Almo keeps talking, as usual. “Funny old world, isn’t it? If Marcus Larsen exists, your mother falls in love. If Marcus Larsen exists, your sister doesn’t. All your friends had to do, to erase your sister, was walk into one coffeehouse and stop a murder. Not Marcus Larsen’s, but his ancestor.”
“You’re telling me how I can get my sister back,” Prudence says. Where’s the trap? There has to be one somewhere, she thinks.
“No, I’m really not. I’m telling you why you’re not going to. Not without my help. And for that”—he smiles, spreads his arms—“you need my forgiveness.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: Which Shall Serve as an Introduction to Charles King
1780
“The weapons,” Alice gasps, as the mare snorts and stamps. “That’s what my father regretted. Not taking more care with the weapons.”
“But it might have been anyone, anytime,” Jane says. “Thousands of muskets, they said.”
Alice nods. “He thought it was him. Or he wondered—” She stops, looks around. They’re not in Hampshire, or at least not any part of Hampshire she knows. They’re in a town or city, on a beaten dirt street, with the screams of gulls in the air and the masts of ships bobbing in the spaces between buildings.
“Jane?”
“Yes, beloved?”
“Where are we?”
“New York City. May 19, 1780. We’ve gone ahead a few more days.”
“New York City.”
“When you left me behind that boulder—”
“I’m sorry, but—”
“I overheard some of the soldiers talking about a man named Charles King, who was carrying letters to New York. To the Merchants, they said. I remembered seeing the Merchants Coffeehouse on one of your father’s maps. Wall Street, near the bottom tip of Manhattan, not far from the Battery. And look: there it is.”
Jane’s arm stretches out ahead of them, her finger pointing to a square building with a large sign over the door declaring it the MERCHANTS COFFEEHOUSE.
“And why do we care about this man and his letters? Is this to do with Father somehow?”
“I don’t think so. But these men seemed to think the letters, perhaps the bag they’re in, might be contaminated with smallpox. If we stop this man from going into the coffeehouse, and burn the letters, we might save some lives.”
Alice breathes heavily, and the mare’s ears flick back. Save which lives? Prudence would ask the question, and ask what the consequences would be. Will more people suffer, later, because of a life they save here today?
“I would like to do something good,” Jane says, frustration in her voice. “I’d like to have some effect on something, even if it is only one life, or two, or three. I can’t stand this constant . . . calculating, that comes with the time-wheel as Prudence would have us use it. We achieved nothing in Charleston, but we did learn one thing that might be of use to someone. I won’t be a coward anymore.”
Alice nods slowly. “All right, Angel of Mercy. Let us see what we can do here.”
They tie the mare to a hitching stone, little more than a rough block with an iron ring set into one side. The horse seems almost calm, despite having gone through two shimmers in the last few minutes. A remarkable horse, mottled in black and white.
“I’ll call her Magpie,” Alice says. “My black-and-white horse who loves shimmers.”
Jane makes a face. “You are taking her home, then?”
“I don’t see why not. Havoc and Thunder could stand a little change, lest they become grumpy old men.”
The blasted dragoon helmet is getting heavy, and Alice doubts it adds much to her disguise in any event. She takes it off. Across the inside of the dragoon helmet, a bit of leather stretches, a kind of handle. She runs the horse’s rope through it.
Alice and Jane walk along Queen Street, toward the bobbing masts.
At first she feels self-conscious in her incomplete and imperfect soldier’s uniform, but no one seems to bat an eye as she walks with Jane’s arm in hers. In fact, she probably would have stood out more in the taffeta print she’d been wearing before they left, the bright peonies on yellow. Most of the women are wearing very plain cloth, solid whites and blues, plainer even than Jane’s pink-and-white stripes. And of course, the women here are wearing the fashions of nine years ago, and an ocean away: long bodices or stomachers and short sleeves. Most of the skirts hang dismally beneath plain sashes or aprons, but an old lady of means sashays along in wide panniers.
