by Dima Zales
Mary settled the tray beside Petra’s knees and looked calculating. “A little lie-about does no harm.”
Petra looked at her breakfast and wondered if it could cause any harm. Of course, she really hadn’t expected pop-tarts, but she did miss them. Maybe the gypsy would appreciate the hard boiled eggs, slabs of ham, and a scoop of what looked like it might be beans of an unknown variety.
“Does the Earl know I’m here?” Petra asked, sitting up slowly, careful not to jostle the tray.
“How would he know that, miss?”
Petra shrugged and thought about texting, e-mails and instant messaging, not to mention phones, cell phones, telegrams, and the pony express. “If he knew, do you think he’d mind?”
Mary mumbled something like, “Not if he got to keep your jewels,” before she went out the door.
Petra picked at a piece of bread and realized that Mary probably wouldn’t discuss the Earl, her master, for fear of endangering her job. Through the window Petra saw a tinge of pink. Birds began to call, the morning was waking, but she hoped the occupants of the manor were still asleep. Three outings in her nightie seemed like three too many, but she couldn’t wait much longer. Mary would be back for the tray soon.
Slipping out the door with the food tray, Petra tried to think of an excuse for wandering the halls half-clothed but gave up. No one asked much of a half-clothed half-wit. It was a liberating thought. She walked fast, watching the eggs tumble around the tray.
The sudden clamor of church bells almost made her drop the breakfast. Wedding bells? That reminded her that Mary did have expectations…impossible expectations. Petra passed a window and looked out over the rolling estate to the normally busy square beyond the manor’s gates. The square looked vacant. No farmers, no vendors.
It’s Sunday, she realized. They observe the Sabbath. The thought cheered her and she practically skipped. Would she be invited to attend services? Would Emory and The friar be there? She had plenty of questions for them both.
Thankfully, she didn’t pass anyone on the way to the office. Inside, she kicked the door closed with her foot and leaned against the wall, catching her breath. Moments later she was in the now familiar passageway where she couldn’t help thinking of Emory.
She flushed remembering how it felt to be in his arms. Just before the attack on the gypsy camp, she had been sure he was going to kiss her. And she had planned on kissing him back. She hadn’t wanted anything more or less than that.
And then everything went wrong. She’d thought, she was sure, he’d been killed. The sickness and horror of that moment washed over her.
And then she’d found him in the passageway.
And he wasn’t happy to see her.
That hurt. That he hadn’t been as touched and moved by seeing her as she’d been hurt. A lot. He’d been shocked to see her, but definitely not happy. The thought of never seeing him again, again, twisted in her belly. It was becoming a familiar feeling.
She turned a corner and told herself to forget Emory. She needed to talk to the man in the monk garb. He’d administered some sort of prayer or blessing on the wounded gypsy and he had found peace as quickly as if the friar had pressed a button. Petra knew that there wasn’t a button or potion that could send her home, but maybe…
But she didn’t really know that, did she? She’d arrived in Dorrington, England, in the year 1614 without a lot of pain or fanfare, so why shouldn’t she be able to return as easily? The friar had some sort of gift. She simply had to persuade him to work his magic on her.
When she turned the corner and came face to face with the empty cells, she asked herself if he had made the gypsy disappear. Where had he gone? Where was her quilt? And now what was she to do with the food? She didn’t want to feed the rats.
This was what she really hated about 1614. There were too many questions.
And rats.
Dressed in a soft gray dress with a pearl trim bodice, Petra followed Garret and Chambers into the tiny stone church. The congregation of villagers gathered in the chapel, even the flock of sheep trapped in the stained glass window, seemed to stare as she tried to sit in the back pew.
Chambers gave her a heavy frown and Garret sighed deeply when she settled her skirts around her. A family with six children stared at her–six round little mouths hanging open at the sight of a stranger in their spot.
“Oh, do you sit here?” she whispered. She apologized and hurried after Garret, feeling Chambers’ frown between her shoulder blades.
As the town’s leading citizen it seemed Garret had to sit on the front pew, directly beneath the stern gaze of the priest. Apparently, as the Falstaffs’ guest, Petra was expected to also.
