“What?” Rose said warily. Barely three months ago, on Halloween night, Brianna and the Mean Queens had chased her home after trick-or-treating. Chased her down this very alley and thrown a rock at her. It had barely missed her head, but had crashed into one of the greenhouse windows. September had leaped out at the girls and managed to claw Lisa’s face, leaving an angry-looking scratch.
“Uh . . . ,” Brianna began. “Are we going to stand out here in the rain?” September purred and looked up at Rose. You want me to ask her in, don’t you?
“All right. Come into the greenhouse.”
They entered. Brianna looked around. “This is really beautiful. I feel like I’m in another . . . country, almost.”
“So what did you want to tell me that’s so bad?”
She took a deep breath. “Carrie, Lisa, and that sixth grader Jenny. Well, I kind of knew they were up to something. You know how Carrie gets.”
“I do. Too bad it took you so long to figure it out.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Brianna took a deep breath. “You know how crazy she is about not being on the mathlete team, going on about how it’s not American enough or something.”
“Yeah, or something,” Rose said in disgust, rolling her eyes.
“So I pretended to be friends with them again.”
“Are you sure you were pretending?”
“Yes,” Brianna said fiercely. “I faked it. They had this big plan to rat out Marisol to the immigration people. They wanted me to dial the number and tell them everything. Your address, about your grandmother.”
“You didn’t!”
“I lied. I told them the number was out of order. The first time.”
“The first time?”
“The next time I just dialed some random number and pretended to report it.”
“And what happened?”
“Somehow they figured out that I had dialed some place that wasn’t the real place. Not the immigration office.
“So today after school, Carrie sneaked into the school office and dialed the real number and reported that there was an illegal alien girl living at your address. Carrie didn’t want it traced to her iPhone, which is why she used the school’s phone.”
“What? How did you find this out?”
“Jenny. Jenny is stupid and bribable.”
“What did you bribe her with?”
“A promise that I could get her into the audition for America’s Next Top Tween Model.”
“Oh God, like Mia Ryles! The YouTube creep.” Rose paused a second. “But can you?”
“Of course not.”
“So what does all this mean?”
“It means that those agents from immigration could show up here any minute.”
“OMG, I have to get Marisol!” It was as if Rose’s heart had leaped to her throat. She looked around wildly, then tore out of the greenhouse and up the stairs to her bedroom.
She arrived, panting. “Marisol!”
“Yes?”
“Marisol, things are very dangerous. You have to come with me.”
“Why?”
“They know you’re here. The ICE men.”
“No!”
“Marisol, I can keep you safe.”
“Where?”
“It’s too hard to explain right now. But it’s safe. It’s the safest place you’ll ever be. Cross my heart and hope to die.” She grabbed Marisol’s hand and yanked her.
At the very moment they were at the top of the stairs, the doorbell rang.
“Now, who could that be at this time of night?” Betty said.
Rose froze. She and Marisol were at the top of the staircase, about to come down. They could hear the sound of Rosalinda’s and Betty’s footsteps as Betty helped her to the stair lift. The door opened.
A man’s deep voice was heard. “Sorry to disturb you ladies. I’m Agent Sawacker from Immigration and Customs Enforcement. We understand that you have an illegal immigrant by the name of Marisol Juanita Esteban.”
“What?” her gran’s voice cawed.
“Marisol Juanita Esteban,” the agent repeated.
“I know no one of that name. Not here, not anywhere.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I’m sure. And I’m also sure that I have to urinate very badly and don’t want to wet this pair of diapers that my caretaker just changed an hour ago.” Rose and Marisol looked at each other and almost laughed out loud.
“Oh!” the ICE man said.
“Oh! You say! Well, just you wait, young man, until you’re eighty-eight years old and your bladder is as leaky as an old tin can. Yes indeed, an eighty-eight-year-old bladder is not all fun and games!”
“Sorry to intrude, ma’am.”
“I am too!” Rosalinda huffed.
Marisol breathed a sigh of relief.
“It’s not over yet. Follow me,” Rose said, still holding Marisol’s hand tight in her own. “We’re going down the back stairs to the greenhouse.”
Three minutes later they were standing in front of the damask rose graftling. Rose shut her eyes momentarily and inhaled deeply.
“Okay, Marisol, what I’m about to tell you is going to sound really, really strange.” Marisol nodded. “But there is something very special we share.”
“Our friendship, Rose.”
“Well, yeah, but something else too.” She paused a second. “You see, Marisol, we are both migrants.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Marisol, you are a migrant in place. But I am a migrant in time.”
“What, Rose? You were born here in this country. What does that mean—migrant in time?”
“I was born here, as you say. But my father lives in another time.”
Marisol’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean, another time?”
“You know my mother died last summer in a car crash. She was born here too. If she had lived, she would have been forty-nine. But my father—that’s a different story.”
“What story is that, Rosa?”
“My father was born in the year 1504.”
Marisol shook her head. “That’s impossible! He would be over five hundred years old.”
“But he’s not. See, that’s the strange thing. He’s there. He’s about fifty. He’s fine. More than fine. He’s the goldsmith for the royal court.”
