A Knight's Vow

by Lynn Kurland

  Maybe there'd been more to Elizabeth's map than met the eye.

  She looked around her. She was in a ramshackle old stone church. It still had a roof and walls, but there were plants growing where they shouldn't be and all sorts of nestlike items loitering inside that she was just sure housed animals of dubious origin. She looked to her right and saw an altar adorned with what she could only assume was an unconscious priest. She was worried he might be dead until he suddenly gave a great snort, then began to snore.

  Okay, you might have found something like that in Jersey.

  But that didn't account for the guy facing her who continued to demand "Who are you?" and "Whence hail you?" in a language that sounded remarkably like Middle English. When those very intelligible words gave way to what resembled Norman French to a frightening degree and a litany of curses she could only half understand, she began to think that even Jersey couldn't produce something quite this strange. Then there was the chain mail to consider. A student of medieval languages didn't learn the words without learning a great deal about the history. His gear looked late 13th century. Maybe early 14th if he'd been poor and had to use hand-me-downs. But his sword was very bright and no doubt very sharp. She looked to her left and found two large horses standing just inside the front door of the church.

  Hollywood movie set?

  She had her doubts.

  By the way, watch out for Gramercy Park. That place is a minefield. Fell asleep on a bench there once and wound up practically on another planet.

  Elizabeth's words came back to her mind with uncomfortable clarity. Another planet was just a figure of speech, wasn't it? She hadn't landed on some kind of Star Trek world where life was perpetually stuck in the Middle Ages, had she?

  "… and to be sure, I only made the vow to assure myself of success," the man was saying as he eyed her with distinct disfavor.

  Julianna had been watching his lips move; she realized only then that he'd been using them to form words.

  "I'll need all of that I can have," he continued with a grumble, "for removing his sorry arse from my keep will be a difficult task even if he can scarce hoist a sword to save his neck."

  Julianna felt as if she'd been dumped suddenly into a foreign country where the babbling going on around her had suddenly begun to resemble the language she'd been diligently studying. Only, she was beginning to wonder if her brief semester exchange at Cambridge had been enough to get her American professors' accents out of her ears. Then it struck her that she was listening to a man gripe at her in Norman French and curse the teenager sitting next to him in Middle English—and it was then she began to be firmly convinced that she was losing her mind.

  " 'Tis his father's sorry arse he speaks of," the teenager supplied cheerfully. "Stole his—"

  The kid ducked a friendly, if pointed, cuff to his ear and fell silent. Julianna looked at the man and latched on to the one word she thought she could repeat without screaming.

  "Vow?" she asked hoarsely.

  "Aye, pox rot you," the man replied curtly.

  She blinked at him.

  He cursed. "To rescue and defend any and all maidens in distress—"

  "Protect," the priest supplied in a weak voice, then began to cough, which precipitated an abrupt slide off the altar. He landed with another cough and a snort. He shifted around, made himself comfortable, then almost immediately began to snore again.

  The man threw the man of the rotting cloth a dark look, then returned his unfriendly gaze to her. "Now, for the last time, what is your name? Whence hail you?"

  Julianna took a deep breath. It was just all too unreal. She couldn't believe what she was hearing. She didn't want to believe what she was smelling. Her every molecule of common sense didn't want to come to the conclusion that seemed most obvious.

  Time travel.

  It wasn't possible.

  Was it?

  She looked at the man and smiled weakly. What the hell. Might as well try out the truth on him and see how he reacted. Maybe she would exhaust his stores of Norman French, and he would give up the game and admit it had all been an elaborate hoax. He'd show her to the showers, beg her forgiveness for pulling her leg so hard and long, and then offer her a job with his reenactment society.

  Or maybe he wouldn't do any of those things. Maybe he wouldn't believe her, he'd think she was a witch, and try to burn her at the stake. Because no matter what her common sense said, she was almost certain she wasn't in Manhattan anymore. Though her forays into the lands south of the city had been few, she was almost certain that not even Jersey could cough up scenery like this. The one thing she was sure of was that the man she was going to have to get help from didn't exactly look like he headed up the local Welcome Wagon.

