Love Beyond Time

by Speer, Flora

  “Father, you know perfectly well that I have seldom been at Deutz since I began school at Chelles,” she reminded him.

  “That’s so. Perhaps my sense of disquiet is only the result of weariness after a too-exciting Mayfield followed by the marriage of my only child. I will soon recover, I am sure, once we at Deutz return to our usual routines.”

  Neither Deutz nor its inhabitants were destined for routine peacefulness, nor were Guntram or Danise and Michel able to leave for their respective estates as they had planned. When the ferry that had taken Sister Gertrude to the opposite side of the Rhine returned to Deutz it was crowded with men and horses. The ferryman made two more trips across the Rhine after that first one, and his counterpart who was based at Koln did the same. On the very last crossing of the ferry, having seen all his men safely over the river first, came Redmond. The news he brought was distressing. At least, Danise found it so. The men seemed to think it was exciting.

  “There is new trouble in Saxony,” Redmond told them, “and Autichar is behind it.”

  “I suppose you are going to tell us,” said Savarec, “that the Saxons are angry about the failure of Autichar’s plot against Charles. What have those heathen tribesmen done now? Burned Frankish villages? Raped and slaughtered innocent women and children? Or have they been murdering Christian missionaries again as revenge for the end of their wicked scheme?”

  “I do believe Charles wishes that isolated acts of vengeance were all he has to deal with,” said Redmond. “No, Savarec, the news is worse than you could have imagined. Autichar was taken to Bavaria by Duke Bernard and there delivered up to Duke Tassilo, just as Charles ordered. Tassilo said he would keep Autichar imprisoned while he considered exactly what terrible punishment to lay on that traitor, but he delayed his decision until past the time when Duke Bernard was bound to leave Bavaria to rejoin Charles.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Michel put in, “let me guess what happened next. Once Duke Bernard was back in Francia proper, Tassilo released Autichar.”

  “Not exactly.” Redmond sent his friend an approving look. “Though I believe you have come close to the truth of the matter. Tassilo claims that Autichar escaped from his prison. Autichar is now rumored to be in Saxony, where he is expected to stir up violence against the Franks.”

  “You mean, he was permitted to escape?” exclaimed Savarec. “If this is true, then Tassilo is as much a traitor to Charles as Autichar is.”

  “We may never know the whole truth of it,” Redmond said. “Tassilo sent word to Charles that he has executed the guards who let Autichar escape.”

  “Of course he’d kill them,” said Michel. “Dead henchmen can’t talk and implicate their master.”

  “That’s what I think, too,” Redmond agreed. “Tassilo also sent his most profound apologies to Charles, along with word that he has moved men into Saxony in search of Autichar.”

  “That would be a clever way to cover up troop movements,” Michel noted.

  “No one ever said Tassilo was a fool,” muttered Savarec. “Cunning, concerned only with his own interests, consumed with jealous hatred of Charles, a despicable traitor – all of these things Tassilo is, but he is not stupid enough to challenge Charles directly unless he is absolutely certain he can win a contest between them. Redmond, from the story you’ve just told us, I assume that Charles is sending you into Saxony to add your men to the troops already there.”

  “I am to ask you to add a contingent of your own men to mine. Here is the order.” Redmond handed Savarec a rolled parchment containing Charles’s signature as he always wrote it, in the shape of a cross. “Charles told me to warn you that his spies report the Saxons are greatly inflamed by the collapse of Autichar’s plan to rid Saxony of Frankish rule. On their own, in retaliation against us for Charles’s punishment of Autichar, the Saxons have begun attacking Frankish settlements not only on the border but well into Frankish lands. Now, with Autichar on hand to urge them onward, Charles expects more serious attacks.”

  “They will not strike as far west as Deutz,” Savarec said. “We are too far away. But if they cross the River Weser, they could attack Paderborn.”

  “That’s what we are to prevent,” Redmond told him. “Since Paderborn is a royal seat, Charles does not want the Saxons to take it.”

