The Time Roads

by Beth Bernobich

  “Possibly. Certain members of our Congress believe the device will have practical applications, and my scholars agree Doctor Ó Cuilinn’s theory about time fractures is … plausible.”

  His gaze turned inward a moment, as though he surveyed a scene far different from this elegant breakfast room, the warm yellow gaslight glinting off the silver tea urns. Was he pondering the implications of time fractures? (The idea alone made me queasy.) Or was he perhaps remembering my mother?

  Then he gave himself a shake. “Enough speculation. We both have a busy schedule this morning. Let us finish our breakfast and set to work.”

  It was Tuesday, a day set aside for private interviews with delegations from other nations. Today, my father would meet with the Prussian ambassador, a stiff-necked, belligerent man, who matched his king’s personality well. It would not be a pleasant hour. The Prussian Alliance was seeking to expand their territory, and while their activities did not affect Éire directly, they did affect our closest ally, Frankonia.

  Mine was the less taxing morning. An informal meeting with the newly appointed representative from the Papal States. Another with a group of Egyptian scholars, who wished to organize an exchange between their universities and ours. A much longer session with an ambassador from the Turkish States, listening demurely as the man droned on, and his interpreter murmured in my ear.

  The noon bells chimed. The Turkish ambassador and I rose and went through all the formalities of leave-taking. It had been an especially tedious hour, and later events should have erased this insignificant moment from my memory, but a scattering of images and impressions remained. The man’s watery green eyes, almost ghostly in his brown face. The soothing lilt of his voice, which was echoed by the woman who translated his words. How faint lines and the mottling of his skin belied his otherwise youthful appearance. The scent of coriander and rose that hung about his person.

  One of the senior runners escorted the ambassador and his interpreter from the room. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply. I had a moment of respite before my next engagement, an intimate luncheon with my father and a coterie of influential representatives from Éire’s Congress.

  Then, a door swung open.

  I heard it first, a deep, grating noise that penetrated to my bones.

  Even when I opened my eyes, I could not quite take in what I saw.

  It was not the unobtrusive side door, used by servants and runners. Nor the ordinary ones used by visitors, such as the Turkish ambassador. No, these were the doors used only for the most formal state affairs. Each panel measured six feet by sixteen, and was carved from a single tree imported from the western continent. I had only seen the portals opened once during my lifetime, and that was when my mother had died.

  An old man in livery marched into the room and stepped to one side.

  Next came a silver-haired lord with the ribbon and chain of office draped over his raven-black coat. It was Lord Mac Gioll, the oldest of my father’s councilors. He had served as an officer, then as my grandfather’s personal adviser, when my father was but a young man. Old, so very old, his thin white hair like a veil over his skull. He walked with a stiff limp, but he held his chin high, and I saw there were tears in his pale gray eyes.

  He stopped six paces away. “Your Majesty.”

  “What are you saying?” I whispered.

  Lord Mac Gioll knelt before me and bent his head. “My Queen. I have the great misfortune to report that your father…”

  I heard nothing past that, only a roaring in my ears, but I knew what he was saying. My father was dead. Impossible, cried a voice within. He was well not three hours ago. He—

  “… the first to pledge my honor, my loyalty, my blood, and my self to your throne…”

  As Lord Mac Gioll recited the vows of lord to queen, a part of me recalled that he had recited those same vows to my father, twenty-five years before, when he had lost his father to an attack by Anglian revolutionaries. It was important that I face the news with as much strength and composure as my father had. And so, when Lord Mac Gioll finished his speech, I held out my hands to receive his kiss upon my rings. With great difficulty (I knew better than to make any move to assist him), Lord Mac Gioll rose and gave way to the next man just entering the room.

  * * *

  Later, much later, I sat alone in my private chambers and laid my head upon my hands. Firelight jumped and flickered against the walls. No gas lamps burned here. Only a single candle guttered on the table. Its orange-scented perfume overlaid the wood smoke and pervasive sourness of my own fear.

