Chameleon in a Mirror Read online

  “Not for a while.” She bent over a crate, and her long, dark hair fell in front of her face like a curtain.

  “Then I take it you don't want me to wait for you?”

  She looked up. “No. I'll be home later.”

  Richard nodded, the perfect gentleman. Only the flaring nostrils betrayed him. “Fine.” He bent over and gave her a perfunctory kiss. “Bye, Willa.”

  She hated being called Willa, and he knew it. “Bye.”

  “Men,” she muttered, turning back to her crates. Thank the powers that be for baroque goodies. A room full of intriguing antiques was an excellent distraction from a spat with her boyfriend. Billie grimaced and made herself relax her shoulders. If only Richard would stop acting like a husband. Next, he might even be expecting her to follow wherever his career took him. On the other hand, she didn't have much to keep her here if he left. The problem was, she didn't know what she wanted to do with herself anymore. Graduate school was a bitch, London was too big, England was too cramped, and Billie was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  But she had the keys to the exhibit. And the keys had the power to unlock the past. She dug a hand into the pocket of her jeans and closed her fist around them. No matter that Billie had wanted to give a paper at the symposium and had been turned down; no matter that she'd wanted to vindicate Aphra in her dissertation; now she had the keys and the lute.

  The lute case was still on top of one of the crates. She stood and took out the instrument again, handling it reverently, admiring the curve of the body, the hue of the old wood. Tucking the lute under one arm, she struck a pose in front of the mirror and admired her reflection, her billowing silk shirt, embroidered brocade vest, and long, curly hair. Billie had spotted the extravagant vest at a flea market the week before. It reminded her so much of the outrageous fashions worn by men during the English Restoration, she'd bought it in honor of the symposium. Fashion for men in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries was more exuberant than it would be for hundreds of years, at least until the hippie era of the twentieth century. Billie loved the paintings of those subtly smiling Restoration rakes with their manes of long, curly hair. Still, she had to wonder how many of those beautiful heads of hair were real, and how many were wigs.

  Gazing at her image in the mirror, she thought she showed a decided resemblance to male heartbreakers of the Restoration. She would make a very handsome cavalier! Billie extended one booted leg the way a man of fashion in the seventeenth century might and stretched out her arm to an imaginary lady. What did one say to imaginary Restoration ladies? Remembering the verses from The Dutch Lover, she chuckled. Restoration ladies probably didn't want to hear that kind of thing, but if she was practicing to be a cavalier, she might as well begin there.

  She gave herself a steamy look in the mirror and recited the lines on display in the case:

  “Kind Messenger of Love! Thus, thus a thousand times

  “I bid thee welcome from my fair Clarinda.

  “Thus joyful Bridegrooms, after long Despairs,

  “Possess the yielding Treasure in their Arms;

  “Only thus much happier Lover, I,

  “Who gather all the Sweets of this fair Maid

  “Without the ceremonious Tie of Marriage; —”

  Billie felt a vague unsteadiness, as if she'd been spinning around in a circle like she used to do on the lawn as a child. She gave a short shake of her head and read the remaining lines:

  “That tie that does but nauseate the Delight,

  “Be far from happy Lovers; we'll embrace

  “And unconfin'd and free as whispering Air,

  “That mingles wantonly with spreading flowers.”

  The room full of Restoration knick-knacks began to shift and fade around her. Billie couldn't tear her eyes away from her reflection; it was as if the mirror were drawing her in. Everything outside her own outline melted away, only her shocked face in the glass remaining distinct and real. Finally, the mirror's hold on her seemed to snap. Feeling dizzy and sick, Billie closed her eyes and gripped the edge of the table next to her with her free hand. She hoped she wasn't going to throw up all over the antiques.

  Slowly the feeling of nausea passed, to be replaced by a sensation of cold. Billie prayed she wasn't pregnant, took a deep breath, and opened her eyes.

