Epilogue

The old, thin, grey-haired lady, sat quietly, in the gloomy half-light of a late winter afternoon, back ramrod straight, in the comfortable parlor chair, staring into the past, hopelessly lost in memories, an open photograph album laying forgotten in her lap. She’d been sitting, motionless, since shortly after two in the afternoon, when she’d first opened the album. A few pages of the album was all that was required to take her mind back in time, to a time when her future was so full of promise.

She’d been born Eleanor Guinevere Smithson. An only child of poor, but honest, hardworking tenant farmers in southern Maryland. She’d known from a very early age that there was more to life than what her parents were living. She also knew that somehow, someway, she would not only have that life but have it as soon as she could leave the farm.

She was fourteen when her chance came, a chance she grabbed with both hands, and until fairly recently, she’d never had reason to look back. Her parents had died in a horrible fire, started somehow in their bedroom. Ellie, as her parents called her, was on her pallet in the only other room of the house, a combination parlor, dining room, kitchen.

By the time she’d woken up from the smoke and heat, it was too late to save her parents, even if she’d wanted to, which she most certainly did not. Quickly putting her shoes on, she threw both sets of clothes she owned onto her blankets, added the money her parents had been saving for as long as she could remember, from the old tin can on the top shelf near the stove, and a knife. She bundled everything into her blankets, grabbed her mother’s coat, and ran out the door as the walls and roof of her parent’s room crashed down, spreading the fire into the rest of the house.

The nearest neighbors were over two miles away, and with a deadly flu epidemic raging, she knew no one was coming to help in time to put out the fire. Her parents were already dead and there was no one else she could go to. Wearing a small smile, she went to the lean-to, untied the plow mule, and using a tree stump, mounted the mule, and rode north. North to a better life, far away from the people she’d grown up with, ‘life’s losers’ was how she’d always thought of them.

Her parents may have been poor, but at least they’d taught her how to pinch a penny, how to make do, when necessary. Every time she had to make do while on the trip, she fumed. She fumed at having to trap animals for food, she fumed at butchering her small catches and tanning the hides, she fumed at having to steal ill-fitting warmer clothes, she fumed at stealing into hay piles and barns to get a warm night’s sleep.

She didn’t fume at the poaching or stealing itself. No, she fumed because the animals were so small, and she didn’t have anything but some wire to make better traps. She fumed because the only clothes she found to steal were ill-fitting or of poor quality. She fumed because the furs she sold brought so little money for so much effort.

Riding north, she was careful to stay hidden from other people, from prying eyes. She knew how to stay hidden in the countryside, but she lacked the skills necessary to stay hidden in towns or cities, so she avoided any but small one-street towns.

It took a few months, but eventually, she’d arrived in Boston, her ultimate destination, with more money than when she’d started the trip, and infinitely better off. Now she had to learn how to survive in a large city.

Instead of living in Boston and having to learn all the survival lessons at one time, she took a job in a crossroad diner just south of Boston. As a young, single, good-looking waitress, she received her share of romantic and sexual overtures. Overtures she turned down without exception. She had her eyes on other targets, targets that weren’t drummers, farmers, or tradesmen.

In return for her work, she received a salary, a small salary to be sure, room, board, and most importantly, one day off a week. One day every week where she could go into Boston, learn the lay of the land, learn the good places, the bad places, who was good, who wasn’t, where the better jobs were.

She bided her time, learning as much as she could, stealing better clothes whenever she could. A year after she’d arrived, she began to implement her plan. Reading newspapers left by diners, she found eight articles on well-to-do families with young children that didn’t include information about nannies. Taking her time, and using her most elegant writing, she wrote letters to all eight families offering her service as a nanny. She used the restaurant’s address for the return address.

Three of the eight families responded with interest and she set up interviews on her next day off. Dressed in her now fashionable clothes, she got a ride from a produce hauler into the city. In the city, she took a city coach to as close as she could to the area the interviews were in and then walked the last couple of miles.

The first two families were disappointments. The interviews themselves went well, but she’d known after the first look from the women that she wouldn’t be getting the job. She was much too pretty and much too well-endowed to be anything but a threat to the women.

The third interview, a recent widower with a young son, was the answer to her dream. The interview was flawless, the offer eventually made and accepted, she moved in, and in short order, had taken over all aspects of managing the house.

