by Nina Merrill
“Please!” Without thinking, she put her hand on Tibald’s arm, feeling the prickle of hairs at his wrist. In an instant, Napier’s hand had seized her own and bent it back until she went to her knees, gasping. Tibald’s hand was nearly as swift, freeing Jennie from Napier’s hold.
“Consider your actions, brother.” Jennie was stunned to hear a curl of menace in Tibald’s voice. “She came at our summons, where we had called for aid. Harm her not.”
“Consider your actions, brother,” Napier hissed back. “She has besotted your wits. She preys upon your weakness.”
“Mayhap.” Tibald helped Jennie up almost thoughtlessly, his attention focused on Napier. She shot to her feet like a cork rising through water. “But judge me not.”
“I'm your companion. It’s my duty. You’d do the same for me.”
Jennie took two steps back as the men argued. She held up her hands, palms out, fingers spread wide. Tears threatened again and spilled as everything that terrified her came out in gasping sobs. She struggled with the language. “I do not seek to cause…strife. It’s just that I’m afraid. I’m far from home, in a place I don’t know, out of my own time, with no one to help me. All I want is to return there, but I don’t know how. Please don’t fight. I promise I won’t try to escape, and I’m not trying to—to seduce anyone, or come between you in some way. But it’s so dark here, and there are…there are…rats, and God knows what else!”
“Lady…Jeanne. Weep not.” Tibald caught at her hands.
Jennie clutched him as if he were a lone spar bobbing in a stormy sea and bowed her head against his chest. It was foolish and stupid and childish, and she couldn’t help herself. Behind Tibald, Napier made a disgusted noise and she heard him hawk back in his throat, followed by a wet splat against stone.
“Be it on your head, Tibald. I watch from without.”
Jennie struggled to control the storm of emotion that swept over her, but the past hour’s fear and confusion overwhelmed her. Tibald’s chest rumbled as he spoke words of comfort that she could hardly hear, much less comprehend, and his hands were warm on her back. The work-roughened skin of his palms made tiny snagging sounds as it brushed over the silk of her robe.
Eventually one hand settled between her shoulder blades and the other at the back of her waist. There was no crowding close to him, not with the hilts of various weapons protruding from the belt slung low on his hips, but just his nearness and warmth steadied the world. His scent was a complex brew of hard-worked male, wool and oiled leather, and the briny odor of oiled iron. It should have repelled her, but instead the smells spoke of strength and solidity and provided a needed link to reality, proof she wasn’t dreaming.
He was only a few inches taller than she. Her brain, always running like a hamster in a wheel, fetched disparate and useless facts and offered them like nuts for her consideration. It’s poor nutrition in the Middle Ages. Rampant disease. But while Tibald and Napier were not the six-foot giants of modern America, they were strong as bulls. Their speech was rough and simple, but not uneducated, and only somewhat tainted by superstitious or religious twaddle.
Payraud had proclaimed he’d wait until morning to question her, but Jennie sensed she needed an ally, someone to take her side. Let Napier snort and deride, warn and fork the sign of the evil eye at her…she would tell Tibald everything she knew or suspected. Perhaps the telling would cement the reality in her own mind.
She lifted her head from his chest and put her palm where her tears had wet his tunic. “Forgive me.”
“There is naught to forgive, lady. Will you not sit? You're injured.”
Jennie smiled weakly. Nice of you, but it’s nothing compared to what’s about to happen to every Templar in France. “I will sit, kind sir, but I must speak with you.”
Tibald ushered her to the bed and spread one of the blankets on the rough ticking with an efficient flick. Jennie sat down, looking up at him as he shook out a second blanket and draped it around her shoulders, lapping it in front of her. She permitted the relative intimacy, trying to hold his gaze, even as he seemed to grow uneasy.
“We will speak in the morning.”
“There is urgency,” she insisted, sniffing back the last of her tears. “It concerns the Templars. And the king.”
“Lady…” Tibald moved away, but she put a hand on his wrist again. He froze.
