by Kim Hornsby
After working on the new episode, we were ready for its eight-p.m. upload. Eve had been teasing on social media all day of the investigation of a lonely little ghost of a child and I’d even shot some footage that day saying they’d found the body five feet under and were preparing to hold services for him in a few days. We’d helped a child cross over.
We would know in the morning what our viewers thought of the show when we read their comments over coffee the next morning, one of our favorite pastimes the day after a new episode aired.
I slipped into bed that night, Hodor already prone and snoring, tired from running on the beach with Jimmy and Eve before dinner. I hadn’t been back to the beach recently. Not since the night I saw the women being smuggled. I wanted to go, to time travel again, but the last one had freaked me out. I wanted to talk to Caspian before I found myself heading back in time again. I had questions. And, tonight I realized that some ghosts need to be put to rest in order to go where they are ultimately supposed to go. And that ghosts weren’t meant to hang around in our world. Did Caspian need to be put to rest like the ghost of the child? Was that the kindest thing for me to do for Caspian? I wasn’t sure, but the investigation had opened up a wound of sorts, causing me to wonder if I just needed to find Caspian’s bones and call it a day. Let the poor man go.
I turned off the light in my bedroom out of habit, then I scrunched down in my bed. The pillows had to be in the shape of an upside-down U so when I rolled over during the night, I had a pillow to hug on either side of me. I almost had my pillow configuration perfect when the shape of the pillow came into view. Then the outline of Hodor against the blue quilt. A lamp had been left on, probably on the desk, but I wasn’t interested in that. I was interested that I could see because it meant Caspian was back.
I sat up in bed.
I patted down my wild hair and licked my dry lips in preparation for Caspian. Dang. I’d worn my flannel PJ’s to bed. The ones that are so baggy, I could go camping in the top.
Then I remembered that Caspian was my grandfather times four. I stopped fixing my hair as the room came into view and Caspian walked through the wall near the fireplace. He smiled like seeing me was his greatest joy.
“I’ve been looking for you. How long has it been this time?” he said, crossing the room and sitting on the bed beside me. I realized I was grinning.
Hodor stood to greet Caspian.
“Six days,” I answered.
“I’m sorry,” he said with a sweet smile on his face. A smile of regret.
Why wasn’t my dog barking? He didn’t know this stranger who’d just walked through my bedroom wall. Not really. We’d spent a day together, before Caspian disappeared last time, but that was all. A day of watching our two pets dance around each other with a lot of sniffing on Hodor’s part, and hackles on the cat’s part.
Caspian took my hand, his thumb rubbing the back of my hand and I wondered if now was a good time to mention I knew we were related by blood. Now that my heart rate was headed for the triple digits.
“Since you left last time, I’ve traveled back to the time when Stevens lived in this house.”
Caspian looked genuinely shocked and his thumb stopped, and he gripped my hand firmly. “And?”
“And, I look like Rachel. Not my mother Rachel, but the one you were in love with in the 1850’s.” I watched his face for signs of disappointment but saw nothing. He was good at remaining stoic and I wondered if Caspian played poker. “As Rachel, I attended the Summer Ball with my mother. I slipped away to meet you in the library and…” I wasn’t sure how to say this next part. My mouth was dry, and my face felt flushed. Should I even tell Caspian that I knew all this or play dumb and just continue with him as the object of my affections? I wanted to forget that I might be related to Caspian, but it was the 4-ton elephant in the room. At least for me. “…and I know she carried your child.”
Caspian let go of my hand.
I continued, no matter how much the words cut me. “I’m a descendant of Rachel Primrose.” I waited and watched his face. His lips twitched once, he took a deep breath and then he stood.
Caspian walked to the far end of my expansive bedroom, leaned over to put another log on the fire in the fireplace. I slipped out of bed and threw the blanket from the bottom of the bed around my shoulders.
