Tangled in Time 2 Read online

  Then she was back—back in her robe, wearing her fuzzy slippers. Indeed, she was in the very spot she had been when she had left. Standing in front of the graftling of the damask rose. She tipped her head to one side to study it more carefully. Was it drooping slightly? There was something more fragile about it. An uneasiness crept through her. How could it have changed so quickly? She must have only been gone a minute or two. That was the usual duration of her time travels. What might seem like months or years back in the time of the Tudors, the sixteenth century, might only amount to minutes or even seconds in her home century. She had not brought her iPhone down with her, but she recalled that it had been 12:01 when she tiptoed down from her bedroom—12:01 on the longest night and shortest day of the year. But there was no clock in the greenhouse. The nearest clock was in the library, where she, her gran, and Marisol had gathered hours before.

  So she headed for the library. It was a beautiful room, and yet quite the opposite of the greenhouse. It was a place of darkness and shadows. She turned the switch and the soft amber glow of lights hung like halos in the walnut-paneled room. The scents of this room swirled around her. Scents of wood, leather, and the oil that was applied twice a year to the old leather-bound volumes. And also the fragrance of balsam from the Christmas tree.

  All these smells were so different from that of the greenhouse, which seemed to be filled with the fragrance of life and growth. These odors certainly were not of death but of preservation. Many of the books on the shelves were old ones, rare and probably forgotten by most of the people on earth. There were histories and ancient encyclopedias. Also something her gran called Books of Hours, which were very valuable. They were tiny prayer books beautifully illustrated by monks in the Middle Ages. “I know,” Gran had said. “You can google all this stuff. But I would rather have the weight of this leather volume number eight, with its lovely green spine and gold-embossed title, than one of those laptop things.”

  There were a few faintly glowing coals in the grate of the fireplace, and on the elaborately carved mantelpiece was an equally elaborate clock. The minute hand on the clock showed ten minutes past midnight. Rose blinked. She had never stayed so long in that other world. If she calculated the time it took her to go from her bedroom at 12:01 in the morning down to the greenhouse, it would have been no more than three minutes. Had she actually been at Beaulieu Palace for six whole minutes? Why? Was it because it was the longest night of the year? Did the time gods, or whatever it was that caused these tangled time journeys, grant her a few extra minutes because of the winter solstice? After all, it was a pretty complicated situation. A critically ill queen, her princely fiancé forced to cancel his visit. Then this total creep Edward Courtenay trying to court her by whispering disgusting things about burning innocent people.

  Rose needed to think. She decided to turn on the Christmas tree lights. The moment they flickered on, she heard a soft meow. “September!” she exclaimed. The cat was by the Christmas tree and looking at the glittering silver ornament hanging from a low branch. Rose remembered how her cat back in Philadelphia would harass the Christmas tree until finally her mother had to hang the tree from a hook she installed in the ceiling.

  “Oh, please don’t bat it, September!”

  September turned her head toward Rose. The limpid green eyes narrowed with the most scornful expression. As if to say How could you even think such a thing! Then the cat jumped onto the velvet sofa across from the fireplace.

  Rose sat down next to September, who tucked in beside her. It was a bit chilly, so Rose pulled up the furry lap rug that her gran used to keep herself warm.

  “Does this offend you?” she asked September. Apparently not, as September burrowed her nose into it. She began purring; it was the most endearing sound that a cat could make. It was as soothing for Rose as it was for September. She had once read that a cat’s purr rate or frequency vibration was twenty-five hertz, or cycles, per second. Studies had shown that it could even promote healing. Rose yawned. She did feel as if she were healing in some way from the ugliness she had seen in the queen’s bedchamber. The basins of blood. The fragile smile that twitched at the corners of Mary’s mouth. It made her look truly nasty, especially with the treacherous Courtenay whispering in her ear. She yawned again. But something more niggled at the back of her mind. Franny . . . I must help Franny. She was so tired. Six minutes in the year 1553 was utterly exhausting. Well, of course. She must have been there for at least a month. After all, the dress was almost completed. She yawned one last time and fell sound asleep.