The hymns blaring through the organ pipes were giving her a headache and the service hadn’t even started.
Garret sat like a statue, clasping a hymnal. Petra tried to peer around him to search for Emory or the friar. Instead she saw Anne slip into the back of the chapel and arrange her blue skirts as her flushed face struggled for calm.
Petra tightened her jaw, straightened her shoulders and fixed her eyes on the priest. She didn’t care and wasn’t curious about Anne’s relationship with Emory.
After the opening prayer, Petra kept her gaze on the pulpit, but her attention wandered. She found it hard to focus, and when she managed to tune in she found the sermon silly. Who, other than a priest with porcupine sideburns, could seriously blame a drought on scandalous behavior?
The priest began droning the Beatitudes, but his message barely scratched Petra’s thoughts. I don’t want to inherit the earth, she thought; I just want to go home. It didn’t seem an unreasonable request when the Lord was promising much greater blessings. The poor, the hungry, the mourners, the meek, the pure in heart, the peacemakers- where did she fit? What about Emory? Where was he and why had he been so mean?
During the closing hymn, Garret’s strong bass voice belted out a song Petra didn’t know. She mouthed along in monotone and cast him a glance. What if she told him her experiences, how would he react? Would he think her insane? Have her locked away? Would he protect her? Could she hide behind him? Possibly, but that wouldn’t be fair. She hadn’t a romantic interest in Garret, although she wondered why not. He looked exactly like Kyle. Tall, handsome and kind, yes, but he has the sense of humor of a toad, a small voice in the back of her head told her. Exactly like Kyle. She wondered what she ever saw in him.
Garret caught her watching him, and the corners of his lips lifted, but Petra didn’t know if it was a smile or just the necessary movement to sing chart and compass come from thee.
After the benediction, Petra looked beyond Garret’s broad back to watch the friar slipping through the broad double doors. When had he come in? No sign of Emory. Maybe since he couldn’t be harmed, he also couldn’t walk on hallowed ground, a vampire or demon sort of thing. Not that the congregation appeared so holy. She recognized a few of the parishioners--including Muffin Face, Anne, and some of the men from the cock fighting rink.
Petra didn’t believe in vampires or demons, but until a few days ago she hadn’t believed in time travel. Maybe she needed to be open minded about all sorts of things including fortunetellers, and even tarot cards. The thought weighed on her. Everything she’d known, or believed to be true, wasn’t. When everything seemed possible, then nothing was impossible.
“Absorbing sermon, wouldn’t you agree, Miss Baron?” Garret stood between her and the retreating friar as solid and immovable as Mount Sinai.
Petra nodded and tried to snake by, but he followed so close she worried he’d step on her dress.
Outside on the steps of the chapel, the late morning sun streamed through the shade of a maple tree and cast a dappled sunlight on Anne’s face as she chatted with the friar and the priest.
Petra stopped beside the priest and laid her hand on Garret’s arm. “Good morning.” She gave Anne a brief unfriendly nod that she hoped conveyed a small bit of her dislike and then turned to the priest.
“Father Knightly, I so enjoyed your sermon.”
The priest had an unfortunate resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, the same build and craggy facial features, but with more hair. His eyebrows, dark, thick and long, poked from his forehead like a thorn bush and the front of his hairline had a cowlick that made his hair stand on end.
“Good morning, Miss Carl,” Garret sputtered out a greeting to Anne.
Anne lowered her eyes and bobbed a curtsey, looking humble, and yet somehow not.
Petra watched, curious. Did Anne hate Garret, when he so obviously felt differently? Petra’s attention flicked from Garret’s flushed cheeks and eager eyes to Anne’s shuttered face and ramrod-straight back, but then she saw the friar moving down the path toward the church’s gates and lost interest in Garret and Anne.
She’d seen historical movies of women running in skirts and decided that they must have been computer animated. Trying to move quickly while wearing a hundred pounds of clothing wasn’t going to happen for her. She moved past Muffin Face, navigated through a herd of children, and nearly tripped over an aged woman draped in a shawl.
