by Ridgway, Bee
Susan took a deep breath, then spoke out strongly. “I did not fail you, madam. I loved you well enough to try to change—”
Hannelore struck her across the mouth with the back of her hand. “Go to the chair!”
Susan pivoted on one foot, and walked toward the chair. She turned when she reached it; blood trickled from her lip. She sat down slowly, her hands hanging at her sides. She looked at Hannelore for a moment, then closed her eyes.
“And now to the demonstration,” Hannelore said. “What do we wish Bertrand and Alva to learn, Susan?”
Susan spoke in a low, clear, singsong voice. “The River may be traveled both up and down. But human life moves only forward, toward death. Time is your teacher. But what you learn from him will leave you in his debt. He will demand payment of you. You will pay him in the circumference of your soul.” She opened her eyes and Alva was shocked to find Susan’s gaze fixing on her. “But it does not have to be that way, Alva,” she said, her voice her own again. “We could use different methods—”
“Susan.” Hannelore spoke sharply. “Do not push me. Do you wish to remain a subject forever?”
Susan smeared the bright blood across her mouth with her palm, then held her palm up and out in a gesture of defiance. “I wish to remain a subject, madam, until you yourself are released from this delusion under which you labor.”
Hannelore sighed, like a tired housewife after a day’s hard work. “Susan was always difficult,” she said conversationally to Bertrand and Alva. “When I loved her as I love you, Alva, she treated me scornfully. Now she will waste the rest of her life trying to convince me that she loves me better than anyone else. Ultimately, for her foolishness, she will be left out of the great story of the Guild’s triumph altogether.” She directed her attention back to the woman in the chair. “So be it, Susan. But remember, it is not I who condemn you to your fate. You are choosing that path yourself. I shall ask you again next time.”
“And I shall answer in the same fashion.”
“Very well. Prepare yourself.” Hannelore took a step to the right and straightened her back; she stood tall, directly facing the woman in the chair. “I am going to narrow my powers on Susan,” she said to Bertrand and Alva, “but I shall first magnify my powers through the two of you. You will feel my talent fill you, circle through you, and flow back into me, enlarged and made many times more intense. You will feel me draining you of your will as I focus my talent on Susan. But never fear, I am not robbing you. As soon as I drop your hands, your powers will be restored. Do you understand?”
“But what is it that we are going to do?” For the first time, Bertrand sounded scared.
“Sh.” Hannelore smiled gently. “You are doing nothing. Tonight, I am merely borrowing your talent. I shall pay time’s debt for this exercise. It is only a lesson, only the very first lesson. Take my hands. Are you ready, Susan?”
“Yes, madam.”
“Good girl, Susan,” Hannelore said, her voice gentle. “You are a good girl, my duck.”
At that, tears spilled down Susan’s cheeks. She closed her eyes.
“Alva?” Hannelore wiggled her waiting fingers.
Alva reached out and took her hand.
• • •
Dar’s eyes flew open. It was three in the morning, according to the bells tolling somewhere off to the south of Grosvenor Square. He stared up into the blackness, wondering why he was awake, and why he was terrified. He was never terrified. But he was pinned to the mattress with fear, even as his heart was trying to leap like a rabbit from his chest.
He’d fallen asleep wondering what to do about that Swedish girl and her plan to blab about Bertrand. Kidnap her, definitively this time? But she had already, once, scotched that inane plan of his, without even blinking. Seduce her with his fatal charms, such as they were? He had fallen asleep imagining that scene unfolding, in lurid detail.
But whatever nightmare had awakened him was as far from sexy as the moon was from Manchester.
He tore himself from under the covers, shoved aside the heavy bed-curtains, and stood, bare feet on cold floorboards, the clammy cold of a pitch-black autumn night slapping against his naked flesh and making him gasp. He fumbled toward the fireplace and put a hand out to the mantel, groping for the spill vase. The blasted thing was shaped like a cow, and the sharp little horns jabbed him when he finally found and clutched it. Crouching to the banked fire, he lit the spill and went back to the bed, the flame wavering dangerously close to going out. He couldn’t find the candle at first, but there it was, toppled out of the candlestick and tucked behind a book.
