The Time Tutor (5 page)

The smell of roses wafted from the kitchens. When Alva pushed open the door, she saw Ed sitting alone at the long wooden table, a huge bowl overflowing with blossoms beside him. They were white and pink roses, which this morning had been the last survivors in the garden behind the mansion. Ed was plucking the blossoms and putting them in another bowl.

“Whatever you're making, it isn't Swedish,” Alva said, pulling out a stool and sitting across from him. “Here, give me some. I'll help.”

He pushed the two bowls so that they were between them. “Thank you. I am making rose water. And tomorrow I shall make lokum. It is Turkish. Hannelore loves it.” He chuckled. “But she doesn't love it as much as I do.”

Alva pushed her fingers into a pink rose, and began to pull the petals from the heart. They came away as if they wanted to, as if it were their pleasure to flutter over her hands. The scent of the flower gave itself to the air like a sigh.

“Why am I here, Ed?” Alva asked after she had destroyed three more: a white and two more pinks. She looked around her. “And why are the kitchens deserted?”

The cook stroked a petal between his thumb and forefinger. “A rose's beauty is long,” he said. “In the bud and in the flower. Then suddenly it is blown. And done. With us people, it is the opposite. We are beautiful only for a short time, and old for a very long time.”

“But some would say blown roses are the most beautiful of all. And what about rose hips?” Alva shredded another blossom. “And dried roses? And rose water? And your lokum? Old roses are beautiful, too. So stop talking in metaphors and tell me why you've dragged me down here in the middle of a concert. You know how Hannelore feels about absentees.”

Ed laughed. “You are so mundane sometimes, Alva. So like a peasant.”

She shrugged. “I am a peasant. Dressed up like a lady. You know that.”

“Yes,” Ed murmured. “Yes, and that is what is so strange.” He picked up a handful of petals from the bowl beside him and let them sift through his fingers. “Susan said you asked a question about her past today. Why did you do that?”

Alva glanced up at him quickly, then back down at her work. “I was curious. Why? Is it wrong to ask?”

“No, but it is not done. You know that. You have played the game so well since the moment you came, as if you could sense the rules without being told. It is why you would make a great time traveler—your ability to read the emotions in a room. So why did you ask today?”

Alva didn't say anything. But her brain was spinning in her skull. She took the only red rose from the bowl and tore half its petals away. She watched them flutter down to stain the pile of soft whites and pinks. She looked up at Ed. “Tell me. No more questions. Tell me what you wish to tell me, and then let me go.”

He nodded. “Have you noticed, Alva, that you and Bertrand are the youngest among Hannelore's Favorites by many years? Of course you have. You enjoy it. And you both do it so well, the trick of pleasing her, of distracting her. Bright, happy, dancing poppets.” He frowned down at his hands, empty now of blossoms. “Do you think . . .” He paused for a long time, then looked up at her, and for the first time Alva could see that his face was ravaged by some terrible, unfulfilled yearning. “Do you think that there have been no others, no other pretty sparrows? Do you think that Hannelore—who thrives on beauty and gaiety and the feeling of passionate young hearts beating, throbbing in her hand—do you think that she has lived without that for twenty whole years?”

Alva stared at him, the flowers forgotten.

“Alva, she is about to test you. I can sense it. She will test you just as she has tested all of us. I want to warn you, not because I think you will fail, but because I am sure that you will pass. Passing does not mean what you think it will, my dear. You will join the rest of us then.”

“Join you?”

“Yes.” He smiled at Alva. “How old do you think I am?”

She frowned at the abrupt change of topic. “I don't know.” She studied his careworn face. “Forty-two?”

He held out his hands, palms down. They were smooth and youthful. “I am twenty-five,” he said. “What you see in my face is the measure of my devotion. To Hannelore, and to the Guild.” He reached across the table and touched her cheek. “It is a steep price, but . . .” He smiled. “It is worth it.”

