Timestruck

by Speer, Flora

  “Dominick ordered it brought from the attic storeroom,” Hedwiga explained. “Since you haven’t brought a clothing chest of your own with you, you will use this one. Now, let’s see what’s in here. I haven’t looked inside since Lady Hiltrude left us, but I put a lot of lavender and sweet woodruff in the folds of every garment when I packed them to discourage any moths.”

  “Who is Lady Hiltrude?” Gina asked.

  “She was married to Dominick, though not for long. The silly girl divorced him and went to live at the convent at Chelles. Said she’d rather be a nun than wife to a man like him. Can you imagine such a thing?”

  “The convent at Chelles?” Gina repeated, to be certain she hadn’t misunderstood. She said no more, though she was absolutely dying to ask what the departed Hiltrude had meant by a man like him. As Dominick’s wife, Hiltrude would have known all his dirty little secrets. Every man had them, as Gina knew too well. Apparently Dominick was no better than any other man, despite his gentlemanly veneer. Having discovered what he was really like, his wife had left him. Gina experienced a stab of disappointment at that realization.

  “Well, of course, Chelles is a nice place, or the king’s own sister, the Lady Gisela, wouldn’t live there, would she?” Hedwiga said. She pulled a green woolen gown from the chest and shook it out, smoothing away a few wrinkles and checking the fabric. “Not a sign of moths. I always say if you store clothing properly, it will last for years, and then you can use it again for someone else. Let me see, now, there must be a shift or two in here, and some stockings, too. While I’m looking, you take off what you’re wearing,” Hedwiga ordered. She spared a disapproving glance for Gina’s black outfit before she leaned over the open chest again and began to pull out more items of clothing.

  When she realized that the kind of underclothes she wore were nonexistent in the year 792, Gina decided to keep on her bra and briefs. She did, however, remove her boots and heavy winter tights and put on a pair of soft leather shoes that tied with leather thongs. She found them a lot more comfortable than her high-heeled boots.

  She agreed to wear the short-sleeved linen shift Hedwiga handed to her, thinking the green woolen gown would be scratchy against her bare skin. The linen flowed softly over her body, and Gina’s oddly acute senses welcomed the touch with unfamiliar, sensual pleasure. When she put the dress on over the shift, the wool proved to be so finely woven that it didn’t scratch at all.

  The dress was too big through the torso but, according to Hedwiga, too short by several inches. Gina thought ankle length too long and said so.

  “You cannot wear the skimpy garments you had on,” Hedwiga told her sternly. “Not even the shameless women who ply their trade in the worst part of Regensburg would consent to be seen in such clothing. Lady Gina, you must be properly dressed.”

  There really wasn’t any answer Gina could make to that. Hedwiga knew better than she what was proper attire for the late eighth century. She let Hedwiga fasten an embroidered fabric belt around her waist, which made the dress fit a little better.

  “It’s too bad about your hair,” Hedwiga said, trying unsuccessfully to fluff Gina’s rudimentary curls, “though, of course, it can’t be helped, and it will grow again, in time. Mine was cut short once, too, when I was very sick.”

  “Oh?” Gina remarked, hoping Hedwiga would keep talking. The woman knew everything Gina needed to know to pretend that she belonged in the eighth century.

  “When I was fourteen, I developed a dreadful fever and a bright red rash all over my body,” Hedwiga said. “My mother feared I would die, until the doctor bled me twice and insisted that my hair be cut right down to my scalp to save my strength. According to him, the strength of the body flows into the hair. As you can see, the doctor was right. I recovered and am perfectly healthy now. So will you be healthy again.”

  “With no antibiotics – no medicine,” Gina corrected herself when Hedwiga seemed perplexed.

  “Well, one can use potions made with herbs,” Hedwiga said, “but there is nothing better than a doctor who knows what he’s doing. Do you always paint your face that way?”

  Gina responded somewhat defensively to the sudden change of subject. “This is nothing – only mascara and eye shadow and a little powder. The lipstick I put on this morning is probably worn off by now. You should see some of the women in New York. They wear lots more makeup than I do. Oh, dear.” She stopped, judging by Hedwiga’s expression that she was talking too much.

