The queen seems not to smell it, and as far as I can tell she looks no bigger. If I were that baby, I wouldn’t want to be born. Imagine having your first breath of air filled with the stink of these murders. Yuck! Of course some seem not to mind the stink—such as you-know-who—S, I shall call her. We don’t speak anymore, but I saw her rushing down a long corridor the other day. She has become best friends with the queen’s hairdresser. The odor was quite strong that day, and S stopped and inhaled deeply and said, “I know some people complain about the fires, but I find the fragrance fortifying. Purifying, almost, for our land is being rid of a terrible pestilence.” And all the hairdresser said was “Well, I have a cold today and my nose is all stuffed up. Can’t smell a thing. Not a roasting pig or a roasting human.” Imagine that—the horror!
I think Dad is coming today to deliver the medallions—or so Bettina says. I have to figure out how and where to meet him. Will he be mad? I think I can explain it. And I do hope he’ll have some news about Franny. Must finish this. Due in the queen’s presence room at 11:00. The clock in the court is now chiming the quarter hour.
I do wonder about Marisol and Gran. I know I have only been gone a minute or two in their time, yet I have been here for more than a month. My! The entanglements of time.
“Entanglement”—that was a word on Mr. Ross’s most recent word list. I wonder if I’d get a bonus point for using it in a different century?
Fifteen minutes later, Rose was entering the presence room to show Her Majesty the Queen two possible christening gowns. One if the child was a girl and one if a boy.
Rose was motioned to the front of the room, where Queen Mary reclined on a daybed with her hands calmly folded over her belly—her rather small belly.
She appeared to be dictating a letter to one of her secretaries, who sat at a small desk.
“‘Your Holiness,
“‘I hope this finds you in excellent health. I am sure you will rejoice in the joyous news of the safe delivery of our child. As of’—just put a blank line for the date, Sir Thomas—‘a sweet infant was born at’—just fill in the date, and the hour. And the gender and name.” She turned her head toward her husband, Prince Felipe. “I think it’s a nice detail to put in the hour and even the minute, don’t you think so too, Felipe?”
“Of course, my dear,” the prince answered in a bored voice, and could barely conceal a yawn.
“So, Sir Thomas, just leave that blank, then go on.” She sighed. “Then write, ‘I’m sure you will rejoice and be pleased with God’s infinite goodness in the happy delivery of our son/daughter. Most sincerely, Mary, Queen of England, France, Naples, Jerusalem, and Ireland, Princess of Spain and Sicily, Archduchess of Austria, Duchess of Burgundy, Milan, and Brabant, Countess of Hapsburg, and lawful wife of the most noble and virtuous Prince Felipe by the same Grace of God.’” She paused to take a breath. “Now be sure copies of that are sent to the pope, also to the king of France, the Austrian emperor, and the rest of the lot.” She waved her hand dismissively. At that moment a lady-in-waiting approached and whispered something to the queen. The queen clapped her hands in delight. “Do send her in.”
Rose was signaled by Jane Dormer to step back to make way for the new visitor. The visitor came forth. Or rather waddled forth. It was a ruddy-faced woman the likes of whom had never been in a palace of any kind, let alone the presence room of a queen. She was carrying something in her arms. Jane Dormer now stepped up to the queen.
“Your Majesty, allow me to present Matilda Cooper with her three babies, delivered just two days ago.”
“Mrs. Cooper, do come closer and let me see your precious darlings. I understand that you are of an age close to mine.”
“Yes, ma’am, I mean, Your Majesty.” She gave a small curtsy.
“And look at you, up and about and looking so fine.”
“Well, you know, ma’am, after you’ve had eight children, three more don’t make no difference really.”
“Oh!” Mary’s laughter tinkled pleasantly in the room. “Charming.”
Charming, thought Rose. What is charming about having eight children when one is a peasant and must exist on the smallest amounts of food from whatever little plot they could cultivate? Franny’s parents only ate meat perhaps twice a year.
