Castaways in Time

by Robert Adams

  As the enemy host broke camp and prepared to take up their journey, Sir Francis scrutinized them through Foster's big 7x50 binoculars, of which he had become quite fond.

  "They be French, the bastards," he announced, at length, though never taking the optics from his eyes.

  "You can hear that well?" queried Collier. "It all sounds just a confused babble to me."

  The old nobleman's pointed vandyke—not quite pure white, being shot through with errant strands of light auburn—bobbed as he silently laughed. "Och, nae, my gude magister, I can but tell from the moving o' the whoresons' lips wha' whords they be speaking. Aye, they be mostly French, wi' at least a few Savoyards . . . wait noo, some Flemishers, too. Och, 'tis a fine kettle of tainted fish the thrice-domned Pope has sent intae our lands."

  They stayed close until the enemy rear guard was nearly an hour over the horizon, then hurriedly crossed the ford and rode hard to the southeast. It was not until they were bare miles from York that they were forced to fight for their passage, and this not with foreign Crusaders, but with a band of common brigands. In a morning's misty rain, the highwaymen must have mistaken the party with its long pack train for merchants, rather than armed, alert and bellicose gentlemen and their retainers; few of them lived to reflect on their hasty follies. Briskly, Sir Francis' men stripped the dead and dying robbers of their arms and anything else that looked to be usable or of value, loaded the booty onto such horses as could be easily caught, and resumed their ride. In mid-afternoon, they came within sight of York. The town was filled to more than overflowing, what with the King and his retinue, gathering supporters and their armed bands, hordes of humbler folk from smaller towns and villages and the countryside seeking the protection of the strong walls and trained fighters afforded by this temporary capital—all in addition to the usual inhabitants. The provost was allowed to believe that they were but another trooplet of King's men from the northern marches, whereupon he assigned them an area in which to pitch their tents. When all was in order in his camp, Sir Francis rode to seek the King.

  Seated on the ground-cloth of his pyramid-tent, his disassembled firearms spread on an improvised table made of a piece of planking atop his tight-rolled sleeping bag, Foster was absorbed in carefully cleaning and oiling his Colt, Winchester pumpgun, and his two new horse pistols. In rear of the tent lay Webster, snoring resoundingly on blankets, his leather buff-coat rolled up for a pillow. Collier was out roaming the camps, fascinatedly.

  When he had reassembled the automatic and the shotgun he broke the two Stevens Model 94s—only the pistol grip and fore-end remaining of the stock, and with barrels shortens to thirteen inches—and held them up to the light of the doorway. The black-powder-reloaded shells had left an unbelievable amount of fouling in the smooth bore. He set himself the task of removing it.

  "Amazing." Collier wandered in, still armored and [unclear], his filthy, muddy jackboots leaving broad stains on the ground-cloth.

  "What's going to be amazing," Foster grinned, "is the of the hole I'm going to blast through you if you don't remember to take off those cobbler's nightmares or at least clean them before you come into this tent. God knows how long we're going to have to live in it, and my standards of cleanliness are somewhat higher than those of our British friends here."

  Hanging his ugly head sheepishly, Collier sat down and started to struggle out of the ungainly footwear, speaking all the while. "This place, those camps, ugh . . . a philologist's dream, Bass. I've just been in the camp of a squadron from Di[missing]moor, and they speak Cornish. Can you believe it, Bass, Cornish!" At last, big boots shed, he slid on his rump over Foster's "table," unholstering his long-barreled Luger.

  "I'd best clean this, too, I suppose. I fired four or so rounds from it, back on the road, there."

  Foster shook his head and said, "You should've used horse pistols, Bill. Save the Luger for dire emergencies; I told you and Webster that."

  "Well, you used your .45, Bass. Dammit, what's the difference?" demanded the Professor peevedly.

  "The difference is that I have over two hundred rounds for the Colt, but only fifty—less than that, now—for your piece or for Buddy's, and once they're fired, there'll be no more."

  The older man delved a hand into one of the pouches of his belt—his contemporary clothing had no pockets—then tended the open palm containing a trio of 9mm cases to Foster. "Reload them, as you reload your shot shells. I'm reasonably certain that I can devise a means of fabricating primers."

