No Good Deed

by Kara Connolly

  Right. Do not pass Go. Or, in this case, anywhere on the grounds of the castle.

  Or, more to the point, under the castle.

  From where I stood, despite the milling, gawking Nottingham folk and the castle people getting back to work, I could see from the terraced courtyard down into the stable yard. The arch I’d come through was visible, as was the heavy wooden door, propped open with a cask. I couldn’t see deep into the passage, but I remembered how it had looked—dank, wide, lined with barrels and crates—and nothing contradicted that.

  Not even my gut instinct. I was certain, in a way that was as inexplicable as traveling through time, that the way back, at least that way back, was closed.

  My head was full of white noise that pulsed with the throb in my temples. I felt stretched tight and brittle, and when Much slammed into me and nearly squeezed out all the air in my lungs, I couldn’t believe I didn’t shatter.

  “That was amazing!” he said when he let go. “That arrow nearly parted my hair. What a shot!”

  My stomach turned, even though Much’s wild hair clearly hadn’t been parted for a while. “I’m sorry, I couldn’t think of anything else to do.”

  “I know!”

  “I could have killed you!”

  “I know!” he crowed. “That was amazing!”

  The closed door to home had opened another, to the place where I’d been shoving all my outrage and fear, all my catastrophic, apocalyptic freak-out. “Oh my God, Much, that’s not okay! No one should be forced to do that.”

  The frayed cords holding me together began to snap, fiber by fiber, under the strain of not completely losing my shit. I was yelling, and people were staring, and they should, because I’d shot an arrow at a kid to save my own skin.

  Suddenly James was there, wrapping me in one arm and whisking me away from the center of attention. He turned so that he and his big Templar cloak with its big Templar cross hid me from view. “Calm yourself,” he said.

  “Calm myself?” Now that I’d popped the top on my outrage, it just kept bubbling out like a shaken soda. “It’s not okay that the sheriff can just say something is true and not have to prove it. It’s not okay that you can drown someone in a pond, or raise taxes until people have no food to eat. What about jurisprudence? What about no taxation without representation? It’s not okay that everyone thinks that’s normal!”

  James said nothing until I finished flailing against my helplessness, and then he waited a little longer, studying me while I wound down. “Are you wellborn?” he asked finally, as if nothing but curious. “You seem very educated, even if your ideas are…far-fetched.”

  “My parents are scholars,” I confessed, subdued.

  “Ah,” he said, but he might as well have said That explains a lot.

  Maybe it did. My dad the physicist could theorize how I had somehow looped backward on the string of my own space-time continuum and landed in the Middle Ages, or in some pocket parallel universe. Mom might have a clue about the who, what, and where of this flea-infested, tyrant-ruled, plague-ridden pit of the past. But it was up to me to figure out the why of it.

  “Both of them?” James asked.

  “What?” I’d forgotten what we were talking about.

  “Both of your parents are scholars?”

  Oh yeah. Women’s lib was about a million years away. By now there didn’t seem any point in lying, at least to him. Least of all about this. “Yes.”

  He gave me another one of those studying looks. “What an interesting place your land must be.” Thankfully, he dropped the subject. “We should go. I believe we can make Northgate Priory by sundown. I did promise to see that your injuries were treated.”

  “Right.” That seemed like a long time ago. “What is a priory, anyway?”

  “A convent with a prioress instead of an abbess.”

  Well, of course. Silly me. I would have nodded except it hurt my head.

  James continued. “Much and I are headed to Rufford Abbey, but we cannot reach it by nightfall. Northgate is close.”

  “I vote for close.”

  That amused him for some reason, and he turned, calling to Much to find his pony and join us. I got ready to unstring the longbow but couldn’t resist drawing it one more time, now that life and death weren’t at stake.

  It was really too short for an authentic Ye Olde English Longbow, but it was perfect for me. I couldn’t have chosen a better length. I glanced at James, who was a head taller than me, and long in the arm. “This is too short for you.”

