Alice Payne Rides Read online

  Alice laughs loudly, but feels some sympathy for the horse, and vows to make sure she doesn’t get singed.

  “You shag-bag,” she calls to Duncan, and lets the flames die down again, but only so they burn low, about to the horse’s knees. “You rotten poltroon. Hand me your purse, and I’ll be on my way, and you will have a story to bore women with at parties.”

  Duncan puts his hand to his belt then tosses something into the air. Although he’s made no move and shown no weapon, she stays out of pistol range. She watches the bag fall onto the ground, and then she reduces the flames just low enough that he is able to induce his horse to step over them, and he rides away, coward that he is.

  Alice depresses a final button and she’s in darkness again, with no trace except the hoofmarks on the road and the clean, oily smells of Jane’s fire-trap. It always reminds Alice of Jane’s study, with its Argand lamps and strange spirits in bottles.

  She rides closer, pulls out the telescoping handle of her riding crop (another of Jane’s innovations), leans over and picks up Duncan’s purse with it.

  “Alice!”

  She turns, hand at her waist, and sees Jane standing with a lantern, Prudence at her side, and behind them, a third person, entirely shadowed. In the darkness, she can’t see a shimmer, but it must be there. All she can see in the lantern’s golden light are the faces of her beloved and of Prudence, and those faces are grave.

  “What is it? Is it Father?”

  “It’s motherfucking Wray Auden,” says Prudence. “He wasn’t just investigating. He was changing history. And all my safeguards failed, so we forgot.”

  “We . . . forgot?”

  The third person steps forward, and Alice shifts so suddenly in the saddle that Havoc lifts his feet, uncertain.

  The third person is also Prudence. A second Prudence. She is wearing a cloak; it’s hard to say in the darkness, but it looks rust-coloured.

  “We forgot,” says that other Prudence. “When I checked my diary, and realized what happened, I shimmered back to the minute before he left in the first place. I prevented him from going. He . . . made other choices. Reasonable choices. Directed his energies elsewhere. It . . . I won’t say too much, but it did not end well.”

  The cloaked Prudence looks up at Alice. She says nothing for a moment, but Alice remembers well enough what another version of Jane once told her, about what Wray Auden would do if he ever learned Alice’s secret.

  “Months later, we could see, in hindsight, where it all went wrong,” the cloaked Prudence continues. “So we tried to rescue him from the moment he arrived in the thirteenth century. That didn’t go well either. Not at all. We have been trying to save Wray Auden for a very long time now, and we know that there’s only one moment when it’s possible to save him, and everyone else.”

  “Everyone else?” Alice asks. The other Prudence—her Prudence—is scowling but silent. This is the sort of question she might ask; she already has, Alice realizes. Her Prudence has already been convinced by her double.

  “We can’t do it,” Future Prudence says. “Not from our time.”

  “Why not?” Alice asks. “What’s different, in your time?”

  “Believe me, I wouldn’t be here if it weren’t our last resort,” cloaked Prudence says, as if she believes that’s an answer. “Bad things happen when you try to live your life over. Every teleosophy recruit learns that on day one. But it’s the only solution I can see.”

  “We must go and save him, Alice,” says Jane. “You will have to change your clothes.”

  CHAPTER THREE: One Woman Too Few

  1203

  There are few sounds in the dungeon. A faint trickle somewhere deep within or beyond the stone wall; the clinking of the chains whenever Wray shifts in a futile attempt to unknot his neck; the occasional moan from the dungeon’s other occupant. Wray’s mind forms words as bulwarks against the roar of silence, and the words are these: What would Miss Payne do?

  He shakes the words away, with a rattle of chains. He ought to be able to find a solution within himself. He is Captain Wray Auden, parish constable and pensioned officer in His Majesty’s service. He has been a prisoner before, and escaped before. That bitter march southeast from the battlefield at Saratoga. That long winter in the cold barracks. When the spring came, and the officers were paroled out to work in the fields with the old men and their wives and daughters, still he waited. When one of those wives offered to lie for him, that, at last, was his chance, and he took it, although it broke something in him to know he would never see her again.

