, opening her mouth, moistening Alice’s fingertip. Each of these caresses or grazes daring a little more, a little further, and yet still within the realm of we are companions, we are friends, we are practically sisters.

  Why then? Why that summer week, two years past, after so many years in the same house together? Once it began—whichever touch began it—the apotheosis seemed inevitable. The moment when Jane looked up from her microscope to see Alice bearing a cup of tea, and staring at her as if she were working out some remarkable puzzle. How Jane rose, and took the tea, and set it down, still face-to-face with Alice. How Alice took Jane’s face in her two hands and kissed her. Only a brief buss on the lips, but a kiss that pushed the bounds of friendship to their breaking point, and then a gaze, a smile, and a second kiss, which Jane probably began although she doesn’t quite remember. They broke three of her microscope slides that day.

  How is it that Alice’s hand on hers still holds all the mystery in the world, and all the certainty? It is a question she intends to keep asking, until all the bodies in the universe have cooled to a point of equilibrium and all motion ceases, that is, if Bailly’s theories are correct.

  The study door opens and Jane withdraws her hand from her beloved’s. Prudence enters, with Captain Auden just behind. Prudence looks even more out of sorts than usual. She’s carrying a bright orange box, molded or carved out of something not quite wood.

  “Forgive us for intruding on your grief, Miss Payne,” says Captain Auden. “Shall we return later?”

  Alice bows her head. “Thank you, but this blow has been long in coming. I didn’t know it would be a stroke that took him, of course, but I knew it would be something, before long. How is your Arthur now?”

  “We’ve given the boy who would be king some antivirals, and I think he’ll live,” Prudence says. “He’s sleeping comfortably on that little bed in Jane’s study.”

  “Do you mean to say the future holds a cure for smallpox, as well as a preventative?” Jane asks, sitting straighter.

  “Not a cure, but a treatment. They had some in the clinic where I swiped the vaccine, and I figured, in for a penny, in for a pound. Once he’s cured, we can try to find a way to get him back to his own century in a way that won’t set off all the alarm bells in history. Besides, I don’t want to have to get rid of the kid’s body. I hate digging holes.”

  Prudence seems as if she’s talking half to herself, less careful than she usually is to be understood.

  She opens the orange box and takes a small black spot out of it, holding it between thumb and forefinger. It’s smaller and thinner than a penny. “I took a few dozen. Enough for any servants who might come here in the future, anyone else we might need to protect. Jane, could you remove your fichu and just pull down the shoulder of your dress? I think that’s easiest. This can leave a small scar, I’m afraid.”

  Jane stands and complies, while Prudence touches the spot to her skin. It stings, and adheres.

  “Is it osmosis?” Jane asks, peering at the site.

  “Not quite. That little square contains more than a dozen tiny needles that scratch your skin and administer the virus. They activate with moisture,” she adds, turning back to address Captain Auden, “so you have to be careful not to touch the needle surface. The darker side goes on your fingertip. Hold it to the skin for ten seconds. Once it adheres, the patient should leave it there for at least an hour. Longer is fine. All right? I’ll linger close by in case you have any questions, but I think it’s best if you do the servants. I doubt they’d be very happy having a black woman stick something on them.”

  Captain Auden shakes his head, but with astonishment, not refusal. “It’s so . . . bloodless. Nothing like the inoculations I’ve seen. Will it work? And it won’t make them ill?”

  “Well, Jane, do tell me if you get a rash or a headache, but you should be f
ine. It’s a much safer method than rubbing pus into wounds, let me tell you. It’s not actually even smallpox virus, it’s—” Prudence stops, glances at Jane’s face. “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It doesn’t matter? You hold the ability to save a life on your fingertip.” Jane stops to catch her breath, hardly realizing she’s speaking aloud.

  “When I was in America,” Captain Auden says, and there’s a slight hush, because he so seldom speaks of America, “I saw whole towns—whole peoples—sent to the grave. Children suffering.”

  “Surely we can . . .” Alice says, gesturing at the orange box.