They stand for a moment and look at the ships in the harbour. There are more than the three they saw from a distance, and all of them crawling with men loading, unloading, lounging, gossiping.
“Which one is his, I wonder?” Jane murmurs.
Alice shakes her head. “We could ask at each one, but we might easily miss him that way. We might have already missed him. What time is it?”
“Eight o’clock, if the time-wheel steered aright.”
“Let’s inquire at the Merchants. If he’s already been and gone, we know we have to shimmer earlier. If he hasn’t come yet, we know we’ll meet him there. We’ll stop him at the door and urge him to quarantine his ship.”
“And if that doesn’t work?”
Alice cocks her head. “As Prudence would say, then it’s plan B. Whatever that may be.”
Inside the ground floor of the Merchants Coffeehouse, their eyes adjust to the dim and din, to the smells of cooked meat and old coffee. There’s a staircase at one corner, with men in very plain waistcoats and powdered hair hurrying up and down it, and lining each wall, booths made of dark, smooth wood, each one with a green curtain to close it off from the rest of the room.
At one end, a woman stands, quite evidently holding court by the way she stands and surveys. She sends a young man scurrying with a tray of steaming cups.
“We should pay for something, I suppose,” Alice says, putting her hand into the pocket that isn’t weighed down by the time-wheel. She pulls out two coins. “Just my damned luck. I’ve got a shilling and sixpence but they’re both 1787. They’ll think I’m a counterfeiter, and not a bright one. What have you got, Jane?”
“I’ve a ’58 shilling. You’re sure they’ll take English money here?”
“Those are English uniforms, unless I’ve been much deceived,” Alice says, glancing at a knot of red-coated soldiers lounging against one wall and drinking something more spirited than coffee. “And no one has run a bayonet through me and my red coat yet. Come to think of it, though, best if you do the talking. I’ll hang back.”
“Good afternoon, madam,” says the woman as Jane approaches. “I don’t believe we’ve met before.”
“I’m Jane Hodgson,” says Jane primly. It probably didn’t occur to her to lie, or even to playact. If it had been up to Alice, they would have introduced themselves as . . . hmm, perhaps Cordelia Higgenbottom and Aloysia Spragg. Probably best it was up to Jane.
“If you’ve come from New Jersey,” says the woman, stepping in closer, “you may be interested to know that the Chamber of Commerce is meeting upstairs as we speak.”
Alice frowns. It’s almost incomprehensible enough to be some sort of password, but she has the feeling it’s meant in earnest.
“I can assure you I have not come from New Jersey,” Jane says.
The woman makes a placating face and steps back again. “Fair enough.”
“I have a meeting arranged with Charles King,” Jane says. “Do you know if he’s arrived yet in New York? I understood he would come straight here.”
The landlady narrows her eyes. “Everyone of quality always does. Mr. King has not yet arrived, no, but I am expecting him today. The weather’s been fair enough. You may wait for him here, if you like.”
“That will serve very well,” Jane says. “In the meantime, may we take one of those booths? And a plate of something?”
She gestures at Alice, who seems to be engaged in a game of scowls and appraising glances with another redcoat.
“It’s s
ixpence each for a plate of cold tongue, cold ham, hot rolls and hot coffee,” says the landlady. “You can take that booth nearest the door, and you’ll be the first to see the man when he comes.”
“Very kind of you,” says Jane, paying her the shilling. “I have not met Mr. King in person before. I don’t suppose you could tell me—”
The landlady holds her sides and chuckles. “I hardly know how to prepare you. He’s . . . Well now. A bit of a macaroni, I suppose you’d say. Decked out in all the colours of the rainbow, likely. Quite the sight. I don’t think you’ll miss him.”
“I’m in your debt, madam.”
They sit on one side of the booth in the quietest part of the hall.
“What do you think counts as a macaroni, here?” Alice asks, looking around at the men in the room, who are either in well-worn uniforms or in dowdy browns.
“I suppose we’ll find out,” Jane says.
