Castaways in Time

by Robert Adams

  I love you, Krys. I love Little Joe, the son I thought I'd never have, would never have had on that other world. I miss you both and I pray for winter to hurry with all the fervor that Arthur prays for the capitulation of London with.

  For all the fact that they're my enemies, I cannot but pity the poor folk inside that doomed city. The refugees who have managed to escape for one reason or another paint a grim picture—not one horse, mule, ass, cow, or goat is left within London, and even rats are becoming rare as gold hen's teeth, their supplies of both gunpowder and fuel are scant, and . . .

  Well, Krys, Sir Ali is ready to leave for the north and I have still to sign this and some other letters, sand them, seal them, and pack them in a waterproof tube. Hug Little Joe for me and be ready to move to Rutland as soon as the gallowglasses arrive to escort you.

  I do hate to ask you to leave the creature comforts of my little house, honey, but Fort Whyffler is just situated too far north for me to establish it as my principal seat.

  All my love always,

  Bass.

  ——«»——«»——«»——

  Krystal Kent Foster refolded the letter and looked again at the elaborate beribboned seal of dark-blue wax. Her husband had obviously wasted no time in acquiring a coat of arms, for the largest blob of wax bore the deep imprint of those arms, but the detail was too tiny for her to make it out in the poor, fading light of the westering sun.

  She had been living in Whyffler Hall for most of the summer. The central-air-conditioning unit in Bass's house had worked in a fair manner for about a week after she first turned it on, but then had begun to blow only hot air. Her limited knowledge of the mechanics of the unit led her to believe that quite probably the device needed a fresh injection of coolant gas—neon or xeon or freon or some such name. She had no idea of whether or not Bass had any stored in his workshop and would not know how to put it in if she could find any. Without air-conditioning, the tri-level was an oven, stifling from top to bottom.

  Whyffler Hall, on the other hand, with its high ceilings behind thick stone walls, was divinely cool. Gradually, over a couple of weeks, Krystal moved most of the contents of Bass' house into the hall, returning to the tri-level only to use the tub or shower.

  She judged Sir Ali to be somewhere around twenty-five. He was dark of hair and eyes, with deep-olive coloring, and handsome despite the numerous scars on his face and the jutting beak of a nose that seemed almost too large for the head on which it was mounted; urbane, charming, and very courtly of manner, the Arab moved with the grace of a leopard.

  He had arrived at Whyffler Hall a bit before noon, by way of the York Road, at the head of the most villainous-looking pack of mounted cutthroats Krystal had ever seen. Apparently Lieutenant Smythe, who commanded the small royal garrison still manning the Fort Whyffler defenses, had been similarly impressed, since the party had been trailed at a discreet distance by a dozen pikemen and half that number of men armed with the seven-shot arquebuses, their matches smoking.

  "Saints preserve us a'," old Geoffrey Musgrave had muttered, as he had stood beside but a little behind her on the broad veranda. "I c'd swear those pack o' twa-legged wolves be o' t' domned Irish breed, none save t' Irish gallowglasses bear an ax and twa swords, tae boot. W' sich as them aboot, m'lady, t'would be well tae arm t' serving men and bury t' plate."

  But the troopers at the Arabian knight's back had proven themselves, if not exactly models of civilized decorum, at least manageable.

  When Sir Ali had made his formal obeisance and had been ushered into the hall, he had announced to all those assembled, "I, Sir Ali ibn Hossain, appear here in my function as herald to our most puissant lord, Sebastian Foster, Duke of Norfolk, Markgraf von Velegrad, Earl of Rutland, Baron of Strathtyne, Knight of the Garter, Noble Fellow of the Red Eagle of Brandenburg, Lord Commander of the Royal Horse of England, and good and faithful servant of His Majesty Arthur III, God bless and preserve him."

  He had gone on, at great length and in the same, stilted manner, to announce that Sir Francis Whyffler, now Duke of Northumberland, had ceded his ancestral lands to the Crown, at Arthur's personal request; that Bass Foster had received those same lands in feoff from Arthur in a formal ceremony at Greenwich Castle and so he was, consequently, now their overlord.

