The Time Tutor: A Penguin Special from Plume

by Ridgway, Bee

  When the maid was gone, Alva sank back into a comfortable chair. An hour before dinner. An hour of privacy. She stared at the fire. It was finally time to think. Indeed, the thinking was begging to be let out. So she whispered, no more loudly than the hissing of the logs, welcoming the problem into the room: “Bertrand is Ofan. Bertrand is a spy. What am I going to do?”

  She thought about her carefree friend. They had come into Hannelore’s favor together, a little over a year ago. They had playfully competed for Hannelore’s attentions. And Hannelore loved them both, loved their banter, their beauty, their eagerness to please. She called them “my brave twin sparrows,” and other, mostly avian nicknames, always pairing them. “Goosey and gander.” “My pullets.” “You are my robin,” to Bertrand, “and you are my pretty little raven,” to Alva, “in spite of your golden hair.” When challenged that ravens are not usually considered pretty, Hannelore had frowned. “Look more closely at a raven, next time it is your privilege to meet one.”

  And now Bertrand and Alva were lovers, or at least, they had slept together once. Thank God Bertrand had kept his passion to love letters and swooning looks over dinner in the refectory, and hadn’t come knocking at her door in the intervening days. Because now, since her visit to the time tutor, she wouldn’t know what to say to him.

  Hannelore ran the Guild like the Sun King’s palace, her courtiers all around her. She controlled them with gossip and insinuation, with smiles and special dispensations given and withdrawn. But although it felt, in any given moment, like nothing more than a game, with the stakes no higher than a seat above or below the salt on a particular evening, Alva knew that the game was played in deadly earnest. Hannelore’s ambitions for the Guild were real, and she would brook no dissent, no disobedience. She held a court once a week in the old guildhall around which this mansion was constructed, with herself as judge and jury. Those who had broken the rules were disciplined, and larger infractions were punished with . . . something. At least banishment. Perhaps worse.

  Alva had never seen the court in session, nor had anyone ever so much as whispered a word about what happened there, what the punishments were.

  Bertrand. Alva pressed her palms to her eyes. Bertrand, whose fate was, apparently, hers to decide. How would Hannelore punish him?

  She dropped her hands and stared at the fire. Why had Bertrand done it? He was young, but he was intelligent and passionate. Would he really have betrayed the Guild for someone as ridiculous as Ignatz Vogelstein with those silly costumes and see-through antics? Alva remembered the time tutor’s harshly handsome face, his disarmingly roguish smile. She had immediately liked him, even in spite of his charade. Indeed, she more than liked him. He was . . . she smiled to herself . . . quite a handful.

  Vogelstein must have shown Bertrand a different face than he showed Alva. A man-to-man talk; that’s how it must have happened. Offering Bertrand the same knowledge he’d offered Alva, but on equal terms. No chicanery. Vogelstein would have worn that dashing smile the whole time, and talked to Bertrand about politics and philosophy. Perhaps he had actually taught him something about the talent. Maybe even taught him how to jump? She frowned. In any case, something about Vogelstein and his message had been powerful enough, thrilling enough, to make Bertrand betray the Guild and become Ofan.

  Alva found herself tracing a sensual circle on the back of her left hand. O for Ofan. If Vogelstein had shown her who he really was, if he had spoken to her man to man, and given her a taste of what he could really teach her . . . she would be there with him now. She had always wanted to know more, to feel more, to own and control her power. It was that desire that had sent her out of Scotland on the bony back of a mule. It was that desire that thrummed in her now. That desire and a few other, less virtuous little fantasies.

  Alva stood, ridding her mind of a pair of dark eyes. No more thinking; pack it all away. She glanced in the mirror. She would go down and sparkle for one more night at least, as if nothing were the matter.

  Hannelore would not want to talk about anything tonight, anyway. Evenings in the Guild mansion were for Hannelore’s pleasure.

  Alva had a little time to make her plans.

  • • •

  It was in the break between the Mozart and the Cannabich, when Hannelore had left the great hall with three of the older Favorites for a walk on the terrace, that a footman plucked at Alva’s sleeve. “Please, miss,” he said. “A message for you.” And he handed her a folded piece of paper.

