“But I shall tell you of my beloved grandmother, a healer and saint upon this earth, who used herbs to assist many of the sick and dying who came to our family for aid during the dark ages of the plague. Marigolds cured inflamation of the mouth, wounds, and burns. Simple chamomile would relieve coughs and fevers, skin irritations, even liver complaints. These are natural healing elements and ingredients, which alleviated the many pains and suffering that had enveloped our world in her time.”
“That much I think I understand, because I have a friend who is… well, sort of a hobby botanist.” Maggie thought the comment would ensure the countess that she was listening to the history lesson.
“Well, all the physicians and the Church, with their barbaric rituals and rites, could not accomplish more than what my grandmother had. Word of her abilities spread far and wide.” Elthea gestured with hands outward. “Many of the priests took word of her healings to Rome and Pope Paul III himself.”
The countess paused for a moment. “And he had just established the Inquisition three years prior. I was merely a young girl of nine calendars. It was by those, the fearing and feeble-minded, yet all-powerful, my grandmother was accused of heresy. Verily, I tell you, the woman condemned herself when she dared to speak out against the ignorance and cruelty of the Church.”
Maggie watched Elthea shake her head, seeming to surrender to the memories.
“So, this good woman was accused of being a witch, imprisoned for months in chained degradation, tortured unmercifully until she would have confessed to being the devil himself! After her cruel death at the hands of her inquisitors, her lands were seized by the Church, who only killed her to add to its coffers. Our title, tarnished by the accusation and public display of her murder at the stake, was allowed to remain in the family, but all our holdings vanished save for one small manor. This one that I was able to retain by marrying the Earl of Amesbury, a man of… of many talents who agreed with Bloody Mary’s reign of terror for those who opposed the return of Catholicism. Upon Elizabeth’s ascension to the throne, he promptly turned to the Church of England, though he secretly attended mass and forced all in his house to do so with him.”
“Wait a minute. Hold on…” Maggie pleaded. “I’m confused. You’re saying that your grandmother was accused of being a witch and was killed?”
“Yes.”
“And then years later you married to keep this place?”
“Aye, yes.”
“But your husband was playing both sides of the fence? Pretending to be Protestant, when he was really Catholic? He was like… a spy, a double agent?”
“Quick-witted and perceptive. Yes and now my son, through his own foolishness, is following in his father’s footsteps by secretly joining ranks with the likes of Ambassador De Quadra in aiding the Spanish claim to the throne. A Catholic claim.”
“And now you are plotting against your own son?” Maggie was shocked, for she couldn’t see any maliciousness in the woman.
“I am merely the observer. I agree not with my son on many issues, yet I do love him. He is my blood, though it appears the blood of his father runs far deeper than my own. I am not plotting anything, nor was I, until your untimely arrival. Now I must plot a way to get you and Nicholas away from this madness.”
“Do not distress yourself, m’lady,” Nick whispered to Elthea.
“The only way I can see in this moment is to have you play the role of my cousin for a few days. And then, I promise you shall be free of us all. Would you assist me in this most dire of times, Maggie?”
She didn’t know what to say. Her mind was reeling from the information she’d received and from all the crazy thoughts running through her mind. How could any of this hold even a shred of truth? It was beyond incredible. It was too bizarre!
“Countess Elthea, this woman could never hope to impersonate a lady. She is most distressing as she is, let alone a—”
“Hold it right there!” Maggie demanded, while shifting her legs over the side of the bed and rising. She felt dizzy for just a moment, until her body caught up with her anger. Imagine the nerve of this guy. It didn’t matter that he was handsome. He was also a royal jerk! She had faced down network heads, ego-crazed entertainers, and even her depressed ex-husband. She wasn’t about to be called less than a lady by an acting troubadour!
Pushing her hair back off her forehead, Maggie tilted her chin and stared down the man. “I will help you, Elthea,” she stated, while capturing Nick’s resentful glare.
The woman sighed with relief and touched Maggie’s arm in a show of thankfulness.
