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Dover Castle
June 1295
Elisa
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Elisa dropped her notebook on the table in front of her with a bang. Sometimes overseeing so many intelligent and competent people wasn’t as easy as it should have been. More like herding cats. “Okay everyone. Settle down.” She looked around the room. “Who are we missing?”
“George, of course.” Andre leaned back in his chair and spoke laconically. He had been the pilot of the plane that had brought Elisa’s family to Earth Two and would pilot it to Paris, along with much of the equipment they would need over the next two months. That David had decided to bring the plane at all indicated how important this mission had become to him.
Elisa made a dismissive gesture. “Last we heard, George was still in Italy. I don’t expect to see him before this is over.” George was one of Chad Treadman’s employees who had also come in the plane.
“Bronwen isn’t here,” Lili said. “Cadwaladr wasn’t feeling well.”
“Dad,” Christopher added, “some last-minute issue with finance, which I pretended to understand but didn’t.”
“Go ahead, Aunt Elisa,” David said from his position at the opposite end of the table. We’re ready.”
She looked around her gathered friends and family, feeling a sharp stab of love for them, for their enthusiasm, and their willingness to put their lives on the line for something as crazy as what they were about to attempt.
“Callum,” she said, “let’s hear about Aquitaine.”
Callum straightened in his seat. “We have set the date for the vote for their parliament. It will be in mid-September.”
“And our defenses at Angoulême and Château Niort?”
“They’re in place.”
“Target practice with cannons isn’t quite as much fun as it’s made out to be,” Cassie said dryly from beside him, “but they’re getting it.”
“When the time comes, you’ll have my archers as well,” David said. “I won’t be needing them where I’m going.”
Elisa put out a hand to him. Most of the time, she was able to ignore the fact that he was the King of England rather than just her nephew. “We’ll get to that.” She looked again at Cassie and Callum. “How’s our source within the court of Robert d’Artois?”
“Safe and undetected, so far as we know,” Callum said. “She will get word to us when his army has gathered and he begins moving on Aquitaine.”
“Excellent.” Elisa indicated it finally was David’s turn. “Are you ready for what you have to do?”
“Are you asking if I’m ready to give up Aquitaine to King Philippe?” David laughed. “Of course not. But I will do it.”
In 1295, France didn’t exist as a country the way people in Avalon knew it to be. The country of France itself had originally been a much smaller entity, with power centered on Paris, but consisting primarily of Chartres, Orléans, Champagne, and Burgundy. The French king’s only access to the English Channel had been at Calais. In the last hundred years, the French crown had conquered Normandy outright, giving the King of France control over most of northern France, with Brittany as a last semi-independent outlier in the northwestern part of the country. Throughout, until now, Aquitaine had remained in the hands of the English king, in this case, David.
Over the last year, David had been laboring to add Aquitaine as a fifth state to his newly constituted Confederated States of Britain (CSB), which included Wales, England, Ireland, and Scotland. Each had their own government, but David himself was High King. Unfortunately, the King of France was looking upon the changes in his vassal state with uncertainty and fear.
In the Earth Elisa knew, of all the medieval European kings, it had been Philippe, even more than Edward I (if that could be believed), who’d worked relentlessly to accrue and centralize as much power as possible within himself. On the way to total power, Philippe had temporarily wrested Aquitaine from English control, murdered a pope, exiled France’s Jewish community, and destroyed the Templars.
If David and the rest of them had their way, none of that would be happening in Earth Two.
Ieuan, who was sitting to David’s right, put up a hand. “I am still not convinced our families should be coming with us.”
“Not you too,” Lili said, somewhat despairingly. “Queen Joana invited the boys and me personally. If she and Philippe are sincere about wanting us to visit, it could even be fun. Besides, I could hardly refuse such a heartfelt request so soon after the deaths of their daughters.”
Tragically for Philippe and his wife, they’d lost both their daughters to illness earlier that year. They also had two sons similar in age to David and Lili’s Arthur and Alexander. It was a strange coincidence that not only had David and Philippe been born a few months apart, but their sons had been as well.
“Well, you could have,” Ieuan said. “You are yourself the Queen of England.”
“All the more reason to accept. Like you, I must do what I think is right. We need to make Philippe believe.”
This was an old argument, and every time the issue had come up, they’d come to the same conclusion—which was to move forward as they’d planned.
“Even if Philippe’s honor has fallen so far that he would harm our children, we have safety nets set up for every eventuality we could think of. Even if this—” she made a gesture with her hand, “—Murtaugh’s Law of yours does apply.”
“Murphy’s Law, my love. Murphy’s Law.” David covered his wife’s hand with his own. “Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong. We must assume it.” Then he clapped his other hand on Ieuan’s shoulder and shook him a little. “Your sister’s right, as usual. We have reached out to Philippe through every channel we have—front, back, sideways, and underground. He would not concede a single yard to us, much less meet us halfway. If we are to avoid war with France, this is the way.”
“You are still too much of an idealist.” Ieuan’s words were critical but without rancor.
David looked around the room before saying softly, not to anyone in particular, “If I am not, who will be?”
