For most of the night—the longest night of my life to date—the contractions remained at twenty minutes apart. I knew because I counted. I managed to sleep a little between contractions.
Finally, a tiny glow of daylight appeared in the window slots.
I worked my way to the door and pounded on it. “Hey! Hey! Let me out!”
My hand began to hurt so I somehow got my shoe off and banged it against the thick wood. “I do not belong here! Let me out! I am in labor.”
Finally, shuffling footsteps neared the door. “M’lady, please. You’re frightening the other prisoners.” The asshole chuckled to himself.
“I need a midwife.”
“I’ll see to it sometime today.”
Idiot. I waddled back to the bed.
But by midmorning, the contractions were ten minutes apart. Clearly, this was not a false pregnancy like Queen Mary’s but the real thing. I lay on the bed, sweating with each contraction, furious I was going through this instead of Blanche…or furious because I’d put myself in this position in my fantasy. Why hadn’t I thought ahead and put something in place as Blanche had done? No wonder Chris preferred Blanche—she was smarter.
I tried telling myself I was okay, but I wasn’t. I was in labor, locked in the Tower, with no one to help me. I was going to die, and the baby with me.
I nearly cried with relief when a key jingled in the lock and turned. I rolled to my feet and tried to stand. Would this be the midwife?
But when the door creaked open, it was Harriet standing there with the key in her hand.
“Harriet?”
“Good God, woman, you’re as big as a house.” The brown eyes twinkled.
“Meg!” In two steps we were in each other arms, me crying and Meg comforting me. I struggled for control, since the next contraction would soon hit. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Long story, but basically I let one of the Tower guards cop a feel in exchange for the key. Not one of the more pleasant memories I’ll have to look back on, but still worth it. C’mon, we’ve got to get to St. Paul’s.”
I grabbed her hand and bent over. The intense pain moved up my torso and down my legs. “I’m in labor.”
“Sorry, love, we still gotta go.”
When the contraction ended, I sort of stood up. Meg threw her arm around me and helped me out onto the walkway. The sky was steel gray, with heavy slate clouds galloping in from the west. The wind was cold on my sweaty skin.
I managed to reach the next tower in the walkway before doubling over again. I tried to breathe into the pain, huffing like I’d seen in movies, but it really didn’t help. “This is never going to work,” Meg muttered. The tower room was cluttered with gardening tools, chairs, and tables…and a wheelbarrow in the far corner. “Perfect.”
“I can’t get into that.”
But in less than a minute, I was sitting in the wheelbarrow, clinging to the sides while Meg pushed me to the end of the walkway. She helped me out of the wheelbarrow, then bounced it down the stairs, leaving it there to come back up for me. “Down the stairs, then we just walk down the street and out the gate.”
We stopped on the stairs for another contraction. “Fire truck, this hurts,” I said, gritting my teeth. Then I was back in the barrow, moaning in my discomfort. Pain truly was not my thing.
Two guards approached us from the gate.
“We need help,” Meg said. “This woman is giving birth. I need one of you to deliver the child and the other to deliver the placenta and cut the cord. I hope you don’t mind getting a lady’s private area blood on your uniforms.”
“Hell’s gate,” one of the men muttered. They both stepped back as Meg pushed me out onto the street. I would have laughed if the pain hadn’t been so distracting.
“Now what?” I said through chattering teeth.
“Give me a minute.”
“Meg, if the baby comes before the lightning strike, I have to stay here for the baby. I can’t trust Blanche to do the right thing.”
“Yes, you can.” Then Meg jumped out into the middle of the street and waved her arms. A stately black carriage, decorated with gold tassels and being pulled by four stunning bays, came to a clattering stop. By now I’d sort of fallen out of the wheelbarrow and onto my feet.
Meg yanked the carriage door open. “Okay, everyone out.”
“What is this? What right have you—” sputtered the gray-haired man sitting with two women.
“You’re being carriage-jacked, my friend.” She grabbed his arm and yanked him out. “Ladies, I don’t mean to be cheeky, but I’m putting a pregnant woman on the floor of this carriage and she’s going to give birth in about thirty seconds. If you’d like to get blood all over your nice slippers, then by all means keep your big bottoms planted on the bench.”
The carriage rocked as the two women nearly fell out the other side. That’s when the rain started lightly tapping the dusty street.
Somehow, Meg got me up into the carriage, where I knelt on the floor and rested my face and arms on the smooth leather seat. Then she climbed up onto the driver’s bench and yelled in the guy’s face. “I will cut your penis off if you don’t take us to St. Paul’s immediately.”
Then she was back inside with me and we were moving. “I bribed him with some cash. The threat was just for his boss’s sake.”
Another contraction hit, nearly making me scream. I clenched my teeth. “How did you know I was here?”
“You kept wondering ‘Why Blanche? Why not some other woman?’ So as I said I would, I did my research, and I found out that you actually are related to Blanche Nottingham.”
My hot, wet skin stuck to the seat, but I didn’t care. “Please don’t tell me I’m carrying my own ancestor.” How else could The Dress have ended up in my family? I could barely hear myself over the rain pounding sharply on the carriage roof.
Meg rubbed the base of my back, which helped my breathing slow down, then leaned close. “No, you’re carrying the brother of your ancestor. Blanche and Jacob Maddox go on to have five children. You’re descended from the last one, James, so that’s why you can relax about this baby. Blanchy and Jacob will take good care of Paul.”
“Paul. Cute. But that still doesn’t—” I gasped.
“Breathe, Jamie, breathe.”
I did my best, huffing until the contraction passed. My entire body felt limp as a noodle, and my wet skirts clung to my legs…wet from the rain and from when my water broke during the wheelbarrow ride.
