Love Beyond Time

by Speer, Flora

  * * *

  It was raining when Michel first saw Koln. He had been there several times in the twentieth century, when he and his English-speaking colleagues referred to it as Cologne, and when it was a large and prosperous city. Michel’s principal interest in it at that time was for its twin-towered Gothic cathedral and for the excavated remains of a Roman villa that had a splendid mosaic floor in the banqueting hall. He had once spent an interesting morning in the museum built over and around this villa.

  What he saw on this present visit was a village set within the boundaries of the rebuilt Roman walls, with the Rhine providing extra protection along its eastern side. Long forgotten by the inhabitants of Koln, the Roman villa lay beneath half a millenium of dirt and rubble, and while the town was served by a church built in the Romanesque style, the cornerstone of the great cathedral would not be mortared into place for another three centuries. Michel regarded Koln with a dizzying sense of discrepancy, before reminding himself that he was the one out of proper time and place.

  Directly across the fog-shrouded river from Koln lay Deutz, the fortress Savarec commanded. There was a flat-bottomed ferry, little more than a raft with railings, to carry them across the river.

  After helping to load their horses onto the ferry, Michel and the men with him stepped aboard and the ferryman poled them slowly across the Rhine. As they drew nearer, Michel could see the sentries patrolling the walls of Deutz. To his archaeologist’s trained eye it was obvious that, like Koln, Deutz had once been a Roman outpost, built to protect this convenient crossing place from the depredations of the wild tribes who, even in those distant Roman times, lived in the eastern forests. Plainly, the Franks had the same sort of defense in mind when they added to and refortified Deutz, using mellow old blocks of Roman-cut stone for their additions.

  Outside the fortress walls there were a few dwellings near the ferry landing, probably for the families of the men who worked the ferry. Beyond these houses, some fields were under cultivation. A dozen or so peddlers had set up awnings or wooden booths along the short, muddy road that led from the ferry to the fortress. Comparing the organized simplicity of Deutz to his own estate, Michel wondered what Danise would think when she first beheld Elhein.

  He did not have long to engage in dour misgivings. Just as the ferry reached the shore, bumping gently against the wooden wharf, Michel saw two mounted figures emerge from the fortress gate and head toward the ferry.

  “Danise,” he breathed, recognizing the smaller of the riders despite the concealing hooded brown cloak that shielded her from the rain.

  “Did you doubt she would meet you?” asked Guntram. “And Savarec with her. What have they done with Clothilde, do you suppose? Or with Sister Gertrude?”

  Michel wasn’t listening. He leapt ashore and hurried toward the two who were now almost at the ferry landing. Seeing him, Danise slid off her horse with a cry of welcome. She ran no more than two or three steps before she was swept into Michel’s arms.

  He could not get enough of her sweet mouth, could not hold her close enough. He kissed her again and again, neglecting to greet Savarec, forgetting everything and everyone else in his delight at holding Danise once more.

  “I’ve missed you so,” she gasped between hungry kisses. “I feared you would be delayed, or not come at all.”

  “Nothing could keep me away from you,” he told her. “Nothing.” His desire to kiss her yet again was forestalled by Savarec’s deep chuckle.

  “Michel,” Savarec said, “you will be happy to know that all the preparations are made. You and Danise will be married tomorrow. That is, unless you have changed your mind?” This dry question was followed by a wink and another chuckle.

  Michel released Danise long enough to put out one hand to Savarec, but he kept his other arm firmly around his love’s waist.

  “It’s good to see you again, sir,” he said, “and, no, I have not changed my mind. Nor would I. Not in a thousand years.”

  “Come along,” Savarec invited. “Don’t stand here in the rain. There is a fire in the great hall, and food and drink awaiting us.”

  With the horses quickly unloaded, they remounted and all rode the short distance to the fortress.

  A firepit ran down the center of the great hall and Savarec had ordered fires lit there to stave off the damp chill. Tables were being set for the garrison’s evening meal and several dozen men stood about the hall talking while they awaited the call to table. The men who had come with Michel and Guntram greeted their friends and, after a final word of thanks from Michel for all their help, they disappeared upon their own business, leaving only Michel, Savarec, and Guntram in the group about Danise.

  “It is not right for you to be the only woman in this hall with so many men here,” Savarec said to Danise. “Leave us now.”

  “I want to stay with Michel,” she protested, taking his arm.

  “I allowed you to greet him. Now, go to Sister Gertrude,” Savarec ordered. “We will join you shortly.”

  “Father, you no longer need to be so protective of me,” Danise said, shaking her head and smiling at him. “I am as good as married and every man here knows it.” But she did leave, sending an inviting look in Michel’s direction as she went out of the hall.

  “Now,” said Savarec to Michel, “I want to hear about Elhein. What kind of place is it? Did you have trouble with Clodion’s people there?”

  “No real trouble, but I couldn’t have managed without Guntram,” Michel said. He went on to give Savarec a carefully edited version of what he had found at Elhein, what he hoped to do there, and how the work was progressing. Guntram added his bit, but neither of them revealed to Savarec the true state of disrepair or uninterested servants they had found there.

