by Bee Ridgway
Bertrand narrowed his eyes. “We stage a grand betrayal,” he said. “It is what Hannelore fears the most. All her energies are bent on securing the loyalty of her Favorites.”
“A betrayal?”
“Yes. A spectacular betrayal.”
“Who is going to betray whom?”
Bertrand smiled for the first time since Dar had seen him today. “Alva is going to betray Hannelore. She is going to do it so thoroughly, so definitively, that Hannelore will hate her forever.”
“And make you her successor.”
“Yes.” Bertrand twisted the ring on his finger. “Exactly. Alva will take the fall and be forever shunned. And I will be perfectly placed to inherit the Guild itself.”
“Alva wishes to found an Ofan school,” Dar said. “She intends to take my education of the Ofan further. Organize it. Organize them. She thinks—and I think she’s right—that we need to study group control of time. Keep abreast of the Guild. But do it in a way that doesn’t drain and destroy lives.”
Bertrand raised his eyebrows. “She is ambitious.”
“She is perfect,” Dar murmured.
Bertrand’s eyes didn’t waver. “She is a whore.”
“Careful, Arthur.” Dar’s sword hand twitched, an ancient memory.
Those green eyes blazed, with what Dar could only see as hatred. “You will never call me by that name again,” Bertrand said. “Never. You will die without ever saying it again.”
Dar stared for a moment more into Bertrand’s face. “I never shall say your name again,” he said. “But you, in turn, will not speak ill of Alva. Never once. That is the deal.”
Dar watched Bertrand struggle—just a ripple on the implacable surface. Then Bertrand nodded, once. “It was wrong of me,” he said. “And it is an easy promise to make; I have enormous respect for Alva. Now. How shall we stage this betrayal? Hannelore must discover Alva in a compromising situation.”
Dar sipped his lager. And grimaced. It was like drinking horse piss. The 1970s were the worst. He pushed the glass away. “It will be at the Savoy,” he said. “Hannelore will discover Alva at the Savoy, in the 1920s. She will find Alva having time-traveled without permission. Dancing and carrying on with her Ofan teacher.”
• • •
“Betray Hannelore.” Alva tested the idea, weighed it in her mind as she used to weigh beets in her hands, sorting the good, dense roots from the wormy. “It is a good idea,” she said, at last. “And Bertrand is right. I must be shunned by Hannelore and the rest of them. But I do not want Hannelore to know that I am Ofan.”
They were walking down to the river in the early evening, dressed in rich medieval garb. Dar had returned to her in the company of an exquisite and fastidious butler named Neville. Neville had dressed them both in the height of twelfth-century fashion, paid the landlady, and was now going before them through the crowded, twisty little streets lined with half-timbered houses, clearing the way for “M’Lord Dar and his lady.”
“Why not? If we reveal you to be gallivanting about with an Ofan bigwig, that will confirm the betrayal. You hate the Guild, she hates you.”
“Because then she will watch me, Ignatz. Watch us. And I wish my school to be secret from the Guild, for as long as possible. You must leave me to betray her, alone, on my own terms.”
“Fine. But if you aren’t Ofan, then what are you?”
“I shall set myself up as an independent woman,” Alva said. “A woman with a reason to be in London, and a reason to have a house with a great deal of traffic in and out of it. A woman whose wealth makes sense, whose social influence makes sense.”
Dar shrugged. “Not so easy to arrange in the eighteenth century. Not unless you are a very grand lady. An aristocrat. And you are not. You could marry me, but—”
“I shall not be marrying you.”
“Then what will you do? The only other option is to become . . .” Dar’s sentence petered out. He stopped dead in the street. Neville glanced back over his shoulder, then stopped as well, holding his arms out theatrically to keep passersby away.
Alva smiled at him, enjoying his discomfort. “I can see that you have thought of it. Why will you not say it?”
He set out walking again. “I won’t have it.”
