Turning the pages, Katie made a mental note: try not to sleep through Latin class. Though she looked at the book for a very long time, it was all so much gibberish to her. In frustration she slammed the book shut and a stiff white card fell out. It was embossed in a flourishing script. ‘Aide memoire’ it read. To help her remember! This was the card that had arrived with the walking stick. How had it ended up in this book? Perhaps she’d left the card as a bookmark? She couldn’t think of any other explanation. But even Katie knew she wouldn’t have been that careless with something so important.
Dolores stood in the doorway. ‘Bathtime,’ she said. ‘And then bedtime.’
‘But I’ve been in bed all day,’ Katie protested from behind the pink dust ruffle.
‘You are under the bed now,’ Dolores said. ‘I don’t know what you do down there. You are a child, not a groundhog.’
Katie knew she’d never be able to sleep, but the sooner she was in bed, the sooner Dolores would leave, and she could get back to code-breaking; so she diligently had her bath, put on her warmest flannel pyjamas and pretended to sleep. Finally the door slammed.
Slipping back under the bed, Katie found the Tempus book and the embossed card. How had they ended up together? Did they connect in some way to the walking stick? It was all such a puzzle and Katie had so few pieces: she had to fit them together any way she could. She simply had to figure this out. Maybe she could find the words ‘aide memoire’ somewhere in the Tempus book. She knew that was silly. Old-fashioned people used the phrase ‘aide memoire’ to remember a business appointment, or a luncheon party, or a ball. It wasn’t magical at all, just functional.
She switched on her flashlight and examined the card over and over. ‘Aide memoire’ she said to herself. Opening the book she read its title page: ‘Tempus Fugit, Libertati Viam Facere.’ She turned from the book to the card, from the card to the book. ‘Tempus Fugit, Libertati Viam Facere,’ she repeated to herself, and flipping the card she noticed the watermark. She’d seen it hundreds of times; it was the logo of the paper manufacturer, just a jumbled pattern. But tonight it was clearer. Maybe it was the dark and the flashlight, but she could almost read it. As she held the flashlight closer, the pattern formed words and the words formed lines, then the lines became verses:
In the dark of the night
The flicker of light
Lies deep in the looking glass.
If unable to sleep
Through blackness you’ll creep
Towards shades who shimmer and pass.
The right eyes read reverse
Through blessing and curse
And backwards through time and space.
Katie held the card so tight, it made red dents in her fingers. ‘That has nothing to do with the name of a paper-maker,’ she said aloud. She always talked to herself when she was frightened. Mimi was sleeping through a cocktail of Ramelteon and Temazepam and Dolores was on the subway, hurtling towards the Bronx. Katie might as well be alone in the apartment. ‘Poetry’, she mumbled, ‘I’m being frightened to death by poetry. Whoever heard of death by couplets? Though it’s not two lines, it’s three . . .’ Pedantic humour was her other defence against fear.
Katie looked at the card again. The words were fading, reforming as the original watermark and becoming unreadable. She scrambled around for a pencil and a scrap of paper and quickly wrote the words down. If she lost them, she’d never find the meaning of the walking stick. She wasn’t going to make the mistake of forgetting again. This was a message for her, and she had to figure it out. ‘Now think, you dummy,’ she said loudly. ‘What did that card say? And what does it mean?’
‘In the dark of the night,’ she said, hunching over her scribbles. ‘The flicker of light lies deep in the looking glass.’ She chewed the end of her pencil. ‘It’s dark now’, she said, ‘and it’s night. Could this be “the dark of the night?” Is it showtime? Whatever it is; can I make it happen?
She pored over the words ‘The flicker of light’. This message she was receiving, could it be from the past? Why else the old book and the aide-memoire card? ‘Light,’ she said, ‘a candle.’ But Mimi had all the candles – large scented ones all over her bedroom and bathroom. Katie didn’t think she should leave her own room; she might break the spell, or whatever it was. She tapped the flashlight against her chin, and it flickered against the piles of books. If she didn’t have a candle she would have to make do with the flashlight.
