by K. C. Dyer
He pointed down the corridor and took her arm in what seemed a polite gesture. Darrell swallowed tightly and hurried along beside him, his hand on her arm firm evidence that at this moment, she had little other choice.
The familiar burn settled deep into Darrell’s leg as the hooded man hustled her along the corridor. There was no time to talk, no time to worry that she was being rushed along by a man who looked like he had walked off the cover of a book still sitting unread in her pack at school. She needed all her powers of concentration not to slip on the damp cobblestones.
Shortly after taking her arm, the man paused long enough to heave open a stout wooden door, banded with iron, that appeared in the gloom of the passageway. She could hear the sound of rushing water somewhere in the distance. The door led into a slightly less gloomy corridor, with torches that flared and flickered at intervals along the wall. Darrell noted with a pang of worry as the door swung silently back into place that it was faced with plaster and fitted so tightly into the wall that the cracks indicating its presence were barely evident in the gloom. Even the ring used to pull it open was recessed into the wall and would be just another lump in the plaster to an unobservant passerby.
“Keep sharp your eyes,” he whispered, “for if your companheiros are here without guidance, they may be lost to us forever.”
Darrell staggered, and the man tightened his hold on her arm. “You are in pain?” he asked kindly.
She shook her head, misery clogging her throat like a gag. Give your head a shake, she thought. Feeling sorry for yourself is not going to help find your friends.
To take her mind off her fears, she stole a sideways glance at her companion in the flickering torchlight. He wore a long robe of heavy grey wool under an open cloak of the same fabric. The robe was tied at the waist by a rough length of rope, from one end of which dangled an iron ring of keys that clanked against his leg as he walked. The only concession to decoration was tucked into the rope at his waist. Darrell recognized the polished stones and small golden crucifix of a rosary. He must be was a priest, then. But a priest with a menorah? Darrell’s head buzzed with unanswered questions. She wished desperately that she’d taken the time to read Uncle Frank’s book or had listened even a little to the new teacher’s droning history lessons at school.
The man showed no further inclination towards speech but walked swiftly with his reluctant charge. As they hurried along one corridor after another she puzzled over the language he spoke. We spoke, she thought, for she had conversed with him as readily as if it had been her native tongue. Not Spanish, as she’d taken an introductory course at school last year. And yet — he’d called her Señhorita ...
The air began to feel fresher, but the hall was still clammy, and Darrell tucked her free hand into her long sleeve. They followed a path she couldn’t hope to remember. First a left, then two rights and up a twisted spiral stair. Spiderwebs clung in every crevice, and the gritty floor showed no evidence of regular use, let alone cleaning. Darrell was convinced the passage doubled back on itself several times, and she tried to recognize repeating landmarks. Hadn’t she seen that particular torch before? And what about that bit of broken plaster?
After ten minutes or so her muscles began to loosen as she picked up the rhythm of walking on the new wooden foot. She’d been forced in the past to walk on little more than a stick of wood, so this was almost easy by comparison. She was just mustering the breath to ask a question when her companion came to an abrupt halt at yet another heavy wooden door.
Darrell was relieved to see that this door was not camouflaged in any way. In fact, it seemed quite recognizable. A large crest was carved into the middle, the design an intricate cruciform surrounded by roaring lions raised high on their hind legs. He selected a single key from the jangling bunch at his waist and turned it in the large iron lock.
With a mighty heave, the grey-robed friar pulled the heavy door open and courteously held it while she stepped inside. He followed behind, and, leaving the portal slightly ajar, he faced her and pulled back his hood at last. Gentle brown eyes gazed at Darrell from a weathered face. His hair was straight and iron grey, and the hair on top of his head had been shaved off in a neat circle.
“I apologize for the hurry, Señhorita, but it is imperative I keep you from prying eyes until we are safely away from this place.”
Darrell looked nervously around the small room. Her heart sank a little. No sign of her friends anywhere. “Safely away? From where — where are we?”
