Unbroken in Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  “When can Lord Nogaret see us?” Samuel asked.

  The guard sniffed. “When he chooses. Until then, your belongings will be confiscated, and you will wait.”

  Though the guard had turned away and was clearly expecting them to follow, Samuel still didn’t move, and that meant the wagon didn’t either. “Perhaps it would be better if we deferred our visit to another time. We’ll just be on our way.” Samuel held out his hand for the permit.

  The guard didn’t give it back. “You will come with me now.”

  It was a command that brooked no argument. By now, the two guards who manned the barricades had been joined by not only a third guard, who’d been standing near the gate, but two more: a fourth who motioned for several people to skirt the wagon and pass into the city, and a fifth who took up a post behind the wagon. There was no going back that way. In fact, from the looks, there was no going back at all.

  Over the last few weeks, many of David’s companions had gone in and out of the Templar’s tunnels dozens of times. The tunnels hadn’t been built for the small groups of Jews who needed to leave the city, but it had allowed David’s people to set their feet on the road to Aquitaine or England undetected. Each of them carried a document much like the one the guard had taken from Samuel. The signature was even authentic. As Princess Gwenllian’s uncle and a friend of Archbishop Romeyn, Amaury de Montfort had always been an ally, but he’d never before been called upon because he lived in Rouen.

  There was irony in the way the king’s policy of arresting some Jews had masked the smuggling of others out of the city.

  Samuel went to Rachel and held out his hand to help her off the wagon seat. “Deep breath.”

  “I’m breathing, believe me.”

  He helped Aaron down next, who said, after he landed on his feet, “Did you see who just went by?”

  Rachel blinked, clearing some of the fear from her eyes in time to recognize the couple on horseback who’d just been waved past: Livia and Michael.

  Now her breathing really did ease. They might be ending up in the thirteenth century equivalent of Devil’s Island, but they had many friends watching their backs and wouldn’t be forgotten.

  As Livia and Michael disappeared into the city through the gatehouse to which they themselves were headed, the guard folded up their permit and tapped it on his thigh impatiently as he waited for them to reach him. Since many gentiles viewed Jews as somehow unclean (and vice versa, truth be told), they didn’t like to touch them. With that in mind, she had proposed that she strap a two-way radio and knife to her thigh in order to smuggle them into the prison.

  She’d been overruled on the idea that none of them should enter the prison with anything that might reveal them to be not of the thirteenth century. They’d have to get their information and weaponry another way.

  So she lifted her chin and braced herself for what was coming, prompting Aaron to chuckle beside her. “That’s my girl.”

  Samuel in turn patted her hand where it rested in the crook of his elbow. “Remember what David said? No plan survives contact with the enemy.”

  Rachel managed something of a surprised laugh. “I’m more concerned about whether or not we will.”

  Chapter Six

  Day One

  Michael

  “Hurry,” Livia said as Michael reached up to help her dismount, having reined in a few yards inside the entrance to the Templar commandery where they were staying. Since there was nothing to connect them to David, they were free to find lodging in the commandery’s guesthouse and come and go as they pleased through the main gate instead of having to use the tunnels. “You don’t want to lose them.”

  “I won’t.” He squeezed her hand, which was all the public display of affection they could allow themselves, and loped back through the gatehouse and into the street. He was just in time to see Samuel, Rachel, and Aaron enter the city on the heels of a typically sneering guard.

  Livia went the other way, towards the keep, the most prominent building of the Paris Templar commandery. As second-in-command to Elisa, and the current head of David’s new spy agency, Y Ddraig Goch (The Red Dragon), in Europe, Livia’s role was more administrative than Michael’s. The divvying up of responsibilities suited them both, since he had never been one to sit behind a desk. Besides, a woman on the streets of Paris at night—especially one as beautiful as Livia—would be subjected to unwanted male attention, which would defeat the entire purpose of surreptitiously trailing their friends to their prison cell.

