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Overview
Pulled from Renaissance Italy, former peasant Benedetta brings a friendship with master artist Leonardo da Vinci . . . and an unprecedented ability to change destiny, aided by her new partner, the Viking Ivar. But it is not easy to reconcile the past and the present, and the time refugees have their own plans for their new world.
Weaving together time travel, quantum mechanics, Templars, and outlaws, acclaimed author Rebecca Ore delivers a powerful tale of intrigue and possibility, and the fight to be free.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780380792528 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | HarperCollins |
| Publication date: | 02/20/2007 |
| Pages: | 336 |
| Sales rank: | 690,860 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.76(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Time's Child
Chapter One
Benedetta Then and Again
A Species of Afterlife
An angel told Benedetta she was in Purgatory. Benedetta knew she wasn't in Purgatory when she saw a scab on the angel's knuckle. She didn't believe she'd died, even though her body didn't hurt as it should have from the wound she'd received. Benedetta was unsure what this afterlife was, but she was in her body and angels could be wounded. Perhaps this was a game of light and shadows, of things like puppets.
"Confess what brought you to us, sister," said the angel with the scab.
"You say you're the creature of the Lord?" Benedetta said, edging around the walls and feeling for a secret door to the room. Camera obscuras did something to have people on the wall behind the tiny round window. Only Benedetta didn't see a tiny round window, just a mist at the top of the room. This was something like a camera obscura, Benedetta thought. They'd drugged her with opium or that Arab drug the Old Man of the Mountain used, or something. She was not dead. Angels didn't have scabs on their knuckles. But perhaps she should play along if the angel had a good excuse for not knowing her history.
"I'm not the Lord God Almighty, I'm just one of his servants who takes confessions in Purgatory from the unshrived."
Oh, that's a good one. Benedetta smiled. "I was a young novice in a nunnery who was foully abducted by the French."
"That's not the entire story," the fake angel said. "You had been sexually active long enough to have had a child, and you were raped recently. And the man who died with you wasn't your most recent lover."
"Why do you doubt me?" Benedetta asked, genuinely curious.
"Because the Lord tells me you are lying."
"Oh, bullshit."
"That's more how you sounded like when your soul was being brought to Purgatory. As you lay dying."
How do I get out of here? "So, I was kidnapped a couple of months earlier and ran away from those cruel French to the Lombardians."
"And I don't believe the couple of months. Child, confess and save your eternal soul."
Benedetta wondered what the fake angel got out of lying to her. "Prove this is Purgatory and not Hell," she said.
"It would be better if you started telling us about life in the camps," the fake angel said. Benedetta hadn't felt any doors in her complete circling of the room. Maybe the fake angel got down on a rope from the area in the ceiling she couldn't see for the smoke or mist or whatever. Mirrors, perhaps they obscured the openings with mirrors.
Don't panic. Benedetta didn't want to tell the truth, because that's what this creature wanted, and being trapped in a closed room with no windows and being told she was dead and in Purgatory made her angry. The anger warred with the panic and left her momentarily confused. "I went with the soldiers rather than be bored."
"I believe you, my child."
"So you want to jerk off while I tell you about the fucking I did?"
"I'm an angel. I'm sexless."
"Let me kiss the fucking ring." Benedetta grabbed his hand and bit down hard. If she hadn't had her mouth occupied while he shrieked, she'd have told him that angels don't feel pain, much less have scabs.
Other people in weird clothes rushed through the walls, through the doors Benedetta hadn't felt and couldn't find, and grabbed her mouth at the jaw hinge. She spat out blood.
"Why did you bite me?" the fake angel asked.
"You have a scab on your knuckle. You can't be an angel. Your lingua, your Lombardian, sucks. So, what the fuck is this place?" She expected she would die now, but the people holding her simply grabbed her legs and arms and held on. Something hissed against her arm and she thought snake before passing out.
Not a snake, she thought when she woke up.
The angel and a woman in strange clothes sat beside her bed. The woman said, "I know you're not going to believe this either, but you're in an archival facility in the future. Think of it as a library for people. I'm here to explain your legal standing in our culture."
Benedetta wondered how many layers of lies they'd try on her.
The fake angel said, "We're trying to learn about the past and we'd like you to help us."
The woman said, "We saved your life and brought you into the future. A lot of people are more comfortable if they think they died and are in an afterlife they can understand."
Maybe they aren't lying? Benedetta thought this was all too crazy for anyone to try as a lie. Should she pretend to believe it until she could learn more, or just stay confused?
"We're sorry, but I don't understand why you bit me," the angel said. "Why so hard?"
"You were lying to me. Well, thank you for saving me from dying. I can't believe those French. I want out of here."
"We'd like to spare you the culture shock," the woman said. Benedetta didn't know how culture could cause shock.
"We've saved your life," the man said. "Not that we expect you to be immediately grateful, or to believe us. Yet. But can you begin to tell us honestly about your life. We really want to know what you saw, how you lived, what your customs were."
"I want to see the future first," Benedetta said. Her heart was beating very fast.
"You have the right to be treated as reasonably as possible. But I think you should wait," the man said. "Your heart is beating very rapidly."
I've been trapped by magicians, Benedetta thought. "I couldn't believe in Purgatory."
"Most people from the period of Christianity that had a concept of Purgatory as well as Heaven and Hell would find Purgatory believable. Nobody believes they are good enough for heaven—or at least they don't argue about it. And people are relieved to find they're not in Hell," the man said. "I'm Joseph. You can call me Joe."
Continues...
Excerpted from Time's Child by Rebecca Ore Copyright © 2007 by Rebecca Ore. Excerpted by permission.
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