Knight Tenebrae Read online

  Then John related a tale of their leader, Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick. Bare weeks ago, one of the other claimants to the empty Scottish throne had been murdered at the altar of Greyfriars Church to the south. People were saying it was Bruce who did the killing, but John assured them it wasn’t the case. Robert had only struck the first blow, and Comyn had still been alive when Bruce hurried from the church. John knew this, because it had been his commander and cousin, Roger Kirkpatrick, who had gone in to finish the deed.

  John related all this as if he were chatting about a football game, and even seemed to be bragging a little about his cousin. Alex had no reply, and John segued into other stories. They talked for hours, until the camp quieted and the fire burned low.

  Eventually, John bade Alex good night then left for his own tent, and Alex and Lindsay retired to their parachute tent.

  It was small, and there was only one saddle blanket to cover them both on the single pallet. Lindsay looked at it, then at Alex. Her expression told him what he’d already figured, that he was to keep his hands off her. With a sigh, he lay down on the parachute and pulled the blanket over him. Lindsay followed suit, and lay with her back to him. Alex began to drift off quickly, accustomed to sleeping in a tiny, steel room with three guys who all snored and had reading lights, and with jets landing on the deck directly overhead. But in the twilight of consciousness he caught sounds of weeping that pierced his awareness and brought him back around. Silently in the darkness, he turned his head to listen. Lindsay, who had kept a flawlessly brave front all day, was breaking down for a long, quiet cry.

  The weeping tore Alex in a place he’d kept carefully hidden; he knew exactly how she felt, and was at an utter loss to comprehend the extent of his grief over the damage done to his life today. He’d carefully tucked away his own pain, but he couldn’t stand to ignore hers. He rolled over to put an arm around her, and she let him. Lying close, he held her until she stopped sniffling. Then the fourteenth-century day finally swarmed in on him for good and he dropped off to sleep.

  Well before dawn the camp awoke, breakfasted, and began the process of dismantling and packing for travel now that Robert had returned from wherever it was he’d briefly been. Boys hurried back and forth, and voices seemed inappropriately loud in the early morning dimness and cold. For Alex and Lindsay there was only to bundle up the tent and saddle the horse, so Alex revived the fire to warm themselves and they lingered over their cold breakfast of bread, cheese, and water from the bloated condom. Lindsay was still shivering, while Alex was feeling nearly human again. He looked around for some more deadwood, and threw small branches on the fire for her.

  She appeared less upset today than she had the night before, and he was relieved to see she was holding up. Her face was set, determined, but her eyes were clear and focused on what was before her. Alex watched her saddle the horse, impressed by her alacrity. By way of doing his share of the work without appearing too common, he untied the parachute from the branch overhead and began folding it into a small bundle.

  Lindsay paused in her work, staring at the saddle before her, and said, “Alex, about last night.”

  “It was cold.” He wasn’t up for this discussion, so he headed it off. His attention focused on the parachute in his hands.

  She looked over at him, relieved. “Yes. It was cold.” She continued with her work and they both maintained silence.

  Once the camp was struck and they were ready, Alex mounted his horse with Lindsay behind and they went to join the other knights in a line forming along the trampled midway of last night’s circus town. About fifty knights presented themselves, and the rest of the support folk clustered loosely behind them. A second line of younger men at arms also stood to the rear, probably all squires. Standing abreast the knights waited, and Alex figured he knew why.

  “Inspection,” he muttered. Bruce, gold-trimmed black surcoat lifted by the breeze and motion of his horse, came down the line with his personal retinue to review the troops, nodding to some and assessing others. When the earl reached Alex, he stopped before his newest knight and smiled.

  “Sir Alasdair!”

  Alex glanced to his right, but Lindsay quickly whispered, “That’s you.” Caught flat-footed, he responded by reflex, raised his chin, and lifted his hand in salute. Bruce then touched his gauntleted hand to his helmet in return, and didn’t seem to think it strange.