It really was a miracle that every person in this godforsaken era of the so-called Enlightenment hadn’t burned to death in their beds.
He clenched the unlit end of the spill between his teeth, jammed the candle into the candlestick, held it up to the flame . . . finally he had light.
To what purpose? He sat back on the mattress with a grunt. It wasn’t as if seeing a small portion of his enormous bedchamber was going to help.
And yet, the tall, pure flame of the candle, combined with the increasing discomfort of his body, focused him. He’d fallen asleep thinking of the girl, and the fact was, he’d woken up thinking of her, too. Whatever this terror, it had to do with Alva.
“Alva,” Dar said out loud, and the candle flame seemed to bow and wink, like a conspiratorial friend.
Why did the sound of her name make him want to run to her rescue? The blasted chit must have wrapped him around her finger.
No. She had wrapped her fingers around him, reducing him to abject servitude, and she was going to rat on Bertrand to Hannelore, thus ruining the only idea Dar had for how to get even a sniff of a hold on the Guild. Alva was, without a doubt, not in trouble. She most certainly did not need the help of a man whom she considered a buffoon.
Dar smiled to himself, remembering her audacity, her fire, and his immediate and fully attentive response to it. She would at least have to admit that he was a well-endowed buffoon.
As usual, his cock knew what was going on long before his brain did. He was, quite simply, tuned in to her, like the BBC to the blasted Greenwich Time Signal. It was the same tingling sixth sense he used to read the River of Time. He was never wrong about the River, and he didn’t think he was wrong about this. She was in trouble, and he was going to have to at least attempt to find her and save her. From what, he did not know.
How tiresome.
He gave the bell pull a sharp tug.
He was sorry to wake Neville, but sometimes the business of saving young ladies had to be done in the wee small hours of the morning. It was not a business that Dar had ever had any ambition to pursue, mind you. But . . . he grinned at his sleepy valet as the man opened the bedroom door, holding his own candle out in front of him like a question mark. “What is the use,” Dar asked the man, “of being a belted earl and a damn good time traveler, if one doesn’t ride to the rescue of a fair damsel once in a while?”
“I cannot say, m’lord.” Neville was dressed in his nightshirt, but he had somehow managed to put his wig on, perfectly straight. “Which era of clothing do you require this evening . . . er, morning?”
“I shall be making this gallant rescue in two eras,” Dar said. “This one, and sometime in the mid-twelfth century. I’ll need to pass unremarked in both. So . . . no cotton, everything linen. For the eighteenth century, shepherd’s smock and trousers. I’ll toss a tunic on top of that for the twelfth century. I’ll have to leave the tunic behind, so nothing you’re too attached to.”
“Yes, m’lord.”
“And get me a woman’s dress that will pass in both eras. For a tall girl. Nice bust.”
Neville coughed. “Quite, sir. And that, too, should be a peasant’s garment, sir, for the lady?”
“Yes, that’s right. Rough. And Neville, I really mean it. If you think it’s
ugly, it’s probably just right.”
Neville flared his already quite rabbity nostrils. “Yes, m’lord.” And with that, he disappeared into thin air. A moment later he appeared again, staggering beneath a pile of clothing. “I found many possibilities.”
“For the love of Christ, why must you always make a production out of this?” Dar helped him unload the garments onto the bed. “Too fancy. No . . . no . . . yes. A perfectly good smock.” He held up the embroidered garment. “A sheaf of wheat? So I’m to be a ploughman, I see. Nice touch.” He was met with a blank stare. “Trousers, tunic, boots, and this atrocious frock . . . thank you. You may take the rest of this back, and I don’t need help dressing.”
“But sir . . .”
“No help needed,” Dar repeated. “Thank you.”
“M’lord.” Neville bowed, gathered up the pile of clothes, and winked out like a light.