Rose peeked around the woman’s broad back as she uncovered the triplets for the queen to see. They were robust little creatures. One yawned, one gurgled, and one began howling bloody murder. Then, Jane Dormer signaled that the woman should take them away. Which she immediately did. A great look of relief swept across the mother’s face. By the time she left the room, all three were howling.
Chapter 31
Fire and Ice
April 13, 1555. So Easter has come and gone and no little Easter bunny has shown up. We are now in the third week of April. But you know who else hasn’t shown up? Dad. He was supposed to come last week but it rained constantly and the roads were impassable. Bettina tells me she’s sure he’ll come this week. . . . Thank heaven Easter has passed. The High Masses for Easter go on forever. Especially the one that starts on Saturday, three hours before midnight. My knees are killing me still. But guess who was watching me the whole time. S! Of course. The queen got a special dispensation from the pope to sit this service out because of her delicate condition. She didn’t exactly sit it out, though. An altar on wheels was brought into her apartments. Pays to have friends in high places—like the pope. And be assured I don’t mean God. I don’t think God is exactly Mary’s friend. If he is, I am profoundly disappointed in him. There have been ten more burnings!
There are whispers that Prince Felipe has a crush on Princess Elizabeth, but rumor has it that the princess thinks he’s kind of weird, and besides, she likes Robert Dudley, who is OMG so cute!! Isn’t this sounding more and more like middle school texting? Except it’s not texting. I’m writing this on a piece of ancient rag paper with a goose quill and a kind of ink made from something called iron vitriol and crunched-up oak galls, those big knobby things that grow on tree. Definitely a lot harder than texting!
April 20, 1555. Still no baby, but yes more burnings. I feel that I am living in two different realities here. Imagine a queen who orders people to die, yet at the same time is so excited about the coming birth of her child. But nobody really believes that the baby is coming. “A figment of her imagination,” Jane says. Well, I want to say to the queen, “Imagine what it’s like being tied to a stake, then have bundles of twigs and reeds laid at your feet.” And I was told that often they tie bags of gunpowder between the victim’s knees to ensure that the person was not only burned but blown to bits.
Rose would never have dared to keep such a diary if she had not been living alone in this room. Thankfully, Sara had been moved to another part of the palace. They had not spoken a single word since that night Sara had come into her room and accused her of having a Bible. They didn’t have to work in the wardrobe on the queen’s clothes either, as Sara had been sent to the nursery, where she was now being tutored on the care of an infant by an old nursemaid of the late King Edward. Grammy Nonny, as she was called, was considered an expert in newborns and childhood illnesses—of which Edward had had many.
Rose’s nub of a candle was now burning low. But so disturbed were Rose’s thoughts that she was uncertain she could sleep, and she wondered how long she had been here in England, in the court. She had arrived in early February, and it was now May. But this might only translate to three or four minutes away from her grandmother’s house. She hoped that Marisol was still safe—for three minutes she should be. She wondered about the graftling. It seemed it might have grown a bit, become a little less droopy. Nevertheless, she felt a peculiar unease. She snuffed out the last flicker of the candle stub, got up from her desk, then put on her night hood and climbed into bed. She was not sure what was disturbing her, causing this disquiet.
Despite this unease Rose fell asleep almost instantly. Hours later something blue, bright blue, and pulsing, f
lashed through her dreams, and then a high shrill sound—a siren! She sat straight up in bed. This was crazy. There were no sirens here. Nor were there flashing blue lights. This was an ambulance. But the word was written backward, just as it was on an ambulance, so that drivers could read it in their rearview mirrors.
ECNALUBMA
Her heart seemed to skip a beat, or maybe two. This was not a dream. This was real. This was happening in her home century, at 4605 North Meridian Street, Indianapolis, Indiana 46204. She had to get back! Right now. But sometimes it was harder getting back than leaving. Calm down. You can do this. She shut her eyes tightly. She imagined the greenhouse. Nothing happened. Then the thought of the graftling came to her—fragile and trembling in an odd breeze. She felt something cool against her face. Had she left the window open on this warm June night? And then another sensation, the soft brush of September’s tail!
