Time Knot

by M. C. Morison

  Håkan and I glanced at each other. He shrugged, and I shifted around as my legs ached so much from riding. Paracelsus held a soft leather package, bound with a thin silvery cord. We stood near a tree stump that provided a rough and ready table for our lunch. He squatted down and gently unfolded the packet and spread it out. There, displayed under the silent canopy of the trees, were several of the items that I’d discovered in the Time Sphere, once I’d learned its secrets: Shoshan’s scarab necklace, the small bag of ten stones that Dimitris had received from Pythagoras, the thick Greek coin, and the silver thimble.

  “You must guard these well,” said the doctor, his eyes glistening. “We all depend on their safe-keeping over the rolling years.”

  He straightened up and fiddled with the top of his sword that he had kept close while we ate. He took off his glove and placed the pommel of his sword on the palm of his hand.

  “Here, Håkan. Add this. What it contains you and Rhory will need once more if you are to succeed in the far north. And once more again…” he looked up at the sky, his eyes narrowing, “…to the east. What it contains is prepared by an alchemist far greater than I will ever be. And I’m certainly the greatest doctor currently alive.”

  He beamed at us, his rosy cheeks making him look almost like a boy once more.

  “And now, now we must go. Snel. Vite. Fast.”

  Håkan carefully wrapped the package, and glanced at me with what looked like anger – but could have been fear – in his eyes. He slipped the package with great care into his jacket and buttoned it up once more. We remounted the horse, which snorted and decided at that point to relieve its bladder. Surrounded by a cloud of steam, my legs complaining of medieval torture, we set off.

  “The Witch’s Lair”

  For some time we’d been descending. The snow still speckled down, but with less belief in itself. The sky no longer loomed just above the treetops and pale blue patches hinted at brighter weather to come. My legs had given up, going beyond aches, through pain, past torture and had arrived at a complaining numbness.

  After our quick lunch and the revelation of the time-travelling objects, we’d ridden for a while, each deep in our own thoughts. I didn’t know what Håkan made of Paracelsus suddenly revealing he had objects from times and lands Håkan had hardly heard about. I couldn’t make head nor tail about how he’d ended up as their custodian, like my great aunt. Did this mean Paracelsus also had to be an ancestor of mine? That idea seemed preposterous, and clearly he wasn’t an ancestor of Håkan’s.

  Paracelsus interrupted my thoughts. “They’re searching for you, you know. They even know one of you is English.”

  “How do you know,” I asked.

  “I stopped yesterday in the tavern. It’s dark inside there. The rush lamps give scant light and the fire less heat.”

  He turned on his horse, to look across at us.

  “The booths and tables are separate and soldiers talk loud. They were speaking Danish but I understand it quite well. It’s not so different from low German and Swedish. They said they’d be coming to the witch’s lair today, once their captain returned.”

  “The witch’s lair?” said Håkan.

  “It was a phrase a soldier used. I guessed they might mean your farmhouse. Then that neighbour of yours, Pettersson, raised his voice. He explained that the Danish officer would come to the house to question you all about your father. Local people stared into their beer. They fear this man, but I know also they like your mother. As the soldiers became drunk on Pettersson’s money, I slipped out and rode back last night to warn Frau Ekland.”

  “She’s gone ahead, by this same route,” said Håkan. “And Gregor led the way early this morning with the sleighs.”

  “The sleighs?” I said.

  “Of course, the sleighs,” Håkan snapped, though leaving me none the wiser.

  Now, with the dusk approaching and my legs belonging to someone else, I’d ceased to care. The trees began to thin and we came onto a wider road. Paracelsus held up his hand, keeping us within the cover of the trees. He listened. The silence hovered around us telling nothing of its secrets.

  The sky had cleared to a washed out blue-green. In front of us lay the biggest skating rink I’d ever seen. The spattering of snow had stopped. Little flurries blew and tumbled in the wind over the black, flat surface of the ice that stretched as far as my eyes could see. The sea, or lake, or whatever it was, extended both ways on the far side of the road. Our horses panted, as they waited for us to decide which way to ride. Beyond the road, the steep bank fell towards a jetty, its wooden poles and slats glistening with ice crystals. I couldn’t make out the far side of what had to be a lake.