  A bright blade of morning light slashed through the heavy draperies. She glanced at the clock. Eight o’clock! She got up and left the library. The house was unusually quiet for this hour. No sounds of Shirley the cook stirring in the kitchen or Calvin outside shoveling the walk. Must be the solstice, Rose thought. The longest night must have kept people in bed. She climbed the staircase and tried to be as quiet as possible so she wouldn’t wake Marisol up.

  But Marisol was down on her knees at the end of the bed. She appeared to be praying. When she looked up, Rose could see that she had been crying.

  “Marisol, you all right?”

  She sniffed and pressed something to her chest. “My mother’s birthday. Light vanishing day.”

  “You mean the solstice?”

  Marisol nodded silently. “Solsticio,” she whispered.

  “But it’s not really that at all. You’ve got it confused—every day from now on will be longer and the darkness shorter.”

  “Here it’s that way,” Marisol said.

  “Here?” Rose was slightly bewildered. Then it dawned on her. Marisol did not come from “here.” She came from Bolivia, in the southern hemisphere, where it was just the reverse. At this time of the year, the days would be growing shorter and shorter.

  “But . . .” And now there was the trace of a smile across Marisol’s face. “My mother’s name is Luz, for sunlight!”

  Marisol got up and sat beside Rose. “See.” She held out a tattered picture of her mother, Luz.

  “She’s beautiful, Marisol. You look so much like her.” She could almost feel the lump growing in Marisol’s throat as she fought not to cry.

  “You know something?” Marisol said suddenly.

  “What’s that?”

  “My birthday is exactly six months later, June twenty-first, where it is the winter solstice. In my country the days grow shorter and shorter now.”

  “And . . .” Rose paused.

  “And what?” Marisol asked.

  “Without the darkness there is not light to see.”

  A fleeting smile broke across Marisol’s face. But then her brow puckered. “But . . . will I find her?”

  Rose felt something collapse inside herself. “Will I find him?” she whispered. She hadn’t meant to say it out loud.

  “Him? Who are you talking about?” Marisol asked.

  “My father.” Her voice seemed to break.

  “I thought you didn’t have a father or a mother.”

  “It’s hard to explain. I think . . . I think I have a father somewhere.”

  “Like me. I think my mother is somewhere out there too. . . .”

  Her conversation with Marisol haunted her all day, and the idea of celebrating Christmas with her father continued to grow in Rose’s mind. The problem was that every time she went back, she never knew what day or month she might arrive on. It had been early November last time. Who knew what month or year it could be, but what if somehow it were Christmas and she could celebrate it with her father and Franny? What gifts might she give them? She certainly knew that she had to get to Hatfield soon, to warn Franny about the growing danger to Protestants.

  She turned to Marisol. “If you could give your mother a Christmas gift, what would you give her?”

  “Oh, I already know. I almost have it made.”

  “Made?”

  “Yes.”

  Marisol reached for the backpack she had been carryin
g to school on the day Rose found her in the snow. She took out a small, flat box tied with a red ribbon. She untied the ribbon and carefully began taking out sheets of paper. On each piece of paper there was a watercolor and colored pencil drawing. “Mama likes flowers, like your grandmother. I’ve been painting them ever since I came to Lincoln School. Ms. Adams, the art teacher, is so nice. I’m going to make some pictures for your grandmother too. I want to go down to the greenhouse and paint some of those beautiful roses.”

  “These are beautiful,” Rose said as she leafed through the stack of drawings. “That’s thoughtful of you, Marisol. It will mean a lot to my grandmother, I’m sure.”

  “She’s a special lady, your grandmother.”

  They were not all flowers. Some were faces. “Who is this?”

  “Guadalupe—a girl I met when I was riding the trains from Bolivia north. Very nice girl. Protected me.”

  There was a flinch of fear deep inside Rose. She dared not ask what Guadalupe had protected her from. There were close to thirty pictures. Some of people, some of flowers, some of sunsets and sunrises.

  “You’re really good,” Rose said.

  “You are too. I saw those bow ties you sold. Too expensive for me.”

  “I’ll make you one for Christmas!”

  “Aaah, that’s nice.”

