6

16th Side: Lunch with the Sterkarms

Windsor drove his scarlet Range Rover up the ramp and onto the platform before the Tube. Bryce, who had been waiting for him, opened the passenger door and got in. “All set?” Windsor said. “Let’s give ’em hell!”

The green light beside the Tube lit up, and Windsor drove forward into the hanging screen of plastic strips, which rattled against the car and slithered over its windshield. Then they were into the Tube, its white tiling vaguely reminding Bryce of a urinal. In addition to the light filtering through the screens at either end, there were cat’s-eyes in the road and lights set into the roof overhead.

Going through the Tube was bizarrely mundane, Bryce always found. Your brain told you that you were doing something impossible, exciting, strange, wonderful—but your eyes and ears told you that you were only driving through an old road tunnel. There was a fixed, tarmacked road under the wheels, and the curved walls were covered with tiles, pierced with maintenance panels. There was no sensation of it spinning. Crossing from one dimension to another, and going back five hundred years in time, took roughly a minute or less. Though he supposed that minute actually lasted five hundred years.

The Dow-Jones Index was being read on the radio, and Windsor was humming some unrecognizable tune to show how unimpressed he was. Bryce made a guess at where the center of the Tube was, the point at which they would vanish from the twenty-first century, and gripped the edges of his seat, bracing himself in case something went wrong and his atoms were disassembled. In fact, they left the 21st a little later than he guessed—the transition was marked by the buzzing of static as the radio cut out. There were no other strange noises, no bump, no eerie sensation. The roadway and the tunnel simply continued smoothly on, until the car brushed through the hanging strips on the other side.

Windsor braked the car on the platform just outside the Tube. Bryce looked through the windshield at the rutted mud of the compound below, surrounded by its high chain-link fence and, beyond that, the moorland hills of the Sterkarms’ country. Five hundred years had just been sidestepped. They were also about twenty miles farther north than the spot they’d left in the 21st—Bryce wasn’t exactly sure why. There’d been talk of wishing to avoid the small sixteenth-century city of Carloel, where everyone’s business was too readily known to everyone else, but also technical talk of a “temporal-spatial dislocation.”

What was truly hard to grasp was that the hills before him, though solid and in every way real, were not in the same world as the one he’d just left.

A security guard stepped out of the office alongside the platform and stooped to look at them. Recognizing his immediate boss, Bryce, and Bryce’s superior, Mr. Windsor, he smiled and waved them on down the ramp.

Windsor drove down the ramp and across the small compound to the gate. A guard opened it for them, dividing the big FUP logo, and then joining it again as he closed and locked the gate behind them.

Windsor stopped the car, a great shiny, metallic scarlet box on the green hillside. “How long are we going to have to sit here?”

Bryce smiled. “The Sterkarms don’t have watches.”

“They have the ones they stole from our geologists,” Windsor said.

“Yeah, well … I told young Andrea nine thirty—”

“Which it is now, and there’s not a sign of them.”

“We’ll just have to be patient,” Bryce said.

Windsor tutted and got out of the car, slamming the door. The metallic sound echoed back from the hills. As Bryce got out of the car into the wind, he had a feeling of immense space opening around him. He joined Windsor in leaning against the car’s hood. “What a view,” Windsor said.

Before he admired the view, Bryce took his pistol from its shoulder holster and checked it over. It was his own and, unlike those carried by the security guards, it was loaded. He didn’t think there was any chance he would need it—if he had seriously thought that he might, neither he nor Windsor would be here—but if anything did go wrong, he was prepared. He noticed Windsor smirking at him and waited for some crack about playing soldiers. Windsor was one of those who thought that, because they weren’t like him, the Sterkarms were nothing more than overgrown, rather dim and naughty children.

But it was a wonderful view. The FUP compound was built about halfway up a hillside above Bedesdale, a long, wide valley cut deeply through the moors. Long hill spurs, now from this side, now that, sloped down from the hills toward the river of Bedes Water. Between the spurs were narrower side valleys, making the shape of Bedesdale a long, intricate zigzag. It was impossible to see very far up or down the valley, because the long hill spurs blocked the view.

But from where they stood, just outside the gates of the FUP compound, it was possible to catch a glimpse of Toorkild’s tower. Look across the width of the valley to the hills on the other side—and look high up, high on the shoulder of the nearest hill spur. There, just poking above the ridge, was the top of the tower. It was built on the slope of another hill, farther away than the one that blocked most of it from view, but it stood tall enough to give the Sterkarms’ watchman a clear view up and down the valley. The Sterkarms had a better view of the FUP compound than FUP had of them. As the bird flew, the distance between them probably wasn’t much more than a mile, but by the time you’d climbed down the hillside and over the rough valley floor and forded the river, and climbed up the opposite hill, you’d have been walking for a good hour and a half. And then you had to walk back. Andrea said she’d never been fitter.

It was rough country, but fresh and beautiful. Above them, the sky was thick with clouds moving so fast before the wind that patches of clear blue were torn open, letting through the sun. The sunlight shone in patches on the hillside around them, and on the slopes across the valley, gleaming on red bracken, lighting green and tawny grass—and then vanished as the break in the clouds closed, leaving the hillsides shadowed, grayed. But somewhere else other patches of sunlight were dancing briefly before closing.

Scores of little streams fell down from the hills in silver streaks, to join the silver of Bedes Water as it ran down the valley. Here and there were stands of trees, pretty birches mostly. Some of them, those highest on the hills, where the wind blew coldest, were turning yellow.

Bryce was never sure if he imagined it, but the details of everything, even outcrops of rock and bushes on the opposite hillside, seemed pin sharp, as if there were a lens in front of his eyes, magnifying things and intensifying colors. There seemed to be more tints to the colors here than there were at home in the 21st. More greens, subtle but distinct: rich greens, luminous pale greens, golden greens, tawny greens. In the stone, the bracken, the trees, there were tawnies, russets, grays, ochers, purples—and all the colors seemed to softly vibrate somehow, to shimmer.

It was the air. It was so clean, so clear. His eyes were no longer looking through a filter of smog and dust. Behind them, the bright-yellow paint of the office was as bright and fresh as when new, and the concrete of the Tube was pure white.

Windsor let out a long sigh. “People are going to pay big money for this. Just listen to that silence!”

