The Crown of Valencia

by Catherine Friend

  I opened my mouth again. “Professor, I don’t understand how this is happening, but I have an idea. It’s going to sound, well, crazy.”

  His eyes widened behind his small wire frames, his expression endearingly hopeful. “Any ideas you have would help. Tomorrow about one hundred academics are holding an Internet roundtable as we try to work this mess out. I have no light to shed on this nightmare.”

  “You say the original texts you’ve looked at all change around the end of the eleventh century?”

  “More or less.”

  “And you’re seeing an expansion of Muslim influence.”

  “Far-reaching. It’s a fantasy, yet it’s not.”

  “Professor, remember that reading you assigned, the one about how Spain might have been better off if the Moors hadn’t been driven from Spain?”

  He nodded, rubbing his chin. “Historians no longer make those subjective value judgments, but I wanted the class to see how earlier historians thought.”

  I inhaled deeply, then let my breath out in a slow, shuddering exhale. “I believe someone has gone back in time to change history, to make sure the Moors dominate Spain.”

  He blinked once. “Gone back in time.”

  “Yes, I’ve done it myself. There’s a cave outside Zaragoza, Spain, that throws you back over nine hundred years. The Altamira cave at Santillana del Mar brings you forward the same amount of years.” Strangely calm now, I barreled forward, explaining what had happened to me, amazed at the giddy relief washing through me. Now I wasn’t the only one who knew.

  He stopped swiveling in his chair, his face frozen in a mask I couldn’t read. Confusion? Concern? Disbelief?

  I rushed on, explaining about Anna and her obsession. “I don’t know what she’s done, but it must have worked. I think something she did is actually changing history, and it’s showing up in all the original texts. She brought back a shitload of money with which to influence people, and Viagra, and god knows what else. It’s been eight years, Professor. I never would have believed it, but maybe one person can do more damage than I thought.”

  A subtle redness started at the base of his throat and worked its way up his neck and onto his face. After I told him about Arturo and why I had returned to the present, I finally ran out of words. We sat in silence for a few minutes.

  His hand trembled as he reached for his water bottle, gulped the last of the water, and tossed the plastic bottle into the trash can beside me with a hollow thump. “Ms. Vincent.” His tremulous voice started a roaring in my ears. “I have never been so insulted, so enraged, as I am at this very moment.” I clutched at my necklace as he struggled for control. “I am discussing the most devious, most serious challenge the academic world has ever faced, and you have the gall, the insensitivity, the presumption to entertain me with some fantastical story.” He rose, leaning forward on rigid fingers splayed across his desk. “Time travel is not possible. It has never been possible. It will never be possible. This is not some Star Wars episode.”

  “Star Trek,” I said. “Star Wars doesn’t deal with time travel.” Oh, shut up, Kate. Could I possibly make this any worse? I stood, palms pressing against my belly in some frantic attempt to protect myself. “Professor, I—”

  “It’s time for you to leave.”

  “But it really—”

  “Now!” he thundered. I hesitated, stiff with frustration and my own fury. How could I make him believe? The truth squeezed my throat tight. I couldn’t. It was just too unbelievable. Without another word, I left, slamming the door behind me so hard the door’s aged, frosted glass nearly popped from its frame.

  *

  For the next few days I carried my slim red book with me, pulling it from my briefcase, obsessively checking every hour, but it remained an Arabic book. I don’t know what I expected. Sci-fi shows rattled on about temporal fluxes; maybe I hoped things would pop back into place and the problem would go away. My days became almost surreal, as if I were living inside a fantasy novel. I would stare at the red book, finger its thin pages, and know it was real. But how or why it had switched over from a Latin text to an Arabic one was unreal. Things like this just did not happen.

  Every time I replayed the scene with Professor Kalleberg, my chest ached and my head began to pound. What a stupid thing I’d done.

  Arturo looked like I felt. Finally Friday morning before school I sat him down. “You aren’t leaving this house until you tell me what’s wrong.”

  “You first.”

  “What?”

