The Time Travelers, Volume 2 (20 page)

Katie wanted love, but Strat had given away the love he possessed. He had given love to his family, and in return, had been destroyed by his own father. He had given love to Harriett, and she had died. He had given love to Annie, and she was lost to another world.

Strat was still a nice person who knew his duty. But his heart was desiccated, like the hearts of mummies in tombs: a hard dry thing, without hope. And now he lurched on a camel with dead men whose hopes had ended.

Oh, Annie! he thought, staring at the burned gold of desert sand. Will I ever see you again?

Time was flying by. It was November of 1899. In six short weeks, Time would hurtle around a huge and magnificent corner, becoming another century.

Nineteen hundred
.

If Strat did not cross Time now, he never would.

And so Strat decided that he, too, would spend the night on top of the Pyramid, in the hope that the Egyptians were correct and he would meet the spirits of those who had gone before.

He approached the French embassy in the belief that he had everything under control. He even spoke a little French, which was good, because Frenchmen felt that the English language—especially spoken with an American accent—was a poor way to communicate.

But after the spoken formalities were over, there were paper formalities. Forms to be filled out. Signatures.

Strat had not expected to need his name.

Everybody at the dig called him Strat and never asked for more. He was not one of the impressive young men, college boys from Yale or Princeton who were playing at archaeology for a few months before joining their fathers’ law firms in Boston. He was merely the camera boy, practically a servant.

He should have come up with a false name long before, but he had been too dumb. He had thought thousands of miles would protect him from the name Hiram Stratton. Strat pasted a fake smile on his face and scribbled. “Archibald Lightner.”

The French turned cold. He was no longer forgiven for being American. “You will sign your own name,” they said sharply, “not your employer’s.”

“I’m not in charge,” he protested.

They whipped out a fresh form. “You brought the bodies. You sign.”

He could have chosen any name. John Strat. Strat Johnson. But he panicked and scribbled a meaningless squash of letters. He found himself with a cold and severe Frenchman.

Why was he reluctant to state his real name? the
attaché demanded. What made him volunteer to dispose of the bodies? Where had Strat been, at midnight, when the two boys supposedly rolled over and fell to their deaths?

The attaché pulled the ends of his mustache into thin cords, revealing thin lips tightened in suspicion. “How did these boys die?” asked the officer. “Did you push them?”

A
nnie climbed the Grand Staircase of the Metropolitan Museum, silently thanking every benefactor whose name was recorded on the marble panels on either side of her. New York would be less grand without this museum, and these were the men and women who had provided it.

Then she forgot everything except the special exhibition.

It was divided among rooms whose gray carpet went right up the walls, giving both exhibition and visitors a padded permanent look, as though they would be here forever, enclosed in cloudy gray. She was bumped by two very old ladies with museum headsets perched in their white curls. A girl in frayed black sweats sat cross-legged on the floor, sketching a statue whose eyes had been ripped out in antiquity. A middle-aged man read the translation of an ancient papyrus, while a tiny delicate woman studied a trinket box carved from hippopotamus ivory.

There were a number of photographs. Each one had a caption.
LIGHTNER EXPEDITION
.
1899
.

The first one Annie studied was not framed, just tacked to splintered wood. It was black and white, yet full of glare and heat. It showed a woman caught in a whip of sand and dust, arm raised against her face so she could breathe, her long skirt billowing, and beyond her, the rising side of a vast pyramid.

Who was the woman? The placard did not say.

Maybe it’s me, thought Annie Lockwood.

The contents of the next room had come from the tomb of a queen named Hetepheres, mother of King Khufu, who built the Great Pyramid.

The tomb of Hetepheres had been found entirely by accident when a cameraman employed by the archaeologists got clumsy. His heavy wooden tripod fell over, striking a patch of plaster that had hitherto concealed the entrance to the shaft.

The placard did not give the name of the cameraman.

Was it Strat?

If she could touch the photo, she’d know. She’d feel Strat through that paper. Or she wouldn’t.

