Castaways in Time

by Robert Adams

  Turning, he set eyes upon his tatterdemalions, slowly debouching from the swamp and forest to stand gaping in stunned disbelief at the serried ranks blocking their only road to Bournemouth. He shook his head sadly, closed and cased his precious long-glass, set his helmet back over his coif, reined about and set off at a plodding walk toward the steel coach, heedless of the tears coursing down his lined cheeks into his scraggly beard. Surrender was foreign to his nature . . . but so, too, was suicide.

  CHAPTER 8

  With the capitulation of the last and largest force of foreign Crusaders, the counties of the south and the east were a-ripple with the sound of turning coats. Those few men too honest or too stubborn to decide that Arthur was lawful king after all spurred lathered horses for the safety of the walls of London. Some made it. Some did not, and full many a tree and gate lintel and gibbet throughout the realm was decorated with the bird-pecked corpses of churchmen and Church's men, swaying and rotting and stinking under the hot summer sun.

  With no less than three captured siege trains, the Royal Army invested London—last remaining stronghold of Church and Pretender—late in May. They still were ringed about the city in December, warm and dry and adequately supplied in well-built encampments, patiently awaiting the order to attack but, meanwhile, seeing to it that no living creature left the city and that no supplies of any sort reached it.

  Of scant value to the besiegers, the Royal Cavalry had spent the summer and the autumn riding hither and yon, putting down brigandage, hunting down stragglers from the various foreign armies, and flushing out Church's men and other traitors. But as autumn merged into winter, the Lord Commander of Horse recalled the wide-ranging units to the old campground near Manchester, and after issuing orders that all be ready for instant summons but in any case report to the present encampment no later than the first day of April, he dismissed them to their homes. Then, accompanied by his faithful attendant and along with a score of Borderers, he set out to the northeast, where old friends, wife, and infant son awaited him.

  The little party clove to the coast as far north as Kendal, then northwestward up the valley of the Eden River, due west over the northern foothills of the Pennine chain, over the ancient Roman Wall, and so into Tynedale, being welcomed at every hall and hamlet they passed. But there was no welcome for the travelers at Heron Hall.

  The smashed gate hung drunkenly on but one hinge, swaying and creaking dolefully to the strong, frigid gusts howling down from Scotland. Most of the outbuildings were but heaps of old ash and tumbled, sooty stones, and the hall itself, wherein had been dispensed so much cheer from year to year, was a smoke-blackened ruin. The windows gaped like the empty eye-sockets of some ancient skull, while the soaring chimneys and charred roof beams now gave roost to a flock of cawing crows which rose in an ebon cloud, loudly shrieking protest, when a trio of dragoons clambered through a front window and drew the rusty bolts so that their officer might enter.

  Foster saw that half of the stone stairway still stood, mounting upward from the desolation below to end abruptly in the empty space above. Small vermin scuttered squeaking before his advance, and his boot struck a roundish object that rolled over in the cold, wet ashes to grin up at him with broken teeth—a human skull, a wide, jagged crack running from just above the brow to the crown.

  His troopers poked about here and there, but between the Scots and the fire, nothing worth the looting remained in the empty shell of Heron Hall. They soon mounted and rode on northward, a good bit more somber than before, until the banner-crowned keep of Whyffler Hall came into view.

  The silken banners snapped taut in a stiff wind from the northwest, and Foster reined up on a knoll to study them through his battered binoculars, with the now-instinctive caution born of the long months of war.

  There was the royal banner, of course, as the hall still was reckoned a fort and still housed a reduced garrison; there was Sir Francis' family arms, and Foster's own. But there were several other banners as well. One of them he was dead certain was that of Harold of York, though he could not imagine for what purpose the Archbishop had left his comfortable palace for the long, rugged journey to the northern marches. Beside the episcopal banner floated what could be none but that of Reichsregent Wolfgang, and there were two others, one of which bore a striking resemblance to the arms of the Kingdom of Scotland; as to the last, Foster knew that he had seen it before but could not say where or name it.

