A Twist in Time

Chapter 10

The man was certifiable. Why did he fight her even when he was ashen and wavering on his feet? She stood, glaring down at him. He turned his head away. Just great.

Well, she had other things to do.

Lucy left him in the dim cabin. The Camelot rocked more than usual in the water. Rain beat down in waves across the deck above. Rivulets obscured the windows. A worry intruded to crease her brows. The bandages on both his shoulder and his thigh were pink and yellow and wet again. Was that a bad sign? He’d certainly looked ill.

She sheathed his sword and laid it on the sofa. It wouldn’t do any good to hide it from him. He’d find it if he had to tear the boat apart. Was he dangerous? Maybe when he got his strength back. He’d been angry with her for some reason just now. The man was incomprehensible. She rummaged in her shoulder bag under Leonardo’s book and pulled out the pepper spray. Too big for her jeans pocket. In the end, she put it in the spice rack bolted to the galley cupboards, where it was accessible from the table or the galley itself. She’d have to remember to take the spray with her when she changed bandages or used the head.

Leonardo’s book.

She flipped on a cabin light. The day was dim. She went to her shoulder bag and pulled the book out. The leather with its tooled image of angels ascending to heaven gleamed in the light of the lamp swinging over the table. That book had exerted a power over her for months and now . . .

Now, nothing. It was just a marvelous book, a precious historical object written in the hand of a great man long dead. But she hadn’t thought about it since she’d shown it to Jake night before last. When had she ever, in the time she’d owned it, not thought about it for even an hour? It had owned her more than she owned it.

She felt like a jilted lover. Whatever had been between them, her and the book, was over, a memory of passion that seemed incomprehensible, even amusing, now that she’d moved on.

Or it had moved on.

What a thing to think! She must be losing it. She put the book in a cupboard above the sofa. That was the first time Leonardo’s book had been out of her shoulder bag, except when she handled it, in several months. There was a time when she would have felt anxious. But not now. Now she felt . . . right. Things were as they should be. How odd. The feeling this morning at Target of not being panicked about anything had grown even more intense.

She snorted and closed the cupboard. Who was she kidding? She was hiding out with a probably murderous Viking from her own friend. She’d probably changed history. And some CIA type was maybe after her. Things were way not right.

She glanced at her watch. Nearly two. She had some time before she needed to start dinner. She’d always been chief cook and bottle washer for her father when they sailed up the coast each summer to cruise among the San Juan Islands off the Washington coast. You could cook a decent meal in tight quarters if you set your mind to it. Funny. Her father had tried to make her into a physicist, but he was most content to let her do the woman’s work on their trips. Can’t have it both ways, Daddy. She sighed. The experience would stand her in good stead now, though. Not that the stupid Viking would appreciate her efforts. She grabbed the newspaper, sat at the table, and flipped it open. No mention of the time machine or a search for her and/or her Viking. Good.

Wait. . . . An article in the metro section said San Francisco General was doing some construction on the parking structure.

That couldn’t be coincidence. Her mind churned. Of course. They’d have to dismantle either the machine or the parking structure to get it out. She read the article carefully, only a couple of column inches. It said only that the residents nearby could expect construction between the hours of 7:00 A.M. and 9:00 P.M., with a quote from the hospital administrator apologizing for a few days of noise and dust. Why had something like this even made the paper? Maybe to keep people from complaining to city hall or loitering. The world beyond Jake’s boat was taking its own direction. That made her heart thump. Brad and Casey wanted the machine enough to dismantle a parking garage. They must know that without the diamond they could never make the machine work. They would pursue her to the ends of the earth.

She thought wildly of just mailing Brad the diamond and the book.

But that thought nearly made her ill, it felt so wrong. Jake was right. Casey would use the machine for his own purposes, and those were guaranteed not to be in the best interests of the world at large.

