“I may be killed soon, if I have good fortune.”
I sat up slowly, but a night in the mud made me stiff and sore, and I needed her help to stand. She put her arms around my waist and clasped her hands together, firmly against my lower back.
“Lean against me,” she said, and we stood successfully. I used her for a crutch. I hung my arms over her and rested my face down on her shoulder, like two teenagers slow-dancing at a prom.
“You will go on,” I said to her, “wishing for death will not change that. You are steady and you are strong. It is your gift, or your curse. Don’t argue. Listen. You said you did not pray to any god, because there was no god of slaves. Well, there is.”
I had squealed as much to Taliesin, and it did him no good. Would it have if he had lived? I would have also squealed to Taliesin that Emperor Nero would be sentenced to death by his Senate in seven years’ time, but that like Boudicca, he would commit suicide instead. How do you like that, Eleanor? I could tell them everything.
Except, the information would be useless. Taliesin did not know Nero. The Romans were a collective ruthless force to him; he did not know the principals and would not equate the word “Romans” as a people with a nation. He did not know its rulers, however they would affect him.
Poor Taliesin. No magic saved him. His powers, on the most powerful feast of his cult, were for nothing.
As were mine.
Tell her of Paul, or of Peter, the Rock who would be crucified himself in a few years? Explain to her the difference between ritual sacrifice and martyrdom? No. I could not read her the catechism, or convert her to a religion only just struggling to be born, or even prepare her for her destiny, whatever that was to be. I could only guess.
A Roman nobleman was approaching on a horse, down the avenue of tents.
Tailtu watched him, not averting her eyes. I had a feeling she would never downcast her eyes from anybody again.
The soldiers acknowledged him and paid him tribute with their weapons and their salutes. It was a general.
It was Caius Suetonius Paullinus, the Roman general who had skillfully crushed the Rebellion. It could be no other. The man of the hour. A legend in the making. Still, however his prowess for dealing with savages would be proclaimed in Rome, there was no exultation of veni, vidi, vici for him. He would soon be removed from his post as the new governor because of his failure to handle the rebellion in a less destructive way. His brutality and relentless vengeance on the Celts for months afterwards, beginning now, destroying their crops and creating famine, was detrimental to the smooth running of a province. Rome wanted no more skirmishes with the hardheaded Celts. The Roman government did not want enemies; they wanted citizens. They would replace Paullinus with a diplomat.
What would he say to me now if I told him his fate, as I had told Taliesin? Would he take it like a man, or laugh at a bold savage who acted like a prophet, or just kick me some more in the face until I bled through my eyeballs?
A ceremonial guard unit marched behind him. Beyond, approaching from far down the parade route was a steely bunch of regular soldiers marching into camp for the night. We would be their new mission tomorrow.
The other captives stirred behind me. They coughed with sickness, they moaned from their wounds, they wept, cursed, and wept more. They would fetch some price. We would all fetch a price, the women more than the men. Tailtu more than me. She had more uses.
Paullinus rode on.
A November breeze stirred with all the leaden reality of a morning after. I realized the Samhein was over. As kids in our masks and costumes, we had no bloody idea what we were celebrating. The Celtic winter had begun.
“Tailtu,” I said, licking my swollen lips as Paullinus passed me on his horse and nodded to the soldier who had listened in tolerant ignorance of my recitation from Ecclesiastes, “listen to me now.” I watched him ride off until he disappeared.
She gripped me tighter around the waist and desperately kissed my shoulder. That moved me more than anything.
“There is a God of slaves,” I suddenly found myself saying, “You will hear more of him when we get to Rome.”
“Rome?”
Oh, no. She had no idea.
“Tailtu, you are a slave of the Romans now, you know this?”
“Yes.”
“They will take you, and me, all of us here, far from this land. They will march us to Londinium. Then we will be put on ships. We will travel over the sea and be brought to the homeland of the soldiers.”
