“Oh,” Lydde said, thinking fast, “I come from Ireland.”
“Ah.” He nodded, greatly relieved. “That would account for it.”
She hoped he wouldn’t remember to ask her name again. But something else had occurred to him and he came back with another sharp question.
“Not papist, are you?”
She had barely enough sense to answer, “Oh, no, no! I’ve run away from the papists.” And to add, “’Tis why I’m here.”
“To escape the papists? Good lad, good lad. A right boon for your salvation, as they do say the papists drink the blood of infants at the altar.”
“Indeed I have heard the Pope himself is the Antichrist,” she said, silently apologizing to her Catholic friends as the old man nodded his approval. “And may I beg your forgiveness? But in Ireland we hear little of the world’s doings. Are the Puritans in charge now?”
“They are.” He leaned closer and looked around furtively before continuing. “And a sour lot too. No more games, you see, no more sport, no prayer book or music, and no more dancing. They’ve even banned Christmas, they have.”
“Have they indeed? Christmas, of all things.”
“Too much fun for ’em,” the man said. “The Devil takes you when there’s fun about, so they say. I keep clear of ’em Puritans. Afraid of making a mistake, I am. Keep that in mind, lad, never laugh around ’em, and you’ll do fine.”
“I’m grateful for the advice,” Lydde replied, growing alarmed at the prospect before her. “And may I ask what city lies yonder?”
“Norchester,” he said, kindly now. “And if that be your destination you are in luck, for the East Gate is yon. You’ll just make her before nightfall.”
Norchester, she thought, my God, my God.
“And this church?” She waved her hand at the pretty church in its yard, which from this angle was suddenly looking quite familiar.
“St. Pancras-without-the-wall, that be. And if ’tis the prayer book you want, the good vicar Mr. Smythe may yet read it here time to time, though he’s been warned he shall be turned out of his living for it.”
St. Pancras Church. The print on Uncle John’s wall come to life. She bowed her thanks, hoping that was appropriate. He did think it odd, poor man that he was, to be bowed to, but put it down to outlandish Irish ways, waved her off, and was on his malodorous way with his gaggle of geese. With a fine story to tell his wife and grandchildren, no doubt.
So, Lydde thought. I am asleep. I am in a coma and dreaming, like Dorothy in Oz. I am insane. Nevertheless, I seem to be in England. In Norchester. During the rule of Cromwell and the Puritans.
She was also hungry, and frightened, and she knew nothing better to do than to go on to Norchester. At least, she thought, I’ve been there before.
NORCHESTER in Lydde’s day (she kept ridiculously thinking of it in the past tense) had been largely Georgian in the city center, and Victorian mixed with modern bungalows in the middle-class neighborhoods outside the wall. Only three Tudor black-and-whites had been saved, including an old pub billed as the Oldest House in Norchester.
The Norchester she now found herself in had few houses outside the wall, and none of them familiar. Inside East Gate the buildings were all black-and-whites, their upstairs hanging out like lopsided cakes decorated with timbered icing. Lydde longed to stop and get her bearings, but she had acquired a trail of curious onlookers, including a gaggle of small boys, who yelled incomprehensible things and threw clods of dirt at her back. She tried to stop and speak to people, but that seemed to make things worse, as they fell back from her in alarm. No one ran away, though, but called out to neighbors so that the crowd grew steadily and came close again.
Lydde decided the safest course possible was to pretend there was nothing odd about herself. She ignored the stares she received and tried not to stare back, but curiosity overcame fear. Everyone was dressed in rough clothing, blouses and coats and breeches and broad-brimmed hats for the men, long dresses and aprons and caps for the women, and not a clean head of hair as far as she could see. She felt as though she’d dropped down on the set of a play, except it was a stage with no wings for an exit, and it stank to high heaven.
