by Glenn Cooper
The whole while she had battled raging anger and abject fear to try to figure out what had happened to her. Without pen and paper she had resorted to doing the math in her head and concluded that what had happened must have been a strangelet-induced phenomenon. She desperately hoped it was reversible. Her rational mind told her that the only conceivable way to return to her own place in space and time was for the Hercules experiment to be re-run with the same high-energy parameters. She had prayed to a God who seemed to be farther away than at any time in her life that her team would know what to do. And with a shudder, she had surmised that to get home again she might have to return to the same spot where she had materialized at the exact time that MAAC was up and running. The conclusion was crushingly apparent.
There might be no return.
Onboard the ship she had been taken to a locked cabin where completely alone for the first time since the ordeal began, she cried a river at the enormity of it all.
Whether she chose to call it Down, as Dirk and Duck called it, or Hell, it had to be some sort of alternative dimension with its own set of bizarre physical rules. Everyone and everything she knew and loved seemed desperately far away. She thought of John and wished she’d allowed him to apologize. The thought of being permanently trapped here, of not seeing him or any of her friends and family again, was so profoundly sad. And as the ship sailed farther and farther away from Britannia, her despair only bloomed.
Marot had heard her sobs and unlocked the door to offer sympathy and to express his wonder that a woman such as her had descended to his unhappy world. In the course of their turbulent crossing she would learn about Captain Marot and what awaited her once they made landfall in Francia.
Francis, Duke of Guise, Marot had told her, was an imperious lord, much feared by ally and foe alike. He had come to Hell in the mid-sixteenth century, the victim of a Huguenot assassin while still a hale and hearty man in his fifth decade. As such, it pained Marot to say, the duke harbored prodigious appetites for the fairer sex, and as a rich and powerful noble, the coin to procure virtually whomever he chose. Spies such as D’Aret were given broad remit to strike deals to secure choice women, and with redness in his cheeks, Marot informed Emily that none were choicer and more exotic than she.
“My European history’s a bit sketchy,” she had said. “I’m afraid I don’t know who this Guise man is. Or was.”
Marot had seemed more intent on her than the question. “Your accent is fetching. Is it of the Highlands?”
“Yes, I’m a Highland lass, born near Inverness.”
“The Guise family played a part in your land’s royal intrigues. The sister of the duke, Mary of Guise, married your king, James the Fifth and birthed your Mary Queen of Scots.”
“A bit before my time.” She had studied his face. He was rather handsome, perhaps in his thirties, with expressive eyes. Perhaps, she thought, she could turn him into an ally. “Tell me, Phillipe. You seem like a nice man, far kinder than the others I’ve met. Why are you here?”
“I am here because I deserve to be here. I participated in a shameful and atrocious act while a soldier in the service of the duke. It was in the year 1562, one year before the duke was killed and ten years before I myself perished in battle. The duke was returning to his castle in Joinville, near Paris, and decided to stop for a rest in one of his villages, Wassy-sur-Blaise. He had heard that the village harbored heretical Protestant tendencies and he wanted to see for himself whether this was true. Hearing church bells and a congregation at prayer inside the church he went inside, and to his dismay, he did hear a most foul, anti-Catholic, Huguenot rant. An argument ensued. I was in the market square myself with a company of gendarmes. Before long I heard shouts and cries. The duke stalked out of the church followed by a throng of villagers—men, women and children, and suddenly the order came to kill these Huguenots. I did not hesitate. I fired my archebuser, reloaded, and fired again and again. Women fell at my hand, children too. When we were done fifty were dead, many more shot through. I carried the shame of that day for the remaining days of my poor life. And here I am, condemned for eternity. My duke was already here when I arrived, already nearly as powerful as he had been on Earth. I found him and he took me into his employ once again. I continue to do foul deeds for him, though I fear none will be so foul as delivering you unto him.”
Now, standing on the rocky shore of the land called Francia, Emily weighed her options. She had no idea what horrors were coming. She might never have a better chance. So, while Marot was having a word with another soldier, an ugly, heavily bearded man, she took off, running as fast as she could down the beach, trying to find patches of flat sand between the rocks for her footfalls.
Marot shouted for her to come back and took after her but the bearded soldier was the faster of the two and caught up with her first. She was grabbed by the hair and thrown roughly to the pebbles and sand. The soldier raised his arm and was about to bring his club-like fist down on her when Marot arrived and thwarted him.
The two men argued while Emily cried in frustration and pain and began to shiver uncontrollably. Marot sent the bearded soldier away to cool off and had a blanket brought to her. He helped her up and surrounded by soldiers, she robotically followed him off the beach toward a cluster of houses.
“Can you ride?” Marot asked.
“Horses?”
“Of course, horses.”
“No.”
“It is of no consequence. There should be a carriage. I am sorry he hurt you. Please do not try to flee again. I can only control them to a point.”
They walked for a half a mile and at a small stone cottage two men emerged and spoke with Marot.
“We might have some food and drink before we embark,” the Captain told her.
“Just some water if it’s clean. My stomach’s still off.”
