Saira had a dream.
That, in itself, was not unusual. She supposed she had dreams like anyone else. As she slept, her Gift lay dormant alongside her like a stuffed child's toy, or the lavender sachet under her pillow. It was there when she fell asleep. It was there when she woke.
In Saira's dreams, she knew nothing of the duplicitous nature of people. Like every other girl, she was in awe of an innocent touch and blushed at a well-intentioned pleasantry directed at her appearance. She swooned at the attention of dashing young men and believed every word that came out of their mouths. Sometimes she would wake in a panic, wondering if she had lost the ability to See true intentions, or terrified that she had, in her sleep, agreed to accept a farce of a life filled with bitterness and misplaced trust.
But last night, she was standing at a wall of thorns, full blooms crisscrossing along the high wall and disappearing between the iron bars of the locked gate that led to somewhere beyond.
It took moments after she woke, or maybe moments in her dream, or maybe the entire dream because time was different in dreams, to realize that she'd seen this garden gate before. It drew her in like a moth to a candle, but she dared not shake the bars or call out. Something deep inside of her let her know that even in this dream, no matter what she did or said, she had no power to open the gate and walk through it to the garden beyond.
As before, what distinguished this dream from all other dreams was its vibrant, living color.
For an entire week, she'd kept her eyes open. In the streets, near the coffeehouse, and anywhere in town, she kept looking for the curious young man with the colorful vision. Never did she catch sight of him or his mesmerizing green eyes, or feel a jolt as she brushed past people in the streets.
Hoisting the overstuffed satchel to her shoulder, she passed the Roman columns outside the Assembly Rooms like one would a stranger, pretending that she held no grudge against their unwelcoming stance after her mother's passing. In time, that wouldn't matter. She wouldn't have to impress anyone. In boy's clothes, no one looked at her twice anyway as she scooted between buildings and entered through the side doors. Inside, steam rose from the large rectangular pool, and Saira swept past lounging bodies and into the steamy hallway between the atriums.
Back here, everyone dressed in loose clothing to account for the heat. She shoved herself against the stone, pressing her satchel close as a man with a large stack of towels brushed by, followed by a woman with an arm full of white robes. Two men who looked like doctors carried a large buckled case between them and a young lad scurried behind with a gilded ceramic urn, with the inscription 'Leeches' on its lid.
She chose the smallest of the closets, tiny as a broom cupboard, and ducked inside, barely able to close the slatted door behind her. Almost standing on top of the satchel, she shook out her skirts and slipped them on. Since she was on her own, she was glad that she hadn't packed the padding. Her skirts had absorbed moisture from the thick air and were heavy enough without the stuffed rolls. When she had shimmied into the dress, she seated the veil over her head without a mirror to adjust it properly. These were visitors to the city, she reminded herself. Her disguise didn't have to be perfect when she had little chance of meeting them ever again.
Word had spread of her off season Sittings in Bath. A small group from Regent's Park who had come to take the waters had also inquired about The Shroud - the idea of comforting both body and spirit in the same location appealing to them. She didn't know how her aunties had finegaled this encounter, only that she was obliged to appear since these ladies had paid handsomely in advance.
She'd passed the Roman Baths many times, but she had been too young, too healthy, and later, too occupied with saving every coin her father didn't waste to consider ever coming here for herself.
Auntie Bava would enjoy the Baths, Saira thought. She often lounged in the summers in the garden on the chaise in the full sun. The steam and the heat would do well to unwind Auntie Rame as well. Open her pores. Relax her mind. Quit her from worrying over every little thing.
One day, Saira thought. One day they'd have a spa day for just themselves, when their worries were over and they were mistresses of their own fates.
The Queen's Bath was thankfully cooler than the corridors, and Saira breathed in the refreshing air as she stepped into the atrium. Everything clung to her skin in the dampness, and she hoped the petticoat bunching at her ankles wasn't too noticeable. Three older ladies sat on the edge of the pool, dangling their legs in the water. They nodded at her as she entered, and Saira guessed by the canvas gowns they wore, that they wouldn't be likely to judge her appearance.
Saira set up her candle on the bench and waited for one of them to approach her. Then she lit her candle, and they asked their questions.
It was easy enough to answer questions of health and vitality, when these women so clearly were taking care of themselves. They would live to their maximum ages. They would continue to enjoy their lives and their friendships, and spend their husbands' money for satisfactions they otherwise wouldn't receive.
And they did not ask about their worries over their children's happiness, or the in-fighting between cousins relating to the upcoming reading of a grandfather's will. Saira Saw these worries, and if they had inquired, she'd have told them the truths they already knew: that their children's happiness depended on their children and not themselves. That the cousins would continue to make unpleasant noises no matter what the will declared. That when people were desperate or lonely or upset, they were going to do whatever they wanted, no matter what anyone told them.