She had known the street as Eastgate. She looked in vain for a street sign to confirm this, then narrowly missed stepping in a newly steaming pile of horse shit. Thereafter she dodged piles of several varieties of dung. People stopped to gape at both her strange dress and her manner as she sought to keep her balance while hopping over a cow pile. Then someone called out, “An actor! An actor!” and others took up the cry.
How on earth can they tell? she wondered, and hurried on.
People were pointing at her shoes, her sweatshirt and jeans, and vowing they’d seen no players in such garb, not even in the old days. They continued to follow Lydde on all sides, pressing so close she was forced to slow down and then stop. Then a hand grasped her arm and she found herself face-to-face with a tall man with thick black eyebrows and cold brown eyes.
“Who are you?” he demanded. “Why are you dressed so oddly? Are you indeed an actor and is this your costume?”
She started to say that she was, but the force of his grip and the threat implied in his question made her cautious.
“Please!” she pleaded, remembering how the old gosherd had grown more friendly. “I am a poor boy come from very far off.”
There was a moment of silence at the sound of her voice, then everyone began talking at once. Lydde felt a tug and looked down. A boy of around five had hold of her jeans pocket and was pulling as hard as he could. Then his mother grabbed him up and clutched him to her as though shielding him from great danger.
The crowd suddenly parted to make way for a sturdy man carrying a cudgel and wearing a sword strapped to his waist. He stopped before Lydde with his fists on his hips and said, “I am Constable Baxter. Who are you? What is your business in Norchester?”
“The lad is an actor,” said the man with black eyebrows. “A ganymede who appears in plays of the Devil!”
Lydde again had a hard time understanding what was being said, but caught the gist of it. She remembered then that the Puritans had banned the theater throughout the rule of Cromwell. Plays, they believed, were the work of the Devil, and boys playing the part of women with other men was especially offensive.
“I am no actor,” she said. “I’m only a poor lad seeking shelter in Norchester after a long journey.”
Constable Baxter took a step back and looked askance when he heard her speech.
“Ireland,” she said before he could ask. “I’m from Ireland.”
“Ah,” he said, and an expression of sympathy crossed his broad face. “That will explain it.” He turned to the curious crowd. “An Irish lad.”
That brought another outburst of alarm.
“Fleeing the papists!” she called out.
This inclined the crowd more to sympathy, though many still stared suspiciously at her, some of the more brazen reaching out to touch the strange fabric she wore, or stooping for a better view of her shoes.
“Why are you clad in such strange garb,” demanded the man who still held her by the arm and now shook it roughly, “if not an actor?”
“If I am an actor,” Lydde responded, “where is my troupe?”
“Enough, Jacob Woodcock,” said Baxter. “You are a blacksmith, not a constable. I ask the questions here. Now, lad.” He continued to look kindly at her. “What is this strange manner of dress?”
Nothing to do but brazen her way through. “I was forced to wear this. By the papists.”
“And why is the word Duke set upon your blouse?”
“And why is there a grinning devil set upon it?” cried Woodcock, who had been examining the fabric at close quarters. This sent the crowd back several paces in a panic. And Lydde realized with horror that set within the D was a tiny embroidery of the school mascot, a Blue Devil.
The constable peered closely, his expression turning to alarm.
Just then a voice called out in the halting manner of one with an impediment of speech, “H-hold, Con-stable! I c-can explain!”
A man pushed his way through the crowd, which fell back respectfully. And there, to Lydde’s amazement, stood her Uncle John.
Chapter 5
John Soane
AND YET HE was not Uncle John, for Constable Baxter addressed him at once as Mr. John Soane, and he was a man in his forties, not an older man as Uncle John had been.
“Good day to you, Mr. Soane. And what do you know of this lad?”
“Be-before I say,” answered the newcomer, in the halting manner of one who has suffered a stroke, “h-how does M-Martin?”
Baxter softened even further. “Well, indeed. Who could imagine the child was so near death only days ago? God be praised for your skill, good doctor.”