“We are far from the grotto, Señhorita,” he said. His voice was low and urgent. “Not a soul save myself knows the route we followed today. For your own safety I must insist you remain here. I beg of you to forget all that you saw in that place. In these uncertain times, it is best that some things remain unsaid.”
“But ...” Questions surged to her lips, fighting for precedence. “Do you know how I came here?”
He shook his head firmly. “Nor do I want to. The less we all know in truth means fewer people meet untimely deaths.” His voice dropped to a whisper. “I desire no further blood on my hands.”
She pushed the fear that his words awoke in her aside and clutched at his sleeve. “I must find my friends,” she said quickly. “A tall boy and a girl with red hair. There may be a second boy, with — with blonde hair. I lost them just before I met you.”
He looked horrified. “Near the grotto? I fear I misunderstood you earlier. This is terrible news, Señhorita. If your associates wander freely around the fortress a soldier — or worse, a priest — could find them at any time. I must try to locate them at once.”
Darrell could hear her pulse pounding in her ears. “Thank you, sir. You cannot possibly know how important it is for me to find them.” She paused. “I have been travelling some distance, Señhor,” she managed. “Please tell me — where is this place?”
He touched a finger to the side of his nose and smiled briefly. “Do not fear, my child. You are safe here for the present. We are in the monastery near to the Lisboa Cathedral, in the centre of the most powerful nation in the world. I will return shortly to bring you news of your friends and to reunite you with your people. Adeus.” The door closed behind him quietly, but the click of the bolt sliding home echoed like a death knell.
Safe she might be, but what she had feared most as she hurried through the labyrinth below had come to pass — she was a prisoner.
After taking five long, shaky breaths to calm her nerves, Darrell slipped over to the door of the room and tried it. The handle was an iron ring that did not turn, and the lock was so solid the door would not even rattle on its hinges.
Despair washed over her, and she slumped onto the small cot pushed against one wall. This was unlike any journey she had ever taken. Her friends were missing — Delaney was missing.
“Let’s hope I am the only one who is truly missing,” she said aloud.
Judging by the light from the high window, dusk was gathering. A cool breeze whirled in through the unglazed opening and the room held a deep chill. No shutters stood ready to guard against drafts, but they would have been useless anyway, as the window was far too high on the wall to reach.
The friar had left a small fire burning in the grate near the door to her room, and she added more fuel from the pile of wood and charcoal nearby. She pulled a worn woollen blanket from the bed and wrapped herself in it, kneeling as close to the fire as she could manage. It was time to think — not that she had much else to do.
One side of her roasted while the other froze, and yet Darrell suspected her surroundings had been designed to allow the resident some comfort. She looked around in the dancing light of the fire. The tiny room had a straw mattress raised off the floor on a wooden bedstead and a small wooden desk and chair. There was the coarsely woven blanket she had taken from the bed, and the straw in the mattress was fresh and fragrant. The priest had left behind precious wood for the fire. Remembering the dried dung that fuelled medieval fires made her grateful fo
r the clean smell of fruit wood burning in the grate.
Under the desk was a wide-mouthed china bowl that Darrell recognized with some trepidation as a chamber pot. Ugh. And yet, these surroundings would probably be considered luxurious by most Portuguese standards of the day. But what did she know of Portuguese standards?
“And what day?” she muttered aloud. “When am I?”
Everything inside her rebelled at the thought of just sitting and awaiting her fate. She rose again to prowl the tiny space. Above her head a glimpse of sky pinkened into sunset.
“Too bad I don’t have any of Brodie’s climbing gear,” she muttered. “I could be out that window in two minutes flat.”
But climbing gear was not at hand. Darrell flopped on the bed and tugged her heavy skirts up over her knees. The evidence was inarguable. It was time to face facts.