“Bless your heart, child. I will help you as much as I can. Fill you in on family history and what you will need to know to pass during your meeting with Robert. Nicholas will tutor you in our social graces while you recover tonight and tomorrow. I cannot postpone your meeting longer than that.”
Maggie blinked. What the hell have I walked into? How am I to make an escape after making this promise? And this arrogant ass is going to be my teacher? In social graces? It is absurd.
She set her teeth as she stared him down. Why was she sure this was going to be torture? One he would enjoy?
Closing her eyes for a moment, she patted Elthea’s hand, and whispered, “I do this for you. Not him.”
“I have not asked anything from you, mistress.”
“Children,” Elthea pleaded. “This is a time for unity, not dissension. Both your lives depend on it.”
Sighing, Maggie broke eye contact, and said to Elthea, “I don’t suppose you know what a bathroom is.”
The older women looked up. “You wish to bathe? I shall inform the servants.”
“A bath would be nice, but I’m talking about…well, a place to relieve myself.” She refused to look at Nick.
Elthea jumped up and shooed Nick out of the room saying, “Verily, I should have thought of this. Here, dearest Maggie. The privy.” She closed the door after Nicholas then walked over to another, revealing a small closet that looked like it might be a bathroom.
Maggie timidly peeked in and saw nothing but a carved wooden seat upon a stone shelf with a thin slit of a lead-framed window above it. It was just a primitive outhouse in the wall. A seat, a hole, some rags and a pot of water to wash it all down with. Maggie wondered when the joy part was gonna kick in, and how she was going to get back to sanity and indoor plumbing.
Yeah… she was getting really, really, tired of this joyriding.
“Thank you, Elthea,” Maggie said weakly, and started to enter the small closet.
“Allow me to assist you,” Elthea offered, and began unlacing the back of Maggie’s gown.
When the heavy velvet gown puddled at her feet, Maggie looked into the woman’s eyes, and said, “Elthea, you know one of us is right and the other is delusional. Both of us can’t be right.”
Elthea picked up the gown and folded its bulk over her arm. “Dear child, we have both spoken our truth this eve. You are not in the year 2000. I do not have sufficient knowledge to explain how this has come to be, yet only if I accept your truth… child, you have traveled back in time. Such a miracle does not happen by chance. It is certain, you are here for a great reason.”
Maggie looked into Elthea’s eyes and swore, for an eerie second, she saw the eyes of Aunt Edithe looking back at her. Blinking furiously to clear her vision, Maggie broke eye contact and shuddered.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, gathering up her slip and stepping into the tiny space.
Sanity. Just thinking the word proved too much. Here she was, in some castle, about to pretend to be some Renaissance noblewoman, involved in thwarting some kind of a coup, and annoyingly attracted to a crazy man who insisted he lived four hundred years ago.
Yeah, sanity was just too much at the moment.
She sat with a moan of relief.
Actually, she couldn’t have picked a better place to think about it. Sanity and how she could escape back to it. She would play along until she found a means of securin
g her freedom. Her world, her life, was out there somewhere. After what she had heard tonight, there was no doubt in her mind it would be up to her to find it.
At the moment, there was a more pressing need.
Chapter Seven
“Aye, Mistress Margaret… you curtsy more slowly to Lord Amesbury, in deference to his station. Once again, please. And this time hold your spine rigid.” He actually had the nerve to pound the floor with the curved wooden staff someone had given him to use as a cane.
Oh, her spine was rigid, all right! “Hey look, Nick, there’s no need for you to punctuate every directive by pounding your wizard stick on the floor. I’ll curtsy, bow… whatever… when I’m ready.”
“I shall curtsy when ready,” Nick corrected her while examining the tip of his cane. “Mistress, thy speech is most deplorable.”
Now she was grinding her back teeth together. “You may call me Lady Margaret,” she said in an authoritative voice. “I need the practice.”
His head jerked to the side and he looked to the ceiling, posturing as though he hadn’t heard a word of her command.
