by Rysa Walker
“A time and place I’m likely to find Pru by herself. Young Pru, back when she was angry at Saul.”
“Why—”
“Kiernan, the less you know, the better. You’re always telling me to just trust you and do what you’re asking, and I do—”
He snorts. “When it suits you.”
“Okay, but I do when it seems important. And this is really, really important. I was thinking maybe the Seneca Falls Convention? That’s when she changed the document—the one that Katherine noticed—by adding her signature.”
“Pru wasn’t there. We tried that before, in the other timeline.”
“But . . . her name’s on the document. Maybe—”
“I didn’t go to the convention with you—sorry, with my Kate—but I remember that trip very well. We spent some time in a cabin on the Finger Lakes near there. Kate didn’t find Pru at the meeting. She decided Pru prob’ly never even went. Just bribed the printer to add her name later on.”
He takes another swig. “Victoria Woodhull. Pru worked for her presidential campaign.”
“I’ve heard the name. Something to do with ‘free love,’ so must’ve been the sixties or seventies, right?”
“Yeah. 1872.”
I was thinking more like 1972. Women couldn’t even vote in 1872, so how did one end up running for president? But I just nod. Getting him off on a tangent will only wake him up further.
“Kate’s backup plan was snatching Pru’s key in 1872,” he continues, “assuming she couldn’t lure her back to the same time as your mom. Woodhull gave this big speech in New York. Pru was probably there. She was about your age, right after the baby was born. Simon mentioned it once. Said Pru freaked out over something Saul did and disappeared for a few days, but Pru said she was there a lot longer than that.”
“Did she know about you and your Kate then?”
“Not . . . directly. Pru and I weren’t ever together until she was eighteen, nearly nineteen. Older Pru might have told her something about it, though. Anyway, if Pru’s not at the speech, I know she’s there when Woodhull gets jailed for the Beecher article. Nearly got herself arrested, too.”
“I’m not following any of this, you know. Beecher who?”
“Henry Ward Beecher.” Another slug from the bottle. “He’s a preacher. Hey, that rhymes.”
Well, that answers any questions about whether the alcohol is working.
“Okay . . .” I motion for him to continue.
“Beecher spoke out against Woodhull’s free love speech, but he’d been foolin’ around with a married woman. Woodhull called him a hypocrite, got hit with an obscenity charge. Was all over the papers.”
He hands me back the bottle, which is down to about a quarter. “Any more of that an’ I’m gonna blow chunks.”
I have to smile, wondering where in time he picked up that bit of slang.
“See if you can get Martha to drink a bit more. Help her sleep.” He slumps back down onto his pillow. “An’ don’t nag me about corruptin’ a minor. Sleepin’ meds in 1905 have some scary ingredients. Bourbon’s safer.”
“Kiernan—when you see me next, don’t mention this. And you can’t follow me like you did in Australia. Really and truly you can’t.”
“’Kay.”
He said okay last time and still wound up killing a crocodile out of some misguided determination to protect me, so I nudge his shoulder. “No, Kiernan. Not okay. You have to promise me.”
“I promise.” With half-closed eyes, he reaches out and grabs a handful of my T-shirt, pulling me toward him. “Mo ghrá thú.”
Kiernan’s bourbon-scented kiss is half on my cheek, half on my lips, but I feel the same stirring I always do, followed by the same flood of guilt. I push him gently back onto the pillow and kiss his forehead, next to the scar that’s nearly healed.
A sleepy smile spreads across his face. “Night, Katie.”
∞10∞
BETHESDA, MARYLAND
September 11, 1:35 p.m.
Connor is at the computer when I blink in. He’s squinting, but I can’t tell if it’s from what he’s reading or the fact that he needs to be wearing his reading glasses.
He glances over when I sit down. “Everything go okay with Tilson?”
Connor is certain the devices he installed shield the house from any sort of eavesdropping equipment, but I’m still nervous about talking inside. He’s right, though—we can’t keep hiking out to the backyard every time we need to discuss things, and I’ll freely admit that he knows much more about electronics than I ever will.