“We will never return?”
“No.”
“But, you returned from your slavery once? And found your way back to your tribe?”
That was a lie. That was an official lie. I hated myself, but I could not take it back now.
“About this God,” I said, closing my eyes, feeling dizzy and exhausted, “his name is Jesus Christ. You will hear of him. He is not a Roman god, nor a god for only chieftains and queens. He is for slaves and the unprotected, and the weak.”
“Does one make offerings?”
“One prays for strength, forgives and is forgiven, and does good.”
“Is one delivered from bondage for such things?” she asked, with proud Celtic scorn, and I almost smiled.
“Of a kind.”
“I don’t understand you.”
“I don’t either, my love, my darling, that’s just how it’s supposed to work….” More stirring from the other captives around us as a guard detail scoured the chained groupings for some particular unfortunate.
“This is the slave who speaks the language of Imperial Rome.”
I turned to look at the voice behind me and my eyes were drawn down from the cocky brush of his helmet down to his face, which did not look at me, but looked over into the face of a small, blonde woman standing behind me with no chains binding her. She turned her face to me and instantly grabbed my arm, plunging her pinching fingers into my skin.
I was instantly dizzy, with a sharp pain between my eyes. Unbearably dizzy…it wasn’t from being beaten, or not eating or sleeping. It was something else.
She looked familiar. She looked like Eleanor. What in the name of…?
I lost my sight.
Eleanor.
The static crackle in my head was familiar. I knew what was happening. I just didn’t know how.
“And this is also your belief?” Tailtu’s voice was difficult to hear over the noise in my head.
“What? Tailtu? Yes, but it is only one belief among many sources of faith in which man seeks to find his spirit in the chaos of this life. Man is a great believer in things, more than he knows. It is his passion and his strength.”
I felt the queasy feeling in my stomach, the tinnitus and the loss of equilibrium that came upon me just before the time-burst. Oh hell, I knew what this was.
This was it. It was real. I was sure. Oh, God.
I lifted my head off her shoulder like it weighed a ton, and, still supporting myself on her with one hand, touched her cold, tear-streaked face with the other.
“Tailtu…”
I wondered again if this is what it was like to die.
“…have hope…”
All the profanities or prayers which leapt to mind would not ward off the metaphysical hurricane.
“A chara?” Her voice was far away.
Eleanor, your meticulous constancy, your fanatic attention to detail, couldn’t you have failed this once?
I know a flash of light had taken me, and that I would be a mystery in her life forever.
But, I was not kidnapped by the Banshees and taken to the underworld, nor did I earn the paradise of Avalon to join with Boudicca’s and Cailte’s and Taliesin’s spirits. I was held in the iron grip of a soulless female from the future who, more than anything, had to prove that she was right. My body went for a ride, and my soul had nowhere else to go except to come along, past two millennia.
I opened my eyes in a well-lighted laboratory, under a dome of clear plastic
resin, in a world far removed from the 1st century AD, and which, except for Eleanor and Dr. Ford, had little use for it.
And the Woman was alone.
***
And you, my friends, for I call you that liberally though on no basis of fact, will examine my body for signs of bacteria and contagion, and wear and tear. You will debrief me on my knowledge gained and write reports for the budget hearings next year, and a journal of my experience will be put into the National Archives. And a new action figure of me in long hair, Celtic tunic and neck torque will be released just in time for Christmas.
“But, you need not fear my emotional instability this time, Eleanor, for as you see I am not hysterical as I was on my return from my field trip to the Hundred Years War. I have learned to put it all in perspective. Killing, death, faith, hope. And the greatest of these is charity. I have become more pragmatic than I ever was.”
Eleanor sat with her thin, white hands clasped in her lap, and did not use them to brush tears that suddenly, shockingly, filled her pale blue eyes. How that would have affected me before. How unaccountably moved I would have been, to discover she was human after all. At this moment, I did not give a rat’s ass. I smiled and shook my head. What inane, ineffectual fools we all were. Even Dr. Ford looked deeply affected, but then, I recalled he was a romantic anyway.
