The Time Travel Chronicles (8 page)

“In case I didn’t say it earlier, Quaker garb suits thee."  

“Thanks.”

I purposefully wait until the pink begins fading away from her pale skin to speak again.  "Plain dress is a very difficult look to pull off, you know.  If there’s the slightest hint of drab in a woman’s face, it tips the scales toward
totally
plain.  No risk of that in your case."

As expected, the compliment summons the blood right back to her cheeks. 

I need to tread carefully, though.  Angelo very nearly saddled me with Delia Morell as a third party.  I don’t have much use for Delia or her husband. Even though they're only a few years my senior, they've gradually wormed their way into CHRONOS middle-management, mostly by sucking up to Angelo. The two times I've landed a reprimand, it's been Delia’s fault.  I talked my way out of anything actually sticking to my record, but I'm smart enough to steer clear of them.

Angelo didn’t even have a decent excuse when I asked exactly why he’d assign Delia, a mid-twentieth century specialist, to a Quaker village in 1780.  He just did that weak, wavy thing with his hands and changed the subject.  But he pulled her from the jump schedule, so I win.

I know why he wanted Delia along.  Angelo knows our fields of research make his little blonde lamb my inevitable research partner, but he’s not sure she can handle the big bad wolf. Maybe he realizes the lamb is attracted to me. I’ve known it since the first time I saw her a few years back, fourteen and not even out of Fundamentals. Even that goofy kid who follows her everywhere—Richard, Robert, something like that—knows it. He glares at me like he fantasizes about killing me off so Katherine will finally notice him.

"So, you were at Jemima’s so-called resurrection?" Katherine’s voice is a little shaky, and she steals a glance at me from the corner of her eye.  It’s the first time she’s had the nerve to ask a direct question.

"Well, not at the resurrection itself. Just at Jemima’s sermon the following Sunday. I'm sure the resurrection would have been more fun to watch, since it took place in her bed..." I wag my eyebrows suggestively.

As I suspected, innuendo is even more effective at bringing on her blush, but the sly grin that follows close behind is a surprise.  “You weren’t supposed to be married back when you met her in 1776.  Why didn’t you arrange an invitation to her chamber?"

"Um…because that would have blown my cover as an aspiring celibate.”

"It’s your third trip to this region.  If that cover’s not already blown, you must be slipping.” 

Her comment almost causes me to miss a step.  I’d classed her as
pretty, but vapid
. She apparently catches my near-stumble, because a tiny little smile sneaks onto her lips.

We trudge along for another ten minutes or so.  Katherine picks up the pace when she spots Judge Potter’s residence, known locally as The Abbey, up ahead.  I’m not sure if the family calls it that or not.  The villagers seem to be using the term ironically, possibly mocking Judge Potter for taking Jemima in and building a separate wing for her to hold services.

“Don’t get your hopes up,” I caution Katherine.  “It’s farther than it looks."

She sighs and slows back down.  The hike up North Road is less than two kilometers total, but between the dark, heavy clothes of this era and today’s unnaturally thick and humid air, it’s not a pleasant walk.  I set a stable point on my last visit, just outside the barn, and we could
probably
have jumped in without anyone noticing.  But the Potter family would have found it odd if visitors popped in out of nowhere, looking fresh and unruffled.  Better for one of the field hands to spot us coming up the road. 

Instead, we jumped in near a tavern and booked rooms at the inn in Little Rest. That village will morph into Kingston in a few decades, then South Kingston, with two or three other mergers and name changes along the way until the whole area is gobbled up into the Greater Boston district of the EC in the 2200s. 

Katherine sniffs the air.  “How can they not tell that’s smoke?”

I wish she’d go back to being too shy to ask questions.   “It’s only a faint trace. Could you pick it out, if you didn’t know?”

