Love's Labyrinth by Anne Kelleher Page B

going to do?” Alison asked, turning back to face Olivia. She closed the door carefully. “How long do you think this revel is going to last?”
    Olivia shrugged. “At least ’til dark. It doesn’t sound as if the Queen is staying here—she just came for dinner.”
    “Oh, that’s even more great.” Alison rolled her eyes. “And what time was the bus leaving?”
    “I think we were supposed to be back in London by eleven, so I guess the group would leave around nine.”
    “Nine o’clock.” Alison shook her head. “What time do you suppose it is now?”
    There was a long silence. Finally Olivia met her friend’s eyes. “I don’t think it matters.”
    Alison strode over to the other chair and sat down. “What—what do you mean?” For the first time, Olivia heard the little catch in her friend’s throat that meant that she was upset.
    She drew a deep breath. “I don’t think it matters what time it is right now.” She spoke very gently. “I’m afraid it might not be quite so easy to get home.”
    Alison bent her head, and the short fall of her strawberry-blond curls hid her face. For a long moment, she was silent. Finally, her shoulders heaved as she drew a deep breath. “What are we going to do?”
    Olivia shrugged. She leaned over and patted Alison’s shoulder. “It’ll be okay. We’ll find a way to get back somehow. If it worked one way, it’s got to be able to work the other. It’s a pattern—it can’t be that difficult to reverse it. It’s just that while we’re here—” she broke off and bit her lip, trying desperately to remember all she knew about the middle years of the reign of Elizabeth I. But at the moment, it was all a jumbled mess—of new religions and usurping Tudors and imprisoned Scottish queens. But Shakespeare had begun to write his great plays, and Marlowe and Jonson—she raised her head with a start. Somewhere in this time, a man named William Shakespeare had just made his way from a little town in Warwickshire to London. His greatest works probably weren’t even glimmers in the writer’s eye. Had he even appeared in London yet, or was he still in Stratford? For one minute, she tried to remember, and then dismissed all thoughts of Shakespeare, London, and the Globe Theater. She really was every bit as undisciplined and unfocused as her father used to say. Deliberately, she forced herself to think about the matter at hand.
    Alison was watching her. “What do you mean, while we’re here?”
    Olivia sighed. “This is a very difficult time in Elizabeth’s reign. Mary, Queen of Scots, had become a focal point for anti-Elizabethan and anti-Protestant sentiment. There’s evidence of plots and treason—all aimed to get Mary on the throne of England and restore Catholicism as the true religion. If this is fifteen eighty-seven—let’s say for the sake of argument, it’s August fifteen eighty-seven—Mary was executed in February of this year. But even after Mary died—which was something Elizabeth eventually had to order because of the threat to her own life—Spain vowed retaliation, which was really just an excuse to plan an invasion of England. Remember the Spanish Armada?”
    Alison nodded slowly.
    “I imagine in the shipyards of Spain, even as we sit here, the ships are being built.” A little shiver rippled down her spine. What would her father have given to spend even five minutes in this time and place? A wave of sadness came over her as she realized that whatever knowledge she’d managed to acquire from him was going to have enormous importance until they could return.
    “But, but,” Alison was saying, “but what about our families? If we don’t get back soon….” She broke off and dropped her eyes. They both knew that the only family Olivia had left was a seventy-seven-year-old aunt in a nursing home in New Jersey. Following her last stroke, the woman didn’t even recognize her niece. Except for Alison and her own family, Olivia was truly