Bubble in the Bathtub (23 page)

Doctor Proctor gulped. “Where? Out with it.”

“To a jail cell. In the city of Rouen. On May thirtieth. In the year 1431.”

Doctor Proctor looked puzzled. “Why there? Why then?”

“I know,” Lisa said.

“Oh?” Doctor Proctor said, and looked at her.

“Mrs. Strobe just covered that in history class. Joan of Arc was burned at the stake in the Old Market Square in Rouen on that date.”

“Is that true?” the professor asked, looking at Raspa.

Raspa shrugged. “It was the first thing I thought of.”

“Something tells me our troubles aren't over yet,” Doctor Proctor said.

Just then the carriage stopped and they heard the driver's voice call from the roof, “The Pastille, Mademoiselle Raspa!”

“So this is where you were going, too?” Doctor Proctor asked.

“Of course,” Raspa said. “My bathtub is here. In the pigsty, to be precise.”

“You followed me,” Lisa said.

“Yes. I realized that one over there was never going to lead me to Victor,” Raspa said, nodding toward Nilly, who you're probably thinking has been quiet for quite a while now, which is pretty unlike him. Nilly was lying, slumped down in the seat, and the sound that almost sounded like snoring actually was just that: snoring.

Lisa rolled her eyes and gave Nilly a kick in the shin so that he opened his eyes. He blinked, smacked his lips, smiled, and mumbled a very groggy, but hopeful, “Breakfast?”

They hurried out of the carriage. Luckily the bathtubs were still right where they'd left them. Sure, they had to pull out three pigs, who were enjoying the bathwater, and in the chicken coop the rooster was perched on the edge of the tub pecking at them aggressively. He obviously thought the tub now belonged to him.

Raspa poured time soap into both of the tubs and said that she wanted to go to Rouen with them. How else could she be sure that they wouldn't run off and cheat her of the drawings for the tub?

Doctor Proctor didn't object and they agreed that he and Nilly would use the tub in the chicken coop and Raspa and Lisa would use the one in the pigsty.

When Lisa and Raspa were alone in the pigsty, stirring the tub to make some bubbles, Lisa heard Raspa sniffle. Lisa didn't say anything. She just waited. Then there was another sniffle. And another.

“You were in love with him,” Lisa said finally. “Weren't you?”

Raspa sniffled a long, wet, oversized sniffle.

“Victor never noticed,” she said. “He was only ever interested in his inventions.”

Lisa just nodded. She'd suspected this for a long time.

“I would have done anything for him,” Raspa said,
sniffling and still stirring. “I would have gladly given him the recipe for the stupid time soap if he'd only just asked. I thought he was a little slow, that he just needed a little time to fall in love with me. But I realized that he wasn't slow at all when one day he came into the laboratory beaming, and said that he'd fallen in love with a French girl he'd met on the street.” Massive sniffle. “And you know what?”

“No, what?” Lisa said.

“Back then I was much prettier than that … that … Juliette Margarine. Just so you know!”

“I see,” Lisa said. “But he fell in love with her. That's just how it happens sometimes.”

Raspa stopped stirring and cocked her head, looking down at Lisa. “Who died and made you Miss Smarty Pants, if I might ask? You're just a little snippet of a girl. What do you know?”

“Not that much, maybe,” Lisa said. “But I lost a friend once, and I made a new one.”

Raspa pulled out a handkerchief and blew her nose. “You don't say,” she said. “A new friend, huh?”

“Yes,” Lisa said. “It's never too late to make new friends, you know.”

Raspa sniffled contemptuously. “And who does Little Miss Smarty Pants think would want to be friends with an evil old lady with a wooden leg, if I might ask?”

“Well,” Lisa said, looking down at the soap, which was starting to form a nice layer of bubbles, “me, for example.”

“Sea spray!” Raspa spluttered, clearing her throat.

Lisa didn't respond. They kept stirring in silence, even though there were enough bubbles now for them to go.

Finally Raspa asked, “Do you know what the stupidest thing is?”

“No,” Lisa said.

Raspa laughed a short, hard laugh. “Don't say anything
to Victor, but I've known how to make tubs that could time-travel the whole time.”

Lisa stopped stirring. “What are you saying?”

Raspa shrugged her shoulders. “That I don't actually need his drawings. I can make my own time-traveling tub anytime I want.”

“But … but why did you follow me and Nilly to Paris if it wasn't to get your claws on those drawings?”

“Isn't that what your friend Nilly would call
elementary
?”

Lisa smiled. “You wanted to find Doctor Proctor, not the drawings for his tub.”

Raspa sighed heavily. “I was dumb, I was hoping … that maybe there might still be a chance that he would …”

“Fall in love with you?”

Raspa laughed a bitter laugh. “Pretty stupid, huh? I mean, can you imagine?
With me?
An old witch of a woman with a wooden leg and bad breath?”

“I don't know,” Lisa said. “But what I don't get is why you're helping Doctor Proctor find Juliette if you don't actually need his drawings after all.”

