Timewatch by Linda Grant

Author:Linda Grant
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hay House
Published: 2014-10-19T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 21

Lady Mary Montague–Geraldine Morgan A palace in Constantinople, Turkey, 1717

* * *

It was a lovely garden, thought Geraldine, with roses, carnations, and jonquils interspersed with other flowers whose names she didn’t know. Jets of water arcing into the air fell into marble basins emptying into pools in whose hidden depths she could see the movement of silver-finned fish.

Everything felt slightly unreal: the fountains, the cypresses swaying in the gentle evening breeze, the sudden laughter of someone in the palace, and the marble bench on which she was seated.

The logic that had told her time travel was not possible had apparently been confounded because here she was, inhabiting the body of Lady Mary Montague, wife of the English ambassador to Turkey, sitting in this Turkish garden halfway around the world and several centuries away from the mission garden where she had ingested the herbs that Jeremy had left for them.

It was like something out of the Arabian Nights.

So were the fancy brocaded harem pants over which hung a kind of gauzy white silk smock and over that a white-and-gold damask waistcoat covered by a caftan of the same material. A wide belt spangled with diamonds cinched her tiny waist. On her head she wore a turban.

“Lady Mary?”

The servant coming toward her was holding her long skirts above the grass. Quelling the panic threatening to engulf her, Geraldine rose to her feet.

With the querulous look of someone who has soured on life, her maid, Emma, who had traveled with them to Turkey said, “Lady Mary, the old woman you were expecting has arrived.”

“I’m coming.” Geraldine’s initial attack of anxiety abated as information began seeping into her mind. It was amazing, she thought, how by relaxing and balancing her mind with Mary’s—although she was sure that Mary wasn’t conscious of what was going on—the words came out with the proper accent and intonation, as well as a certain phrasing.

Emma nodded at her and turned away with a jerky movement, stepping gingerly on the grass as though it were slivers of glass. This place might be a paradise, but not for Emma, living in fear of the Turks whom she thought of as heathens.

She led her into an opulent room of intricately patterned rugs, furniture inlaid with precious woods and gems, and priceless glowing lamps. Standing in the middle of the room and clutching a wooden soldier in one hand was a small boy, Lady Mary’s seven-year-old son Edward, who was staring at an elderly woman carrying a bundle.

“Mummy, is she going to hurt me?” asked Edward in a small voice.

“Darling, no!” said Geraldine as Edward threw himself at her and hugged her tightly.

“But Emma said that she would make me sick,” replied her son, his eyes big with fear as he looked at the woman who was going to inoculate him.

Her arms folded over her meager chest, Emma glared at the old woman, who was bowing awkwardly to Lady Mary and asking in halting English, “This the boy I help?”

“Does Lord Montague know of this, my lady?” interrupted Emma, her face screwed up into a frown.

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