In the Time of Kings

by Sasson, N. Gemini

  “Damn it, Alan!” Anger explodes inside me. I knock his blade aside with mine with surprising strength. “I’m no bloody heretic. Let go of that, will you? Just ... just leave here!”

  He retreats a step. His eyes skip to the point of his blade. Slowly, surely, he raises it again. “If you refuse to come, you will be proclaimed a heretic. Do you know what they do to heretics? Do you?” A tic jerks at a muscle in his jaw. “While a crowd gathers in witness to their sinfulness, they strap them to a pole atop a pile of dry kindling. Then they light it aflame and watch as his flesh melts from his bones. The agony you suffer in those few minutes will be but a glimpse of your eternity, Roslin. You see, there is no life after this one. There is only heaven ... or hell.”

  I glance at the soldiers behind him and at Malcolm. They’re all wearing the same attire they fought in: blood-splattered, torn, muddied. They’ve had too little sleep and not enough food. Even so, the odds are stacked against me. To fight him would be futile. If he doesn’t kill me himself, Malcolm will. My only chance is to reason with him, convince him it would be best if I stay here and provide refuge to those fleeing the English before going to Edinburgh. In truth, I haven’t thought beyond the battle about what my future holds. I had believed my death was already scripted — and yet I survived. What if Father Murray was wrong about my death? What if I am to die today, at the point of Alan’s sword, or in Edinburgh, at the stake? My prospects are looking grim.

  “You have no proof,” I say, even though I know I’m merely stalling.

  A jagged smile distorts his mouth. “Then come. Simple, aye?”

  Just as he lowers his sword, I catch a subtle movement out of the corner of my eye. Two of Alan’s soldiers have dismounted and are encircling us. No, not us. Not Alan and me. They’re watching Mariota, getting closer to her.

  “Sir Roslin,” Alan drawls, tilting his head, “perhaps I do have ... proof. A confession, of sorts. Tell us, do you believe we live more than one life? Have you ever admitted that you have?”

  Only twice. First to Duncan in the storeroom at Lintalee. Then to Mariota, the day she came to camp at Berwick. But neither would have betrayed my secret. I was certain no one had overheard me at Lintalee, but Berwick ... The walls of tents are thin. Malcolm, maybe? If he’d heard, if he’d told Alan or anyone else, then that’s all the evidence they’d need.

  And as soon as I’m out of the picture, Alan can have Mariota all to himself. He doesn’t need her permission. Her brother will gladly give it. After that, Alan will do everything in his power to become David’s guardian now that Archibald is gone.

  “Was it you, Malcolm?” I probe, looking past Alan. But Malcolm’s features are granite, his mood unreadable. “Did you tell him something that would damn me?”

  Triumph sparks in Alan’s eyes. “You’re asking if I have a witness to your confession? Maybe he did; maybe he didn’t. What does it matter to you? Your sins are widely known and my word carries a great deal of weight with the king.”

  If I thought he might be bluffing, I thought it no more.

  “Duncan!” I shout.

  Laughing under his breath, Alan glances at Malcolm. He swings his sword before him like a pendulum. The blade gleams with blood. “Really, did you think I would let him live? He stood in my way. He won’t again.”

  Behind me, Mariota’s whimpering pleas escalate. “Malcolm, don’t let him do this. Whatever you think you heard, it wasn’t heresy. If you believe it is, then I am implicated, too. They’ll have to deliver the same fate to me. Do you want me dead, as well?”

  Malcolm gives no response, just glares back at her.

  All at once, it’s like I’m standing in a deep, dark pit and the walls are caving in on me, suffocating me, crushing me. If I confess, I’m as good as dead. So is Mariota. Alan could kill me on this very spot and suffer no repercussions. Murdering a heretic is no crime. It’s a heroic deed done all the time in the name of God. If I deny it, he’ll haul me all the way to Edinburgh and I’ll die there — and not at all swiftly.

  “So tell us,” Alan repeats more slowly, ignoring Mariota’s plea to her brother, “have you ever spoken of living another life ... to anyone?”

