My hands tightened on a basket of turnips. Well, I’m here now, aren’t I? And I’m coming for you.
Collum rode up on the wooden bench beside the farmer. I began to chat, carefully, with his wife. Phoebe stayed quiet, still uncomfortable with the twisty medieval dialect. Two ratty-haired children perched atop a crate of wormy apples, casting shy glances our way.
“’Twill be our last trip to town before the roads close for winter,” the woman offered. “But my John just had to come see the new king crowned. Wanted the little ones to see it too.”
She sighed and settled her thin frame more comfortably against the hard wagon bed. “I pray to all the saints this winter won’t be hard as the last. We lost our good milk goat. And our youngest babe.”
The young woman’s prematurely weathered face never changed as she spoke. Phoebe and I exchanged a look, marveling at a time when the loss of livestock and a child were uttered in the same breath. In this era, however, losing a goat would likely cause more suffering. She could always have more children.
We rested as best we could, jouncing along the nearly impassable road. One of the children, a little girl with a perpetually runny nose, crept closer and was soon fussing with Phoebe’s braids. I shut my eyes, the sun winking in orange patterns against my lids, and listened to the cadence of the conversation going on up front.
The sway of the wagon lulled me, and I must’ve drifted into a sort of fugue. Tiny nuggets popped up like bubbles in my drowsy mind.
A man’s voice, speaking urgently as his strong arms set me on the ground. A whiff of burning that coated my tongue. Shouts. Screams. Someone grabbed my hand, and I began to run.
My eyes popped open. The half dream dissipated, leaving me shaken and strangely hollow. I lurched across the wagon and eased down beside Phoebe. Our feet dangled from the back.
She glanced at me sidelong. “You all right, then, Hope? You look pale as milk.”
“I’m fine.”
Phoebe raised a skeptical eyebrow, then uncapped a leather flask and handed it to me. “Here, take a drink. It’ll help.”
I took several long gulps. The slushy water we’d filled from a clear spring burned my throat. “Thanks.” I croaked.
“Look”—Phoebe nudged my side—“I know it’s hard, yeah? This is my third journey, and it still feels like a dream. Or like I’m inside a play. But you get used to it. I promise.”
I snatched another look at the family, the little girl now snuggled in her mother’s lap, the older boy at her feet. It struck me suddenly that these people were dead. Only dust in the ground in our own time. And yet there they were. The father chatting quietly with Collum. The mother stroking her daughter’s hair. How could anyone ever get “used” to something like that?
When we emerged from the forest, the farmer halted. I rose to my feet. Phoebe pulled herself up beside me. Everyone, including the family, gaped at the sight of the walled medieval city lying before us in the distance.
London. 1154.
Wow.
Distant bells chimed the hour, I thought I counted ten peals, though there were so many ringing all at once, it was hard to tell for sure. Tendrils of smoke rose from a thousand fires to coat the sky above the city in a smoggy cloak.
The farmer drew his son up onto the slatted boards between him and Collum. “There she is, boy.” The man smoothed his child’s rumpled hair. “Londontown. And our good King Henry there to greet us.”
“I pray on catchin’ a glimpse o’ the new queen,” the wife said. “Do ye know, we hear she went on Crusade with her first husband, that Frenchie king.” Her voice lowered. “They say she rode with her tatties on full display to entertain the troops.”
“I heard that too.” I agreed, tucking back a grin.
For the first time, the historian in me woke and squirmed with excitement. I was here. I’d traveled through time and space. The possibilities stretched out before me—so many worlds, so many famous people and events.
My jaw dropped as something occurred to me. My mother was a renowned historian, with prestigious awards for her academic publications. Her lectures were booked up months in advance. Reviewers wrote how Sarah Walton’s lectures painted such vivid pictures, it was as though she’d seen the history with her own eyes.
I snorted. Kinda cheated there, didn’t you, Mom?
And now I was seeing it with my own eyes. London on the eve of one of the most famous events in English history. The coronation of its greatest royal couple, Henry II and his infamous wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine.