Castaways in Time

by Robert Adams

  "To drink all, pliss, noble Herr Hauptmann Vebster. Sleep vill undt no pain feel, ja."

  "What the fuck is that goddam witchbrew?" demanded Webster, making no move to accept the cup.

  "Do what he says, Bud, drink it," said Foster. "Nugai knows what he's about."

  "GOODGAWDIRECKOW! Grimacing, Webster flung the emptied cup from him. "Thet fuckin' stuff tastes like a swig of liquid manure, I sware. If you done let that slant pizen me, Bass, I swear to God, I'm gon' haint you till you dies."

  Within bare minutes, Webster lay unconscious, and when Nugai returned with the needed materials, he, Foster and Allison were able to easily accomplish a setting and rough splinting of the breaks, with never a voluntary movement or a sound from the recumbent patient.

  ——«»——«»——«»——

  The Royal Army was two days in reorganizing, then immediately took up the pursuit of the shattered Scottish host, this time unencumbered by wagons or by any but the lightest of field guns, the necessities on pack animals, and the trains and the wounded well on the way to Durham. Arthur and Wolfgang pressed them hard, marching from before dawn until well after dusk.

  Arthur's beloved cousin, the Duke of Northumbria, had fought at the King's side throughout the long battle, and only when the battle was done and won did he suddenly turn purple in the face and fall, clawing feebly at his breastplate. He was dead before many noticed he was down. He had been Lord Commander of the Royal Horse—overall commander of cavalry. Before the pursuit had commenced, Wolfgang, conferring with Arthur, had recommended Foster to fill, for the nonce, the vacant post.

  The King slanted his head to one side, wrinkling his brows. "Squire Forster be a valiant man, a doughty sojer and all, Brother Wolf, but he cannot become Lord Commander. He be not a lord . . . and I be not even certain of his patents of nobility. No other Forsters seem to have heard of him ere now, and such a man as he be would surely have been renowned in his youth."

  "Pah! Brother King, a trifle, that be."

  Foster had been readying what was left of his squadron for the road, selecting remounts from captured chargers and from the herd driven up from Durham, when the blank-faced pikemen of the King's Foot Guards found him and hustled him away.

  Arthur sat in his canopied armchair at the head of the council table. Several of his noble military commanders sat grouped about the table, and Reichsherzog Wolfgang stood before it, the shimmering Tara-steel broadsword in his hand.

  Foster could see no softness or humor on any face in the pavilion, they all looked deadly serious. When he had been maneuvered to a place directly before the big German, Wolfgang spoke but one word.

  "Kneel!"

  His head spinning, his mind a chaotic jumble of thoughts, Foster just stood, looking from one grim face to another, until two pikemen grabbed his shoulders and forced him to his knees on the carpet, then jerked off his helmet.

  The Reichsherzog advanced a single pace, raised his bared blade, and slapped the two shoulders of Foster's well-worn buff-coat with the flat of the steel. Then he sheathed his weapon, bent, and took Foster's hands and clasped them, palm to palm, between his own, all the while intoning what sounded to be a formula in German. Finally, he spoke directly to Foster.

  "Sir Bass, ven the speaking I each time stop und mein head I nod, answer you must, 'Ich vill es tun, mein Herr.' Understood? Ja, so."

  When at last, the long business was completed, Wolfgang, his eyes now twinkling merrily, grasped Foster's shoulders and set him upon his feet, then embraced him and slapped his back soundly before kissing him on his cheek. Threading his arm through Foster's, he turned and addressed the King.

  "So, Brother Arthur, months haf I vanted this jewel of a soldat for the Empire, und now he ours iss. Royal Sir, schentlemen, my great pleasure it now iss to present to your graces, mein vassal, Freiherr Hauptmann Sebastianus Forster, Markgraf von Velegrad, ja! Your tchance you lost haf, Brother Arthur, now the Empire's he iss!"

  The King smiled, shrugging languidly. "Perhaps, Brother Wolf, but mayhap not. Nevertheless, His Lordship now is in all ways qualified for the vacant post. Our thanks to you for that. There can be no questioning the patents of a Marquis of the Holy Roman Empire."