She was back. Standing with the cat in her arms. The throbbing blue lights of an ambulance swept through the greenhouse. She put September down and ran to the entry hall of their house. Two men, emergency medical technicians, were lifting a stretcher. Rosalinda was on it. Marisol stood as if nailed to the floor with her hands lifted to her mouth, as if muffling a silent scream. Betty was beside the stretcher.
“What happened?” Rose asked.
“Not sure,” Betty answered. “I think it might be just one of her spells.”
“I want to go with her,” Rose said, stepping close to the stretcher.
“Stand back, miss, please,” one of the EMTs said.
“Who are you?” the other asked.
“I’m her granddaughter.”
“Let her come?” Rosalinda said in a breathy voice.
All the way to the hospital, Rose held her gran’s had. They had put an oxygen mask on her and already hooked her up to an intravenous tube.
“Gran, you’re going to be okay. I just know it. I’m here. I won’t leave your side. I promise.” Gran’s lips moved but no sound came out. “Don’t try to talk, Gran. Just save your strength.”
There was the scream of another siren coming.
“Busy night,” one of the EMTs said.
“A call from the park ranger’s office. Some fool fell through the ice on Lake Marian.”
“Who’d be stupid enough to go out on a night like this on that ice? Everything’s thawing.”
In another ambulance a girl lay bundled on a stretcher.
“Any heartbeat?” an EMT woman snapped.
“Not yet.”
“All right, continue chest compressions. I’ll intubate her and start suction.” The woman used a laryngoscope to insert a tube through the girl’s mouth down into her trachea.
“You got foam?” the other EMT asked.
“Sure do. She sucked in a lot of lake water.”
“How long do you think she was under?”
“No idea.”
“Okay, suction finished. I got out about fifty cc’s of fluid. Starting ventilation.” The woman began squeezing the ventilator bag that was hooked up to an oxygen tank. The EMT stopped the chess compressions. He pressed a stethoscope to her chest.
“Got a heartbeat! Very weak.” The EKG monitor showed a very slow heart rate.
“Call in to the ER and tell them what we’re coming in with.”
“Hello, this is Pete coming in with a patient, approximately thirteen-year-old girl, found in Lake Marian. She initially needed CPR but responded to chest compressions, suction, and O2. Continuing ventilation, weak pulse with a heart rate of forty-two.”
The woman lifted the girl’s eyelids and shone the beam of a small penlight into them.
“Any pupil contraction?”
“None.”
“No pupil contraction,” Pete reported.
Was she dead? thought Brianna. She wasn’t sure. But wherever she was, it wasn’t bad. No, not at all. She felt oddly rested and free. She wondered what her parents would think. Did they think? Their perfect little girl had fallen from grace, and now right through the ice. Her mom’s dream wrecked. The career her mother never had but instead foisted onto her daughter. Was it gone? Brianna smiled slightly in her comatose state. And was her parents’ marriage gone too? Her dad had moved out weeks ago. No more International House of Pancakes, no more breakfasts on Sunday where she had to pretend to be happy. International House of Pancakes, refuge for divorced parents granted weekly visitation rights with their children. Children they had hardly known how to speak to in the first place. Done with that. No more. But in the back of Brianna’s almost-dying, gasping brain, she had another thought. She could not quite remember what it was, but it was vital. It had meaning. There was something she had done—something important, of value, not to her but to someone else. She had maybe saved a life of someone? What was it? If only she could recall it, then she might leave in peace. Marisol . . . Marisol . . .
“She’s a remarkable woman, your grandmother,” Dr. Freed said as he tapped the rail at the end of her hospital bed. “The pacemaker is doing the job.”
“The marvels of twenty-first-century medicine,” Gran said. “To think how it was . . . way back when . . .” Careful, Gran, Rose thought. The image of those crazy doctors bleeding Queen Mary was still vivid in her mind. She knew the phantom baby had never shown up.
“I think you can go home tomorrow. And this wonderful granddaughter will be able to get back to school.”
Her gran’s “slight heart attack,” as they referred to it, had happened on a Friday night, and now it was Tuesday. They had told Sam Gold about the ICE men coming to their door. He advised Marisol not to go to school for a few days. He himself planned to go directly to the school and talk with Ms. Fuentes, the principal, about the Mean Queens’ call to the immigration authorities.
