Castaways in Time

by Robert Adams

  "Two months ago, Rome finally got around to excommunicating Harold, the Archbishop of York, and declaring his see vacant. But all churchly functions he performed prior to that are valid, including his sanctification of the Whyffler Hall powder mill. So, you see, I—and all of you—have nothing to fear from Church authorities, on this ground, at least. Furthermore, if we go over to the side of the right, devote our future energies and talents to furtherance of the Holy Cause of the Church, we will be forgiven our earlier efforts on the side of Arthur and his rebels."

  "Says who?" barked Foster.

  "No less a personage than Cardinal Ramon de Mandojana, and Papal Legate now in Edinburgh," announced Collier with a satisfied smirk.

  Webster lifted a buttock and broke wind, loudly. Foster chuckled. "I echo and endorse Buddy's sentiments, Collier. In the first place, I do not and will not share your newfound belief that King Arthur is wrong, not on what obviously biased evidence you've given us tonight. In the second place, I value my neck and I've got no intention of risking it to prove whether this Mandapajamas is a man of his word. You're more than welcome, as far as I'm concerned, to jump out of the frying pan, but don't expect me to join you in the fire, fella; I ignite easily."

  Collier talked and argued on for some hours, but made no converts. As dawn paled the sky, he pulled his gauntlets back on with stiff, jerky movements. Only Foster and Krystal were left in the den, the other three having retired long since.

  "I'll say but one thing more, Foster," the former Earl began coolly.

  Foster was infinitely weary of listening to his uninvited guest. His muscles were stiff and his eyelids heavy and gummy-feeling. He realized that his temper was frayed to the point of sudden murder. "I wish you wouldn't, Collier, not if it's some more of your damned preachments. You've forsworn King Arthur, we haven't, it's that simple, and nothing you can say is going to change our feelings about the King, the Church, or the rightnesses or wrongnesses of the causes."

  "Professor Collier," put in Krystal, "when first you arrived tonight, and told us you were leaving England, I thought that you might have come here for your wife, but you've not even mentioned her in all the hours you've been talking. Do you intend deserting her, too?"

  Collier shrugged. "Perhaps you would call it 'desertion,' Doctor, but I feel Arbor will be better off here until I come with the Scottish army in the spring. The last encumbrance I expect to need would be an ailing, alcoholic wife."

  Krystal's eyes glittered like ice. "Yes, Professor, I would say that you're deserting your wife. You know, it's funny now, but during that first day we were here I felt sorry for you in your marital situation; then I came to truly respect you, as you proved so versatile and commanding a figure. Now, however, you've betrayed your friends, the King that favored you, and now you're about to betray and desert your wife, and you disgust me, Professor."

  The former Earl shrugged again, then ignored the woman, addressing himself to Foster. "If there is anything in this house you want to save, I would strongly advise that you move it and yourself well south before the spring, my dear Captain. Whyffler Hall and the Royal Gunpowder Manufactory herein contained will be one of the earliest and foremost objectives of the Scottish Crusaders. Sir Francis is certain to make an effort to hold the hall with whatever troops he can beg or borrow from the Usurper or enlist hereabouts, so it will most likely be reduced from a distance with bombards, and a few sixty-pound stone balls will quickly render your twentieth-century home into matchwood."

  "Before you leave," said Foster, "I'll have my father's Luger back, if you please, and the pair of breech-loading pistols on your pommel, as well. They were yours while you remained a King's man, but I'll be damned if I'll see them used against the King by a turncoat traitor."

  And as soon as there was enough pale light to indicate that, somewhere behind the storm clouds, the sun had risen, Foster and Pete Fairley were at the hall and in conference with Sir Francis and Geoffrey Musgrave.

  The old nobleman's cap and voluminous robe were both of the same thick, rusty-black velvet. Foster recalled the garments clearly; they were those Sir Francis had been wearing when first they had met. But the pale, trembling, dim-eyed old man who had greeted and thanked him for his support in a quavering voice, then, was now replaced by a soldier who, though admittedly elderly, was possessed of keen faculties and intuitive judgment.

