Studies in Romantic Fiction III

Ravenwood

She must have looked a sight. Her hair still wet and stringy from the rain in 21st Century London, she stepped out of an invisible spaceship into a glorious summer's day in 19th Century Winchester, polar opposites of each other. The centre of a smog-filled rainstorm to an unpolluted world with a burning sun in the sky and lush green fields all around, and the town just at the fringe of her vision. Descending the steps of Jenny's flying saucer, Clara took care to open her umbrella, the enormous black one she had to protect from sunlight. She was also wearing her longest coat and had her glasses turned to their highest intensity, and even wore a pair of leather gloves to prevent her hands from burning in case she had to reach out of the shade of her umbrella. In these cases, she thought about how profoundly lucky she was to now be cold-blooded, but she did have the unfortunate habit to begin to give off quite an odour if she spent too much time in the heat. Like a corpse.

It was midday in July, and such fine weather meant that there were people out and about, people everywhere, and she did wonder if it may have been better to come late at night. But there was the possibility that Cassandra would refuse to let her in if she arrived at night and woke them up, and Jane would be too weak to allow her in herself. Then again, she didn't look too unusual, she realised as she came upon the town, as every woman she saw who had even a little bit of money and status was also out waving a parasol. Admittedly, she was still wearing all black, but she was still hard to notice; unless she did something rash to draw attention to herself, being a vampire meant becoming a blind-spot in the eyes of most people because light passed right through her. It did not take her long to locate the house because it happened to be painted bright yellow, and because she had visited it before, a few times. She had been brought there once on a family holiday by her mother, more than twenty years ago now, before she really knew who Jane Austen was.

She knocked on the door very loudly and clearly and then stopped to wait. While she did, her phone began to buzz in her pocket, and she stole a glance at it very carefully – for she could not have the residents of 1817 seeing a mobile phone, or she would have the same fate as the rogue time traveller in that old Charlie Chaplin film – seeing it was Jenny trying to ring her. But she really couldn't answer, not in her current situation, and it was with a heavy heart that she forced herself to decline the call. It did not take long for somebody to answer the door, though, and of course it was the one person she had expected to answer.

"Cassie!" she exclaimed with a grin when Cassandra opened the door, Cassandra who cast a sickened look over her person and shook her head. She hated being called 'Cassie.' Clara forced herself to stop with her cocky smile, designed to irritate, because she became conscious of her fangs.

"To what do we owe this displeasure?" Cassandra had never forgiven Clara for so heinously seducing her younger sister. It was practically criminal.

"Your sister has requested my presence," Clara said, "And I'm always happy to offer my company."

"Yet we haven't seen your sorry face for many-a-year now, have we, Clara?" she said coolly.

"I'm surprised at you answering the door yourself, where's the maid?"

"She is gone to buy eggs," Cassandra explained. She did not make any move to let Clara in. "Are you wearing spectacles?"

"My eyesight is going in my old age," she said.

Cassandra scoffed, "Old age? You look the same as always. If a little sickly."

"For god's sake, Cassandra," a man's booming voice came from inside the house, and Henry came out of a back room she assumed must be a study holding a book, "You will be letting all of the hot air into our cool interior if you stand with that door open for any longer."

"Excuse me, Henry," said Cassandra, "It is just that we have a rather unwelcome visitor."

"Unwelcome? Who? Why… if my eyes do not deceive me, am I looking upon Miss Clara Oswald? Is she returned to our hospitality? How wonderful, Jane will be thrilled." This was Henry Austen, their brother – though, the two girls did have six brothers. More siblings than even in Oswin's enormous family.

"Jane is resting, Henry."

"Nonsense, she has been begging the maid to bring her eggs all morning, wretched girl. She will be quite alright to hold a conversation. Let her in, won't you? No use standing around idle in this heat. We do not want two sick women to deal with do we, Cassandra?"

"Yes, brilliant, let me in, please?" Clara said, "You know, invite me."

"You normally push straight past me."

"I've changed," Clara said. I've become a vampire and now I have to be invited in to places, to make it harder for me to feast on the blood of the innocent. "Please, Cassandra?" Between the two of them, that was the equivalent of grovelling. Literally grovelling, hands and knees.

"Fine. You can come in."

"Thanks," said Clara, closing her umbrella and coming inside, relieved to be out of the sun. She was already exhausted, but weather like this made her dreadfully lethargic. She didn't wait for Cassandra to give her directions, just high-tailed it up the stairs, jumping the last few, before she could get another word in. Even if she hadn't been to the house before, to that very room, the smell of death was something she recognised well and knew how to follow. It was July 12th, 1817, and Jane Austen's date of death was exactly one week away. She knocked tentatively on the wooden door and strained her ears. She heard a cough and a voice trying to tell her to come in, one she made not have heard at all were she human.

