Redemption: Supernatural Time-Traveling Romance with Sci-fi and Metaphysics (17 page)

“I guess so. Purpose
and
progress.”

“Very well. If you would put your
cup down on the table and lay back, we will begin.”

Ann did so, arranging the
cushions beneath her head to make herself as comfortable as possible. She
closed her eyes, then sat up suddenly.

“Just one thing though. Can you
please show me something a little nicer than the other visions I’ve had?
Something less tragic?”

“I’m sorry, my dear,’ said the
psychic, holding up her hands. “I can only help you to see what you need to
see, but I cannot change what is past. The lives you have lived cannot be
re-lived. What has happened has happened, and that is that. And what is wrong
with a little tragedy, anyway? Everyone dies, you know. The point is to have
lived first!”

Ann lay back again and closed her
eyes and, as before, the psychic began to mutter her strange words. The sense
of relaxation and calm that Ann had felt seemed, somehow, to increase, as
though every concern that she had ever experienced, and every worry she had
carried with her in life, began to melt away, leaving her more and more relaxed.

I wonder if this is how Nirvana feels,
she wondered as, little by little, she drifted off to sleep. . .

Paris, France. XVII Century

Chapter Sixteen

S
he opens her eyes, awoken by a sudden chill gust of wind, and pulls
the ragged blanket up around her neck.

How long have I been asleep?
It can’t have been more than a few hours,
she thinks. She can’t remember the last time she slept well. The long nights
are filled with anxious thoughts and fears of the future that rob her of any
sense of peace. The filth of the slums is no place for a girl her age, and even
now, her sharpened sense of danger has startled her from her slumber.

She looks up to see a large man
staggering towards her, a lecherous leer on his wet lips. She shrinks back in
fear, drawing the blanket up to her eyes as if to ward him off like an evil
spirit. As he passes her by, she lets the cover drop away from her face and
sighs in relief, her breath hanging in the cold air like smoke.

The sound of coarse laughter cuts
through the night and she glances along the narrow, cobbled street to see a
small group of people standing around fire. They look warm, as much due to the
fire as to the bottle of cheap brandy they pass among themselves. One man,
dressed in filthy rags, grabs at the ass of a woman, laughing drunkenly.

I wish I was warm
, she thinks,
shivering in the cold and looking longingly at the glow of the flames.
But not at that fire. Look at them, the
common brutes of the city slums. I want nothing to do with their sort!

She turns away, the sight of the
fire making her feel even colder than before. Knowing that she will not be able
to sleep, she climbs stiffly to her feet and, wrapping the damp blanket around
her shoulders, makes her way slowly through the night streets of Paris.

The night is so cold that a
freezing fog has settled over the cobblestones and, despite the dim glow from
the street lamps, she has to tread carefully to avoid the debris and muck that
litters her way. The sound of her footsteps seems to echo strangely while all
other sounds are muffled by the fog. Not that there is much to hear as the
streets are mostly deserted at this time of the morning.

I’m so cold
, she thinks, her teeth
chattering.
Even walking hardly seems to
help. I need food, even just a little something, but I’ll just have to wait
until sunrise when I can beg a few coins
. She tries wrapping her arms
tighter around herself in an effort to keep warm, but it causes her blanket to
slip from her shoulders onto the filthy cobblestones. As she stoops to pick it
up, a huge rat scurries across it, its tail brushing against her hand. She lets
out a sharp cry and the rat stops to look at her, its teeth long and yellow.

“Go away!” she shouts, kicking
the blanket at it, and it scurries away across the street. She shivers again,
but not from the cold, thought it bites into her, chilling flesh and bone.
Rather it is a memory from her childhood that causes her to shudder; the memory
of a fingerless man.

“What happened to your hands?”
she had asked the man, filled with a six-year-old’s unashamed curiosity. “Where
are your fingers?”

The man had looked at her with
dead, empty eyes and said simply, “Rats, Isabelle! Rats!”

It isn’t the first rat she has
seen, of course. After all, Isabelle has been begging on the streets ever since
her parents died twelve years ago. For many years she had done this begging
with her aunt, who would earn extra money by singing for passersby. But since
her aunt went down with the wasting sickness the previous winter, she has done
the work alone. This rat, however, had shown no fear, just like the ones that
had gnawed off that man’s fingers all those years ago.

Please don’t let it attack me,
she thinks,
as though uttering a silent prayer to an unknown god.

Keeping a wary eye out for the
rat, she walks over to where her blanket lies in the muck and stoops down to
pick it up. As she does so, she hears the clatter of hooves on cobbles. The
sound is muffled by the fog and, as she straightens up, she realizes it is much
closer than she thought. She turns to get out of the way, but it is too late. The
horse bursts out of the darkness. She hears someone shout, “Look out!”, then
the animal crashes into her shoulder. There is a burst of pain and she is
knocked across the street. Landing heavily on her side, she sees hooves clatter
past, mere inches from her face.

“Whoa!” The hoof beats slow to a
stop and then approach her at a slower pace.

“Are you alright, young lady?”
asks a voice and she looks up to see a man leaning from his saddle, looking
down in concern. “Are you hurt?”

“I. . .” Isabelle
begins, but her head is dizzy and she cannot find the words. Instead she tries
to push herself up, to climb to her feet, but the pain in her shoulder makes it
too difficult and she sinks back to the cobbles. She looks up again at the man,
her eyes slowly focusing on his face. He is handsome, even in her dazed state
she can see that. And he is very finely dressed, with a triangle hat as black
as his moustache and two beautiful rings set with green and red gemstones. She
blinks at him, her head slowly clearing. “I’m okay,” she says at last. “It’s
just my shoulder.”

“Let’s go, Henri!”

