By the time she turned into the privy garden, the fog was swirling around her. Stone statues reared through the scarves of mist that streamed through the garden. But the garden had been neglected. Although it was mid-March here, it felt closer to winter, as if February had stuttered along, leaving plants and and shrubs leafless. Buds were shut tight and almost withered looking. There was not even a promise of blossoming. She had been in this garden before at this same time of year, after Henry VIII died, and it had not looked like this then—not at all. She stepped up close to a hedge called King’s Fool. It was one of the earliest shrubs to bloom, with large blossoms as big as saucers. Normally the buds would be swollen and green with the hint of a burst of a deep pink blossom. But these bud cases were brittle, as if withering on the stem. Shriveled as they were, Rose detected a crackling stubbornness, an absolute refusal to bloom. Nature had gone on strike!
Ahead she saw the stone mane of the lion rippling in the windless night. There was a bench just across from it. She approached quietly, sat down, and watched the sky. A dawn vigil. She tried to calm herself, but her heart was racing. The sky was growing lighter. Had a layer of darkness been peeled away? Yes, she was sure a stream of palest pink was beginning to softly glow in the east.
Chapter 21
The Kindling
Nicholas Oliver caught his breath as he rounded the corner and glimpsed his daughter, Rose, her head turned east toward the breaking dawn. She was as still as one of the stone statues. She clutched some sort of package in her arms. It seemed a miracle to him. She had come back. He knew that other people in his century were not aware of her absence. It was one of the oddities of these twenty-first-century time travelers. When her mother, Rosemary, would be gone, it might seem like only a minute to him. However, when she returned, she often seemed surprised that it was another season. Rosemary might say, “Oh, it was spring when I was here, and now it’s almost autumn,” or “fall,” as she called it.
“Really?” he would reply. “Honestly, it seems like it was no more than a few minutes since I last saw you.” But then those few minutes began to grow longer, into hours, and then days, and finally months. And yet he was the only one at Richmond Palace who noticed. There Rosemary had served Anne Boleyn, and then later she had served at Hatfield, where Princess Elizabeth was taken as a baby. Finally when the weeks stretched into months and the months to years, Nicholas Oliver knew that his beloved Rosemary was gone for good. They had talked of her bringing Rose here, but had decided it was simply too dangerous. And too confusing for Rose. So they both agreed it could never happen. But then Rose had traveled here on her own. And now she was back again. She was here, despite his warning.
He stepped out into the fragile dawn light just as Rose looked up. She sprang to her feet and rushed into his arms as he crushed her to his chest.
“Oh, Rose! Oh, daughter!” Rose felt a thrill pass through her. It was as if something within her had become more complete. He looked at the package in her arms. “And what is that?”
“A present for you, Dad.”
“What? A present? For what occasion?”
“Well, where I come from, it’s Christmas . . . Christmas Eve, actually.”
“How strange! It’s the eighteenth day of March here. But time does tangle, as your mum always said.”
They walked together over to the bench. He looked at the package. “What strange paper. Quite lively. Who is that little fat man in the red suit?”
“Santa Claus.”
“Who?”
“Well, I don’t think he’ll be invented until many centuries from now. But kind of like Saint Nicholas.”
“Oh, you mean the Christian martyr from Greece. I was named for him.”
“I guess,” Rose said.
“I never imagined him so fat and jolly.”
“Uh . . . it’s sort of hard to explain. He brings presents. He comes down the chimney when everyone in the house is asleep and puts the presents under the Christmas tree.”
“How peculiar. Now, how does he get on the roof?”
Rose took a deep breath. “Well, he lands there.”
“Lands there?” A baffled expression was in her father’s eyes.
“Prepare yourself, Dad. It gets more peculiar. He comes in a sleigh from the North Pole. The sleigh is full of presents and is pulled by reindeer.” She paused. Her father’s deep blue eyes had grown wide with wonder. “And there are eight of them,” she added. “Eight reindeer—wanna know their names?” Her father nodded. “Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, and Blitzen. . . . But Dad, maybe you should open the present I brought you.” No reindeer, no sleigh, just a mysterious greenhouse, Rose thought as she watched him untie the ribbon. She almost held her breath when he began to pull at the Scotch tape.
