03/01/1546 – Mission #VN-7316

It’s hard to write an ongoing report when I know you’re going to be the first person to read it. You wouldn’t believe how much time I wasted just trying to decide what tone to strive for. Do I (a) keep everything professional and dispassionate and have you mock me for it mercilessly when I get back to our century? Or (b) tell the truth about what I’ve hypothesized and how excited I am, and risk looking like an idiot if it doesn’t pan out?

As you can probably tell, I’ve chosen a third alternative: babble on so endlessly that I’ll look like an idiot no matter what happens.

It doesn’t matter, because you’re never going to read this. Not all of it, anyhow. I have the option of redacting before I send this report forward, and I am going to take extensive advantage of that. Once I know how this mission ends, I’ll modify my narrative so it fits my final conclusion.

That’s what history is, right, Prof?

I can see you raising your eyebrows at that. I can hear your dry voice, with that slightly burred accent: You’re too young to be so cynical.

(Since you’re not reading this, I’ll take the opportunity to tell you that I hate it when you say that. It’s not cynicism; it’s realism, and I learned it from you.)

It might seem like writing this sprawling report that no one is ever going to read is therefore a huge waste of time. But right now, there’s not much else for me to do. The sixteenth century is boring. And you were right about the difficulty of working here as a woman. I’m sorry I got into such a snit when we had that conversation.

You were wrong about my age, though. In the sixteenth century, I’m an adult. I am physically mature and able to bear children, and that’s all that matters. No one cares about the completeness of my frontal lobe.

So right now, I’m mostly just sitting around. I’ve done all the preliminary steps outlined in my plan proposal—except number five, which is totally pointless and which I only put in to make Majrab happy. I think you would have pushed the committee into funding my mission even over his objections, but why not include a line about bribing church officials to get him on my side? When I revise this, I’ll make up some reason why it was impossible to actually implement.

But I’ve done all the other steps—sent the letters, made the contacts, bribed the people who might actually know something (or at least hinted that I was willing to bribe them). That was all three days ago, and nada. Apparently during the Renaissance, offering a bribe is the equivalent of filling out an application. It’s just the first step; it doesn’t actually guarantee you anything.

So now I have to wait.

I hate waiting. It’s not what immature frontal lobes were designed for.

03/04/1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Before I left to go to 1546, you told me to report “Nothing but the facts, but which facts are entirely dependent on your opinion of them.” A line I know by heart. You say it in every single Intro to Time Travel class you’ve ever been forced to teach.

You really are the most pretentious person I’ve ever met.

I know what you’d say to that. Just shut up, Prof. (I’m going to redact that, too, obviously.) I get it. You’re thirty years older than me. You’ve lived almost three times as long as I have. You’re wise and experienced and I should accept everything you say as gospel truth.

So. The facts. The important facts. Important to history, to our research. Not to me. You said it couldn’t be done, but I’m going to do it.

Today I got my first clue. I’ll write out all the details later, but a nobleman visiting my “brother” had heard of Lucia the daughter of Gonzaga. You should have heard the way he talked about her—like she was a talking dog, except one that keeps pooping in public and marking up expensive statues. It was all I could do to bite my tongue and not tell him that in seven hundred years, someone would get funding to travel back in time and retrieve her poems, but nobody would even remember whatever tedious literary pretentions he was being lauded for.

I did bite my tongue. I even joined him in mocking her, which felt awful, but it got him to keep talking. By the time he left, I knew not only what literary salon she is said to frequent, but where it is and when it meets. He wasn’t suspicious at all. The whole respectable widow persona really works.

(A widow! Can you imagine? I even invented a miscarriage for myself, to make it believable. Back home, I wouldn’t even be allowed to get married without my parents’ consent.

Then again, I guess that’s true here, too.)

I’ll redact this part, because it’s not important to history, but I can’t stop thinking about his tone. The contempt was so thick I could taste it. And he’s not exactly exceptional; everyone here shares his view of a woman who hasn’t managed to get married and spends her time writing poetry instead. She’s obviously a little unhinged, and a lot unnatural. If only she were prettier, they say, and shake their heads and smile pityingly.

How did Lucia manage to keep going in the face of all that? Without even knowing that in seven hundred years people would think of her differently?

