‘You want us to help set you free?’ Lechasseur asked.
‘Please,’ the boy pleaded. ‘I can’t stand being trapped. Please let me be free again. I want to move between suns again. I want to see new worlds. I want to feel the universe dissolve around me as I move through the time fields. I want to be free again.’ Tears were welling in his eyes. ‘You can’t imagine how it feels. To have been able to go anywhere, to be at any point in time, and to have it all taken away from you. To be trapped in one place. You can’t imagine.’
‘I spent over a year in bed after the War,’ Lechasseur said quietly. ‘For a while, I couldn’t see anything except walls, and then they moved my bed so that I could see out of the windows, and that was worse. I could see the sunlight and smell the flowers and the grass when it was freshly cut. But I couldn’t touch it. I couldn’t pluck a flower to sniff it or walk in the grass or feel the sun on my face.’ He shrugged self-consciously. ‘It’s not the same exactly, but maybe I understand a little.’
‘Then you’ll help me?’ the boy asked uncertainly.
‘If we can,’ Lechasseur glanced at Emily. ‘Right?’
‘If we can,’ Emily confirmed.
The boy started speaking quickly, as though afraid they would change their minds if he didn’t hurry. ‘I know how to do it,’ he blurted. ‘It’s those things you call time snakes. They’re the answer. They reach through time, backwards and forwards. They cross barriers in time. They’re the answer.’
‘They’re how we travel,’ Emily said swiftly, trying to slow the boy’s onslaught.
‘I know,’ the boy went on. ‘And they have huge amounts of energy in them, because of the way they weave through time. If I can have that energy, I can break loose and be free again.’
‘You want to tap someone’s time snake?’ Emily asked. ‘How is that possible?’
‘I can do it,’ the boy said with certainty. ‘I know how to take someone’s time snake.’
‘Snake?’ Tess asked nervously. ‘I don’t like snakes. I seen a couple on the common. I hate them.’
Lechasseur raised a hand to quiet Tess. ‘These aren’t snakes like you think of them,’ he explained. ‘It’s just a phrase to describe something that might look similar.’
Tess still looked far from convinced. ‘If you say so,’ she muttered. ‘But I wish you’d called them something else, that’s all.’
An uneasy chill spread through Emily. ‘You said you could take someone’s time snake,’ she said. ‘If you take someone’s time-snake, what will happen to them?’ She knew she wasn’t going to like the boy’s answer.
‘They’ll unexist,’ the boy said, in a flat, matter-of-fact tone.
‘You want to murder someone?’ Joan choked.
‘No,’ the boy said. ‘You don’t understand. They just won’t exist anymore.’ He turned to Emily. ‘Make her understand.’
Emily shook her head. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I understand it myself.’
‘Setting aside the hows and whys,’ Lechasseur interrupted slowly, ‘I think we’re missing one important question here.’ He let the room quieten for a moment before finishing. ‘The who. Just who is he expecting to … to unexist?’
The question hung uncomfortably in the air as four pairs of eyes turned to look at the little boy. ‘It’s none of you,’ he squirmed.
‘Who then?’ Joan asked.
‘One of the women you brought here?’ Emily asked. ‘You said you wanted to help them. Is this how you want them to pay for your kindness? By giving up one of their lives?’
‘That’s stupid,’ the boy snapped. ‘I could have made any of them unexist if I wanted to. I could have just taken their time snakes any time I liked. I could have, and nobody would have known.’
‘So why didn’t you?’ Lechasseur asked.
‘Because I don’t want them to unexist.’ The boy was becoming agitated again. ‘I don’t want that. I want them to carry on.’
Lechasseur shifted uncomfortably. ‘If it’s not any of them, that leaves only two options.’ He pointed at Emily and then at himself.
‘No, it’s not you either. I don’t want anybody who’s alive.’
‘Well, you can’t kill ’em when they’re dead,’ Tess sniped, then caught herself. ‘Can he?’ she asked.
‘No,’ Emily assured the girl. ‘Even he can’t kill people who are already dead.’
‘I dunno why, but that’s a relief,’ Tess muttered.
‘Oh, god.’ Emily’s haunted whisper quietened the room completely. She looked at the boy with horror. ‘It’s not the dead you want, is it? It’s exactly the opposite.’
A smile began to pull at the boy’s mouth as the pieces of the puzzle finally came together in Emily’s mind.
‘You want the unborn,’ Emily breathed. ‘You want the baby. You want Mary’s baby.’
• Sandi?
• Yeah?
• What will you do if you get back to your own time?
• Dunno, Alice. What about you? What will you do in ’95?
• I’m not sure. But I know I won’t commit suicide. It’s odd, but I’ve realised from being here that I want to live. Really live. I’ll grieve for John, but I want to have a life.
• I’m not sure what I’ll do. I don’t know what I can do. But if I’d gone to jail for … for what I did, I’d have been out fifteen years ago. Maybe I’ve served my time.
• More than that, by a long way.
• If things do turn out, maybe I can look you up in ’95.
• Why not?
• I’ll be a middle-aged hippie, probably driving a van.
• Painted garish colours?
• Natch.
• Do you think we will get home?
