Time Sight

by Lynne Jonell

  “Clumsy, aren’t you?” said a sneering voice. “Cook won’t keep you on if you throw food on the floor.”

  Will felt heat rise past his neck. Ranald had tripped him on purpose.

  The man stuck his leg wide and waggled his boot. “I’d have thought these were big enough for even you to see, blind as you are.”

  “I’m not blind,” Will said through his teeth. He tried to step around Ranald’s foot, but the big man blocked his way again.

  “You’re blind enough to look at Master James and think he’s your brother!” Ranald’s brows contracted so they looked like one hairy bar across his forehead. “Keep away from him, you hear? It’s my job to protect this family, and by Saint Cuthbert himself, I’m going to do it.”

  Will set his jaw and brushed past Ranald without saying a word. The table at the far end still didn’t have any bread.

  It had chairs instead of benches, made of wood so dark they looked almost black. Will stacked loaves hurriedly in the baskets and had started down the other side when, out of the corner of his eye, he saw a little bustle at the door behind him. He turned to see a tall, lordly man stalk in, sweep the room with a pair of keen eyes, and raise his chin with a slight sideways tilt as he sat down in the high central chair, which was carved like some ancient throne.

  It must be the laird. He looked almost familiar—a little like Will’s father around the nose and mouth. Were these people his ancestors? The pleasant-faced woman sitting down with a swish of skirts had curly hair like his mother’s. Behind the woman came a tall young man, and behind him came—Jamie!

  Will almost dropped his basket. He caught it just in time and got very busy about putting the last loaves on the table. But from under his lashes he watched his brother.

  Jamie was dressed in some checkered cloth, bright and clashing by modern standards. He didn’t fidget at the table or wriggle in his chair, and he had a knife, a big one. For someone who had been allowed to use only blunt kindergarten scissors, the knife looked wickedly sharp—but Jamie was cutting a hunk of bread with casual competence.

  “What are you gawking at?” Janet waved a hand in front of his eyes. “Hurry along, Cook wants us in the kitchen. Haven’t you ever seen the laird before?”

  Will shook his head.

  Janet clicked her tongue, turning. “That’s Sir Robert Menzies, the clan chief, the laird. The tall boy next to him is his son, and the lady next to the laird is his wife. The little lad next to her is young James, the laird’s nephew, sent here for fostering. But he’s still a bit touched in the head.”

  Will trotted after her. “Touched?”

  Janet rolled a finger in circles near her temple and gave an expressive wink. “Once a loony, always a loony, I say. Oh, he acts like he’s supposed to now—most of the time. But every so often, he says the strangest things!”

  They had reached the stairs. “Like what?” Will kept close by Janet’s side as she hurried down the curving steps.

  Janet snorted. “Once he came down to the kitchen and asked if we had any candy. I said did he mean boiled sweetmeats, and he said no, he wanted a girl bar.”

  “A girl bar?”

  “Well, a ‘her’ bar. Or no, maybe it was a ‘she’ bar.” Janet stopped, frowning. “Or was it a she-her bar? No—”

  “A Hershey bar?”

  Janet snapped her fingers. “That’s it! How did you know?”

  Will laughed. “Lucky guess.”

  “He says stranger things than that,” she added, banging open the kitchen door.

  Cook was just sliding cherry pies into the bake oven. A crowd of helpers were bringing up tureens of stew and great platters of turnips and pickled onions and lumpy things Will couldn’t quite identify. His stomach made a noise like a bear growling.

  “Here, you, pot boy! Go up and serve out the ale. Run fast when they call you, and water it for the small ones.”

  Will wasn’t quite sure exactly what she meant, but Janet went up, too, and showed him. He was to stand by the sideboard in the Great Hall and wait until someone called for ale. Then he was to take one of the mugs from the sideboard, fill it from the keg, and bring it to the person who was thirsty. There was a pitcher of water to add to the ale if someone wanted it weaker.

  “Don’t use the covered cup, that’s for the laird and his lady. Whenever someone is finished drinking, bring their mug back to the sideboard so it’s ready for the next person.”

  “What, you keep using them over and over without washing them?”

