Saturday 16 November 1745
A local woman and volunteer by the name of Katherine Finchley was regrettably killed today in a round of musket fire following a disagreement with the militia, who refused to continue to guard the castle against the Rebels. Her life was given to protect mine, and for that I will never forget her.
Her companion, Matthew Galloway, who was present at the scene, was unable to save Miss Finchley. He was greatly upset by this, and has scarcely left my side since in an attempt to ensure that her life was not given in vain to our cause.
I, being equally affected by the loss of the local woman, of course reassured him that I had no intention of surrendering. We must honour her memory. No more innocent blood will be shed.
Folios/v1/Time-landscape-1745/MS-12
File note: Diary entry of COLONEL DURAND during the 1745 Jacobite Uprising. The entry concerns subjects “KATHERINE FINCHLEY” and “MATTHEW GALLOWAY”. It was recorded before CLOVE’s arrival in 1745. See Folios/v1/Time-landscape-1745/MS-12-alt for the diary entry as recorded after CLOVE’s visit to 1745
When Clove finally went back downstairs after testing Matthew’s DNA, she was relieved to find that he had gone to change into dry clothes. Mrs Samson scolded her for disappearing halfway through making breakfast and put Clove to work in the wash-house doing laundry.
“Did you find the ingredients which you need for your spell?” Ella asked, as she arrived an hour later with another load of dirty clothes for Clove.
“I did. It’s all done. Thanks for your help,” Clove said, trying to hide how out of breath she was from the pummelling of undergarments. Barbaric.
Ella deflated. “I was hoping you would wait for me. I wanted to watch.”
“Sorry.”
“Did it work?”
Clove paused a beat too long before nodding.
“It worked, but you aren’t happy with the result?” Ella guessed.
Clove shrugged. “It’s just… I don’t really know what to do now.”
“I can help with that.” As she spoke, Ella dipped a hand into Clove’s bucket of fresh water and flicked her with it.
Clove leapt back, but the freezing cold water still splashed her arm. “Hey!” she said, trying to be serious, but she couldn’t help the way her mouth just wanted to smile. She ducked her head, giving in to the urge to grin.
When she looked back up, Ella’s expression took her by surprise. She looked … awestruck. Like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing, when what she was seeing was Clove. Just Clove. No one had ever looked at her like that before.
“What?” Clove asked, a little defensively.
“Nothing,” Ella said. “It’s just… I’ve never seen you smile before.” She sounded winded.
Clove swallowed hard, her laughter dying in her throat. It was true that she had been very stressed recently. But surely she had smiled before? She couldn’t remember, right now, when Ella was looking at her like that.
Flustered, Clove flicked her hand into the water. Ella skittered away and let out a giggle.
Clove chased her out of the wash-house and across the lawn. But by the time she had cornered the girl by the kitchen door, all that was left of her attack was two damp palms. She pressed them to either side of Ella’s neck as she tried to squirm away.
Ella winced at the coldness of the water on her skin. The two girls were standing so close that Clove could see droplets of water clinging to Ella’s collarbone and the goosebumps standing up on her neck. Ella’s cap had come off and her hair was falling out of its bun again, messy spirals curling off in all directions.
There was a moment when they just stared at each other, breathing in unison. Clove felt like every molecule of her skin was alert and attuned to Ella’s movements. Something had snapped their bickering into a meaningful tension. She parted her lips. If she just leant a little closer, if Ella just tilted her head a little to the right, then—
Ella stepped back. Then she lifted her arm, holding up Clove’s bucket of water – which she must have grabbed before running out of the wash-house. Clove didn’t have time to react before the water fell through the air in an iridescent arc, splashing Clove right in the chest.
It was so cold that Clove couldn’t catch her breath to speak, and when she did all that escaped was helpless laughter. “Ella!” she gasped.
Ella was laughing so hard she nearly fell over. “Yes!” she screeched. “Got you!”
