Chapter Four
“How do you know that I’m not the real Catherine?”
The man looks at me with grave intensity. “Because I was the one who summoned you here.” I take an uneven breath, but he quickly chuckles, his mouth curving warmly. “I speak in jest. People never perceive me as teasing, but I am actually a very humorous person.”
He walks closer, and his charcoal gray clothes give the impression that they were expensive once but aren’t anymore. He has heavy bags under his eyes, and patchy facial hair covers his neck and cheeks. He might be hungover. Or functionally tipsy.
“So, you didn’t summon me?” I ask.
He shakes his head as he then makes his way to an open cupboard.
“I did not. To tell you the truth, I have no idea what brought you here.” He begins rifling through a row of bottles, and I give another quick glance around the room.
There’s a loud squawking sound, and I notice an angry-looking raven caged in the corner.
“How did you know I’m not the real Catherine, then?”
He turns back around, holding two wooden cannisters. “I have very good intuition. Wine or ale?”
“Wine,” I answer. He nods and puts one of the cannisters back on the shelf, grabbing two silver cups afterward. I take a step toward him. “If you don’t mind me asking, who are you?”
He kicks the cupboard shut behind him as he turns to face me. “My apologies. I don’t often have guests anymore. I’m Matthias. Personal astrologer to the king.”
“An astrologer?”
He moves toward a small rectangular table in the center of the room. “I’m also a skilled weaver. I come from a weaving family. I would have stayed with them, but my father said I scared the customers. Ha! Can you imagine?”
I do everything I can to keep my face neutral. “No, I can’t imagine that at all.” He sets the cups down and begins pouring the wine. “So, when you say you’re an astrologer, would that be a code word for something else?”
“Code?” he asks, glancing over at me in question.
“Like, are you a sorcerer or something?”
He slams the wine cannister down onto the table, and I flinch against its bellowing echo.
“Sorcery is a crime punishable by death.” His eyes are deadly serious until they shift back to untroubled nonchalance.
“No, I’m merely a man who hears things and sees things from a mist in my head.
” He sits down, taking a sip from his cup and gesturing for me to join him.
I carefully approach and take my place across from him.
“Now tell me, not Catherine Howard, are you sure you didn’t conjure up some sorcery of your own to send yourself here?”
He takes another sip, and I hold my cup to occupy my nervous hands.
“I definitely didn’t send myself here,” I tell him. “My friend and I were on a tour of the palace when I thought I fainted, and somehow I woke up like this.”
“Fascinating.” He leans in a bit over the table. “How does it feel to be walking around in there? It must be strange to be a spirit in someone else’s body. Does it tickle?”
I sit back in my chair, realizing how grateful I am to actually be talking about this with someone. “It feels strange, but more mentally strange than physically. I’m trying not to overanalyze everything, but that’s challenging considering the field I work in.”
“You work in the fields in the future?”
I take a sip of wine then instantly regret it. “No, I’m going to be a psychologist. I’ll help people understand how their brain, thoughts, and emotions work together to improve their mental health. I’ll also—”
“You study the brain?” he interjects eagerly. “Do mine! Do you need to make an incision to see it, or can you just tap my head and it opens up?” He leans down all the way over the table, offering his skull to me without hesitation.
“What I mean is, I help people work through issues they may be struggling with by talking with them and understanding the root of the problem.”
Matthias sits back up to look at me. “That’s a bit of a letdown.”
“Sorry,” I answer.
He shakes off his disappointment and takes another sip of wine. “It’s fine. And now you’re set to marry the king. Exciting.” His smile says that he’s genuinely excited for me, and my mouth sets in a grim line.
“I wouldn’t call it exciting. I’m going to do everything in my power to not let it happen.”
Matthias sets his cup down. “How do you mean?”
“I mean, I can’t marry him. The king is old and has no clue who I am, and he kills all his queens.”
“Ah, spoiler alert,” he says, pointing to me with a grin.
“How do you even know what that means?”
“The mist told me,” he answers. “Back to what we were talking about. You have to marry the king.” I laugh at his assertion, and he laughs as well for a few seconds before he stops. “No, but you really do.”
The humor of the situation dies in my chest, sending a chill through my body. But I’m not scared. Now I’m pissed. “My free will says I don’t have to marry him.”