By this time tomorrow, the sky will be nearly black.  The residents of Little Rest are already edgy from the strange weather, but tomorrow it will tip to full-fledged panic.  They have no way of knowing the darkened sky is due to low-lying clouds combined with smoke from a massive forest fire in an uninhabited region of Ontario.  Scientists won’t figure it out for over two centuries. In this era, people simply flail about and search for some way to appease their gods.

Their reactions don’t interest me, although I’m a little curious about what Jemima thinks.  Does she really believe in prophecy?  Or is she the clever con artist her enemies depict?

The girl’s voice breaks into my thoughts.  Dear God, she’s actually reciting the
poem
.

“
'Twas on a May-day of the far old year
Seventeen hundred eighty, that there fell
Over the bloom and sweet life of the Spring
Over the fresh earth and the heaven of noon,
A horror of great darkness, like the night
In day of which the Norland sagas tell,
The Twilight of the Gods.”

Katherine grins when she reaches the end of the stanza.   “And we get to
see
it!  To be here right in the middle of it, when people are rushing about worried that it’s the end of the world. Even Whittier didn’t have that advantage.  He had to write his poem based on someone else’s account.”

She ignores my eye-roll and skips ahead a few steps, then turns back to face me.  “Laugh all you want.  It’s my first apocalypse, Saul Rand. And yes, I know being excited is the hallmark of a time travel virgin, but I’d rather be young and eager than a jaded old man.”

When I don’t respond, she arches an eyebrow and says, “What?  Hast the cat thy tongue?”

Truth be told, I’m pissed off at the
old man
remark, but I’m certainly not going to admit that. “No.  I’m still back on the bit about you being a virgin.”

Her blush comes rushing back.  

And that means I win.

∞

The servant, a middle-aged black man, slides the silver tray onto the low table in front of us.  The two glasses are filled with a pale, cloudy liquid.  “The Friend begs thy pardon, John Franklin, and that of thy wife. Susannah is still restless and the Friend does not wish to leave her side.  She hopes to speak with thee soon.”

“Thank you, Caesar.”  

We’ve been waiting here for an hour already. I have no doubt the delay is connected more to Jemima’s sense of self-importance than to Susannah’s illness.

Once we’re alone, Katherine whispers, “He’s very direct, even for a Quaker slave.  He used your name—well, your cover name—without any sort of title.  The same for Potter’s daughter, Susannah.  And wasn’t Caesar one of the names on the manumission documents?”

“Could be.”

“If he’s free, why is he still here?”

I shrug. “Maybe he didn’t have anywhere to go.”

A brief silence and then she speaks up again. “Susannah, the daughter who dies tomorrow.  What’s wrong with her?”

“Typhoid, most likely.”

I sincerely hope that guess is right, otherwise the wide-spectrum antibiotic I’ve brought with me won’t do much good.  Even then, there’s a chance that “The Friend” will resist, or do something else to botch this test as badly as she botched predicting when the sky would go dark.  It’s looking more and more like this jump will be a colossal waste of effort. 

Katherine is looking at me oddly now.  “Is something wrong?” 

“No.  Why?” 

“You’re clenching your jaw.” She glances around, and then leans closer, lowering her voice. “The way you did at the Objectivist Club, when you were angry with Campbell.”

I really like the warm press of her breast against my arm, and the gentle thrum of her heartbeat that I can both feel and see in the little hollow where her neck meets her collarbone.  I even like the way she smells—the hint of vinegar and honey on her breath from the drink, the faint undertone of sweat from our walk.

What I
don’t
like is her chatter interrupting my thoughts.  She’s more observant than I thought, and now I’m wondering whether she’ll be the easily controlled partner I first imagined.

I lean in closer, purposefully maximizing contact between our bodies.  Her pulse quickens, as I expected, but she doesn’t move away. 

“Do you
like
waiting here in an empty room?” I ask, locking my eyes with hers as the pink slowly fades from her cheeks.  “We’ve been allotted thirty-six hours, give or take, before we must return to our stable point and head home.  I don’t know about you, but I doubt there are answers to the questions on my research agenda here in this parlor.”

