The Crown of Valencia

by Catherine Friend

  Kalleberg winced. “You feared your young son would come to harm in this century.”

  I smiled. “He’s fine and is here in Valencia. I think you’ll find him changed, almost grown-up, in fact.”

  “Excellent,” the professor said as he looked around. “I still can’t believe I’m here.”

  “Perhaps when we get you something for the pain, you’ll start enjoying yourself. But what did you mean about proof?”

  “That’s the other reason I came back, and the most exciting. I wanted to tell you that you will write the most astounding—”

  I held up my hand, heart pounding. “No, please. I’m done knowing my future.” I waited, listening to the pulse of my body. I didn’t want to know what I should do, for that would box me in as tightly as if I were back in Anna’s prison cell. No. I was done doing what was expected of me, by friends, by Arturo, by time. My future stretched out before me, blissfully blank. “Professor, no hints, no clues. Nothing.”

  “But you’re going—”

  “No.”

  Flushed and frustrated, Kalleberg shut his mouth, then nodded. “You’ve gained much wisdom these last four weeks.”

  Salaam flowed from the palace in search of a new patient, a new challenge. When I told Kalleberg that Salaam spoke flawless Latin, the professor brightened considerably. “Go with the doctor. I will find you later.”

  *

  Suddenly restless, I saddled my horse, fairly competently, if I must say so myself, and rode east toward the sea. At the edge of the grassland leading to the beach, I tied the mare to a piece of driftwood, then pushed through the tall grass, drawn by the sound of crashing waves. I’d been so caught up in my mission that I’d forgotten how healing the sound of water could be. I pulled off my boots and let the warm sand heat up my feet and ankles, then walked and walked along the shore, marveling that I was still alive.

  Thanks to Kalleberg, I now knew I had a future I could return to. My future. Sudden turmoil stopped me in my tracks as the foam from the most recent wave slid up the hard-packed sand and licked my toes. A future without Elena.

  How could I leave her again? She was still angry with me and protecting herself, but who could blame her? I started walking again, relishing the cool water lapping at my ankles.

  Being a parent meant sacrifice; I’d done that eight years ago, and it was absolutely the right thing to do, but Arturo had been frightfully on target when he’d said he’d never seen me smile like I smiled when Elena was around. I’d felt that myself, but refused to admit I was unhappy. Parents don’t have the time, or the right, to feel unhappy, right? But what kind of parent would I be if I was miserable all over again?

  A flock of skinny-legged terns pecked at the sand ahead of me, then skittered out of the way as I passed, peeping in alarm. From the very first moment I’d seen Elena at Valvanera—so furious and protective of her child—I’d known there could never be another woman in my life. When I returned to the future, I did so knowing I’d leave my heart behind.

  No, that was melodramatic. My heart would return with me, but it would crack open and its contents leak out, never to be shared with anyone. Would there even be enough left for Arturo?

  Was my stubbornness about doing the right thing for Arturo blinding me? And what was the right thing? Arturo had been right weeks ago when he’d listed all the dangers of the modern world. There would be no way I could protect him from a car accident or a random shooting or getting cancer or any of the other dangers of the time.

  I looked around at the ocean, the walls of Valencia rising in the distance, and felt a deep ache at the beauty and solitude. Was this really such a bad place to raise a child? As a Moorish city, Valencia was filled with scholars. Arturo could receive the highest quality education in art, mathematics, music, classical literature, and history.

  My pulse raced as I began pacing a short stretch of beach, back and forth, startling a seagull who’d been following me. I tasted salt water on my lips as I thought this through. Maybe Arturo could train to be a historian. What better qualifications than to actually live it? When he turned eighteen he could return to the future; I’d go back with him to help him get established. That was only four years from now. Valencia would be a calm, peaceful city for five years until the Muslims once again took control. Perhaps I could return to the future long enough to get a stash of antibiotics and other medical supplies. If Arturo ever got sick we’d head back to the future faster than a lamb runs for its mama.

