The Puzzle Ring (46 page)

Read The Puzzle Ring Online

Authors: Kate Forsyth

It seems funny now, doesn't it? So will people laugh at us one day for ever doubting the possibility of time travel?

The Paradoxes of Time Travel (you can skip this part if you don't like your mind being boggled and baffled)

There are a number of problems with the idea of time travel, a lot of them linked with cause and effect. If you could go back in time, would this change history? What would happen if you met yourself at a younger age? Is this even possible? Can someone or something exist in two times at once?

One problem with time travel is called ‘the grandfather paradox'. For example, if you went back in time and accidentally killed your grandfather, he could never have given birth to your father, who could never have given birth to you. Therefore, you would not exist, which means you could never have travelled back in time to kill your grandfather.

This kind of paradox is one of the many problems that have kept scientists stumped for more than a century. Lots of different solutions have been proposed, including parallel universes and
multiverses (i.e. lots of universes). The idea of parallel universes is that every time something happens that affects the course of someone's life, the universe splits into two. Of course, this means there are an infinite number of universes, each with different histories and different futures. It does, however, solve some of the paradoxes of time travel, because it means that you are simply going back in time to another branch of reality. In essence, you are sidestepping into a parallel universe.

Other scientists argue that the past is the past and cannot be changed. This new speculation, based on the laws of quantum mechanics, is quite simple—you
could
go back in time and meet your grandfather, but even if you tried your hardest, you would not be able to kill him. The past—including your role in it—has already happened, and the consequences of your actions are already unfolding in the present and into the future.

So it may be possible to travel back into the past, according to Einstein's theory of special relativity, but it is impossible to change that past, according to the laws of quantum mechanics. You can
affect
the future, of course, as every action that you take will have consequences. You just can't
change
what has already happened. This idea is called
the Novikov self-consistency principle
, a difficult name for what is really quite a simple solution.

It actually has a great deal to do with what Hannah decides to do, and how. You may ask: why didn't she go back and stop Eglantyne from casting the curse in the first place? Or why did she not go back and save her father from being captured by Irata?

Both of these things would have been impossible for her to do. Hannah could not have stopped the curse from
being cast because it was known that the curse existed, and the consequences of that curse could be seen in the present. She could not have saved her father that night because it was known that he had disappeared and been missing for thirteen years. She could only bring him back to a day
after
her initial decision to go back in time, thereby affecting the future but not changing the past.

Hannah could, however, find the lost loops of the puzzle ring and restore them into one ring, because this would not violate any known facts in the present—the rings had been lost and not found in all that time.

So how then did Robert manage to rescue Eglantyne from the fire? The point is that he did not change the past. The consequences of his action were always evident in the present day—in the story of the white flash of fire and the fact that Eglantyne's remains were never found. And the consequences of Hannah's actions while in the past are also evident in her present, without her being aware of it—the story of the Red Rose who would one day save a Black Rose, solve the puzzle ring and break the curse, for example, or Miss Underhill's family story of a red-haired witch.

It might help to think of time as a loop of cause and effect, with no beginning and no end. Of course, this sets up its own paradoxes, often called causal loops. Linnet's marmalade cake is a causal loop—Linnet cooked it for Hannah because she knew Hannah loved it, yet Hannah only loved it because Linnet cooked it for her.

Mind-boggling, isn't it?

If you know your history, you could argue that Hannah's actions in the time of Mary, Queen of Scots, are evident in
that tragic queen's fate. For if Hannah and her friends had not called out Lord Bothwell's name when they went back through the city gate, and if they had not woken Lord Darnley from his slumber, perhaps there would not have been so many unexplained mysteries about his death that led to the people of Scotland rising up against Queen Mary and forcing her to flee.

So, let me help you know your history . . .

Mary, Queen of Scots

Mary, Queen of Scots, was one of the most intriguing and controversial monarchs of the sixteenth century. At one time, she claimed the crowns of four countries—Scotland, France, England and Ireland—yet it all ended for her on the executioner's block at Fotheringay, when her head was chopped off on the orders of her own cousin Elizabeth I of England.