The man bent his head in acknowledgment, then said, “N-now about this b-boy here. He is kin.”
Lydde studied him narrowly. His impediment, real or faked, made it impossible to tell whether he spoke as she did or was one of the townspeople.
“Kin to you?” Baxter said, surprised.
“Indeed.” The doctor began to laboriously explain, and it took a good deal of time for him to get his story out in its entirety. But the point of his speech was this: that the lad standing before them was the son of a cousin in Bristol.
“Bristol?” exclaimed Baxter. “He says he comes from Ireland!”
Lydde nodded emphatically and raised her eyebrows at the good doctor. “To escape the papists. ’Tis the story I told.”
“Aye, Ireland,” said the doctor. He leaned close to her and winked. “But by way of B-Bristol, w-which is the port through which many I-Irish do enter England.”
“Is this the same cousin who died and left orphan the child Mary, who now dwells at Soane’s Croft?” Baxter asked.
So, Lydde thought. Soane’s Croft exists.
“N-not the same, but a relative as well.”
“And the devil upon his blouse?” Jacob Woodcock interjected. Lydde took an involuntary step back.
John Soane took his time and managed to spit out the following explanation. That the papists in Ireland had killed the lad’s father and pursued him to Bristol along with his mother, who had since died. That, once in Bristol, he had been captured at the docks by a renegade Catholic sect strictly devoted to devil worship. That the unfortunate lad had been abducted and forced to follow papist rituals and wear the shirt with the demonic device, and was told if he removed it he would surely forfeit his soul to Satan that same night. That he had escaped and sent word ahead to his good cousin John Soane that he would seek sanctuary in Norchester, where the prayers of the God-fearing would allow him to safely remove his blouse and live thereafter a sober and righteous life.
“B-but first he must have some rest, and food, for he has been sadly abused. G-go home!” urged the doctor. “Pray for the safety of this lad’s soul!”
This seemed to be generally satisfactory and caused the crowd to give way. Then a woman called out, “What is the lad’s name, good doctor, that we may pray for him?”
John Soane seemed taken with a spell that made him stammer and chew over his words even more, head bobbing and an eye toward Lydde as if to encourage her.
“Louis,” she said quickly, pronouncing it the Italian way as she was used to when speaking of her brother. “My name is Louis, ah…”
“Soane,” the doctor finished.
“’Tis a French-sounding name,” said Jacob Woodcock.
But the doctor had Lydde by the arm and led her south toward the River Pye. Behind them Constable Baxter was urging the crowd to disperse and allow good Mr. Soane to take charge of his new ward.
“Uncle John?” Lydde whispered as they hurried along. “Is it you?”
“It’s me,” he said. “But what on earth are you doing here?”
“Me? You’re supposed to be dead! And how did either one of us end up here? Is this place real or am I in the middle of a Monty Python movie?”
“It’s real, all right. It’s the seventeenth century—September 1657, to be exact.”
They had reached the shelter of a tree-lined path that followed the river. Then they stopped.
“You stink,” she said. “Like everyone else.”
He laughed. “Wait a week without deodorant or a bath and you’ll smell the same. But by then you won’t notice.” He pointed to a tree beside the riverbank. “Let’s sit and rest a minute. We’ve both got a lot to tell.”
THEY sat sheltered from view beneath a large weeping willow.
“Ireland?” he said. “Where’d you get that?”
“I had to think of something. I’ll apologize to the Irish later. But what was all that nonsense about me being kidnapped by demonic Catholics?”
“Living here you get lots of experience in thinking fast,” he said. “Creatively too. Actually it’s a pretty safe explanation for both of us. Most people here don’t know beans about the Irish or Catholics except that they have horns on their heads and long tails. Call somebody a papist here, it’s like calling someone back home a Communist in the 1950s.”
“Okay. But if you’re Uncle John, how come you look so young? You can’t be much more than forty.”
“I’m not the only one who looks young,” he said with a smile. “You don’t appear to be more than fourteen, yourself. A fine lad.”
