Wartime London.
World War II.
Nicholas confirmed it when he returned, with clothing for her tucked beneath his arm. He’d changed into a crisp button-down shirt and trousers, and traded his shoes for oxfords. She could only imagine how he might have explained the breeches, stockings, and jacket he’d been strolling around in.
“I wasn’t entirely sure of the size.…” he began, his eyes on the ground as he passed a cornflower-blue dress and smart matching jacket into her hands. Etta studied the dress—V-neck, modest length, short sleeves—and ran her fingers along the lace detailing she had just noticed.
“It’s beautiful, thank you,” she said. And also generously loose in the waist; but it came with a belt that would allow her to tighten it if necessary. “How was it out there?”
Nicholas stared at her as she struggled to blindly unbutton her dress until Etta, flushing, finally cleared her throat. He startled and spun on his heel, giving her a little bit of privacy, as she got enough of the buttons undone to pull the dress over her head.
“Men are working to clear the wreckage from last night’s attack—they’re searching for survivors still,” he said. “I overheard them saying they would move to this area soon, so we need to proceed with some haste.”
Etta thought so too, but it wasn’t helping her get her stays unknotted any faster. Her hands throbbed from where they’d been scraped raw by her fall, and she could not get her fingers to stop shaking.
“I’m sorry,” she muttered, “I need help—”
Nicholas glanced at her, then immediately turned back to face the wall. Etta felt a blush moving up over her face and chest. Stays and a nearly see-through shift. She could have at least crossed her arms over her chest.
He took in a pained breath and turned around. She studied the quick, sure movements of his calloused hands as he worked, forcing her arms to stay down at her side until the laces finally gave. His broad shoulders closed out the rest of the world; Nicholas stood close enough that she could have leaned forward, pressed her face against the space between his neck and shoulders—she could have—and, for a moment, she felt she might be trapped in the heavy grip of her own want if she didn’t. His pulse fluttered in his neck, and she couldn’t take her eyes away from it.
“There,” he murmured, though his fingers lingered on the loose laces a moment longer, his thumbs skimming along the upper edges of the stays, ghosting against the fabric of her shift. Etta held herself completely still, too afraid to lean forward into the touch; too afraid to move, or do anything that might end it.
The dizziness was back. She felt the warm breath of his sigh fan against her collarbone, an instant before he stepped away. He kept his gaze down as he said, in a voice like warm honey, “Sailors. Good with knots.”
It wasn’t until he turned back around to let her finish that Etta’s mind cleared again enough to remember the scissors she’d taken and stowed in her bag, for this exact reason.
The dress he’d chosen fit her well enough, but Etta would have to make do with the lace-up leather boots she’d taken from Sophia, and just ignore their pinching until there was a better option. She reached up, touching her earrings to make sure they were still there.
“Okay,” she said, smoothing her hair back over her shoulder. “How’s this look?”
As he stared, she reminded herself very firmly that he was staring at the hideously bruised lump jutting out of one side of her face, and only the hideously bruised lump.
After a moment he said, “You’ll do, pirate. Now, tell me what your mother’s letter truly says.”
As he balled up the gown, rolling the fabric up into a tidier bundle, Etta retrieved the letter and pen that had rolled to the bottom of the bag. Using the wall, she sketched the outline of a star over the face of the letter, studying the flow of words that were contained inside of its shape. Nicholas stepped closer, reading over her shoulder. Around them, the morning was picking up in pace, bursting with voices and the smell of fire and gasoline; but they were tucked inside a quiet pocket, a passage of their own.
“Rise and enter the lair, where the darkness gives you your stripes. Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe,” Etta read, running a finger beneath the words within the star. “Seek out the unknown gods whose ears were deaf to lecture. Stand on the shoulders of memory. Bring a coin to the widowed queen. Remember, the truth is in the telling, and an ending must be final.”
“My God,” he said, with a hint of delight. “How did you know to do this?”
With as little explanation as possible, she told him about the secret messages her mother had hidden in her violin case, and in her suitcase when she traveled.
“She wanted you to be able to read it,” he said, practically glowing with excitement. “She thought that someday you might have to find the astrolabe. Do you understand any of the clues?”
Etta shook her head, scanning the words over and over again, wondering if she’d been wrong—if it was meant to be another shape. The words didn’t make any sense.
“If we assume this is a list of instructions, directions, then I believe we can ignore the first clue,” Nicholas said, taking the letter from her. “The second, Tell tyrants, to you, their allegiance they owe, refers to the place where Nathan Hale was killed—the passage we came through—meaning the next one is likely relevant to us now: Seek out the unknown gods whose ears were deaf to lecture. Does that stir anything in your memory?”
Helplessness tugged at her as she shook her head, and she felt her hope start to fray. How were they going to figure out multiple clues like this in seven days?
“What do ‘unknown gods’ have to do with London during the Second World War? Are they people? A certain faith? The last clue tied the location of the passage to one man’s death.” And the clue had used a song that her great-grandfather was fond of belting out now and then. Would this one relate to her family in a similar way—be as personal?
