“Alex, if this is a joke--”
"I swear to you I had nothing to do with this."
"Dear God." She slumped under the impact of his words and pressed her forehead against the stone mullion. The horror of the situation was too much to handle. Her world was orderly, methodical. This new reality shattered that world. "I'm sorry. The last thing you need right now is for me to fall apart. Please, give me a minute to pull myself together."
Instead, she began to shake. Alex came up behind her and slid his hands down her arms. "I think the term living ghost is an oxymoron."
The lighthearted quip meant to tease her into relaxing a bit, failed. For his sake, she wished she could fake it, smile a little and let him think the attempt worked. She felt like a shit, but she didn’t have it in her to give him the tiny victory.
"I guess you're not in the mood to quibble over semantics. I’m a living man who happens to remember my prior earthly life.”
He moved next to her and leaned on the window embrasure. “By a quirk of the fates, or by their design, I also remember the centuries where I drifted between worlds. Caught in a place where I could hear and see the descendents of my bloodline, but unable to do more than watch the events of their lives unfold. Unable to..."
He closed his eyes and when he opened them again, he stared off into a distant place, locked on another time, reliving memories.
Her tremors subsided as she watched him, engrossed. “Unable to do what?” she asked, laying a hand on the linen sleeve of his shirt.
His bicep jerked beneath her palm and he turned. "It’s not important,” he said, the sorrow of the past in his eyes. “Déjà vu is just an eerie feeling for most people but my reality. Given a choice, I'd choose to remember nothing."
"Please go ahead with..." she gestured palms out, "how you came to be given this life."
"My nephew, many generations removed, fell into a coma following a traffic accident. Each day his spirit died a little. As the light from his energy failed, I was granted his form."
"What happened to his spirit?"
"I haven't a clue."
"Did you ask?" The question unintentionally sounded condescending and clinical.
Alex walked away. "No, I believe that information is on a need to know basis, and I never assumed I was on the need to know list." He kept his back to her and filled the goblets with wine. "Why do I feel like I'm on the witness stand? You want me to defend a circumstance where I had no control other than to agree or not."
"Sorry, force of habit." Such a weak apology, empathy for the trauma of his experience entered her conscience as an afterthought. "Blame my curiosity, but don’t despise me for it."
He handed her a goblet. "I don’t despise you. I doubt I ever could. Go on with your questions."
"When did this exchange take place?"
"Five years ago. He was twenty-five, almost twenty-six, my approximate age at Poitiers."
"Those knights and the people here think you’re the same man you were six-hundred years ago. They see Guy when they look at you. How? Why? I’m not sure what the correct question is."
"My nephew bore a remarkable resemblance to me, extraordinary considering the lapse of time between our lives."
"It is indeed."
Religion wasn’t her strong suit. She preferred to sleep in on Sundays, rather than attend church. But, Alex’s experience raised questions.
“You’re awareness of both your mortal and immortal life indicates the existence of a soul.”
He nodded. “I’d like to think there was more than mere memory.”
“Then you, Alex, are in possession of that soul.”
He nodded again.
“If there’s but one soul per person, what about Guy, the Guy Guiscard from this place, how can the two of you be?”
“I don’t believe we can exist on the same plane at the same time. He’s not in Wales. He’s me, and I’m here.”
Shakira sipped her wine, thinking in a strange way that was good news. “Its better, isn’t it? I mean, we don’t have to worry about him riding into the bailey. Seriously, explaining the phenomena of the two of you to these superstitious folks wouldn’t end well.”
“The terms pitchforks and torches come to mind.”
"Can you tell what year this is?"
"Yes, it’s early September, 1355, when I went to Wales. Simon told me I've been away about a week. I wasn't expected to return yet, which is why Simon and Stephen were so surprised to see, me or as they believe, Guy."
He rocked back and forth as they talked. The repetitive motion soothed her frayed nerves. "Poitiers was in September, 1356. At least we have a year to keep trying," she said.
