“A university program?”
She laughs at the notion. She can’t even read.
“Government?” Oliver doesn’t sound convinced and doesn’t seem surprised when she denies that, too.
“Are you…” He pauses, as if he doesn’t really want to know the answer to what he’s about to ask. “Are you a time traveler?”
“Time traveler?” Beatrix asks. She’s not sure how two familiar words can taste so foreign on her tongue.
Oliver nods to her clenched fist. The silver coin digs into her palm. “Look at it. It’s the one you tried to steal from me.”
She uncurls her fingers and considers the perfectly round coin. It’s not a sixpence after all. A single word is stamped over a man’s bust, a phrase engraved under his chin. She flips it over. There’s a bird with its wings spread wide and more words she can’t read. She flips it again and notices the numbers.
“One, nine, eight, six?” she asks, glancing up at Oliver.
“Nineteen eighty-six,” he says. “It’s the year it was made.”
Beatrix’s heart lurches. “That’s impossible.” It must be some kind of trick. A joke for Carnevale.
“I found it when I was a kid, digging in the garden with my dad,” Oliver says. “Somehow, it survived.”
“It survived?” What does he mean it survived? It shouldn’t even exist yet.
“For two hundred years. I thought I’d found buried treasure.” He laughs. “It’s worthless.”
“If it’s worthless, then why do you keep it?” she asks.
His gaze softens. “It’s not worthless to me.”
Beatrix turns the foreign coin in her hand. The year 1986 is the distant past to him, what Lancaut is to her now. Yet he was at the Globe with her. He is here with her now. Skipping through time like a stone on water.
Her heart sinks. Not like her at all, then.
“If you’re not traveling through time, then how are you here?” he asks. She can see him puzzling over her existence.
“It’s a long story,” Beatrix says.
Oliver’s lips twitch at the corners. “I’ve got time.”
Beatrix stares blankly at him, but he can’t fight the grin anymore.
“Sorry, I couldn’t resist.”
He waits for her to speak, but Beatrix’s guts are full of butterflies. She shakes her head. “You won’t believe me.”
“Are you going to lie to me?” he asks.
“No.” She will tell him the truth or nothing at all.
“Then I’ll believe you.”
But he doesn’t know what she is about to say, what an impossible story she’s about to tell. A story she might never have a chance to tell again. Even if he leaves her standing on this bridge—thinking she is drunk or mad or both—if he will listen, it will be worth it.
She takes a breath. “I was born on the nineteenth of July, in the year 1481.” She can see Oliver’s mind working, counting up the years she’s walked the earth.
Too many.
She looks into his expectant eyes. And then she says it. Breathes life into that bizarre, impossible sentence that has lived inside her for the last two centuries. Her voice doesn’t even tremble. “I died in 1505. On the thirteenth of June.”
