Alice Through The Multiverse

by Brian Trenchard-Smith

  “Sir, these ruffians accosted me! Yesterday eve...”

  “Silence her!” came the gruff response.

  “How have I offended?” Alice asked.

  Before she could say more, a filthy rag was thrust into her mouth, and she was gagged. The rider leaned down towards her, no longer a silhouette, revealing a man a little older than her father. He was the Inquisitor Fernando Córdoba, a black-robed priest of the Dominican Order, acting on behalf of Fernando de Valdés y Salas, Archbishop of Seville and Grand Inquisitor of Spain, who was himself answerable to Prince Phillip. Alice had a chilling intuition that the man was evil to the core, like a snake lurking in a field of weeds. She knew this instinctively. Never before had a stranger’s malevolence struck her so forcibly. Then he spoke.

  “You are a witch, and you will burn in hellfire everlasting!”

  CHAPTER 3

  Ghastly Yuletide Ornaments

  Male nurses placed the unconscious Alice on a gurney. Dr. Picton, quietly seething and quoting from his folder, reproved the American intern. “This is why she was to be kept sedated and restrained: ‘Found naked and unconscious 1:30 a.m. on the Farnham Road. Attacked assisting paramedics.’ A danger to herself and others. All of which is in your own admission report.”

  “The strength of the sedative seemed excessive in view...” Paul tried to explain.

  Picton interrupted: “No doubt things are done differently in the U.S., but if you wish to continue to work at my hospital, never act unilaterally again.” He turned to Dr. Unwin: “Rose, give her a thorough physical, then call me.” Dr. Unwin said she would.

  Paul thought that some humility—which didn’t come naturally to him— might improve the situation: “I do apologize, sir. I never meant to offend. I was using my best judgement.” But Picton was walking away.

  Dr. Unwin gave Paul a rueful smile: “Welcome to Farnham Psychiatric Hospital, Dr. Picton’s personal fiefdom, and don’t you forget it.”

  Paul responded, “Only my first week. Guess I was out of line.”

  “We expect that of Americans,” she said drily.

  The gurney took Alice down the hall. Her eyelids flickered in her sleep

  ***

  The four riders led by Córdoba trotted up a steep wooded hill. On the last horse, Alice sat astride the lap of Gareth, her wrists secured to the pommel of his saddle. He liked tying girls up. It excited him. Neither he nor the other mercenaries were aware of the progress Alice had made toward loosening her bonds.

  Gareth had for some time been trying to resist lustful thoughts, as his priest would expect. But the movement of the horse was causing Alice’s body to rub against his thighs, and he could no longer resist temptation. His loins had a will of their own. Just a little taste, perhaps, he thought, as he took the reins in one hand and slipped the other inside the cloak that covered Alice. She squirmed as he groped for her breasts, quietly grunting. But she was powerless to stop him. Giving the reins more play so that he could have access to her with his other hand, he whispered into her ear: “ ’Tis said a witch’s tit is cold. Not so. Be good to me tonight and I’ll set you free.” A false promise to a witch was hardly a sin.

  Alice thought for a moment, then bent slowly forward, lying down on the horse’s neck, pressing her rump into Gareth’s lap. Gareth took this as a good sign and leaned forward. Without warning, Alice jerked up, smashing the back of her head into his nose. He recoiled, dropping the reins; she twisted in the saddle, got a leg up, and kicked him in the chest with all her might. He tumbled off the horse, hitting the ground hard, snorting blood from his nose. But one of his feet remained caught in the stirrup. Alice snatched the reins, expertly turning the Barbary mare, and cantered into the woods, dragging the wretch Gareth behind her. All done in seconds, before the astonished Córdoba could cut her off. Then Alice ripped the gag from her mouth, and with a yell of defiance turned the horse again, causing the dragged man to arc around, snagging onto a tree stump. The connecting stirrup snapped, allowing the horse to leap away at full gallop, leaving Gareth groaning in its dust. Córdoba and his men rode past, their horses’ hooves missing him by inches.