But she was interrupted, interrupted by her phone going off again, for the second time in some ten minutes. She checked and again saw it was Jenny – was she okay? Clara again was forced to decline, but unlocked her phone to text Jenny asking what was wrong. She couldn't be in grave danger if she was repeatedly calling – she was probably just trying to find out if she needed to get any milk on the way home, or something. Clara would also expect a call from James Elliott if something devastating had happened.

After putting her phone away, Clara braced herself and entered the room, which was gloomy and warm with the curtains drawn closed over the summer afternoon. And there was Jane, Jane who was still, in her final days, a damn sight prettier than that ghastly sketch Cassandra had done eons ago which was the only trace of her likeness to survive. Cassandra had never been a particularly good artist, for all her trying with her watercolours. It pained Clara a great deal to see Jane wasting away, grey and aching. It must be obvious to everybody who saw her that she was about to die, and she was only forty-one, some seven or so years older than Clara. But she looked older now, though her expression still lit up when she saw it was Clara come to see her.

"Am I hallucinating?" she asked hoarsely. Clara smiled slightly, trying not to look sad, and pulled up the chair from the writing desk in the corner. On it, she spied the same manuscript she had just been delivered, completed and wrapped up, waiting to be delivered to her in two hundred years.

"Nope, not at all," Clara said, "I got your message."

"Was it published?"

"No. Only the first twelve chapters, under a different title. Cassie wouldn't let anything compromising get out," she sat down at Jane's side.

"I didn't know where I should send it."

"You can write the instructions now, I suppose," Clara said, "It must be one of those completing-cycles things. Where they happen backwards. Happens a lot in my line of work."

"Time travelling?"

"Exactly," Clara said.

"Then it must really be happening. I must be dying. If I wasn't, you wouldn't have come."

"I would have," Clara argued, "Anytime. It's not my fault you live before telephones exist."

"But I'm dying?"

"You know you're dying, Jane," Clara said softly, "You wouldn't have asked for me like that otherwise. With your love letter. Which was incredibly romantic, so, props to you. Pat yourself on the back. But I'm not here to rekindle anything."

"I think it's still there, rekindling unnecessary." Clara laughed.

"You would think that."

"Help me sit up."

"Is that a good idea?" Clara asked.

"I always have good ideas," she said. Which was ridiculous, she often had dreadful ideas, indecent ones that made Cassandra wonder how the pair of them were even related – though really, Jane and Cassandra were thick as thieves and always had been, despite Cassandra's monumental horror at what had gone on between her sister and Clara. Clara leaned over and helped sort out the pillows, propping Jane up through she was still terribly sickly. "I am ready now."

"Ready for what?"

"For you to tell me everything, of course, my dearest! Where have you been, what have you seen? You seem very different, vastly so, from the last time we spoke. These spectacles, for one thing. And yet, strangely, you remain looking like yourself, as if a painting. Yourself but changed."

"Yeah, I have changed…" she sighed, "Here, give me your hand." Jane lifted her hand above her bed sheets and Clara took it, clammy and shaking.

"My word! You are like ice. Is my fever so developed?"

"No, no. It's me. I'm cold. I'm dead. I died."

"So you are a dream."

"I'm not a dream. I'll tell you a story. There's this monster, you won't have heard of it right now, no-one's really going to know about it for seventy years yet. This folklore, a creature, called a vampire. Most people will tell you it comes from Eastern European legends, but really, it's from everywhere. Always these myths about monsters who look like our deceased loved ones come back to life, they feed on human blood, they're nocturnal – it's sort of a theme. You could find it if you looked into it, this universal fear of things that look familiar, but they're evil. Except… it's not a story. Just like things that come from outer space and other planets, and people who can travel back from the future and tell you all kinds of secrets aren't stories, either. These vampires, they're real, and I went to Whitby in the 1880s and there was an entire group of them living there, preying on innocent people, breaking out of mausoleums and living in the catacombs underneath the abbey. And one of them bit me, and when they bite you… they make you into one of them. They don't age, they don't decay, they stay young and live forever."

"I could never believe that my Clara has become a monster."

"Well, no, 'monster' is a very subjective term, I suppose," she said, feeling her phone vibrating in her pocket again, though she made up her mind to merely ignore it, "But, I'm one of them."

"A creature? Who feasts on human blood? Is nocturnal? It's the middle of the day, in summer."