 • • • 

The night's entertainment was over when Alva emerged from the kitchens, and the passageways were full of Favorites making their way to their chambers. How quickly can you walk before your pace reveals that you are running? How calm a face can you have before its rigidity shows that you are actually terrified? Alva went as speedily as she dared. When she reached Bertrand's door she knocked, and held her breath. A curious face or two drifted past, and Alva gave them what she hoped was a sunny smile. When she heard the bolt withdrawn, she shouldered her way in and pressed the door closed behind her with her body. Bertrand was kissing her before she could open her mouth, and she pushed him away. “Bertrand,” she whispered. “Bertrand, no time for that! We are caught in a terrible snare!”

He stepped back. “You know? Thank God!” Bertrand pulled her by the hand into the room. “When Hannelore said you were the spy, I—”

“Hold there: She said what?”

Bertrand's eyebrows rose. “She said you were the spy.”

“She told me
you
were the spy, Bertrand.”

They stared at one another for a long moment.

Then turned their heads as the door to the hallway swung open.

Hannelore, in all her glory, stood smiling in at them. “Good evening, my lovebirds.”

 • • • 

Dar left the Holborn shop in a wretched mood. The girl's magnificence had faded in memory, as girls' magnificence always does. Now he was simply angry. Not angry at her—what was her blasted name? Emma? Anna? Something like that. And not angry at Bertrand, because he could now perfectly understand the young idiot's besotted state. The girl . . . Alva! That was her name. She was Swedish. He'd heard it in her voice, that accent like water being poured out of a small-mouthed bottle. The girl was sparkling and more clever than most men put together. Definitely besottable with, highly so.

No, Dar was angry at the Guild, for being so fucking organized, for nabbing all the real talent among new time travelers. For being rich and slick enough to brainwash kids like Bertrand and Alva, the smartest and the best. And he was angry at the Ofan for being so pathetic. Bopping up and down the River, cavorting like Robin Hood's Merry Men, minus Robin. Not one single thought for what might happen if the Guild had their way and rubbed the fun out of everything.

To be honest—not his favorite thing to be, but sometimes a man has to do what a man has to do—he was angry with himself. He was a good teacher and a good dreamer. He could light the fire in a new Ofan's eyes for an hour or perhaps even for a lifetime, training him up not only in the how of time travel, but in the why and the wherefores. But he was no leader of men. He wasn't making any headway with the Ofan as a whole. He suspected they were beginning to find his rants about the Guild irritating.

But if the Ofan were raggle-taggle, at least they were company. And he needed company, after that debacle-slash-erotic-dream-come-true back in the shop in Holborn.

His steps led him through the squalor of Soho to Soho Square. Shaking a particularly persistent urchin from the skirts of his greatcoat after beguiling her for a moment with a trick involving a half crown and her ear, he entered the Ofan safe house and soon enough found himself in the medieval catacombs hidden beneath the square. It was a network of tunnels and rooms half-filled with bones and half-filled with books, and at its center was a warm, candlelit, cozy pub, called the Transporter. It was perfect, and always good for a conversation or a flirtation or even, if the mood was right, a fistfight. And perhaps, Dar thought as he pushed open the door to the pub, the mood was right. Maybe what he needed was a good black eye, delivered to him by some Ofan knucklehead from the dim and distant past. That might be just the ticket.

But when he opened the door he realized that it was not to be. Not tonight anyway.

The pub was almost empty, and the reason was immediately obvious. Stan, Stan the Madrigal Man and his three snortingly nerdy friends were over by the yellow piano, warbling their dreary and earnest way through “Sleep, Fleshly Birth.”

He suffered through three verses and half a glass of beer before Husani turned up from the 2020s, gorgeous as always, in her flour-dusted pastry-chef's apron. In her hands, she carried one her most fiendish concoctions, an apricot pistachio croissant. And she had the light of battle in her eyes.

“That's it,” Dar muttered. “There are only so many angry, sexy women I can take in one day.”

He wiped his mouth on his sleeve, crammed his beaver hat on his head, and stood up. Husani was striding toward him. Her hair, which she wore in a thick braid for work, was lying over her shoulder and down over her breast. It seemed to be undoing itself as she walked, all on its own, in a disturbingly snakelike fashion. “Dar, you are not avoiding this fight. Don't you leave, don't you dare—”

“Madam.” He touched the curly brim of his hat and walked past, deaf to her protestations.

