The Time of the Clockmaker (23 page)

TWENTY-THREE

DAYS WENT BY
as I visited Richard. He was too ill to visit the clockmaker to see if the clock he'd commissioned was finished, but I almost didn't care anymore. I ignored the increasing tension in my stomach caused by staying in one time for too long and went to his bed every day, hoping that by some miracle he would be better than when I last saw him. And every day Lady Sutton would give me a sympathetic look as I emerged from his room.

“My Lord, he's only a boy. Such a good boy,” I found her saying one day. I didn't know whether she was talking to herself or praying.

Visiting Richard kept my mind off the discomfort that was taking hold of my body. Fifteen twenty-seven was trying to reject what did not belong.

Sometimes Richard was awake, but often he was asleep or wracked by a fitful dream. Though he would shiver, his fever
climbed high. He had night sweats and complained of a pain in his chest, as he grabbed at it and struggled to breathe.

I much preferred it when he was asleep, for though he had lost weight and his skull showed through his face, he was still Richard, and when I closed my eyes, he was the same.

“The physician said that there's nothing he can do anymore. He's leaving with the king to accompany him on a hunting expedition tomorrow,” Lady Sutton said.

“Then he shouldn't go hunting,” I replied. “Richard needs him. He's a physician. He's
supposed
to make him better.”

“There's nothing he can do anymore.”

I didn't want to hear that. Those were the last words that were said before people died. They couldn't be said now. It was not time. Richard would live. He had to.

Lady Sutton shook her head, as if she had heard my thoughts. “The best we can do for him now is make him feel comfortable.”

“No.”

I turned from Lady Sutton and ran out the door.

Rebecca!

I was vaguely aware that Henley tried to say something, but soon I was in a corridor filled with people. I pushed and shoved them aside to get air. I ran into the countess's chambers just as tears flooded my vision.

I swallowed them and tried to compose myself.

“My own dear.” The countess came at me with outstretched arms. “There, there. I know this must be hard.”

I wondered if this was how the countess had felt when she had lost her husband. It was as if the earth was coming alive and consuming me.

“I know this is a difficult time, but there's something we need to discuss,” the countess went on. “I know Richard is . . . a dear friend. But I'm afraid it's not seemly for you to go on seeing him like this.”

She raised a hand, seemingly to comfort me, but I flinched away.

“I
love
Richard.” I was surprised by how easily those words came out of my mouth. “I love Richard.” It sounded right. “I have to see him.”

“Visiting the bedside of someone ill once is admirable, but visiting repeatedly raises eyebrows. I don't want you to get involved in this any more than you are already,” she said.

Thinking quickly, I remembered the night the falling candelabra had almost killed me. “My lady, I believe this is my duty—a calling bestowed upon me by a power greater than either of us.”

She stood in awe. “A calling bestowed upon you by the Lord?”

“I heard a voice one night, instructing me that I must do this,” I said.

She stood dumbfounded, and I figured she wouldn't try to stop me any longer.

With Richard's health getting progressively worse, mine did as well.

It was close to the middle of the night, yet I was awake in a cold sweat. I felt a pressing pain all over, and I tried not to moan out loud. I wondered if Richard was awake in a similar manner. I hoped not.

The nervous feeling in the core of my body from being in
one time too long had progressed beyond a queasy uncertainty and into a permanent dull pain encompassing my whole body. At times, tremors shook my hands, and I tried to hide them in the folds of my skirts.

I had never let it progress this far before. Miss Hatfield had always moved us from one time period to the next, even before we started feeling much discomfort.

The one time it had come close to feeling as bad as this was when I had left Henley in his time period. I remembered the heightened nausea I had felt day in and day out, and trying to fight it for one more day with Henley. But still, that couldn't compare with what I was feeling now. This was the first time I had felt actual
pain
associated with staying too long, and it frightened me all the more.