"I'm braving it all for you," she said, before she realised how much that sounded like she was giving Jane false hope about becoming lovers again. That was out of the question, and not just because she wasn't single – but also because she absolutely couldn't have a relationship with a human. Not without being at risk of killing them. "I'm fine. I've got my umbrella to hide from the sun, I've got these glasses – that's what they do, block out sunlight."

"What happens when you go into the sunlight?"

"Oh, I get migraines, but if I stay out for longer than a few minutes I start to burn. I'd die eventually. Maybe twenty minutes maximum of direct sunlight? And that's only because I get blood from a special source with… extra nutrients. Normally I'd burn immediately."

"All of those summer afternoons we spent together… do you recall when we went strawberry picking? That was a splendid time, I truly enjoyed it."

"I enjoyed it when we snuck away together for a while," Clara said wryly.

"Oh, stop. Is that all you think about?"

"It generally seems to be."

"You are a scoundrel, Clara Oswald, you truly are. Perhaps you are a monster after all." She laughed, looking at Jane's hand in hers. She was only half there, though, the rest of her was worrying about Jenny and her persistent phone calls. Maybe things weren't okay? Maybe she should answer the next one… "If I heard you correctly, one bite and eternal life is granted?"

"Don't get any ideas, I didn't come here to give you the 'gift.' You can't eat garlic, and you can't go to church or read the bible or have anything to do with religion."

"Religion?"

"Some people would call me a demon," Clara said, "Religion is not really as big of a thing in England in the future. I've got nothing against it, I just can't have anything to do with it at all. Can't even look at a crucifix. Plus, you know, I'm not sure you would like drinking human blood."

"We would be together for always, though. I could just continue living, until one day I would catch up with you, and I would know all the things you speak of. I would have lived them myself."

"You're wasting your breath, I've never turned anyone and I'm not going to start. Besides, I…" Again, she felt her phone buzz and she bit her lip. Jane had seen her phone before, she knew what it did – it was everyone else in the century she had to hide it from. "I have to take a call right now, I'm sorry." Clara let go of her hand and walked away from the bed, into the corner of the room as she answered.

"Clara? Oh my god!" Jenny exclaimed down the phone.

"What? What's the matter?" Clara asked urgently, hoping she was not going to be asked to go and retrieve Jenny from a hospital – again – after she received some minor injury. She hoped she was okay.

"Nothing – I mean – I just-"

"You've called me six times today – I'm kind of busy, Jen," Clara said softly. She was trying to get Jenny off the phone as soon as possible, if only because it was just plain rude to talk to someone on the phone for a long time when you were with somebody else, but she was trying to be gentle about it.

"Busy how? I thought you were staying in."

"Something came up."

"Something like what?" Jenny was pressing her for information, but why? God – Clara thought – she hadn't worked out about the proposal, had she? Maybe she had found the receipt for the ring, or Nios had let something slip – or Cohen. Jenny saw Dr Cohen all the time at work, and Clara didn't know how much Nios had told Cohen about her proposal plans. And Cohen could not lie.

"Just something – listen, is this important?" Clara asked quickly, wanting to get to the bottom of if Jenny was okay or not.

"It's just – we've carried out a major drug bust and solved this case, it was this alien medicine, see, and-"

"Yeah, that's brilliant, I'm proud of you, can you tell me about it later, yeah? I'm really in the middle of some-"

"Who is it you are talking to?" Jane interrupted from her bed, and Clara covered the microphone for a second.

"Just a second," she hissed at Jane, then went back to Jenny, "Jenny, I'm sorry-"

"I've got the rest of the day off now, and tomorrow, all my leave reinstated. Where are you? I can drive over, and-"

"You can't," Clara said quickly. She was sure she sounded very suspicious, but she had to tell Jenny in person about having to go and see Jane.

"Why not? Where are you?" Jenny continued to press, with an odd tone in her voice. A cold one, full of edge – as if Clara was being interrogated. It irritated her a little. What was she being accused of, exactly? Of wanting to marry her girlfriend?

"Why should it matter where I am?" she sounded a bit snippy herself now.

"I-"

"I'm sorry, lovely – I really am. I'll talk to you later, okay? We've got a lot to talk about…" she was still thinking about her proposal plans and her reservations at the seafood place, "We'll go out for dinner. I'll see you soon. I love you." She hung up and put her phone away.

"You love a girl named Jenny now?" Jane asked, "Is 'Jenny' short for 'Jane'?"

