by Amanda Paris
He was disturbed that Aunt Jo and I lived on our own, not understanding how two women could live without a male relative to protect them.
“Much has changed, Damien, since the 1200’s,” I said, laughing.
“Yes,” he said sadly, “it has.”
I could tell that, for him, it was a total shift of perspective. He would have to learn how to be modern, and I knew it would take time, perhaps all our lives.
We moved on from my personal history to a more general history of the world. I had been prepared for this and brought my history book with me. It was woefully inadequate, but I was confident I could drop by the library on my way home and pick up more books.
He was horrified to learn that the Holy Land hadn’t been taken from the “infidel.”
“But Damien,” I protested, “the Crusades were very wrong.”
He looked at me in horror.
“Emmeline, how can you say that?” he asked, outraged.
I had to remember that it had been every knight’s dream to make a pilgrimage at least once in his life to the Holy Land or to fight in a crusade. My father, in my past life, had done it before I’d been born, traveling with King Richard the Lionheart’s army before he’d married my mother. Damien had planned on it as well. The Crusades were a rite of passage for many trained knights, anxious to serve their God and King in momentous battles for Christendom.
“Damien, it’s a different world,” I explained.“For one thing, the world is a much bigger place than the one you, that is, we, grew up in.”
I could read regret in his eyes.
“I’m not sure I like this new world, Emmeline,” he said quietly.
I tried my best to defend it.
“We’re trying to recognize and appreciate differences across cultures and religions, to end wars and promote peace. At least, most civilized countries aim for this,” I said, thinking about the bombs, attacks, and wars they reported every night on the evening news. I wasn’t so sure I actually believed what I was saying. Was it really a better world than it had been?
He looked thoughtful at what I’d said.
“Yes, I can see the merit of that,” he finally said, conceding that peace was preferable to war.
He was willing to allow for the logic of my argument, but I could tell I hadn’t changed his mind entirely. It was too ingrained in what he’d trained to do his entire life. A week ago, he’d been practicing in the field. Today, he was sitting in a plantation house built several hundred years after he’d been born discussing twenty-first century world politics with me.
He was more excited by the scientific advances that had been made. Electricity had seemed like magic to him, and the television, he said, had scared him when he first saw it through a store window in London. How could those tiny people get into the box, he wondered? I laughingly tried to explain how TV worked, realizing that actually I didn’t know the technicalities myself. I supposed it was a little like magic.
I wrote down his questions and promised to research them in the library for him. He was shocked to learn that I could read and write. Women weren’t educated in the thirteenth century beyond the domestic arts, and he was very proud of my learning.
I blushed. I was not the brightest student at school.
“I can still sew,” I boasted, and he laughed.
“Don’t you remember? You really hated that,” he said.
“Did I?” I could hardly believe it.
How strange that I was drawn to something now that I’d disliked earlier. Except for my power, it was likely one of the only connections to my past life.
“Emmeline,” he began, a serious tone to his voice now, “there is something you should know. When I came through, I didn’t come alone.”
I caught my breath.
“Lamia,” I whispered, not wanting to speak her name aloud for fear that I might conjure her before us.
“When that strange man found me, he said two other girls had come out of the woods. I didn’t think about it at the time, but now I wonder…” He let his sentence trail.
I knew this was a possibility. Ramona had warned me that curses could follow time travelers. I thought then that the man who’d rescued us must have thought it was a strange morning to have found three lost souls wandering around in the early morning hours. Perhaps that was why he acted so strangely. Something wasn’t adding up, though.
“But I didn’t see anyone, and I would have felt Lamia on the train station, even if her appearance had altered... witches can do that,” I explained. Though I preferred the name “wise woman” to witch, I wasn’t sure it would’ve made a difference to Damien. Even a good witch was still a witch. We hadn’t yet discussed my power. Tomorrow would be time enough for that.
I thought back to the morning after I’d cast the spell, which was still slightly blurry. I’d been terribly upset. I tried to piece together the events leading up to my departure.
“I took the 10:30 train, and you took the 12:00.The station wasn’t very big…” I began, trying to imagine how we could have missed her…unless she didn’t want us to know that she came through.
“Damien, did you see her at the ruins?”
“No. Should I have?”
“She should have come through at the same place and time with you. Tell me the last memory you had before waking up.”
He looked at me, pain filling his eyes. I caressed the side of his face and kissed him lightly.
“I know it’s painful, but this might be important,” I said softly.
He looked down, too proud for me to see him struggle with the memory. After a moment, he began.
“She had been standing over me, directing one of her henchman to pick up the tongs. That was to be her next instrument,” he said in a controlled voice.
I held my breath.
“So she was right beside you?” I asked quietly, not wanting to prolong this if I could help it.
“Yes, the last I remember she was.”
“Yet she wasn’t when you awoke?”
“No.”