  The alert sentries spotted the mounted party long before they reached the ring of outer fortifications, and they were greeted at the south gate by a well-armed quarterguard and there halted until their identities had been established to the satisfaction of the guard officer. Only then were they escorted to the hall, wherein Sir Francis and his guests sat at meal.

  ——«»——«»——«»——

  Foster stood before the mirror in the master bathroom of his home, bare to the waist, removing the stubble from his cheeks with slow, even strokes of the rotary razor. Through the connecting closet space, he could see Krystal, still sleeping on their big bed, her fine, exciting body concealed now by the blanket, her raven hair still in the wild disarray in which their early-morning bout of love had left it. Beyond the bed, in an intricately carved and richly inlaid cradle, slept his son, Joseph Sebastian Foster.

  He had always been of the opinion that all babies looked alike . . . but that was before he had first held little Joe, gazed into the dark-blue eyes under the already thick shock of blue-black hair, felt the surprising strength of the grip of that tiny pink fist. My son, he had thought with fierce pride, my son; it all has been worth it—the pain, the cold, the heat, the privation, even the death—you, my son, have made it worthwhile for me, simply by being.

  The two marriages of his salad days had never been happy or secure enough for him to even consider children. He and Carol had often discussed having a few, as they often had discussed formalizing their relationship with marriage, but they had continually put off both projects . . . and then, one day, Carol was dead.

  As he stood beneath the scalding spray of the shower, he thought, "Arthur must find a way to mollify Church and Pope, if I'm to see this son of mine a man. Only a handful of my original troop are left alive, and if more Crusaders come in the spring, if the war drags on for another year, it can only be a matter of time until a sword swipe or an ounce of lead makes me one of the majority, for all that I don't see as much hand-to-hand anymore as I did when I led only a troop or a squadron."

  "Of course, I could say to hell with it, I've done my bit and take my sword and my family and my stallion to Europe with Wolfie after London falls, and no man would think any less of me for it; after all, I am a nobleman of the Empire and Wolfie's vassal, and I'm as safe from the Church there as I would be here, at least as long as Egon is Emperor."

  "That Egon is quite a boy, but then I always thought highly of him. Took a leaf from Arthur's book, they say, declared his Empire was no longer a Papal feoff and flatly refused to go to Rome to be crowned by the Pope . . . and the Electors backed him up too, to a man. Crowned himself, he did! Then sent Cardinal Eugenio de Lucca back to Rome with a message that it's said sent the Pope into screaming fits. Emperor Egon I solemnly promises that when he can win the support of a majority of the Imperial Electors, he means to enter into a formal alliance with the Kingdom of England and Wales and, if any Crusade is preached against him or the first foreign Crusader sets foot over his boundaries, he will make peace with the heathen hordes on his eastern borders and grant them free passage over his lands that they may descend upon Italy, France, Iberia, and Scandinavia. Obviously, Rome believes him, for they now are playing a very tight game, where Egon is concerned."

  "And the buggers should take him seriously, too, because he already has a big minority of those Electors on the hip. When he informed them that he meant to not only pick his own empress but that she'd be the daughter of a simple country Freiherr, and English to boot, he got majority approval on the first vote."
>
  "So now, dear old Sir Francis and Arabella are en route to the King's camp, and the escort who came to deliver Arthur's summons and bear them back was already fawning over the old man and addressing him as 'Your Grace' and 'My Lord Duke,' and the ladies of the party were all aflutter over 'Her Imperial Highness.' Sir Francis seemed to be bearing up well enough—I can't think of any possible circumstance that would rattle that stout old soldier—but poor little Arabella looked dazed. I guess she thought she'd never see Egon again."

  He turned, then, to let the steaming water play over his back and shoulders now thickly callused from bearing the weight of a cuirass. He silently mused on.

