24 September 1066
Scarborough, Earldom of Northumbria
Kingdom of England
Nathan slumped on a stool and stared at Charlotte in the flickering candlelight. "Claude is here? My asshole ex-boyfriend is a frigging Timekeeper?"
She sniffed. "I'll let him tell you what he is. Hold still." She pulled a syringe from her paper sack and injected him in his thigh, sticking the needle through his jeans. "This might make you a little dizzy."
Nathan scowled and rubbed his leg. "What the fuck was that for?" His muscle cramped, and a deep chill flowed through his veins.
"It's a lingual implant." She opened an ornately carved chest, pulled out black robes, and began draping them over herself.
"A what?" This was just too much.
"Look, I don't know how they work. They're self-organizing something-or-others. When they link up with the speech and hearing centers in your brain, you'll have access to over a thousand human languages."
"Holy crap on a cracker. First nano-docs and now this." He shook his head as the room spun around him, and a high-pitched keen filled his ears.
"Whatever." She put what looked like a white scarf over her head, except that it wrapped under her chin and had a long train that ran down her back. "Hraiding, ye leasure." She tucked her hair into her scarf.
Who did she think she was, calling him a fool? Wait. "What language—" The guttural Germanic tones that passed his lips clogged his throat and stopped him cold.
"It's English, or more accurately Anglisc. I see your implant is already starting to work. Good." She pushed a door open and chill night air rushed into the room. "You'll get used to it with practice. It will come and go over the next few days, and then it will be as natural as if you were born speaking the languages others around you speak. Follow me."
He stumbled outside and followed Charlotte across a moonlit courtyard. Barnyard scents tickled his nostrils: the sweet aroma of oats mixed with animal droppings, and the odor of wet fur filled the air. A steeple loomed overhead, gray granite and mortar glistening in the dew. The cobblestone pavement hurt his feet through his flimsy prison slippers, and his skin prickled in the chill wind. Worst of all, his pants, absent the belt that the FBI had confiscated, kept trying to fall to his ankles.
He jerked at the waistband of his trousers and grumbled, "Not so fast."
Charlotte stopped and turned to face him. She held a candlestick high in one hand, and her eyes reflected the ruddy glow of the flame, burning red at him through the murky light. The black robes she'd put on hid her body even as they fluttered in the breeze. She could have been a nun instead of the efficient FBI agent who'd brought him here. Her voice dripped with scorn when she spoke. "Come on. We don't have all night."
He limped up to her, stopped, and rubbed his foot against his shin. "It's these damned cobblestones. They hurt my feet and I don't have proper shoes." His pants slipped again, and he jerked them up. "And my damned jeans won't stay up since those goons took my belt."
He could swear her lips quirked in a smile. "Keep your pants on. Seigneur Claude will be here soon enough." She turned and continued to stride across the courtyard.
Nathan huffed after her, holding his jeans up with one hand and trying to choose his footing in the dark. Misery fought with anger and fatigue. First his asshole lover Claude had dumped him, then his jerk-wad dissertation adviser had fired him, and then friggin' Vikings and their hounds from Hell had chased him. After a trip to the frigging Pleistocene, the FBI arrested him, and now this witch in a nun's habit was ordering him around. He was cold, tired, and willing to kill for a cup of coffee.
"Hey. You. Nurse Ratched, or whatever your name is. What happened to the other guy? Haakon?"
She ignored him and pressed on.
He snatched at her sleeve. "Answer my question. Where's Haakon?" No way Haakon would have abandoned him.
She froze in place and her voice turned to ice. "Release my arm."
He held on for a beat but then let go.
"That's better." She straightened her robes. "If he has the brains of a flatworm, he will meet us here shortly." She spun on her heel and stalked away.
He tried to match her pace, but his foot caught in the gap between two cobblestones. His bad ankle wrenched, and his arms pinwheeled as he fought for balance. His pants slipped to his knees, his legs tangled in the fabric, and he collapsed to the stony surface. "God damn."
She turned and admonished, "Watch your language. Taking the Lord's name in vain inside the Minster could get you fifty lashes." She held the candlestick up, and the golden light chased the shadows. "Nice boxers. Pull up your pants before someone sees. Only royalty wear underwear in this era."
He clambered to his feet and tugged at his jeans. "If you think I'm stripping for you, you're even crazier than I thought. I'm not giving you my underwear."
She shrugged. "I've seen a man. Just don't let the locals see the boxers. They'll think you stole them, and God's justice can be harsh. Now come on. We're almost to the Bishop's chambers. You'll meet Seigneur Claude there."