“I’m soaking wet!” Clove’s bodice was drenched, and her skirts were rapidly darkening as the water spread. “I’m going to throw you in the pond,” Clove threatened, tugging the damp fabric away from her skin.
Ella only laughed harder. “You look like a drowned cat! All bedraggled and furious.”
Clove hissed at her, baring her teeth like an angry feline. “If I get a chill and die, it’ll be all your fault.” Clove held a hand to her forehead, letting out an overly long groan of pain, which turned into laughter when Ella jabbed her in the ribs.
“I think you will recover, Miss Tabbycat,” Ella said. “Especially as the last time you were dying you managed to wander off and escape me.”
“The salad days,” Clove muttered, sighing to herself and leaning into Ella’s side.
Ella tightened her arm around Clove’s shoulder.
* * *
That evening Clove washed the plates from dinner. Outside, bats swooped: dark shadows that ducked and dived as they caught flies. The kitchen was warmly lit by the glowing fire, and still smelled of the bread Mrs Samson had baked for the next day. Clove put the last plate on the draining board and turned away from the sink. As she did so, she noticed Matthew sitting at the kitchen table.
“Oh!” Clove said, backing up until she hit the basin. She hadn’t heard him come in.
“I think you need to tell me who you are, Anise,” Matthew said.
She took a deep breath, preparing herself for the conversation to come. Then she said, “My name is actually Clove.” She sat down at the kitchen table, brushing her hair away from her face, and tried to sound calm. “Clove Galloway.”
He frowned, scratching his nose. “We’re related?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
Clove picked at a flake of something crusty on the table. “I’m the daughter of Katherine Finchley.” She watched him carefully, waiting for any sign of recognition on his face. There was none.
“Who’s that?” He tilted his head, staring at her with a blank expression.
How could he possibly not know who she was? They’d spent lifetime after lifetime together. “Your wife.”
He flinched. “What?”
“You’re going to marry her,” Clove said, staring him right in the eye. “You’re going to marry Katherine Finchley and have a baby. You’re going to call her Clove.”
“What?” he repeated faintly.
“I’m your daughter. From the future,” Clove said, leaning forwards on her elbows. “I know you know all of this. You don’t have to pretend you don’t.”
Matthew leant backwards. “You have gone mad.”
“I’m not mad. I travelled back in time from the future, so that I could meet you. You must … you must know what’s going on. It’s impossible that you don’t!”
“What are you talking about?” he asked, horrified. “You need to see a physician! There is something wrong with you.”
“There’s nothing wrong with me! I travelled through something called a wormhole, which is a kind of gap in the space-time landscape that connects two points in time. It’s made by generating a lot of energy and causing an explosion. It’s—” She stopped. She didn’t need to explain any of this to him. He knew it already, surely. He must do.
But instead of saying, “Clove, it’s so brilliant to meet you at last,” Matthew stood up. He was pale. For some reason, her words had taken him by surprise. Had he not expected her to talk about time travel?
“You must know who I am!” Clove said. “You’re Matthew Galloway, my father. In a few weeks, when the city is besieged, you and Katherine will … will sacrifice yourselves in some way to the cause…” She trailed off. Matthew was looking at her as though she was mad.
“I do not understand anything you are talking about,” Matthew said. “Who is Katherine? What in heavens does the Uprising have to do with me?”
Clove pulled her watch out of her pocket. “It’s all here. Spart found out all about you and Katherine, and what you do in 1745.” She tapped the screen and it lit up to reveal her locked screen − a selfie of Meg and Clove smiling at the camera. Clove and Matthew watched the large 20:37 tick over to 20:38.
Matthew dropped back into his seat like his strings had been cut. “What – what is that?” he cried.
“It’s a computer,” she said. “You must have seen one before.” Why was he being so stubborn about this? Why not just admit that he knew who she was?
“That device sends people back to the past?” he asked, incredulous.