  He got that slightly guarded look I’d noticed only happened when he talked about the Crusade. It was subtle, but consistent. War sucks on all sides in all centuries.

  “David had no family, so his belongings were dispersed among his brothers-in-arms,” he said after a pause. “I’m not sure why I kept it.”

  “Because he was your friend. What other reason do you need? Here.” I held it out to him, biting back my reluctance.

  He covered my hand with his and pushed the bow back to me. “Take it. You’re right, it’s too short for me, and I’m not an archer. Maybe it was meant for you.”

  Meant for me.

  If that was true, then maybe this was not an accident. Maybe I was here for a reason.

  In all my worry about what the past could do to me, it hadn’t occurred to me that I might affect it. Maybe there was something that needed setting straight—that’s what always happened to time travelers in fiction, right? Either that or they screwed something up and then had to fix it.

  How did I know which it was? What if I’d already screwed something up?

  “Eleanor?” said James, sounding worried. “What is it?”

  Only the possible total annihilation of history.

  I wanted to tell him. Maybe my gut said he would have advice, or maybe I just wanted to share the burden. But what if that was the thing that screwed stuff up? It was safer to just say, “It’s nothing.”

  He surprised me by putting a hand on my cheek. It was cool, and callused from the reins and the sword. It felt good, no lie. “You don’t look well. I think the sooner we get to the priory, the better.”

  I shook my head, and wouldn’t admit even to myself how dizzy it made me. “You’ve been more than kind, Sir James, but I can’t. Look at the danger and the trouble I’ve already caused.”

  James looked at me soberly. More soberly than usual. “Mistress Hudson…May I call you Eleanor?”

  Was he serious? “You’ve been calling me that most of the day.”

  He actually blushed. He had a deep tan, but not so deep I couldn’t tell. “My apologies. It’s been an unusual circumstance.”

  “You mean it’s not like this all the time?”

  That got a smile out of him. “Perhaps it is. I’ve been away a long while.” The smile didn’t completely fade, despite his return to business. “Eleanor, when you threw yourself into that river, Providence threw you into our path. If you are determined to cast yourself on the goodwill of strangers, it might as well be us.”

  “When I say my situation is complicated…,” I ventured, in the biggest understatement of at least eight centuries, “I mean really complicated.”

  James raised a brow. “You do not tell me anything I haven’t guessed already.”

  “Oh, I doubt that,” I muttered.

  He decided to play hardball. “Do you know anyone in Nottingham? Do you have any money? Where will you stay? Where will you go?”

  I squirmed, because he was right. Everything I’d carried was at the bottom of Hell River. At least losing my iPhone meant one less thing to possibly alter the course of history.

  James took the edge of my cloak that had fallen open and tucked it back around me. “Keep your secrets, then, but allow me to take you someplace safe.”

  “All right.” I relented. I supposed there was no sense seizing the reins of a horse if I didn’t know which way to steer it. “A priory is as good a place as any to figure out what I’m going to do next.”<
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  “Good,” he said, shifting back to business. “Let’s collect Much and be off, before the sheriff thinks of something new to charge you with.” With that cheerful thought, James gathered the reins of his horse, swung into the saddle, and held out his hand to me. I timed my jump to his pulling me up, and got my leg over the horse’s rump first try. The altitude shift, though, made everything spin, and I grabbed James, closing my eyes and pressing my face into his cloak until I was sure I wasn’t going to fall over.

  He didn’t turn, but covered my hand at his waist with one of his own. “Are you settled?”

  “Yeah. I’m just tired.” Morning had been centuries ago.

  His fingers tightened on mine as he turned the horse toward the gate. “You can rest at the priory.”

  I’d asked the universe for a lot today, but I sent up one more prayer: Please don’t let the place be too far.

  I woke up knowing I was in a hospital but with no clue what I was doing there. Then I moved my head. God, I must have one hell of a concussion, because I’d had the weirdest dream about church bells and ministering angels.

  When I pried open my gritty eyelids, a round and feminine face hovered in the haze of my fever and splitting headache. When the owner of the face saw my eyes focus, she smiled. “There you are. Welcome back.”