  “No,” says Prudence, holding up a hand. “Stop and think. That smallpox that swept America during the war. If it hadn’t, how would the course of that war have changed? You have no idea. I have no idea. You’re talking about changing who lives and who dies, on a grand scale. Your own bloody English officers gave blankets infected with smallpox to Leni Lenape diplomats, for Christ’s sake. So many ripple effects. You know what happens in the twentieth century? Humanity eradicates smallpox. Defeats it. What if that doesn’t happen, because you all decide to change the course of history and give the vaccine to the governments of the eighteenth century? There’s a brief window of public faith in international institutions in the twentieth century, and in that window, well, shit gets done. Would the Montreal Protocol go through? What would happen to the ozone layer? What about Bretton Woods, trade liberalization and the decline in poverty? You don’t know. You don’t even know what the ozone layer is. You’re meddling in—you’ve already—” She stops.

  Jane is used to being told she knows nothing of any importance. She is used to being just clever enough to be useful—to some great man of her acquaintance who needs a sympathetic ear or someone humble enough and clever enough to check his work—but not enough to be listened to.

  “So Prudence Zuniga disposes,” Jane says coldly. “And the rest of humanity lives, or dies, according to her decision.”

  Prudence shakes her head. “Every decision is life or death. Every goddamn decision. That boy in your lab lives; someone else loses a sister, or a brother, or a child. Listen. Trust me. In about forty years, a German scientist will figure out how to make a widespread, safe smallpox vaccine. Within your lifetimes, you’ll see it. But you have to trust me. Small changes are life and death. Big changes are . . . misguided.”

  Jane opens her mouth to argue but Alice says, “The life-or-death decision at this moment concerns my servants. Captain Auden, do I understand that you’re willing to administer the . . . What do you call it? Vaccine?”

  He nods. “If Miss Zuniga will stand by in case I have need of her. There is a cook, a groom, a footman, your father’s manservant, a housekeeper and a maid. Is that correct?”

  “Yes. Six. They have all been told to ready themselves. If anyone objects, please send them to me. In the meantime, if you don’t mind, I have many matters related to my father . . .”

  “Of course,” says Captain Auden, bowing his head.

  They leave, Captain Auden holding the door for Prudence, who seems annoyed by it, but then she seems annoyed by everything and everyone today. No one forced her to come back with Jane - from - the - very - near - future to 1788, to make her home here at Fleance Hall. It was that other Jane’s idea, and the Jane who was meeting Prudence for the first time could not very well object. She and Alice were both curious, in their own ways, both about the time-wheel and the woman from the twenty-second century.

  Jane-of-the-future had left the time-wheel in their possession, saying as she stepped through the shimmer into her own world that if everything had changed as she thought it would, she would have a time-wheel of her own, in her own time. Jane spent an evening making notes and charts to try to make sense of it, to little avail. But now the occupants of Fleance Hall have two time-travel devices at their disposal: the belt that Prudence nearly always wears, and the time-wheel, a bit of brass a little like an astrolabe or a compass, with nine concentric wheels. It is remarkably easy to use.

  And now it is in Alice’s hand, and Alice is smiling at Jane.

  “Where did that come from?” Jane asks.

  “I took it from your study as we were leaving. I thought we might not want to return for it, while the boy is still ill. And now we have a reason to use it.”

  “You want to go to America. To 1780, to see your father.”

  Alice nods. “And look what else I have.” She unfurls her left hand and shows three small black squares. “I took them while Prudence and Auden were intent on administering your vaccine.”

  “But what of Prudence’s warnings? What of the consequences?”

  “Everything has consequences. I don’t think saving lives can ever be the wrong choice, and besides, I wanted to make you smile just as you are smiling now. You’ll get a chance to look at these under your microscope soon enough, my love. In the meantime, will you come with me to America? I’ll bring my pistols.”

  Alice’s tone is as sprightly as it usually is when she proposes something rash, but it quivers strangely.

  “What would Prudence say?” Jane asks.

  “She would react as she does every time one of us has a thought of her own,” Alice retorts. “Roll her eyes and bewail her fate. She’s in a worse mood today than usual. I can’t believe she’d approve, but I know she’d be wrong.”