Born on 8 December 1542, Mary was the only child of King James V of Scotland and his French wife, Mary of Guise. Her father died when she was only six days old, and almost immediately people began fighting over who would control her. Her great-uncle, King Henry VIII of England, wanted her to marry his frail young son, Edward, and when Mary's mother refused, Henry invaded Scotland in a series of attacks called ‘the rough wooing'. Eventually, Mary's mother sent her to France to marry the French king's three year old son, the Dauphin François. She was just five years old. Queen Mary spent the next thirteen years at the French court, accompanied by her own court consisting of the ‘four Marys',—four little girls her own age, all named Mary, the daughters of the noblest families in Scotland.

On 24 April 1558, at the age of fifteen, Mary married
François, and when his father, the king, died a year later, she became Queen of France.

She had already laid claim to the thrones of England and Ireland after the death of her cousin Mary I of England, even though Henry VIII had had another daughter, Elizabeth. Mary, Queen of Scots, was Catholic, and in the eyes of many Catholics, Elizabeth was illegitimate because her father had married her mother while his first wife was still alive. Claiming the throne of England was a big mistake on the part of Mary, Queen of Scots, because her Protestant cousin Elizabeth I of England never forgave her.

François died on 5 December 1560. Mary went from being the queen of France to being a hated and ignored daughter-in-law to Catherine de Medici, the new regent of France, who enraged her by recognising Elizabeth I as Queen of England. Aged eighteen, Mary returned, humiliated, to Scotland on 19 August 1561.

Scotland was by now devoutly Protestant and regarded Mary with suspicion, the flames being fanned by the radical reformer John Knox. He condemned Mary for dancing, playing music, dressing too frivolously, speaking French and for her insistence on worshipping as a Catholic.

In July 1565, Mary married Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, her first cousin. She pleased no one with this marriage and enraged many. Darnley was one of the hated English, he was a rake and a gamester, and he was too close to the English throne for Elizabeth's liking.

In March 1566, Darnley and his friends murdered Mary's Italian secretary, David Rizzio, right in front of her. Darnley's motivation seems to have been jealousy, racism and the hope that Mary and her unborn child would also be killed and
he could seize the throne and rule in Mary's place (and yes, the story of the bloodstains that never fade is true—you can go and search for them yourself on the floor of Mary's chambers at Holyrood Palace.)

Mary persuaded Darnley to let her escape, but their marriage would never recover. Their son, James (to be James VI of Scotland and James I of England), was born a scant six weeks later.

On Sunday 9 February 1567—almost one year later—Holyrood Palace was filled with music and dancing and laughter, as Mary celebrated the marriage of her valet, Sebastian Pagez to one of her maidservants. Later that evening, Mary rode out from Holyrood Palace to visit her sick young husband, who was staying at Kirk o' Fields, a house just inside the city gates of Edinburgh. With her went her court of admirers, including her most faithful supporter, Lord Bothwell, and various musicians and singers, hired to entertain Lord Darnley.

Not long before midnight, Queen Mary remembered that she had promised to return to Holyrood for the final ceremonies of her valet's wedding. Lord Darnley protested, and as a sign of her true affection, Queen Mary gave him a ring from her finger.

As she mounted her horse for the ride back to Holyrood, Queen Mary saw her page—who had previously been in the employ of Lord Bothwell—emerge from the cellars, his face and hands blackened as if with coal. She exclaimed, ‘Jesu, Paris, how begrimed you are!' He muttered some excuse, and she rode back to the palace.

At 2 am on Monday 10 February, a gunpowder explosion blew up the house at Kirk o' Fields. Darnley and
his manservant were found dead in the garden, dressed only in their nightshirts, apparently strangled to death.

There are many different theories about what happened that night. Some thought that the gunpowder had been hidden in the cellars of the house at Kirk o' Fields—probably by Lord Bothwell—with the aim of blowing up the house and the king together. They believe something, or someone, woke the young king and he had sought to escape, only to be killed by assassins in the garden.

