The Chronicles of the Tempus

by K. A. S. Quinn

  Katie gave a fierce shout in return, as strange wild impulses pounded through her. This was a new world – deep, evil and exciting. And then Katie came to a juddering halt. She could feel hands wrapped around her ankles, pulling her back. A completely different sensation surged up her legs. Snatches of sound came to Katie: the murmur of women together, the click of knitting needles and voices raised in song.

  Steal away . . . steal away . . .

  Steal away from evil

  Don’ take that hand of sin

  ’be buried in my grave

  ’for I become a slave

  Steal away . . . steal away . . .

  Hadn’t she heard this song before? Some kind of Baptist spiritual that Dolores sang while she was ironing? The clicking of needles, the harmless gossip of a group of women, the soft wail of a hymn: these were the sounds of Dolores’s life. They were prosaic and gentle, but as powerful in their own way as the vaulting shriek of blackness that threatened to engulf her.

  ‘It hurts,’ she thought, ‘it hurts.’ She was being pulled and pushed; her body would break in two. The walking stick juddered in her hand, banging against her head. The scarf around her neck tightened. Something rasped against her skin, scraping her badly. Friction turned to heat; she was burning – that strange, scorched, electrical smell filled her nostrils. ‘It’s like a space capsule, re-entering the atmosphere,’ she thought, gasping. ‘But I’m the capsule, moving through time and space. And I’ve got no protection. It’s going to kill me.’ She could feel her body beginning to splinter. She couldn’t breathe. And then nothing – blackness – only the burning raging inside.

  Chapter Five

  Alice and James, 1861

  The first thing Katie saw was the snow, through the window. Cool and white. Calm. For a long time she didn’t move. Why should she? And then she turned her head gingerly to the side. She was lying on a bright, woven Indian carpet, next to a large tufted footstool. A fire glowed in the grate. Looking up she could see candles burning in their sconces. Her whole body ached. Was she bleeding? Katie closed her eyes.

  She heard footsteps, running, a door banged open and two male voices argued as they crossed the room. One was obviously quite young, his voice cracking with anxiety. ‘Dash it all,’ he exclaimed. ‘You could have told us that you had called her. And why has she landed here?’

  ‘I haven’t the slightest idea.’ The other man was older, his world-weary voice tinged with a continental accent.

  ‘You must have called her,’ the young man insisted.

  ‘I did not. And I certainly did not call the very unusual person lying in a heap next to her.’

  A lighter step followed, and a girlish voice overrode them with a hint of hauteur. ‘It doesn’t matter who called Katie. She is our friend. We do need her. I do not know why you are standing here arguing. She might be hurt, and that person with her is decidedly so.’

  At the sound of the girl’s voice, Katie relaxed. She knew that voice: pretty, English, old-fashioned, surprisingly firm and just a bit grand. It was a voice she always kept locked away in her mind. She trusted it with all her heart. The voice belonged to Princess Alice. Katie opened her eyes.

  All was clear. There was no point saying ‘Where am I?’ It was the place that lay hidden in Katie’s memory, the cause of her scribbling, and the source of her visions. It was the reason Mimi looked frightened and the explanation for Katie’s hours in a psychiatrist’s office. How could she not have remembered it all – this vital and important part of her life? She was with her friends, not just Princess Alice, but also James O’Reilly. She was in the nineteenth century.

  Then the pain came over her in waves. She felt as if an internal war had been waged through her body.

  Princess Alice knelt down beside her. ‘Where does it hurt, dear?’ she asked.

  ‘Everywhere,’ Katie said. ‘It’s normally not this bad; I’m usually a pretty good traveller. Is someone here with me? Are they OK?’ She turned her head to see James crouched over another person, a mass of rumpled and torn clothes. Gently he turned the body over. Katie gasped and tried to sit up. It was Dolores. ‘Oh my God!’ she cried. ‘Is she breathing? Is she alive? You’ve got to save her, you’ve just got to . . .’

  ‘What do you think I’m doing?’ James snapped, loosening Dolores’ collar and placing his fingers against her neck to check her pulse. ‘She’s breathing more steadily now and her pulse is beginning to slow, though she’s still unconscious. She’ll probably be fine. But Katie, do lie down. Try and do as you’re told for once. Alice – make her . . .’

