In Time for You

by Chris Karlsen

  “Please trust her, trust us, this will help you to see the veracity of what we are about to tell you.”

  “Fine. I won’t stand. You can kneel and open your mouth. I shall have a peek but nothing more.”

  Electra got down on her knees, bent her head back and opened for him to see.

  From her angle it appeared the sight baffled him. He leaned down close, taking more than a mere peek. To her abhorrence, he stuck his finger in her mouth and touched the crowns and the filling. She refused to dwell on where that finger had been or the last time it was washed. She focused on the beamed ceiling but the distraction didn’t last long. Her disgust returned. As if that wasn’t enough, he began to move his finger around inside her mouth. At one point, she gagged when he moved past the crown covered back molar to feel around behind the tooth. Did he think she faked this?

  “This metal covering for your teeth, is it common practice among your people? Why would you cover something no one can see in precious gold? This doesn’t make sense.” He pulled his finger away and sat back again. “You may rise unless you have other hidden gold to reveal.”

  “It is common practice where I am from.” In for a penny, in for a pound, as they say. Time for the truth. “I am not from Greenland. I was born in 1988 at Gloucester Royal Hospital.”

  The Prince’s face darkened. “How dare you put forth such a foul lie and think me so foolish as to believe it.” He stood. “We are done here.”

  Roger stood to confront him. “I beg you, as a nobleman, please hear her out. Hear what we each have to say before passing judgment.” In his own way, Edward was known to be a religious man. Roger went to the prie-dieu and laid a hand to the bible there. “On my soul, I swear our story is true.”

  “On your soul, you’re swearing to tell me the truth?”

  “I am.”

  Edward didn’t take as long as Roger expected to wave him over to rejoin the other two. “Continue.”

  “I don’t know how it occurred but Emily and I were picking flowers at an outcropping near Elysian Fields when we were ripped through time.”

  Oliver raised a single finger. “May I speak?”

  The Prince nodded. “I pray you’ve something to say that makes more sense.”

  “I believe super lightning is the energy that generates the opening of a passageway through time.”

  “Super lightning? I’ve never heard of this,” the Prince said and then added, “Lightning is all around us at certain times of the year. Why aren’t these passageways opening, hither and thither?”

  “Because super lightning is uncommon for one, and we don’t know how many other places this happens. Unless someone is caught and manages to come back, we have no idea the frequency.”

  “You claim to be from the future too?”

  “I am.”

  “What are you in this future?”

  “Like the Greek mathematicians, Euclid, and Pythagoras, and Archimedes, I am a scientist who has been studying the phenomena of time travel. When the ladies disappeared, Roger came to me for help.”

  Edward turned a suspicious eye to Roger. “You are from this time. How is it you came to know these people, if what they say is true?”

  “At Poitiers, I wounded a knight called Stephen Palmer—”

  Edward brightened. “I know that knight. He was the Baron Guiscard’s man.”

  “True. I had blinded him and he crawled to a rocky spot to get away from me. I followed intending to finish him. Suddenly, I lost my bearings. It felt as though the whole world tipped this way and that. The two of us found ourselves ripped to the future. We both found our way to England. He is well and married to Electra’s sister. We have buried our differences and are friends now.”

  “There was no lightning of any sort that day. We had fair weather. How is it the passage opened? The old man’s theory doesn’t hold true.”

  “None of us has figured out the trigger for the tear in time that brought Stephen and I to the modern world. At the risk of losing my soul, I can only tell you what happened to us is true.”

  The Prince poured a goblet of wine and slowly drank part of it down. Electra hoped he would at least try to wrap his mind around the possibility they were telling the truth.

  “The knight Palmer has a good friend, Simon, the one-legged knight at Elysian Fields, who was also in the battle. The Baron was killed that day and we recovered his body but I recall Simon searching for Stephen. Crippled and in severe pain, he hobbled through the fallen but never found Palmer.”

  “Did you not capture a knight from every noble house in France at the gates of the city?” Roger asked.

  “We did.”

