A Contemporary Asshat at the Court of Henry VIII

by MaryJanice Davidson, Camille Anthony, Melissa Schroeder

  “You dare to lecture me on courtesy, you, a common—”

  “Yes, me. A common. Think about that. A nobody who isn’t from around here had to teach the Duke of Norfolk a lesson in common courtesy. That’s what you should be upset about, not the fact that I could have broken your arm in two places. Now stay. Away. From me.” Each pause was punctuated by a jab to his chest. “Amy, it’s time to go. Again.”

  We left him staring with his mouth open and, as if on cue, the room started filling with servants and courtiers as we took our leave. I don’t think he noticed.

  “So that geezer’s kinda your bitch now?”

  “Doubtful,” I replied, but hey. Never say never. Or sometimes say never. I didn’t know; it had been a loooong weekend. “Look, we need to get clear of the castle, and then we need to head for the big willow tree just off the bridge and then—” And then hopefully a magical science-portal no one understood would somehow know we were there and what we wanted and would open up for us and hurl us five centuries into the future where Amy would sign many non-dis agreements and I’d get another £10,000 which as of two days ago converted to $14,515 American.

  The whole thing sounded ludicrous, I could barely believe it, and I’d seen I.T.C.H.’s tech in action. Amy’s good nature was going to be put to the test. Again. Which was a shame, because the poor thing was white to the lips and having trouble keeping her balance.

  And then. Like a miracle. We were outside, we were moving past people intent on their own lives and attracting no serious attention (other than some puzzled looks) and I could see the wavy gold shimmer that meant the gate was opening and when I looked to my left there was another one! And another on my right! And in front of us, and I glanced back and there was one behind us and oh shit they weren’t gates oh shit they were visual auras and we weren’t saved at all because I was getting a migraine.

  I wanted to cry.

  I wanted to throw up.

  I did both.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  As we staggered past the bridge and headed for the trees, we were taken for scandalous, badly dressed drunken prostitutes and mocked, but nobody tried to impede our progress. Everyone was busy being busy, thank goodness.

  I had two of Lisa’s experimental pills in the fanny pack under my skirt, so I hiked it up, unzipped the pack, dry swallowed, and let my skirt drop back into place in the time it took to walk three steps. But I was in no shape to make a note of the start time and what could I write? “Migraine started just after Anne Boleyn’s elevation to peerage, Windsor Castle, 1532”?

  “Christ, my head. You have too much ale for breakfast, too?”

  “Nish. Jush grain.” Dammit! Along with the aura, aphasia sometimes kicked in. I tried again: “It’s jush—just a migraine. This is—the leasht marfan piece. Of the post office.” GODDAMMIT! There was nothing more frustrating than aphasia (unless I was trying to buy a Shamrock Shake in the summertime). I knew what I wanted to say but I couldn’t get what was in my brain to match up with what came out of my mouth.

  Pull it together. It’s not as bad as the immediate aftermath of The After.

  Right. My go-to “it could be worse!” psych-up. I had to keep us moving until something happened. An arrest for drunk and disorderly. A gate. An aneurysm. Something.

  And then we were there: the willow! While I watched, a new aura was forming right in front of the trunk, or the gate was opening. Or both? I guess it could be both.

  Please be a gate. I’ll do anything if it’s a gate. I’ll give up meat! Well, not all meat. I’ll give up fish. Okay, not sushi or fish n’chips or grouper or tuna or—cod! I’ll give up cod.

  It was a gate, glory be to the highest! (Also, no more cod for me, because a deal was a deal.) I felt the familiar tingling as I groped for the wavering, shining thing. Watching my arm disappear up to the elbow into the glow was as exciting as it was disturbing.

  “What are you doing? Why are you groping the trunk?”

  “Hey, itsh science.” At least the aphasia was losing its grip. I was slurring but coherent, the way I was when I was two-and-a-half daiquiris in. “Man, they are going to be so impressed to see ush! Especially me! Againsht all odds I brought you back and shtopped a war and got Anne knocked up with Queen Elizabeth. No wonder I need a nap.”