• • •
After the scene in the guildhall, after Susan was taken away, after Alva had shaken a stern-faced Bertrand’s hand good night and steeled herself to kiss Hannelore as if she were delighted with her first lesson, after she undressed herself because Susan lay, pale as death, asleep on her cot in the dressing room . . . after all of that Alva thought she would never sleep, would never again close her eyes and find peace in this house.
But somehow she slept.
Bagpipe music. That’s what that must be. Her dreaming mind, having decided that it was bagpipe music, also decided that it must be Egil playing the pipes, but far away. Why? He was leading the procession. It was the Feast of Saint Martin, and the town was driving the geese—bedecked with flowers—to the slaughter. How could she have forgotten? Her mother’s geese were the fattest. She could hear the wild sound of the bagpipes from far away over the fields. Why was she here, in the vegetable garden, lying in the parsley? She should be there, cheering and laughing with everyone else. But instead she was here . . . she was here because she was dying . . . the mad knight’s terrible, calm face was above her now. There was a beautiful, towering cloud in the sky, behind his head . . . no, it was Hannelore, standing above her, and that was her wig. Hannelore, sucking the power from her, using it against Susan . . .
Alva woke with her own hand at her throat, but the music was still there, reedy but close, not far away . . . she blinked her eyes open.
Someone was whistling. Whistling in her bedroom. A horrible, off-key, slow tune she recognized as a mangled version of the song everyone was singing in the streets this month, “Sweet Mog the Brunette.”
Alva bit down hard on the inside of her cheek to keep from screaming. She didn’t want to die, any more at midnight than she had at that long-ago midday. The whistling continued, like a dirge. She opened her mouth to say, “Who’s there?” but once her breath was freed, she found that she was screaming after all, and scrambling up and back against the headboard of her bed. Immediately the whistler was by her bed, whispering fiercely: “Shut up, woman! Do you want to bring them down on us like a plague of bloody locusts?” Then she felt his hand fumbling to cover her mouth, so she grabbed his arm and bit down on his hand as hard as she could.
“Shit!” The man ripped his hand away, and Alva took the opportunity to scream again.
To good effect. When she paused for breath, she could hear loud voices outside the door, and the knob was turning. “In here!” Alva called, but the man threw himself full length over her, and hugged her to him hard, pinning her arms to her sides. “Get off! Help!” Alva struggled against him.
“Hold on, sweet chuck,” he whispered fiercely in her ear.
And then the world melted away, like sugar.
Alva was free-falling through time. Her desperate efforts to push the man away changed into a desperate effort to hold him close; she squeezed her eyes shut and her scream died in her throat and every element of herself was bent simply on clutching hold, keeping him pressed as tightly to her as possible, until suddenly there was air around them again and they were falling not through time but through space. It was a quick drop and they hit the ground hard, the man underneath her now.
He lay perfectly still. Alva opened her eyes slowly and saw him stretched beneath her in gray dawn light, a tall man in a linen smock, his dark hair almost long enough to curl, his lean cheeks shadowed by stubble.
The time tutor.
It was the djävulen angripna time tutor again, in another ridiculous costume, and this time he hadn’t merely enticed her across the city to some dusty storefront—he had invaded her bedroom and then dragged her across the centuries, only to reemerge when her bedroom wasn’t even there to hold them up.
Alva scrambled up, hitching her shift high so that she was sitting astride his prostrate form. “Fan ta dig!” She hauled an arm back and slapped him as hard as she could across the face. His head jerked to one side from the force of the blow, then rolled back again. His eyes stayed resolutely closed.
Oh God, he was dead.
Was he dead?
Alva put her hand to his chest. He wasn’t breathing.
“No,” Alva said. “Oh, no. No you don’t.” She pushed hard on his chest. “Don’t drag me here and then abandon me, you . . . you . . . skitstövel!” She pushed hard again, and again, then started beating her fists against him. The tears were flowing now, and she was yelling into his still face as she pushed and pushed again on his chest. “Din jävel!”