  Håkan gave out a low whistle. An answering call, like some marsh bird, came from a little way to our left. We crept forward. I could feel the tension as Håkan looked for the hidden whistler.

  “Here,” said a voice.

  The old guy who looked after the stables and horses and who had left so early in the morning, stepped out from a copse of trees. Dressed in a long white jacket and pale leather hat, he’d blended in with the tree trunks in the dim light. Behind him a pile of furs moved and Håkan’s mother appeared. Another movement and Håkan’s little sister Eira rose from a cocoon of fur, with her bow in her hand.

  “Thank the Lord,” Signy murmured. “We must hurry. A lone soldier passed this way only minutes ago. He saw nothing but we’ll be caught like fish in a bucket if they come back this way.”

  Håkan dismounted, and compressing his lips gestured for me to get down. My legs wouldn’t obey. I started to lean to one side and rub my thighs to get feeling back, when the old man, Gregor, moved over.

  “Come, young sir,” he said, “I don’t think you live in the saddle, do you?”

  I shook my head, feeling tears might not be that far away from disgracing me.

  “Just tumble my way, I’ll get you.”

  I came down in an undignified heap, his strong arms supporting me all the way. For a few minutes I walked around as though my legs were acting out the shape of the letter A. Håkan moved closer to the water’s edge. The doctor, Gregor and Signy talked together, their heads almost touching.

  “You’d best go quickly, doctor. Your religion and your nationality are not in your favour, you know,” said Signy.

  Paracelsus held Signy’s hand for a few long moments.

  “You will be safe, you know,” he said. She nodded, but without much conviction.

  “The lamps are lit,” said Håkan.

  “Then we go,” said Signy.

  Paracelsus remounted and held both his arms above his head in a salute, first to Håkan and then to me. He leaned forward in his saddle offering us a bow and eased his horse round to go back up the track we’d just come down. Gregor mounted Håkan’s horse in one easy, graceful movement. He touched his hat to Signy, nodded to Håkan, blew a kiss to Eira, and smiled at me. I sniffed, wiped away tears from each eye and felt Signy’s hand on my arm. The two men had already disappeared into the forest.

  “Come,” she said. “We cannot tarry.”

  We followed a small path down towards the jetty and some steps that in summer must lead to the water’s edge. Tucked under the landward end of the jetty stood two sleighs. Håkan arranged the furs on the big one. The smaller one had room for two people at a squeeze. Both the sleighs had a single lantern lit, with fresh horses munching from sacks looped around their heads.

  Håkan went round each of the horses removing sacking tied to their hooves. Their horseshoes glinted with tiny spikes.

  “Crampons,” I murmured in English to no one in particular.

  “Stops them slipping and sliding all over the place,” said Eira. “Great on ice. Rubbish on land.”

  “Ah,” I said.

  “Shhh…” said Håkan.

  Signy pointed to the stars beginning to emerge. She spoke to her son, her voice urgent and her gloved hand moving this way and that, angled towards the sky.

  “Wh
en they rise, both of them, put out your lamp and steer right.”

  Eira tugged my sleeve.

  “Come on, Rhory.” She grinned at me. “I’ve got my bow, you’re quite safe.”

  Her bright eyes, so earnest, caught the light from the lamp in the larger sleigh.

  “We’re going in this one,” she said. “Get in.”

  Feeling the world had entered a topsy-turvy stage, I climbed in next to Eira. After arranging thick furs over us like some mother hen, rather than an eight- or nine-year-old girl, she kept her bow in her hand and the quiver of arrows just behind her.

  Signy finished her instructions to Håkan and came over to our sleigh. She held up her gloved hand, hissing, “Shhhh!” as Eira began to say something. A jingling sound accompanied by shouts and hoof beats came from the trees.

  “Go, go, son,” said Signy. “Now.”

