Sea of Tranquility(49)

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—

“Now that you and Niall are dead,” he confided, to Gilbert, “I’ll inherit the title and the estate.” He was surprised by how little he cared.



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—

It came as an odd jolt when he walked out into the walled garden one morning and saw a man waiting on the bench. For just a heartbeat he thought it was Gilbert—at this point anything seemed possible—but then he came closer and the man’s true identity was almost as strange: he was the impostor from that tiny church on the westernmost edge of British Columbia, the strange man in the clothes of a priest whom no one else in that place had ever seen or heard of.

“Please,” the man said. “Sit.” That same unplaceable foreign accent.

Edwin sat beside him on the bench.

“I thought you were a hallucination,” Edwin said. “When I saw Father Pike and asked him about the new priest I’d just been speaking to, Pike looked at me like I had two heads.”

“My name is Gaspery-Jacques Roberts,” the stranger said. “I’m afraid I only have a few minutes, but I wanted to see you.”

“A few minutes until what?”

“An appointment. You’ll think I’m a lunatic if I tell you the details.”

“I’m afraid I’m in no position to judge anyone else’s lunacy, just at present, but why are you lurking around my garden?”

Gaspery hesitated. “You were on the Western Front, weren’t you?”

Mud. Cold rain. An explosion, blinding light, things raining down around him, then one of those things hit him in the chest and when he looked down he recognized his best friend’s arm—

“Belgium,” Edwin confirmed, through gritted teeth.

Friend wasn’t really the word for what that man was to him, actually. The thing that hit his jacket and fell to his feet was the arm of his beloved. His beloved’s head landed nearby in the mud, eyes still wide with amazement.

“And now you fear for your sanity,” Gaspery said carefully.

“It was always a little fragile, in all honesty,” Edwin said.

“Do you remember what you saw in the forest at Caiette? It was years ago now.”

“Vividly, but it was a hallucination. The first of many, I’m afraid.”

Gaspery was quiet for a moment. “I can’t explain the mechanics here,” he said. “My sister probably could, but it’s still beyond me. But whatever happened to you afterward, whatever you saw in Belgium, it’s possible you’re saner than you think. I can assure you that what you saw in Caiette was real.”

“How do I know that you’re real?” Edwin asked.

Gaspery reached out his hand, and touched Edwin’s shoulder. They stayed like that for a moment, Edwin staring at the hand on his shoulder, then Gaspery removed his hand and Edwin cleared his throat.

“What I experienced in Caiette couldn’t possibly have been real,” Edwin said. “It was a derangement of the senses.”

“Was it? I believe you heard a few notes of violin music, played by a musician in an airship terminal in the year 2195.”

“An airship…the year twenty-one-what?”

“Followed by a sound that must have seemed quite strange to you. A sort of whoosh, wasn’t it?”

Edwin stared at him. “How did you know?”

“Because that’s the sound that airships make,” Gaspery said. “They won’t be invented for some time. As for the violin music…a kind of lullaby, wasn’t it?” He was quiet for a beat, then hummed a few notes. Edwin gripped the armrest of the bench. “The man who composed that song won’t be born for another hundred and eighty-nine years.”

“None of this is possible,” Edwin said.

Gaspery sighed. “Think of it in terms of…well, in terms of corruption. Moments in time can corrupt one another. There was a derangement, but it had nothing to do with you. You’re just a man who saw it. You were helpful in my investigation, and I believe you’re in a somewhat delicate state, and I thought perhaps it might ease your mind just a little to know that you might be saner than you think. At that moment, at least, you were not hallucinating. You were experiencing a moment from elsewhere in time.”

Edwin’s gaze drifted away from the man’s face, to the mild decrepitude of the September garden. The salvias were bare now, for the most part, brown stalks and dried leaves, a few last blooms wisping blue and violet in the failing light. He was struck by an understanding of what his life could be from this moment: he could live here quietly, and care for the garden, and that might eventually be enough.

“Thank you for telling me,” Edwin said.

“Don’t tell anyone else.” Gaspery rose, brushing a fallen leaf from his jacket. “You’ll get committed to an asylum.”

“Where are you going?” Edwin asked.

“I’ve an appointment in Ohio,” Gaspery said. “Good luck.”

“Ohio?”

But Gaspery was already walking away from him, disappearing around the side of the house. Edwin watched him go and then remained on his bench for a long time, hours, watching the way the garden faded into twilight.