Chapter Five #3
“Hey, guys?” Jason’s voice came from the phone.
“Sorry, Jason,” Rose said and picked it up again so they could see each other. There was nothing but innocence on Rose’s face. Henry had been known to say awkward things sometimes, himself, and he found he was glad to set his suspicion aside.
“I’m sorry for your loss, Your Grace,” Jason said correctly.
“She must’ve been so young,” Rose said, pressing a hand to her chest. “How…?”
“A weakness in her heart, they say,” he said, his voice clipped. “Though no one warned us of it.”
“That’s so awful. I know sometimes there aren’t any symptoms.”
“But there were. She often had palpitations, and she fainted easily. Our family doctor told us they were merely signs of an excitable nature. I ought to have consulted a second physician. Instead, as I am predisposed to dullness, I supposed that marriage to me would have a salubrious effect.”
“I’m sure she thought you were the opposite of dull,” Rose said. That was charitable, for he’d given her no reason to say it. Well, other than appearing out of thin air. She was right in one aspect, though. Neither he nor Charlotte had been dull in the bedchamber.
He said, “We were married two years…” As reluctant as he’d been to speak of this, he also had every grieving man’s urge to let everyone else know how cruelly life had treated him. The dangerous tightness in his throat, though, made him conclude abruptly, “She died in her sleep.”
Rose reached over and put her hand over his. He startled. She was a sweet, kindhearted creature, he had to admit, and in the moment, when his world had tilted even further off its axis, her comfort steadied him. He grasped her fingers in his own.
Jason cleared his throat. “Your Grace, it’s no consolation, but I doubt any doctor in your time would’ve been able to help.”
“And it would be different in your era?”
“Yes. We have better tests, better medicine, and better surgical techniques. We even have machines that let doctors look inside the body at what the heart, or any organ, is doing, without even hurting the patient.”
Could that possibly be true? Henry’s gaze darted to Rose, who was nodding.
Jason said, “But back in your time, there wasn’t nearly as much that even a good doctor could do.”
Was this meant to also absolve Henry, as a husband, for not knowing anything was wrong? That crime could not be set aside so easily. He released Rose’s hand, feeling that he should, although she hadn’t pulled away.
Jason said, “The astrolabe must’ve meant a lot to you. My understanding is that it was made in Granada, Spain. Possibly in the tenth or eleventh century. Does that sound right to you?”
“Yes.” Henry was so surprised that he set aside the awareness that the other man had, quite deftly, turned the conversation back to his own topic of interest. “That is to say, I was told it came from Spain, and there are inscriptions in Arabic, Hebrew, and Latin on the outer rim.”
“Really?” Rose exclaimed. “That’s so cool!”
“Well actually, southern Spain is warmer than England,” Henry said politely. When she and Jason both smiled, Henry realized he’d been foolish, because they weren’t in England. “At any rate, my astrolabe also bears the symbols of astrology, which are pure nonsense.”
Rose peered at him. “Capricorn,” she decided.
“I…” Damnation. How had she done that?
“It’s a gift,” she said with delight. She pointed at Jason. “Gemini?”
“That’s hurtful,” Jason said.
Henry folded his arms across his chest. “The fact that I was born on January third has no bearing whatsoever on my character.”
“Which is exactly what a Capricorn would say.”
Jason shook his head slightly. “Your Grace, the most interesting thing about your astrolabe is that according to a couple of early sources, it could be used for time travel.”
“What?” Rose demanded. Henry just stared at Jason.
“I’m guessing you didn’t know this,” Jason said to him. “But is it possible that your wife knew?”
“I am sure she did not,” he snapped. “This idea of her dabbling in the occult was nothing more than a product of vicious minds.”
“Um, what?” Jason said, and Rose’s features lit up with curiosity.
Henry reminded himself that they knew nothing of those absurd rumors. He said shortly, “It was a sentimental gift.”
A faint shadow of doubt crossed his mind as he said it.
Sometimes Charlotte’s interest in magical tales had perhaps gone beyond the intellectual.
Had he been traveling to arcane libraries, conferring with great minds, and poring over formulas for an answer that had been, quite literally, at his fingertips?