  Up until very recently, Michael had acted as David’s bodyguard. But because he was new to Earth Two, something of a linguist, and none of the French had met him before, he had been deemed too important to waste at David’s side—and too noticeable once there. Like Darren, Michael was a person of color, and while that wasn’t all that rare in 1295 Paris any more than it was in London, according to Elisa, while Darren was a handsome man, Michael was objectively gorgeous. As was Livia, of course. It seemed ridiculous to think it, much less say it out loud. Enough people had told him so, however, that he supposed by now he had to believe it.

  Michael came upon the first of his watchers a few yards from the Templar gate. The man in question was perfectly nondescript, with brown hair, brown eyes, brown beard, and no real distinguishing features other than intelligence behind his eyes. Like most of their manpower, Gerard was a Templar sergeant, on loan from the commandery, though not dressed tonight in his distinguishing black robes with a red cross.

  In the past, it had been against the Templar code to wear informal clothing, but since David had come into the picture, the stricture had occasionally been eased, specifically when dressing in Templar garb made spying impossible. In this instance, the Grand Master himself had decreed that every cooperation was to be given to David and his companions in the pursuit of their current endeavor.

  Michael didn’t look at Gerard, but stood with a hand on the hilt of a knife he wore at his waist, silently observing what was happening at the gatehouse. As this was August, the sun had set very near to eight o’clock at night, and it was now a good two hours after that. While Paris had no streetlights of any kind, since allowing a lantern, torch, or brazier to burn unattended would be folly in a city built from wood, individuals on the street sometimes carried their own lanterns, and enough light spilled from open tavern doors and unshuttered windows that Michael could see.

  At the moment, however, the only real light on the whole block came from the gatehouse and from the single torch one of the guards carried as he herded Samuel, Rachel, and Aaron down the street. Since the torch would ruin their night vision, none of the guards who surrounded them would be able to spot a tail.

  “The gate has been busy this evening, my lord,” Gerard said.

  Michael still didn’t move his head. “How so?”

  “Two men were stopped as they entered the city and were taken away as well.”

  “They were Jewish too?”

  “No. But they were foreign.” Gerard shifted, adjusting his shoulder on the wall against which he was leaning.

  “English?” King Philippe hadn’t actually ordered all English people to leave the city, but Michael could understand why they might want to.

  “No. I didn’t understand the language they spoke, but I’m thinking it was Italian.” He cleared his throat. “The guard gave the prison a new name too: la fosse noire.”

  That translated to the black pit. Michael rolled his eyes. “That’s not at all ominous.”

  Gerard shifted. “Sometimes when you speak, I cannot understand your meaning. You say one thing, but you mean another.”

  “Believe me, I mean another in this instance.”

  The Bastille, the infamous prison on the right bank, wouldn’t be built until the Hundred Year’s War as part of the city’s expanded defenses in the fourteenth century. But the current prison was bad enough—and la fosse noire conjured up something a bit too terrible, especially when his friends were about to disappear insid
e it.

  According to Gerard, in the past, when Jews had been arrested at a city gate, onlookers had stood along the curb, jeering. By now, however, the sight was commonplace, and none of the pedestrians were looking twice, instead keeping their heads down against the rain.

  Michael eased away several steps, anxious to follow his friends, but at the same time wanting to give them a head start. “Have you heard what happened at the palace?”

  Gerard kept his focus on the street. “King David surrendered Aquitaine, and it wasn’t given back.”

  “Already?” Michael grunted his dismay. “Is it common knowledge in the city?”

  “It was shouted in the streets.”

  Michael nodded. “Thank you. Keep watching.”

  “This wall might fall down without me leaning against it.”

  As Michael strode after his friends, he found himself grinning.

  It was a new thing to be the one in charge. Initially, he hadn’t known if the men and women who spied for him would accept him, since he was an Avalonian by origin and English to boot. But once they had, he’d discovered he liked working for Y Ddraig Goch, abbreviated, as it would be, to DG, almost as much as he liked being David’s bodyguard. It definitely involved less loitering in doorways and corridors, though there was still plenty of that, and trailing his friends was actually the simplest task he’d taken on since he’d arrived in Paris.