A covered carriage was brought to the house yoked to a team of four horses, with a cabin only large enough for two. Emily was made to climb in and Marot joined her. Saddled horses were produced for the soldiers and they began their overland journey. Marot told her their destination was the duke’s castle at Joinville and that if all went well they would arrive in the early hours of the following morning. The carriage driver, seated on an open-air bench, flicked the reins and they were off. Marot had a pair of short-barreled archebuser rifles propped against the carriage door and checked the powder to ensure it was dry.
“Are you planning on using them?” Emily asked, clutching the coarse blanket at her throat.
“I hope no, but fear not. If I do, I am an excellent shot.”
She thought of the children he had massacred and said, “Whom might you need to shoot? Isn’t this friendly territory?”
“There is no friendly territory. One is never safe, not even in a lord’s castle. There are thieves and scoundrels at every turn. The countryside belongs to no one and belongs to everyone.”
She decided to make her play. “I don’t suppose you could help me?” she said.
“Help you how?”
“To escape. I need to get back across the channel, to Dartford. I think that’s the only way I can get back to my home. Please help me.”
He looked miserable. “I wish I could, my lady, but there is no place for noble acts in this world. If death were the worst I could suffer, I would happily help you. After all these centuries, death would be sweet. Yet, my fate would not and could not be death. Instead, I would be punished and I would suffer the most vile consequences for all of eternity.”
“What would happen to you, Phillipe?”
He used the term, salles de décomposition, and then explained to her what rotting rooms were.
She fell silent.
The land was heavily forested and the road to Paris was no more that a ribbon of dirt or grass. The wooden carriage wheels rode rough over the uneven ground and Emily’s stomach had little chance of settling. Marot had a loaf of brown bread wrapped in a cloth and tried to get her to eat a few morsels. Fin
ally, at midday, the temperature had risen enough to make the blanket unnecessary and she succumbed to hunger and ate some of the coarse bread.
“Did you have a wife?” she asked.
“I did, and a son. I was often away on campaigns with the duke so I saw little of them. I do not know if they even knew the manner and time of my death.”
“And here?”
“I do not have a woman. Yes, I have been with women from time to time but there are not so many here.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes, of course. Women are not as evil as men. Is it not so in your time also?”
She nodded. “If women were in charge of things there wouldn’t be all these stupid wars or slaughter of innocents.”
“I think this too.”
In a clearing in the forest, Marot called for a halt and told Emily the party would briefly rest. He pointed to some stout trees and suggested this would be a place she might answer nature’s call.
She climbed down, and away from the prying eyes of the leering soldiers, relieved herself behind a trunk. She heard Marot bark orders to his men to keep vigilant as she looked up at the dull sky above the canopy. There was a pretty yellow bird in a high branch that looked something like a golden oriole and a pair of black squirrels cavorting lower down. It all seemed so natural, so ordinary, so much like the things she was accustomed to, until the spell was broken by desperate shouts that sent the wildlife fleeing.
She stood just as Marot appeared at her side, his face seized with fear. She made out one soldier’s cry, “Clovis est ici!” and asked Marot, “Who’s Clovis?”
“Come quickly. He is a very ancient lord, a very bad man who calls this forest his own.”
As Marot dragged her to the carriage a spear thudded and stuck into the tree trunk then arrows began to rain down. One of Marot’s men fell, an arrow through the dome of his head. The Captain pushed her under the carriage and ordered his men to cock their rifles but not to fire until his command.
Ahead, horses appeared in the road with longhaired men astride. They were clothed in skins and leathers, brandishing swords, spears, and short bows. They shouted battle cries in a guttural language. Emily made herself as low to the ground as she could and closed her eyes, more afraid than she’d been at any moment since her arrival. Then Marot screamed, “Fire,” and a dozen archebusers discharged and sent lead balls toward the raiders. Marot tossed one of his rifles aside and fired the other.
Men and horses fell and those attackers who weren’t hit scattered at the volley. Marot yelled for Emily to get inside the carriage. The carriage driver scampered up to his perch and the soldiers mounted up. Marot climbed in beside her, frantically reloading his weapon as the horses were whipped to the gallop.
For several seconds all was quiet until there was a lone, chilling battle cry and a spear came crashing through the side of the carriage. Marot looked startled and stopped pouring powder into his rifle. He looked down at his blue soldier’s jacket that was turning crimson.
“My God, you’ve been hit!” Emily cried. “We have to stop.”
“No,” he replied weakly. Then he mustered one last command to the driver, “Keep going. Under no event will you stop until you arrive at Joinville.”
“We have to stop the bleeding!” she screamed.
“Please permit me some room,” he whispered, and when she had slid as far from him as possible, he grasped the shaft of the spear and pulled himself away from it, pushing the bloody end out through the hole in the carriage door. “There, that is better.” Then he slumped against her.
She reached over to try to staunch the blood but the spear had torn his spleen and the flow was torrential, flooding the carriage floor. Instinctively she knew he should be unconscious or dead but his lips kept moving in a silent babble.
She called out to the driver, “Stop. We need to help him,” but the driver refused, shouting for her to push Marot out of the carriage to give Clovis a prize to stop the attack.