It makes me more sure that she’s the author of the The Journey of Giacomo. It explains so much about the poem: the unique ambiguity of the central figure, the brilliant and non-standard plot, the wit and sarcasm sparkled throughout. All those discussions about whether it was written by an insider or an outsider. All of them entirely missing the real answer.

You might remember the lines from the epic I was planning to quote in the foreword of my dissertation:

A woman’s modesty is her greatest virtue

A better woman would not be speaking at all.

But as I have not enough virtue for silence,

Those also less virtuous find meaning in my speech.

For decades, everyone assumed this was a man writing in a woman’s voice. But what if it wasn’t? What if it was a woman, writing sarcastically?

It was Lucia. I know it was. I can’t prove it, not in our time; the fact that I’ve read everything we know she wrote, and that I’m sure this was written by her, means very little to the Academy. But now that I’m here... if I can find her...

I’m going to prove that she wrote so much more than we knew. I’m going to prove that she was a woman we should be studying. I know I can’t change the tragedy of her life—you don’t have to give me that speech again—but I’m going to change how we remember her.

03/07/1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Things at the salon didn’t go so well.

First of all, when I walked in, I was the only woman there.

I should have expected it. No, actually, I shouldn’t have gone. I should have sent a servant, the way an actual sixteenth-century woman would have. I should at the very least have brought a servant with me.

And since I didn’t do either of those things, I should have expected to run into trouble. There are few women in public anywhere. We have documentation of fewer than a dozen women who participated in literary salons in this particular time and place. Those women were the exceptions, not the rule.

It’s just that I’ve spent my whole career studying those women, so my expectations were skewed.

I shouldn’t have assumed Lucia would be there. Not based on that one conversation with that moronic nobleman. I should have looked for more confirmation. But when I put the clues together and figured out that (I thought) I could actually talk to her, I felt like such a genius. I was imagining how impressed you would be when I told you.

Obviously, I’m not going to tell you.

I’m probably not going to tell you any of this. I don’t know how you would react. I’ve worked with you closely for two years now, and I’m still not able to tell when you’re feeling strong emotions. That’s why, in some ways, it’s better to talk to an imaginary you and pretend you feel what I want you to be feeling.

Pretend you’re feeling anything. Sometimes, I wonder.

I’m sorry. Now I’m angry at you, and of course that’s not fair. All you did was warn me.

It’s not that attacks on women are common. It’s that they won’t consider them attacks. They won’t expect you to, either.

I’m not angry at you for being right. I’m angry at myself for not listening. But I’m also angry at you, because it’s your fault I didn’t listen. Because when I walked into your office the morning before I left, I thought you had summoned me for an altogether different conversation, because…

Ugh. I can’t do this. Not even with an imaginary version of you, who would… what? Swell up in protective fury? Take his first trip to the past just to challenge some Neanderthals who have no idea they did anything wrong? Take his first trip to the past just to remind me that Neanderthals is referring to the wrong time period?

We have a pact, you know, the women at the Institute. Our reports don’t go into detail about incidents like these. “Mention them, but don’t focus on them,”—that’s what Barbara told me. (And yeah, I know, she shouldn’t have meddled. But this wasn’t exactly something that could have come from you. Also, in case it makes you feel better, she’s not the only woman who’s told me that.)

I’ll probably just delete this whole entry. Not to prevent you from yelling at Barbara, or to keep from crippling the careers of other female time travelers. It’s just… I really don’t want anyone, anywhere, to know what happened today.

03/07/1546 – Mission #VN-7316

My visit to the salon was unproductive, though I did capture several unusual design elements *uploaded images* as well as an image of a nobleman’s attire that may be of interest to Costuming *uploaded image*. The visit was cut short due to an unpleasant encounter with a group of young noblemen who made certain assumptions about a woman walking alone into a salon.

I escaped without serious injury and without compromising my cover. No locals were harmed. The only damage I inflicted was a light blow to the calf of one local, which does not warrant a temporal-stability incident report.

The 4th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Sorry I haven’t written for a while. I’ve been adjusting. Trying to get my head into more of a sixteenth-century mindset, to assimilate fully into this time and place.

Obviously, I couldn’t do that while constantly thinking about your twenty-first century reactions to everything I was observing. So I had to stop reporting.

I’m telling the truth. I didn’t write for several weeks. There are not reams of redacted letters between my last missive and this one. I’ve been trying not to think of you—where “you” are a metaphor for everything from the twenty-first century—at all.