They were in a Mexican standoff. If Brad and Casey couldn’t find her and her Viking, she and Galen couldn’t get back to the machine to return him to his time, either. To do that, they had to have a working machine, and that meant giving Casey all he would need to use it. It was a trap, a horrible trap, and she couldn’t see any way out of it.

Okay, she told herself. Just calm down. There’s nothing you can do right now. Just take it one day at a time. She thought back to that time in Jake’s apartment when she’d looked into Galen’s eyes and known for sure that all they needed was time for him to heal. She wished she had that sureness now.

Speaking of healing, she pulled out the book she’d bought on nursing. The stupid Viking wouldn’t appreciate her taking care of his wounds, either. But Jake’s blithe instructions to change his bandages and remove his stitches when they were ready didn’t provide anywhere near enough detail. Was his wound infected? When exactly should she try to take the stitches out? She read through the whole section on the care of wounds, then read it again.

Well. Interesting. Seepage was normal. You bandaged the wounds primarily to absorb draining fluid. Once the wounds had stopped draining there was some controversy over whether you should bandage them at all. The only other reasons for bandages were to reassure the patient and keep the stitches from catching on clothes. In fact, after her second reading, she kind of came down on the side of those who said you shouldn’t bandage at all after the wounds stopped seeping if you could get away without it. The wounds healed better and were easier to keep clean. It was okay to get wounds wet, once they were sealed if you patted them dry, but not the dressings, because they held moisture and collected germs. Pulling the bandages off to disinfect the area just pulled at the stitches. And the book said you should take the stitches out in five to seven days, not the ten she’d thought. At least she still had some time. And she had a plan.

She put away the book and bustled around the kitchen, marinating some whole snapper, peeling asparagus. Would he know asparagus? There was so much she didn’t know about life in tenth-century England. She found a pan large enough to fry the snapper. Fresh bread and butter—he’d be used to those for sure.

A couple of hours later she whirled to find him behind her. For a big guy, he moved silently.

“Stinks good,” he said “Ic am hungry.” At least that’s what it sounded like.

She nodded to the sofa. “Sit. We eat soon,” she responded in English.

He nodded. Had he understood that? “After we eat, you will teach me your Englisc,” he said, reverting to Latin.

She nodded. The sooner the better. Latin was getting to be a real strain.

The woman could cook. The fish was delicious and the vegetable, too, whatever it was. The bread was sour, but he liked it. She said it wasn’t spoiled. It was supposed to be that way. And when he had insisted on mead instead of water, she had reluctantly produced beer in a glass bottle. Not mead. Not beer as rich or flavorful as he was used to, but better than nothing. She would allow him only one, though. It had something to do with the tablets that kept away pain.

He sat now and watched her cleaning up. He had been shocked this afternoon that she wore breeches that showed the rounded curve of her buttocks, but at least her legs were covered. Her torso was covered, too, but so tightly that every swell was clearly visible—a contrast to her tiny waist. Did women always dress to provoke a man in this time? And the shirt clearly showed the cleft of her generous breasts. This Brad was a lucky man.

She did not seem to long for her lover to come to her. She was, in fact, hiding from him with the very man he wanted to imprison. That meant she did not value him. Good. This Brad was not man enough to bind her to him. Galen could make her forget him. He would show her what belonging to a man could mean.

When she was finished, she got some large parchment from a cupboard aft and laid it out on the table. She patted the padded bench beside her. It was almost a command.

But it was easy for him to obey her in this small thing. She had something he wanted. He went and sat. She was very close. He could smell the soap she used on her hair and feel her heat. He watched as her nipples peaked beneath her thin, tight shirt. She held a strange wooden stick that appeared to have a charcoal center, for its tip left marks upon the parchment. She drew a line down the center before turning to him.

“You speak Danish and English very well,” she said slowly, in Englisc.

He got most of that. “Min moder is Englisc,” he said, also slowly. “Min fæder, Danir.”

“Do you read?”