He watched me now. He had taken off his glasses and stopped making notes on what I said. He only listened, giving me his complete attention. Cailte would have appreciated such an audience. In a way, this seemed like a tribute to Cailte. I felt glad for him. I did not know how to tell them how much I missed those people, and how empty I felt inside. From that little boy, to that fool Dubh, to Taliesin. And especially Boudicca. But, no one more than Tailtu. There was no way they could understand, and knowing that made it that much easier to harden myself to this miserable life. There was nothing I could do, so there was nothing I had to do. Damn them all.
Ford said gently, as if reading my mind, “I would have liked to have known them.”
I looked at him gratefully, my eyes suddenly filled, and I nodded.
Eleanor clumsily wiped her own eyes with the sleeve of her lab coat. She had put it on over some other dress or some strange filthy rag she was wearing. I would ask her about that later, when I might give a damn.
“Don’t cry, Eleanor,” I said, “you have your whole life ahead of you. As does Tailtu, a kind of life, a miserable life. But, still a life. Lived more fervently and preciously than you do yours. Tailtu knows how to live. Or, I should say, knew how. She’s dead now. Funny. I was just talking to her. Look, I have a present for you.” I lifted two strands of hair from my sleeve. They were both long and light colored, but one was more light brown and the other more copper colored. One was thick and coarse, and the other was fine and silky. One was Tailtu’s hair, and other was Boudicca’s.
“I bring you the DNA of two remarkable ladies.” I waved the hair between my fingertips, slipped off the examining table, walked unsteadily across the lab and draped them lovingly together across a petri dish.
“I know that’s all you care about. What did Daddy bring you? I know that this specimen,” I spat the word, “will be the sum total of the success of this mission. I know nothing else will be gained, and nothing of true value will be learned. We are in the age of merely gathering fact, as much as possible that can be wrestled onto a disk, but not of understanding it. That takes too long, and too much effort, and time is of the essence. And besides, I just cannot bring back with me the ecstatic human passion of a queen for revenge, a bard for glory, a druid priest for power, and a woman and boy to simply just survive together.”
Another woman came out of the murky background who had been thoughtfully watching us, that new one. The one who cried in the gallery when Brian K. Yorke and I were beating the crap out of each other. She did not cry now. She studied me. I pursed my lips and made a sarcastic pretend kiss at her. She brightened and returned it. Who was this weirdo?
“Eleanor,” I said, trying to finish my thought before I wasn’t able to, “the past is not static. Reversing entropy does not compensate for the realities of forward-moving time. And it always moves forward. Like a conveyor belt. You jump to one spot, and it moves you along, slowly, and relentlessly. Your project is a myth.”
“Even myths have some basis of fact. Often the fact is so small that we miss it. Or misinterpret it. Yes, it’s the smallest things we usually miss.” She spoke with tears still in her voice, and something like regret.
Dr. Ford did not move to comfort her, but looked at his watch.
“Shouldn’t we notify General English, and his …guest? They’ll be very happy to know you’ve been successful. They’ll truly marvel at this last-ditch effort you’ve made. You ladies…you doctors, are heroes,” he said ingratiatingly, especially to the weirdo, it seemed to me. I had never seen the cocky rooster act like a sycophant before. Oh, well. Who cares?
“There’s time for that later,” Eleanor said grimly, “We need to have the medical team in now. You’re hurt quite badly.”
I smiled as much as my stiffening blue-black jaw would let me.
“Yes, I would like that. A little willow bark tincture would be good. Just kidding. I would like a very good sedative. Could you tell them that for me, Eleanor?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I would like to sleep for a very long time.”
“I understand.”
“I want to wake up a long time from now. A long time ago, in fact. I want to wake up with her, in her slavery.” I said, “Wherever she is. That’s all I want. After all, it’s just trading one kind of slavery for another, isn’t it?”