A museum guard, finely tuned to be aware of all ready-to-touch visitors, gave Annie the heavy-lidded look of authority.

She stumbled on.

In the third room was a small gold statue of Sekhmet, goddess of revenge, on a pedestal behind glass. And there, at eye level on the carpeted wall, was the photograph described in the newspaper article: every member of the dig that had uncovered the tomb of Hetepheres.

Museum visitors were standing in front of it and
blocking Annie’s view. She peered around shoulders and between the straps of handbags.

The picture was large, with the quiet hazy look of early photographs. A dozen people had posed in two rows, shadowed by the brims of hats they had worn a hundred years ago to protect themselves from the Egyptian sun. They seemed to have been mummified as they waited for the picture to be taken.

Slowly the exhibition visitors rotated on. One boy was still half in Annie’s way, but she couldn’t wait any longer, even though she wanted to be alone with her photograph. She shouldered the boy away and carefully examined each tiny black-and-white face. This had to be her shaft through Time.

But Strat was not in the photograph.

Annie was just a silly girl in silly clothing, wearing her silly hopes. “Oh, Strat!” she said, heart bursting with grief.

The boy who was also still looking at the photograph said, “Yes?”

S
ix months after the murder of her father, Camilla Mateusz decided to become a man, because men were paid more. She had read once that a Confederate girl pretended to be a soldier throughout the entire War Between the States and never got caught. So why couldn’t Camilla be a man during the twelve working hours of the day—and never get caught?

Camilla possessed an advantage in such a masquerade. She towered over all ladies and most men.

A lady must be delicate, with white throat and narrow ankles. Not that anybody believed a Polish girl was within reach of being a lady, but Camilla Mateusz had an additional affliction. She was six feet tall in a generation where most girls were hardly more than five. When she was sitting, people thought her attractive, and praised the thick blond braids, rosy cheeks and blue eyes.

Eventually, however, Camilla had to stand up. Mill hand or shopkeeper, priest or policeman—everybody who saw Camilla unfold burst out laughing. Who would ever marry her?

Only once had her height been useful, in the wonderful
new game called basketball. How grand to feel the joy men had always felt: throwing a ball.

Of course, girls did not play the same game as boys. Girls, for example, could not dribble, which was a skill far beyond their capacities. The court was only half as large, and in long skirts, girls did not move quickly. Last season, however, the girls had actually been permitted to play against another school’s team. Oh, not without arguments. The community was outraged by this attack against feminine behavior. It was clear where this kind of thing would lead. Lovely sweet girls would be ruined.

They pointed to Camilla as proof, how unwomanly she was, with her attention to the ball and her desire to win.

Well, Camilla had lost the joy of basketball. She had lost her chance to win a high school diploma as well. But she had not lost her father’s courage. He had crossed a terrible ocean, worked hard at a terrible job and died a terrible death. He had done this for his family and she could not do less.

What to do about the waist-length yellow hair of which she was so proud?

Since men wore caps or hats in the street, as a man, she could cover her hair to an extent, but caps were removed indoors. Camilla would have to have short hair. And so she gave herself a ragged haircut, put on Papa’s clothing and Papa’s cap. Low on her cheeks she rubbed a little soot from the kerosene lamp. Then she put on Papa’s old reading glasses, smudging them a bit in hope of lessening the blue of her eyes.

Oh, Papa! He had had his heart set on seeing his
children finish school.
They
would not spend their lives in a mine or mill.
They
would go to an office, have clean jobs and wear white shirts with white collars.

The Mateusz family had but one photograph on their walls. It was large and quiet in its heavy brown frame. Mama was seated, Papa standing behind her, his hand resting on her shoulder. Mama wore the dress she had been married in and Papa his only suit—the one in which he had lately been buried. Seven children stood around them, solemn and proud to be in a portrait. Since then, the three oldest had had to drop out of school to work in the mills—or rather, the remaining mill; the one Mr. Hiram Stratton had
not
burned down; the one in which her father had
not
died.

