Knights

by Linda Lael Miller

  “Well, hurry up about it,” replied Mrs. Bond. “We’ll have a case of the pneumonia on our hands, if we’re not careful. My niece Ellen looked just this way when—”

  Lyn hurried through the house toward the kitchen, there to find that Mrs. Bond, the soul of efficiency, had already lit the stove and set the kettle on to boil. The crockery pot had been filled with hot water from the tap to prepare the china, and a tin of Ceylon tea waited on the tabletop. He prided himself on the steadiness of his hands, though he wasn’t a surgeon, but there was a slight tremor in them now, and he nearly spilled everything.

  His mind, of course, was on the hauntingly beautiful creature he’d found in the graveyard at the ruins of Kenbrook Hall, looking as terrified as an angel dragged over the threshold of hell. Moreover, he’d have sworn she’d appeared out of thin air, though that was impossible, of course.

  He brewed the tea, put some biscuits on a plate, and arranged everything none too carefully on a tray. The dishes rattled when he lifted it, and some of the tea, hot and fragrant, spilled out of the pot’s slender spout. He would have noticed someone like her, he insisted to himself, wandering about in those strange, wonderful flowing robes. He went often to the ruins of Kenbrook Hall, even when it rained, because—well, because all his life he’d been expecting to find something there, he realized now, with such a start that he hardly trusted himself to get the tea tray safely from the kitchen to the library.

  Mrs. Bond had done her work when Lyn reached the room where he spent most of his free time.

  “Hasn’t said a word,” the housekeeper confided in a stage whisper that would have reached the rear balcony of any theater. “Not a single word, poor creature. Just stares into the fire, looking as though she’s lost her soul. I don’t know that she shouldn’t be in hospital.”

  Lyn studied his damsel in distress. “I’ll have a look at her. You’d better go and ring up Marge.” That was his nurse, who hadn’t come in to work that day, since his surgery was closed. “Ask her to please stop by.”

  Mrs. Bond made a little huffing sound, as though she thought Lyn might do something improper if she didn’t keep watch, then padded out.

  His bag was on the desk, where he’d left it after rounds that morning. He opened it, got out his stethoscope, a tongue depressor, and one of those new digital thermometers. A routine examination proved what he’d already guessed: his patient was not physically ill, merely agitated, confused, and afraid.

  He offered a cup of tea, and she took it carefully, staring at the cup and saucer as though she had never seen anything quite like them—or as if she had, but couldn’t remember what to call them.

  Her attention had been fixed on the fire burning low in the grate, but as she sipped the hot, bracing tea, liberally sweetened, she began to take in her surroundings. As she did so, her eyes widened, narrowed, and widened again, over and over.

  Lyn could almost hear her mind working, silently assigning names to things and deciding upon their uses. If he hadn’t known better, Mr. Kirkwood reflected, he would have thought she was a time traveler and not just some poor soul wearing a museum-quality costume.

  Chapter 11

  Gloriana huddled miserably in the soft chair before Kirkwood’s fire, quite overwhelmed by the magnitude of what had befallen her, stricken mute with shock. That she’d experienced a transition like this before, and that she’d half expected a recurrence, did nothing to settle the roiling tumult in her mind and spirit. She had been a little girl the first tune and had often imagined, in her loneliness and neglect, becoming a princess and living in a castle. It was only mildly surprising, therefore, when the dream came true; for so fanciful a child, the boundaries between fantasy and reality are fluid, forever shifting and changing.

  She had hoped at first that Kirkwood and his modern world were only illusions, wrought by the crippling headache that had struck her down in the graveyard of Kenbrook Hall on a misty morning in the thirteenth century. Now, however, it was plain from the substance and texture of things and people around her that she had indeed traveled through time, spanning more than six hundred years in a matter of moments.

  Gloriana closed her eyes, struggling to hold on to her composure. In this clean but oddly frenzied place where she found herself, Dane was long dead, as were Gareth and Edward, Judith, and Lady Elaina. She was utterly alone, except for the man and woman who had conceived the child Megan and then abandoned her.

  In all her confusion and fear, Gloriana could find no desire to search them out. They were, and had ever been, strangers.

