by Ridgway, Bee
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BEE RIDGWAY was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts. After various adventures in the United States and the United Kingdom, she has finally come to roost in Philadelphia. She is an English professor at Bryn Mawr College. The River of No Return was her first novel.
CONTENTS
About the Author
Also by Bee Ridgway
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Acknowledgments
The Time Tutor
Excerpt from The River of No Return
Also by Bee Ridgway
The River of No Return
The Time Tutor
A Penguin Special from Plume
Bee Ridgway
PLUME
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2014
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Copyright © 2014 by Bee Ridgway
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
eISBN 978-0-698-16908-1
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Version_1
For Holly Kosisky
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Huge thanks go to Eloisa James and Connie Brockway, who knew that a novella wanted to be born. Thanks to Lauren Willig for tea and sympathy, to Beatriz Williams and Karen White for scooping me up in Atlanta, to Donna Thorland for swashbuckling compatriotism, and to Jessica Peterson for a very fun late-night walk around the block. To Linda Lee and Sarah MacLean—thank you for being very kind to a newbie. Thanks to Camilla MacKay, Homay King, and Sharon Ullman for last-minute reads, to Elly Truitt for her medieval eye, and to Rosi Song for being such a wonderful motion-sickness consultant. Thank you to Alexandra Machinist for everything, but in particular for a high-carb summit meeting (and to the nameless gent at the bar for that much-needed negroni). To Denise Roy, thank you for folding time and space to make this happen. You are a wonder. My love and eternal gratitude go to Holly and to Kate, and to my parents and siblings, without whom I’m nothing. And massive thanks to everyone at Bryn Mawr College—my colleagues, students, and kind alumnae in cities around the country, all of whom have been so lovely about this particular left turn I took at Albuquerque.
The Time Tutor
“You moan more when I rub your feet than you do when I’m—”
“Please shut up, Bertrand, and stop playing with my toes. It’s my arches that ache. Yes, like that. . . .”
Alva Blomgren let her neck relax and her head sink even deeper into the down pillow. She had danced all night. Or rather, she had danced nearly all night. Another sparkling Guild party. The Guild members had been wearing their very finest, but the Favorites had outdone themselves; the men had dressed in the colors of the rainbow, and the women in the colors of the rain. Alva’s own gown, now tossed on a chair, was silver shot with blue.
In a year of magical parties, last night had been by far the most dazzling. As the last dance had died away, Alva had felt Bertrand’s hand in her own, and she had given in, at last, to his flirtations. They had slipped away to her suite.
But now it was the cold light of day; her feet were sore and she was filled with regret.
“Relax.”
“What if Hannelore finds out?”
Bertrand shrugged. “She would be delighted. We are the most favored of her Favorites, both of us so young and so beautiful.”
“Conceited, Bertrand!”
“It’s true, though. And the chatter last night was that she is choosing between us for a successor. Any day now she will teach us both to travel in time. She hasn’t relinquished that secret to anyone else for years and years. If we are the chosen ones, why should we not also be lovers? Together, she can only think more highly of us.”
Alva closed her eyes. Bertrand was too eager, too hopeful.
Hannelore had made her usual grand, midnight entrance to her own ball. The music had stopped just before the hour, and a tittering sort of silence hung over the ballroom. A clock chimed a high, clear note. Then from outside, all across and around the city, from St. Clement’s to St. Martin’s to Bow and Shoreditch, they could hear the bells. Between the sixth and the seventh sounding of the ballroom chime Hannelore appeared, out of thin air, in the very midst of the crowd. She wore a robe à la polonaise of shining gold, caught up in swags over a ruby-spangled saffron undergown. A semicircle of ostrich feathers dyed in the colors of flame framed her already towering wig.
She was, quite clearly, the sun.
“Welcome!” Her voice was warm and rich, honeyed with good humor. “Welcome, to my rain and rainbows ball! Make hay, my darlings, while the sun shines!” Everyone cheered, and Alva felt embraced by warmth. After that, the party had really gotten under way. Champagne had flowed and gems had sparkled and people had disappeared in twos and even threes behind curtains and reappeared again sometime later, their wigs slightly askew on their heads, or their bodices not quite completely pulled up over powdered bosoms.
Hannelore had shone throughout it all, beaming upon her world with the munificence of the heavenly body she represented.
Late in the night, Hannelore had found Alva and drawn her out of the dance. “I have a gift for you,” she’d said. Alva curtsied low; when she arose Hannelore fixed a magnificent opal necklace around her throat. “Raindrops,” Hannelore said. “Ones that will never dry. Forever young, my pretty one.” Then she had kissed Alva. “No thanks but your loyalty,” she had murmured in her ear. “That is all I ever ask.”
“You are tense again,” Bertrand complained. “Relax your foot.”
“I was still thinking of Hannelore.”
