Time to Control (12 page)

Somehow I felt like I got the bad
end of that deal.

By the time the end of the work day
rolled around, I was starting to think something was up.
 
My work email address was pretty
private; it wasn't posted on the internet, and I didn't have communications
straight with clients.
 
I normally
got one, maybe two pieces of spam a week.
 
But now I had gotten ten this afternoon alone, and they were
increasingly graphic.
 

Alan, maybe, I thought.
 
Petty and childish, but that was
Alan.
 
I deleted the emails and shut
down my computer.
 
I usually just
locked the workstation, but Joseph had told me I could have the rest of the
week off to find a new place to live and get settled.
 
Eddie was supposedly done in town, but
was staying to spend more time with me and fly out to my parents that weekend.

Chapter Five

“So, how do you want to do
this?”
 
I wondered out loud.

“It’s not like it’s an exact
science.
 
Well, maybe it is, but I
certainly have never heard that we've mastered time traveling before.”

“Really, Eddie?”
 
I laughed.
 
“I don't call what we're doing as having
mastered time travel.
 
We'll need to
travel a lot more before I'd make that claim.

“Anyway, my thought is to think of
when we were there last, at the alley next to Henry's apartment, but 'tweak'
the time so that we hit when the Queen was visiting Southwark.
 
Aim for early morning, so we can catch
Henry on his way to work?”

Eddie nodded his approval, and slid
the ring onto my finger.

Like before, the stench was the
first sign that we had arrived at our destination.
 
Ironmonger's Lane wasn't nearly as bad
as Southwark, where the Globe resided.
 
Here, someone upstairs may look out the window before emptying the chamber
pot onto the street.
 
It was still
very working class, though, and our servant costumes weren't too out of
place.
 

We found a good spot across the
street from Henry's house, and Eddie leaned against the timber of a shop.
 
He had a lot more faith in their
durability than I did.
 
I stood next
to him, trying to stay out of the way of carriages and Londoners starting their
day.

About twenty minutes, thirty
carriages, and two squashed toes later, a man left Henry's door.
 
“We're on,” Eddie said, pushing himself
off the wood frame and taking my elbow to cross the street.

“Henry Davies?”
 
Eddie called, and Henry turned around.

“Wherefore?” He asked,
suspiciously.
 
He eyed us both, but
thankfully not leering unlike most of his compatriots.

“We know your father,” I answered
promptly, but shut up when Eddie whacked me on the rear.
 
Guess he was the designated speaker.

Eddie explained that we knew
Charles, and that the man sent Henry his well-wishes.
 
His suspicion alleviated, with a “By
your leave” Henry nodded and left for work.

We let Henry get a little bit ahead
of us, and followed him.
 
Henry went
a more direct way towards the river than we had taken the day before, and
hopped into a boat-taxi instead of walking down and across the London
Bridge.
 
We lost him there –
we had no currency yet to pay a ferryman.

I had done some research on my
flight home from New York (my husband is rich – I can afford in-air WiFi
now), and knew that we could buy pre-made clothing from a draper on Lombard
Street.
 
Eddie had a small pouch
inside his tunic with a few of the lesser gems, and we stopped off at a
not-so-reputable goldsmith's next to a tavern.
 
As rough as the stones looked to my
untrained eyes, they must have been in excellent condition for Elizabethan
times.
 
Not knowing the worth, Eddie
didn't haggle much, and we left with ten gold crowns.
 
I think that was highway robbery, but I
didn't had a fair idea of an exchange rate.

We backtracked towards Henry's
place, then wove our way through the crowds to reach Lombard Street.
 
Street-signs didn't exist, making me
doubly glad that Eddie and I had studied a London map before we left.
  
One draper looked the same as
another, each willing to take our shillings.

The draper that we chose at random
wasn't like a modern day clothing shop.
 
There was no racks of different sizes of the same style, jeans on one,
blouses on another.
 
