When Xanthe stepped out of her own blind house into her own garden she was reassured to see it was still dark but cautious about making assumptions. The time-speed differential between her time and the one she traveled to had already shown itself to be variable and irregular. The only factor that remained constant was that time in the past moved more quickly than in the modern day. By that reasoning, as she had spent barely a couple of hours in bygone Bradford, scarcely any time at all should have elapsed at home. She put her bag and the wedding dress in a snug bundle just behind the little stone building and then made her way into the house. The back door was still as she had left it, ajar and unlocked. As she took hold of the doorknob she felt rather than heard a disturbance somewhere above her. Somewhere up on the roof of the house. Instinctively she yelled at Pie, who bounded through the open door ahead of her. Within seconds there came a loud rumble. It was a sound out of place and curious but its origin was definitely above her. She looked up just in time to see the chimney toppling from the roof and falling toward her. She cried out as she leapt across the threshold, flattening herself against the wall in the hallway, a mere heartbeat before a crushing weight of bricks and ancient masonry crashed onto the lawn at the exact spot where she had been standing only moments before. As the noise faded, the dirty plume of dust spread and fell, coating a large area of grass and path. Her heart was pounding. From upstairs came the sound of Pie whining in fear. Beyond the garden wall two car alarms had been set off by the impact. Xanthe felt unable to move. The thought of what would have happened if she hadn’t looked up, hadn’t taken that swift step forward … there was no possibility she could have survived being underneath the ruined chimney. She peered upward, searching for whatever it was that had caused the stack to fall, but even as she did so she knew she would find nothing. She knew what had toppled the chimney at that exact moment. Or rather, she knew who had toppled it. She had the sensation of an earwig descending her spine at the realization that yet again, Fairfax was watching her, observing her every move, witnessing all her plans and preparations. She had come within a few short paces of being killed.
She continued cautiously down the hallway and listened. Nothing. The house was in silence, save for the ticking of the ormolu clock in the shop and Pie’s whimpering upstairs. Xanthe stepped quickly along the narrow passageway and peered into the shop, the low streetlight sufficiently illuminating the interior to allow her to read the clockface. It showed ten minutes to eight. After negotiating the repaired staircase and settling Pie in the sitting room with a small feed, Xanthe made doubly sure the door to that room was shut. The dog was, understandably, exhausted after its adventures, so that after a token protest of five minutes of squeaking she gave in to fatigue and went to sleep. When Xanthe looked in on her carefully a little later she was sprawled upside down on the sofa, snoring softly.
“Right!” she said, as much to herself as to the lurking, menacing presence of her unseen voyeur. “Enough of this. You think you’re the one dictating things here?” she called out to Fairfax. “You think you can scare me into giving you what you want?” She shook her head, anger and determination driving her now. “You said you wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating me again, well, guess what? You just did!” She grabbed an anorak off a peg in the hallway and shrugged it on over her costume before marching through the shop.
Within minutes, she was pushing open the doors of The Feathers. Ignoring the somewhat surprised hellos from the temporary barmaid, she went straight to the door to the apartment on the floor above, took the stairs two at a time, and burst into the kitchen. It was hard to say who, of the three people seated at the table enjoying their supper, was the most surprised to see her. Annie got to her feet at once. Harley froze, a forkful of food held up, mouth agape. Flora breathed her daughter’s name in shock. Only then, catching a glimpse of her reflection in the darkened window of the kitchen, did Xanthe realize how she must look. As if it wasn’t enough that she was not in London, not singing with a band, and had charged into the room as if being chased, a fine layer of brick dust coated her clothes and face, making her look for all the world like a ghost of herself.
Harley found his voice.
“What the hell, hen?!”
Annie moved toward her, her expression full of concern. “Are you all right? Come and sit down.”
Flora started to get up. “Xanthe, love, what on earth has happened? I thought you were … what are you doing here? You’re covered in … what happened?” she repeated.
She went to her mother and put a reassuring hand on her shoulder.
“It’s OK, I’m fine. Honestly. This is just … brick dust.”
“What?” Flora remained puzzled.
Annie pulled out a chair. “You look a bit shaken. Why don’t you sit down and tell us what’s happened?”
When Xanthe shook her head Harley formed a one-word question, “Fairfax?”
