The Time Baroness (The Time Mistress Series)

by Georgina Young-Ellis

  “What is it?” Shannon was the first to ask.

  “It’s a letter from Jane Austen to her sister.”

  There were exclamations all around, and she looked at Professor Carver out of the corner of her eye.

  “How did you get it, Cassie?” he inquired.

  She told the story and when she was through, the general consensus was that she’d done the right thing in preserving it.

  “Well, I would say,” offered Carver, “that if this is an item for your personal collection, there’s no harm done. But I would hesitate to publish it with your other documentation.”

  Cassandra agreed to defer to his judgment, and then let the letter be carefully decontaminated.

  ******

  After returning from any time journey, there was always a certain period of debriefing, especially in Cassandra’s case as she had been gone so long. The shock of stepping out into the modern day world could be great, so she spent the night in the lab, and went out early in the morning, before the hub of the city of London was at its peak. Nevertheless, the noise was hard on her ears, and the general stimulation intense.

  She went with Professor Carver, James, and Nick, who was now officially a member of the team, to her Bloomsbury apartment to continue the debriefing. She would remain there, venturing out little by little, until she felt assimilated enough to fly home to Boston and resume her normal life.

  Debriefing a time traveler was a matter of asking questions and getting the person to sort out past from present. Since Cassandra’s journey had been a long one, it took more time than usual. But Cassandra was resilient, and she responded well. Between the sessions with the three of her colleagues, she watched the VV (virtual vision) and reacquainted herself with modern culture. She tuned into the news of the day via sens-net and tried to focus on the here and now in as many ways as possible.

  When Professor Carver was confident that her debriefing was complete, he gave her the okay to return to the U.S. She did not want to remain in England long. Even three hundred years in the future, there was too much there that reminded her of the past. It was time to be the objective scientist. Within two weeks of her return to the twenty-second century, she was back at her Boston townhouse.

  Now she had to get on with the second phase of her project, which was to record it. This phase was already partly accomplished as a result of her journaling. By swiping the pages she had neglected to erase during her journey, she was able to record its entirety in the database. As she read them over again, she verbally recorded her additional comments and observations.

  Phase three of her experiment was analysis, and then finally, she would publish. Analyzing her experience meant she would be researching the records of the lives of the people she had come in contact with throughout her visit, determining if she had had any effect on the outcome of those lives. The research itself was not difficult. All historical dates ever recorded about deaths, births, marriages and other information of public interest had, over time, been computerized from church records, family histories, ship logs, and other sources. Within the last one hundred and fifty years, information that was already on computers had then been added to the database so that one could enter the name and the approximate time and country, and get all the possible matches in an instant.

  Both Nick and James were highly interested in working with Cassandra on this particular phase of the project. Nick had expressed that he wasn’t ready to publish yet. He had ten years of experiences to officially record, though, like any good scientist, he had kept a journal. He had spent almost two months debriefing with Professor Carver’s team and needed a break from thinking about his own experience, so he was in no hurry to begin his work. He would also eventually look up the people whose lives he touched, but he wanted to help Cassandra first.

  She, of course, was most curious to know about the outcome of Ben’s life, but decided to save him for last. She was anxious about what the result would be. She was finding it difficult to adjust to the fact that he was long dead. Instead, she felt like she was just recovering from a recent heartbreak.

  The three scientists gathered in the study of Cassandra’s townhouse on an afternoon in February to begin the research. James wanted to know about Elizabeth Charles, so they started there. It turned out that in 1821 she married a man named Sir Richard Thorpe. The fact that he had a title indicated that he might have been somewhat older than her at the time of their marriage, so they looked up his birth record, and indeed, he was ten years older than she. The only other reference to her in history was that in delivering her first child, in 1822, both mother and baby perished. This was a sad realization for James.

  Lady Charles did not live much longer than her daughter. She died in 1823, but Sir Robert remained a prominent member of Parliament until his death in 1835. He never remarried, and they saw no evidence that he’d had any success re-instating an anti-witchcraft law. Cassandra breathed a sigh of relief.