I missed Henley. I wanted to talk to him about this, about everything, but I knew he would only worry and insist we find a way to leave this time period immediately after the clock was made. He always thought about what was best for me. And of course I couldn't talk to him about my confusion with my feelings about Richard. I didn't want to hurt him more than I already had.

I knew I had two choices: leave before the murderer found me or stay with Richard. As soon as I realized that I needed to make a decision, I knew that I had already made the choice long ago. I would stay with Richard.

Henley wouldn't like it. Actually, Henley would hate it. He would try to talk me out of it if he knew I was making this decision. That was why I wasn't going to tell him yet and he didn't have to know at least until I had the clock. Damn Henley for
looking out for me.

I thought back to the last night I'd spent with Miss Hatfield, in front of the old television coated with dust. I didn't know why that memory came to mind, but it made me smile.

I remembered how we had bickered over the characters and what we thought of them. Miss Hatfield always thought that any way other than her way was foolish. And for once, I missed hearing that.

I remembered the family on the show—the older father, his two kids, and their respective new families. I loved that though they had their own complexities and issues, they always managed to come together as a family in the end. It didn't matter how long it took them to realize that their problems were small compared to the family and support they had, because when they did, they knew they didn't need anything else.

I remember wanting—craving—that
so
badly. I wanted a family. I just hadn't realized at the time that I already had one. Once in Miss Hatfield, and now still in Henley. We'll always bicker, but we'll also always find our way back to each other.

Henley was my family.

I turned over, and threw up.

TWENTY-FOUR

THE NEXT MORNING
, as I readied myself to go to Richard's room again, Henley spoke.

Are you really in love with him?

There wasn't anyone else he could be talking about, but it seemed he couldn't bring himself to say Richard's name.

“I do love him,” I said, quietly. “I realized it even before I knew he was sick, but that only confirmed my feelings.”

But are you
in
love with him?

Love, in love, did it make a difference? I hated that Henley knew and could see the effect that Richard had on me. I hated that I couldn't turn it off like a switch.

So you're not
in
love with him . . .

I still couldn't say anything.

If you're not, I still have a chance.

“I can't think about this right now with Richard dying. It's not the time or the place.”

So you'll talk about this after he's dead?

I grabbed the first thing I saw—the washbasin on the bedside table—and threw it toward Henley's voice.

Helen came running in, throwing open the door.

“My lady, are you all right?”

“I'm fine. I'm fine.”

Her eyes darted from me to the ceramic washbasin now in fragments by the wall.

Helen had already thought something was suspect with me today, when she had seen that I had thrown up in the chamber pot last night. I had convinced her that nothing was the matter and there was no need to inform the countess of a minor upset stomach from dinner last night. But I supposed there was no convincing her to keep quiet about this.

“Is the countess up?” I asked, walking past her into the sitting room.

“In her room, my lady.”

“Very well,” I said, walking in that direction.

The countess was sitting at her vanity with her back toward me, as usual.

“I trust you had an eventful morning already?”

I figured she had heard the crash of the washbasin, so I didn't try to hide it.

“I'm sorry about that,” I said.

“Nonsense. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone,” she said, running a brush through her hair. “When my husband died, I went through about twenty plates. There wasn't a piece of china that was safe from me.”

It was hard to imagine someone as perpetually refined as the
countess throwing a tantrum.

“You really loved him,” I said.

“I did. And it hurt all the more for it.”

“How did you get over it?” I asked.

“I never did.”

The countess continued brushing her hair as if we were having a different conversation. To a passerby who couldn't hear our words, it would have looked like we were discussing the weather.

“Only, don't try to prepare yourself for the pain,” the countess said. “You can't prepare yourself for something like that. It's unimaginable.”

The countess's words resonated with me, and they remained stuck in my mind for the majority of the day.

I was beginning to learn that there are a handful of people in your life who affect you like no others can. It doesn't matter how long you have with them. You'll carry their mark forever. It was as Helen had said when she'd found me staring at the mirror, thinking of Miss Hatfield.