Time travel could be the very devil when it came to romantic entanglements.

He turned right out of the Transporter and was off down the corridor to the costume room. It was twentieth-century air he needed. Bright and electric-lit and jazz-threaded.

Soon enough, in white tie, top hat, and tails, he was swinging his cane down the Strand, headed for the Savoy. It was a spring night in 1923, a crescent moon lolled among a few clouds up above, and he knew he would be able to put Bertrand and that blasted Swedish girl out of his mind for a handful of hours. So long as the Savoy Orpheans were blowing their horns and some pretty, non-time-traveling flapper found her way into his arms for a few turns around the dance floor and maybe more . . .

“Dar?”

He spun. “Goddam—”

The curse died aborning. It was the Madrigal Man, poor bastard. Stan was too pitiful to warrant anything other than a tired sigh. So Dar sighed tiredly.

Stan looked absurd in his attempt at twentieth-century attire, like a cross between a cowboy and a banker. “Hi there, Dar.”

“Don't pretend this is accidental, Stan. You know I hate it when you follow me. Gives me the spooks.” There was the throbbing bosom of the Savoy, luscious and warm. “I do not have time tonight.”

“Please. I must talk to you.”

“Of course you must. And it has to be now.” Dar resisted the urge to break his cane over Stan's head. Instead, he plunged past the Savoy, gesturing for Stan to follow. They made a sharp right down Savoy Street, toward the Embankment. It was deserted, but the reflection of electric streetlights sparkled on the black waters of the Thames; at least there would be something bright and modern about this evening. “Sit,” Dar said, gesturing to a sphinx-flanked bench.

Stan sat, looking up at Dar like a hopeful beagle. “Aren't you going to sit, too?”

“No, I'm not. I do not feel particularly companionable.”

“Why not?”

“Stan.” Dar propped his cane against the bench, put a spatted shoe up on the seat, and leaned his elbow on his knee. He admired, for a moment, the way his signet ring glimmered on his hand. “I would caution you to cut line. Tell me why in the name of all that's holy have you followed me to 1923. If you don't have a good reason I shall be obliged to beat the living daylights out of you with this very fine cane.”

“I'm practicing and practicing,” Stan said, with just the hint of a whine in his voice, “but I still can't jump alone. Your lessons aren't working.”

Dar nodded as his toes curled in his shoes.

“I do everything you say, professor, and I can't jump.”

Dar removed his foot from the bench and strolled a few feet away to look down at the river. After a few deep breaths, he turned and leaned against the iron railing. “You just did jump,” he said. “Following me.”

“But that's the point. The only way I can jump alone is if I follow someone's trail, a few moments after they've gone. If I try to jump cold, all on my own, it just doesn't work. I know exactly where I want to go, but I can't feel the River, like you're always telling us to do. I can only make it if I'm with another person.”

“The talent's different with everyone,” Dar said. “Your trick of following—which by the way is driving me completely insane, Stan—nobody else can do that.”

“But it's useless! I want to be able to stride out of a room, brush past the most beautiful woman the Ofan have ever seen, and just jump into a beautiful suit and a beautiful life.”

“That's a lot of beautifuls.” Dar fished in his jacket pocket and brought out a flask. “Everybody wants a beautiful woman and a beautiful life. Everybody thinks the next man over has it.” He unscrewed the silver cap and took a small sip. Lowering the flask, he saw Stan eyeing it. He held it out. “Would you like a taste? I got it from James IV of Scotland himself, in 1506. Made by the Guild of Surgeon Barbers.”

Stan upended it. “Thanks,” he said, handing it back to Dar, empty.

Dar weighed the empty flask for a moment and looked at it with some incredulity, then screwed the cap on and slipped it back into his pocket. “Tell me, Stan, did you have beautiful women and a beautiful life before you jumped?”

A full-blown pout sprouted on Stan's face. “No. Because I'm ugly—”

Dar held a hand up. “I've had enough. It's not because you're ugly, Stan; it's because you are a picksome fatwit. Why do you think I spend my precious time training the likes of you? Do you think I do it out of the goodness of my heart? Because I want you to be able to jump around in time just like all the other kids? Because I want you to get laid?”