The silence was, indeed, more a presence than an absence. It made you realize that what passed for silence in the twenty-first century was more often a din of disregarded sound: of traffic, and people talking nearby, of radios and televisions, of piped music, of machinery running. The silence of the 16th’s hills seemed to travel to them from miles away, to coddle their ears in fold upon fold of silence. When there was a sound—when a sudden gust of wind flapped their coats, or a sheep bleated miles away—it was startling. Then they realized how much the silence had calmed them, without their being aware of it, how it had slowed their hearts and made them draw their breath more deeply.

“Yes,” Windsor said, sighing again. “How can you beat this for a get-away-from-the-rat-race vacation? We’ll be able to ask any price.”

“Not if the Sterkarms are going to keep up their little games.”

“Oh, I can deal with the Sterkarms,” Windsor said. “God, they can’t even write their names. And it’s early days. By the time we get vacations here under way, the Sterkarms will be walking to heel and fetching sticks, don’t worry.”

They’re ill to tame, the border men … Bryce, who’d seen more of the Sterkarms than Windsor, tried to picture this. He said, “It’s a shame we’ll spoil it all.”

“We’re not going to spoil anything,” Windsor said. “We’ll improve it. Improve it and preserve it, not spoil it.”

“But coal mining,” Bryce said. “And drilling for oil. And tourists are going to want electricity—it all adds up to pollution, doesn’t it?”

“You’re still in the past!” Windsor said. “Catch up! Cold fusion! Clean, cheap power!”

“But isn’t there a—”

“It’s perfectly safe,” Windsor said. “One hundred percent. And the pollution at home was built up over two hundred years. Way back then, they didn’t care how much mess they made—but we’ve learned a lot. We know about filters and safeguards—and we’ve got a big incentive to keep this place clean! Money! All this …” He waved a hand at the landscape spread before and below them. “It’s all money in the bank. Are those sheep or goats?”

A little troop of animals had appeared from a fold of the hillside below them and went trotting past, following a narrow track down into the valley. They had long, shaggy coats of wiry hair rather than fleece, black with the odd rusty brown streak. All of them had at least two horns—several had four, in a sort of star burst.

“They’re sheep,” Bryce said. “They do keep goats, though—for their milk.”

“Free-range, organically bred meat on the hoof,” Windsor said. “Unpolluted by insecticides, antibiotics or radioactive fallout. That’s why they’re so tiny and skinny, of course, but the health-food mob won’t mind that. The health-food nutters are just going to eat this place up. See that river down there?”

“Water,” Bryce murmured. The Sterkarms called it “a water,” not a river, and he liked the phrase.

“Fresh trout, fresh salmon, freshwater mussels—and oysters! All plentiful, unpolluted and cheap. Freshwater pearls! Vast shoals of fish in the sea, not just oil!” He spread his arms wide. “Their fishing grounds haven’t been vacuumed clean of fish by factory ships until there’s nothing left but sardines—there’re still whales out there! Do you know how much ambergris is worth an ounce? No heavy-metal pollution in these seas. No mad cow disease in the food chain. Fruit, grain, vegetables, all organically grown.”

“There’ll be a big demand,” Bryce said, and watched Windsor nod. He was wondering himself how long it would be before FUP quietly introduced growth hormones and insecticides and artificial fertilizers into the 16th, to maximize production. How long before they imported big fat modern sheep to replace the hardy but small and skinny Sterkarm sheep. The Sterkarms themselves would probably welcome every innovation once they saw that they would gain from it, so how could you say it was wrong? There was no way he could stop it from happening anyway.

“Whiskey!” Windsor said. “Can you imagine the ad campaign for a whiskey made here? All you’d have to do is list all the pollutants in every make of whiskey made 21st side, just because it’s made in the 21st, never mind how special their ‘pure, natural spring water’ is. And forget ‘twelve years old’ and ‘twenty-five years old’—ours’d be five hundred years old! You wouldn’t be able to keep the shelves stocked. I tell you, this place is a gold mine. But here comes the grit in our Vaseline.”

Bryce had already spotted the approaching party of horses and people. They were on the near side of Bedes Water, having crossed the ford out of sight, and were just rounding the corner of the nearest hill spur.

“We’ll go and meet them,” Windsor said, and got back into the Range Rover. Bryce climbed in beside him. The Range Rover was going to be a shock to the Sterkarms, but it wouldn’t do any harm to impress them with the power of the Elves. Slowly, in four-wheel drive and first gear, they lurched down the rough slope.

Andrea was plodding along on foot, having walked all the way from the tower, as she always did. The Sterkarms had offered her a horse many times, but she didn’t like horses much, and liked the idea of falling off them even less. Toorkild, from good manners, had dismounted and walked beside her, leading his horse, though walking was normally beneath him. His men either dismounted too or curbed their horses into walking behind and beside them, though occasionally one of the party would canter off to stretch his horse’s legs before returning to them.

The Range Rover had been glaringly visible from the moment they’d rounded the hill spur and started climbing toward it: the brightest color in the landscape, a scarlet dot against the green hillside, flashing light from its windshield and mirrors. The men around Andrea exclaimed and pointed. “It’s an Elf-Cart,” she’d said. “You’ve seen them before.” But the Range Rover was very different from the drab trucks that had been brought through the Tube when the office and compound fence had been set up.

Then it started down the hill toward them, which the trucks had never done. The noise of its engine reverberated across the valley. The horses shied and bucked. The men themselves, as they struggled with the animals, sent white-eyed glances at the thing jolting down the hill. The nearer it came, the stranger it looked. Even Andrea thought so, after spending so long in the 16th. The chrome and glass and metallic finish sending out blinding flashes of light; the great, four square, machine-tooled frame; its coughing, snarling, growling; its strange smell. It was utterly alien.

“Take the horses back,” she said. “I’ll go and ask Elf-Windsor­ to stop.”

The men were glad of the excuse to fall back from the thing, but after Andrea had gone on a pace or two, she found Toorkild at her side, though he’d left his horse behind in someone else’s care. She could feel his apprehension about the big, noisy steel box, but he would never allow himself to appear afraid in front of his men, even less in front of a woman, even an Elf-Woman. And he had to greet Elf-Windsor personally because anything else would be, in his own eyes, insufferably rude.

