The Time of the Clockmaker Read online

  There were footsteps from the floor above and the sounds of doors opening and closing in rhythm with the whirring of plane engines flying overhead.

  I took the clock and set it on the left bedside table. The dim lights of the room reflected against its golden rim, and that sight was comforting to me. It was one small thing that hadn’t changed, even after Miss Hatfield had died.

  Thinking about the past?

  Henley’s voice still startled me, though I knew I should be getting used to it.

  “Yeah,” I breathed. “There’s a lot to get used to.”

  Realizing I didn’t have anything to change into, I turned off the light and slipped between the covers clothed.

  Despite how tired I thought I was, sleep didn’t come easily. The yellow of the room was replaced with darkest black, but I still saw shadows behind my eyelids. When the shadows morphed into crazed patterns, a suffocating dream began.

  It didn’t make sense. There was no story or plot. Just images. Faces. Miss Hatfield’s blanched skin. The hotel clerk’s scrunched-up mouth. Henley’s furrowed brow.

  I wasn’t aware of tossing in my sleep, but when I woke, the sheets were twisted and my clothes were plastered against my body.

  Cool air touched my face and I felt the sweat gathered on my upper lip. I felt a chill and looked toward the source of the breeze. The window was open.

  Frowning, I got up to shut it again. There was a satisfying click, but I thought I had heard that same sound when I had closed it before . . . if I had closed it before.

  Just as I was getting back into bed, I heard a noise. That is, I thought I heard a noise. I froze but, not hearing anything else in the dark save for the drunken shouts of a man making his way up from the hotel bar, I lay down again.

  It was probably just my paranoia mixed up with how tired I was. A lot had happened in only a couple of days, and I knew I needed time to digest it all.

  There was a crash and I shot up in bed. My fist clenched at the sheets as I tried to get away from whatever was in the room with me. I groped around for the light, but I didn’t remember which wall the main switch was on.

  With the curtains shut and the lights out, all I could tell was that the sound seemed to come from somewhere on my left.

  Rebecca, get away from the bed!

  I followed Henley’s direction, but instead of getting away from the intruder I blindly launched my body toward the left side of the room and the source of the noise. The clock was somewhere on the bedside table, and that was the only thing that mattered now.

  I felt the solid wood of the table; its corners dug into my skin. I felt the cold metal of the clock, but I also felt a stranger’s hard body somehow reaching over me.

  There were voices outside, of other hotel guests too preoccupied and loud to guess or probably even hear what was happening in a room just a few doors down.

  I tried to hit him. There was nothing methodical about it. I grabbed and struck him where I could, but he was strong and shoved me toward the wall.

  I heard the sound of breaking glass before I felt the sharp pain on my forearm. I realized the glass face of the clock must have broken.

  There was something wet and sticky on my arm, but I didn’t have time to think about that as I mindlessly groped around in the dark for the clock.

  Again there was a pang of pain as the intruder stepped on my hand. I cried out and as he stumbled, unbalanced, I was able to push him over.

  I think he fell, but I was too disoriented to be sure. There were still more crashes, and I think Henley must have been yelling. No one in the hotel seemed to think anything was amiss. I wondered if they thought it was the drunken man I had heard earlier yelling and knocking over a few glasses.

  I picked myself up and tried to run after the intruder, but I had no idea where he was. All of a sudden the ground felt harder and colder than it had been a few minutes ago. I heard a thud on the far side of the room and I figured that was the intruder jumping out the window. He had gotten away.

  I made to shove the curtains aside, but in the scuffle the curtains had probably been knocked down. Outside was as dark as the room. I tried to find the light switch, but I still couldn’t remember where it was.

  Not thinking straight, crawling on my hands, I searched the floor for the clock. I went over every corner of the room. And I still couldn’t find it. It was lost.

  For the first time since Miss Hatfield had turned into dust before me, I heard my heart. It was deafening and my head thrummed with its beats. I just wished it would stop.

  Without the clock, I was stuck. I wouldn’t turn into dust, but I would suffer far more than that. I would slowly watch myself go insane, all the while knowing it was happening.

  I shivered from the suddenly piercing cold. I wanted to call out. To call for Miss Hatfield, or Henley. But my voice was trapped inside my throat and all I could do was gasp.

  SEVEN

  THE SOUND WAS what woke me—or rather, the lack of sound. The whine and thrum of planes was distinctly missing. The ringing of late-night telephone calls and the sounds of women talking in hushed voices was gone. There was no motion. There was no sound. All was still and flat.

  I looked down at my hands, but they were bare. Where was the ring on my finger? I swore I’d been wearing it.

  When I stretched out my legs, pain shot through me. I woke crumpled on the floor in the fetal position, but my cheek wasn’t pressed up against the discolored carpet of yesterday night. Instead, I felt a cool dirt floor against my skin.

  My eyelids felt like lead, and forcing them open proved as difficult as sitting up without screaming. As I looked down at my own body, my nakedness made me gasp. I couldn’t see where my clothes were. Even the small action of moving my neck made me want to double over as my body screamed out but, noticing my surroundings, I stiffened.