“Ic raede and wrte.” He was proud of that. He was a rarity, if not in the way his mother had wanted, at least in some things.

“Good.” Here Lucy pointed. “Write your words here and I write my words there.” She pointed to each side of the parchment

He nodded. “Werds. We beginnen.”

She was so excited she nearly let him work at it too long. She sat back when she noticed the lines of strain around his mouth and eyes. “Enough. You are tired.” He didn’t understand that. “You work too hard.”

“I wyrce heard.” He wrote the words on his side of the makeshift ledger and gestured to her to do the same with her version. They had been through four pieces of chart paper, both sides. He already understood that modern English had simpler verb forms and he got the fact that the sentence order dictated whether the noun was a subject or object—you didn’t need a different word ending. He had the pronouns down cold and could name most everything in the boat. She’d gotten through conjugating the basic verbs, “to be,” “have,” “do,” “speak,” “know,” a few others.

Galen was really intelligent, maybe brilliant. She was nothing short of amazed.

“You are very good at this.”

His smile could only be called smug. “I learn swift.”

“Swiftly.”

“Swiftly,” he repeated, frowning in annoyance. She had seen that several times tonight. He was smart but also driven. He demanded more of himself than anyone had a right to expect.

They resorted to Latin sometimes, but it wouldn’t be long before they could stick pretty much to English. What a relief that would be! There had been some surprises in how he spelled the words. His “cn” was like modern “kn” sounds. “G” sounded like her “y” sometimes. “Wh” sounds were spelled “hw” in his time. And there were two letters to indicate the “th” sound that didn’t exist at all anymore. But on the whole, it was starting to make sense to her, too.

“Bed now. It is late.” She rolled up the charts. “I will tend your wounds.”

In his cabin he pulled off his sweatpants and lay on the bed. She turned on the bedside lamp. It cast a golden glow over his body. Outside, the rain still beat on the deck and ports. The boat rocked in its slip. She had never felt so alone with a man. The world was far away beyond the darkness. Brad and Casey and Jake, even the convenience store guy, were all irrelevant. It was only she and Galen in the watertight cocoon of Jake’s boat, safe and dry, at least for now.

She got the hydrogen peroxide, the Betadine and bandages. She pulled the adhesive on his shoulder wound in toward the incision so she wouldn’t tug at the stitches (thanks to the book’s instructions). Then she pulled the sodden gauze away. He peered down at his shoulder.

She tossed the gauze and tape aside. The wound was still shocking, but it had pulled together and tightened. The drain in the lower end seemed even more a violation of his flesh than the black, uneven track of stitches. “It’s better.”

“Hit heth swift.” He was staring at her. “It heal swiftly,” he corrected.

Forget the dropped s on “heals”—no use overcorrecting him. “You are wonderful with words.” She turned to her disinfectants. He’d understand that. “Wonderful” was a word they shared.

“I was meant to be more,” he said in Latin.

She glanced up to him and saw a look of shame flicker across his exhausted face. She had seen that expression before. What had he to be ashamed of? A potent warrior, a man who could read and write several languages in a time when literacy was almost unheard of . . . why would he be ashamed? “What more? More than warrior? More than leader? More than intelligent?” She spoke in a mixture of English and Latin, whatever occurred.

His expression flattened. “You ne understandeth.”

Well, if he was going to retreat to being the strong, silent type, two could play that game. She focused on her dressings. As well as she could. Her hands on his body were sending signals to parts of her that shouldn’t be taking the call. In fact, she wasn’t sure the boxers helped much. They were bulging over his generously constructed male . . . area, which only drew her attention to what she knew was underneath. And the rest of him was bare, except for bandages of course, and so her hands touched hot skin at every turn. Was he fevered? Or maybe she was the one who was hot. Either way, the result was the same. Signals. Shuddering, tingling signals.

