May 7, 1824 Vienna, Austria #2
Four years ago, Oliver left her on a rain-soaked street outside a tiny London pub. She shoved her hands into her coat pockets, reaching for her gloves, and felt the letter. She tore it open and read it right there, then promptly returned to the pub for another drink.
Oliver unfolds the page and reads.
Tuesday, 7 April 1818
Dearest Professor,
I have completed cataloging the stones at the cemetery of St. James’s Church in Lancaut, Gloucestershire. As per your request, I have enclosed my report of the matrilineal line of Beatrix Woodward (née Atwood): born 19 July 1481, died 13 June 1505.
I look forward to discussing the findings with you soon.
Yours most sincerely,
Edward Davies
Oliver looks up at her. “What is this?”
“Professor Winfield studied faerie lore,” she says. She doesn’t know exactly what he was looking for or what he found. Perhaps the whispers of Lancaut had survived as long as she had.
She hands Oliver the other pages. “This is his report.”
His gaze darts across the papers. Hers must have done the same, trying to make sense of the names she didn’t recognize and the dates that spanned generations, until those two words—the last two words—stopped her heart.
Presently living.
“It’s your family tree,” Oliver says. “Your daughter’s daughter and her daughter, all the way until…”
“Now,” Beatrix says. Or, more precisely, 1818, when Edward Davies wrote it.
She went to Tintern the next day. Got off the ferry and walked into the nearest pub, asked after the man who had sent the letter. The address wasn’t far, the man behind the bar assured her. Just past the abbey. What was left of it.
Its bones were overgrown with ivy, the roof gone, the round and arched windows empty of their glass.
The long center aisle bordered by archways reminded her of the walk at St. Paul’s, the vaulted ceiling replaced by a cloudless sky.
It would have been beautiful when it was whole.
Still possessed a haunting allure that tugged at her heart.
It was a glimpse of what might have been.
If she had never danced with William in the rain, her bones would be there among the moss-covered stones, overgrown with ivy, too.
“That’s what I need your help with,” Beatrix says.
She found the address easily enough. Knocked on the door and politely asked the woman who answered if she could speak to Mr. Davies.
“Moved out,” the woman said. “Don’t know where.”
Beatrix pressed her for more answers, any clue she could follow to find him. Did he have family? A job? Friends? But all Beatrix gathered was that he was an eccentric man who never remembered when the rent was due and that his landlady was glad to be rid of him.
“Can you find her?” Beatrix asks, pointing to the last name on the letter, presently living, out there somewhere. “I wouldn’t ask, but I’ve hit a dead end.”
Oliver looks at her, stunned. “You want me to look up her future?”
“Mr. Davies did a catalog of all the graves in Lancaut and researched the lives of the people buried there. Can’t you do the same in your time? Research her life and tell me where she’s living now?” Beatrix asks.
Oliver goes still. “She’s nine years old, Bea.”
“She’ll be thirty-six when you come back,” Beatrix counters.
“What if I find her?”
“Then I find her,” Beatrix says.
“And then?”
“I don’t know.” She has tried not to think that far ahead. “I don’t think—I couldn’t talk to her. I just want to see her. To know that she’s real.” To know that there is some piece of her family, of her old life, still out there.
Oliver leans toward her. “Say I look her up in the Aevum database. I find out everything there is to know about her: where she was born, where she spent her childhood, where she went to school, who she married, how many children she had. It’s the 1800s, so if you’re lucky, there might even be photographs.
Any document she was ever mentioned in will be there.
Her entire life.” He taps the words on the paper between them.
“But in my time, it won’t say ‘presently living.’ ”
“I know that.”
“I don’t think you do, Bea,” he says quietly. “If I find her—if you find her—are you going to just sit there and watch her, knowing every horrible thing that will happen in her life? The exact day she’s going to die?”
It feels like a trick question, that she should say yes, of course she can, that she won’t interfere, that she will stick to whatever time traveler’s code Oliver has sworn to observe. But they are sitting in a café garden instead of listening to a symphony. “I don’t know,” Beatrix admits.
“You can’t tell her anything,” Oliver says gently. “But if you know, how can you not?”
“Like Beethoven?” Beatrix asks.
“Like Beethoven,” Oliver agrees.
Tears prick behind Beatrix’s eyes. She folds the letter and the family tree, and hides them away in her pocket.
“I’m sorry. I wish I could help you,” Oliver says, and she can tell he means it. “But it wouldn’t be fair to you, and it wouldn’t be fair to her.”
Beatrix would laugh if she wasn’t afraid she’d burst into tears. She would like a word with whoever is in charge of fair.