  An assortment of sounds assaulted her from all sides—faint strains of music, somehow scratchy, the drone of some half-remembered cleaning machine, the tick-tock of the time-keeping device on the mantel, the whoosh of wheels on the rainy street in front of Kirkwood’s cottage. Gloriana sighed and opened her eyes again, to find Kirkwood still seated on his padded footstool, regarding her with a pensive and sympathetic expression.

  “What’s happened to you?” he asked, and this time Gloriana translated what he was saying with much less difficulty. She realized with mingled relief and despair that her mind was adapting to the new surroundings, interpreting, making it possible to communicate. That was vital, of course—but did it mean she was doomed to stay?

  She looked about, a little wildly perhaps, her throat still so constricted as to prevent speech, wanting parchment and a quill. Perhaps her rescuer would understand better if she wrote her reply, rather than speaking.

  Seeing a desk littered with documents and other items she could not readily name, Gloriana set aside her tea and rose from the chair, shedding Kirkwood’s cloak and the coverlet like layers of skin, to cross the room.

  She frowned, pondering the strange, gleaming devices that rested on the surface, memories hovering at the frayed edges of her awareness. Her host did not follow but simply turned, watching her with kindly interest.

  She pantomimed dipping a quill into a pot of ink and writing.

  Kirkwood smiled, though his eyes were yet thoughtful, and came at last to stand beside her. He opened a drawer and brought out a shining cylinder of metal and a pad of paper. Because the tablet, at least, was familiar—she’d drawn endless pictures as the child Megan—Gloriana was encouraged, and a tentative smile rested briefly on her mouth as she nodded. Seating herself in Kirkwood’s soft leather chair, she looked around for ink.

  Kirkwood took the writing implement from her fingers and, pressing one end with his thumb, produced a clicking sound. Then, to demonstrate, he made small, squiggling circles on the paper.

  Gloriana’s eyes widened, and even as she marveled, she also remembered. A pen. As Megan, she had seen adults employ such mechanisms many times, though she herself had most often used bits of brightly colored wax.

  Shakily, she took the instrument into her hand and began to write.

  I am called Gloriana.

  These first words were misshapen and somewhat untidy—her tutor, Friar Cradoc, would not have approved—but as Gloriana got used to wielding the pen, her confidence grew, and she wrote with more certainty.

  I do not belong here. I wish to go home.

  She glanced back at Kirkwood, who was reading attentively over her shoulder. Although his countenance was somber, he nodded to show understanding, and Gloriana did not feel quite so frightened and alone as before. Perhaps the phenomenon of traveling through time was commonplace in this latter day, and he would be able to help her get back where she belonged.

  Kirkwood took up another pen and wrote underneath, Where is home? Please, tell me where you come from.

  Gloriana pondered the spare, slanted letters for a few moments, her forehead creased with a frown, but gradually their meaning came clear. It was odd and awkward, conversing this way, but their common language had obviously been altered over the centuries, and there was more resemblance between the written versions than the spoken ones.

  I am Lady Kenbrook, and I live at Kenbrook Hall, with my lord and husband, Dane S
t. Gregory. Upon my leavetaking, the year was 1254.

  Kirkwood read the words carefully, his brows knitted in concentration. “Where is Geoffrey Chaucer when I need him?” he murmured, and Gloriana did not even attempt to comprehend.

  You are indeed a time traveler, he wrote, after pondering Gloriana for some time. That should surprise me mightily, being quite impossible, but somehow it doesn’t. The present year, my lady, is 1996.

  Gloriana felt herself go pale. She had been but five when, as Megan, she had stumbled out of one world and into another. Though gifted, already reading and writing, she had never known or cared about the progression of years, and it startled her to learn that time had advanced so far. Surely, by now, humanity was teetering on the very brink of Holy Judgment!

  She laid the pen down and, feeling slightly dizzy, bent forward to rest her head on folded arms.

  Kirkwood laid a hesitant hand to her shoulder. “It’s a lot to take in, all at once,” he said gently, then sighed. “For me, as well as for you. What you need now is rest.”

