by Frewin Jones
“Do you think I gave Gabriel an opening?” she asked quietly. “I’ve been frightened to death every time I’ve gone to sleep since it happened, but I haven’t dreamed about him again.”
“I think you opened the door to him just a crack,” Edric said. “But you beat him in the end; you slammed it right in his face. That’s a good thing.”
“I escaped by the skin of my teeth, you mean,” Tania said with a wry smile. “Next time I might not be so lucky.”
“Then we need to make sure there isn’t a next time,” Edric said. “We’re in this together. We’ll keep you safe from Drake, and we’ll find the Queen.”
She smiled and rested her head on his shoulder. “And you really don’t mind that I’m going to Florida for a fortnight?”
He shook his head. “It’ll do you good to get away for a while.”
“We’ll start searching for Titania again the moment I get back. We’ll have her address and telephone number within a week.”
“Is that a promise?”
“You bet it is,” she said, lifting another forkful to her mouth. For some reason that casually spoken sentence flashed in her head like a neon sign. We’ll have her address and telephone number within a week.
Suddenly a thought struck her and she sat bolt upright, staring into the distance. “There’s something we’ve totally forgotten,” she said breathlessly. “Titania sent me the Soul Book, didn’t she?”
“Yes, I think we can assume she did.”
“So she knows my address.”
Edric’s eyes widened. “So why hasn’t she just knocked on your front door and asked to see you?”
“Exactly!” Tania said. “She’s been keeping track of me for the past five hundred years, she sends me my Soul Book as a sixteenth-birthday present, and then? Nothing! How weird is that?”
“There has to be a reason,” Edric said. “While you were in hospital, did anyone call at your house? Anyone your parents didn’t know?”
Tania shrugged. “They never mentioned it.”
“Did you ask them?”
“Well, no….”
“Perhaps you should.”
Tania looked at him. “Yes. Perhaps I should.”
They had a full dress-rehearsal run-through of the play after school that day. Everyone was twitchy. The nurse forgot her lines. Mercutio tripped over his sword, and part of the scenery fell over onto one of the actors.
Apart from that—and apart from the fact that Tania was anxious for the rehearsal to be over so she could go home and ask her parents the vital question—everything went fine.
She phoned home to let her dad know he didn’t need to pick her up; the mother of the boy playing Tybalt had offered her a lift to her door.
She dumped her bag in the hall and went through into the living room. Her parents were watching the news on television.
“How was the dress rehearsal?” her father asked.
“So-so,” Tania said. “Mrs. Wiseman practically had a coronary when a piece of the trellis nearly flattened Peter Cray, but apart from that it was okay.”
She perched on the arm of the couch. “I was wondering,” she said. “Did anyone come to the house asking about me when…when I wasn’t here?”
Her mother raised her eyebrows. “You mean apart from the police and friends and neighbors?” she said. “No, not that I can remember.”
“There was that odd thing with the posh car,” Tania’s father said, his attention still mostly on the news.
“What odd thing?” Tania asked, keeping her voice calm despite her excitement. “What posh car?”
Her father tore his eyes away from the screen. “It was a black Lexus with tinted windows,” he told her. “It came here the night after your birthday. Your mother was upstairs, lying down. Betty Howe had popped in from next door. She answered the door, actually. I had a quick look out of the window, just to see who it was. The chap who rang the bell looked like some kind of chauffeur—you know, gray uniform, peaked cap. He had a few words with Betty then went back to the car. There was someone in the back, because he tapped on the window and someone from inside opened it.”
“Did you see who was inside?” Tania said.
“Not really; it was too far away.”
“Do you know what they wanted?” Tania asked.
“Betty said the driver asked if you were here. ‘Is Miss Anita Palmer at home?’ he said, very formal, apparently. Betty told him that you’d gone missing the day before and no one knew where you were. And that was that.”
“And the car never came back?” Tania asked.