“Sometimes,” Raspa said, climbing into the tub, “even witches aren't sure why they do the things they do. Come on, Lisa. Time for us to head to the Dark Ages.”

AND, INDEED, THE Dark Ages did turn out to be extremely dark: coal-black and jet-black, pitch-black and ink-black. Totally nighttime-black, actually. Nilly determined this as he stood in his bathtub. Now he cried out, “Is anyone here?” His voice echoed.

“I'm here,” a voice next to him said.

“Well, duh, I know that,” Nilly said. “We came in the same tub, didn't we? I was wondering if anyone else was here. Can you see anything?”

“No,” Doctor Proctor said. “Juliette? Juliette?”

No answer.

“Juliette!” the professor repeated. “Juli … Ow!”

“What was that?”

“Something hit me on the head again.”

“What was it?”

“I don't know, but it felt like a bathtub.”

“Is there anyone here?” That was Lisa's voice.

“I'm here,” said a hoarse, desert-dry voice.

“Well, duh, I know that,” Lisa whispered. “We came in the same tub, didn't we? I was wondering if—”

“We're all here,” Nilly said. “But where are we? It's totally impossible to see anything.”

“We're exactly where we wanted to be,” Doctor Proctor said. “In Joan of Arc's prison cell.”

Nilly's eyes started adjusting to the dark, and he
could just make out a little window with bars on it very high up in the wall. And the outlines of three white bathtubs arranged scattered about at random.

“Juliette's been here,” Nilly said. “I can see her bathtub.”

There was a creaking squeak.

“The door's closed.” That was Raspa's voice. Nilly could just make out her outline over by something that looked like an alarmingly solid iron door.

“Um, so we're locked in and Juliette's not here?” Lisa said. “What are we going to do? Shh! Did you guys hear that?”

Nilly held his breath and listened. All he could hear was a soft crackling from outside, like the sound of fireworks in the distance. But wait! Now he heard it, too. A soft moaning. It was coming from … from underneath Juliette's bathtub.

“Help me tip over this bathtub!” Nilly shouted.

Raspa and Doctor Proctor were at his side in a flash.
They tipped the tub up onto its side and the bathwater poured out onto the black, hard-packed dirt floor. And there, lying on her stomach under the tub, was a woman! The moon must have emerged from the clouds right then, because a pale, flickering glow lit up the prison cell and the woman's auburn hair and white dress.

“Juliette, you …!” Lisa started, beaming with joy. But she stopped suddenly when the woman on the floor raised her head and looked at them with her frightened but incandescent blue eyes. Because although she certainly looked like Juliette, with the same color dress and the same auburn hair, this definitely wasn't Juliette. This was a young woman. Well, actually, she looked like she might just be a teenager.

“Who are you?” Doctor Proctor asked.

“I'm Joan,” the girl said, her voice quavering.

“Joan of Arc?” Lisa cried, astonished. The girl had long, beautiful hair, just like in the picture in her history book, but she looked so much younger.

The girl nodded.

Nilly stood frozen in place, still holding the top edge of the tub. He was tongue-tied. The girl under the bathtub was the most beautiful girl he'd ever seen, more beautiful than the women who had kissed him on the cheek after the bike race, more beautiful than Juliette in that picture from when she and Doctor Proctor were young, yes, even more beautiful than the cancan dancers at the Moulin Rouge.

“Where's Juliette?” Doctor Proctor asked.

The girl blinked her eyes, not understanding his question.

“The woman who arrived in the first bathtub!” the professor said.

“I don't know,” Joan said, curling up defensively as if she was afraid they were going to hit her.

Finally Nilly let go of the tub, which toppled out of the way with a long, drawn-out boom, and squatted down next to the girl.

“Joan, we know you've been through a lot,” he said solemnly in a sort of artificially deep voice as he put his hand on her shoulder. “But you mustn't be afraid of us. We're only here to rescue Juliette. She's the professor's girlfriend. Do you understand?”

The girl nodded at Nilly, who gave her a big smile in return and then added, “As for myself, I'm not seeing anyone at the moment. How about you?”

Lisa cleared her throat and pushed Nilly aside, saying, “Can you tell us what happened, Joan?”

The girl looked from Lisa to Nilly.

“I was sleeping and waiting for them to come get me,” she said. “They're going to burn me at the stake for being a witch today, you know.”

“I know,” Nilly said, enthusiastically. “Because you helped defeat the English at Orléans.”

“Yes,” Joan said. “And because I hear God speaking to me. And because I refuse to allow them to give me a bowl cut.”

“A bowl cut?”

“Yeah, everyone's supposed to wear a bowl cut. To show that we submit ourselves to God, right? You guys don't have bowl cuts. That's why they put you in here.”

“No,” Lisa said. “What Nilly says is true. We time-traveled here from the future in a bathtub to save Juliette.”

Joan stared at them for a long time. “You poor people. They want to burn me at the stake because I claim I've heard a few sentences from God. Guess what they'll do to you when you tell them that ridiculous lie.”