It’s an entirely legitimate method. Laid out in the Time Travelers’ Manual, in a footnote on page 278. Look it up if you don’t believe me.

You’re the one who told me that the author of the Manual put all the most interesting tidbits in the footnotes—“everything not fit for twenty-first century eyes.” Do you remember?

I remember. It was the first time you ever spoke to me like I was a colleague, rather than a student. An adult rather than a child.

I wonder what you’ll think of me when you find out how much time I’ve wasted here.

I’m not talking about the time I spent self-immersing. That was necessary. It’s not easy to half-forget who I really am. But after a couple of weeks of that, I started being afraid I wouldn’t remember how to act when I got back—which, according to footnote 281B, is when you know it’s working.

So now I feel like it’s safe to talk to you again. As safe as it ever is, anyhow.

And why am I talking to you, Prof? Just because I can break the immersion doesn’t mean I should. I’ve got nothing to report. Not a single solid lead on the woman I’m here to study. It is incredibly hard to get anything done in this time and place, especially if you’re female.

But Lucia did it. She managed to write her poetry. Managed to be remembered seven centuries later. Even if she’s only remembered by very specialized academics and time travelers in search of dissertation topics, that’s still more than most of the men who wander these stinking streets will ever accomplish.

Granted, it’s also more than all the women confined within their houses will.

What made her do it?

I know you’ll accuse me of reading twenty-first century attitudes into a sixteenth-century woman. But typical sixteenth-century women didn’t write sarcastic criticisms of the female virtues, did they? There’s a part of Lucia that’s more twenty-first century than sixteenth, and that’s the part that people where I’m from are going to love her for.

I’m sure of it, and it gives me hope. Because it works both ways. If her words and emotions can reach across the centuries, can find an echo in my modern heart, then maybe the people here are not so different from us. Maybe I can convincingly think like one of them.

I’m doing pretty well. The thing in the salon, it already feels different to me. Like if I’d jumped back from a curb right before a car hit me and got dirt on my favorite shoes as a result. Just a thing that happens. Regrettable, but not really worth dwelling on once your heartbeat calms down.

I think I’m doing well enough to take some risks.

I can see your half-grin, the one that escapes when I’ve managed to surprise you. Honestly, I think that’s the entire reason I wrote that. So I could imagine your grin, your faint nod, before I get back to the business of trying to find her.

I’ll probably erase most of this entry, but I will let you know how my next venture goes.

The 13th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Do you want to hear the good news first, or the bad news?

I’m assuming your answer is going to be to the same as when I asked you that question after my neuro-scans.

So: good news first. My plan worked. I found Lucia.

Bad news: Her name isn’t Lucia anymore. It’s something else. Very likely it’s something like “Maria.”

That’s right. She went and became a nun.

A nun, Prof.

It just happened last year. She entered the novitiate a year before that. If I had set the coordinates just three years earlier...

I don’t understand where I made the mistake. I’ll have to look through my research notes when I get back.

Which should be soon. Actually, I guess I have to come back now.

But then it will be too late. There’s no way I’m going to get funding to come back. Five years ago, she was definitely creating literature… but what am I going to claim, that she wrote The Journey of Giacomo when she was twelve years old?

It’s not actually crazy. Twelve years old, in this time, is not as young as it is in our century.

Go ahead, make the requisite joke about how vividly I must remember being twelve. Which I don’t, by the way. Six years is a really long time when you’ve spent it training the way I have.

But I’m the novice historian who just incorrectly calculated the date of her subject’s writings. I can’t argue anything. No one will take me seriously. As my mentor, you’ll pretend to, I guess.

So my career is effectively over. Maybe I’ll go to law school. I’m young enough.

How would you feel about that? About not being my mentor anymore? Would you be devastated? Would you be relieved?

Maybe both?

I think probably both.

The 14th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Don’t worry, I’ve calmed down. I’m guessing you knew I would, and you haven’t spent the night pacing in circles and worrying about the collapse of all my hopes and dreams, the way I have.

Though if you don’t mind, I’m going to imagine that you did, until I get back and you disabuse me of that notion. Though by then, hopefully, you’ll be too busy helping me frame this discovery in a more useful way.

I mean, nuns are actually in with the general public right now, right? Ever since that film-scape where they were really rebel classicists, which I know is wildly inaccurate, but it struck a chord. Which accurate history rarely does.