Spinning around, she didn’t see the friar but she caught sight of a plaque nailed on the wooden gate.
“In loving memory of those who fell to Black Shuck, May 1557.
All down the church in midst of fire, the hellish monster flew,
and, passing onward to the quire, he many people slew. ”
Beneath the plaque, scorch marks scarred the gate.
“Tis the devil’s own fingerprints, that,” the woman said, noting Petra’s interest.
13
Legends as old as the Vikings claim a doom dog known as Black Shuck roams England. It’s said that seeing him means certain death within twenty-four hours. He haunts graveyards, side roads, lakes and dark forests. In other tales, he’s a protector of lone women. He’s also big, ugly and has breath that smells of rotting meat.
—Petra’s notes
Petra turned to the woman who came barely to her elbow. Wrapped in the shawl, she must have been warm in the early morning sun, but she looked cold and wizened. Her black eyes stared into Petra’s face.
“Black Shuck…is he the devil then?” Petra licked her lips, feeling foolish yet scared.
The woman bent her head. “Not the devil, a hound of hell.”
This woman was clearly a relic from the Dark Ages, steeped in what Grammy would have called hoo-hah. Petra tried not to think of her practical Grammy rolling her eyes when she asked, “Black Shuck came here? Others have seen him?”
The woman cackled, exposing a mouth without teeth. “No one lives more than a day after catching sight of Black Shuck.”
Petra fought back the shiver that crawled down her spine as she remembered her conversation with Emory. “I’m just so relieved you are alive,” she’d said. “As I am you,” he’d replied. She’d wondered what he’d meant. He couldn’t believe in hell hounds, could he? He had whispered about the legend of the chained oak. Shivering, “No one? Were you here then?”
The woman sniffed and wiped her nose on the back of her filthy sleeve. “I was but a bairn on that terrible day.”
“Black Shuck came here and everyone who saw him died?” Sarcasm laced Petra’s voice as she studied the old woman. She looked as old as a mummy, but according to the plaque, Black Shuck had visited the church only 40 some years ago.
Death comes early, Emory had said, and looking at the woman she supposed that old age came almost as quickly. Petra put her hand to her cheek, wondering if she’d be old in ten or twenty years. She felt a flutter of panic and a renewed sense of urgency to find her way home.
“This black dog, or the devil in such a likeness,” the woman said. “God, only He knows how the devil works.”
Petra wanted to get away from the witchy old woman; she reminded Petra of the one in the story who cursed the unlucky Earl. She didn’t want to hear about a killer canine on a rampage or the devil disguised as a doom dog, and she certainly didn’t want to be cursed. But maybe she already was. Was that why she was here? She moved away from the chapel doors, but no longer caring that she might be thought rude.
The woman trailed after her. “Running all along down the body of the church with great swiftness and incredible haste.”
Petra hastened toward the gate, but the woman managed to stay at her elbow, speaking and spraying spit.
“He came among the people in a visible form and shape. He passed between two persons as they were kneeling in prayer and wrung the necks off them both at one instant. Clean backward.”
Petra managed to reach the cemetery’s gate, a stone and wrought iron contraption, but she hadn’t been able to shake the old woman.
“Where they kneeled they died,” the woman said, leering up at Petra, revealing nostrils ringed with hair.
“That’s a terrible story.” Petra frowned at the woman. “That’s the second worst story I’ve heard since I’ve come here.”
“Tis not a story --”
“Yes it is!” Even in her own ears her voice sounded screechy. “None of it’s true. It’s all…” She fought to find the word, “hullabaloo, hoo-hah!” Frustrated that she’d been reduced to her grandmother’s terminology, she nearly shouted. “Superstition!”
The woman gaped, her mouth a terrible, smelly hole.
“There are no such things as curses, or hags, or devil dogs!” Petra put a hand on her forehead as if to stop all her wild thoughts. “Please excuse me.”
As she stumbled into the cemetery, she realized she’d returned to the spot where she’d first met Anne. Lifting her skirts, Petra walked briskly among the tombstones, as if she knew where she was headed, as if she had a destination to pin point on a map.
