by Julianne Lee
From here she could see she was still near Perth, in Scone. The knoll rose above her, but not as it had been in the twenty-first century. The door was cleared of bracken and appeared sturdy. Almost new. She’d gone back in time, and could only hope it was far enough. Drifting on the currents of fate wouldn’t cut it this time.
After a few minutes, she tried again to move and found the pain had subsided. She could raise her head without feeling as if her skin would split open, and found the places her clothing bound weren’t as excruciating as they had been. She sat up.
It was nearing dark. The weather was cool and overcast, so she guessed the month to be May. June at the latest. The year could be nearly any. Not that it mattered all that much. It was Nemed she was after, and so long as he’d deposited her where she could find him physically, she could have what she was after. Alex had once forced him to send them home; she figured she could make him give back her son. Or else she’d kill him. Just then, in her pain, the prospect of killing him anyway was oh, so tempting.
As the burning faded to become tolerable, she climbed to her knees, then to her feet. Hard to tell where the sun was. By her memory of the knoll, she knew the river was beyond the stand of trees in front of her. The town would be just south of her. She began walking. The clothing chafed against her skin, and each step brought new pain.
Soon she came upon a cluster of buildings, along a dirt track pitted with deep hoofprints left from the last heavy rain. Not many wheeled conveyances came through here, and Lindsay’s heart stilled with fear she might have gone back too many centuries. Torches and candles were being lit here and there in the village. She thought Scone would have been bigger than this.
One building was lit up more brightly than the others, and before it stood several mounts held by two squires chatting with each other in low voices. She guessed the place was a public house of some sort, the operative word being “house,” since it was apparently someone’s abode made available for travelers and locals to refresh themselves with food and drink. She made her way toward it, nodded perfunctory greeting to the bored squires, and took a deep breath to ready herself for the bluff. From experience she knew that in being convincing as a man the best defense was a good offense. Timidity of any sort would get her nothing but picked on, particularly in a time when even a modern man complete with penis and Y chromosome would be thought a shy coward of the worst sort.
Except Alex. Alex had impressed them from the very start. She missed him horribly. Her heart ached at what he would believe of her if she were unsuccessful, and she resolved that she would bring him Nemed’s head, or die in the attempt.
Lindsay ducked through the door to the public house and went inside to learn what she could.
A large hearth at one end lit the room with a bright, merry fire, and near it stood a counter of sorts. Unattended, it was little more than a high, narrow table of rough wood. Under it was a shelf that bore a single jug and some wooden cups. The room was small enough the one round table surrounded with chairs filled half of it. Most of the chairs were taken by knights, more than likely the men whose horses and squires awaited outside. A single doorway containing no door led to a back room, from which low voices of a woman and children emanated. The building was a single story, and Lindsay guessed the two rooms were all there was to the place: the public room, and the back room for the merchant and his family. Maybe there was an outbuilding of some sort, for storage.
The men lounging around the table were plainly knights by their swords, as she would also be identified as a knight by hers. One squire stood off to the side, alert to his master’s bidding but taking glances at Lindsay the newcomer. The knights sitting casually in their chairs all stared at her, their talk having been suspended on her entrance.
By their chain mail, and their lack of plate armor besides, she saw she had indeed come at least as far back as she wished. By the style of their tunics and shoes, she was relieved to note she’d probably come no farther back than that. The appearance of these men was as she would expect for the span of years she had aimed for, and that brought a measure of relief. Her confidence rose, and she made certain it showed in her demeanor. She coughed to clear her throat and relax her vocal chords so her voice could go as low as possible without straining or softening. She would never sound like anything but a teenage boy, and every bit of pitch advantage helped. She said to them, “Is this a place for a thirsty man to find refreshment?”
One of the knights nodded toward the counter, and said with a voice of authority that suggested he was in charge of the group, “There. You’ll find a jug and a cuach. Leave a penny for the jug, if you would have it all.” The men seemed fairly scruffy, even for guys that were probably out on campaign. They looked like mercenaries. This one wore his hair long, to his shoulders, and though he had a beard along his jaw, chin, and lip in the English fashion, he also had heavy stubble where he hadn’t shaved elsewhere in what appeared to be at least a week. Such a hairy face wasn’t the way among Scottish nobility. The others were less scraggly, but not by much.
“And for just the cup?”
“Leave nothing, and Himself will come to you once you’ve had enough.”
Lindsay figured she’d end up paying the entire penny that way in any case, so she went to the counter for the clay jug and wooden cup, and dug a silver penny from the pouch tied at her waist. One of the other knights kicked out an empty chair for her to sit, an amiable gesture, even if it was the only chair left in the room and she would have sat in it in any case. She brought the jug and sat, leaning back like the others in the rickety wooden furniture. Her skin was still sore, and she couldn’t get over the concern she might have a reddish color they would see. But her hands showed nothing, and the fire made everything in the room orange regardless, so she put it from her mind. The heat from the fire heightened the pain just a notch, like wearing a hair shirt.
She poured from the jug and took a draught from the cup. Grape wine. English. Her nose wanted to wrinkle at it, but she kept a straight face. Even mead, made from honey and gagging her with its sweetness, would have been better than this. She was certain there were very good reasons French imports would one day kill the production of English wine. She drank it anyway, for it was all there was.