The gentle swaying stopped. "No, we don’t." He pointed out the window to a stall next to the blacksmith’s. "See that man?"
A thin man in a leather apron stoked a forge with a length of flat metal, a sword. When the steel glowed red, he pulled the sword from the fire, held it aloft then laid it down onto an anvil. A small group of knights and garrison soldiers crowded around as he fashioned the blade.
"Yes."
"That’s the sword smith. On his left is our armourer. They work from sunup into the night so every soldier from Elysian Fields will have a weapon of some kind and protection. You see, we don't have a year. The army sails for France right after Yuletide this year."
"What are you saying?"
"Baron Guy Guiscard sailed with them. If we don’t find a way back to the twenty-first century, I, as Guy, will be expected to go--”
“To certain death for the man you are now, Alex Lancaster, to die on the battlefield.” The shrill female voice wasn’t recognizable to her. It came from a terrified woman deep within that she’d never had to face.
“Calm down.”
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down.”
Chapter Sixteen
Shakira twisted away. "You’ve lost your mind. You can’t go. What will happen to me?"
He opened his mouth to answer, but she waved her hand to silence him. "Don’t say a word. I listened while you told me one fantastic thing after another. Now you," she pointed a steely finger, "will listen to me. You cannot go. Period. If this place--this timeframe, is what you say, then you have to find a way out of sailing with the army," she said, pacing. "What can the king do if you don’t go, confiscate your property, strip you of your title?"
"Would you hold still?" He made a grab for her.
"No, moving helps me think," she said and dodged out of reach.
"In answer to your question, yes, he’d do all those things you mentioned and more. I’d be labeled a coward and my family name disgraced forever."
She stopped midstep. "What do you care? You know the truth."
"I care. In this time and place a man’s honor is everything.”
She threw her hands in the air.
“That’s not all. I’d be hunted down. If he didn’t find me, Edward could order my sister and mother arrested and questioned. My mother’s mind is fragile. She lives a sedate life with the holy sisters. She’d never survive incarceration. My sister has a little boy. He’d take them all."
"Imprisoning a child serves no purpose."
"He’d want to know my whereabouts. What better way to get information from my sister?"
Anger flashed in his eyes. A harsh set to his muscular jaw, his features hardened. Any second, he’d explode.
Where was the warm and sympathetic man who a short time ago had held her so tenderly? When did he change into this medieval man who spoke of honor at the risk of his own life? She braced.
The heated words didn’t come. He poured another goblet of wine and returned to the window. Silent, a white-knuckled grip on the casement, he watched the activity below.
She needed him to see things from her side and that perhaps he was over-estimating the king’s reaction. "You’re speculating," she ventured.
"Am I?" His attention on her again, he said, “He’s a Plantagenet."
Go
od point. Edward’s grandfather, Longshanks-the Hammer of the Scots, didn’t spare woman or child. Some historians allege, Edward’s mother, the "She-Wolf of France," although a Plantagenet by marriage, and her lover murdered his father--ran a hot poker up his rectum, so there’d be no marks of foul play. Once he took the throne, Edward exacted swift revenge against them for his father’s murder. Between genetics and politics, the king was no stranger to violence.
Alex snorted and sipped the wine. "We have been at war for over a decade. Edward can ill afford to let one of his Barons get away with refusing to serve his cause. What better example to set for the other nobles than kill my family?"
The very real threat of barbarity she'd only read about washed over her in a nauseating wave.
"There’s another issue with my sister’s child."
"What?"
"If the child dies, there will be no modern day nephew and body for me to inhabit. He’s descended from my sister’s son. Either way, I’m screwed."
Shakira filled a goblet and drained it, refilled her cup and proceeded to drink half of that. "Let me make sure I understand. If you go with the army, you’ll die at Poitiers. If you don’t go, your family is at risk, which puts your descendents at risk, along with your current existence?"