  The yellow wallpaper was missing. In its place, rough walls standing on bare dirt sloped toward each other in a perpetual balancing act under an almost pyramidal thatched roof. An uneven bed of straw was in the far corner of the room. In another corner was a small chest. The clock was nowhere to be found.

  Ignoring the protests of my body, I stood up and stumbled toward the wooden chest, lit only by the sunlight coming in through the open window. The chest was simple in design, with only a latch on it, and I flicked it open easily.

  I thumbed through layers of linen, only realizing that they were clothing after I found a woman’s shift and a man’s white shirt.

  Of course I was naked! My jeans and T-shirt wouldn’t have survived the trip—after all, I was in a different time! My clothing hadn’t been made yet. And neither had the ring that Henley had given me.

  In the struggle with the intruder, one of us must have hit the clock and accidentally turned it, causing me to travel in time. That was the reason the hotel room had felt so different after the scuffle. I cursed myself for not having realized earlier. Had Henley come with me? When was this, anyway?

  “Henley?” I tried. “Henley?”

  Are you hurt?

  His voice was so loaded with concern. I remembered he couldn’t quite see me; he only saw an outline of me and therefore didn’t know if I was hurt.

  “No, I’m fine.” I stretched and cringed.

  I think you have a different definition of fine.

  Though Henley couldn’t see me per se, that didn’t mean he didn’t pay close attention to the outline of my body and its movements. But on the bright side, he couldn’t see that I was naked either.

  I threw on the shift and began to earnestly rummage through the clothes. I wanted to take what I thought I would need and leave the house before anyone found me, but I also wanted clues as to where—or rather when—I was.

  I put on what looked like a petticoat and a reddish-brown gown that laced up in the front. There were other clothes that I didn’t know how to wear, but I figured this was fine for my purposes . . . whatever my purposes were.

  “Thankfully the clock has
to be somewhere . . .”

  I was talking mostly to myself, but Henley replied, Does it always come with you?

  It was easy to forget that even Henley didn’t know all the workings of time travel that I had learned through Miss Hatfield.

  “That’s just how it works. The clock has always come with me. It normally stays in Miss Hatfield’s house, but there’s no reason it should be different this time.”

  It goes where you go?

  “Rather, the clock’s just so old that going back or forth in time doesn’t change it. It’s always been the same. . . . You know, the intruder must have taken it.”

  Taken it with him?

  “That’s why it’s not here. It wouldn’t just disappear.” I ran my fingers through my hair. “Can’t you just . . . see?”

  You mean look for a small clock in all of space and time?

  It did sound absurd when he put it that way. “Is that a no?”

  Rebecca. It’s like looking into a dollhouse for a miniature clock. That’s hard enough as it is. Now multiply that dollhouse by a few million to account for the entire world, and then a few million more to account for all the houses that have ever existed or will exist in time. Now do you know how absurd and impossible this is?

  “But you found me.”

  And it took a while. And a gap in time is slightly—only slightly—easier to find than this needle in a haystack. Besides, that was you. You have this . . . draw. It’s hard to explain.

  I was glad Henley found his way back to me, but I couldn’t help but wish he could have been a little more helpful. It looked like it was going to be up to me to find the clock.

  I tried to put the contents of the chest back the way I had found them, but I knew the owner would probably realize that a few pieces were missing. I didn’t know what I was doing, but I did know that I had to leave before the house’s inhabitants came back.

  “Look, I have to get it back.”

  I opened the door, and a gust of cold wind flew up into my face. In the coarse, homespun dress, I hesitated in the doorway.

  For once, Henley didn’t say I was being hasty or foolish. He didn’t say anything.

  The planes were gone, no longer screaming through the sky. The asphalt was gone. The smell of wet concrete was gone as well. What was left behind was a startling green that made the wide sky seem brighter.

  So I walked.

  Heathrow really was a heath in whatever time this was. Everything in the landscape was rough, from the coarse grass to the wiry purple and yellow flowers dotting the scenery.

  Leaves and stems scratched at my ankles and snapped where I walked. The footsteps I left behind me were sunken into the land, trailing back to the little house, which was now almost a speck on the hillside.

  Ahead, there was a tree by the bank of a small river. Its top and branches were flattened as if the sky weighed heavily on it, so having no other place to go, I began to walk toward it.

  I didn’t notice the tree getting closer, but all too soon I was there by the bank of the river and without a plan.

  What are you going to do now?

  I bit my lip and concentrated on Henley’s words. I couldn’t begin to tell him how nice it was to hear a familiar voice.

  “I—I don’t know.”

  Don’t cry.

  I didn’t realize I was tearing up till he said that. He had probably heard the waver in my voice. Hot tears dripped out of the corners of my eyes. I gasped for breath, but my lungs wouldn’t expand.

  I felt hands around my shoulders and I felt my body sink into pure warmth.

  “Don’t cry.”

  It was an unfamiliar voice and unfamiliar frame I sank into, but it felt safe. It was a fatherly gesture, one I couldn’t remember receiving for a long time.

  “Please don’t cry.”

  The stranger held me close for a long time. Only when he set me down did I get my first look at him.

