Mirrors (Curse of Lanval Book 1)

by Dodson, Rebekah

  Even the way he said, “What is this” translated wrong. “Can you understand me?” I asked. They all shook their heads.

  Jules looked at me, her eyes wide with renewed panic. “Why can’t they understand you?”

  “Quelle est la date aujourd'hui?” I asked them the date.

  “Aujourd’hui?” Leather repeated.

  I nodded, pointing to the sun in the window to demonstrate. The chapel was almost blanketed in darkness.

  Suddenly, his eyes lit up. “Datum,” he said. “C’est trente septembre.”

  “It’s the same date,” Jules said, and her face told me she was slowing coming to the same resolution I was. “Quelle anneé?” she asked the year, and I was surprised she remembered her French so well.

  He cocked his head to the side and mumbled something close to “year of our Lord” followed by “onze cinquante-quatre.”

  “Holy Shit,” I said in English. “1154? You’re fucking kidding me.”

  “Oh my god, how can that be?” My sister looked at me.

  “This is all your fault, you just had to pull that mirror free!” I glared at her.

  “The mirror!” she exclaimed. “Where is it? If we are in the past, we can get back… I bet mother will be pissed!”

  The prince strapped to the wooden board coughed and gurgled, his eyes opening. He looked around, at me, and to the older soldiers, and then slipped back unconscious. Leather shook his head and motioned to the prince, raising his hand to demonstrate lifting. He rambled in Old French too fast for me to keep up.

  “We have more important things to worry about just now,” I told Jules, “like getting someone with medical supplies.”

  “It’s eleven fucking fifty-four!” Jules yelled. “Aspirin hasn’t been invented yet!”

  “Technically, aspirin wasn’t invented…”

  “Goddamn it, Gill! Shut the fuck up and help us lift him!”

  I motioned to the soldiers to help us raise him. The one standing lookout opened the doors, and we emerged into the twilight.

  Despite the heavy burden we carried, I still noticed, with quite a shock, how the landscape had changed. The great hall, no longer great – rather, before it was great – was a small one-story building. The cobblestone courtyard was now lush green grass. The walls that once encompassed the castle in the middle of the town were taller, adorned with tall towers and blue and white flags. And the grand gate we had entered, with a parking lot just in front? That opened onto the water, with no safety railings or modern day attendants in their little yellow hats.

  1154. Shit. This was real, all of it. This was my sister’s fault, I was sure. How the hell were we supposed to get home now?

  Chapter Seven: Well, This Sucks

  Ihad this feeling my sister was on the verge of a total breakdown. My entire life, my sister had taken so much after my mother, it was hard to tell where one started and the other began. Both practical, reasonable, down to earth. The day my sister announced at the dinner table she was gay, my mother shrugged and said, “We know.” Even my father didn’t lift an eyebrow as he usually did. Although my older sister had her sassy side, she kept it pretty well hidden. Unless I provoked it. That’s what little brothers are for after all, right? I learned that from about, oh, age five. It wasn’t my proudest moment when I put a dead spider in her hair, and she immediately dumped a bowl of soggy cereal and milk on my head. I was used to her fuming and fussing sometimes, but it was always over and done before I could even react.

  This Jules, worried me, though. In true firefighter fashion, she carried her weight of the unconscious prince like the rest of the soldiers, who were oddly quiet and openly stared. She met their gaze with a sarcastic glare, even once asking, “See something you like?” Even though she knew, they couldn’t understand her. My sister was deadly focused, cool, calm, and collected. She hadn’t even broken a sweat, though our chain-mail laden patient was heavy as hell. In the back of my head, I saw my last night of work, the panicked mother from the ninth floor, her blue-faced son choking. I supposed Jules would crack eventually.

  Hell, I felt ready to crack, but the adrenaline from my EMT skills, of saving this precious life, was still racing through my veins, and it made my metacognition skills a little fuzzy. I tried to recap the details: It was now 1154 A.D., western France, and the chapel we had been in, the year 2016, was in the midst of a brutal War of the Roses-type battle. Or some shit. God, what I wouldn’t give to be back by my uncle’s graveside, where we should have gone a few hours ago, instead of off on this ancestry quest that my sister just had to explore. Even better yet, at home in the States where my third week of Fall term was just beginning. I had history, writing, French, and science classes to catch up on.

