Champions of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  Before David could respond, she walked away from him, heading for the front doors. The one-way glass was the only reason the press corps hadn’t spotted David already. By now, the administrator had succeeded in his job enough to convince the press corps to move farther from the hospital, across the median. Mali went with Amelia to the first set of doors, and remained between the outer and inner doors, keeping both sets open by standing at parade rest in the middle of the rug over the sensor pad.

  One of the press corps recognized Amelia too, because as soon as she appeared, she shouted, “What does Chad Treadman have to do with King David?”

  The wording set David back a pace. The journalist had said, King David, in a tone that was straightforward and not mocking.

  “Why is King David here?”

  “Is King David really from an alternate universe?”

  “Excuse me.” Amelia put a hand on the administrator’s arm, and he willingly gave way, stepping back two paces. Amelia must have had a portable microphone because her words were clear all the way to where David stood in the hospital lobby.

  Without Amelia having to do anything but stand before them, at long last, the press corps quieted.

  Amelia chose to answer the last question first. “Yes, King David has arrived from an alternate universe, the same one to which the plane went two weeks ago. You all have seen the images. If you’re anything like me, you’ve watched them dozens of times.” She laughed, gently mocking herself, and the press corps responded with smiles and laughter of their own.

  Michael whispered low in David’s ear. “She’s good. This is going better than it would have done if you’d been out there.”

  He knew it was true. “Yeah, you’re right.”

  The words could have come out sour, but while he didn’t like knowing that his instincts had been wrong, he was grateful to have been stopped before he did serious damage to himself. David might not like what was happening, but he wasn’t in a cell at MI-5 either, so he could go along until such a time as it made sense not to.

  Amelia paused and put her hand to her ear, the universal stance of someone who was listening through an earpiece. The press corps knew it, because they remained respectfully quiet, and then Amelia said, “King David has arranged for an interview with Owain Williams. It will be broadcast at eight pm Sunday night, live on BBC One.”

  David’s heart beat a little faster. That was in two days’ time. “He pulled that off quickly.”

  “He’s Chad Treadman,” Reg said. And really, what more needed to be said?

  What David thought, but decided not to say, was that he wouldn’t have been surprised if Chad Treadman had arranged for some kind of interview in advance of David’s arrival, ready to be pulled out at a moment’s notice. He was pretty sure that his appearance, only two weeks after Anna had left, had only sped up whatever timeline Chad had been crafting. Chad could have already had a plan in place to reveal him to the world in person. David could be mad about being manipulated, but he could also admire competence.

  Amelia was continuing to speak, “Until then, please respect the privacy of the patients here, as well as of King David. The hospital has asked that you keep to the public spaces beyond the grounds.”

  “What can you tell us about his current condition?” The shout came from the back of the press corps. “Was he himself wounded?”

  “No, he was not.”

  “Who is the other man?”

  “All will be discussed Sunday night.” Amelia nodded. “Thank you for your cooperation.” She turned smartly on one heel and marched back to the double doors.

  Mali stepped inside with her so the main exterior door closed, followed by the second set of doors into the lobby.

  When Amelia reached David, she gave him a hard look. “We are committed. You are committed. We have a lot to talk about, your majesty.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  1 April 1294

  Sophie

  “Is this as utterly mad as I think it is?” Sophie said in an undertone to George.

  “Does it feel like it to you?”

  “Honestly, no more than the fact that we’re here at all. As in—I’m in the Middle Ages. Could anything be more insane?”

  “Scaling the outside of a mountain to sneak into a castle that up until now has never been assaulted, much less taken, free the captives, and live to tell the tale. What could be crazy about that?” George laughed lightly.

  Ieuan appeared beside Sophie, dressed in the gear she’d chosen for him. In defiance of her expectations about medieval people, Ieuan was absurdly handsome and would in no way have looked out of place in a modern setting. She’d expected rotted teeth and pockmarked faces, and while ill people certainly existed, most of the people who surrounded her were the epitome of health. Dr. Abraham had explained his working theory that the immune systems of people who survived to adulthood in the Middle Ages were stronger than the average modern person, whose survival depended on modern medicine. He was studying their blood in hopes of showing it scientifically. Sophie had assured him that, if he ever chose to return to the modern world, Chad would have a place for him too.

  He’d laughed, however, and said, “I’ve caught the bug. My home is here.”

  It irked Sophie a little bit that only one modern person didn’t really want to stay: Mark. Chad had talked about how Avalon could learn from Earth Two, but so far she’d learned mostly that she could function without washing her hair every day. And then she laughed under her breath, because that was entirely the point. And she had to admit that David had taken care of the people who’d wanted to return to the modern world by driving them home to Britain in a Cardiff bus. Which he hadn’t had to do.

  “Second thoughts?” Ieuan said.

  “Second, third, and fourth, I’m afraid,” she said, “but as this was my idea, I’m hardly going to back out now.”

  “Cold feet is one thing,” Ieuan said. “I need to know if you think we can do this.”

  “Yes, we can.” George’s words were firm.