  Next they entered the name Eunice Fairchild. Here was a happy surprise. Eunice married Jeffrey Holcomb in 1825. He had great success in his military career, and by 1840 was an admiral in the British Navy. They had four children, all of whom lived into adulthood.

  Cassandra’s heart was in her throat as they looked up Jane Holcomb, wondering if she would see Ben’s name connected with hers. An irrational jealousy overcame her. But once the information was called up, she was pleasantly surprised to find that Jane married Edward Clarke in 1824. Cassandra chuckled. Lady Holcomb couldn’t have been too pleased about the match. Edward took his orders as a clergyman in 1821 in a parish near Selborne. Cassandra figured that his inheritance was probably rather small, as would be his income as a preacher. But since Jane had a decent dowry, they probably scraped by, in spite of the fact that they had eight children. Six of them survived into adulthood. Lady Holcomb died in 1830.

  The two Moore girls, surprisingly, both married baronets and both remained childless.

  Mr. and Mrs. Merriweather stayed on at Sorrel Hall until their deaths at the ages of seventy and seventy-five, respectively. As Cassandra went to look for Mary’s records, she realized that, try as she might, she could not recall the girl’s last name. “I can’t believe I never asked,” she said out loud.

  “She might have ended up doing something notable,” James remarked. “Since she apparently educated herself. “

  “We will never know,” said Cassandra, sadly.

  They found that the Collins did not return to Sorrel Hall. It was sold to Eunice and Jeffery Holcomb in 1831, and Cassandra was glad to know that it had fallen into good hands.

  Finally they were ready to search Ben’s history. Cassandra began to chew on her pinky nail, and Nick cleared his throat and ran his fingers through his hair. She smiled at him, and he reached out and squeezed her hand. James went down to the kitchen to get a bottle of wine and poured out a glass for each of them when he returned. Gratefully accepting the wine from her son, Cassandra took a hearty sip and then spoke the words, “Benedict Johnston, circa 1821, England.” The computer responded immediately, and projected the information.

  There was a record of a Benedict Johnston who set sail for America from Portsmouth on board the Crescent in July of 1821. The ship docked at New York harbor two months later.

  Cassandra was stunned. “He left his father!”

  “Don’t jump to conclusions, Mom,” warned James. “Maybe he went to the U.S. on his father’s business. Let’s see if his name shows up in any transactions.”

  However, the next record of Benedict Johnston in the U.S. was a marriage to a Sarah Williams in 1823. Cassandra sharply took in a breath. The name Benedict Johnston then turned up in 1826 on a list of musicians for a concert with the Grand Symphony Orchestra as first violinist. Cassandra’s heart was racing now.

  She decided to look up Sarah Williams. Her father was an Anglican minister at the Church of All Angels in New York City. His name was Jeremiah Williams, and there were a couple of newspaper articles at the
time mentioning him as a fervent abolitionist. Sarah and Benedict were married in his church. The records noted that they had three children together, Cassandra, Jeremiah and James. The two boys had families of their own, but Cassandra Johnston did not.

  Now Cassandra was weeping, and James and Nick looked at each other, unsure what to do. Nobody spoke. All she could think was that, yes, she had changed history, though she hadn’t meant to. She had led Ben to happiness, for so it seemed. He had rejected work that would have made him a party to slavery, and instead had gone in search of a new life. For all she knew, he had gone in search of her. But instead, he found Sarah Williams and became a father and a successful musician. Where were his descendents today, she wondered? Maybe she would meet them someday.

  James went to get his mother a glass of water and, as he left the room, subtly gestured to Nick, who gathered Cassandra in his arms, gently rocking her. She cried on his shoulder until she was spent. James returned with the glass of water and lightly stroked her hair until she looked up at him. There was no doubt now of the impact of their visit.

  Still, there was one more thing both she and James had to consider in their research. Cassandra took his hand and pulled him back down into his chair.