  Foster shook his head slowly. "You, your many accomplishments, never cease to amaze me, Bill. You're not at all the sort of man I assumed you to be during the first day I knew you. You're the best pistol or rifle or wing shot I've ever seen, and I've seen a lot. You can fence me into the ground, and I wasn't all that bad a fencer, once. You're a better horseman than anyone at Whyffler Hall . . . except, maybe, Sir Francis and Geoff Musgrave."

  "It was you that remembered Webster saying that he was hauling a load of chemical fertilizer, and you that worked out a way to use it in place of niter crystals. It was your mind and Pete Fairley's hands that also worked out a quick and simple method for converting matchlocks to flintlocks. And it was you who thought up the bit with my Jeep pickup." He couldn't repress a grin and a chuckle. "Christ, I'll bet some of those barefoot bastards are still running."

  "No doubt you'll have other surprises in store for us, in time, and I don't doubt for a minute that you can and will make primers when the couple of thousand I have with my reloading set are gone."

  "But, Bill, there are one or two gaps in your knowledge. First off, my Colt and Luger and Buddy's .380 are all three automatics; that is to say, they're operated by their recoil and the gases from their charges. Black powder just isn't a powerful enough propellant to make them work."

  "Then put in more powder, Bass."

  He grimaced. "The cases aren't big enough to put in that much powder, Bill—as much as we'd need, I mean. Besides which, there's more to reloading cases than simply knocking out the old primer, fitting in a new one, and adding powder. You need the proper dies for each caliber, and the only dies I own are for three shotgun gauges. You start playing around with reloaded ammo, you'll soon wind up missing fingers or a whole hand or with a big chunk of steel in your head. I stick to the rules and the load tables, and I'm not about to do any experimenting . . . not unless somebody else is going to do the test firing. Unless you want that job, you'd better just forget about reloading 9mm or .45 hulls, Bill, and hoard the few you have for a real emergency."

  "Use the horse pistols, and thank God Carey's load included a case of those single-shots. You may think they're slow-firing, but believe me you've got one helluva edge over these muzzleloaders."

  Sir Francis stamped in, his fine-boned face a study in disgust, frustration, and rage. "Och, the black-hirted, self-sairvin', meacock wretch of a whoreson carpet-knicht! Wi' the domned French and Flemings landed ain the east, the wild Irish ain the west, Spanishers and Portagees a-gnawing at the Southerly coasts and the domned Scots massing their domned army on the north bank o' the Tweed, still the bull's pizzle pandar be oot tae line his purse, and me wi'oot gold enow tae sate his base demands! I fear me we'll nae see the King, alas."

  "Bureaucrats are always the same, eh, Bill." Foster smiled "My late father used to say that 'crooked politician' was a gross redundancy." To Sir Francis, "How much does the thieving bastard want?"

  The old man sighed. "Ten shilling tae see the King late next week, twenty tae see him arily next week, but it maun be in gold, nae siller."

  "And how much to see him tomorrow?" Bass asked, while unzipping his coveralls and pulling up his T-shirt, glad now that he'd heeded the hunch and brought part of Carol's coin collection along.

  "A fu' Spanish onza o' gold." Sir Francis shook his white head in weary resignation. "More hard money than mony see in a' the year. And a' I brocht be siller."

  Foster fumbled for a moment in the nylon money belt, then handed the old noblema
n a South African krugerrand. "Will that do it?"

  CHAPTER 3

  Dear Krystal,

  I am sending this letter by way of the trooper who was my orderly, Oily Shaftoe. The poor fellow lost his forearm and hand when an arquebus ball took him just at the elbow and so ended his soldiering days. The miracle is that he failed to bleed to death or die of infection. He's a bright fellow and learns quickly, so tell Pete to find a job for him.

  Bill Collier is also sending a letter to his wife, and Sir Francis one to his daughter, a second to his sister, and two shorter ones to Geoff Musgrave and Henry Turnbull.