  "Your name," he repeated.

  "Name," she agreed with a croak. "Julianna Nelson. I'm from New York." She was certain her accent was far from perfect, but she hoped she was managing to get her words in the right places and get her meaning across. "Manhattan," she clarified.

  "Manhattan?" he repeated. He shook his head with a frown. " 'Tis unfamiliar to me."

  "That ain't the half of it, buddy," she said under her breath.

  Then she took a deep breath—and wished she hadn't. Memories flooded back, as did the strong suspicion that she'd had the contents of a Porta Potti dumped on her. She started to hiccup. It always happened to her when she got really stressed. It was unpleasant during job interviews; now it was just downright annoying—probably because every time she sucked in air involuntarily, she wasn't quite sure what else she was sucking in off her clothes.

  "Water," she asked. "Hic-hic."

  "Hic-hic?" He looked at her as if she'd lost her mind, but another round of violent hiccups apparently cleared up the mystery for him. He frowned. "There is a stream—"

  "Yes." She nodded. "Where?"

  He rose, eyeing her bag once more, but apparently her smell was enough to keep him at bay. He kept his distance enthusiastically as he led her out the front of the chapel and a small distance away. He pointed to the small trickle, then folded his arms over his chest and waited.

  Julianna took a big drink, praying the water wasn't polluted enough to kill her. It didn't stop her hiccups, but it slowed them down enough that she could turn her mind to others things—namely a bit of a bath. Never mind that it was raining enough to soak her through to the skin. Never mind that there wasn't enough current for a good wash and that a good wash would likely have given her pneumonia. She wanted her clothes off, her hair clean and she wanted to do it in peace. She looked at her unwilling host.

  "Go," she said pointedly. No sense in muddying up the communication flow with words that didn't need to be there.

  "Nay."

  "Privacy," she attempted, with another hiccup.

  He looked at her blankly.

  "I want to be alone," she said, in her best Garbo imitation.

  That only served to force his eyebrows up below his ragged bangs. He put his hand on his sword.

  "My vow," he said, as if the very words left a bad taste in his mouth. "I will protect you. 'Tis my knightly duty."

  "You could—hic—turn your back."

  "I might miss an assailant."

  Great, a lecher with scruples. Julianna considered her alternative, which was to smell like a sewer for the foreseeable future, then turned her back on her uneager protector and took stock. She set her bag aside, then took off her shoes and tried to discreetly pull down her nylons. They were almost a total loss, though she supposed holes were better than completely bare legs, so she put them in a pile to wash. She took off her jacket and wondered if a good dunking in a cold stream would violate the dry-clean-only dictum on the tag. There appeared to be no other choice. Her skirt followed, adorned as it was by bird poop and other unmentionable substances. Her blouse only had minor damage, so she started with that first, ignoring the fact that she was kneeling in the mud with her back to a man, wearing only her slip.

  She'd had bett
er days.

  She also could have wished for much firmer thighs as she leaned over and dunked her head into the water. The touch of the icy stream sent her headache into another dimension entirely, and she thought she just might faint. Before she could truly give in to the impulse, she felt strong hands on her arms, holding her back from a complete tumble into the stream bed. An ungentle hand washed her hair for her, then wrung the water out with an expert twist or two. Julianna soon found herself back on her feet, squinting up at a man substantially taller and broader than she, who apparently wasn't bothered by a little rain. She wiped the water out of her eyes, took as good a look as her pounding head would allow and realized, with a start, that while her rescuer might have been grumpy, he was extraordinarily good looking.

  His hair was dark as sin,and as the thought ran through her mind, she realized that she had perhaps read one too many of Elizabeth's romances. Since she'd only read one, perhaps even that had been too much for her. Too bad she didn't write them. The man in front of her would have been good hero material. He had an amazing pair of light gray eyes, a chiseled jaw and sculpted cheekbones. Yessir, she would definitely have to tell Elizabeth about him the first chance she got.