“Yes, exactly,” she said, relieved. “Well, a bigger one does, but it’s the same basic idea.”
A message from Spart popped up on the screen.
> Hello, MATTHEW.
“It’s a demon!” Matthew cried. “That thing. It’s taken you under its spell, made you believe its lies. You aren’t from the future − you can’t be. You’re just enchanted.” Before she could stop him, he snatched the watch from her and threw it into the fire, where it fell between two burning logs and disappeared into the red-hot embers.
“No!” Clove cried out. “Don’t!” She reached into the flames with her bare hands. Her mind was blank with panic. She didn’t even notice the pain as the fire burned her. She couldn’t do this without Spart − she wouldn’t last a day!
Matthew grabbed her elbows and pulled her back before she could rescue the watch. “Let it go,” he said, voice cracking with fear. “Let me help you, Anise − Clove. Whatever your name is. You’re going to be better now. Trust me. That … that demon was possessing you!”
Her watch glowed white-hot in the flames.
“Let me go, Dad, please.”
In shock, he released her. “I’m not your father! Can’t you see how senseless that is? We’re the same age!”
Clove fell onto the hearth and grabbed the iron poker. She knocked her watch out of the flames, hands trembling. The computer hit the hearth, sparking on the tiles.
“It had you under its spell,” Matthew repeated. “It had you crazed.”
“It didn’t,” she sobbed. “You don’t understand.”
She touched the screen, frantic to see if it was broken, but it was too hot. Without her watch, she was lost. Without it, she couldn’t talk to Spart, or— Oh God. She couldn’t get home! If she didn’t have the watch, she had no way of contacting Spart-in-the-lab in 2056, and so no way of getting back to the future. Clove burst into frustrated tears. She was stuck here for ever.
For ever.
“That thing still has hold of you,” Matthew said. “It’s going to kill you. I can see it in your face. You can’t let it control you like this.”
“You’ve destroyed it already,” Clove said, gasping. She couldn’t seem to stop crying. Her whole body hurt, and she couldn’t draw breath properly. Her chest felt tight, like she was having a heart attack. She pushed out one long breath, drawing it back in as slowly as she could.
Matthew was still watching her in horror.
“Can you get me some water?” she asked when she felt a bit steadier.
“Water will make you ill. I’ll get you some ale.” Matthew fetched some from the pantry.
Clove drank it, breathing in and out, until she felt calm again. She wiped away her tears. By then, the watch had cooled enough for her to touch it. Cautiously, she tried to turn it on. The screen stayed black. This had never happened to her before. She had no idea how to fix it. All of those hours she’d spent studying programming were worthless in the face of a problem with the hardware.
Clove tried to remember whether watches could survive high heats, but her mind was blank. She thought that they must be able to − they were solar powered, after all.
“Do you want me to fetch someone?” Matthew asked, touching her forehead as if checking her for fever. “You need help.”
Clove shook her head. She was so confused. Matthew seemed to know nothing about the future role he was to play. What if he decided that she was insane and took her to a doctor? By discussing this with Matthew she was risking more than she had realized. Who knew what the doctors here would do to her, if they thought she was crazy? They might even put her in an insane asylum – or burn her for witchcraft, like Ella had mentioned.
“Please,” she said. “I promise I won’t cause any trouble, or whatever you think I’m going to do. Just – just don’t call anyone. I … I just need to rest.”
He stared at her for a long time. “What if you hurt yourself?” he said finally. “I can’t risk it. You need help.”
“I don’t! I’m fine!” She tried to lower her voice, which was getting increasingly frantic. “Nothing is going to happen. Please!”
He didn’t look convinced.
“If Spart really is a demon, then you’ve killed him, right?” Clove said. “It should just wear off, shouldn’t it? The spell. If there’s a demon, you’ve saved me from it. I don’t need help.”
Matthew rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know what is happening any more. I need time to think. I can’t decide anything now.”