  Janet stared at him. “Why not? It’s all good ale, nothing else is going in the mug to dirty it.”

  “Germs are going in,” Will muttered, but Janet had already whisked off to her next task.

  He was almost run off his legs. “ALE!” shouted one after the other, and Will hurried to obey. Why on earth couldn’t they each have their own cup? he wondered. But some of the mugs were wonderfully made: silver and enamel, with ornate etchings and beautifully curved handles, and there were drinking bowls, too, with little legs on the bottom so they would stand upright. He was careful to keep far from Ranald, but everyone else blurred into one big mass of noise and laughter and grasping hands, and it was with a shock that he heard Nan’s voice at his elbow.

  “Can you just get me plain water?” she begged.

  The plump girl next to her gasped. “You don’t want to do that,” she said earnestly. “Water alone is unhealthy. Have ale, it is better for you!”

  The woman on the other side looked down her long nose at Nan, her mouth pinched in at the corners. “Maybe that’s why your stitches were so crooked today. You’re sick from drinking water! Take ale and get a good night’s rest, and perhaps tomorrow you can sew a seam that doesn’t look like a crooked man limping.”

  “Yes, Mistress Cullen.” Nan waited until the woman looked away, and then rolled her eyes. “Have you talked to Jamie yet?” she whispered.

  Will shook his head.

  “Well, do it quick, will you? I’m going to die if I have to thread one more stupid needle. Look at my fingers!” She waved them in front of Will’s face. “I pricked them so many times, they look like a cheese grater!”

  Will bent his head, as if taking her order for ale. “You’ve still got the Magic Eyeball book, right?”

  Nan patted the satchel in her lap.

  Will looked over at the head table. Maybe he could bring Jamie some water and use that excuse to talk to him … but Jamie’s chair was empty.

  Nan jerked her chin in the direction of the sideboard. “He’s over there. Guzzling ale, probably.”

  Will hurried over to Jamie’s side. “What are you doing?” he demanded. “Mom and Dad would never let you drink ale, no matter what century it is!”

  Jamie carefully closed the spigot on the keg and frowned. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  Will tried to adopt a more reasonable tone. “Shouldn’t you be watering that?”

  Jamie flipped the silver lid over the top of the mug in his hand. “It’s for the laird,” he said. “I’m supposed to serve him—I’m his page.” He hesitated, staring at Will. “I’ve seen you somewhere.”

  “Oh, come on, you’ve known me your whole—” Will folded his fingers into fists to keep himself from grabbing Jamie by the shoulders and shaking him. “Forget it. Listen, you saw me yesterday. I’m the one Ranald tossed in the mud puddle.”

  Jamie nodded slowly.

  Will lowered his voice. “You knew me before that, though. Remember?”

  Jamie shook his head, but his forehead wrinkled above his nose, and his teeth caught at his lower lip.

  That was the way Jamie’s face always looked when he was worried or unsure. Encouraged, Will pressed on. “We lived together with Mom and Dad, and our address was—”

  “Seventy-five twenty-one, Seventeenth Avenue South,” Jamie blurted out. Then he clapped a hand to his mouth. Above his fingers, his eyes widened.

  Yes! Will felt like pumping his fist in triumph, but he kept
his voice calm. “That’s right,” he said. “In Plymouth, Minnesota. And our zip code is—”

  “Five-five-four-four-seven,” Jamie whispered through his fingers.

  Will grinned. Like every kindergartner, Jamie had memorized his address and practiced it over and over. “You do remember!”

  Jamie took his hand away from his mouth. “I’m not supposed to remember.” He flipped the lid on the silver mug back and forth on its hinge. “None of those things I remember are true. They were just dreams that came after I hit my head. That’s what everybody told me,” he added, gnawing his lower lip again.

  “I’m true,” said Will quietly. “Don’t you know me, Jamie? Your big brother, Will? Don’t you remember Mom and Dad, and the trip on the big plane, where you spilled your root beer?”

  Jamie gulped. A shadow loomed above them.

  “Master James, is the pot boy bothering you?” growled Ranald.

  Jamie shook his head. He snapped the silver lid down and walked quickly away toward the head table.