  “If they did,” said Michel, “it would be bad for Frankish morale and for Charles’s reputation.”

  “Exactly so.” Redmond nodded. “That is why we are ordered to stop the Saxons while they are still well east of Paderborn. Savarec, may I impose upon your hospitality for a night or two? When Charles summoned me to Aachen, I pushed my men hard to reach there as quickly as I could, and stayed at Aachen only a few hours before setting out again to bring the news to you. As a result, my men and their horses all need to rest. At any rate, you will require time to prepare your own troops. If we stop here at Deutz, we can travel together.”

  “Of course, Redmond.” That Savarec was thinking hard could be heard in his abstracted answer. “I am overstaffed at the moment. Since we are in no serious danger here, I can spare half my garrison. I’ll leave my lieutenant, Hubert, in charge. Michel, you may want to send Danise across the river to Koln, or even on to Elhein while you are away with us.”

  When she heard of this plan in the privacy of the chamber she shared with Michel, Danise objected vigorously to her father’s continuing parental protectiveness.

  “Deutz is perfectly safe,” she said to Michel. “Saxon uprisings occur all the time, and not in years has the disorder reached this far from the present border of Francia. I will not leave, Michel.” She did not ask him to remain with her. She knew he would have to go with her father and Redmond. For him to do otherwise would be cowardly, and she did not want anyone to question Michel’s courage.

  “I could order you to go,” he said.

  “If you do, I will not obey,” she informed him. “You or my father may need me here. I will not leave Deutz. When I see Elhein, it will be with you, or I will not see it at all.”

  “Rebellion in the ranks,” he muttered, but he did not look annoyed. He caught her hands, pulling them around his waist with rough tenderness, forcing her to step closer so he could hold her in his arms. He began to nibble at her bare shoulder. “It will take me a few minutes to think of an appropriate punishment for this particular mutiny. Bear with me while I consider the subject.”

  “Your absence from my side will be punishment enough,” she whispered, her blood warming to the touch of his lips. “But you will return safely to me. I know it as surely as I know the sun will rise when morning comes.”

  “Do I love you because you are an optimist?” he asked, gently ravaging her earlobe. “Or is it because you have such confidence in me?” Swinging her off her feet, he headed toward their bed.

  “You love me because you were meant to love me,” she murmured. “You could not do anything else.”

  “Sweetheart, I love you because you are you.” He laid her upon the bed and got in beside her. “With all my heart, for all time … Danise … Danise….”

  His hands on her, his mouth and tongue, all unleashed the passion Danise had come to expect from him, but never to take for granted.

  She knew how precious Michel’s love was. She reveled in his desire for her, returning it in full measure. They joined together in a heated rush and she did not think again for a long time, not until she lay relaxed in his arms, in the sweet contentment of passion temporarily spent.

  “So, you think I couldn’t do anything else but love you?” he teased. With one finger he traced her lips before kissing them. “My lady, were you hinting that you won my heart with a magic potion? You sounded remarkably sure of your power over me.”

  “It was not my power,” she murmured, nestling closer to him. “It was heaven’s will. It was our fate.”

  “Predestination?” His fingers strayed downward toward her breasts. “That idea doesn’t leave much room for free choice on my part. Or on yours.”
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  “You once suggested as much yourself, that you might have been sent to keep me from living a lonely life. Have you forgotten?” Lulled as she was by their just completed lovemaking and by the way his fingertips were tracing patterns of renewed warmth across her skin, Danise said what she should have waited to reveal until she was fully awake and thinking more clearly.

  “It was because of Hugo,” she said. His fingers, which had reached the very tip of one breast and were playing there in a most delightful way, stopped their tantalizing motions.

  “Hugo,” he said in a tight voice. “Would you like to explain that statement? Do you imagine that I am some kind of consolation prize, sent to you because Hugo died?”

  “You were not meant to replace Hugo,” she said.

  “I am damned glad to hear it.” Forsaking her tender embrace he rose to his knees, glowering down at her until Danise got up on her knees, too. And there, kneeling and facing each other in an unhappy travesty of the positions in which they had once begun to make love while in the charcoal makers’ hut, they fought their first bitter quarrel.