  Alice pursed her lips and tried to look stern, but couldn’t quite manage it. She was too happy at the sight of her friend. ‘Please Katie, don’t start by being so stubborn,’ she lectured with a belying sweetness. ‘We’ll have lots of time to be stubborn together, but right now you have to rest.’

  Katie had to admit, she felt much better lying down. James’s father was the Royal Household physician and James was training to be a doctor. Alice, too, had excellent nursing skills. She’d best let them get on with the task at hand. Katie smiled at Alice. New York was a busy, exciting place to live and she attended one of the best progressive schools in the city. But she’d never really connected with the other kids. And Mimi didn’t have a lot of time for her. Alice was the first person who’d really understood Katie, been truly interested in her and wanted to be her friend – Alice, a princess from another country and another time. Katie had missed her desperately. She just hadn’t known it.

  From the corner of her eye Katie could see the bottom tip of a walking stick; that final voice in the room had to be Bernardo DuQuelle. ‘You didn’t call me, DuQuelle,’ she murmured. ‘I heard you say you didn’t call me.’

  ‘We didn’t call, yet you are here, quite the mystery . . .’

  Katie glanced up. From where she lay, DuQuelle’s long curved nose looked like an overhanging cliff. There was something ancient and monumental about him. He bowed low over Katie and, gently pulling back her fingers, removed the walking stick from her clenched hand. It had left a long red welt across her palm. Deftly, he untangled the scarf around her neck. Lifting it to his nose, he sniffed it and rolled his eyes. ‘Travelling through time,’ he snorted, ‘this was more of a catapult. Something was urging you on, but the drag of this other . . . being . . . held you back.’

  Katie closed her eyes again. She really was exhausted. ‘Dolores,’ she said. ‘It’s Dolores. She always looks after me.’

  ‘But of course,’ said DuQuelle, ‘the nanny. Well, she almost killed you. You were lucky to avoid spontaneous combustion. You’ve been scorched. I can sense the struggle and smell the pain. The question is: why are you here? I don’t like the smell of this.’

  Katie was worried too. And even more unsettled than usual. That strong, dark thing that had moved through her. That strange calling voice. They had nothing to do with her friends.

  ‘I for one am so very pleased to see you,’ Princess Alice said, examining her friend’s burnt hand. ‘We do have troubles and we do need you. James must attend to that burn. And then, are you well enough to listen?’

  Katie nodded. ‘But Dolores first. Will she be OK?’

  James scowled at Katie. He was struggling to get Dolores’s bulk onto a sofa. ‘She’s just coming to. We should leave her alone for a few minutes.’

  ‘Then tell me,’ Katie said. ‘Tell me all about it.’

  ‘There is a war developing,’ Princess Alice told her, ‘a war with your country.’

  ‘What year is it?’ Katie asked. James had opened his bag, and was applying a salve to Katie’s palm. He snorted. It always surprised him that Katie, the time traveller, had no concept of time.

  ‘It’s 1861,’ Alice said, ignoring James.

  Katie remembered the plaque on the snow globe. ‘Is it Christmas, 1861?’ she asked.

  James rolled his eyes. ‘If you didn’t know the year, you certainly won’t know the day. It’s actually November. The 22n
d of November, 1861.’

  November 1861 and war was brewing. Katie ran through the timeline of all the awful wars America had fought. 1861 – way before Afghanistan, before Vietnam, before Korea, before WWII, before WWI . . . ‘It’s the American Civil War,’ she decided, ‘and it’s a really, really bad one. North against South, Cotton is King, the Emancipation Proclamation, over 600,000 men killed, and then Lincoln is assassin . . .’

  ‘Stop!’ DuQuelle cried out. ‘Don’t you remember the damage you can do by revealing history? You have been chosen and you know what happens. As part of the Tempus Fugit, you must make certain historical events stay on course. To tell Princess Alice would be to change history, to . . .’

  ‘I’m in a lot of pain,’ Katie protested, waving her now bandaged hand. ‘I forgot.’