"It has twice as many syllables, and no, I've never heard of anybody calling someone 'Jenny' as short for 'Jane,'" Clara sighed and came to sit back down. "I was just about to tell you, honest – she's been calling all day, that's all, I thought something was wrong." To Clara's surprise, Jane didn't seem upset about Clara having moved on. She smiled a little, in the way old friends did when they met after a long time and found they still clicked. She supposed it was a lot like that, really.

"Tell me about her."

"Oh, she's… great. I mean, she's wonderful. Incredible. Brilliant. She's just… she's beautiful, as well," Clara said, feeling a smile creep onto her face, "She's the Doctor's daughter."

"Really!" Jane began to laugh at this revelation, but her laughter quickly descended into an unpleasant coughing fit and Clara held her shoulders to stop her from convulsing too much with the effort. She fell onto Clara's shoulder and Clara let her stay leaning there, at least for the time being. "Scoundrel," she murmured. Clara smiled. "A true rogue. Your dearest friend's daughter."

"I don't really see him anymore. At all. Not for a long time. Not the Doctor you met, at any rate."

"If that is so, how did you reach me today?" Jane said, lifting her head from Clara's shoulder and falling against the pillows again.

"Oh, Jenny's got a time machine of her own, I've borrowed it."

"Is she much like her father?"

"Well, she's infinitely kind, infinitely brave, she's a genius – she can speak every language in the universe. She's a trained chef, she was an acrobat before, now she works for the police, in the future. She's a detective, solves crimes."

"My word. How could I compete?"

"Well, she's very jealous of you," Clara said, "I forgot to say – I think they did it after the last time I saw you – they've put your face on ten pound notes. I've got one, actually…" Clara dug around in her pocket and found a ten pound note, one of the new plastic, waterproof ones, and showed it to Jane, who was in awe. "Jenny always says, how could she compete with a woman whose face everyone in England carries around with them? But I've got a thousand pictures of Jenny on my phone so I carry her around with me, too. As well as you."

"May I keep this?"

"No you may not – I don't think it's biodegradable. It won't rot and then somebody might find it," Clara said, snatching it back, "Your vanity knows no bounds. The drawing isn't even a particularly good likeness." She put it away again, but as she did her fingers touched the ring she still had on her.

"I don't see any good reason why this girl of yours should envy me. How old is she?"

"She's going to be two-hundred-and-fifteen in a few months, actually," Clara said, "She doesn't age, either. And because she's an alien, I'll never want to drink her blood."

"I must say, this sounds like a perfect match – the sort of match only I could have dreamt up, in all my wisdom."

"Yes, your famous wisdom. I'll tell you a secret."

"Do confess."

"I was going to propose this morning. You know how I'm always telling you women can get married to each other in the future?"

"You were going to? What changed your mind?"

"Nothing, she got called into work, that's all. It's not like crime stops in London just because I want to get married," she joked. "Do you want to see the ring? It'd be nice to know what you think."

"Then show it to me," she managed a smile. Clara was beaming with the excitement of showing off this ring, of just the thought of her incoming proposal. She heard somebody knocking very loudly on the front door downstairs, and looked around. "That will only be the maid returning with the eggs. I ran her out awfully quickly, she most likely forgot to take her key." Clara assumed Jane was probably right, and so tried to block out the noise from downstairs as she fidgeted in her pocket. "I never would have thought you would propose to somebody."

She laughed, "Neither did I, really. But Jenny's oblivious. She can't even deduce her own feelings, let alone somebody else's. I have to do everything. And she had a bad experience, with her ex-husband – he never got her a ring and she's always been upset about it…" there were loud voices now, Clara thought Henry had come back out of his study again. "Here it – bollocks…" she had dropped the ring on the floor in the dark room. She looked around to see if she could see it glinting, and thought she spotted it near the foot of the bed on the floorboards. "Hold on."

"I am."

She pushed back her chair and knelt on the floor, picking the ring up.

"Here," she stayed on the floor and showed it to Jane. "It's-"

The door was thrown open with such verve Clara thought it had been kicked very violently. She had been trying to ignore the noise and so hadn't heard anybody come up the stairs, and so jumped when this intrusion occurred. They had been gravely wrong, however, about who had been at the door downstairs, for it was none other than her girlfriend – her lovely, wonderful girlfriend – with her face contorted in a dreadful expression of pure rage, horror, upset and envy, standing their gawking at the scene. And it was then that Clara realised what the scene was – that Jenny had just barged in on her kneeling at Jane Austen's bedside holding a diamond engagement ring, after a rather frosty phone call where Clara had refused to disclose her whereabouts or activities.

"Jenny!" she exclaimed, meeting those blue eyes that had never looked so cold and angry before. "…Shit."