Focus, she thought. Not on that! On the wound. Just tend the wound. New bandage. Lay it out. But the crisp hair on his chest brushed her knuckles and his nipples were soft. They made her want to rub her thumbs over them until they peaked. How had his left hand gotten to her thigh? She looked up. His blue eyes were communicating in a language that didn’t need words. She got the message loud and clear.

And she was really afraid her eyes would be speaking just as clearly. What was the matter with her? This is a probably murderous Viking, remember? She’d bought pepper spray just to thwart unwelcome advances. Only her body was sending out signals that the advances weren’t unwelcome. And she was going to be cooped up on this boat with him for a while. At the moment it seemed like forever. So she had to deal with this whole attraction thing head-on.

She sat back and took his hand from her thigh. Her heart was thudding uncomfortably in her chest. “Look,” she said, then started again in Latin. She wanted no misunderstanding. “I am not interested . . .” She wasn’t sure that was the right word. More direct. “I do not want you.”

Those blue eyes blinked, slowly. Was there a hint of a smile around those lips? There’d better not be. “Thou haban . . .” He started again. “You have lust for me.”

“I . . . I do not . . . lust for you!” Why did “lust” have to be a word from Old English?

“Ja. You have lust for me.” He reached his good hand around her neck, under her braid.

And she let him. His calluses felt coarse against her skin. She was throbbing and wet between her thighs. What would it be like to let a man like this have his way with her? Would it be her way, too? Would she give in to him? The word “yield” sounded in her mind.

“Gield to me,” he said clearly, echoing her thoughts.

She started and sidled out from under his hand, to stand above him, panting. Yield was an Old English word? Oh, she hated that. “I will not yield to you.” Or to my feelings. She switched to Latin. That seemed more . . . impersonal. But she was so flustered it was difficult to find the words. “You will be . . . be . . . good.”

“I be good.” He smiled, slowly. He did not switch to Latin. “Very good for you, Lucy.”

“You will not touch me,” she continued firmly in Latin. “Or I will leave you.”

“You . . .” He searched for the right word. “You want to cyssan me.”

“I do not want to kiss you.” Much. At least her brain didn’t. She could no longer vouch for her body, betrayer that it was. She searched for purchase on a very slippery slope. She stuck firmly to Latin. “I do not want a lover.” Did she?

But this Viking didn’t love her. He was looking for an easy conquest. That thought gave her the purchase she needed. “Women now do not live only for the kiss of a man. We have our own lives. We choose our lovers.” She would have gone on, but the language barrier was just too tough. “Do you want help for your wounds or no?”

He searched her face. “Ja, Lucy. You heal mine wounds.”

“Okay then,” she muttered, losing her Latin entirely. “But you keep your hands to yourself.” She sat back down and made sure all her movements were extremely brisk as she taped the bandage over his shoulder.

Out of half-closed eyes Galen watched her secure the bandage. Why had she refused sex with him? Galen was not used to rejection. Women looking for a man thought themselves fortunate to attract his attention. But not this one. Perhaps he had mistaken her. Could she possibly be a virgin? He never trifled with maidens. She said she had male “friends.” Not possible. Women had male relatives who protected them, a husband or a betrothed, or lovers. Jake was more like a father or an uncle to her. Galen had seen that. But what about this Brad?

She said that women of her time chose their lovers, that they did not need a man. Danish women, too, were strong and independent. But, Galen had to admit, not until they were married and widowed. Their fathers chose husbands for them. And many were bought for their bride price and their comely bodies more than for lifelong companionship. When they were widowed, they could inherit land and run their own lives. If Lucy ran her own life, mayhaps she was a widow who had taken this Brad as a lover. That would explain much.

But what would keep her then from a little enthusiastic sex?

Ahhh. She was afraid she would want to deny this Brad after Galen had swived her well and thoroughly. That made sense. It would be hard for another to follow in his footsteps.