Katherine leans back in her chair after a moment, thankfully silent.  Then she walks over to the bookshelf in the opposite corner, which holds a few dozen volumes, and runs her forefinger along the spines, eventually pulling a thin bound volume from the shelves.  Another brief search and she snags a second book from the lower shelf. 

She tosses one of them to me.  “I don’t remember seeing either of these in our archives.  Maybe they’re some of the Friend’s lost manuscripts.”

I don’t respond, just thumb quickly through the essay collection, “Some Considerations, Propounded to the Several Sorts and Sects” by the Publick Universal Friend. It’s written in the obtuse, florid language used in all of her works.  There’s an occasional, mildly interesting biblical reference, interspersed with paragraph after paragraph of commentary that’s either self-aggrandizing or else addressed at resolving petty squabbles between one local church and another. 

A complete waste of time.  “I’m going to find the privy.  Wait here.”

It’s a lie, but I’m too edgy to sit.  I need a few words with Jemima in private, anyway.  The Friend’s desire to take credit for the prophecy will probably keep her from saying anything too revealing in front of Katherine, but you can never tell.  Jemima was stupid enough to keep the prophecy vague, so she might be stupid enough to babble about it.  But most importantly, Katherine can’t be around when I slip Jemima the medicine I’m carrying.  The longer I wait around on the Friend to grant us an audience, the greater the possibility the fool will botch her second chance to add a miracle to her résumé.

I veer down a hallway I saw Caesar take earlier, when he first left us in the parlor, and head up the stairs.  The house is large by colonial standards, but I hear faint moans when I turn into the hallway, so it doesn’t take a genius to locate the room.  When I nudge the door open, Jemima is praying, eyes closed, over a feverish woman in a damp white gown that clings to her frail body.  Judge Potter’s wife, Penelope, is at the head of the narrow bed, sponging her daughter’s forehead. 

When I tap on the doorframe, Penelope looks up from her ministrations, frowning as she tugs a blanket over her daughter’s body.  “Thou should not be here.  Caesar asked thee to wait…”

I glance away from the bed and say, “I beg thy mercy.  My business with the Friend is urgent but it will only take a moment and she can return to her prayers for thy daughter.  Another life hangs in the balance, else I’d not intrude in this way.”

The Friend’s eyes flash with annoyance, but she places the Bible she was holding on the bed table.  “Penelope, give thine own prayer over Susannah until my return.  I shall not tarry.”

Jemima Wilkinson isn’t exactly pretty. She’s somewhere between the written descriptions of a bewitching beauty I read in some of the histories from this era and the rather drab drawings that were made when she was well past her prime. In keeping with her “Universal Friend” persona, she wears an odd mix of male and female garments—a loose-fitting, black clerical robe and white cravat over a plain skirt.  

Definitely not my type, but her eyes are compelling.  Dark, almost black, especially when she’s angry, as she is now.

She ushers me down the stairs, toward an exit at the side of the house.  Once we’re outside, she says in a low voice, “Hast thou come to claim credit even while the sky is merely dim?”

“No, Friend,” I say, lowering my head in deference.  “My wish is not to claim credit, but to spare thee pain.  While I cannot speak with the passion thou hast, my visions are strong.  Susannah will die by this time tomorrow, but I have medicine that can save her.”

I take the vial from my pocket and place it in her hand.  She pulls the cork from the top and sniffs the contents, wrinkling her nose.

“This could be poison.  From where was it obtained?”

I grab the vial from her, pour a tiny spot of the liquid into my palm, and then press my tongue against it.

“I cannot reveal my source, but I swear it will not harm Susannah.  And she’s near to death anyway.  You’ve seen enough patients to know that.”

I realize that I’ve lapsed from plain speech as soon as the words leave my mouth.  Jemima’s brow furrows, but she takes the vial back, replacing the cork.

“Your manner is strange, John Franklin.  William Potter made inquiries of thee with the Friends at Richmond. The man by that name who once worshipped among them is twice thine age.”