The Time Travelers, Volume 2 Page 14

  For a long while she did not speak. She paused three steps above him and examined the face of the man she had been destined to marry. He stared back. He was stronger than he had been. Standing up to his mother was an act he had never expected to achieve, and he had done it, and let Gordon and Miles laugh. He was stronger. Devonny, too, was stronger. Not weakened by her ordeal, she was calm and certain, standing in judgment of him.

  “We have all suffered enough,” said Devonny. “Let us not accuse one another of crimes and cruelty.”

  Hiram lurched to his feet. “But—”

  “Let us forget the past.”

  She is a great lady, thought Hugh-David. Her wedding destroyed, her place in Society battered, her reputation suffering, her father responsible for her terrible fate—and she wants us to forget this. “I am impressed, Devonny. I would be bringing charges against him. I would force him to suffer as he forced you. And you, after all you have suffered, you choose to forgive.”

  She descended the final steps, and now, standing on the same level as the rest, she seemed almost ordinary. The ice goddess from the top of the stairs was just a thin girl trying hard not to weep.

  He wanted desperately to protect her. Idiot, he thought. You have failed to protect her.

  He held out his hand to his bride and she took it. Her skin was so cold. He gathered her in, pulling off his coat, wrapping her up. “Gordon,” he ordered, “put your coat around Mrs. Stratton. They are freezing.”

  He could not know how relieved Devonny was when he jumped to the wrong conclusion and accidentally supplied an explanation for where she had been. They assumed Father was responsible. She would never correct them.

  Armed with his hammer, standing in front of those who opposed him, Hugh-David did not look at all the way she remembered him. He looked handsome, and brave, and a little bit silly. She found herself smiling.

  “How would you have cared for my mother?” she said.

  “He didn’t know,” snapped a monstrously huge woman in a vast fur robe, who could only be Hugh-David’s mother. “He was just stumbling around hoping things would work out.”

  How courageous of him to stand up to his bear of a mother. Devonny knew what it was like; she had a bear of a father. “I thank you, Winnie,” said Devonny, who also knew what it was to stumble around hoping things would work out. “I thank you for your faith in me. I thank you for coming against my father’s will, and against the law, to save my mother. I admit that I did not respect you, Winnie, but now I do. You have character, and strength of mind, and I will always think well of you.”

  “I was hoping you would not call me Winnie,” he said.

  “I think it fits quite well,” she said. “I absolve you from any pledge. You may return to your country with honor, for you have treated me honorably, even in my absence, and in the face of a laughing public.”

  Instead of bowing gracefully and turning to leave, Hugh-David took both her hands. “Miss Stratton,” he said humbly, “will you marry me after all?”

  “What?” shrieked his mother. “You have narrowly escaped an alliance with these awful people! I forbid this!”

  “What?” yelled Hiram Stratton. “You will get no dowry from me!”

  “See?” shouted the Duchess. “There is no point to this without the settlement!”

  Lord Winden knelt.

  Devonny thought of loneliness and compromise and rescue. She thought of love and honor. She thought of the world she had nearly lost. She thought of the frail and desperate mother in the shadows, where already too much time had been spent.

  Angry parents were shrieking. Winnie did not see or hear them, and neither did she.

  “I have grown up a little,” said Hugh-David. “I too would like to marry a person with character and strength, and that is you.”

  The yelling of parents receded into the distance. To be wanted for her strength was a beautiful thing. She would have liked to tell Tod. She felt a terrible pang. She would never be able to show anything off to Tod.

  “There will be no mistresses,” she told Hugh-David.

  “No.”

  “There will be no gambling.”

  “No.”

  She thought of her travel through time; of her dear brother, whom she would never meet again, but whom Annie had lifted, somehow, into Egypt and archaeology. She said to Hugh-David, “When you travel to places like India, I will go along. You will never leave me behind.”

  “Yes.”

  She thought of Tod’s designer water and his soccer team and his amazing mother and the great privilege it had been to share, so briefly, their world. “If I decide to start a business, you will not interfere.”

  “Start a business?” said Hugh-David, his jaw dropping.

  “The children,” said Devonny, “will have the names I choose.” For the girls she would choose Annie and Harriett, and for the boys, Lockwood and Stratton.

  “Wait,” said Hugh-David. “Wait just a minute. I did not agree to that.”

