Riding Shotgun (15 page)

When they arrived back at the house, Margaret set out cold cornbread and the butter while she ground coffee. “Our greatest luxury. I imagine you could drink it anytime you wanted to in London. I keep the coffee here and the tea next to it. The flour is in this crock and sugar here. I use honey more than sugar though. Your beehives are flourishing. You’ll have to walk up to the clover meadows to see for yourself.”

Cig gratefully ate the food placed before her. “Margaret, I appreciate your kindness. But I still can’t believe it’s 1699.”

Margaret folded her hands in her lap. She had spent a restless night, worrying about the changes in her sister-in-law. Finally, she had reached the conclusion that Pryor, despite splendid good health, had suffered a mental affliction due to the rigors of her journey or perhaps some shock along the way that would reveal itself in time. No tainted blood ran in the Deyhle family or in the Buckinghams, for that matter, although the Buckinghams could be courageous
as well as foolhardy. The knowledge that Pryor’s disturbance was most likely temporary enabled Margaret to tolerate her peculiarities, although she didn’t want anyone else to see Pryor until she had recovered her senses. She had always loved her husband’s sister and was prepared to help her, nurse her back to reality and pray continuously for her restoration. She was well aware that her own experience was too limited for her to imagine all that Pryor might have seen and endured on her journey. Margaret had never known the horrors that drove people to cross an ocean, but her grandparents had told her enough about the Old World to make her quite happy she was in the new one.

“Actually, it’s November four, 1699,” Margaret quoted from the old-style calendar. The new, corrected calendar wouldn’t be used until 1752.

Cig blinked. She vaguely remembered the calendar switch because she had read that presidents Jefferson and Madison could celebrate two birthdays if they wished, old style and new style.

“I… I…” Cig searched Margaret’s face. If she really was in the last year of the seventeenth century, continuing to insist that she was from 1995 would make life harder for them both. Her main concern was not for herself but for Hunter and Laura. Were they safe? Would they manage without her? Grace, as their godmother, could provide for them but her heart broke each time she summoned their faces. “I remember names. Some names.”

“Which ones?”

“Shirley Plantation. Williamsburg. Uh, Flowerdew Hundred.” She rattled off some plantation names she could remember.

“So you heard about Williamsburg while you were in London? The ship carrying that news must have had wings.”

“Uh—” Cig hated to sound stupid. “I’m a little confused. Isn’t Williamsburg the capital?”

Margaret beamed. Now she knew Pryor’s memory would return. “On paper.” She laughed. “The Assembly passed an act to build the city where Middle Plantation now stands. An excellent location between the York and the James, I
think. When the state building burned last year, the Assembly decided to move to a place less beset by contagion. But the Act only passed this June. You must have heard as you were packing to come home.”

Cig ignored that. “So nothing is built yet?”

“Duke of Gloucester Street, a mile long, if you can imagine that, has been laid out. All other streets will be parallel to that. John Page sold two hundred eighty-three acres to the city. A most marvelous occasion for him.” She appreciated foresight and profit.

“My God, we really are at the very beginning,” Cig gasped.

Margaret tried to understand. “After London, we must look to you as the Indians look to us.”

“Oh, no, nothing like that, Margaret. It’s just—” She wiped her forehead then abruptly changed the subject. Her temples throbbed. “I’m not a lunatic even if I seem like one. I’m peaceful.”

Margaret’s response, spontaneous and warm, soothed Cig. “I think no such thing. This will pass. I feel strange that you don’t know me for I look upon you as a sister… yet that, too, shall be set right. I know it.”

“Okay.” Cig weakly agreed.

Margaret asked, “Okay?”

“Ah—” Cig paused a moment. “It means ‘yes’ or everything’s fine, good. Okay.”

“The rage in London?”

“No—forget it.”

That night Margaret hauled buckets of water, which she poured into the huge cast-iron pot hanging in the winter kitchen attached to the back of the house. She thought a bath would lift Pryor’s spirits, so the two worked together to prepare it.

