Alice Through The Multiverse

by Brian Trenchard-Smith

  Things are going well, thought June. “Bit of a bad ass myself,” she said, deliberately dropping a file. Paul bent down to retrieve it. He let June see him cast an eye on her rear end; not bad at all, and he let her know it. He took the stack of files from her so that she could have both hands free for filing, which made her smile with appreciation. “Thanks.”

  As the filing continued, Paul decided to take a risk: “Help me out here. Why would a patient be marked for immediate transfer? Where are they sent?” This prompted a sardonic look from the Duty Nurse. “Why do you ask?”

  Paul offered a reason that he thought sounded plausible. “Listen, I don’t want to screw up again...I see ‘Transfer Patient,’ what do I do?”

  “You carry out the orders in the file,” she said pointedly, moving closer to reach a shelf.

  Their proximity allowed Paul to look directly into her eyes with his most engaging look. “Please, if she’s anonymous, found on the street, how come she has pre-set medication?”

  June frowned. “Don’t go there.”

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “Look, this is a reputable hospital. It’ll look good on your resume.”

  “I know it is, that’s why I’m here. Come on. Enlighten me.”

  “What did they once say about ‘Loose lips…’?” she asked, holding his gaze.

  “… never make me think of sinking ships,” he responded, returning her look.

  She knew she had him. Subconsciously her lips parted. He knew he had her. Not for sex, just information. He never mixed business with pleasure. June Daly did frequently. “OK,” she said. “Occasionally a patient arrives under sedation, stays in isolation for a few days, then he’s gone.”

  “He?”

  “All male so far. Until now. If you repeat any of this, I’ll deny it.”

  “Trust me,” said Paul, with apparent sincerity. “Anything you say is in total confidence.”

  Two men with headphones smiled at that, as they monitored the conversation with sophisticated listening device technology. June’s voice continued: “I think sometimes…we do a little government work.” They heard Paul’s reply. “Government work?” The listeners were operating inside a dark green van with tinted windows, parked in a clearing surrounded by trees, about two-hundred yards from the hospital.

  “Maybe for your government, too.” Now that it seemed they were going to be special friends, June felt safe repeating rumors as if they were closely-guarded secrets. “I think that apart from its usual work, this facility may be a waystation for persons of interest to the government...”

  “Whoa!” said Paul. “You know what? My curiosity just vanished.”

  “Very sensible,” she replied, happy the matter was closed, and she could move the conversation to sharing a drink after work at the end of the week.

  From down the hall, Dr. Picton spotted them chatting and decided to break up what appeared to be developing into a chummy relationship. He’d have none of that. Picton strode up to them and ordered: “Dr. Montgomery, you’ve worked double shifts. Take some time off.”

  The listeners in the green van exchanged a look. One scribbled notes on a pad while the other shed his earphones and slipped out of the van for a smoke. As he lit up, he looked through a gap between the trees at the object of their surveillance. Across an adjacent car park, was a two-story building ringed by a high brick wall, outside which a laundry service delivery van waited for the automatic gate to open. A sign on the gate read: FARNHAM PSYCHIATRIC HOSPITAL—VISITORS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY.

  CHAPTER 6

  Trial by Water

  Soldiers guarded the crowd that had gathered beside the Elstead Bridge on the River Wey. Among them was the former Abbess Catherine, anguished but powerless. The townsfolk were outraged, but mindful of the swords and spears that surrounded them. Alice was kneeling at the center of the bridge, tormented by the thought of her forthcoming fate. What sin had she committed? Why had God abandoned her? A length of rope was bound to Alice’s waist and secured to a post; her right thumb was tied to her left big toe with a cuir boulli thong. The mercenaries Andrew and Cedric stood guard beside her. Gareth was spending a day in the village stocks as punishment for his carelessness.

  Inquisitor Fernando Córdoba and Sir Giles De Fries paced toward the center of the bridge. Now out of earshot of the crowd, they resumed arguing over Alice’s fate. “These proceedings are uncanonical. Maleficium is tantamount to heresy; she should burn in the market square as a witch and a heretic,” stated Córdoba with finality. He wondered why his king wanted to marry into such a weak-willed nation.