  Sleigh Ride

  He flicked the reins on his smaller sleigh, and with the tinkling of many tiny bells he set off. We followed immediately, although our sleigh had no musical accompaniment. We fell in behind Håkan, whose lively horse set up a swift pace. The sleighs shushed their way across the ice, running parallel to the shore. Eira had turned around to watch behind us. She had an arrow notched in her bow. Something whistled overhead. I turned as best I could.

  “Be careful!” shouted Signy, no longer showing any caution about noise. “Don’t knock anything off, we cannot go back for it.”

  On the bank a file of blue-coated horsemen descended towards the jetty. One rode out on the planks, the drumming of his hooves carrying across the ice. Two horsemen started riding on the ice, but the horses hesitated. Wrong horseshoes, I guessed.

  “They’re shooting,” said Eira.

  “Keep your heads down,” said Signy.

  I waited for the flash and bang of a gun, but none came.

  “There!” said Eira. “They’re rubbish.”

  Something small and black drew a line in the snowy ice to the right of us. In a moment we overtook where it stopped.

  “A bolt,” she said.

  My puzzlement must have shown.

  “From a crossbow.”

  I nodded. Crossbows didn’t sound too dangerous. Already the soldiers were becoming grey smudges, as the jetty faded into a blur. The officer shouted something, his hoof beats crashing over the wooden planking once more. The horsemen on the ice rode back up the bank and disappeared into the trees.

  For some moments the only sounds were Håkan’s Christmas melody of tiny bells coming from in front of us, and the thrumming of the hooves of the two horses on the ice, their clever spiked shoes gripping with ease. The soldiers on the road were charging at full speed. They appeared and disappeared as the trees hid and revealed them. In a few minutes they’d be on the bank above us and well within bolt shot. Signy didn’t seem bothered and she and Håkan held the same steady pace. The trees on the lake side of the road disappeared entirely and I could see the officer leading the charge. My stomach contracted into a sick ball of sharp pain as I recognised the Lucian look-alike of my dreams. Even in the final dying moments of dusk, the glow from the snow as he emerged from the trees left no doubt. He reined in, as the road took a sharp turn to the left. The lake had an inlet here and the shore fell away from us. Håkan and Signy must have known the danger from the soldiers would quickly pass.

  Eira and I settled back into the furs. The biting cold wind played over my face and I eased my scarf out of my jacket and over my mouth, pulling my hat low on my forehead. Above us more and more stars appeared. We glided over the flat blackness with the deepening dark of the sky twinkling and sparkling. If my legs hadn’t been quite so full of aches and my tummy rumbling with the need for a juicy hamburger and fries, and if soldiers led by the army captain from hell weren’t hot on our tail, I might have enjoyed the beauty of it all.

  Once darkness had completely fallen and we could no longer see the shore, just an increasing gloom around us, Håkan slowly stopped. He walked smartly over to our sleigh, and snuffed out the lantern. Briefly, he held his mother’s hands, blew a kiss to his sister, murmured, “Look after them both,” to me and returned to his sleigh. The tiny bells tinkled their message once more, a sound, so loud as we sat still that it had to carry to the shore to our left.

  Very slowly, Signy eased our horse to the right, with a few twitches of the reins, until we were heading at a considerable angle to the route Håkan had taken. Now Signy kept the horse going slightly slower than before. She looked over at us and smiled a tight smile.

  “Maybe it’ll fool them. I don’t know. It’s best they don’t know which way we are going, then we may get away from them. It’s about three hours before the moon rises. When it does, we’ll eat. As long as we show no light we’ll be invisible from that shore.”

  She pointed to our left. In front of us but on the side closer to the shore, we could see Håkan’s light. Of his sleigh, we could see nothing.