  The Earl of Carrick said, a bit loudly for a personal conversation, “Ye trewe kneegt, ye fowgt and slough manly as a kneegt.”

  Alex recognized ‘kneegt,’ guessed at ‘fowgt,’ and thought he knew what was being said. Lindsay confirmed it. “He’s telling everyone in earshot that you fought well yesterday.”

  There was no reply to that except a nod, and that brought a wider smile from Robert. “Alasdair MacNeil, the noble conquerour,” he said, as if a gentle jest. There was a chuckle from the retinue, then Robert moved on, having alerted the larger company of knights to the status of their newest member.

  Alex turned to Lindsay and whispered, “Alasdair?”

  “Gaelic form of Alexander. He was honoring your Celtic heritage as a MacNeil.”

  “Ah. Bastard though I am.”

  She chuckled. “I’m certain he doesn’t care the least which side of the blanket you were born on. So long as you fight ‘manly as a knight’ and stay loyal to him and his cause.”

  Having reached the end of the line, Bruce continued on and the line turned to follow. The company of knights with their squires, scant baggage, and camp followers began to move out.

  “Why does Robert give a damn about honoring Celts? Aren’t all the ruling class guys Normans? I thought they all looked down on anyone who wasn’t Norman.”

  She made a humming sound as she sifted through her memory for the answer, then she said, “To the best of my recollection, most of Bruce’s early supporters were Highlanders. Also, his mother was a Gael, and his wife was...is Irish.”

  Alex watched Bruce at the front of the line. “Huh. I bet that hasn’t done him any good getting along in England.”

  “Oh, no, he was very close to Edward I. Almost like a son. He did all right, I think.”

  “If he had done all right in England he wouldn’t be here, trying to boot the English out of Scotland. Something must have gone FUBAR for him at one point or another.”

  Lindsay said only “Hmm,” and left it at that.

  The column moved on, headed north, according to the small compass in Alex’s survival vest.

  For several days they proceeded over rolling countryside covered with woodland interspersed with wide pastures. Each night they encamped to eat and sleep, then each morning Lindsay rolled the parachutes into a tight wad and tied them inside the survival vest. She then slung the bundle over her shoulder by remnant shroud lines, and the helmets were draped across the horse’s withers as before. Thus with all their worldly goods packed, they hit the trail again. There were no more weeping outbursts from Lindsay, and she seemed to come to terms with what had happened. Over the days as the shock wore off, they were able to speak of their situation on the long trail north, carefully, poking around for sore emotional spots.

  The day was waning, and they sat by the fire after having eaten. Alex picked up a bit of kindling wood and shaved a sliver from it to use for a toothpick as he’d seen others in the camp do. He found it worked pretty well if he chewed the end first to make it more like a brush. Then he shaved off another and offered it to Lindsay.

  “What do you figure did this?” asked Alex.

  She took the toothpick and shrugged. “Act of God...magnetic atmospheric disturbance...secret scientific experiment gone horribly wrong...are you certain that plane of yours was an ordinary jet?”

  “It’s never taken me back to the past before.”

  There was no chuckle. “I’ve not the slightest notion what could have done this.” She sighed and turned to look back the way they’d come. “Unfortunately. I think we might be losing our best chance
at getting home again by leaving the area where it happened. Whatever that thing was we saw, it was back there. We’re not going to find out anything elsewhere.”

  Alex looked behind them, and that strange, creepy feeling of being watched stole over him again. It made him not want to look to the rear, like when he was a little kid and had averted his eyes from the closet at night in the darkness so he wouldn’t see the monster living there. He faced forward and said, “You’re probably right. But we can’t go back just yet.”

  “We can’t?”

  “What do you figure would happen if I turned this horse around and took off?”

  Lindsay’s sigh was desolate, and Alex could feel the chill of it brush across his soul. “Robert would send men after us and they would kill us for traitors.”

  “And they would be right. I pledged my allegiance to this guy, and I’ve got to keep my word. At least until the army stops moving and I have a chance to get my bearings. Then once I’ve lived up to my obligation—”

  “You don’t even know exactly what that obligation is.”