  Alva raised her eyes and looked instinctively at Bertrand, who was drooping like a disconsolate cupid in a chair across the room. For once he wasn’t looking at her.

  So it wasn’t yet another love note from Bertrand. Her heart picked up its pace. Surely Vogelstein wouldn’t dare . . . ?

  She could feel several pairs of eyes on her as she unfolded the paper. But it was merely a note from Ed, the chef. “Apologies. If Miss would visit the kitchens, a question has arisen about a Swedish dish in preparation for tomorrow’s dinner.” Ed, like all good chefs, was a perfectionist, and must be humored. Alva passed the note to the man seated beside her. “Please make my excuses to Hannelore,” she whispered. “You can see that I must do my duty.”

  The man gave her a perfunctory smile. “She will forgive you anything,” he said. “At least so far.”

  At least so far? Alva made her way out through the press of bodies in the great hall, smiling brightly into faces that suddenly seemed to eye her with suspicion and dislike. Had the ranks of the older Favorites always looked at her this way, or had something changed? She remembered Susan’s gaze dropping, her clasped hands. Since Alva’s return from the time tutor’s shop, everyone who had always been so friendly seemed suddenly on edge, and everything anyone said seemed both portentous . . . and illegible.

  The smell of roses wafted from the kitchens. When Alva pushed open the door, she saw Ed sitting alone at the long wooden table, a huge bowl overflowing with blossoms beside him. They were white and pink roses, which this morning had been the last survivors in the garden behind the mansion. Ed was plucking the blossoms and putting them in another bowl.

  “Whatever you’re making, it isn’t Swedish,” Alva said, pulling out a stool and sitting across from him. “Here, give me some. I’ll help.”

  He pushed the two bowls so that they were between them. “Thank you. I am making rose water. And tomorrow I shall make lokum. It is Turkish. Hannelore loves it.” He chuckled. “But she doesn’t love it as much as I do.”

  Alva pushed her fingers into a pink rose, and began to pull the petals from the heart. They came away as if they wanted to, as if it were their pleasure to flutter over her hands. The scent of the flower gave itself to the air like a sigh.

  “Why am I here, Ed?” Alva asked after she had destroyed three more: a white and two more pinks. She looked around her. “And why are the kitchens deserted?”

  The cook stroked a petal between his thumb and forefinger. “A rose’s beauty is long,” he said. “In the bud and in the flower. Then suddenly it is blown. And done. With us people, it is the opposite. We are beautiful only for a short time, and old for a very long time.”

  “But some would say blown roses are the most beautiful of all. And what about rose hips?” Alva shredded another blossom. “And dried roses? And rose water? And your lokum? Old roses are beautiful, too. So stop talking in metaphors and tell me why you’ve dragged me down here in the middle of a concert. You know how Hannelore feels about absentees.”

  Ed laughed. “You are so mundane sometimes, Alva. So like a peasant.”

  She shrugged. “I am a peasant. Dressed up like a lady. You know that.”

  “Yes,” Ed murmured. “Yes, and that is what is so strange.” He picked up a handful of petals from the bowl beside him and let them sift through his fingers. “Susan said you asked a question about her past today. Why did you do that?”

  Alva glan
ced up at him quickly, then back down at her work. “I was curious. Why? Is it wrong to ask?”

  “No, but it is not done. You know that. You have played the game so well since the moment you came, as if you could sense the rules without being told. It is why you would make a great time traveler—your ability to read the emotions in a room. So why did you ask today?”

  Alva didn’t say anything. But her brain was spinning in her skull. She took the only red rose from the bowl and tore half its petals away. She watched them flutter down to stain the pile of soft whites and pinks. She looked up at Ed. “Tell me. No more questions. Tell me what you wish to tell me, and then let me go.”

