Quicksabre: Thanks!
Here it is, the second last narrative, and the one which reveals some...interesting things. Enjoy!
Chapter 47 – Echoes of a Lost Time
6/2/1820
The excitement, anxiety and fear didn’t just cease because the danger was over. Rather, for John Adams it kept him from sleeping and filled him with a nervous energy. He had first gone to find Elijah, and promised to meet his friend the next day. Finding out that he was unhurt was a great relief for him, and made him breathe a bit easier. Finally, part way through the night he drifted off in a corner in Parliament House. No one was paying him much attention.
When he came to he found that he had been laid on a light mattress and covered by a blanket. Getting up, he looked around, seeing no one until he emerged into a wide hall. There he found his father and Elijah waiting for him.
“My son! I was so worried that something had happened to you! Mr Hill told me that you were unhurt, but I couldn’t find you this morning.
“I’m fine, father,” John said, embracing Benjamin.
“Well done, Johnny,” Elijah said, shaking his hand. “This place is too nice to go up on smoke!”
John nodded, but his attention wasn’t really on matters, and he soon excused himself. He had questions, but no idea who to ask. Or rather, he knew who to ask, but no idea where to find them.
He found Lady Mendenhall overlooking the Thames. She had changed her dress, and showed no sign of the multiple wounds she had taken the previous night. At his approach she looked over at him and smiled.
“Good morning, John. Sleep well?”
“Yes, thank you. Did you…with the blanket?”
“You looked like you needed it. Me…I don’t sleep much anymore. The time when I needed it has mostly passed by. You look like you have questions about what happened last night. I think I owe you a full explanation at last of who I am, the full story.”
John nodded. “Only if you don’t mind telling me,” John said.
“I don’t. Someone else should hear it, if only to explain what I have done for four centuries.”
They moved on to the St James Club where her Ladyship was allowed to enter only after a few minutes of intense negotiation. Her Ladyship settled herself on seat and begun to speak. Most of the time she didn’t even look at John, but sometimes she did face him, judging his reactions.
“My name is not actually Angelique,” she revealed. “But for reasons that will become apparent I changed it.”
“What was it originally?”
“Tamara. My parents were great historians and my mother a feminist. She named me for the famous Georgian queen said to have led her armies into battle. It was quite a lot to live up to!”
She paused before continuing. “Your history, everything you see around you is the product of a million events and choices made in the past. Think how different your history would have been if Harold Godwinson had won the Battle of Hastings, or if King John had beaten the French instead of being humbled by them. How about if a fire had not destroyed the Palace of Westminster, killing Henry Bolingbroke before he could be crowned King?” She gave a grim little smile at that.
“Everything we know is a product of these choices, but no one will ever know the consequences of those choices. No one, except me, that is. I have seen three timelines of history, and each of them shows very different realities. Very different versions of the same basic history. Where these versions differed was in the interplay between England and France.”
“I was born in 1912, in London. I was born into a Great Britain which owned a quarter of the world, and was one of the dominant powers in the world. There were others, see France had won the Hundred Years War and English attention shifted overseas. However, without a central driving force or the continental power and resources of France they were lesser than what you have now. Either way, my parents were well off, upper middle-class gentry, my grandfather having made his money in industry. I grew up, did well at school, and then went to university despite it still being a little frowned on. My great passion was history, just like you John. The time I studied most was Reformation era England, the Tudor and Stuart monarchs…people you have never heard of, I know.”
John sat, listened. It all seemed fantastic…but he knew this was only the start.
“I graduated university with the highest marks on record for a woman. I am not boasting when I say that I was the best student of either gender there. Still, it was difficult to get my degree, and once I got it my options were limited. I wanted to get a doctorate, but I couldn’t find anyone to sponsor me. Women should know their place, it seemed. I was expected to marry someone, have kids, be a housewife. I didn’t want that, especially since I’d already come to my own conclusions regarding what I wanted in a partner.” She gave John an amused look.
John didn’t know what to say, and also didn’t really know what she meant. He said as much.
“No, I suppose not. Well, if you look hard enough you can see a pattern.”
She left it at that, and John let it go. He had an idea what she meant but it didn’t interest him as much as other things.
“I grew up in the aftermath of the ‘Great War’, a conflict that cost the lives of ten million and led to revolutions and strife across all of Europe. I was only six when it ended, but the after effects stayed with the world for a long time afterwards. A unified Germany had arisen, and from their defeat in this Great War an even more dangerous threat appeared. I finished university in 1936, and I knew that war was imminent at some stage. Thinking about this, and other things, I went to bed on the night of the 14th of October 1936. When I awoke, literally everything had changed.”
“I woke up, and can you imagine my surprise when I found that I was no longer in my own house? I looked for my parents, but they were nowhere. I was in a disused building, and when I exited onto the street the thing that stuck me was that everything was in French as well as English. I’d learnt French at school, so I could read most of this, though it was different in many ways to the one even you know. I looked quite the strange sight, wearing a light dress walking down the street dazed and confused. I didn’t know what had happened at first, and it was only after a few questions that I realised that something strange had happened. I found a bookstore and looked in it, and found the history section filled with stories of the Lady Protector, the French Kings and Directors and so on. I admit I had a breakdown from the shock, waking up in a prison.”