  Gloriana felt the meaning of what he’d said, without having to translate it. That, at least, was getting easier. She raised her head and nodded. Oblivion was a welcome prospect. Perhaps after a nap she would awaken and find herself in her bed and Dane’s, in the tower at Kenbrook Hall, and marvel at how vividly she’d dreamed.

  Within minutes, Gloriana had been taken to a small chamber by the servingwoman, Mrs. Bond, to rest. She was tucked up in a warm, clean bed, and almost eagerly. Gloriana gave herself over to emotional exhaustion and collapsed into a deep state of sleep.

  Hours later, she awakened with the immediate and heart-seizing awareness that she was still in Kirkwood’s house, which meant, of course, that she had not been dreaming. The grief and disappointment she knew in those moments were so crushing, so omnipresent, that she could not move or make the smallest sound.

  Gloriana waited helplessly, tears stinging her eyes and trickling over her temples and into her hair. Strange, subtle sounds ebbed and flowed in her ears, like an invisible tide. Gradually, those noises crystallized into the voices of two women—underlain by a more distant and somehow mechanical one, a man discussing peace talks between British authorities and the Irish Republican Army.

  The realization crashed like a thunderclap inside Gloriana’s mind. She understood what was being said.

  “Ought to be in hospital, that’s what I say,” came Mrs. Bond’s observation, from somewhere nearby. “Probably on drugs.”

  Gloriana sat up a little further on the pillows, listening intently. “Drugs”? She did not recognize the word, but it had an ominous sound to it.

  Another voice replied, kinder and younger than the housekeeper’s. “She looks too healthy for that.” That would be Marge, the nurse Kirkwood had mentioned earlier. “Besides, Lyn’s a doctor, isn’t he, and I should think he’d have known immediately if that were the case.”

  “I don’t like the shape of it,” grumbled Mrs. Bond. “Imagine someone just appearing that way, practically out of nowhere, and in a graveyard, mind you. And you saw her clothes—right out of a museum, except that the cloth is as new and sturdy as the wool in my own good winter coat.”

  Gloriana would have preferred to cower beneath the warm covers, rather than face the inevitable questions and curious looks getting up would bring her way, but her bladder was filled to bursting. She arose, as awkward and shaky as an invalid, and bent to look under the bed.

  There was no chamber pot.

  She stood again, confused, searching Megan’s memories and coming up with an image of a privy equipped with gleaming porcelain fixtures. It would be indoors and probably at one end of the hallway just outside her bedchamber. She crept across the tiny room, Kirkwood’s shirt covering her to her knees, and peered cautiously around the door panel.

  The light was so bright that it blinded her, and for a few moments, she simply stood there, blinking and disoriented. Then her vision cleared again, and she saw Mrs. Bond at a table in a cheerful room, with a red-haired woman seated across from her. A pot of tea steamed between them, and everything around seemed to shine.

  “She wants the loo,” Mrs. Bond’s companion said pleasantly, then added, with a gesture of one hand, “It’s that way, lovie. End of the hall.”

  Gloriana got the sense of the words, if not the literal meaning, and found the privy. She used it, with some trepidation.

  It was a bit longer before she recalled how to flush the commode and work the spigots on the basin in order to wash her hands. When she reached the hall again, the nurse, Marge, was waiting for her, smiling and plump and benign.

  “Don’t you mind Elsa Bond,” the woman counseled, in a confidential whisper, bending close and taking both of Gloriana’s hands into her own. “She’s not really a bad sort. Just has a gruff way about her, that’s all.”

  Gloriana nodded. Again, though she could not have defined the individual words, she caught their essence.

  “Would you be wanting a nibble, dear? You slept straight through tea, but I think I can come up with a few things.”

  Gloriana’s stomach translated for her and rumbled softly. Marge was offering food, and the prospect was a welcome one. Once more, she nodded.

  Marge smiled and pulled her into the bright room—a kitchen. It was certainly different, Gloriana reflected, from its thirteenth-century counterpart, which would have been much bigger and darker, rilled with heat and bustling servants and hounds snoring on the hearth. On one end of a low cabinet sat a box with a flickering screen.

