Chameleon in a Mirror Read online

  Chameleon in a Mirror

  A Time Travel Novel

  Ruth Nestvold

  Red Dragon Books

  Contents

  Description

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Author's Note

  Also by Ruth Nestvold

  About the Author

  Connect with Ruth Nestvold online:

  Excerpt from Island of Glass

  Meeting Aphra Behn is Billie's wish come true -- and now she's trapped in the 17th century!

  Take:

  - one graduate student who wants to change history;

  - one dead -- and now forgotten -- playwright who did change history;

  - the colorful and turbulent times of the English Restoration;

  - one magic mirror.

  * * *

  Mix thoroughly, and you have a Chameleon in a Mirror.

  * * *

  Billie Armstrong has long wanted to give Aphra Behn, the first professional woman writer in English, the prominence she deserves. But when Billie accidentally activates the magical properties of a baroque mirror, propelling herself into the seventeenth century, she gets more than she bargained for. What develops is an unwilling masquerade, a tale of license, love and literature, as Billie does her best to survive in a strange era and ensure Aphra’s literary survival in the future.

  Copyright 2014 Ruth Nestvold

  * * *

  Cover design by Rebecacovers

  * * *

  Red Dragon Books

  First Electronic Edition 2014

  Created with Vellum

  What color is a chameleon in a mirror?

  * * *

  Anonymous

  * * *

  This novel is dedicated to Aphra Behn, 1640-1689, the first professional woman writer in the English language. If it hadn't been for her, many of us would not be where we are now.

  Thank you, Aphra.

  1

  All women together ought to let flowers fall upon the tomb of Aphra Behn, which is, most scandalously but rather appropriately, in Westminster Abbey, for it was she who earned them the right to speak their minds. It is she — shady and amorous as she was — who makes it not quite fantastic for me to say to you tonight: Earn five hundred a year by your wits.

  Virginia Woolf, A Room of One’s Own

  Professor Fogerty had a small mole near the corner of one eye, and it was twitching. Billie concentrated on the twitch to keep her temper in check. All the power might be on his side of the desk, but at least she didn't have any nervous tics.

  “You have to remember that Mrs. Behn was little more than a marginal writer, Miss Armstrong,” the professor said in that smarmy way he had. “A transitional force, yes, but not innovative, not really. If being a woman in itself were innovative — why, the world would be in constant revolution.”

  Billie ignored his weak attempt at a joke and took a deep breath. “But what about Love Letters Between a Nobleman and his Sister? It was an epistolary novel written sixty years before Samuel Richardson, after all.”

  He chuckled, a sound intentionally jovial. “You cannot seriously claim that Behn influenced Richardson!”

  Since that was precisely what she had intended, she kept her mouth shut. It seemed she was going to have to find a different thesis advisor — or else go back home to the States in shame, without a dissertation.

  Autumn sun spilled through the high windows of Fogerty's office, hampered by streaks of grime. The buildings of London Blackfriars University were much like those of the Inns of Court nearby, lofty and arching, a metaphor for freedom of thought and high ideals made stone. It was too bad that even a modest attempt at redefining literary history had no place here, at least not as long as Fogerty had a say in it.

  “What I'm trying to show is that Behn used autobiographical material in a very original way, and it influenced a number of people,” Billie said carefully.

  “Miss Armstrong, Mrs. Behn was a hack — a very talented hack, but a hack nonetheless.” He shook his massive head. “Don't get carried away by causes in your academic work. Literature is not about beating the odds.”

  “But she was one of the most respected dramatists of the Restoration,” she couldn't help protesting.

  Fogerty's insincere smile spread across his face. “Respected? Come now, Miss Armstrong! Certainly you know of the lampoons written about her?”

  “Those were written about her morals, not her writing. A lot of her contemporaries were envious of her success.”

  “It's a mistake to equate popularity with literary merit.”

  “Oh, I would never make that mistake,” she muttered under her breath.

  “What was that?”

  “Defoe, for one, respected Aphra Behn,” she said, loud enough for him to hear. “He called her one of the 'giants of wit and sense' — along with Milton, no less.”

  He gazed at her critically over the top of his glasses. “Are you implying that Behn influenced Defoe now?”

  Billie couldn't keep her mouth shut any longer. “Among others, yes,” she said, rising and gathering up the papers on the desk between them. Her preliminary abstract for her dissertation, all shot to hell now. “I see I will have to reconsider my approach.”

  Fogerty rose too. “Very wise, Miss Armstrong. I'll be looking forward to your new proposal.”