  “James,” she began, taking a breath to clear her thoughts, “have you looked up your own name yet in the records since you’ve been back?”

  “Yeah,” he replied. “I had to. I was dying to see what the newspapers said about my escape.” He grinned at Nick.

  “It’s serious, James!” his mother admonished him. “Fortunately, it doesn’t look like their knowledge of the event adversely affected any of our acquaintances. Quite the contrary, as a matter of fact, but I want to know if you had an impact otherwise—in London, or on the poor police captain, for instance.”

  “No, Mom, not that I can see. Here, I’ll show you.” He called up his name in conjunction with the year 1820, and there was the article that Cassandra had read in the Times while in London, and several others after the escape—all very sensational. The mystery was marveled at in the papers for two weeks after the event. But the three scientists noted with interest that the police never revealed the disappearance of the music device, probably they were too embarrassed.

  Both James and Nick had read the irate letter from Lady Charles that Cassandra kept for her documentation, and Cassandra began to think about it now more than she had for some time. “You know,” she remarked, “I feel I’m coming to a conclusion about the success of my experiment, and it’s not a positive one.”

  “What?” Nick and James both exclaimed, overlapping. “What are you talking about?”

  “Well,” she continued calmly. “First of all, I…we,” she glanced at James, “obviously affected the past and altered history.”

  “Well, yeah, somewhat,” admitted James.

  “But for me, more personally, the issue is that I was not successful in fitting in with the people and ways of the time, and therein, I feel I failed in my experiment.”

  “What do you mean?” exclaimed her son. “You were loved my many people, accepted as a friend by many, you made someone fall in love with you.” He glanced at Nick. “You were valued by the lower class as a wonderful patron. How is that not success?”

  “I appreciate what you’re saying, James, but people still regarded me as an outsider, in particular Lady Charles. For all her faults, she was really the most perceptive. She knew there was something inherently different about me—something more than being an American. She thought it was something… well, paranormal, for lack of a better word. She was right—I was from the future, for God’s sake. And because of my oddness, I alienated her.”

  “Mom, I was the one who did the damage. I was the one who brought the PAL. If anyone sabotaged your experiment, it was me.”

  “My love,” she replied, “I will not let you feel guilty about that. This was my experiment, and I take the responsibility for it. The fact that I failed to properly fit in stirred Lady Charles’ ire before you even arrived. Not to even mention the fact that Nick here knew I was a time traveler, practically from the moment I walked through his door.”

  “Well, now, that’s different,” chimed Nick. “I was able to recognize the signs of a time traveler because I am one.”

  “Look, don’t get me wrong,” continued Cassandra. “It goes without saying that a failed experiment is just as valuable as a successful one. I learned something here for scientists to benefit from in the future.”

  “Of course,” Nick agreed. To James he said, “You and I have yet to analyze the success or failure of our journeys.”

  “Well, mine was pretty much analyzed right here today,” James said.

  “Yes, but you still need to combine your perspective with the result,” added his mother.

  Feeling emotionally weary, they decided to quit for the day. James took his leave to go spend time with some of his friends. Nick asked Cassandra if she’d like to get some dinner, and she realized she was starving. They went to a good seafood restaurant nearby that she knew of, for that was the food she had missed the most during her time in the past—fresh shellfish didn’t make it much farther than the port towns in those days.

  Cassandra was exhausted from thinking about her own time travel experience, so as they sipped their wine and waited for their food in the candle-lit bistro. She decided it was finally a good time to ask Nick why he had once made the decision to journey to nineteenth-century England, presumably to stay forever. She didn’t need to ask, for before she could inquire, he began the conversation himself.

  “You asked me once why I had traveled to old England and stayed so long. I think it’s time to give you an answer.”

  “I would love to know,” she replied, “but I didn’t want to pry.”

  “Well, it’s not a happy story, nor one I like telling. But I want you to know my reasons.” He picked up a piece of bread and put it on his plate. “Back in the 2080s, I formed a chronology team of my own. I had just completed my PhD at MIT, studying under Carver.”