Just as the doctor was leaving the room, there was the ping of a text message coming through on Rose’s phone. It was Joe.
You won’t believe this, but the Trio of Doom might truly be a doomed trio—Carrie, Lisa, and that twerp, the one you call Tinker Bell. But you know who is in deeper trouble? Brianna. She’s in a coma at St. Vincent’s Hospital!!!! She broke through the ice the same night your grandmother had her heart attack.
“Whoa!!!” Rose blurted out.
Dr. Freed, who was halfway out the door, turned abruptly. “Something wrong, Rose?”
“Uh . . . I just found out that, uh . . .” Should she say friend? Yes, she should. “That a friend of mine is in a coma here at the hospital.”
“Oh yes, there was a girl who fell through the ice on Lake Marian. I think it was the same night they brought your grandmother in. She’s downstairs in critical care. No visitors except family.”
“Yeah, sure.”
But Rose decided to go down anyhow. She couldn’t stay away.
The intensive care unit rooms all had very large glass walls. There were privacy curtains, but she saw immediately that the one in Brianna’s room had not been drawn. There were three people in the room. One was a doctor who stood at the foot of the bed, a stethoscope around his neck. Then there were two others, a man and a woman, beside the bed. Those two must be Brianna’s parents. They looked frozen in place. There was a network of tubes all connected to one thing—Brianna, who lay very still on the bed, draped in sheets. Half a dozen screens flickered with incomprehensible numbers on machines that Rose figured must be monitoring her breathing rate, her heart rate, and who knew what else. Her brain waves? Rose closed her eyes and swallowed. Poor Brianna. . . .
A doctor came by, trailed by three medical students. “This is a thirteen-year-old girl who fell through the ice while skating. She can’t breathe for herself, so she is on a ventilator. We’re getting some conflicting information about brain activity. She appears totally unresponsive to any stimulus.”
“Consciousness extinct?” a woman student asked.
“Hard to determine at this point. She could very possibly be hearing but unable to respond or signal in any perceivable way.”
Inside
the room, Rose could see that the doctor was addressing Brianna’s parents.
“You know, Mr. and Mrs. Gilbert, it’s just very difficult to tell at this point. We’ll be doing a stimulus assessment later today. There is a distinct possibility that Brianna can hear us but is not able to respond.”
“But if she flunks . . .” Meg Gilbert’s voice reached a desperate pitch.
Flunks, Mom! Jeez, Brianna thought.
“Will that mean—what do they call it? A persistent . . . uh, vegetative state?” Meg Gilbert asked.
Oh boo-hoo, Mom, you’ll have a vegetable instead of a skater!
Brianna was in a peculiar place. A kind of dreamscape. She could hear her parents but really had no desire to respond. She was skating but perhaps not on ice. Clouds? On the crests of waves? A far and distant sea? She decided to try a double axel. Yes, a double axel. What did she have to lose? Her life? Her brain? The sounds of the machines supporting her life melted into beautiful music. Is this heaven? she wondered.
“You’re telling me she’s not there?!” Sara Morton hissed at the two guards, one of whom held a warrant for the arrest of Rose Ashley.
“Not a trace, miss.”
“But I saw her leave her quarters less than ten minutes ago. I saw her shadow slip around the corner. She must be in the laundry now. She was going with some muslin items for the queen’s lying-in.” Sara was furious. “Come with me. She has to be there.”
She stomped off in a rage of indignation. Half a minute later she spied something white on the stone floor. Like a bloodhound on a scent, she bent over and picked it up. “Hah!” she exclaimed, and held up a muslin cloth triumphantly. “Proof! This is a baby diaper! They need to be washed at least twenty times to be soft enough for a baby’s bum.”
From behind a statue Bettina peeked out and quickly began turning somersaults into their path.
“Out of the way, you cursed little ball of . . . of blubber,” Sara screeched. But no sooner had Bettina retreated than Jane pranced out and for the first time in years performed a perfect cartwheel.
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