The shopkeeper
offered us wares to try on, with a young girl available to assist me in
dressing.

Oh, crap, I thought, realizing that
I had my bra and panties still on.
 
It wouldn't be good for the girl to see my future clothing.

“Eddie?” I ventured softly,
blushing.
 
“A word, please?”
 
I pointed towards the room divider that
served as a dressing area.
 
He
stepped in behind me, and I immediately twirled on him.
 
“Quick, help.”
 
I hoisted my costume up, yanked my
panties down, and shoved them into his tunic.
 
He stared open-mouthed.

“Unhook my bra, will you?”
 
I turned away from my husband, and
stretched my shoulder blades together to make it easier for him to unfasten the
bra through my clothing.

Eddie's brain finally caught up,
and he made quick work of the clasps.
 
“Why on earth are you wearing this?”

I gave him a “well, duh”
shrug.
 
“Blame modern society.
 
I feel naked without them.”

His breath tickled my ear as he
whispered in my ear.
 
I froze, one
arm out of the bra strap.
 
“You can
be naked over my knee when we get home for doing a stupid stunt like this.
 
You knew we were going shopping.
 
No excuses.
 
Now hurry it up.”
 
He gave my rear end a whack with promise
of more to come, and I rushed to get the bra all the way off so that we could
continue.

Eddie traded his tunic for a
doublet, velvety soft.
 
The blue
fabric was slashed, showing a vibrant yellow cloth underneath.
 
His hose were suitable for the merchant
class we were going with.

Thankfully, citizen women rarely
wore the farthingale, the whaleboned structure with the large skirts.
 
I did let the draper's girl dress me in
a bumroll, the stuffed pillow intended to poof out my petticoat and
skirts.
 
Gorgeous glass beads
trailed down the outer skirt, emphasizing the contrasting color of the
underskirt.
 
If I understood it
properly, having multiple skirts, and treating them like a mix-and-match
outfit, was a sign of wealth.
 
Did I
feel like the crimson on top?
 
Or
the robin's egg blue?

Since it was presumed I did
housework and helped my husband with his business, the stays (the proper name
for the corset, I learned from an askance glare) were loose, not limiting
movement.
 
I actually loved the fine
linen shift, and purchased several – the thin soft fabric wasn't
necessarily meant as a nightshirt, but I planned on wearing it that way.

Our crowns didn't go nearly as far
as I had expected.
 
We left the shop
with four shillings left, and I knew we would be needing to sell more gems
before going to more shops.
 
The
merchant had tied our goods up with twine, and Eddie slipped his fingers under
the knots to carry them away with us.

Lombard Street was more crowded
than Ironmonger's Lane, and we wandered through several streets before finding
a lonely alley to travel back to modern times.

***

The next morning we started in on
our new daily routine.
 
We'd travel
to the alley near Henry's place, take up residence across the street, and
wait.
 
When Henry would appear, we'd
let him get ahead then follow him to work.
 
Now that we had money, we could pay the pence for the boat-taxi.

The boat-taxis were a bit perilous
for my tastes.
 
They did have
boarding mastered, so I didn't have to worry about falling into the nasty, smelly
Thames while getting in.
 
The boats
themselves were little more than a modern-day rowboat.
 
In my opinion, they were woefully below
the task at hand, but they were cheap, reliable transportation in an age where
large bridges hadn't been mastered.
 
They did allow for a fair amount of employment, as I could see hundreds
of boats in use up and down the river at any point in time.
 
You just...had to be sure not to sit
where someone had stepped.

After seeing Henry safely to the
Globe, Eddie asked me what I wanted to do for the day.
 
“We can catch the bear baiting, it's
just down the street.”

I stared at him open-mouthed.
 
“Seriously?
 
Why don't we hit up the bull baiting
while we're at it?
 
I'd love to be
trampled, gored, or chewed on.
 
Sounds like a pleasant way to pass the day.”

