Spark

by Catherine Friend

  * * *

  Dr. Raj still hadn’t come up with anything. We talked every day, and he’d go into painful detail about this theory or that, but ultimately nothing he said reassured me that my body-switching days were over. I obsessed over the weather reports as if my life depended on them. Every morning, I raced to the kitchen window and searched the sky for cloudy wisps that might gang up and start a thunderstorm.

  One day I couldn’t paint and I couldn’t bear to sit in the flat, so I walked all the way down to Trafalgar Square and the National Gallery. I returned to Dr. Rajamani’s basement exhibit and stood in front of each of the twelve scans, staring at them as if one of them held the answer to my problem. As I moved from scan to scan, my spirits sank because each scan was nearly identical, a mishmash of red and green and blue, with slender threads of white visible at the outer edges.

  Then it hit me. The scan in front of me had much more white than the others. I checked all twelve, and found one more just like it. These two had been the only ones to catch my eye the day Chris and I had attended the exhibit’s opening. I called Dr. Raj, and he answered right away.

  “Jamie Maddox, I am studying this. Be patient.”

  I told him about the huge amounts of white in the two framed scans.

  I could hear his confusion. “Of course, I did notice that as I prepared the exhibit, but I could find no data to explain it. Give me the patient numbers of the two with more white, if you please.”

  I read off the two numbers and waited while he checked his research. “Hmm, the reason there was no more data on those two subjects is that they dropped out of the study after only one session.”

  Excitement pulsed through me. “I’ll bet one of them was Ray Lexvold.”

  “Yes, one was Ray, and the other was Meg Warren.”

  “Dr. Raj, it can’t be a coincidence that the two scans with all that white never came back. We know that Ray was sent back in time. What if Meg was as well?” I asked Dr. Raj for her phone number and address. Maybe I could track her down and eliminate her as another traveler.

  I had time, so took the Tube to Meg’s Soho flat. She didn’t reply to my buzz from the locked vestibule, but someone leaving held the door open for me. I climbed the narrow stairs, which were clean as freshly-fallen Minnesota snow, then found number Three A. The hallway smelled of furniture polish. I knocked, but no one came to the door.

  I tried twice more, with the same results, then a door down the hallway opened. An elderly woman popped her curly gray head out and glared at me. “No matter how much ye knock and disturb the rest of us, ye can’t bring a person to answer her door when she isn’t there.”

  I approached her, hands up in apology. “I’m so sorry. Do you know when Meg will be back?”

  “Not an inkling.”

  I handed her my card. “Could you have her call me when you see her? It’s very important.”

  With a curt nod, the woman accepted the card and closed her door.

  I slid a card under Meg’s door, then left. There was nothing more I could do.

  That night I read about the Tudors and realized how lucky I was to have known Elizabeth, even if it had been under crazy circumstances. Then it struck me: I was the only person currently alive on the planet who had actually met her.

  Elizabeth was pressured her entire life to marry, at least until she was beyond childbearing age. Her councilors were terrified that the country would erupt into warfare without a clear line of succession, since so many branches of the Tudor family could claim they were next in line.

  Possible marriage candidates included Philip II of Spain, the widower of Elizabeth’s sister Mary. Eric XIV of Sweden was passionate about a marriage, but the oafish Swedes were almost considered clowns in court, with their thick accents and rough clothing. Elizabeth had been courted by the Archduke Charles of Austria and the Earl of Arundel, yet she’d strung each of them along until they drifted away. She insisted on meeting each man in person, but few members of foreign royalty would consent to travel the great distance to England only to be put on display and rejected at a whim.

  My heart sank into my ankles as I read more about Dudley and Elizabeth. They loved and fought each other their entire lives. She never married him, however, because of the cloud of suspicion surrounding his wife’s death. Some believed that the very fact that Dudley was available after his wife died kept Elizabeth from marrying anyone else.