  He nodded. “Have you noticed, Alva, that you and Bertrand are the youngest among Hannelore’s Favorites by many years? Of course you have. You enjoy it. And you both do it so well, the trick of pleasing her, of distracting her. Bright, happy, dancing poppets.” He frowned down at his hands, empty now of blossoms. “Do you think . . .” He paused for a long time, then looked up at her, and for the first time Alva could see that his face was ravaged by some terrible, unfulfilled yearning. “Do you think that there have been no others, no other pretty sparrows? Do you think that Hannelore—who thrives on beauty and gaiety and the feeling of passionate young hearts beating, throbbing in her hand—do you think that she has lived without that for twenty whole years?”

  Alva stared at him, the flowers forgotten.

  “Alva, she is about to test you. I can sense it. She will test you just as she has tested all of us. I want to warn you, not because I think you will fail, but because I am sure that you will pass. Passing does not mean what you think it will, my dear. You will join the rest of us then.”

  “Join you?”

  “Yes.” He smiled at Alva. “How old do you think I am?”

  She frowned at the abrupt change of topic. “I don’t know.” She studied his careworn face. “Forty-two?”

  He held out his hands, palms down. They were smooth and youthful. “I am twenty-five,” he said. “What you see in my face is the measure of my devotion. To Hannelore, and to the Guild.” He reached across the table and touched her cheek. “It is a steep price, but . . .” He smiled. “It is worth it.”

  • • •

  The night’s entertainment was over when Alva emerged from the kitchens, and the passageways were full of Favorites making their way to their chambers. How quickly can you walk before your pace reveals that you are running? How calm a face can you have before its rigidity shows that you are actually terrified? Alva went as speedily as she dared. When she reached Bertrand’s door she knocked, and held her breath. A curious face or two drifted past, and Alva gave them what she hoped was a sunny smile. When she heard the bolt withdrawn, she shouldered her way in and pressed the door closed behind her with her body. Bertrand was kissing her before she could open her mouth, and she pushed him away. “Bertrand,” she whispered. “Bertrand, no time for that! We are caught in a terrible snare!”

  He stepped back. “You know? Thank God!” Bertrand pulled her by the hand into the room. “When Hannelore said you were the spy, I—”

  “Hold there: She said what?”

  Bertrand’s eyebrows rose. “She said you were the spy.”

  “She told me you were the spy, Bertrand.”

  They stared at one another for a long moment.

  Then turned their heads as the door to the hallway swung open.

  Hannelore, in all her glory, stood smiling in at them. “Good evening, my lovebirds.”

  • • •

  Dar left the Holborn shop in a wretched mood. The girl’s magnificence had faded in memory, as girls’ magnificence always does. Now he was simply angry. Not angry at her—what was her blasted name? Emma? Anna? Something like that. And not angry at Bertrand, because he could now perfectly understand the young idiot’s besotted state. The girl . . . Alva! That was her name. She was Swedish. He’d heard it in her voice, that accent like water being poured out of a small-mouthed bottle. The girl was sparkling and more clever than most men put together. Definitely besottable with, highly so.

  No, Dar was angry at the Guild, for being so fucking organized, for nabbing all the real talent among new time travelers. For being rich and slick enough to brainwash kids like Bertrand and Alva, the smartest and the best. And he was angry at the Ofan for being so pathetic. Bopping up and down the River, cavorting like Robin Hood’s Merry Men, minus Robin. Not one single thought for what might happen if the Guild had their way and rubbed the fun out of everything.

  To be honest—not his favorite thing to be, but sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do—he was angry with himself. He was a good teacher and a good dreamer. He could light the fire in a new Ofan’s eyes for an hour or perhaps even for a lifetime, training him up not only in the how of time travel, but in the why and the wherefores. But he was no leader of men. He wasn’t making any headway with the Ofan as a whole. He suspected they were beginning to find his rants about the Guild irritating.

  But if the Ofan were raggle-taggle, at least they were company. And he needed company, after that debacle-slash-erotic-dream-come-true back in the shop in Holborn.