He stumbled after her and, sure enough, in a few more steps they reached a massive door with black, wrought-iron hinges and a leather hasp where a handle should be. When she tugged at the not-handle, the door creaked open. She stood to one side and waved to the interior. "Go on in. Don't sit in the Bishop's chair. Seigneur Claude will be there in a few minutes."
"How will I know which one's the Bishop's chair?"
"It's the only one in the room. Now, go."
Nathan clumped inside, glad to be on the straw-covered plank floor instead of the hard cobblestones. The door thudded shut, leaving him alone. The walls stopped the chilly breeze, but they also blocked the relatively fresh outside air. He inhaled the dank, disgusting odors of the room, which was about the size of the living room in Nathan's efficiency apartment. Rancid, burning animal fat and what had to be several thousand years of accumulated BO made him wrinkle his nose. An ornately carved, wooden chair dominated one wall, almost like a throne. A couple of benches sat on the side walls, along with a three-legged stool in the middle of the room. Two candles burned on each side of the throne, their glow sending shadows racing around the gloomy space. Nathan plopped onto the stool, took off his slippers, and rubbed his feet.
A horse neighed, and the clip-clop of hooves sounded against the cobblestones outside. Voices called in guttural accents, then broke into the more musical phonemes of what was almost-but-not-quite French. The door creaked open and he turned to inspect his latest tormentor.
Stubble flecked with gray darkened the man's cheeks. He wore a loose-fitting tunic that hung over tight breeches that didn't quite disguise his paunch. An ornate Celtic cross hung about his neck. Just like Haakon's. Greasy locks of blond hair framed his strong features, and his step had an athletic bounce as he strode into the Bishop's chambers.
Nathan whispered his name. "Claude."
Except this wasn't the Claude of memory. He was older, with smile wrinkles around his eyes, a gut, and gray in his hair. But the man's brown eyes hadn't changed. Nathan could still lose himself in those eyes.
When Claude's gaze locked on Nathan, his face showed shock, or perhaps awe. When he spoke, it was with the same smooth baritone that had melted Nathan's heart. "Mon dieu. It is you." In an instant, he closed the distance between them, lifted Nathan to his feet and wrapped his arms about him in a bear hug. "How I've missed you, mon ami."
Nathan wanted to melt into those familiar arms, but they were arms that had rejected him. He twisted free. "What are you doing here?" He jerked at his pants again, not wanting Claude to see his physical reaction to their embrace.
Claude bit his upper lip and contemplated Nathan, from his slippered feet to his tangled hair. "I should ask you the same." He circled about the room, eyeing Nathan from every angle. "By God's good grace, it's fine to see you again, my love."
Nathan grunted. "That's not what you called me the last time we were together."
Claude ceased his pacing and turned to face him. "You know, I searched for you, after you disappeared." He reached out and clasped Nathan's hand in both of his.
Tingles shot up Nathan's arm and his breath quickened. Still, the hurt of the breakup couldn't be denied. "You dumped me, remember?"
Surprise flashed across Claude's face, and his eyebrows shot up. "You mean that silly tiff? That was nothing. I came back, looking for you. But you'd disappeared, vanished without a trace."
Nathan wanted to tell him it was more than a silly tiff, that Claude had stolen his soul when he'd walked out, along with plundering his checking account. Instead, he heaved a breath and peered at his companion in the flickering candlelight. "You look older. You are older. How long has it been for you?"
"What a curious question." The other man's eyes narrowed, and his tongue flicked across his lips. "How long has it been for you?"
"I asked first." Nathan chewed on the side of his mouth. "This is stupid. Three weeks. You walked out on me three weeks ago."
Claude paled and he whispered, "Three weeks. Barely a breath of time..."
Nathan wrenched his hand free. "Answer my question. How long has it been for you?"
His companion slumped in the Bishop's chair and avoided facing Nathan. "Longer than for you," he murmured. "A long time." He glanced up and pain showed in his eyes. "Duane—Dr. Wilson—he was desperate to find you. He'd replicated your experiments and wanted to apologize, to give you credit. But then the Timekeepers showed up with an offer neither of us could refuse." His gaze fell to his forefinger which stroked the heavy pottery chalice that rested on the table next to the chair.
"Timekeepers?"
Claude continued his inspection of the chalice.
"Look at me, dammit. Are you a Timekeeper?"
He glanced at Nathan and then looked away. "How do you know about Timekeepers?"
"It's a long story." Nathan looked around for a place to sit and settled this time on one of the rough-hewn benches. "Why don't you tell me what you're doing here first?"
"I'm not sure you'll believe me."