Except I’m a historian, not a filmmaker. I know, Prof. I know. And as a historian, there’s really no way I can keep my draft about salon culture and how it created a space for female creativity.

Nor can I think of any explanation for why a woman who had been gaining acceptance in salons would leave them to join a convent.

But here’s my new angle. Most of the female writers we know actually were nuns. Women’s ambitions were much more acceptable if they were veiled with sanctity. And these are communities that were led, organized, and governed exclusively by women. It makes sense that the writer of The Journey of Giacomo, ahead of her time in so many ways, would want to spend the rest of her life in one.

Will you buy that, if I make it my thesis?

Honestly, I’m not sure I buy it. (Though if I convince myself that I do, I’ll redact that.)

Here’s another possibility: What if I leave the convent out? It is not, after all, the part of her life we’re interested in.

Although… the rest of her life is likely to be a very long time. Her stint as a scandalous writer is a tiny fragment of who she was; she spent most of her life as a nun.

Can I be true to who she was, to recording her life, if I don’t mention that? Or if I only mention it in a footnote?

I wish you were here, Prof. I wish I could talk to you. Why aren’t you here?

The 15th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

I’m sorry, Prof. That wasn’t nice. Even if you’re never going to read it.

But while we’re on the subject, I’ve always wondered why you never tried to time travel.

It’s not like the age limitations are based on rock-solid research. Or, you know, any research. It’s basically some anecdotal evidence about fewer neuro-injuries in younger people, with a heap of ageism to fuel the recommendations.

And you—you were the rising star at the world’s top university. Your findings in the Rakuso Archives had turned over a whole field. Your second book was a bestseller, your first was being made into a movie. Don’t tell me you couldn’t have forced them to make an exception if you had tried.

Instead you send students off to the past, to live and understand what you can only read about. We live history, and all you do is study it.

Is that, deep down, what you want? Because if you wanted to time travel… well, I’ve never seen you not try to get something you wanted.

With one exception. Maybe. But I’m not going to talk about that now, not even knowing I’m going to redact it.

The 16th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Sorry about the blank entry yesterday. I wrote out some ridiculous drivel, and I decided to just erase the whole thing. There was nothing useful in it at all.

The 27th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

I did it! I found a way to get to her. The simplest way you could think of.

I am now a nun.

The look on your face! Just imagining it is making me pitch a fit of giggles, which I had better get under control, because the walls here are very thin.

Deliberately thin. It’s not like they don’t have enough building material—the outer walls of the building are thick enough to stop a truck. (Or a lustful young bravo, which I believe is the true concern.) We can’t even hear the rest of the city through them.

But through the walls inside, you can hear everything. There’s no privacy at all. It’s a daunting challenge to even find the time and space to write these letters.

I’ll find a way, don’t worry.

This definitely wasn’t in my plan proposal. Majrab is going to pitch a fit.

Are you amazed at my daring, I wonder? Or do you find it astonishingly stupid? Impulsive, you said of me once, with that slight twist to your voice that made me want to shrivel up and die inside.

Didn’t know it had that effect on me, did you? I’m sure you didn’t. Every second I spend with you, I’m busy hiding the effect you have on me. It’s second nature by now.

But anyhow. Back to the convent, and to the information I’m actually going to include in my final report.

First thing to note: Renaissance convents are awful. In this city the rules are known to be lax, but I guess that’s by sixteenth century standards. By twenty-first century standards… well, let’s just say I’ve had about as much piety as I can take.

As a novice, I’m not even forced to endure the full rules of the order. Even so, I think I’d like to find Lucia, get some interviews, and declare that I lack vocation as soon as possible.

It’s going to take me a little time, because of course she’s not called Lucia any more. She had to take a new name, shave her head, and leave all worldly possessions behind.

Don’t worry, I won’t have to shave my head. (Are you worried?) I’m supposed to be spending my first year in a trial period, to make sure my calling is real. My cover is that of a wealthy widow who is also planning to donate all her money to the convent, so that went over well.

Nuns don’t have a lot of free time, but I have only one thing to do with mine. So it shouldn’t take me long to find her.

The 2nd day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

I was right.

I was right I was right I was so so right!

I’m not going to have to redact half as much as I thought, because this evidence is incontrovertible. Nobody can claim confirmation bias or wish fulfillment. I saw her! And got it on vid, too. *uploaded vidstream*

Her name is now Sister Magdalena. She’s very chummy with the prioress. She’s one of the best singers in the choir.