She turned to the next line. ‘Lies deep in the looking glass.’ Looking glass; that was a mirror, but which mirror? There were hundreds in the apartment. Mimi’s dressing room was mirrored floor to ceiling with real make-up light bulbs and hundreds of drawers for her creams and lotions. There were eight large chrome-rimmed ones in Mimi’s bedroom, set in the cream shantung silk walls. There was even a pop-up mirror in one of the kitchen drawers, so that Mimi could have a final peek at herself over her nettles and water.
Katie lifted the dust ruffle from her bed, and peered around her room. ‘Which mirror, which looking glass?’ she asked. As if in answer, a tiny shaft of light darted from under the door of her bathroom.
If unable to sleep
Through darkness you’ll creep
Towards shades who shimmer and pass.
The strange words on the card seemed to reverberate through her brain. She took a deep breath. There was a choice now. She could get up, telephone her father and ask if she could come over; or she could creep, through the darkness, towards whatever lay beyond her bathroom door. For several minutes she couldn’t decide what to do. But then she thought of the girl in her bed. That vision might be connected to this message. ‘Can you help?’ had been the question hanging over the girl’s head. How could Katie help if she ran away?
‘Fine,’ Katie said. ‘If that’s what you want, through darkness I’ll creep.’ For protection she took the book and the walking stick with her. Wedging them under her left arm, she clutched the white card and the flashlight in her right hand. Flat on her belly, she inched towards the bathroom and pushed the door open. The source of light was the bathroom mirror. Not a reflection of light in the mirror, but the mirror itself. Katie shuddered. There really was something moving inside the mirror. Wands of faint light darted out and then withdrew into the depths.
She almost heard a click in her brain, and then she understood. Had it been Michelangelo, or da Vinci? Which one had written their diary in reverse, so that you could only read it reflected in a mirror? Taking a deep breath she held the card up to face the mirror. Shining the flash light on the card she chanted the final lines of the verse.
‘The right eyes read reverse
Through blessing and curse
And backwards through time and space.
The activity in the mirror became frantic. She still couldn’t see what was happening, but it was growing, circling. And then the card flashed bright and she could read a new couplet in the mirror, as glaring as a neon sign:
The Tempus will find the message
That leads to timely passage.
She was frightened and excited and still very confused. It was the Tempus that could make it all happen. But what, or who was the Tempus? She looked around the room: the toilet, the towels, the bath soap, the acne cream. She knew, instinctively, that none of this had anything to do with the Tempus. Then, through the darting lights of the mirror, she settled on her own reflection. Again, a brittle click seemed to awaken something in her brain. ‘A m I the answer?’ she cried. ‘Am I the Tempus? Could it really be me?’
‘Ah, realization at last. I thought I might doze off, waiting for that revelation.’ A low, foreign voice was coming from deep within the looking glass, a voice so bored, it was actually yawning. ‘You have a mind that moves like treacle . . . perhaps we could progress now . . . might I suggest the walking stick?’
Of all the things Katie had expected, a sarcastic talking mirror was not one of them. But having got this far, there was no turning back. Taking th
e mirror’s advice, Katie lifted the walking stick high and the whole room galvanized. The symbols carved into the stick’s base and head flew through the air, darting into the bowels of the mirror. Image after image formed and then dissolved before her. Things she had never seen, or would never hope to see.
There was the sick and frightened girl with the long red hair, the one in Katie’s bed. But this time she was in a different room, with a spirit lamp and a candle burning low – the end of a long night-vigil. The girl sat up in bed, calling. Katie could hear her now. ‘Can you help?’ she cried in a pretty Irish lilt, struggling for breath. Katie leaned forward; but before she could answer the girl was gone, the scene had vanished.
In its place was the bustle and action of an army on the move. There were cannons, soldiers, horses, lances and swords. Coming directly towards her was a mounted battalion, horses at a trot, lances prepared, swords at the ready. This was war.
The rumbling of the horses’ hooves was echoed by a crash from above. In the mirror, the sky grew dark. Clouds piled thick and black; they swirled and distorted, forming inky black figures in the sky. Lightning split the skies, like swords wielded by giants. It seemed the heavens had an army of their own; two wars waging at once.