She laughed. “But it is none of your affair, Ignatz. The only way to set myself up against Hannelore is to reign supreme over a group of admirers and hangers-on, much in her own mode.”
He rounded on her, frowning fiercely. “So you will be a courtesan.”
“The greatest courtesan! I shall set up my house in Soho Square, above the Ofan catacombs. From there I shall drive Hannelore to distraction by seeming to become the most powerful whore that London has ever seen; I shall have men of state and wealth at my fingertips.”
“Yes. Just as you had me at your fingertips in that damned draper’s shop.”
“Ah, but that draper’s shop was a sham, was it not? While Hannelore rants and raves about my dramatic desertion into the ranks of the demimonde, what will be transpiring behind the drawn curtains of my house of ill repute, and down below in the Ofan rabbit warren? There, you and I shall begin the work of founding our little university.”
It was grand talk, but as they neared the river, Alva found herself growing uneasy. She, who had been poised to become the next alderwoman, was tossing it away for a thin dream of justice.
But still, it was happening. They were standing, alone, in the shadow of a ramshackle hut built to the edge of the riverbank, and Dar was about to lead her through the jump that would take them to the twentieth century. And then she, Alva, would crush Hannelore’s heart.
The thought of it made her want to throw herself into the river—either the Thames or the River of Time—throw herself in and float away to a place where she wouldn’t have to see Hannelore’s face, ever again.
The Thames flowed past, fast and clear at high tide, and dotted with fishing boats. Insects must have been drawing the fish to the surface, for Alva saw a big silver one leap into the air.
“I am going to lead you,” Ignatz said. “We shall go slowly, and I shall guide you through every stage. Are you ready?”
She took his hand. “Yes,” she said.
“Close your eyes. Listen to the water slipping past. We are standing now on the land where the Savoy will be built, almost seven hundred and fifty years from now. You are listening to the Thames. But can you feel the River of Time? Can you feel it pushing us both?”
Alva allowed the rushing feeling to begin in the back of her head. She gripped Ignatz’s hand, hard.
“Sense it,” he murmured. “Now reach forward from this moment. The River of Time is made up of human feeling. Thousands of years of human emotion, pushing forward with hope and ambition, yearning backward with grief and longing. We are going to jump forward. You must use your hope. Do not use your backward-looking feelings. Put aside your nostalgia and grief and let yourself feel what you might have felt as a child on a special morning, on a feast day.”
Alva summoned up the courage, and then she opened her heart. The River rushed in. She could feel the future, feel it pulling at her. It was thrilling, like riding a horse fast in the dusk, when you cannot quite see the ground.
“That’s it,” Ignatz said. “But softly. Do not let it overwhelm you. You will find that you can control it, as you might control tears. You feel the River, but you do not let it flood you, not just yet.”
“Yes,” she whispered. She could control it, and the sudden knowledge of that power thrilled her. She heard him laugh, delighted with her.
“Now. You feel the River. Focus as well on this place, where your feet are planted. What are you sensing?”
Alva trained her attention down, down to the place right around them. “With my hope I feel . . .” She gasped.
“Too much,” he said. “I should have been more
specific. Do not let yourself feel everything at once, all things that this place can tell you. Start from now and feel forward, one era at a time.”
Alva took a deep breath. “Soon,” she said. “A great deal of pride. The pride of craftsmen, the pride of a family.”
“Yes,” Ignatz said. “You are feeling the Savoy Palace. The grandest nobleman’s house in England. It will be built here in one hundred years, by a Savoy nobleman who became the Earl of Richmond. So powerful is Richmond that he and his descendants will have special powers here, in this place, powers beyond the laws of England itself. These powers are called the Liberty of the Savoy. Geoffrey Chaucer will begin writing The Canterbury Tales while employed here. Here, collected, are the master works of thousands of artists, jewelers, tapestry weavers, wood-carvers.”
“But . . .” Something was licking at the edges of the feeling, something new. Something . . . hot.