  So recap: my uncle died, we went to his funeral in France, my sister dragged me to a castle, my sister touched a mirror, and the chapel – or the whole world, maybe – was now transported to 1133. This was some science fiction bullshit I didn’t really have time for. Literally, no one would believe me. I could see my professor’s face now: Yeah, sorry about that homework, you see I was in 1154… And their response: Good to hear, Mr. Guillaume Lanval, here is your F! It’s all shiny and polished for you.

  Goddamn it.

  I looked over at my sister, grunting at the strain of carrying this soldier on a rough-hewn plank we had cut from a chapel pew. Wood splinters cut into my hands. Our soldier’s wound was still bleeding profusely from where I’d pulled out the arrow, my shirt tourniquet only a temporary fix. The other bearers seemed to know exactly where we were going as we ducked under the rounded arch of what used to be a great hall. Or rather, what would be a great hall in the future at some point. For now, it was barely a long, broad structure with six narrow windows and one large archway. The sounds of battle were faint, but clearly moving away from the castle.

  The people in the great hall reaffirmed my notion that we weren't in my mother’s France anymore. There were few women; of course, I noticed them first. That’s how my brain works, despite my paramedic training to assess situations, although that was a close second. The hall was filled with injured soldiers, some on primitive cloth mats, a few just propped against the wall. Probably about a hundred or so, just off the top of my head, and though I couldn’t gauge injuries right away, from the din of groans and screams many were fatal. When we entered, however, all eyes were on us.

  This was a goddamn battle scene.

  “Queen!” The leather-bound leader of our little troupe stepped away from our patient, as the rest of us found a spot to lay the wounded one he’d called ‘Prince.’ A tall, thin woman, laden with golden-etched finery, quickly approached.

  She took my breath away. The swell of her breasts teased just a little too much over the lace bodice, yet her wavy fiery red hair was tied back in a simple piece of thin rope, the front of it tucked under a tight headdress of some kind. I sucked in a breath. I always had a weakness for redheads.

  Her dark blue skirts draped the stone ground, stirring dust like a plume of sacred air announcing her arrival. The screams of agony and the flurry of attendants, all dressed in brown and dingy white garb, faded as this lady approached. Had he really called her queen? She deserved that title. She was drop-dead gorgeous.

  Jesus, I’d tap that.

  The lady looked at Leather Soldier and murmured to him in French, but the whole time she stole gazes over his shoulder at me. I’d be lying to say if I didn’t puff my chest out a little bit. I was completely shirtless, having donated my white funeral attire to save this prince’s life. I beamed at the beautiful queen. Instead of returning the smile, as all women did, she ignored me and instead ran a quick gaze over my sister. Jules stood in her knee-length flowered dress, a stark contrast to the flowing skirts of all the ladies in the room. Her close-cropped hair made her stand out even more, especially with a delicate orange flower pin that was tucked it behind her left ear. She had her hands on her hips, taking in everything as only a shell-shocked soldier could. The queen fro
wned slightly, and then snapped her regal attention back to the soldier in front of her.

  In my head, I had this weird version of her on my social media account: queen, 25-ish (I’ll never tell!) I’m into rebellions, long walks on the castle walls, and not into any guy who wants to sell me for an alliance with France. I love satin all the way to the floor, especially if they are your sheets. There’d be this picture of her looking prim and proper, but she’d be slightly winking. You know, just enough to say, “Technically, I’m a virgin, but I can rock your knighthood.” I touched my hand to my pocket, where my dead phone lay sleeping and being a general asshole. Shit, that wouldn’t help me now. Phone chargers were eight hundred years in the making.

  My sister didn’t waste any time on the queen’s looks. She went right to work. Without even a word, she ducked past the queen to a nearby soldier, murmuring to the peasant boy that attended him, and I could barely hear the word “water” from her lips. The peasant boy rushed off. My sister moved on to the next soldier. Thought her medical skills were rough compared to mine, she still knew the basics of emergency care. She moved about the room with grace and composure. This wasn’t my rough and tumble sister that liked a beer on Saturday nights and a good old-fashioned fistfight. This was my sister, civil servant.