“Not as far as I know,” her father replied. “Do you know who it was, then?”
Tania shook her head. “Not a clue.”
“So why the sudden interest?”
“No reason,” Tania said, bounding off the couch. “I’m starving.”
“Cannelloni in the fridge,” her mother called after her as she headed for the kitchen. “Two minutes in the microwave will be enough.”
“Thanks,” Tania called back as she scooped up her bag and ran into the kitchen. But she wasn’t thinking of food. Someone in a really expensive car—someone with a chauffeur—had called on her the day after her sixteenth birthday.
The waitress in Richmond had said that the woman with the red hair and green eyes was wearing a designer business suit. Was the owner of the Lexus the same person who had ordered an espresso and filled in the address on a big manila envelope while she drank it?
Was the Queen of the Faeries a successful businessperson in present-day London?
VIII
After lunch on Thursday Tania, Edric, and the other students involved with the play met with Mrs. Wiseman by the front gates of the school and, after a quick head count, set off to the Underground station for the field trip to the Globe Theatre. Half an hour and one change of trains later they came out of Mansion House station and set off across Southwark Bridge to the south bank of the Thames.
Despite living her entire life in London, Tania had never previously visited the Globe Theatre, and she was looking forward to exploring the modern reconstruction of William Shakespeare’s famous sixteenth-century “Wooden O.”
Walking across the bridge with Edric at her side, she gazed down into the murky waters of the Thames. She was struck by how different it looked from the clear blue waters of the Tamesis. The Faerie river followed the same curves and loops as the Thames, except that in the Mortal World the river wound through the noisy, dirty heart of London while in Faerie the vast Royal Palace stretched along its northern bank, with a great green forest to the south.
Tania was very impressed by her first sight of the Globe Theatre. It was a tall, circular building, oak-built and reed-thatched and with lime-washed walls that gleamed white in the sunlight. It stood in the middle of a complex of other smaller buildings: shops, cafés, and restaurants, an education center, and a brick-built indoor theatre for winter and bad weather.
“This way, everyone, keep up,” Mrs. Wiseman called, taking them along a riverside walkway to the exhibition center. The Globe Exhibition spread over two floors, with large-screen televisions that ran continuous videos and displays that explained the roles of actors and musicians both in Elizabethan times and in modern day.
Once they had toured the center and the theatre itself Mrs. Wiseman allowed them to split up and explore on their own.
“Let’s go and look in the theatre again,” Edric suggested to Tania.
She nodded and the two of them made their way around to the entry foyer. They pushed through the heavy glass doors and took the stairway that led up to cafés and a wide piazza. There was a matinee performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream later in the afternoon, and the piazza was busy with people enjoying the sunshine while they waited for the announcement to take their seats.
“It’s nice to be on our own at last,” Tania said as they climbed one of the external stair towers that led to the upper seating levels. “This is an amazing place.”
They entered the theatre in the Middle Gallery and then moved down through the rings of padded seats to stand at the wooden balustrade.
From here they could look down into the round open-air auditorium. Two sturdy pillars rose from either side of the rectangular stage, holding up a flat roof that was topped with a thatched gable. All the woodwork of the stage had been painted to look like marble and stonework, the carved oak picked out in dark grays and browns and forest greens and deep, russet reds. Above the stage was a long balcony for musicians and actors—a balcony from which Tania imagined Juliet might lean when she heard Romeo’s voice on the night of their first romantic meeting.
But Tania couldn’t think too much about the school play; she had other things on her mind.
“It must have been Titania in the Lexus,” she said to Edric. “Do you know how expensive those cars are?” She shook her head. “I don’t honestly know what I expected Titania to be like when we found her. I never really gave it much thought. But I suppose I imagined her living in an old house like Miss Haversham in Great Expectations, all alone and a bit crazy maybe and wearing royal clothes that had got all moth-eaten and ragged over the years. I never imagined her cruising around London in a chauffeur-driven luxury car.”