“Yes, Alva. You can feel it. I feel it, too.”
She hung on to him. The great palace was burning. It was burning, and so much was burning with it. She felt the rage, the despair, the grief, but she was also overwhelmed with jubilation. Her questing hope, her forward-pushing emotion found it, that strong, triumphant, new feeling, a feeling that fed on the destruction of the old. Jubilation and anger and . . . “What is it?”
“It is another hundred years later,” he said. “Wat Tyler is burning the palace down.”
“Why?”
“‘Till everything be common,’” Ignatz said, his voice strangely gentle. “‘And that there be no villains nor gentlemen, but that we may all be united together, and that the lords be no greater masters than we be.’”
She said nothing. The joy was fading, to be replaced, and replaced again . . . with suffering now. “Pain,” she whispered.
“A hospital,” he said.
“But why does it feel bad?”
“The River doesn’t judge,” he said. “It is made up merely of feelings. You are finding the strongest current. The patients are afraid; they are in pain. Many of them are dying.”
“It goes on for so long.” Alva reached, and reached, through the agony and the fear, to a sparkle in the distance. . . .
“We are getting there,” he said, and she felt, in his hand that held hers, a shift. He was letting go of teaching her. He was beginning to thrum with excitement, to be with her rather than beside her. Something fun and frivolous, something ridiculous was coming. . . .
And suddenly, like a thunderclap, Alva was laughing . . . standing by the bank of the Thames in the year 1145, but laughing with a theater audience giddy with absurdity, seven centuries in the future.
“That’s D’Oyly Carte’s theater,” Ignatz said. “We are almost . . . just a moment now. Yes. Hold on. You are about to jump us there. Are you ready? Now.”
Hannelore. The old woman laughing, Leonard on her lap, and Alva laughing, too . . .
“I’m sorry,” Alva whispered, but her words were torn away.
She had already leapt into the future, into a dark night spangled with lights, and the happiest music she had ever heard spilling out of an open window behind her and floating out over the dark waters of a bridge-bound river.
• • •
Ignatz was suited to the 1920s. The loose-limbed height of him, the tilt of his body, the angles of his face, his sculpted eyebrows, and his black hair were all perfect in this era of black-and-white tuxedos. Poised between elegance and insouciance, with the bowl of a champagne coupe balanced on the knuckles of his third and fourth fingers, he looked at home here at the Savoy. He lounged in the streamlined chairs; he grinned at his ease, bantering with waiters and strangers and women who looked him in the eye; he laughed with his head thrown back, unabashed. It was something to do with the electricity, Alva thought, as she spun through a waltz with him under the chandeliers. He was lit up, energized, alive under the bright lights. And she realized—as they jostled through a rambunctious Charleston among perfect strangers, and one lock of his hair fell down over his eye and he didn’t care, and as he kissed her on the mouth in front of the band and a trombone player made a saucy noise with the slide, and everyone around them laughed and cheered—that she was happy, too. She was reaching up on tiptoe to tell him so, in his ear, when midnight struck.
Before she could speak, Alva knew that Hannelore was in the room. “Stand away,” Alva whispered to Dar. “Stand well away.” And she turned to face the onslaught.
Hannelore had come for her in a wig and enormous gown, fresh from the eighteenth century. She stood at the entrance to the ballroom, scanning the crowd, and when she saw Alva she stepped forward, grand and terrifying. The dancing stopped as she passed, and people stared at the old woman dressed up like Marie Antoinette. By the time she had reached Alva, the music had come to a stuttering halt.
“Hannelore,” Alva said.
The Alderwoman stood facing her for a moment, and Alva could feel the rage in her like heat from a furnace. Then her hand shot out and she took Alva by the ear, pinching hard. “You little traitor.”
“I had to be free,” Alva said, refusing to wince at the pain in her ear.
Hannelore spun to face the crowd, dragging Alva about with her. The revelers gawped, monocles and sequins and diamonds sparkling here and there in an otherwise still sea of faces. “Look at them,” Hannelore said. “How could you trade my love for this flat mimicry of life?”