  I put the book down. Poor Amy Dudley, in love with a man who wanted nothing to do with her, then dying so young in a tragic fall. What would it mean for the future if Winston succeeded in killing Dudley? The Master of the Horse was so handsome and charming that every man the council put before Elizabeth as husband material paled in comparison. Without him, what would Elizabeth do? I did a quick search on plots to kill Dudley and found there were two. Neither succeeded, and neither involved Winston.

  On the weekend, Chris and I went to Spamalot at the Apollo Victoria, even though I hated its steep stairs without railings. Descending to our ticketed seats felt like a barely controlled fall. Chris seemed to have given up on the idea I had multiple personalities, and a truce of sorts settled over us. We laughed until we cried and ended up holding hands. That night, for the first time since I’d returned to my own body, we made love. At first, I was nervous, thinking she would be comparing me to Blanche, but her delighted moans told me I could withstand that sort of scrutiny.

  Later, as I curled around her warm back, Chris kissed my hand. “Babe, can I ask you something?”

  I nuzzled closer in assent.

  “Why haven’t you asked about the manuscript that you…that Blanche started writing?”

  I sighed. “I guess I don’t want to know anything more about her. The whole thing seems like a bad dream. I don’t ever want to leave you again, Chris. And if Blanche ever came back, there’s no telling what she’d do.” I told her about the plot with Winston to kill Dudley, about the horrid things Blanche had said to my parents. She’d likely done the same to my friends, since neither Ashley nor Mary was letting me back into their lives. “I don’t want that sort of person around you, or running my body. She could really muck things up.”

  “But the novel is really good. I just think you might try reading it. Maybe, given your…experience, you might be inspired to add to it.”

  I sat up, letting the covers pool around my naked hips. “By ‘add to it,’ you really mean ‘keep going,’ don’t you? You think I’m writing a novel called Sleeping with the Queen, not Blanche.”

  Chris sat up as well, and we faced each other in the dark. Until this Dr. Raj mess, I’d been very content with my life, and by content I didn’t mean settling for less but content as in happy. Why, in Chris’s eyes, was that so wrong?

  “I’m trying to respect what you believe to be true, but I also think it would be a good idea for you to step outside your comfort zone. Read what you’ve written. You might feel some creative spark.”

  “Blanche lived here, in this time, and in my body, for less than a month before she began writing. I just can’t believe she could have assimilated that quickly.”

  “That’s the thing. It’s written in some form of very old English, which makes the voice totally unique. And the details are rich and vivid, so you feel as if you’ve stepped into Elizabeth’s world.”

  I snorted. “I have, remember?”

  With that, we slid back down into bed, pulled the covers back up over our shoulders, and rolled away from each other.

  The next day dawned so hot that I was sticky with sweat even before I left the bed. Chris was already gone. I dressed in loose shorts and a baggy shirt, took a walk to get my creativity flowing, then attacked the next Froggity painting. That afternoon I would try Meg’s flat again.

  Candace liked what I was sending her, so my job once again seemed on firm ground. The sweat pooled at my waist and tickled the back of my neck until, five hours later, my growling stomach drove me downstairs into the pub.

  “How’s
the artisté?” asked Sam as he poured me a tall frosted glass of lemonade.

  “Parched,” I said. “When is this heat going to break?”

  “Oy,” Sam said. “Probably about October.”

  We laughed and talked of politics and neighborhood scandals. The fresh salad he brought me and the iced drink were two things I’d really missed when stuck back in Blanche’s body.

  Something flashed against the brass railing around the bar. I turned around but saw nothing out the window. Five minutes later, it happened again. “What’s that flash I keep seeing? Do you think I’m going blind?”

  He shook his head. “Naught but a bit of heat lightning. It’ll move on quickly, but it does give one a start to see the flash in a blue sky.”

  I froze, then slowly placed my glass on the bar. Heat lightning.

  Another flash. I looked at Sam but couldn’t hear the words he was speaking. Another flash, then darkness as I was yanked from my body and sucked up into the heavens.