  Feet slap over the cobbles behind me. I whirl around. Mariota’s skirts whip about her legs as she darts through the postern gate. I run after her. Two of Alan’s men have already followed her out onto the narrowing finger of land, but they stop dead when she spins around. Her back is to the cliff’s edge, her heels but inches from a hundred foot drop.

  “Mariota!” I call. “Mariota, no!”

  Her eyes snap to me, and then to the gate as Alan rushes through, followed closely by Malcolm. She points a shaking finger at Alan. “If you take him ... if you kill him, Alan, I will step from this cliff. I would rather die than become your wife.”

  His arms drift wide, although he’s still gripping his sword. “Mariota, don’t be blinded by this sinner. He has deceived you. Woven a dark spell. Made you believe things that violate God’s holy word. Please, my love, don’t allow his trickery to dupe you further. Suicide is a mortal sin. Would you truly give up your life for him, knowing that you, too, would burn for all eternity?”

  She raises her chin. The sea wind blows her hair across her eyes, tangles the strands into knots. Her countenance is a façade of passionate resolve. “Sharing your bed would be a worse torture than hell.”

  Alan clutches an empty fist to his chest, pain etched as indelibly over his features as if she has just shot an arrow into his heart. “Mariota, we have known each other since we were infants. Did we not once confess our love to one another? How can you speak to me thusly now?”

  I want to interrupt, to tell him what a selfish bastard he is, but something in my gut begs me to hold off.

  Mariota spreads her arms to either side, her flattened palms facing the sea, so that the wind buffets against them. She takes a tiny step backward. Her heels hang over the edge. “I was thirteen then and foolish. And yes, I thought I loved you. I even told you so, because I was afraid of being given away to a man I did not know and being taken from the only home I had ever known. But then ...”

  Even from fifty feet away, I can see the tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “Then, you raped me, Alan. That was not an act of love. It was an act born of jealousy and carried out in violence.”

  “No, no, no.” With each word, Alan edges closer to her. “You remember wrongly, dearest love. We were both tempted. Our desires overtook us, that is all.”

  “Your lust closed your ears to my protests,” she says. “I fought you, Alan. I gave you scars, so you might never forget.”

  His hand drifts to his neck, where the fingernail marks still stand out: three thin streaks of red.

  “No, it was not love,” she continues. “Not even carnal desire. Certainly not on my part. When you learned of my betrothal to Roslin, you wished to get me with child in hopes my father would renege on his agreement with Sir Henry and give me to you, instead. And along with my hand would come my inheritance. You knew Malcolm’s wife had proven barren. You wanted land and the power that comes with it, so you won him over to your plans long ago, figuring that if anything ever happened to Roslin that Malcolm would grant his blessing. It was never about your love for me. What a blessing it was that as the months passed, no child came of your act upon me. Soon after, I was married to Roslin and left for Blacklaw. I thought then I had seen the last of you, but you would not leave me be, visiting my father-in-law on weak pretenses as often as you could. I feared for my safety every time I saw you. You sicken me even now.”

  In three angry strides, Malcolm swallows the ground between them. “You lied to me, Alan! You said Roslin had forced himself upon her, so that he could have her inheritance. But it was you.”

  “Shut up!” Alan shoves Malcolm to the ground, then turns back to Mariota, one hand outstretched, imploring. “Mariota, you don’t understand. I do love you. I was desperate, that is all. I could not bear to think of you wit
h him, or anyone. That is why I never married. I have been waiting for —” He stops himself in mid sentence. The secret is out. He has been waiting for me to die — in Spain, in England, at Berwick. He even came here expecting to find Mariota alone. Instead, he discovered the two of us sharing a bed.

  “For years after Roslin and I were wed,” Mariota says, “I would not let him near me. A man’s touch, I thought, inflicted only pain and shame. Even so, Roslin was never anything but kind and patient. So very unlike you, who took what you wanted without care.” She spits at the ground. “Go from here, in peace. Take back your accusations of heresy against Roslin. I shall call you a liar and it will be my word against yours. Find yourself some other wife and make a life for yourself at King David’s side. It cannot be between us, Alan. I was meant for Roslin. He is my husband. I ... I love him. I always will.”

  A burst of wind swirls around her, snapping at her skirts, nudging her. Her body wavers. She leans forward to steady herself.