  He snorted, then grabbed both my hands. “You’ve been biting your nails.”

  “Very observant.”

  He shrugged. “You raised me to be an observant, sensitive guy. That’s why the girls are crazy about me.”

  “Too bad I forgot about humility and modesty.” I chewed the inside of my cheek, then played with the toast crumbs on my plate. “Okay. It’s complicated, but I’m having trouble with the texts from my Latin class. That’s all. Now you.”

  He shook his head. “Mom, if I moped around like that every time school was hard I’d never get up in the morning.”

  “It’s more complicated than that. C’mon, your turn.”

  Arturo clutched the thick brown bangs that fell into his eyes and probably drove the girls mad. “Sometimes I wish I lived a hundred years ago. Life was simpler. I shouldn’t have to deal with this crap.” I waited. “First, I think I know what I have to do. So don’t go all parental on me, okay?” I nodded. “Last weekend the guys made a plan for the spring dance tonight. I said it was stupid but they wouldn’t listen, and I couldn’t talk them out of it. They’re going to spike the girls’ sodas with vodka, get them too drunk to care, and then—”

  “I get the picture,” I said, my jaw tight. “I thought your friends were better people than that.” Christ, what a world. Thank god Arturo hated the idea of altering his mind with drugs or alcohol. He even harassed me about my caffeine habit.

  “Me too. I’ve been worrying all week about what to do. I didn’t want to squeal and have my friends hate me, but I can’t let them do it. I keep thinking about what you’ve hammered into my head since I was six, all that stuff about taking responsibility, about getting involved when it’s really important.”

  “I said that?”

  “Yeah. You said that if my actions could help someone, I should do what’s necessary, even if it’s not easy or popular.”

  My heart swelled. I had no idea he’d been listening. I jumped as he slammed his palms against the table. “So, I’ve decided. I’m going to call Vanessa right now. Tell her about tonight. She’ll tell the others not to drink anything. And if the guys find out and hate me, I’ll just have to live with that.”

  “Good plan,” I said softly.

  Suddenly energized by his decision, Arturo whipped out his cell phone, dialed, then left the kitchen. After I cleaned up, I dug out my fanny pack from the back of my underwear drawer. The items in the pack were all modern, but for some reason they felt so connected to the past, the distant past, that I couldn’t bear to have them visible. I’d somehow lost the photo of Arturo in Burgos eight years ago, but otherwise, everything was just as it’d been the day I’d fallen back in time.

  I slowly unzipped the pack, smiling. That night in 1085 when I’d finally told Elena Navarro the truth about me, she had sat on the ground by the fire, slowly zipping and unzipping this very pack, fascinated by the magic of the ‘teeth.’ I stroked the black leather, marveling that Elena had once touched this pack.

  I heard Arturo laughing on the phone. He had thought about the problem, come up with a solution, and taken action. I seemed to be stuck in the first phase. Telling Kalleberg had gotten me nowhere. What else could I do? Even if I were to leave Arturo and go back in time, how could I possibly figure out what Anna had done and undo it?

  *

  Four days later I was in my bedroom on the phone with Laura when Arturo barged in, gnawing on a bagel. “Some guy’s downstairs. Says he needs to
talk to you. Won’t tell me what it’s about.” With a quick good-bye to Laura, I followed Arturo downstairs.

  The last person I expected to see standing in my entryway was Professor Kalleberg, his hands gripped together. We said nothing, so Arturo looked from the professor’s face to mine, then back to Kalleberg, ghostly pale under a few days’ stubble.

  The professor’s eyes were bloodshot. “Kate, we must talk.”

  “Arturo, let Max in, then please go upstairs and close your door. Professor Kalleberg and I need to speak privately.”

  “What’s so secret? I’m old enough to understand stuff.”

  “Go. Professor, would you like some tea?” With a nod, he followed me into the kitchen, where I made two cups of tea, my insides churning. Once we moved into the living room, the loose-limbed Kalleberg perched himself on the edge of the sofa. The first time I’d seen the professor walk across campus, I’d worried the poor man’s joints would come unhinged from such violent swinging and that his arms and legs would go flying. The professor cleared his throat. “First, I must apologize for my outburst in my office. You—”

  I held up my hand. “It was a perfectly normal response. What I told you was probably the strangest thing you’d ever heard.”