  “It will take a lot of hard work,” Guntram summed up the situation, “but once Michel’s changes are put into effect, Elhein will be a productive estate, with a very nice house for Danise and Michel.”

  “I am relieved to hear it,” Savarec said. “I wasn’t sure what sort of place it would prove to be, or if Clodion had some of his concubines living there. I did not want Danise sent to a house that would forever remind her of Clodion and what he did to her.”

  “By the time Danise sees Elhein, there will be no trace of Clodion left,” Michel promised. But his conscience pricked him. He knew Savarec wanted something better for Danise than Michel would be able to provide for her at Elhein. Michel wanted something better for Danise, too.

  The small but clean guestroom to which he was soon conducted, the pitcher of hot water, wooden bowl of soap, and clean linen towel provided by a polite maidservant, all were lacking at Elhein. How could he take Danise there and subject her to such a rough existance? Yet he did not want to postpone their wedding for fear of losing her. In this miserable state of indecision he washed, put on a clean tunic, and went to join Savarec, Danise, and Sister Gertrude for a light evening meal in Savarec’s private chambers.

  Danise noticed Michel’s distraction at once. She did not think he was angry with her, nor did she believe her father had said anything to upset him. She sat through the strangely quiet meal, during which each of the four people at table was preoccupied with personal thoughts. Danise decided she would have to get Michel alone if she was to convince him to tell her what was weighing so heavily on his mind.

  “The rain has stopped,” she said, a little too brightly, into the silence at meal’s end. “Michel, you have not seen the garden. Let me show it to you. If it’s a fair day tomorrow, the ceremony will be held there. I teased Father until he agreed to let me have my way on that.”

  “It is too damp for you to walk there.” Sister Gertrude’s expected protest was halfhearted, as if she spoke only out of habit, knowing perfectly well that her years of control over Danise’s actions had already ended.

  “Let them go,” said Savarec. “There is no harm in allowing them time alone now. By this hour tomorrow, they will be wed, and Danise no longer our concern.”


  “I know you well enough to believe I will always be your concern,” Danise responded, putting her arms around his neck and resting her cheek against his. “Father, I will not stop loving you because I am married to Michel. We will see each other as often as before, since most of the last few years I have spent away from you at Chelles.”

  “That’s true enough.” Savarec kissed her. As she left the room with Michel, Danise momentarily rested a hand on Sister Gertrude’s shoulder. Sighing, the nun lifted her own hand to pat Danise’s.

  “You must not think they don’t like you,” Danise said to Michel, leading him down the stairs and toward a narrow door in the stone wall. “It’s just that they both love me and it’s hard for them to let me go.”

  “I can understand their feelings,” Michel replied. “I wouldn’t want to let you go, either.”

  Danise went through the door first, then paused, trying to see the garden through Michel’s eyes. It was an oblong, walled space, and not as well kept as in the days when Danise’s mother had been alive to tend it. Yet, protected from the wind as the garden was, with high walls on all four sides, the herbs and flowers planted there grew well without much attention. A second door in one long wall opened directly into the kitchen, and near to this door the herbs were planted so they would be readily available to the cook. Elsewhere in the garden, since it was early July, late roses still bloomed on the bushes planted by Danise’s mother. The white lilies had grown profusely, doubling and redoubling over the years, and their sweet fragrance permeated the moist, still air.

  Danise and Michel walked along the gravel path from one end of the garden to the other while Danise explained where Michel was to stand on the following morning, where Savarec’s secretary and his chaplain would be, how she and Savarec would enter through the door Danise and Michel had just used. She could tell Michel wasn’t really seeing the garden or listening to her description of the plans for their wedding day. Her eager words failed and she stopped speaking, watching him for some sign as to what was wrong. When he did not break the silence that lay between them, she felt forced to speak.

  “I have talked too much,” she said. “It’s your turn now. I want to hear what you have been doing during these past weeks.”

  For a while he regarded her with a bleak expression, until she began to wonder if he would ever speak to her again. He did, after taking a deep breath. She thought he was steeling himself to give her bad news and she stiffened her backbone and set her face to hear it without weeping or otherwise behaving in a cowardly fashion.

  “Danise, I have to be fair to you,” he said. “When I tell you about Elhein, you may decide that you want to back out of this marriage.”

  “Why would I?” she cried. Fearing for an instant that Sister Gertrude’s dire predictions about men leaving women they professed to love might be at least partly true, she asked, “Have you decided that you don’t want to marry me after all?” Even as she spoke she knew it could not be so. She and Michel were meant to be together. There must be some other reason for his talk about their not marrying. He confirmed her belief.

  “There is nothing I want more than to marry you,” he protested. Again he hesitated before bursting into speech. “It’s Elhein. The place is a disaster. The house isn’t fit for you to live in, I don’t know if the few crops they’ve planted there will feed everyone through next winter, there isn’t enough livestock. I hate the thought of taking you there. The worst thing about it all is that though I can issue orders, and I think after the last couple of weeks the people there will obey me, still, I don’t really know what I’m doing. I haven’t had the right training for this job. I know what the end result of my efforts should be, but I’m not sure how to attain them. I am an archaeologist, not a farmer, or a hunter-gamekeeper, or an architect and builder. I should be all of those things. Thank heaven Charles sent Guntram with me, or I would have made a complete mess of things.”