“Interesting. Never seen this before,” he whispered as he peeled off the tape and held it up in the air. Then he opened the paper, and there was the sound of a sharp inhalation of breath. He seemed to go rigid. God, what have I done? Rose thought as she saw the color drain from his face. He picked up the cashmere scarf. “Her!” he exclaimed. “Your mum’s scent.” He buried his face in the soft fabric, just as Rose had when she had pulled the sweater from her closet. Rose put her arm around her dad’s shoulders.
“Yeah, I know. I . . . I felt the same way when I found it.” He looked up at her and smiled. His smile was like a beam of sunshine in this frail dawn. “It had been a sweater of Mom’s, but I repurposed it.” He looked at her closely. “Repurpose—so it would be something you could wear—a muffler around your neck. Something to keep you warm. You told me once it gets very chilly in your workshop in Stoke-on-the-Wold, and I thought this could keep you warm.”
“Triply warm,” he replied with delight. “The muffler, the scent of your mother, and you—the thought of you making this for me and bringing it here.” He gestured at the garden and his hand grazed another smaller shrub of the King’s Fool.
Poor things, she thought. “These flowers look like they’ll never bloom, and here it is almost spring.”
“Nothing wants to grow here anymore.” There was a note in her father’s voice that frightened Rose. It was not so much a statement as a prophecy, a bad omen. She decided to change the subject.
“Did Mom ever bring things to you?”
“Yes, of course—the pictures of you. The ones in the locket and some other things. I mostly had to hide them away for fear of them being found.”
“Did she ever have trouble bringing things from here?”
“I think it took her a while, but she seemed to have mastered both imports and exports.” He smiled.
Good! Rose thought. Now she could talk to him about coming back with her. “Dad, remember when we first met in May, it was at Hampton Court Palace? Not long before young King Edward died.”
“Of course, my dear. A day I shall never forget.”
“Remember how I asked if you could come back with me?”
He nodded solemnly. “And how many times since then have you asked?” He said this very soberly.
“I guess almost every time.” She saw his brow crinkle. Fear began to squirm deep in her stomach. Was he going to say no this time?
“Rose . . .” He began to speak slowly. “One of the reasons I came here was to warn you.”
“Warn me? But how did you know I was here?”
“I know you are stubborn like your mum. Things are getting very dangerous here.” He looked toward the east, where the sun had climbed higher. “Just about now Princess Elizabeth is being brought by barge to the Tower of London.” Rose gasped. It was all becoming true, too true. “The queen has ordered Elizabeth’s arrest as part of the conspiracy in the Wyatt rebellion. They were accused of trying to overthrow the queen because of her possible marriage to Prince Felipe.”
“B-b-b-but . . . b-b-but she had nothing to do with that. Mary’s always been jealous of Elizabeth—her beauty, her . . . her smarts . . .” She saw her father blink at that. “I
mean her intelligence. Why would she do that?”
“Because”—her father’s voice had dropped to a whisper—“she is a vile and desperate woman. She is unhinged. She has sent out warrants for the arrests of several suspected Protestant enclaves, groups that practice their religion secretly. People who own Bibles. It is now a criminal offense to own a Bible.”
“But I don’t go to Protestant prayer meetings, or whatever you call them. Not here. I go to Mass three times a day, as is required. I mean, I just sort of pretend. But the queen will never know the difference.”
“Maybe not. But I’m worried about your friend Franny.”
“Franny! What’s happened to Franny? I miss her so! I haven’t seen her since . . .” She tried to think back. Had it been when young King Edward died? That had been eight months ago.
“Everyone on the princess’s staff at Hatfield is suspect.”
“But she was only a dairy maid.”