  We took the plunge, and then we were standing on the platform.

  The dark platform. The dark, quiet platform.

  “What is this?”

  “It—it’s I.T.C.H.,” I stammered. “But it looksh like …”

  No. I must have had it wrong. Because it looked like I.T.C.H. had closed for the day. It looked like the lights were out. It looked like no one was waiting for us. A few of the machines were glowing, but there was no one in the cavernous room, and all the overheads were off. The equipment beyond the platform was dark. Everything had gone dark.

  No. I didn’t have it wrong. Sometime in the last five hundred years, I.T.C.H. had been shut down.

  “Ooooh, I don’t feel good,” Amy groaned, then bent forward and threw up on the platform. This seemed an entirely appropriate reaction, so I did, too.

  (A good hostess never lets her guest feel self-conscious.)

  Chapter Forty-Six

  “Jesus Christ!” I couldn’t see the speaker, but he sounded as appalled as I felt. It was a month for new experiences: time travel, employing the Heimlich five hundred years before it was invented, putting the Duke of Norfolk in a wristlock, and barfing in tandem with a fellow American after teleporting back to the 21st century.

  The overhead lights started flickering on and I realized it was Warren, dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved black t-shirt (the sleeves were regrettably unrolled), hair damp from a recent shower, holding a cup of what I assumed was terrible coffee while he stood in the doorway and gawped.

  “Jesus Christ!” he yelped (again). “You came back!”

  “What the hell, Warren? Where ish everybody?”

  He was staring up at us like we were apparitions. Violently ill apparitions. “I can’t believe it. You did it!”

  “Again,” I reminded him. “I did it again. This is Amy. Amy, this is Dr. Warren, and he’s going to have an enormous pile of paper for you to sign. After he cuts me a check. Don’t jusht stand there,” I commanded. “Help us down. Or find a mop. Maybe both. Where’s everybody else?”

  “We—you’ve been gone for a couple of days.”

  “Yes, you wouldn’t believe how often I got hung up. Not to toot my own horn, but I was incredible in my perseverance and frankly, you got me at a bargain rate.”

  “We—I—we assumed you had—had failed.”

  While Warren was stammering, I was helping Amy down while skirting the edge of the puke puddle. (The platform wasn’t especially high—it reminded me of the transporter room in a J.J. Abrams Star Trek movie.) But Warren’s comment made me jerk my head up and glare. “So you closed?”

  “You left on Friday. It’s Sunday.”

  “So. You. Closed?”

  “Yes.” His face was starting to flush, which unfortunately only improved his looks. “Everyone was exhausted. No one knew what to do. As you know, we’ve been at this for weeks. And then a day went by … and then another … it was a miracle you made it back once, never mind—”

  “Yesh, definitely don’t factor my return rate of one hundred percent into your calculations,” I snapped.

  “And—well—it costs an enormous amount of money to keep this place running—the cooling units alone are—”

  “So why are you here, Warren? If Dr. Holt told you all to go home?”

  “I did go home. Had a real meal, took a shower. But.” He actually had gone to a closet and grabbed one of those Swiffer mops, which was kind of cute, but now he stopped his mop prep and looked straight at me. “I wasn’t ready to give up on you. So I came back.”

  Perhaps it w
as the migraine, but I nearly fell on his neck and wept. But one person coming back didn’t make it right. Especially when I considered other factors. “I rishked my life, Warren!”

  “What’s wrong with your speech?”

  “Migraine! Which I got risking my life! Repeatedly! Because you begged me to. So I went back—again. And I—” Fixed history—again. But this wasn’t the best time to bring that up, though the conversation was inevitable. “And—and I found Amy and brought her back and yes, I was gone for a couple of days. Can you figure out why?”

  “Um—”

  “Because sometimes it takes more than ninety minutes to go back in time, track a Lostie, find them, free them, get clear of any observers, and find a return gate, you shexy moron!” Oh shit. I called him sexy. To his face. Which I’m going to put down to the migraine if he ever mentions it.