Matthias’s face twists in uncomfortable sympathy. “Free will isn’t really a thing here. The only will is the king’s will.”
I think the fuck not.
“That’s too bad, because it’s not happening.”
“Your marriage has to happen,” he says. “Did Catherine Howard marry the king in your time?”
“Yes.”
“Then you have to marry him now. Not now, exactly, but in two days, as planned.” Frustration courses through me, forcing me to stand. My chair scratches across the floor as I push off from the table. “If you don’t marry him,” Matthias says, “you risk irreparably damaging the timeline.”
“What timeline?” I snap back.
“The timeline of history!”
I pace the room, but the repetitive motion doesn’t soothe me. He can’t just pin this on me. I let everything I know about the Tudors flutter through my brain, clawing for a solution.
“No,” I tell him. “Everyone who takes the throne after Henry dies has already been born. So there isn’t a definite reason why I have to marry him. It won’t affect the timeline.”
Matthias winces in indecision as he squirms around in his chair. “I know I shouldn’t let you tell me, but I’m so curious. Go on, then, who gets the crown in the future?”
Angry bird attacks his cage in the corner as I answer. “I don’t know the specific order, but I do know that his daughter is Queen Elizabeth, and she stays queen for a long time. She takes England into a golden age.”
“Oh, bad luck for you,” Matthias says.
“How so?”
He pushes his chair back from the table as well, though he doesn’t stand. “Well, if Elizabeth becomes queen, then that must mean Henry doesn’t have any more sons. And I guess little Edward won’t be with us for long. Poor dear. Good riddance to Mary, though.”
“Okay,” I reply. “And what does that have to do with me?”
“Well, what if you don’t marry him, and then the king marries someone he otherwise didn’t?
They could have sons together who are wretched, and then they would precede Elizabeth in the line of succession.
They would rule and not her. It could erase the golden age you mentioned and send us all spiraling into a war-torn, scorched-earth scenario.
Wars that never happened could come about.
Great people who lived might never have been born. ”
I stop pacing. “You have no concrete proof that that will happen.”
“It might.”
“It might not.”
“But are you willing to risk it?” he asks. He stands up slowly, and his gaze is compassionate but determined. “I’m sure you have a family in the future. This is the only real way to ensure that they’ll still exist when you get back.”
His words knock the wind out of me—more brutal than a gut punch.
This is some fucked-up historical blackmail.
Since I’ve been here, I’ve kept the memories of my mom and grandma tucked away in a neat little box.
I’ve carefully compartmentalized them, because if I let my thoughts linger there for too long, I’ll disappear into a nothingness of missing them.
We were a trio. We are a trio. The three Whitaker women.
My grandma was a high school science teacher, and my mom is an English lit professor.
We lived, and they still live, in a small Spanish-styled bungalow on a dead-end street.
Our lawn is perpetually shabby, so much so that some kids in our neighborhood called it the witches’ house.
I love it with every fiber of my being.
The thought of their not existing in the future is unfathomable. The world wouldn’t spin without them. They’re too real a light force. Too strong a glow. Matthias has to be wrong.
But what if he isn’t? What if I change history and they disappear? What if someone I don’t know—that someone else loved—disappears because of me?
This can’t be the only way forward, but right now, it feels like it might be.
I grit my teeth and scrunch my eyes closed before walking back toward Matthias. “If I’m go through with this, I need to know for a fact that you are going to help me get back home.”
He gazes back at me in bewilderment. “How should I know how to do that?”
“Ask the mist!” I yell. “You’re the one saying I have to marry Henry the freaking VIII for the sake of the future universe, so yeah, you better be planning to help me.”
Matthias nods. “That’s a good point. Yes, I will help you to get back home, but I need some time.”
“How much time?”
“A week.”
“A week?!” I fume, dropping back down into my chair. “The king could kill me in a week!”
“I’m sure he won’t kill you in a week.” Matthias pauses as he pours himself more wine.
“Mostly sure.” He stays silent for a few seconds before shaking the thought off.
“I wouldn’t be worried. Henry can be very charming when he wants to be.
He’s well studied. He speaks multiple languages.
He’s good at cards. Did you know he’s an accomplished musician? ”
I attempt to skewer him alive with my retinas.
“I need a week to research,” he goes on. “I have access to some very rare, somewhat forbidden texts, thanks to my astrologer privilege. Let me look them over and see what I find.”