  But Ieuan’s eyes were on Sophie.

  “Yes,” she said. “This can work. George and I have scouted the ground. We know where to go in and where everyone is being kept—or were being kept two weeks ago. If this could be done in 1643, we can do it now.”

  “No mission plan survives the first ten minutes, though,” George warned. “Things could go to hell in a heartbeat.”

  “I know. We have a plan for that event too,” Ieuan said. “Callum and I deem it worth it to try.”

  “Not all your commanders agree with letting us do this,” George said, referring most likely to Humphrey de Bohun and his ilk.

  “Not all our commanders have the goal to get out of this war with minimal loss of life.” Ieuan glanced at him. “Shall I count you among them?”

  George swallowed. “No, sir.”

  “Do you think Avalon’s record in caring for human life is better?” Ieuan asked.

  George wet his lips, clearly somewhat discomfited by Ieuan’s continuing directness. “Avalon’s understanding of this world is ... incomplete.” He’d chosen the last word carefully.

  “I have been married to a twenty-firster for nine years,” Ieuan said. “I know of your wars and rebellions. Didn’t your Second World War result in seventy million dead?”

  George was looking stricken.

  Ieuan continued without waiting for George to answer, since the question had been rhetorical anyway, “We who know him are well aware that Dafydd is the best of you and, by coming here, has brought out the best in us. But we are at war, and there comes a time when every commander has to choose among evils and endeavor to pick the least. That’s what we’re doing here.”

  “Yes, sir.” George nodded. “I apologize if I implied any criticism. I’m used to speaking my mind.”

  “A habit to which I do not object.” Ieuan looked from Sophie to George. “Don’t make the mistake of confusing knowledge for intelligence, and I will attempt to do the sam
e. We all have much to learn from each other.”

  Sophie nodded, understanding that it was easy, among the three of them, to feel superior to medieval people. Technology alone put them at an insurmountable advantage—or so it appeared at first. It had been David, in fact, at the very start, who’d confronted them openly about their intentions. With enough planning and the weaponry they’d brought in the plane, it might be possible for the three of them to take over Britain for themselves—or at least carve out a large piece of it. They’d assured him they meant to use their knowledge and gear for good. Tonight, successfully navigating this slope could save the lives of dozens of people on both sides, depending upon what they found on the other side of those walls.

  “Gear check.” Andre approached. He had to have overheard that conversation, but he was acting as if he hadn’t, adjusting first the straps on Sophie’s chest and then George’s and Ieuan’s.

  Sophie and George would go up the mountain first with Ieuan and Andre following. While Andre had declared himself too old for climbing mountains, he was coming anyway because it was he who would situate himself on the top of the wall with his high-powered rifle in order to pick off anyone who attempted to stop them. Constance, one of the four other participants in this crazy endeavor, would do the same with her bow. She, however, wasn’t wearing climbing gear. The only scaling of Beeston she would be doing was by rope ladder.

  “Ready?” Sophie went to stand in the entryway beside Andre, who was studying the sky. The lantern light reflected off the gray at his temples. They were leaving now, hours before their intended climb, in order to get themselves situated. If they were detected by those watching from Beeston’s battlement, despite the darkness, those few hours of waiting could lull the watchers into complacency.

  Andre looked down at her. “You’re going to need to trust your instincts. You’ve never been in a firefight before, and your job is not to fight. Don’t get pulled into thinking it is. You’re leading us up and down that mountain. Leave the shooting to those of us who’ve trained for it.”

  Sophie wasn’t one to take offense when someone spoke the truth. Andre wasn’t being patronizing or asking her to stay safe because she was a woman. He was right that she’d never been in battle. Though she knew how to shoot, she’d never aimed her gun at anything but a target. George hadn’t fought in a war either, but he’d been a cop, and he’d hunted deer in upstate Minnesota, where he was from.

  Before coming to Earth Two, Sophie herself had been borderline vegan. That had gone out the window pretty quickly after they arrived, and Andre had encouraged her to see that most of her objections to eating animal products had been due to the presence of hormones and chemicals and the lack of ethical husbandry in modern food production. None of which was a problem here. To turn up her nose at what was offered, especially when it was meat, would also be perceived as not only foolish, but an insult. Food here wasn’t equivalent to a religion or about control. Dieting wasn’t a thing. Food was fuel for life.

  “I’ll be your spotter, like we agreed,” she said.

  He grinned. “These eyes are too old for this. This body too.”

  “So you’ve said.” She snickered. Andre commented often in a disparaging way about his age, but he was fitter than she was.

  Ieuan stopped beside her. “Just say the word.”

  “I’m ready.”

  Ieuan nodded and made a forward motion with his hand. They set off in single file, Ieuan in the lead with Sophie following next.