When they neared the car, Windsor halted it and got out. He remembered Andrea, now he saw her. A big lumpy girl. Her round face was all red from the cold, and her hair was pulled back and pinned in prim plaits around her head. She wore a thick, mannish jacket and a long skirt, with solid boots appearing at the hem. Her choice of dress was obviously practical, and possibly in deference to local custom, but Windsor suspected it was what she would wear to a garden party or on the beach. Big lumpy girls were always prudish, because nobody wanted them to be anything else.

Standing beside Andrea was Old Toorkild Sterkarm, who was the kind of man it took to make Andrea look dainty. He had a big head of thick, shaggy long hair hanging to his shoulders and becoming an equally shaggy beard. He was tall too, every bit as tall as Windsor himself, and wore an odd kind of cross between a cloak and a coat with a big cape of fur across the shoulders, making him look enormously broad. He was grinning through his beard, showing big, square, slightly yellowed teeth. Luckily for FUP, however impressive Old Sterkarm might look, he was as ignorant and dim as he was wide. He thought France was a town in England.

Toorkild came at Windsor, arms spread, and enveloped him in a powerful, furry embrace and a strong stink of musk, old wet fur and rank, masculine sweat. Before Windsor had time to react, the harsh mass of beard was shoved into his face and a kiss planted on his cheek. He couldn’t stop himself trying to pull away but remembered in time that this was the Sterkarms’ way. They hugged and kissed everyone, regardless of age or sex. Nerving himself, Windsor grasped the big man’s shoulders and gave him a smacking kiss on the cheek in return. Hey, whatever it took.

Old Sterkarm was speaking—that is, he was making a snarling, coughing noise that was incomprehensible to Windsor, even though it was supposed to be some peculiar kind of English. Andrea translated, as Toorkild beamed at Windsor. “It’s his pleasure to welcome you again, and he thinks it’s been too long. He’s brought a horse for you to ride to the tower, and he and his wife will be unhappy if you don’t eat with them. They have gifts for you, as they’re eager for the friendship of the Elves.”

“Tell him it’s my great pleasure to be here and that I’m looking forward to meeting his wife again.” If Windsor remembered correctly, Mrs. Sterkarm was rather a fetching little piece, if no easier on the nose than her husband. “I’ll be delighted to eat with them, but I’ll pass on the horse if he doesn’t mind. Not dressed for it.”

Indeed, Toorkild was staring at the cloth of Windsor’s dark suit, which had a smoothness and tightness of weave that couldn’t be found in even the best cloth the Sterkarms could steal. “Ask him,” Windsor said, “if he’d like a ride in the car.”

But Toorkild, asked if he would like to ride in the Elf-Cart, politely declined, saying that perhaps at some other time he would, but that day, he was sad for it but he had to get back to his men and the horses. He would ride ahead to the tower, so that everything would be ready for them when they arrived. In the middle of saying this, he turned to Bryce, opening his arms, hugging and kissing the security man even more enthusiastically than he had Windsor, since he knew him a little better.

“Vordan staw day?” Bryce said, as Andrea had taught him— How stands it? or How are you?

Toorkild laughed and thumped him on the back and said something. Bryce didn’t understand a word but smiled and nodded throughout. He gathered that Toorkild was amused by his attempt to speak like a Sterkarm, and was generally being pleasant.

While Toorkild was talking to Bryce, Windsor smirked at Andrea and said, “Well, hello there, Sexy.” She looked startled, which was what he wanted. “Who else will call you ‘Sexy’ if I don’t? I see they’re not starving you.”

Andrea had been thinking that she ought to tell Windsor about the ride the Sterkarms had sent out. Now she changed her mind.

“Join us in the car,” Windsor said. “We can have a few words before the meeting.”

Andrea had to translate again, as Toorkild made another attempt to persuade his guests to ride the horses he’d brought for them and then apologized for having to go back to his men. As Toorkild went away down the hill, Windsor opened the door of the Range Rover.

“Get in the back, Andrea. Sit in the middle—then maybe you won’t roll us over on these slopes.”

Andrea climbed into the car, feeling elephantine and clumsy, and wishing she could suck the blood back out of her face and not give Windsor the satisfaction of seeing that he’d made her blush. She could feel Bryce’s embarrassment on her behalf, and that embarrassed her still further. Neither of them was really in a position to fall out with Windsor, however rude he chose to be—which, of course, was exactly why he enjoyed being rude. She couldn’t imagine anyone among the Sterkarms ever being so casually offensive. In fact, when Toorkild and Per were with people subordinate to them, they were generally more polite, not less. At least, they were if the subordinates were Sterkarms.

Unpleasant as Windsor was, it had to be said he drove the Range Rover well, taking it down the steep, uneven slope and then over some very rough ground on the valley floor, alongside the river. They rounded the hill spur and came in sight of another part of the valley, a bowl surrounded by cloud-­shadowed hills against a gray sky.

They crossed Bedes Water at the ford, driving very slowly through the brown water and over the loose pebbles, and then followed the riverbank again, rounding another hill spur and coming into still another part of the valley. Andrea pointed out the tower on its hill above them. Its full thirty-foot height could be seen now, surrounded by a wall half as high, and all built of the local grayish-reddish gritstone.

Windsor ducked his head to see it and said, “Amazing.” The car jolted on toward the steep path that climbed to the tower. “What I wanted to say was, I’m going to have to be pretty blunt with your friends, and I don’t want you softening what I say. They’ve got to start leaving the survey teams alone.”

“Okay.” She felt a great deal of sympathy for the geologists who’d been waylaid, and had wanted to get Per and Toorkild to feel sorry for them too. Toorkild had been unable to understand what she’d been getting at. The Elves hadn’t been hurt, had they? Well, then, what was their complaint? Per had, eventually, expressed some remorse, but she knew that it had been intended purely to please her and that, given another opportunity to rob a survey team, he would almost certainly do it again—just because it teased. She knew this ought to make her angry, but, instead, if she was honest, she had to admit it made her want to share the joke. I shall finish up, she thought, writing to some agony aunt.

Just at that moment, though, she was much more concerned with the steepening ground ahead of them and her memory of the hard climb up to the tower. The path wasn’t wide enough for even a cart. “Do you think we’d better leave the car here and go up on foot?”