“Well, stop thinking of her. Think of me.” He took her foot firmly in hand and molded the strong base of his hand to her arch.
Alva dissolved once more. “Yes, yes, you’re good. Harder. Right there.”
“C’est honteux,” Bertrand muttered. “Foot rubs. A night of passion should be followed by a morning of the same. Chocolate in bed. And silly love talk.”
Alva jerked her foot away, burying it again under the linens. “I told you, no love talk! It was the one condition I gave you last night. I will not sacrifice my future for your kisses. And you must not sacrifice yours for mine.” She sat up in bed and glared at him. “I wish to stay in Hannelore’s favor. I’ve had enough of being nobody. Surely you have had enough of it, as well.”
The sun—the real sun—shining through the grand windows behind Bertrand made a bright halo around his body. His face was in shadow, but she could see the grin glinting there, see the youthful confidence in him. “I have never been nobody,” he said, leaning forward. “Now come to me.”
She threw
the covers back and stood. “No.”
“Cruel!” He twisted, and sprawled back onto the mattress. “I am killed by your loveliness. Kiss me. Bring me back to life.”
Alva looked down at her friend. The powder was mostly gone from his black hair. His morning stubble changed his beauty to rakishness. Light poured over the planes of his body. He really was perfect, for all that she found him a touch too skinny, an ounce too pretty. She felt herself begin to weaken. He caught the change in her mood, and his pale green eyes flashed in anticipation.
She leaned over him and traced a finger down from his sternum, enjoying the way her touch made him bite his lip, made him raise his hips. “You make it hard to resist you,” she whispered.
Bertrand flung his arms out wide on either side of him. “You are Aphrodite, you are the Queen of . . . ah . . .”
Alva tickled her finger through the trail of black hair that led to . . . well, to trouble.
She should never have let their friendship come to this.
“Krac’h!” Bertrand cursed in the ancient language that was his mother tongue, and rolled away from her, burying himself under the covers.
In the same moment, Alva smelled the heavy amber perfume that could only mean one thing.
Hannelore von Trockenberg had entered her bedchamber.
Alva was naked, and her hair hung unruly down her back. But she knew she must turn, and face the woman whom she admired and feared the most. The Alderwoman of the Guild, the most secret and most powerful brotherhood on earth: a brotherhood of time travelers. In this year of 1793, Hannelore was the greatest time traveler of her generation. She ruled the Guild, and time itself, with an iron fist. And she had stooped from her great height and plucked Alva out of the lowest ranks of the Guild and raised her to the highest rank of Favorites.
Alva took a deep breath and turned.
The Alderwoman stood in the doorway in the same white wig, the same golden ball gown that she had worn last night. She had discarded her ostrich feather headpiece, and the heavy paint that by candlelight had smoothed away the years was now smudged, and looked garish in the bright sunlight. After her night of revelry, Hannelore looked ninety. She was, in fact, a hale and hearty seventy-two. Her faded blue eyes swept around the disheveled room, resting for a moment on the bed, with its linens whipped up to a froth and the lump in the middle that was Bertrand. Then her eyes flicked to Alva.
Alva raised her chin an inch. Now that she was caught, she wasn’t going to apologize. She was sorry, but she wasn’t ashamed.
Unlike Bertrand, hiding under the bedclothes like a child. He could kiss good-bye any hope he had of bedding her again.
Something like a smile flickered across Hannelore’s thin, paint-blurred lips. “Children,” she said, moving into the room with both hands out wide, as if she were dancing the saraband. “I must speak to you.” She hooked a night rail off the back of a chair as she passed. “Put this on.” She tossed it to Alva, then prodded the lump on the bed with one sharp finger. “Bertrand, won’t you join us? But pray keep yourself covered. I am in no mood for peachy youth this morning.” Bertrand’s tousled black hair and green eyes appeared, followed shortly by his smile.
The Alderwoman sat down on the edge of the bed, and the sound of her stiff silk skirts settling around her set Alva’s teeth on edge. She patted the mattress beside her. “Come. Sit.”
Alva allowed a tentative relief to trickle through her veins. She settled herself beside her mentor. If Hannelore was angry, she wasn’t showing it. Her hand, thin skinned and roped with blue veins, grasped Alva’s, and she reached on her other side for Bertrand.
“My two young nestlings. You have been warm and safe beneath the feathery breast of Mother Time for long enough. Now she will test you. Last night, after the ball, I made a discovery.” She looked closely at Bertrand and then at Alva, then drew them both even more closely to her side. “An Ofan spy has inveigled his way into the very heart of the Guild,” she said in low tones. “I want you two to find him, and bring him, alive, to my hand. It is a delicate task I ask of you, one that will make you worthy of the Guild’s greatest secrets. Perhaps, when you have succeeded, I shall begin your training.” She winked at Alva. “You are a long way from your beet fields now, my silver thrush.”