“Yes. And, something more. Mum, I need to talk to you. Actually, I need to show you something.”
“We were just about to eat. Is it really that urgent?” Flora wanted to know, looking from Harley to Xanthe and back again.
“Well, lassie?” Harley put down his fork at last.
“Mum, I’m really sorry to drag you away from your meal, but I need you to come home with me. Now.”
“But Annie’s cooked supper.…”
Harley put in, “Don’t worry about that. We’ll do this another day. You should go with Xanthe,” he insisted.
Flora noticed the look he gave her daughter. “Annie, I’m so sorry.…”
Annie sat down again, replacing the lid on the casserole pot in the middle of the table. “It looks like Xanthe needs you, Flora. Don’t worry about supper. We’ll do it another time.”
“You are so sweet, after all the trouble you’ve gone to.…”
“It’s stew, really, it wasn’t any trouble. And Harley will happily eat your share.”
“Leave it to me.” Harley nodded seriously.
Flora got up. “Well, I’m sorry, but I need the loo before we set off. Is that OK with you?”
“Of course it is, Mum. I’m sorry … I’ll explain everything when we get home.”
While Annie helped Flora to negotiate the cluttered hallway that led to the bathroom, Harley spoke to Xanthe in an urgent stage whisper.
“Did you find him, way back when, you know … the time you traveled to. Was the bastard lying in wait for ye?”
“No, well, yes, but I had to come back.”
“What? Why?”
With a sigh she explained, as quickly as she could. “Pie traveled back with me. She got out of the house and into the blind house just as I was spinning … I had to bring her home.”
“Wait, she went and came back? No problems?”
“None that I could see. She was a bit tired, but other than that…”
“So, you could take someone with you!?”
“Yes!”
“Lassie, this is huge!”
“I know, which is another reason I’m here. I want to show Mum, to take her.”
“What, right now?”
“I need her to see, just for a moment. I’ll bring her straight back. I have a plan, and I need more things from here for it to work. More money too, really. Luckily, Mistress Flyte will help me.…”
“The old woman from before? But…”
“I can’t explain it all, there isn’t time. I’ve got to go back again, but … Harley, Fairfax is still trying to do things now, in my time. At the shop … he nearly killed me this time.”
“What?!”
“He brought the chimney down. The whole thing. If I hadn’t glanced up…”
“Christ on a bike!”
“I need to explain more to Mum. I don’t want to frighten her, but, oh, Harley, I want to show her. Can you understand that?”
“Don’t you think she believes you already?”
“Yes, but … I need to show her. I want her to feel it, to know what it is I feel. And maybe it will make her take the threat of Fairfax seriously too.”
“I should imagine chunks of her house falling into her garden might do that.… Look, hen, the man’s proving to be more bloody dangerous by the minute. If you’re able to take someone with you, why not take Liam?”
“Liam?”
“You know I’d give my left … ear to hop through the centuries with you. Nothing would be more fan-bloody-tastic, but that would mean a lot of lies to the woman I love, and I cannae do that. But Liam, he’s fancy free, apart from yourself. Take him with you this time. Let him help you. He’d look after you.”
“I don’t need looking after.”
“But why tackle a man like Fairfax on your own when you don’t have to? I am not happy about you facing him alone, hen, I’ll tell you that now.”
“I can’t stop him from here, you know that. I’m going to take his astrolabe away from him. Destroy it.”
“Oh, and you think he won’t be expecting you to do that?”
Voices in the hallway told them the two women were on their way back. Harley gripped Xanthe’s shoulder. “Hen, will you not tell Liam?”
“No. It’s too much. Too soon. It’s not an easy thing to share with someone, you know?”
“It’s too damn dangerous to do it on your own.”
“Mistress Flyte will help me. And I’ve thought about how to keep myself safe. I’ll be OK.…”
“Right,” Flora came back into the room, “I’m all yours, love,” she said to Xanthe.
As they were leaving Harley tried one last time. Standing close he hissed into her ear, “Promise me you’ll at least consider my suggestion.”
She squeezed his hand. “OK, I’ll think about it. But first, I need to show Mum. OK?”
“Aye, fair enough.”
As they stepped out onto the chilly high street Flora paused to brush some of the dust off Xanthe.
“Where did this stuff come from?” she asked.