The sarcasm wasn't lost on
Eddie.
 
“Chill, Schroeder.
 
I was joking.”

I sighed.
 
“I'm sorry.
 
Spending all the time here has been
draining.
 
Don't get me wrong,” I
continued as we walked towards London Bridge, “I love coming back here.
 
We're honest to goodness
time-traveling.
 
There's so much I
want to do, see, visit.
 
But...I'm
getting tired.
 
We spend hours here,
and go back to our time and finish off a normal day there.
 
We've mastered having more hours in a
day, and it's exhausting.”

Eddie guided me around a merchant's
cart that had spilled.
 
“Do you want
to go home?
 
Get some sleep?”

“Yes.
 
No.
 
I don't know.
 
I feel like
it'd be stupid to waste a trip and not do more.”

“It's not wasted,” he
insisted.
 
“We protected Henry.
 
We've done our good deed for the day.”

I didn't want to get started on
that.
 
I still didn't believe that
we had to protect him in the first place.
 
I doubted that we could save his life.
 
Ripples from a butterfly, that type of
thing.
 
It wouldn't surprise me if
we saved his life only to have him die the next day.
 
Would Eddie insist on saving him again
and again?
 
Would we never be 'free'
to just time-travel as we wanted?

“Eyes right!” Eddie suddenly
ordered me.
 
I couldn't help it
– I looked left.

“Too late,” I answered, and now
looked right to find a place to throw up.

I had heard that the London Bridge
had the decapitated heads of traitors on pikes.
 
The last time we crossed the Bridge, I
was too fascinated by the several story buildings on it, making it look more
like a road than a bridge.
 
Maybe
there weren't any heads up – there definitely was this time.

Whatever they did to the dozen or
so heads was beyond me, and I did not want to stare long enough to fully
understand the process.
 
They were
barely recognizable as heads.
 
Which, actually, probably made the punishment effective.
 
Who'd want to end up like that?

“Eddie, I want to go home.
 
Now.”

He stopped me before I could slip
the ring off of my finger.
 
“Not
here, there's too many eyes.
 
We'll
cross the bridge, then find an alley.”

Half an hour later, we weren't even
halfway across.
 
All the buildings
took up valuable real estate.
 
There
was barely enough room for two carriages or wagons to pass each other going the
other way.
 
If we had traveled to
the bridge directly from the future, I wouldn't have known it was a bridge at
all.

We were pressed up against one of
the houses to let a wagon pass when a door opened behind me, almost dumping me
inside.
 
“Perfect!” I grabbed
Eddie's arm and yanked him into the privy.

I knew castles had privies that
were on the side of the castle, so that waste ran down the outside.
 
It made sense that the bridge had
similar concepts.
 
I didn't want to
use the multi-holed restroom, but instead use the privacy to head back to the future.
 
Eddie closed the door behind him, and
nodded for me to take of the ring.
 
I just hoped someone wasn't waiting outside to use the facilities.
 
They'd have a long wait.

“I still think we need to talk
about this first,” Eddie told me in no uncertain terms as he took the driver's
seat later that 'modern' morning.

“It's only a month-to-month lease,
that's all, Eddie.
 
I just want a
place to live until the buyout and we can live together.”

“But you don't need to get an
apartment.
 
You can get a house too,
you know.
 
Even a rental.”
 
He followed the directions I gave him to
the first apartment.

“A house is too big.
 
I'm not going to waste money on
furnishing a house.
 
And there's
plenty of nice apartments right around the office.”

“Fine,” he scowled.
 
“But we're making sure there's a fire
hydrant close by.”

The first two complexes were duds.
 
The first one didn't have the availability mentioned online, and the
second Eddie didn't like the looks of so he drove right on by.
 
I hated to think of what he would have
thought of my former place – it was the cheapest in the area, and that
certainly wasn't a misnomer for inexpensive.
 
Different social class, different world.