“Royal court?”
“Yes, the English court. Mary, the daughter of Henry the Eighth in England, is now the queen.”
“And you’ve met this five-hundred-year-old father?”
“He’s not five hundred. He’s fifty, and yes, I’ve met him.”
“How?”
“I told you. I’m a time migrant. So were my mother and my grandmother.”
“Rosalinda?” Marisol began muttering softly to herself in Spanish. Then she looked up. “So you go to this place?” Rose nodded. “How?”
“The greenhouse here is a portal.”
“Like a border?”
“Sort of, but not exactly. But I can get you there. I can hide you away. No one will ever find you. No one.”
“Then not even my mother could find me, and I won’t find her there either.”
“But you’ll be safe.”
Marisol looked away from Rose. “No! No, Rose. I won’t go.”
“Please, Marisol.”
“No, I told you, I’m staying here.” And she stomped her foot.
Rose looked at her. She knew that there was no way she could persuade Marisol to go.
Rose sighed. “Okay. You go up to bed.”
Marisol turned and began walking away, then turned and smiled at Rose. “Dios bendiga la vejiga débil de tu abuela.”
“What does that mean?”
“God bless your grandmother’s weak bladder.”
Rose rushed up to Marisol and embraced her.
The night, thought Brianna, is a lonely place when the stars don’t shine. No one was at Lake Marian tonight skating. There were no bonfires, no sledding. But the
ice was still firm. She laced up her skates and glided out onto the lake. She had to think. When Brianna had told Rose the agents were coming, Brianna knew that for herself it meant much more. It meant that for the first time in her life she had done something good—not for herself but for someone else. She had taken a risk. A new kind of risk. Not a double axel skating trick. Not a be-the-most-popular-girl kind of risk, but something entirely different. She felt better than she had in a long time. But she didn’t feel especially happy. She still felt a profound shame for what she had done and been in the past. She took the full blame for Joe’s broken ankle. She didn’t care about medals anymore, or competing someday in the state championships, the Nationals, or the Olympics. That didn’t matter anymore. But still she was so achingly lonely. She felt engulfed in an ocean of loneliness. It washed through her like a rising tide—a tide in which she might drown. But she wasn’t fearful. She felt at peace. And kept whispering to herself, ‘I helped someone. I helped them.’ She tipped her head up toward the drizzling night. No stars. Nothing.
There was a sharp crack from the ice. Her heart seemed to lurch. It was as if the earth had shifted beneath her skate blades.
Was this the end? Her end?
Whatever! she thought. She felt the water beginning to seep into her skates.
Chapter 29
The Scent of Smoke
“They say we’ll be moving to Hampton Court for the confinement,” Jane the Bald said as they rushed along a corridor in Whitehall Palace.
“Confinement? What is that?” Rose asked. A minute before, she had been standing in her grandmother’s greenhouse, begging Marisol to come with her, and now she was here. In that strange way she had of vaguely knowing everything that had happened in her absence, she was quickly catching up. The events were coming into clearer focus.
“Confinement? You don’t know the term?” Jane asked.
“Sort of.” Rose fudged it a bit.
“Well, I suppose in the servant classes pregnant women cannot afford to stay away and not work. But in court, and certainly with princesses and queens, they cannot be seen pregnant as the date of their child’s birth approaches. It is considered immodest. You know, the big belly and all.”
“Queen Mary has no belly as far as I can see. I have not been asked to let out any of her gowns since that ceremony thingamajig.”
Jane unleashed a peal of laughter. “You have such a way with words, Rose. I assume you are referring to the quickening ceremony, to celebrate when the baby first kicked inside her belly.”
“Yes, that’s it.” Rose had never seen such ridiculous goings-on in her life. There were jousting tournaments, a ball, and endless religious services—all in celebration of an unborn baby’s first little kick or punch inside the womb.
“The quickening celebration was almost three months ago, Jane, and I haven’t had to let out a dress of Her Majesty’s since. She doesn’t look any fatter to me.”
“Nor to me either.” Jane slowed her pace and drew Rose into a shadowy corner where the corridor turned into the long gallery that connected with the tennis courts. “Let me tell you,” the queen’s fool whispered. “You are not the only one with doubts. There are even rumors that a substitute baby will be swapped in at the time she is supposed to deliver.”
“April, right near Easter, that’s the time, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve been asked to make some cute baby smocks. You know, spring colors with a few Easter bunnies hopping around.”
“Easter bunnies!” Jane’s eyebrows shot up into that hairless desert of her head.
Uh-oh! Rose thought. She’d done it again. “It’s . . . it’s just a custom from my part of the country. West Ditch near Twickenham, you know.” Rose blamed every modern phrase she accidentally uttered on West Ditch, her supposed home village.
Suddenly she got a whiff of a peculiar smell. Something was burning, but what? It sent a shiver through her. “What is that . . . that smell?”
Jane grasped her hand. “They did it!”
“Did what?”
Jane turned toward Rose. Her face was white as chalk. Her protuberant eye began to throb in a rhythm all its own. She raised her other hand toward her eye and covered it as if to calm it down. As if it had seen too much.