He shook his head. “I touched and held the astrolabe countless times. So did my wife. Nothing strange happened.” He felt that familiar temper rising in him, as it always did when things were beyond his understanding.
Jason said, “It must work under unique circumstances.”
Rose’s face flushed pink. “It’s me. I’m unique circumstances. I’ll tell you what I did.” She gathered up three of the cards in her little pile and held them up.
“First of all, these tarot cards were already on my altar. I didn’t really think of them as part of the spell, but…
maybe they were?” She laid them out. “Eight of Wands, Six of Cups, the Lovers.” The last card depicted a man and a woman as naked as Adam and Eve.
Henry had heard of tarot cards, but he had never seen them.
He hadn’t realized they were so scandalous.
Rose shook her head. “I draw three every morning to tell my fortune for the day, but I thought these were pretty random.”
This was every bit as absurd as the ancient Roman practice of inspecting the livers of sacrificed sheep to divine the future, though Henry supposed it would be preferrable from the standpoint of a sheep.
And surely, Rose must be as guileless as a sheep, if she believed in such nonsense.
He attempted to keep his thoughts to himself.
It was an unfamiliar exercise, but he didn’t wish to be called a jagoff again.
Rose said, “For the spell, I also used a picture of Venus.” She set another card down next to the others. “I said an incantation and lit a candle. A pink one, obviously.”
Jason asked, “Where did you get the incantation?”
“I always write my own. Although this one just popped in my head. It even rhymed.” She gave a little laugh. “They’re always stronger if you rhyme.”
“This is nonsense,” Henry couldn’t help but say, shifting in his seat as though he could not contain his agitation. “I may not have discovered the secret of altering time, but my being here can have nothing to do with muttering words over a candle.”
Rose’s cheeks flushed. “I don’t mutter.” Too late, Henry remembered why his criticism had touched such a nerve.
She was talking about a spell to make a perfect gentleman fall in love with her.
A spell that had, in her perception, resulted in his dramatic appearance out of the very ether.
She was in a humiliating situation, explaining this right in front of him.
A true gentleman would’ve made every effort to ameliorate her chagrin, perhaps with a rueful joke at his own expense.
He’d never been good at that kind of thing, but he could’ve at least refrained from mocking her.
Jason asked Rose, “Would you mind writing out what you said?”
She shook her head. “I can’t remember exactly. I called on Hecate, too—the goddess of the crossroads? But I don’t even know why.”
“In the statuette at the museum, she’s carrying keys,” Jason said.
“That’s right,” Rose said approvingly. “She’s pictured with other things, too. But the keys are because she can unlock the door between this world and the next.”
“Or between this century and another one,” Jason suggested.
Henry felt prickles on the back of his neck. This could not be an explanation of how he came to be here…but what other explanation was there?
Jason asked, “Your Grace, in the moment before you touched the astrolabe, do you remember what you were thinking or feeling?”
“This is preposterous. No, I don’t recall.”
And then Henry did recall. He’d been thinking of Charlotte, and missing her. Was that why Rose’s love spell had plucked him out of that particular moment in time?
Impossible. His thoughts were not magical.
“All right,” Jason said. “Rose, is that all you used for the spell?”
“No, hang on. I also used this moonstone necklace.” The pendant had been face down before, but now she held it up, swinging back and forth on its chain like the pendulum of a clock.
Henry stared at the blue stone with its four-pointed star.
It couldn’t be…
Rose looped the chain over her neck as she kept talking. “I don’t know why I used it, because a moonstone is supposed to reunite lost lovers. I definitely don’t want to reunite with any of my exes.” She rolled her eyes. “But I was wearing it because of the full moon, so why not, you know?”
She shrugged. Belatedly, she looked from Henry to Jason—whose expression, Henry now noticed, was also intent. “What?” she demanded.
Henry said, “That moonstone was set in my astrolabe.”
Jason nodded.
Rose shook her head. “It can’t be the same one. I got it on Maxwell Street.”
Jason said, “The astrolabe’s been missing that stone for at least fifty years.”
“Wow.” Rose looked down at the pendant on her chest. “But the astrolabe’s still in England, right?”
“No,” Jason said. “It’s in Chicago.”