Once Every Never (6 page)

Well
, this
is one hell of a puzzle
, Clare thought as Al leaned forward, hands clasped, unconsciously mirroring Clare’s posture. Heads bent together over their untouched soft drinks, they picked apart Clare’s experience one more time and in minute detail. Eventually Clare called a halt to Al’s forensic questioning.

“Maggie’s gonna come looking for us any minute now,” she sighed and checked her watch. “Huh …”

“What?”

She turned her wrist so that Al could see the digital display face. It was dark.

“You need a new battery.”

“I put in a brand-new one two days before we left.”

Al frowned. “Didn’t you say that you felt a jolt—like an electrical shock—when you disappeared?”

“Yeah …”

“And again when that girl touched you? The blond girl?”

Clare nodded.

“I wonder if
that
had anything to do with it. I mean … maybe you shorted out your watch. At any rate, I’d say it’s tangible proof that something definitely happened to you.”

“Maybe …” Clare thought about that for a moment. It’s not as though she’d ever paid attention in science class, but it seemed plausible enough.

“You said she called you by name?”

Clare nodded. “She called me ‘Clare.’”

“Right. Unlike the dude, who called you ‘Clarinet.’ Or maybe just said some word that
sounded
like it. And you said you didn’t think he could see you.”

Clare shrugged. “I don’t know. I don’t
think
he could. But it sure sounded like he said my name. How do these people know my name, Al?”

Al frowned, concentrating. “Beats me. You said the girl definitely saw you. Talked to you. But in a different language? How could you understand what she said?” Al worried away at the details of the incredible story the same way she approached complex problems in algebra.

Clare shook her head slowly. “I seriously don’t know. It was like my
ears
heard one set of sounds but my
brain
heard another. It doesn’t make any sense!”

“No—no, it kinda does.” Al held up a hand, thinking. “My Gran speaks Irish Gaelic. Mostly when she’s pissed off at something, so, y’know, a lot. But me? Not so much. Thing is, I know most of the words and stuff and so I totally understand her most of the time and I don’t even register that she’s speaking in another language. It’s like I kind of auto-translate in my head.”

“Right.” Clare nodded. “Except I don’t know any words in … whatever that was.”

“Yeah, well, yesterday you didn’t know how to time-travel. But you said you didn’t understand the language when it was just the chariot-people talking. That it wasn’t until the
girl
spoke that you understood. And that was after she
touched
you. You said you felt another shock when that happened and that things got brighter. And louder. Maybe that has something to do with it. Maybe you formed some sort of … I dunno … spatial-temporal link with this girl.”

“Maybe …”

“There’s obviously some kind of a connection between the two of you.”

“And chances are we’ll never figure it out.” Clare sighed in frustration. The whole thing was starting to give her a headache. “I wish I knew what happened! I mean—she really seemed like she was in trouble. And then there was the other girl in the chariot … and that
woman
.”

“And the tasty charioteer, don’t forget.”

Clare ignored Al’s salacious grin. Sure—cute guy should’ve trumped. But she frowned, remembering the whole scene. “Jeezus, Al,” she murmured. “You should have
seen
this chick. I don’t how she even stayed standing. I’ve never seen so much blood …”

“Do you remember what the other driver called her?” Al was still very keen on info-gathering. “I mean, can you remember what it sounded like?”

Clare shrugged. “I don’t know. Most of what they said to each other sounded like dogs barking under water.”

Al rolled her eyes. “Work with me, here, will ya?”

“I can’t remember.”

“
Try
! Maybe we can find some information on her.”

“Oh—what?” Clare threw her hands up. “Like we’re gonna just go look her up and she’ll be some famous queen or something? That’s like everyone who thinks they had a past life was Cleopatra or Guinevere. Al, that woman was probably just some peasant who’d had her village attacked. A nobody on the wrong side of some barbarian raid or something.”

“Not from the way you described her she wasn’t.” Clare had forgotten for a moment that Al was the type who actually
read
the textbooks on the history-class syllabus. “And you said the guy gave her that gold neck thingy. Do you honestly think your average peasant got to parade around in that kind of swag? She had to be somebody important. You must have heard her name! C’mon,
Clarinet
. Think!”