He nodded.
"Fan-fucking-tastic." She finished off the wine.
"Watch your language here. You’re a lady, not a Welsh bowman."
"Yes, milord," she drawled with an exaggerated curtsy. "Your wish is my command." He stared back impassively as she fantasized hurling the goblet at him and storming out.
“Go ahead, throw it,” he said.
“How’d you...?”
“You’ve the worst poker face on the planet.”
She resumed pacing. "Let’s think this out. There’s a logical answer to every problem. Everything that’s happened to you is the ripple effect stemming from a single event, Guy’s defining moment. The answer is to break the problem down to the one action or reaction."
She snapped her fingers and quit pacing. "Got it."
He looked puzzled.
"If you must go battle, don’t ride to save your friend. It’s your defining moment, the moment--”
“Turn my back on a friend?”
“Your rush to help didn’t prevent his death. It only changed your life.”
“No.”
“You said it yourself. You weren’t supposed to die that day. If you hadn’t ridden to his aid, your fate wouldn’t have gotten entwined with his. You’d have lived."
"Just because I wasn’t supposed to die then doesn’t stop me from dying the day after or the week after. Which is irrelevant. We can’t alter what occurs, no matter what I do differently. One way or another, things will work out the same. You can’t change history."
"Why not?"
"The battle and its results are an entity with a fixed place in time and space. The events aren’t flexible. We’re the mobile components in the equation."
"That’s all theory. One life spared is such a small thing from a historical standpoint," she said.
"Small in your opinion doesn’t make it so."
"If history can't be changed then your sister and nephew aren't at risk. They weren't taken the first time."
"I personally don't think you can change what happened. For the sake of argument, say it’s possible. Then, I have to consider all the worst case scenarios, my family imprisoned or executed."
"God, Alex. I won’t survive." She sank down onto the foot of the bed. He sat next to her and she pressed her head to his shoulder. “How did this happen? How did we wind up here?”
“No idea. Maybe we were caught in some kind of wormhole. Whatever the cause, I’m staying optimistic. If there’s a way back in time there must be a way forward.”
“You’d think,” she said.
“Tomorrow we’ll ride to the same spot. Maybe we can figure it out.”
“I’m so scared, Alex.”
“I know. Let me reassure you, I have no intention of dying, not for a long time anyway." He tipped her chin up and kissed her forehead. "If events go against us, I’ll figure a way to work things out. On my honor, on my soul, I won’t abandon you."
There was a knock. Alex straightened his tunic and answered. The person whispered to him and Alex nodded. "Thank you," he said and shut the door.
"I hate to leave you when you’re upset, but I have to greet a party of knights from Roger Fulke’s holding. They’re on their way to court and spending the night here. I'll return as soon as I can. I’ll send a seamstress and a cobbler up. Pick out several bolts of cloth. Be sure to include some silk and velvet." He tugged the sheet off the mattress. "Get undressed and wrap yourself in this. Hide your clothes in the trunk, the fewer people who see our strange garments the better."
She laid the sheet on the bed. "We hope to leave. Why do I need dresses made of silk or velvet?" She struggled to remove a riding boot.
Alex bent to help. "Everyone thinks you're my mistress. They'll expect you to look the part," he said.
Another bombshell of information and a logical presumption, she hadn’t given much thought to. "Is that what you meant when you said I belonged to you?" She’d assumed he meant she was with him as in a date, nothing as intimate as lover.
Alex loosened the laces and pulled off the boot with irritating ease and dropped it on the floor. "Yes. You're a lovely woman. If my knights thought you were available, they wouldn't leave you alone." He started unlacing the second boot.
"I thought this was the Age of Chivalry." She gave his fingers a squeeze. "I can get this one."
"There’s a romantic notion associated with the Age of Chivalry reality doesn’t always bear out. My men aren’t going to force themselves on you, but you’d be fair game for their attentions."