Richard was one of those people. His intensity and passion were things I could never forget. And I didn't want to. I wanted to be a living testament that he had existed. I suppose that's what love is. I loved Richard. But I wasn't
in
love with him.

I wondered why it had taken me so long to realize that, why I hadn't realized what Henley had been getting at. It seemed so simple now that I knew, but I guess that's the case with the hardest things to learn. I had fallen in love once, and I knew that because it felt like I couldn't breathe and the sky had opened up.
It was a different love from what I felt for Richard. Not better, or worse—just different.

You could love more than one person in a lifetime. It didn't mean you were replacing or comparing them. I wondered if the countess knew that.

She had looked so happy with Lord Dormer. It was clear to anyone, save herself, how good he seemed for her.

I laughed, remembering the countess telling me that it was unseemly for any woman to go out alone with a man, when she herself did the same thing with Lord Dormer. Lord Dormer was the kind of man who could get the countess to do anything. It was obvious how he swept her off her feet with the smallest things he did and said. I knew the countess loved her late husband, and that would never change, but she had room to love Lord Dormer too. There wasn't anything unseemly about that.

I walked to the countess's door and knocked.

“Come in.”

Ever the picture of propriety, the countess sat still, working on her needlepoint again.

“I don't think you'll like to hear what I have to say,” I began.

“I don't think anyone will if you start your conversations that way, Lady Eleanor.”

Ignoring her, I plunged into what I had come to say. “I think you need to give Lord Dormer a chance. And I mean a
real
chance.”

The countess betrayed no emotion at me barging into her room to say something so personal to her.

“I think it would be a shame for you to let what you have with him disintegrate because you are too cautious to act on it.”

I paused, waiting for her to say something.

When she finally spoke, her response was short. “Is that it?”

I was taken aback, since it wasn't something small I had just said.

“I'm guessing that's all, since you clammed up suddenly,” she said.

I wondered how someone could be so disengaged from her own life.

“There are things we'd all like to do in an ideal world. But we don't live in an ideal world. I'm sorry if you don't realize that yet.”

“You can't live by the rules of society forever,” I said.

“Spoken like someone who doesn't know the true consequences of not living by the rules.”

“I've given up more than you know,” I said. “An entire life.”

“And you expect me to do the same? Not everything is a happy ending, my dear. At some point, we have to learn to be satisfied with something less.”

“What use is a life you have to be
satisfied
with? Don't you want more?” I asked.

I knew what she was like around him. She couldn't make me believe that she dreamed of a life without him.

“Wishful thinking doesn't do anything—”

“You're wrong. Not taking risks is what doesn't do anything.” I knelt at her feet and chose my next words carefully. I knew she was finally listening. “You've seen Lady Empson—”

“What about her?”

“She frightens me. Not because of who she is—I obviously don't know who she is, since she hardly ever talks without
echoing someone else—but because she doesn't have an identity.”

A smile played at the countess's lips, and I chuckled.

“So you've seen it too?” she said.

“It's hard not to! She's a shadow of her husband. My point is that she is an example of someone who doesn't take risks. I don't think she's ever taken a
single
one.”

“Not even deciding what to eat?” The countess laughed softly.

“Not even that,” I said. “You don't want to become that, do you?”

She smirked. “I'd rather die.”

“Then don't always live according to what society says. There's a time for that, but there are also times when you have to
do
something.”

“Like run after Lord Dormer?” The countess looked at me.

I laughed at the idea of the countess running after anyone. “Like giving this—whatever may be between you and him—a chance.”

“You sound like an old married woman giving advice,” she said, after a stretch.

“I feel like one.”

About an hour of peace went by before I heard a knock at the door. Knowing it was Helen, I called for her to come in. I had been here long enough to grow used to Helen's soft knock and differentiate it from Joan's more peremptory rap.

She curtseyed as always, and I wondered if she ever got sick of doing it.