  He blew out a long breath. “True, none of my other students have told me they traveled nine hundred years back in time.” He gazed into his tea. “The web conference on Friday solved nothing, produced no reasonable explanation for this mess. We did compare notes and determined that anything written after 1200 has been altered, drastically, almost as if history fractured. The Arabic language shows up almost everywhere, and Islam is the dominant religion.”

  Suddenly exhausted, I wanted to curl up into a ball. I didn’t want to understand. I didn’t want to have anything to do with any of this.

  “After I eliminate all the possible explanations I have no choice but to consider the impossible.” Our eyes met. “You told me you fell back in time to Moorish Spain. You told me your partner Anna—”

  “Ex-partner.”

  “Ex-partner Anna followed you back, determined to bring Spain greater glory by keeping the Moors in power. What you told me is impossible, yet it’s all I have.”

  My heart fluttered so irregularly I pressed one palm against my chest. “You believe me.”

  “My brain does. The rest of me will follow eventually. Tell me more about your experience. Did you get close to anyone? Is Anna the only other person who knows about this cave?”

  Max scratched at the back door, still outside. “Excuse me, professor.” I raised my voice. “Arturo, you forgot to let Max in.” I settled back in my chair, facing Kalleberg. I told him about the two other travelers from our century. Grimaldi was a pilgrim who’d turned out to be Walter Williams from Arizona, and who’d been injured trying to help me. The other traveler was Roberto, the janitor from the orphanage who’d issued that ominous “No go cave” warning. Also, Anna said that Carlos Sanchez, the tour guide from the Aljafería, the Moorish palace in Zaragoza, knew about the cave, but I didn’t know if he’d ever used it.

  “So this Roberto or Carlos could have gone back in time as well. They or Grimaldi could have affected the timeline.”

  I shrugged, but none of them had seemed as interested in politics as Anna.

  “Anyone else?”

  I touched the pearl, once again around my neck, then took a deep breath. “The first few months, in 1085, I really struggled to get back to the future, sort of like Dorothy trying to get home to Kansas. I was locked in a harem, kidnapped twice, almost raped twice, tortured, nearly murdered three times.” I smiled weakly. “I was pretty clueless. The only reason I’m still alive was Luis Navarro, El Cid’s First Lieutenant. He rescued me more times than I could count and kept me sane. I did some stupid things and got into trouble. He had his own difficulties, and suddenly marriage was the only way out for both of us.”

  I stopped, examining my hands, remembering the feel of Elena’s muscles, her scars, her smooth breasts. “I soon discovered Luis was really Elena Navarro, a woman who’d disguised herself as a man to avenge her family, killed by Moors.”

  “Yet she lived in Moorish Zaragoza?”

  “Long story. As I struggled to get back I began to see how incompatible Anna and I really were, and I doubted my ability to be a good parent to Arturo. I didn’t mean to, but...but within two months I’d fallen in love with Elena.” Kalleberg’s face softened. He put down his tea. “Once I realized Anna would make the best parent, I decided to remain in the past with Elena. After I helped Elena recover from some pretty nasty mind games Gudesto Gonzalez played on her, we had seven months together. But then...” The end of the story didn’t come easily so I stopped.

  “Then you found out Anna had come back into the past.”

  I wiped my mouth, relieved to be finally telling someone my story. “I couldn’t let go of the image of Arturo, abandoned now by both his prospective parents. I had to come back.” My throat tightened. “Elena brought me to the Altamira cave at Santillana and gave me this pearl. We said good-bye.” I stopped, since saying these things out loud brought back her cocky grin, the feel of her arching against me, the sound of her voice.

  Kalleberg nodded, his oval-lidded eyes kind. “Kate, I have a theory that’s pure conjecture at this point. May I explain? If Anna was able to bring about a major change in events, it could have affected everything that happened from that point forward.”