  “ALE!” shrieked Nan, waving her arm, and Will ran over with a mug of water, glad for the excuse to get away.

  “I hate that guy,” Nan whispered, glaring at Ranald.

  Will bent close to her ear and pretended to brush crumbs off the table. “Jamie remembered our address! He knows me, too, I’m sure, but he’s afraid to admit it. They’ve told him that everything he remembered from his old life was crazy.”

  Nan gazed at the head table thoughtfully. “How are we going to get him to meet us? We’ve got to be together when we go back to our own time.”

  “I don’t know!”

  “Can’t you think of more things he’ll remember? The more you tell him, the more he’ll believe you.”

  Will’s mouth twisted. “I can’t even get close to him without that stupid Ranald coming over—”

  “ALE!” yelled someone at the far end of the table.

  Will gave an exasperated grunt and ran back to the sideboard. By the end of the night he was sick of the smell of ale. When were the pot boys fed, he wondered? After everyone else, apparently. It wasn’t until the cherry pies came up from the kitchen that Will was given a dish of stew and told he could eat.

  There was a little space not far from the high table, at the end of a bench. Will squeezed himself in and applied himself to his meal. The stew was good, salty and rich with beef, and the bread was chewy and dense, with a flavor of oats. After the first few bites, he slowed down, listening to the conversation around him.

  “The Stewarts are lawless, and getting worse—”

  “Now that Sir Robert’s got the king’s authority for those lands, he can clean things up a bit.”

  “Eh, and how? Neil Gointe and his wild men will never submit to the king, or the laird, either. If we come in force, they’ll melt away into the hills and come out again worse than ever when we’re gone.”

  The argument grew louder, and someone bumped Will’s elbow. “Shove over,” Nan said, sliding onto the edge of the bench. “The Stewarts aren’t so bad,” she said under her breath. “Isobel Stewart is almost my best friend at school—”

  “Quiet, will you?” Will choked on a bite of crumbly pastry and took a swig of water. “Someone will hear you. Besides, I don’t want to talk about the Stewarts.”

  “Why not? Everyone else is.”

  Will scooped a last bite of cherry pie into his spoon—where were the forks? he wondered; no one seemed to use them here—and with his mouth conveniently full, didn’t answer. It made him nervous to think about the Stewarts. He kept seeing the cruel, wolfish face of the man who had murdered two men with such quick and unexpected violence.

  Someone banged on the table with his mug. “I say murder the bunch of them! That’s what they’re trying to do to us!”

  “Who speaks of murder in my hall?” It was the laird, and all around Will, the voices quieted to listen.

  “It would stop their lawless ways!” said a voice down the table—Ranald’s, Will thought.

  Sir Robert lifted his chin with the sideways motion Will had noticed before. “And shall we then become lawless ourselves? Shall we become like those we despise?”

  “Good point,” whispered Nan in Will’s ear.

  Will shifted uneasily on the bench. “How are we supposed to stop bad guys, then?” he whispered back. “Shake our fingers at them and hope they listen?”

  “The police can arrest them,” Nan said. “Then a judge can put them in jail.”

  “There aren’t any police or judges here! There’s just Sir Robert and his armed men!”

  Nan tossed her head. “I don’t know why you care. It’s not like we’re going to stay here long.”

  “You hope we aren’t,” Will muttered.

  Sir Robert was still speaking; his words echoed sternly in the Great Hall. “By the king’s grace, the disputed lands are rightfully ours. If the Stewart chief fails to obey, we shall by force bring him to justice in the name of the king. But murder, secret and dishonorable murder, in the dark?” He turned his head, surveying the crowded room, and his eyes gleamed in the candlelight. “Never while I am chief! Remember our deeds of arms; remember our proud history; remember our motto, ‘Will God, I Shall.’ Remember!” He pointed to a shield on the wall. “Remember that we are Clan Menzies, and up with the Red and White!”

  “MENZIES!” roared a hundred voices, and “Menzies!” cried a high, childish voice, later than the others. Will looked up to see his little brother waving a silver mug in the air.

  “There’s my brave Jamie!” The laird’s stern face was glowing. “Sound in wit once more, and as proud a Menzies as any. Come, lad, give us a song!”