Something nagged at her as she thought back to the Dove, the Artillery Park, but she brushed it aside as Nicholas said, “Lecture…lecture, lecture, lecture…”
He spun toward her so quickly, he almost knocked her back a step. His eyes lit up, making the planes of his face seem almost boyish. “Is it possible it’s referring to St. Paul’s Areopagus sermon?”
Etta returned his eager expression with a blank one.
“Heathen!” Nicholas teased. “Acts 17:16–34. The Apostle Paul gave a sermon—a lecture, in fact, as it was against Greek law to preach about a foreign deity—in Athens, at the Areopagus.”
“I’ll take your word for it.”
He chuckled, absently brushing a featherlight finger along her chin. He didn’t seem to realize he’d done it, but every inch of Etta’s skin was sparking with awareness.
“The Areopagus is the rocky area below the Acropolis. It served as the city’s high court of appeals in ancient times,” he explained, and Etta felt both impressed at his knowledge and terribly inadequate in the face of it. “I’ve read of it. Captain Hall saw himself as a philosopher as much as a seaman—he was educated at Harvard, if you can believe it—and kept any number of treatises around in the hope that Chase or I would stumble upon them one day. And Mrs. Hall was rather stringent in our biblical education.”
“I wish I could say the same,” Etta muttered. The only service she’d attended inside of a church had been the funeral of Oskar, Alice’s husband. Considering the role of religion in the eighteenth century, the depth of Nicholas’s knowledge shouldn’t have surprised her. She found herself leaning toward him, something sparking and warming at the center of her chest as she reappraised him in light of this. For the first time, Etta was truly grateful he had followed her through the passage.
“The sermon is something to the effect of, ‘Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription: To the Unknown God.’ The sermon was centered on his
distress at seeing the Athenians worshiping false idols—the Greek pantheon of gods.”
“And the connection between London and Ancient Greece is…?” Etta prompted, hoping he’d have the answer, since she didn’t.
“Architecture, law, statues, and art,” he offered. “I’d imagine that it’s a place or thing you have a personal connection with. Have you visited this city before?”
Etta nodded. Any number of times. She, her mom, and Alice had flown back to visit, spent summers in rented flats to escape the sweltering heat of New York. Alice had grown up in London, and…well, she’d always been told her mother had as well, though that seemed up for debate now. The truth and fiction in her stories had started to bleed together, damaging them, like a waterlogged painting.
During their holidays, they’d rented any number of flats, but remembering them now, none of them stood out from the others. They’d walked all over the city, visiting the parks, the house Alice had grown up in—they’d gone to the theater, museums—
“Oh!” she said. It felt like the thought reached up and slapped her in the face. She turned to Nicholas, almost giddy that she could finally explain something he might not know. “This idea is crazy, but…London—the British Museum—has a ton of artifacts from ancient Greece, doesn’t it? The most famous set were removed—or looted, depending on who you’re talking to—from the Parthenon by a British lord, Elgin, who brought them back here and sold them to the British government for the museum. It’s a whole legal mess.”
Etta rocked back onto her heels, looking up at the clouds and smoke trailing overhead. “I might be reaching here, but the Acropolis, and the Parthenon, are so close to the Areopagus, it feels like they’re linked. It’s been a while since I visited that room of the museum, and I can’t exactly remember what the Elgin Marbles depict—some kind of battle, I think. But there are statues of men and women…”
“Go on,” Nicholas urged.
“I was trying to figure out the ‘deaf ears’ part, thinking of real, living people, but what if it’s talking about the statues themselves? They can’t hear or see or feel.”
“Do you recall ever hearing any strange noises while in their proximity?” he asked.
She shook her head.
“Based on the way your mother used the clue about Nathan Hale’s execution, it’s likely the passage is in the museum, near where those statues are housed. The British Museum of my time is likely quite different than the one you know; I’ve never been granted access to it, nor was I ever given the full record of where all of the known passages are located—I’m a bit lost as to what to suggest.”
Frustration pooled in the pit of her stomach, rising with each passing moment. Nicholas watched her, waiting. “I don’t know—are we overthinking this? Should it be something simpler? More obvious?”
He stooped slightly to look her in the eye. “It’s all right. Perhaps it would help to think aloud? Anything, however small, might help us.…”
She nodded. He could help her clarify her thoughts, and might catch something buried in the words. “Mom works for a museum, but in New York. There’s been a lot of renewed debate recently about whether or not the Elgin Marbles should be returned to Greece—it’s been all over the press. The British Museum is just the British Museum, you know? Or, well, I guess you don’t. Yet. But…Alice used to give us her own special tours. Her father was a curator. She told me the whole story about how they came to be in the museum’s collection.”
“Alice…your instructor?” he clarified.
Her throat was suddenly too tight to speak. Nicholas merely nodded again, as if he’d somehow put all of the pieces together.
With a small, tentative smile, he asked, “Shall we go, then?”
With the image of Alice still too close to the front of her mind, and exhaustion stretching every emotion, Etta didn’t trust her voice. She nodded, accepting his arm when he offered it. It didn’t even occur to her that her hands were cold until she placed one into his. Despite everything, Etta felt anticipation fizzing through her veins, prickling across her nerves. The scene around them sank through her, became real. Nicholas gave her a knowing look.