  "Well, at least our northern marches are secure—anyway, secure as they've ever been, considering the temper and endless feuds of the Borderers. James of Scotland not only doesn't want any more war with us, he's willing to send unsecured hostages for his continued good conduct. Too, Hal of York says that in addition to offering Arthur his only child as a wife, James's emissary keeps obliquely inquiring whether Arthur might be willing to send part of his army to Scotland to help put down a covey of rebellious lairds."

  "And I doubt we'll see much of the Irish, for a while, what with the hot little civil war—five-sided, last I heard!—the High King's got on his bloody hands. If we can put stock in our chubby Baròn Melchoro, no Portuguese will be back. But there are still the French and the Spanish, and you can bet that Rome will be hiring another army and another captain, come campaigning weather. Old Count Horeszko will be passing the word among his colleagues that we're a tough nut to crack, but that won't faze the condottieri, of course; each one of them thinks he's a better captain than any other, so they'll just put his defeat down to his senility . . . and jack up the price to whatever the Church is willing to pay."

  "But the Church dislikes spending money on wars and soldiers to fight them and Wolfie says that, if it appears that the English Crusade is going to continue to drain the Papal treasury at the rate last year's campaignings did, it's more than likely that the Pope will call off the Crusade and try to normalize relations with Arthur. If London falls, he says, and the Pretender and his harridan of a mother should happen to meet with fatal . . . ahh, 'accidents' before a new war season can get underway, it's a near certainty that Rome will try to negotiate. God, I sure hope he's right!"

  ——«»——«»——«»——

  The sound of the rushing water wakened Krystal Foster, slowly. She stretched once, deliciously, then snuggled back under the blanket, purring like a cat, her mind filled with thoughts of her husband.

  There had been many times in the not-too-distant past (or was it future?) when she had thought she would never have either husband or child, as she trod the fine line between the insensate demands of mother, aunts and other relatives—"marry a nice, Jewish boy and settle down and start having babies; that's what a girl is supposed to do with her life, Rebecca, that's what makes life worthwhile"—and the gut knowledge that her baby brother would never willingly amount to a damn and so only her accomplishments would be available to salvage her beloved father's pride.

  In the eight years of pre-med and medical school, she had done her share of sleeping around, of course, and had soon come to the conclusion that damned few of the young men of her peer group were free of some sort of sexual hang-up. She had started to wonder if the religious nuts were not correct in their vociferous assertions that American society was rotten to the core, hopelessly decadent and bound irrevocably for hell in a handcart, until she met Dan.

  That was in her junior year of med school and, within two months of meeting, she and Dan Dershkowitz were sharing a tiny off-campus apartment. In the beginning, he seemed the man of her dreams—tall, handsome, trim and athletic, highly intelligent and well-educated, urbane and charming, abrim with humanism. A native of Chicago, he was a psychiatric social worker in Baltimore and also taught a couple of evening classes each week at Krystal's university.

  It lasted for five glorious months and ended terribly, traumatically, one lovely spring afternoon. Her last class of the day having been canceled in the unexpected absence of the professor, she had returned to the apartment two hours earlier than usual. As she climbed the stairs, she was already planning to call Dan at his office, cook him a fine meal, and have a wonderful early evening before again hitting the books.

  She turned the key in the lock and swung open the door. The air was thick and bluish with hash smoke, but this was not unusual; she and Dan often relaxed with grass or hash, which both of them considered pleasant and innocuous substances. She reeled against the doorframe in sick horror at what she saw upon the Murphy bed.

  Dan. Wonderful Dan. Her Dan. Dan, nude but for T-shirt and sox, doing things to the wholly nude body of Ricky Perez, the super's retarded teenaged son!

  Her second fiasco started almost a year later, in the person of Harley Fist. Harley was a couple of years older than she, though only an undergraduate senior, due to the fact that he had done two hitches in the army between high school and college. He was not above average in height—only five-nine or so—but was solid and powerful, with long arms and such superb coordination that he was a shining light of the varsity hockey team, though he invariably spent a good bit of each game in the penalty box.