Below, the army of men tensed and then surged forward. ‘Charge!’ the battalion cried as one, picking up speed. ‘CHARGE!’ The horses’ eyes rolled, the men stood upright in their stirrups, arms raised, lances glinting; and in a mad forward dash, headed straight for Katie.
She threw her arms up, ducking, and both battles died away. In their place was a pretty girl with long black curls and big eyes; behind her was a flaxen-haired boy in his teens, dressed in velvet and lace. The girl sang a song in French, sad but soothing. When Katie tried to look directly at the boy, she winced. It hurt even to look at him.
Hundreds of scenes passed through the looking glass. When a serious-faced girl appeared, Katie felt she had found a friend, and reached out to take her hand, only to have this vision replaced by a terrifying, strange and snakelike man. Katie recoiled and involuntarily held the walking stick high. At this the man retreated deep within and the mirror thundered and flashed again. Katie was dizzy, sweating and terrified; but she could not tear her gaze away from the looking glass.
Far in its depths a figure began to form in the swirling clouds, at first a pin-point of dark against the lightning, but growing larger with every passing moment. It was a man, tall and thin, with deathly pale skin. His hooded eyes, beneath a tall silk top hat, gleamed green through the gloom. He was wearing a black cloak, a close-fitting black frock coat and a high white cravat. And he was carrying a walking stick – exactly like the one in Katie’s left hand. Tap, tap, tap, she remembered. He’d been on the window ledge, outside her apartment. And now he was within.
This vision, this shade, was different from the others. This one could actually see her. The white-skinned man in the high black top hat – he was looking straight at Katie. He spoke, and his voice was the low foreign voice she had first heard when she faced the mirror, but it wasn’t bored anymore. ‘SEEK,’ he said, ‘SEEK’. Katie’s heart was pounding and an acid bile was rising in her throat.
‘I’m going to pass out,’ she panicked, ‘and all this will have been for nothing.’ Along with the man, she could see herself, faintly reflected in the mirror – rather grey, and gulping repeatedly.
The man had reached the front of the glass. Fixing Katie with his glittering green eyes, so close that she could see their large black pupils, he raised his walking stick. She raised her own with a fierce gesture, but this did not vanquish him. Instead he circled the ebony and silver stick above his head. The strange carved symbols Katie had tried so hard to decipher swirled around it, as if summoned. They reformed and then divided into the words of a thousand languages. With a final, sweeping gesture, he broke through the mirror with his walking stick, the surface rippling into expanding rings.
There were no flying shards of broken glass, just thousands upon millions of words spilling through the opening, encircling Katie. They swirled around her and seemed to fill her. Despite the words she was speechless. For a moment, she could understand everything ever said in this world, but could say nothing. The knowledge inside her was acutely painful. There was no room for her heart, or her lungs. Had the blood stopped moving in her veins? She couldn’t breathe. ‘Too much,’ she finally found the words. And then there was nothing.
The Reunion
Quiet. Everything around her was quiet and still. She had thought she was dying; yet now she had never felt so comfortable.
‘You fainted,’ said the low, foreign voice. ‘It was amateur dramatics night on 89th Street.’ Katie continued to lie on her back with her eyes closed. She needed to think, to figure things out. But then something was prodding her in the side. She remembered that prod, right in the soft spot under the ribcage. Trying not to move a muscle, she opened one eye, ever so slightly, and took a sidelong peek to her left. There was the walking stick – not hers – but his, all carved ebony and gleaming engraved silver, poking her in the side.
Two well-shod feet shifted impatiently on the stone floor. A long, thin white hand, smelling slightly of musk, extended to pull her up. She wasn’t on her bathroom floor. Katie knew, with absolute conviction, that this was not a dream; and the time for uncertainty was gone. Though it might be frightening, she must face whatever was coming. Taking the offered hand, she stood, and opening her eyes wide, she looked. She understood.