  Besides, as Gerard had indicated, it wasn’t a mystery where they were going. Given the frequency of raids on Jewish households, synagogues, and places of work over the last six months, everybody in Paris knew where Michael’s friends were being taken.

  Eventually he fetched up on the street that ended in a T at the prison, so he was able to watch the guards march their prisoners right up to the front gate. After a brief discussion Michael couldn’t hear, five were admitted—two guardsmen plus Aaron, Samuel, and Rachel—while the other three guardsmen, who’d been part of the escort to ensure compliance, peeled off, back to their duties on the wall-walk.

  Then the heavy wooden door closed behind them.

  Chapter Seven

  Day One

  Rachel

  The guard took them to the dungeon.

  Back in Avalon, Rachel once had searched the internet for places to visit in France, and she’d allowed the browser to translate the pages for her. Over and over again, the translation service had turned the French word for castle keep, donjon, into dungeon. It had taken her longer than it should have to understand that the French king hadn’t expanded and remodeled his ‘dungeon’ as part of a building program, but his keep.

  As it turned out, the inaccurate translation wasn’t entirely wrong, because the French kings had spent a great deal of money on their dungeons too.

  The guards had confiscated their wagon, which meant all their medical supplies were unavailable. Hopefully they hadn’t thrown them away. They hadn’t touched Rachel, however, and she allowed herself a moment of triumph that she’d been right that a radio and knife would have been okay. At least she still had the lock picks stabbed into the elaborate hairdo arranged under her hood. Clearly these guards hadn’t seen enough movies to know how to properly frisk a captive.

  Then again, the cruelty was bad enough without giving them any ideas.

  Like the later Bastille, the current prison was built into the city wall, roughly three quarters of a mile from the Paris Temple. Not that the proximity was going to do them any good immediately, given the number of walls and guards between them and fresh air. The prison complex resembled a castle in many ways: it had a curtain wall with great doors through which they’d come and which fronted the street. Squat buildings lined the interior—a barracks, the office of the captain of the guard, the warden’s quarters—and the prison itself took up most of the central space, as would a keep.

  Despite what she’d said to Samuel and Aaron, she had faith they would breathe free air again, but she held her breath as they descended a flight of stairs and a putrid smell from below overcame them.

  The deeper the stairs went, the farther into her shoes her stomach dropped, and the anxiety solidified into a near panic she couldn’t help. It wasn’t because she was claustrophobic but because the only light came from the torch the guard carried, and she’d just realized they were going to be left in darkness when he returned to the courtyard.

  Rachel supposed it was too late to mention she’d always been afraid of the dark. It was irrational, she knew. She didn’t believe in monsters or witches. Rodents of Unusual Size, however, were another story entirely. Those she knew were down here.

  They reached level ground at the bottom of the stairs, and two rows of cells with floor-to-ceiling bars faced them. Arched doorways to the left and right led into darkness. From the shouts and curses coming from all sides, people were imprisoned there too.

  “Shut up!” The guard shouted at the prisoners, to no discernible effect, and then herded the three of them through the door on the right. The deeper they went, the clearer it became that it was a warren below the surface, carved out of caves and ancient tunnels dating back centuries, if not millennia.

  They were finally taken to a narrow corridor unlike the first, in that it had only one row of cells, and theirs turned out to be the first one along the corridor. Behind the floor-to-ceiling bars were two dozen people. And unlike the rest of the prisoners in the dungeon, they were completely silent.

  The guard shoved a comically large key in the lock, urged them inside, and locked the door behind them. Rachel’s gaze took in the curious faces of the people who faced her—for another two seconds before the guard took the torch with him and, as she had feared, plunged the cell into total darkness.

  Rachel backed up against the bars behind her, clutching her hands around them and trying to breathe evenly. The foulness of the air paled in comparison to how much she hated not being able to see. Then a light flared beside her, revealing Samuel with a big grin on his face, holding a candle he’d just lit.

