A Glitch in Time

by April Hill

  The hairy gnome's job seemed to be to question us, and he attempted to do just that now, in a language I could barely decipher as English. In addition to being perhaps the ugliest human being I had ever seen, the fellow was dirty from head to toe and smelled appallingly of sweat. Edward, being better at languages than I, did what talking there was, and again attempted to explain the innocence of our presence.

  "Why don't you just tell the filthy little troll we came from 1400 years in the future," I suggested with a vicious smirk, "in a time machine."

  The words "filthy troll" were evidently not that difficult to make out, and the squat little man responded by striking Edward across the chest with a large stick.

  "Your whore has an evil tongue," he cried, in almost understandable English. "She wants beating!"

  "She does, indeed," Edward said, leveling a malicious look at me. "And were I not bound hand and foot, I would flail the very hide from her, but alas, sir, as you can plainly see, she is doltish and slow-witted, and beating does little good for that sort." This was the third time in two days that my traitorous husband had insulted my intelligence, and I becoming very annoyed with it.

  Something was beginning to dawn on me, however. While I still did not quite believe the whole time machine nonsense, I was willing to believe that we had somehow fallen into a nest of very peculiar persons, who had a very odd grasp of what was and was not entertainment.

  "Old Tom here, will teach the slut her place," the gnome growled, showing a mouthful of rotting teeth. He picked up a coiled leather whip and moved toward me, menacingly.

  At that fortunate moment, three armed men strode into the building, and one of them spoke sharply to the ugly gnome. The gnome grunted, obviously unhappy to have been disturbed in the middle of his preparations to flog me to a gelatinous pulp.

  "Leave her be, Tom," the first man ordered. "The king grows curious to see these creatures before she's beaten and hanged. Flog her later, when we've finished with her."

  I didn't especially like the words finished, flogged, or beaten, but hanged was definitely disagreeable. I saw Edward go pale, as well.

  "We have committed no crime, sir," Edward shouted. "We are but innocent wayfarers."

  "We shall see," the man growled. "Bring them along!"

  Two stout sets of arms freed us from the wall and half-carried us across the open area to the long wooden building. Closely seen, the structure was easily the largest wooden building I had ever seen, but bore no resemblance to a castle.

  Inside, the building was dimly lit by several torches, which were set in iron sconces on the walls. The entire structure was hazy with stale smoke, and the floor was scattered with straw. The first room to which we came had at either end an enormous stone fireplace and was furnished with a series of long wooden-plank tables and rough-hewn benches placed around the walls so that the center remained open. On a raised platform along one wall was a separate table, equal in length to its brothers, but with two tall, elaborately carved wooden chairs placed behind it. On the wall behind the chairs hung a large tapestry and several stretched animal skins.

  We were pulled along until we reached another chamber, somewhat smaller, but more expensively furnished, the throne room, presumably. Still, by modern standards, the room could only be called crude. Its walls were adorned with animal hides and a few tapestries of the simplest design, and the floor was strewn with animal skin rugs, one of which appeared to be a gigantic black bear with its head posed in an open-mouthed growl. On a raised platform or dais sat a tall, carved chair with padded arms and a crest of some sort hewn into the back.

  But the most astounding thing in the room was in the exact center, an immensely large, heavy table of dark, almost black wood. Around its rim, the great table had been carved with the likenesses of what I recognized as mythological animals, and with an inscription in Latin that I could not make out. (I had received failing marks in Latin on at least four occasions, and on each of these unhappy occasions, Uncle Herbert had applied an extremely painful incentive–to my bared bottom. Alas, it was not my bottom taking the Latin examinations, and all of Uncle Herbert's efforts went for naught. My Latin vocabulary and grammar remained vague, at best, and to me, the inscription appeared to read, "All who sit at this table shall be treated like horses." Edward translated it later as equals.) The table itself was perfectly round, possibly twelve feet in diameter, and ringed by twenty high-backed wooden chairs. In the exact center of the table was carved a large letter A.