She ruminated over what he said, a little flustered. The sexual duties of a mistress were obvious. She didn’t need additional illumination in the matter. How independent were medieval mistresses? In this less enlightened time, nothing could be taken for granted. "I’m kind of in the dark. I’m not sure what protocol is involved. What are my limitations? Do I wait for you to escort me, or am I allowed the freedom to walk around the castle on my own? Does it send the wrong message?"
"You don’t need my permission to leave the chamber. You’re not a prisoner. Obviously, for tonight stay here until you can get other clothes."
"I assumed that much. Maybe I’m not asking the right questions. Everything is so different."
"The questions will be there when I come back." A corner of his mouth turned up in a lopsided grin. "Listen, nothing would please me more than for you to want to be my mistress in all ways. You don’t have to decide right now. Think about it, and we'll discuss the possibility more when I return."
***
The seamstress and cobbler came and went. Both were curious about the Lord's new lady. Shakira kept her answers ambiguous. In turn, she baited them with a couple of contemporary terms, trying to trip them up. She mentioned hearing a car horn to the seamstress, who said Shakira was mistaken. Carts do not have horns, milady. She told the cobbler she’d love a cup of tea.
“Sorry milady, I am unfamiliar with this drink” he said, before his mouth fell open at the sight of her red toenails.
Witchery. He didn’t say it. He didn’t need to, his expression said it all. Thinking fast, she made up a bullshit story about admiring Celtic body art and experimenting with artist’s paint on her toes first. He finished in a hurry and left, to her relief, which she suspected wasn’t as great as his.
After what seemed an interminable amount of time, Alex still hadn’t returned. She cut a wedge of the cheese, sniffed it, and then tentatively took a bite. The color of Camembert but not as creamy or pungent, she expected the same potent flavor. Instead, the cheese tasted similar to mild cheddar. She broke off a chunk of bread, cut another hunk of cheese, and stuck it in the bread’s soft center wishing she had some butter too. One bite and she spit the mout
hful into her hand. She ran her tongue over her teeth, and then picked the gritty bits of bread off the tip of her tongue. She inspected a slice of bread and then another. All had tiny particles of a sandy substance as though the grain hadn’t been properly ground.
Disgusted, she swished a swallow of wine around her mouth. In all the excitement, she hadn’t noticed earlier how flavorful the wine was. She took another swallow and let it sit on her tongue for a few seconds. It had a deep quality to it, a heartiness, and some kind of berry was the base flavor, cherry or blackberry perhaps. Kristen, the wine buff would describe the overall taste as earthy. Kristen. Would she ever see her friend and co-worker again?
She grabbed an apple and her goblet and sat by the window watching the people below. She stayed there until the sun started to set and the breeze turned chilly, hoping to see a sign of modern life and seeing none.
Chapter Seventeen
Alex excused himself and left his knights and Fulke’s men to entertain themselves. Alone on the stairs, he practiced what he’d say to Shakira. He’d stress his attraction and feelings for her went beyond the physical. He’d remind her no conflict of interest existed here. Her low opinion of a mistress’s situation remained a sticky wicket. He’d have to play that part by ear. First and foremost, he’d assure her she had a choice.
His hand on the latch of the chamber door, he reviewed his game plan. He’d pour them a goblet of wine. He’d sit her in a chair across from him but within reach, a nice, neutral spot. He’d take both her hands in his and kiss the back of her fingers. Women loved the chivalrous gesture. Then, he’d take his time and present the advantages of agreeing to be his mistress. Pleased with his strategy, he went inside.
He stood in the doorway and listened. Shakira sang the old Chambers Brothers song, Time Has Come Today, and puttered with the fire. He would’ve commented on the perversity of her choice in music had his mouth not gone dry at the sight of her.
She glanced up, the firelight danced in her eyes, and a tiny smile touched her lips. "You were gone a long time."
Journey in Time (Knights in Time) Page 8