  “Huh. Is that what you’ve been doing?” From Amy, who had found a discarded lab coat—I hoped it was Karen’s—and was wiping her mouth with it. “The last half hour is starting to make sense now. And now that I’m—ugh—sober, I have some questions …”

  “Not now, Amy!” I turned back to Warren. “I did all that for you—for I.T.C.H., I mean—and you guysh couldn’t give me until Monday before giving me up for dead and having your mail forwarded to your next mad scientist project?”

  “Well—”

  “I mean, Jesus!”

  “Careful,” Amy warned. “She knows karate.”

  “I do not! It’s aikido.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.” Warren was just standing there, mop in hand and paralyzed by my rage. “There’s nothing I can say, you’re right to be pissed. There’s no excuse. We—I have no excuse.” He kept looking at me steadily, and under any other circumstance I’d be thrilled to be the focus of his regard.

  But I had puke on my shoes and was going on day three in the same underpants and these people didn’t give a shit about me and the headache was coming. I was in the sweet spot: the aura was gone, the aphasia was going, but the pain was about half an hour off.

  “Joan, what can I say? We screwed up.”

  “Again. Screwed up again.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that old saying, fool me once, shame on you, fool me by sending me time traveling and then giving me up for dead, shame on me? I’m done. Cut me a check, call me a cab, explain things to Amy and call her a cab. And don’t call me anymore. Parse your own problems, I am out.”

  “But we need the details of your—”

  “No. You don’t get to debrief me this time. Nobody gets to debrief me, I’m going to debrief myself!” Wait. What? “The highlights: I was terrific, I.T.C.H. owes me, and apparently however long I’m gone in the past, the same amount of time passes here. And that’s all you’re getting.”

  “Joan, forgive me.” The cup he was holding was trembling just a bit, but I steeled myself against it. “I am so incredibly sorry.”

  I stuck a finger under his nose. “Shut up. And call a cab.”

  “I’m confused,” Amy confessed as Warren scurried off (still holding the mop—heh).

  “Yeah? Be resigned, it’ll only get worse,” I warned her.

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  “Where in the name of ever-loving fuck have you been, you absent shithead?”

  “Doing scads of drugs and having so much unprotected sex I lost track of time?”

  “Nice try, you terrible liar.” Lisa took a break from pacing to glare. “Jesus, Joan, I’ve been going out of my mind!”

  “Migraine.”

  “Oh. I know they suck, and you know I’m trying to help, but they don’t prevent you from telling me what’s up so I don’t yank my hair thinking you’re in a botulism-induced coma.”

  (That’s one of six ways Lisa has predicted I’ll die: food poisoning so severe it kills me.)

  “No, I mean I’ve got one now. Yes, I took a pill, and it started exactly two hours ago. But it’s a baby, so it’s not all bad.”

  “Silent migraine, okay, that’s good, I’ll put that in the data. Although these meds aren’t supposed to lessen a migraine, they’re supposed to eliminate it.”

  “Yes, but I’m not complaining.”

  “And that still doesn’t explain where you’ve been all weekend.”

  “At work.”

  “No, you weren’t, because I went to the Information Technology for Culture and History and you weren’t there. Also, what raging marketing fuckhead thought up a name with the acronym I.T.C.H.?”

  “You—what?”

  “Don’t make this about invading your privacy,” she snapped, “although I invaded your privacy. I was scared, Joan. And I fucking hate being scared so I checked the GPS and went to the lab I had no idea you worked for because you’re keeping secrets for some reason.”

  “Um …”

  “Joan. I thought we were done with that shit.”

  This was tricky territory for several reasons, the most problematic being that I’d spent my adolescence being secretive and she’d spent hers being hyper-vigilant.

  I took a breath. Let it out slowly. And lied. “I’m not an official employee, so there’d be no record of me there.” Wait. That wasn’t a lie. “I’m an off-the-books intern working in their R&D department.” That wasn’t, either. “And I can’t tell you about their work because I signed a non-disclosure agreement.” Huh. What do you know? It’s all true! (Don’t tell me about lies by omission. I know all about lies by omission.)