  Edward stood unmoving for a long moment, staring at the table, his mouth open. "The Round Table," he muttered, "My God! The legend is true!"

  Despite Edward's scientific expertise, however, I still believed that Edward had arrived at this outlandish conclusion much too quickly. Edward adores history almost as much as he does science. His delight in his current surroundings, combined with the opportunity to write about this experience, had understandably colored his judgment. My own hesitation at accepting his theory was due, possibly, to my own pragmatic upbringing. The more likely reason, however, is that Edward, in his eagerness to explore the historical and scientific possibilities of our situation, had forgotten that our Time Machine (if that is what it was), did not appear to work properly. I had not forgotten, however, and under these conditions, I would have vastly preferred this entire thing to be part of some silly masquerade. To conclude that we had been deposited in time, without hope of escape, some 1400 years before the invention of the indoor water closet, was more than I could bear.

  I did not have the opportunity to discuss these thoughts with Edward before a great door at the end of the hall was flung open, and a tall, well-built man strode into the room. He wore a small, trimmed beard, and was dressed as though for hunting. As he approached, he threw off a long cape and a pair of leather gauntlets, tossing them carelessly on a chair.

  "Are these the condemned spies of whom I was told?" he asked of one of the guards holding us.

  "Spies," I cried, straining at my restraints. "Condemned! How dare you threaten us! We have had neither trial, nor counsel! We have a right to trial by jury, or have you forgotten the Assize of Clarendon, and the Magna Carta? To say nothing of English Common Law?" (This will demonstrate, I hope, that despite my lackadaisical Latin, I had not forgotten all of my education.)

  The man looked at me with a most peculiar expression, as though he thought I had lost my mind, and Edward looked at me in almost the same manner.

  The guard dealt me a hard blow. "The woman is a said to be an imbecile, sire, or possessed of demons," he said.

  "Aye, so it would seem," the tall man nodded sagely. "Has she been bled? Purged?"

  "Nay, sire. Tom will bleed and beat her proper, when you've done with her."

  "Sire," Edward interjected quickly. "My wife is not possessed, merely uncommonly stupid."

  Edward was beginning to get on my nerves.

  "The man speaks well enough," the tall man observed. "Peculiar in his raiment and accent, but he speaks passably well. Why doth the woman wear but one shoe? And what is this manner of exotic clothing they wear?"

  "I lost the silly shoe, for heaven's sake," I cried, totally exasperated. "And exotic? I shop at Harrods and Oxford Circle, you blithering cretin!"

  The man's eyes narrowed. "What are these places of which she rants? Circle Harrod Oxford? Cretin Blithering?" Then, with a wave of his hand, he ordered Edward from the room.

  "Take the man away. I will question the woman alone."

  "Please, sire," Edward protested. "My foolish wife is merely weary from travel, and means no..." Before he could finish, poor Edward was dragged from the room, insisting at the top of his lungs that I was profoundly dim-witted and not responsible for my actions. I was left in the room with the tall man and one burly guard.

  "Now," said the tall man. "You will tell us from whence you came and with what purpose. If you confess, you will die a merciful death on the block, and be spared the agony of being drawn and quartered. Do you understa
nd my words?"

  At the back of my admittedly very small mind, it had begun to occur to me that perhaps there was something to Edward's theory. Either these people were actors, or all of them were escaped lunatics. I decided to change my strategy.

  "Forgive me, sire," I simpered. "As my husband has said, we are strangers in this kingdom, and do not know its ways. Are you, then, the king?"

  The tall man leveled a pair of piercing blue eyes at me. "Ah! The imbecile speaks! You seek to play with me, wench?"

  "No, sire, " I said, my eyes wide. "Not at all. Indeed, my lord husband believes you to be the famed King Arthur, of song and story."

  A small smile crossed his face. "And you do not?" I sensed that I had become the plaything, now, and deciding suddenly to call the man's bluff, I stood up very straight, and leveled a hard look at this counterfeit legend. "What I think is that you nothing but a third-rate actor," I seethed, "and a bloody pompous ass, dressed up to play some stupid part in a childish charade. And now, you are carrying the entire silliness much, much too far. When we are released from this ridiculous place, you pretentious, posturing bastard, I have every intention of summoning the first constable I see and having you arrested for unlawful… well, unlawful something or other."

