Restoration

by Deborah Chester

  Maybe his wild ride through the time stream had sapped him more than he knew.

  Taking no chances, he opted not to return to the busy street but instead continued up the alleyway, thankful to have ditched his pursuers so easily.

  It was a gloomy hole he’d wandered into, however, and the farther he progressed the worse it looked. The walls on either side grew even more narrow until his shoulders almost brushed them. The mud he sloshed through had an appalling stink, and he dared not examine it closely. A rat as large as his foot darted across his path. The creature paused at the sight of him and stared up, its red eyes unafraid and malevolent. Noel halted, seized by an instinctive revulsion, and waited until the rat scuttled out of sight through a hole. Noel could hear the squeaking of other rats from inside the house foundations.

  No people were about. He might have been the only person alive in this quarter. The quiet was spooky, almost unnatural after the thronging crowd in the other streets.

  His stomach was already growling with fresh hunger. That wasn’t normal. The food packet was high in energy and nutrients. It should have lasted hours, but he felt as though he hadn’t eaten anything. His legs were cramping again, harder now, the pain making him sweat.

  But Noel hurried on, the hair on the back of his neck prickling. He didn’t like this place with its quiet, its dark gloominess, its filth. Some of the houses had strange symbols marked on the doorways.

  Crooked and winding, the street went on as though forever. The houses loomed overhead, seeming to lean on their ancient timbers until they nearly touched.

  Laundry, half-soured and unable to dry where the sunlight didn’t reach, hung on lines suspended from upper-story windows. The foundations of the wooden houses were green and peeling with mildew. An air of rotted dampness permeated the place. He would have paid a king’s ransom for a breeze, but the air lay still and hot and fetid.

  A cat fight erupted beneath a doorstep, and Noel’s heart jumped into his throat. He thought about turning back, but being arrested for pig thievery or witchcraft didn’t appeal to him. He stuffed his hands deep into his coat pockets and kept going.

  Finally he began to encounter signs of human habitation. Babies wailed from indoors. Voices cursed or laughed or argued without care for who overheard.

  “Gardyloo!” cried a voice from an overhead window. Seconds later, a stream of liquid splashed down, missing Noel by scant inches.

  He jumped back, swearing, and glanced up. The woman, her hair hidden inside a large mobcap, waved at him with a cheeky grin and pulled her chamber pot back inside.

  “Too bad I missed, ducks!” she called saucily. “Ye look like ye need a bath.”

  “Not the kind you’re offering!” he called back.

  “Oho!” she retorted with a toss of her head. “Too good to be doused in ’is Lordship’s piss, are ye? Might make a man o’ ye.”

  “Might not,” said Noel, and went on his way, grinning.

  After his exchange with the chambermaid, the street seemed less sinister. A few minutes later he emerged onto a larger road. The buildings stood well back, and the sunlight made him squint beneath his hat brim.

  This was a heavily traveled thoroughfare, one a-bustle with foot, horse, and carriage traffic. A coach horn blared tinnily, making him nearly jump from his skin. Pedestrians scurried aside for a coach and four driven at a furious pace. Dust fogged up in a cloud that settled over everything.

  Coughing and slapping his clothes, Noel walked on. He tried to look for a street sign, but found none. He had lost all sense of direction, except what the sun’s position told him. It was afternoon, growing late. No one seemed headed home, however. If anything, the crowd grew thicker.

  Noel was obliged to push his way past vendors carrying trays of pastries or delivering buckets of water to houses. Coach horns blared impatiently to force a way for the men and women in finery of silks and lace being borne along in carriages, their liveried guards riding with them for protection. The coachmen swore vividly and cracked their whips over people and horses alike.