  Devonny’s stepmother and Devonny’s mother exchanged happy smiles. “They sound married already, don’t they?” said Florinda.

  “I think they will get along very well,” agreed Aurelia.

  “Let’s plan the wedding,” said Florinda.

  “No!” shouted Hugh-David’s mother. “Not without a contract.”

  “Never!” shouted Hiram. “I have suffered enough! I am not paying for the privilege!”

  “We have a contract,” said Devonny. “It is signed. It is legal. Father has no choice. There is a dowry, Winnie, and it is the same one you thought you were getting. Father had the best lawyers, the tightest arrangements, and the firmest phrasing.” She smiled, for she was truly happy. She had learned the most important thing, and it had nothing to do with one century or another. To help a stranger was what counted; to care for one another. And in both centuries, the people who mattered had done so. Including her husband-to-be.

  “And this time,” said Devonny Aurelia Victoria Stratton to her future husband, “I insist upon a new wedding gown.”

  For All Time

  I

  Time to Fight

  ANNIE: 1999

  When her parents finally got married again and left for their honeymoon, nobody was happier than Annie Lockwood.

  She now had four days—precisely ninety-six hours—in which she would be unsupervised. Annie had convinced her parents that while they were gone, she would be responsible, trustworthy and dependable.

  None of this was true. Every single promise to her mother and father she had no intention of keeping.

  She was alone at last. The wedding guests were gone and her parents en route to Florida. Her brother was on a bus with his team, headed to basketball camp. The house was utterly quiet. Annie stood in the center of her bedroom, unaware of the clutter around her, and gathered her courage.

  Opening her top desk drawer, Annie removed a small envelope and shook it until a scrap of newspaper fell out. It landed between a mug of pencils and a stack of CDs.

  EGYPTIAN ART IN THE AGE OF THE PYRAMIDS

  September 16, 1999—January 9, 2000

  Metropolitan Museum of Art

  New York, New York

  Annie despised museums. Whenever there was a class trip to a museum, she tried to be sick and stay home for the day. If this failed, she slouched in the teacher’s wake, wishing she could get pushed around in a wheelchair, because nothing was more tiring than standing in front of a painting.

  But today was different. In a few hours, Annie would be standing in front of a photograph which had merited one brief mention in the newspaper article about the special exhibition. Taken one hundred years ago, this portrait showed every member of the original archaeology expedition.

  And would the person she cared about most, the person she had known one hundred years ago, be in that photograph? How vividly Annie remembered Strat’s moppy hair and broad shoulders, his casual grin and easy slouch. Every time she touched the newsprint, she fel
t Strat through the ink.

  Strat was in Egypt, waiting for her.

  She could feel him. She would cross Time and be with him again.

  Four days lay ahead of her. Surely Time understood the urgency and would bring her to Strat.

  Annie unzipped her bridesmaid dress. It was a fashion disaster in emergency room green, which indeed made Annie look as if she needed to be hospitalized. Why had Mom’s college roommate agreed to put this dress on her body twenty years ago, when she was maid of honor? Why had this roommate saved the dress, so that Annie would have to wear it in public?

  But in the end, wearing such a dress was a small sacrifice to celebrate that her mother and father were not getting divorced after all.

  Dad’s hobby for the last few years had been another woman. Annie and her brother hadn’t expected their parents to have another anniversary, let alone another wedding. But not only did Mom and Dad seem truly back together, Mom had talked Dad into getting married a second time for their twentieth anniversary.

  When Mom came down the aisle, as lovely as ever in her original white satin wedding gown, even Annie’s cynical brother, Tod, was dabbing at tears. Annie chose to believe that Dad repeated his vows—broken once—with every intention of keeping them this time around.

  The word time had swirled throughout every conversation of the second wedding day.

  My parents loved and lost, thought Annie. Today, they swore to love again. I loved and lost. Today, I, too, will have a second chance.

  She let the ghastly dress fall onto the carpet and stepped out of it. Annie was fond of floors, which were the best storage space. She kicked off her dyed-to-match satin shoes, peeled away her stockings and stood barefoot and happy in front of her closet. She had even bought clothing from an adventure catalog to wear for this museum trip.

  She put on the long swirling skirt of khaki twill; the full-sleeved silky white blouse; the jacket with bright buttons and many pockets. She tied a scarlet scarf loosely at her throat and pulled on footgear that was half army boot, half sneaker, and fully cool.