Others believe that Lord Bothwell had nothing to do with the crime, but that he was framed for the murder, probably by Mary's half-brother, Lord Moray, who wanted to rule in her place.

Still others believe that Darnley himself set up the trap, wanting to kill his wife, Mary, only to be foiled by her insistence in returning to Holyrood Palace. They believe Darnley died in his bungled attempts to defuse the gunpowder.

We can never know the truth. Historians argue over the event, just as scientists argue over the possibility of time travel. What we do know is that Mary seemed shocked and horrified by her husband's murder and asserted to the end of her life that she had been the true target. The many sharks circling her throne seized upon the scandal and used it to discredit Mary and force her to abdicate in favour of her thirteen month old son, James. Mary's half-brother, Lord Moray, was appointed regent and ruled for three years before he was assassinated by one of Mary's supporters.

Some of the mysteries around the murder of Lord Darnley include the decision of Mary to return to Holyrood Palace at such a late hour; the group of mysterious cloaked figures who called out Lord Bothwell's name to gain entry
to the city after midnight; and the discovery of Darnley's body in the garden, some distance away from the blown-up house. I have used these mysteries in the tale of Hannah and her search for the lost puzzle ring; they do not, of course, really explain the unknown factors in this ancient crime.

The rest of Mary's history is as bloody and tragic.

She was abducted, willingly or not, by Bothwell and his men in April 1567 and taken to Dunbar Castle. In those days, there was little choice for a woman forcibly abducted. She had to marry her abductor to save her reputation, which she did on 15 May.

Unfortunately, it was too late for Mary. People believed the worst of her, and she was accused of her former husband's murder. The Scottish lords rebelled against her and raised an army, which confronted Mary and Bothwell at Carberry Hill on 15 June. Mary did not want to fight her own lords and believed their protestations of loyalty. As long as she left Bothwell, the lords said, they would be faithful. However, after Mary gave herself up to them, the lords broke their promise and took Mary captive. She was imprisoned in Loch Leven Castle, and in July 1567—after miscarrying twins—she was forced to abdicate in favour of her baby son.

On 2 May 1568, Mary escaped from Loch Leven, but the small army of supporters she managed to raise was defeated on 13 May. She fled to England, but was imprisoned by Elizabeth's soldiers on 19 May 1568 at Carlisle. Nineteen years later she was beheaded on suspicion of treason, by the orders of her own cousin. Her execution was shockingly mishandled, with the executioner's sword taking three blows to sever her head from her body. As he lifted her head by its
tresses, to show the crowd, her head fell to the ground and rolled away, leaving his hand gripping a wig of red hair. She was only forty-four years old.

One last thing: Roz's assertion that ninety-five per cent of all Scottish people believed in fairies up until the nineteenth century is quite true. Fairy lore in Scotland is rich and deep and fascinating. I wish I could have included more in this book, but you can read up on it yourselves.

Some further reading

NON-FICTION

Time & Space
by John and Mary Gribbon, part of the ‘Eyewitness' series published by Dorling and Kindersley

An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and other Supernatural Creatures
by Katharine Briggs

FICTION

(the most useful time travel stories I have read and loved)

A Traveller in Time
by Alison Uttley (this is about a girl who goes back in time to the days of Mary, Queen Of Scots' imprisonment in England)

Tom's Midnight Garden
by Philippa Pearce

The Children of Green Knowe
by Lucy M Boston

Stonewords
by Pam Conrad

Jessamy
by Barbara Sleigh

A Chance Child
by Jill Paton Walsh

A String in the Harp
by Nancy Bond

The Time Garden
by Edward Eager

Other books

Humor y amor by Aquiles Nazoa
Light Lifting by Alexander Macleod
Floodgate by Alistair MacLean
The Daughter of Odren by Ursula K. Le Guin
Raised by Wolves by Jennifer Lynn Barnes
It Was 2052 by Richardson, J.
Campbell's Kingdom by Hammond Innes
Storm of Visions by Christina Dodd