  Buddy Webster and I are well, if overworked and somewhat underfed all too often, and not because we cannot buy food—I still have quite a bit of the coin collection I brought along—but because there is damn-all food to buy hereabouts. We did eat pretty well for a couple of weeks after the battle near Haltwhistle, where we virtually annihilated about five thousand of these so-called Crusaders, most of them from France and Belgium. My troop—I bought commissions for Buddy and myself, early on; you simply would not believe the purchasing power of gold and silver coin, Krystal—was in the thick of things. We were part of that squadron (commanded by Sir Francis, who else) that rolled up their left flank.

  We see very little of Bill anymore. He made a deep impression on the King at first meeting, quickly was appointed to His Majesty's personal retinue, and is, we understand, planning most of the royal strategy now.

  We break camp in the morning to march south. There is a larger French force advancing from the east along the Weiland valley, but we'll probably have to fight the Irish, first, as they are encamped near Manchester. Granting we overcome both the Irish and the French, there still is an even larger Spanish-Portuguese-Italian force to the far south, last reported somewhere west of Chichester. And we can only hope and pray that King Alexander's internal problems not only continue but multiply, else we'll have his Scots on our backs before we can drive off the other three armies.

  Re the letter you sent me with the last powder train: No, stay where you are! The only women with the army, "ladies" and commoners alike, are out-and-out whores. True, they do aid the surgeons in caring for the sick and wounded, but their status is definitely inferior. They share all the filth and hardships of camp life, so they are mostly in poor health and their death rate is high.

  With autumn coming in, it is beginning to get downright cold; therefore, I'd appreciate it if you could send me a few things with the next powder train. In the attic of my house you'll find an old footlocker with my name stenciled on the lid; it's heavy as lead, but damned strong. Put the biggest padlock you can find in my shop on it and give the key to Pete; tell him to pack it in with a box of five hundred twelve-gauge shells (all slugs) for Webster and me.

  Put the following in the footlocker: my other two coveralls, all the wool sox you can find, the two sets of insulated underwear, all my undershorts and T-shirts, the two replacement liners for my sleeping bag, the large can of foot powder, the big pasteboard box labeled "motel soap," all the razorblades you can locate, the green parka, any bottles of aftershave you can find, and the prescription bottle of Lomotil (also in the medicine cabinet).

  I don't ask for food because I know how short you are of it there; however, a couple of fifths would be nice (if you have room for them and if Arbor hasn't guzzled them all by now), also some vitamin tabs and perhaps a few bouillon cubes. There are a couple of chapsticks around the house somewhere, and I can certainly use them, along with the big jar of petroleum jelly and one of the hundred tab bottles of aspirin.

  Put in all my handkerchiefs, four bath towels, a big pair of scissors, two ballpoint pens, a couple of the black market pens, and a pack of the 8 x 11 bond. There is a brass police whistle and chain in the bottom drawer of my gun cabinet; that too.

  If I said that I love you, Krystal, I'd be lying, but I do miss you and I wish I could be with you. However, we—all of us—are irrevocably committed to His Majesty and his cause, like it or not, so it is sure to be some time before I can return to Whyffler Hall . . . and to you.

  As for the BIG QUESTION, where we are is assuredly England, when is a little trickier as these people (those to whom I've spoken, at least) reckon time according to the individual kings or popes. This is the ninth year since the crowning of Arthur III of England and Wales, the fourth year since the ascension of Pope Boniface XI. I don't know all that much history, but I never heard of an English king named Arthur III.

  The present King is a Tudor, and his great-grandfather was Henry VII, but the only reference I can find to the Henry VIII of our history is the memory of the King's great-uncle, Henry, who was killed on some European field more than eighty years ago. Arthur III was preceded by his elder brother, Richard IV, who died suddenly and mysteriously (it is widely believed that he was poisoned at the instigation of the Archbishop of Canterbury, but that may well be just anticlerical propaganda). His wife bore a son seven months later, but by then Arthur had already been crowned.