  CHAPTER 7

  King Alexander rode north in cold fury. Retirement from the blood-soaked peat of Hexham had not been in any part his doing or desire. Had it been up to him, he would have willed that the army fight until either victory was won or not one man of any class stood on his two feet. Cooler and wiser heads had, however, prevailed, most notable among them: Andrew, Earl of Moray; the King's brother, James, Lord Marshal of the Army of Scotland; and the Papal Legate, Ramon de Mandojana.

  The retreat was in no way a rout. The trains, the guns and all the noble wounded were in column with the battered troops . . . for a while. That they did not remain so was in no way the doing of the victorious English. Rather was it the English weather.

  The bright, warm sunlight under which the withdrawal had begun did not last long. By noon, the sky had become a uniform, dull gray, and the first big drops of cold rain splattered down shortly thereafter. With scant pauses, the rain fell for nearly a week, and a truly deadly rain it was for full many a Scot.

  The very lightest of the siege guns weighed, with its massive carriage, in excess of four tons, and the huge, bulky, clumsy weapons were difficult to transport under optimum conditions. By the evening of the third day of rainfall, Alexander had been forced to abandon every big bombard he had taken south and several field guns, as well. There was no way to reckon how many tons of supplies and powder had been surreptitiously cast by the way by wagoners trying to lighten their loads, or how many draft horses and mules had been killed or crippled in heaving to drag mired wagons and gun carriages out of the slimy, sucking mud. While fording some nameless stream, a wagon had lost a wheel, tilted and been overturned by the force of the current, hurling its load of screaming wounded into the racing, icy waters. Alexander had refused to countenance any rescue attempt, for by then English dragoons and lancers were nibbling at the rear and flanks of what was left of the Scottish Army. For all any knew, the entire English army was massing just over the closest southerly hill, and the area surrounding the ford was no place on which to try to make a stand.

  Alexander had the place at which he and the army would—regardless of the maunderings of Legate, Lovat, Moray, Ayr or any of the rest of that craven pack—make a stand. He had managed to convince himself that Whyffler Hall must certainly have fallen to Scottish arms by now, conveniently forgetting the poor quality of the troops he had left behind to invest it. It was within those masterfully wrought works that he would mass his remaining force, thundering defiance at the excommunicated and disenfranchised wretch of an Arthur from the mouths of the Sassenachs' own guns.

  But when at last he came within view of his objective, cold reality—in the form of the English royal banner, King Arthur's personal banner, and a third bearing the arms of the House of Whyffler, as well as a fourth which was not familiar to him, still snapping proudly upon the apex of the ancient tower—brought his self-delusions crashing about his head. Disregarding the "advices" of his advisers, he ordered the army to take up the positions they had occupied when first he had essayed the fort and, the next dawn, ordered and personally led a full-scale assault against the heavily defended works.

  The assault was repulsed, sanguineously repulsed. The Scottish King himself had no less than three horses killed under him, and one of every six Scots and mercenaries was killed or wounded. But immediately after he had reluctantly ordered the recalls sounded, the valiant but impossibly stubborn sovereign was discussing the dispositions of the next morning's assault.

  In the night, numerous Continental Crusaders cast off their white surcoats and, after tying rags of them to their lanceshafts, rode silently out of camp . . . headed south. Bearing their wounded and such supplies as they could quickly and easily steal, the surviving mercenaries were not long in following.

  A
t dawn, the bloodied Scots formed for another suicidal effort, awaiting only the King to lead them. Then, just before the hour of tierce, the great lairds—Moray, Lovat, Ayr, Midlothian, Aberdeen, Ross, Angus, Banff, Argyll and Berwick—appeared in company with the Lord Marshal, James Stewart, to announce that King Alexander had died of his wounds in the night, as, too, had Cardinal de Mandojana. The late monarch had not thus far produced a legal heir, and as bastards could not inherit a crown, they had decided upon James to henceforth rein as Fifth of that name.