  I was Áine Lasairíona Devereaux, the seventeenth of my house to take the throne, the thirty-first ruler of Éire.

  I do not want this, I thought.

  * * *

  I did not want it, but I could not turn away from my duties.

  And so I let tradition carry me through the next six weeks. When I looked back upon them, I remembered nothing in particular, just a weight against my heart, a curious and lasting numbness. The funeral itself proceeded without any misstep. A hundred ambassadors passed before my father’s coffin; thousands more—from Éire, from Alba, from a dozen or more nations of Europe and beyond—paused to bow and whisper a prayer, before making way for the press of mourners behind them.

  And I, I stood dry eyed upon the podium, flanked by guards.

  I have no tears, I thought. No grief. Or had grief been burnt entirely away?

  There was no one who could answer that question. Or at least, no one I trusted.

  Afterward, I met with my father’s ministers and other members of Éire’s Congress. I held innumerable interviews with representatives from the Continent and farther abroad, those who came to express their condolences, and to reassure themselves that an alliance with Éire would continue to be to their advantage.

  I also met with the royal physicians and ordered an autopsy on my father’s body. They soon reported he had died of a seizure of the heart. There were no signs of poisoning, nor that the seizure had been induced by artificial means. I thanked them for their thoroughness, wondering all the while when my grief would break free.

  Ten days later came the coronation—a hurried affair, but my ministers agreed I should take control of the throne as soon as possible. Once crowned, others would find it more difficult to dislodge me. And there were those who would attempt it. I knew that from my own history.

  The day began with a stuttering of snow—a typical late-January morning. The skies were flecked with clouds, and the sun, when it finally consented to rise, cast an uncertain light over Cill Cannig and the nearby city of Osraighe. Cold nipped at my skin as I darted from the palace into the waiting carriage.

  The kings and queens of Éire had lived in Cill Cannig and the Royal Enclosure for six centuries. Tradition, however, proclaimed they would receive their crowns in the ancient cathedral of Osraighe. And so I rode alone in the royal carriage, shivering in my finery, in a slow, creeping procession from the palace, through intervening fields, and into the city. The clocks were just chiming ten as I arrived at the cathedral. There Lord Ó Cadhla took hold of the lead horse’s reins, while Lord Mac Gioll flung open the carriage doors to greet me with a long ceremonious speech. A cold dank wind blew against my face. I paused upon the step to listen, as the ritual required.

  It was there the assassin took his chance.

  A shot rang out. Fire exploded inside my shoulder, as though a white-hot spear had pierced me. I gasped and fell backward, reaching for that spear and thinking confusedly that if I could pluck the damned thing out, the agony would stop.

  After that, I had difficulty remembering. Pain and more pain. The strong stink of blood. Lord Mac Gioll’s creaking shout, then Lord Ó Cadhla’s stronger voice calling for the Queen’s Guard. And me, retching all over my grand expensive gown, and weeping at last, weeping so hard and furiously that I retched more and finally collapsed onto the ground.

  * * *

  The wound proved painful, but not dangerous. Once
the physicians removed the ball and bandaged my shoulder, they allowed themselves to be herded away by Lords Mac Gioll and Ó Cadhla.

  “Your Majesty,” said Lord Mac Gioll.

  I turned my head away.

  “Áine,” said Lord Ó Cadhla.

  That nearly caused me to look around. I stopped myself, but not before I glimpsed a smile on Lord Ó Cadhla’s grim face.

  “You are not dead,” he said quietly. “Nor so badly wounded we can put off this interview.”

  He was right, of course. I sighed and waved a hand to show my assent.

  That, apparently, was not good enough.

  “Stop grieving for yourself,” Lord Ó Cadhla said crisply. “You have lost your father. Well, and so have I. Lord Mac Gioll here lost a brother and two sons in the last Anglian Uprising. I understand. But you must postpone your mourning for a more propitious time.”