• Well, you know how to kill any cheery atmosphere, don’t you?
• I’m serious. Can we escape?
• Escape? No way, hon. But this Emily character has ideas, and things are kinda weird around here right now.
• I’d have thought things were weird here all the time.
• No. Things normally have a pattern here. They’re kinda dull most of the time, but things are changing. Two people disappearing at once. This Emily showing up and then disappearing again. Hell, even Mary stood up for herself. No, something’s happening. Patience has been here longer than me. Ask her.
• Patience? Patience?
• Patience?
• I am sorry. My thoughts were elsewhere. What did you say?
• Sandi was saying she thought something was happening.
• And Alice wanted to know what we’d do if we all got home.
• Home? If I ever return home, I think I will surely be murdered.
• You’re kidding, right?
• I think I would prefer death to a return to the life I had.
• What about Mary?
• I have been unfair to the girl, Alice. I have thought only of myself and ignored her suffering. Perhaps I will be able to help her, though I doubt if she will allow me to do so. And in truth I have no idea how I could help her.
‘You want to kill a baby?’ Joan said. Her voice was shrill with horror. ‘That’s disgusting.’
The boy backed away a few steps. ‘I wouldn’t be killing it,’ he whined.
‘But you would be taking its life away,’ Emily countered.
‘It would unexist.’
‘And what about Mary?’ Emily pressed. ‘Shouldn’t she be here? Surely she should have a say in this?’
‘Mary?’ The boy looked confused. A thin finger pointed at Tess. ‘Not Mary. It’s her baby I want.’
Chapter Nine
• Mary?
• Leave me be.
• Jesus, I’ve been here forever, and that’s the first time I’ve heard you say boo to a goose.
• Leave me alone, Sandi.
• Well, that’s a step forward, hon.
• What are you talking of? You never say anything that makes sense. Instead you sneer and make jokes and hide behind insults, and I am in no mood for you.
• Well, little miss quiet’s found a backbone.
• Don’t insult me! You chose to make your life a hell. Your choices did that. I had no choice in my life. No choice to how my life would be. No choice to whose bed I was dragged into. No choice but to be seen as his whore. No choice when I fell pregnant, and no choice when he took his belt to me when he found out. Your life was of your making, mine was forced upon me as surely as he forced himself on me when I took his eye. I wasn’t a servant. I was a slave. Better I was a slave in the Indies. At least then I’d be long gone from him.
• I’m sorry. I didn’t know.
• Why should I be loud about my shame? So that you could all whisper in the darkness, calling me the same names you call Tess when you think she will not hear? No. It’s none of your concern.
• So whose concern is it? Yours?
• Mine
• On your own?
• Yes.
• Bad news for you. Being a martyr is out of fashion.
• Don’t make fun of me.
• I’m not. Really. I’m not. But you don’t have to deal with everything on your own.
• Leave me alone.
• Listen.
• Go away! Please leave me alone!
‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ Tess exclaimed. ‘I’m not pregnant. Mary’s the one as is knocked up.’
The boy’s head shook. ‘No, she isn’t. She lost her baby when the Squire beat her with his belt.’
‘Of course you’re not,’ Joan agreed. ‘You’re far too young.’
‘Yeah,’ Tess said softly. ‘Too young for a lot of things, but I done them anyway.’
Lechasseur stepped towards Tess, but Emily caught him and shook her head. Whatever the girl had to say could prove to be vital, no matter how painful it might be.
‘I didn’t set out to be on the streets,’ Tess continued. ‘That wasn’t what I wanted. I had dreams when I was little. Such dreams. Dreams of being in the countryside. They always used to talk about it. My mum said it was always sunny in the countryside, and everything always smelled sweet.’
‘Did you ever go?’ Emily asked. ‘To the countryside?’
‘Nah,’ Tess answered sadly. ‘Never had the money to go.’ She snorted derisively at her memories. ‘Never had the money to go anywhere more than a half dozen streets away, really, except that bloody waste of time to see the Queen. Never expected to go anywhere either. I didn’t mind. Well, I was a kid, I didn’t know nothing else. It was okay when Mum was there. Dad could be a drunken sod sometimes – more than sometimes. He worked down the docks. Made good money, then. But he had a taste for the drink. Drank his wages, so sometimes we didn’t eat, and when Mum got to him about it … well, he was as quick to hit her as he was to belt me.’ Tess’s voice caught bitterly. ‘Then one day she narked him too much about it, and he went for her. He beat her, and he kept beating her till she stopped moving. Till she stopped breathing.’ She sniffed. ‘Then he just went. Never saw him again.’
‘He left you?’ Emily asked. ‘Alone?’
‘Yeah. Probably for the best, really. I don’t think I could have watched him hang. Not even for that.’ Her voice trailed off. ‘Even though I hated him for all the things he done to Mum. And to me.’
‘How could he do that?’ Joan asked, obviously both distressed and disgusted by the story she was hearing. ‘How could he murder his wife? How could he abandon his child?’
‘How old were you?’ Emily interrupted. She shared Joan’s revulsion for a child being left in that situation, but didn’t have time now for Joan to make an emotional scene.