Still, I keep my voice low. “Yeah. Someone must have prearranged the date and time. Tilson was waiting at the door. I just handed him the samples and the article and blinked back.”
I omit the part about my hand clutching the handle of the cooler a little too long. Tilson gave me a sympathetic look, so I think he understood why I might have a few qualms about handing over a deadly virus to someone I hardly know. I had to remind myself that Trey’s dad and Trey’s granddad have known Tilson for decades and hold him in high esteem, and also remind myself that in a slightly different timeline, an older version of the man in front of me would refer to the Cyrists as “lotus-wearing parasites.” I just hope that Tilson and his colleague at MIT are really able to come up with a vaccine based on the blood and water samples inside the case. Although I guess they already have, based on what Tilson said at the meeting.
Martha barely opened her eyes. I’d like to think it was my newfound skill as a phlebotomist, but I suspect it was due more to the dose of bourbon Kiernan gave her earlier and lingering shock. She nodded a few times as I spoke and winced slightly when the needle went in, but she was back asleep before I even finished bandaging her arm.
“Any luck on Woodhull?” I ask.
Connor is reading a digitized version of Harper’s Weekly from February 17, 1872. The highlight of the page is a cartoon entitled “Get Thee Behind Me, (Mrs.) Satan!” At the forefront is a woman—Victoria Woodhull, I guess—with horns protruding from her hair and bat wings attached to her back. In her hands is a sheet of paper: Be Saved by Free Love. Another woman trudging along the rocky terrain in the background, with children strapped to her body and a drunken man on her back, claims she’d rather be shackled in the worst possible marriage than follow Woodhull’s path.
He rubs his eyes. “The problem isn’t a lack of information. It’s the exact opposite. I wish you’d asked Kiernan which speech. The woman gave a lot of speeches. Aside from what she made publishing the paper, most of her income was from public speaking. My best guess? He’s talking about her acceptance speech at the Equal Rights Party convention on May 11th. But it could also be the one in September that starts the whole Beecher scandal, or one to the Spiritualist Association. Could you go back and ask him to clarify?”
“Not a good idea. He wasn’t even positive Prudence was there for the speech, so let’s focus on the arrest.”
“Again,” he says dryly, “which arrest?”
“Oh.”
Connor types something in, and a picture of a stout, balding man with puffy whiskers pops up. “Wait, that’s him when he’s older,” he mutters. A few clicks later, and he taps an image of a slightly thinner guy with a narrow mustache.
“This one’s closer to Anthony Comstock in 1872. Fortunately it’s a headshot so you don’t see the gigantic stick up his ass. This jerk dragged Victoria and her sister into jail every few days during November. As soon as her lawyer could spring them, he’d find some reason to haul them back in.”
“Was he police chief or something?”
“No. The weird thing is he didn’t have any actual authority, but everyone acted like he did. He used the Woodhull case to draw national attention and eventually landed a position as postal inspector, where he spent the next forty years tracking down so-called pornographic material. It got so bad medical schools couldn’t even send anatomy textbooks through the mail.”
“Woodhull was innocent, t
hen?”
“Well . . . Woodhull and her sister weren’t angels. They clearly didn’t mind a bit of blackmail. Or fraud. But Comstock keeps jailing them because of the issue claiming Beecher was having the affair with Elizabeth. Tilton included another article that used the word virginity.”
Katherine comes in, holding a dress over one arm. It looks like the pale-green dress I wore at Houdini’s show, but she’s tweaked it a bit. “The obscenity charge was just an excuse to get Woodhull out of the way,” she says. “I did a two-month study of the Beecher-Tilton trial before they teamed me up with Saul. Beecher’s people were behind the arrests. I doubt they paid Comstock off—he was such a stickler for propriety he probably wouldn’t have accepted a bribe—but it’s funny how the complaints against Woodhull and her crew evaporated the moment Beecher’s church decided the charges against him merited closer examination.”
“So Beecher and the Tilton woman sued Woodhull for libel?” I ask. “Or is it slander?”
