CHAPTER 24
Folios/v7/Time-landscape-2019/MS-160
It was late afternoon before Katherine found the courage to face the thing again. It was staring blankly at the ceiling when she entered her bedroom. It turned to her, eyes brightening, and she couldn’t help but freeze. She was surprised to see that its skin was red, dark with an unhealthy shininess like it had a fever. The room smelt strongly of vomit.
“Hello,” it said, uncertain and a little afraid.
“Hello. Do you need anything? Any food or water?”
It hadn’t eaten its breakfast. It shook its head. “Just… Can you tell me where I am?”
“You’re in Carlisle. On the border of Scotland and England. We were in the cathedral, and you were shot. Then you weren’t. That’s all I know. What do you remember?”
“I remember being in the Crimea with my – my friend Katy when she was shot in a battle and died. Then everything went black and I woke up in a cathedral on the other side of the world, and a woman with Katy’s face is treating me like a monster.”
She couldn’t even process what he was saying. She swallowed. “What do you think happened?”
After a long pause, the thing closed its eyes, frowning heavily as if in pain. Then it replied in a heavy tone. “I was hoping you’d know. It seems such a coincidence that someone who looks like me should be in Carlisle with someone who looks so much like my Katy. And surely we’d have run into each other before now? My family is from near Carlisle, just across the border.”
“You look so similar to Matthew, like you are brothers. Twins! But even if you were twins, that wouldn’t explain how you suddenly appeared. Do you think it was magic?”
The thing that wasn’t her Matthew rubbed its head. “I don’t understand why anyone would want to pull me across the world to replace a dying man.”
“Maybe they were trying to be kind. Your Katy died; my Matthew died. They bring us together so we aren’t alone?”
“It’s possible. I’m not sure I’ll thank them for it, though.”
Katherine agreed. There was no possible way this man was a replacement for her Matthew. She didn’t know what to say. “How are you feeling?”
“Bad. I was vomiting all morning and I have a terrible headache. I think I have a fever.”
“Do you need anything? I could get a doctor?”
“No. Thank you. Hopefully it’ll pass soon.”
She nodded, and they were quiet again. After a moment, to break the silence, she said, “You told me you were in the Crimea?”
“I’m a journalist for The Times. I’m reporting on the war.”
She gaped at him. “In the Crimea? I didn’t know the Jacobites were attacking anywhere other than England.”
“Jacobites? What have they got to do with it?”
“We are at war with them, like you said.” She frowned. “That’s why Matthew was shot, because the Rebels are attacking the city.”
“I meant the war with the Russians.”
Katherine stared at him, open-mouthed. She hadn’t heard anything about that. “Are you sure? You aren’t just confused, after the shock?”
He nodded decisively. “I’m sure. We’ve been at war with Russia for months now. I don’t know how you haven’t heard about this.” After a moment, he asked, “Did you say the Jacobites are attacking England? Again? What does the king want this time? And what a time to choose, when England is at war with Russia? First the Scots refuse to help in the war, leaving England alone, and then they attack us? Really?”
“The Russians,” she said, startled. She felt like they were each having a different conversation.
Slowly, he asked, “Katherine, what year is it?”
“The year of our Lord seventeen hundred, five and forty.”
The thing – the man – stared at her in shock and then began to laugh, a weak sound that ended with him coughing. She watched in confused dismay, until he recovered enough to explain.
“Let us start from the beginning.” He held out his hand.
She shook it reluctantly.
“Hello, Katherine Finchley. My name is Matthew Galloway, and I come from the year eighteen fifty-four. I’m very pleased to meet you.”
Matthew leant against the wall of the outhouse, gasping for breath, his eyes closed. It was almost quiet inside the building, which provided a small haven in the middle of the battle. Katy scarcely noticed. She was still trying to reconcile the Matthew beside her with the one in her memories – to unite the two versions of him that she’d known.
“Tell me what you remember?” she asked eventually.
He considered her for a moment. “I was a servant in your house during the Jacobite rebellion. You were spying on me again. We helped to improve the city’s defences, and when the Rebels attacked, the soldiers panicked and wanted to surrender. There was a vote, and an argument and I was shot. That’s the last thing I remember.”
“So you don’t remember coming back?”
He stared at her, uncomprehendingly.
“After you died, you woke again, fully healed,” Katy said slowly, remembering what had happened in Carlisle, all those years ago and in another lifetime. It was strange, remembering things from a century ago that hadn’t happened to her. But the memories were all crystal clear and too vivid to be anything but real, even if she didn’t understand how that was possible.
“What do you mean?” Matthew asked. “I woke up healed? How?”