  Rose decided right then that she would also make her dad a bow tie for Christmas should they ever celebrate together. He’d be about two centuries ahead of his time, but let him be a trendsetter. Now, what might she make for Franny? Franny was always complaining about the coarse, scratchy hemp cloth she wore. Five hundred years ago there were stupid laws in England that ruled how people could dress. If you were a common person, a servant, you were not permitted to wear satins or velvets or brocades. Even certain colors were forbidden, like purple—strictly reserved for royalty.

  But why not make Franny some pantaloons in velvet? No one would know, after all. This was underwear. There was even a new fabric she had found called Veltru that was a polyester synthetic velvet. It was so soft. Dared she make pantaloons in purple for Franny? No, better not chance it. She’d make them in gray—nice dull gray. The point was that the material would be soft. Softer than any of that scratchy cloth. Franny might as well be wearing a burlap bag for underwear.

  All the rest of the day Rose and Marisol worked on their projects. Rose felt a bow tie wasn’t really enough. She decided to make a whole new outfit for Marisol to wear to Christmas dinner. Susan and her mom and dad and older sister were coming. They always dressed up for things. Even though they were Jewish, they still sang carols and oohed and ahhed over Christmas trees. At least that was what Susan said. This was Rose’s first Christmas with her gran. She had to get to work. Her first stop was to scroll back in her blog to an entry that was from much earlier. In her blog, she had a section called “Seeds.” Things that inspired her, out of which other things grew. There was a dress that the famous painter Georgia O’Keeffe had worn, that was part of an exhibit along with her paintings. Rose absolutely adored that dress.

  There it was! “Awww . . .” She sighed happily as she looked at the stunning picture of the white-and-black dress from the exhibit. The show was called Art, Image, Style. In Rose’s mind, Georgia O’Keeffe and Frida Kahlo were the two most stylish artists ever.

  Some Artist

  Like “Some Pig!,” the message Charlotte the spider wrote in her web for Wilbur in Charlotte’s Web, I would like to say “some artist” about my favorite style icon. Here’s what was written about Georgia O’Keeffe in her high school yearbook: A girl who would be different in habit, style and dress. So, dear readers, when I first saw those words, I thought, here’s my hero. Please note I did not say heroine. There are certain behaviors that are completely gender free. Like painter—sounds stupid to say paintress. We all own these words.

  Now Rose scrolled to earlier posts. The ones of Frida Kahlo.

  Exhibit A: The Real Deal

  Exhibit B: Me

  Rose blinked at the picture and gasped. It was her, all right. On August 14, the day before her mom’s fatal car accident!

  “Are you all right?”

  “Sure.”

  Rose looked up into Marisol’s deep brown eyes. She saw not simply concern but anxiety.

  She had been so determined to wipe out those days around the time of her mom’s death. She had almost torn out the pages in the diary her mom had given her for her birthday. It was the last gift her mother would ever give her. She had studiously avoided looking back on anything before that terrible date. But now she had done it. Gone back to her own blog to the day before the crash. She felt a strange and unexpected calm begin to steal through her. Did this mean she was okay? Did it mean that she loved her mother less if she could so easily go back to this date now?

  It was as if a scab had finally formed over a deep cut. She took a breath and gave a frail smile. “I’m fine, Marisol. I just have to get going on some presents myself. You’ve got a head start on me.”

  “You going to sew something? You sew so beautifully. . . .” She looked at Rose thoughtfully and smiled.

  “You just wait and see, Marisol,” Rose said slyly.

  “You’ve got style, Rose. Real stylish girl.” The soft Spanish inflection was like lovely music.

  That morning Santa’s workshop was officially opened in Rose’s bedroom. Bolts of fabric were taken from the closet where Rose had neatly stored them. In the meantime, Marisol had gone down to the greenhouse and begun a series of greenhouse watercolors for Rosalinda. When Marisol ran out of paper and other art stuff, Calvin drove her to the art supply store. “Can you get me some colorful crepe paper while you’re there?” Rose called out as they were about to leave.

  “Crepe what?”

  “Just ask the salesperson for paper to make artificial flowers.”