“Everyone,” her father said sternly. “She hasn’t been arrested yet, but if a rumor got around that she was in one of these secret groups of heretics or had a Bible, it could be very bad for her.”
But, thought Rose, Franny doesn’t know how to read. Then a second later she remembered. How could she forget that she herself had taught Franny to read? But surely Franny wouldn’t have enough money to purchase a Bible. She paused a moment as a horrid thought came to her. “Will they chop off these people’s heads, like King Henry did to his foes?”
“No. As I said before, the queen will burn them. The stench will spread from these fires. The smoke will cling to the air for days as a reminder to the heretics who do not follow her faith. Queen Mary is just gathering the kindling. Soon the pyres will be built throughout England. Piles of straw will be set around stakes wrapped in oily cloths. When these stakes are touched by a torch, people will burn.”
“Dad, you . . . we have to protect Franny.”
“I shall try my best. You shouldn’t be part of it. It’s simply too dangerous. You must return to Indianapolis as quickly as possible.”
Rose shut her eyes and shook her head. Was she about to have first argument with her dad? At school her friends were always having fights with their parents—over curfews, doing homework, getting piercings. But did her fight have to be on such a historic scale? Was her dad grounding her? Or rather, ungrounding her? He was forcing her to go back to her home century.
“You are not part of this, Rose. You are my only child. You must go back to your own time, your century, your grandmother.”
Rose plunged her hand into a deep pocket of her kirtle and crossed her fingers.
“Sure, Dad.” She had just told her first lie to her father. No way am I going back for good.
When she returned to her room, she saw Sara sitting on her bed, perfectly still, with cold, narrowed eyes. The eyes of a predator. Rose gasped.
“What are you doing here?”
“Might I ask you where have you been?”
“No. I asked you. Why are you here? This is my room. Yours is down the corridor now, or had you forgotten?”
“I heard a crinkling sound when I was here before. It sounded a bit like paper.” Dread flooded through Rose.
“So?”
“So Bibles are made of paper.”
“It was not a Bible. It was a gift.”
“For whom?”
“That is my business and none of yours.”
“Prove it was a gift.”
“I don’t have to prove anything to you, Sara.”
“But you do.” Her voice was laden with threat. “Say the catechism.” The words came out of her thin-lipped mouth like bullets.
“I am not a parrot. I do not have to perform for you. I shall not cheapen God by such mockery. And yes, that is what it is when a vicious little bully like yourself makes such stupid demands. Shame! Shame on you, Sara! Now get out of my room!”
Sara seemed taken aback by this outburst. She got up and walked out as if in a trance.
Rose sank, shaking, onto the bed. Her father was right. The danger was great. Damn! Sara was every bit as evil as the Trio of Doom.
Chapter 22
Migrant in Time
“Hi,” Marisol said as Rose came through the bedroom door. She was still shaking.
Rose glanced at the clock: 9:05 p.m. on Christmas Eve.
There was the ping of a text message. It was Susan.
See you tomorrow. That was fun yesterday!
But then she saw an earlier text message from six minutes ago. It was from an unknown number. Rose felt something curdle in her stomach as she read it.
Feliz Navidad to you and your leetel amigo.
This had the fingerprints, or the claw marks, of the Trio of Doom. But she had blocked their numbers. They must be using someone else’s phone. OMG, thought Rose—bullies all over the place. Just back from that idiot Sara, and now this.
“What’s wrong, Rose? You look like a spirit walked over your grave,” Marisol said.
“Oh, nothing,” Rose said, attempting a smile. “I’m tired. Mind if I go to sleep? Don’t worry, you can leave your light on.”
“I have a favor to ask you,” Marisol said.
“Sure.”
“Could you give me the list of words from Mr. Ross? I’d like to study them.”
“Sure, but on Christmas Eve you want to study the word list?”
“I got a lot of catching up to do, Rose. Many words to learn.”
Rose stood up and printed out the word list. “Want my dictionary too, so you can look them up if you don’t know them?”