  His steps led him through the squalor of Soho to Soho Square. Shaking a particularly persistent urchin from the skirts of his greatcoat after beguiling her for a moment with a trick involving a half crown and her ear, he entered the Ofan safe house and soon enough found himself in the medieval catacombs hidden beneath the square. It was a network of tunnels and rooms half-filled with bones and half-filled with books, and at its center was a warm, candlelit, cozy pub, called the Transporter. It was perfect, and always good for a conversation or a flirtation or even, if the mood was right, a fistfight. And perhaps, Dar thought as he pushed open the door to the pub, the mood was right. Maybe what he needed was a good black eye, delivered to him by some Ofan knucklehead from the dim and distant past. That might be just the ticket.

  But when he opened the door he realized that it was not to be. Not tonight anyway.

  The pub was almost empty, and the reason was immediately obvious. Stan, Stan the Madrigal Man and his three snortingly nerdy friends were over by the yellow piano, warbling their dreary and earnest way through “Sleep, Fleshly Birth.”

  He suffered through three verses and half a glass of beer before Husani turned up from the 2020s, gorgeous as always, in her flour-dusted pastry-chef’s apron. In her hands, she carried one her most fiendish concoctions, an apricot pistachio croissant. And she had the light of battle in her eyes.

  “That’s it,” Dar muttered. “There are only so many angry, sexy women I can take in one day.”

  He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, crammed his beaver hat on his head, and stood up. Husani was striding toward him. Her hair, which she wore in a thick braid for work, was lying over her shoulder and down over her breast. It seemed to be undoing itself as she walked, all on its own, in a disturbingly snakelike fashion. “Dar, you are not avoiding this fight. Don’t you leave, don’t you dare—”

  “Madam.” He touched the curly brim of his hat and walked past, deaf to her protestations.

  Time travel could be the very devil when it came to romantic entanglements.

  He turned right out of the Transporter and was off down the corridor to the costume room. It was twentieth-century air he needed. Bright and electric-lit and jazz-threaded.

  Soon enough, in white tie, top hat, and tails, he was swinging his cane down the Strand, headed for the Savoy. It was a spring night in 1923, a crescent moon lolled among a few clouds up above, and he knew he would be able to put Bertrand and that blasted Swedish girl out of his mind for a handful of hours. So long as the Savoy Orpheans were blowing their horns and some pretty, non-time-traveling flapper found her way into his arms for a few turns around the dance floor and maybe more . . .

  “Dar?”

  He spun. “Goddam—”

 
The curse died aborning. It was the Madrigal Man, poor bastard. Stan was too pitiful to warrant anything other than a tired sigh. So Dar sighed tiredly.

  Stan looked absurd in his attempt at twentieth-century attire, like a cross between a cowboy and a banker. “Hi there, Dar.”

  “Don’t pretend this is accidental, Stan. You know I hate it when you follow me. Gives me the spooks.” There was the throbbing bosom of the Savoy, luscious and warm. “I do not have time tonight.”

  “Please. I must talk to you.”

  “Of course you must. And it has to be now.” Dar resisted the urge to break his cane over Stan’s head. Instead, he plunged past the Savoy, gesturing for Stan to follow. They made a sharp right down Savoy Street, toward the Embankment. It was deserted, but the reflection of electric streetlights sparkled on the black waters of the Thames; at least there would be something bright and modern about this evening. “Sit,” Dar said, gesturing to a sphinx-flanked bench.

  Stan sat, looking up at Dar like a hopeful beagle. “Aren’t you going to sit, too?”

  “No, I’m not. I do not feel particularly companionable.”

  “Why not?”

  “Stan.” Dar propped his cane against the bench, put a spatted shoe up on the seat, and leaned his elbow on his knee. He admired, for a moment, the way his signet ring glimmered on his hand. “I would caution you to cut line. Tell me why in the name of all that’s holy have you followed me to 1923. If you don’t have a good reason I shall be obliged to beat the living daylights out of you with this very fine cane.”

  “I’m practicing and practicing,” Stan said, with just the hint of a whine in his voice, “but I still can’t jump alone. Your lessons aren’t working.”

  Dar nodded as his toes curled in his shoes.

  “I do everything you say, professor, and I can’t jump.”

  Dar removed his foot from the bench and strolled a few feet away to look down at the river. After a few deep breaths, he turned and leaned against the iron railing. “You just did jump,” he said. “Following me.”