That night, after Rosemary had unpinned and deribbonned me, I slipped under the covers and waited until Mary’s snoring rattled the bed. Because they drank ale or wine all day, everyone slept as if on Ambien. Even Vincent snored like a mastiff. I rose like a ghost, pulled on the comfortable dress, then headed down the hallway. Moonlight lit my way through the palace; I couldn’t have picked a better night. Leaves glowed almost blue in the garden.
Low voices from the main gate reached me as the guards talked softly, but I managed to slip past the knot gardens and cherry trees without being seen. I ran across the bowling lawn toward the dark forest. Once inside, the moonlight dimmed, creating deep shadows that followed me. I should have brought Vincent with me, but the night was filled with so many frogs croaking that I wasn’t afraid. As I picked my way down the path free of bodice, padded stomacher, and heavy skirts, I was as agile as a dancer, as graceful as a cougar. Now and then a twig snapped or something snuffled in the dark, but the thought of clean hair and a clean body kept me moving.
As I walked, my thoughts kept wandering back to the obvious, that Rajamani was messing with the mind in ways he couldn’t control. His drug had somehow made me and Ray Lexvold sitting ducks for the electrical surge that must have come with the lightning strike. If Rajamani thought he had funding problems now, he was in for a big surprise. Once I found my way home again and into my own body, I’d sue the professor’s ass off.
It felt good to think things like that. Yet how could I possibly duplicate the conditions of a risky experiment? I had no GCA, but perhaps it still flowed in my veins. And the only source of electricity I’d find in 1560 would be a thunderstorm. I didn’t think I needed to actually get close to a strike of lightning, but I certainly had to be in the vicinity.
By the time I reached the pond, the silence had encouraged me to be as stealthy as a shadow. I stepped so lightly no one could have heard me approach. I leaned against the rocks to take off my shoes, then slipped the dress off, hung it on the rocks, and lowered myself into the water.
“Ahh,” I murmured as I sank in up to my neck. I considered sipping the water around me, but knew I’d pay with diarrhea, unfun even with a flush toilet. But with a chamber pot and twenty pounds of skirt? Fire truck.
I swam around the pond’s curve.
“Oh my God!” shouted a woman. Heart pounding, I shook the water from my eyes. A naked woman stood on the side of the pond, a candle burning at her feet. She clutched her rough muslin dress to her chest. Her eyes were red, and tears streaked her face.
“Hell’s gates!” I cried. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t know you were here.”
The woman calmed down when she heard my voice, no doubt relieved I was a woman. “I thought I was alone.”
“Me too. Come on in. There’s plenty of room.”
The woman dropped her dress and slid into the water. She had a strong, sturdy body, and suddenly, I was so lonely for Chris that my throat closed up. It’s not that I was attracted to this woman, but that I hadn’t been held or hugged for days and days.
“My name is Harriet Blankenship,” she said. “I come here every week to bathe so I don’t pass out from my own stench.” Her plain face, visible in the faint moonlight filtering through the leaves, was softened by the warmth of her dark eyes. She wasn’t beautiful in the usual sense of the word—her eyes too wide-set, her nose too small for her broad face—but every feature, no matter how plain, sparkled when she smiled.
“You don’t like going weeks and weeks between baths?” I returned her smile.
“I would rather be poked with one thousand pins. Or attacked by one thousand dogs.”
I laughed as we began swimming side by side. “My name is….Nicole,” I said.
Harriet’s eyes flickered up to my servant’s dress hanging on the rock. “I have never seen you before,” she said. “Where do you work?”
“All over the place.” If she knew I was one of the Queen’s ladies, everything would get awkward.
“I am new to the palace,” she said.
“How long have you been here?”
Harriet rolled onto her back and floated, a plump mermaid with silver breasts. “Too long, too long.” She held up nine fingers. “Nine weeks and three days.”
“I don’t mean to pry, but you were clearly crying before I startled you.”
“I…I am from the country. The life here in the palace, with the Queen and her court, is very strange to me. Crying helps.”
I nodded. “I know exactly how you feel.”
She stopped swimming. “My life here is not what I’d hoped. Sometimes I clean the palace, which is interesting, but I spend most of my days in the laundry.”
“That would be hard work.” Without a Maytag and a bottle of Era Plus, I’d be lost.
She sighed. “I can handle the work. It is just the boredom I despise. I used to…back in my village I performed many different activities. I was never bored.”
I let my feet float to the surface so I could scrub my toes. “Maybe you could find another job in the palace. Do you have other skills?”
She grunted in frustration, eyebrows fierce as she frowned. “I can read and write, which none of the others I have met can do. But no one believes me. Even when I pick up a stick and write in the dirt outside the laundry, they say I am just writing gibberish. When I read out loud a leaflet dropped in the street, the women say I am lying.”
“It’s unusual for a servant to read and write?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe I could help.”
She reached for my hand. “I would be so grateful. This can be such a lonely place.”
I answered her squeeze, wanting to pull her close for a hug but unsure if she’d be comfortable hugging a naked stranger. “We must help each other through this.”
“Absolutely.”
We said nothing more as we swam for a few more minutes, then each retrieved our soap. I knew I shouldn’t be putting soap in the water, but I was desperate to be clean. Harriet, however, had brought a bucket, so she soaped up out of the pond, and then rinsed herself with the bucket. Note to self: bring bucket next time.
At first, I was self-conscious as I pulled my naked self out of the pond, but then it hit me: This wasn’t even my body. Why should I be embarrassed to be naked?
Talking softly about the families we’d left behind, Harriet and I toweled off, then dressed. We wove our way back to the palace. As we reached the spot where we needed to part, I gave in to my need for physical contact and hugged her. “I’m so glad I’ve met you.”
She hugged back. “And I you. One can never have too many friends. Let us bathe again in a week.”
I smiled and headed for the palace, but at the same time my stomach sank to think I might still be here a week from now.