  “And this is why you think I should not marry you?” she asked.

  “It’s why I think you will regret it if you do,” he replied.

  “Oh, Michel.” She started to laugh, until she saw the regret and the pain in his face. Then she sobered to speak earnestly. “If we had married at once instead of waiting, this would not have happened. You are so clever at disguising your foreign origin that I sometimes forget you were not born a Frank. Let me tell you that in most noble Frankish marriages, it is the woman who manages the land, because the husband is so often away from home.” She laid one hand on his chest and her voice took on a lighter note. “Who do you think has charge of the royal treasury? Or control of the crops from Charles’s own lands?”

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose he has a treasurer, and a steward.”

  “No,” she said. “Hildegarde. Who can a man trust more completely than his wife?”

  “She does all that work? No wonder she’s always sick. After the last couple of weeks at Elhein, I can appreciate how much work she must do every day, that I never noticed.”

  “Hildegarde doesn’t count every single coin or golden dish in the treasury, or each sheaf of wheat or cow or goat on Charles’s land and her own,” Danise said. “There are stewards and secretaries to help her, as you guessed. But the final responsibility is hers, and if it were necessary, Hildegarde could walk into the most dilapidated estate and begin restoring it to good condition within an hour. So could any other well-trained Frankish noblewoman.”

  “Are you telling me that you know how to do those things that I have been having so much difficulty with?” he asked.

  “I have known how to do those things since I was ten years old,” she replied. “I haven’t had much opportunity here, where fortification is the primary reason for the existence of Deutz, nor very much chance to show what I can do at Chelles, either. But I believe that you and I together can turn Elhein into a fine and happy place.”

  “And I thought late twentieth century marriages were supposed to be liberated and equal.” He put his arms around her. “Danise, what you are talking about is a real partnership. But tell me, while you do all that work what am I supposed to be doing?”

  “You, my dearest Michel, are meant to be the great warrior, the one who meets in council with Charles and the other nobles to decide if we are to go to war in a particular year, or to keep the peace. He may send you on a mission to some distant land, such as Lombardy across the Alps, or Northumbria beyond the Narrow Sea, where Alcuin was born. Or Charles might assign you to travel about Francia to make certain that his laws are carried out and the people treated justly. Those are the duties of a Frankish noble.”

  “I don’t think I’m going to like that last part of the deal,” he said. “Not if it means leaving you behind.”

  “I will be with you as often as I can,” she promised.

  “I want you with me all the time,” he whispered, his face in her hair.

  “Perhaps you were not treated fairly when we were betrothed,” she murmured. “No one troubled to tell you what would be expected of you.”

  “Why should they?” he asked. “No one but you and I knew that I had no idea what I was getting into. It’s my own fault, Danise. In my previous life I spent too much time digging up ruins and not enough studying social customs.”

  “Now that you do know what is expected of you, do you still want to marry me?”

  “I will never marry anyone else,” he promised.

  “Nor will I.” At that moment it occurred to Danise that there must be Frankish men who found their lives as warriors frightening or perhaps, at least occasionally, not to their liking. She could not imagine such a man revealing his innermost concerns in the way Michel had done. Redmond certainly never would, nor Guntram, nor her own father. That Michel trusted her enough to speak so openly endeared him to her all the more. She promised herself she would see to it that they would always talk to each other in this way. There would be no secrets between them.

  No secrets at all. She would tell him at onc
e about her vision of Hugo and what she believed it meant.

  “Michel,” she began.

  “What are you two thinking of?” Sister Gertrude hurried through the doorway and along the garden path to confront Danise and Michel. “It is raining again, and you stand here embracing while you are being soaked, and what’s more, where you can be seen by anyone glancing out a window. Do you want to spend your wedding day coughing and sneezing?”

  “You are right, Sister Gertrude.” Michel released Danise from his arms and took her hand instead. “After tomorrow, it will be my happy duty to protect Danise. I hope I can do the iob as well as vou have done. I’ll start by taking her out of the rain at once.”

  “I am glad to know one of you still has some sense left,” snapped Sister Gertrude. As she shooed the lovers indoors like a hen with her chicks, Michel sent Danise a twinkling glance and her heart constricted with love and happiness.

  Danise knew she would have no other chance to tell Michel about Hugo on that night. They would not be allowed to be alone together again until after they were married. And on the next night… she grew warm and trembled at the thought of Michel making love to her again.

  There was no real need for haste in telling him about Hugo. She would do it later, after the wedding celebrations were over, after they had enjoyed a night or two of tender pleasure. It would be easier to tell him then.

  The rain stopped during the night and the morning sun dried the path and the plants in the garden so dampness no longer threatened the shoes and the clothing, or the comfort, of the wedding guests. But the air was still heavily loaded with moisture that drew the scent from all the plants, so the fragrances of lilies and roses and herbs added a delightful note to the freshly clipped greenery and the neatly swept path. Sister Gertrude had seen to these preparations shortly after sunrise, and had inspected the garden twice since that time to be certain all was in readiness.