“Please. You don’t have to say anything, just…listen.” And maybe tell me I’m insane, or fade away like the dream you must be.
Outside in the hall Napier cleared his throat. Tibald closed his eyes briefly and Jennie knew he was torn between duty and curiosity. But he didn’t pull away, so she began speaking, struggling for the right words.
“The king’s sister by marriage, Catherine de Valois, is ill. Soon she will die, if she hasn't already. Your order’s grand master is Jacques de Molay. He will travel to Paris for the funeral, and the day after that—Friday the thirteenth of October—every Templar in France will be arrested. The king has issued writs. He seeks to destroy your order, Tibald. The knights have too much power, too much money.”
Tibald’s gaze riveted on her face, and without looking she knew Napier had moved to stand in the doorway of the room to listen.
“There is less than a month to prepare your order. The king’s envoys are already traveling through France, delivering their writs to his seneschals and deputies. Lives are in danger…your entire way of life at risk. Your fortunes. Your holdings. Philip will confiscate all.”
“Are you a seer? Are your words true?”
“I am no seer…” Jennie frowned, trying to think of a way to explain what had happened to her. “I'm a student, as I've mentioned. I don't know exactly how I came to be here among you, but here's the truth as I know it.” She took a deep breath. “I come from a western land, a land that won’t be discovered in your lifetime, or even in your grandchildren’s lives. I know it looks like magic—it seems that way to me, also—but I am no seer, no witch and no demon. You're here in the year 1307. I'm from the year 2007, seven hundred years in the future. The story of the Knights Templar is legend in my time. Your secrets are no longer entirely secret.”
“She speaks treason, brother,” said Napier. “’Ware.”
Tibald didn't react to Napier’s comment. “These are grave charges to lay at the feet of our king.”
“I know. I wouldn't speak them did I not believe them to be true.”
“What more do you know?”
“The order will fall…the king wishes to break the back of the Templars’ power. I have reason to believe he's responsible for the death of Pope Boniface. He's the one who put Clement on the papal throne. The Templars have financed wars, set kings and popes upon their thrones. You're too powerful, and Philip the Fair will end your reign himself.”
“You say he has sent out letters?”
Jennie nodded. “All over France, calling for the arrest of every Templar.”
“A month from now.”
“Friday the thirteenth. And there is worse—there is a spy among you already, an agent of the king. A man who joined this Temple since July.”
Tibald sucked air through his teeth and put a hand to the hilt of his sword. “Alain, go and find our commander. If she speaks the truth, this cannot wait.”
“He is abed. Let it wait for morning light.”
“Very well then, I will go.” Tibald suited action to words, leaving Napier gaping after him.
Chapter 7
It was dawn before the interrogation with Payraud ended. Jennie’s brain was sucked dry of every last scrap of information. After the hours in the torch-lit darkness, drinking wine and nibbling on chunks broken from the loaf to avoid the cut edges where there might be rat blood, Jennie was dizzy and sick with exhaustion and dehydration, and her throat rasped from all the talking. She liked Napier less than ever, weary of his devil’s advocate stance and his slanderous comments regarding her motivations and morals.
Payraud seemed to val
ue the input of both men. Tibald, who was so patently on her side, though confused by what she presented as the facts of the situation. Napier, who cast doubt on her least words. During the interview, Payraud sat stiffly on the stool next to the table, his hand on her journal. She asked twice to have it returned to her, but each time he refused.
When the pearly light of dawn filtered into the tower room, she finally ran out of words. She couldn’t tell if she'd convinced Payraud, but thought she’d detected discomfort each time she mentioned the subject of the letters sent out by King Philip. He knew more than he was telling. All three men looked knowingly at each other when she mentioned the king’s agent. And, of course, there was the fact the knights had been asking God for help when she arrived. She couldn't help but think they already suspected something of what she was telling the three men.
None of them seemed to comprehend that she’d come backward through time. They believed her insane or deluded, in the cases of Payraud and Tibald, or a lying witch, in the case of Napier.