  He saw cutthroats surveying the crowd, urchins picking pockets, beggars whining and holding out their bowls for alms. Now and then he encountered elderly or middle-aged men in plain, Puritan garb marching along with frowning, disdainful faces. These types, with their black coats, long-pointed white collars, and unadorned headgear, stood out in marked contrast to the more colorful clothing everyone else wore. Buffoons sometimes followed these Puritans, making faces and rolling their eyes to the laughter of the passersby. There were inns flowing with custom, their doorways thronged with laughing cavaliers in tall riding boots and extravagant plumes flowing from their cocked hats. They made bets among themselves or laughed over women’s scented handkerchiefs that they passed around. Children flirted with danger as they darted across the street in front of horses, and starved dogs stole scraps from the gutter.

  Noel kept one hand on his money purse, the other on his sword, immeasurably comforted by the pistol in his pocket and searching for a safe place where he could consult his LOC for a self-check. By now, especially after eating, he should have been revived and alert. Instead, he still felt shaken. His hunger increased with every step, and his body ached with a strange exhaustion.

  Maybe Dr. Ellis hadn’t managed to condition him properly for his passage through the time stream. But, no, she wouldn’t neglect a single detail. The woman knew her job.

  On the other hand, that hadn’t exactly been a normal travel. No one could have foreseen the events that had transpired in Lab 14, least of all Noel. He was simply grateful he’d arrived in one piece.

  He had three days in which to find Leon in this teeming mass of humanity, but he was optimistic. All he had to do was activate his LOC, and it would find Leon for him.

  The somber thumping of a drum carried over the noise, growing steadily louder. People stopped in mid-conversation. Their faces grew pale, their expressions taut. A general uneasiness flashed over the crowd. Curious to see what was coming, Noel paused and glanced over his shoulder.

  Like autumn leaves blown by a wind, pedestrians cleared the street. They pressed back against the storefronts and doorways, their fear an odd contrast to the general gaiety that had been present moments before.

  “Death cart!” wailed a voice in an eerie parody of a vendor’s cry. “Death cart! Make way.”

  The drum boomed steadily, and now Noel could see a thin, bewhiskered man walking in a long, loose coat that resembled a robe. His hat was pulled low over his eyes. He led a cart horse that plodded slowly with its head down. A child followed the cart, his expression like stone. He beat upon a drum with one great solemn thump after another.

  “Death cart! Bring out yer dead. Make way fer the death cart.”

  The cart was piled with corpses sewn into crude shrouds or wrapped in blankets. One of the cart’s wheels bounced over a pothole, and a blanket slipped back to reveal a woman’s face, gray-white with death, her eyes open and staring, terrible pustules blemishing the corners of her mouth.

  Watching, Noel felt the coldness of horror slide over him. At his side, a plump, elderly woman pulled her shawl over her head and began to weep.

  “Plague victims,” whispered Noel aloud.

  “Bless us, dear Lord,” murmured the weeping woman, clasping her hands together. “Deliver us from misfortune and protect us from the filthy air.”

  “It’s not the air that causes bubonic plague,” said Noel before he could stop himself. “It’s—”

  “Leave her be,” said a man, giving Noel a shove. The woman turned and hurried away. “That be Dame Stoken, of Holborn. Lost four children to the plague last year, God bless their souls. It ben’t so bad this summer, though it do be mortal hot now.”

  “Aye,” said another fellow, talkative now that the cart had passed by. “Last year, we thought the end of the world had come upon us. Death carts was all the traffic there was, most times. And at night, mercy but how people did cry out and moan. Fair made your
hair stand on end, it did. You never saw so many houses marked with the sign to keep away. Doctors dropping like flies, and you never knowing when the fellow next to you might break out with the fever. It got so a body was afraid to step out even to buy a meat pie for his supper.

  “When the king moved his court to Oxford, why, I said to my wife, time we moved to the country too. And so we went. Just closed up shop and left it for anyone to take. But when we come back in the cooler weather, all was safe as houses, and waiting for us.”

  Nodding, Noel moved on. In his mind he was busy turning over this unwelcome information and trying to remember if 1697 had been a plague year. It seemed not, but this era wasn’t his specialty.

  Besides, he found other details that didn’t add up. He was supposed to be in London, and the people spoke English, all right, but there was an odd look to the city, something unfamiliar and strange that he couldn’t quite put his finger on. As he walked, the sense of something wrong grew stronger. Noel frowned and began to observe with greater attention details of customs, manners, and dress.