  Her first impulse was to close them again. She was still standing in front of a mirror, but everything else had changed. The same hideous carvings framed the mirror, but the table she gripped was covered with an assortment of masks and fans and feathers, not the glass case containing yellowed documents from the seventeenth century that she expected. She glanced around cautiously, searching for a familiar object, but the only thing she recognized was the lute still clutched under her arm. Heavy silk and brocade garments hung on hooks on the opposite wall, and one bronze velvet dress was draped carelessly over the back of a chair.

  “Whatever are you doing in the tiring room, lad?”

  Billie whipped around at the strange voice with the even stranger accent. Tiring room? Lad? A woman stood in the doorway, mustering her with an amused eye. She had a wide mouth, a long nose, a plunging neckline, and skirts to the floor. Billie stared.

  “Prithee, what pray is the matter? Never seen an actress up close before?”

  All Billie could do was shake her head. Prithee? What was going on here? Where was she?

  “If you're seeking a part in the play, 'twould be best you speak with the playwright. I'll take you to her. She's plotting it out at this very moment.” The actress hooked her arm through Billie's elbow. A wave of ambergris assaulted her nostrils, and the nausea nearly returned.

  Billie allowed herself to be led out of the changing room. Was this some kind of elaborate practical joke? But how could she have gotten here, wherever here was? And how could this actress be speaking such authentic-sounding Early Modern English? Perhaps the mirror had fallen off the wall and knocked her out and she was dreaming of Restoration playhouses. Yes, that had to be it: she had blacked out and at this very moment was lying on the floor of the classroom-turned-exhibit-room, and no one would find her until morning. Nothing else made any sense.

  They went through a door with a balcony above it that led to the main part of the theater. The stage stretched out into the audience, and a painted screen was pushed halfway across the rear wall. Gathered to one side of the stage stood a richly dressed group of people examining what appeared to be rough sketches hanging on the wall.

  The actress kept glancing at Billie under thick lashes, a laugh in her eyes and a smile playing around her wide mouth. “Methinks we have another aspiring actor here, Mrs. Behn,” she called out to the group.

  The woman who looked up from the manuscript she was examining had an abundance of copper curls, a wide expanse of white bosom set off by some sinfully luxurious material, heavy-lidded dark eyes, and the hint of a smile on her face. Even the stray curl in the middle of her forehead was the same as in the portrait Billie had recently hung on the wall of a London university classroom. Had she been staring at paintings too long and started hallucinating?

  The first professional woman writer in English literature gazed straight into Billie's eyes. Billie shivered.

  “Cold lad?” Aphra asked, lifting one dark eyebrow. “Or just stage fright?”

  2

  “Faith, sir, we are here today, and gone tomorrow.”

  Aphra Behn, The Lucky Chance

  Billie closed her eyes for a moment and then opened them again. Aphra Behn was still gazing at her in amusement, waiting for an answer. An imaginary Aphra Behn. Too much studying must have fried Billie's brains. No — too much studying was not an option. But she could swear she was backstage in a Restoration playhouse with the object of her research and a group of actors from the seventeenth century. If it were a hallucination, it was a dream come true that felt like winter and smelled like a horde of unwashed bodies doused in perfume.

  How many dreams were olfactory?

&nb
sp; Dream-Aphra pointed at the lute still tucked under Billie's arm and smiled. “Appears more a musician than an actor.” As Billie continued to stare, Aphra's smile grew wider. “Stay, lad, we won't eat you. What's your name?”

  Lad again. She didn't think she'd ever had a dream before where everyone assumed she was male. Maybe she was developing inferiority complexes about her flat chest. It couldn't be her height; she was 5'9” on a good day and 5'8” on a bad. But then, among the people populating her strange dream, very few were taller than she was, even among the men.

  “Bi— uh, Will, Ma'am,” Billie stuttered, for some reason playing along with the plot of her dream, responding as if she really were where it looked like she was. She wasn't sure if the nickname “Billie” existed in the seventeenth century. She knew “Will” did.

  Aphra gave an almost imperceptible start. “Common enough name, but that's an uncommon accent.”