  “Go on, Danise.” Michel sounded as though he was determined to goad her into a damaging admission. “Tell me exactly what you meant about Hugo, and why you were thinking about him while you and I were lying naked together.”

  “Hugo is in you.” His truculent attitude did not deter her from speaking what she believed was truth. “I saw him, Michel. After we made love for the first time, in a flash of lightning, I saw Hugo’s face and form imposed upon yours. In that moment I knew that some part of Hugo survives in you, and that very part of him is what first drew me to you. It is also what made you want me so insistently.”

  “That’s crazy!” he shouted at her. “You are wrong, Danise. Dead wrong.”

  “I know what I saw,” she insisted. “Though you were born in different times, you and Hugo are each part of the other.”

  “No! I am myself, Bradford Michael Bailey, in the wrong century and the wrong place, but I am not someone else, and don’t ever think that I am.”

  “I have pondered long upon what I saw that night.” In response to his anger Danise tried to keep her own voice quiet and to choose her words sensibly. “Hugo had a younger sister, and after he died, Charles arranged a marriage for her. Did she – will she in a few years when she is old enough – marry and bear children? Could you be her descendant? Is the remnant of Hugo’s bloodline what I recognized in you when first I saw you?”

  “How the hell should I know the answer to that?” he demanded, apparently only made more furious by her attempt at reasonableness. “There are more than twelve hundred years between now and my own time, generations and generations of people. I have thousands of ancestors. How could I know if a particular woman was one of them?”

  “I do not really think it is a matter of the flesh,” she said. “Rather, it is a spiritual matter. Michel, there is no reason for you to be jealous of Hugo. I love you now. You”

  “Do you?” He looked at her as if she were a stranger to him.

  Danise refused to lower her eyes. She was sorry she had been foolish enough to raise the subject of Hugo, but she was not going to back down. She knew what she believed, and she was not going to change her mind about it, so Michel would just have to lay aside his indignation and accept the fact that contained within his being was some small part of Hugo. To Danise, it did not seem such a terrible thing, but apparently a man – a twentieth century man, she reminded herself – saw it differently.

  “Is that all I am to you?” he demanded. “All I’ve ever been in spite of everything we’ve said to each other and the promises we’ve made? Am I just a crummy substitute for a dead man?”

  “I do not know what that word crummy means, but you are no substitute,” she cried. “Michel, I love you.”

  “No.” He glared at her, injured masculine vanity and plain jealous rage showing in his posture and his expression. “You love Hugo. You always have. But I am me! I can’t take Hugo’s place. I can’t be what he was. I wouldn’t want to if I could.”

  “I know you are Michel. I love you because you are Michel. Why can’t you understand what I am trying to explain?” Danise stopped, choking back her own irritation before it could take fire from Michel’s wrath and flame up out of control, scorching them both beyond repair.

  “I don’t belong here, in this time,” he told her, his face and voice hard, “and from what you’ve just said, I don’t think I belong with you, either.”

  “But I love you.” Irrational fear caught at her. “You said you loved me and would forever. All those beautiful words that lay between us – did they mean nothing?”

  “I do love you. That’s why this crazy idea of yours hurts so much. If I didn’t love you, it wouldn’t matter that when you go to bed with me, you think you are making love with someone else, or that you fell in love with me because you mistook me for your precious Hugo.” He got off the bed and reached for his tunic.

  “Don’t leave me,” she begged. “Stay and talk to me until we settle this difference.”

  “I’m going downstairs to the great hall. Redmond may still be there, or Guntram. I feel the need to talk to someone about practical concerns, someone who won’t try to convince me that I am a twentieth century reincarnation of an eighth century warrior, who has been sent back to the eighth century to make you happy.” He paused, shaking his head. “Do you hear how ridiculous that sounds? How completely insane?”

  “Even Alcuin could not explain it,” she said.

  “You talked to Alcuin about this?” He was shouting again. “Before you ever said a word to me?”