  She also suspected shoulders and arms that looked that substantial even in chain mail didn't come from a desk job. He made her feel fragile. She sensed that, miraculously, the extra ten pounds on her thighs were melting into insignificance.

  "Can you stand?" he asked.

  "Um-hmm," she said, unable to suppress the start of a smile. She noticed, quite suddenly, that her hiccups had gone the way of her common sense. Well, if she had to get thrown back into some alternate reality, or off into some rustic land that time had forgotten, this was certainly the way to go. "Thank you."

  He grunted. "Damned vow."

  But his grumbling didn't stop him from dumping all her clothes into the stream and swishing them around in a particularly manly fashion—quickly and not very carefully. Julianna would have protested his less-than-gentle treatment of her two-month-salary suit, but then again, she wasn't having to wash it and watching her rescuer do her laundry was wrenching another smile from someplace very tender inside her.

  He had all her dripping things in one great paw, and then he turned purposely toward her bag.

  And her smile faded abruptly.

  She dove for it just as he did and for the second time in recent memory she felt as if she'd dashed her head against a rock. She straightened, rubbing her head only to find him doing the same thing. She scowled at him, received a scowl in return, then found herself beginning to sway. She really had to stop abusing her skull or she'd be in serious trouble. She watched the ground beginning to come toward her and closed her eyes in self-defense. Great, all that washing up and now she was going to get all muddy again.

  She soon found herself, however, not on the ground but held up on her feet by a pair of very strong hands.

  With her bag firmly clutched to her chest, of course. Not even a potential slide into unconsciousness was enough to make her let go when Godiva was at stake.

  "I'll carry that," he announced, looking at the bag purposefully.

  Couldn't he think about anything else? "You won't," she stated with equal firmness.

  "I'll not maul your sacred relics."

  She looked up at him skeptically. She'd seen him starting to look through her bag with the methodical impartiality of an NYPD veteran. His apparent lack of respect for her comfort food was enough to forbid him any further access. Who knew what else he might choose to discard?

  He sighed, rolled his eyes heavenward and, before she could squeak out a protest, swooped her up into his arms and was striding back toward the crumbling church, her clothes and shoes grasped carelessly in one hand.

  "Oh, my," she said, putting her hand to her heart in a Southern Belle gesture she had never before used in her life.

  Dire circumstances brought out the best in a woman, apparently.

  He grumbled something at her, and it took a moment or two for her to work it out. When she did, she started to laugh.

  Chivalry is never convenient.

  He looked at her, seemingly startled, then frowned and continued on his way. Julianna found herself deposited back where she'd started. Her clothes hit the floor next to her. She stood, shivering, and watched as the man fetched a blanket from his gear. He came over to her with an easy gait and draped the blanket around her shoulders.

  "Oh," she said, nonplussed. "Thank you."

  He grunted, then turned and nudged his dozing companion with his foot.

  "Up, Peter," he said. "Keep watch. No fire, understood?"

  "But, my lord, where go—"

  "To sleep, child. You'll manage for an hour or two."

  The boy named Peter gulped, then jumped to his feet. He accepted the man's sword with scrawny, quaking arms and a great shiver. Julianna watched as the knight—and she could hardly call him anything else after watching him draw that medieval broadsword with the big fat red gem winking like blood in the hilt—turned his back on them both and went to the other side of the chapel. He rolled up in his cloak and soon was still. Whether he slept or not, she couldn't have said.

  One thing was for certain: He wasn't about to answer any of her questions. And she had plenty of questions. Such as where was she really? Why was everyone currently speaking languages that were popular eight hundred years in the past? Why were there horses defecating not twenty feet away and no one thought it was weird?

  That didn't begin to address how she was going to get out of where she was and back to where she should have been. She looked at William's back and decided that he wasn't going to be of any use on any of those problems at present.

