The Day Before Forever Read online

  Something else echoed then, and I swung to look at Henley.

  “What is that?” I whispered, not wanting my voice to carry.

  It sounded like a distant tapping, echoing from the other side of the big room. Yet the taps had no pattern.

  “Footsteps,” Henley said.

  And he was right.

  Trying to think quickly, I put down the clock I was holding and stepped next to it, arranging my long skirts so it was hidden.

  The reason I couldn’t make out the footsteps was that it sounded like more than one person. Many more.

  I stood close to Henley, flattening my back against the wall, trying to disappear.

  Henley found my hand and squeezed it.

  “And please watch your step as we enter this next room.”

  I held my breath, but there was no way we wouldn’t be found. There was one door on the other side of the room—the side from which the voice was coming. There was no way out for us.

  “Here we have the Painted Hall—”

  A woman with an absurdly bright-red scarf walked backward into the room. At least fifteen other people followed her in, gripping tightly onto little booklets and what appeared to be folded maps.

  With one glance, I could tell we were in the time of ripped jeans and baseball caps.

  Though the people who followed the woman in openly stared at us, she seemed too busy talking to notice.

  “This wing was built just prior to 1694 and was donated by William III to become the Royal Hospital for Seamen at Greenwich. The hospital was closed in 1869.”

  Two little girls had come to the front of the crowd. They were playing tag and obviously not listening to the woman in the red scarf.

  “You there,” the woman barked, singling out one of the little girls. “What did I say about running in these old buildings? You could break something, heaven forbid!”

  The little girl was wearing a large pink fleece jacket that almost went down to her knees. Her big eyes looked up at the woman before she suddenly ran back into the crowd, presumably to find her parents.

  The woman with the red scarf continued. She was lecturing almost forcibly to the crowd, harshly punctuating her words. “From 1873 to 1997, this was the site of a training establishment for the Royal Navy.” The woman’s face was almost as red as her scarf. I wondered if it was tied too tightly around her neck.

  I looked to my side to mention this to Henley, but when I turned, he wasn’t next to me. I hadn’t even noticed that he’d let go of my hand.

  I scanned the crowd for Henley. He couldn’t have gone far.

  I was right. Henley was standing at the back of the crowd. What was he doing there?

  Squinting, I tried to make out if he was talking to someone. No, that wasn’t it.

  Henley was easy to spot, as he was still wearing his Tudor-era nightshirt, as Richard had been on his deathbed only a moment ago. I shook my head at how confusing that sounded. But oddly, no one seemed to pay Henley any heed, as he stood just a few steps behind everyone.

  As the crowd looked forward toward me and their guide, I craned my neck to see what Henley was up to. I knew there had to be a reason he was there. Maybe he was scoping out the exit?

  As I stood on my toes, I saw Henley move close to a man standing at the edge of the crowd. The man didn’t look particularly different or important in any way; he just had a backpack slung over one of his shoulders. I didn’t know what Henley was doing until I saw his hand flash forward.

  I yelped, and everyone, including the man who stood right in front of Henley, looked up at me. I must have looked a sight still in my Tudor gown, complete with a French hood headpiece.

  The woman shushed me. “My God. Attention-seeking actors . . . The company should have warned me about their new promotions.” The woman in the red scarf mumbled, but she soon continued her lecture.

  Henley had taken something from the man’s backpack. Whatever it was, it was small, and I saw him hide it in his shirt. My shriek had distracted everyone—including Henley’s target—and actually helped him pickpocket the man.

  I watched as Henley moved toward the other side of the room. I couldn’t say anything with so many people around. Luckily, the group started toward the exit, and the woman with the red scarf ushered everyone out.

  I felt a tugging at my skirt. I looked down to see the little girl with the oversized pink fleece coat. She wordlessly thrust something at me.

  Confused, I took it, and before I could see what it was she ran off to join the group. It felt small and cold in my hand.

  “Please remember there’s a step here!” the tour guide barked over her shoulder.