“I could drive this car up the side of a skyscraper,” Windsor said.

Andrea sat back nervously as the car rocked and swayed and bounced, and fervently wished she and Bryce were walking with the Sterkarms. She’d be glad to see Windsor turn his car over then.

The ground became steeper until the car seemed to be clinging to the slope like a fly. The track was so narrow that Windsor often had to drive on the grass beside it, and would then find a boulder in his way, or a sudden hollow or hummock. Several times Andrea thought—with some satisfaction—that Windsor was going to have to abandon the car, but he coaxed it right up to the ridge of the hillside above the valley, where the wind thumped against the windows and thrummed the aerial.

Even Windsor had to admit that he couldn’t get the car through the tower’s gate. The tower itself was built on top of a crag, a large heap of rocks dumped by a glacier, which rose abruptly from the hillside. The path leading up the crag to the gatehouse was for feet and hooves only, and Windsor had to be satisfied with halting the car on the most level spot he could find near the crag. Even there it was tilted at an acute angle.

A crowd of people had come from the tower to meet them, murmuring with curiosity at the sight of the big, gleaming Elf-Cart. Windsor, Bryce and Andrea climbed out of the car into the hilltop wind that buffeted their ears, tugged at their clothes and pulled their hair.

Toorkild came pushing through the crowd to greet Windsor all over again, with another hug and another kiss, which Windsor thought was doing him too much honor. Mrs. Sterkarm was with him, her fair hair all tucked away under a rather stylish little cap, her cheeks and nose very red from the wind, but her wonderful big blue eyes and smile as pretty as he remembered. She chattered away at Windsor in “English” and offered him pattens for his shoes—wooden soles, each raised on two wooden blocks, that you fastened under your shoes with straps, to raise you out of the mud. There was always plenty of mud in the alleys of the tower, well mixed with dung, clumps of dirty old straw, and vegetable matter too rotted to be identifiable.

While the Elves fastened on their pattens, Toorkild and his wife gabbled. Andrea translated.

“They say, Come in at once, dinner’s ready to be served.” She added, “We’ll be eating in their private rooms—and they’ll be serving you big helpings of the very best they have.” She was anxious for her friends, afraid that Windsor wouldn’t appreciate their effort.

Toorkild and Isobel led the way up the steep, rocky path that climbed the little crag to the tower’s gatehouse, with Windsor, Bryce and Andrea following slowly. It wasn’t easy to walk over such rocky ground in the inflexible pattens. Behind them came the general crowd of Sterkarms—every inhabitant of the tower who could get away from their work for long enough to gawp at the Elves.

The gatehouse’s big wooden gate, with its massive iron hinges, stood open, and they passed quickly through the short, dark tunnel with its green smell of long-standing water and mud. Then they were through into the tower’s yard, which disappointed Windsor all over again. This was perhaps his third visit to the tower, and during the long periods between visits, he began believing his own promotional talk of “authenticity” and “tremendous possibilities for development.” It created a picture of the tower in his own head that the real tower could never match. The real tower was cramped, ugly and dirty.

The space enclosed by the wall wasn’t large, and it was crammed with many buildings used as storehouses and dormitories. Between them wound narrow, muddy alleys. The buildings weren’t picturesque, just inconvenient. They were all rough plastered in a mud color, and had thick, dark thatches that raggedly overhung the lanes and dripped. None of the buildings had doors or windows at ground level. The doors were all in the upper stories and were reached by ladders, many of which leaned against the walls, partly blocking the ways, so they had to be moved or scrambled over. The people who often had the most money to spend on expensive vacations were the elderly, and would they want to climb ladders all the time, or keep moving them out of their way?

The place was no pensioner’s dream of half-timbered thatched cottages with gardens of old roses and pinks. It stank. It reeked of sewage and garbage and smoke and old food. And it was noisy. Children screamed, dogs barked, someone was hammering and clanging away at iron with a hammer. Crashes, bangs, yells and gusts of heat and shouting came from another building as they passed—the only building with a door at ground level. “The kitchen,” Andrea yelled to him, and Windsor had a sudden qualm about eating anything that came out of it. Chickens scattered from under their feet, and a pig ran away from them into a dark alley, screeching with a noise like iron rubbed on iron. You had to wonder about people who were happy to live in such filth. It was all a damned sight too authentic, and would need a hell of a lot of development and improvement before anyone could be expected to pay to stay there. The essential flavor of sixteenth-century life would be preserved, of course, and the improvements could only make things better for the Sterkarms too, so how could anyone object?

Even the tower itself was lacking. Surrounded as it was by a clutter of outbuildings, it lacked dignity while still managing to look as grim as a prison. There were no windows in the ground floor at all, and the only door was tiny, barely wide enough to admit Windsor’s shoulders, and so low he had to duck.

Inside was a dark place with a barreled ceiling, lit only by whatever light managed to get in at the door. It stank like a stable. Tangles of dirty straw and dung covered the floor. They stopped in this unpleasant place to take off their pattens, and then the Sterkarms, having first pulled back a heavy gate of iron gridwork, led the way up a dark, narrow and frankly sinister staircase. The first stretch was entirely dark, and Windsor had to grope for each step with his feet. Behind him, Bryce and Andrea were boring on about whether the stairs were really easier for a left-handed swordsman to defend than a right-handed one. The climb, in that dark, confined space, with smelly people ahead of him and behind him, seemed endless. Then a slit of a window admitted a smear of light, but they were so close packed on the steps that all he could see was the place between Mrs. Sterkarm’s shoulder blades.

They came to a landing but passed by the door that opened from it, and climbed a second flight of winding stairs, though these were slightly better lit. Eventually, to Windsor’s relief, Toorkild opened a door and there was a flood of light.

Windsor followed the Sterkarms into a small room and glimpsed something big as it reared up, blocking the light and seeming to attack Toorkild, who bellowed so loudly that Windsor jumped. The thing dropped to the floor again. It was a dog—a very big dog, a sort of Irish wolfhound thing. It had been taller than Toorkild when it had rested its front paws on his shoulders. Cowed by his yell, it slunk under the table.

The table took up most of the room. There was no cloth, and plates were set directly on the wood. At either end was a large, high-backed chair, and a bench was placed along the side farthest from the hearth.