  “When I am nearly dead myself,” I muttered.

  “That would be more convenient.”

  His words brought a puff of laughter to my lips. “Speak,” I told him. “You will anyway.”

  “So I will,” Ó Cadhla said. “First, you must have a more competent bodyguard. Lord Ultach and his staff have vetted all the members of the Queen’s Constabulary deemed fit to protect you. And they are fit. But they are not quite so … thorough as the man I would propose.”

  “A bodyguard,” I repeated. “Who…”

  “Commander Aidrean Ó Deághaidh,” Ó Cadhla said. “He served as a covert agent in Austria and that region for six years. More recently, at my recommendation, he enlisted in your father’s Constabulary to acquire experience at home. I have always found him reliable.”

  “You mean he is one of yours.”

  He nodded. “One of mine.”

  Someone outside Court, but inside our circle of trust.

  Though I disliked the necessity, I understood Lord Ó Cadhla’s reasoning.

  “Very well,” I said. “Have him come tomorrow for an interview. Surely the Constabulary can protect me until then?”

  They left me with a thick packet of reports, which I set aside for later. My shoulder ached, and I had little appetite for reading reams of bureaucratic paragraphs. It was easier to lie motionless, hoping that the drugs the physicians gave me would send me to sleep.

  I spent a restless, fruitless hour in search of that sleep. Finally I abandoned the attempt and stared upward at the patterned ceiling, awash in moonlight. I briefly considered summoning the physicians for another sleeping draught, then abandoned the thought. It was not sleep I needed, but a sense of purpose.

  He knew it, I thought, as I maneuvered myself painfully onto my good shoulder. He knew I would get bored.

  Whatever their faults in predicting the assassination attempt, my Constabulary had worked quickly to discover those at fault. The attempt had been led by members of two key political groups with ties to certain influential members of Congress. With a sense of dread and irritation, I read the name of a cousin who had allowed himself to become the nominal leader of this movement.

  You, I thought, have made a grave mistake.

  More reports listed the names of lesser conspirators and the probable extent of their schemes. My difficulties would not end with one attack. Many in Éire’s government believed me too young to rule. Some wanted a regency. Some worked to shift power from the queen to Congress.

  And there were the Anglians. Always the Anglians.

  We shall never rid ourselves of the danger, my father once said, until we cut their chains and help them build a new nation of their own. Several new nations. They are not a monolith, after all. He had meant to accomplish that in his own reign.…

  The tears burned in my eyes. I swiped them away and read past the further details of plots and political maneuvers, to the details about this man, Ó Deághaidh.

  Commander Aidrean Conaill Ó Deághaidh. He had taken an undergraduate degree in mathematics from Awveline University, then begun his graduate studies in Austria. Those same studies were broken off within the year, for reasons unknown. Fluent in German, French, Russian, and Czech, with smatterings of others. He had spent two years wandering through Europe and the Near East, during which time he’d come to the notice of Lord Ó Cadhla’s people, who recruited him for his ability with languages and his understanding of political matters. I saw nothing to suggest he would make a good bodyguard, but I knew Lord Ó Cadhla. My father had trusted him. I began to think I might as well.

  * * *

  “Commander Ó Deághaidh.”

  “Your Majesty.”

  It was three days after my near assassination. I chose for this meeting the smallest of my parlors, an intimate room with knotted silk rugs and cloth chairs gathering around the fireplace.

  Commander Ó Deághaidh, however, remained as formal as if we were met in Cill Cannig’s grandest audience chamber. He stood at attention, his hands clasped behind his back: a tall man, as lean as a shadow and nearly as dark. Warm brown eyes. Dark hair cut short and swept back in the newest fashion. The reports said he was thirty-four. He appeared younger, except for the faint lines around his eyes.

  “Why did you quit your studies?” I asked.

  “Let us say I allowed myself to be distracted by the larger world.”

  A reply that had a practiced quality, as if he had often had to answer this same question.

  “Is that the truth?” I said.