  "Nay, lad," he answered Foster's suggestion. "Dinnae ye ride tae the King. Anely God kens where His Majesty be noo. Och, aye, mayhap he bides wi' the army, but too he could be wi' his ane folk in Wales."

  "Nay, let Captain Webster ride in sairrch o' the King; he be known tae His Highness as well as yersel', an' he'll be bearing letters both frae ye an' me. Geoffrey can gi' him some dozen launces tae ride at his back and there still be horses aplenty aboot ma' park."

  Properly gauging their temperatures through dint of long experience, Musgrave leaned forward, drew four loggerheads from the fire, and plunged them hissing and steaming into four tankards, then passed a heated cup to first his lord, then the other two.

  Sir Francis sipped, then took a long draught. "Nay, Bass, ye maun ride tae York, tae Harold Kenmore, the Archbishop. York be for certain sure the anely place our manufactory will be safe and, too, if ye bring wagons frae York empty, nae doot ye'll be mindfu' o' the best routes o'er which ye'll lead them fu'."

  But Francis Whyffler's assurance had not been shared by Harold of York. "I much fear me, Squire Forster, that you cannot do it, nor could I, nor could the King himself, not at this wretched time of the year. Even so, 'twere better than the powder and wherewithal to fashion it should lie a-rotting in the Pennines than that they should fall to the thrice-damned Scots; therefore, I shall warrant you to fetch back all you can. You'll have carte blanche of garrison, city and country—men, horses, wagons, provisions—take whatever you feel needful to our purpose. My secretary here will see to the necessary papers. God be with you."

  Then the armored and padded clergyman had hidden his head in an old-fashioned casque and resumed his practice bout with blunted broadsword and main gauche dagger, stamping and grunting and swearing like any trooper.

  He found Sir Francis had been correct, too. The trip north with empty wagons had helped mightily in planning the trip south with full ones, although the sufferings and difficulties of that northbound preview in no way mitigated the waking nightmare that the southbound main show proved to be.

  Arrived finally at Whyffler Hall, having lost only eleven wagons out of the sixty with which he had left York, Foster was pleasantly surprised to find Buddy Webster, several companies of Welsh pikemen, the Royal Artificers Corps and Reichsherzog Wolfgang.

  The snow had been cleared or tramped away from the environs of the hall's circuit of walls, and under direction of the European and the artificers, levies of country folk and soldiers were feverishly strengthening the ancient walls, fronting them with deep ditches, and constructing artillery emplacements. Drawn by lowing, steaming oxen on log sledges, or huge, creaking wains, bombards captured from the French Crusaders were arriving at the average rate of three per day, each escorted by mounted artillerists and dragoons.

  Every couple of days, Duke Wolfgang would have the five or six new pieces loaded and fired a few times. Then he would confer with their gunners, make a few calculations, and decide just where each gun was to be mounted on the walls.

  "Each gonne an individual iss," he told Foster and Sir Francis, one night after dinner. "If a man a goot rider iss, ve poot him on a horse; if not, ve teach him to pike. So why not each gonne place vhere even its flaws goot are?"

  By the time Foster's caravan was ready to leave, Whyffler Hall was well on the way to becoming a stout fortress, and more royal troops were arriving to man the defenses. The walls were become stronger than ever they had been, and they and the new-made outworks now guarding them were bristling with bombards and swivels, and the powder manufactory had worked ceaselessly to fill each cask and gun-box to overflowing.

&
nbsp; When a last, long powder train had departed, bound southwest toward the camp of the Royal Force, Pete Fairley supervised the loading of all his equipment and supplies into wooden crates bearing misleading markings; then, previously hidden replicas of his devices were put in place of the originals, and empty fertilizer bags were each filled with a hundredweight of earth and carefully resewn before being stacked in the storage area. Whyffler Hall was to maintain as long as possible the appearance of still housing the manufactory and would, it was hoped, bog down sizable elements of the Scots army, whenever they organized sufficiently to cross the border.

  Sir Francis' sixteen-year-old daughter, Arabella, flatly refused to join the exodus of noncombatants, and neither cooed importunings nor heated shoutings would move her. A dimpled smile on her heart-shaped face, she gave that same answer to any who pressed her.