Surprised by the voice, Isabelle
peers round to see a
plump
woman in her thirties sitting behind him, h
er
skirts
lifted up and rouge smeared on her face in a vulgar
fashion
. Her attention is drawn back to the man
again as he holds out a hand to her
with
a number of
coins in it.

Look at those beautiful cuffs,
she
thinks, wondering how it is possible to get something so perfectly white and
making no move to take the money.
And
those rings!

Her shoulder still hurts
terribly, but she tries to ignore it.

“Here,” he says, tossing the
coins onto the cobbles.

There is the crack of a whip and,
as the horse and its riders continue their journey, Isabelle hears the giggles
of the woman before they are swallowed up by the fog and darkness.

What a man,
she thinks, looking down
at the coins in her hand.
I wonder who he
is?
She quickly hides them in her clothes, keeping the money from the
spying eyes and prying fingers of others.
That
woman was obviously low-born, far lower than a nobleman like him. How come she
gets to ride around in that carriage with him?
Finally Isabelle feels able
to get up and heaves herself to her feet.
I’m
younger and prettier than that woman. Surely I have just as much chance of
being with a man like that! Maybe even more!

She brushes some of the muck from
her skirt and tries to smooth them down. She is wearing the same clothes her
aunt had bought her before she died, after a particularly successful day’s
singing. Back then, this skirt had been long and fit for a lady, and Isabelle
had been so delighted with it. But that was a long time ago.

She looks at the money the man
gave her.
It’s a fortune! Easily ten
times the cost of my skirt.
She looks at her worn out clothes and the
blanket around her.
I have to get myself
a nice jacket. And maybe a hairbrush. I’ve always wanted one of my own. Yes,
that’s what I’ll do!
The decision gives her a direction for the coming day.

~

A couple of hours later the sun
begins to creep above the houses, melting away the fog and the fears of the
night. Ever since she made up her mind to buy herself some new clothes,
Isabelle has been excited, making her way to the market stalls and street
peddlers in the heart of the city. As Paris slowly wakes up and the streets
begin to fill with people, she finds herself in Les Halles. The great market is
already bustling with merchants busy setting up their stalls for the day’s
trading.

Such amazing colors
, she thinks as she
weaves her way through the market.
What
are all these wonderful things?

Here are fruits from across the
world, many strange and exotic to Isabelle’s eyes, and here all manner of tools
for various craftsmen and artisans. Here are animals, geese, pigs and sheep,
all waiting for buyers before they are taken to the butcher’s knife, and here
are rolls of silk and satin brought in from the Far East by land and sea.
Pottery, metalwork, fabrics, food and wine, the market place is filled with
everything anyone could wish to buy, and more.

When at last she finds the
tailors’ stalls, Isabelle is dazzled by the choices of materials and styles.
There are all kinds of garments, from dresses and bed clothes for women to
trousers and hats for men. There are even delightful children’s clothes and
assortments of accessories and ornamentations. One stall in particular
captivates her and she stops to finger the material of some of the garments.

What a beautiful thing! It’s even finer than my own skirt used to
be!

“Away with you!” The man at the
stall hurries over to keep such a dirty creature from touching his wares. “Go
on! We don’t need your sort around here.”

“One moment,” says Isabelle,
holding up a hand as she pulls the coins from where she has hidden them. “I am
looking to buy a bodice.”

The merchant eyes the coins in
her hand. “Well, miss,” he says, his manner suddenly courteous. “You’ve come to
the right place. We have the best bodices in the city. What sort of thing did
you have in mind?”

“I’m not sure. Just something
second hand.”

The man gestures to a pile of
clothes under a trestle table. “Have a look in there. See what takes your fancy.”

For the following, wonderful few
minutes, Isabelle enjoys trying on different bodices, and eventually settles on
one. It is long-sleeved, all the better to protect her from the harsh winter
nights. It is mostly black, though it is picked out with bright green
embroidery across the chest and down the sleeves. The merchant has his tailor
make a few small adjustments to ensure the bodice fits her perfectly.

“All included in the price, miss,”
he explains. The price itself is quite high, and Isabelle hesitates for a
moment. The pain in her shoulder, which had dulled earlier, has returned after
trying on so many garments, and she is loath to spend so much of the money the
injury has cost her. But after a little haggling over the price, something she
is used to after years on the streets trying to get the most for the few coins
she manages to beg, they agree on a price.

The merchant accepts the coins
and slips them into the money belt around his waist.

Pleased with her new item of
clothing, Isabelle decides to visit a stall nearby, filled with various
grooming products and haberdashery and buys a small cake of soap that smells of
lavender. She also buys herself a green ribbon for her hair.

The man running the stall allows
her to make use of his washing facilities to scrub as much of her as possible
while keeping herself decent. She washes her face with the soap, combs the
knots out of her hair and ties it up with the ribbon before looking at herself
in the mirror.

There’s still something missing,
she
thinks and, thanking the merchant for his kind help and handing over more of
her coins, she heads back to the food stalls. Here she uses the last of her
money to buy some fruit and a slice of honey cake, and the missing ingredient,
a small, red beetroot. This she uses to add color to her lips and cheeks. At
last, she looks the part and, delighted at this change in her fortunes, even if
it is only for today, and with her shoulder only hurting a little, she heads
back across the city to the small shelter she calls home, nibbling her
honey-cake.

Here, hidden from view, she takes
off her skirt and tidies it up as best she can, stripping away the parts that
are damaged or stained beyond repair. With the bar of soap and water from the
Seine, on whose banks her shelter is located, she washes the dirt and filth
from the rest of the material and wrings it dry.

Well, I may have to beg again tomorrow
,
she thinks, having put the skirt back on.
But
this has been a good day!