  “What day is it?” I croaked, my voice as unoiled as the Tin Woodsman. “Did I miss the competition final?”

  The nurse—she was wearing some kind of white hat—reached for a cup on the bedside table. The contents smelled herbal and pungent; not pleasant, exactly, but reassuringly medicinal. “Don’t worry about that now,” she said. “Can you take a bit of drink, do you think?”

  Could a drowning man use a breath of air? The nurse helped me lift my head and tipped a bare sip of something wet and sweet past my lips. Bliss.

  “Do you know where you are?” she asked.

  “Nottingham,” I said, and fell back onto a mattress so thin that it scarcely merited the name. The National Health Service really needed to upgrade.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Eleanor Hudson.” I let my heavy eyelids close. I was shivering, but the nurse’s hand on my cheek felt cool. “My driver’s license and passport are in my satchel.”

  There was a brief, consulting murmur of two voices, then the first spoke again. “Very good, Eleanor. Now, who is on the throne of England?”

  Why did they keep asking me things when I just wanted to sleep? “Elizabeth,” I said. “The second.”

  A snort from the other side of my bed. “La folie.”

  “Shh, Clothilde. Elle a de la fièvre délirante.”

  I opened one eye and squinted the bedside nurse into view. Her headwear was not a white nurse’s cap but rather a wimple and veil. Of course it was. My last clear memory was of agreeing to go with Sir James to the priory of…what was it again? Everything after that was a blur of muscle-wracking chills and sweat-drenched fever. When I shivered, someone piled on warm blankets, and when I sweated, they soothed my face and the back of my neck with something cool and wet.

  “Try again, Eleanor,” said the nun. Her cheeks were pink and her blue eyes full of intelligence and humor. “And then you can tell me what a driver’s license might be.”

  Who was the king? I wasn’t sure that would be a fair question even if I didn’t feel like I’d been dragged down five miles of bad road. “Is it Richard the Lionheart?”

  The second nun stood at the end of the cot, arms folded. “The Lionheart,” she scoffed. The room was dimly lit, but I think she rolled her eyes. “Not that his backside has graced the throne long enough to warm it.”

  “Sister Clothilde,” chided the nice one. She leaned over and dabbed at my face with a cloth that smelled of rosemary. “All shall be well, Eleanor. You have a fever and must rest.”

  Like I had a choice. “I told Sir James that I was going to die of some horrible medieval disease.”

  She laughed. “You are not going to die. We will take good care of you.”

  “No bloodletting,” I insisted, with my last bit of energy.

  The older nun loomed over the cot. “We’ll do what’s best for you, and you’ll be grateful.”

  The young nun covered my hands with hers. “Don’t let her frighten you. We don’t hold with bloodletting here.”

  “Or leeches,” I said.

  “Well, sometimes leeches.”

  Oh God. They were going to put leeches on me and I was sure I had fleas and the only way I knew back home was closed and though I’d had every inoculation in the world, I was going to die for lack of a tube of Neosporin.

  I didn’t fall unconscious so much as pass out from the awfulness of it all.

  —

  When I woke again, I found myself in a tiny room lit by diffuse daylight, with the fading notes of a chapel bell drifting in the casement window. The first thing I did was check myself all over for leeches, then sighed in relief. I was alone, remarkably clearheaded, absolutely ravenous, and reassuringly free of bloodsuckers.

  I was wearing a loose linen nightshirt. It was clean, and so was I, pretty much. The ache of fever was gone, but I had plenty of bruises from my adventures. Gingerly I reached up and felt around on my head. The lump was covered with a thick, stiff bandage; when I poked it, there was a sharp smell of sulfur and herbs.

  I looked around the room. No clothes, and no place where they might be. Also, no bow. I felt around in the cot, but the bow wasn’t there, either. The mattress was too thin to hide anything beneath it.

  James probably had it with him for safekeeping. That was logical. I should not be panicking. I should not be nearly so attached to something that I’d owned for—what, less than twenty-four hours?