Caspian was down on his haunches in front of the fire with a tool rearranging the burning wood. I moved in beside him and stared at his glassy eyes. Had he teared up or had the fire made his eyes water?
“We need to talk about this.” I touched his shoulder.
He set the tool down and pulled me up to stand, us facing each other. “I love you, Bryndle. That won’t change. Ever.”
I stepped into him and let myself be enveloped by his embrace. Was this a goodbye? It sounded like it. “Don’t leave me, Caspian.” I looked into his eyes and his hands moved to cup my face.
“I won’t. Not willfully.” He kissed me tenderly and I enjoyed the kiss. In that moment I didn’t think that Caspian was related to me, I only remembered that I loved this man with everything I had and if we couldn’t be together in this century as lovers, I’d accept that. What I wouldn’t accept was being without him.
When Hodor jumped off the bed to greet Moonraker who was now cautiously walking through the same wall, Caspian had just come through, the cat provided the distraction we probably both needed.
Caspian and I moved to sit on the love seat in front of the fire. There was barely room for both of us, Caspian being a large man and me having a healthy-sized booty.
“I traveled back to the night we saw Chinese women being loaded into boats on the beach.”
His body tensed and his jawline clenched in anger. “You traveled twice since I left then.” This was a statement.
“I was trying to find you, call you back, and was down on the beach,” I said. “The first time was an accident. I just appeared, walking into Cove House the night of the Summer Ball. The second time, I tried to call to you on the beach and slipped into that night we were hiding, watching the ships take the slaves.”
“I remember the night well.”
It was strange and freaky and hard to comprehend that Caspian, who’d been absent as if he’d merely been away on a business trip, came back to remember something that happened to me. “You remember us standing behind the rocks talking about how Stevens was smuggling?”
“I do, although it happened over a hundred and seventy years ago. You wore a dress of grey that night. We spoke in the house earlier, then met on the beach when everyone retired for the night, then activity in the bay caught our attention and we were trapped watching.”
“I just experienced it only a few days ago.” Time traveling was almost incomprehensible.
“Nonetheless, I remember it happening and have had this memory since it happened.”
We stared at each other, both trying to understand the nuances of time traveling. “Did I change anything by traveling to that night? Do you remember Rachel being there with you and then it was me acting differently?”
Caspian shook his head slightly. “It was whoever it was. She looked like you. I called her Rachel.”
If that was true, did he remember having intimate relations with me in the library or had it been Rachel? Did I just have Rachel’s memories? The answer might devastate me. Before I could ask, he sensed the question and I had my answer.
“I don’t know the difference between you and Rachel. I’m sorry.”
I felt pangs of jealousy to think that he’d been amorous with someone else, even if she looked like me and was my great-great-great-great-grandmother. The concept of time travel and alternate dimensions were making my brain hurt and although I wanted to drop the subject, at least for tonight, there was one thing I needed to know. “Did you think that Rachel had suddenly changed when I met you in the library?”
Caspian tilted his head to stare at me with squinted eyes as though he was assessing me. “You worry that my love
for Rachel is stronger than my love for you?”
“I’m worried that you think I’m Rachel,” I said, fidgeting with the edge of my pajama pocket. “Did you know you were with someone other than Rachel that night?”
“No, I thought it was Rachel. If you were there instead of Rachel, you seemed just like her.”
I was so confused, I felt like my brain had taken in more than enough information and thought-provoking doo-doo that I couldn’t take in anymore. I needed to process what Caspian told me and what I’d learned. I took his hand in my two and squeezed. “It’s hard to process,” I said.
Caspian put his arm around my shoulders, and I settled in against his side, my grip on his hand more desperate than I wanted. We stared into the fire and I told him what I’d learned from Joan Hightower that day.
We talked about shipping and smuggling and Caspian’s hatred for the men who took advantage of people by trafficking lives.
“Watching the innocent women and girls being loaded into boats for San Francisco, I vowed to put an end to Stevens’ shipping business.”