Edric smiled at her, leaning with one elbow on the balustrade. “She’s a Queen, Tania,” he said. “The daughter of an ancient Faerie House. She’s not going to be sitting around in a tatty cardigan, drinking tea out of a cracked cup and watching daytime television.”
“I suppose not.” Tania stood upright. She looked at her watch. “We’d better make our way to the front to meet up with the others.” She put her hand on his arm. “I know we were going to hold off the search till I got back from Florida, but I can’t. Not now.”
He looked inquiringly at her. “So?”
“I’ll get away on Saturday,” she said. “I’ll tell Mum and Dad I’m going shopping for holiday stuff. As long as I buy something in Richmond while we’re there, it won’t be a lie.”
“And this time we’ll keep our eyes open for a black Lexus,” Edric said.
They made their way to the back of the gallery and started down the stairs that led out to the piazza.
Halfway down Tania paused, intending to ask Edric whether they had theatres like this in Faerie. But as she turned her head everything began to spin in front of her eyes. The staircase twisted and tipped and everything around her blurred and streamed like watercolor images being washed away by rain. She groped blindly for the banister, her feet stumbling on the shifting treads.
She was vaguely aware of Edric’s face: a blob of pale color, his mouth a dark circle opening and closing soundlessly. Then her legs gave way underneath her and she sat down heavily on the stairs, the dense air clogging her ears, ringing in her head.
She closed her eyes, gasping for breath, but her throat felt tight and constricted and the air was thin and painful in her lungs. She coughed—a cough from deep down in her chest, a cough that hurt her throat and made her head throb.
“Mistress Ann! Mistress Ann! How you do misbehave, child!”
It was a warm voice, a woman’s voice, filled with urgency and concern. A hand took Tania’s wrist and she was pulled to her feet.
She opened her eyes. Her surroundings were similar, but strangely different. The woodwork of the stair tower seemed older and the stair treads were more worn, as if from many years of use.
A plump woman stood on the stairs below her, a woman she had never seen before. And yet…
The woman was dressed in a floor-length red frock, her face as round and rosy as an apple, her hair gathered up under a white pleated cap.
Tania gazed dizzily at her. The woman was huge; even standing three treads below her on the stairs, she was Tania’s height as she pulled her to her feet.
Dazed, Tania blinked and stared around her. More giant people were moving up the stairs, and all were dressed in Elizabethan clothes.
“You are a caution and no mistake.” A plump finger wagged in her face. “Come now, your father did tell you most specifically that you were not to wander and get under foot.” And so saying, the huge woman started to tow Tania down the stairs.
And that was when Tania realized that she was no longer in her own body. She had shrunk, dwindled away to almost nothing, her arms and legs stick-thin under her child’s dress.
The world had not grown huge around her; she was smaller, and she knew somehow that she was also much younger. But how much younger? It was hard to tell. Ten years old, maybe?
The woman drew her out of the way of the constant tide of people.
Tania coughed again, a pain burning in her narrow chest.
“Hearken to you now!” the woman said anxiously. “There’s your punishment for gadding about the place, and you only a few hours up and about after three days a-bed with the ague, child.” The woman’s voice was full of affectionate concern. “I told your father it was a mistake to bring you here, but the master will not hearken to the likes of me when his mind is made up.” A large warm hand was applied to Tania’s forehead. “I can feel the fever in you still, Mistress Ann, truly I can. Will ye sit here quietly for a moment?”
Tania stared at the woman, her vision blurred, her head throbbing. “Who are you?” she murmured.
“Bless me, the child is wandering in her head,” the woman said. “Do you not know your own Bess, child? Your loving Bess, who has taken such pains over you since first your mother gave me charge of you to cosset you and care for you and fret over you all the waking hours of your life?”
Tania smiled. “Bess,” she said softly, and there was strange comfort in the name, although she had no idea why. “Bess.”