  “Definitely not a speaking role for the lad,” the actress who had guided Billie to the stage added, and the other actors laughed.

  “Where are you from?” Aphra asked.

  “America,” Billie replied, truthfully enough. At least it would be a good excuse for any mistakes she might make. But why was she worrying? This had to be some kind of dream, so it wouldn't matter what she did. She might as well just play along and enjoy the extravagance of her own imagination. Only if it were a dream, it was a very vivid one, and she had even incorporated her hated linguistics lessons in the concoction. These folks didn't speak any dialect Billie recognized, but in some ways their accent was closer to American than British English. Aphra had definitely pronounced the “r” when she said “where”.

  Aphra clapped her hands. “Why, Will, then welcome you are, accent or no. Another American! You must have been in the Colonies much longer than I, to judge by your speech.”

  Billie nodded and thought about the paper Professor Fogerty intended to give at the symposium, reviving the old theory that Behn had never been to the Americas. She had Behn on the brain.

  “Must be the fashion among the savages,” an actress murmured, glancing at Billie's black jeans.

  “When we are done here, you must tell me of your travels,” Aphra continued, ignoring the interruption. “'Tis nigh on ten years since I left Surinam, but I remember it well. Might you be willing to play the music for a song or two, Will?”

  Billie pulled the lute out from under her arm. “I could be persuaded, but I'm not sure if my instrument can.”

  Aphra examined the lute and laughed. “It does indeed look as if it has been to the Americas and back!”

  “Farther,” Billie said ruefully. She looked at the sketches on the wall. “What are those?” she asked, wondering where she might have gotten the idea that playwrights pinned scraps of paper to the wall of the theater.

  “We're plotting scenes for The Dutch Lover,” Aphra replied. The Dutch Lover — the play Billie had arranged under glass; the play Billie had recited from. What could that mean? No, she couldn't think that way, as if this were real: all it meant was that The Dutch Lover was the last thing Billie had been reading before she passed out.

  She tightened her hold on the actress's arm to keep from reeling. The actress returned the pressure, giving Billie a steamy glance and yet another complication to worry about. Billie disengaged herself from the over-friendly young woman and ran a hand through her hair, pulling it back from her forehead. She was having a nightmare with a sense of humor, that was it. But if this was a dream, its inner logic seemed more in tune with the conscious than the subconscious mind.

  Aphra gave Billie and the actress a sharp look. “Perchance you could help out with the songs, Will, I'd be grateful,” she continued. “The musician who was to play the lute came down with a case of the clap and is forced to spend his time in a sweat.” She raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

  The clap — seventeenth century lingo for venereal disease. And the common treatment was sweat-houses. But she knew that; her subconscious could have included those details.

  “Don't forget the mistake you made with Otway, Mrs. Behn,” an obese actor pointed out.

  “I assure you I will determine if this youth knows his instrument before I engage him, Angel,” Aphra said with a wink, and the actors surrounding her laughed.

  Billie went wide-eyed: would she have thought up that kind of a joke on herself? On the other hand, she knew about the incident the actor referred to as “Angel” was talking about. In Aphra's first staged play, she gave an important role to Thomas Otway, an unknown aspiring actor, who totally flubbed the performance and proceeded to go down in literary history as a major Restoration dramatist, a position denied to Aphra Behn. Perversely, the thought made Billie feel a bit better. Vicarious resentment kindled her fighting spirit.

  Besides, it was all a dream. She had to remind herself of that. She might as well enjoy this flight of fancy until she came to. She'd had dreams often enough where she was aware of her own dream-state. This had to be something like that. Just more vivid.

