The sound of Chris puttering in the kitchen pulled me out of the sinkhole of sleep I’d fallen into. I stretched, rubbed my ear in a futile attempt to get rid of a high-pitched whine, then shot out of bed. I raced for the window. Twenty-first century buildings! Honking cars. Barking dogs. Wailing police sirens. When I bent double, clutching myself, I realized it was my body I held, not some stranger’s.
I was back. It’d been a nightmare, nothing more. Other than this irritating hum in my ears, life was back to normal.
I dashed into the kitchen, inhaling strong coffee, and flung my arms around Chris. “Thank God,” I murmured into her neck.
“That I’ve made the coffee already? Poor baby, you were really out. Guess you need this. Here.” She stepped back and handed me my favorite mug, the one with an image of the mosaic floor in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
My hands shook as I held the mug against my face. The warmth was reassuring.
“Are you okay?”
“No, I’ve got to give your Dr. Rajamani a piece of my mind. That stupid GCA really messed me up.”
Now dressed, my coffee mug empty, I ran down the apartment steps and hailed a cab, too impatient to bike to campus. The cabbie let me off in front of the Alexandra Building and I dashed up the stairs. Dr. Raj’s office door was closed, but that didn’t stop me. I burst in to find him on his cell.
Angrier now than I’d ever been, I tore the phone from Rajamani’s hand and flung it across the room. It shattered against the wall.
“What are you doing?” Raj leapt to his feet.
The humming in my ears became the roar of a chainsaw so I had to shout. “Your GCA gave me hallucinations. I thought my mind was in the body of some chick in Queen Elizabeth I’s court. Can you imagine what that felt like? All your talk of transporting my consciousness into another vessel started it, but I’m sure the GCA made everything worse. I can’t remember anything from yesterday after that last clap of thunder, but I somehow managed to get myself home safely, all the while thinking I was in some sort of Elizabethan costume drama.”
Hot rage spread like wildfire through my limbs. I wrapped my hands around Dr. Rajamani’s neck and squeezed until his eyes widened in fear. His hands clawed ineffectually at mine, but I was too strong. I shook him so hard his head snapped forward and back. “I’m going to shake you until your head comes off,” I yelled. “You’re a lunatic! You’re dangerous!” Dr. Rajamani’s lips began to turn blue, so I closed my eyes and squeezed harder.
“Blanche! Stop!”
I tightened my grip even though hands now tried to pull me off of Rajamani.
“Blanche! You must stop!”
Blanche?
With a shuddering gasp, I opened my eyes to find my hands wrapped around the throat of the woman next to me in bed. I let go, allowing the hands to drag me back. The room was dark, the only source of light the sputtering candle held by “Kat Ashley.” White candle smoke rose into the oppressive dark. The woman next to me struggled to sit up, coughing and clutching her throat.
“Blanche Nottingham, have you lost your senses?” “Kat Ashley” hissed. I held my pounding head and struggled to remember. I was sharing a lumpy bed with “Lady Mary,” while “Lady Charlotte” slept on a pallet on the floor. Across the room were women in two more beds. Ahh, the ladies chamber. All their shadowed faces looked haunted. “Mary” still clutched her throat.
I covered my mouth to cut off a scream. I’d had a nightmare within a nightmare. The room’s darkness weighed on me like a thick tapestry. My marvelous sense of direction was no help to me now. When you were trapped in something you didn’t understand, it was almost impossible to find a way out.
“Mary, are you able to breathe?” “Kat” drew the stunned “Mary” into her arms.
Finally, the woman nodded, croaking out her assurances.
I licked my lips. “Lady Mary, I am so sorry. I was having a nightmare.” Tears welled up, but I refused to yield. Instead, I leapt from the lumpy bed. “I will find somewhere else to sleep so you don’t need to worry.”
“Lady Charlotte” waved me toward her pallet, then she slid into the bed beside “Mary.”
I lay down on the pile of straw covered with a blanket and pulled a dirty fur rug up over my shoulders. The end of a goose feather poked through the pillow cover and scratched my cheek, so I punched the pillow down and tried to get comfortable. Despite the straw, cold rose up from the wooden floor and shackled my ankles, knees, hips. Thank God this wasn’t truly a straw bed from Elizabethan times, for that would have been crawling with fleas and lice.
A small brown and white spaniel with long silky ears and serious brown eyes trotted over and sniffed at my face. When I offered a finger and was rewarded with a sandpaper lick, I lifted the covers in invitation, and the little thing hopped in. He circled a few times, a doggy trait I’d always admired, then curled up against my chest. I adjusted the covers so he could breathe, then began gently stroking his ears. My reward was a small sigh of approval.
I looked around the room, remembering now that “Lady Charlotte” had brought me here last night and taken pity on me. “This is your room. This is your trunk of gowns.” While a quiet-as-a-mouse actor playing a servant undressed me, the woman droned on about my shocking behavior. After the servant left, the woman pushed me toward the bed. “This is your bed. I suggest you use it.”
Despite the soft warmth of the dog, loneliness pierced me like a thousand tiny arrows. But was I alone only in my mind, or in reality? I could only come up with three options for my situation. Perhaps I was collapsed on the floor of Raj’s lab, locked in a drug-induced dream or nightmare. Or I could be in a coma at University College Hospital, locked in the same dream or nightmare, with Chris at my bedside, my frantic parents and brothers flying across the Atlantic to join me. With both of these options, my knowledge of London and my fascination with all things Tudor were providing the details. So far everything I’d seen could have been culled from the books I’d read, the movies and shows I’d watched.
The third option? That the freaky Rajamani had actually located my consciousness and somehow transported it into the body of a woman named Blanche Nottingham sometime in the mid sixteenth century. But this was too bizarre to believe.
No, the more logical answer was a coma.
I scratched a few itches on my calf, then curled around my only friend, grunting at the uncomfortable straw. I was still Jamie Maddox. I’d been born in 1984 at Abbott Northwestern Hospital in Minneapolis, Minnesota. My parents were Rick and Julia Maddox. I had a younger brother, Marcus, and an older brother, Jacob.
I was still the girl who had fallen while running down the sidewalk and cracked open my chin on the head of the antique doll in my arms. There’d been no plastic surgeon on duty, so an inexperienced resident had stitched me up. Thank God the eight stitches were out of sight on the underside of my chin, but I knew them intimately, for I often ran my thumb over the bumpy ridges when nervous.
I reached for my chin and felt nothing but skin smooth as a peach.
No. I was still the girl who’d fallen while trying to skateboard down the low brick wall at the Beautiful Savior Lutheran Church a block from our home. I reached for the resulting scar but touched only flawless skin on a plump knee.
As I shifted on the straw, I winced at the waves of body odor escaping the covers. I’d read that Elizabeth used scented rose water to both mask her scent and the scent of others, but this was a perfect example of a detail my mind could have conjured up while I rested in a warm, pristine hospital bed, deep in a coma, instead of on a dry, rustling pile of straw that attracted cold rather than repelled it.
I needed help. I needed to ask Chris for advice. Call Ashley and Mary and Jake. Maybe they could help me figure it out…but apparently nightmares didn’t come with cell phones.
The candlelight jumped wildly as the wick began drowning in melting wax. Then it went out. I closed my eyes as the dog’s paws twitched in his dreams. If only my dreams could be as pleasant.
I stroked the soft fur. I would figure this out in the morning.