“Did what?” Rose asked in a strangled whisper.
“God rest ye, John Rogers.”
“Who is he?”
“The first heretic to be burned. I didn’t think they would actually do it.”
“But where? How can we smell the fires from here?”
“Smithfield, where the pyres have been built for the heretics, is just two miles north of here. Must be a north wind blowing that brings this horrible smell.”
“Pyres. They will burn more than one?”
“Indeed. I fear eight more are now awaiting their turn for the kindling to be lit.”
“Oh, Jane!” Rose closed her eyes. Her father had warned her! But she had come back. And now was on her way to see the queen with a parcel of the latest smocks she had made for a baby. A baby whose mother had just given the order to set another human being on fire for not believing as she did. No God in any religion on earth would want this. Of this Rose was certain.
Rose and Jane walked on. Before they entered the presence room, they both looked at each other and took a deep breath. If the scent of smoke carried an excruciating message for Rose and Jane, the ladies-in-waiting of the presence room and the queen who sat in an elevated chair in the middle seemed completely immune. They were tending to their needlepoint and giggling as Bettina turned somersaults. Then she began a series of imitations of different animals as the women called out their choices.
“Do the frog, Bettina. We all love the frog.” Rose felt a wave of nausea as she watched Bettina crouch down and begin to spring forward. These people were loathsome. They burned heretics and treated humans like toys. Bettina had achondrogenesis—yes, that was the name for dwarfism. Susan had an aunt who had this condition and had done a report on her for science class.
Rose turned to Jane and said, “I have to go—I’m going to be sick.” She ran from the room.
Racing through the corridor, she managed to find a convenient urn into which to vomit. The smell was relatively sweet compared to the one outside. She then continued to her own quarters and sank down on the bed. “What have I gotten myself into?” She spoke to the air as if expecting an answer. On the small table that served as her desk lay a stack of rag paper. Sir Waldegrave had been very generous in giving her paper for her sketches of clothing designs. There was a sketch on top, a design for a christening gown for this stupid baby—a phantom baby, in Rose’s mind.
She got up and went to the desk, tore up the paper, and looked at the blank one beneath it. She had forgotten yet again to bring her iPhone. Her departure had been too sudden, and she had had many thoughts swirling through her head. She sat down at the desk, picked up a quill, dipped it in an ink pot, and began to write. The scratchy sound of the goose quill was somehow soothing to her. She began with the first thought that came to her mind.
So they burned a man today. I can still smell the smoke. This makes me so worried—dared she write her name? Perhaps just the letter F. When I got back here, I planned to bring Dad back home with me and to make sure that F is safe. I must know that before I leave. I doubt F would come back with me. She is like Marisol in this sense. Her father and mother are here in England, after all, and Marisol’s mom is in America somewhere. F would no more come back with me to America than Marisol would go back to Bolivia. But Dad might be another story. I can only hope. I think I’m going to have to fess up and let Dad know I’m here. I can’t stand telling a lie.
Then there was a rap on the door.
“Yes, who is it?”
“Jane and Bettina.”
“Come in!”
“How are you?” Jane looked anxious.
“Yes,” Bettina said. “I saw you dash out of the presence chamber.”
“I . . . I became ill. But I’m feeling better now.” She discreetly folded the paper and tucked it under a blotter on the desk.
“The queen loved the little gowns and smocks for the baby, especially the ones with the bunny rabbits,” Jane said. “As a matter of fact she immediately took to calling the child Bunny.”
Oh God, I might throw up again, Rose thought.
“We go to Hampton Court soon. Three weeks or so, I believe,” Bettina said. “More things are ordered for the royal birth.”
“More clothes. This is going to be the most well-dressed baby ever. Thelma and I and the others are stitching away.”
“Not just clothes ordered, but some jewelry too,” Bettina said.
“Jewelry—a baby wears jewels?” But then Rose’s mouth dropped open. She knew what Bettina was saying. It was code. This meant her father would be coming to Hampton Court!
“Yes,” Bettina continued. “Many medals to be struck for the attending doctors and something as well for the midwives, and then of course the godparents. And we understand a rather large diamond ring for the father, Prince Felipe. He did what he was supposed to do. Produce an heir.”
“We’ll see.” Jane sneered.
Rose thought her heart might leap out of her chest. Bettina was the only one who knew that Nicholas Oliver was her father. She did not know, though, that Rose was from another time and another place. That secret was one she had to keep. Bettina had proved herself to be a wonderful messenger between Rose and her dad, the royal goldsmith.
“So when do we go to Hampton Court?”
“The baby is due in April near Easter, and the queen’s official confinement begins in a few days. So soon, I would imagine.”
Soon, Rose thought. She would see her father and beg him to leave, to come back with her. She would apologize for defying his wishes. She cringed at the fact that she had lied to him, defied him. But it was for love. He had to understand. He just had to!
Chapter 30
Phantom Baby
The burnings have increased. Eight so far!! And even though we are at Hampton Court, as the queen’s official “confinement” period has begun, if the wind blows the wrong way we can still smell that horrid odor of smoke and ash and burning flesh.
Tangled in Time 2 Page 17