  Wray escaped, alone, and made his way to the nearest British camp, and to a promotion.

  He must believe that if he waits, a chance will come, just as it did before. He has nothing but time, after all. There are five hundred and eighty-six years between this dungeon and the friends waiting for him in 1789.

  By which time, he will be nothing but bones.

  By God, Miss Payne would do something.

  If he can just get one hand free, he can touch the shimmer belt that Miss Hodgson, in her practical way, adjusted to fit around his upper thigh, so thin that the guards did not find it when they patted him for knives.

  One hand. That’s all he needs.

  He twists his head up, ignoring the complaints in his neck, and looks at the wall. There are two chains leading up from his wrists to the wall, each attached to a rusty iron bar. The mortar around the one on the right looks as crumbly as cheese. He strains against it, and thinks he feels it shift, give, just a little.

  The truth is—and where can a man find truth if not in a dungeon—that Wray is no longer the man who waited all those years ago in that numbing barracks, and has no desire to be. He feels alive again, in a way he hasn’t in a decade, and it’s all due to the Misses Payne, Hodgson and Zuniga.

  And if he doesn’t get back to them soon, they might come looking. That is what Miss Payne would do. Put herself and her companions in danger, for him.

  The fact that Miss Payne has not already appeared to extricate him is a puzzle.

  The only explanation he can see is that he does arrive back where he is expected in 1789, the moment after he left. He must, therefore, succeed. He will succeed; he has succeeded, from a certain point of view. It’s only a matter of doing it.

  Wray strains harder, feeling the blood heat his face. The chain slackens as he rests. He pulls again, his wrists slick with sweat. This time, there is no doubting it. The bar is moving. He looks up, sees it wobbling.

  What will happen if he steps through a shimmer into another place and time, with one hand still chained to the wall? He can’t say, but he’s soon to find out. From what Miss Zuniga has said, an object (or person) can exist between the two sides of the shimmer for only a few moments before being pulled to one side or the other. Perhaps the chain will snap in two, or be pulled clear of the wall and into 1789. That would be the best. If not, well. He’ll step into Miss Hodgson’s workroom in the eighteenth century, pick up a tool, alert his companions, and return to free his other hand and the youth.

  He’s known Alice Payne since he bought the house a mile distant from her father’s, six years ago. He’s always liked her company, and that of her pale, serious companion, Jane Hodgson. But it was not until after the arrival of Prudence Zuniga a year ago that he became, if he might be allowed the liberty, their friend.

  Miss Zuniga caused a stir across the whole county when she came to live at Fleance Hall. The gossip was that she was Miss Payne’s Jamaican mother, ignoring the fact that she is only eight years older than her putative daughter. Some simply assumed that she was another of Colonel Payne’s unfortunate attachments.

  Wray is no gossip, but it is his duty to know what goes on in the parish. That is how he learned that the women of Fleance Hall had a time-travel device. And that is why he finds himself in the year 1203, in Rouen Castle, next to Arthur of Brittany.

  The youth moans. He’s been insensible since yesterday. A fever of some kind? Some effe
ct of the beating King John’s men gave him? The boy won’t survive another assault. Wray must get them both out of this dungeon.

  He strains again, and three sounds break the dungeon silence:

  First, an involuntary grunt from his own throat.

  Second, a hideous clatter as the bar breaks free and hits the floor, the chain rattling with it, and the sinews burning in Wray’s right arm.

  Third, the patter of steps as the guards approach.

  He gathers the chain in his hand and struggles to his feet. There’s nothing for it: he can’t risk opening the shimmer now, when the guards could follow him through, or pull him back by the chain. He’ll have to get through this, and hope for mercy or luck.

  The door opens.

  Two of John’s thugs; Wray doesn’t know their names. That’s good. They don’t rank highly enough to kill prisoners without explicit instructions. Probably.

  The one on Wray’s right, nearest the broken chain, has a short ginger beard. The bigger one, on the left, is bald of chin and pate. They each draw short, one-handed swords.

  He is in no position to engage them, no matter what weapons they carry. He’ll have to take his punishment, wait for his moment, look for his chance.

