The Time of the Clockmaker (24 page)

“Richard—”

What about Richard?

“He's dying.”

I know he is. I also know how much you've been suffering because of it. I've seen it in your face. But we can't do anything about it. No one can.

Henley was right again, as much as I wished he wasn't.

“I can't leave him,” I said. “I can't just disappear from his life.”

This wasn't only about Richard anymore. This wouldn't be the first time I had to leave someone I loved.

When I left Henley in 1904, I had never felt agony like it. I thought it would ease as time went on, and we both continued with our lives. Instead, it was a wound that wouldn't heal. It festered, reminding me of the pain every day. That was something I had done once, and had sworn I would never do again. It was selfish, but I couldn't go through that for any reason.

“I've experienced that pain once,” I said. “I can't . . .”

I knew Henley was thinking of the same moment when I'd had to walk away from him. He didn't know the reason then, but even now, after understanding everything, I knew it didn't lessen the suffering for him.

“I can't go now.” My voice started to get stronger. “I just can't.”

Rebecca, that's not a decision you can make. You're putting your life at risk. And I—I can't let you do that.

“You think I don't understand, but Henley, I really do understand the gravity of the situation. It's also my life, and my choice. I have to stay with Richard until he . . . dies, and I
will
do it. I'd just rather do this without fighting you every step of the way.”

Silence answered me, and I knew I had won.

At any slight indication—whether it's the murderer reaching for you or you feeling even worse because you're staying here too long—you're getting out of here.

Henley and I both knew he couldn't enforce that. He could turn the clock himself, but that would only make him travel in time body-less, not me. Staying with Richard until the end was something I knew I had to do.

TWENTY-FIVE

VISITING RICHARD EVERY
day, time went by both slowly and quickly. I had taken to bringing the clock with me every time I went to see him. It was large, but easily concealed once I wrapped it in a shawl or cloak. No one had questioned me about it. It had taken so long for me to get my hands on it again that I didn't want it out of my sight for as much as a minute. Besides, this way the murderer couldn't steal it either. Even when I slept, I took precautions to hide the clock under a pile of clothing. When I brought it to Richard's bedside, I placed it on the table next to the bed, where it caught the light of the disappearing sun. It bathed the room in a warm glow, almost making me forget the unabated ticking.

The hours I spent by Richard's bedside were long, but they still felt too short every time Lady Sutton would come to escort me out so Richard could get his rest. Day by day, he progressively got worse. It got to a point where the deterioration was
so fast that he looked sicker and closer to death every day I saw him.

“Lady Eleanor,” Lady Sutton said to me one day, when she was walking me out. “Maybe it's best if you didn't come any longer. I know you want to be supportive until the very end, but Richard . . . he's not responding to anyone anymore. You've seen him—he seems to be forever caught between his feverish dreams and his delirious reality.”

It was true that Richard had stopped recognizing me when he woke to see me at the foot of his bed.

“Perhaps it would be best, for you and him both, if you stopped visiting. You could remember him as he was, and not what he's become.”

I swallowed, and shook my head. “I need to see him until the end.”

“Very well,” she said. And that was the last she ever spoke of me not coming to see him.

I was there through it all, and to Lady Sutton's credit, so was she. I was there when Richard started hallucinating; he yelled at something he saw in the corner of the room, and cried during a one-sided conversation he had with his mother. I was there when Lady Sutton couldn't take it anymore and broke down crying while wiping his damp forehead. I was even there when Lady Sutton called the priest to administer the final rites.

I waited in Lady Sutton's sitting room with her, with the clock in my lap, as the priest went straight into the bedroom to hear Richard's last confession. I held Lady Sutton's shaking hands in my own as we waited for him to call us in.

“The family may enter now” we finally heard.

Without any hesitation, Lady Sutton pulled me in with her.

“I'm the only family he has here,” I heard Lady Sutton telling the priest. “His parents, his brothers—they started toward court as soon as a letter was dispatched with news of Richard's fast-declining health . . . but they didn't arrive in time.”

The priest, who Lady Sutton had said was visiting from Spain, had anointed Richard with what I guessed to be blessed oil. Lady Sutton remained solemn, and judging from her expression, I guessed the anointing was a standard practice. The priest laid his hands on Richard and continued to pray.

“Through this holy anointing, may the Lord in his love and mercy help you with the grace of the Holy Spirit.” The priest had a familiar voice that rose and fell, comforting me. “May the Lord who frees you from sin save you and raise you up.”

He placed a wafer into Richard's half-parted lips, but Richard was too far gone to accept it. The priest had to push it farther in before Richard instinctively swallowed.

Soon, the priest left. I wished I could have thanked him for administering the last rites and giving Richard some final comfort, but I couldn't take my eyes off Richard, much less turn them to the priest for conversation.

Lady Sutton also had to leave the room. She was sobbing too hard, and simply squeezed my hand as she passed.

Finally, I was alone with Richard. I placed the clock on the bedside table. When I moved to sit down next to him, I felt a weight roll in the pouch at my side. Reaching in, I withdrew the silver pocket watch the clockmaker had made for me and placed it on the table next to the clock. My hands shook, and I wondered if it was because of my body being rejected by this time
period, or if it was because of the good-bye I knew I had to say.

I sat at the edge of the bed and wondered what I would say to Richard. I had just this one chance left.

“Oh, Richard . . .”