  "Och, nay, I be chatelaine o' Whyffler Ha', by war or reavin' or nae. My place be here. I maun care for Fither, an' I cannae do sich in York. And I shall stay!"

  But her expressed filial sentiments were not her sole reason for remaining . . . and all knew it. There was also the only remaining patient in the hall, who still was too ill to be waggoned south.

  Several times each week, mounted patrols composed of royal dragoons and local lancers swung north into the Cheviot Hills, keeping watch on the likeliest routes of invasion, and one day Foster, beginning to feel a sort of cabin fever, joined the unit as a supernumerary. At midday they had paused on a prominence overlooking the very border itself, or so the cairns proclaimed. Staying below the ridge as they munched their rations, they posted a brace of Musgrave's troopers to keep watch on the narrow gap below.

  The patrol leader, one Lieutenant Edgar Lloyd, had just put foot to stirrup when one of the sentries slid down the precipitous slope with word of approaching horsemen. Both officers returned to the man's vantage point and witnessed the unfolding of the drama.

  First one, then a second horse careened down a wooded hillside, slipping and sliding on icy rocks and patches of old snow, but somehow retaining their balance. Once safely on the more level surface leading to the gap, the two riders spurred the obviously tired mounts to the best speed they could maintain, but would have stood little chance of keeping their lead had the party pursuing been as fortunate in negotiating the hillside.

  There was not room for the score or so of heavily armed riders to descend abreast on the narrow, winding track—even four would have been too many, and the canny Scots should have known as much—nonetheless, six essayed the trail, with disastrous results. Almost at once, a horse and a rider went off the right-hand side and out of sight of the English watchers, followed very shortly by one, then another on the left. The shrill screams of the injured animals were clearly audible to Foster and Lloyd, as were the guttural shouts and war cries of the Scots.

  Fourteen of the pursuers managed to reach the bottom of the slope mounted and unhurt, to take up their hot chase afresh. A couple of shots were loosed off at the escaping prey, but, now more than halfway to the gap, they were well beyond the range of horse pistols. But the flight of arrows that followed was a much more successful and deadly ploy.

  The second horse shrieked and surged ahead, briefly, then fell all in a heap, quivering all over, legs churning the snow, while gouts of steaming blood poured from mouth and distended nostrils. The rider sailed from the saddle, bounced once, and rolled to a stop, then lay still . . . terribly still, his head at an impossible angle.

  The leading rider and his horse both seemed to suddenly sprout jouncing, jiggling slivers of wood—the horse, in his straining offside haunch, the rider, in his right arm, just below the shoulder. But the now-wounded man retained his seat and firm control of the pain-maddened horse.

  There was something tantalizingly familiar about that rider's bearing, and Foster sharpened the focus of his binoculars in an attempt to discern more. But the man's head and upper torso were wrapped in a faded, dirty length of tartan and his face was obscured by the long, whipping mane of his shaggy mount.

  The Scots formed up and resumed the hunt, lancepoints and broadswords glittering in the sun. Scots they certainly were, but Foster could see nothing in their clothing, armaments, or appearance to differentiate them from a like number of the armed retainers of Sir Francis or John Heron—jackboots, rough trousers, buff coats, most wearing some model of helmet, several in cuirasses and a couple in three-quarter armor.

  Beside him, the Musgrave lancer grunted, "Robsons, Jaysus domn 'em! 'Twill be ane gude an' holy killin', we'll be doin', fer a' I pitty the puir De'il an' Him havin' tae tek on sae scurfy a pack."

  Foster was just about to remark that they were here to observe only, not to become embroiled in border feuds, when the wounded horse, which had been slowing as bright-red arterial blood continued to geyser up the shaft of the arrow, stumbled once, twice, then simply stood, swaying, head sunk low. The rider turned in the saddle, looked at the oncoming Scots, then half slid, half fell from his dying mount. Hobbling, decidedly favoring his left leg, he came on toward the gap, and it was then that Foster first saw his face.