  “Alcuin believes there is no sensible explanation,” she told him.

  “Well, he was damned right about that!”

  “He said some things are beyond human comprehension, and ought simply to be accepted.”

  “Now that sounds like something I’d expect to hear from an eighth century scholar,” he said scornfully. “Don’t ask questions, just accept the wildest possible ideas on faith alone.”

  “Do not insult Alcuin!” she cried, her own temper igniting. “Nor me, either. I have told you truthfully what is in my heart and what I believe. I think what has happened is a beautiful thing, for it proves that love does not die when our bodies do. Yes, I love Hugo in you, but that does not detract from the Bradford Michael Bailey I have learned to love, and into whose keeping I have given my life, my heart, and my future. I will not take back what I have said here tonight. Nor will I ever stop loving you. You, Michel. If your manly pride is injured, I am sorry, but it does not change what I feel.”

  She saw the anger go out of him, saw it replaced by a weary sadness, and she wondered if he would ever forgive her for what she had revealed.

  “Get some sleep,” he told her. “I am going below to talk to my friends.”

  * * *

  In the great hall Michel poured himself a cup of wine. Redmond was nowhere to be seen, nor was Guntram, but Savarec sat at the long table talking to one of his men-at-arms. Michel slammed his cup down on the table, then dropped onto the bench near his father-in-law. Savarec finished what he was saying to his man and dismissed him. He sat quietly while Michel swallowed most of the wine in one gulp and refilled his cup.

  “I know that look,” said Savarec. “I’ve seen it before on other men’s faces, and I have no doubt I wore it often enough myself while my wife lived. So, you and Danise have enjoyed your first quarrel.”

  “‘Enioyed’ is not the correct word,” Michel replied, draining his cup a second time.

  “The wine won’t help,” Savarec told him. “It will only give you a sore head in the morning and in the meantime, it will annoy Danise still more if you join her in bed in a drunken condition. Believe me, Michel, I know this from my own experiences.”

  Michel did not answer. He sat staring into his empty wine cup and Savarec sat watching him.

  “Danise’s mother was the only woman I have ever loved in all my li
fe,” Savarec said after a while. “Since her death I have bedded a few women, for I am not without male desires, but never again have I loved as I loved her. She loved me, too. And yet, we quarreled frequently, on many subjects. It is difficult for men and women to live together without differences arising between them.”

  “I’d be willing to bet you and your wife never quarreled on the subject Danise and I just discussed,” Michel said.

  “I do not want you to tell me about it,” Savarec cautioned. “It’s best if you settle your problems between the two of you, and best if I don’t take sides, which I might if I know what your disagreement is. But I will give you some advice, Michel. It is unwise for a man to go to war leaving behind a wife with whom he is at odds. If you never see each other again, Danise’s grief will be all the greater if the two of you have parted in anger.”

  “I’m not sure this quarrel can ever be settled,” Michel said glumly. He wasn’t thinking onlv of his quarrel with Danise. He was also recalling a night centuries in the future, the painful sorrow of love betrayed, a woman’s mocking laughter, his own vow never to trust or love again. He had broken that promise to himself, and as a result his past seemed to be repeating in the saddest and most intimate of ways. “Savarec, did you know Hugo well?”

  “Not really. He came through Deutz occasionally on business for Charles. I know that Charles valued his friendship, as did many other nobles. Is that what’s troubling you? Michel, Danise would not have wanted to marry you unless she was sure in her heart that she has recovered from her love for Hugo. There is no need for you to be jealous of her old affection for him.”

  “That’s what she says,” Michel told him, “but I’m not so sure.”

  “The man is dead. Danise loves you, and only you.”

  “I wish I could believe that.” Michel could not say aloud what he was thinking. I wonder how you would have reacted, Savarec, if your beloved wife had ever informed you that she thought you were the reincarnation of her old love. How could you ever again be certain that when she looked at you, or put her arms around you, that it was really you she was seeing? How could you know that she was making love to you and not to him?