  The chance must come, he tells himself, or else Miss Payne would be here.

  While the big bald one walks to Arthur and prods him with a booted toe, Ginger Beard approaches Wray.

  “The dog’s slipped his chain,” Ginger Beard says with a cruel smile. “Not much good it will do you. The door’s locked.” He steps close to Wray, so close that Wray can smell the reek of his body. “Where do you think you’re going to go?”

  All those months Wray spent learning Norman French so he could bandy words with King John, and he ends up in close conversation with some thug whose name he’ll never know. Of course, he did bandy a few words with King John. Enough to land him in here with Arthur.

  As ever, Wray’s grand sense of purpose has scuttled to a small and mean ending. Despair tugs down at the corner of his left eye like a tear, and up at the corner of his mouth like a tic. Like a smile.

  Ginger Beard’s eyes bulge and he raises his sword arm. As Wray’s body reacts, ducking his head down into his chest, hunching his shoulders, some small analytical part of his brain manages to think, So the pommel comes into use, as the blow strikes the back of his skull.

  All sound dissipates in the roar of blood and fear. He is not helpless.

  Wray won’t die here, by God.

  He flings the chain out from his right hand, around Ginger Beard’s body, and scrambles with his left hand against the small of the man’s back. He can’t reach the chain. He moves in closer. Ginger Beard’s raised arm swings down, his forearm hard against Wray’s Adam’s apple. Wray’s vision clouds. As he gurgles for air, the fingers of his left hand grasp the chain.

  At last he has the man.

  Wray cranks his head to the left, squeezes down out of the space between the man’s arm and the wall. The stone wall scrapes his left ear bloody. He’s squatting low, and pulls the chain tight around the man’s knees. They buckle and Ginger Beard falls, messily, an elbow striking Wray’s rib on the way.

  Wray won’t die here.

  He twists the chain around the man’s knees, hard, clambers on top of him, and slams the iron bar down on the guard’s sword-arm. The man screams; Wray might have broken the arm. He puts all his weight down, to keep him immobile.

  It’s futile, he knows it’s futile, but he can’t stop. Where do you think you’re going to go?

  A flash in his peripheral vision and sharp pain in his wrist. The big bald guard has slashed Wray’s arm with his sword and Wray automatically drops the chain, holding his wound, blood everywhere.

  A crack of a whip and the sword clangs to the stone floor, and Bald cries out. Wray does not shift his weight on Ginger Beard’s body but he looks up to see Bald holding his wrist.

  And beyond, at last, Alice Payne.

  Miss Payne stands in front of a shimmer in the air, a mere trick of the light, one might think, if one did not know about time portals. She is not dressed for riding, but she holds a riding whip in her right hand. Her left hovers at her waist, where a leather belt holds a pistol at one hip and a mallet at the other. Somehow, this belt manages to look perfectly congruous against her pink-striped taffeta bodice.

  Wray reaches for the sword that Bald dropped, shifting his weight as much as he dares on Ginger Beard’s elbows and hips.

  All three of the women have come through the shimmer from 1789. Miss Payne, still holding her whip. Beside her, Miss Hodgson, fiddling with a bit of paper in her hand.

  Miss Zuniga, behind them, holds the time-wheel and surveys the dungeon with a soldier’s eye. She crosses the floor toward Wray in a few brisk steps.

  —and Wray is facedown on the floor, flipped over, his arm wrenched and screaming behind his back. Ginger Beard has him by the chain, and the worst of it is that Bald has picked up his sword and is lunging at Miss Payne, bent on revenge.

  Miss Payne’s whip cracks again, and curls around the sword as her lip curls in victory. But Bald has a better grip on his sword than she has on the whip, and when he pulls, it flies out of her hand.

  Miss Hodgson, weaponless, steps between them.

  At which point, Miss Payne draws the pistol on her belt.

  “No!” shouts Miss Zuniga. “Alice, don’t shoot!”

  Miss Payne raises her hand and the butt of the pistol comes down on the guard’s bald head and he stumbles past Miss Hodgson.