  “Yet you never caught me and you know I was there. I was with the King’s column. I’d have been with him when you captured him, if I was still present.”

  “Come here and open your mouth again,” the Prince ordered Electra.

  She didn’t like the sound of his order. She feared more finger probing. She kneeled before Edward who did exactly that. He used two fingers to tap on one of her crowns and then try to wiggle the tooth.

  “What is the purpose of this?” he asked, pulling his fingers out.

  “In my time, we have men called dentists. Have you ever had a toothache or lost a tooth?”

  He nodded.

  “Decaying food causes a tooth to rot. The dentists scrape out the affected area, fill it with medicine and then cover it with metal to prevent further destruction.”

  “Still seems a waste of good gold.”

  “May I rise?”

  “Please do.”

  Keen to get the taste of foreign fingers fiddling inside her mouth, Electra lifted the flagon of wine. “May I?”

  “Certainly.” To Roger he said, “Is this wizardry all you have to prove your case?”

  “No, there’s more. You wrote a letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury. You have petitioned him and offered generous patronage, if he’ll grant your request to be buried with military and royal honor at the cathedral.”

  The prince’s eyes widened. He pulled a ring of keys from under his tunic and unlocked his desk drawer. From inside he pulled out a rolled parchment sealed with red wax and tied with a ribbon. Edward inspected the seal, running his fingernail along the side to check it remained intact. Satisfied, he returned it to the drawer, locking it away again.

  “I am mystified as to how you could know about my petition. If you are indeed from the future, and I’m not saying I believe you, then you must know my future.” He looked from Oliver to Roger and settled on Electra.

  This is where it gets hairy, Electra thought. How much does she tell a powerful man that will satisfy his curiosity but not inspire him to change the outcome?

  “What would you like to know, Your Highness?”

  “Will I be a good king?”

  The terrible question he was bound to ask. She didn’t dare tell the truth. He would never be king. He would die of dysentery a year before his father passed. No man should know his death time. It always changes the way he lives.

  “History will remember you as a fine monarch, a courageous soldier, and excellent military strategist.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “You will marry Joan of Kent and have two sons.”

  Edward swallowed a gulp of wine and then scoffed. “Ah, the flaw in this strange story. My dear cousin is married already.”

  “Yes to Thomas Holland but she will be widowed in three years.”

  “Interesting. Thomas is my friend. I hate to think of him leaving us. What of the sons you mention? Will either follow me on the throne?”

  Again the horrid answer he needn’t hear. How could she break his heart with the truth? One son would die young. The other, Richard, would become king. A hated and despised monarch; he’d be usurped and made a prisoner in the Tower, where he’d die under mysterious circumstances. Some historians speculated his jailors starved the poor man to death. None of which was information the Prince should hear.

/>   “Yes, you’ll have a son who will be known as Richard, the Second.”

  “All of this is fascinating but a good soothsayer might tell me the same.”

  “I am not a soothsayer, Your Highness. I cannot tell you if the crops will fail. If you lay a row of cards face down, I cannot tell what they are or what you will turn over. I can say this time is known to us as the Age of Chivalry. Your name and that of your father are what come to mind when future people speak of knights and chivalry.”

  He smiled bigger than he had the entire time she’d been with him. That small tidbit made the sale of the truth palatable for him or so it seemed.

  “If I choose to believe you, where do you intend to go from here?” Edward asked Roger.

  “We’ll return to Elysian Fields and get Emily. We know there’s a passageway where the women disappeared. We’ll remain in the area and hopefully Oliver’s theory is the way back. Failing that, I’ll take everyone to France and we can live out our days in Normandy.”

  “I am of a mind to think the worst but you’ve done me no harm. Even though you are my enemy, I cannot countenance punishing any of you in this unusual circumstance. Instead, I have decided to offer aid. I will allow two of my men to escort you to Elysian Fields. I’ll also provide a letter requesting they assist you in anything you need.”

  Electra forgot all sense of propriety and hugged Edward, daring to kiss him on the cheek. Roger and Oliver shook his hand and thanked him. Edward’s parting words were, “I hope we never meet again in battle.”