  She looked to her right. The priest had propped himself up with his back against the altar and was drooling as he dreamed.

  That left the scrawny kid in front of her, who looked at her as if she'd just been released from an insane asylum. Great. Bad enough that he thought she was crazy. Worse yet that he was holding the sword.

  The only bright spot was that he did look hungry. Maybe it was time for a serious foray into the depths of her bag. Surely there would be something there to sway a teenager. She could hold lunch in her hand and use it as a bribe for information.

  She sat down as gracefully and as modestly as she could, keeping her eyes on the unstable-looking sword bearer. She wondered what would possibly entertain the kid. She had her Godiva, of course, but she had the feeling that would be wasted on him. If his boss thought it was poison, he probably would too.

  Okay, so chocolate was out. She contemplated the contents of her bag. Scarf, Dick Francis mystery, dog-eared copy of The Canterbury Tales for long subway rides, and dire-dire-emergency bottle of pop she never touched. For all she knew, it might save her life one day. She had her Day-Timer with its special section of games for those bored in meetings, and a pair of Cole Haan pumps that never touched anything rougher than Berber carpet. There was her sketchbook and a pencil case full of colored pencils. Oh, and what she'd purchased at the health-food store. She suspected carob-covered carrots were not the way to this kid's heart, but it was the best she had, so she would make do.

  She pulled out the crinkly bag, held it in her hand and looked Peter in the eye.

  "Now, Peter," she said in the don't-give-me-any-crap voice she reserved for civil servants and the super of her building, "I have a few questions for you…"

  five

  Two days later, William stood at the edge of the forest, stared off into the mist surrounding his seized castle and cursed his current straits. He should have been inside his keep with a warm fire near his toes and a bottle of something drinkable and sweet at his elbow. And he would have been, and two days ago at that, had events not conspired so strongly against him. Now look at him—out in the rain, staring stupidly at his quarry and finding himself without a strategy.

  He sighed and leaned back against a tree. His hope of surprise was gone. Even though he sto
od in the shadows of a goodly bit of forest, he suspected he was being marked. No doubt Hubert's men had enlightened him at great length and with great merriment about the events at the wall two nights earlier.

  William sincerely hoped his sire had laughed long and well. It would be the last thing he'd find to laugh over for some time to come. For even though Hubert was a drunkard and a fool, he couldn't have been fool enough to believe a little refuse would keep William from taking back what was rightfully his.

  Of course, that was before William had found himself saddled with a woman who likely couldn't fend for herself if she'd been left inside a secured hall with a larder full to overflowing and two score of the finest mercenaries as guardsmen.

  William cursed heartily, though it provided him with little satisfaction. For the first time in his life, he found himself forced to care not only for someone else's, but for his own sweet neck as well, and that was a sorry state of affairs indeed. His value as a warrior had always come from his total disregard for his own safety. He had dared where others had shrunk back in fear. He'd forged ahead where others had hesitated. He'd thrown himself into the heat of battle with abandon where others had stopped to consider the cost. Such had won him a fiercesome reputation and enough gold to see himself fed, wined and wenched to his satisfaction whenever he pleased.

  Should any of the victims of his former ruthlessness have been witness to his current state, though, they likely would have laughed themselves ill. William of Artane, callous executor of war, hesitating because of a woman.

  Pitiful.

  He pushed himself away from the tree and gave himself a good shake. What did he care for a woman who had no business roaming about by herself—and just where was Manhattan, anyway?—and likely deserved whatever fate she met? He was a warrior, by St. George's foul sword, and his business was before him in the keep, not behind him in the chapel.

  He looked over said keep with a critical eye. The wall was crumbling in places, but sturdy enough to still keep out most assailants. William felt sure he would be pleased by that fact when he was viewing those walls from a different vantage point. The hall itself was small, but perfectly adequate for a minor lord such as himself—at least what he could tell of it from just being able to see the top of it. He hoped to find it defensible on closer inspection.