The fire was made of peat, and a great deal of gray smoke coiled into the room despite the chimney’s stone hood. A painted carving of the Sterkarm handshake decorated the hood, and Windsor, eyeing it and remembering the reason for this visit, thought of the warnings about shaking hands with Sterkarms.

As for the rest of the room, the walls were plastered but otherwise plain. A short flight of steps rose from a spot near the door to another door near the ceiling, which led out onto the tower’s roof. The wooden floor was covered everywhere with straw and bits of dried twig and leaf, which made Windsor think of dirt and bugs—and that big flea farm had come prowling out from under the table again! Apart from the table, chairs and bench, the only other furnishings were a cupboard and three wooden chests along one wall.

Bryce started making a fuss of the dog, rubbing its ears and patting its back. It was one of those long, dangerous-looking dogs whose deep rib cages slope up steeply to high, narrow hips. Its shoulder blades and hipbones rose higher than its spine, and its tail lolloped noisily against its shaggy sides as it nuzzled Bryce’s hand, and then reared up to put its paws on his shoulders and look down at him, its tongue hanging out between its teeth.

“Oh, don’t encourage it, Bob,” Windsor said. He thought such a large dog in such a small room was going to be a nuisance while they were trying to talk—and besides, he could already feel his ankles itching.

Isobel, who was trying to usher Windsor to the guest chair, said, “Entraya, will I have Cuddy taken out? I can have her locked up somewhere.”

But when Andrea passed this on to Windsor, he patted Cuddy perfunctorily, saying, “No, no, let her stay.” He went to the chair Isobel was offering him and sat, putting his briefcase on the floor beside him. Isobel fetched cushions from a chest against the wall and packed them behind him. Windsor thought it rather pleasant to have her fussing around him, but the cushions only added lumps to what was already a fiercely hard and uncomfortable chair.

Toorkild had taken the chair at the other end of the table, and Bryce a seat on the bench. Isobel offered him a cushion, which he accepted.

“It’s good to eat with friends,” Toorkild said, “and we’ll eat well today! It’s sad our bonny lad can’t be here. He’d eat twice what any of us can eat and never notice it touching his sides.” He laughed and thumped his belly. “And I’m stuff enough to make three of him!”

“Let him come home safe,” Isobel said, touching the wood of the table.

Andrea quickly translated for Bryce and Windsor, who were looking slightly puzzled. She added that Toorkild and Isobel were talking about their son who, sadly, couldn’t be with them today.

Windsor and Bryce glanced at each other. They had something to tell Toorkild about his precious son. Windsor tried to remember if he’d ever met Sterkarm Junior, but couldn’t call him to mind.

Isobel poured ale from an earthenware jug into Windsor’s cup, which was a beautiful little thing made of silver. Toorkild and Bryce had cups of pewter at their places, while Isobel and Andrea had cups of wood. The way the Sterkarms acquired things meant that they tended not to match.

As soon as his own cup was filled, Toorkild lifted it and said, “Long life and good health to you, a child every year to you, and may you never drink from a dry cup!”

Andrea hastened to translate the toast, and Bryce and Windsor laughed and agreed to it. They tasted their ale as Toorkild was urging them to do.

“Good stuff,” Windsor said. He thought it awful: thick, sticky and sweet. But he knew from his previous visits, when the Sterkarms had pressed snacks of ale and bread on him, he had to be careful with it. The “first-brew” ale they served to guests was far stronger than twenty-first-century beer.

Isobel stooped over the fire, preparing to serve the food. Toorkild sat in his chair, grinning at his guests. Windsor, struggling to make conversation, said, “Is their son away on business?” He was surprised when Andrea threw him a startled, even alarmed, glance.

Andrea’s next glances were to Isobel and Toorkild, to make sure they weren’t wearing the wristwatches Per had given them. She’d had to be quite blunt, telling them that she knew perfectly well the watches had been stolen, and would only cause awkward questions to be asked if Elf-Windsor saw them. It had been difficult, even so, to get Isobel to leave off the watch, because it was such a pretty thing and Per had given it to her. Andrea had reminded her that only the Elves could provide them with aspirins. At that moment, the watches were wrapped in a towel in one of the chests on the other side of the room.

Toorkild was waiting to hear what Windsor had said. “Ah—Elf-Windsor wants to know—has Per gone away to work?” Isobel looked around from the fire, and Toorkild was momentarily startled by the notion that his son would perform menial tasks for pay, but then good manners made him smile again.

“Nay!” he said. “Killing Grannams is pleasure and sport!” It was a joke rather effortfully made, but he laughed at it himself, and Isobel did too, though she turned and gave Andrea a stricken look even as she laughed. “Keep him safe,” she said.

Windsor and Bryce were raising their brows, curious to know what the joke was. “He says, yes, Per’s been called away,” Andrea told them. They looked baffled and glanced at each other again. Andrea could see them thinking that the joke must have lost a lot in translation, but couldn’t imagine that they would be much amused by Toorkild’s little quip either. I’m getting into boggy ground here, she thought. FUP paid her to report on the Sterkarms for them—but she was lying for the Sterkarms because—well, because she loved them. Should a personal loyalty be greater than a loyalty bought and paid for? Per wouldn’t have had the slightest doubt. No payment, however high, could buy his loyalty, which was why you should never shake hands with a Sterkarm.

Isobel took the little silver-gilt bowl from in front of Windsor to fill it from the iron pot she’d been stirring over the fire. Andrea was glad to have an excuse for thinking of something else, and went around the table to the fire, where she passed the empty bowls to Isobel and set the filled bowls before the diners.

Windsor looked into his bowl with interest. Having been promised the very best of what the Sterkarms had, he was hoping for fresh oysters, salmon so recently caught it was still swimming, roast haunch of venison, wild strawberries with fresh cream straight from the dairy. The little bowl before him was filled with a smooth, thick paste. Pools and rivulets of a yellow liquid ran through it. He looked up at Andrea as she was setting another bowl before Bryce.

“Groats,” she said quietly. It meant nothing to him. “Oats ground very very fine—a lot of work—and cooked for hours, very slowly, with cream and butter. That’s the butter, melting out of it.”

Isobel, smiling, passed an earthenware platter of pale, reddish-­brown slices of meat to Windsor.