“They talked to me, trying to understand me, though they probably thought I was delusional. After all, there had not been an independent Britain for two centuries. I figured that they were going to ship me off to an asylum, but before they did they received a message that She was coming. I had no idea who She was, but it terrified them. I was expecting…well I don’t know what I expected. A pretty woman, older than me, entered my cell. She looked tough, cunning, strong. If I had known about women soldiers I’d have said she was definitely one. I was of course right.”
“We stared at each other for a long moment. I knew something was expected of me, so I said ‘Hi’. Not very original. ‘Do you know who I am?’ she asked in reply, and I confessed I didn’t. She asked me who the last Tudor monarch of England was, and I answered Queen Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII. Something astonishing happened. She suddenly dropped her icy posture and embraced me, kissed me even!” Angelique coughed slightly, hurrying the story on.
“She revealed to me that she was Lady Protector Talena Mazari, the power behind the Imperial French Directorate, and that she originally had come from my timeline as well. She had been visiting London, heard about the ‘mad woman’ and come to see it herself. She said she had been on the lookout for people from her timeline.”
“Of course, I learned that she was from far in the future even to me, but had been pushed back in time to 1399 and lived through until that point. She told me that she was immortal, and that she was over five hundred years old. I didn’t believe her until she did my usual trick of showing the quick regeneration of injuries off.”
“The Lady, as she was known, was widely feared. Her French Empire, headed officially by a Director, but with her really in charge, covered all of South and North America, almost all of Europe, North Africa, the Ukraine, Coastal China and parts of Japan. It was a massive state covering sixty percent of the world’s landmass. By this stage though it was no longer ‘French’, but a vast Empire covering more than Rome ever had. How, you wonder? Because she gave them weapons and ideas far in advance of their enemies, and their armies rolled over the world like a tide. Rulers, generals opposed her, but she defeated them, replaced them. Eventually she became the undisputed power, known to all, an immortal goddess ruling over them.”
Her Ladyship sighed. “I tried to avoid that. Everything I have done is to avoid becoming a tyrant like her, dominating the world. But, at the same time, I couldn’t let things just happen. I chose the middle path between anarchy and domination. There are times when I was tempted…tempted so badly to follow her. There was so much I could have told the Kings and Queens that would have made the conquest of Europe possible. Always I managed to stop myself. In the end, John, I did all this to save people, and I have. I’ve averted the terrible wars from my future and hers. Peace and prosperity reigns.”
“But might you not be causing the very danger you’re trying to prevent? Britain is the most powerful nation in the world, and if we felt like it we could try and conquer Europe.”
“It requires a lot of balance, but I can handle it.”
John looked across at this woman, ancient and yet somehow fragile. She seemed so determined to believe what she was saying. Perhaps she couldn’t countenance the fact that four centuries of work might all be for nought.
“Lady, that explains what happened to you, but how did you come here? Obviously those events never happened here.”
“No, they didn’t. I shall tell you.”
Lady Mendenhall continued. “We became close…we were each other’s only links to a lost time and place. We became…very close.” She coughed again.
“Anyway, she kept me with her, but I saw only progress, wealth, the good things. But one day I heard some servants talking about a ‘special room’, and the curiosity burned me. I simply had to find out, just like you did, I suppose. So I went to this special room and found that she was keeping a special prisoner there named Lucille, a time traveller like her. She persuaded me to release her, and she showed me the darker side of the Grand Empire. Like you I was conflicted, I didn’t know what to say. I confronted her and she saw nothing she had done was wrong. Lucille and Talena faced each other in battle, two immortals fighting, trying to gain me over to their side. Eventually Talena killed Lucille and confronted me.”
“The crisis came, and I couldn’t allow Talena to continue, no matter my feelings for her. Using a gun she had brought with her from the future…I killed her. The first person I killed was the most important to me. That is what motivates me, to not make the mistake I did.”
“Little did I know though that she had recreated her machine, and as the building went up in flames I was all alone, and had no escape…so I used it. I woke up here in London.”
As her Ladyship put her head in her hands John leaned forward. “Tamara…it’s not too late. Why not let it all go? You have all you want, why not relax the power you have? Is it really that necessary?”
“But if I do John then who knows what might happen!” she said, almost pleading.
“But that’s just it, you are not her…yet. But in fifty or a hundred years who knows? You asked for me to me your conscience, and I am saying you need to give his up…or it will destroy you.”
“It’s so hard, John. It’s all I’ve been doing for so long. Can I just leave it all behind?”
“How about you let it go for a month, then a year, then ten, then for good. Stop answering the messages, stop the intriguing. Say that your daughter is taking over like you usually do and just…well…retire.”
“I am…not sure if this is the best course. Without me…”
“Without you things might be better or worse, Lady…but people need to make their own mistakes. The Grey Eminence cannot rule forever.”
“I suppose you’re right. I have more than enough to live on. I did try….”
John stood and went to her, gently taking her hand. She looked up at him, tears on her cheek. “Thank you, Lady. You are more than welcome to visit me…I still have to take up your offer of tuition.”
“You are welcome, John, I would like that. Perhaps this is for the best.”
As John walked away his last sight of her before he headed downstairs was Tamara Grey, Angelique, the Grey Eminence sitting by herself, looking down at the table. With a heavy heart John left her, returning outside.
It was a cold winter’s morning in London, capital of the British Empire.