  "However, our lord, burdened as he is with his military duties, attendance upon our King and the affairs of his duchy and earldom, will likely be unable to return to this barony for some time; therefore, I am to place its affairs in the charge of his lady wife, Her Grace the Duchess of Norfolk, and the present intendant, Captain Geoffrey Musgrave."

  "Captain Musgrave, please step forward."

  Then, in a simple and businesslike manner, the Arabian had knighted a bemused Geoff Musgrave in Bass' name, had himself knelt to buckle the gilded prick spurs onto the old reaver's scuffed jackboots. Then, still in Bass' name, Sir Ali had presented the new knight with a fine Spanish sword, a dagger of the renowned Tara steel, and a brace of the new flintlock horse pistols, as well as a thick, wax-sealed letter from Duke Sebastian.

  Due to all the excitement and ceremony, dinner had not been served until after two in the afternoon. Throughout the long meal, the normally voluble Sir Geoffrey Musgrave had said hardly a word, and from time to time Krystal had noticed him fingering the heavy, golden thumb ring and the golden pendant of his office as a duke's intendant on its gilded chain as if he expected them to imminently disappear in a wisp of smoke. Krystal supposed that the items had been within the folds of the letter or inside the pistol case.

  Finally, Krystal had said, "Sir Geoffrey, Geoff, you can't live on ale alone; eat something. The good Master Millan is the finest parting gift that the Archbishop could have given us; he is an outstanding chef and has really done his usual genius on these fine pork-and-herb pasties. Try one."

  A pained expression came over the grizzled warrior's countenance. "Och, y'r ladyship, His Grace, y'r noble husband, Duke Bass . . . er, Sebastian, meant well and a' I ken me, but he should nae ha' done sich. Och, aye, the Musgraves—semets o' 'em—be o' the auld nobility, but I be but a common wight, y' ken? I be a younger son, younger grandson, and ere younger great-grandson and precious little noble blude flows in me. I be but a plain, bluff sojer, no true knicht, nor wi' His Grace's generosity or the noble Sir Ali's buffet make o' me elst."

  Krystal shook her head. "What's all that got to do with the price of bagels, Geoff?"

  "My lady . . . ?"

  She shoved a brass platter toward him. "Have some of the goose, Geoff. Common or noble, you need food."

  The scarred and wrinkled face screwed up and Sir Geoffrey Musgrave hung his head and said in a low voice. "I . . . fear . . . I fear to disgust my lady. I be a base, common mon and I hae not the high-table skills and manners and a' . . ."

  Sir Ali leaned back in his armchair and roared with laughter then. Leaning forward and speaking around Krystal, he said, "You'll never learn them, Sir Geoffrey, by starving yourself to death. Not that they be all that important to any save soft pampered courtiers, anyway. Draw your belt knife and have at that goose, I'll tell you all you need to know."

  "Now, firstly, when dining at high table, a gentleman should use but his right thumb and two fingers to convey his victuals to his mouth, never allowing grease or sauces to come into contact with his palm." Grinning, he displayed a hand greasy to the wrist.

  "Secondly, he should be careful to never spit back small bones or gristle into a common dish."

  "I'd ne'er do sich, high table or low, my lord!" said Musgrave indignantly.

  "You see," nodded Sir Ali, with mock seriousness, "you're more inherently noble than you thought. And I am not your lord, Sir Geoffrey, not any longer. You may address me as Sir Ali or preferably, as just Ali, since I'd be your friend."

  "But, back to the lesson. You may throw table offal beneath the table only if your host does so first, and if sharing a cup with a dining partner, be certain that your beard and mustachios be free of crumb
s before drinking; but beware, never wipe your mouth and beard with your sleeve or the back of your hand." In illustration, Sir Ali did just that, then added, parenthetically, "Although if a host is not sufficiently modern and civilized to have provided a footah or panolino"—he touched the large square of cloth tied around his neck and covering his front—"or if the improvident guest has not brought one with him, I have often wondered just how he is expected to remove stains from lips and face without making use of Nature's footah."

  "You see, Geoffrey, high-table manners are, I feel, the invention of those who take but little joy in their victuals and so would selfishly make the act of eating as difficult as possible for those who do."