“I’ll explain, but please can we wait until we get home?” As she spoke she was unable to stop herself glancing up and down the street. It was a small gesture, but an anxious one, and it was not lost on her mother. After that they walked the short distance home in tense silence. As they climbed the patched stairway Pie could be heard squeaking and scrabbling.
“Oh, poor little thing, did you miss us?” Flora opened the door to the sitting room.
“Leave her in there, Mum. And leave your coat on. I need you to come outside. I need to show you two things.” She nipped into the kitchen and fetched a torch and then led her mother downstairs.
When Xanthe opened the back door she felt the sharpness of the night air and that the temperature had dropped noticeably, threatening a frost. When Flora went to step out into the garden Xanthe stopped her, switching on the torch and pointing its beam on the rubble on the lawn.
“What is that?” Flora asked.
“Our chimney.”
“What? But how…?” Instinctively Flora looked up, searching the dark sky for the silhouette of the chimney stack that should have been there but wasn’t.
“The dust, the stuff I was covered in,” Xanthe explained. “That lot missed me by inches, and only because I sensed something and stepped back.”
Flora looked at her again now. Even in the low light of the garden with its borrowed illumination from street lamps beyond the boundary wall, Xanthe could see the shock on her face.
“You could have been killed,” her mother whispered, hardly daring to form the words.
“He means business, Mum. That’s what I need you to understand. Come on, watch your step, there are broken bricks everywhere.”
She led Flora over to the blind house.
“I have to tell you, love, it doesn’t look much like a time machine. Just a damp old stone shed.”
“Stand here a minute.” She stepped over to where she had tucked her bag and took the wedding dress out of it. Immediately it began to set up its song and the fabric felt hot in her cold hands. She showed it to Flora. “This is our ticket, Mum. Are you ready for this?”
“I … am not entirely sure what you’re asking me to do?”
“If we step in there together, with this, if you hold onto me, I will show you. I’ll show you how it works. What I do.”
“You mean … we’ll travel back in time? Together? Right now?” Again she looked skeptically at the blind house. “In that?”
“The blind house doesn’t go anywhere. Just us.”
“And where … when will we end up?”
“I don’t know the exact date but I’m thinking it’s around 1815. I didn’t know I could take someone with me, but Pie followed me earlier.”
“Pie?”
“Yes, and she was fine. I brought her back and, well, you’ve seen her. She’s OK. I can take you, Mum. I can show you. If you want?”
Flora swallowed hard, processing what she was being told, finally facing the possibility that she might just be about to do the impossible. “Well,” she said at last, “I always did like Jane Austen.”
Xanthe smiled, yet again impressed by her mother’s bravery.
“It’ll be OK, Mum. Promise. If that means anything anymore.”
Flora threw her a look as she stick-stepped past her through the door of the blind house. “Move to a small town in the country, they said. It’ll be a quiet life with no drama, they said.…”
Once inside Xanthe switched off the torch. She had not considered how frightening the dark, musty interior might be for her mother. She reminded herself that only she could hear the high notes of the singing wedding dress and the myriad clamoring voices that now called to her. She squeezed Flora’s hand, pulling her closer, recalling what Mistress Flyte had said about the risk of a non-Spinner being set adrift while making the journey through time. “Hold on tight to me, Mum, OK? Whatever you hear, whatever you feel, don’t let go. That’s really important, OK?”
“Will there be flashing lights, or something … I don’t know what?”
“Nothing really, not for you. You might feel a bit dizzy.” As she spoke she felt her mother pressing closer to her, her grip on her hand tightening. The voices only she could hear grew louder as with her free hand she held up the wedding gown, so that some of the tiny pearl buttons on its bodice were caught by a slice of light that fell through the still open door.
“What was that?” Flora asked.
“What? What can you hear, Mum?” She wondered if some of the voices, some of those lost and desperate souls, would be able to make Flora hear them too. Their entreaties were now so loud in her own head she found it hard to make out what her mother was saying to her.
“Outside,” Flora explained. “I thought I heard someone call your name.”
“It’s OK. Just hold my hand,” Xanthe repeated as she began to feel the now familiar giddiness that signaled the start of her journey. She was aware of her mother’s breath against her cheek as she seemed to fall forward toward her and then the transformation was underway and together they tumbled through time.