  When the new king's decision to break off the feckless fight and march back into Scotland ere the bulk of English arms caught up to them was bruited about, there was a roar of general acclamation for the new-made sovereign. Only a few of the lesser lairds and chiefs thought to wonder when King Alexander had been seriously enough wounded to die, as he had led the actions in full-plate and had shown no signs of having suffered hurt . . . and of how the Legate, who had not fought at all, had suffered fatal wounds. But for all their private doubts and questions as to just precisely how James V had won the throne—for fratricide, patricide, and regicide were neither new nor novel in the violent and volatile Royal House of Scotland—they gladly followed him north, into the relative safety of the hills of home.

  ——«»——«»——«»——

  Foster sat his spotted stallion on the hill just southeast of Whyffler Hall and watched the Scottish army break camp and head north into the Cheviots, leaving their hundreds of dead heaped about the unbreached defenses of Whyffler Hall. After dispatching a galloper to seek out King Arthur, he toed Bruiser forward to slowly descend the hillslope, his escort of dragoons following him and the foreign nobleman who rode at his side.

  Reichsbaron Manfried von Aachen had but recently landed at Hull, paused briefly in York, then ridden on to find the army, pressing his escort hard every mile of the way. Arrived, he had immediately met long and privily with Reichsherzog Wolfgang and the King. Then Wolfgang had summoned Foster.

  Throughout the introductions, Foster could detect the grief and sorrow in the voice and bearing of his friend and new overlord; when at last the rote was done, he was informed of the reason.

  "The Emperor is dead," said Baron Manfried, flatly, his English far better and less accented than Wolfgang's. "Killed he was by an aurochs bull during a late-winter hunt in the Osterwald. The Electors met hurriedly and decided upon Otto's eldest son, Karl, but before their messengers could reach him, the Fürst was slain in battle with the heathen Kalmyks. The Electors then decreed that Karl's younger brother should succeed their father, but, if he too be dead, that the Purple should pass to his uncle, Reichsherzog Wolfgang."

  Wolfgang had sat throughout with his chin on his breastplate, sunk in his private sadness. Now he raised his head "Zo, good mein freund Bass, ride you must, if necessary through all the Schottlandter host, und soon to reach Egon's side. The Empire at var mit neither Church nor Schottlandt iss, zo safe you und your men vill be mit the Imperial Herald, Baron Manfried . . . or zo vould you be mit any civilized monarch, let us to hope that these verdammt Schottlandters better know the usages of diplomacy than the practice of var."

  "You mean," demanded Foster incredulously, "that Egon von Hirschburg is, has been all along, a royal prince? But you always said . . ."

  Wolfgang shrugged his heavy shoulders. "I said that His Imperial Majesty a young noble of the Empire vas und mein godson. These true vere. For the rest . . . vell, better vas it thought that no vun know that a son of mein brüder mit an excommunicant fought, better for Egon, better for the Empire und her relations mit the Church."

  "Of course," he sighed deeply, "nefer did any of us to think that efer Egon vould to rule be schosen. But a goot Emperor vill he make, ja, far better than vould I. Gott grant he safe still be!"

  The track of the Scots had been easy to follow, a blind man could not have missed it in a snowstorm—crates and bales of stores, casks of gunpowder, dead men and dead horses, discarded weapons and bits of armor, a wide track of mud churned up by countless hooves and feet and cut deeply through with the ruts left by the wheels of laden wagons—though twice they had swung wide of that track to avoid contact with bodies of southward-marching troops, first a couple of hundred armored horsemen, then three or four thousand pikemen and crossbowmen quick-marching to the beat of muffled drums. On each occasion, Foster had detached and sent back a galloper to alert the King and Reichsherzog of these units proceeding to meet the English army.

  Her Grace, Lady Krystal, the Markgräfin von Velegrad, was experiencing great difficulty in becoming accustomed to the incessant bows and curtsies with which she was greeted wherever she might choose to go in the Archbishop's huge palace. No whit less hard to bear for the gregarious young woman was the constant deference with which former friends and acquaintances now treated her. Aside from Pete, Bud Webster—convalescing in York while his broken leg knitted, and fretting that he could not be with the army as it retraced its way south to deal with the Spaniards on the south coast—Carey and Susan Carr, the only person with whom she found she could have a normal, give-and-take discussion was Archbishop Harold.