  I was confused. What the hell? The queen didn’t even return my smile and maybe a bit of a wink. Weird. I stood there feeling like the awkward kid on the first day of school, shifting my weight from foot to foot and clearing my throat. A soldier just behind the queen began to scream, thrashing about in agony as a young boy tried in vain to hold him. I stepped forward to offer aid.

  The soldier in front of the queen immediately stuck out his arm, blocking me.

  “He’s clearly dying!” I protested immediately. “Let me help! I’m a…”

  The soldier nodded to the far corner of the room. My gaze shifted to the prince’s body on the stretch board in the far corner of the room, set on a slightly raised dais. Two maidens served him, but they did little for him save applying a cloth to his forehead.

  “Healer,” the queen said softly, fiercely eying me. It took me a minute to reason out that word. “Your name?”

  “Guillaume L…” I bit my tongue, hard. This was Castle Lanval. Something pricked the back of my mind that it wasn’t a good idea to use my surname, at least not now. However, since this was clearly my heritage, I chose another title. “Sir Guillaume,” I said in French.

  “I am Eleanor of Aquitaine,” she cooed. “It is odd for a knight to be a healer.”

  “I am a multi-talented man, your majesty.” I slipped on the ol’ Gill-patented-panty-dropper smile.

  She looked confused, but shook her head quickly to dismiss it. She looked over her shoulder, where my sister was on her knees two rows back, her head pressed to a bloody soldier’s chest. The queen openly stared, her face softening.

  “The maiden over there is my sister, Julia,” I offered, not sure if I got maiden or even sister correct.

  “Julia?” the queen repeated. She turned back to me, her hands at her side, balling into fists. She raised one arm and pointed to where the soldier had looked earlier. “You and Julia… save him?”

  I nodded. “I can try,” I said. I looked past her and saw a small fire dwindled in the massive hearth at the end of the hall. “I’ll need a dagger, sword, something iron, heated red hot in your fire,” I told her.

  She offered a curt nod, and quietly rambled something I didn’t quite catch to the lesser soldier on her right, who bowed slightly and immediately rushed off, drawing a dagger out of his belt. I offered my own curtsy and went to attend the prince.

  Picking my way across screaming and tortured soldiers, and a few of them I saw were already gone, I tried to keep myself grounded in the present. I had almost convinced myself this was a dream of some kind, where I’d wake up in the middle of the history test with the hideous sound of my professor screeching his chalk across the blackboard. Was this even real? A glance at my sister, her orange dress splattered with blood and her cheeks and forehead streaked with red, told me I wasn’t in Wonderland or even Narnia. Narnia would have been much, much cooler. Forget the stoned caterpillar and cracked out rabbit and give me a talking lion or rat any day.

  I had almost reached the prince when one of the young boys I’d seen with my sister earlier caught up to me, a piece of white cloth in his hand. I could see it was a shirt, a baggy, and rough one, but I slipped it over my head anyway.

  “What’s your name, boy?” I asked as I saw the soldiers the queen had summoned coming towards me, red hot dagger in his hand.

  “Piers,” he said. He looked no more than a scrawny fourteen- or fifteen-year-old, and he was dressed worse than any soldier in the room. A burlap sack over his head buckled around his waist, over pants that were tattered and torn. His shoes — barely pieces of rags — were tied to his feet with leather cords. He was a pole of a lad with slender arms and legs, but flashed a brilliant smile that almost put me at ease.

  A commercial played in my head, an old white guy with a bushy beard asking for money to support these poor European peasants with just ten cents a day. I almost laughed. I pursed my lips and nodded at him, afraid if I spoke I’d lose my mind. The old guy was repeating in my head, ten cents a day will feed him…

  I may be a trouble maker, but my father was good for one thing – there was a time to get goofball Gill, and there was serious Gill -who saved old ladies in the middle of a heart attack and repaired gunshot and stab wounds. I mustered the latter as hard as I could. “Piers,” I said, “I’ll need a strong lad’s help. Will you assist me?”

