Madman's Dance (Time Rovers #3)(79)

Keats’ breath caught in his chest as Justice Hawkins donned the black cap.

“You will be taken hence to the prison in which you were last confined and from there to a place of execution where you will be hanged by the neck until you are dead and thereafter your body buried within the precincts of the prison. May the Lord have mercy upon your soul.”

The Chaplain murmured, “Amen.”

Keats sank into the chair, proud of his defiance. By evening, his final statement would be in all the papers. There would be hell to pay in Parliament as questions were asked and answers avoided. At long last, this festering sore would be laid open to the world.

He nodded to himself, pleased. He’d done all he could.

That’s what being a copper is all about.





Chapter 25




2058 A.D.

TEM Enterprises

Time passed. A new year began. The shrinks came and went less frequently now. That was a blessing. Cynda had begun a sand drawing, just on a whim, but it had taken hold of her. The sand dragon now had wings and a massive tail. It seemed to her that the more it grew, so did she. Somehow the two were connected.

Like a jagged wound, her mind continued healing in little patches. One moment she wouldn’t remember the name of an object or a person, and then it would be there. Sometimes she’d forget it again, but more frequently the words found a suitable niche in her muddled mind.

Hours working the sand and doing Tai Chi with Morrisey had calmed the fire ants under her skin. It hadn’t gone smoothly. Some days she would rant at him, furious when she couldn’t remember a move he’d patiently taught her over and over. Other days it went better. Memory was still an issue. Always would be.

“Time is a great healer,” Morrisey often said whenever things seemed rough for her. Cynda often wondered at his endless patience. She couldn’t help but notice there was more gray at his temples now.

At Morrisey’s suggestion she’d begun another tradition: every night she asked the computer to pull up a few of her run reports. It seemed to be the best means to fill a few more holes in her past and for her to understand what kind of person she’d been. What it was like to be a Rover. When Ralph had realized what she was doing, he’d taken to joining her. He said it was in case she had any questions. She suspected it had more to do with loneliness than anything.

The reports read like fiction. Could she have rescued a half-dozen tourists from lions in a Roman Coliseum, or spent time in the court of King Henry the Eighth? The old Jacynda Lassiter had dined in the same room as Elizabeth the First, watched the defeat of the Spanish Armada. She’d been at the Battle of Trafalgar and witnessed Lord Nelson felled by a sniper’s bullet, and later, his corpse being packed into a water cask filled with brandy for the mournful journey to England.



“You’re frowning a lot,” Ralph observed over the sound of the vintage music coming out of his equally vintage headphones. He’d never taken to the ear implants. “Something bugging you?” She mimed for him to take them off, and he complied.

“Is this all true?” Cynda asked, gesturing toward the screen.

“For the most part. You didn’t always put everything in the reports, though. TPB can come down hard on a Rover if they think something was weird about a run.” Ralph was rapidly becoming her personal bellwether. He seemed to relish the role. It was a way for them to mend the rift between them.

“It’s all weird, as far as I can see.”

He chuckled. “I’ll give you that.” The headphones went back on. His face settled into a smile and he began tapping his fingers in time to the music. He’d said it was a band called Jefferson something or other.

She began reading through the final few reports, which covered her tours of duty in Victorian London and her encounters with two gentlemen: Dr. Alastair Montrose and Detective-Sergeant Jonathon Keats. When she’d finished, she asked Ralph about them.

“Montrose sent you home,” he explained, headphones off again. “I’m still amazed a Victorian pulled that off. Of course, the boss didn’t breathe a word about that to TPB; they’d have gone nuts.”

Montrose. The kind man who’d wept for me. The doctor looked back at her from a scan of a vintage photograph taken when he’d graduated from medical school. Nattily dressed, he radiated confidence, but she thought she saw hidden pain behind the celebratory image.

With a wave of her hand, the screen changed. Now hanging in the air above the keyboard was a photograph of Jonathon Keats. The twinkle in his eye seemed to call to her. “And this sergeant guy?”



“You helped him recover some explosives.”

Her gut told her there was more to it than that. Ralph was right: not everything went into the run reports.

“Handsome,” Cynda murmured. Both of them. Suddenly, she could see herself walking arm and arm along a street with Keats as her exuberant escort. Had he been courting her, then? Possibly. The pleasant memory withered: now she saw herself inside a carriage as he lay dying in her lap after some street battle. She closed her eyes, still feeling the brush of his kiss on her lips. Tears began to form. She fought them back, not wanting her friend to see them.

Just then, a name surfaced out of nowhere. “Who’s Fred?”

Ralph grinned. “I wondered when you’d remember him. He’s your stuffed ferret. You carried him on your trips, though it was against the regs.”