When she refused the driver called for the nearest soldier to do the deed.
The rider reached down from his horse, unlatched the carriage door and grabbed a fistful of Marot’s jacket. As the captain was about to be thrown to the ground, she saw his glassy eyes blink at her and his mouth curl into something close to a smile.
They rode at breakneck speed until the horses could no longer take the pace and in a broad clearing, where the enemy might be spotted from a distance, the party pulled up and rested the animals. The ugly and unsmiling bearded soldier who had thrown her down by the hair took Marot’s place beside Emily. He smelled of cabbage and worse and said not a word. It was impossible to avoid Marot’s blood. Her feet stewed in it for the rest of the journey and as day became night the puddle became sticky, gluing her shoes in place.
She must have slept for the last few hours because she awoke startled when the carriage inclined sharply and finally came to a stop at the threshold of Castle Guise.
A soldier was calling into the darkness for the drawbridge to be lowered and when the heavy bridge thudded onto the earthenworks the carriage slowly crossed over the moat and entered the main bailey through the portcullis.
The bearded soldier tried to pull her down but she shook off his hand and climbed out herself. There was a raging fire pit which cast enough light for her to make out an enclosed ground. Jutting into the courtyard and rising above it was a rectangular stone tower, its entrance marked by a pair of basket-topped iron rods filled with burning tallow.
In the darkness, high over a further bailey was a round tower, black and ominous. It was here she was taken.
The bearded soldier opened a heavy wooden door, called up the dark stone stairs and Emily found herself in the company of women.
A skeletal hag with streaky-gray hair took charge of her. The old woman’s initial air of pique at being woken gave way to alarm when she realized that the night visitor was a different sort of creature.
The woman inspected Emily with a candle held high then rattled off something unintelligible to the bearded soldier in some kind of dialectic French. Emily made out part of the soldier’s reply, something to the effect that Captain Marot knew more about her than he did but had fallen in a skirmish.
The hag, who wore a loose-fitting linen shift, addressed Emily sharply. Emily responded that she couldn’t understand her and the woman migrated to a somewhat more modern form of French. It was apparently not her natural tongue because she spoke it slowly and deliberately.
“Come with me. I am Marie. I look after the girls. There is something not right about you, no?”
“So it seems,” Emily replied, following her up the tightly spiraling stairway.
On the first landing, Emily saw a single chamber scattered with mattresses and sleeping bodies. Up another spiraling staircase, the highest chamber was different. There was a single occupied wood-framed bed and some simple furniture against the round, bare stone walls.
Marie lit a few candles with her own, shook the sleeping figure awake and told her to get up. The woman under the blankets hurled a rich barrage of curses at Marie and sat up, searching the room with fiery eyes. She was young, about Emily’s age, with taut, ebony skin. Her French was modern and slang-infested.
“Who the hell are you?” she asked Emily.
Emily was woozy. “My name is Emily,” she said weakly.
The woman directed her anger at the old lady. “What’s going on here, you fucking bag of bones?”
Marie told her that a new girl had arrived. The woman replied sarcastically that she wasn’t blind, she could see that, but what did it have to do with her?
“She’s a special one,” Marie said. “She’s meant to have your bed.”
“The hell she will! I’m not giving up my bed.”
“I can sleep anywhere,” Emily said.
Marie shook her head and went down the stairs calling for the bearded soldier to come and help her.
Emily wobbled, unsteady on her feet.
“Is that blood on your shoes?” the woman asked.
“Yes.”
“Yours?”
“No.”
“Whose?”
“A Captain Marot.”
The woman frowned. “I fucked him a few times. Not a bad sort as men go around here. Pity.”
“Who are you?” Emily asked.
“Jojo. What’s with you, anyway? You look like you’re just off the boat but different.”
“Apparently I’m not exactly dead.”
Jojo pulled back her covers and stood to get a closer look.
“The fuck you say! You’re right. You don’t smell right. How’d it happen?”
“Do you think I might sit down? I don’t feel well at all.”
Jojo pulled a chair from the wall. She watched Emily shiver in the coolness of the chamber and sighing, pulled the blanket from her bed and threw it at her.
Emily thanked her and said, “I’m a physicist. I was conducting a research experiment outside London with a high-energy particle collider and…”
“I’ve already lost you, honey. Some shit happened, you’re here, you’re alive, that’s all I need to know. How’d you wind up at this shithole?”
“I’ve been passed around like a prize cow. Something about the duke here being quite a ladies’ man.”
“Oh yeah, he’s a real stud for a five-hundred-year-old piece of dead meat. I was his favorite. Until now, maybe. He took a couple of the other girls tonight which gave me a break.”
Marie returned with the bearded soldier who began shouting at Jojo to find a place to sleep in the lower chamber. Jojo would have nothing of it and shouted back, brandishing a candlestick to reinforce her position.
“I can sleep downstairs,” Emily said by way of defusing the situation, but Marie countered that orders were orders. “Look, here,” Emily said, “the bed is large enough for two. If it’s all right with Jojo perhaps we can share it.”