  “After we're finished plotting, I'll give you a copy of the music, and you can tell me if you and your instrument are up to it.” Aphra gave her a smile of dismissal, and Billie wandered toward the front of the stage, wondering what other odd details she had included in her fantasy. In one of her pre-academic incarnations, she'd done a stint as an actress until she realized it provided even less chance of making a living than poetry and song-writing. She knew the backside of a stage better than the front side, but the layout in this place was totally unfamiliar. The long apron extending into the audience was a little like what she'd read about the Globe. She turned around to examine the main stage from where she stood. The proscenium arch had doors with balconies on either side of the stage, and together with the forestage, it created an illusion of depth. It just didn't know what it wanted to be at the moment — a huge painting of a forest was pulled halfway across the stage, while behind it, another wing showing a street scene covered the rest of the back wall.

  Above the arch were gaudy carvings of cherubs and a couple of female figures representing tragedy and comedy, to judge by the masks they held. Highly distracting, as far as Billie was concerned. The whole place was incredibly opulent, decorated to the ceiling and oppressive as hell. Who would watch the actresses with those larger-than-life females overhead?

  Billie's attention shifted back to the stage. Aphra was pointing at sketches hanging next to one of the doors, a look of impatience on her face, while the obese actor stood off to the side, folded arms propped on his stomach. Apparently in her imaginary seventeenth century, playwrights also functioned as directors. No. It couldn't be a real detail, because none of this was real. She didn't believe in magic mirrors.

  It all felt so real, though. It had none of the surreal quality of a dream or a hallucination, and it was cold, much colder than Blackfriars in October. Only how could she have ended up in a playhouse in the seventeenth century? Billie had to stop thinking that way. She had to just go with it for now and hope that she would eventually wake up somewhere that made sense.

  Aphra turned away from the sketches, the frown on her face changing to a smile. Three brilliantly dressed gentlemen were entering the stage from a door on the opposite side. Obviously, Billie had underestimated what it took to make a cavalier; her billowing silk shirt and bright satin vest were drab in comparison with the splendor of these gentlemen. Or perhaps the correct term would be Restoration rake — all three looked like they had the potential to be very rakish. The casual elegance of their rich attire produced exactly the right impression of strutting peacocks utterly assured that they would be watched wherever they went. Their long hair was elaborately coiffed in flowing waves and ringlets — either that or they were wearing elaborate wigs. Billie feared her own curly tresses looked rather limp in comparison. Two of the men wore lavish hats with plumes, while one went bare-headed. Long, aristocratic fingers rested on the hilts of swords slung at their waists. All three wore vests almost to
their knees, with open coats slightly shorter over the vests. With their extravagant outfits, these men put the vast majority of women in the twenty-first century to shame. Billie was decidedly out of fashion. Fortunately, one of the men sported high leather boots resembling those she wore.

  The one wearing boots strode across the stage to Aphra and gave her a proprietary kiss on the cheek while the darkest one, clothed completely in black and white, looked on with hooded eyes. Billie found herself staring at the play within the playhouse. As if he could feel her eyes on him, the dark one looked over at Billie and caught her fascinated gaze. She blushed. The hatless cavalier, watching the whole incident with an alert expression, laughed out loud at her embarrassment.

  Billie gave him a murderous look and wandered to the back of the stage to inspect the scenery wings up close. In front of the painted forest were a collection of small potted trees and a couple of chairs, probably props. Did they even call them props in the seventeenth century? Examining the painted backdrop, Billie noticed that it slid on grooves in the floor and the ceiling to make changing scenes easier. She gave the wing a trial shove with her free hand; it screeched so loudly that the group gathered around Aphra looked up from what they were doing.

  The hatless visitor separated himself from the group and sauntered over to where she stood, her cheeks hot with embarrassment. He bowed gracefully and Billie decided his hair was real. It wasn't thick enough to be horsehair.

  “Edward Ravenscroft at your service. With whom might I have the pleasure?”

  Billie imitated his bow to the best of her ability, the useless lute still clutched under one arm. Maybe in her dream she would make a cavalier yet.

  “Will Armstrong, sir.” This was apparently yet another research detail that had crept into her dream version of the Restoration: she'd read about Ravenscroft, a minor playwright and lifelong friend of Aphra's. Some sources conjectured that they'd been lovers, but most agreed they weren't.