The tongue is boiled, served in cold pale slices with a bit of pepper, and the rolls are fresh and hot. The coffee is bitter and muddy, but certainly stimulating. Alice and Jane are the only women other than the landlady.
“Did your father never speak of the explosion?”
Alice looks down at her plate. “He hardly spoke of the war at all. Not to me.”
She remembers that grey morning, waiting for him to come home. Standing with Jane in the hall, holding her hand, waiting. And the door banging, and Father coming in. Alice dropping Jane’s hand, suddenly terrified that the change that had come over her and Jane in her Father’s absence would be obvious. She had never cared about the servants. Let the servants think what they would. But Father. Father could always read her face.
But he seemed to barely see either of them.
“Do you remember,” Alice says, taking Jane’s hand under the table, “a few days after he came home, that garden party in Winchester for all of the men who’d come home in His Majesty’s service?”
“I do. The men were all so quiet. Demoralized at the outcome of the war, I thought. That poor man with the wooden leg who seemed as nervous as a mouse. And the Colonel—”
“And Father, yes.”
Overhead, a stomp of feet and creak of floorboards. The Chamber of Commerce meeting sounds boisterous.
They both sit in silence, remembering the argument Colonel Payne had with a fellow officer. It had to do with some soldier who’d been promoted despite not having the seniority or experience that Colonel Payne thought appropriate. Alice had taken her father home, red-faced, stinking of spirits, his vituperation spent, his hands quivering.
It was that week when Alice had determined to do what she must to make their home safe for herself, for Jane, and yes, even for Father himself. She’d keep the gossips and the debtors at bay, and find a way to repair the roof, and step between Father and whichever member of the household he was vilifying. Father tried to keep up their social status, inviting the local men for hunting parties and dinners, while Alice put off the ones she could and tried to make sure there were guns and dogs and fowl when she could not.
“Ah,” says Jane, gazing out the murky window. “That must be our Captain King. Let’s stop him at the door.”
Charles King is as bright and lithe as a flower, his pale green breeches leaving little to the imagination, rising to a close-fitting magenta waistcoat, buttoned high to a bunch of lace at his throat. Even his sage silk coat is tailored slim. He wears a high periwig as white as his skin, and has a chapeau bras under his arm. The only sign that he’s a sailor is in his wide stance, nothing like the crossed ankles that should go along with silk stockings and buckled shoes of such magnificence.
Behind him stands a small, stout white man dressed in the more typical American colours, holding a large two-sided bag.
Alice and Jane leap to their feet and to his side. Jane bobs a short curtsy and Alice nods her head.
“Good afternoon, madam, and sir,” says King, with hardly a hesitation after looking Alice up and down. “May I be of some assistance?”
“Captain Charles King, I believe?” Jane asks.
His expression turns suspicious. “Zounds, has someone sent you?” His voice drops low. “Have you come from New Jersey?”
Alice scowls. One day, she’ll need to learn what’s behind this fascination with New Jersey.
“You’ve just sailed from Charleston,” Alice supplies. “With letters from the officers there.”
He raises an eyebrow. “You seem to know more about my manifest than I do, sir.”
“We know something you do not,” says Jane. “We know that the mailbag was in the possession of a man who is now under quarantine for smallpox. Do you have any crew members ill?”
He steps back, frowns. “I—my crew has all had that distemper long ago, or been inoculated. We do not carry the bloody pox, and I will not be quarantined.”
“Please, sir,” says Jane, putting her hand on King’s arm. “We don’t ask for the ship to be quarantined. Only that you burn those letters.”
He glances back at the bag in his servant’s hands. “I’m not a man who can afford to make more enemies, madam. I’ve sworn to deliver those letters to the Merchants, and here I am. If you’ll be so kind as to step aside.”
He tries to step between them, but Alice steps in, cuts him off.
He puts his hand to the ridiculously ornate sword at his waist. “I warn you. It has been three weeks since I last drank a decent cup of coffee. And I would not scruple to duel a man in uniform.”