  CHAPTER 17

  On the morning after Sir Ali's arrival, the two knights rode out with their respective retinues—Sir Ali's gallowglasses and Sir Geoffrey's lancers—to formally post and announce the change of overlords to the villages, hamlets, and the small halls and yeoman farms to the barony. Krystal, once she had broken her fast, seen to Little Joe, performed the most immediate duties of a chatelaine, and informed Master Millan, the chef, that the day's meal would be even later than on the previous day, since the two knights could not be expected back much before sunset, collected her three serving women and left the hall to walk down through the formal garden fronting it to the brick-and-frame tri-level house squatting incongruously among the yews and boxwoods. If she did not have a hot bath at least every third day she felt so grubby that she could not stand herself.

  When the house had been so mysteriously transported into this world, Bass had not been the only living creature to come with it. His three house cats, four or five flying squirrels, and two or three mice had come along for the ride. One of the cats had been sterile, but the other two had lost no time in joyously fighting and fraternizing with the half-wild stable and barn cats of the hall, so that now the environs of Whyffler Hall abounded with all manner of feline mixtures and mutations, nor had the flying squirrels had any apparent qualms about bringing forth fresh generations, finding the formal gardens and the small park within the perimeter walls much to their liking.

  When she made her way through the empty, echoing house to the large bath off the master bedroom, it was to discover that a young queen had, sometime within the last two days, decided to produce her litter in the bathtub and was currently in the full throes of labor—her legs twitching, her long, pink tongue drooping out from between her fangs as she panted in agony.

  With a sigh, Krystal gave up the idea of a long, slow, leisurely tub bath and turned instead to the tiled shower stall. As she dropped her robe and stepped under the hot spray, she could hear the three serving women—Trina, Meg, and Bella—giggling and jabbering in their north-country patois as they added ice cubes from the refrigerator to a big pewter ewer of honey mead brought from the hall and then placed it in the unit to chill more thoroughly. Usually while the mead chilled the women would troop down to the bathroom on the lower level and take turns under the shower, which they never failed to find fascinating.

  While she was showering, Krystal decided to shampoo as well, and as she fumbled blindly on the shelf just outside the shower stall, the lights flickered briefly, then went out.

  "Oh, dammit," she breathed to herself, trying to think of where there still might be an unneeded bulb. The spares were long since used up and another winter here would see any occupants of this house existing by light of lamps or candles.

  Finally out of the shower, she toweled her long hair briefly, then formed of the towel a turban and shrugged into her terry-cloth robe, slipped her feet into the soft, beautifully decorated pair of "shoon" that the dextrous Bella had crafted for her mistress from the hide of a fallow doe taken during the great Christmas hunt of last winter. Then she checked on the cat in the bathtub.

  While she had showered, two tiny kittens had been born and cleaned, and now were both nursing, their minuscule forepaws treading at the straining belly of their mother. Having cleaned her offspring, bitten through the umbilicals, and eaten the afterbirths, consumption of which stimulated her lactation, the brownish tabby now was in a third bout of labor.

  Kneeling by the tub, Krystal gently stroked the head and back of the queen, "Good girl. That's a good little girl. And your kittens are just as beautiful as you are." Then, standing, she called, "Meg, Bella, is the mead cold yet?"

  When she received no answer, she opened the door to the master bedroom and repeated the question, raising her voice a bit louder. Still not being answered, she shook her head and proceeded out into the third-level hallway. Her mouth open to shout once more, she reeled instead against the doorframe, her eyes wide in horror.

  The living room and entrance foyer on the second level were filled to within a foot or less of the very ceiling with muddy brown water! Capped with grayish-yellow scum, the water was lapping perceptibly higher on the stairs; even in the brief moment she watched, yet another tread went under the dirty, opaque water, leaving only two steps between her and the water.

  Snapping out of her momentary paralysis, Krystal stepped across the hallway and opened the door to what had been Bass' office, strode across the bare room, and raised the Venetian blind, then the window. Only then could she dearly hear the terrified screaming of her maidservants.

