The Time Baroness (The Time Mistress Series) (30 page)

“Oh Mary!” She embraced the startled girl. “That makes me very happy.” She released her after a moment and took a step back.

“Thank you, ma’am.” Mary smiled, her eyes downcast.

“Good-bye.” Tears welled in Cassandra’s eyes.

“Good-bye,” Mary whispered.

Cassandra waved to the household staff, and they waved back, Mrs. Merriweather applying the handkerchief to her eyes.

When a person visits a place, Cassandra thought as she rode away, soaking in every sight, there is always the hope of returning. When a person visits a time, saying good-bye is permanent.

She asked to be taken to the White Hart. There, she was well remembered by Betsy and the rest of the staff. She decided she would wrap up her business in one day. After a night’s rest in her former room, she went to the bank to close her account. The Bank of England was sorry to lose her money, most of which still remained untouched. It would be a blow to the institution, but the handsome fee they extracted for such a large withdrawal softened it somewhat. Getting names and addresses of some of London’s orphanages from Mr. Howard at the bank, she hired a hack chaise to carry her to them, one by one. She divided the sum of her remaining wealth, a little less than three thousand pounds, among five of the neediest.

Her final chore was to visit the office of Ben’s barristers. She paid them to keep an eye on the orphanages and see that they used the money for the direct benefit of the children. She knew that such a charitable action might be changing history, but she hoped it would be for the better. She had considered leaving money in Ben’s bank account to free him from the tyranny of his father, but she decided that to do it could be radically altering history. He had his own decisions to make.

Finally, back at the White Hart, she gathered her bags, and headed down the hotel stairs with them. A young man and woman passed her in the entryway, and Cassandra stopped, recognizing the woman. It was Rosalind Carr, the girl who had been on her way to become a governess, the one Cassandra had met the night she’d eaten in the dining room. Rosalind didn’t notice her —her eyes were only for the man. Cassandra spied a wedding ring flashing on her finger and smiled to herself. That story had ended far better than she had predicted.

She was suddenly startled by the bellman rushing up to her. “Mrs. Franklin! Please let me take your bags!” He moved to grab them from her hands, but she held on firmly.

“No, thank you, Charlie. I am only going a short distance and will handle them myself.”

Charlie looked around helplessly at the desk clerk who was on his feet in a moment. “No! No! Let us order you a carriage, Mrs. Franklin, I insist!”

The doorman went out to whistle for a hack chaise.

“No!” Cassandra screeched. The three men froze in their tracks. She modulated her voice and continued. “I am going only a few blocks to a friend’s house, who will assist me on my way to Portsmouth. I need the walk to clear my head. Please, let me be.”

“If you say so, Mrs. Franklin,” uttered the desk clerk.

“I do. But thank you for your efforts. Good evening.” Cassandra straightened her back, hefted her bags, and marched out the door.

“Good evening, Mrs. Franklin!” called the clerk after her as Charlie shrugged and moved away, and the doorman slunk back in. “Please come again!”

It was around four o’clock; the sky was almost dark, and the fog had set in. She scurried the short distance to the alleyway and peeked around the corner. It thankfully was empty—too cold even for vagrants. She ran to the end of the alley, and in seconds disappeared.

Before Cassandra could focus her sight on anything, she heard James’ voice.

“Mom!”

The pod door slid open, and he grabbed her in his arms, hugging her tightly. “Oh, Mom, I can’t tell you how glad…I’m so happy! We were so worried—”

Over his shoulder, she saw Nick Stockard standing, wiping tears away and smiling.

Professor Carver’s voice boomed. “Cassie! Oh, Cassie we knew you’d make it!” He was beside her in a moment, stealing her away from James and giving her one of his enveloping hugs. “It’s so good to see you!”

Next it was Jake’s turn, then Shannon’s, and then Simon’s. Most of the team was there to witness her return. Nick hung back, letting her greet her friends. Finally she went to him. They looked at each other for a moment, and then she threw her arms around him and embraced him warmly. “I knew you’d be okay,” he whispered.

“We weren’t sure when you’d be back, Mom, even though the twelfth was the target date. We didn’t even know
if
you’d be back!”

Cassandra grasped her son’s arm. “I told you nothing would keep me from getting back.”

“I know,” he breathed.

“Actually, we made a pool,” laughed Jake.

“What!”

“Yeah,” he continued, “we made bets on which day and time you’d return, and I won! Or at least I was the closest.”

“I refrained, Cassandra,” remarked Nick good-naturedly.

“As did I, Cassie,” added Professor Carver. “Most un-scientific!” Everyone laughed. “Come, let’s sit you down.”

They all crowded into the lounge area and sat around Cassandra, James closest to her on the small couch.