  I stopped pacing, tears stinging my eyes. To be a good parent for Arturo meant I needed to take care of myself as well. All I needed was Elena. I had to believe that beneath her cool treatment, she still loved me. A warm sudden flush shot through me; our night at Valvanera proved she still desired me. With Solana, the four of us could form a family, with Nuño too, if he wanted.

  I turned into the bracing wind blowing in off the ocean and laughed out loud, suddenly as light as the sea foam dancing at my feet. Surely Arturo could live a few more years without a Mountain Dew or Spiderman movie.

  *

  I searched the palace, then headed for the nearest outside staircase up to the wall. Jogging along the narrow walkway, I circled half the city before I found her, one leg up on the wall, staring out at the horizon. My breath caught in my throat. How could I make her understand how much I loved her? How could I convince her I was staying, that she didn’t have to push me away any more. “There you are,” I finally said.

  Elena whirled around. “There you are. Where have you been?”

  I crossed my arms and frowned. Man, this woman could push my buttons. “What do you mean where have I been? You’ve been avoiding me for days.”

  “You are right. I no longer want to avoid you.” Then she smiled at me, and my heart skipped a beat. She kept smiling and my heart skipped a few more beats.

  She took three strides and stopped in front me, her face alarmingly open. “I have given it a great deal of thought these last few days, and I have decided I will not let you leave.”

  Now my heart skipped rope. “How will you stop me? Chain me again?”

  A woman of action more than words, Elena took my face in her hands and kissed me, long and hard and with such need my head spun. I clung to her to avoid falling over.

  I don’t know how long we kissed, but when I finally pulled away, my cheeks were wet, and her hands trembled as they held my own. I inhaled deeply. “Okay, that might slow me down a bit, but I still might leave.”

  She looked around to make sure we were alone, then pulled me even closer, slid one hand up my blouse, found my breast, and whispered something highly suggestive in my ear.

  “No fair,” I whispered back, my body on fire.

  She kissed me again, then smiled, her eyes warm as turquoise. “I do not regret letting you go the first time because Arturo is a delight, and it is right you should be his mother. And I would not have Solana if you had not left. But if I let you go again, I will not recover.”

  I touched the black brows, the scarred nose, the tan forehead. “I’m not leaving, Elena. Not again.”

  I could feel a shudder of relief pass through her. “Saint’s blood, say it again.”

  “I’m not leaving. Even if Arturo is upset, I’ve decided that for the next four years he must do what I decide.”

  She dropped her gaze. “When I realized you had come back to change history, not to be with me, I swore I would feel nothing, so when you left again I would still feel nothing.”

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered. “If it helps at all, I learned in the future that Rodrigo would murder you. I came back to stop that.”

  She played with my hand, lacing our fingers together. “I suppose I should thank you. Knifing Rodrigo in the ass was very effective.” She gazed into my eyes again. “I tried to feel nothing, but every time I looked at you,” she stopped, swallowing hard, “and every time you smiled or laughed or tipped your head the way you do, I—”

  “I love you, Elena Navarro.” Once a
gain, I covered her mouth with my own.

  After a long, deep kiss that fueled my hunger rather than cooled it, I pulled back, one unsaid thing hanging between us. “I’m so sorry Anna revealed the truth about you.”

  Elena jammed her hands under her belt, stepped back, and began scuffing at the rough stone with her boot. “I was devastated. I thought my life was over. But since then, many men have come to me in private, expressing both anger that I had fooled them, and a wish that I not abandon them.”

  “You’re a great leader, Elena, and they know it. They’re just trying to adjust.” I wanted to erase her confusion, but I recognized that figuring out what came next was something we all struggled with, regardless of the century.

  “I do not know what I will do now. I am a soldier without an army. I am a mother without a husband.” She looked at me through her lashes. “And I am nothing without you.”

  “Elena Navarro! You’re flirting with me.” Her wicked grin sent me back into her arms for more kissing. God, I was going to love life in this century.

  A few minutes later someone coughed awkwardly behind us. “Excuse me, Mom.” I jumped back.