  “Okay, first? Literally no one calls them non-disclosures; they’re NDAs and I can’t believe I have to tell you this again. But that bullshit aside, you fucking hate paperwork of any kind.” Lisa could not have been more amazed if I told her I’d taken up lap-dancing to make friends. “You almost didn’t come to England and threw a shit-fit because the State Department requires a three-page form for ex-pats!”

  “That’s how important I think their work is. And I still think a two-page form would have been sufficient.”

  That made an impression. She stared at me. After a long moment, she said, “Can you at least tell me what kind of work you’re doing?”

  “No.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can I help?” There was no pause before that question, because Lisa was as brave and loyal as she was profane and grumpy. (She would also write me a doctor’s note whenever I wanted to get out of work. Money cannot buy such loyalty and good fellowship.)

  “No. Besides, it’s moot. I literally just quit. I might go back for—for some paperwork, but that’s it. I’m done.”

  Again with the unblinking regard, then. “You’d tell me if you were in trouble, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you promise?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. The important thing is you’re back. I mean, that’s what I cared about the most. The minutiae, not so much.”

  “I know.”

  “So. Since you’re back. And you quit. Then … I guess …” I think Lisa had anticipated the argument would last longer, because she seemed a bit unmoored as she groped for a new subject. “Are you hungry? I went to the Café and got an extra steak sandwich to go. D’you want it?”

  “No, I’m not hungry.”

  “Oh shit, are you dying?”

  I snorted at her histrionics. “Stop it. You know there are times when I’m not hungry.”

  “Yeah, and I can count ‘em on both hands even though we’ve known each other over a decade.”

  “I just want a shower,” I said, my truest statement that day so far. “And a nap. And then maybe another shower.” Although I’d left the gown at I.T.C.H. and changed back into my street clothes before the cab picked me up, I was still in the same underwear. And my hair, after being squashed under a wig, was atrocious, staticky and wild l
ike it was happy to be free at last and anxious to escape my skull. “And a brush. Maybe several brushes.” And not just my hair. My teeth needed a Crest caress in the worst way.

  “Yeah, about that, and don’t get pissy and take this the wrong way—”

  “I’m not getting it cut!” I snapped. “I’m growing it out.” Partly because I have hair ADD (I grow out bangs, then cut my bangs, then decide I don’t want bangs anymore and grow them out, a vicious circle I’ll never escape), but also so I could eventually ditch the wigs.

  Oh. But I wasn’t doing that anymore.

  But still: my drab mane was at that awkward stage of too long to be considered short and too short to be considered long. If I kept ignoring it, eventually it’d be long.

  “Fine, starve yourself and keep your cute hair looking awful, see if I care. Tea?”

  “Tea would be great. And. Um.” I cleared my throat. “I’m sorry I scared you.”

  “I’m just glad you’re back, fucking hideous hair and all. And I’m a little bummed you weren’t actually doing drugs and getting laid. Chai or jasmine?”

  “Jasmine, please.” Something delicate to look forward to sipping while I counted the blessings afforded by 21st century plumbing and shaved my legs. No more time-travel for me, which was just as well—I’d live longer, probably.

  Thomas Wynter is long dead. He’s a pile of bones by now.

  Now where had that come from?

  I shrugged it off and went to shower.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  An hour later, I was in my favorite spot: sprawled on our couch in front of a fire while the latest Game of Thrones spinoff streamed and Lisa sat on the floor muttering at her tablet.

  I felt unappreciated but clean. I had flossed so much I sounded as if I was twanging a harp strung with dental floss, and my clean hair gleamed like a mud puddle after a heavy rain.

  And my bank account looked great. Warren had given me a check, which wasn’t the brightest move because now I had no incentive to go back. I would, because they should know what I’d been up to while in the grip of their tech, and maybe my info could help them solve some of the problems, but I didn’t have to. That made all the difference.