  Richard's widow, Angela, is the niece of the previous Pope. As such, her son is the favorite of the Church and Rome has turned all the screws they can to force Arthur to abdicate in his nephew's favor; everything else failing, they excommunicated him. But a wave of anticlerical feeling has been building up in England for generations so that now Arthur has the full support of at least sixty percent of his nobles and closer to eighty percent of the common people. And the more foreign armies and raiders the Church sends into England, the wider and stronger becomes the open, public support.

  The center of pro-Church sentiment is in and around London. When the King marched his army north at the news of the then-imminent invasion of the Scots, a strong force of Crusaders sailed over from the Continent and garrisoned the capital. The Archbishop of Canterbury and certain pro-Church nobles acclaimed and crowned Angela's son as Richard V, proclaiming his mother his regent.

  So that's how matters stand.

  As for Arthur, from the little I've seen of him, he seems a personable man of thirty years. He seems intelligent; they say he speaks seven or eight languages fluently. He's strong as the proverbial ox and has been a soldier since his early teens (but that's par for the course among noblemen); he has a build that probably will run to fat as he gets older, but now he's all big bones and sinew.

  He had a wife (a daughter of Lothair III, Emperor of what I surmise is the Holy Roman Empire, although its boundaries seem different from what I can recall of my European history), two young sons, and an infant daughter, but they were butchered at the order of the Regent, Angela, soon after her son was crowned.

  I think, all things considered, we're definitely on the right side in this conflict, Krystal. For all that the King's people can be rather crude and barbaric, the Church people strike me as mercilessly savage, not my kind at all.

  ——«»——«»——«»——

  There was more, additional little items Bass requested for his health or comfort, instructions for turning on the heating system in his house—he clearly assumed that she still was living in his tri-level, but she had long ago moved into Whyffler Hall, to be near her many patients, and turned the anachronistic house nestled among Sir Francis' specimen shrubs over to Pete Fairley and Carey Carr. Dave Atkins moved in with them whenever he and Susan had a tiff, which was why Krystal had dumped everything resembling a drug into a cardboard box and locked it into the big, heavy antique safe, along with the rest of the coin collection, the silverware, Bass's jewelry, and the remainder of the liquor.

  Dave had proved a good worker, innovative and knowledgeable of weapons . . . when he wasn't tripping on drugs. He would swallow any pill or capsule he came across, however, as too would Susan.

  Krystal broke the seals of Professor Collier's letter next, knowing that Arbor would be in no condition even to hold the missive, much less read it. The months here had not been kind to her; she was a mere shadow of her former self, thanks to the rough food to which her digestive tract could
not seem to adapt, and to the constant intestinal irritation produced by the gallons of ale she swilled each day.

  My Dear,

  Please forgive me for leaving you, for much good has come of it. I have been able to help a very fine young man, whom I have come to love almost as a son; his name is Arthur Tudor and he is the King. It is truly amazing, but he and I bear a marked physical resemblance, one to the other. He it was who first noticed and remarked upon it and that remark was the inception of our present intimate friendship. I have become one of his three principal and most trusted advisers, nor has he been unappreciative; not only has he maintained me as lavishly as present conditions allow, he has ennobled me as well. You may now style yourself "Countess of Sussex," as I have been appointed Earl of that holding (the present Earl is a traitor and rebel and, when once this rebellion is quashed and the invaders driven out of our realm, he stands to forfeit not only his lands and all other holdings but his head as well).

  I know that you have always disapproved my consuming interest in the military aspects of history, thought my fascination with games involving strategy and tactics childish in the extreme, but it has been this very knowledge and expertise in the proper techniques of marshaling and movement of troops that has proven of such aid to young Arthur and to his hard-pressed army.

  He is a very intelligent young man and possessed of personal courage, but he was as ignorant of the skillful conduct of maneuver warfare as are still our opponents.

  When once I had explained the value and necessity of disciplined units of uniform sizes to Arthur, he quickly ordered that my suggestions be carried out. Within the short space of a month, Mr. Webster and Mr. Foster and I had trained a cadre of open-minded noblemen and set them, under our supervision, to imparting of their new knowledge to selected units, both horse and foot. Then I set myself to the organization of the artillery, such as it was.