Loaded for bear, ready to fetch back the traitors to their just and richly deserved punishments, Colonel Dr. Jane Stone closed her office door behind her and stalked down the corridor toward the descending lift.
“As you may or may not know, Bass,” said Harold, Archbishop of York, “His majesty has decreed that a church be raised on each of the five battlefields whereon the various armies of Crusaders were smashed, in the last two years, and I had journeyed up to the environs of Hexham to dedicate the chosen plot of ground and also to symbolically break the earth for the construction.
“Then, in the very midst of the high mass, which was being sung out of doors, of course, before the gathered throng, eight men and five women appeared—one of the men at my very side—then disappeared so quickly that one might have thought to have imagined the entire sequence of events, save that it repeated twice over. Then, while still the folk all were exclaiming and calling on God and the saints, those eight men—musicians—were there, before the very altar! Two wantons stood amongst them and three more, almost nude, were whirling in some lascivious Byzantinic dance.
“Bass, I am become an old, old man, and my mind has lost some of its flexibility, alas. I was shocked, deeply shocked, thinking for a brief moment that this was but another plot hatched by Abdul and the thrice-damned Romans; then it dawned on me what must have happened. I knew myself the terror of the unknown that these poor men and women must feel and cursed myself roundly for not making useless that hellish device up there under Whyffler Hall, long since.
“As my own terror melted away, however, the understandable terror and horror of the assembled throng had mounted, and as one they moved forward, blood in all eyes and weapons in right many hands, while their voices roared out their common intent to do fatal violence to those whom they saw as evil warlocks and witches.
“It was a near thing, Bass, a terrifying near thing. Had my guardsmen—of whom I had brought along a goodly number, both horse and foot—not been easily to hand, belike the bemused throng had taken and messily done to death those poor involuntarily projected men and women. But a few prearranged signals brought the guards to me, and twoscore of my pikemen and halberdiers proved quite sufficient to halt the ill-armed folk there congregated. Once my horsemen had cloaked the intruders and ridden them out of sight, it was still an hour or more before we could quieten the folk, but it was done, and the mass was concluded.”
“Where are the poor bastards now, Hal?” asked the Duke of Norfolk. “Christ, what a shock to them that must’ve been!”
“Well cared for, Bass, although their movements have been restricted, for their own good, of course, you understand. I felt it wisest not to bring them into York, especially not into my palace, not with all that is here going on these days. They are all being held at the Abbey of St. Olaf. You recall its location, do you not? It is the place where his majesty kept his—aahhh—”ladies* when the royal camp was hereabouts three years agone.
“From my brief conversations with various of them, from their dress—the men, that is—and from the dialect that they all seem to speak, I would guess that they are plucked from a time far closer to yours than to mine own; therefore, I would like for you to take them over, try to ease their transition into this world of the here and now which will be so new and strange and terribly frightening to them a11.
“And what am I to tell them of exactly how they got here, Hal?” inquired Bass. “Do I troop them all down into the ground level of Whyffler Hall and show them the console to which you’ve so often alluded? Is that what these damned royal warrants are for?”
The archbishop shrugged. “It’s in your hands entirely, Bass. Your judgment has proved itself good; tell them as much or as little of the actual truth as you think they can understand or believe.
“As to the warrants, that is another matter entirely. Bass, at the far end of the main cable of that console lies a world of technological savagery beyond the imaginings of you or any other man or woman here. That world has almost exhausted its ores and fossil fuels, has poisoned its best croplands and its waters, and its people will do the same or worse here, if once they discover this rich, unspoiled place and know the proper console settings to get here.
“That console and the building full of equipment that backs it and powers it was developed by a project the avowed purpose of which was to find and plunder earlier eras of Earth history, but they would jump at this world just as fast and like it even better.
“I showed you one of the heat-stun weapons from that world, Bass, demonstrated it on that pig, remember? How long do you think even your fine cavalry could stand up against men armed with such weapons? No, every second that that device is turned on—and it must be turned on, else those poor men and women would not have been projected here—is a second that this world lies in the direst form of danger.
“So I want you to take a small force, and those warrants, and ride as fast as horseflesh will bear for Whyffler Hall. There you are to break the seals, have the masonry blocking that archway broken down, descend to the old cellar, and ax the power cable in twain, thus permanently severing all connection with my own world as Emmett and I should have done when first we came here one hundred and fifty-eight years ago.”
* * *
Bass decided that the newcomers could wait a bit longer. Gathering his lancers, he rode back to his camp at a stiff clip. There he gave a staccato stream of orders and began to change from his more formal clothing into attire more suitable to a hell-for-leather cross-country ride up to the border and his estate of Whyffler Hall.
The Norfolk Lancers had made a fine, brave, colorful military show for the procession into York, but for the kind of ride he now planned, parts of it through the traditional haunts of outlaws, brigands, and the like, an entirely different variety of mounted man-at-arms was needed, so he had ordered Sir Calum and Sir Liam to select fifty galloglaiches to accompany him, and the rest of his gentlemen on the long, hard ride up to the Marches.
He only spared the necessary time to send a galloper over to the archbishop’s estates to fetch back Baron Melchoro and Don Diego because he knew that did he not, his lady-wife, Krystal, would most likely not see the jolly nobleman again before he had to return to Portugal and his family, estates, and affairs.
They set out for Whyffler Hall in the manner in which he would have preferred to set out for York from Norfolk—sixty-six armed men, no pack train, no servants, no tents; horse grain, powder, and absolutely necessary equipment were packed on the spare horses’ backs. Quickly inspecting the men chosen from the galloglaiches, Bass silently doubted that any brigands of sound mind would risk a tangle with such specimens, and for the umpteenth time he thanked his stars that they and their comrades of the Royal Tara Squadron of Gallowglasses felt and evidenced such fanatic personal loyalty to him.
What with wind and rain and mist, plus unseasonal chill in the mountains, Bass Foster had occasional cause to regret forcing his unit to travel so light, but they did make good speed and on the only night of really hard, driving rain were able to camp in the partial shelter of the crumbling, weed-grown ruin that had once been a place of cheer called Heron Hall.
Despite the sadness that Bass felt in the ruin, having many far more pleasant memories of the place and its late owner, Sir John Heron, that sadness was allayed with a sense of satisfaction, for a dawn departure from the place would see them at Whyffler Hall by midafternoon of the following day.
“You do not love us, do you, Brother Prospero?” asked Pope Abdul in a mild tone tinged with sadness.
Cardinal Sicola, who had been summoned by the pontiff within hours of his return to Rome from Palermo, reflected that the faded blue eyes were radically incongruous in that lined, dark-olive-hued face above that raptorial beak of a nose; they should rightly be black or at least brown to properly match so predatory a face.
In reply, he shrugged, saying candidly, “No, I do not, your holiness, I never have. Nor did I love your holiness’* predecessor . . . but he, at least, was properly elected.”