This morning Mama had had no food to put in the lunch pails. Irena and Magdalena, Antony and Marya did not cry. They just looked a little more pinched as they set out for school. Stefan, age thirteen, shrugged and walked out to endure his twelve-hour day. But Jerzy paused for a moment, running his fingers over the pile of his abandoned schoolbooks, still stacked on the shelf by the door. He made a fist, hit the wall, apologized to his mother and went to the factory. Jerzy was fourteen.

Mr. Hiram Stratton, Sr., the man whose wealth and needs dictated all that happened in this city, had broken a strike by the simple expedient of burning down the factory. He had not checked to see if the factory was empty. He ordered his thugs to torch it, and they did. Michael Mateusz had been there. He had not gotten out.

Hiram Stratton was not accused of arson. He was not accused of murder. In fact, he was named the next police commissioner.

So Camilla left a note for her mother. “I’ve gone to get a good job. I will send money so the boys can return to school. Do not worry about me. I am strong.”

Newspaper advertisements contained four possible jobs. The first three interviews went badly. She blushed when she pretended to be Cameron Matthews instead of Camilla Mateusz. She lowered her eyes demurely, forgetting to stare man to man. She did not remember to stride or swing her arms. Furthermore, she went in the morning, while sunlight streamed into each office. Nobody guessed that this very tall person could be a girl, but they were puzzled and uncertain and did not want to hire her.

The fourth interview was late in the afternoon. Camilla found herself at an office that did not yet have electric lights, and the single lamp in the little room scarcely illuminated the papers on the desk, never mind the stranger in the door. She paused for courage, reading the sign.

Camilla’s heart sank.

She could not be party to the sort of things that led to
divorce! Aside from the fact that the Church would disapprove, she might lose faith in the human race.

Although, given what Hiram Stratton had done, what faith had she in the human race anyway?

She raised her hand to cross herself, and keep away the evil of such practices as arson and divorce, when she was greeted by the man who must be Mr. Duffie. Just in time, Camilla remembered that her pretend self, Cameron Matthews, was probably not a good Catholic.

But Mr. Duffie thought she meant to shake hands, so he got halfway up from his desk, extending his hand over the wide wooden top. Luckily she had been doing this all day and knew to grip hard.

His black pomaded hair glistened on his head. He might, or might not, have brushed his teeth the week before. He handed her a form to fill out.

Cameron Matthews
, she wrote, in big strong script.

High school diploma
, she added, instead of
Eighth-grade graduate
.

Mr. Duffie held her paperwork close to the lamp and scanned the page quickly. “Matthews,” he said approvingly. “A good English name. You don’t know how many Poles and Czechs come in here, expecting to be hired, as if they were regular people.”

Camilla spat into the tobacco stand to demonstrate her disgust at the current situation in America. This was a hard part of being a man. Why did men always have spit in their mouths? She certainly never had any spare spit in her mouth.

Mr. Duffie leaned back in a wooden swivel chair and
chewed the tip of a pipe. “What I need, Mr. Matthews,” said Duffie, “is a man willing to masquerade as a woman. I know, I know. A shameful thing to ask. I have had men vomit at the suggestion of imitating a female. But in this line of work, there are situations into which a man cannot go. A female, however, could do so.”

That would be interesting, thought Camilla. I’d be a woman pretending to be a man pretending to be a woman. “Why then,” she asked, in her new deep voice, “do you not simply hire a female?”

Mr. Duffie laughed out loud. “Nobody would trust the evidence of a female. Who would hire my agency if it became known that I used female operatives? No, I need a man to disguise himself.”

“You ask a great deal,” said Camilla, accepting the offer of chewing tobacco.

“I pay a great deal, Mr. Matthews,” said Mr. Duffie, writing the amount on a piece of paper and shoving it toward her.

Camilla nearly swallowed her tobacco. He told the truth. He paid a great deal. If she lived frugally, not only could Jerzy and Stefan return to school, lunch pails would be full! Mama could pay somebody else to do the laundry!