She rolled her gaze. “Just say it. We both need practice so we don’t screw up in front of Robert.” Plus, she wanted to annoy him by taking a shot at his superior manner.
He turned to her with an I-know-what-you’re-up-to sly grin. “Thy speech is most deplorable… Lady Margaret?”
She couldn’t help it. She smiled back. “That’s better. Now, I shall curtsy.” And she did, very slowly, with spine erect.
Wearing Elthea’s dressing gown and heavy blue-velvet robe, Maggie felt foolish yet played along with all this ridiculous formality. She refused to consider that Elthea might be right… about time jumping.
This whole Shakespearean scenario had to be a Midsummer’s Nightmare. She giggled at her own pun.
She’d clearly been kidnapped by a bunch of Renaissance fanatics who insisted that it was 1598. They really have a great setup, she mused, looking around the darkened room. Everything, all of it, seemed authentic, from the heavily paneled walls to the thick curtains around the bed.
Of course, none of it could be real.
So why did that nagging thought continue to scare her? She hadn’t seen anything modern since she’d run from that maze… and how does a maze just disappear? An entire faire? Her aunt Edithe. And Malcolm. Geez, time travel. She nearly said the word aloud, but she knew deep down inside, that if she really thought about it, her brain would have some kind of meltdown. So she’d continue to play along with them until morning, when she could see a way to escape back to where she’d come from. Reality.
“Well-done,” Nick said, observing her long, slow curtsy.
She stood up. “Thanks. Now how do I address him? Lord Robert?”
“No. There is precedence, Mistress Margaret.”
“Lady Margaret,” she corrected.
“Do you know nothing of rank?” he asked in a presumptuous voice.
“Rank? Oh, you mean ‘special’ people elevated by birth and not by deed? There is a small group of people who hold on tightly to archaic titles, but most people think such a desperate attempt to believe one is superior to another is well… quite frankly, pathetic.”
She walked to the table where, earlier, Nicholas had placed a small wooden vessel of ale. She was glad he’d brought it. She needed a drink. Then, with a defiant air, she filled a cup and continued the education of one Nicholas Layton about history in the future.
“Even your monarchy in my time is debated as meaningless. Your way of life is falling away, and everyone is more egalitarian. One’s blood is no longer thought to be better than anyone else’s. It is one’s deeds that distinguishes one, not who one’s father was.”
There, she nodded and mentally congratulated herself for giving an articulate and intelligent answer. She was woman, “hear her roar”!
Nick sat down once more before the fire, and rested his leg on a short stool. He still held his cane and was examining the twisted, polished wood.
“Prithee, Maggie, thou art here, not in some fantastic future. This is the Golden Age of England, where precedence, preferment, and even attainder is law. Therefore,” he stuttered, “if you are to be received and pass thy meeting with Lord Amesbury, you must learn it,” he finished, exhaling deeply.
He had just called her Maggie.
He cleared his throat, and continued, “Now, precedence refers to your ranking, either above or below other people. An earl takes precedence over a baron, a baron over a knight and so forth.”
“Hmmm…” she murmured. “So much to remember, instead of just saying hello.”
And she said it without a tone of aggravation in her voice. She smiled softly at him, yet her expression didn’t deter his teaching.
“That is to say…” for an instant, he looked at her with an appearance of wonder on his face then went on, “… that an earl is the first to be introduced and also the first to lose his head should the occasion arise. Sir John Wallingham, whom you shall meet tomorrow, may be addressed as Sir John or Master Wallingham, but not Sir Wallingham. Margaret, do you comprehend this?”
Maggie blankly stared. “Why can’t I just shake his hand, and say, ‘Hello, Robert’?” she said, mimicking the action of shaking someone’s hand.
“You will never pass your meeting with Lord Amesbury if you do not commit this to memory. Henceforth, I insist you cease your interruptions until you innately behave in accord with precedence. Formally you are known as Margaret Gray, Countess Norreys of Rycote. You may be formally addressed as Lady Norreys, but not Lady Gray or Lady Rycote. To address you as Lady Margaret, one must have a close relationship. Do you understand?”