  “We are not in Spain, Inquisitor. The stake would require a trial; a trial, time,” Sir Giles countered. “We must act now. Half the county’s in revolt.”

  “Hang them!” was Córdoba’s automatic response.

  “I do,” said Sir Giles, “but we can’t hang every yokel who spits at us. Who will work the fields?” Córdoba realized that this was not an argument he was going to win, at least not until the souls of these miserable Britons came under the spiritual control of his Order. Sir Giles continued: “No, the trial by water is the answer.”

  “To the rebellion?”

  “It will melt away, when word spreads that wives and daughters face testing for witchcraft.”

  Córdoba grasped the strategy, satisfied at least that punishment was still involved. He absolved himself of the present irregularity. Despite the Church’s condemnation of the trial by ordeal, “swimming” was popularly used for witches and malcontents in his country also. “If you choose to test her, I have no power to stop you.”

  Alice had overheard this cynical exposition but pleaded anyway.

  “Spare me, Sires, I am no witch!”

  “It is for your soul’s benefit, child,” said Sir Giles, relishing his hypocrisy. “This is a judgement of the Church, which it is my duty to enforce. Pray. Pray for God’s mercy.”

  Alice considered what her last words should be. She looked from Sir Giles to the Dominican. “By God’s vengeance, I curse you both to the end of time. You shall pay.”

  Sir Giles noted the fierceness of her gaze: “Indeed, she is a witch.” He held up an hourglass containing enough sand for perhaps three minutes and addressed the crowd: “People of Farnham, by my order, the accused will undergo trial by water till the sands run through the glass. If she is righteous, she will be accepted by the water and sink. If she is rejected by the water and rises, she is a proven witch and damned for all eternity.”

  A groan came from the crowd, and a few shouts of derision. His soldiers slapped their shields with the flat of their swords as a warning. The rabble will curb their tongues after this, thought Sir Giles. He signaled Cedric and Andrew, who tossed Alice into the water headfirst. Then, in no particular hurry, Sir Giles inverted the hour glass, and placed it on the bridge within the view of the townsfolk.

  As Alice cleared the hair swirling in front of her face, she saw the sandy bottom of the river. Flailing on her descent to the riverbed, Alice resolved not to drown. She would fight to the end. To escape death, she would have to manage to loosen the thong that prevented her swimming. Yet even if she were to break free and save herself, her “guilt” would be proven. So far strenuous efforts with her free arm and its opposite leg had merely made her spin like a whirligig. Her taxed lungs expelled a cluster of bubbles.

  The death agonies of a young maiden, though curtained off from view by sun-dazzled water, were vivid in the minds of the townsfolk standing behind banks of reeds and cattails at the river’s edge. Led by Catherine, they sank to their knees, trying to block out the horror with prayer. Some in the crowd wept openly. Alice was beloved in the village. Sir Giles and Córdoba remained standing, each lost in widely different thoughts. Sir Giles imagined that the girl struggling in the water below was writhing naked beneath him. She was a pretty thing for a peasant. He felt a stir
ring in his codpiece. Córdoba studied the water anticipating the retrieval of the body. For a deterrent to be effective it was important to display the corpse.

  Sir Giles looked at the hourglass. Half the sand yet remained. A breeze rustled the banks of reeds that lined the river.

  Alice’s struggle to untie the hardened leather joining thumb to toe was futile. Pain seared her lungs. She was tempted to give up, to breathe in water and hasten the end. Sensing a movement, she whirled round to see James floating beside her, who began cutting through the girdle of rope and the tormenting thong. James was alive! Joy at the prospect of rescue intensified the pain in her lungs. Clamped between his teeth he held hollow reed stems. Alice’s mother had told her that people who love each other deeply could read each other’s minds. It was true. She knew instantly what James wanted her to do, as clearly as if he were whispering in her ear.