  The pavilion was hardly more than a half-mile from Beeston’s west slope, so they were going to walk it. And it wasn’t just the eight of them. They were saving their strength for the ordeal ahead, so other men were coming too, carrying gear, weapons, food, and water. A significant difference between now and four hundred years from now—or seven hundred for that matter—was the absence of a thick woods that surrounded the castle on all sides. No medieval castellan would allow vegetation to grow on the slopes surrounding his castle because it could hide attackers. In 1643 when Beeston had been conquered, the castle had been in disrepair and only fortified again because of the English Civil War. That was the age of cannon, and the vegetation on the slopes had been thought to make no difference.

  On one hand, if it had been allowed to exist today, the undergrowth would have been hard to get through. On the other, it would have hidden them during their journey to the top. As it was, they were relying on a cloud cover and a waxing moon that was less than twenty percent full.

  Small stands of trees had been left in the fields that surrounded the castle. They’d found one a hundred yards from the point where they would start their ascent, and their companions would wait there.

  Sophie found herself breathing shallowly—too shallowly—and she forced even breaths in and out of her lungs. She emptied her mind of everything but where she was putting her feet along the path they were following. She, George, and Ieuan had come this way earlier in the day when they’d scouted the mountain, and she’d had her first view of what Beeston looked like in Earth Two.

  Truthfully, with the gear they had, this climb should be easy enough, if they hadn’t been in the midst of a war and she wasn’t leading men who’d never climbed in their lives. She’d been climbing since she was eight years old, and she repeated to herself Ieuan’s warning about not mistaking knowledge for intelligence. Ieuan was right that she had plenty to learn in Earth Two. It might even be that they were walking tonight because neither she, George, nor Andre knew how to ride a horse, and Ieuan didn’t want to risk something untoward happening at a crucial moment as a result of their ignorance.

  Twenty minutes later, they set up camp amongst the trees. Sophie took a sip of water through the straw on her hydration pack. The cool water and the familiarity of the action helped to settle her. Andre’s hand came down on her shoulder. “Better get some rest. It will be a few hours before the fireworks start and we can move.”

  Sophie nodded and settled her back against a tree. Around midnight, Humphrey de Bohun and Edmund Mortimer were going to begin their assault on the front gate, located on the east side of the castle. They were going to knock on the door, loudly and with fervor, while Sophie led her team in the back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  1 April 2022

  David

  “For starters, Amelia, please don’t call me your majesty.”

  “I apologize. Is your royal highness better? You’re a king.”

  “I’m not a king here, and it isn’t what we say in the Middle Ages anyway.”

  Amelia was shaking her head before he was halfway through saying his very short sentence. “You need to stop thinking that way right now. You are not the king of this England, but you are the king of an England. It’s like you’re a—” she paused to look out the window, checking, he was sure, for stragglers from the dispersed press corps, “—visiting dignitary, come to England as part of an embassage. As such, you need to be treated with respect, as we would the King of Saudi Arabia, for example. Thus your majesty or your royal highness is what you should be called, and what I am calling you.”

  They were sitting in a lounge across the hall from William’s room. He was asleep again, having devoured a mostly liquid meal. He was doing far better than David might have expected for someone with a hole punched through him, but David also remembered watching television shows where people with bullet holes in the shoulder were sent home the same day. He supposed it depended upon where the hole was, and a crossbow bolt had the benefit of not exploding on impact. It made the same-sized hole going out as coming in, and the damage was restricted to the area of the hole.

  David had asked the doctor if everything was going okay and been assured that it was. But even the doctor had appeared a little wide-eyed about David’s existence and had spoken with deference and a demeanor that made David wonder if he was telling him what he wanted to hear rather than the truth.

  He said as much to Amelia, who replied. “You’re the King of England.”
It had become her mantra.

  “We’re in Wales, though, in Gwynedd, even.”

  “So you’re a prince of Wales, one who really is Welsh, for all that you’re also American. England has an American princess now. Surely Wales can have an American prince.”

  Chad’s army of employees had been streaming in and out of the hospital all day, adding weight to the idea that David might really be who he said he was. By now, everybody on the planet had seen the new video of his and William’s arrival, and though David had overheard a general agreement that it could have been faked, the existence of the video plus the reality of David standing at a nurse’s station in their hospital was hard to deny.

  Chad’s infusion of staff hadn’t all been, like Amelia, about the press corps. The promised young woman, a dark-haired, blue-eyed third year university student, had arrived to sit with William. If he leaned forward, David could see her now. She had a laptop open on her lap and was typing away at a paper on Alfred the Great. Though she spoke no Welsh at all, her medieval French and English were pretty good.

  For the others, David had the distinct impression that Chad was afraid he was going to disappear again—for good reason—and he wanted to gather as much information as he could while he had David in his clutches. Suffice to say, both David’s and William’s blood had been drawn, and scientists in labs all over the UK were rejoicing—and hard at work—tonight.

  David eased back into his chair. Amelia was making a certain kind of sense, but if the pomp of being king in Earth Two had always made him uncomfortable, here in Avalon, it struck him as completely archaic. He was an American, from a country in which every person was the king of his own castle, and even the poorest person could view himself, as John Steinbeck once said, as a temporarily down-on-his-luck millionaire—though why the first semester of his high school American lit class was coming back to him after twelve years, David didn’t know.