She was scrupulously honest in managing the house, accurately accounting for every penny she spent, ensuring the house and boy were always clean and presentable, that meals were of high quality and ready on time. Above all else, she made sure she always presented a cheerful demeanor and countenance.

Within a year, she was engaged and married to the man she had worked for. A very well-off man. Financially secure, well-respected, and now a young mother, with a man who loved her deeply, so deeply that he couldn’t and wouldn’t believe ill of her.

Yes, she had what she wanted, almost. Her next goal was to become financially secure in her own right, which she promptly set out to do. Over a four-year period, she built a nice little fortune through the simple expedient of stealing from her husband. A small lie here, a larger exaggeration of a need there, and she was given money whenever she asked her husband for some.

A large stake now in hand, she began implementing the next part of her plan. She advertised for a yardman, interviewing almost forty respondents before she found what she was looking for. The man was relatively seedy looking, lived in a rough part of Boston, and was most certainly of questionable morals. The exact person she was looking for.

From him, she learned what she wanted to know. Who the underworld power brokers were, the businesses they were involved in, how large their organizations were, who wanted to expand but needed more money to do so, where they were strong and where they were weak.

Using her yardman as a go-between and middleman she began investing in the underworld, receiving silent partnerships in some while receiving nothing but a share of the profits in others. Her available funds, funds unknown to her husband, grew larger and larger in a relatively short amount of time. More importantly, her behind the scenes power and control grew more and more, becoming almost absolute in three different gangs.

While all the criminal activity was going on, she made sure she presented the image of a prim and proper upper-class wife, mother, and lady. She hosted and attended business parties for and with her husband. Always she listened much more than she talked. She listened to her husband’s friends and competitor’s talk about those in his business and other businesses. She listened to the other wives gossip about who was having an affair, who had, or was in the process of, losing their money and business.

With more money available, she studied what she’d heard and invested in the strong businesses, like Goodyear, Baldwin, Burlington, and Winchester Arms. Some dividends were reinvested back into the awarding company while others were used to strengthen her behind the scenes control of the city’s criminal element.

Then came the bad years. The years where her husband speculated feverishly, losing and gaining small fortunes within days, generating a deep sense of insecurity for his wife. After two years, she’d had enough, and became determined to stop him before he destroyed the family name and her in the process.

Choosing her time, she struck when he came home depressed about a friend who had died in a work accident. She wondered aloud what would happen to his wife and children since women couldn’t own property and most didn’t have access to their husband’s bank accounts. Absently, he replied they would be fine as the man had been bragging about putting more than enough in a family trust to take care of his family if anything happened to him. When she asked, he admitted that he’d been thinking of doing the same thing. For the next three months, she quietly encouraged him to create a trust, with her as administrator, to make sure she and their son were taken care of if something should happen to him.

He finally acquiesced, went to a lawyer, had a trust drafted, reviewed it with his wife and then signed it with her approval. The fact that he was signing his death warrant never occurred to him.

Moving quickly, she arranged for an accident through her criminal contacts. An accident that occurred within days. Unfortunately, the boy, who she’d learned to love almost as if he was her own, picked that day to travel with his father. Both were killed when the brake on a parked wagon gave way and rolled down the hill.

No acting was required on her part, she was truly grieved at the loss of her son. Publicly, she became the epitome of a grieving widow, dressing in black, never seen in public without an appropriate escort.

In private, however, was a different story. She applied her now abundant free time to increasing her power and control. She had short affairs with selected prominent businessmen and politicians. When the short, usually unsatisfactory affairs, were ended, she blackmailed each man, receiving money or votes or both in return for her silence.

She was so successful in her public and private activities that she not only survived the stock market crash that ruined so many others but grew richer and more powerful. For more than twenty years she continued to live that life. Doing what she wanted, when she wanted, with who she wanted. She controlled the city, the politicians, and the businessmen.

Then came that awful night. The night her wonderful world, a world she’d worked so hard to build, ended. She’d been walking from her house on Beacon Hill to a nearby restaurant to meet her newest paramour for dinner. It was a pleasant late spring evening. The trees and flowers were beginning to bloom, the fragrance strong enough to be enjoyable. The sun had already set, but the full moon was bright enough to light her way for the short walk.

One moment she was walking under a clear nighttime sky full of stars, the next she was walking in a white fog that rolled in from nowhere. A fog that encompassed and blocked everything from her sight, from the ground to the stars. That’s all she remembered as she lost consciousness and crumpled to the ground.