  Her lungs were ready to burst, but she knew that she must remain underwater; she dared not use the reeds till they reached concealment in the thicket of foliage beside the river bank. If she surfaced now, which all the fibers of her lungs were demanding, they would both die. She launched herself not upwards but clawing her way hand over hand along the river bed. James grasped her under the shoulder to help her along. They both clawed and kicked and swam like frogs till they reached sheltering cattails. James saw her chest heaving. He quickly placed hollow reeds in her mouth with one hand, while raising her head with the other. Their reeds broke the surface, spouting accumulated water. Then came the sound of sucking air, but the attention of the crowd was on the rippling water by the bridge.

  Alice and James knelt facing one another on the sand, their heads arched toward the surface, one hand holding up reeds, the fingers of the other intertwined. As soon as James felt her breathing slow, he squeezed her fingers and pointed in the direction they must swim. No one noticed the reeds moving away. James, swimming skillfully underwater, guided Alice along the dappled riverbank. They surfaced behind the thick foliage of an overhanging willow, now some distance from the bridge. Catching their breath for an instant, they hugged tightly.

  “Your family’s safe and well,” James whispered. Alice kissed him deeply, lovingly. She had known that he would save them if he could. Then she broke from her kiss. There was something he must know. “The Princess Elizabeth...”

  James put his fingers over her mouth. He already knew. “Taken to the Tower. We must go to London Town.”

  “They’ve blocked the river,” warned Alice.

  “We’ll get by. Quietly now.”

  They crawled stealthily onto dry land and hid behind a bush. James cupped his hand and made the call of a skylark. Alice was surprised afresh that one so highborn knew country ways. A few seconds later, the light crunching of leaves signaled someone approaching through the nearby thicket. Alice’s brother Ben appeared carrying two cloaks. Brother and sister embraced wordlessly. Then Ben wrapped a cloak about her, before turning back into the thicket. Alice and James followed him. Alice, now in a state of giddy happiness, half wished she could stay to see Sir Giles’ face when her escape was discovered.

  On the bridge the glass had been empty for several seconds. Sir Giles held it up, inspecting it for any last recalcitrant grains. He enjoyed tormenting the crowd. Then he waved to Cedric and Andrew to pull up the rope. It held nothing. There was a gasp from the townsfolk, then a cheer. Córdoba stared astonished. Sir Giles hurled the hourglass into the river, cursing in French: “A foutre cette con de vache!”

  Córdoba scanned the river, thick forest on both sides. He turned to Sir Giles: “Alive or dead, she must be found, tried and burned.”

  ***

  Two nurses charged with getting Alice bathed were puzzled by her distress. Giving the drowsy girl a shampoo, they had dunked her head for no more than three seconds, yet she had come up as if on the verge of drowning. The older nurse had offered maternal comfort. “There, you see, isn’t that better? Did you get soap in your eyes?”

  Her eyes were indeed stinging, but Alice’s distress was not merely physical. Her visit to this frightening world, unlike the odd visions of it she had glimpsed throughout her lifetime, was prolonged. It seemed that she was now living in that strange place, interrupted by fragments of the life she had known. And with each waking, a new contradiction. The kindly older man who had first greeted her, the man she had thought might be an angel, she now recognized. Changed though he was in his hair and attire, he was Sir Giles De Fries. And worse, James De Fries, the love of her life, no longer knew her. As the daughter of an executioner, Alice had witnessed desperation, and she did not wish to wear that face. She must force herself to be calm. She would make sense of all this soon, through prayers for guidance. “One more rinse, dear. Shut your eyes, now,” said the large woman standing over her, as she grabbed Alice’s neck and pushed her head under once more.

  CHAPTER 7

  Nelson and Brandt

  A car dropped Derek Nelson off outside a government building in Whitehall, then drove on. Nelson, Lead Security Agent for the British Division of the European Security Taskforce (EST), fastened the lower buttons of an expensive double-breasted suit coat. The morning’s work had gone as planned, though he expected mild carping from his superiors in the U.K. and on the Continent that the suspect had not survived for interrogation. But that could easily be written off as operational necessity. Politically bulletproof results were all Whitehall and Brussels wanted, which Nelson consistently delivered.