She wasn’t sure she believed it herself, even after what amounted to a defense of a doctoral thesis, hours of questioning and reasoning her way through the morass of data and the shock of finding herself seven hundred years in the past. What had once been a hobby, the romantic study of the Templars, their secrets and their bloody end, might now save her life.
With dawn came bone-deep exhaustion. Even breathing was a chore—each breath seemed to pull drowsiness deeper into her veins. She swayed with fatigue, and at last Tibald put a hand on Payraud’s shoulder and spoke in his ear. Payraud nodded and rose, slipping Jennie’s journal into the pouch at his belt. With regret she watched it, and him, leave the room. She needed that journal to recreate her ciphers and try to send herself home. She’d done what she felt she must in warning the order, though she had no idea whether her efforts would have any effect. All she knew was that she’d violated the tenets of every time-travel science fiction television episode she’d ever seen—she’d tried to alter the past.
When Tibald, with Napier looking on from where he leaned in the doorway, pressed her backward on the bed, she didn't protest. She hardly felt the scratchy weight of another blanket settling over her, so quickly did sleep take her under.
When Jennie woke, the yellow quality of the light in the tower room seemed to indicate late afternoon. Her bladder insisted she find a bathroom, or its medieval equivalent. She sat up, swinging her feet to the floor, and discovered someone had put shoes on her feet. They were soft, shapeless leather booties with thicker soles. They looked just like the high-topped moccasins she’d seen in religious paintings from the period and appeared to be unworn, with pristine soles. She marveled that she hadn’t wakened when someone touched her. She hoped it was Tibald who had laced the shoes onto her feet. The idea of Napier touching her with his ratty hands made her shiver.
The door to the hallway was closed. Jennie was alone. Glancing around the room, she saw more than she had last night. A pottery commode—nothing more than a crude thick-walled bowl—waited under the table where the basin, ewer and wine flask stood. Scowling, but with her bladder giving her little choice, she used it, feeling clumsy and unhappy. The realities of medieval Paris had destroyed her dreamy ideals. She poured water into the basin—someone had emptied last night’s water—and washed.
A noise from outside the open window caught her ear. Crossing the room to the embrasure, she noted her foot seemed not too much the worse for wear.
In the daylight she saw that her window looked out over the Templars’ complex, acres filled with church and chapel, charnel house, dormitories and farm buildings. Below she saw a series of lawns, and a few sheep nibbling here and there. A goat scratched its flank on the stony corner of the building across the way. A wall, crenellated and marked by turrets, surrounded what she could see of the preceptory.
Jennie looked her fill, swept away anew by the excitement of experiencing her scholarly passions in person. While her doctorate involved medieval French literature, in her free time she’d gorged on the legends of the Templars. The prospect of seeing the legends for herself, and perhaps catching glimpses of real illuminated manuscripts in use, or even in the process of creation was intoxicating. She leaned out and saw the source of the noise that had attracted her.
The Templars were drilling.
She had known they were militaristic, but this late in their history she’d expected them to have grown soft and hedonistic in their moneyed splendor. Payraud’s knights still knew how to use their swords, as she’d seen last night, and today she saw them moving in formation about a parade ground just below. It seemed to be the end of their exercises, for they were filing into the building just across the lawn. She watched until the last of them had disappeared, then she turned to her door.
Was it locked? Was she a prisoner? She put her hand on the latch, which lifted easily. She pulled the door open.
Chapter 8
Outside was a young man, much younger than Tibald or Napier. He had been sitting on the landing, his back to the hallway wall, in what light fell from a window in the spiral staircase at the corner of the tower. When she opened her door, he scrambled to his feet, leaving his dice on the floor. His hand went to the hilt of his sword.
Jennie bowed, keeping her eyes on the youth. “Good afternoon.”
“Lady.”
“I would like to find Monsieur de Bergère or de Payraud, if you please.”
He nodded, his fringe of unwashed, curly hair falling forward over his eyes. He seemed young indeed to Jennie, a colt compared to the warhorses Payraud had set as her guards last night. “Warden de Bergère asked me to bring you to sup when you wakened.”