Lili was less patient with her brother. “This way we are risking only the few of us, not an entire army. With two hundred thousand people in Paris, and untold numbers of soldiers, we were never going to outnumber the French anyway, no matter how many people we brought. Smart is better than numerous.”
“I like smart and numerous,” Ieuan mumbled under his breath, but not really arguing anymore. He had been as instrumental in designing this plan as anyone else and had volunteered for it, just like the rest.
The one wild card in all this was what would happen if Philippe decided to execute David on the spot. Elisa herself had brought it up. Given the number of attempts on his life that had been made over the years, how could she not?
The answer was always the same: time travel.
Or rather, world shifting to Avalon.
But even Elisa had to admit that wasn’t as cool a way to say it.
None of them could control when it happened, but it had happened pretty reliably when David’s life was in danger. Philippe could have David beheaded in the middle of his audience chamber, and it might be interesting to see if he vanished before everyone’s eyes as the blade swung down. But there was a reason a king didn’t kill another king or execute an opposing power’s ministers: if he did, nobody would ever trust him again, and he could expect his own people to be killed in retribution.
Back when David was sixteen, King Edward had taken him for an upstart bastard, not really a prince, and had tried to kill him within full view of his nobles. Edward had done so out of frustration at David’s father’s newfound independence and power—and it wasn’t as if Llywelyn was ever going to trust Edward anyway.
David had made it this far without dying, however, and the entire point of making himself vulnerable to Philippe was to distract from the fact that all of their other friends and companions were elsewhere, saving the world.
“Okay.” Elisa clasped her hands in front of her and looked at Rachel. “That brings us to you.”
“About that,” Rachel said, “some of us have been talking.”
Abraham blinked. “Without me?”
“I knew you wouldn’t like it.” Rachel reached for her father’s hand, but her eyes went all around the table as David’s had a moment ago. “It isn’t enough to get most of our people out of Paris. We have to free all of them, including those in prison.”
David leaned forward. “I’m listening.”
Because King Edward had died and David had taken the throne, the Jewish community of Britain hadn’t been evicted from England in 1290. But persecution had continued in France, its provinces, and throughout Europe. Six months earlier, Philippe had seized the possessions of all Jews in Paris and held them for ransom, giving their owners eight days to buy them back before he sold them to someone else, with the proceeds benefiting the crown. More recently, leading members of the community had been disappearing from their homes and places of work to be incarcerated in a prison on the right bank, never to be heard from again. Since the crimes were invented, they couldn’t be defended against—even if the king would allow it.
This was hardly the first pogrom against Jews. They’d been expelled from Paris in the twelfth century and again the year Philippe and David were born, though that second time the decree had been only partially enforced. Jewish possessions and property had been seized numerous times over the years as well, though accommodation had always been made in the end, and the community returned to Paris. It appeared now, however, that things were actually worse in Europe, almost as if the kings and rulers on the Continent were trying to make up for the aberration that was David.
Given the pogroms, Elisa would have thought King Philippe would have been happy to be rid of his Jewish citizens entirely, but in addition to these other decrees, he’d made it illegal for them to move from one town to another without a permit. He’d also forbidden emigration and had begun arresting French ship captains found with Jewish people in their holds. He had not gone so far, as yet, as to arrest English ones.
Consequently, over the last six months, David had authorized what amounted to an underground railroad to move Jews safely through France, and by that means they’d winnowed down the total number of Jewish residents in Paris to five hundred.
But having done what they could with smaller missions, it was time for a larger effort. It was this that David’s arrival in Paris was meant to distract from, if not mask.
“Without someone inside the prison,” Rachel said, “the task might be impossible. With three of us on the inside, I’m thinking Samuel, Aaron, and me, it becomes highly doable.”
Darren spoke before anyone could protest. “We know it’s a risk, but we scouted it out, and with Templar help, we think it will work.”
When still nobody replied, Rachel looked directly at her father. “Ten years ago, David pleaded with Llywelyn to welcome Jews into Wales because he saw an injustice and felt the need to do something about it—and because he was the only one who could.”
Rachel paused. “This time, we are the only ones who can.”
Abraham looked at his daughter for a moment and then turned to David. “This is madness.”
David spread his hands wide. “I’d have to hear the complete plan, but each of them, in their own way, is highly capable. If Rachel says they can do it, I believe her.”
Abraham now turned pleadingly to Aaron. “Let me go instead of you.”
“It has to be me, Abraham,” Aaron said gently. “We can’t all be from Avalon, not if we want those imprisoned to trust us, not after what they’ve been through. They need to see a familiar face.”
“Then Rachel should stay behind.”
“A father traveling with his two children,” Rachel said, “is an arrangement the guards will accept as normal, and my presence may make it less likely either of the men will be abused.”
Finally Abraham turned to Darren. “You would let your wife do this?”
Darren laughed out loud. “Let her? She’s your daughter!” But then he sobered. “Those doctor’s hands of hers can pick a lock better than mine, she won’t be alone, and this is something she believes in. We all believe in it. Who am I to tell her no?”
Abraham sat back in his chair with a laugh, though it was a sound without actual amusement. He gazed at his daughter with a mixture of pain and pride, before turning back to David. “We do this, we change the world forever.”
David smiled. “Abraham, my friend, you must see that’s entirely the point.”