  ‘It’s natural that she would,’ Alice chimed in, defending her friend. ‘She shouldn’t be speaking at all. Now Katie, I will tell you what we know and you can listen quietly. America is at war, the Unionist North against the Confederacy South. It seems there will be a long and difficult war. I’m certain Katie is sorry for the damage done, but she has just confirmed this. The question is: does Britain enter the war?’

  Bernardo DuQuelle caught Katie’s eye and she remained silent.

  ‘The South is prodding us to a declaration in their favour,’ Alice continued. ‘The Prime Minister thinks we will fight on the side of the South to protect our cotton interests. My father and mother are against this.’

  ‘And they are right,’ James added. ‘The South depends on slaves and as a country we cannot support slavery, no matter what our financial interests.’

  ‘My father is working so hard to keep us from war,’ Princess Alice continued. ‘This is taxing enough. But there have also been a series of events, strange and gruesome happenings. He is becoming suspicious . . .’ Alice’s voice tailed off. It was always embarrassing for her to discuss the supernatural elements of their lives.

  Bernardo DuQuelle felt no such qualms. ‘Prince Albert is a man of intelligence. He begins to wonder and to doubt. He does not understand some of the occurrences. Why should he? They are not of his world. This has added greatly to his anxiety and fatigue.’

  Katie thought about the snow globe. This might be November, but she’d had a peek at December. From what she’d seen, 1861 did not end on a high note

  Princess Alice sighed. ‘This additional worry is too much, particularly when added to his endless daily work. I do not wish to be disloyal to my mother, but the Queen thinks my father is perfection and with this comes a burden. She believes he can solve any problem and complete any labour. Her faith in him is destroying his health.’

  Katie looked at the strange trio. Princess Alice, James O’Reilly and Bernardo DuQuelle. She had lived through so much with these three: an assassination attempt on Queen Victoria, a duel on Hampstead Heath, the battlefields of the Crimean War. She had met the Queen, THE Queen, Queen Victoria. Katie shook her head. How could she ever have forgotten . . . being presented at court . . . kissing the Queen’s hand . . . working with Florence Nightingale at the Hospital in Scutari, surviving the Charge of the Light Brigade? She glanced at James and remembered, with a great pang that not everyone had survived. His brother Jack, that brave young soldier, had died. One of the noble 600 . . . She only hoped his sister Grace was still alive. She had been so ill. It was consumption . . .

  All these people were so important to Katie. Yet in her own time, they were nothing but shadows. Katie couldn’t take her eyes off Alice, so beautiful and serious; her time nursing in the Crimea had matured her. She turned to James. He had always been purposeful, even stubborn and occasionally rude. But she knew that his gruffness disguised a true heart and a fine brain. The years of hard work and study were now paying off. He was capable and confident and much more grown up. Alice and James were the same age as Katie, but she felt gawky and childish compared to her friends. Only DuQuelle remained unchanged. He had started old, and looked no older. He did not age. He was the one who held the answers.

  ‘These strange happenings, do you think they are the work of the Malum?’ she asked. Princess Alice moved closer to James. The Malum – potent and evil – fed off the brute force created by the worst type of man. ‘They’ll love this,’ Katie added, ‘I mean, a war. There’s nothing the Malum likes more than a war. It will be a feast for them. This war could create the world they need to thrive and dominate. Can the Verus defeat them? Is the Verus even trying? Does Lucia continue the virtuous fight?’

  DuQuelle lowered his eyes and examined the silver tip of his cane. He was not embarrassed by his own world and the battles of the Verus and the Malum. His relationship with them was complex though, particularly with Lucia. ‘She fights the good fight, Lucia does,’ he said rather drily. ‘Good versus evil. It could almost be a pantomime, if it had less effect on your world. But you are correct, the Malum gains power. There is something afoot, something big – and it’s gathering speed and force. We simply don’t know enough about it.’

  A frightened cry came from the sofa. Despite her pain, Katie was up, immediately, at Dolores’ side. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘I’m here. I’ll take care of you.’

  Dolores took in the room. The overstuffed and fringed chairs, the ornate marble mantelpiece, the candlelit room. Her eyes became wider as she saw Princess Alice and James. When her gaze stopped at DuQuelle, they almost popped out of her head.