She gazed down at her legs stretched out on the bed in front of her. This morning when she had dressed for school, she had donned jeans, a heavy sweater layered over a T-shirt, and a pair of running shoes. Now she looked down at one long, lean limb, clad in some kind of woollen stocking and shod in a leather slipper. The other was red with cold and bare to below the knee, where it was wrapped tightly in cloth and attached to a leg with a jointed ankle and simple wooden foot.
Darrell ran her hand over the surface of this strange contraption. More than anything, the feel of the smooth wood under her fingers proved the inevitable. It had happened again.
She was lost, somewhere in time.
The sound of chanting voices snapped Darrell out of her reverie. A heavy scent wafted in through the high window, and it took a moment or two to place it. Incense.
She looked around the room again. Spartan, clean, with space for little more than sleep and quiet contemplation. A friar’s humble cell. And locked inside — a prisoner from another time and place.
The voices, borne on the wind, rose and fell in rhythmic chanting. Darrell knew at once that she was listening to Latin, and yet the strange ability to speak the vernacular of this earlier time didn’t stretch her ability to understand. She listened as the voices echoed, dolorous through the dark. Something skittered at her window above. A bird? A bat? At this lonely time, Darrell would have welcomed any company at all. She curled into her thin blanket and fell asleep thinking about her dog.
The thin blanket was not much help against the biting wind blowing through the open window, but it was all Darrell had and she was grateful for its warmth. How long had she slept? The fire had long ago burned low, the pile of wood and coal soon gone. The people of this time must really have to work to stay warm.
Darrell shivered. It was becoming painfully clear that function dictated fashion. Even with all the layers of clothing she found herself wearing, she still thought enviously back to the heavy woollen robes worn by the friar, her captor.
Her captor — where was he? Twice over the course of the long, frigid night she had heard scurrying noises in the hall outside her door. Raised voices and running feet, but no sound of a sliding bolt. What if he never returned?
A gentle tapping sound made her raise her head sharply, but after a moment she realized that the noise came from outside. Rain had started to fall. Not quite snow, in spite of the cold. Bone chilling didn’t even begin to describe it. Darrell’s fingers ached with it, her feet had gone numb from it, and her brain felt rattled from all the trembling.
A few drops pattered onto the stone windowsill and slid down the walls along cracks and fissures in the rock. Darrell curled up as tightly as she could manage on the straw mattress, tucking the thin blanket carefully around her cold foot. Fear that had sprouted in the dark was wrapping its tiny, fast-growing vines around the edges of her conscious thought. Unable to sleep again, she slipped into a reverie, listening for the sound of freedom but hearing only rain.
Even without the fear, the cold was bad. Bad enough to kill? Darrell had read in her National Geographic magazines of how freezing was supposed to be a gentle way to die. You warm up by the end, the stories said. You just go peacefully to sleep and then stay that way. Well, if that was the case, she must have a way to go yet. This cold hurt.
She looked around the tiny stone cell. No food. And worse, the small clay jug of sweetened water stood long empty. Perhaps since the cold hadn’t yet managed to kill her, fear might just step in and finish the job. Some of the National Geographic types had drunk their own urine when their water ran out.
That got her moving. She staggered to her feet and started pacing, six strides one way, seven the other. “Disgusting,” she said aloud. “If I ever make it home, I am cancelling that subscription.”
The wooden prosthesis creaked a little as she paced, and though the space was small, she worked hard to master the knack of walking with it. Instead of the peg she had been forced to wear on previous journeys, this foot actually resembled its function. The wood was somewhat roughly shaped and the approximation looked more like a boot than a foot, but it was stiffly jointed at the ankle and sanded smooth where it was bound to her leg — both vast improvements on past incarnations.
She peered up at the minute patch of sky she could see through the window. Pale pink dawn had given way to a thin winter blue tinged with grey. And the air smelled so cold — perhaps it would snow. “That’ll finish me for sure,” she muttered.