These women had lived long enough to leave those worries unspoken and concentrate on the matters of themselves and each other. It was easy to be content with a comfortable future, she supposed. These ladies had won the game: non-demanding husbands, sizeable accounts, and land for days. Each of them could live for half a year on their secondary properties and avoid their other halves without even trying.
But they were also lucky, because not too many ladies married well in every sense of the word. She'd Seen into enough unguarded minds to know that only a small portion of Englishmen were of the pliable, affable and non-demanding type. Most men's idea of a 'good arrangement' had nothing to do with being equitable or of one mind as the law suggested.
Saira was about to pack her candle away and be done, when the third woman rose from the water and dripped over to the benches. After drying her hands, the woman fished around in her robe pocket and pulled out a folded note and a large gold coin that glinted in the steam-filtered light.
"I have one more question, on behalf of my husband."
Saira eyed the Guinea with interest. "One coin, one question," she whispered. Without a basket at her feet, Saira gestured to her lap, where the woman placed the coin and sat down across from her. Once again, Saira lit the candle and waited.
The woman eagerly unfolded the note, which to Saira's dismay was a schedule for London's next horse race. "Can you show me the winner?"
Of all the inquiries she'd ever heard, the people of Bath had to know by now that The Shroud's services did not include speculation. Even if she had Bhurja bark and marked it with a bolt of lightning, she would never pretend that what she Saw was a certain, unchangeable future. It would be like making the dangerous assumption that if she dressed like the dark goddess, she would have the power to prevent evil from taking over the world.
The Guinea felt like an unwelcome weight in her lap. No one had ever demanded the return of their coin. Oh, but maybe that's why they kept asking: because no one wanted to admit that they'd not gotten the answer they paid for. She'd seen firsthand how mixing audacity with greed ruined lives, and kept hoping that one day they would stop asking such things. Until then, she would use the bishop's words that she'd overheard while passing by the Octagon Chapel last summer.
Saira leaned close, making sure that the other ladies in the room wouldn't be privy to her response. It wasn't up to her to share her answers with anyone but the person right in front of her. She pressed the offensive clipping back into the woman's lap and held her gaze.
The woman eagerly leaned closer until their foreheads almost touched. "Yes?" she asked.
"Gambling is the devil's play," Saira said softly, and snuffed the candle out.
Black lace clung to her moist cheeks as she moved down the steamy corridors between the rooms. It had almost been the most pleasant Sitting she had done in a long while, until that last question. The woman did not retrieve her Guinea from Saira's lap, and so she had stowed it away, the cool metal fitting into her pocket like it belonged there.
And then, in the bowels of the Bathhouse, a distinctive tingling sensation ran up her spine. Saira looked up from counting her steps to the ladies' changing room and almost squeaked in surprise.
She made out trousers first, buttoned by thick suspenders over lean shoulders, a bulky metal tool in one hand, a sloshing bucket in the other. Through the steam, she recognized the unmistakable gait. Instead of meeting him head-on, Saira rushed into the small closet and closed the door, avoiding him like a child ducking her nurse to avoid a morning tonic.
How could the young man she'd accosted in the street last week be coming down the same hall as she, down here in the underground of Bath's largest public pools? It served her right, since she'd shamefully followed him last week. Maybe he had guessed who she was, and now he was following her?
Hiding wasn't cowardly if she was doing him a favor, was it?
Yes, that was right. He didn't need more of her unsolicited words, and she didn't need to touch him, just to feel that jolt again to experience her mind exploding in color. It was silly to even assume that it might even happen a second time.
Oh, but she wanted to find out.
Her world had been in a relentless fog ever since that day. No matter how brightly the sun shone or how hard the wind blew, everything around her appeared gray, gray and more shades of gray. If she could figure out how her Gift had turned colors, and whether touching him again would bring them back…
No, just leave him be. He is none of your business.
She slipped out of her skirts and shoved them into her bag, hastily pulling on the breeches, nearly upsetting a stack of towels with her restless elbows. Her aunties would be there soon to collect her. She needed to be ready for them.
Footsteps echoed along the stone passageway as Saira tugged on the buckle that barely fastened around the bulging satchel. She looked up in time to see him through the slats in the door as he came back from wherever he had gone moments before. He stopped mere feet from her closet hideout, reached into the bucket and began wringing out a large piece of white cloth with streaks of black all over it. It looked a little like a torn robe that the patrons might have worn. He swore at the puddle he'd made on the floor, called the robe all manner of rude names, and shook his hands in the air to rid them of the dampness. Then he was on his way again, bucket in his hand, swagger in his step, and another string of curses spilling out of his mouth.