  “The ladies at the royal court paint their faces,” Hedwiga said, frowning her disapproval. “I suppose it’s the custom in Northumbria, too.”

  “Northumbria? Oh, right.” Apparently Dominick had repeated his mistaken assumption that Gina was from a place called Yorvik in Northumbria. Since she knew nothing about such a town, she decided it was time to change the subject again, before Hedwiga could begin asking questions about her supposed home. “Thank you for the clothes. Is there anything I can do for you in return?”

  “You are a guest,” Hedwiga responded, patting her arm in a kindly way. “What’s more, you’ve been sick. You ought to rest until you are completely recovered.”

  “There must be some little thing I can do.” Once she was out of the bedroom she intended to investigate Dominick’s house with the idea of trying to find a way to get back to New York.

  “Well, there is a basket of mending,” Hedwiga said.

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to sew,” Gina said.

  “Can’t sew? How strange. I thought every girl was taught at a young age to make neat stitches.”

  “Customs are different in Northumbria,” Gina said, seizing on the first excuse she could think of.

  “I see.” Hedwiga thought for a moment. “I suppose you could work in the kitchen. Mixing and kneading the bread will probably be too strenuous for you, but you could help to chop the vegetables and cook the stew.”

  “I can’t cook,” Gina confessed. “I never learned how.” She could see that Hedwiga was beginning to wonder if there was any womanly chore Gina was able to perform. In her own time and place Gina considered herself quite competent. With her computer skills, she could always find a job, even if she wasn’t paid very much. But it was rapidly becoming clear that in the eighth century she possessed no useful skills at all.

  “You are too frail to assist with the laundry,” Hedwiga said. “Scrubbing and wringing out sheets and clothing is heavy work. But I suppose you could help to spread out the smaller pieces to dry.”

  “I’m sure I could do that,” Gina said, eager to agree to something Hedwiga suggested.

  “Come along, then. First I will show you the house, so you won’t get lost.”

  From seeing the main building as she drifted downward through the air, Gina remembered that it was built in an H-shape, with covered walkways on its inner sides. Now she learned that Dominick’s chamber was on the upper left part of the H. There were several other bedrooms on the second level, and a large great hall directly below, on the ground level.

  The crossbar of the H contained a formal reception room and an office for the overseer of Dominick’s farmlands. The remaining wings housed the servants and men-at-arms, with stables set off to one side, near the entrance gate of the palisade. The kitchen and laundry were in a separate building directly behind the great hall – according to Hedwiga, an arrangement intended to lower the risk of a damaging fire.

  The laundry was a hot and steamy place, with cauldrons of water boiling over open flames. A pair of women, sleeves rolled above their elbows, labored over soapy tubs. Another pair rinsed the laundry in separate tubs, wringing out the finished pieces. Meanwhile, three teenaged boys lugged pails of hot water from the cauldrons to the tubs.

  “Ella,” Hedwiga called to a rosy-cheeked girl, “Lady Gina is a guest, but she has offered to help us. I want you to show her what to do with the finished laundry.”

  “I’d enjoy some company, and especially help with the sheets,” Ella responded, grinning a
t Gina with easy friendliness. “There’s a basket ready and waiting for us.”

  The wrung-out laundry was piled into an oval wicker basket with handles at either end. Ella seized one handle, Gina took the other, and together they carried the heavy load through the back door of the laundry. They came out of the hot room onto a swath of grass edged all around by bushes. With Ella providing instruction, she and Gina shook out each piece of wet laundry and spread it over the bushes to dry in the sun. The sheets and other large items they spread on the grass.

  “Doesn’t everything just get dirty again as it dries?” Gina asked.

  “We shake any loose leaves or debris off the bushes and then sweep the grass first thing on laundry day,” Ella explained.

  “Why don’t you string a line and hang the laundry on it?” Gina asked. “That’s what people do where I live. I’ve seen lots of clotheslines strung from building to building.”