  A furious chase twisted and turned through the trees. Alice had been taught to ride a farm horse at the age of five. But her pursuers were skilled cavalrymen. She wheeled this way and that, plunged through bushes, but could not shake them off.

  Cedric managed to get ahead of her, turned and charged her head on, while Córdoba and Andrew closed in from behind. Córdoba swung his sword. Alice ducked just in time. Andrew took evasive action, but was unable to avoid a low-hanging branch and was swept from the saddle with a mighty thwack. Alice used the moment to steer her mount into a gully. Córdoba looked round. She was gone.

  Alice rode down the gully towards a cluster of trees. Slowing the horse, she reached into the low-hanging branches and pulled herself up. The horse continued to canter without her, disappearing into a hazel thicket. Alice hoped that it would lead her pursuers away. A moment later, Córdoba and his men galloped beneath her and circled round the thicket wall. Alice decided to continue her escape out of sight through the tangled tree canopy, before finding her way back to the village. She nimbly leapt from branch to branch and from tree to tree, till she thought it was safe to drop to the forest floor.

  Grabbing a supple young branch of a broad oak that would bend under her weight and let her down closer to the ground, she swung down through the leaves only to collide with the dangling body of a hanged man. The bending branch she held snapped. Instinctively, Alice clutched the hanging man, his eyes bulging, his face purple, swollen and wheezing. He was not yet dead. Her added weight spared him further agony. His neck snapped with an audible crack. She shrieked and dropped to the base of the tree.

  Dazed, Alice lifted her head. She found herself at the edge of a clearing full of soldiers making camp. The bodies of three villagers hung from the branches of the trees above like ghastly Yuletide ornaments. Alice gasped with horror. These were people she had known all her life. Then the spike of a halberd was placed against her throat. Alice slowly turned. A tall guard with a craggy face glowered at her. Standing beside him was Sir Giles De Fries.

  “Ah! See what has dropped from Heaven...Seize her!” Others from his personal guard rushed forward, still smarting from their humiliation of the day before. They roughly grabbed her and bound her wrists behind her.

  At that moment, Córdoba and his mercenaries rode into camp. Gareth, scratched and bruised, shared a saddle with Cedric. Sir Giles called out: “Inquisitor! Over here. See what I have found!” Córdoba and his men rode up and reined their sweating steeds to a halt, snorting and pawing the ground in front of Alice, now on her knees. Córdoba gave her a withering look. Alice understood that protest was useless. She was doomed to the same fate as hung above her in the tree.

  “My nephew’s harlot,” said Sir Giles cheerfully, “the second blessing of the day.”

  “And the first?” asked Córdoba dismounting.

  “News from the Palace. The Princess Elizabeth has been taken to the Tower, by order of the Queen.” Alice was shocked.

  Córdoba was exultant. “God be praised. That heretic bitch will never see the throne.”

  “If all goes to plan, she’ll see the headsman’s block,” Sir Giles gloated, “like her whore of a mother.”

  Alice’s heart sank. That would be a black day for England.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Devil’s Teat

  Alice lay unconscious on Dr. Unwin’s examining table, loosely covered by a sheet, under a pool of light in a smallish room with tiled walls. Paul stood at an appropriate distance. Trying not to stare at what Dr. Unwin was doing, he looked at surgical instruments in a metal tray visible through a glass cupboard door. Then Alice made a little whimpering sound, which Dr. Unwin attributed to the exam she was receiving.

  Paul saw the sedated girl twitch and give a little
moan. A thin red mark appeared on Alice’s arm unnoticed as they talked. “Any indication of sexual assault?” asked Paul, wondering why she had been found naked and unconscious in the middle of the road.

  “I’ve examined her to rule that out and actually she’s...a virgin.” Dr. Unwin rolled off her latex gloves with a snap as punctuation. “Unusual amongst runaways or the homeless. What’s her problem?”

  “She believes she is Alice Craddock, daughter of a 16th century executioner.”

  “Interesting,” said Dr. Unwin.