  Instantly, the guard struck me across the shoulders and shoved me roughly to my knees.

  "For that mockery, strumpet, your filthy little neck will surely stretch!"

  The king studied me for a moment, and then, laughed!

  "Mayhap the gibbet will not be required," he said cheerfully. "Methinks this odd little strumpet is but leading us a merry chase. Wherever she is come from, she hath spirit. I pray that I am not yet become such a tyrant that I would slay those who do naught but mock me honestly, and to my face. She doth have a sharp tongue, and a profane one, though, and is thus in need of correction, but not of hanging, I think."

  "Sire," the guard protested. "This may be but a ruse. She may be a spy. Is it not safer to hang her, or put her to the fire, lest she have information to divulge under torture?"

  The king shook his head again. "Nay. She shall be spared the fire, and the stretching, but fear not. She shall suffer the thumping her impertinence requires. Never the wench was there that was not the better for a good, hard strapping. Done well, that should loosen her tongue. We'll have her across yon table, then, and summon us a willing fellow here to accomplish the thing. A stout, strong fellow, mind you, with a goodly bulge in his right arm. This rude wench will sleep on her belly tonight, for sure, and will not sit with ease on her ass for longer yet." He turned, stepped up onto the dais and then made himself comfortable in the great throne chair, awaiting the arrival of the executioner.

  Within moments, a giant of a man strode into the room, and to my dismay, he was in the process of removing a wide, thick leather belt from around his wide middle. Quite naturally, I began complaining vociferously about the injustice of his sentence, but my protestations went unheard. With one thick arm around my waist, the executioner dragged me across the rough stones of the floor and bent me over the enormous round table. (Yes, dear reader, that table.)

  "She fights well. Hold her down," the king commanded, not in the least offended, it seemed, by the vulgar and unhygienic manner in which his famous table was about to be used. "In light of her offence, first the rod, I think, laid on long and well, followed by the strap, should she show no repentance."

  I groaned.

  In Uncle Herbert's book, "The Time Machine," I remember one of the characters warning of a particular difficulty the time traveler might encounter in going backward through time. Everything about the person of a later period would seem, he warned, exotic and possibly threatening to the inhabitants of an earlier period. "Our ancestors," the story's protagonist explained, "had no great tolerance for anachronism." Now, in a small but embarrassing way, I was to experience the truth of these words. No sooner had the lackey thrown me down over the table and raised my skirts than he stopped and drew back.

  "What heathen manner of attire is this, then?" the man cried, turning to his monarch for clarification. "This wench is clothed from waist to knee in..." He stopped and scratched his head, uncertain, presumably, of how to describe the item that had so confounded him. Having only recently recovered from the shock of my shoes (or shoe, as the case may be), these people were now thrown into confusion over a perfectly average, everyday, pair of cheap underdrawers. (As I may have mentioned earlier, Edward and I are not especially well off, and my clothing budget does not allow for silk, or French lace, or tiny ribbon roses. My bloomers were of common cotton with machine-made eyelet trim and were, lamentably, patched in several unattractive places by my own untalented hand.)

  "What is it, man? Speak up!" The king demanded, apparently exasperated by the delay in the start of the morning's entertainment. He stepped down from the dais and strode to where I lay, to see for himself the astonishing and terrifying sight of my plump backside at its shabby worst.

  "Fool," the king shouted. "The item is clearly a bandage of a kind, or perhaps her husband has garbed her thus, for modesty and chastity, perhaps."

  The king opened the flap of my thin bloomers, and both men leaned down to more closely examine the seemingly fascinating details of the garment under discussion. "It would seem to do little for modesty," the king said thoughtfully, tapping my now exposed bottom rather distractedly.