A wooden tub shaped so a person could comfortably sit and stretch out her legs in it took up the center of the floor. Homemade soap from boiled pig’s fat mixed with aromatic herbs, mostly lavender, made do for the body and the hair as well. Cig untied her one pigtail, which she wore at the nape of her neck. She shook out her hair and surveyed herself in the small but good-quality mirror.

“Margaret, every time I look there’s more gray.”

Margaret checked over the full, dark head. “Nonsense.”

“Why don’t you bathe first and I’ll follow?” Cig offered.

“You go first, please.”

“Do you ever take a bath with Tom?”

Scandalized, then amused, Margaret laughed. “Never. Gentlemen and ladies should enjoy separate toilettes. Besides, he slops water everywhere.” After pouring the heated
water into the tub she leaned over and tested it with her elbow. “Just right.”

When Margaret had left, Cig stripped off her clothes and crawled into the tub. She stood straight up. It was a lot hotter than it looked. Little by little she scrunched down until she was up to her neck in deliciously warm water. As the temperature outside had skidded into the forties she appreciated the warmth. The big fire in the fireplace crackled and as the shadows danced around the kitchen, the pots loomed like a parasol of planets. The well-worn wood felt smooth and comfortable. Cig dozed off for a bit, only opening one eye when Margaret scooted back in to grab her dirty clothes.

“I don’t have any clothes other than what you’ve got in your hands.”

“Yes, you do. In your wardrobe. I haven’t moved a thread.” Margaret sat down on the stool next to the tub.

Margaret absentmindedly rummaged through Cig’s vest and jacket pockets, natural enough if clothes are to be washed. She pulled out the dollars, the driver’s license with Cig’s photograph on it, two quarters and a dime and the little flashlight. Margaret stared at the driver’s license. Her hands shook.

“It’s you. It’s the most perfect likeness I could imagine!” She read the dates of Cig’s birth, 6/8/55, and the expiration of the license, 6/8/00. “I don’t understand.” Trembling, Margaret placed the driver’s license beside her on the stool. Nell Gwyn jumped up and sat on it. No piece of paper, no matter how tiny, escapes the notice of a cat.

“I don’t understand either, Margaret, but as you can plainly see that picture is of me and it’s not a painting. It’s a process called photography which was invented in the middle of the nineteenth century. And the license is so that I can drive a car. That’s a machine that’s like a coach in a way but runs on gasoline—you don’t need horses. Automobiles, or cars as we call them, were invented around the beginning of the twentieth century. I truly am from the twentieth century. Look at the money.”

“What money?”

“The paper—we use paper money.”

Margaret’s luminous eyes shone with fear and curiosity as she placed the folded-over bills in her left hand and opened them. The attire of Washington, Hamilton, and Andrew Jackson was close enough to what she herself knew that she intently studied their faces. “One dollar.” She put the accent on the
lar
. The date on the dollar Bill was 1992. Margaret stared at the date.

“Dollar. It’s the money of the United States of America. We’re a separate nation from England now—and we’re huge. The country stretches from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean.”

Margaret couldn’t fathom that. She was still grappling with this strange physical evidence of another time, the photograph, and even if Pryor could have printed up the money—and beautiful it was, too, such high-quality engraving—she could not have created that—picture. “It’s you. Truly with God as my witness, this is you.” She read aloud the name, “Pryor Chesterfield Deyhle Blackwood.”

“I’m widowed. I’m a Deyhle by birth. My husband died last year of a heart attack.” Cig withheld the rest of that sorry tale.

“But you are Pryor Deyhle?” Margaret struggled to hang on to her own sanity.

“Yes, I am.”

“And you are Tom’s twin sister. You have to be. Look at you. Look at him.”

“I—I don’t know—we do look like twins, but Margaret, I have no memory of living—this life. I remember everything about my other life, including some stuff I’d like to forget.”

“No one can have two lives.”