The “Clarinet” goad worked. “Boo-something,” Clare muttered.

“Boo?”

“There was this one word he said and it seemed like a name. And it definitely sounded like Boo-something—”

Al hauled Clare to her feet without another word and dragged her out of the museum’s eatery. At the heart of the British Museum, in the centre of a spectacular glass and iron canopy that spanned the sky above the Great Court, stood the Reading Room. A circular structure, it functioned as a library that had served more great minds throughout history than the girls had had hot dinners. It contained a fabulous wealth of information, both in book form and electronically, and it was to the computer terminals that Al led Clare at a pace just slow enough not to get them harassed by the attendants.

Al sat down at one of the terminals and started typing furiously into the library’s searchable database. She tried different search terms:
chariot
,
flogging
,
whipping
—those last two brought up a slew of blocked sites, forcing Al to rethink her strategy—
red hair
, and
torc
. Then she tried combinations, along with the beginnings of what Clare had thought might have been a name. She experimented with a variety of spellings, hoping to get a hit. “Boo …” she muttered under her breath as her fingers tap-danced away. “B-o-o? … unlikely … B-u maybe? No. B-o-u? … B-o-u—Holy crap!”

Clare shushed her as the librarian’s head bobbed up and swivelled in their direction.

“Boudicca!” Al blurted, ignoring the gesture.

Clare froze.
“Boudicca …”
she murmured, a whisper of sound. The sound of the name she’d heard uttered by the chariot driver. Al had played
pin-the-name-on-the-raging-redhead
and scored a bull’s eye on her very first try.

Al began scrolling rapidly through the text of an encyclopedic entry. “I was
so
right,” she muttered excitedly. “That was no freaking peasant you stumbled on.”

“Almost got run
over
by …” Clare amended dryly. She waited impatiently. Finally she snapped, “Hell’s bells, Al, who on earth
is
this ‘Boudicca’ chick?”

“Was.”
Al pointed at the screen, beaming with quiet triumph.

Clare peered over her shoulder at the webpage. There were a few academic-looking paragraphs of text and a grainy picture that looked like an ink drawing of a long-haired, heavy-set woman with angry eyes wearing a fanciful, Brunhilde-like breastplate. Clare snorted. “That’s totally
not
who I saw.”

“Yeah, and I’m pretty sure she didn’t sit for a Sears Family Portrait back in the day.” Al rolled an eye at her. “It’s an artist’s rendition.”

“I
know
that … What does it say about her?” Clare wasn’t sure she wanted to know.

Al’s gaze flicked back and forth as she scanned the information on the screen. “You’re not gonna believe this.”

“What?”

“Well, smart-ass …” Al pointed at the screen. “It says right here that your mystery lady
was
—”

“No.” Clare had a sudden feeling she knew what Al was going to say.

“In fact—”

“No.” She didn’t want to hear it.

“A famous queen—”

“Shut
up
.”

“Just like Cleopatra.”

“Or Guinevere …”

“Just like that.” Al grinned. But as she turned back to the screen and kept reading, the grin faded from her face. “Except with a lot more bloodshed.”

“Blood …” Clare frowned, remembering the cruel lash marks on the woman’s back and shoulders. “Yeah … what exactly was this chick the queen
of
?”

“This.” Al gestured vaguely about the room with one hand while continuing to click away with the other.

“Queen of the Library?”

“Funny. Try Queen of
Britain
.” Al’s eyes never left the screen.

“All of it?”

“Well, a chunk of it, at least.”
Click, click, click
… Al paged through article after article, giving Clare the Coles Notes version as she went. “This was back in the first century ad and Britain was like a whole bunch of counties all ruled by different Celtic tribes. Boudicca’s tribe was called the
Iceni
and she ruled from a place that—in later years, once the Romans took over—was called
Venta Icenorum
… I don’t know what the Iceni called it. Anyway, it says here she was married to some guy named Prasutagus and had two daughters. Prasutagus was what they called a client king to the Romans, who were busy invading and taking over the country one tribal territory at a time.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that, instead of getting conquered and enslaved, he paid Rome tribute and they basically let him keep the appearance of still being a king.”