  “Artificial? What for?” Marisol asked. “There are real ones in the greenhouse.”

  “You’ll see.” She felt something flinch deep inside her. Dad, I’ll be back for you!

  Chapter 18

  The Snow Fairy’s Bat Mitzvah

  “And folks, it looks like another storm is coming our way. Is it a snowmaggedon?” The weatherman’s voice sounded quite joyful. “A new polar vortex is forming in the Canadian Rockies and sweeping down across the Great Lakes. It will be blizzard conditions by early this evening. They’re calling this one ‘Graymore.’”

  “Graymore? Since when do they name blizzards?” Rose asked. But at that moment she wondered what her dad would think of naming blizzards. It was kind of weird, some of the things he didn’t know—like the expression “stuck up.” She’d thought that had been around for centuries. But they were all minor things that he didn’t know. She could get him up to speed on everything he really needed to know. Well, not driving a car. But Calvin could teach him that. Oh jeez, could they have fun buzzing around in Gran’s Bentley! Face it, she thought—she’d have fun chugging along in a jalopy as long as she was with her dad.

  “Maybe blizzards got jealous of hurricanes and wanted names too,” Marisol said.

  Rose looked up from her sewing machine and laughed. “You’re funny, Marisol.” It delighted Rose that she was almost finished with Marisol’s dress and Marisol still had no idea what she was working on. She’d whizzed through this dress. Of course it could not compare with the complications of sewing Queen Mary’s meet-the-prince dress. No sewing machine and all those pearls to sew on! The dress had heavy brocade fabric, insets of lace, and five pounds of pearl trim—it was a heap of gaudiness, a complete fashion catastrophe. The Las Vegas of sixteenth-century gowns. And if the queen ever recovered and met the prince (which she would, as Rose had googled her death date—Mary died in 1558, so she had another five years to go) she would wear that dress. The question wasn’t whether Mary would survive, but whether Rose would make it back to 1558. She had to! She had to get her father here. She had to warn Franny. Once again Rose felt as if she were being torn between t
wo worlds—torn in half.

  Just at that moment, they heard footsteps on the stairs and Susan came into the room.

  “Wow! This does look like Santa’s workshop. What are you two elves up to?”

  “Susan!” Both Rose and Marisol gasped. It was as if some snow fairy had alit in the bedroom.

  “What? Oh yeah, I’m not wearing my glasses. I got contact lenses.”

  “It’s not that!” Susan’s hair was a jet-black froth of dense frizz. It flared out from her head like a halo. Her dark cloud of hair was luminous with sprinkles of snowflakes snagged midflight.

  “Look at yourself in the mirror,” Rose said.

  “And your eyelashes are so long, and they have snowflakes in them too . . . they . . . they sparkle. You have snow lashes!” Marisol’s voice was full of wonder.

  “Well, I guess that’s thanks to Graymore. By the way, they aren’t just calling Graymore a blizzard. He will be a ‘snow bomb’ by tomorrow morning.”

  “What?” Rose said. “That’s the stupidest thing ever. What’s a snow bomb?”

  “It’s a kind of snow cyclone.”

  “Fine. But hold it right here before you melt.” Rose jumped up and reached for her iPhone. “I need to get a picture of your eyelashes.”

  “And what about my nails?”

  “¡Fantastico!” Marisol exclaimed.

  “This is worthy of Instagram and my blog.” Rose sat down. Her thumbs were flying as she posted the picture.

  JEWISH CHRISTMAS ANGEL SIGHTING

  “I brought the nail polish. I can give you both manicures. I have all the stuff. The glitter and the teensy paintbrushes. I’ve been practicing.”

  “This is so cool,” Rose said while Susan set up her manicure space on a small table. “Here, have a gummy worm. New flavor for the holidays. Cranberry.” Rose set out a package on the table alongside the manicure stuff.

  “Oooh, yum. It’s been months since I could eat a gummy anything. But I got my braces off too this week!” Susan replied. She grinned and batted her eyelashes, which had been hidden behind her glasses since she was six years old. “So, what design do you want?” She showed them some pictures from the manicure kit.