  Paul studied Alice’s face, her delicate features and lightly freckled cheeks, a sadness in the set of her jaw. How does the poor girl fit into this? Feelings of sympathy were somehow seeping through his customary wall of pragmatism. He forced them back. Dr. Unwin continued.

  “Other than what we’ve given her, I haven’t been able to detect drugs in her system, legal or illegal. No surgical scars, dental fillings. Remarkable teeth, in fact. Nor does she shave bodily hair, as you can see,” she said, lifting the sheet on armpit and pubic hair. “No anachronism you could use to contradict her delusion.” Dr. Unwin had also noticed a mole on Alice’s left side, the only one on her whole body. Her skin had a milky quality. No sign of pimples or sunbathing.

  The girl moaned again in her sleep.

  ***

  Alice lay in a dank room with moist walls, her hands and feet strapped to a bench. Her pain was intense. A man’s fingers were intruding roughly inside her most private place. He was a pallid man wearing a shapeless hat, with rotting teeth and donkey’s breath. Adding to Alice’s humiliation was the presence of the priest Córdoba, and of Catherine, former Abbess of a Cistercian convent once attached to the now-dissolved Waverley Monastery. Catherine had known Alice since childhood. Not even her own mother had seen Alice’s bare body after she had reached puberty. When they bathed together in the river before Sunday Mass or during her monthly cycle, Alice always wore a shift. She had done no wrong, yet felt such shame.

  “I tell you, she is intact,” Catherine insisted, inwardly fuming.

  “That my man will confirm,” was the curt response.

  The erstwhile Abbess noted in disgust that the Inquisitor was making no effort to avert his eyes. The examining apothecary, who also served as the town barber, delivered his verdict: “Vagina intacta.”

  I told you that, you cream-faced loon, Alice was wise enough not to say aloud. James had never taken advantage of her devotion, despite her invitation. They kissed and hugged, but all James would say on the matter was that it would have to wait until his estate was restored and the banns of their betrothal were read.

  But the apothecary was anxious to please the high-ranking cleric who had scowled at his pronouncement. He knew what was needed. “But note, Father, she has a mole on her left side...a sure sign.” Córdoba lifted the cloak covering Alice with a short cane. He bent down and studied the mole, located on her ribs beside her left breast. He extended a finger and slowly brushed its edges. Alice flinched. “The Devil’s teat,” Córdoba concluded with grim satisfaction.

  Catherine glared at the self-serving apothecary. She understood only too well the implications of the mole. “I have known Alice since she was a babe. She is no witch,” she asserted.

  Córdoba looked at Catherine as if she were a simpleton. “A whole town does not commit the sin of rebellion without Satan’s hand. Witches are his emissaries.”

  “Why do you accuse this girl?” asked the Abbess pointedly. Corrupt clerics had been known to threaten accusations of witchcraft to force sexual favors.

  Córdoba resented her insinuation. Simplemindedness he could tolerate, it was the state of most females, but disguised insolence angered him. She would not reclaim her position when this benighted country was reconfirmed in the one true Faith. “She is known to have strange visions. Further, she is the whore of the rebel leader.”

  Alice cried out: “I am not his whore!”

  Córdoba continued. “Found unclothed in the forest after cavorting with the Evil One.”

  “How” the onetime Abbess interrupted, “can she have lain with the Devil when she is yet a maid?”

  “Satan delights in unnatural practice.”

  While Alice did not understand his implication, she was still outraged: “I’ve lain with no one!”

  “Silence!” Córdoba lashed her left arm with his cane.

  CHAPTER 5

  Ghost Detainee

  In the examination room the discussion continued. Paul stated: “Her dissociative symptoms might indicate somatization disorder, psychogenic amnesia, schizophrenia. Or we might be looking at an idiopathic form of DID.” He permitted himself to feel a little smug saying this. Paul’s abbreviation of dissociative identity disorder, the proper term for multiple personality, had an authoritative ring to it. While it might take nine years of training to become a doctor in mental health, it had taken Paul a mere week to learn to sound like one.

  A voice from behind interrupted: “We are not looking at anything. She is not our concern.”