After what seemed like an aeon, his eyes flew open. He stared at her for a second, then tossed her roughly off, rolled to one side, and coughed long and hard. “Christ in his heavens!” He fell back again, groaning. “Shit on a shit brick!”
• • •
Dar felt like hell. His hand was swollen to the size of a juicy, well-apportioned ham sandwich, and he could see the marks of her teeth coming up purple. It had felt like she was ripping the flesh from his bones, though she hadn’t, in fact, broken the skin. And it was a miracle, after that fall with her riding him down through time like a witch, that his head wasn’t smashed open. He lifted his non-ham-sandwich hand and explored through his hair on the back of his head. There it was. A goose egg the size of . . . a goose egg. And the baggage must have pummeled him back to life with absolutely no finesse whatsoever. He felt as full of dents as an old Model A Ford. Except old dented Model A Fords—new shiny ones, for that matter—were many centuries away. It was the chilly dawn of a spring morning, in the year of our Lord, 1145.
“Come on.” She was leaning over him now. “Come on. You need to sit up.”
“Why? Am I not allowed to die lying down, like a man?”
“Come now.” She got her hand behind his shoulders and hauled him into a sitting position.
“You’re hurting me!”
“Ignatz Vogelstein, you will not complain to me of hurting! If you are wise you will say nothing to me at all. Now, let’s see if you can move.”
He dragged himself, with her help, several yards to a pile of enormous cut stones, clearly laid out and waiting to be used for building. It was patently all he could do, and they collapsed, breathless, against the stone. Once he was leaned up against them, things seemed slightly more as if they might resolve into him continuing to live, rather than continuing to die. “Thank you,” he said.
“We are no better off here than we were over there.”
“No, but thank you nevertheless.”
“You’re welcome.” From her tone, it really didn’t sound as if he were welcome, but at least it was almost companionable, sitting here together in the dawn’s light, their legs touching. They were sitting on an enormous Roman mosaic of a man entwined with snakes.
“What year is this?” she asked.
“Eleven forty-five. This is the building site for the guildhall. Today they’re starting construction. That’s why I jumped us here, to the morning that building begins . . . it was the only way to get you out of that damn Guild stronghold. I h
ad to take you back to before it even existed.” He closed his eyes against the pain in his head. It felt as if three or four mice were gnawing their way out from the inside of his skull.
“Eleven forty-five . . .” She sounded as if she were tasting the numbers, savoring them.
“I love the twelfth century,” Dar whispered. “It’s completely mad. I love it almost as much as I love the twentieth century.”
“I’ve never been to the twentieth century,” Alva said. “Or the twelfth, for that matter.”
He sighed and pressed his leg a little closer to hers. “You’re going to adore the 1920s. I shall take you there someday. The 1920s, before the Crash. We’ll go to the Savoy and dance, and you’ll wear a rope of pearls twice as long as you are yourself. . . .” His voice dwindled away. The mice were winning.
“No, thank you,” she said. “I’d prefer to go back to 1793, if you please.”
“Can’t. Have to save you.”
“Save me? Save me?” And she was off, cursing a blue streak in Swedish while he peered at her through two slits that he supposed were his eyes, but that really seemed as if the mice had only just now gnawed them from the inside out.
When she paused for breath, he held up a hand. “Please calm down, Alva. It hurts to look at you.”
“Oh, it hurts to look at me? Thank you. Thank you very much. Mr. Vogelstein, look at me.”
He hauled his eyelids up. She was a mess, poor kid, sitting in a medieval building site in nothing but her fine linen shift. Where was that dress for her . . . ? Blast. He’d left the goddamn sack full of clothes behind in her eighteenth-century bedroom. No dress for her, no tunic for him.
Well, he’d been in tighter spots, though he really couldn’t remember when. “You look gorgeous,” he said. “Let’s get going, shall we?” He gathered his strength and tried to heave himself to his feet, but the pain in his head exploded like a fire balloon and he fell back, moaning.