  He was old. His beard wasn’t graying—it was completely white. His hair flew in wisps around him, as fragile as his entire frame. His body hung limply, his skin seemingly tossed over his bones carelessly. I was surprised that such a feeble-looking man had held me up just a moment before.

  “No need to be frightened,” the old man said, watching me look him over. “Just tell us where you’re off to and we can get you back.”

  “Are we taking in strays again?” The new voice sounded younger and harsher than the old man’s.

  I looked past the old man to see a younger, dark-haired man tying up a rowboat by the river.

  “This girl’s obviously lost,” the older man said. “It’s our duty to take her home.”

  “Lost?” The younger man jumped from the boat and began to walk toward us. “Are you sure about that? Sure that she hasn’t just run away from home? I mean, look at the way she’s dressed!”

  This made the older man look away, but I could see that his brows were furrowed.

  “Father, have you even thought to ask the girl yourself? Surely she can talk.” By now the younger man was standing next to me, and though he addressed his father, he was looking at me.

  The older man finally turned back. “My dear girl, are you lost or running?”

  I opened my mouth to answer, but I paused. Was I lost or was I running? Both, I supposed, but I could never explain that.

  “Lost.”

  The old man nodded, satisfied with my answer, but the young man only scowled.

  “Even so,” the young man continued, as if I were not there, “it’s not our job to take her home. We have other things to do. Other things that actually pay.”

  The old man did not seem to hear him. “What’s your name, girl?”

  “Rebecca,” I said. “Rebecca Hatfield.”

  “And how did you get here, Mistress Hatfield?” The young man squinted at me.

  369,000 pounds of flying metal called an airplane, I wanted to answer. And, oh yeah, time travel, but all that came out was, “I was traveling.”

  “Traveling?” The young man threw his arms up. “Through here? Why? There’s nothing here! Where on earth were you going?”

  “I—I . . .” I could tell he didn’t believe me and I panicked.

  “Oh, do be gentle with the girl,” the older man said. “It’s obvious she’s been through a lot. She must have gotten out of a carriage to stretch her legs and accidentally been left.”

  “Accidentally been left? And a carriage? Through this heath?”

  “What else could it be? I know she’s not dressed like much, but I think she’s one of those important people. Why else would she sound the way she does? Why don’t we bring the girl along?” the old man said. “We can bring her into town and inquire after passing carriages.”

  “She isn’t ours to worry about,” the younger man hissed.

  “She is now.”

  “I never asked you where your home is,” the old man said.

  It was the first time in hours that any of us had broken the silence.

  “Far from here,” I said. I hoped he wouldn’t continue asking me, but of course he did.

  “I supposed so,” he said. “Your accent . . . it’s certainly not from around here.”

  I had known it would only be a matter of time before they picked up on the way I talked. I realized I had an American accent in a time where there probably were no Americans yet.

  I glanced at the young man, sitting behind me. He hadn’t talked since we’d gotten on the boat, and he made no move to talk now, but I knew he was listening in on our conversation.

  “Are you from the North?”

  “No,” I responded. “From the West.”

  “Ah, near Liverpool?”

  “A bit farther west.” He didn’t have to know just how far west I came from.

  “And what’s it like there? Where you come from.”

  The first thought that came to mind was the St. Patrick’s Day Parade in New York. I didn’t know how to respond, so I said the first thing that came to mind
. “Very green.”

  “Ah . . . And that’s where home is? What’s that like?”

  “Yes, I suppose so. A brown stone building whose steps I trip down every morning.”

  “Steps?”

  I wasn’t sure if I’d said something wrong. “Yes . . . steps.”

  “And what about windows?”

  “Oh, we have windows.”

  “Many of them?”

  I thought back to Miss Hatfield’s brownstone. “I suppose you could say that.”

  “There you go!” He suddenly turned to the young man. “Told you she was mighty important. I had a hunch.”

  The old man thoughtfully nodded and surprised me by not questioning me further.

  The next time he spoke was when the boat stopped at a reasonably sized village.

  “Give me your hand, Miss Hatfield,” the old man said. “And just hop across. Don’t fall in the Thames.”

  I looked down at the wide gap between the boat and solid land. All I could see was dark water. “Just hop across.” Easier said than done.

  “Oh, come here.” As soon as I heard the young man say that, I felt strong hands lift me up and over the gap.

  Upon collecting myself, I muttered a quick thank-you.

  The young man shrugged. “We would have been waiting all day for you” was his response.

  The old man led me past crowds in what looked like a sort of marketplace, dotted with small lean-tos. I saw an entire wagon filled with live chickens and another just with turnips. He dragged me between people who looked over their shoulders at me and whispered among themselves. I knew I must have looked a sight, dragged through the streets in a smock I didn’t even know if I was wearing correctly.

  I don’t like him.

  Henley’s voice startled me, and I turned to see if either of the men had heard him.

  “Keep your voice down,” I hissed, but I hung back to make sure they couldn’t hear.

  I didn’t want anyone to hear Henley, much less the old man or his companion. I didn’t know what they would do if they heard me talking to a disembodied voice. Leave me here? Burn me at the stake for being a witch?

  The old man. And his lackey. I mean, what do they want with you?