“I do not have to give you my reasons.”
Hannelore yanked Alva toward her, then dropped her ear and instead took her face between her hands. Her blue eyes seared. “How could you steal my beautiful secret?” Hannelore whispered. “How could you spill it, here, in this perfidious era? Among these ghosts and shadows?”
Alva opened her mouth to answer, but at that moment someone in the audience found his voice, and hollered, “Go home, Miss Havisham! Let the girl have her fun!”
With his voice, the ballroom came to life again. There were shouts of agreement, and the trombonist made another sally with his slide. Then the bandleader called across the crowd, “Out with the old, in with the new! ‘Let’s All Go to Mary’s House!’ One, two, three, four!” The band struck up, dancers began to kick and spin, and a brace of waiters started making their way toward Alva and Hannelore with the clear intention of escorting them out of the ballroom.
It was then that Alva felt the River open like a whirlpool beneath her, all the depth of time at once, the theater and the hospital and the fire and the palace, and all the emotions of tens of thousands of Londoners living and loving and dying here in this place for a thousand years. Hannelore had slid one hand round Alva’s neck, to grip her by the nape. She began dragging Alva with her, and the River was draining her away with Hannelore into the past. “You will come with me,” Hannelore said. “You will come home with me and we shall forget this interlude.”
“No.” Alva twisted out of Hannelore’s grasp and with all the strength of her will she wrenched her soul from the terrible pull of the River. She held a hand out, warning Hannelore to keep back. “Do not touch me again.”
The Alderwoman’s eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in rage. “Who has taught you? Who has taught you to do this thing?”
“No one,” Alva said. “I taught myself.”
“That is impossible.”
“You withheld it from me, but I found it, and I took it. I found it within myself.”
Hannelore lunged for her, and at the moment of touch, Alva felt herself tumbling through time’s whirlpool once again. “I will find out the truth from you; I will drag it from you.” Hannelore’s voice filled Alva’s head.
“The truth is that you will steal my youth and give me nothing in return!” Alva twisted in her fall through time, desperately urging her talent to catch her, to hook her up and back to the ballroom. “I hate you.” She spoke the words directly into Hannelore’s face. “I hate
you, and I want to be free of you.”
Everything stopped. They were suspended, as if between worlds. It might be any time, any time at all. Alva watched as the love that she had once so desperately wanted, the love that she had cultivated in Hannelore, died away in the old woman’s eyes.
Then they were standing face-to-face, firmly planted on the dance floor. “Let’s All Go to Mary’s House” was still in full swing.
Hannelore was flanked by waiters now, one of whom was plucking at her sleeve. She shook him off. “Alva Blomgren.” Her voice was perfectly calm. “I cast you out of the Guild. You are dead to me. You have rejected my protection and dared to make your way in this world alone. So be it: Alone you will remain and if you should ever come crawling back to me, I shall spurn you like a dog.”
Hannelore raised her chin, cast one last look at Alva, and then simply disappeared.
The music stopped.
The screaming started.
But Alva, in the midst of the panic-stricken ballroom, found that she was smiling.
The future had begun.
PROLOGUE
Castle Dar, Devon, 1815
Julia sat beside her grandfather’s bed, holding his hand. The fifth Earl of Darchester was dying.
Heavy velvet curtains were drawn across the tall windows, but the late-afternoon sun found a thin opening and as the day grew older a narrow ribbon of light moved slowly across the floor and over the bed. Lord Percy’s breath was shallow. Julia felt life guttering in his fingers, saw death written on his beloved face. Motes of dust moved slowly in the shaft of light. Once Grandfather was dead, Cousin Eamon would be the new earl and would live here, at Castle Dar. Julia sighed, making the dust dance with her breath, then squeezed her eyes shut, willing herself to be calm. Time enough to worry about tomorrow’s problems.