“You eat the meat with the groats,” Andrea explained. “It’s smoked mutton and smoked sheep’s tongue—I think there might be some goat too. Raw, just smoked. Use your fingers to dip it in the groats.”

Windsor’s expression was one of carefully controlled horror, but Bryce helped himself to a slice of meat, dipped it in his bowl, and said, “It’s good!”

Toorkild and Isobel smiled widely. Windsor thought the goo looked repulsive, but he dipped a slice of tongue into it, wondering exactly how the meat had been smoked. With peat, or dung? But his hosts were watching him. He would have to trust twenty-first-century medicine to put him right.

Bryce hadn’t been telling polite lies. The tang of the meat and the butteriness of the groats were tasty together, if rather rich for a starter. Still, the notion that he was swallowing aggressive sixteenth-century microbes wouldn’t leave him.

A rather awkward silence fell while they ate the groats. Making light conversation was difficult when everything had to be translated. Windsor wondered how quickly they could get on to the real business.

Toorkild and Isobel emptied their bowls first, and Toorkild held Cuddy back by her collar while his wife escaped the room to order the next course. She didn’t go far; they heard her yelling down the stairs to someone, and then she came back, smiling. She opened one of the big chests, and Toorkild helped her bring to the table some objects wrapped in cloth, one of which was very long.

Toorkild took this long thing to Windsor, pulling the wrappings away to reveal a sword with a graceful basket hilt to protect the hand. Toorkild cleared his throat and said, “This we give you in gratitude for your friendship, which we hope will long be ours. May it serve you well and protect you for many years.”

As Andrea translated, she watched Windsor’s face. He took the sword awkwardly—it was a little long for him to handle easily as he sat in his chair. He drew the bright, sharp blade partly from the scabbard and seemed startled by the harsh scraping sound it made. His expression was slightly stunned, as if Toorkild had hit him.

Andrea thought she knew how he felt. The Sterkarms had been shocked to discover that she had no weapon of her own, and had given her a dagger. She’d felt very odd about it, touched by their concern that she should be able to protect herself, but at the same time the heaviness, sharpness and obvious practicality of the weapon had dismayed her. She felt the gift was making a demand she couldn’t meet. Of course, she’d known that the Sterkarms’ way of life was often violent, but her own life had always been safe and peaceful, and however hard she tried to come to terms with the feuding and riding, the brute reality of it always came as a shock.

She saw the same shock in Windsor’s face. The sword he’d been given was in no way symbolic or ceremonial. It wasn’t a theatrical prop, or a quaint antique, but an everyday tool for killing people. It had come to vicious life in his hand, and had thrown him a little.

Isobel was giving Bryce a dagger with an elaborate hilt that suggested it had been made to match the sword given to Windsor. Expensive and generous gifts. Andrea wondered who had owned them before they’d come into the Sterkarms’ possession.

“Thank you!” Windsor said. “I’m sure I speak both for myself and Mr. Bryce when I say I’m delighted to do business with people so charming and hospitable, and we look forward to a long continuing connection in the future. We shall treasure these gifts.”

Bryce was nodding emphatically as he admired his dagger.

To Andrea, Windsor went on, “Can you add anything that’s proper?” He wondered how much the sword would be worth 21st side. Once FUP’s project really got moving, the bottom was going to fall right out of the market for sixteenth-century antiques, so if he was going to sell, he’d better sell quick.

Andrea translated his speech. She added, “Elf-Windsor says that this beautiful sword will always remind him of Sterkarms’ friendship and generosity. He feels himself honored to be trading with a family as renowned for their courage and pride, for their weapon skill and vindictiveness as Sterkarms.”

Toorkild and Isobel beamed, and Andrea felt quite proud of herself. The Sterkarms loved to be called proud and vindictive. It was nothing more than the truth: They did value themselves highly, above others, and they were prone and quick to seek revenge. They considered both to be excellent qualities.

Toorkild was so pleased by what he believed Windsor to have said that he pulled Windsor up from his chair to hug and kiss him again, and then, while Isobel was kissing Windsor, he pulled Bryce up from the bench to embrace him. Both 21st men were startled but carried it off. Cuddy became excited and jumped about, flailing them with her tail, and making the strangled whining noise that was the closest she could get to a bark. Toorkild gave a shattering roar of “Down, Cuddy!”

“I have presents too!” Windsor said, and stooped for his briefcase. He took from it two whole packs of aspirin, each containing twenty-four tablets, one for Toorkild and one for Isobel. As an afterthought, he tossed another pack onto the table. “And one for their son.”

The Sterkarms had never seen so many aspirins before. Isobel cooed over the pretty neatness and bright, clear colors of the little cardboard boxes, and held one up for Toorkild to admire. “Elven be greatest of our friends!” Toorkild said, as someone knocked at the door. “My brother will envy me—he has a wife and three sons and a daughter too.”

Isobel had gone to open the door, while struggling to hold Cuddy. Two kitchen girls came in, carrying a pot between them on a wooden bar. As Andrea was translating, Isobel caught her eye. She never liked to hear talk of her brother-in-law’s bevy of children, especially not when her only living child was out of her sight.

Windsor, taking the hint, found two more packs of aspirin in his briefcase and dropped them on the table. “I don’t have any more with me, but perhaps I could get some more.” He met Toorkild’s eye as Andrea translated this and thought they understood each other.

Isobel had shooed away the kitchen girls and now served the main part of the meal: a sort of meat pudding. Andrea went to help her. In honor of the guests they were using plates instead of trenchers, silver gilt for Windsor and Bryce, pewter for Toorkild and Andrea, wood for Isobel. They slopped lumps of the meat pudding onto the plates, together with its gravy, while Andrea translated Windsor’s remarks about how good it smelled and how hungry he was.

“Good appetite!” she said, as she passed him his plate.

Both Bryce and Windsor found the venison sausage hard work but tried not to show it. The meat was gamy and had some rather unusual textures, and they were expected to eat it with a knife and spoon, and the help of lumps of heavy bread, full of seeds and grit. Meat kept falling off the spoons and splashing in the gravy, and Windsor got some drops on his sleeve. Looking up, he saw Toorkild and Isobel eating with gusto and licking their fingers clean.

“This is wonderful,” Windsor said bravely. “Can you ask Mrs. Sterkarm how she made it?”