I had only known him for a short time, but I felt I knew him.
Really
knew him. I understood the passion that lived within him, and he in turn had recognized what lived inside me.

I wished I had been able to know him for longer, but I knew him well enough to know that all I had wanted to say to him I had already said. We understood each other, and we didn't need words for that.

And so I took his hand, which seemed dwarfed and lonely in mine, and brought it to my lips.

“Thank you.”

Richard's eyes flickered to me and looked confused. My whole body hurt with that one look. Richard was someone who had always been so sure of his place in the world, and here he was, so lost that he couldn't even find himself.

Richard coughed violently, barely managing to turn to his left. Blood dripped down his chin. It was the only color on his face now.

His eyes rolled under his thick lids, as if he were reading something I could not see. His lips mouthed words over and over, but no sound came out. So this was it.

I wished I could have said good-bye to the real Richard. The person in front of me wasn't even a shell of the man I loved. He was a completely different person.

I shut my eyes, but not soon enough. Fat tears rolled down the sides of my face.

It'll be all right.
Henley said.

I looked at Richard, but he didn't react at all. He simply stared past my head.

He's just returning to the place he came from before he was alive.

I turned to see what Richard was staring at, and followed his gaze toward the window in the corner of the room. It was dark now, and the window reflected the image of what was playing out before me.

Richard stared and stared, and as a last effort to connect with him, I squinted at the windowpane. I blinked quickly to rid my eyes of the tears that shrouded them. And then I saw it.

The window wasn't reflecting what was happening at all. It was reflecting me, kneeling in front of the bed. The figure in the reflection knelt, clasping her hands to herself, as if in prayer. Her face was open and looked strangely serene, as if waiting for a miracle.

The window reflected a lie. There was no miracle. There were tears streaked down the young woman's face, which didn't show in the reflection. Her lips were parted as if in accepting prayer, but only because she was sobbing out loud. None of it was captured as it was, but when I turned to face Richard, his graying lips were fixed in a smile.

“Henley, you have to do something.”

I grasped at my hands to keep them from shaking. My fingers turned white from the amount of pressure I put on them, but I didn't care.

Richard started coughing again, but this time his body hardly moved. He looked too tired to force another cough out.

“Please, Henley,” I whispered, because I knew my voice would shake if I spoke any louder. “You have to try.”

I had no idea what I thought he could do, but I was at a point where there was nothing left. Even just trying—anything—would make me feel less helpless.

I'm trying. There's nothing I can do.
Henley's voice sounded pained, and I knew he was trying in earnest. I knew it hurt him to see me like this, but I couldn't stop crying, as much as I tried.

I tried to take a breath, but I cried out, seeing Richard's body shudder.

Rebecca, I'm trying.

Through my tears, I was only vaguely aware of Richard's body rising an inch off the bed from the force of Henley trying to influence the physical world. A palpable energy ran through the room.

My shoulders shook, and I didn't know whether I was crying out loud or in silence anymore. Henley
had
to do something. He just had to.

Richard's chest seemed to struggle to rise. And then it stopped.

“Oh God. Please.”

My head bowed with the pain in my own chest, and in that instant I felt Henley in every part of the room and every molecule of my body. It was as if he expanded in a crack of energy.

I felt the bed shift, as if a weight moved.

I looked up, but I could only see a blur of disorienting images. I wiped my eyes and tried to focus them on the shape on the bed.

There, in front of me, Richard sat up. His curly brown hair was plastered to his forehead with sweat, but other than that, he
looked fine. His skin was losing the gray sheen it had worn only seconds ago, and a natural flush came to replace it.

I couldn't believe it. I blinked, and he was still there.

My eyes ran across his face, watching him come alive. I watched as hands twitched awake, and his lips regained their color. My gaze swept over him, then froze at his eyes.

His normally soft-colored eyes were still warm and the color of honey, but something was different about them. Something was off. It was the light that hit them in a different way that made me pause. I stared into his eyes, and though what I found there was familiar, it wasn't Richard at all.

“Henley, what have you done?”

The voice that replied was Richard's in sound and tone, but everything else wasn't him.

“I don't know,” he began, stopping and starting. “I was trying to help, Rebecca. I was trying to do something. Anything. It was the way you looked. Devastated. Small. I was trying so hard to keep him alive. When Richard died, it felt like a vacuum was created. I was trying so hard to sustain him, for even a minute longer, that I somehow fell in. What I mean to say is that it felt like falling, or being sucked in—”

“My God . . .”

It really was Henley.

I reached out a hand, almost still testing if he was real. He placed his hand against mine, palm to palm.

I had lost a man I loved, but regained the man I was in love with.

We both straightened, hearing footsteps outside the door. The priest? Lady Sutton?

I looked Henley in the eye and nodded. The ache in my entire body had become almost too much to bear.

Reaching toward the bedside table, he felt past the silver pocket watch and grabbed the clock.

He held my hand as he moved the clock's hands with the other.

“No, that's too much into the future,” I said. “You're in a mortal body. You can't survive that.”

“I'm not supposed to be able to, but I wasn't supposed to be alive either. We'll see.”

Now that he had come back to me, I wouldn't dare let go of him.

I lunged at the clock, but it was already happening. The colors around us started melting. Everything around us had already started morphing. It was too late. It was all I could do to hold his hand.

Henley had come back to me. I wasn't about to lose him again.