“It’s just…unbelievable that we’re here,” she told him. “All of this…”
It was beautiful, and strange, and unnatural, and she couldn’t help it—she wanted to explore what was around her. To see it for herself, the world unfolding as it was—not the edited versions presented in films and books.
“Under other, less dire, circumstances,” he said, “might you be glad to see this?”
It felt like a betrayal to her anger at the Ironwoods to give the yes that was in her heart, even with the way he’d couched the question. “I don’t know. Let’s see how we do, and then I’ll answer that.”
Let’s see if I can find the astrolabe and my mother, and set my life straight again.
Nicholas slung the leather bag over his other shoulder, letting it slap against his hip as they navigated the maze of debris. He stopped suddenly, craning his neck around. Etta followed his gaze to where gold letters gleamed high above the entrance archway. The contrast between them and the battered ruins of the structure made the hair rise on the back of her arms.
“Burlington Arcade,” he read.
She knew this place—she’d been here once, years ago, for a performance. Alice had walked her through the long enclosed shopping center with all of its glittering stores. They’d found Christmas presents for Rose.
“I think I know where we are,” she said. “Roughly.”
Rough was a good way to describe what they saw as they stepped out of the ruined arcade and onto the street. She’d known to expect destruction—she’d seen pictures, heard Alice and Oskar describe it with a raw pain that lingered decades later. What Etta hadn’t expected was that so many Londoners would be out and about in suits, dresses, and heels, carefully picking their way through the piles of debris that had blown out of storefronts, deftly avoiding the craters that had collapsed in whole sections, the surface of the street torn away to reveal the pipes beneath.
Clouds passed over the sun, spotting the ground with shadows. Etta watched Nicholas as they made their way down a succession of connecting streets, heading east. He was drifting to the left, pulling away, until her hand slipped off his sleeve. The nausea and wooziness from the traveler’s sickness had passed, but she felt disoriented all over again, in a very different way. Though Nicholas stayed only a step ahead of her, she felt the distance build between them until she felt suddenly alone.
Every now and then Nicholas caught sight of something new—a bicycle, a window display, a police officer in uniform, a traffic light—and it would drag his attention away. Etta could tell he didn’t want to have to ask her to explain—there was some part of him that was enjoying the process of figuring it out himself—but he was curious.
“Have you been here before?” she asked finally. “Here-here?”
He shook his head, answering quietly, “I only went as far as 1925, and that was in New Orleans.”
Compared to the quiet of the eighteenth century, twentieth-century London practically roared around them. A car beeped and sped past them, and Etta felt a hand clamp over her wrist. Nicholas flew back against the nearby shop, and Etta stumbled after him.
A nearby shopkeeper was writing BUSINESS AS USUAL on a piece of wood in the shattered front window of his store, and looked up at the sudden movement in alarm. Etta sent the man a reassuring smile before turning back to the man next to her.
The breath tore in and out of Nicholas, his nostrils flaring as the car rolled to a rattling stop nearby.
After a moment he explained, “They’re…louder than I recall. Faster.”
She nodded. “They probably are.”
“And,” Nicholas said, his voice lowering as he looked down at her, “you have them in your time, as well?”
“Yeah, even better ones. Faster, quieter—they use less energy, some have built-in navigational systems—”
Okay, too much detail. His eyes had widened at the words less energy, and she knew she’d lost him. “Everything changes, when given enough time.”
He worked his jaw back and forth. “Everything?”
It might have been the way he was studying her mouth, or how his hands seemed to be lightly tracing the folds of her dress’s skirt without even being fully aware of it, but the trickle of confusion roared into a jagged, painful understanding.
Oh, she thought, throat thick. Oh…
“Do you want me to tell you?” she asked him. “Do you really want to know what my time is like?”
If he did plan on returning home and never traveling again, he would never benefit from any progress—never see it for himself. It would drive anyone crazy, knowing what was out of reach of his natural lifetime.
Finally, Nicholas shook his head. “I’d rather discover it for myself.”
She could protect him in the meantime, at least. “You covered for me on the ship. The least I can do is return the favor now, the best I can.”
His smile turned rueful. “This ‘partners’ business is a rather novel concept for me…but I appreciate that.”
Etta wanted to ask him about Julian, but she also couldn’t let him drift away into a pool of terrible memories. She stepped back out onto what little was left of the sidewalk, cupping her hands over her eyes to shade them from the sunlight. “Well, I officially have no idea where we are.”
His jaw actually dropped. “Did I not say we needed a map…?”
She wasn’t about to let him win that argument. “Hold on—just a second.”
“Hold on to what?” he called after Etta as she walked away.
The shopkeeper she’d seen a moment before had ducked back into his store, and was now sweeping out the powdery dust and ash that had blown in from the street. She leaned in through the doorway.
“Hello,” she said. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m wondering if you could help me?”
The man leaned against the handle of his broom, the severe features of his face softening as he returned her smile. Behind him was a long wooden counter, with shelf upon shelf of dark bottles marked with paper labels. Some kind of pharmacy.