  Sea gulls squawking amid the sparrows and pigeons told him this ramshackle city was a port, although he saw no ships or wharves. Hoping to establish his bearings and regain his sense of direction, he walked with the main press of the crowd, glad to see that the people around him were looking increasingly prosperous, and the area less seedy. As a historian, although not a specialist in English history, he was quite familiar with the famous landmarks of London. It was a handsome city, an old city filled with tradition and grand examples of fine architecture. Yet where were these mighty edifices? Where were the statues, the baroque park gates, the classic Wren-designed buildings of stone and brick? Too many buildings were built of wood. They looked old as well, almost medieval, although the people were clothed fairly similarly to what he wore.

  Still…he eyed the men strolling by in wide-topped boots, their spurs jingling, swords swinging arrogantly from beneath their coattails. None of them wore a long vest like his. Their breeches were longer and fuller than his, positively baggy compared to his slim ones, and decked out with ribbons. He wore a tricorn, but their hats had straight crowns and large round brims. Many had either long hair or wore elaborately curled wigs down to their shoulders. Noel’s own black hair was cropped short, and with the sun glaring from a hazy sky he was thankful not to be wearing a hot wig.

  Granted, the last time he’d visited 1697 he’d been in the Caribbean among pirates rather than city dwellers, and fashion had hardly been important, but even so the men had tied their hair back, not worn it full and loose in this manner. Their clothing had looked more eighteenth century than this. The garb he saw now made him think of musketeers, cavaliers, and Louis XIV.

  Noel swallowed hard, and a sudden qualm made him stop in his tracks. Someone bumped into him from behind, and he felt clumsy fingers nip under his coat. He grabbed the pickpocket’s hand and dragged the boy around.

  “Please, sir! No ’arm, sir. Please, sir.”

  Noel shoved the boy away and continued on at a fast stride, searching actively now for a place of privacy. His earlier sense of confidence had vanished, and he felt worried and shaken. He thought he’d landed in the right place—maybe—but certainly at the wrong time.

  What had happened?

  The semihysterical urge to laugh at that question rose up and choked in his throat. As though he needed to ask. Any of a thousand things could have gone wrong. All he had to do was remember his wild passage through the time stream. Bruthe hadn’t had a constant fix on the destination. The distortion had been skewing all the data. He could be anywhere.

  And if he’d landed in the wrong place or just the wrong time, then…

  Gulping, Noel tugged his hat lower over his eyes and hurried on, threading a rapid path through pedestrians and riders, his heart thudding faster with every step.

  Ahead, somewhat to his surprise and consternation, he saw the buildings end. The street narrowed to a country road. Meadows stretched over the hills, with small clusters of houses scattered here and there. He’d walked all the way to the edge of town.

  To his left stood a posting house busy receiving carriages and sending them off, the yard heavy with dust as hostlers hurried to harness up fresh horses and lead away the tired, sweaty ones to the stables around back. Smoke curled from the chimney, and Noel could smell meat roasting for dinner. His mouth watered, and his stomach growled hungrily. Men lounged around the doorway, holding tankards of ale, and he swallowed his own spit in acute thirst.

  There would be time to go in and buy himself all the food and drink he wanted—later. First he had to access his LOC. He might as well find out the truth about where he’d landed and get it over with.

  Noel hurried across the road, then paused at someone’s well and helped himself to a ladle of water from a wooden pail sitting beside it. Refreshed by the drink, he slipped behind a garden wall, took a couple of apples from a heavily laden tree, and hurried out into the common meadow beyond.

  A handful of sheep—their wool tangled with burrs and dried mud—stood listlessly some distance away. Noel looked around but saw no evidence of a shepherd. Still, the pasture itself was too exposed for his purposes. His shoes crunching on the drought-brittle grass, Noel took shelter behind a thicket of hawthorns and crouched there in the slice of shade they afforded.

  Doffing his hat and balancing it on his knee, he ate one of the apples, core and all, then pulled up his left sleeve while he munched more slowly on the second piece of fruit.