  I looked down to see what the girl had given me. It was a coin. I wondered if her mother had told her to give it to the nice actor in Tudor dress standing mutely in the corner of the room.

  I turned the coin over in my hand. “One pound,” it said. Right, we were still in the UK. Just more in the future.

  I waited for the last of the tour group to trickle out of the room and round the corner before I carefully stepped around the clock I was hiding and walked up to Henley.

  “What the hell was that?” I said through gritted teeth.

  “The little girl was just tipping you for your wonderful performance,” he said.

  “You know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

  Henley dug into his shirt and withdrew a leather wallet. He tossed it to me, and I barely caught it.

  “Money,” he said.

  “Money that’s not ours.”

  “I’m quite aware of that,” Henley said. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we need some money to get out of here.”

  I didn’t want to admit it, but he was right. If there was one thing I learned from living in New York, it was that you needed money to survive. New York was expensive, and I guessed that London was, too. You need money to buy food, find a place to stay, and to even get around. Money was tied to everything really. So I opened the wallet.

  “Reed Lory Glazen,” I read from the driver’s license. “New Jersey driver’s license, so he’s American.”

  I pulled out his credit card and all the cash he carried in his wallet. A Visa, 238 British pounds, and 10 American dollars.

  Henley held out his hand. I didn’t know if he had pockets, but I handed him the credit card and the cash.

  I looked closely at the driver’s license. The photo looked like it was a mug shot. There was a date of issue and an expiration date. I looked closely at the years. The license was issued in 2015 and it expired in 2019.

  “The current year must be between 2015 and 2019.” My head spun.

  I saw Henley gulp.

  I had seen the sweatshirts and sneakers, and I knew we were in the future. I was born in the forties . . . 1943, was it? And Henley was born in the late 1800s. This definitely wasn’t our time. I also knew this definitely wasn’t Tudor England, but we were so far in the future.

  On the other hand, this was a time period I knew a bit about. It was close to the year Miss Hatfield had been killed. Technically, the murder had taken place only a few years ago.

  I tried to keep a level head. “What about the wallet?” I asked.

  “You should just drop it here,” Henley said. “No sense in carrying it around, especially with someone else’s ID in there.”

  Since there was no table or window ledge on which to set it down, I put the leather wallet on the floor between us.

  “We should go,” Henley said. But neither of us knew where.

  “Wait,” I said. “We can’t go like this.” I motioned to what I was wearing.

  I took off the first layer of my clothing—the Tudor gown I was wearing and the French hood headpiece, along with the pouch strung on a golden belt. As strange as the pieces of clothing looked, wearing them had become almost second nature to me in 1527.

  Something rattled in the pouch as I took it off. I looked in and saw that it was a small glass vial, the size of one of my fi
ngers. It had been a little present from Richard.

  I turned it over in my hands once, before promptly putting it back into the drawstring pouch. I couldn’t deal with it right now. We didn’t have time. I couldn’t think about Richard yet.

  I had Henley help me take off my corset. I took a deep breath once it came off. Next was the stifling kirtle.

  I kept taking articles of clothing off until I was left with a pile of fabric at my feet and only a white linen smock on. It wasn’t much better, but at least I now had a minuscule chance of fitting in here—whatever the exact year was. Not to mention the fact that my entire body felt lighter and much less constrained.

  “You’re forgetting this.” Henley lifted the necklace I was wearing from around my neck. He took it off and handed it to me. Even after hundreds of years, the garnets—or were they rubies?—glinted in the sunlight that streamed in from the tall windows of the room.

  I paused before deciding to put the heavy necklace and matching earrings with the vial in the pouch I had been wearing. I strapped the belt and pouch back on.

  Wadding up the clothing on the floor, I looked around to see if there was a vase or something I could hide them in. Nothing. The Painted Hall was too bare. I decided I would just bring them with me for now. It would be too suspicious if I just left a pile of clothing here.