  “Really!”

  “Yeah. It was when he was still teaching, before he had a team. I admired him immensely. But he was too slow for me, too cautious. I was young, you know, still in my twenties, and I thought I knew everything.”

  “I know someone like that,” she said, chuckling.

  “Yes, exactly. And to make matters worse, I was heir to a huge fortune. My parents are among the wealthiest people in the world, I’m somewhat embarrassed to say.”

  Cassandra thought for a moment. “Stockard…wait a minute not the Stockards.”

  “Yes,” he laughed, “the Stockards”

  “Goodness,” she murmured raising her eyebrow.

  “Wealth, combined with youth, made me cockier than I deserved to be. I gathered around me several brilliant scientists and built a laboratory of state-of-the-art equipment, and we rushed to beat Carver to the breakthrough.”

  “He beat you, though.”

  “Yes, he did. But as I told you before, we weren’t far behind, with just enough of a difference in our methods so that we couldn’t be accused of stealing from him. It didn’t really matter, because each person on our team had signed a nondisclosure agreement, and we didn’t plan on telling anyone what we were doing anyway. We just didn’t want to be under the scrutiny of the scientific community. As it turns out, we should have been more cautious.”

  “What happened?” Cassandra asked with trepidation.

  “Well, first of all, I fell in love with and married one of my colleagues. Her name was Nagla Sumeria.”

  “That doesn’t seem so bad.”

  “No, no, it was wonderful, she was wonderful—”

  Nick looked down; Cassandra took a sip of water.

  “Anyway, we took the same precautions as Carver, tested and retested the machine, but I was anxious to start traveling. I was the first one to make a trip. It was just a brief one, back to the 1920s to check out jazz clubs in Harlem. It was successful
, so we started planning longer ones. My wife was of Egyptian descent and wanted to go to ancient Egypt, but just for a short stay, just to get a taste of it, because it was a very volatile time. I was against it, but she eventually persuaded me. My problem was that I couldn’t go with her to help keep her safe. As you know, time travel is usually done solo, but there was no way I would send a woman back to that time period alone. However, as a white man, I just simply could not go. Nobody existed there who looked like me; I would stand out like a phantom.”

  He buttered his bread, took a bite, and chewed it. “So another scientist on the team, an African American fellow, offered to go. Using anthropological and archeological studies, we determined that they both looked enough like the ancient Egyptians to get by without undue notice. Well, we were wrong.” Nick took a gulp of wine. “We set up the portal exit on the outskirts of Alexandria, using ancient maps to assure that it was in a remote area. But when they walked into the city, looking like travelers, they were soon seized and thrown in jail. Apparently they were of the wrong race to be seen together as man and woman. We had taken so much care with the costumes, the hair and jewelry, and all the other details, but we just didn’t know enough about the cultural taboos.”

  “Oh my God, what happened?” asked Cassandra.

  “They killed my wife.”

  “Oh no!” cried Cassandra.

  “Yes, and they sentenced our friend Rodney to slavery.”

  Just then the waiter came and delivered their salads. They both sat staring at them.

  “Fortunately, Rodney was able to escape within just a couple of days and made it back to the portal exit. We could not recover Nagla’s body, though. I don’t even know what they did with her.”

  “Oh, Nick, I…oh, dear God. I’m so, so sorry. It’s, it’s just beyond comprehension.”

  “Yeah,” he said sorrowfully, picking at his salad. “At the time, I just wanted to kill myself. I felt fully responsible for her death. I scrapped my work, and the team went their separate ways. I just stumbled around through life for awhile and then decided that I couldn’t live in a world anymore that reminded me of her. So I gathered enough of the team back together to help me set up a temporary lab and one-way portal exit. I left for nineteenth-century England with a huge wad of money and my eighteenth-century cello. All I wanted around me was music, so I opened up the shop and played now and then at salons and private concerts. I kept a low profile.”