  Miss Zuniga is at Wray’s side now, and Ginger Beard’s head is in the crook of her arm before he or Wray have any idea that is a thing that could ever happen. Miss Zuniga, who is half a foot taller and a good deal stronger than the guard, holds him as if he were a naughty child, and Ginger Beard drops Wray’s chain to try to fend her off.

  “Now would be a good time, Jane,” Miss Zuniga mutters.

  A good time for what?

  “I can’t—can’t manage the—” Miss Hodgson fusses with the paper in her hand, and then her expression clears and she throws something into the middle of the room.

  A crack of thunder and a flash of red light and the room fills with foul smoke. Wray is coughing, and next to him, Miss Zuniga releases the guard. He runs out of the dungeon with his companion.

  Miss Payne kneels at Wray’s side, with a green kerchief tied over her nose and mouth like a bandit. She sets her chisel against the link to the wall, and knocks it with the mallet.

  “You must go,” coughs Wray. “They’ll be back in a moment.”

  “Hush,” says Miss Zuniga, and she deftly ties a kerchief around his nose and mouth. It helps him breathe, a little, although it does nothing for the stinging in his eyes.

  Miss Payne, on the other side of him, kneels and sets her chisel against the links near his shackle, the mallet in her other hand.

  “You said,” she says between her teeth and between chisel blows, “that as a royal prisoner, Arthur would be kept in comfort. You said he’d be riding horses. Eating almonds. On a curtained bed.”

  “So he was,” Wray says, “until King John found out he was conspiring. He put him down here so his henchmen can mutilate him. We have time. You’re nearly through already, Miss Payne.”

  “I’ve some practice with a chisel,” she mutters, and then follows, quickly, “On occasion Jane needs someone to hold a tool.” She glances up at Miss Hodgson and winks, and Miss Hodgson’s eyes go wide.

  Wray has known for some time that Miss Hodgson is more than “companion” to Miss Payne, but he has never quite thought of a way to signal his knowledge in a gallant way, so he pretends he doesn’t know. Miss Payne, apparently believing he doesn’t know, likes to tease Miss Hodgson by flirting in ways that he, Wray, might be expected to be too obtuse to notice.

  “Quick, now,” says Miss Zuniga. “Through the shimmer.”

  He shakes his head. “We can’t leave the boy.”

  “Oh, for Christ’s s
ake,” Miss Zuniga says, throwing up her hands. The smoke has cleared a little, and no one is coughing now.

  “Hardly a boy,” Miss Payne says. “Sixteen, and he just led an army to besiege his grandmother.”

  The boy in question seems barely aware of his surroundings.

  “Alice, they’re going to gouge his eyes and—” He coughs, not entirely from the smoke, and now he knows he is going pink. “And they’re going to wound him in other ways. So the barons won’t want to make him king.”

  “And how did you end up down here with him?” Miss Zuniga demands.

  “I, er, intervened.”

  “Of course you did.” Miss Payne shakes her head, but she’s smiling. “Jane, can you hold them off with another blast, do you think? If you hear them coming?”

  Miss Hodgson nods, her mouth set thin, and pulls another wad of papers out of her pocket.

  “We can’t do this,” says Miss Zuniga, with some futility, as Alice is already banging her chisel against Arthur’s chains. “What’s wrong with our little prince, anyway?”

  “We planned to abduct him, you said,” Miss Hodgson says. “And so we are. We were meant to follow Captain Auden, but we forgot, because he did something that changed history, and now—”

  “But not like this,” Miss Zuniga says, more angrily now. “We can’t just go into the thirteenth goddamned century and start shooting people and disappearing—”

  “I wasn’t going to shoot him,” Miss Payne says. “Just a warning shot.”

  “And leave a lump of eighteenth-century lead in the wall. We can’t do this.”

  “We’ve done it,” Miss Payne says, standing up and shaking the kinks out of her hands. “He’s free. Should we leave him like this? Unchained, door open? So Arthur will escape, and he’ll go off to become king, and it will be like we were never here.”

  Miss Payne, Miss Zuniga and Wray stand looking down at the boy, while Jane stands waiting in the doorway, listening for the guards.