  “Not to worry. I have more than this up my sleeve.”

  Rachel let out a trembling breath, relieved beyond measure—and also knowing that Samuel quite literally meant what he said.

  And then Aaron leapt forward. “Benjamin!”

  The elderly man in question stared for a moment, and then gasped. “Aaron? Is that really you?”

  The two men moved towards one another, switching to Zaphartic, a Judeo-French language common to the Jews of Normandy, England, and Northern France—which Rachel still spoke poorly. Then Aaron (perhaps taking pity on her) switched back to French and motioned for both Rachel and Samuel to come into the circle of his arms. This was the same Benjamin ben Isaac whom Samuel had mentioned to the guard. Of the others in the cell with them, six were cousins to Aaron in some fashion, and the rest had been made family by nature of their incarceration. The introductions were made quickly, with a blur of names flying past, a few of which she managed to keep straight.

  Deborah, a woman about Rachel’s age and the niece of another of Aaron’s relations (and thus, by default, his niece), gestured to the walls, against which many more people sat, too ill to rise to greet the newcomers. “They have fed us only unclean food, and we’ve had no opportunity to bathe or even leave the cell in all the weeks we’ve been here. Every day they bring more of us and take out others who are dead. Many are ill.”

  Rachel clenched her hands into fists. She was a doctor, as was Aaron. But without medicines—or food and water—she could do no more for these people than the little that had been done.

  She swung around to Samuel, pleading in her eyes.

  “Yes, as soon as possible,” he said in English. “The plan is still a good one. Nothing they’ve said indicates to me it won’t work.”

  “That lock won’t be trouble, will it?” Aaron asked worriedly.

  Rachel didn’t quite snort, but her look was withering.

  Then she smiled, understanding that the question had been purely for comfort’s sake.
Darren had known how to pick a lock before he came to Earth Two, and he’d spent many hours teaching her his craft on every lock they came to. There was irony in the fact that the easiest door lock to fashion—a latch with a drawstring—was the hardest to get through. But even one of those would usually fall if a person hit it hard enough in the right place to jostle the latch free. Darren hadn’t had to tell her that the problem with escape lay not in the initial departure from this cell, but in the guards beyond, the height of the walls, and the number of people they needed to rescue.

  “I was accused of circumcising a gentile infant.” Benjamin shook his head, tears leaking out the corners of his eyes. “As if I would. It was coin clipping for Simon over there.” He gestured to a black bearded man with a thin face and similarly sad eyes, sitting against one wall holding his six-year-old child.

  In a world where coins weren’t made of gold or silver, coin clipping made no sense. But throughout the medieval period, coins were made of valuable metals, and merchants shaved the edges off the coins they received in order to melt these scraps into other items. David himself had conducted raids on English merchants to ensure it happened as little as possible. Whether the Jewish community was guilty of wholesale coin clipping was still a hotly-debated topic in Avalon, even as it was unquestioningly assumed to be true here in the Middle Ages.

  But coin clipping had never been the real issue, even when it was legitimately happening. Kings, both English and French, arrested members of the Jewish community for fraud when they found themselves in debt and wanted relief from it. Jewish merchants and traders had no defenders within the greater society when accused of crimes, and those kings could then confiscate their wealth for the crown with virtual impunity. Money, as it turned out, made the world go round in any universe.

  Philippe was in that very situation: his constant wars and extravagant lifestyle had put the French crown perpetually in debt and (in his mind) forced him to take punitive measures against his lenders, who were becoming increasingly reluctant to loan to him, since he was obviously an unreliable borrower. This year already, when he’d confiscated Jewish possessions and forced them to buy them back, it had been with the excuse that they hadn’t adequately paid the taxes they owed him. Against non-Jews, his two most recent measures to reverse his fortunes had been to tax the Church (with the Pope’s permission) in 1289, and, in 1291, to arrest the Lombard merchants to whom he was indebted. In order to free themselves from prison, they had to buy French citizenship. In effect, they were forced to give him the money by which he could then pay off his debts to them.