  Arturo and Rabi’a stood on the wall, hand in hand, faces glowing. Arturo gazed at Elena. “Did you tell Mom?”

  Elena shook her head, a funny smile on her lips.

  Arturo looked decidedly nervous. “I thought you were going to tell her.”

  “I decided it was your place to tell her,” Elena said, “not mine.”

  “What’s going on?” I said. “Tell me what?”

  “Mom, ah, we have some news.” Arturo took a deep breath as Rabi’a pressed her face shyly into his shoulder. “We’re getting married.”

  I stared, unsure if my ears worked. “What?” I finally said, calm as a turtle.

  “Married. Me and Rabi’a.”

  “You’re fourteen, Arturo.”

  “I know.” He gulped, then took a deep breath. “But we thought it would be best for the baby.”

  Fire alarms clanged in my brain. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that correctly.”

  “The baby, Mom.”

  I threw up my hands. “Don’t be ridiculous. How could she possibly know this early?”

  “She’s very regular. After that night in Zaragoza, well...” He shrugged. “She’s pretty sure.” I was gratified to see he looked a bit stunned himself. “I’m going to be a father.”

  I slapped my forehead.

  “So I won’t be going back to...you know where. I can’t.”

  “Just wait one minute, young man. How do you know she’s pregnant? How do you know it’s yours?” I couldn’t believe the words coming from my mouth. This was a feminist talking?

  Arturo smiled at Rabi’a, one of those intimate smiles that exclude the mother. “Even if she’s not pregnant, I still want to stay. We’re in love.”

  I threw up my hands again and felt like a sit-com mom, but I couldn’t help it. “Love? You don’t know love, Arturo. Do you have any idea what you face? The responsibility, the time a child requires? You’ll have to sacrifice too much. I can’t—”

  “Mom, listen. Eight years ago you sacrificed everything for me, your child.” His eyes flickered to Elena. “Would you have me do any less for my child?”

  “Well, I don’t think they’re the same—”

  “Mom, I’m not asking your permission.” His chin raised with resolve. “I’m telling you. This is what I’m doing. I hope you’ll support us. I hope you’ll stay here.”

  With a firm nod, he and Rabi’a left the wall.

  “Christ,” I exploded. “Can you believe that?” Even in my fury I noticed Elena was laughing. She took my hand and led me in the opposite direction.

  “A baby? He’s still a child himself.” That Elena seemed unable, or unwilling, to stop laughing didn’t help. “This isn’t funny, Elena. I told him to keep it in his pants, but did he? No! Christ, take a fourteen-year-old boy out of the twenty-first century and you know what you have?” Elena stopped at a guard tower. “You have trouble, that’s what.” She unbuckled her sword belt and hung it on a nail by the open door, then ushered me in and closed the wooden door behind us.

  I stood in the narrow window and pounded a fist on the sill. The sea beat against the shore, roaring waves of sound audible even up here. “And I didn’t get to tell him I’d decided we were staying. That’s a huge thing, and he just went ahead and decided on his own.”

  She unbuckled my belt and let it drop with a clatter to the floor. “You know what I think?” Elena asked, her voice unusually husky.

  “What? That I’m a controlling mother? You just wait until Solana turns fourteen.”

  She shook her head as she unlaced my tunic with strong, firm hands. “No. I think you are upset you will be a grandmother.”

  I groaned. “I’m thirty-seven. Don’t you—”

  “Thirty-eight.”

  “Okay, thirty-eight. Don’t you think that’s a ridiculous age to be a grandmother?”

  “I think it might be fun.” She tugged at my waistband. “Besides, Solana is at the age where she would love to fuss over a baby.”

  I stepped back, hands on my hips. “Well, there’s one thing I don’t understand.” Amusement flashed through her eyes.

  “Yes?”

  “How did we end up in this guard tower and why am I half naked?” Elena’s slow smile sent my blood pulsing everywhere, and she began unlacing her own tunic. “Your sword belt is hanging outside, isn’t it?”