Then she cleared her throat and took a chance to introduce herself.
“I’m Sir Lindsay Pawlowski from distant Hungary, until recently household knight to Sir Alasdair an Dubhar MacNeil of Eilean Aonarach, near Barra.”
“Should we have heard of ye?”
Good question. She had no idea what year this was, whether Bannockburn had been fought yet, or if the battle was so far in the past she couldn’t possibly have fought there. But the mention of Alex and his island didn’t seem to give them any trouble, so she ventured, “King Robert knows my name, for I was knighted by him.”
That brought grins to the knights and relief to Lindsay when another of them said, “And we all ken the name of Robert, now that he’s stood against the English crown and prevailed.”
Oh, good. After Bannockburn. Not too long after, either, by the use of present tense in the comment. It was beginning to look as if she’d been returned to a time very close to when she’d left. The knight continued. “We still fight for Scotland and Robert. How do you do yourself?”
“I’m pledged to nobody. One fight is as good as another for me. I’m in search of a situation in need of a paid sword, for I’ve no use for land and taxes. Give me a bedroll for sleeping, a good fight on waking, and some mead afterward to wash down the blood and return me to the sleeping.”
That brought a laugh and some nods of agreement. Tension in the room dissipated, and a platter of meat was shoved across the table in her direction. Chunks of beef lay beside pieces of roast fowl, and she took a greasy bit of bird. Not that she felt hungry, but she should be and knew it was best she ate. Food in these times was often hard to find even when one was blessed with a pocketful of cash, which she was not. The few coins she’
d brought with her, left over from her last stay in this century, would cover her for a short while, but she would need gainful employment to survive long. It was good she was being questioned by these guys, for in the questions she smelled a job offer.
To nurture it, she said, “I’ve tired of living on so remote an island as Eilean Aonarach, and wish to find a more interesting life among those who harass England.” She knew, if the year was anywhere near 1314, there were still Scottish men at arms making forays across the border into England. Noblemen, most notably James Douglas, First Earl of Douglas, took raiding parties south in an effort to convince England’s Edward II he had no business north of the Tweed.
One of the men at the table, the first one who had spoken, sat up in his chair and leaned forward to lay his palms on the table and look her straight in the face. “Would you take plunder for your only pay?”
“No. I would take what I find, and three loaves of bread a day besides. And mead.” Working on straight commission was a bad idea in any century, and she didn’t intend to starve while waiting for the next raid. Surely these guys were being fed by their master during downtimes, and she didn’t care to let herself be shorted.
The knight grunted. “And are we to trust you’re worth your keep? Can ye fight?”
Lindsay snorted. “If not, I’ll be dead in the next foray and no longer a bother to you. The sooner we ride into England, the less stake my master will have in my success.”
The men looked to their leader, who considered her words then nodded. “Aye. If you can fight, we’ll be glad to have you.”
“I’ll need to borrow a horse until I can reive one of my own.”
The knight sat back. “You’ve no horse? Nor arms? No squire?”
“Only what you see before you.” It suddenly occurred to her she hadn’t brought a bedroll, and she mentally kicked herself. “Stake me for the first raid, and I’ll reward the favor.”
Clearly the guy didn’t care for this development, and he frowned and grumbled. “Did your master at Eilean Aonarach not pay you sufficiently?”
Lindsay grunted and made herself lie. “My master is a close man and that is why I broke alliance with him. In my service to him, as squire and knight, I’m left with naught but my sword and mail. I’ve fought well and hard, and have not been properly rewarded. That’s why I seek better fortune elsewhere.”
The knight gave that hard consideration. But finally he shifted in his seat and said with some reluctance, “Very well, then. You’ll have one of my horses until the next raid. Then you’ll either have your own or you’ll be on foot. Again.” The disparagement was thick in his voice, for a knight on foot was not really a knight at all.
Lindsay let the insult slide, lifted her cup in agreement to the deal, and drank. Again she resisted a grimace at the dreadfully sweet wine. The men introduced themselves, and the unkempt, dark-haired one in charge turned out to be called Jenkins. His accent seemed from all over, and by his dress and demeanor she guessed his origins — and possibly his loyalties — were as diffuse. She pegged him for a hardcore mercenary, the sort she hoped they thought she was.
The men drank and talked for a while longer, then made their way to their camp. It was not far from Scone, tucked into a small hollow among a stand of oak and pine. One of the men loaned Lindsay a blanket for the night. After a trip into the woods to relieve herself and to change and bury her blood-soaked towel in private, she rolled herself up in the borrowed blanket on the hard ground near one of the fires and dropped into a not particularly restful sleep. Images of Nemed came, and in her imagination she fought and killed the slanty-eyed, pointy-eared monster. Over and over.