  ‘I can’t believe this,’ Dolores muttered over and over. ‘I CANNOT believe this.’ She clutched Katie’s hand. ‘Child, either I’ve entered your mind, or gone out of my own.’ Then she dropped from the sofa to her knees and began to pray, hard. ‘Oh Lord, have mercy on me. I’ve seen the visions and I need your help.’

  Bernardo DuQuelle tapped his walking stick impatiently on the floor. He did not find this helpful. An interloper – Tempus Stativus. Her presence here was awkward and he suspected it interferred with Katie’s powers. He turned quite sternly to Dolores. ‘Stop this caterwauling instantly or I shall send you back into the abyss.’ Dolores hiccupped once and fell silent; Katie had never seen her so cowed.

  ‘Leave her alone,’ Katie said. ‘What has she ever done to you?’

  In answer, DuQuelle walked over to a nearby table laden with albums and books and, choosing one, handed it to Katie. ‘The question is: what has she done to you? Let us examine the problem,’ he said. ‘Read this. Read any section of the book you wish.’ Katie obediently opened the book and began.

  Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! A squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. The cold within him froze his features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek . . .’

  ‘Nothing,’ DuQuelle said. ‘It is as I thought.’

  ‘She read beautifully,’ Alice interjected. ‘Mr Dickens’s work, A Christmas Carol, splendidly declaimed.’

  ‘I begin to understand the problem,’ James interrupted. ‘Katie, did anything out of the ordinary happen while you were reading?’

  Katie shook her head. ‘Nothing. I get it too. The words were great – great to read, but I saw nothing and felt nothing. My power of the visions – the endless visions created by the written word – they are gone.’

  DuQuelle took out a handkerchief and wiped his forehead. The paleness of his skin made the cloth look grey. ‘Something has weakened your powers. I can only assume it is the pull of another, from your own time.’ He cast a distrustful glance towards Dolores and she glared back with a mixture of fear and hostility. ‘We must separate the two of you,’ he decided. ‘I will send for Florence. She has a knack for this type of thing . . .’

  ‘I’m not going anywhere with that man,’ Dolores protested, ‘and I’m not leaving this here child with him neither.’ Her face contracted with pain and she fainted.

  ‘That’s enough,
DuQuelle,’ Katie exclaimed. ‘What are you trying to do? Kill Dolores? I don’t think she’s the problem.’ The dark power that had emerged while she was hurtling through time, perhaps that was the problem. But for some reason she didn’t tell her friends about it. Instead, she crouched by the sofa and wrapped her arms around the large woman. Dolores had looked after Katie for so many years. Now it was Katie’s turn to look after Dolores. Bernardo DuQuelle watched them both with an impassive face. What was human so often did not touch him. ‘I still believe this woman is the cause. You must be separated. I will call my carriage,’ was all he said, leaving them without a backwards glance.

  James prised Katie from Dolores and laid his ear against her ample chest. ‘She has taken a turn for the worse,’ he muttered, ‘her pulse runs and races. Her heart rate has not synchronized to our time. She is in a state of apoplexy.’

  ‘Apoplexy is common and normally very treatable,’ Alice added, giving Katie a comforting look.

  ‘Normally, yes,’ James replied. ‘But neither of us can truly help. It’s the time travel. We do not understand the added components of time and space.’

  Alice and James looked at each other. They seemed to be able to communicate, even in their silence.

  ‘Yes, I agree,’ Alice said, as if in reply. ‘DuQuelle is right. Miss Nightingale is our best hope.’

  James turned to his medical kit and began to mix something in a glass beaker.

  ‘Warm this,’ he ordered Alice, ‘as close to the fire as possible.’ When the liquid had heated he spooned it into Dolores’s mouth. ‘Quinine, camphor, capsicum, calomel and laudanum,’ he explained. ‘This will calm her for the time being, but truly, Katie, I cannot treat her. We must send her to Miss Nightingale.’

  Katie nodded. She trusted James.

  James’s medicines began to take effect. As Dolores opened her eyes, Princess Alice spoke to her. ‘Miss Dolores, I have heard so much about you,’ she said. ‘Katie is a true friend to us. She has come to visit before.’ Dolores nodded, and then shook her head. ‘You need medical attention,’ Princess Alice continued. ‘We are sending you to the leading expert on your illness. She will help you. But Katie will have to stay here with us. It’s for her own safety.’