She longed for a mirror. “Do I really look like a boy?”
“Didn’t you play Prince Hal when you were young?” he reminded her. “You must look the same as then. Remember, people here never see women in pants or with short hair. And women are taught not to look a man in the eye or speak out. So you have to be male just by the way you act. And your voice is high and your skin is smooth, so they just assume you’re a boy. I’d guess if you had on a dress, you’re really more like twenty or so.”
“But how?”
“We’ve broken the time barrier, Lydde. It’s a side effect, because of relativity. Go forward in time, you age; go backward, you grow younger—depending on how fast you travel through the wormhole. By the way, I’ve got to stop calling you Lydde. It really will be safer, as long as you’re here, if you pretend to be a boy. It’s that much harder for women. Very little freedom, lots of hard work, and you’re not supposed to know anything.”
“Oh, God,” she moaned. “Am I stuck here?”
“No, no,” he reassured her. “We can go back. I’ll explain all that later. But first things first. What’s this about me being dead? And how is Lavinia?”
“Aunt Lavinia’s fine,” she said, “everything else is totally nuts. You died of a heart attack. Aunt Lavinia found you, and you’re buried in the cemetery at Lafayette. But how could that be?”
He stared a moment, then said, “Oh, my. John. Poor John. I was afraid of something like that.”
Lydde jumped up. “Then you aren’t Uncle John,” she cried. “And he is—”
“I am your Uncle John,” he interrupted. “How would I have known to ask about Lavinia otherwise? Or that you’re Lydde? But be quiet or you’ll call attention to us.”
Lydde sat back down. “Okay. I’ll shut up. Now explain.”
THE first time, he had come to Norchester accidentally, as she had.
“Though I was more fortunate in my timing,” Uncle John told her. “It was nearly dark, so I didn’t have a crowd following me. But you can’t imagine how confused I was.”
“Try me,” Lydde said.
“At that time the door to the church crypt was kept unlocked, so I found my way outside, and who should be passing but a man who looked to be my twin? John Soane was returning home from a call to an injured man. He was on horseback, and it was clear from his dress he was from another time. I was wearing a plaid shirt and jeans. We both were terrified, I can tell you. But we were both scientists in our own ways. He was a physician whose g
eneration was the first to be really and truly scientists, who no longer relied on the Church for explanations but instead studied the world around them. Studied it closely, methodically, skeptically.
“He invited me to Soane’s Croft with him, and I went, wearing his cloak to cover my odd clothes. We talked the rest of the night. But I began to grow frightened, not of him, but of what effect I might have, a man from the future interfering with the past. So he took me back to St. Pancras, still wearing his cloak, and left me. Probably decided the next day he’d had a hell of a dream. Meanwhile, I found to my great relief that the trip works both ways. Not only that, but objects can be carried both ways. I was back in the New River Gorge with a cloak from seventeenth-century England.”
“When was this?”
“In 1950. I built the Mystery Hole later to keep anyone else from stumbling into the wormhole. It took me fifty years to get up the nerve to return. I thought maybe it was a terrible sin, like playing God, to get involved with the past. What if I caused some damage that would alter the future? So I studied, read all the physics I could, worked on the mathematics of it all. For years scientists wouldn’t touch this stuff, so it was hard to find material. But that started to change in the 1990s and I grew confident that I could go back in time without harming the present. Our present, I mean. I started to think that consistency will overcome paradox and once events have happened, they have happened and can’t be disrupted. And I thought maybe, just maybe, I could do some good for our future.”
“But you have changed events here,” Lydde said. “What did that constable mean about his child? Did you save it from dying?”
“I stopped it from choking to death.”
“Well, then? Whatever that child does from now on will affect the future for good or ill.”
“Yes,” Uncle John said, “but the child would have lived whether I saved it or not. Someone else would have saved it, or it would have saved itself. It was meant to be.”
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