‘Eleven,’ Tess answered. She sounded relieved that Joan had been interrupted. ‘And I was out on my ear as soon as the landlord found out my folks was gone. An eleven year old’s not going to be able to pay the rent.’ She gave a humourless laugh – a laugh too cynical for someone of her age. ‘Well, that’s what I thought. But I either had to look after myself or wind up in the poor-house, and I wasn’t going in one of them places. I’d learned a few things. I knew how to make things disappear without anybody seeing.’
‘Stealing? You were a thief, too?’
Tess bristled at the condemnation in Joan’s voice. ‘I didn’t take much,’ she said defensively. ‘And nothing from nobody who couldn’t afford it. Just a few things here and there – a few things off a stall, a few flowers from a basket. I didn’t need much to afford a room for the night. I did all right for a while.’
‘You got caught?’ Lechasseur enquired.
‘Yeah,’ Tess nodded. ‘Not by the police. I’d just lifted a bag of chestnuts. He was on the other side of his cart. I didn’t think he’d see. He bloody saw me all right. He grabbed me and shook me half out of my skin. Then he went for me with his belt, worse than anything my dad ever done to me. The police saw what he was doing, but they didn’t do nothing. Didn’t want to get hurt themselves, probably. I knew then I couldn’t stay on the streets. Then this woman offered me a place to stay, regular food and some coin in my pocket. So I took it. I knew who she was and I knew what kind of place she had, but I must have been so stupid. I never thought they’d want me to … to do that.’
‘You were a kid,’ said Lechasseur.
‘That’s not an excuse for being stupid,’ Tess snapped angrily, though her anger was clearly aimed entirely at herself rather than at Lechasseur. ‘I didn’t know some blokes liked them young. I didn’t know much, did I?’ she spat bitterly. ‘I screamed all through the first time. He just kept telling me to scream more.’
‘You don’t have to tell anybody this.’ Lechasseur looked square at Emily, challenging her silently to disagree. She said nothing, but Tess continued. Other than a few slips, she had kept the truth hidden to herself for over a century, and now that she had started telling the story, she didn’t seem able to stop.
‘Took weeks for me to stop screaming and crying when they sent somebody to me. I wanted to run away, but I had no place to run to. So I let them do what they wanted.’
‘How long?’ Joan floundered, searching for something to say.
‘Till I started growing up,’ Tess answered angrily. ‘They didn’t have no use for me once I got hair on it. Their men didn’t care for that, so they threw me out and dragged in some other poor cow.’
‘And you were back on the street?’ Emily pressed.
‘No home, no family, and I couldn’t do nothing to earn money, so I did what they’d made me do. Wasn’t all that bad.’ Tess tried to sound nonchalant about the experience, but succeeded only in letting her anger show. ‘A couple of times a night and I’d have enough for a place to stay and something to eat.’
‘Except you hated it?’ Lechasseur asked. ‘That’s why you started taking opium.’
‘You think anybody could be happy with that life?’ Tess spat. ‘The poppy just made it go away for a while. I’d used it off and on since I started, you know.’ She paused briefly as another wave of unpleasant memories came to her. ‘And it made the pain stop after, well, after I’d seen the … midwife.’
‘Midwife?’ Joan demanded. ‘You said you weren’t pregnant.’
‘I’m not. Not any more. I was – happens to us all, I suppose – so I saw the midwife to get rid of it. God, it hurt.’ Her voice cracked as she remembered the filthy back room, illuminated only by two candles, and the black-toothed midwife holding the long, pointed spikes she had used to get rid of the baby. ‘I’d have been better seeing a butcher.’
‘How could you kill your baby?’ Joan Barton’s voice was calm and quiet. Tess had expected Joan to scream or shout or strike out at her. She would
have taken any of those things ahead of the cold condemnation she heard in her friend’s voice.
‘It wasn’t a baby,’ Tess protested. ‘Not yet. It wasn’t born or nothing. I couldn’t have a kiddie. I didn’t have enough to look after myself. I didn’t even have a room. How could I look after a kiddie?’
‘You just find a way.’ Joan’s voice rose with anger. ‘You just do.’
‘How?’ Tess shot back. ‘With what? I couldn’t go on working if I was showing, could I?’
‘You could have done something,’ Joan snapped. ‘You didn’t have to kill your baby. Don’t you know how precious a child is?’
Emily moved between Joan and Tess. The story was told now, and she had as much information as she could get from it. There was nothing to be gained from letting the situation deteriorate further. ‘She knows, Joan. Look at her. She’s still a child herself.’
Angry tears welled in Joan’s eyes. ‘I lost seven children, and she casually throws one away like a rag.’
‘I didn’t just throw it away,’ Tess screamed back. ‘I just didn’t want it havin’ the same life as me.’
Joan’s face twisted with rage, resentment, disappointment and bitterness. ‘Stay away from me. Just stay away from me.’ She turned her back to the room, angrily wiping her eyes.
The room fell quiet for a long moment, letting the storm pass until Emily spoke.
‘Honoré,’ she sounded puzzled. ‘If Tess did away with her baby, why does our little friend here think she’s pregnant?’
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