  In the full-length mirror, with her pale complexion and sleek dark hair falling to her waist, she had a dated look, like a young schoolmarm from another time.

  She drew some deep breaths, preparing herself, trying to still her racing heart and hopes. She had never gone into New York City alone. The kick of the city was going with friends. But if Annie was right about this, she would meet the friend she cared about most in the museum. He would be in the photograph, waiting.

  She would climb through.

  STRAT: 1899

  Strat was riding a camel.

  He had expected a camel to be like a horse. He would become friends with his camel, which would trot to meet him in the morning and nuzzle him affectionately.

  Camels, however, despised Strat. They spat and growled, they gave him dirty looks, they tried to bite and they never stopped making nasty noises.

  Strat had had stepmothers like this camel.

  His father had had two activities in life: money and marriage. Father had been extremely good at money, but not good at wives. But then, money was worth holding on to and wives were not. For this and other reasons, Strat hoped never to speak to, write to, or be in the same room with, his father again.

  But once he mounted the camel (sitting on something more like a table than a saddle, with pillows and backrest, a carpet and a sunshade), the camel forgot Strat was there, as indeed Strat hoped Father had forgotten about him. Riding a camel was like sitting in a rocking chair that happened to progress toward the horizon. Strat could bring a picnic or a book, write a letter or take a nap.

  Today, however, he was bringing two dead bodies into Cairo.

  The bodies were wrapped in a canvas tent flap. The Egyptian servants had first draped the bodies over a donkey’s back, but Egyptian donkeys were very small, so the bodies hung with their heads dangling in the dust on one side and their feet on the other. The loss of dignity was great. Strat had to bring them up onto the camel with him.

  It was not as awful as he would have expected to have two dead bodies in his lap. In Egypt, who could fail to think of death? The land itself was death, blazing murderous desert encircling stone cities of the dead, occupied now by whole cities of archaeologists. Strat’s archaelogist, Dr. Lightner, searched for death. It was Dr. Lightner’s great hope to find a mummy in a royal tomb, untouched by Time or robbers.

  Even Strat’s camera was death. It recorded on paper what had existed a moment ago but would never exist in the same way again.

  Strat had been dreaming of death. In the dream, he was buried alive. When a shaft leading to a long-lost tomb was opened, he, Strat, tumbled in and was forgotten, to be smothered by shovelsful of sand and bucketsful of stone as the shaft was filled in. The dream was so vivid that Strat would wake up with his fingers scrabbling at the low tent ceiling, trying to claw through canvas to get air.

  He wondered what the two French campers had been dreaming of when they rolled over in their sleep.

  The Egyptians had refused to deal with the bodies. The Pyramid, they said, was fine to climb by day, but by night, it belonged to the ghosts of the past. Persons on the Pyramid at night should expect to be accosted by the spirits of those who had gone before.

  How Dr. Lightner scoffed. “You and I, of course,” he said to Strat, as they packed the bodies, “have no such superstitious beliefs.”

  Dr. Lightner was incorrect. Superstitious meant believing in things inconsistent with the known laws of science. Strat had witnessed something inconsistent with the known laws of science. Father had imprisoned Strat in a lunatic asylum because of what Strat claimed. So Strat could not quite so easily dismiss the idea of ghosts from the past.

  He had volunteered to go to the French embassy in Cairo because he could not bear to think of the families who would not know what had happened to their boys. Strat knew what it was like never to have answers about the fate of somebody you loved.

  Everybody was delighted not to have to think of the dead tourists again and they were quite cheery as they waved good-bye to Strat.

  Egypt was crammed with tourists. Boats overflowed with archaeologists; camels were top-heavy with dreamers; donkeys were laden with watercolor artists. Strat made all his spending money by taking photographs of elderly British maiden ladies and spry old Italian men, of sparkly uniformed British soldiers en route to conquer the Sudan and pipe-smoking German scholars who argued with Dr. Lightner’s conclusions.

  Tourists paid well, and the more money he made, the more he could send to Katie. Not that it was money Katie needed. In her letters, she assured Strat that she was proud of him and that was enough, he need send no dollars.

  It was not enough, and Strat knew this utterly.

  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?”

  ANNIE: 1999

  Annie 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.