Chameleon in a Mirror Page 12

  But still ... it was a chance, the first chance she'd had in nearly a month. Oh, how stupid she'd been not to think of this earlier. Of course, she didn't know yet if it would work, but she had the crazy conviction that she'd finally come up with a solution.

  Billie got out of her female garb as quickly as possible and slipped into her jeans and silk shirt. What other props would she need? The lute? Suddenly she remembered the wallet in her back pocket — it had a driver's license and a picture of Richard. She took them out and gripped them in one hand, the lute from the Victoria and Albert in the other, and faced the mirror. She would try the song she'd played for Aphra and see what happened.

  “We cannot solve the riddle of the future,

  “But don't give me never for an answer.”

  Nothing. Billie recited the whole song without a hint of nausea, without a trace of dizziness.

  Well, she wouldn't give up yet. She had long suspected the mirror at the Dorset Garden Theatre was part of the equation, and Ravenscroft had invited her to join him there for a meeting with the players tomorrow. He hadn't written the play yet, but he said he'd come up with most of the characters, and if he knew which actors would play them, he would be able to write the parts better. It was the strangest way of writing a play Billie had ever heard, but she would be there.

  Hopefully not for long.

  Billie adjusted the lace cravat at her throat and pulled the silk shirt out a tad from the arm of her brocade jacket so it showed below the sleeve just enough to be stylish. The jeans under the historic getup were her little personal rebellion, and they were comforting — particularly the wallet in her pocket. It was her ticket to the future. The present. Whatever. Or at least she hoped it was.

  She checked her reflection one more time before she left her room and descended the stairs. Hoyle had come to call only a few minutes previously, and Aphra's ringing laughter was audible throughout the house. Although what there was about that man to make anyone laugh was a riddle to Billie. She wished he wasn't there. If she really did make it back to her own century, she didn't know if she would ever see Aphra again, and she would have liked to make some kind of gesture, do something to let Aphra know how important her support had been. But no one had a chance against Hoyle; his intensity was like an incinerator.

  As Billie opened the door to the sitting room, yet another loud laugh from Aphra greeted her. Both of them rose at her entrance, and Hoyle made a leg. Billie returned the gentlemanly greeting, but when she straightened up again, she knew her dislike showed. Noticing her expression, he raised one dark eyebrow. Billie couldn't understand how anyone could look both bored and intense at the same time, but this man did it.

  And she couldn't stand him.

  Billie strode over to Aphra and took one slender hand in her own. “I must leave you, madam,” she said, raising Aphra's hand to her lips. “The theater calls.”

  “Well, that is certainly a call we all understand,” Aphra said, letting her hand rest in Billie's. Out of the corner of her eye, Billie saw Hoyle's mobile eyebrow go up again. Good. Let him think Aphra's favors might be in danger of drifting to another. Her gaze met his, and she found herself caught by those ridiculously dark eyes. If there were such a thing as the devil, he would surely look like Hoyle.

  Billie returned her attention to her benefactress, pressing the other woman's hand tightly with both her own. “Your servant, madam,” she said formally, but Aphra seemed to catch the undercurrent of something unsaid in her voice, and a question crept into her eyes. Billie's lips twitched. She raised Aphra's hand for a second kiss and had the satisfaction of seeing the question replaced by repressed laughter. She would rather leave Aphra with a laugh than a frown.

  “Do not stay away too late,” Aphra said with an affectionate smile. “The streets of London are not safe for young sparks unaccustomed to the big city.”

  She nodded and left quickly.