“Libel,” Connor responds, “since it was in print. But no. Beecher and Tilton never sued Woodhull. The case was brought by Theodore Tilton, Elizabeth’s husband, against Beecher. This is a few years after the article. Theodore—who was, coincidentally, sleeping with Victoria Woodhull at pretty much the same time Beecher fooled around with Elizabeth—decided that Beecher might actually have harmed him by having sex with his wife. So he sued Beecher for alienation of affection.”
“Why would he sue Beecher if he was cheating, too? Are you sure this isn’t a plot on Days of Our Lives?”
“It was a very different era,” Katherine says, sitting down next to Connor. “Husbands cheated frequently and with impunity. Wives did not. Divorce was a scandal, especially for a woman, not to mention an enormous risk. She lost all rights to marital property and to her children in most states. That’s a large part of what Woodhull was protesting. Her plea for ‘free love’ was less about sexual promiscuity—although there was a touch of that as well—than about the double standard for women. As for it being a soap opera, you’re absolutely right. The so-called ‘scandal issue’ of Woodhull and Claflin’s Weekly where they exposed Beecher’s affair sold for as much as forty dollars on the streets a week later—over seven hundred dollars in today’s money. Victoria Woodhull and her sister were the 1870s equivalent of the Kardashian sisters.”
Connor shakes his head. “Bad analogy. The Kardashians started out with money. Woodhull is more like Honey Boo Boo. Or maybe Duck Dynasty. Just smarter.”
“True,” Katherine says. “Victoria and Tennie started from nothing, and their family was . . . colorful, to say the least. Long before Victoria ran for president, the sisters were on stage. They worked as spiritualists, they were the first female stockbrokers, and they claimed to be the first female newspaper publishers, although that’s not accurate. Several other women ran newspapers long before, including Elizabeth Timothy back in—”
Connor clears his throat, interrupting her. “And yes, students, we’ll be learning all about that in tomorrow’s lecture.”
Katherine shoots him a perturbed look, but pulls herself back on topic. “Anyway, I’ve done the best I can with this dress. I’d have gone with something less flashy, but this is what we have on hand, unless you’d like to jump back to last week and give me some notice?”
“I’d rather not twist your memories or mine any more than we have to. This will be fine.”
She frowns, making a tsking sound. “Even with the lace in the front, the bodice is a bit . . . well, just don’t go outside the hall if you can help it. I don’t think it will be a problem at this particular convention—many women wore less. I tried to replicate the Dolly Varden dress that was in vogue for younger women. There were some truly crazy variations, so you may be able to pull it off. I padded the back with some spare pillows since we don’t have a hoop.”
She holds up the dress, and I see she’s made a rather large split down the middle of the skirt, tying the fabric back with ribbons. Beneath this outer apron is a flounced skirt of darker green, which looks like fabric left over from my trip to 1893. The back poofs up like a partially deflated balloon. Bits of lace from the bolero cape thingy are stitched around the neckline.
Katherine’s also holding a very familiar pair of white kidskin boots, which I will not be wearing, and one of the rattan placemats from the breakfast nook that she’s fashioned into some sort of bonnet. It used to be a natural straw color, but now it’s a very familiar shade of mojito green. It smells familiar, too—sort of acrylic-y.
“Did you use all of my nail polish?” I ask.
“Yes. I thinned it out with a bit of polish remover and used it to stain the bonnet. The color is quite close. Beautiful, isn’t it?”
Beautiful is not the word I would have used, but then I’m not a hat person. She’s stitched two strips of the lace from the bolero to the edges of her creation—I guess so I can tie it onto my head. Leaves and berries that I’m pretty sure came from the holly tree outside are clustered on one side. It looks like someone ate a Christmas wreath and then threw up on top of a large green pancake.
“It looks very nice,” I say, hoping that my lying face is in proper working order, “but please put the boots away.”
“I know. They’re not era appropriate. But they’re the closest we have. This style heel is—”
“Who cares whether they’re historically accurate? They blistered my feet in Chicago, and I can’t move in them. I’ll wear my black ballet flats.”