“No.” She began tapping her foot. Behave? Now he was really pushing some buttons. Yet, she restrained herself from a feminist barrage.
She watched as Nick blew out his breath with frustration. “Mistress, I am not such a dull teacher that you cannot grasp this simple form of address.”
Maggie took her seat before the fire, a few feet away from him. “Listen, Nick… I don’t mind playing this Lady Margaret person, but I’m not about to be filled with this ridiculous precedence. Do you know how insulting this is to the majority of people who are not titled? You are saying that by right of birth, you are entitled to special treatment. It just isn’t so.”
“Mistress,” he said, obviously trying to maintain his patience, “I have received a classical education in the arts, in rational, logical philosophy, moral philosophy, and natural history. I even excelled in the seven liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, logic, arithmetic, geometry, musk, and astronomy. I have studied the faculties of law, theology, and medicine; surely I may instruct thee on precedence.”
Maggie held up her hand to stop him. “Enough already! I’m impressed. I’m just saying that treating anyone as though they are better than I am, or worse off than I am, makes me uncomfortable. Somehow, you don’t get this. In the real world, out there somewhere”— and she pointed to the darkened lead-framed window— “equality of all is being practiced, or at least is the ideal. This… this precedence is antiquated superiority, and I have a right to object to it.”
“Object all you wish, mistress. However, you agreed to assist Countess Elthea in this most unfortunate of circumstances, and so you shall. You have only this night and the morrow to become Lady Margaret. Now, how would you address Robert when you meet him?”
“Wait a minute. I agreed to help Elthea, but you also have a stake in this, if I’m not mistaken. You and Robert aren’t exactly friends, and you brought me here as his future wife, so, so your neck is on the line here, too.”
He gazed at her and nodded. “I am as deep in this deception as anyone involved. And all for a moment of mistaken identity. Heaven knows how it shall all be resolved. Presently, I am concentrating my attention on your meeting with Robert. You must get through that before we worry about the future.” He rose and tapped his cane once more on the floor.
“Now we shal
l practice your meeting once again, until it is so natural even you shall believe you are the Lady Margaret. Prithee, rise, sweet lady, and show me your curtsy.”
Sighing, Maggie stood up and closed the space between them. She kept his gaze as she slowly bowed before his chair, “Good day…” wait, the words boomeranged back into her skull. She quickly looked to the floor. His words, “sweet lady,” momentarily interrupted her murmur, “… to thee, Nicholas Layton,” she finished with a nearly crowning curtsy.
He was still staring when she finally looked up. Maggie was acutely aware that Elthea’s robe was tight around her breasts, and her hair was cascading around her shoulders. It didn’t matter that he was younger than she, or living in a fantasy. In that moment, when her gaze locked with his… she saw something that took her breath away.
She saw an acknowledgment of attraction.
He cleared his throat and held out his hand to her. Maggie placed her fingers inside his palm. Assisting her to rise, he muttered, “Well-done, Maggie. You are either a talented performer, or you have some of that dreaded blue blood racing inside your own veins,” he mocked theatrically. “That was almost perfection,” he finished with a wide grin.
“Almost perfection?!” She couldn’t help smiling, just a little, as they continued to hold each other’s gazes and hands.
“You should lower your head when showing respect to a person of higher station, especially the male of the realm.”
“Ooooh!” She withdrew her fingers and stormed away. “Give me a break, Nick. I am so sorry… no wait”—and she bowed once more—”forgive me, my lord, pray pardon my ignorance, I crave your forgiveness for my most atrocious blunder. The higher-stationed male! Ya know there wouldn’t even be a male, had he not come through a female, so don’t ask me to buy into male superiority now, ‘cause this debate is one you’re gonna lose, buddy.”
She’d had to resurrect the feminist in her for his inequality comment.
Once and Forever Page 11