“Then I'm not a prisoner?”
His gaze slid away from her. “He did not say, lady. Just that you're not to be unattended.”
“What is your name?”
“I am called Boudin.”
Blood sausage? she wondered. She looked at him curiously. Perhaps it was a nickname or perhaps he was the child of a butcher. In either case, it didn’t matter—she needed to find Bergère and continue trying to wheedle her journal out of the master of the Temple. She saw no other way to return herself to her own time, and tempting as it was to explore the here and now, she must get home again.
She realized the youth’s gaze had been moving over her from head to foot. Flushing, she crossed her arms over her breasts. Still in her bathrobe and nightgown. Scant covering for a woman of the fourteenth century. “Have you a cloak I might borrow, Monsieur Boudin?”
“Just Boudin,” he corrected, huskily. “Warden de Bergère left a gown for you.” His head tilted toward her room, and his too-big Adam’s apple bobbed in his throat.
“Oh.” She bit her lip and retreated, closing the door.
The gown lay on the foot of the bed. She’d taken it for just another blanket, in its anonymous, slubby beige wool. Jennie lifted it in both hands and carried it to the window. It was shapeless and sack-like, with long sleeves and a deep hem. She shook it out the window, hard, hoping to dislodge anything that might be living inside. Dust and fuzz blew from it, but nothing more frightening. She pulled it over her gown and robe, which might protect her skin from the harshness of the wool.
Sighing, she stood. Now I’ve got my makeup on, I’m ready for the world. Ha.
Boudin escorted her down the twisting staircase. Jennie kept close to the outer wall where the treads were widest and her footing, in the floppy boots, most sure. At the bottom of the stairs, Boudin took her out into daylight. She looked around her with pleasure at the blue sky, breathing deeply of the fresh air. No contrails crossed the sky, no jet engine noise or the ambient rumble of highway traffic met her ear. She marveled at the quiet, broken by the clangs of what might be a forge nearby, and the bleating of goats.
“Watch your step,” Boudin advised, gesturing at a mound of dung before her. He took her arm in his grasp.
A footprint marred the heap, and she wondered whether a knight ha
d stepped in it while marching. Once again reality intruded on her fanciful musings. She avoided the mess and kept her eyes on the ground after that, trying hard not to think about crossing this stretch of yard in the dark the night before. God only knew what she had stepped in; Napier had given no quarter.
Boudin led her down the same passageway as the night before, into the hall where men sprawled, eating and gaming and talking. The room was smoky and filled with the odors of stew and ale. Her stomach knotted and saliva filled her mouth. She clenched her hand over her belly, biting her lip as her presence attracted the attention of every person in the room. Her gaze skittered over each face, seeking the one safe haven she knew.
Tibald de Bergère sat on a bench in the far corner, and even from where she stood, Jennie saw his face change when he caught sight of her. He pushed to his feet. Her breath snagged in her lungs as she watched him stride toward her so purposefully, his tunic clean and white with the red splayed cross over his heart, belted at his narrow waist, the laces of his boots wrapped over his round calves in their leggings.
He was a fine figure of a man, this knight. Jennie’s pulse rocketed into the stratosphere. Her strongest instinct was to meet him halfway, hurrying as fast as she could, to be close to him and the safety he represented. She controlled the impulse, but only because Boudin’s hand was still linked around her arm just above her elbow.
Tibald’s gaze passed over her and she flushed, aware of how the shapeless dress hung on her, and wishing she had thought to use the belt of her robe to cinch the waist. He smiled as he saw her feet in the shoes. Arriving at her side, he nodded to Boudin and took her arm himself. “You will be hungry. Come, we’ll sup together.”
Jennie looked around at all the male eyes fixed on them as they crossed the hall. Some were blatantly speculative, others narrowed in dislike, still others were frankly curious. She dropped her gaze to the floor, as much to avoid the stares as to avoid the bones and offal tossed amongst the rushes. Thank God for the shoes. She was horrified to think she’d hurried through this mess last night. It was where she’d got the cut on the ball of her foot.