Memorabilia

In the evening I repaired to my studio, removed my jacket, waistcoat and tie, donned my apron and once again took up the brush. I stood before the portrait I had begun in memory of my parents, lest the callous peregrinations of these so-called ‘time-travellers’ should banish them forever from memory.

The brush was thick and clumsy with affection, splattered sentiment upon the canvas and smeared recollection into imagination as light descends into shadow. Memory is an unfaithful guide. It astounds me that so much of what passes through one’s life should vanish into the aether, leaving one with such small snippets as time vouchsafes for us: A look, a brief word, the glow of firelight upon the bow as my father played the violin, or rushing to the door upon hearing his return. If I can barely retain such moments within myself, what hope have I of resisting those who would wipe them out entire?

I leaned back and surveyed my handiwork. The scene was of a family outing to

Exeter College

in

Oxford…

No, surely that wasn’t right. It was Merton, wasn’t it?

In any event, I recalled my father standing on the banks of the Cherwell in the shade of a willow, turning to speak to my mother with a smile. One of our last happy memories.

The work proceeded slowly, for I am sorely lacking in both natural-born talent and timeworn skill. However, I consoled myself with the thought that these apparent failings only enhanced the efficacy of the process, for the longer one spent in contemplation and effort upon the task, the stronger it was anchored into reality, and the harder it was for these mendicant meddlers to remove.

I sighed with frustration. No, the angle of the arm was quite unnatural. I would have to paint it over, and essay the task again. It would take time. The one element we lacked, and they had in abundance.

England is not at war, yet it is a battleground.

#

“Just as a moving object passes through three-dimensional space, so it passes through the fourth, which is time,” the Scientist (I will not write down his name, lest this narrative be found and he be expunged from reality) explained to us. “An object may be altered: a knife may be sharpened on a whetstone, a wet cloth may be stretched, a candle may be lit or snuffed out. In a likewise manner, an object’s trajectory through time may also be altered, or in extremis, halted entire. Such changes are not instantaneous, in either our three dimensions or the fourth. We perceive the lightning before we hear the thunder. The closer we are, the sooner we hear that peal.”

We met in secret, of course, for any invitations, records, notes or summaries such as we might create would invariably fall into the hands of the time-travelers, and they would know when and where we met, and would seek to undo our work before it had even begun (A rule I break this this diary—I shall destroy it, once the work is complete). For the same reason, we were neither the leaders nor luminaries of our respective professions, but rather those on the second or third circle down, whose comings and goings might pass unobserved. I was there as a representative of the arts. If you can imagine!

The Scientist stood by the fire, one hand upon the mantlepiece. A fire smoldered in the hearth, lamps and candles illuminated the room. The rest of us were seated before him in a loose demi-circle, including myself, the General, the Psychologist, the Politician, the Bishop, various merchants and business leaders as well as the Prussian Ambassador. The Prussians had also made great strides in chrononautics, we had been told, and hence she had been quietly approached to attend the evening’s deliberations.

“Such delays are what enable us to perceive when they alter our present,” the General concluded, tugging on his truly magnificent mustachios.

“Precisely,” the Scientist nodded. “Those closest in proximity to the alteration may not apprehend that anything has changed, whereas those at greater remove appear able to discern the presence of a change, if not its particulars.”

“To what end?” asked the Politician. “What is it they seek to accomplish?”

The General and Scientist shared a look, and both shook their heads in unison.

The Ambassador spoke up. “Perhaps not ‘end,’ in the singular, but ‘ends.’ We believe that much as nations vie with one another for supremacy, so too do camps or factions within the time-travelers manipulate

us

for

competing

ends.

Military affairs seem to be one focal point, industrial and scientific advances another. The role of the church, too. As to why, only Allah can say. The import of such effects may be hidden from us, yet like a small stone which precipitates an avalanche, even a minor change may have calamitous results in their time.”

The Ambassador spoke English quite well for a Turk, I thought.

“But what can we do?” the Politician wailed, throwing up his hands. “Our foes are invisible, strike at us from our own past, and lack even coherent goals such as might be negotiated with. Are we but their helpless playthings?”

“Not entirely,” the Psychologist said. “I believe events become more resilient and resistant to change when they are firmly embedded and enmeshed within the material of time. They may be anchored, through the creation of memorabilia, mementoes, and similar objects which effectively extend the memory, and thus duration, of the event throughout time.”

I sat up at that suggestion. “Memorabilia?” I asked.

“Indeed. Records, histories and annals, songs and poetry, statuary …” (The Ottoman Ambassador looked aghast at the suggestion.)

“Paintings?” I suggested.

“Just so.”

#

My grandfather, Garret Wesley, had been a composer and professor of music. It seemed only natural to me that father should wish to follow in his footsteps, yet as a politician it became necessary for the family to be seen to contribute to the war effort, and so father dutifully purchased a commission in the army.