  Billie might not be in love with Ravenscroft, but whatever she was feeling, it was a damn good imitation. When she entered the theater and saw him on stage with the actors, her stomach plunged. God, he looked so good to her. If only sex really were like folks had imagined back in the 1960s: this was definitely a man she could fall into bed with at the drop of an elaborately plumed hat. But then what? If all she cared for was his body, it would be pretty uncomplicated, but she loved his smile, the way it spread across his face, touching his eyes and mouth before he checked it and organized his features in a semblance of cavalierly unconcern. What she loved —did she say love? — was the expression in between, the expression of enjoyment behind the heavy-lidded eyes, the impetuousness behind the deliberate mask. Billie was very fond of games and masks, but with her it hid a true deliberation, an unwillingness to commit too quickly. With Ravenscroft, it was just another manifestation of his playfulness. To him, everything was a game, but a game to be won.

  Despite her street music and her foreign studies, Billie did not consider herself adventurous, especially not sexually. Ravenscroft was. But sexual adventure was dangerous in the age of AIDS — and not exactly harmless in the age of syphilis, either.

  Billie joined the crowd on the stage and caught a glower cast her way by Angel. She acknowledged it with an elegant bow.

  Ravenscroft disengaged himself from his actors and actresses and sauntered over to her. “Glad you could come, lad,” he said, gripping her hand in a firm welcome.

  “You said you had a song for the play?”

  “I discarded it,” he said, his smile wide.

  Billie shook her head. “You never had one.”

  “You accuse me of deceit?” His voice shook with mock indignation.

  “Certainly.”

  Ravenscroft laughed out loud. Billie looked at him, the cords of his strong neck, his laughing golden eyes, the silky curls falling over his shoulders. Now was her chance. Now she should go to the dressing room on the pretext of taking off her cape, right now, before she did something stupid that she would regret later.

  “I swear you were born with a lie on your lips,” Billie said lightly, gazing steadily into Ravenscroft's eyes.

  “You do me an injustice, my friend,” Ravenscroft replied. Golden eyes met gray.

  Billie liked the “friend.” She smiled. “I must take off this heavy cape. You will excuse me?” She wanted to say something, do something, but they merely bowed to each other formally, and Billie moved away, her heart giving a wrench. Why should she feel like some kind of gesture was necessary anyway? All that had ever been between her and Ravenscroft were a couple of kisses and a load of sexual attraction. If she managed to disappear, he probably wouldn't even miss her.

  Before leaving through the door on the side of the stage, she looked back to find Ravenscroft gazing after her, a slight smile on his lips. When he saw her turn, he nodded. Billie returned the gesture with a sudden ache in her stomach and hurried to the tiring room.

  She closed the door behind her. It was hard to believe it had only been a matter of weeks that she had been stranded in this place and time; it felt like a lifetime. Changing centuries was like changing continents, only worse. Things were so different, it was hard to maintain a sense of continuity.

  After tossing her cape over an empty chair, Billie pulled her wallet out of the back pocket of her jeans. She drew out the picture of Richard in front of the college steps and gazed at it abstractedly. They had been freshly in love the day that picture was taken; they'd spent the afternoon in an old pub off Fleet Street drinking bitter, and had giggled all the way back to the college. It was a picture of her life in England, the romance and the lack of it. If it couldn't get her back to twenty-first century London, nothing could.

  Suddenly it hit her: the landmarks they had passed that day, the Inns of Court and the Thames — the Dorset Garden Theatre must stand on almost exactly the same spot as the college.

  Perhaps that meant getting back to a mirror stashed at the Victoria and Albert was impossible.

  Billie drew a d
eep breath. Clutching the picture and her driver's license in one hand and the lute in the other, she faced the mirror and began to recite the lyrics of the song she'd sung for Aphra. She felt the first hint of dizziness with a sense of elation laced with regret. With the second verse, a fit of nausea washed over her that made her double over and clutch the back of a chair for support. Her dashing hat tumbled from her head and the picture crumpled in her hand.

  When the fit of nausea passed and Billie straightened up again, she was standing in front of a table with a half-empty glass case on top of it — a glass case she had been arranging weeks ago. The sound of traffic through the closed windows was deafening. Billie gave a short shake of her head and looked around the room as if she had never seen it before. Everything seemed to be exactly as she'd left it. Even the quality of light coming through the windows was almost the same. Only now it was lighter than when she went through the looking glass.