  I shifted in my chair. I blinked twice. Outside Ford Expeditions and Subaru Outbacks zoomed by. Email and voices flew over phone lines. Astronauts worked overhead in the International Space Station. How, in the middle of all this reality, could the professor and I be discussing fluctuations in the past as if they were as real as Shea Stadium or billboards or Lake Michigan?

  “Everything is changing.” The professor stood and began pacing. “Some material is just switching from Latin to Arabic, or being altered slightly. Other documents are totally disappearing.” He waved his hands as his agitation increased. “The changes are moving forward. A colleague just called this morning. She found altered material from the early thirteenth century. Kate, it’s coming toward us.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  He pulled up the ottoman and sat down, reaching for me. Both our hands were cold and clammy. “If time travel is possible, if Anna changed history, those changes have begot other changes. References to events, to cities, to people, are disappearing because, under the new timeline, those events, those cities, those people no longer exist.”

  I shut my eyes. Why couldn’t I just fall asleep right here, right now? When I woke up, the professor would be gone and life would be normal again.

  Kalleberg worried his upper lip, then sighed. “Think of it as a wave moving through history, disrupting and rearranging the world as it advances year by year.”

  “What does it mean?”

  He asked for a piece of paper. When I found one buried under the magazines on the coffee table, he drew a family tree, going back ten generations to the marriage of one couple. “Let’s say your ancestors here are Clara and Hans. We are each a product of unions that extend back for centuries, even if we don’t know everyone’s names. Every child had parents who came from parents, who came from parents. If the changes moving through history affect Clara’s ancestors, she might never be born. And if she’s never born...” He scratched out the entire family tree, including me.

  An odd coldness settled in my neck and shoulders. “Jesus,” I said.

  “You must go back.”

  “What?”

  “You must go back and undo whatever Anna has done.”

  I leapt to my feet. “Don’t be crazy. She’s had eight years to mess things up. One person can’t undo that. And besides, I’m not leaving Arturo again...ever.”

  He led me to the sofa. “I stayed up all last night with Salaam, translating documents from medieval Spain. We narrowed it down to one major event in Spain’s history that
never happened, but should have.”

  I lay back against the couch but could not speak, so I draped an arm over my eyes.

  “In 1094 Rodrigo Díaz, El Cid, lays siege to Valencia and captures it in order to rub his growing power in King Alfonso’s face. History distorts this, turning it into hero worship, crediting El Cid with beginning the four-hundred-year drive to expel the Moors.” He touched my knee and I opened my eyes. “In the fractured history, El Cid does not capture Valencia. He does begin a siege, but then just goes away, and a young caliph named al-Rashid, still a teenager, suddenly shoots to power and captures the crown of Valencia. From there, he unites all the Moorish taifas and Islam quickly overwhelms Spain, then all of Europe, and eventually Asia as well.”

  I moaned softly. “And you think I can just waltz back nine centuries and put El Cid on the throne instead of al-Rashid.”

  He winced. “I know. Sounds crazy. But what else do we have? We certainly don’t have time on our side, no pun intended. But here’s what we do know: in the correct timeline, eight years after you left the past, Rodrigo marched into Valencia on June 15, 1094. This event must take place. So if you returned to the Mirabueno cave and sat back down on that ledge, where in time would you appear? I’m guessing, from what you’ve said, that time in either century moves at the same pace, like two movies playing at the same time. You left your life in the past in 1086, eight years ago. So if you traveled back to the eleventh century next week, you’d find yourself somewhere in mid-May, 1094. That would give you lots of time, almost a month, in which to fix this problem.”

  “Less than four weeks? Are you insane?” Confusion and loneliness and responsibility and pain boiled over. I stood again. “You think it’s such a great idea? You go back. I—”

  “You’re the best person to do this. You know your way around the eleventh century—”

  “Right. That’s why I nearly died so many times.”

  “You have connections you can use. And one person is best because if too many people go back, they could really mess things up. We need—”