“Oh yes, you are so kind, Rose. I never met anybody kinder.” Marisol looked up with such trusting eyes. To think, only minutes before, Rose had been looking into Sara’s cold eyes, that brimmed with suspicion, the eyes of a predator.
Rose got into her bed and pulled up the covers. She watched as Marisol began studying the words, her lips barely moving as she silently sounded them out. There was occasionally the little wispy sound of the thin paper of the dictionary pages being turned as she looked up the meaning of a word.
Marisol had finally closed the dictionary and quickly fallen asleep. But Rose couldn’t sleep at all. She felt once again torn between two worlds, and now three people. Her dad, Rosalinda, and Marisol. If she went back to the sixteenth century for good, it might kill her grandmother. Then again, it might kill her. The episode with Sara had been truly unnerving. And now, since that weird text, she was really worried about Marisol. Undoubtedly the text was from Carrie or Lisa. Probably not Brianna, as they had clearly dumped her. What business was Marisol’s legal status to them? But they would stoop to anything. Look what they did to Joe, she thought—broke his ankle. How would they break Marisol? A broken bone would be easy compared to a detention center. How had she gotten herself into this situation? It was almost too much for her. She began to cry, burying her face in her pillow. “Mom . . . mom . . . ,” she whispered into the pillow. “Why, why did you have to die?” It was all her mom’s fault. And then she cried even harder. How could she have blamed her mom for dying? What kind of a girl does that? In that moment it suddenly struck Rose that she and Marisol shared a curious bond. They were both migrants of sorts. She reached for her diary by her bed. Then she felt for the crack in the headboard where she had wedged the key. This diary was the last birthday present her mother had ever given her before that monstrous date, August 15, when her mom had died in the car crash. She glanced at the clock by her bed. It was almost one o’clock in the morning. Christmas morning—four months, one week, and three days since her mom had died. She had a headlamp that she often wore for reading in bed. She put it on and turned away from Marisol so as not to wake her. Unlocking the diary, she began to write.
Dear Diary—Guess what! I was just thinking about Marisol and suddenly I have this weird, bizarre thought. Marisol and I share something. Marisol is a migrant of place and I am a migrant in time. That is sort of astounding. She’s worried about getting caught and
sent to a detention center, and I worry about being caught and burned at the stake. Dad’s really worried about Franny and me. She’s my best friend in England—England of more than four hundred years ago. I know I’ll have to go back—I have to help them. But not right now. It’s Christmas. But when I do go back, Sara better not get in my way!
She shut the diary, locked it. Then fell sound asleep—at last.
It was the scent of cinnamon that woke her.
“Ooooh!” Marisol said, sitting up in her bed, stretching, and sniffing the air. “¿Qué es esto? . . . I mean, what is this?”
“Shirley. She baked my favorite thing for breakfast—cinnamon sticky buns.”
“Then we must go down to breakfast with alacrity!” Marisol giggled.
“Whoa, you really did learn those words!”
“I need words—lots of words,” Marisol said cryptically. Her eyes hardened with a determined look.
They heard a soft knock.
“It’s me, Betty.”
“Oh, Betty, I nearly forgot.” Rose leaped from her bed.
“Forgot what?” Marisol asked.
“I promised to help Gran get dressed. Because Betty is taking the day off.” She opened the door.
Betty was standing there wearing a colorful puffy beret. It was a patchwork of different colored velvets. Rose had decorated the edges with quarter-inch gold braid trim. She loved the soft hats that so many of the men wore back in the sixteenth century—including her father. They of course didn’t call them hats, but bonnets. Often they had feathers attached and were decorated with jewels as well, if the man was wealthy. Men would never think of wearing such hats now, in her home century, but back then men were much more daring. She had seen Henry VIII only once before he died. But he certainly wore a bonnet with a great deal of style. His were trimmed in ermines and sometimes dripping with pearls—the go-to gem for clothing.
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