And yet . . . Could it be she loved this Brad? The thought rankled. What if, no matter her transient lust for Galen, it was he who did not measure up? He imagined this Brad a warrior with dark hair and steely eyes. Did she writhe under him as he claimed her, night and morning? Did she moan his name as he suckled at her breast?

Then, too, Brad was very important if he could imprison anyone he wanted. Galen was nothing here. What matter that he was the king’s trusted commander when that king had long since turned to dust? He must push his body back to health. He would have to face this Brad to get back to his own time. And when Lucy saw Galen bring her lover to his knees, when this Brad begged for mercy, then she would be sorry she had not taken Galen to her bed.

She bent over his thigh, not looking at him. She made an apologetic face as she pulled the bandage fastener away from the hair on his thigh, though he did not flinch. Her lips pouted in concentration as she daubed at the wound with her stinging orange-yellow medicine. That wound was already drying and pulling together. The flesh around it was still reddened but not hard and hot with rot. She sat back and cocked her head, studying it.

“No bandage.” She spoke in Latin even though it was hard for her, just so she would not speak words their languages shared. She rejected even that intimacy. “It is better.”

He grunted assent.

She rose. Ahhh. Her blush betrayed her. She lusted for him whether she would or no. She hurried from the room. But soon she returned with her cursed tablets and a glass flagon of water.

“Here.”

He took the tablets. His fingers brushed her hand. He managed to touch her fingers as he took the flagon, too. She practically snatched her hand away. She would not meet his eyes as he swallowed the tablets.

“Good night.” She switched off the light. The little, rocking room went pitch-black.

He sighed. Whatever happened, he could not afford her fear. “Lucy.” He could feel her uncertainty in the darkness. He spoke carefully in Latin to make sure she understood. “I will not try to . . . kiss you again. You need not be afraid of me.”

The silence stretched.

“Thank you,” she said, in English. Then she was gone.

The whole parking structure reverberated with jackhammers and the bone-jarring crash of front-loaders dropping hunks of concrete into waiting dump trucks. This would have to be the last load. It was long after dark. The smell in the air was a curious mixture of diesel fuel and powdered cement. They’d cleared away the little kiosk and the striped gate arms at the entry.

Brad stood still while Casey paced the sidewalk. His head ached with the noise. Or maybe it was the fact that he wasn’t sleeping. He couldn’t stop thinking about what a fool he’d been with Lucy. Why had he been so obsessed with her? A bookseller, for God’s sake, when he deserved someone as brilliant as he was himself. She wouldn’t take up science. She wouldn’t run marathons with him, even though it would have made her leaner. She wasn’t his ideal of a woman at all. Who knows what some hulk from the past saw in her?

He wasn’t the only one upset. The hospital administrator was livid. Especially since no one would tell him exactly why the machine in the parking structure was so important that hospital routine had been shattered, or how it had gotten there if it was too big to fit through the entry. Patients had to park two blocks over in the public lot. Employees were walking five blocks. Only ambulances were allowed to use the driveway and even they had to pull in about fifty feet from the ER doors and run their gurneys up the sidewalk. Cops manned the barriers out at the street where gawkers milled.

And now the engineer said it was going to take three or four days to get the machine out.

Casey stopped in front of Brad, fuming. Casey looked worse than Brad felt. “I need a cup of coffee,” Casey muttered in a normal voice, which meant Brad had to read his lips.

Brad followed, squinting, as though to shut out the noise.

The hospital felt as silent as a tomb after the din of construction, in spite of intercoms and conversations and heels clicking on the linoleum floors. Down in the cafeteria they filled Styrofoam cups with sludgy coffee and paid the cashier before finding a table by the window. An elderly woman was crying in the corner. A father tried to keep a boy of about seven from zooming around the room like an airplane. Casey didn’t even seem to notice. He stared out the window at a little courtyard garden, ignoring his coffee.

“Any news of them?” Brad blew on his coffee. No use burning his lips.

Casey turned cold blue eyes on him. “What do you think?”