Alice is almost beyond caring. There are so many scraps of cloth and bits of humanity carrying smallpox from one end of this continent to the other. Who can say whether this mailbag will make anyone sick? But Jane’s face has its familiar look of quiet determination about it, her lips bunched and her brows lowered, just as when she’s trying to work out some obscure experiment that no one will write about in any journal and no one will ask about in any salon.
Alice swallows. “Captain King, I propose a solution. My companion here will swear that she saw someone steal the mailbag from your servant in the street, here and now. Surely no one will blame you. And I will pay you for your trouble.”
“Well,” says the captain, his expression softening. “It certainly has been a great deal of trouble . . .” He looks up, past them, toward the sea. “What in God’s name?”
The sky is darkening, as if it’s about to rain, but the air does not feel damp.
“A storm approaching,” says Jane.
He shakes his head. “There’s no storm. Was no storm, at least. But look at those clouds now. As thick as apple cider, and the same colour too. And it’s not yet noon.”
He puts a hand to his smooth chin.
It’s as dark as twilight now. Children come out into the street and women point at the sky. A bearded man, ragged in his clothing, comes running through the street, yelling, “The time is at hand!”
Darkness is an inadequate word for the oppressive blanket that seems to choke the air. A dog whimpers and scurries, and Alice looks up the street to see how Magpie is faring, but she can’t tell from this distance, and in this darkness. A night without stars, a day without sun. Alice shivers, despite her father’s heavy coat.
“Something’s not right,” Alice says, pulling Jane aside.
“A storm,” Jane says, her face uncertain.
Charles King and his servant have walked a few yards away from them, toward the sea, to get a better look at the open sky. It’s nearly as dark as night now, and a dog bays not far away.
“Let’s shimmer away from here,” Alice whispers. “Take this bag out to an island and burn it, and then go home.”
“I suppose we can always leave a guinea for Captain King later. All right.”
Jane sets the time-wheel, while Alice gingerly grasps the mailbag.
“Beloved, now,” Alice whispers.
“Yes, I’m trying.”
“Now!” Alice whispers, hoarsely, as the sailor turns back to look at them.
�
��It won’t work! I can’t make it work. I can’t shimmer.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: The Black Spot
2145
“When Arthur of Brittany made his miraculous escape from the castle at Rouen,” Almo says, “at first we thought the Misguideds had opened a new front, but it didn’t seem like their style. White princeling in the thirteenth century? Nah. This stank like a Farmer dark mission, but the thing is, Prudence, there are no missions so dark that I don’t know about them.”
“You want me to confess? I confess.”
He grins. “No need, Prudence. I’ve already caught you. We had the historians take a look at other places that showed some evidence of possible rogue activity. You know the kind of thing: the Mary Celeste, the Babushka Lady, Monsieur Chouchani, Gil Pérez . . . A mysterious appearance or disappearance that wasn’t one of our own, or wasn’t one we knew to be Misguided activity. At each of these places, we laid a trap. Something that would bring the time travellers to a moment where they could save the life of one of Marcus Larsen’s ancestors. And the moment they did—”
Almo claps his right hand over his left, palm-to-palm, like the jaws of an alligator. Prudence flinches.
“What the hell have you done,” she says, more threat than question.
“They’re fine. They’re alive. We thought it would be you, you see. But we got your acolytes, and that’s fine too. They’ve allowed us to demonstrate one of our newest technologies. Want to see?”
Either the question is rhetorical or he takes her side-eye as consent. He types a command on the top of his desk and a 3-D image of planet Earth appears above it.
“Interactive light software,” he says. “Watch: it changes pretty quickly. This is already Stone Age. Actual satellites, so it’s accurate.”
This Earth is cloudless, so she can see the edges of the landmasses shifting. Once in a while, there’s a big change in the shape of a coastline, and grey masses appear, more and more. Cities.
“It’s showing the timeline. From when to when?” She can’t help it; she’s curious.
“Depends. You can change the settings.”
Alice Payne Rides Page 8