  “A song! A song from Master James!” The cry was taken up around the Great Hall, and mugs banged lustily on the wooden tables. Rough hands lifted Jamie and set him, standing, on the head table, his feet between the plates. He stood wide-legged on the table, grinning.

  Will winced. Jamie could sing, all right—but he was such a show-off.

  “He looks like he’s done this before,” Nan said.

  “It wouldn’t surprise me,” Will said glumly.

  “Sing ‘Rose o’ the Glen’!” shouted someone from the back of the room.

  “Nay, give us ‘Langtree’!”

  “‘Loch Tay’!”

  Jamie raised a hand, and the room quieted down. Then Nan cried, “Sing ‘Flower of Scotland,’ Jamie!”

  Jamie blinked in the flaring candlelight.

  “What did you do that for?” Will whispered. “Everyone’s looking at us.”

  “Who cares?” Nan hissed back. “It’s one more thing that will remind Jamie of his life in the future, see?”

  “He won’t remember a song you taught him once,” Will said scornfully.

  Nan tossed her head, and her red gold hair went flying past Will’s cheek as she stood. “You learned it from me,” she called to Jamie. “Remember? It goes like this.” She tilted back her head and began:

  “O flower of Scotland, when will we see your like again? That fought and died for your wee bit…” She paused and looked at Jamie.

  He hesitated. “Hill and glen,” he quavered at last.

  Nan shot Will a triumphant glance. “And stood against him,” she sang heartily, and Jamie joined her, his voice growing stronger with each word. “Proud Edward’s army, and sent him homeward to think again!” they bellowed together, as the room erupted in shouts and cheers.

  “Bravely sung!” Sir Robert said. “I’ve never heard that song before. Did you truly teach it to him, lass?”

  Nan nodded.

  “And you know what it’s about, of course?”

  Nan grinned. “It’s Robert the—” She stopped midsentence, her eyes suddenly panicked. “Wait, did Robert the Bruce come before this time, or after? I can never remember dates!” she hissed to Will.

  “You’re asking me?”

  But Sir Robert was smiling. “Speak up, now. Don’t be afraid.”

  “Go big
, or go home,” Will murmured.

  Nan gripped her hands together behind her back. “It’s about Robert the Bruce, sir. When he fought King Edward and gave us back our Scotland from the English.”

  “Well spoken! And though it was many long years ago, it’s good to hear that new songs are still being made about it. But there are more verses, surely?”

  Nan, sagging with relief, nodded. “I can teach him the rest of the song tonight, sir, if you’ll let Jamie come with me.” She nudged Will with her foot and gave him the ghost of a wink.

  Sir Robert frowned; his chin jerked up and to one side. “That’s Master James, to you, lassie—you must not be so pert. As for James, the song can wait—it’s time for him to be abed.” He ushered his family out by the far door. Jamie had time for just one backward look before he was out of Nan’s and Will’s sight.

  “See?” Nan’s dimple was showing. “He did remember the song!”

  Will was strongly tempted to point out that people who said “I told you so” were annoying to almost everyone. He made an effort and managed to say instead, “Good job trying to get him to meet us.”

  Nan brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Yeah, but it didn’t work.”

  “We’ll think of something,” Will said with an optimism he didn’t feel. “If we could just find out where—”

  “Pert, Sir Robert said, and he was right!” The waspish voice was just above their heads, and they looked up to see Mistress Cullen’s pinched and disapproving face. “I can see that I will have to teach you manners as well as sewing! No wonder your stitches were so slapdash today. You must have run off to play with Master James when you were supposed to be setting a seam. And here I thought you were just going to the garderobe.”

  “I didn’t play,” Nan began, but the woman cut her off.

  “Teaching him that song when you were supposed to be about your duties is what I call playing. I don’t care if it pleased the laird—it’s me you’ve got to please tomorrow, or you’ll be out on your ear and good riddance to you!” She sailed off, her nose held high.

  The plump girl who trailed after her gave Nan a commiserating look. “Better come up soon,” she whispered over her shoulder, “or you won’t get your share of the blankets. The other girls hog them all.”