He courted my mother, the daughter of Baron Longford, but her brother forbade the match, as we Wesleys were not a wealthy family. In defiance, my father left the military, and married my mother anyway. He made a living as a music tutor and teacher instead.

They had great hopes for me, as well, though despite long hours of practice my fingers remained clumsy and insensitive, the bow more my enemy than my ally. Father asked me to play Bach, Minuet Number 2 for our house-guests. Ah, what a disaster. A lack of precision and control, the bow arm quite overshot the A string, and our guests smiled tightly and patiently to one another.

My father thanked me for the performance. And never again asked me to practice or play.

Could the time-travellers change that, I wondered. I feared the worst, but perhaps I denied myself the best. Might a happier childhood, one in which I shone in my father’s eyes just as he did in mine, lie half-hidden, just beyond my reach? Could one small nudge of time heal this hurt.

#

Someone had been inside my studio. I heard nothing in the night, but the evidence is as unmistakable as the upsweep of the General’s mustaches. A number of landscapes I am sure I stacked against one wall lay scattered about the floor, as though someone had pawed through them, searching for something.

I was glad I had kept the portrait of my parents separate, in a locked cabinet elsewhere in the house. I dare not write down where. I lacked any evidence as to the motive of the intrusion, yet there was no doubt in my mind, this portrait was their target.

#

The next morning, I sat before the easel, chin upon my hand, elbow upon my knee, and surveyed the liquid violence I had enacted upon the innocent canvas. It was wrong, of course, entirely wrong. The colors were wrong, the figures were wrong, the scene was wrong. I was tempted to abandon this Pygmalion effort, yet what else could I do?

“They can’t have you,” I told them. “I won’t let them take you.”

As I gazed upon the painting, I smacked the heel of my hand to my forehead. I had not even painted my mother’s wimple upon her head. What respectable woman would have ventured outside with her hair uncovered so? I reached for the white, then stopped. Could I truly have been so thoughtless, so careless as to miss such a significant detail? Or was this new thought the intruder, my painting the true image?

The time-travelers had us trapped, between Scylla and Charybdis, damned no matter whither we turn. Was my mother truly bare-headed that day, or had she worn a shawl? I doubted even myself.

One always imagines that one is at the focal point of history, that when time-travel was discovered we should be the ones embarking upon such journeys, to explore and tame the shores of each era as easily as the Spanish did the coasts of the Americas. It is distressing to learn that one is, like the faceless Achaeans before Troy or the Sabine women, one is merely an

adjunct

to

someone else’s

Odyssey.

There was a knock upon the door, and upon my acknowledgement my servant Xaltemoczin admitted the General into my studio. He wore his parade finery, shoulders dripping with gold braid, chest plated with gold and silver medals, the prodigious weight of which I daresay would protect him against any attempt at erasure.

“Wesley!” he beamed, full of good humor.

“General —,” I greeted him, and gestured to my paint-bespattered clothes. “You will forgive me if my courtesy is somewhat lacking.”

“Not at all,” he batted my concerns aside with a thrust of his hand. “I just wanted to inform you the first step in our great project has been completed. Admiral Nelson’s statue was unveiled today. His victory over the Viceroyalty of New Spain will stand forever.”

“Thanks be to God,” I murmured, as appropriate and expected.

These public works were my suggestion, yet we were careful not to publish this fact lest I became I target. I had, therefore, chosen not to attend the ceremony or otherwise draw attention to myself.

It was hard for me, yet perhaps harder for the General. My father’s own service had been cut short, when he forsook the regiment for my mother and the violin. The General meanwhile found himself forced to fight a war in which rifle and artillery were useless, bravery an irrelevance, armies an anachronism. Now we fight with brush rather than sword strokes, the tip of the pen rather than the spear, the bow of a violin, not horse-archer.

The General came to stand at my shoulder and gazed upon the canvas.

“Almost done?” he inquired.

“I suspect one is never done with paintings; one merely reaches the point at which one cannot improve further, and any additional brushstroke will diminish rather than add to the piece.” I set down my paint brush and frowned at the two figures. I had been about to add something, I seemed to recall. “Tell me, General, is it common for womenfolk to go without a wimple?”

“A what?”

“A wimple.”

“In this day and age?”

“Ah. Oh dear.”

He laid a comforting hand upon my shoulder, and gripped it firmly. “Don’t worry, we’ll fight them,” he said. “By God, we’ll fight them.”

#

I awoke in my bed, every sense tingling with alarm. I was certain, absolutely and with every fiber of my being, that I was no longer alone in my chamber. At first, I could see nothing, hear nothing save for my own racing heartbeat in my ears.

I remained as still as I could, hardly daring to move. I kept my breath even and steady. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, and the gelid starlight filtering softly through the windows, I beheld a shape, crouched down at the foot of the bed, evidently searching for something. For the portrait, I did not doubt for a moment.