  I cocked my head at Henley, and he shrugged. There was nothing we could do about the way he was dressed, as he was only in a linen shirt and old-fashioned, billowy shorts. Maybe people would think we were actors in costumes like that other woman seemed to think? Then again, maybe people would think we were both dressing according to some brand-new fashion? One could only hope.

  Henley picked up the clock and put it under his arm. I followed him as he walked out of the room, the way the tour group had left.

  When we passed through the doorway, I saw that we were outside. The light was incredibly bright. I squinted forward and thought I saw the River Thames. Some things never changed. The gravel crunched beneath our flimsy leather shoes as we stumbled toward the river.

  “Wait a second,” I said.

  I spied a booth set up against the stone wall on the outside of the building, just a little to our right. “Take photos with you as the king and queen!” it declared. It was a little thing, barely fitting the man behind the foot-long counter. The man was all muscle—I could see that even from where I stood. It looked as if his body frame was the only thing keeping the booth from falling apart.

  A grown woman and a little boy were in the middle of taking photos a few steps away from the booth. They were dressed in period costume over their jeans and T-shirts.

  I stole a glance at Henley. “I have a brilliant idea . . .”

  I took off toward the rickety booth, and poor Henley had no choice but to follow me.

  The man greeted us with a smile. “Hello there. Are you two looking to dress up as the Tudors did? It makes a great Christmas card.”

  “I’m sure it does,” I said. “But we’re not actually looking to take photos—”

  “Then move along,” he said.

  His gruffness startled me, but I didn’t move from my spot directly in front of the counter.

  “What are you trying to do?” he said. “Scare away customers? I have a work permit—”

  “I’m sure you do. I don’t really care about that. I’m just here to hopefully do some business with you,” I said.

  “Some business? Who do you think you are?”

  I ignored him. “Look, we have a fine . . . replica woman’s Tudor-era costume we think you’d be interested in and also find good use for.” I gestured to the woman and boy, still absorbed in taking photos. “How many of those costumes do you have?”

  “Enough. Now get out of here.” He crossed his arms in front of his chest, causing the muscles in his arms to bulge. I could have sworn I heard Henley gulp.

  “Well, how many of those do you go through in a year?” I asked. “People aren’t that gentle with them, are they? Buttons pop off, zippers break. Worse still is when the fabric itself rips.”

  “Your point?”

  “My point is that until a certain level of damage, it’s fixable without the clothes looking horrible and without it putting a dent in your profits. But at some point, you’re going to have to replace the costumes. You could put more costumes into circulation to lessen the amount of wear each one gets.”

  The man looked skeptical. “And you have costumes to sell?”

  “We do.”

  Henley set the pile of clothing on the narrow ledge of the booth counter.

  “We have a woman’s complete outfit. Gown, headwear, petticoat, kirtle . . . everything. Exact replicas of what they used to wear. You won’t even see a zipper in sight,” I said.

  The man started riffling through the clothing and holding them up. He inspected the fabric and the seams. “Not bad . . . ,” he finally said. “Naturally, I’ve seen better . . . but not bad at all. How much are you asking for this set?”

  I hadn’t really thought of how much I should ask. I didn’t know the market price of Tudor replica costumes.

  I looked at Henley, but he only met my gaze with a panicked look.

  Ultimately, I turned to the man. “What are you willing to pay for these?”

  “Hmm . . .” He fingered the fabric of my skirt again. “Two hundred pounds.”

  I struggled to not widen my eyes. It was a lot more than I was expecting him to offer. I didn’t know much about this time period, but when I lived with Miss Hatfield right before she was murdered, two hundred dollars was a lot. Two hundred pounds couldn’t be that much far off. “Make it two hundred and fifty and you have yourself a deal.”

  “Fine,” he said, and dug into a pouch he wore around his waist.

  I couldn’t believe it. It was an easy sale. I thought I’d have to fight him to buy our useless apparel. But I guess he had seen the quality of the clothing; nothing’s as good a replica as the real thing.