  In the corridor, Electra breathed a huge sigh of relief. “He believed us, a little bit at least. I’m in shock. I thought for sure we were done for.”

  “He didn’t believe us,” Roger said.

  “What do you mean? He’s released us. He wouldn’t unless he felt we might’ve told the truth,” Oliver said.

  “Did you at any time see awe on his face? No, you didn’t. I should think a tale about time travelers from the future would instill awe. He might’ve been amused by our tale, but he never thought it true. We’re free because he doesn’t desire to take action against us. He said as much. If he admitted he didn’t believe, he’d have to move against us. I’d be taken prisoner and ransomed, again. Oliver would be executed as a traitor and who knows what he’d do with Electra.”

  “That he chose to do what he did speaks volumes about his nature. I wish history knew how kind he was,” Electra said.

  “He’s the one man who should’ve been king.” Roger wrapped his arms around Electra. “Tomorrow we ride to our future. Are you frightened?”

  “Not with you near.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Conwy, Wales

  Their small party gathered on the dock behind the town. Edward paid the captain of an English ship to forego transporting his normal cargo and carry only the five passengers. In addition to Electra, Roger, and Oliver, the Prince chose her former suitors, Percival and Horatio as their escorts to Elysian Fields.

  The two knights brushed the crewmen aside to personally take charge of loading their mounts. Percival went first. He held his large destrier on a loose lead line. With a combination of clicking noises and the words, “up, up,” he urged the animal onto the gangplank and onto the deck. Other than a few snorts, the horse obeyed without a fuss.

  “That’s impressive,” Electra said. “I’d have thought all the noise and activity on the dock and the rocking of the ship would’ve made his horse skittish.”

  “A knight’s mount is a well-trained beast,” Roger told her. “They don’t spook easily. Horse and man are one unit, which is why Percival handled the loading. He is as protective of his horse as he is his sword arm. A good knight will only trust a few with his mount.”

  “Can you do that with Conquerant?”

  “Yes, of course. I was considered a great warrior once and an excellent horseman. For heaven’s sake—I can’t believe you asked me that.”

  “Glad to know you weren’t just a pretty face,” she said, batting her eyelashes.

  Horatio went next. His mount loaded with the same efficiency as Percival’s.

  Edward approached as the ship’s crew readied to weigh anchor. “I shall miss your fine fare, Lady Electra.”

  “Thank you. The greatest compliment I can ever receive as a chef is that I pleased a Prince. Should we get home and I open my bistro...my inn,” she corrected herself knowing he wouldn’t understand the word bistro, “I will call it The Black Prince’s Table.”

  He laughed. “I have heard people secretly call me by that nom de guerre. I don’t know the origin. Do you?”

  She shook her head. “Even in my time there is only speculation, but it has stayed associated with you through the centuries.”

  He fixed on her, eyes narrowing. “In your time; I forgot you’re supposedly from another time.”

  Roger’s arm stiffened around her.

  Electra didn’t hesitate to redirect Edward’s attention. “Does the title offend you?”

  He smiled. “No. The opposite. I rather like it. It sounds fierce.”

  Roger’s hold on her eased.

  Edward turned to Roger. “I wish you a safe journey wherever it is you travel. I regret times and trouble kept us from being better friends.” He clasped Roger’s hand in both his. “Be well.”

  Then he turned to Oliver. “You old man, are like a unicorn. I’ll never know if you are what you say. I have my doubts. I can say that I am not unhappy to see the back of you. I offer this advice. Stay close to him,” he nodded in Roger’s direction. “Whatever you are, nothing good can come to you on your own.”

  “On that Your Highness, we are of one mind and I appreciate your mercy toward me.” Oliver bowed his head once. “Thank you.”

  The captain called out that it was time to board. The five passengers stood at the stern’s rail and waved.