  The exhibit was here and the case was open. She was back in the future, a future she apparently had never left, or at the most for only a few hours. And she had done it with a couple of verses of a song that had been heard at most on a street corner and in a few bars.

  She'd done it. Her words had brought her home. Billie was back in her own time through the power of her own words.

  10

  [Aphra Behn's] art was predatory, and she took any author's property as her own.

  The Cambridge History of English Literature (1912)

  Billie stared at the lute in her hands and realized through her euphoria that she had a problem. Back in the seventeenth century, she'd begun to think the same way about the old lute as everyone else — it was little more than an old piece of junk. The Victoria and Albert wouldn't think that way, though. For the exhibit, the lute from Ravenscroft should do fine, but before the symposium was over, she would have to get back to the past to retrieve the museum piece. The time travel didn't seem to be a fluke — once Billie had figured out the principle of the thing, she'd ended up here in her own century, after all.

  She'd managed to get back to the present, and it was her own scribblings that had done it. How very strange. Maybe that meant when a tree fell in a forest, it really did make a sound whether anyone was there or not.

  Billie wandered to one of the high windows that looked out over the street and the Thames beyond. With her Restoration sensibilities, the speed of things was hard to comprehend: cars racing past and lights changing, making her eyes ache. She was no longer immune to that kind of bombardment on her senses. The din was comparable to that of the era she'd just left, but seventeenth century street noise had little resemblance to the constant roar she was hearing now. Individual sounds were recognizable there — the voice of a street crier, wooden wheels on cobblestones, horses' hooves — all definable, not this gigantic hum blending in to one big noise.

  She wondered what time it was. Glancing around, she spied her bag on a chair next to the far wall. If she was lucky, her cell phone would still be in it.

  “That's a bloody poor showing for a whole night spent arranging an exhibit.”

  Billie whirled around at the sound of that low voice. Richard stood leaning casually against the door frame. The posture was uncaring, but the tight line of his jaw and the way the cords of his neck stood out betrayed how much effort the posture cost him. Then it hit her: a whole night. She'd only been gone one night?

  She couldn't come up with a plausible lie, so she didn't say anything. For some reason, she didn't feel like telling him she'd been gone for a month on a jaunt to the past — and had been on the verge of falling in love.

  “You'd better finish soon,” Richard continued. “The first speaker is due to start in an hour.”

  At least he was kind enough to let her know what time it was. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “I wanted to be certain you weren't going to make me look a fool. Glad to see you still have a sense of duty despite conflicting interests.”

  Billie took the lute she was carrying over to the open case and laid it next to the quarto of The Dutch Lover.

  “What is this outfit?” Richard asked, examining her jacket with the unusual three-quarter arms critically. “Borrowed plumage from your new flame?”

  Billie examined herself in the big baroque mirror, feeling a lifetime away from the last time she'd done so. She was wearing her own pants and shirt and boots, but the black jacket with the gray trim was a nice touch, very dashing. If only the hat hadn't fallen to the table. It would have been awesome to have a seventeenth century hat to wear to the symposium.

  “Smart, isn't it?” Billie said, ignoring the impending confrontation in Richard's words. The first answer that had come to mind was, “it's not what you think,” but that had been said a few times too often. It fit the situation perfectly — and it would be wholly inadequate.

  “Lovely,” Richard said sarcastically. His voice was strained but still beautiful. Billie had almost forgotten the quality of that voice. Richard wasn't deigning to ask her anything outright, and Billie was relieved. Suddenly, she was grateful he was British; he was disinclined to make a scene. It was hard enough readjusting to her own time without a relationship squabble.