  “Do you?”

  “No. Not really. I think there might be a certain time frame involved, but I don’t know how long it would be.”

  “Then I’ll just have to either serve or make an arrangement to get out of it.”

  Alex sighed as unwanted realization crept in. “Besides, there’s a good chance we’ll never learn what happened. If we’re stuck here for the rest of whatever, we’ll be better off with Bruce and his army on our side than to be wandering the countryside by ourselves.”

  “Point well taken.” Even without being able to see her face, he could hear the resignation in her voice.

  * * *

  The next several days were hard travel while the ground seemed to rise before them, and mountains reared up on the horizons. The company camped in a wide valley and Alex noted there were people still joining them. The company had grown by at least five, maybe ten, knights and their retinue. Some of them had made themselves known to the new MacNeil knight, boasting of their past exploits and fighting prowess, and all seemed excited about the coming conflict with England.

  Sitting before the cook fire, watching a piece of mutton drip grease into it, Alex said to Lindsay. “You know, we’ve been hanging out together almost constantly for over a week, and I know almost nothing about you.”

  She looked over at him, but said nothing.

  He shifted his seat to lean toward her and pressed. “You know all about me because you grilled me the day before we got here.”

  Her face revealed nothing, and she gazed at him with bland eyes. “I only know the things you wanted printed in the paper. Which, even assuming they were all true, still told me very little.”

  “Well, I suppose. But you at least know where I went to school.”

  With a shrug, she replied, “University of Liverpool.”

  That made him smile and he leaned back against the blanket-covered saddle again. “That’s a start. How about your name? If Pawlowski is Polish, how did you end up so very British? Grandfather fleeing the Nazis?”

  Her shoulders tightened in a shrug, and didn’t entirely release as she poked at the fire with a stick. “Great-grandfather fleeing the Bolsheviks. He was from a family of ethnic Poles living in Moscow, and far too well-off and not nearly Russian enough to expect to survive the revolution. So he came to London. Apparently he saw himself as not the least bit Russian, and was some generations removed from Poland, so not much that is Russian or Polish has come down in the family.”

  “You don’t look very Polish.”

  Now she smiled, carefully and without looking at him. “I look like my maternal grandmother, who was a granddaughter of a duke.” A slight change in the timbre of her voice clued him as to how proud she was of this fact. But she didn’t elaborate on it, and he assumed she thought it would bore him. And she was right, so he didn’t ask which duke, information that would have meant nothing to him if she’d told him.

  “So, you’re practically royalty.”

  She chuckled and colored, finally glancing up at him. “Hardly. Any more, it’s a struggle to even stay employed. I’m petrified we’ll get home and find my job is gone.”

  Sore spot. The more time Alex spent not flying, the harder it would be to requalify once he returned. As terrified as she was of losing her job, he headed the subject back in a more acceptable direction.

  “Did you always want to be a journalist when you grew up?”

  Another hint of a smile played at her mouth, and he hoped it would grow. “No. When I was very small I wanted to be a high fashion model.”

  “No kidding?” The way she said it suggested the idea was embarrassing, but he was pleased to learn this about her. Even more, it pleased him to see she would confide to him something that sensitive. “I bet you could have made it. How come you didn’t?” He could imagine her posing. Particularly for a lingerie catalogue, and the image warmed him.

  She shrugged and shook her head. “I was a child when I thought that. And not nearly well enough connected socially for modeling. Never built for it, really, even when I grew older.”

  “Are you kidding? You’re built like a brick...outhouse.”

  Her smile came in full, and she laughed. “Outhouse? Indeed? That’s lovely to hear. And probably more accurate than you think, for I’m very strong. I’m simply not thin enough for modeling. Not frail enough.”