  “The wind would blow everything away,” Ella said with a laugh. “Its better to dry the linens spread flat, with clean stones to hold down the larger pieces.”

  There was a basket of stones in the drying yard, and these they laid on the corners of the sheets to keep them in place. A second and third basket of wet clothing and linens arrived, carried to the yard by the other women and left for Ella and Gina to see to.

  Gina found the work unexpectedly satisfying, in large part because Ella was such a pleasant, chatty companion who did not ask disconcerting questions. Ella was willing to talk about herself and her own life, so Gina encouraged her to chatter. Soon she knew all about the fifteen-year-old Ella s budding romance with Harulf, who was one of Dominick s men-at-arms.

  “Be careful,” Gina warned, recalling herself at that age. “Sometimes men take advantage of young women, and sometimes they mistreat girls.”

  “Not Harulf. Besides, no man would dare, not here at Feldbruck. Dominick wouldn’t allow it.”

  The total conviction in Ella’s voice made Gina cease her attempts to spread a sheet flat in the brisk wind so she could stare at the girl.

  “Really?” Gina said. “Dominick makes other men behave themselves with women? That seems unusual.”

  “If you knew Dominick well, you wouldn’t think it at all unusual.”

  “Yet I understand Dominick’s wife left him. From what I’ve heard, Lady Hiltrude would rather live in a convent than with him.”

  “She claimed it was because Dominick was ruled a bastard,” Ella said, shrugging as if such a statement was unimportant. She didn’t notice that Gina was gaping at her, openmouthed, and she continued to spread a pair of men’s linen underdrawers on a bush while she talked. “If you ask me, I think all of that was just an excuse. I think the truth is that Hiltrude was afraid to have children. Some girls are. But if that’s the case, they shouldn’t allow their fathers to arrange marriages for them, now should they? It’s upsetting to their parents and cruel to their husbands if they change their minds later.”

  “Even cruder to call the husband a bastard,” Gina said in hope of eliciting still more information about Dominick.

  “Everyone here at Feldbruck thinks the new rule is a bad thing,” Ella said. “It’s unfair. So many people were hurt by it, and some even turned against the Church because of it. But that’s the way it is when the pope makes rules for lesser folk. I suppose in time it won’t matter so much. Eventually, everyone who was affected by the change will be dead.”

  Gina couldn’t ask what the new rule was without betraying her total ignorance of life in eighth-century Francia. She didn’t have the chance, anyway, for Hedwiga appeared, stepping carefully around all the laundry Gina and Ella had spread on the grass.

  “Well done,” the chatelaine said, nodding toward the empty baskets. “Ella, you are needed in the kitchen.”

  After Ella took her leave and hurried off with the empty laundry baskets, Hedwiga turned her attention to Gina.

  “Your: face is flushed,” Hedwiga said. “You’ve been in the sun too long.”

  “I’ve enjoyed it,” Gina responded truthfully. “Ella is a very nice girl.”

  “We appreciate your help,” Hedwiga said, “but you must rest now. We don’t want you to fall ill again. I suggest an hour or two in your room, where it is cool.” She made the suggestion sound like an order.

  “I’d rather sit in the garden,” Gina said. “Will you tell me how to get there?”

  “Go through the kitchen and across the great hall, then out of the hall by the side door,” Hedwiga said, adding, “but be sure to stay in the shade.”

  “I will.”

  The garden contained four oblong beds of plants, each edged with stones, and there was a sundial in the middle, where the gravel paths intersected. The trees were taller than they had appeared from the air, and the flowers were brighter in color and more riotous in growth, spilling out of their neatly defined beds and tumbling into the paths. Gina could almost feel their need to grow without restraint, and she wondered at her odd, distinctly emotional reaction to a few simple plants.

  She discovered a stone bench under one of the trees and sat on it, leaning back against the tree trunk and closing her eyes for a moment to block out one of her newly sharpened senses. Her fingers still tingled from handling wet sheets and underclothes, and she remained keenly aware of the textures of linen and wool against her body.