Isobel fixed him with her round blue eyes and smiled. “I sent our Per to fetch a deer. He brought home a beauty—I’ve set it to hang. Then I took its heart, its lungs, its liver and its kidneys, and I chopped them all small and mixed them with oats and thyme and sage, and then I cleaned out stomach and stuffed it with mix and boiled it.”

Windsor looked at his plate, nerving himself to take another bite. Bryce seemed unconcerned.

“Our Per will be sad he missed it,” Toorkild said.

“He would eat whole pudding himself if I let him,” said Isobel. “I saved some for him.” She gave a firm little nod. “Saved him a big slice.”

“Don’t worry,” Andrea whispered to her, knowing that Isobel had put the slice of pudding aside in the manner of a spell—it was being saved for Per, therefore he must come home safely to eat it Isobel glanced at her and patted her knee.

The venison pudding eaten, Isobel fetched from the cupboard a bowl of water and towels, for them to wash their hands. She also brought over little wooden bowls, one full of honey, the other of a thick mess of stewed fruit: bilberries, raspberries and blackberries, gathered from the moors. The last course was another bowl of groats, this time served with the honey and fruit.

“A wonderful meal!” Windsor said, when his bowl was empty. “I want to thank my host and my delightful hostess for providing us with such wonderful food—the best possible precursor to business.” He hoped the slight churning in his guts was only his imagination.

Andrea passed this on, except that she left out the mention of Isobel being delightful. She was fairly sure Toorkild wouldn’t appreciate it.

At the mention of business, Isobel rose. “You must excuse me, I have many things to look into—but you are always welcome, and you must come again soon. Are you sure there’s nothing more you want? More food? There is plenty more groats and fruit …”

Bryce and Windsor protested that they’d eaten more than enough and it had all been delicious. Isobel listened, and then filled their bowls with what was left of the groats, honey and fruit. “It will only go to waste if you don’t eat it …” Which was a plain lie. There were plenty in the tower who would be glad to eat it. “Will I pour you more ale?” She filled their cups without waiting for an answer. “Would you like fire built up? Entraya, tha’ll keep fire in, good lass. Will either of you have another cushion?”

No, no, Bryce and Windsor assured her. They were warm enough, quite comfortable, well fed. There was nothing they needed.

“There be beds made up,” Isobel said, “if you would stay night. You are more than welcome.”

Toorkild was standing, holding Cuddy by the collar so she shouldn’t escape when Isobel finally left the room. “If there be anything you’d like?” she said pleadingly.

“Woman,” Toorkild said, “away wi’ thee.” He said it quite pleasantly, and Andrea didn’t bother to translate. Isobel went to her husband, clutched his arm and kissed the cheek he stooped toward her before she left. It wasn’t so much a show of affection as a reminder that Isobel expected to be told everything that was said while she was out of the room. If she disagreed with anything Toorkild decided, she would express her views forcibly—Andrea had heard her do so on other occasions. Indeed, when Toorkild asked for time to consider any deal, what he usually meant was a chance to ask his wife’s advice. All the men of the extended Sterkarm family knew that he was going to ask Isobel’s advice—just as they asked their wives—but everyone politely maintained the fiction that men’s business was nothing to do with women.

“Now we can talk,” Toorkild said, settling himself into his chair. He smiled but, behind the smile, was wary. Though he pretended to believe that the Elves had come on a friendly visit, bringing gifts to bind friend to friend, he knew there was something more to it.

“Yes,” Windsor said, nodding to Andrea to translate. “I’m glad to have a chance to talk, because we’re a team.” He smiled. “We’re a team, Toorkild, you and I.”

Andrea had to expand a little in translating this. Toorkild knew what teams were, but thought of them in a purely frivolous sense, as people banded together on holidays, to win tugs-of-war, to race horses, or play wild, murderous, day-long games of football. It wouldn’t do to use the word “family” instead since, no matter how honored a guest Windsor was, Toorkild would strongly resent the suggestion that he was family. She said, “Mr. Windsor says, ‘We deal well together.’ You and he.”

Toorkild nodded and smiled. His beard hid much of his face, and his smile was so genial that even Andrea, who knew him well, found it hard to see any trace of his skepticism.

Encouraged, Windsor said, “We have the same long-term objective.” Andrea groaned inwardly. “We both want to see the Sterkarms prosper,” Windsor went on, which was at least easier to translate.

“It’s difficult,” Windsor went on, “when some members of the team aren’t playing with the others. There has to be full cooperation on both sides.”

“We have to help each other as much as we can,” Andrea said to Toorkild, who beamed and nodded.

“We at FUP have all the skills to score the goals,” Windsor said, “but some members of the team seem to be playing for the other side.”

“His son,” Bryce put in. “And his nephews.”

Andrea hesitated about passing that on to Toorkild.

“We have to work together, Toorkild,” Windsor said. “We have to play on the same side, for the same team, to score the goals for us!”

Well, Toorkild did understand the concept of a football game, even if his idea of a good, fair game was Windsor’s idea of a riot between football hooligans. Andrea translated closely. Toorkild sat back in his chair, his face carefully blank.

“We at FUP are sending out survey teams,” Windsor said, “and they are being robbed.”

Andrea passed this on.

Toorkild sat straight in his chair and slapped the palms of both hands on the table. “Reiving? Who has been reived? Who is reiving anyone?” Toorkild knew that the best way to silence an accusation was to respond fiercely, with injured innocence, to speak of your slighted honor and threaten to revenge it. “There has been no reiving.”

Andrea couldn’t meet Windsor’s eye as she translated this for him. She didn’t know herself how far to believe Toorkild. He had to know how Per had acquired the wristwatch he’d given him, but was Toorkild only lying to protect his son after the event, or had he known about the robbery of the survey team all along? The Sterkarms always did seem to have difficulty in grasping the meaning of the word “robbery.” If someone took Toorkild’s cattle, he would agree that was robbery. That was an insult to his honor, an unforgivable slight, demanding instant and full revenge. But if he rode and took someone else’s cattle, well, that was only natural, and repayment for some time in the past when they’d taken his. Besides, he needed the cattle. Riding was what the Sterkarms did. They were good at it. It was only right they should go on doing it.

“I’m afraid another of our survey teams has been robbed,” Windsor said. “Their clothes, boots, tools, ponies and food were all taken. Now, I have a problem with this, Toorkild.”