  Harley's pugnacity on the ice was infamous; he had assaulted opponents with butting head, flailing fists, knees, elbows, forearms, stick, feet and skates and, on occasion, had downed his man by way of a flying body-block. Nor were his attacks limited to sport—his fraternity brothers trod most warily around him, especially on the frequent times he was found in his cups. But he was unquestionably masculine and Krystal needed that super-maleness, after Dan.

  As his date of graduation neared, Harley was recipient of several attractive offers from many professional hockey clubs who recognized the box-office potential of his brand of savagery. Immediately he accepted the most promising and lucrative of the commitments, and asked Krystal to marry him in June and accompany him to Canada.

  Even had she not already been accepted as an intern at a large Baltimore hospital, Krystal could not see herself legally bound to Harley Fist. Too many things about him were unsettling. He was crude, and not even four years in a top fraternity had been able to impart sufficient polish to his rough edges to make him more than marginally acceptable in most social situations. Another thing that bothered her was his obvious relish in recountals of thoroughly sickening atrocities he had perpetrated or taken part in during his tours in Southeast Asia. But the most disturbing factor was the fact that, when he was not in strict training, he was never cold sober and, when drunk, he posed a deadly threat to everyone within reach.

  As gently as possible, Krystal refused him, citing her past eight years of preparation and her coming internship. Reaching across the table, she took his big, scarred hand in both of hers and sincerely thanked him for the offer, then she finished her coffee and excused herself to go to her next class.

  On the evening of the second day after her graduation, her mother and her father were helping her pack her furniture and personal possessions for the storage company to collect the following morning, since she would be required to reside in the hospital during her internship. In the window, the air-conditioning unit fought valiantly against the muggy heat. While her mother boiled eggs and brewed tea in the minuscule kitchenette, she and her father sat carefully wrapping breakables in newspaper before stowing them in the china barrels.

  The wall clock showed twenty minutes of midnight when there came the pounding on the apartment door.

  "People don't know what a bell is for?" asked her father as she arose and stepped over to open the latch. Leaving the burglar chain engaged, she peered out to see Harley Fist, swaying on his feet, his eyes red-rimmed, his face sullen and stubbled, a livid bruise discoloring one side of his chin and jaw.

  Squinting, he peered at her. "Open up the gawdam door, Krystal. I came to give you another chance, 'fore I leave for Canada."

  "My a
nswer is still the same, Harley. Thank you so very, very much, but no."

  He leaned against the door and leered nastily. "Well, open up, anyhow, sweet chips. We can crawl inna bed and say bye-bye right." He shoved his hips forward, adding, "Stick your hand down here and take a feel of what I got for you."

  She shook her head. "Just go home, Harley, please. What we had is over and . . . and I have—"

  At that moment, her father called, "Who is it, honey? What do they want?"

  Harley took a half-step back and lunged. Krystal barely had time to get out of the way of the wood splinters and brass screws as the chain was ripped from the jamb and the door crashed open.

  Harley stalked into the room, snarling, "You gawdam sheenie bitch, you! Couldn't wait till I was gone, 'fore you was slidin' your slimy, fuckin' cooze onta a cock old enough to be your friggin' father. Well, I'll just fix his fuckin' apples, and 'fore I'm done with the two of you, tonight, you gone need a fuckin' doctor . . . or a friggin' undertaker!"

  Recognizing the clear signs of his killer rage, Krystal grasped his arm, placing herself between him and his intended prey. "Harley, Harley, this is my father! Harley, listen to me! This is my father."

  Mr. Kent had stood up. Frowning disapproval, he took the telephone from atop a sealed crate. "Krystal, the young man is obviously drunk. Don't try to argue with him. Tell him to leave. If he won't, call the police. That's the only way to handle people in his condition."

  He held the set out. Harley grabbed it, ripped the cord from the wall, and heaved everything through the window above the air-conditioner. Followed by a shower of glass and pieces of sash frame, the telephone fell three stories to narrowly miss an open convertible parked in front of the building, and the indignant shouts of the five young men occupying it could be clearly heard through the shattered window.