  As she sat there quietly, she was struck by how peaceful Feldbruck was compared to New York. No one was shouting or quarreling. No car horns or radios were blaring or sirens wailing or trash trucks clattering. Instead, she heard insects buzzing. She heard laughter in the distance. And she could smell the garden. She took several deep breaths, then opened her eyes and looked around, trying to adjust to the fragrances and colors that impressed themselves on her mind with glorious intensity. It was like coming alive for the first time, with the world bright and new around her.

  Often she had peered into New York florist shops with longing, and she always paused at street-corner flower stands to look at and smell the blooms they sold. Seldom had she been able to indulge herself in the extravagance of fresh flowers, and she didn’t know the names of many. Roses, daffodils, anemones, and her favorite, hyacinths, because their fragrance was so lovely – that was about the extent of her horticultural knowledge. She wasn’t sure what she was seeing in Dominick’s garden. The only plant she recognized was a clump of white Easter lilies, and she definitely smelled mint. Other than that, the beds before her were a mystery.

  Bees droned their way from flower to flower, multicolored butterflies flitted here and there as if they were very busy, the sun beamed down, and Gina discovered within herself a contentment that was the fulfillment of the longing she had known while gazing down at the garden as she fell from the twentieth century to the eighth. Now that she was actually in the garden, she was able to set her many fears aside for a little while and take pleasure in the beauty that lay before her. For a few minutes she was happy.

  She heard a step on the gravel path and knew it was Dominick even before she turned her head to look at him. She simply sensed his presence, and the sight of him gladdened her heart – the same heart she usually kept tightly guarded against any wayward emotions.

  “This is for you,” he said, handing her a leafy stem on which three pink flowers clustered. “Be careful of the thorns. Every rose has them, you know.”

  “These don’t look like any florist’s roses I’ve ever seen. They have only five petals.” She bent her head, sniffing at the flowers. “What kind of roses smell so sweet? It’s like holding a bottle of expensive perfume in my hand.” Struck giddy by the scent, she inhaled again.

  “The fragrance makes the prick of the thorn worthwhile,” Dominick said.

  He sat next to her on the bench, so close that his sleeve brushed against hers and she could feel the warmth of his arm. To her own surprise, Gina experienced no compulsion to move away from him.

  “Thank you, Dominick. No one has ever given me flowers before.”


  “I find that difficult to believe,” he said, his gaze on the garden, rather than on Gina. “Roses don’t last long. Lovely things seldom do.”

  He looked so wistful that she wondered if he was thinking of the wife who had left him in favor of a convent. Knowing the subject was none of her business, still Gina tried to think of a way to mention it. Ella’s remark that Dominick had been ruled a bastard intrigued her – and that was a subject that did touch on her own life. Besides, she told herself as her fears returned, the more she knew about Dominick and his world, the more likely she was to discover a way to return to her own time and place. Before she could begin, however, Dominick took control of the conversation.

  “Now that you are properly clothed,” he said, “I would like you to reveal how and why you suddenly appeared at Feldbruck.”

  “Why do you want to know?” To her own ears she sounded rude, but as far as she could tell, Dominick didn’t take offense. He just smiled a little, his chiseled lips curving upward in a tantalizing way. His smile and his gift of roses combined to make Gina’s insides twist with guilt. If she was ever going to get back to New York, she had to be ruthless about pumping him for any scrap of information that might help. She couldn’t afford to be sidetracked by his kindness.

  “Gina, what is wrong?” Dominick put a hand over hers, and she did not pull her fingers from his grasp. “If you are in danger, if you are being forced to act against your will, I can protect you. Please trust me.”

  “I can’t tell you. I wish I could,” she whispered, certain he’d never believe her story. “There is nothing you can do.”

  With a frown marring his handsome face, he removed his hand from hers. The loss of the warm contact between them produced a longing that unsettled Gina almost as much as did her displacement in time.

  “Very well,” he said quietly. “I’ll not intrude on your privacy. Should you change your mind—.”