“Seriously, Cass,” said Shannon. “We were really worried. You could have gone to prison in James’ stead. We were trying not to imagine the worst, but—”

Cassandra quickly related the tale of her performance in the police station and how she managed to disintegrate the music player and divorce herself from any suspicion. She also told how she faked the note from James so that Ben would be convinced of his escape.

“Incredible!” gasped Simon.

“Pretty quick thinking, Cass,” said Jake, “though I have to confess that I did ask Elton’s permission to go back and check on you.”

“Yeah, me too,” added Nick sheepishly.

“But I said no, as I know you would have wanted,” Professor Carver remarked. “We all know the dangers of time travel; we all know what we might be in for when we go, and that we’re responsible for our own safety.”

“I appreciate everyone’s concern, but I also appreciate that you trusted me, Elton.” She squeezed her boss’s hand as they locked eyes.

“You are a brilliant scientist and a resourceful woman, Cassie,” he replied. “However, I can’t tell you how relieved we are to have you back with us again.”

“Thank you.” She beamed at her colleagues.

She remained in the lab with the team for several hours. All of the items she carried and her clothes had to be specially sanitized in case they contained any disease or parasite. This was routine. The scientists ran tests on the food she’d brought along to see if it was safe to take out of the lab, while she went into the shower and washed with special cleanser. She put on her own clothes that were waiting for her on this occasion. She was pleased to see they still fit. Then she was required to stand under a high-intensity ray, which further purged her of any ancient biological threats.

No one could leave the lab, now that they’d touched her, until they also stepped under the sanitizer for decontamination. The air in the lab was tested for airborne viruses.

While going through the sanitation process, she left her bags to the mercy of the scientists as they removed everything for scrutiny. When she emerged from the final phase of the process into the lounge area of the lab, James was waiting for her with a peculiar look on his face.

“What?” she asked in alarm.

“I found this in your suitcase,” he said, holding open a small velvet box with the ring from Ben inside.

“How on earth?” she uttered in surprise. “How did it get in there?” Then she remembered that Ben must have met Mary at the front door of Sorrel Hall, and that later that day the girl had been arranging things in her suitcase. He must have given it to her and she slipped it in among Cassandra’s clothes. She smiled to herself.

“I will explain it later,” she said to James, “just keep it safe. There’s something else, you will be interested in seeing.” She went to where her things were scattered about on the examination table and extracted her journal from the pile. The scientists huddled in with anticipation. She opened the journal and carefully removed the letter.

“What is it?” Shannon was the first to ask.

“It’s a letter from Jane Austen to her sister.”

There were exclamations all around, and she looked at Professor Carver out of the corner of her eye.

“How did you get it, Cassie?” he inquired.

She told the story and when she was through, the general consensus was that she’d done the right thing in preserving it.

“Well, I would say,” offered Carver, “that if this is an item for your personal collection, there’s no harm done. But I would hesitate to publish it with your other documentation.”

Cassandra agreed to defer to his judgment, and then let the letter be carefully decontaminated.

After returning from any time journey, there was always a certain period of debriefing, especially in Cassandra’s case as she had been gone so long. The shock of stepping out into the modern day world could be great, so she spent the night in the lab, and went out early in the morning, before the hub of the city of London was at its peak. Nevertheless, the noise was hard on her ears, and the general stimulation intense.

She went with Professor Carver, James, and Nick, who was now officially a member of the team, to her Bloomsbury apartment to continue the debriefing. She would remain there, venturing out little by little, until she felt assimilated enough to fly home to Boston and resume her normal life.

Debriefing a time traveler was a matter of asking questions and getting the person to sort out past from present. Since Cassandra’s journey had been a long one, it took more time than usual. But Cassandra was resilient, and she responded well. Between the sessions with the three of her colleagues, she watched the VV (virtual vision) and reacquainted herself with modern culture. She tuned into the news of the day via sens-net and tried to focus on the here and now in as many ways as possible.

When Professor Carver was confident that her debriefing was complete, he gave her the okay to return to the U.S. She did not want to remain in England long. Even three hundred years in the future, there was too much there that reminded her of the past. It was time to be the objective scientist. Within two weeks of her return to the twenty-second century, she was back at her Boston townhouse.

Now she had to get on with the second phase of her project, which was to record it. This phase was already partly accomplished as a result of her journaling. By swiping the pages she had neglected to erase during her journey, she was able to record its entirety in the database. As she read them over again, she verbally recorded her additional comments and observations.

Phase three of her experiment was analysis, and then finally, she would publish. Analyzing her experience meant she would be researching the records of the lives of the people she had come in contact with throughout her visit, determining if she had had any effect on the outcome of those lives. The research itself was not difficult. All historical dates ever recorded about deaths, births, marriages and other information of public interest had, over time, been computerized from church records, family histories, ship logs, and other sources. Within the last one hundred and fifty years, information that was already on computers had then been added to the database so that one could enter the name and the approximate time and country, and get all the possible matches in an instant.