  She shut the door of his office behind her, closing her eyes briefly. That had gone even worse than she'd expected. It was well known that Fogerty had been bullied into helping host the upcoming Aphra Behn symposium after Billie's former advisor had been bullied out of the department, but she hadn't realized his resentment of a female playwright dead for over three hundred years went that deep. But what did it mean for the symposium? Maybe Fogerty and his ilk — the ones who had bullied Professor Bentley until she fled to a foreign university with a Women's Studies department — thought they could turn the clock back, envisioning themselves as an antidote to the Great Feminist Danger and its Trivializing Impulses.

  Chuckling, Billie pushed away from the wall. As long as she could still laugh about the situation, she'd be okay.

  Still, she wished there were some way to give representatives of the old guard like Fogerty a kick, make them wake up and acknowledge the importance of Aphra's role in literary history. But what would it take? Most of the facts were there: the prose fiction Aphra had written long before the “beginning of the novel,” her plays, her poetry, the admiration and attacks from her contemporaries.

  And yet there were still Fogerties out there who denied her any real influence on the literature that came after her.

  Making her way past a few evening stragglers who were laughing and flirting on the steps, Billie climbed the stairs to the first floor (or second, to her American way of thinking) and headed for the room that was to hold the exhibit during the Aphra Behn symposium. Even though her former advisor had fled Blackfriars for more fruitful feminis
t soils, at least she'd officially left Billie in charge of the historical goodies.

  The big, old-fashioned key opened the door with a satisfying clunk. Most of the tables had been cleared out of the classroom, except for the ones needed for the exhibit. On top of the remaining tables now lining the walls were glass cases, several still empty.

  It was not a large room, but the high ceiling made it appear bigger. Tall windows looked out over the Thames and Blackfriars Bridge. Despite the double-pane windows, the sound of traffic was a constant roar of white noise in the background. On the walls to the left and right hung portraits of Aphra Behn. They weren't the real thing, of course, just prints; the symposium might be important enough to borrow some antique stuff from the Victoria and Albert, but not important enough to get an authentic Lely.

  In front of the tables stood the crates. Some baroque memorabilia from the museum had arrived today, and she was eager to examine her treasures. It was a good thing Fogerty didn't know about how much fun she was having with the display, or he probably would have tried to take the job away from her.

  Drawing on the gloves the curator had insisted she wear to handle the antiques, Billie opened the largest crate. This must be the mirror. She grabbed both sides and slid it carefully out of the box, grunting with the effort. It was heavier than it looked. She leaned it against the wall beneath one of the portraits of Aphra and removed the protective wrapping. The thing was a gaudy monstrosity, the mahogany frame a swirling pattern of snakes and leaves topped by a looming face with deep-set, hollow eyes. Billie trailed one gloved finger over the elaborate carvings, tracing intertwining snakes through a maze of branches until they melted into the hair of the figure at the top. The design seemed to pull her gaze into the sunken eyes, and she gave an involuntary shudder. It was as if the mirror were staring at her.

  Billie shook her head, chiding herself for her overactive imagination, and devoted her attention to the next crate. Sifting through the wood shavings, her hands hit on something solid, and she pulled out a long cardboard box that opened to reveal a delicate silk fan decorated with a painting of a stage scene. It would be perfect next to the folio in the display. She unlocked the glass case and lifted the cover. Gingerly, she picked up the ancient copy of Behn's play The Dutch Lover, overcome by a sense of awe. She knew she wasn't supposed to think that way about a research subject, but she couldn't help it: a world traveler, a spy, a woman who had fought her way to the top in a man's world, the first woman in English literature to make a living through her writing. What wasn't there to love about Aphra Behn?

  Smiling, she skimmed over the date on the title page with her fingertip: “1673.” She leafed through the brittle pages until she found a suggestive passage Fogerty was sure to hate, and arranged the fan and the manuscript to catch the visitor's eye.

  She dug deeper in the crate. It was just like Christmas! Her searching hand closed around an object with a familiar feel, and she pulled out an instrument case. Elated, Billie snapped open the lid and took out the lute. Did it work? Could she even figure out how to play it if it did? Well, there was no question of trying, since this was a museum piece, but it still made her curious how different a lute would be from a guitar or a mandolin.

  At the sound of voices in the hall, Billie quickly returned the lute to its case. Her boyfriend Richard entered the room with Professor Fogerty, the two of them chuckling like old buddies. Billie felt a stab of betrayal. Before Richard had turned in the first draft of his dissertation, they'd laughed about Fogerty together: now here was Richard laughing with him.

  Fogerty leaned over, examining the case with The Dutch Lover, and his chuckle at her arrangement sounded forced. Billie grinned. Willa Armstrong: 1. Professor Fogerty: 0.

  The professor straightened and turned to her. “I see we have precisely the right person to set up the exhibit.”

  “Why is that?” Billie asked, a polite smile on her face.

  “This room is becoming a statement of solidarity. Just as it should be.” The bushy eyebrows he raised at her seemed to say exactly the opposite.