  Chapter Eighteen

  It was like racing down the freeway at a hundred miles per hour and driving right into a bridge support. Sudden stop didn’t even begin to describe the sickening jolt as my consciousness exploded into a body and fought its way into the brain. I doubled over and began coughing, struggling to breathe. Why the hell was every time different? A little consistency would have been nice.

  “Lady Blanche, are you unwell?” It was Lord Winston’s voice.

  I forced myself to sit upright as I struggled to breathe normally. “No, I am fine,” I croaked out, even though I wanted to start screaming and pulling down wall tapestries and breaking ale mugs and sticking the burning candles into Winston’s eyes. God’s blood, I was back in 1560 again.

  We sat in a room I didn’t recognize. There were two other men with us, the two who’d been with Winston in the bowling green.

  “Good, then it is settled,” Winston said with a slap to his knee. “We will put our plan into action tomorrow night. Thanks to Blanche’s intelligence, we know Dudley will be climbing the rear staircase to the Queen’s bedchamber around midnight. Lady Blanche will descend and delay Dudley with idle court gossip as Charles and I come up the stairs behind him. William, you will descend behind Blanche so Dudley will be trapped. Lady Blanche, you then leave us and return to Her Majesty’s chambers. We will do the rest.”

  Great, just great. Blanche had continued to participate in the stupid murder plot. And now, of course, I had to deal with what she’d arranged. “One question. Must we kill Dudley? Why not wound him or frighten him instead?”

  Charles snorted. “My God, Lady Blanche, you change your mind more often than Her Majesty changes gowns. Do you think a man such as Dudley frightens easily? He expects to be King within a few years, for it is said his wife is gravely ill.”

  William leaned forward, resting his elbows on muscular thighs. Clearly, he was in excellent shape and could do Dudley bodily harm. “As for wounding him,” William said, “that would only incite the Queen’s sympathies and perhaps those of others in the kingdom. No, to protect the realm Dudley must die. Were he to become King, the country would split wide open, thus encouraging the French or the Scots to begin a war.”

  Winston stood, tugging at his breeches and gathering his cloak together. It was too warm to actually wear it, so he slung it over his arm. “We have been over this ground before, Lady Blanche. You will encounter Dudley in the back stairs tomorrow at midnight and play your role in this necessary action.”

  I stood, unable to think of any way to stop this plan, so I nodded weakly. Charles escorted us out onto broad brick steps lined with green hedging. Behind me, the house rose three stories, the roof holding many chimneys. At the base of the steps waited a carriage. When the footman saw me, he stepped forward and offered his hand. Thank God someone knew where I was to go. I climbed into the carriage, which rocked slightly, then settled back on worn velvet cushions. I was greatly relieved not to be negotiating the streets of London by foot again.

  Within minutes, the carriage horses turned smartly, and we entered the palace grounds. After being helped from the carriage, I stood there watching all the activity. The many buildings of the palace loomed over me, and I couldn’t bear to once again enter its dark hallways and rooms, some lit only by candlelight in the middle of the day. Damn Rajamani for not figuring this out in time.

  Instead, I wandered around the gardens, finally landing on a marble bench near the raised bed of roses. The scent of blooming flowers and wet earth calmed me a bit, but I still scanned overhead, willing a streak of heat lightning to split the agonizingly blue sky.

  I blocked out the sounds of palace life, humming to myself the Beatles’ “Back in the USSR,” and then, unfathomably, switching to Captain and Tennille’s “Muskrat Love.” What a nightmare.

  Rattling metal cart wheels snapped me out of it. An elderly gardener with round shoulders, black-stained nails, and a hound dog face stopped his cart when he saw me.

  “Aye, m’lady, sorry to disturb. I’ll be returning later.” His cart was heaped with white-flecked black soil and must have been heavy.

  “No, please. Stay and work. You won’t bother me.”