  A television set, Gloriana recalled. The man’s voice she’d heard earlier, talking about the Irish Republican Army, had come from this machine.

  She stared at it in curious fascination as she took the chair Marge offered at the table. Mrs. Bond, muttering that it had been a long day, took her leave, disappearing into the hallway.

  Marge, in the meantime, was busily putting together a meal and chatting the whole while. “I’ll switch that off if it bothers you,” she said. “Bond loves her telly, so it’s always yammering away, day and night. If you’re wondering where Mr. Kirkwood’s gotten off to, he’s gone to make his evening rounds. He’ll be back in a little while, though.”

  The name Kirkwood caught Gloriana’s attention, and reluctantly, she tore her gaze from the colored images on the television set. She wanted to respond verbally, but she was afraid to make the attempt.

  “Poor dear,” said Marge, with a cluck of her tongue and a shake of her head. Her hair was short, a mass of springy curls surrounding a ruddy, cheerful face. “Heaven knows what’s happened to you. That look in your eyes fair breaks my heart, it does.” She gave a great sigh. “Well, then. Never you mind, lovie. We’ll look after you, the doctor and I, and make matters right if we can.”

  Moved by the woman’s kindness, Gloriana felt fresh tears spring to her eyes, while her throat constricted painfully. Still unwilling to speak and reveal just how different she really was, she shifted her gaze back to the “telly.”

  The incessant words and images and strains of music were confusing, but in an odd way they made a bridge between the modern world and the one she had left only that morning. If she but watched and listened, she concluded, she would soon learn how to communicate with those around her.

  Marge set a plate on the table before her, and Gloriana recognized the offering as a sandwich, a layer of yellow cheese melted between two slices of cooked bread. She ate ravenously, her gaze never straying from the television set, listening, absorbing, remembering.

  The images on the television screen brought the outside world into focus for Gloriana, at least partially. The words were harder to grasp, since many terms were unfamiliar and all were uttered so swiftly as to be nearly abbreviated.

  Everyone, it seemed to her, was in a hurry.

  “Seeing how you put that first bit of food away,” Marge said, sliding a second sandwich onto Gloriana’s empty plate, “I thought you might be wanting more.”

 
“Thank you,” Gloriana ventured to say, forming the words carefully and pushing them slowly past her lips.

  Marge beamed, bright as the room itself, with all its light and shimmering surface. “You’re most welcome,” she said.

  Soon after that, weariness overcame Gloriana again, and she returned to the little room off the hallway, there to tumble into a fitful sleep. Her dreams were vivid, and in them she saw Dane walking the passages of Kenbrook Hall like a specter, calling her name.

  Mist shivered down from the leaves of the oaks as the small, weary band rode past Hadleigh Castle and the abbey, progressing slowly but steadily through the twilight toward Kenbrook Hall. Their swords were nicked and bloody, their clothes stained crimson and stiff with sweat and dirt. They were seasoned soldiers to a man, but the battle with Merrymont’s forces had raged for more than two hours, with only brief respites. Each had been taxed to the limits of his skills and endurance.

  Dane kept his gaze fixed on the looming bulk of his ancestral home, where his heart rested in the hands of a beautiful woman with witchery in her eyes. The invisible chord stretching between them was all that drew him forward, for he had lost his taste for war, and the formidable personal strength that had sustained him for so long was all but spent. He wanted only to kneel at Gloriana’s feet, to lay his head in her lap and feel her fingers soothing his temples, threading lightly through his hair.

  Maxen, wounded and filthy, his tunic soaked through with blood and rainwater, drew up beside Dane. He was leading a second horse behind his own, with a dead man sprawled across its back. “He’s the devil’s own spawn, is Merrymont,” the Welshman said. “Did you see him up there on that hilltop, watching his men set that crop ablaze with their torches? Kept a safe distance between himself and us, didn’t he?”

  Dane nodded mutely, remembering. He and Maxen and the others had joined Gareth and his men an hour after the sun’s rising, beside the lake. They had not had to search out Merrymont, for the smoke of a burning field had filled the western sky, black and acrid.