  The Prince waved in return as the ship sailed past the breakwater then he turned and walked toward the castle. He was out of sight by the time they’d crossed the mouth of the harbor and entered the Irish Sea. They picked up a stiff wind that blew down from Scotland. The captain said if it kept up, they’d make the Severn River and Gloucestershire by the next afternoon.

  Percival and Horatio sat at the bow chatting with the crew.

  “It’s cold. I’m going below,” Oliver said. He pulled the cloak the Prince had given him tight around him. The August weather was sunny inland to the east of Conwy, but to the west, as they passed Anglesey Island, it felt more like a grey-covered biting November day. Oliver’s nose and the top of his ears were already pink.

  “We’ll join you in a little while,” Electra said.

  “Excited?” Roger asked Electra after he left them.

  “Yes, and nervous. What about you?”

  “Concerned we may never find a means to return to the modern world. I’ve never asked if you’d be horribly disappointed if you had to make do with a life in medieval France. I worry you’d grow to hate me. It’s human nature. I know you wouldn’t want to but you might not be able to stop the resentment from taking hold.”

  “Resentment over what? Over things not working out? If I blame anyone, I blame myself. If I hadn’t decided to wander off and pick wildflowers with Emily, I’d have stayed safe with you. But, what’s done is done. I’m tired of being angry with myself and the circumstances. It serves no purpose. One thing working for the prince taught me was as awful as I might think my situation is, I could have it a whole lot worse.” She snuggled close, pressing into his chest.

  “Are you cold? Do you want to go inside?” Roger asked.

  “In a bit.” She breathed deep, enjoying the brisk sea air. For the first time in weeks, she felt truly safe. “I never gave up hope that you’d find me but I also accepted the fact you might not. I’ve chosen to do the best I can and try not to be sad and filled with regret all the time. I knew early on that I had the strength to face this strange world. My only fear was for Emily. She’s not strong. Of the three of us girl
s, she’s always been the fragile one, the one who wouldn’t kill a spider.”

  “I will do everything in my power to fill your world with love and nothing to regret. That includes bringing Emily to France if we are to live out our time here. No harm will come to her under my protection.”

  “I know that. I don’t worry for her physically. I know you’d keep her safe. I fear for her emotional well-being. She’s not made of the sterner stuff I am.”

  He touched his lips to the top of her head. “One problem at a time, my love, one problem at a time.”

  “Kiss me.”

  The breeze tugged at the edges of the hood and teased chill tears from her eyes as they kissed. “Let’s go below,” she said, breaking off the kiss.

  Roger went down the ladder first, skipping the last rungs and jumping down. He turned as Electra started her slow descent, her skirt a tangle around her feet as she proceeded. He reached up and grabbed her around the waist and lifted her down.

  “Did I hear a groan?” she asked once her feet hit the deck.

  “A little one and it was more a faint grunt. I love you but you’re not exactly petite.”

  “That’s not very romantic and you French are supposed to be the kings of romance.”

  “Ah well, I blame these many months I’ve spent in England. They’ve tainted me.”

  “Shut up.” Electra looked up and down the narrow passageway and saw only one cabin. “This is the captain’s cabin. Where are we?” A horrible thought crossed her mind. “Are we bunking in one of the smelly crew’s hammocks below? Ick.”

  “No. The prince arranged for the captain to give us his cabin.”

  She gave a huge sigh of relief, closed her eyes and said, “Thank you, Edward. Best prince ever.” She opened her eyes. “The current William was, but he’s been relegated to number two now.”

  “I’m sure he’d understand. Shall we?” Roger said, opening the door to the captain’s cabin.

  The room took her breath away. Nothing about it was what she expected. The cabin was much smaller than a captain’s quarter’s in an English Man of War. A velvet counterpane covered the narrow bed, which was set down inside a wooden surround to provide stability in rough seas. Electra expected a rough woolen cover and flat straw mattress, but this mattress was puffy and looked comfortably soft. The usual cheap tallow candles a cargo ship would burn had been replaced with expensive beeswax, leaving the cabin less smoky. A fine pewter flagon of wine and goblets were set out with a tray off cheese and fruit.