  Alan lurches.

  “Wait!” I cry.

  He whirls around to look at me, every muscle in his body tensed as if he’s torn between saving her and wanting to murder me.

  “I’ll go with you,” I tell him.

  “No!” Mariota bolts forward, directly into my arms. She grabs at the front of my shirt, bunching it in her hands. “You cannot, Roslin. Do not put your life in his hands. He will kill you if you give yourself up to him.”

  I have no doubt she’s right. But better my life than hers.

  She brushes the back of her hand against my rough-whiskered cheek. I close my eyes, touch my forehead to hers and simply breathe, inhaling the scent of her: ocean and earth, pennyroyal and cloves, damp stones and moss ... I can even still smell on her fingertips a hint of the lavender-infused oil she had massaged into my aching muscles last night.

  “You’ll have a son, Mariota,” I whisper, opening my eyes to look into hers. Then I lift my right hand just enough to briefly touch her belly before white hot pain flames through my shoulder. I clench my teeth, swallow the pain. “Our son.”

  A bittersweet smile flits over her lips. I lean in to kiss her, but just as I do, the space between us opens up.

  Alan thrusts her from me and she tumbles to the ground, landing hard, her elbow striking a stone. His sword whooshes through the air, metal dividing sky. I flail my left arm outward. Our blades collide. The force of the blow travels up my arm, jarring my bones from skull to heel.

  Before he can recover, I strike again and again, throwing an anger-fueled strength into my attack that I never knew I possessed. Step by step, he retreats toward the cliff. Wielding a sword left-handed, I’m clumsy, all force, no finesse. The effort is rapidly draining me. I pause, hoping to gather more strength, but my limbs are growing heavy, my head light.

  Bodies rush at us and I’m suddenly reminded of his reinforcements. To my amazement, Alan warns them off with a roar. “Stand back! By God, the man wants to die, then die he shall — on the point of my blade.” He extends his sword straight at me, then dips the end at the ground. “Down on your knees. Make your peace with Our Almighty Father, now, Unbeliever. Repent of your sins. You shall not get another chance.”

  “I have nothing to confess.” My lungs are on fire, my energy fading fast. I can barely breathe to speak. “The only untruths spoken here today are the ones you have uttered.”

  Screaming, he barrels at me. I slash downward, but my balance and timing are poor. My blade glances off his arm plate and is ripped from my grasp.

  “Roslin!” Mariota screeches.

  Moments unfold like minutes as I watch his blade slide cleanly into my gut, just above my hip bone. I suck my torso back, but he holds his arm rigid. Then with a wrench of his elbow, he yanks it free, the point twisting inside me as he does so.

  I collapse to my knees. A dark red stain on my shirt spreads rapidly, wetness seeping down my groin, over my thigh, pulsing away my life. The sound of my own heartbeat drums in my ears — or is that the sea crashing rhythmically against the shore? I can’t tell. Can’t feel the wind anymore, don’t sense any pain. Only coldness washing over me, sucking me slowly into a downward spiral.

  Alan’s laughter breaks through my fog. It’s the last sound I hear before everything goes silent.

  I slump onto my side. Scattered stones softened by clumps of grass press through my clothing and into my flesh, but even that awareness is fading. In a sideways world, I think I see the red of Mariota’s gown sweep across the ground. Her feet tangle in her hem. She falls. Then a startled look flashes across Alan’s face as Malcolm’s hulking form crosses between them.

  Shapes collide, twisting. A slash of metal. Then light.

  Malcolm stands alone at the verge of earth and sea.

  And where Alan had been, only feet from the edge ... there is nothing but sky.

  Mariota comes to me, bends down. Her voice breaks through the silence, a frail thread. “Shhh, shhh. Rest now, my love.”

  My eyes go shut. I can’t open them, no matter how hard I try.

  Part III

  Would the happy spirit descend

  From the realms of light and song,

  In the chamber or the street,

  As she looks among the blest,

  Should I fear to greet my friend

  Or to say “Forgive the wrong,”

  Or to ask her, “Take me, sweet,

  To the regions of thy rest?”