“And did you?” I asked.
“From what I’ve been told, Stevens went to prison, but I died before I saw the fruits of my labors,” Caspian said sadly.
And before he met his child, my great-great-great-grandmother.
Chapter 11
I woke cold and alone on the love seat, now covered with a blanket, my head on a pillow. I was blind again.
I sat up with a fright.
“Caspian?” I knew the answer to my question before silence revealed I was alone. Caspian wasn’t roaming the halls waiting for me to wake. He was gone again.
I’d intended to stay awake all night, to stay awake forever so he wouldn’t leave but sleep had claimed me. Had Caspian slipped away because I fell asleep or had I fallen asleep and eventually Caspian slipped away unwillingly, my need for him no longer there? I knew he didn’t ever intend to leave me. He’d told me that.
I felt around to discover Hodor lying beside the love seat. The fire was out, and I didn’t hear any morning birds which either meant I’d slept through the birds or it was still too early. I stood, wrapping the blanket around myself and walked to the nightstand where my hands landed on my phone.
“The time is 5:04.” The automated voice said.
I slipped into my cold bed, the covers having been left open from when I’d joined Caspian at the fire. I burrowed down under the quilts, with Hodor eventually settling against my legs. My pillows were still arranged in the formation I’d been working on when Caspian showed up the night before and I lay there thinking about Caspian and what we’d talked about. I’d fallen asleep burrowed into his side, feeling safe and loved, and ignoring the elephant that was still in the room. At the very least, it was Rachel he loved, not me.
Although I might not have needed more sleep, I decided to stay in bed for another few hours and wait for daylight before I traipsed downstairs to make coffee. I closed my eyes, took a few deep breaths and fell back asleep thinking about Caspian and trying to see this situation from his perspective.
The next thing I knew, I was opening the door to a room in Cove House. I stepped into the mural room to see Caspian lying on top of the bed sideways, passed out, blood oozing from a wound in his left shoulder. I ran to him to see if he was dead, but he appeared to be breathing.
A servant entered the room with supplies in her arms, followed by a man with a pitcher and bowl. “Madame Cortez would be most appreciative if you would do anything you can to help her husband,” the man said without emotion.
The young woman with the dressings handed me a wad of white cotton and I pulled Caspian’s clothing back to reveal the wound. “I need something to cut the clothing from him,” I said, stopping myself from asking for scissors in case they hadn’t been invented yet.
She handed me a pair of scissors and I cut away from the area, exposing the source of the blood. I applied pressure to the wound while the male servant set down the water and bowl. “Do we know how he was hurt?”
The woman looked to the bloody mural, drips running down the wall, a dagger on the floor. “I suspect from that,” she said.
It didn’t look rusty.
The man left quickly, glancing back once to Caspian, his lips bit together. I worked with the woman to remove Caspian’s clothes once the wound was cleaned and dressed, and when I believed the bleeding had stopped, I dismissed her and finally sat in the chair near the bed, my hair hanging in messy curls, blood on my dress.
It was then I noticed the room was lit by a lantern and the paint on the mural looked much brighter than in 2019.
I didn’t need a Ph.D. in deciphering clues to realize that as Rachel, I’d fallen into the time when Caspian was recuperating from being stabbed by his wife.
He lay quietly on the bed, his eyes closed, his shoulders bare, the sheets pulled up to his chest, his muscled arms outside the covers. Just below his left shoulder area was a bandage too close to the heart for my comfort. I already knew he came through this injury with the help of my nursing skills because he went on to be at the Summer Ball, whole and healthy. But what if I botched it up and changed history?
Caspian’s eyelids fluttered and opened. Focusing on me, he squinted and forced a few words through chapped lips. “Will I live?”
I wasn’t sure. “I’m sure you will,” I said, hoping I was right.
“Why look at me so?” he said, his voice low and forced.