For some unforsaken reason, Saira cracked the door to watch him pass.
***"Shouldn't they be more, I don't know? Pointy?"
Five gestured to the collection of round-tipped metal rods that lay in a heap at the entrance to the King's Bath. The large atrium spread out before him, a swimming pool the size of Sir Newman's front garden. It was so early that only a handful of patrons had entered, wading to their waists in the hot water. Another lounged on a bench near the entrance where the curious rods lay.
He stood knee-deep in the water by the nearest sluice gate, fishing a robe out of the grate with a long handled scrub brush. Five blinked rapidly to clear his vision through the steamy air, still running on the fumes of adrenaline and coffee. He'd left Green Park in the wee hours, woke up to Torchbearer's nose in his face, and then brunched with Sir Newman, who miraculously still had a room. One night in a soft bed was not enough to overcome four nights on a horse. But Five couldn't pass up the opportunity that Sir Newman had laid in his lap that morning. Though, if he'd known it would involve searching through steam-filled rooms for a plumbing issue, he'd have dressed differently.
And honestly, he'd never seen anything like the strange pile of decorative iron bars laying in a heap by the wall. They looked like they had been pointed at one time, with small cannonball-shaped tips soldered on as an afterthought.
"Do you take me for a colonial sympathizer?" the lounging man asked. He tightened his grip on the small towel that barely met at his midsection. "If the King commands that all of England's deflectors have cannon shapes atop them, who am I to argue?"
The man who had spoken might have benefitted from two towels instead of just the one to fully cover his portly shape, but Five was in no position to either comment on or rectify the issue, so he let it slide.
Usually, Lords, Barons and whatnot, would feign offense rather than strike up a conversation with 'the help', but the title "Bath Engineer" had been suitable enough for an exchange of words. Specifically, because the so-called Engineer was so ill-advised on the shape and function of the King's lightning rods.
"Why would he do that?" Five asked, earning himself disdainful looks from the men in the pool. It shouldn't surprise him when, in the four years he'd been living in this backwards place and time, he encountered something of history that he'd never heard of. As a matter of fact, he should be surprised that it didn't happen more often. Yet the little things always threw him… such as blunted lighting rods.
"As Lord Burton explained, His Majesty prefers them rounded, so as not to attract frequent strikes," another of the party called from the water, and then turned to his cohorts, signaling with his bare back that Five's brief inclusion in a conversation of Peers had come to an end.
Five just couldn't leave it alone. To the surprise of the whole room, he spoke up again. "But that's the whole point of…"
A servant coughed politely to Five's left, seemingly having appeared out of nowhere. "My Lords," he addressed the room (with the exception of Five) the leeches are prepared."
Five did his best to hold his groan silent as the gentlemen waded to the steps and ambled out of the steaming water.
"Best not to question the King in certain company," one of them said in passing. "Not too long ago, one could lose his head for such a thing."
Turning to the servant, the first man, apparent owner of said rods, gestured to the pile. "Take them to my carriage, would you?" Then to his companions he added, "If the colonies want to invite frequent attacks from the heavens with their pointed rods, so be it!"
Five decided that if these gentlemen still put their faith in the healing power of leeches, there was no use getting into the physics of electrical currents.
"Yes, yes, Lord Burton. Quite so," they chorused, throwing disdainful looks towards Five.
As the last of the dripping entourage disappeared into the next room, he did a quick double-take. Lord Burton, they'd said. Was that not the father of Daniel's tea shop lady friend?
Pondering this new mental connection, Five made his way from the sweat rooms down the passages that were fitted with small closeted areas for the tools and materials needed to maintain the Baths. Hinged doors fitted into the stone hid buckets and basins and scrub brushes only seen by the servants once the patrons had gone. Because if they saw the means by which the enterprise was run and maintained, it would take away from the ambience that everything happened around them with silent, invisible hands.
Five didn't mind the invisible part. In fact, he preferred it.
Sir Newman had set him up once again, billing Five as a "worthy Engineer" who could fix the slow-draining Baths single handedly within the day. He'd only agreed if he could remain nameless. First, because he didn't want a reputation as a journeyman, and second, he didn't want the official journeymans' wrath for taking their work if he ever ran into them. "Passing through," he had planned to say if anyone asked for his card. Or they could contact the city's licensed journeymen next time, half of whom, according to Sir Newman, weren't worth their salt.