  On a misty April day, she found the white-haired churchman immured in the extensive alchemical laboratory-workshop that he maintained.

  After a few moments of polite chatter, she suddenly said, "Oh, dear Father Hal, why can't things be as they were? I had so many good friends, back at Whyffler Hall and when I first came to York, too. Now there's only Pete and Bud and Carey and Susan and you; all the rest either seem scared to death of me or are so clearly sycophantic that it's sickening. I don't begrudge Bass his rewards, you know that, he earned them. But . . . but my life was so much simpler and happier when I was just the lady-wife of a captain of dragoons."

  Harold scribbled a few words on the vellum before him, then turned his craggy face to her. "My dear, deference to one's superiors is the hallmark of good breeding, and it is deference your friends show you now, not fear; they rejoice with you in your deserving husband's elevation. As regards sycophants, self-seeking persons are oft in attendance upon the noble and the mighty; that you can quickly and easily scry them out be a Gift of God. Too many of your peers lack that perception and so are victimized or deluded."

  "I was aware that you had not the benefit of gentle upbringing and so understood very little of your present and future privileges and responsibilities; that is why I assigned noble maids and ladies to attend you."

  "Dammit, I'm pregnant, but I'm not helpless, Hal," Krystal snapped. "I don't need a gaggle of girls and women to wake me and bathe me and dress me and follow me around all day and finally tuck me into bed at night like some idiot child."

  He shook his head slowly. "No, my dear, you do not need such care, but you had best learn to live with it, all the same."

  "But, why?" demanded Krystal.

  Harold sighed then patiently explained, "For the nonce, my palace is become the King's court, though His Majesty and most of his nobles be in the field with his army. You represent your husband at court and must comport yourself accordingly. The war will not last forever, and many a man's fortunes are made or dashed by his and his kin's conduct at court."

  "Already are you considered rather odd by some folk, since you so abruptly dismissed your attendants, but I and your other friends have bruited it about that your condition has rendered you capricious as is common to gravid women. But such is a shallow untruth and will not bear long scrutiny. You must conform, my dear, must do and act and say what is expected of you here, at King Arthur's court."

  "But what does it matter what people here think of me, or of Bass, for that matter?" queried Krystal, adding, "After all, we won't be in England once the war is done. Bass wrote me that the lands he holds for Wolfgang are, as best he can reckon, somewhere in the area that people of our time called Czechoslovakia."

  "The fortified city of Velegrad guards an important pass through the Carpathian Mountains, Krystal," Harold informed her, but then admonished, "Not that y
ou ever will see it, I suspect."

  "What do you mean, Hal? Wolfgang struck me as definitely a man of his word, and he really likes Bass, too."

  Harold smiled. "Oh, I have no doubt that the esteemed Reichsherzog would like nothing better than to install you and your husband as nobles of his seigneury, for the Empire is eternally at war with some nation or some people, and Bass is a superlative cavalry officer. But for that very reason, Arthur will never allow him to leave England to serve another monarch, even the Emperor."

  "You have had word from the King, then, Hal?"

  "No, Krystal, not concerning this matter, but there be no need. You see, I well know our Arthur. Why he allowed his brother-in-law to knight and enfief Bass with foreign lands, I cannot say that I comprehend, but you may rest in assurance that Arthur had, and has, a reason." The old man smiled and, steepling his fingers—blotched and stained now with chemicals—gazed over them into the flame of a beeswax candle.

  "Arthur is come of a devious stock. John of Gaunt was a conniver of Machiavellian talents, and most of his descendants have been at least his sly equal in that respect, these Tudors in particular. I recall his grandfather, Arthur II, used to say—"

  Krystal felt the hairs rise on her nape. "You . . . you knew the King's grandfather?" She shuddered, suddenly feeling herself in the presence of something unnatural. "He reigned a very long time; you can't be that old. Can you?" she whispered, fearfully.

  The old man chuckled. "I suppose that now and here is a good time to tell you, especially you, since you seem the most rational of your lot. When were you born, Krystal—in what year anno domini?"

  "Wh . . . what? When? In 1942. But what . . . ?"