  “If the lady is sure.…”

  I smiled to seal the deal, tired of snooty courtiers. An earthy gardener was just what I needed. “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Feedin’ the plants, m’lady. They gets so hungry they eat up all the goodness in the soil.” He began shoveling soil from the cart and laying it gently along the base of the trimmed hedges. “This here is chicken dung that’s been sittin’ for some time. Now mind you, dove’s dung is the best but hard to come by so I’m usin’ fowl dung. Next best after that is ass, then donkey. Then you got your ox and cow dung, then swine. Horse is the most vile of dung, and I won’t use it on Her Majesty’s gardens. It burns too hot.”

  I smiled with interest as the man continued to expound on the various dungs. He was a welcome distraction. I wondered where sheep dung fell in his ranking.

  “Lovely day, is it not, Lady Blanche?”

  Before I could rise or protest, Robert Dudley himself joined me on the bench.

  “Yes, it is,” I said, faltering a little. If I couldn’t stop it, this lovely but irritating man would be knifed to death tomorrow night.

  “Ho, gardener. Leave us.” He flicked a wrist, and the man bowed arthritically and pushed his cart down the path of red brick dust.

  Dudley smiled, his teeth surprisingly white behind his moustache. In this era black rotted teeth signified you were wealthy enough to consume great quantities of sugar. Elizabeth had such a sweet tooth that by the end of her life, all her teeth would either fall out or be black.

  “Lady Blanche, I am delighted to have found you, for I wish to speak to you on an important matter.”

  I adjusted my skirts so the man’s knees weren’t so close, since it was just too hot to touch anyone, man or woman. “Of what did you wish to speak?” I almost called him Sir Robert, but he wouldn’t be given this title for a few more years…if he survived, that was.

  Dudley’s face was earnest as he leaned closer. “It is Her Majesty. She has so many offers of matrimony before her, and I know each one distresses her. But when I ask if she is any closer to a decision, she merely smiles and changes the subject. I would know her mind, Blanche, and you are the closest to her of all her ladies.”

  Kat Ashley was closer, having been with Elizabeth since the Queen was a child, but Dudley knew Kat would never say anything. Blanche, however, must have had a reputation as being less than loyal.

  The breeze shifted enough I could now smell the gardener’s applications. “The Queen’s rule is that politics are never to be discussed in her inner chambers, so matters of state such as her marriage are not aired before me.”

  Dudley waved off my comment. “I know that, but surely Elizabeth speaks of matters of the heart in her chambers. That is what I am interested in.” He cocked one eyebrow with such humor that I could see
how Elizabeth had fallen under his spell years ago, when she was still a princess and he just a rich boy living nearby.

  “You wish me to violate her trust and reveal to you the true path of her heart?”

  His sheepish grin nearly won me over. “She says she holds me above all others, but what if she says this to every suitor?”

  What a jerk. “I understand you wanting to know. But is there not a Mrs. Dudley awaiting you at home?”

  Dudley’s mirth and earnestness shut down immediately. “My dear Amy and I had several good years together, but we are in no way compatible. She abhors court, and I thrive on it. She despises the city, and I require it. Also….” And here his voiced softened enough that I truly believed his emotions. “…my wife is not well. Some infirmity of the bone has overtaken her, making her as brittle as clay baked too long in an oven. She cannot travel, even should she wish to join me here at court.”

  I rose and gathered up my skirts in both hands so I could launch myself without tripping. “A true husband would therefore be at his wife’s side at such a time. I will not grant your wish to know Her Majesty’s heart, for you do not deserve any affection she may have for you.” And with that, I stormed out of the garden and through the nearest palace door.

  I retired to my room, relieved to not have encountered the Queen and been swept up in the day’s activities. Instead, I lay down on my bed and stared at the table leg where I’d been scratching the days off from the moment I’d arrived. I’d been in the past for over thirty days, then back in my own life for nine days. At least thirty-nine days had passed.

  I sat up. Had Blanche gotten her period while I’d been gone? While back in the future I’d researched Elizabethan menstruation and learned the women used rags. I dug through Blanche’s trunk of gowns, sleeves, and collars until I found a bundle of rolled-up, clean rags. They smelled musty like the trunk, so they’d been in there a while. They hadn’t been used while I’d been gone.