  His LOC, also known as a Light Operated Computer, was a complex marvel of miniaturized optic circuitry. Fitted with molecular shift in order to disguise itself to fit into any era, the LOC had changed itself this time into a braid of tawny human hair that encircled his wrist. It was tipped with gold at the ends in a clever kind of clasp. Noel raised his brows wryly. Passion’s souvenir? Lovelocks? It was a bit too sentimental for his style. Who had programmed his LOC this time?

  He took another bite of apple, feeling the inside of his mouth pucker at its greenness. He’d probably end up with a bellyache, although the fruit hadn’t done much to alleviate his hunger.

  In one of the houses several yards away, male voices rose in argument. Noel peered around the thicket of hawthorns with caution. In the distance, one of the sheep raised its head and looked as well.

  Still all clear.

  “LOC, activate,” he said quietly.

  The LOC shimmered, and the braid of hair was replaced by a clear-sided bracelet that flashed blue light. “Working,” it replied.

  Relief filled him. He realized that unconsciously he must have been expecting it to be damaged the way it had been during his last trip into the past. But it was in good order this time. He wasn’t going to be trapped again.

  Except you’re in the wrong time, whispered a voice to him.

  A chill ran down his spine that made the summer heat meaningless. He shook it off.

  “Identify place and date,” he said.

  The LOC flashed. “London. August thirty-first, 1666.”

  Dismay sank through him. He frowned, refusing to believe it.

  “There must be a mistake,” he said. “Repeat command. Identify place and date.”

  “Affirmative. London. August thirty-first, 1666.”

  His frown deepened. “Repeat date.”

  “August thirty-first, 1666.”

  “Impossible. It’s supposed to be 1697.”

  “Negative.”

  “Scan your diagnostic codes. Any—” His voice caught in spite of himself. “Any malfunctions?”

  “Negative malfunctions. Date is August thirty-first, 1666.”

  “But that’s thirty-one years off,” he said, half to himself. “Why here? Why now? Dear God, why now?”

  “I am not programmed for speculation,” said the LOC tonelessly.

  Noel remembered Bruthe saying something about Leon’s pattern fluctuating. But even if the technician had failed to get a solid fix on L
eon’s whereabouts, theoretically he and Leon should have been drawn together by the time stream whether a mistake had been made or not.

  A twist of scorn passed through him at his own thoughts. Someone had warned him against depending on theory. Besides, if Leon were around he should have turned up by now.

  “Scan mode,” Noel said sharply. “Is Leon in the city?”

  “Unknown.”

  A small sigh, almost a moan, escaped him. He recognized the hopelessness in his own voice and stiffened his spine immediately. There was no point in losing his head. He had to cope with this, and cope with it fast.

  “We’re in the wrong time,” he said. “LOC, is recall possible?”

  “Mission parameters have not been achieved,” said the LOC.

  “You mean, we haven’t linked with Leon yet,” he said, and rubbed his forehead.

  “Affirmative.”

  “Are you programmed to scan for Leon’s pattern?”

  “Define Leon.”

  “Great,” muttered Noel. “Didn’t Wemble tell you what to look for?”

  “Define—”

  “Stop,” said Noel. He paused a moment, feeling a tiny nerve twitch rapidly in his jaw. He had to stay calm. He had to believe that he wasn’t trapped again. There was a way to overcome this…this small glitch. He had to remember that prep had been a little sketchy. The technicians had succeeded in getting him to the past. It was up to him to overcome the gaps.

  But a thirty-one-year gap? How was he going to get around that?

  He shoved the doubts away.

  “Okay,” he said aloud, expelling his breath. “I can do this. I can think my way through this. Of course. LOC, activate and link with Leon’s LOC. It’s programmed with Leon’s pattern. Isolate and identify that, then scan for him.”

  He waited a moment for the spare LOC on his right wrist to activate, but nothing happened.

  “Come on,” he said impatiently. “I can’t do it for you. The other LOC is programmed to work only for Leon. Tap into its internal codes and link—”