  “Two hundred and fifty pounds.” The man counted out the money on the tiny ledge. He pushed it toward us a centimeter. Anything more and it would have fallen off.

  “Thank you,” I said, taking it and putting it in the pouch along with the jewelry and the vial.

  “You too. Now get out of here. You’re taking over my counter space, and I need it for customers.”

  Henley and I were glad to leave. We continued walking toward the river and away from the big stone building behind us.

  “Look, there’s a sign.” Henley pointed out a plastic placard that was by the river.

  THE OLD ROYAL NAVAL COLLEGE WAS NAMED A WORLD HERITAGE SITE BY UNESCO. THIS IS THE ORIGINAL SITE OF THE PALACE OF PLACENTIA. BUILT BY HENRY VII, IT WAS SUPPOSEDLY ONE OF HENRY VIII’S FAVORITE PALACES. IT LATER BECAME THE BIRTHPLACE OF BOTH MARY I AND ELIZABETH I, BEFORE BEING EVENTUALLY DEMOLISHED IN THE 1690S.

  I had been there. I saw Henry VIII address the court at the feasts he threw. I had been there and now it was all gone. The countess, Lord Empson, Lady Sutton—they were all gone. Dead. Richard, too, was gone. I was always alone in surviving everything, including time itself.

  “Nothing stays the same,” Henley said, interrupting my thoughts.

  I was alone . . . but now I wasn’t. I looked up at him, so glad to have someone finally by my side.

  “Even you,” he continued. “Things change you. People change you. Even you can’t stay the exact same.”

  “Come on,” I said. “We shouldn’t stay around here. Let’s go down to the river. It’s probably our best bet for getting out of here.”

  I started walking, not checking back to see if Henley was following.

  We took the stairs down to the water and walked to the end of the pier, where a large boat was docked.

  “Should we take that boat?” I asked Henley.

  It looked like a ferry that was doing a tour of London from the river. People were embarking quickly in a rush to see the next tourist stop. I recognized a few fa
ces from the tour group that had come in to see the Painted Hall. Dozens of people were going up the ramp. I wondered if they would notice two extra passengers.

  I found Henley’s hand, and we followed the others up the ramp.

  “Tickets, please.” A young man in a yellow vest stood by the entrance of the boat. “Please have your tickets ready!”

  It hadn’t occurred to me that people would already have tickets and need to show them to board.

  “Your ticket, miss?” The man was looking at me.

  “Would it be possible for us to buy them?”

  “Certainly.” The young man reached into the pack he had slung around his waist and pulled out a stack of red tickets. “Two?”

  “Yes, two.”

  “Twenty-four pounds, please.”

  Henley already had the money out.

  “Thank you. Have a good day.” The young man handed us the tickets as we moved past him. “You’ll see the best views from the top floor!” he called over his shoulder.

  “Expensive . . . ,” Henley mumbled.

  “You know money is different in this time compared to yours? Inflation and all that?” This still was expensive. But not as much as Henley was probably thinking.

  The seats by the boat’s windows were all taken, and still more people stood near them to see the views.

  We found a narrow spiral staircase at the far end of the boat. I steadied myself by gripping the railing on either side; I could feel the water swaying the boat under us.

  A blast of cool air hit my face as we reached the top of the stairs.

  The second floor of the boat was open, without a roof. We passed rows of metal benches crammed with people.

  “I’m not sure if we can find seats here,” Henley said.

  I craned my neck to look for an empty section of bench, but it looked like Henley was right.

  “Ouch.” I felt a sharp pang of pain from my left foot.

  I looked down to see a sandal-clad foot on top of mine.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry!” A platinum blonde was talking to me. She sounded American. “There’s just so many people on this boat. It’s kinda hard to know where to step. You okay?” She looked down at my foot. “Love, love, love your leather flats.” She squinted up at me, as she was significantly shorter than I was. “Love your boho style in general.”