  "Edgar!" He gripped the junior officer's arm so hard that the Welshman winced. "Mount the patrol. At once! That man the Scots are after. That's Egon von Hirschburg, the Reichsherzog's godson!"

  Even when faced with a far superior force, the Scots declined to forsake their quarry and died to the last man, most of them shot from their saddles long before they came close enough to have made use of their lances or steel.

  The young ensign lay unconscious in the snow by the time Foster got to him. In addition to the arrow in his right arm, the broken shaft of another stuck out from his left hip, and the wound it had made was oozing pus through folds of the stiff, smelly bandage wrapped around it. The evil stench of the wound filled Foster with a chill foreboding.

  ——«»——«»——«»——

  "Who put the tourniquet on his arm, Bass, you?" Krystal bent over the still, fair-skinned body of Egon von Hirschburg, mercifully unconscious again. At his nod, she added, "Damned good thing you did, too. The arrow nicked an artery and he'd've been dead long before you got him here, otherwise."

  She straightened and brushed back her hair with her wrist, carefully keeping her bloody fingers out of contact with it. "Bass, this boy means something to you, doesn't he? I mean, more than just because he's the godson of your big German friend?"

  "Yes, Krys, he does," answered Foster soberly. "Egon served under me during the closing segments of that hellish extermination of the Irish Crusaders. He's . . . well, he's what I'd have wanted my own son to be, if ever I'd had one, pure guts from breakfast to sundown and a mile wide, energetic, nervy, and knowledgeable, proud to the point of seeming stiff-necked, but withal very conscious of the responsibilities as well as the privileges of his station."

  "And now this." He shook his head in wonderment. "Can you imagine what it must have taken, what it must have cost in terms of determination for Egon to have ridden up hill and down dale for God knows how many hours with a damned iron arrowhead grating on his hipbone? But, Krys, he sat that scrubby horse so naturally that we never even noticed the old wound."

  "It is old, Bass, perhaps as much as three days old. And," she announced grimly, choosing to not meet his eyes, "he may very well die of it. I'm sorry. The surrounding area is terribly infected, verging very close to gangrenous, so the arrowhead must come out at once, along with a good bit of tissue."

  "But he's weak, Bass. There's precious little vitality left to him. I don't think he would survive the type of procedure indicated, even in a modern O.R. with sterile surroundings, anesthetics, whole blood, and antibiotic IVs. Here and now, with my make-do equipment, nothing but brandy to ease his pain and the pitifully few penicillin tablets to retard the infection . . ." Her voice trailed off into a long sigh and her shoulders slumped in defeat "Perhaps we should let his godfather decide?"

  "No, Krys, poor old Wolf has enough to weigh him down just now, and there's really
no choice. The young man is all whipcord and sinew, so it's possible he can live through the operation, but he certainly can't survive gangrene. So go ahead, sweetheart, tell me everything you need."

  The surgery was performed in the kitchen of Foster's home, on the heavy butcher-block table. Dr. Kent was ably assisted by Carey Carr (who had had army medical training and had worked several years with a rescue squad), the hall-village midwife, and Arabella Whyffler, with Foster and Webster on hand to hold the patient down, should such become necessary.

  For all the brandy poured down his throat before and during the bloody business, the boy's agony must have been indescribably obscene, but only once, at the very beginning, did he courteously ask that Webster restrain his arms. With deft fingers carefully flying, Krystal Kent performed as rapidly as she could, steeling herself to not flinch at the screams.

  But, miraculously, the screams never came. Egon's body ran with sweat, his face with tears, his high-bridged nose gushed mucus, and his even white teeth met in the half-inch-thick strip of leather between his working jaws. His rectal sphincter failed him and his urethral, his nails sliced deep gashes in his callused palms, but no single sound louder than a gasp did Egon von Hirschburg emit, from start to finish. Foster could have wept his pride in the boy.

  Since, Arabella Whyffler had virtually lived with Egon, and all concerned considered the young nobleman the primary reason she refused to leave Whyffler Hall.

  Foster sought out the Reichsherzog on the day before his departure with the York-bound wagons, offering to delay that departure for a few days on the chance that the young convalescent might regain strength enough to accompany him out of danger.