  She closed the glass lid on the lute and the play, and turned back to her boyfriend, overcome by a sudden rush of affection resembling nostalgia. He looked as dear to her as if she had already left him, like an ex-lover you meet by chance on the street. It wasn't his undeniable good looks that made her unexpectedly sentimental. He was probably going through hell, after all — perfectly understandable under the circumstances — and taking it very well. Sarcastically but well. According to Richard's time scheme, his live-in girlfriend had just spent a night away from home, and he was showing more generosity of spirit than she expected.

  Especially given that he looked like he hadn't slept at all.

  “I need to get back to work,” she said as gently as she could.

  “Fine.” Richard left without another word.

  Billie got the room fixed up just in time for Fogerty's entrance. The professor praised her in that irritatingly superior tone of voice which made it sound like she was barely good enough but he was too magnanimous to hurt her feelings. She wondered what kind of inferiority complexes made it necessary for him to use that tone so often.

  After Fogerty left, Billie headed for the library. She could miss the first paper, but she didn't care. Richard wasn't giving his until 11:00.

  The library had only one book by Edward Ravenscroft, but that one at least had the play he'd been writing when she left, The Careless Lovers. She knew Behn's spot in the stacks by heart, and Ravenscroft wasn't far away. Billie pulled the orange-bound book out of the shelf and leafed through it. A typescript! Ravenscroft must have been even more unimportant than she'd thought. She took the book with her to a table and started to read. The editor didn't seem to know much about Ravenscroft's life: even though he mentioned the exact date of his admittance to Gray's Inn, he still tried to make him years younger. Couldn't he see the dates contradicted themselves? Billie tapped the pages impatiently and skipped ahead to the play itself.

  The Careless Lovers was a light-hearted, amusing comedy, easy to read for someone accustomed to Early Modern English. When she was finished, Billie closed the book quietly and stared at the shelves. Hillaria, Ravenscroft's heroine, wasn't Billie; Hillaria was much more high-spirited, more like Aphra. But so much was there, in these pages; the things Ravenscroft had said about Dryden and heroes and farce, the flirtatious conversation they'd had at Lincoln's Inn Fields — her words, or close to her words, here in print in the twenty-first century, even if it was only typescript. Of course, literary studies had taught her fiction was hardly a mirror to reality, but seeing her words in print made her wonder. Was that the way Ravenscroft saw her? She thought about the times they had been together, her “daring” masquerade in Restoration society, and began to realize that she might well have come across as pretty adventurous and high-spirited.<
br />
  It almost looked as if she had become the model for a seventeenth century heroine.

  Billie suddenly wanted to call her brother Bruce and hear what he would have to say about this kind of time paradox. It was the middle of the night for him, though. Maybe she could call him sometime this afternoon, during a break between lectures. She longed to hear his voice — just yesterday she'd been unsure if she'd ever have another chance.

  She returned the book to the shelves and made her way to the small lecture hall where Richard was scheduled to speak. She slipped in just as Fogerty was finishing his introduction and took a vacant seat towards the back. A woman with a round face full of freckles and a frizzy mass of copper hair turned towards her briefly and gave her a welcoming smile. Billie smiled back.

  “The title of my paper is 'Fact and Fancy in the Life and Work of Aphra Behn,'“ Richard began. “In this paper I will be tracing the genealogy of the novel's claim to truth by examining Aphra Behn's short work Oroonoko, first published in 1688.

  “The book opens with a standard disclaimer which raises our suspicions and alerts us to the fictionality of the text. As Ernest Bernbaum has shown, Aphra Behn most likely took her descriptions of Surinam from a contemporary account published in England in 1667. Although feminist scholars have made it increasingly fashionable to believe every word Mrs. Behn ever wrote, her portrayal of life in the colony is characterized by tall tales and a distinct disregard for truth.”

  Billie's blood slowly started to boil. Richard had barely begun, and already he was tearing the basis of her own research to shreds. Had he rewritten it last night in a fit of pique, or had he always intended to sacrifice her to Fogerty this way?