  His eyes narrowed with humor. “As I know it, yes, Your Majesty. However, I find in certain cases the truth depends upon perspective.”

  I laughed. Aidrean Ó Deághaidh’s mouth quirked into a smile—a brief flicker of shared amusement. It changed his expression entirely. That intrigued me.

  “So tell me,” I went on, “how you would protect me better than my own guards.”

  At my insistence, he took the chair opposite me. We leaned toward the fire, heads close together, as he described his own impressions of the political situation. A part of me absorbed everything he said, to be reviewed later when I was alone. Another part took in details of the man himself. How his mouth was fuller than I would have expected for someone with such an angular face. How his voice had started off so cool and official, only to drop to a warmer lilting tone. He wore a pleasing scent, too—another surprise. From Lord Ó Cadhla’s initial description, I had expected Ó Deághaidh to be more the automaton. Instead I found myself intently aware of him as a handsome man, clever and so very competent.

  “So you believe the conspiracy to be widespread.”

  He paused. “I believe the number of opportunists is greater than expected.”

  “There is a difference?”

  He spread his hands, palms outward. “Given Éire’s history, I would say no, not ordinarily. But with your father’s sudden death, your inexperience, and the uneasiness on the Continent, there are many more these days who will be tempted to grasp power for themselves, while in other times they would refrain. Your father and grandfather often chose to mete out lesser sentences for those who strayed into treason, especially those duped by others. However, my recommendation to you is that we make no difference between the opportunists and the true conspirators. Call it a message to those who watch your reign.”

  I nodded and felt a flutter of hope in my chest. “Do you want the position?”

  He tilted his head, observed me for a moment—a long assessing look, as though he were measuring me, not as his queen, but as another human being. “Surely the question is yours to decide,” he said at last. “But since you ask, I say, yes, Your Majesty. Yes, I do.”

  * * *

  And so we talked and planned and argued about the coronation and how to keep me alive and whole, while giving the people a spectacle they could remember all their lives. For, as Lords Ó Cadhla and Mac Gioll and others in the Queen’s Council reminded me, this ceremony was meant to imbue me with the authority of history and tradition. Aidrean Ó Deághaidh himself simply shook his head, and took their recommendations into account
. He had neatly insinuated himself into the ongoing investigation of the conspiracy. When he found the time, I had no idea. His absences from my side were few.

  As for myself, I kept to my private chambers, visited only by my closest advisers and my physicians. The official reports said I needed time to recuperate. I suppose I did. I hated it, nevertheless. Kings and queens do not hide, I thought. They act. Just like my father did. And our ancestors before him.

  The physician’s last visit had left me aching and breathless. In between, there were other indignities. Nurses to wash the wounds and apply fresh ointment. Formal inquiries from the Congress about my recovery. Uncharacteristically, Aidrean Ó Deághaidh had vanished a few hours before. He returned just as the Court astrologers departed.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded.

  He smiled, as though to a fractious child. That only worsened my temper. The astrologers had made long and noisy protests over the new date for my coronation. They had calculated to a fine degree the position and phase of the moon—never mind those of the stars—and wanted another month to assure me of a propitious day. Now I pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.

  “You are tired, Your Majesty.”

  “I know that,” I snapped.

  Ó Deághaidh shifted his glance toward the fire. I saw his fleeting grimace.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I … I am impatient. I dislike being caged.” And before he could reply, I hastened to add, “That is hardly an excuse, I know. Merely an explanation.”

  He acknowledged the apology and the explanation with a wordless gesture. There were bruises underneath those brown eyes, and a web of lines radiating outward. He must have spent half his nights in ceaseless work on my behalf. I felt a stab of shame.

  “I’m sorry, Aidrean.”

  A flinch, nothing more, at his given name.

  I had forgotten—just for the moment—that we were queen and servant, not two friends. There was no possibility of apologizing. That would only exacerbate my offense.

  But truly, I did not mean to offend. I meant only …