“Women didn’t wear—”
“Or I can wear these.” I smile, pointing to the blood-red Vans currently on my feet. “Your choice.”
Katherine sighs, tossing the torture shoes under the desk. “Ballet flats it is, although I’ll warn you, the skirt may drag a bit without a heel.”
“Not a problem. I’ll hike it up if I need to run.” I think it’s more likely I’ll strip down to the shorts I’ll be wearing underneath. My patience with historical accuracy is wearing thin, especially with future history teetering on the brink.
“Very well,” Katherine says. “There’s a stable point near the back of the theater, tucked away in a little alcove. And you’ll be fine in this outfit as long as you stay in Apollo Hall. The people I talked to outside the hall were much more conservative and—”
“Wait.” Connor and I say the word in unison. He nods for me to continue, so I finish the sentence without him. “You were there?”
“Well, yes.” Her expression clearly indicates that this is a stupid question. “I could hardly do a proper study of the trial and Woodhull without attending that event. Even if I hadn’t been focusing on Woodhull, I studied women’s movements. She was being nominated for president. By a fringe party, admittedly, but it was an historic moment. Of course I was there. Only twice, but—”
“Twice.” I give Connor a sick look. “Can you remember where you were? What you did? I need to avoid you.”
“You certainly do.” Katherine drops the dress into my lap and steps over to the bookshelves, pulling out a CHRONOS diary. “While I have a vague memory of both trips, I’m sure there are full details in here somewhere.”
I hold up my hands. “Unless you really think it’s important, I need to settle for the vague memories. My afternoon is booked. Going back and carving out extra hours isn’t a good idea, either. I’m running out of times I won’t run into myself or an earlier one of you. I’d rather not mix things up any more than necessary.”
Katherine looks like she’s about to argue, but she nods. “You’re right. The first trip, I wore a dress like that one—except in the gaudiest floral print imaginable. I was near the front, with the more ardent Woodhull groupies. The second trip, I spent most of my time outside talking to the men and women who were looking down their no . . . ses—”
We both turn to stare at Connor’s computer, which is now emitting the same ominous bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom, bom-bom his phone made in the backyard last night.
“What?” He turns back
to face his screen. “I needed a Cyrist alert. It was either Jaws or Darth Vader mouth breathing, and this one’s easier to hear if there are other things going on.” He plugs in his headphones, and the noise disappears.
“As I was saying,” Katherine continues, with a slight roll of her eyes, “I was outside with the self-righteous types—the Mrs. Grundys, as Woodhull’s advocates called them—during the second jump, and made up to look at least twenty years older. I never visited Woodhull’s offices. The positive side is that you won’t run into me there, but there’s also no stable point. So you really need to contact her at Apollo Hall if possible. Steer clear of the very front and don’t go outside, and you’ll avoid both of me.”
“I don’t suppose you remember seeing anyone who looked like Prudence?”
“Unfortunately not, although I wasn’t really looking for someone who might resemble a teenage daughter I might have at some unspecified point in the future.” She stops and pulls in a sharp breath, closing her eyes.
“Katherine? Are you okay?”
She holds up one hand. Her eyes are squeezed tight, and it’s clear she’s in pain.
“Katherine!”
“Shh.” She opens her eyes slightly, glancing at Connor, and seems relieved that he’s still engrossed in whatever triggered his shark alert. “It’s fading. Give me a minute.”
A few deep breaths later, she gives me a shaky smile. “I’m okay. It happens sometimes. Just Fred taking another nibble.”
I want to tell her that’s not funny, but if she needs gallows humor to get through this, is it my place to criticize? “Can I get you anything?”
“No, dear. Still another hour before my next pill. I’m better now, really. As I was saying, even if I saw Prudence at Apollo Hall, I doubt she’d have stuck out in my mind unless she did something bizarre—”
“Hey,” Connor interrupts, unplugging the headphones. “You both need to watch this.”
A network logo flashes at the center of his screen—Cyrist International Network’s pink-and-blue lotus with the letters CIN across the center petal. A wire-frame globe spins slowly behind the lotus.