  His gray eyes went wide, and he nodded firmly, though for a minute I thought he’d turn and run. Looking behind me at the motionless prince, however, I knew he realized his duty. He nodded curtly and followed me.

  Dear God, the blood was everywhere. My shirt was thoroughly ruined as I pulled it away from the arrow wound. The damage was worse than I thought from the arrow, and from the amount of blood I knew his spleen was likely ruptured. It was a death sentence.

  The prince’s pallor was pale, and he was entirely unconscious. His pulse was weak, almost nonexistent. Without a blood transfusion, let alone modern medicine, I already knew his chances were bleak. But that queen was sexy as hell, and I wanted to please her. Strangely, more than I had wanted to please anyone else in my life. Not even Becky.

  I dove right in. No time like the present. I shouted at a maiden to get cloths. I told Piers to hold his legs, though I wasn’t sure that even the pain of the cauterizing would rouse the prince. I cleared the blood away as much as I could and nodded at the soldiers to hand over the dagger. Turning it sideways in my hand, I pressed the smoldering blade to the arrow gash as hard as I could. The acrid smell of burning flesh filled the air around us.

  The prince moaned, but didn’t stir.

  After a few minutes, I set the blade aside, where the soldier scooped it up. Piers was still at the prince’s ankles. He looked at me. “Sir, will he live?”

  I almost said: If the blood loss doesn’t kill him, an infection certainly will, but bit my tongue. They would know nothing of anatomy, even less of medicine. My extensive history studies in high school— and that brief foray into college—taught me that twelfth-century medicine was magic and hope and little reason. I stopped to check his pulse. Still weak. I don’t know how long the arrow had been lodged there, nor how much blood he had lost, but I feared I was too late.

  And although I was usually honest with my patients and their companions, this time I lied. It was a foreign time and place — and they killed people for allowing princes to die. “Yes, he will live,” I told the boy. I almost turned to spit. The lie tasted bad in my mouth, like the one time I’d tried a cigarette in middle school and felt like it was killing me.

  I felt a hand on my shoulder, and my sister stood next to me. “You’ve done the best you could,” she said softly.

  “How many did you lose?” I said, wiping my h
ands on my pants and rocking back on my heels.

  “Too many,” she said, “many of them won’t make it through the night.”

  I glanced around, as the various women and young boys were carrying carefully covered candles. There were lanterns set into the walls, but no one was lighting them. The sounds of the battle had subsided entirely, but I supposed no one wanted them to come rushing back. I stood and ran the back of my hand over my forehead, smearing a bit of blood and wincing. What I wouldn’t give for —

  “A pair of rubber gloves about now,” my sister voiced my thoughts exactly.

  “Antibiotics,” I murmured. Piers appeared, shoving a dented pewter mug at me. I took a drink and nearly gagged. I think the contents were water, at some point, but this was murky and tinny; tasting like copper pennies. I swore under my breath and handed it to Jules, who made the same face. She tucked the mug between her hands.

  “And maybe a Brita water filter,” she leaned in and whispered to me. Two soldiers came then, lifting the prince slowly and hoisting him away. They ducked under the arch off to the right of the room from the entrance.

  “What are we doing, Jules?” I said.

  “Helping them, I suppose.” She shrugged.

  “No, stupid. I mean about getting back to the present. We don’t belong here, and you know it.”

  “The mirror…” she trailed off as one of the young girls who had held the prince approached, her arms laden with cloth.

  “Mistress,” the girl curtsied. “The queen has provided you with a new shift and dress since yours is… oh! Forgive me, Mistress.”

  Jules stared at her, then frowned at me. When I didn’t respond, she hit the mug against my upper arm.

  “Ow!”

  “Translate, dummy!”

  I translated. Jules beamed. Deny it she might, but she had a weakness for clothes. She took the pile from the girl. “Thank you,” Jules smiled. The girl beamed one back and scurried away. “I’ll just, uh,” Jules looked at me, then to the raised platform we were standing on. Behind us, shrouded in darkness, was a plain stone throne surrounded by thick curtains. Jules slipped behind the throne.