  A moment later, the executioner's fingers probed inside my opened drawers, and quickly found what they were looking for, whereupon, without so much as a proper introduction, he thrust one rough finger deeply into one orifice, and a second finger firmly up the other. "Aye, sir, and even less for chastity." This flogging person did not appear to be especially intelligent, but I suppose in his line of work, brawn counts for more than brains.

  "Ah, yes," Arthur said wisely. "I daresay a randy and rampant fellow would not be much dissuaded, front or back, by this garment. Well then, remove it, whatever it be, and proceed with the flogging." He walked back to the throne, and sat down. "Whip her soundly, now, and make her squeal."

  The king got his wish, and I am quite sure I heard him chuckle several times when I squealed with especially intense feeling as the thrashing progressed. Held firmly across the table by two strong men, with another vigorously striping my naked, wriggling rear end, I was defenseless and deprived even of the pleasure of hurling insults, as I would have done with Edward. This was clearly not a man to insult.

  The implement used was on the order of a cane. I had been educated in an English school, but despite being perhaps the most poorly behaved student there, I had managed for all those years to avoid the nasty taste of a cane. (Uncle Herbert was a liberal, and didn't believe in corporal punishment in the schools.) He believed in it quite firmly at home, of course, as I have already mentioned at some length. Thus, whenever I arrived home with a note expressing a teacher's disapproval at some childish offense, Uncle Herbert simply ordered me to his study, bent me across whichever piece of furniture was clear of books and papers, and spanked me soundly on my bared bottom with either a ruler (his favorite), a leather slipper, and rather infrequently, a belt. (Uncle Herbert generally wore braces or suspenders, and wore a belt only when dressed more sportily, in country attire. I grew up despising the country.) When he had finished, I was subjected to a very dull lecture on the subject of wasting the taxpayers' and his money, and then made to stand in a corner for a full hour with my bottom on fire, reciting the poems of Alfred, Lord Tennyson. Should the complaint at school be made again, the penalty was theoretically doubled, but since, for a man of science, Uncle Herbert had a very poor memory, the actual penalty was almost always the same, for which I was endlessly grateful.

  I was, therefore, caned only once, that disagreeable event having occurred in my last year of school, at the ungentle hand of a tutor who had been assigned the thankless task of improving my school marks in Theoretical Physics. Unaware, perhaps of Uncle Herbert's attitude against scholarly chastisement, Mr. Fitzwi
lliam took it upon himself to cure my academic inattention by marching me directly to the stables.

  "What is needed, young lady, is privacy," he said. "I do not wish to see the running of this household upset by what will doubtlessly be a cacophony of insincere shrieks of remorse by you! We shall, therefore, attend to this disagreeable business in the barn, where I may turn your disobedient backside the proper color and texture, and you may kick and scream to your heart's content."

  With that, he forced me across two bales of hay, lowered my knickers to my ankles, and employed a supple, very thin bamboo cane to apply what can only be described as two evenly-spaced minutes of very untheoretical physical hell to my naked, squirming buttocks and upper thighs. I suspect that my piteous howls may have frightened the horses and caused the hens to suspend egg production, but as Mr. Fitzwilliam had vowed, his ardor was in no way undeterred, and the household went undisturbed.

  When I ran weeping to the house to complain bitterly to Uncle Herbert about the whipping, he asked Aunt Jane to take me and privately inspect the area in question to ascertain the damage. When she returned with the information that I was striped thoroughly red from mid-bottom to mid-thigh, and was in some considerable discomfort, but had sustained no serious welts or important bruises, Uncle Herbert shook Mr. Fitzwilliam's hand, offered him a generous bonus, and suggested that next time, he deliver whatever incentive he believed necessary in the library, since I was subject to hay fever and allergies.

  And though I have forgotten virtually all of it now, I did exceptionally well on my final exam in Theoretical Physics.

  Chapter Three

  After I had apparently been flogged to the king's complete satisfaction, he rose from his wooden throne and strolled over to the Round Table where I lay, afraid to let myself believe the whipping was finally at an end. After a quick glance at the executioner's work, he administered a gratuitous smack to my pulsating bottom and then flipped my skirt down.