“I'm sorry if I was interrupting, my lady,” she said.

“No, no. Go on.”

“I was told to tell you that the clock you—or rather, your friend—commissioned is ready.”

The clock!

“Oh, yes. I'll pick it up as soon as I can.” I waved her out of the room, trying to look bored and not reveal how much this sudden pronouncement meant to me.

Richard had told me he had convinced the clockmaker to create the golden clock. I couldn't believe he succeeded after my many failed attempts . . . but I was so thankful.

Though I still needed the clock to escape and survive, the ecstatic feeling I'd had when Richard told me he was able to convince the clockmaker to make the clock was all but gone. It meant almost nothing to me emotionally now that Richard was sick.

Still, I knew I needed it, and went promptly to the clockmaker's workshop to pick it up. I didn't want to jinx anything.

The clockmaker was there when I arrived.

“Lady Eleanor,” he said. “I'm pleased you could come so quickly.”

“I've been looking forward to this for a long time,” I said, but I didn't say anything further to provoke him.

“I'd ask you if you were still sure you want this clock, but you look very decided.”

“I am.”

“Shame about your friend,” he said. “I liked him. Almost better than you.”

I shook that off as he handed me the clock.

The golden clock looked practically the same as it had hanging in the hallway across from Miss Hatfield's kitchen, albeit a bit shinier. There were so many memories that came flooding back to me—memories that didn't exist in this time period yet.

The weight of the clock felt so comforting in my arms, and for once, seeing the strange ticks indicating days, months, and years relieved me. I had always viewed the clock as something contrary to the course of nature, so this relief was foreign to me. Funny what a few hundred years, give or take a bit, could do to a person.

With my finger, I traced the design around the clock's face. The familiar design had new meaning for me now that the man who painstakingly created it was in front of me.

There was a small inscription toward the bottom of the clock's face. I vaguely remembered that I had seen it when Miss Hatfield had first shown me the clock, but I had never actually read it. I raised it up to my face now to better read the small words.

“Time is the devourer of all things,” the clockmaker said. “I wrote it for you to remember and think about, but though you look young, I suppose you already know it.”

“Thank you,” I said. “You have no idea how much this means to me.” And yet somehow I felt as though he did know.

“I could have it delivered to your room, if you would like. It is rather heavy.”

I assured him that delivery wouldn't be necessary. Now that I finally had it, I didn't want to let the clock out of my hands.

I said my good-byes and left for my room, running. I passed the
countess on the way there.

She gave me a strange look but didn't scold me for my running. She was rushing—albeit only shuffling very quickly—herself. When I turned to see where she was going, I saw her meet up with a man in the distance. Lord Dormer, of course. I hoped the conversation we'd had earlier had meant something to her, but there was no real way to tell.

I hugged the clock to my chest, desperate to never let it out of my sight again.

When I shut the door to my room behind me, it slammed closed with a sudden bang. I cursed under my breath, hoping Helen or Joan wouldn't come in to see what the commotion was about.

I'm not going to pretend that I'm pleased that Richard became involved in getting the clock, but thank God you got the clock back. Now you can finally get away.

Henley's words stuck with me in an odd way.
Get away.
But I didn't
want
to get away. I
couldn't
get away. Not with what I had tying me here.

Henley seemed to have sensed my hesitation.
What's wrong?

“I-I can't.” I gently placed the clock down onto the bed.

You came to court to find the clock, and now that you have it, you can escape,
he said. I knew he was right, but I couldn't shake the feeling that I wasn't done.
I know you've become attached to the people here, but your life is in danger. That has to come first.

“I know, but—”

No, you don't know. You're immortal, but not invincible. You have a killer after you. And even without the killer, you
can't stay in one time for too long. I heard you throwing up last night. I know what that was about.

Henley sounded exactly like Miss Hatfield, and in any other moment that would have made me laugh. I knew he was concerned. I was too, but I was also concerned about other things.