  From Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s Maude

  37

  HERE & NOW

  Near Berwick, Scotland — 2013

  “’Ello.” A tentative finger pokes me in the ribs. “You awake?”

  What?

  I ignore the voice. Keep my eyes closed. Something’s different. I can no longer hear or smell the sea. Instead, the musky scent of earth and crushed grass floods my nose. Then another smell intrudes. I inhale more deeply and cough, fighting the urge to gag. Engine oil and gasoline.

  I force my eyes open. My vision is blurry. I can barely make out a guy about twenty-years old with dyed black hair. He hovers over me, his gloved hands braced on his knees. He’s wearing a pair of grimy jeans and a leather jacket hung with chains.

  “Good to see you’re alive,” he says.

  “I ... I’m not dead?”

  “I’d say not. If you were trying to kill yourself, next time pick a taller bridge, eh?”

  I feel utterly drained, disoriented. The sun is low on the horizon, but is it morning or evening? This is no seaside cliff or wooded glen, but open hills covered in grass. Up above a low rise is the road I’d bailed from when the lorry forced me off on my way back to Aberbeg. Not far away is a meandering stream and maybe twenty feet above it a narrow bridge. I remember it clearly, as if it just happened.

  “What year is this?” I mumble. I can see a little better now, but not perfectly.

  He laughs and I’m momentarily distracted by his lip barbell piercing. “That bad, are you? Must be pished. Or taken a pummeling. Still 2013, if that helps.”

  Shock rolls through me.

  No, it doesn’t. I don’t want to be here. I want to be with Mariota. I want to go back.

  Digging my fingers into thick grass, I try to pull myself up, but the world spins around me. My muscles are like Jell-O. My shoulder blazes with pain. A groan escapes my throat. Warm dampness spreads along the waistband of my jeans.

  The punk rocker or Goth or vampire ... whatever he is pushes me gently back down. “Stay where you are. I called an ambulance already. They’re on the way.” He lifts the bottom of my shirt, grimaces, then puts it back down. “Bleeding a wee bit there. Ugly gash on your head, too. Nothing serious, though. Probably just got scraped up when you took a tumble. I think you’ll be all right.”

  “What day is it?” I ask.

  “I should probably ask you that. Do you remember?”

  I think hard. My head is foggy. What day, what day? Our flight home was supposed to leave in two days, on the 21st of July. “The 19th?”
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  “Close enough.” He straightens. “Ah, just down the road. Almost here.”

  The wail of a siren rises above the rustle of a light wind until it comes to a stop on the road above. Doors slam. My rescuer hails them. Soon two EMTs are scurrying down the hill with a stretcher.

  They ask me simple questions: what’s my name, where am I from, how did this happen, does anything hurt, what day is it? I’m not sure I answer everything correctly, because I’m too tired to think and they ask me some things more than once. I just want to go to sleep, hoping I’ll wake up back in 1333.

  Because if this is real, if I’m stuck here now, I’ve not only lost Mariota forever, but I’ll soon lose Claire, too. Or already have. If that’s the case, I don’t even want to be alive. The next truck that comes along, I’ll be sure I plant myself squarely in front of it.

  It seems like forever before they finish checking me over and begin to carry me uphill. Every stride jars me back to wakefulness. When we finally reach the road, the biker rushes to one of the EMTs and hands him something.

  “This must be his.” He drops it into the man’s outstretched hand. “I stopped to take a piss over the bridge when I heard it ringing. Found it part way down the hill, then saw him. Looks like someone’s been trying like mad to reach him.”

  The last thing I hear is the boom of the ambulance doors as they fling them shut and the piercing scream of the siren.

  A pinpoint of white light blinds me. I jerk my head sideways and hear the crinkle of a stiff pillowcase. A quick look at my surroundings tells me I’m in a private hospital room.

  “There now,” comes a voice crackled with age. “Remain calm. Everything’s going to be fine, just fine.”

  An older man with ragged gray sideburns and Coke bottle glasses smiles patronizingly at me. Great, I’m being attended to by an octogenarian.

  He clicks his pen light off and listens to my heartbeat with his stethoscope. “You must have skidded across the pavement when you fell off your bike.”