“To determine your pain level.” I realized too late that pain level was a new expression, but he seemed to know what I was talking about.
“Tolerable. I need to get back to my ship. Has anyone from my crew come ashore to inquire of my whereabouts?”
“I don’t know, I’m sorry.” Pleading ignorance was going to get old fast if I stuck around for any amount of time. I knew nothing about what was going on with Caspian. Right around when I was wishing a big timeline would flash on the wall, Caspian gave me a clue.
“What did you say your name was?”
“Bryndle,” I said before thinking. “But… but… my given name is Rachel.”
“Well then, Rachel, if you’ve been assigned to watch me, I’ll assume you’re a servant of Stevens and loyal to him.” Caspian shifted slightly and winced. “Please fetch him. I wish to tell him what his beloved cousin has done to me.” His face twisted with pain.
I wondered what I could do for him without meds. How did they get through an injury like this in the old-timey days? First, I wanted to set the record straight because if there was one thing I knew, it was that I was no servant.
“I’m not a servant, nor am I loyal to Stevens. I… I… happened to be in the house when you were injured, and I offered to help.” I wasn’t exactly sure this was the truth, but Caspian wouldn’t know.
He gave a slight nod and closed his eyes. “I thank you for that. Still, I need to get word to my crew that I’ve had an attempt on…”
He either fell asleep or passed out before he could finish his sentence, but I knew what he needed. The people he trusted needed to know he was injured in this room. I sat down again wondering how to do that. Phoning was my first thought, then I realized that was ridiculous. Going to the beach to flag the ship, assuming it was anchored in the bay, was my next idea but I didn’t want to leave him. Not until I knew he was out of the woods.
Hours later, my decision was made for me when I heard shouting outside the room. I opened the door and realized that the spirited conversation was coming from downstairs in the foyer. Staring over the banister, I saw the same man who accompanied Caspian and me in the Isabella’s dinghy that night I saved him from drowning. What had they called him? Ten teeth or something. He had an eye patch and if I wasn’t mistaken, wore the exact same clothes as he would wear on the night Caspian died.
“Where is he? I tell ya, if you’ve done something to the Captain, we’ll storm the house!”
Stevens stood in a long bathrobe along with a servant holding a lante
rn trying to keep Ten Tooth from entering the house.
“He drank too much and is asleep upstairs,” Stevens said. “I’m sure he wouldn’t appreciate being woken so early. Now leave my premises.” Several rough-looking men came forward, passed Stevens and headed out the door, tackling Ten Tooth. Stevens opened the door wide and I could see the dust up outside, the sailor yelling about wanting to see the Captain.
It was then I noticed in the shadows on the far side of the second floor, Jacqueline stood watching the commotion. She looked up and our eyes met across the expanse. I couldn’t read her expression from this far away but knowing she was the one who’d stabbed Caspian, I turned and went back to his room. She wouldn’t have another go at it as long as I was around.
When Caspian woke hours later, I was peeking at the wound under the bandage. It looked clean and I knew I had to keep infection from taking hold to give Caspian every chance at pulling through this injury. Did Rachel have nursing skills? Because I did not. I wondered if it would be better that the real Rachel take over now.
I changed the bandage again, after washing the wound with what I hoped was boiled water and shortly after my patient fell back asleep, there was a light knock at the door. I opened the door to the female servant with a breakfast tray.
“Food for both of you,” the young woman said, kindly. I opened the door wider and saw she was alone. She set the tray on a table and turned off the lantern now that it was day. “Is there anything else you’ll be needing?”
“Yes, if you don’t mind. Can you boil fresh water and bring it to me?” I gestured to the bowl of bloody water. “And do you know anything about keeping a wound clean besides water?” I stared hard at her for information.
The servant shook her head, then looked to Caspian in bed.
“Do you know who did this to him?”
She appeared panicked, her eyes wide.
“I’ll keep it a secret if you want to tell me.”