This was a mystery. Could she have come through earlier or later? But it couldn’t have been later since the strange woodsman had seen her after helping me but before he’d found Damien. The window of time was not long, either. He must have found her right after he discovered me.
Then I remembered. She had the power to bewitch others, to take them over completely so that their will coincided with hers. Had she cast some sort of spell over the man in the woods? It seemed like a ridiculous, farfetched idea. But then, everything in my life in the last six months had been unbelievable, to say the least.
I could see that Damien didn’t want to talk about Lamia any more than I did. For now, we could shelve it. I didn’t want to spend our first real day together talking about her anyway.
“Emmeline,” he began, “I want to know what happened. Everything—who you are, what you are,” he said, looking intently into my eyes. So it was to be today, then.
“You know what I am,” I replied, not meeting his eyes. “But it’s not what you think,” I continued.
“Then tell me. I’ll believe you,” he said gently.
“I can’t explain it myself. It’s something born within me, though I’m not like Lamia. Ramona said that we all have powers, but some of us choose to use it for good; those are the wise women, like me, like her. Others, like Lamia, use their power to harm others, to control them.”
He looked thoughtful, as though he wanted to say something but didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
“What is it? What are you thinking?” I prodded.
He opened the first few buttons of his shirt. Beneath, he wore a small metal cross with a sapphire in the center. I recognized it as having belonged to my father. It was strange, knowing I had two lives, two sets of parents, two selves. In my past life, which had become my present, my father had given him the cross at the feast celebrating his knighthood. Damien had not taken it off since that day.
He looked
longingly at it, memory filling his eyes, and then took it off. He drew me close to him and kissed me once, solemnly. Placing the cross over my head, he took my hands into his and made the sign of the cross.
“In nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen,” he said. In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit.
I felt a curious shiver run through me, one filled with recognition and holiness. I’d never heard those Latin words uttered in this life, but I knew them from long ago. They seemed to cover me as a shield, an antidote to the curse Lamia cast over me so long ago.
“Amen,” I echoed, awed by the sacredness of the moment. I did indeed have my protector with me.
“…sed libera nos a malo,” he murmured. Deliver us from evil.
I could feel the tears slide down my face. I hadn’t thought I was very religious, but in my past life, I had been and so had Damien. Vows were taken seriously then; to break a vow was to imperil your immortal soul. I wondered if Damien thought my soul was in danger. Witches were damned for all time by the church.
Neither of us spoke for a moment, but we held each other, relieved that we were both alive, and for the moment, at least, in no danger. There was much to discuss, to learn, to discover together, but in this moment, we needed no words.
He felt like a haven for me; the warm, familiar scent of him was both strange and instantly recognizable. I looked out the large window panes at the blooming azaleas, the bees buzzing, the birds happily singing. It was as if I’d entered a beautiful dream, and I never wanted to wake up. This was happiness, perfection—the still moment, the moment outside of time and place. I didn’t know what the future held for us, but the future was not important. Only now held any significance, this moment suspended in time.
We stayed like this, holding each other and making plans, for the rest of the day. I knew I’d eventually have to go back, but neither of us wanted to break the silence that cemented us together.
As it turned out, Mrs. Arthur, the housekeeper, broke it for us.
“Will the young miss be joining you for dinner, Mr. de Vere?”
Both of us jumped apart, startled. I hadn’t realized anyone besides Damien and I were here, though I should have guessed that, in a house this large, there had to be some staff.
“Certainly,” he replied.
“No, I can’t,” I said, getting up.
“Why not?” he asked.
He looked a little hurt.
“I don’t want to leave, but my Aunt…” I gave him a knowing look.
“I’ve been meaning to discuss that with you, Emmeline,” he said, becoming serious.
I looked puzzled.
“Don’t worry,” I assured him, “she doesn’t suspect that I’m here.”
“You mean you lied to her?”
He looked horrified. I’d forgotten for a moment that Damien would consider any form of deceit terribly wrong.
“Well, not exactly,” I backtracked. “I just didn’t tell her I was coming here.”
He looked at me skeptically.
“Emmeline, I want you and your aunt to come and live with me.”
“What? Here?”
“Of course.”
He said this as if it were the most natural thing in the world for us to pack our bags and come to live with him. I wished with all my heart that I could.
“I’m sorry, Damien, but I can’t.”
I hoped he saw the regret in my eyes.
“Two women shouldn’t live on their own. You have no one to protect you,” he argued.
How could I explain?
“Damien, I love you for wanting to take care of us, but it’s a different world now.”
I sounded like a broken record, even to myself.
“What I mean is…,” I continued, “women live alone all the time. We’ve been doing it my whole life, or at least since I was five.”
I could tell this didn’t satisfy him either.
“With Lamia possibly lurking around, Emmeline, I don’t think you can afford to take any chances,” he said.