  Dr. Picton had walked into the room. Picton tended to reduce life to a series of analytical metaphors. Other people at his hospital, for instance, he regarded as cogs and levers in a machine of which he was both the driver and the central drive shaft. If the cogs meshed with his instructions, he was content. He admired precision. It made him feel the master of his environment. Yet every machine, however powerful, can be undone by a tiny piece of grit.

  Twice now the young doctor from America, taken on for a short term internship as a favor to an eminent colleague at New York University’s Department of Psychiatry, had shown a particular interest in this patient, whose paperwork categorized her as being prepared for transfer, for which there was a strict protocol, the subtext of which was—temporary goods, process and forget. Was a professional degree no longer a barrier to stupidity? But a more disturbing question arose as to whether Dr. Montgomery’s interest signaled another agenda, one that could endanger Picton’s highly lucrative untaxed revenue stream. Was this Dr. Montgomery in fact some media snooper? Could he be one of those wretched Scientology activists trying to gather dirt on the psychiatric profession? Dr. Picton decided to conceal his suspicions, and conduct such conversation as was necessary in a good humored tone.

  Paul made a respectful response, hoping to facilitate his own objective, which was to get time with this patient alone. “But sir, with respect, she needs treatment.”

  “And she’ll get it,” replied Dr. Picton, “but not by us. Her behavior indicates that she might be a danger to herself or to others. In addition, she presently has no identity and therefore no money. This is a private institution, dependent on profit. Therefore, she falls outside our charter. However, I have colleagues in London who do pro bono work on behalf of such patients. I am going to transfer her to them. You need not concern yourself with her any further.” With a nod of dismissal, he turned to Dr. Unwin: “So how do you rate her physical health?

  “Excellent.” Dr. Unwin gestured Alice’s shoulders. “It’s strange, considering she’s probably a runaway. She obviously goes to the gym. Look at her biceps.”

  Then they all saw the reddened stripe on her left arm. Dr. Unwin turned to her notes. “Something I missed.”

  “Probably happened when we sedated her,” Dr. Picton pronounced, anxious to conclude the discussion. “When she wakes up, give her a bath, return her to isolation, give her some clothes, and have her eat something. I will decide on her sedation level later.” He looked at Paul as he turned to leave. “I’m sure you have other work to do, Dr. Montgomery.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Paul, with an apologetic nod. He immediately left.

  In fact, Paul’s next task was to hack into the hospital database to obtain more information on patients marked for transfer, and this one in particular. To do this he needed a staff level computer, not the relic the hospital had assigned
to his basement cubicle. Paul sidled up to the Duty Nurse’s station, and offered to take over the desk while she took her lunch break. June Daly accepted gratefully. When she was out of sight, Paul called up Alice’s file. Name unknown. There was no photograph of her, normally required for a no-ID admission. Alice was simply designated as being prepared for immediate transfer, a feature of other cases Paul was investigating. A skim through files confirmed that such patients passed through the facility on an irregular basis, departing always within forty-eight hours. Ghost detainees. Alice was another one. Paul wondered: Why a clearly delusional girl? There was no recognizable pattern as to what these rogues were trafficking in. A search for more information produced: “Level 5 Password Required.”

  Paul was just beginning to hack his way round this obstacle when he heard footsteps approach. But he was ready. He hit a key and a First Person Shooter game previously on pause filled the screen. “Die! Die! Die! Sucker!” Paul exclaimed, hammering the keypad, as laser blasts blew chunks off an alien monster.

  June Daly entered, carrying a stack of files. “Not you, Nurse!” Paul grinned, shutting down the game and the file he had been examining. June wasn’t sure whether to be miffed or flattered by the trespass. But it was a clear sign that he wanted a relationship beyond the professional. She chose to be flattered.

  “Well, don’t mind me. Make yourself at home.”

  Paul offered his excuse: “Sorry...but I hadn’t realized until I sat here that you’re a First Person Shooter fan, too! That cubicle in the basement Picton gave me doesn’t have a decent computer. Challenge, when your shift ends? Warn you, I’m a bad ass.”