  Except that as soon as I had the bow in my hands, I felt like the Ellie I’d been before all of this madness began. It was the only thing that home and here had in common—me and a bow. It was my anchor across eight hundred years.

  I was working myself up into a state, as Mom would say. Dad would recommend—what else—to focus on my goal. I had to get home. I had no idea how I was going to do that, but you don’t hit a bull’s-eye without going through all the steps that come before you loose the arrow.

  Purposefully, I swung my legs off the cot and stood up—

  Then almost jumped back into bed again. The floor was freezing. The cold raced up my legs like the stone had flash-cooled my blood.

  Hopping from foot to foot, I wrapped the blanket from the cot around myself. There was no fireplace, so I shivered my way to the little brazier nearby and stoked the coals. Then I went to the window to get my bearings.

  The casement was more than a foot deep. In the distance, just a few miles away, was Nottingham castle, high on its cliff, with the town clustered around the base. The land between the priory and the castle was mostly wooded.

  And basically everything around was Sherwood Forest. Much had made it sound like a cross between a national park and a royal game preserve. Also, I thought it would be all…forest. The highway, such as it was, appeared here and there, and I could see clearings in the trees that must have been villages like Mapperley. There were also larger cleared areas—for planting or pasture was my guess.

  To see the convent grounds I had to lean on the casement and peer out the window. To my right was the chapel. That one was obvious. To my left was a collection of smaller buildings, mostly timber and plaster with thatched roofs. I could see a large garden, but not much beyond that without leaning out dangerously far. Circling the courtyard, the chapel, and the garden was a wall, tall enough to deter trespassers but not to stop anyone really determined. The gate was open, and at it stood a line of four or five families, some pulling small wagons, some carrying baskets.

  The door swung open behind me, and I whirled around guiltily. Why I felt guilty, I didn’t know. Maybe it was a conditioned response to an angry nun standing with one hand on the latch, the other balancing a tray on her hip, and a face like Nemesis herself. />
  “What are you doing out of bed?” demanded Sister Clothilde. I hadn’t seen her clearly the night before, but I recognized her voice. “If you’re so anxious to pop your clogs, I’ll thank you to swim in the river of someone else’s parish.”

  “Sorry,” I said quickly, steadying myself with a hand on the wall. Apparently I wasn’t quite up to whirling yet. “I just wanted to see where I was.”

  “And where are you?” she asked, with the same forbidding expression.

  “Still a long way from home.”

  “Oh, poor wee lamb,” she said, without any sympathy. “Now get back in that cot.”

  I hurried to do as she ordered, as if the speed of my obedience would lessen my sin. Sister Clothilde gave me a steely look as she came to the bedside and placed her tray down with a thump that rattled the pottery bowls and thick glass jars. I kept a wary eye out for leeches.

  “Who are those people lined up at the gate?” I asked.

  “Once a week we give alms to the poor.” Sister Clothilde felt my cheeks and listened to my chest, harrumphing as she rearranged the blanket over me.

  “Alms? You mean money?”

  “Do we look like a treasury?” Back to poking and prodding, she elaborated, “We have little, but there are many in the shire with even less, thanks to His Honor the sheriff. We have grain for bread, goats for milk, and a garden for vegetables, which we can share. Some of the poor are sick, and are properly grateful for our care.”

  “I am grateful,” I assured her.

  “Hmph,” she said, untying the linen dressing on my forehead and peeling off the dried poultice. For all her grumping, she turned my head gently toward the sunlight for inspection.

  “How does it look?” I asked, scrubbing my fingers through my hair where the bandage had matted it.

  Sister Clothilde raised an eyebrow. “Are you worried about a disfiguring scar?”

  That wasn’t my first concern. “I mean, is the infection gone?” Open wound plus open sewer meant open season on my immune system.

  Her look had been acerbic before. Now it was practically caustic. “Do you wish to prescribe your own treatment? Perhaps my twoscore years of experience in the medicinal arts are insufficient for you?”