The very thought of a thief attempting to steal it away from me filled me with uncharacteristic rage. I flung aside the bed covers and leaped to my feet.

“Help! Help!” I cried, as full-throated as any cuauhtli challenge and charged, “Xaltemoczin! Help!”

The figure snarled something in a language which I could not understand, and slipped aside from my charge as easily as smoke. Something gripped my nightshirt by the collar and arm, and then I was airborne, flailing helplessly through the air until I crashed into the wardrobe.

The impact was sudden and intense, flooding my being with a lightning flash of agony. I could barely draw breath. I quaked with both rage and shame at being so easily bested. Despite the pain, I lunged again for my assailant, grappled with their legs, and held grimly on though they kicked and struck me about the head and shoulders.

There was a splintering crash and the bedroom door flung wide. Xaltemoczin stood in the landing, the hot glede of a lamp in one hand, a coal shovel in the other, brandished like an obsidian macuahuitl.

The shadow figure swore again, and struck me such a buffet about the head that I was forced to loosen my grip. It sprang to the window, threw it open and leaped catlike upon the window sill, its crouched figure limned in faint starlight.

As they slipped away, the intruder said the most astonishing thing. “I’m trying to help you, you fool.” And then they sprang down into the night and were gone.

#

In the morning I called upon the Psychologist, for I was shaken, my mind was uneasy following my conversation with the General and my confrontation with the shadowy intruder. The streets were largely empty, on account of the current Emergency. I had read in the morning paper that the cuauhtli had claimed another killing the previous day. Red-clad guardsmen with Snider-Enfield rifles stood at every street corner, and I was careful to tip my hat to them as I passed, so that they might see my face and apprehend I was not one of the Quecha.

I was admitted by a Quecha servant, and presently led to the drawing room. The Psychiatrist gestured to the couch, as though I were a patient of his, which I suppose I was. He sat opposite me, a low table between us. After the initial exchange and pleasantries, the Psychiatrist waited with a patient and professional smile for me to unburden myself.

“I wonder, sometimes,” I began.

“As do we all,” the Psychologist nodded encouragingly.

“About this project we have undertaken. Are we right, to insist that matters stand as they are? The other day, I could not recall if women in England wore head coverings or not. How can I be sure which was the original state of affairs, which the alteration? I cannot even be certain that any change one way or the other would be for the worse. Are we wrong to hold onto history so tightly? Perhaps the time-travelers’ designs are not all evil—perhaps it is we who, unknowingly, have caused some calamity in their time.”

The Psychiatrist pursed his lips in thought. “Do you truly believe that?”

“I do not want to believe that, but we cannot deny the possibility,” I said. “If Alexander had known his conquest would end in his own early death, that of his beloved horse, his dearest companions, of his wife Roxane and child, do you think he would not have rather stayed and been content to rule Macedonia? He might have lived a long, happy and peaceful life. Nobody would have died at Issus, Gaugamela or on the Hydaspes. If a time-traveller had dissuaded him, much suffering might have been averted.”

The Psychologist nodded. “The question of course is whether doing so might not invite a yet greater calamity. Given the times in which Alexander lived, a life of ease and leisure seems unlikely to have been his lot, whatever course it took. It is easy to discuss such things in abstract though, much harder to confront them in one’s own life. One recoils from the prospect that one has done evil, however inadvertently.”

The Psychologist’s servant entered with a silver tray, upon which was a teapot, china cup and saucer, strainer and spoon. He set these

upon

the table

between

us.

“Can you count, Cuetlachtli?” the Psychologist chided. “We have two guests today. Fetch another cup.”

The servant looked puzzled, glanced to my companion, back at the tray, back to my companion, and then bowing apologetically, backed towards the door and ushered himself from the room,

Companion? I could have sworn I came here alone.

I half-turned in my seat. On the couch beside me sat a person—whether man or woman I could not say—dressed in the most outlandish garb imaginable. He wore a jacket of some midnight material, smooth as black ice and without visible weave, pants of the same stuff, and a brilliant white shirt without a tie or other ornament, open at the collar. By his color and features I took him to be a native of Majahapit or Singhasari, perhaps an Annamite, though his dress suggested otherwise.

Without taking my eyes from this man, I said to the Psychologist: “I have never laid eyes upon this gentleman before in my life.”

The Psychologist drew back with a startled cry, overbalancing his chair and tilting over backwards to land with a crash upon the carpet. The strangely-dressed man made no reaction, save to raise one eyebrow slightly.

“Who are you?” I demanded.

“Apologies for the interruption,” they replied, looking to my mind utterly unapologetic. “There wasn’t time to finesse this, so we’re trying a more direct approach.”

“A time-traveller?” I guessed, and the other nodded.