  Jane takes the black patches and slips them into her own pocket so that she can take Alice’s hand. “You know that I would go with you anywhere. To hell itself.”

  “Mmm, my love, that is no idle promise where I am concerned.”

  CHAPTER NINE: In Which Prudence Lies to the Servants

  1789

  Prudence slows her breathing as she descends the massive staircase, Auden following beside her. She feels beaten, and she does not respond well to feeling beaten. The first course of action after Almo’s little gambit was plain and easy: get the smallpox vaccine back to her friends in 1789, and then decide what to do about her sister.

  While Auden spoke with Arthur, she stepped into the little climate-controlled booth in the pre-Cambrian where she keeps her diary, and read about Grace. About all those lives in which Grace did not exist, and the ones where she did. How Prudence’s own life was happier with a sister in it—how she chose to enroll in the Academy out of enthusiasm, not despair. The special school that Grace began for the children of Capsule. Alexei’s face on the day Nick was born; the long hours that night when Prudence held the newborn Nick so Grace and Alexei could get a bit of sleep.

  How dare Almo take all that away? How can he possibly believe there is any way in hell that Prudence would come back and work for a man who would do that to her?

  No. Prudence is going to get her sister back, but she’s not going to give Almo the slightest satisfaction. The problem is, though, how to do it, and then once she does, how to keep Almo off their backs.

  They reach the door to the white parlour, and Auden, misreading her scowl, says, “I don’t think they’ll bite.”

  She gives him the least murderous expression she can muster, and they walk in.

  The white parlour, on the ground floor, is not quite below-stairs but it is right beside the stairs that lead down to the servants’ quarters, and the kitchen is just beyond it.

  It’s a very plain room, with old-fashioned plaster panelling, all vines and grapes. Alice told Prudence that it was her schoolroom, and Jane’s, when they were still children. Now it’s nearly empty save a long nearly white settee and an out-of-tune piano.

  Half a dozen servants stand in a line, grim-faced.

  Auden clears his throat. It’s a delicate moment. Prudence will be damned before she pokes anyone with anything without their consent, but she can’t have the servants spreading rumours of smallpox around the parish. On both those things, she and Auden have agreed.

  “Thank you for coming. I want to be clear that this procedure is not mandatory. But for any of you who have not had smallpox, we want to offer thi
s preventive measure. It is very safe. Much safer than inoculation. You almost certainly won’t get sick from it at all. A small prick in the skin of the arm. And I must also tell you that we have reason to believe that people in Fleance Hall could be more susceptible to smallpox.”

  As they agreed, he leaves it there, letting them imagine what they will about Jane’s experiments and the Colonel’s travels.

  “Does anyone have a question?” Auden asks.

  Satterthwaite, the butler, coughs. “Begging your pardon, sir. Is this a device of Miss Hodgson’s invention? I can’t help but notice that Dr. Rhys is not performing the procedure.”

  Auden hesitates. He can’t lie, bless him. He looks to Prudence, a liar of long practice, and she rescues him.

  “What can you tell us about the medicine, Miss Zuniga?”

  “These things must go through the proper channels, you know, and in London these days there are so many channels. Poor Dr. Rhys would be in quite a position if he were to administer any medicine without the Royal Society having a decade to debate it. In America, everyone has this done. I’ve had it done myself.”

  She smiles. It’s almost entirely true. And she can see their faces softening. She is still a propagandist. They trust her sincerity.

  Prudence has always been particularly good at accents, although she doesn’t have to work too hard in the eighteenth century. Outside of London, most English-speaking people on either side of the Atlantic still pronounce their Rs in 1789, and Prudence’s native Canadian accent of the twenty-second century isn’t too far off. She has to watch her internal Es and Is, and the cadences of her sentences, but she has a natural mockingbird tendency anyway.

  And any differences, she puts down to the time she was said to have spent in America.

  “Miss Hodgson made a wonderful false foot for my cousin after his accident,” says the cook. “When Dr. Rhys said there was nothing to be done.”