  The three women, two of them stark naked, their wet hair flopping about their backs and shoulders, were racing through the formal garden and up toward the front of the hall, screaming their lungs out the while. Already, their wailings had attracted the attention of some of the hall servants and a couple of off-duty artillerymen from the remaining garrison, but not one of these was making any move to meet the running women; rather did they, one and all, seem to be staring down at the tri-level house.

  Abruptly, the sun-dappled hall façade, garden, running women, gawking servants, and soldiers, everything, seemed to waver before Krystal's eyes, to go out of focus. She blinked, hard, once or twice, and when she again opened her eyes, the scene that lay before them set her heart to pounding in sudden terror.

  Gone was Whyffler Hall and all its grounds; before her lay a seemingly endless expanse of tossing, swirling, gray-brown water, rushing from her left to her right, its surface dotted with uprooted trees and other assorted flotsam, including the roof of what had been a smallish house or largish shed. Then, in another eye-blink, there again was Whyffler Hall, up at the head of the garden, with the group on the stairs grown by a dozen or more, their shouts and shrieks drowning out those of her maidservants.

  "Oh, my dear, sweet God," she thought, recalling suddenly Bass' recountals of his last few hours in this house before he awakened here, in this world. "The . . . the house is going back! Back to . . . to that other world, to the same time, the same place, in the middle of a flood!"

  Turning from the window, Krystal went out into the hall. The stairs and the hardwood floors below were visible and dry with no trace of water anywhere. But before she was half down the steps, the cold, filthy water again was covering them, swirling about her legs at mid-thigh level. Whimpering, she retreated back to the upper hallway.

  After a moment or two of blind, sobbing terror, she pulled herself together. She must get out of the house before it ceased to flicker back and forth between worlds/times and returned to a watery doom in the world it had once escaped. But how? In the moments when it was in that other world, the house was her only safe abode, although the creakings and groanings as it shifted on its foundation gave ample warning that it would soon collapse, be ripped apart by the surging waters.

  "Think, Krystal, think!" That was what her papa used to say; he had been the only member of her family who ever had addressed her by her self-chosen name, rather than by the name Rebecca, which appeared on her birth certificate. "You are a woman, yes, Krystal, but nowhere I know does any law say that a woman must not use the brain God gave her. Emotions are fine, as long as you don't let them rule you. You have a fine mind, girl, use it."

  All right then, Papa, she thought. Th
e intervals in this world seemed to be becoming shorter, those in that other, longer. There would not be time for her to make the dash from the upper hallway, through the living room and foyer, and out the front door and then across the stretch of lawn before the flood was once more filling the spaces. So, okay, she would have to be at or at least near to the front door when next the house shifted back to the dry world. If ever it did . . . ? But, furiously, she drove that seed of doubt from her mind.

  Shedding her robe and kicking off the shoon, she grasped the handrail and stepped deliberately down into the icy, muddy waters, now only six inches or so below the floor of the upper hallway. She continued down the unseen steps until she was waist-deep, then, crouching slightly, she kicked herself toward the door. She dog-paddled and scissors-kicked, for the ceiling was too close to the water surface for her best swimming strokes.

  Halfway across the room, she realized that the whole of the picture window had been smashed in and debated remaining there to make her frantic egress, then remembered that that window would be whole, unbroken, and impassable in the world of Whyffler Hall.

  For a long, frightening moment, her seeking hands could not find the door. With an irrepressible sob of frustration and fear, she took a deep breath and dove beneath the surface, feeling blindly before her, for her eyes could see not even inches in the dark water. Down she drove her body, deeper into the swirling currents. Then, just as one outstretched hand touched the floor . . .

  She found herself falling headfirst toward that hard, dry, sun-dappled hardwood floor!

  Gasping in the welcome air, she caught almost all her weight on her hands and, completely disregarding a slightly skinned knee, dashed through the open door. The weed-grown patch of lawn lay ahead, and it seemed to stretch on to the ends of the earth. Momentarily, she expected to be engulfed in the raging, flood-level Potomac River. Suddenly she sped, full-tilt, into a thick-grown boxwood. Then Krystal surrendered to her repressed emotions. Sobbing with relief, she collapsed onto one of the graveled paths of the formal gardens of Whyffler Hall.