“Get out!” the Psychiatrist cried angrily, face quite flushed with passion and exertion as he extricated himself from his fallen armchair. “This is intolerable! Monstrous! Cuetlachtli!”

The time-traveler ignored the Psychiatrist, and I found instead his attention was wholly fixated upon myself. In a low, earnest voice, he said: “I need to ask for your help.”

“Ours?”

“Yours, specifically. We know you’ve figured out not all of us are on the same side. I’ll be honest with you: My side is losing.”

The Psychiatrist’s servant arrived presently, yet I held up my hand to forestall any violence. The Psychiatrist looked at me askance, but at last relented, and indicated that his servant should return to their duties.

I went to the window, hands clasped behind my back, and watched the street outside. A column of dragoons with shouldered lances cantered along like a bobbing flock of robins, obscuring the crowds in dust. Pedestrians shuffled aside to let them pass, and the Quecha knelt with their heads bowed. It seemed to me a wholly natural and unremarkable scene, yet now I doubted my very senses, and wondered which aspects we could claim as our own, which had been imposed upon us.

“What concern of ours is it, whether one side wins or the other?” I asked at last. “We do not hope that either side should triumph; we wish only to be left in peace.”

The time-traveller came to stand by my side. We watched until the dragoons had passed from sight. He sighed, and pointed at the people in the street. “The Empire never conquered the Viceroyalty. Those people shouldn’t be here.”

“We were defeated?” I was shocked and appalled at the very thought. Then it occurred to me and to why this traveller from the future should wish to speak to me in particular. Had it not been my idea to commemorate Admiral Nelson? Without him, surely the war would have been lost. No doubt the time-traveller hoped to persuade me to tear his monument down, that Nelson’s victory might be rewritten.

“No, not defeated,” the man said. “The Viceroyalty never even existed as an independent state. This is why it should matter to you. The path of history is being increasingly bent away from base reality, and towards one more to their liking. Your Empire grows harsher, crueler and more powerful. We want to fix things, repair the damage. Our aim is to put history back on track. But to do that, I need to ask you a favor.”

I do not claim to be any great judge of character, yet the man seemed honest, forthright and sincere. Whatever the truth of the matter, he at the very least, believed in the nobility and rightness of his cause.

“I am afraid the matter of Admiral Nelson’s monument is out of my hands,” I said with honest regret.

“No, Arthur,” he said and turned towards me, sadness plain upon his face. “Let go of your parents.”

“I beg your pardon.” His worlds were ice water upon my limbs. I could think of nothing else to say.

“This painting of yours, it’s seizing up the works, calcifying and ossifying everything so we can’t put it back to the way it was. What you are living in now, gentlemen, is their reality, not yours. I’ll admit, at first we wanted to change things for the better. There are many things we might have hoped to change about your Empire. However, our crest has fallen somewhat since then. We’ll be satisfied just to return to the status quo ante bellum. To do that, we’ve got to put your parents back the way they used to be.”

“No,” I said, quite frostily. “No, you must be mistaken, my parents had no role in the great events of their day. My father was but a musician.”

“Your father, Arthur Wellesley, was not meant to be a musician at all. He was a soldier.”

“Yes, I know that. He was a captain in the 18^th Light Dragoons, before he resigned his commission.”

“No, I mean a career soldier,” the man repeated. “Hard-core … um, very dedicated. He became a general, you know, then prime minister … ah, a kind of politician. But our interest in him is mainly as a general.”

“A good one?”

“Good? Good … Well, he was a very successful one. Which is the key here. Push one lever, history becomes unbalanced, requiring us to rebalance with another push over there. We need a stronger France as a check on the Spanish, but then we need your father as a check on the French.”

The words meant little to me. The world needed my father, I had been told. Did it need him more than I did?

“And I?” I asked. “What becomes of me? Do I even exist?”

“Yes, you and your brother both, don’t concern yourself on that account.”

“Am I … happy?”

The time-traveller smiled, though it was strained. “Well, you’re the son of a very famous man. That can be tough.”

Yes, I thought. Some burdens are hard for a child to bear.

#

I stood before the canvas, the lie of it, or else the truth. Though the time-traveller had not said so, I could tell that in their version of the world, I remained something of a disappointment. A failure, an unworthy heir to my parents’ legacy. Some things never change. Some things are irreparable, I suppose.

This thing, this one thing I’d hoped to do for them, even that was to be snatched away. If the time-traveller had spoken truly, I would not have even this moment, not even the memory of a memory. In truth, I knew not whether this would represent one last final betrayal, or be the one good deed I ever did in their names.

How long I have stood here in contemplation, I cannot say. The shadows have grown long, the light orange and heavy. The fire in the hearth is low, its fuel almost spent.

Well, what else I can I do? I am, in the end, their son.

In a moment, I will put down this journal, go to the painting

and

take it to

the hearth