“You – he, the other Matthew – said he came from the future. We decided you must have been brought back by a witch, but we were just guessing. Neither of us had any idea what could have happened. I still don’t.” She tried to think what else he’d said, and suddenly it clicked. “You came from now! I remember you saying you’d been reporting on a war against the Russians. That’s now. It must be a battle that’s going to happen.”
“I travel through time,” Matthew repeated. “At some point during this war, I go back into the past.”
“Yes. You said that your … that – I died. In the war. I die.” She swallowed. She had watched Matthew mourn some other version of herself, and at the time it had been sad, in a surreal kind of way. But now she knew that he had been mourning her, Katy. She was going to die, and Matthew was going to be left all alone, until he went back to 1745, pulled to another person who had been left alone. “That’s why you went back – because I lost my Matthew back then, and you lost me now.”
Katy was going to die. Neither of them knew what to say for a moment.
“What else can you remember?” he asked. “We have to make sure it doesn’t happen again. You have to remember. What else did he say?”
“I don’t know!” she said. “It didn’t mean anything to me at the time. I wasn’t paying attention.”
“You have to try, Katy. You’re going to die, otherwise.”
She growled, annoyed at herself. “I can’t remember all of those details. Why can’t you remember it happening? I don’t understand.”
“It hasn’t happened to me yet. It’s still in my future.”
She paused for a moment. “Maybe it’s a good thing you can’t remember that life,” she admitted. “It didn’t go well.”
He looked at her, terror in his eyes. “How can it get any worse than this?”
“Trust me,” she said. “It can.” She took a deep breath and then asked, “Does all this mean you’re forgiving me now?”
“I suppose it does.” He didn’t seem pleased about it.
“I know it doesn’t make much difference at this point, but I’m sorry. I regretted my decision to spy on you almost as soon as I met you, and I hated myself more and more every day. I’m sorry I made you trust me when I was lying to you.” She moved her foot back and forth, digging an arc into the dusty soil. “I did – I do – like you, Matthew.”
“I thought that was a trick too – a way to get more information out of me.”
“No! I wouldn’t… That wasn’t what I was doing at all.”
“Well, I get that now,” he said grumpily. “The fact that we were … friends in another life makes that clear. There is obviously something between us. We are clearly meant to be together.”
She paused, awestruck by what he was saying. She couldn’t process it, but she knew it to be true. “Good,” she said in relief. “I definitely wouldn’t want you to think that I was pretending to like you, because I really do – like you. More than I should.”
“Are you only saying that because you’re afraid you’re going to die?”
She regarded him carefully. “Just because this would have taken longer, that doesn’t make it any less true. I love you.” She blinked. She hadn’t meant to say that.
Matthew froze. His lips parted slightly, and for a moment she thought he was angry, but then he broke into a radiant smile. Without another word, he pulled her towards him, gentle and cautious. She let him, watching him with wonder.
He leant close to her, his eyes dropping to her lips. “I love you too.” She could feel his breath on her face. “I forgive you.”
She used his lapels to pull him down so she could kiss him squarely on the mouth.
> First objective achieved in time-landscape 1854
“Finally,” he groaned, tangling his fingers in her hair. “I keep remembering what your mouth tastes like and I’ve been desperate to see if it’s the same now.”
“Is it?” She pulled his lip into her mouth. He let out a guttural sound deep in his chest, and she swallowed the noise, making him melt into her. She shuddered, overwhelmed with the sensation.
They kissed heatedly – not at all like a soft first kiss, but greedily, as if they knew that they might not get another chance. Katy lost herself against him as she re-learned what would pull a groan from his throat and what made him smile. She ran her tongue across the ridge at the top of his mouth, making him grin against her and break the kiss.
He said in a deep, raw voice, “It’s exactly the same,” and for a second she didn’t know what he was talking about. “Kissing you.”
“You too,” she replied weakly, running a finger along the wing of his collarbone. He curled his hand tightly around her fingers, like he was scared she would leave him.
“I’m going to marry you,” Matthew said. “When this war is over, we’re going to get married. We’re going to buy a farm in the countryside and start a family and never have to do anything like this again.”
“You said that before,” she joked. “A century ago.”
“It’s still what I want more than anything. I’m going to marry you one day.”
“Is that your proposal?” she replied, teasing him to hide the happiness that was twisting in her stomach. “So romantic.”
He began to reply, but she muffled the words with a warm, deep kiss.
“Katherine, will you marry me?” he asked when she eventually let him pull away, his voice softly serious, the words pressed against her cheek.
“I will,” she agreed, and pulled him back into the kiss.