Bryce waited for Andrea to translate that, and then said, “We have good reason to think that the robbery was led by Per May and the Gobbyssons.”

Toorkild recognized his son’s name, and his eyes darted to Bryce’s face. He scowled. “We’re always blamed! If anyone’s reived in whole country round, we’re blamed! If we reived all people we’re said to have reived, we’d have no rest by day or night! Is this why they came to share our salt? To call me a reiver to my face? To call my sweet lad a reiver? If there’s been any reiving done round here, it was done by Grannams! Tell him”—one thick forefinger jabbed toward Windsor—“that my Per is a good lad and wouldn’t hurt a midge, and he’d be safe home with his daddy and his mammy easy in her mind if it wasn’t for thieving Grannams. Let him go and talk to Grannams if he wants to talk about reiving. Down, Cuddy!” The dog, excited by her master’s shouting and the mention of Per’s name, had jumped up and was pacing to and fro.

Andrea relayed the gist of this to Windsor and Bryce, who both seemed taken aback by the energy of Toorkild’s response.

“We are holding talks with the Grannams too,” Windsor said, “as he very well knows.”

“And our people gave us a description of the band who robbed them,” Bryce said. “Tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, led by two young men and a boy, with horses. The boy was about fourteen. One of the others had what they called a ‘girlish’ face. Ask him if his son isn’t known as ‘Per the Girl.’ The other two sound to me like Little Toorkild Gobbysson and Ingram Gobbysson.” Bryce had been checking in his files. He nodded to Andrea. “Ask him what he thinks.”

Windsor and Bryce watched Toorkild steadily as Andrea translated.

Toorkild made a contemptuous sound with his lips and waved one hand. “That could be anyone,” he said.

Even as Andrea put this into modern English, the stolen watches were in the chest a few feet from her, and Per was away on a ride.

Windsor pushed together the packs of aspirins, and then shoved them down the table toward Toorkild. Their eyes met. “I hear you get a touch of arthritis when the weather’s damp. I hope the aspirins help.”

Toorkild leaned forward. “Before Elven came into our country, we did without wee white pills. When Elven have gone away from us, we shall do without wee white pills. Away into pit with your wee white pills!”

Toorkild spoke with obvious displeasure, but neither Windsor nor Bryce understood, as yet, exactly what he’d said. Andrea couldn’t see any point in translating words which could only make the whole situation worse.

“Hang on a moment,” she said to Windsor and Bryce. “I must make sure of this. I just have to check …” Turning to Toorkild, she slid her hand across the table to his, beside which it looked small, plump and pale. “Master Toorkild, sir. There are gifts between us, between you and Elves.”

He smiled and took her hand. “We be ‘thou’ to each other, Dearling. And thou’rt no one of them. Thou’rt one of us, all but one of us.”

“It gladdens me to hear that. But I am an Elf, and I’m bound by my word to them. And it hurts us, Master Toorkild, that when we’ve bought friendship between us, with good gifts, that thy people reive our people. I know, I know tha can’t watch all of thy people all of time, but I thought thy word was more feared than this.”

Toorkild looked furious at the suggestion that his people had disobeyed him. He was both pricked in his honor and set on his mettle to prove that he could govern them.

“I didn’t tell Elven,” Andrea told him, “what tha said about wee white pills. Why fall out with them? Thou’rt better off staying friends.” She didn’t know if she was right to try and patch up the quarrel like this, when it would almost certainly break out again in a little while. But it seemed to her that playing for time would give the Sterkarms and FUP a better chance to settle down into some kind of working relationship.

She could see Toorkild thinking it over. Then he said, impressively, “If my people have taken anything from your people, they shall bring it here, you shall have it back. Every last horse, every last boot. You shall have it!”

Andrea wondered if that included watches, but she passed what Toorkild had said on to Windsor, who was leaning back in his chair with a wary expression she didn’t like.

Windsor had been watching Toorkild and Andrea carefully as they spoke together. He couldn’t understand what they said, but he was suspicious of Toorkild’s sudden capitulation. Of course, louts like Old Sterkarm, who threw their weight about, beat their chests and frightened a lot of small people might well cave in when they met someone who wasn’t intimidated by their bluster, but … “What exactly did you say to him?” Windsor asked Andrea.

“I wasn’t sure,” she said. “I mean, I wanted to make sure that he understood. I was just going over what you’d said before and making sure everything was absolutely clear.”

“If you’d done that in the first place …” Windsor said.

Andrea let it pass. It was more important to have helped Toorkild keep his supply of wee white pills than to defend her own linguistic skills.

“Tell him I’ll have an inventory drawn up of everything that was stolen,” Windsor said.

Andrea thought she’d better not interfere anymore, or she’d have suggested granting an amnesty, allowing the Sterkarms to keep what they’d already stolen in exchange for agreeing not to steal anymore. But it was like Windsor to insist on everything being returned. He liked to be strict. “Playing tough” he called it. Perhaps he was right. The Sterkarms certainly had no respect for anything that seemed weak. But they didn’t respect strength either. If they met strength, they fought harder or, if beaten, became resentful and bided their time for revenge. It was hard to know how best to deal with them.

“I certainly hope we’ll have less trouble from the—the Grannams in the future,” Windsor said, nodding to Andrea to translate. “Because there is talk of sending armed guards out with the teams. He might like to let ‘the Grannams’ know. We’d hate anyone to get hurt.” Bryce was quiet and kept his face noncommittal.

Toorkild showed no concern at the possibility of armed guards. He was probably surprised to learn that the teams his people had robbed hadn’t been armed.

“I’m glad we’ve been able to settle this amicably,” Windsor said. He looked down into his briefcase. “Oh look. Here’s another pack of aspirins I hadn’t noticed.” He tossed them onto the table with the others.

As far as any expression at all could be read on Toorkild’s bearded face, he looked sulky—but he straightened himself in his chair, as if about to say something. Before he could, from outside came a long, soaring shout.

Toorkild’s heavy chair skidded back, so forcefully did he rise. He stood still, listening. Through the tower’s narrow windows came shouts from the yard, more and more voices joining in. They were yelling, “May! May!”

Toorkild went straight to the door, threw it open, and dashed down the stairs, leaving Windsor and Bryce staring.