Generally less time and energy for gardening, to be honest. I am distracted by the distant clinking and clanking of blunt steel weapons in the park down the street, where Tristan has been learning the art of the backsword from one Mortimer Shore, a local historical fencing enthusiast whom I have recruited.
Have been watching Frank and Erszebet converse, as she attempts to describe to him what her számológép does for her. For all my years of editing his papers and carrying my weight at those awkward faculty parties (in which fundamentally non-social creatures—physicists—were expected to behave like social creatures), I cannot follow most of their discussion. This is not actually due to the calculus or physics, given that Erszebet has absolutely no training in either field. It is rather that I find it exhausting to try to be essentially bilingual, which Frank is so willing to be. She speaks in her eccentric lingo and he finds ways to respond to her with very simply layman’s physics—“When you say XYZ, is that another way of saying ABC?” And she thinks, and sighs, and says she supposes so, if somebody is too thick to simply understand XYZ.
After several hours of discussion, Frank thanked her, brought home his notes, and sat down with my shaggy family heirloom to experiment with what he’d learned. He has not yet shared any of his discoveries with me—not because he is keeping it a secret, but because he most enjoys bringing me in to his work when he’s accomplished something. I believe he means to construct a számológép/quipu/shaggy-family-artifact-like object that he can use whether or not Erszebet is of a mind to cooperate with Tristan. (Although since she is the only one who can actually make time travel happen, there is no practical benefit to having a quipu unless she is cooperating. There I go being a pragmatist, which is not how Frank is wired.)
The only other item of note—besides Tristan re-training himself for period combat, which I hope he is never foolhardy enough to use—is that our two young leaders, especially Tristan, seem to be growing tense about how long this is taking. I have spent fifty years married to a man who is delightedly preoccupied with the journey, and now suddenly we are working with those who care only for the destination.
This does not, in truth, seem to match their personalities, certainly not Mel’s. It clearly originates from higher up the “food chain,” the cast of characters we met around that conference table in the Trapezoid. General Frink must be ultimately responsible; but it is Lester Holgate, Frink’s eager-beaver civilian toady, who seems to be on the other end of most of the phone calls and email threads.
LETTER FROM
GRáINNE to GRACE O’MALLEY
A Sunday of Mid-Harvest, 1601
Auspiciousness and prosperity to you, milady!
It’s mostly Tristan Lyons I’m writing of today, Your Grace, as precious few other developments there’ve been but plenty involving him. He must be in alliance with a proper witch, and depending on who and where she is, she could be useful for Your Grace.
In order for me to string this together into a proper tale I’ve had to Wend my way to all of the snáithe—the Strands—in which he has appeared to carry out the same set of deeds. As you and I understand, Your Grace, they all happened at once, as choristers in the church nave sing the same tune at the same time; but I cannot write many stories down in such a manner and so I’ll relate them one after the other, like beads on a rosary.
He has been Sent to several Strands, always on the Sunday, and always with the same task: to convince Sir Edward Greylock to move his financial interests to the East India Company, and away from some queer little joint-stock company called the Boston Council. He wants this as the cause of an effect forty years distant and all the way across the sea. He is not very forthcoming in his plans, except to assure me they have no bearing on Your Grace. I have not yet begun to pry him for important information, as I believe the longer I let him get accustomed to my cooperation, the easier will it be to twist him round my finger when it’s time. So I will continue to knit myself into his affections. I’ve offered him the occasional chance for making the beast with two backs, but he never takes me up on it. It’s a shame since he’s cleaner and better-smelling than any other fellow in the neighborhood (except my sweetheart).
It’s the same each Strand: he arrives while we are all at mass, dons the shirt and drawers I keep extra at hand, and then waits for me to return from services, when I unlock my chest and give him a few coins and Ned Alleyn’s costume pieces. To keep him in the habit of telling me things (although small things they are, for now), I pester him for information on his future world. I’ve learned things that are pleasing enough to my ear, assuming he’s not codding me. He tells me of all the saints there ever was, it’s only Padraig whose feast day is celebrated in his nation. He tells me the spirit of the Irish where he dwells is powerful, so powerful that many of our countrymen will hold a great many courtly offices, so great that it’s our luchrupán used as a talisman by a guild of men who somehow earn their living playing a game with a pig bladder (I cannot fathom how this happens, but I will query further if Your Grace requests to know it). He spends the night in the bawdy-house, and the next day we venture across the river. Tristan understands he must make the effort several times to see results. It’s four times he’s had the same conversation with the same Sir Edward Greylock at the same tavern near Whitehall. However, there have been two remarkable changes in the routine.