“John….”
“I’ll always wonder if she died a very old woman with her children and grandchildren around her, or if she died young. What are the odds, do you think? If her death was peaceful or obscene. I guess maybe we know that answer to that one. Strange. Now that I’m back, I think of her in terms only of the past, and only of her death. Not of her life. Is that just what happens? Is that the natural way? Is that the only way we can go on with our own lives, the ones we were given and waste? Dump the past and make a clean break from it?”
“John….”
“You should have left me there. I wish you had left me there. I could have lived with that.”
“I …we…couldn’t.”
“I just realized, you know what you are, Eleanor? You’re my deus ex machina. You pull the strings of my destiny. You are god-like, Eleanor. In fact, I thought I dreamed you. Like an angel. Grabbing me by the arm. Milly is your faithful scribe, like Cailte, only with less imagination but more accuracy.” I hollered, “Right, Milly?” into sound-proof ceiling panels.
“John, please, stop….”
“What’s wrong, Eleanor?” I asked, kneeling before her as I had done with Boudicca, taking Eleanor’s cold, but strangely dirty hand.
“Have I gone too far, this time?”
CHAPTER 25
Eleanor stood by the side security door and inhaled the cool, damp air of twilight in the parking lot as if she were coming up for air after a dive underwater. The heavy door at the employees’ entrance creaked open and slamed shut as Milly and some other office workers who had been kept late for the mission were at last allowed to leave. They chatted all the way to their cars and wished each other good night. Before she sat in her car, Milly turned her head toward the building to where Eleanor stood watching her, and gave Eleanor brief wave. Without thinking about it, Eleanor found herself waving back. Milly drove away to wherever she lived.
A car alarm bleeped off as Dr. Ford approached his car, device in hand. He also glanced back at the building, and caught her eye.
“I’ll call you,” his voice drifted across the lot. She nodded, but he did not look back.
Eleanor felt the bar-coded tags in her hand, the keys to her car, to her condo, to her lab, her file cabinets, her desk, and to John’s room in the medical unit.
She
re-entered the building.
She signed in and left her handprint with the security post again, but without friendly explanation for her return. They guards did not expect one, not from her.
She approached the medical unit on weary legs, and suddenly realized with each step how emotionally exhausting the day had been, and marveled at that thought. She peeked into the glass window in the door to John’s room. Drugged, looking as if he were lying in state, he was hooked up to several monitors, with the oxygen cannula taped snugly to his nostrils. She nodded to the guard, signed in at the nurses’ station, and approached his room. She swiped her identity card along the magnetic strip and unlocked his door and entered, shutting the door softly behind her as if there was the smallest chance she might actually wake him.
Not knowing what to do, she filled a cup with water at the stainless steel sink and sipped it, catching her own eye in the mirror above the sink. This time she took a good long look, forcing herself. There were lines around her eyes. She looked tired. She was not the girl she had been many years ago, but in a way, would never be anything else. She even resembled her teen self now, possibly because her makeup had been removed by Dr. L’Esperance.
Eleanor again thought of her mother and sister, the only other women in her life, who were not in her life at all, in a trailer park being slowly flooded on the opposite coast, wondering if they were still alive. She had wanted to tell Moore about her adventure. It was only minutes in real time. Real time? It had been real, and it had been more than a few minutes. She wanted to tell Cheyenne about her experience, but had not known what to say. Still, Cheyenne may have known. She cast wry glances at her while Moore was being debriefed, and her look of reticence and caution became a kindly expression of satisfaction. Moore was right, she did have beautiful features.
When General English and his “guest” gruffly returned at her summons, they stayed only a moment. Eleanor had desperately searched their faces for meaning, and felt no sense of triumph that her error had been fixed, only foreboding. They left, with grim smiles of what appeared to be a different kind of mysterious satisfaction.
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