I’m babbling. I’ll revise to make this less babbly. Or maybe not! We need the public to share our excitement. Maybe I should be relatable.

Merda! I hear the prioress. I’ll figure it out later, and rewrite this whole thing then.

The 4th day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

I talked to Sister Magdalena.

It did not go the way I had planned.

More later, when I’m out of the convent. No reason to risk the prioress finding me now.

The 6th day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

We’re back to the good news/bad news thing. Here goes.

The good news: Lucia/Magdalena is, definitely, the person who wrote The Journey of Giacomo.

The bad news: She wasn’t being sarcastic.

She’s deeply embarrassed by what she wrote. Not just by its content, but by the fact that she wrote it, that she was immodest and unfeminine enough to seek such attention. She entered the convent to repent, and she’s proud of the progress she’s made (but also humble about how far she has to go).

She told me she came to realize that her mind was not strong enough to delve into pursuits better suited to men, and that her desire to write was a blandishment from Satan meant to divert her from her calling. She used the word “unnatural” at least five times.

What do I do with that, Prof?

I know I have to transcribe our actual conversation... and I have the recording... but ugh. It makes her sound so unlikable. To people from our century, I mean.

I can see your disapproving look, and yeah, I guess you’re right. This is an important historical truth. Who this woman was, how she thought, what she felt—this is a history. I’m a historian. The fact that I’m disappointed is already proof that my research is impure and faulty.

Whatever, Prof.

Nobody is going to want to read my paper about a dowdy, pious nun who thinks modesty is a woman’s greatest virtue. The truth will only make her more obscure. Nobody’s going to be interested in a word she wrote, not once they know she was a prejudiced self-hating misogynist, i.e., an ordinary sixteenth century woman.

But she wasn’t. I’ve read everything she ever wrote a dozen times, and I know she wasn’t. There was something about her, a desire, an emotion, that was at odds with her time. That didn’t fit.

So I guess she pushed it down, suppressed it, until it couldn’t be seen. And then she did fit.

I feel sorry for her. It must be terribly uncomfortable to have part of yourself be wrong for your time, be something that calls down scorn and reproach from everyone you know. Who can really blame her for getting rid of it?

Certainly not me.

It’s a good thing I’ve developed a taste for the mead they serve around here.

The 7th day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

This is the biggest problem with the way we do history, you told me once. Most people are ordinary, but we write about the ones who aren’t.

Do you remember? It was one of those late nights in your office, when the Northern Lights were putting on an incredible show. You invited me to stay and watch.

We had already been working together for fourteen months. It was the first time you gave me any real evidence that you thought of me as something other than an annoying burden the department was forcing you to take on.

I didn’t know how to answer you, and I was afraid of saying something stupid. So we just sat there, you with your gin, me with my hands knotted in my lap, watching those eerie green lights dancing in the sky. I wanted some gin too, but I’m technically not old enough to drink, so...

The truth is, I’m probably getting this memory all wrong. For one thing, I can’t imagine the phrase “do history” ever passing your lips. So whatever you really said, or did, my memory has clearly lost some of it and added filler.

I’m trying to remember if you warned me that my own beloved research project might turn out be less exceptional than I hoped. You must have; it’s entirely your kind of thing. And your duty, given that you’re my mentor. But I can’t remember it at all.

To be honest, a lot of the time when you talk, I’m not really listening. Not to your words. More to the inflection of your voice. There are times when you could literally be reciting the phone book, and I’d be sitting there, riveted.

Sometimes, like that night we spent watching the sky light up with green fire, I’m pretty sure you know this.

The 8th day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Phew. Got to admit, I was so drunk last night I woke up afraid I had actually submitted my ramblings. That would have been so, so bad. I might have decided to stay in the past rather than face you.

So I’m glad I didn’t submit anything. Because I have to tell you, living in the past has made me like the past quite a bit less.

It’s not the dirt or the smell or the casual violence or the hateful attitudes. I was prepped for all that. You know that, of course; you did most of the prepping. You were the one who looked me in the eye and put your callused hands over mine and said, “You’re ready.”

Hate to tell you, Prof, but you were wrong.

None of us is ready. Who are we fooling, when we tell ourselves we know the past and understand the people who live there? That we are recording people’s lives, rather than creating them? I’ve lived with these people for months now, I understand them fifty percent more than I did when I got here, and I don’t think I’ll ever get close to one hundred percent.