  Nelson was the son of a war hero, an officer from a distinguished military family. Disabled while fighting in Northern Ireland, his father had received the undying gratitude of his nation but its inadequate support. The boy had looked up to his father as to a deeply resented idol. Lieutenant Colonel Nelson had ruled the household as a petty tyrant who aimed to toughen up his only son through unrelenting criticism and punishment. Derek’s cowed mother surreptitiously spoiled and cosseted the boy. Together they made out of their promising son a narcissist and sociopath.

  Derek Nelson had always known that he was destined for success. When his time came, he would die old, rich, and universally admired. He was certain of that. A scholarship student at one of England’s top public schools, his peers were the scions of the wealthy. Their class instinct was to look down on him, but Nelson demanded their respect, distinguishing himself in every field: he was a top scholar, rugby team captain, head prefect. His training at the Sandhurst Royal Military Academy was no exception. Nelson had never found his lack of conscience an impediment to advancement—quite the contrary, and since he was shrewd enough to conceal his prodigious self-regard, he was well-liked.

  Like his father before him, Nelson had graduated 2nd Lieutenant at the top of his class. Just in time for Iraq. As the war came to a close, he was almost involved in a firefight in Basra, but his unit was ultimately held in reserve. While his men were looking forward to returning home, Nelson feared that hostilities would end before he would see combat and have the legal opportunity to indulge his lifelong fascination with the taking of life. In the confusion and darkness, he isolated a group of six prisoners, commandeered a vehicle, and told them that due to prisoner overload and the imminent end to the war, he had been ordered to drive them down the road a way and release them. The weary Iraqi soldiers were relieved and grateful, until a while later, in a deserted place, they saw the M9 Beretta in Nelson’s hand. Just to make the challenge more interesting, he told them to run before opening fire. By the light of a half-moon, he put them all down inside twelve seconds. Checking the bodies, he found that one was still alive, so Nelson put him in a chokehold and strangled the man. Nelson found the experience empowering. He drove back to his unit feeling God-like, leaving the fate of the dead men to be obscured by the fog of war.

  On his return to England, Nelson saw an opportunity to transfer into intelligence and grabbed it. His keen mind and total fearlessness ensured swift promotion. Now he was Britain’s t
op scoring domestic anti-terrorist commander for the newly-formed European Security Taskforce, set up in the wake of Brexit to co-ordinate British operations with those of their continental counterparts. Within the U.K., harsh measures were beginning to gain a level of tacit acceptance from a British public wearied by a string of terrorist atrocities across regional cities. The Nottingham truck attack. The York computer school bombing. The Bristol supermarket outrage. Anger over continuing attacks by sleeper cells made Nelson’s penchant for wet work forgivable. So Nelson was given a sweeping brief and a generous measure of autonomy, which had opened up the possibility of hiring out his expertise to private clients.

  Nelson’s Number Two, Angus Brandt, understood that some of his work for Nelson was entrepreneurial; the other operatives thought that they were carrying out government-sanctioned missions, even though they understood that some of their operations were off the books. A tall powerfully-built Scotsman, Angus Brandt had begun his career at Scotland Yard, where professional jealousy had stymied his advancement, and he had made a lateral move to the EST. There, he and Nelson had formed a fast friendship. Nelson had picked up on Brandt’s bitterness and thwarted ambition, and when Nelson decided to freelance on the side, he had had no trouble enlisting Brandt’s aid. Brandt was further motivated by the need to provide a fine house for his family and put his three kids through public school. No way would he let them experience the social humiliation he’d gone through as a lad. His wife had no idea how they managed so well financially. Brandt wanted to score big this time, pull out ahead of the game. Retire to Edinburgh’s Old Town. Not bad for someone who’d started out life in Possilpark.

  Another of Nelson’s close associates, a wiry, acne-scarred, red-headed Yorkshireman named Ian Selwyn, was not in the know. It wasn’t necessary to fill him in on Nelson’s commercial sideline; Selwyn wasn’t a man inclined to question orders. The third member of the inner circle was young and relatively untried—Willem Jones. He suspected that some of their work wasn’t legit but was prepared to do whatever it took to get ahead.