The sweaty work was much more suited to October weather than the heat of August, but either way, one was going to be hot and wet, or cold and wet. Five took on this job to pass the time. And to get the money, of course. Who knew that Engineers in this period were so inclined to charge thrice the pay of journeymen? Sir Newman did and had set him to task, which Five had already sussed out. Three robes had wedged into the southernmost sluice gate. Thankfully, the King's Bath was now clear, but as he did his rounds to the rest of the baths, he expected to find more discarded garments clogging up the drains. All he had to do was wait for the baths to close for the day, and then assist the servants with their task of opening the sluice gates and fishing out the robes before they got sucked through the pipes.
Five finally got the heavy fabric wrapped around the pole and hefted it out of the water. It made a disgusting plop into the bucket, and smelled like a cross between moldy cheese and rotting fish.
After today, Five would be in the unlikely position of choosing the location of his next employment. Of the four gates he'd had his eye on, three had issued bids for his time, which was as freakishly surprising as it was thrilling. Naturally, he'd countered with an offer to do them consecutively, after which he would need at least a week's worth of sleep in Newman's guest suite to regain his sanity. He hoped Daniel would be up for spending that much time on the back of a horse, but had a certain amount of surety that his friend would go along with it.
Inevitably, the turnpike guards he and Daniel had trained would spill their secrets to each other - and then Five's services would no longer be needed. Jump while the iron is hot, and other colorful phrases ran through his mind, along with the calculations of residual income over the next six months - all short-lived, but highly profitable. Once that money went into investments, he would be well on his way to his comfortable future.
Speaking of comfort, the new sleeping arrangements had paid off. Not in coin because nothing was cheaper than Daniel's room - but in other ways, which once Five had experienced them, he acknowledged were worth the cost. Five could stop worrying about noisy evening coach traffic, domestic disputes through the paper-thin walls, or errant burglars rifling through his possessions. Newman's property was well away from the bustling city, and his butler was a solid man who wouldn't allow ruffians on the property without a fight.
Five's job prospects were looking up. His move had been beneficial. He had almost stopped looking over his shoulder at every turn. Almost. Maybe this girl was a one-time thing, an anomaly. He should be relieved. And yet…
It had been a week since he'd seen her. A week of nothing in the papers, (nothing he'd been looking for - though he had run across a juicy society column about the Baron Burton, who he'd just met, and some low-key feud with the London Knapps, who he had never heard of) and no one calling him out in the coffeehouse or on the street.
He hefted the bucket filled with heavy, wet fabric and made his way through the back corridor, cursing as it knocked into his legs with every step. He set the bucket down and tried to wring out some of the water, but it just made a murky puddle on the floor. Five cursed at the mess, then at the stench on his hands, then threw the mess back in the bucket and continued on.
If someone was looking for him, they'd have to work harder now, and that was all there was to it. He climbed the stairs, set the bucket down at the end of the corridor to retrieve later and turned to go back around to check the northern sluice gates. Five was doing well of keeping focused, and was just about to congratulate himself on how industrious his mind had been, when he saw the cap and hair up ahead. It could be the work of the steam and heavy condensation, but it wasn't just the cap that he saw through the water vapors, it was also the same breeches, the same crumpled shirt… the same boy that was not a boy coming out of the ladies' changing room, carrying a bulging leather satchel on her shoulder.
Of all the places in Bath, why was she here?
Five knocked himself out of his stupor and rushed at the boyish form. He grabbed one of her arms and pressed them both back into the tiny closet. She tried to bolt, but he twisted his fingers into the strap of her satchel.
She tugged against his grip. "Let me go!" she hissed through the steam. Five tugged back, and pulled her satchel back into the tight space, and her along with it. The poor strap gave way, the bag sprang open, and a large ball of fabric tumbled to the floor in a heap.
At that moment, heavy footsteps hurried down the corridor towards them. Five put a finger to his lips and worked the door to the closet closed with them tucked inside, his back pressing against a row of long handled floor scrubbers hanging on the wall behind him. When he turned to face her, he was met with the same dark eyes from before, and her mouth open in a surprised, soundless "oh".
A mix of panic and indignation played across her features as they stared silently at each other in the dim light through the slats in the door. Warm air puffed around them. Whoever it was in the corridor passed in quickened strides, and when the footsteps faded, Five let out a breath he didn't even know he was holding.
This girl. For a week, this girl had been in his head, where he'd thought up a million things he would do, a thousand questions he would ask, and suddenly, he couldn't recall any of it.
When he didn't move, she crouched to her knees with a muffled sob and started gathering the dark fabric back into her satchel with the broken strap. Five knelt next to her and tried to help. He picked up a wad of black lace and handed it to her. Then a black glove. And then another… And then a black stocking, which was warm and stretched, as if it had just been worn… which she took with a reddening face.
And then he knew. He'd bet his entire investment account that there was a veil somewhere in that satchel. And layers and layers of black on black skirts.
"You're her," he said with a mix of awe and incredulity. "You're The Shroud."