  Alex waved away the thought. “Eh. Who wants a girl who’s skin and bones?” He hefted a hand as if weighing something. “I like a little...” His voice failed him as he realized what he was saying and who he was saying it to, and quickly he rigged in his hand and stuffed it into a pocket. “So,” he said, and cleared his throat, “knowing you couldn’t get by on your looks, you decided to use your brains and write.”

  “Yes, and I’m good at it.”

  “I’m sure you are.”

  Her eyes flashed warning, glittering in the firelight. “Don’t patronize me.”

  He held up his palms. “I’m not. Sheesh. Try to compliment someone.” He took his dagger to poke at the meat, hoping it might be done so they could eat, but it still bled red. Too red, even for him.

  She went quiet, and talk stopped for some minutes, until Alex broke the silence. “Hey, how come we haven’t seen any kilts or whiskey?” He looked around the camp as if hoping to see some.

  “Not invented yet.”

  That truly surprised him. “No whiskey? Dang. That’s seriously disappointing.” As it sunk in, the disappointment grew. No whiskey?

  “No ale yet, either.”

  Alex made a noise of disgust. “What do they drink around here, then? Just water and wine? I guess it’s a good thing I like the wine, then.”

  “There’s mead, I suppose. Honey wine. You’ll like that—it’s sweet. Whiskey won’t be along for a few more centuries, and even then they won’t start aging it until sometime in the nineteenth century.”

  “Huh. No whiskey, no kilts, no ale, and the bagpipes sound like clarinets. These guys aren’t all that Scottish, if you ask me.”

  She shrugged. “Things change. Just because a tradition only goes back a couple hundred years doesn’t mean it’s not a tradition.”

  A sly smile curled his mouth. “You mean, like the American Constitution?”

  Her mouth opened for a quick response, but then she closed it and made a sheepish smile. “Touché.”

  He grinned and glanced around. “Do you know where we are today?”

  She sighed and looked around as well, particularly at the mountains to the south. “Hard to say. What with avoiding towns and such, I haven’t been able to catch any place names along the way. We’re at least approaching the Highland line, though I can’t be certain whether we’ve gone that far north yet.”

  Sir John Kirkpatrick passed near, and Alex called out to him in his best approximation of the archaic English he was slowly piecing together. “You! John! What place is this?” It was far easier to
understand people speaking than to pull off a sentence of speech on his own, and he hoped John understood.

  Kirkpatrick changed course and wandered over, apparently not in a hurry to get where he was going if there was fellowship to be had here with Alex and his squire. When he spoke, Alex understood about half of it, but picked up, “Tomorrow we circle Perth.”

  Alex chuckled. “A wide berth to Perth, eh?”

  John gave him only a blank look, and continued, something about a place called “Moot Hill.” Lindsay’s Middle English was improving by leaps as she brushed up on what she’d learned in school, so she translated that they were going to a place in Scone called that. John grinned, a teasing look on his face, and Lindsay also translated the rest. “Surely, Alasdair, you knew that. All Scottish kings are crowned at Scone. If only the stone hadn’t been stolen by Longshanks; wouldn’t that be something to see then?”

  Alex nodded as if he gave a damn whether the king sat on a rock during his coronation, and as if he’d known about the planned event. “Aye. A shame.”

  John sat with them, lounging by the fire as comfortably as in someone’s home. Alex had come to know him somewhat during their trip, for he was outgoing and talkative, always ready to gossip. Alex knew enough about the world to keep his own counsel, but welcomed whatever friendship might he offered as well as whatever information might be had about the other knights. And any chance to learn the language was a big bonus, for even though he and Lindsay spoke to each other in Middle English for practice, they both learned when speaking to one of the locals.

  Through John, and then Lindsay, Alex had learned that the young knight, James, who seemed always in Robert’s company, was James Douglas, whose father had died in the Tower of London and who had been disinherited of his father’s property by King Edward. Those Scottish lands were now in the possession of a man named Clifford, who was loyal to the English king. The consensus among the lesser knights was that James was the one man in Scotland Bruce could trust above all others, for the young man had no possible fortune with Edward.