• • •
In 1348, Alva had been a Swedish peasant girl, and her life had been taken up with cows and turnips. One day, Alva had been alone in the herb garden. Looking up from weeding, she had seen a knight, dressed in the colors of the local lord, standing not five feet away. She stood, brushing the dirt from her hands. Would he like to come in? Did he need water? Food? He said nothing, and when she looked more closely she could see it in his face: He was mad.
She backed away, and he stepped forward, his arm outstretched. She picked up her skirts and began to run. But he tackled her and took her to the ground; she twisted as she fell, crushing parsley beneath her, and she was fighting him even before she hit the ground, scratching and screaming—but he got his hands around her throat and as the scent of parsley filled her nostrils, she felt herself begin to weaken. His mad eyes were soft with a terrible tenderness, as if he were singing her to sleep. “Din skönhet är mjuk och det förstör mig,” he murmured. Behind his head, a bright blue sky. She didn’t want to die at midday! But Alva was spinning, spinning away from this world. . . .
When she came to, she was lying on the cobbled backstreet of an unfamiliar town, and a man—not the mad knight—was standing over her. He introduced himself as a member of something he called the Guild, an organization of time travelers. “You have jumped in time,” he explained, in a strange and halting Swedish. He helped her to her feet. “You must have been dying.” She nodded, touching her throat. “Yes. It is like that for all of us. We are dying, but then, instead of dying, we jump to the future.” He smiled at her, as if this were wonderful news. “Now, I am afraid I have just a little bit of bad news. You are stuck here, in this time, forever.” He took her arm and began walking with her. “But you are not to worry. We shall take care of you for the rest of your life. I shall accompany you to Scotland, where you will be educated for a few years. Learn English. Learn about history. Learn how to live in the eighteenth century. Learn all about the Guild. After that you will be rich; the Guild takes very good care of its own. You cannot ever return to your time, but we shall make you very happy here in this era. There are only a few rules. . . .”
Her new life began. And before many months passed at her dreary Guild academy in Scotland, she had learned something about herself, something she would never have known had she stayed in 1348. She learned that she was ambitious. She was not content to stay at the bottom of the Guild’s hierarchy. She was not content to know only what her pinched, miserable teachers felt she should learn about the talent that had sent her hurtling like a shooting star out of the past. She had heard that the Guild was centered in London, and that the Alderwoman had a coterie of Favorites who surrounded her like courtiers. The Favorites lived together in a palace, where they dined all day on rich foods and danced all night. She had also heard a rumor, whispered only around the edges: If Hannelore von Trockenberg loved you well enough, she might teach you how to travel again in time. If the rumors were to be believed, the impossible was possible. You could jump back in time again, and forward. Wherever and whenever you liked. But only if Hannelore taught you how to control the talent.
One dark night, Alva stole a mule and a wallet of cold sliced porridge, and she set off toward the south, and London, and this queen of time named Hannelore. She never had one moment of doubt; Hannelore would love her.
And Hannelore did.
• • •
A few hours later, Alva was taking tea in Hannelore’s salon, as she did almost every day. “I suppose I simply didn’t believe in the Ofan,” she said. “Whenever I heard Guild members talking about the Ofan, I just thought they were like de Underjordiske, you
know . . . the Hidden Children we tell stories of in Sweden. The ones who live underground. No one really believes in them, but sometimes in the winter, they say you can feel their desire to come up, to be loved, pressing from under your feet.”
Hannelore laughed. “That is one of the things I love about you. You are all ambition, and someday I believe you will be a great Guild leader. But still, always, you are also just a village girl. The Hidden Children. How sweet.”
“You talk about the Ofan in equally fantastical terms.”
The old woman’s wig had disappeared, as had the golden gown. She was dressed in simple linen, her face was scrubbed clean, her gray hair tucked up in a lace cap. Her enormous tabby cat, Leonard, was stretched across her lap. She stroked him as she talked, a sure sign that she wasn’t angry. “Yes, well . . . at certain times, up and down the River of Time, the Ofan have dwindled away almost to the status of myth. Certainly they don’t deserve to be believed in. They are dangerous dreamers, and by rights they ought to disappear. But apparently they are on the rise again, and I am not surprised. It is because I am expanding the reach of the Guild, and they don’t like it. Your Hidden Children, they want to come up from underground; they want love, yes? Well, the Ofan think they are oppressed—buried—by the Guild. They think we hide too much, that people with the talent should know that they can jump again in time, they should know how to use their ability. Everyone, according to the Ofan, should be a Favorite.” She bent down low over her cat’s head. “But if everyone understood the full reach of the talent, that would mean chaos, wouldn’t it, Leonard? Chaos and destruction.” She addressed the cat with a tenderness she reserved only for him, and he ignored her with an impunity that she would only ever accept from him.