It was Bernardo DuQuelle. ‘I’ve been plagued and pestered by several different worlds to bring you back,’ he said. ‘Why they all want you is beyond me.’ He looked her up and down, taking in Katie’s yellow flannel pyjamas, patterned with orange and green frogs. ‘You look a fright,’ he added. ‘You’ve never quite been up to our standards, but this time you’ve outdone yourself. James O’Reilly will be appalled. And really, are you something Princess Alice should see? But she begged and begged, and against my better judgement . . .’
With these two names, happiness replaced Katie’s fear. ‘Alice! James! Are they here? I’ve got to see them!’
‘Got to? You have become presumptuous with time. What you have got to do is calm down and be patient.’ Bernardo DuQuelle continued to view Katie’s pyjamas with distaste. ‘James O’Reilly is attending a medical appointment with his father. Princess Alice is attending a concert with the Queen and Prince Albert.’
Of course, Alice was a princess, and her mother was Queen Victoria. Katie had made this journey before. She’d been here; she knew this man. With every passing moment she remembered more; and not just who was here, but why she’d come. The Crystal Palace flashed before her eyes, with its slender iron frame and thousands of panes of glass. There was the Queen in her carriage, Prince Albert, a mass of cheering people. They’d been inside the glass structure, and the Chinaman was moving forward to assassinate the Queen. The Black Tide is rising . . .
‘Victoria, she’s alive! And Albert, he’s OK too?’
‘Queen Victoria,’ Bernardo DuQuelle said. ‘Prince Albert. There seem to be no manners in your own time. Yes, the Queen is alive and well and so is Prince Albert. They are entertaining a delegation from France. Trying to sort out the trouble in the East, the Crimea, or so they say. They’re all in a frenzy against the Russians, and really can’t wait for the war to begin. They are defending the Turks – the Turks! As if any of them have ever given the Turks a single thought. Battle strategy all day and music through the night. You would think they’d never fought Napoleon, never lived through the fear and waste of it all. But the past fifty years have turned the soldiers’ gore to glory. Wellington would put them straight, but he, alas, is gone. This is a difficult moment. I need to keep an eye on things. Now, if you will excuse me.’
‘You’ve conjured me up,’ Katie protested. ‘You can’t just leave me here.’ She looked around, past DuQuelle, for the first time. She was standing on a cold stone floor, in a room with a low ceiling and drab
walls. In the corner, amongst the old buckets and mops, leaned a full-length mirror, its glass mottled with age spots. DuQuelle walked over to the mirror, and flicked a bit of old gilt from the frame.
‘I didn’t conjure you up, to use your own inelegant turn of phrase. I am not a third-rate magician. I assume you remember who I am?’ His green eyes caught her own.
Katie found it hard to turn away from his gaze. She gulped a bit, and nodded. ‘I remember,’ she said. ‘I have a good memory.’
‘Good memory,’ he exclaimed, ‘you have a memory like a sieve! I thought when I sent you back you would be able to keep the basic events in your head. I even left my card and my cane; but no, the time seepage was complete.’
‘Well, it’s not complete anymore,’ Katie replied. ‘I do remember.’ New York seemed a thousand miles and a thousand years away. ‘Why am I back?’ she asked.
DuQuelle scooped up Katie’s things: the book, the card, the walking stick, and opened the door of the broom cupboard. Looking down the narrow corridor, he escorted her quickly up the stairs and down a hall, into the school room. The Japanese screen and chaise longue were still there. Katie had no choice but to follow. But the more she remembered about DuQuelle, the less comfortable she was with him. DuQuelle had never been her ally. He wasn’t even human. ‘Please tell me,’ she said again. ‘Why am I here?’
Rolling his eyes upwards, DuQuelle addressed the ceiling. ‘Do we really have to start all over again?’ he muttered. ‘The chosen . . . I wonder. How sad that they should pin their hopes on this girl . . . Though I still do hope there are some things she will never know . . . The very idea that she is the survivor . . . or the warrior . . .’ He caught himself talking aloud, shook his head, and turned again to Katie. ‘You might just run your fingers through your hair. It’s standing on end – the travel, the Tempus Fugit, it will do that. Try to make half an attempt to tidy yourself. Such a sight!’ Clicking his tongue, he disappeared, leaving Katie alone in the room. She was not sorry to see him go.
The Queen at War Page 3