  Her tunic fell to the floor, and I seemed to have developed a breathing problem. Then the look in Elena’s eyes affected my pulse. One corner of her mouth rose. She pulled off her shirt, and my breathing problem only got worse. She no longer bound her chest with a strip of linen.

  She reached for my shirt and I raised my arms over my head, then she pressed me against the stone. “Since you have returned, I have been plagued with fantasies every night.”

  Our entire bodies touched from knees to shoulders, and I licked my lips. “Shouldn’t we go slower? It’s such a cliché to profess great love and then hop into bed.”

  She kissed my neck and I shivered. “There is no bed here.”

  “I’ve noticed.” The scent of vanilla and lemon drifted between us. “You’ve bathed,” I whispered.

  “So have you...finally.”

  My heart clicked back on track, just as history found its right path again. Elena’s hands found their path as well. I cleared my throat. “It occurs to me it might be dangerous here with you, alone, naked.”

  She murmured into my ear as my body began to tingle. “Do not worry, my pearl. You are safe here with me.”

  She was right.

  Epilogue

  The Iberian Scholar

  Fall, 2007 issue, published by the University of Wisconsin.

  “The Gender Question: Who Was ‘The Pearl’?” By Sheila House, Ph.D.

  Debate continues to rage over the authorship of The Chronicles of El Cid, the stunning, yet controversial, illuminated manuscript unearthed last year in an archeological excavation of old Zaragoza. When city officials tore down a run-down tenement building to build its first Wal-Mart, they allowed a six-month dig on the site of a minor Moorish palace. The dig revealed a thick manuscript wrapped in an astonishingly well-preserved leather pouch.

  The manuscript, which reads like a modern day journal, was written by the anonymous “Spanish Pearl.” It contains the earliest known chronicle of El Cid’s life, including a remarkable detailed description of his 1094 victory over Valencia, his five year reign, and his death in 1099. It also chronicles the life and death of his trusted first lieutenant, Alvar Fáñez, who died before the Valencian victory. This manuscript was referred to in many songs and other documents written throughout the centuries, but this was the first copy to come to light. Carbon dating places the manuscript in the early twelfth century, perhaps 1125. But critics who have studied the Latin document maintain the language is too modern for the twelfth century and ins
ist it was not written until at least the fifteenth century.

  document has broken historians into three camps: the classical, the feminist, and the lesbian feminist, but all agree the “Spanish Pearl” chronicles a long life spent with Elena Navarro, “La Picadora,” the woman warrior still celebrated today in Spanish folk songs. Together they raised a daughter, Solana Pidal, which classical scholars, led by the Harvard historians, say proves “Spanish Pearl” was a man.

  Feminist historians counter that the writing turns increasingly irrate and impatient about once a month, leading Dr. Sarah Connelly of George Washington University to declare “Spanish Pearl” to be a woman subject to monthly hormonal changes. Researchers at the International Lesbian Archives in Paris maintain The Chronicles of El Cid presents the earliest documented evidence of a long term, sexual relationship between two women. The classical historians, led by Dr. Mark Eerdman, accuse the lesbian feminists of concocting pure fiction “in a desperate attempt to justify their lifestyle.”

  The feminists have suggested “Pearl” was female because the manuscript contains a thorough accounting of everyday life, something other scribes of those medieval centuries neglected. The lesbian feminists suggest the use of the name “Pearl” may hint at a common, though modern, euphemism for part of the female anatomy.

  The classical historians refute both theories. Dr. Kyle Peterman writes that the pearl was a symbol of great wealth in those times, and not necessarily associated with females. The “Spanish Pearl” was likely a wealthy lord with an interest in daily details. “You do not have to be a woman to care about the difficulties of making bread, or how to protect your children from wild bobcats, or how to assist pregnant servants,” writes Dr. Peterman. And as for the genitalia theory, Dr. Wilbert Pinkey has retorted that the lesbian feminists will turn even the most innocent of words into sexual innuendo “in their desperate attempt to justify their lifestyle.”