She’d awakened, still lying on the ground, surrounded by people she didn’t know, dressed in a style of clothes that clearly weren’t from 1956. The way the handful of people around her were dressed reminded her of her childhood in 1910 or perhaps even before.

Then she noticed it was early afternoon not evening. Her wondering why the people were dressed the way they were was quickly replaced by wondering, briefly, how long she’d been lying on the ground before someone saw her.

Giving her head a shake while rapidly blinking her eyes to clear her mind of what she was seeing, she looked up to see the same people, in the same clothes, making way for two blue-suited, copper buttoned, police patrolmen, whistles hanging from lanyards around their necks, walking up to stare at her. Using their nightsticks as long-accustomed extensions of their hands, they rapidly cleared the small crowd back until they were standing beside her.

The two policemen, suspicious of the way she was dressed, began to question her after helping her standup. To all their questions she answered, ‘I don’t know’. Who she was, why had she collapsed, where did she live, where was she going, all received the same answer. She’d decided after standing up and getting a quick look around her that while she might still be in Boston, it wasn’t the Boston she knew from 1956. Better to claim amnesia until she knew more.

A few hours later, at the local precinct, after even more policemen of various ranks asked the same questions, and received the same answers; they called in a doctor to examine her. Finding nothing wrong with her, he gave the policemen a shrug and said he’d read about cases of amnesia, but this was the first he’d ever seen. When asked if she was crazy, his reply was an unqualified no. She seemed to be in her right mind, had control of her senses, and seemed to be simply confused.

Another wearisome two hours of questioning was finally completed without satisfactory answers. With other more serious things to take care of, the police finally escorted her to a local church that sheltered women like her, although the women they usually sheltered were either unmarried pregnant women or women hiding from abusive men in their lives.

Still off-balance mentally, she hardly took note of the preacher or his wife, simply looking around the large house for something familiar she could focus her mind on. All she found was more puzzle pieces. There was no evidence of electricity at all. No appliances, no electric lights, no electric clocks, no electric stoves.

Still thinking about the lack of electricity, she was led upstairs and down a hall to a room for her to rest in and try to recover from her ordeal. Alone for the first time since she’d woken up, the door closed, she looked around the room for clues. She quickly found five clues that, even though they didn’t make sense, told her she’d somehow been sent back in time.

First, there was an old-fashioned washstand against the wall opposite the single bed. Second, there was a small washbasin on the washstand. Third, in the basin was a matching water pitcher. Fourth, and probably the most telling, there was a covered pot on the floor next to the washstand, a chamber pot. She recognized all of these things, in fact, she’d used all of these things from the time she could remember as a young girl to the time she was fourteen. The fifth thing was the most disturbing of all.

Staring back at her from the mirror above the washstand was a much younger version of herself. Sitting down heavily on the bed she tried to come to grips with what she’d seen and heard since she’d awakened. Nothing made any sense, least of all her reflection.

Sometime during the next few minutes, she’d fallen asleep, awakening two hours later from a strange dream. A vivid dream of violence, power, and control. A dream she not only embraced but reveled in. Clearly, she thought, as she poured water from the pitcher into the basin and cleaned her face, it’s my subconscious telling me that if I did it once I can do it again. Only this time I won’t stop until I have full power and control over all the city and perhaps even the state.

Now ready to face the world, whenever it was, she left her room and walked downstairs into the dining room as the food was being brought from the kitchen. She was told to grab a bowl of mashed potatoes from the kitchen and bring it into the dining room before taking her seat.

So began her new life. A life far different from her previous one. For the next nine months, she was treated more like a slave than a human being. Oh, everyone was nice enough to her, but she was continually ordered around the house with never a spare moment until it was time for bed.

She’d quickly discovered the year was 1814 when the preacher left his newspaper on the breakfast table the next morning having forgotten it in his haste to get next door to the church. Seeing the date of the newspaper had overturned what little confidence she’d regained, and she sat down heavily in the closest chair, trying to come to grips, yet again, with her new circumstances.

The only thing that allowed her to keep going was the dreams. The dreams not only made sense they provided her a solid foundation to build on. At least they did until she started hearing voices whispering to her in one ear. She almost lost control the first time she realized that the indistinct voice she’d been hearing for weeks was actually a voice whispering in her right ear.