“Then I’m crazy. There’s no other explanation that I can think of—can you?”

“You’ve lost your memory but you’re not without your faculties.” Margaret ran her finger over the photograph. “It’s smooth.”

“Yes. Photography is a kind of miracle, I guess, I never thought about it before.” She pointed to her breeches. “Look at the zipper in my pants.”

“What?”

“Where the buttons would be in Tom’s breeches.”

“You mean these little teeth?”

“Yes. Now take the plastic tab and run it upwards.”

Margaret clapped her hands together when she did just that. “Wonderful.”

“That’s a zipper. Some are made out of metal. That one is made out of plastic, which came into being, gee, I don’t know, around World War Two.”

Margaret blanched. “The world at war, what are you saying?”

“Oh, God, Margaret. We’ve had two of them. Millions upon millions of people killed. Fifty-five million in the second one alone.”

“The whole world?”

“Yes, including places you don’t know about because they haven’t been settled yet.”

“Wars.” She shook her head. “That’s why the Deyhles and the Woodsons came here.”

“The Woodsons?”

“My maiden name. My grandparents ran from Cromwell’s assassins just as did yours.”

“Maybe the sickness is inside. It’s in every time. My time has better weapons.”

“We haven’t had a war yet,” Margaret stoutly said, “except for the Indians.”

“You will. There’s a real big one coming up in the 1770s.”

“I’ll be dead then.”

“Will you?” Cig stuck her foot out of the tub. “Am I dead? How do you know you won’t come back in another time? I’m here from another time and I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but I’m alive, you’re alive and as you can see, those things in my pocket couldn’t possibly be manufactured in 1699.”

Tears ran down Margaret’s creamy cheeks. “I don’t know what to think.”

“I don’t either. But I swear to you by all that is holy that I truly come from the last gasp of the twentieth century.”

“But you are Pryor Deyhle,
our Pryor.”

“I reckon I am but I don’t know how. Maybe there
are
holes in time, Margaret. Maybe I fell through one and… here I am.”

“What do you remember about that day?” Margaret wiped her tears.

“I was foxhunting and got lost in the fog. What was curious was that I had moments when I felt as though I was going back in time but I discounted them—it was too fantastic. And here’s what’s truly strange—a fox led me! I know this fox. I’ve hunted him for about four years now. Fattail.”

“A big, big red with an enormous tail.” Margaret gripped the side of the tub. “I know him,” she gasped. “He’s bold as Lucifer.”

“Look at this.” Cig picked up and turned on the flashlight.

Margaret leaned back then reached for it. She clicked it on and off, marveling at it. “Surely this is magic.” Then she again stared at the license. “Pryor, you must feel,” she searched for the words, “terrible pain and loneliness. You don’t recognize me at all, do your?”

Cig shook her head. “But I trust you. In my time people don’t really trust one another. Our lives are easier physically but in other ways we’ve only made things worse. It’s difficult to explain because you trust so naturally. So trust me in this—I am from another time.”

Margaret’s lips quivered. “What happened to the Pryor I know, the sister I love? Where is she?”

Cig thought a long time. “I don’t know but there are more things in heaven and earth than we can dream of.” She quoted Shakespeare.

“You know the play?”

“Shakespeare is considered the greatest playwright that we ever produced.” Cig smiled because they did know things in common. “Maybe I lived this life. Maybe I am the Pryor you know. After all, the soul is eternal. Somehow I slipped back to your time. I can’t think of another reason, and maybe trying to find a reason will only make this more painful—you see, Margaret, I left two children behind.”

“Merciful heaven.” Margaret’s hands flew to her face.

“A son, seventeen, and a daughter, fifteen.” That did it. Cig’s calm facade shattered, and her tears began dripping into the bathwater.

Margaret threw her arms around the sobbing woman, heedless of getting wet herself. “There, there, Pryor, God is merciful He will not allow your children to suffer. Somehow all will be well. We must believe that. Truly we must or this burden will crush us both.”