Anger boiled in Nathan along with the urge to know. "That woman who brought me here—Corbett. She said we're in York, England, in 1066. Is that true?"
"Vidamesse Corbett," Claude corrected. He pronounced it "Cor-bay," with a French accent. "Yes, what she said is true."
Nathan pointed at the Celtic cross hanging about Claude's neck. "Is that a Timepiece?"
Claude gave a start and gripped the device in his fist. "Yes," he whispered. "How is it you know these things?"
"Call it a lucky guess." Nathan waited a beat. "Use it to take me home."
An unruly lock of hair fell across Claude's eyes and he flung it back with a toss of his head. "Impossible. I've got a mission here. Corbett and her team popped up from nowhere, and I've been sent from my posting in Duke William's court to investigate. We must safeguard King Harold Godwinson's victory tomorrow over the Vikings at Stamford Bridge."
"I could care less. I want to go home."
"That really is impossible. You vanished from Iowa, never to return. We would have found you if you had."
"So what? Suppose you use your Timepiece gizmo and take me there. Will I blow up or something?"
"Of course not. It doesn't work that way. But you can't go back. It would be a Deviation. Space-time would collapse to a new reality, one in which you returned. It would be the death of everyone and everything I've known since you disappeared."
A frown wrinkled Nathan's brow as he pondered Claude's words. "You mean like the wave-form collapse in a quantum experiment?"
Claude shrugged, his hands held palm forward. "I'm an anthropologist, not a physicist. You know that. I just know that it's genocide to alter what fate has already written."
"Bull. I want to go home." Nathan squirmed on the bench. His back ached, and he wished for a real chair, not some frigging middle-ages bench. "I don't want to be here, in 1066 or wherever we are. I didn't choose to be here. That nun-woman, the not-FBI-agent, brought me here." Damn it, what he really wanted was to be back with Haakon. He trusted Haakon.
"I know. She brought you here from 1962, Nathan." Claude leaned forward, hands on his knees. His voice took on an edge, not quite menacing, but not entirely neutral either. "How did you get from 2018 to 1962?"
"I don't know." Nathan lurched to his feet, twitching his shoulders to ease the ache in his back. "I was walking through Guernsey Green, on the way from the labs to our—my—apartment. And then this guy showed up, and some honest-to-god Vikings shot him with an arrow. Then it was winter instead of fall, and he took me to the Rune Cave. The next thing I knew we were—" Nathan stopped. For some reason he couldn't explain, he didn't want to tell Claude about the refuge in the Pleistocene, nor about Haakon. "Anyway, we wound up in his flat in Chicago. The TV said it was 1962. The Portugal Missile Crisis was going on, for sphincter's sake." Nathan stopped and caught his breath. "Maybe this is all delusion and I'm in a padded room in a mental hospital someplace." Nathan buried his face in his hands. "I feel like I'm losing my friggin' mind." Haakon couldn't be a delusion. At least, Nathan hoped he wasn't.
Strong arms folded around him, and he inhaled Claude's familiar, musky scent. Fatigue dragged at his muscles, his hands trembled, and sudden weakness made his stance unsteady. He buried his head against Claude's shoulder. "I'm so friggin' tired. If I could just sleep, maybe I could make some sense of all this."
Claude's fingers stroked his brow and his voice soothed his troubled soul. "It's all right, my love. We're together again, and that's what matters."
Nathan relaxed in the man's embrace. Maybe things would work out after all.
Heavy footfalls clattered outside. More voices shouted, their words at the edge of comprehensibility.
The door slammed open and a thickset man with ringlets of black hair flowing under a shiny helmet stomped into the room. He grabbed Nathan's shoulder and wrenched him away from Claude. Rage stormed in his voice as he shouted inchoate words in what sounded like Swedish.
Claude stepped back, holding his palms forward, facing the intruder. "Leave him alone. He's not part of this."
The man spat out more incomprehensible Swedish-like words while shaking Nathan like a rag doll. Thoughts of Thor or maybe Beowulf fluttered through Nathan's head as he tried to escape the giant's grip. With a grunt, the man tossed Nathan aside and sent him tumbling against the Bishop's chair.
Claude backed away, while Thor-Beowulf-whoever drew a sword longer than his arm from a scabbard on his back. Claude snatched up the three-legged stool and used it to fend off a thrust from Thor. The two men circled the room warily, Claude with his stool and the warrior with his sword. The blade made little circles in the air, menacing, gleaming in the candlelight, waiting for an opportunity to slice his opponent in half.
Nathan caught sight of the emblem on the warrior's helmet and became more certain than ever he was insane. The Harley-Davidson trademark glowed in gold, white and black on the shiny surface.