Both Nick and James were highly interested in working with Cassandra on this particular phase of the project. Nick had expressed that he wasn’t ready to publish yet. He had ten years of experiences to officially record, though, like any good scientist, he had kept a journal. He had spent almost two months debriefing with Professor Carver’s team and needed a break from thinking about his own experience, so he was in no hurry to begin his work. He would also eventually look up the people whose lives he touched, but he wanted to help Cassandra first.

She, of course, was most curious to know about the outcome of Ben’s life, but decided to save him for last. She was anxious about what the result would be. She was finding it difficult to adjust to the fact that he was long dead. Instead, she felt like she was just recovering from a recent heartbreak.

The three scientists gathered in the study of Cassandra’s townhouse on an afternoon in February to begin the research. James wanted to know about Elizabeth Charles, so they started there. It turned out that in 1821 she married a man named Sir Richard Thorpe. The fact that he had a title indicated that he might have been somewhat older than her at the time of their marriage, so they looked up his birth record, and indeed, he was ten years older than she. The only other reference to her in history was that in delivering her first child, in 1822, both mother and baby perished. This was a sad realization for James.

Lady Charles did not live much longer than her daughter. She died in 1823, but Sir Robert remained a prominent member of Parliament until his death in 1835. He never remarried, and they saw no evidence that he’d had any success re-instating an anti-witchcraft law. Cassandra breathed a sigh of relief.

Next they entered the name Eunice Fairchild. Here was a happy surprise. Eunice married Jeffrey Holcomb in 1825. He had great success in his military career, and by 1840 was an admiral in the British Navy. They had four children, all of whom lived into adulthood.

Cassandra’s heart was in her throat as they looked up Jane Holcomb, wondering if she would see Ben’s name connected with hers. An irrational jealousy overcame her. But once the information was called up, she was pleasantly surprised to find that Jane married Edward Clarke in 1824. Cassandra chuckled. Lady Holcomb couldn’t have been too pleased about the match. Edward took his orders as a clergyman in 1821 in a parish near Selborne. Cassandra figured that his inheritance was probably rather small, as would be his income as a preacher. But since Jane had a decent dowry, they probably scraped by, in spite of the fact that they had eight children. Six of them survived into adulthood. Lady Holcomb died in 1830.

The two Moore girls, surprisingly, both married baronets and both remained childless.

Mr. and Mrs. Merriweather stayed on at Sorrel Hall until their deaths at the ages of seventy and seventy-five, respectively. As Cassandra went to look for Mary’s records, she realized that, try as she might, she could not recall the girl’s last name. “I can’t believe I never asked,” she said out loud.

“She might have ended up doing something notable,” James remarked. “Since she apparently educated herself. “

“We will never know,” said Cassandra, sadly.

They found that the Collins did not return to Sorrel Hall. It was sold to Eunice and Jeffery Holcomb in 1831, and Cassandra was glad to know that it had fallen into good hands.

Finally they were ready to search Ben’s history. Cassandra began to chew on her pinky nail, and Nick cleared his throat and ran his fingers through his hair. She smiled at him, and he reached out and squeezed her hand. James went down to the kitchen to get a bottle of wine and poured out a glass for each of them when he returned. Gratefully accepting the wine from her son, Cassandra took a hearty sip and then spoke the words, “Benedict Johnston, circa 1821, England.” The computer responded immediately, and projected the information.

There was a record of a Benedict Johnston who set sail for America from Portsmouth on board the Crescent in July of 1821. The ship docked at New York harbor two months later.

Cassandra was stunned. “He left his father!”

“Don’t jump to conclusions, Mom,” warned James. “Maybe he went to the U.S. on his father’s business. Let’s see if his name shows up in any transactions.”

However, the next record of Benedict Johnston in the U.S. was a marriage to a Sarah Williams in 1823. Cassandra sharply took in a breath. The name Benedict Johnston then turned up in 1826 on a list of musicians for a concert with the Grand Symphony Orchestra as first violinist. Cassandra’s heart was racing now.

She decided to look up Sarah Williams. Her father was an Anglican minister at the Church of All Angels in New York City. His name was Jeremiah Williams, and there were a couple of newspaper articles at the time mentioning him as a fervent abolitionist. Sarah and Benedict were married in his church. The records noted that they had three children together, Cassandra, Jeremiah and James. The two boys had families of their own, but Cassandra Johnston did not.

Now Cassandra was weeping, and James and Nick looked at each other, unsure what to do. Nobody spoke. All she could think was that, yes, she had changed history, though she hadn’t meant to. She had led Ben to happiness, for so it seemed. He had rejected work that would have made him a party to slavery, and instead had gone in search of a new life. For all she knew, he had gone in search of her. But instead, he found Sarah Williams and became a father and a successful musician. Where were his descendents today, she wondered? Maybe she would meet them someday.