“Your contractions are getting much closer together, aren’t they?” Meg’s breath was warm on the back of my chilled neck.
I sighed. “This is a nightmare. Aren’t we there yet?”
Meg pulled away and looked out the window. “No, too many carriages clogging the street, despite this rain.”
“How did you know where I was?”
“You were worried that Blanche would find a way to outsmart you. Then it occurred to me—what if she had? I checked the Tower records from September 1560 through April 3, 1561 to see if that had happened, and there you were: Blanche Nottingham Maddox, imprisoned April 2, 1561, for treason. Congratulations on the marriage, by the way.”
We giggled like girls until the next contraction. I powered my way through that, then wiped my eyes. “So even though Blanche got the jump on me by having herself locked up, I got the jump on her by raising questions that you answered.”
Meg kissed my ear. “Precisely. Hang on, this stretch of the street is going to be bumpy. Then we’ll be there.” By now the rain could barely be heard over the thunder. This storm was nasty.
“And you? Who is Harriet to you?”
Meg laughed. “That was harder. History isn’t interested in recording the lives of the little people, but luckily, Harriet did something that was recorded, and I managed to find it. With some help of a genealogy organization and a few very large leaps across time, we managed to learn that yes, I am a descendent of Harriet Blankenship.”
“What did she do?” I cried out as the carriage bounced like an inflated play toy, then bit my lip. I pulled Meg down close behind me, and I fell back into her lap.
“She published a brilliant and descriptive treatise on her visit to Purgatory. Both Protestants and Catholics lapped it up. She wrote of metal birds in the sky, and metal rats racing down roads. Of huge metal towers and people who did nothing all day but follow the small, flat box everyone held up in one hand. She even mentioned the London Eye as a turning wheel with people trapped at the end of each spoke.”
I was glad for Harriet, but then doubled over in pain. “Christ, this hurts. But why are you here? Didn’t you get the serum?”
“I did.” She nuzzled my hair. “But you never showed up. So Dr. Raj gave me your address. I hung around until a woman matching your description came out—you are so cute, by the way—and you were right. Her clothes could have come from my mom’s costume box. I ran up to her and said ‘Jamie!’ She just sniffed and turned away. Then she yelled at me over her shoulder, ‘That bitch is dead, so you might as well accept it.’”
“But you didn’t.”
“Of course not. I just kept track of Blanche all winter, watching and waiting for the clothing to change, but it never did. And then I thought to do the Tower research and learned you wouldn’t be able to get to St. Paul’s on your own. I’ve been trying since then to ride the lightning back, but not until this morning did it happen.”
I closed my eyes and moaned at the next contraction, struggling to breathe. “If you came back, that means the serum doesn’t work,” I managed to whisper.
Meg held me tight against her chest. “The serum does work. In order to come back and help you, I took more GCA.”
For a few seconds I was too choked up to speak, but then managed to form words around the lump in my throat. “Dr. Raj let you do that?”
“No, he refused. But I knew where he kept the GCA and the serum, so one day I borrowed a syringe of each and injected myself with the GCA. I strapped the syringe with the serum to my calf so I can take it immediately when I return to the future.”
“But what if Harriet doesn’t understand and takes it off?”
Meg’s eyes sparkled. “I wrapped a note around it: If you take this off, you will die.”
My eyes teared up. “I can’t believe you came back for me.”
The carriage rumbled over another rough patch. “I’m counting on a long and wonderful life with you,” she whispered against my neck.
I kissed her wrist. “I think I want kids.”
“Done.”
The child inside me began banging so insistently on the door to be let out that I moaned with pain. Sweat stung my eyes. “Good, but you can carry them now that I know what this feels like.”
“St. Paul’s,” the driver called.
Meg helped me up, and we managed to exit the carriage without tripping on our sodden dresses. Gray clouds swirled like angry gods, and a flash of cloud-to-cloud lightning blinded me for a second. Then an intense cramp hit me and I collapsed on the wet churchyard green.
I could hear Meg talking, but at this point it wasn’t sinking in. My body demanded all my attention. I felt an opening, sort of like the opening I’d felt in my mind when Dr. Raj had first administered the GCA. Only this door wasn’t closing until a baby kicked its way out. I struggled back into the moment. Concentrate!
Meg was instructing a young boy to find the nearest midwife and bring her here as fast as he could. She gave him a coin and promised more.
My heart pounded with excitement.
This was it.
I was about to give birth.
Or I was about to be swept back into my own body.
Or I was about to be killed by lightning.
One of these three things was going to happen. Maybe all three.
Meg helped me back to my feet. I lifted my face to the rain. If I really did have multiple personalities, for some reason, lightning was my trigger to regain control. If I truly was in 1561, lightning was my only ride home.
The rain now felt warm against my skin. Thunder banged through the clouds and lightning flashed off in the distance. A crowd of men had formed at the cathedral entrance to stare at us. Poor Blanche was going to have an audience when she delivered this baby.
I suddenly felt that hope was a tangible thing, something I could grasp in my fist and never again let go. I licked my lips, tasting the delicious rain, water untainted by city life. The air became charged as more lightning flashed. The hair on the back of my neck stood up, even though I was wet as an otter. I reached up, stretching like a cat, as if I could climb into the sky on my own.
I no longer cared if I was living a fantasy or in 1561. I’d managed to find my hope again and I’d never let someone like Chris take it away from me.
I raised my arms, rejoicing in the rain running down into my sleeves, and grinned at Meg. “We’re back in the saddle again!”
“Ride ’em, cowboys!” Meg shouted.
I sent a silent good-bye to my little Vincent, to my ancestor Jacob Maddox, and to my Queen. Then Meg and I exchanged confident smiles as a seam of lightning ripped open the sky.