Anxiety had kept her quiet when she’d heard the night-muffled voices outside her cell. Now thirst and cold drove past her fear, and she pounded against the door, crying out for help.
Nothing.
She was falling, falling.
Time had swept her up once more and she twisted and whirled, no control of arms or legs, her head snapping backwards. She awoke with a jerk to the sound of the scrape of metal on wood. Hunger and crying had finally given way to exhaustion, and Darrell had fallen asleep stretched uncomfortably sideways across the straw mattress. Befuddled by her dream and sore from sleeping without removing the wooden leg, she took a moment to remember where she was. The darkness of the room was complete, and the open door showed no light from the hall. The rain had stopped, and a thin white sliver of moon gave only enough light for Darrell to make out the shape of a person standing over her in the darkness.
“Whazt?” she managed blearily.
“Silêncio! If you value your life, speak not a word,” a voice breathed in her ear.
Darrell hurriedly pushed her foot into the soft leather shoe and stood uncertainly beside the bed. Night had come again, but it no longer mattered. Her lips were cracked with thirst and her body felt stiff with cold, but the sight of the open door was so welcome adrenaline surged through her. She felt as though she could run for miles.
She watched as the priest slid open the single wooden drawer and rummaged through it. Suddenly, he dropped to his knees and reached so far back that he had to crawl almost completely underneath. Darrell heard the man mutter something under his breath. She took an uncertain step toward the open door. What to do — run or speak? After a moment she settled on the latter.
“Uh — do you need help with anything?” she whispered, feeling foolish.
He lifted his head to reply and banged it hard on the open desk drawer. As he cried out, the desk creaked and a wooden panel shot out from underneath and hit the floor with a clatter. Darrell could hear the sound of a number of objects falling.
“I’m so sorry,” she whispered, bending over to help.
“No time — no time,” he gasped, scrambling to pick up the fallen objects. A trickle of blood trailed into the corner of the priest’s eye.
“You’re hurt,” she protested.
“It matters not, Señhorita,” he said. He brushed the blood away impatiently, smearing it across one cheek. “I am terribly sorry to have left you here so long, but there was no help for it. We must away,” he continued. “These artifacts cannot be found here —”
He reached inside one of his voluminous sleeves and pulled out a rough cloth bag into which he stuffed the various objects that
had fallen from the drawer.
“Found?” Darrell was curious. “By whom?”
He shook his head impatiently and thrust the menorah and a few small, more regularly shaped packages into the bag.
“Señhorita, the little time we have has almost flown,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “You must place your faith in nosso Deus and hold tight to his servant for there is no time for further explanation,” he said, tucking her hand firmly into the crook of his arm.
Darrell nodded. Her head spun a little from the time she had spent without food or water, but a surge of energy coursed through her at the chance to get away. “My friends?” she whispered. “I mentioned them to you before.”
He nodded briefly. “Rest easy, Señhorita. I have located your three friends,” he said, his voice low. “And I aim to reunite you as soon as I am able. But for now we must fly.”
Three? Darrell’s stomach clenched again. So Paris had been pulled through time with them, after all. I’ll get him back safely, she vowed. I won’t let everything that took place with Conrad happen again.
They slipped into the empty passageway, while around them muffled sounds of movement seemed everywhere; shouts and whispers echoed in the sinuous space. Darrell had only taken a few steps down the hall when her companion stopped without warning and knelt at her feet. Darrell stood frozen to the spot, not sure what to do. She felt a tug on her wooden foot and realized that it was being bound with some kind of soft fabric.
Sure enough, as they started to move again, any sound made by the wood striking the floor of the stone passageway was dampened by the new binding.
Without advantage of a torch or even a candle, Darrell clutched the arm of her rescuer and stumbled along as best she could. The ground was terribly uneven. She smiled a little, glad for the practice she’d had walking on this new wooden foot with its jointed ankle. Now tightly bound in cloth, the ankle had lost some of its mobility, but any creakiness was muffled as well.