She heard a low chuckle. “Hoo-hah? Hullabaloo?”
With her hands on her hips, she turned, ready to defend her vocabulary.
The friar stood among the tombstones, amusement on his face. “Come, my dear, no need to resort to obscenities.”
“Hoo-hah and hullabaloo are hardly obscenities.” Petra’s face flushed with anger.
“But it is derogatory.”
“I can be much more derogatorial.”
The friar laughed till he had to wipe his eyes.
Despite her aggravation, Petra found herself warming to him. She sat on a tombstone and watched him laugh at her.
“I can do insulting, would you like to hear more?”
Scathing retorts, insulting barbs, the subtle diss—she had a repertory. Not that reducing others to tears was something to brag about, but in the jungle of high school halls, it was a useful tool. One that she intended to use on Emory if she got the chance.
“Will they all be as amusing?” the friar asked. “Perhaps we should first be introduced. I find it very useful to know whom I am insulting.” He cleared his throat. “Perhaps that’s a lesson you might do well to learn. I am Friar Rohan.”
She cocked her head at him, debating on whether or not to remind him that they’d spent some time together last night. “Friar Rohan, I’m Petra, but you already know that. I think Emory told you about me.”
“My dear,” Rohan said. “I pray that you do not consider yourself the central topic of everyone’s conversation.”
Petra bit back a sharp remark, one that could perhaps hurt as badly as his, but she knew she needed Friar Rohan, miracle man. She needed a miracle badly. “Has Emory mentioned me?” she asked more meekly.
He nodded, and his eyes twinkled as if he were having a wonderful time.
“I thought so.” Petra felt annoyance tingling up her back. “Did he also tell you about mangy Black Shuck, and how I’ve apparently bucked tradition?”
“Mangy?” Rohan’s eyebrows twitched. “Black Shuck is a magnificent beast. I’m sure it’d ruffle his fur to be described as mangy.”
“So you’ve seen him, too? Does Emory know?”
“Not everyone is susceptible to hell’s wiles.”
Petra snorted. “Or superstition.”
“Do not mock what you don’t understand,” he gently cautioned, not unkindly.
“I’m not mocking. I’m sad and scared.”
“Ah yes, so I can see.” He squinted at her. “Well, happy up.”
Petra inhaled sharply. “What did you say?”
Rohan blinked as he lowered his girth onto a headstone. The marker disappeared beneath the spread of his frock. “Happy up? It’s not, perhaps, as derogatorial--”
“Who are you?” Petra asked, studying his face. He looked like a clean-shaven Santa Claus. She’d expect him to say “ho, ho, ho, merry Christmas,” or even “happy Christmas,” but not “happy up.” That was her father’s expression. “Happy up,” her father would say right before he called her Peevish Petra. She didn’t know anyone else who used the saying and she doubted it was a common expression in 1610. Nothing about this man seemed common or ordinary.
He returned her gaze with kind, blue eyes. “I am your friend.”
Petra shook her head. “We’ve just met. Besides, I get the feeling you’re not very picky who is, or who isn’t, your friend.”
Rohan smiled at her. “Not true. For example, Black Shuck is not my friend.”
“Is there such a thing?”
Rohan lifted his eyebrows at her. “Any friend of Emory’s—”
“Emory is not my friend.”
“He most certainly is,” Rohan put his hands on his knees and leaned forward. “He just doesn’t know it yet.”
“And how would you know?”
“Heaven helps me.”
Heaven helps me or, heaven help me? An odd thing to say, Petra thought.
“Or, perhaps more fitting to say, I help heaven.” He winked. “We’re on the same team.”
“Whose team do you think I’m on?”
“Your own of course. ‘Tis true for most of us, I’m afraid.”
“But not you?”
Rohan raised his eyebrows. “He who’s not with me is against me.”
“You’re the easiest person to understand I’ve met since I’ve gotten here, and yet, it’s like you’re talking in riddles. I’m not against you and I’m not on a team.”