“So he was like a puppet.”

“A live puppet, yeah. He made the deal and kept his head on. Apparently Mrs. Prasutagus wasn’t very happy about it.”

“Boudicca.”

“Yeah.”

“The queen.”

“Yeah. She was definitely a queen.”

“Okay, okay.” Clare reluctantly gave in. “Whatever. I don’t need her life story. I just want to know what the hell a
queen
was doing bombing down a lonely river path in a chariot late at night, whipped half to death, with no king, no bodyguard, and only one hot dude and a dead chick for company.”

“Not sure.” Al kept right on reading. “But if this Roman historian guy, Tacitus, is even half-right I’m guessing it had something to do with her inciting her tribe to ‘Rebellion Against the Armed Might of Imperial Rome.’”

“Wow.” Clare knew enough history to know that Imperial Rome had indeed been mighty. And heavily armed. She also knew enough to know that, back in the day, those guys had conquered pretty much the whole of the civilized world. With swords and sandals. She tried to imagine what it would take to make someone rebel against that kind of power. Clare shouldered in closer to Al to get a better look at the screen. “What else does it say?”

“Well … it says here that she was a—”

“Clarinet!”

Both girls jumped at the sound of Maggie’s sharp, annoyed tone.

Clare’s aunt was bearing down on them from across the Reading Room floor like a ship in full sail. “Honestly—the single most unlikely place in this whole building where I’d think to find you and here you are. I’ve been searching everywhere. The next time you run off like that, young lady …
oh, good lord
!” Maggie stopped short, her eyes bulging huge over the rims of her half-specs as she gazed at the images on the screen. “Is it the End of Days? Is that actual
history
you’re reading about?”

“Uh …” Clare blanked on a good comeback. “Yes?”

Al was quicker on the draw. “I have a summer school assignment.” She rolled her eyes in feigned boredom. “Clare was just humouring me—don’t worry, Perfesser, she’s still normal.”

“I’m assuming by ‘normal’ you mean still utterly untouched by intellectual curiosity. Well, thank Heaven, I suppose. I haven’t a notion as to what I’d tell your parents …” As always, the sarcasm dripped in jolly gobs from Maggie’s words. “All right, girls. The installation consult is taking a bit longer than expected. Clare, if I give you cab fare, can you and Alice manage to find your way back to the flat?”

“No!”

Maggie’s eyebrows shot toward her hairline. “No?”

“I mean, yeah. Of course we can,” Clare amended. “But it’s okay. We don’t need cab fare, Mags.”

“You don’t.”

“No.” Clare turned and gave Al a look. “Al was going to call her cousin to come get her, and I’m sure he can drop me off on the way. Right, Al?”

“Uh … right.”

Maggie eyed her niece with thinly veiled skepticism. “No detours, no stopovers, no ‘retail therapy,’ no random shenanigans?”

“None of the above.” Clare drew an X over her heart.

“All right then. I’ll be home in time for dinner. Shall I pick up a curry on the way?”

“Sure. Make it butter chicken and I’ll love you forever.” Clare stood and gave her aunt a hug. “You’re the best, Mags.”

“I know, dear.” Maggie patted her fondly on the back and turned to leave. “Stay out of mischief, you two,” she said over her shoulder as she went.

With a sigh of relief, Clare turned back to find Al staring at her, her head tilted to one side.

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m just impressed by your ability to multitask,” Al mused, a half-smile ticking at the corner of her mouth. “With everything that’s happened to you today, you’ve still got Milo on the brain.”

“I figure it this way,” Clare said dryly, plucking Al’s cell phone up off the table and handing it to her. “Now that I’ve crossed ‘Paranormal Phenomenon’ off my life-experience todo list, I might as well start working my way up to ‘Close Encounter.’”

Al laughed. “Are you saying my cousin is an alien?”

“I’ll let you know when I get close enough to find out.”

Clare grinned at Al, but a chill crawled uncomfortably up her spine. Only a determined effort kept her gaze from straying back to the picture of the warrior queen who, even in that artist’s rendition, glared so fiercely out at the world, a wrath-filled Fury, frozen forever in time.

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