I suddenly felt the urge to laugh. Telling a small white lie to sneak out of the house could have consequences for my soul, yet living together, or what my Aunt would consider ‘living in sin,’ was perfectly acceptable to Damien. Of course, I knew he’d guard my virtue fiercely, perhaps a little too fiercely. Since we’d all lived together in the castle in my past life, he saw no problem with my sharing this large house with him now.
“What’s so funny?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing. I was just wondering how exactly I’m going to explain to my Aunt that we are going to be moving in with a boyfriend of mine that, to her, I just met last night.”
He looked offended.
“But Emmeline, I am your betrothed.”
“Yes, this just gets better and better. We’ll announce we’re getting married while we’re at it.”
I was laughing then, imagining Aunt Jo’s reaction.
“I think it’s a good idea,” he said quietly.
I stopped laughing and felt an eerie sense of history repeating itself.
“I think that’s probably not a good idea,” I said.
“So you still don’t want to marry me?”
Just as before, I rushed to assure him that yes, I did, just not right now. It felt like déjà vu.
“Damien, it isn’t that…it’s just, well, a different world now,” I finished.
“So you keep saying.”
“Women live alone, and it’s perfectly safe and acceptable. And no one, or almost no one, gets married when they’re seventeen. It’s not even legal.”
Damien looked at me, not comprehending.
“Not legal?”
“No, you at least have to be eighteen to get married. You’re not considered an adult yet.”
He looked thoughtful.
“Even with your Aunt’s permission?” he asked.
I didn’t want to answer this. Actually, with Aunt Jo’s consent, we could get married. But I didn’t want to tell him this; he’d suggest asking her immediately. I didn’t want to lie to him, either.
“Yes, but she isn’t going to give it.”
“Why not?” he asked, looking affronted. “Am I not worthy of you, Emmeline?”
Worthy was an understatement. Of course he’d always been perfect in every way that mattered. He was more than worthy in the sense that he meant, but I’d also made him materially worthy in a way he hadn’t been before. He had no real concept of the wealth he had. He understood ideas like “estate,” those having been in existence as strongholds and castles in the thirteenth century, but he didn’t cringe at the car I drove or the clothes I wore, which didn’t have designer labels attached to them. Conrad had purchased the Audi in his name and had had him measured for the impeccable clothes he wore. And it was Conrad who’d bought him several outfits in London and had the rest shipped to him in America. Damien had no real frame of reference to understand the difference between his level of wealth and mine. If there were any monetary obstacles between us now, it was all on my end, not his.
“Damien, it isn’t that. If anyone is unworthy, it’s me,” I answered.
He looked at me in disbelief.
“Besides that, I have to finish school first; then I want to go to college. Only then do I want to get married,” I said.
I’d explained the schooling system to him earlier that day, and he was amazed that girls and boys went to school together for so long. “What do they learn for so many years?” he’d asked. I had smiled at him, amused. Thinking of all the movies they’d shown, fieldtrips we’d taken, and homework I’d neglected, I wondered myself what I’d learned at school over the years.
Damien wasn’t sure why I needed to go to college anyway when he would be taking care of me for the rest of my life. I could tell he wasn’t persuaded by my argument. I wasn’t going to be able to put him off, and truthfully, my heart wasn’t in it.
“Alright,” I finally conceded, “but I don
’t think Aunt Jo will say yes.”
I left it at that. His face looked so elated that I didn’t want to burst his bubble. I was unsure how I was going to broach the subject to Aunt Jo.
“You can still go to school, to college,” he promised.
I smiled. I guess I should be grateful that I’d fallen in love with such a progressive knight, my bare legs notwithstanding.
He was reluctant to let me go, insisting on taking me home, but I was firm in my refusal. It was already five o’clock, much later than my usual time, and I knew I’d better have a good story ready for Aunt Jo. It wasn’t going to include Damien. If she was going to accept him at all, it wasn’t going to happen if she knew I’d skipped school to hang out with him all day.
Though I knew that Damien was ecstatic to have won me over so easily, I could still tell that he wasn’t happy about my refusal to move to Sugar Hill. It finally hit me that I needed to explain it in terms he’d understand. I didn’t want him to think I was rejecting him.
“It isn’t that I don’t want to live with you, Damien. It’s just that, in my culture, it isn’t traditional for a girl my age to live with her boyfriend, at least not when she’s seventeen. And Aunt Jo wouldn’t think it was acceptable at any age for unmarried people to live together.”
“Oh... Why not?”
“I don’t know. It’s cultural…no, religious,” I said in a burst of inspiration. As a knight, he’d understand that.
“Emmeline, I would never…” he began, nearly speechless as he finally comprehended what I said.
I put my fingers to his lips.
“I know. I’m just trying to explain the difference between the age where you, no, where we came from, and this one.”
“But who defends you?”
“We have locks on the doors.”
He looked at me skeptically. I had to concede that it was rather flimsy. A knight like Damien could have the door down in less than five minutes with his bare hands. Fortunately, there weren’t lots of those running around…I hoped.