If I can’t... if none of us can... then what’s the point of doing this at all?

06/08/1546 – Report on Mission #VN-7316

Primary Goal: Ascertain authorship of The Journey of Giacomo.

The Journey of Giacomo was written by a woman we have known only as Lucia, a literary figure who eventually became a nun. It is a work that gives voice to thousands of silenced woman who were forced—or who desired—to enter convents. Lucia used the voice of a privileged male to express the tensions and discontents related to her limited choices in...

Oh, va in quel paese.

The 9th day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

Remember that lecture you gave at the Taipei Conference? Probably not, I’m sure you gave it a dozen times, but I remember it. It was the first time I’d heard you speak. I remember how you strode up to the lectern, how the very air around you seemed to crackle. I remember every word you said.

The truth matters. If we don’t believe the truth matters, we shouldn’t be here.

Do you even remember saying that?

Maybe not that time, but you’ve said variations of it, over and over. More importantly, you’ve lived it. Your dedication to truth is in every line you’ve ever written, every word you’ve ever breathed.

I’m so glad you’re never going to read what I wrote last night.

Of course, some truths are more acceptable than others. Even to you.

I thought I had adopted the mindset of a sixteenth century woman. Obviously, I was wrong. All my theories about Lucia hinged on her not being a sixteenth century woman. And here I am, deeply disappointed in her for belonging to the time she lives in and not to mine.

Who did I think I was fooling?

I know, I know. I’ve only been fooling one person. Myself.

And I know the question that comes after that. I can almost hear the twist in your voice, asking it: Why did I want so badly to be fooled?

I know the answer to that too, Prof.

There was a part of Lucia that didn’t fit with her time, that rubbed like sandpaper against the era where she belonged. So she buried it.

I think I’ve been doing the same thing.

The 12th day of June in the Year of Our Lord 1546 – Mission #VN-7316

I’ve set the coordinates for my return.

When I come back, I’ll admit my failure. I’ll endure the roasting. I’m going to retire my dissertation, and Lucia will return to a couple of dusty footnotes in dissertations about other people.

Don’t worry. I’m giving up on her, but not on my career. Despite what I’m going to say next.

I read over my reports. When I wrote them, I was intending to redact them. But now... now I see what they really say, and I’m not ashamed of it. I want you to read them.

I want you to know.

I think you already know, don’t you?

I think you’ve known for some time that I love you. I think you enjoy it. In the twenty-first century, I’m considered quite beautiful (not here, though, which has been interesting). And you, for all your wit and brilliance and compassion, are not the most handsome of men. Why wouldn’t you enjoy it?

Why wouldn’t you love me back?

Oh, I know all the reasons. The age difference. The power difference. I mean, you have direct control over my career. Depending on what state we’re in and their age of consent laws, it might actually be illegal for us to be together, no matter how much we love each other. Everyone we know would assume that a relationship between us is abusive by its very nature. It would make you into a predator, and me into an object of pity.

To everyone we know there.

But here, no one would see it that way. No one would even think of seeing it that way. All the assumptions behind that condemnation are completely absent.

Which is why, here, I can see what I’ve been feeling all along.

All those historical romances I read (yes, yes, I do read them, we can stop that whole charade about how I get them for my sister), about women rejecting men for being older. Because age is unattractive. Because women want to be as powerful as their husbands, rather than being drawn to men more powerful than they are. Nothing I read, no story I was given in the twenty-first century, prepared me for how I feel about you.

(I mean, maybe vampire romances? But let’s not even go down that path.)

Here, though. Here it all makes sense. It would make sense to everyone, and so it makes sense to me, and I can’t even quite remember why I was so afraid of how I feel. Why I was convinced that there was something dirty, something wrong, with the most natural and beautiful feeling in the world.

I’m not going to redact this at all. I’m just going to send it forward, and then I’ll send myself forward, and then... well, I guess we’ll see. You don’t ever have to speak of it. If you don’t, I’ll never bring it up.

But even if we never speak of it, I’ll know, and you’ll know: I love you.

I’m not afraid of our love. Not anymore.

So there you go, Prof. Even if you’re too limited by your own time to accept it, to reach for something we both know we want, at least you know it’s possible.

If that was the only thing I learned in 1546, it was enough.

See you soon, Prof. I can’t wait to figure out my new dissertation topic with you.