Brad just sipped his coffee. It burned in spite of his efforts and he sputtered.

Casey ignored him and turned those eyes out to the garden again. “Won’t get anything useful out of her shop assistant now, because she’ll say whatever we want to hear.”

Brad shuddered. He didn’t want to think about why.

“They didn’t use cabs,” Casey continued. “No hotels. No other hospitals. We’ve checked surgeons and primary-care doctors to see if they had anyone showing up for aftercare for shoulder surgery. Nothing. We’ve got the pictures and the artist’s renderings spread out over airports from San Diego to Seattle, BART and Amtrak stations. We’re blanketing the surrounding counties.”

“That sounds . . . promising,” Brad offered. Casey’s eyes were scary cold.

“No, it doesn’t,” Casey snapped. “It’s as if she and the Viking disappeared into thin air.”

“So . . . uh, the Stanford guy confirmed the guy is Viking?”

Casey seemed to notice his coffee for the first time and took a gulp. It must have been hot enough to scald, but he didn’t register pain. Casey was one big callus. “Hard to tell. Clothes are tenth century. Sword is Saxon workmanship, but the etching on the blade is in Danish runes. Apparently, it says: ‘I was made for the son of Valgar, for whom the world waits.’ ”

“What the hell does that mean?” Anger welled up in Brad’s throat.

“It means the guy has a high opinion of himself.”

Lucy had a high opinion of him, too. Stupid bitch. She falls for someone with empty boasting on his sword. Brad only realized his grip had tightened on his coffee cup when the Styrofoam broke and hot coffee spewed over the table and onto his lap. “Jesus!” He jumped up and grabbed napkins from the dispenser on the table to scrub at his Dockers.

“Maybe the landlord is the key,” Casey muttered. “If you expect to get into your apartment after four months of not paying rent, you’ve got to have an in with the landlord. She was probably boffing him, too.”

Brad swallowed. That couldn’t be. “Maybe the damage made the machine bring her to the wrong time. Maybe she didn’t know she was four months late.”

“Then she’d be surprised she couldn’t get in. And where might she go?” Casey dripped condescension. “Landlord’s lying about not having seen her. We’ll work that angle.” Casey rubbed his jaw. “Then we have the problem of how they got away from the building, landlord or no. They didn’t take a cab. There’s no car missing from the parking lot. We have her car, and they can’t have walked with him in such bad shape.”

“Rental car delivery?”

“Checked that.”

“You need a witness. Maybe there was a homeless person outside her apartment.”

Casey stared back at the garden, jaw working. Okay, he’d checked that. Brad resolved not to offer any more suggestions. But Casey wasn’t giving him a choice. “There’s got to be something about her we’re missing . . . some skill, some . . . something that might tell us where she was.” He looked at Brad.

“I told you everything I know months ago. She hangs out in libraries and bookstores. She walks—a lot. She knows lots of languages.”

“Okay, that’s now. What about things she did as a kid?”

“Well, she used to sail, and I think she had horses once.”

Casey’s eyebrows rose. “You never said she sailed. That has possibilities.” Brad was relieved he’d said something useful. “Jensen find any diamond big enough to substitute?”

Brad shook his head. “There’s a new one from India about the right size. But it’s still in the rough. The cutters in Amsterdam are studying it before they take a chisel to it.”

“I’ll tell them to get on with it.”

“It isn’t that easy. They have to eliminate the flaws by using them to split the stone. By the time they get it cut down, it may not be big enough.”

Casey rose suddenly and drained the last of his coffee. “I’m going to get some sleep.” All eyes in the room followed him as he strode from the cafeteria. He looked like danger incarnate. Rumor had it that the last job he’d been on, a guy who’d reported Casey’s tactics to his superiors had gone missing. Well, all except a couple of fingers. Brad wondered if he should just go back to the lab and stay as far away as possible from Casey.

But if anyone could find the fugitives Casey could. Brad wanted to be there when he did.