  Someone touched my cheek. I awoke from a shapeless dream. Signy stood beside the sleigh, looking down at me, with her finger to her lips. The horse munched on something in a bag at its mouth. Eira rummaged around in a leather pouch. Above us crystal diamonds shared their cold, twinkling light from millions of years ago. The moon, a yellow half-lozenge, lying on its side at an odd Swedish angle, gave enough glow-power for me to recognise the boiled egg that Eira offered me. That, plus bread of a crustiness that might have come from being part frozen, and a piece of cold meat, made possibly the best meal of my life to date. Something about being in the middle of a frozen lake being chased by time-hopping overgrown schoolboys gave me an appetite. We washed it all down with a beery drink that tasted soapy, but very welcome.

  Moments later the horse had been debagged; it had let out one of those horsy noises halfway between an old steam train and an opera singer clearing her throat, and we were off. Once more we kept the slightly slower pace. Signy frequently looked up at the stars and made minor adjustments to our direction. I’d no idea how we would have made this journey if the cloud cover had remained, or worse still, it had snowed.

  The stars looked close enough for a tall man on a ladder to snaffle one, with one of those things shopkeepers use to get tins from high shelving. I’d never seen so many. Right across the sky a pale whisper of light lay like a forgotten river of fairy milk. The Milky Way! Not something that I’d ever seen in Hammerford.

  The sleigh trundled on, and on and on. Until it stopped.

  “Rhory, I need you to take the reins. I’m falling asleep. And Eira, sit with Rhory and pinch him if he snores.”

  I took the reins, after a quick explanation. I had to keep that group of stars just over the horse’s right ear for a while, but also to keep that bright single star always to our left and in front of us. We were to wake Signy when the ear-stars disappeared below the horizon.

  The horse seemed to know an amateur was holding the reins, and went more slowly than before, something a little more than a stroll but a lot less than a canter. I turned to look at Signy, but she smiled and nodded and the next time I turned around she’d fallen asleep. Eira hummed and whistled tunelessly through her teeth. She nudged me when the star, the pole star I guessed, had gone too far to our left, and I struggled to find the stars that should be by the horse’s ear. There were so many. Then I spotted them, gave a few professional tugs to the reins, and we were heading into the right sector of nowhere once more.

  The noise of the runners changed dramatically, producing a juddering and crunching. I wondered if one of the runners had come loose or something. I looked at Eira, but she had her head thrown back studying the stars above us, and I could see no concern in her face. A little while later, the noise vanished and we shushed on smoothly like before.

  Signy tapped my back.

  “Stop now, Rhory.”

  I looked ahead. The guiding stars had set. I’d not seen them do so. The bright pole star sat where it should and Signy nodded to herself as she studied the celestial satnav above us.


  “This is fine. Fine,” she said.

  She went around the sleigh and removed the lantern. Standing so her body shielded the direction of the far shore from where we had come, she used a tinderbox to get a light. The lamp soon flared back into life, and she placed it on the right edge of the sleigh so the light shone forwards and to our right, and couldn’t be seen from the western shore.

  “Now we wait. Håkan will see this light if he passes in front of us.”

  “And if he passes behind us, Mother?”

  “We must hope he does not. But there is a little light showing behind, and light can be seen a great distance in this dark.”

  “But we will see his light, won’t we?”

  “No, Rhory,” Signy replied, “he will have shut off his light before those stars you followed set, and changed his direction towards us.”

  Goodness, I thought, but didn’t say. What could possibly go wrong?

  We waited. I had another egg and my tummy rebelled by bloating. I moved around on the ice imagining the murky depths below us full of fish and coldness. I could just make out my footprints. I wrote my name in the snow. Eira copied the shapes. I wasn’t sure if she could spell, so wrote her name E-R-A.

  She corrected me and paced out E-I-R-A.

  “Oh,” I said.

  “Shhh.” Signy held up her hand.

  We stared into the curving wall of murky gloom beyond where we stood. The ice lay like a flat dull-grey plain all around us. Ahead, nothing moved. Then we could all see Håkan quite clearly, and quite close. But no bells rang.

  He drew up beside us, his horse panting and producing his own cloud system in our lantern light.

  “I threw away the bells when the moon rose, and put out the light when you suggested, Mother. They will think we’re ahead of them on the western shore. Now we have the advantage as they have no idea where we have actually headed.”