“That’s it, my poppet,” said the woman. “It’s your Bess here, and I’d as soon take you straight back to your bed, but the master was most insistent that you be allowed to see him on the stage, and he’ll take it ill if I disobey him.” Bess crouched down, her hands heavy on Tania’s shoulders. “I shall take you to the side of the stage,” she said in a conspiratorial voice. “You may watch your father for a few moments, but then I will take you back to your bed and call a physick to tend you, and let the sky fall on me for my temerity if I have acted wrongly and done anything to cause you harm.”
Bess got laboriously to her feet again, puffing hard. Tania took her hand, feeling the weighty love of the big woman as they walked together along the curved wooden corridor.
She did feel weak. She could easily believe that she had been ill, that she was still unwell. The pain was like a fire burning in her chest; every now and then it would flare and burn into her throat and she would be wracked by fits of coughing.
She allowed Bess to lead her onward until they came to a narrow place surrounded by costumed men who were all looking in the same direction. Beyond an entrance of angled wooden slats Tania saw the stage and the auditorium, the vertical galleries filled with people, the circular standing area teeming with a silent throng.
Her eyes were drawn upward. The ceiling of the stage was extraordinary: midnight blue panels were ribbed with gold and painted with suns and stars and moons and all the signs of the zodiac. But then her attention was taken by a tall, handsome man who stood alone, center-stage, dressed in ermine and velvet and with a crown upon his head.
“Father!” she heard herself whisper. “That’s my father….”
The man began to speak, his voice rolling confidently over the rapt audience. “Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this sun of York…”
Bess brought her mouth close to Tania’s ear.
“There he is now,” she whispered. “Richard Burbage himself, your great thespian father. Does he not look magnificent in his robes and with the crown upon his head?” An arm circled her shoulders. “I tell you, my poppet, your father is the finest actor ever to perform before the Queen.”
Tania gazed into the big round face. “Do you mean Titania?”
“Bless you no, child,” said Bess wit
h a throaty chuckle. “I mean Her Grace the good Queen Elizabeth, may God preserve her.”
“Oh.” Tania was beginning to feel as if things were drifting away from her. “That’s a pity. I thought you meant Titania…only I’ve been looking for Titania…and I thought…maybe…”
“Tania?” The voice was a blur of unfocused sound that boomed in her ears like distant thunder. “Tania? Are you okay?”
“Edric?” Tania had the bizarre sensation of expanding inside her own body like a butterfly straining at its cocoon, like she was about to burst right out of her own skin. She let out a yelp of pain and then a gasp as the unpleasant feeling fell away from her.
She opened her eyes and found herself sitting on the wooden stairs in the Globe Theatre with Edric kneeling in front of her.
“What happened?” Tania asked.
“You tell me,” said Edric, helping her to her feet. “Are you okay now? Can you stand up on your own?”
“Yes. I’m fine.”
“Did you faint?”
Tania looked at him. “No, I didn’t faint,” she said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Tania and Edric were sitting in the piazza outside the theatre. Tania had just finished telling him, as clearly as she could, what had happened to her.
“Well?” she said. “What do you make of it?”
“I think you just had a flashback to one of your previous mortal lives,” Edric said quietly. “You were in Elizabethan times, you said?”
Tania nodded. “The woman called Bess mentioned Queen Elizabeth,” she said. “But I felt so ill, Edric. And I was so thin. Bess said I’d been ill for three days. She only let me out of bed because my father wanted me to see him on stage.” She gripped Edric’s hand. “I’ve got the most horrible feeling about her,” she said. “I don’t think she got better. I think she died, Edric. I think I died.”
Edric took her hands. “You already knew you’d lived a lot of mortal lives before now,” he said soothingly.
“Yes, I did,” Tania said. “But there’s a big difference between being told about it and actually finding myself inside the skin of one of my previous selves.” She gave a shudder. “How many times have I lived and died, Edric? How many people have I been?”