***
The following morning she was introduced to the commander of the company. He was a big blond guy, and called himself An Reubair, which she recognized as a nickname in Gaelic. The Robber. He had a look about him that struck her as odd. Something about him wasn’t quite right. Like the one who had recruited her, the commander was extra scruffy and had very long, thick hair, and that was expected. His dress was rich but not fancy; at his throat he wore a leather thong from which dangled a silver crucifix, and that was his only ornamentation. Knights these days were fighting men first and nobility second, and even those among the peerage were rough by modem standards. These guys even more so, for they were definitely not ruling class. Nor did many of them even seem Norman. It was a motley assemblage making its way south to fight, but Lindsay couldn’t quite put her finger on why their leader was unusual. An Reubair’s eyes were narrow and seemed wary, but wariness was also to be expected on campaign, especially in the presence of a stranger. No, the oddness about him was something even more subtle than that. A look in his eye, perhaps, that bespoke secret knowledge. Lindsay had a distinct feeling he knew something she did not, and that was unsettling in spite of its unlikelihood. Probably it was a control technique he’d cultivated as the leader of this ragged crew. She shrugged one shoulder and focused on what her new boss was saying in response to her explanation of herself.
“An Dubhar MacNeil, ye say? I’ve heard of him.”
Lindsay’s heart flopped, then began pounding. “And what have you heard?”
“Only that he killed nearly twenty men at the battle near Stirling summer before last.”
Two summers ago. This was 1316, then, if spring, and only a few months after she and Alex had left this century to return home. Only a few months’ difference. For a moment she stuttered at her incredible good luck, then recovered and replied to the comment. “The number was more like ten or twelve, but it’s true he’s a formidable opponent.” Her chest tightened at the memory of Alex standing over her with his claymore, slaying all who challenged him. She wondered whether she would see him again, ever.
“Have you ever tried him yourself?”
Her chin raised, indignant, she said, “He is my foster brother. We were raised together in Hungary.” He is my husband, and the father of my son. I love him more than my life.
“And so your allegiance is still with him?”
“When I pledged to him, it was to him. My pledge now is to you.” I will always love him, and no man will ever come before him.
“You would fight him if necessary?”
“Of course.” Never.
But now Lindsay smelled something not quite right. She frowned and gave him a slanted look. “Alasdair is a royal vassal of King Robert, and by the account of your man Jenkins we are also pledged to Robert. How would it ever be necessary to fight An Dubhar MacNeil?”
An Reubair snorted. “Jenkins has given a false impression, I think. We’re pledged to nobody but ourselves, and we foray into England because that is where we find the fight most profitable. If Robert and his nobles appreciate our efforts, they are welcome to it, and that is the whole of our allegiance to him.”
Jenkins, who was kicked back in a chair in a dark corner of the commander’s tent, snorted and chuckled. “‘Tis not as if His Majesty were stumbling over himself to elevate us to the peerage for our efforts, is it? Nor even reward us with land.”
An Reubair shrugged. “‘Tis better for us if he doesn’t even know our names. Too many men have lost their lands, and often their heads, for being too close to the crown. I like it here in the shadows, and I like my wealth portable.”
Jenkins only grunted, and returned to his quiet watchfulness. An Reubair returned his attention to Lindsay. “So, take warning, then. Your allegiance is to me, and to nobody else, until we are agreed you are released. On your life.”
Lindsay nodded readily, for hesitation would be taken as the misgiving it was. “Aye. I’m a man of my word.”
The interview accomplished, she was told who to see about rations and equipment, then dismissed. With little comment she accepted her day’s rations from the company’s equivalent of a quartermaster, then went to take possession of the horse and trappings placed on loan to her.
It was a sorry animal. Ribs poked out under a dry coat, and the spine was so prominen
t the saddle almost wouldn’t stay on. The dull look in its eye told her she shouldn’t ride it too hard lest it drop dead under her. Seated on this creature, she was going to look like Don Quixote de La Mancha. Not very sporting of her employer to expect her to prove herself on this mount, but she would make the best of it. She would feed it well and hope it would carry her long enough for her to buy or steal a more appropriate steed. She even borrowed a brush to clean the animal’s matted coat, though it was a hopeless effort to make it presentable. This might be a rickety old beast, but for now it was her rickety old beast.
That day they headed south, which was no surprise. Though it didn’t seem that information concerning their prospects for action was ordinarily forthcoming from An Reubair, it stood to reason they would head for the West March, where the pickings would be good and there was convenient retreat to the mountainous western territory held by Robert. Even Lindsay knew Scone was too far north for any action that wouldn’t attract the ire of the Scottish king. It was the Borderlands where the fighting was hot and sanctioned by Robert, and there was plunder to be had from the English who strayed too far into Scotland.
Along the way, it didn’t take long for someone among the raiders to challenge Lindsay to a fight. She’d seen it before and knew it was inevitable. One morning as they neared England, one of the knights she rode with shoved her when she knelt by a stream for some water to wash down her breakfast bread. She held her ground.
“Out of my way, Pawlowski.” Simon shoved her again, and she landed in the grass on her rump. He was not the largest guy in the company, but he was the most arrogant ass. He bore more scars than anyone else, and his nose had once been caved in so it lay flat and squat on his face. From his boasting around the fires at night it was plain he wore his scars like badges of honor, but Lindsay knew they were the mark of a man who had lost many fights. The bank of this stream was open and there was plenty of room, so it was plain this guy intended to challenge.
