“The whole formal thing says, ‘The law of conservation of mass states that for any system closed to all transfers of matter and energy, the mass of the system must remain constant over time, as the system’s mass cannot change, so quantity can neither be added nor removed.’”
Roger’s eyes were half closed in a mingling of tiredness and ecstasy.
“God, that feels good.”
“Good. So what I’m thinking is this: time travelers definitely have mass, right? So if they’re moving from one time to another, does that mean the system is momentarily unbalanced in terms of mass? I mean, does 1780 have four hundred twenty-five more pounds of mass in it than it ought to have—and conversely, 1982 has four hundred twenty-five pounds too little?”
“Is that how much we weigh, all together?” Roger opened his eyes. “I’ve often thought the kids each weighed that much, all by themselves.”
“I’m sure they do,” she said, smiling, but unwilling to lose her train of thought. “And of course I’m making the assumption that the dimension of time is part of the definition of ‘system.’ Here, give me the other one.”
“It’s filthy, too.” It was, but she merely pulled a handkerchief from her bosom and wiped the mixture of grease and dirt from his fingers. “Why are your fingers so greasy?”
“If you’re sending something like a rifle across an ocean, you pack it in grease to keep the salt air and water from eroding it. Or guano dust getting into the mechanism.”
“Blessed Michael defend us,” she said, and despite the fact that she obviously meant it, he laughed at her Bostonian Gaelic accent.
“It’s all right,” he assured her, swallowing a yawn. “The rifles are safe. Go on with the conservation of mass; I’m fascinated.”
“Sure you are.” Her long, strong fingers probed and rubbed, pulling his joints and avoiding—for the most part—his blisters. “So—you remember Geillis’s grimoire, right? And the record she kept of bodies that were found in or near stone circles?”
That woke him up.
“I do.”
“Well. If you move a chunk of mass into a different time period, do you maybe have to balance that by removing a different chunk?”
He stared at her, and she looked back, still holding his hand, but no longer massaging it. Her eyes were steady, expectant.
“You’re saying that if someone comes through a—a portal—someone else from that time has to die, to keep the balance right?”
“Not exactly.” She resumed her massage, slower now. “Because even if they die, their mass is still there. I’m sort of thinking that maybe that’s what keeps them from passing through, though; they’re headed for a time that … that doesn’t have room for them, in terms of mass?”
“And … they can’t go through and that kills them?” There seemed something illogical in this, but his brain was in no condition to say what.
“Not that, exactly, either.” Brianna lifted her head, listening, but whatever she’d heard, the sound wasn’t repeated, and she went on, bending her head to peer into his palm. “Man, you have huge blisters. I hope they heal up by the ordination—everybody will be shaking your hand afterward. But think about it: most of the bodies in Geillis’s news clippings were unidentified, and mostly wearing odd clothes.”
He stared at her for a moment, then took his hand from hers and flexed it gingerly.
“So you think they came from somewhere—sometime—else, and got through the stones—but then died?”
“Or,” she said delicately, “they came from this time, but they knew where they were going. Or where they thought they were going, because plainly they didn’t make it there. So, you know …”
“How did they find out that they maybe could go?” he finished for her. He glanced down at her notebook. “Maybe more people read Pig Latin than you think.”
128
Surrender
Fraser’s Ridge
June 21, 1780
ROGER WAS SEATED IN the family privy, not from bodily necessity but from an urgent need for five minutes of solitude. He could, he supposed, have gone into the woods or taken momentary refuge in the root cellar or the springhouse, but the house and all its surroundings were boiling with humanity, and he needed just these few minutes to be by himself. Not—not by any means—alone, but not with people.
Davy Caldwell had arrived last night, with the Reverends Peterson (from Savannah) and Thomas (from Charles Town). The house was as prepared as half a dozen determined women could make it; the church had been cleaned and aired and filled with so many flowers that half of Claire’s bees were zooming in and out of the windows like tiny crop dusters. The scents of barbecued pork, vinegar and mustard slaw, and fried onions drifted through the cracks in the walls, making his stomach twitch in anticipation. He closed his eyes and listened.
To the sounds of the festivities gearing up, the distant rumble of people talking, the fiddles and drums tuning up by Claire’s garden—even the loud nasal drone of a bagpipe in the distance. That was Auld Charlie Wallace, who would pipe the ministers into church—and pipe them out again, their number augmented by one.
He’d been uncertain about the piping, given the Reverend Thomas’s opinions regarding music in church, but Jamie—of all people—had said that he didn’t think the sound of the pipes should really be called music.
“People dance to it,” Bree had said, amused.
“Aye, well, folk will dance to anything, if ye give them enough liquor,” her father replied. “The British government says the pipes are a weapon of war, though, and I’ll no just say they’re wrong. Put it this way, lass—ye ken I dinna hear music, but I hear what the pipes are sayin’ fine.”
Roger smiled, hearing this in memory. Jamie wasn’t wrong, and neither had been the British government.
Fitting, he thought, and closed his eyes. He was under no illusions that what he was about to do wasn’t one—and an important one—of innumerable steps on the road to a great battle.
Yes, he thought in reply to a silent question he’d answered before, would answer again, however often it came—and he knew it would. Yes, I’m scared. And yes, I will. And in the stillness of his beating heart, all sounds faded into a great, encompassing peace.
JAMIE HAD SEEN an ordination once, in Paris, in the great cathedral. He had gone with Annalise de Marillac, whose brother Jacques was one of the ordinands, and consequently had had a place with her family, from which he could see everything. He remembered it vividly—though in honesty, his memories of the early parts of the ceremony were mostly of Annalise’s bosom and her perfumed, excited warmth throbbing beside him. He was sure that getting a cockstand in a cathedral must be some sort of sin, but as he’d been too embarrassed to explain it in Confession, he had let it pass under the guise of “impure thoughts.” He cleared his throat, glanced at Claire, and straightened up.
This ceremony was quite different, of course—and yet at the heart of it, it was strikingly the same.
The words were in English, not Latin—but they said similar things.