  “I'm glad you like it,” she said, knowing perfectly well that he was just as insincere as she was. Her cheeks felt frozen.

  Richard sauntered over to the case and laughed out loud after reading the passage under glass. Fogerty gave him a brief, stern look, and she felt more generous towards her significant other again.

  “Well, I must be heading home,” Fogerty said. “Make sure you lock everything up when you leave, Miss Armstrong.”

  “I will, Professor Fogerty.”

  “And you make sure she gets home safely, Richard.” Fogerty winked and left.

  So it was “Richard” now. Billie wondered when that happened. It was just one more sign of his higher status.

  The smile left Richard's face. “You seem worked up. I take it the conference with Fogerty was not a success.”

  “Nope. I should have known I wouldn't get fair treatment from him.” She ran her fingers through her long hair, pulling it back from her face.

  “Billie.” Richard put a comforting arm around her shoulders. “Fogerty might have a point. Influence is a hard thing to prove.”

  At his words, the arm felt a lot less comforting. She knelt down and yanked open another packing crate. “He said almost exactly the same thing to me just now.”

  “Don't you think you should be a bit more careful with the museum goods?”

  “Don't you think you should stop telling me what to do?” Billie retorted, even though she knew he was right. But on some stupidly irrational level, that made his comment even worse. Since he'd handed in his dissertation, Richard had developed the irritating habit of giving her advice. The past weekend, they'd had a row about her busking at Piccadilly Circus — something she'd been doing ever since she'd come to London, to earn a few extra pounds and pence to offset the high cost of living.

  Besides, street music was her creative outlet these days. She didn't write much in the way of fiction anymore, not enough time, but she did still write poetry, the raw material for her song lyrics. Given the present disappointments of her academic life, she needed the music more than ever.

  “I'm not telling you what to do. I'm just warning you not to take your anger out on antiques,” Richard said in that low, slow voice that sent shivers down her spin.

  She rose and turned. He stood leaning against a wall of the classroom, arms folded in front of his chest. His voice had the same sexy timbre that was part of the reason she'd once fallen in love with him, but his posture was defensive, and his smile little more than the twitch of one cheek.

  “I know that well enough myself.” She got up and pulled a stepladder next to the wall. After taking down the wall clock, she turned to Richard. “I could use some help with the mirror.”

  He joined her. “What do you want me to do?”

  “Put on those extra gloves and help me hang it up.”

  A few grunts on both sides and the mirror was in place. “Is it straight?” Billie asked, adjusting the frame.

  “A little higher on the left. Now down again. That's right.”

  She glanced at her reflection, and a strange sensation of depth had her doubting her own perceptions. It seemed to reflect more than her and Richard and the room behind them, as if the opposite wall were making a stab at eternity.

  She stumbled on the stepladder, but Richard caught her arm. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.” Billie shook her head to clear it. “That's one weird mirror.”

  Behind her, she heard Richard take a deep breath. “Billie.”

  She turned.

  “Fogerty told me you're on a crusade. Whether you like it or not, you're going to have to follow his advice if you want to finish your degree.”

  They'd been talking about her behind her back. She couldn't believe it. “So you're siding with him. Against me.”

  “I'm not siding with him, I'm just —”

  “Oh, stop,” Billie interrupted. “You're only
going to tell me I should be practical about all this. Well, what if I don't want to be practical? Or respectable? Or any of those things you want me to be?” She glanced up at the nearest portrait. Aphra certainly had not been respectable, as Fogerty had reminded her earlier. The playwright regarded her, regally serene and much too serious. Billie preferred the picture on the opposite wall, an engraving based on a painting by a little-known woman artist. It showed Aphra in the flush of youth, a typical Restoration beauty with her heavy-lidded eyes and wide expanse of bosom. The hint of a smile at the corners of her lips gave her a more playful expression than in the Lely, and the single curl in the middle of her forehead reminded Billie of the nursery rhyme.

  “Billie, you're overreacting.”

  “Yes, perhaps I am.” The fact of the matter was, Billie was beginning to regret coming to London for graduate school, something her friends back in Oregon would never understand. They envied her the dashing boyfriend with the British accent, the fact that she was living in Europe and seeing the world. What more did she want? But after over a year, she was discovering a stubbornly traditional aspect to the system here, at least in her college, that made her squirm. Of course, it had gotten much worse after Professor Bentley left. Now here Richard was trying to persuade her to cave in.

  “You're investing too much emotion in your dissertation topic,” he was saying, his deep-set blue eyes settling on her with a look of patience that made her flinch. Those blue eyes were killers, though, and if she hadn't been so irritated they might have melted her. When Richard made it to professor, which wouldn't be long, he'd have the British equivalent of coeds falling all over him.

  “Emotion isn't professional, is it?” she said. “Not like you.”

  Richard pursed his lips. “When do you think you'll be done here?”