Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (28 page)

He pushed down the wrenching feeling around his heart. He was a knight. It was his lot to sacrifice. He was going to sacrifice a future with Diana, even if all she would have allowed him to be was her friend.

And then, to serve the greater good, he lied to her. “Okay,” he said, standing. “Let’s go.”

He was
so
lying to her. That was surprising in itself. The parfait knight had stooped to overt lying. Well, not overt. He hadn’t told her outright he would take her with him. Maybe having to lie was good for him. He was too hard on himself. He needed to learn to compromise. It didn’t mean he was going to get his way. Gawain was
far
too used to getting his way.

Afternoon was waning as they retrieved his sword from the apartment and went to the store specializing in reenactment costumes and weapons where he’d gotten his swords. He bought some hardened leather greaves and a chain mail shirt and a shield. He preferred the small, round shields of the Vikings to the huge medieval ones that covered your whole body. He said carrying a smaller shield conserved strength. That was frightening. He knew he was going to have to fight for his life back there. The grim lines around his mouth said so.

As darkness fell, he took her to the Top of the Mark, which was now a Russian restaurant with snow-white linen and romantic candles at the tables. A few people still had money. Probably weapons makers and arms dealers. Gawain still wore his jeans and boots, though his leather jacket looked like a million bucks on him. She was wearing the short black skirt and green-and-black-striped sweater she’d put on to go to dim sum this morning. Gawain ordered her champagne and caviar. The menu had oysters on the half shell and crab dressed in some kind of yummy cheesy cream sauce that had a zillion calories. They talked of inconsequential things. She watched him arranging his face for her. Did he not want her to see that he was afraid of going back? Or that he still took on the entire guilt for changing everything about the world?

But she also caught him watching her with some expression she couldn’t name. She wanted to capture that expression in words. A soft sorrow hidden behind his smiles and small talk? Not quite. A . . . a longing for something . . . The color violet in his eyes meant sadness and longing. She remembered the clear green yesterday afternoon. What did that color mean?

When they finally found themselves staring silently at each other, the check paid, there was no way of dodging the future any longer.

“I have a plan,” he said. “I don’t have to kill him after he’s conceived you. We should go back to the exact same moment you did before and stop you from taking him in the first place.”

Liar. He had no intention of making it “we.” “Bad idea. We can’t meet ourselves in the other time. There was a note with Leonardo’s book that said so. That means I can’t meet myself coming back there the first time and you can’t meet yourself as a ten-year-old boy.”

“Why not?”

“The note didn’t say. It just said two versions of you couldn’t exist at once. All the books on time travel I’ve read agree.”

“And these were scientific books? I thought science didn’t acknowledge the possibility of time travel, except in a theoretical kind of way.”

“They were science fiction . . . and romances.” She refused to blush. “But it just makes sense, you know. And anyway, the note is without doubt from someone who knows.” She cleared her throat. “We should arrive sometime later, after we’re certain he . . . well, you know.”

“After we’re sure he’s had time to sire you.”

She nodded, “And before I would actually be born. We should pick someplace far away from where you lived when you were ten.”

“That’s tough. We lived in a hut near the hill with the standing stones, so the ten-year-old me is going to be very near Mordred, assuming he’s still in Camelot. Everything could have changed when Mordred returned. Maybe we’ll even be living inside the castle walls where Mordred could keep an eye on my father or something.”

“I bet Merlin didn’t kowtow to anyone. He’ll live where he wants. And Mordred would never have the courage to challenge him.” She looked curiously at Gawain. “You might be able to see him again, if we can separate him from the ten-year-old you. Would you like that?” What she wouldn’t give to see her father again, her mother.

“My father wouldn’t be glad to see me under the circumstances.” He looked away. Was Gawain—confident, brash Gawain—ashamed? Ahhh, but all this parfait-knight stuff—maybe he did it for his father’s sake, because his father was the world’s most important and powerful wizard and Gawain wasn’t, so all he could be was the best knight he could be. That was a revelation.

“Besides,” he said, rising from his chair. “This isn’t a social visit.” He handed her up.

It was time.

Clancy hadn’t even noticed that the door marked:
Danger
was still unlocked from the last time she and Gawain had used the machine. Some night watchman he was. But that meant Gawain didn’t have to turn into mist again to get them in. Diana watched him carefully—he seemed drained by his effort at the main entrance and stumbled twice in the corridor down to the machine. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah. I’m fine.” But she had a feeling he’d never admit that it cost him to use his power.

Deep in the bowels of the earth beneath the Rotunda of the Palace of Fine Arts, Diana powered up the machine; Gawain held the flashlight on the switches. Gawain was dressed now for battle in the fifth century, with a shield on his arm and his sword in a scabbard. He clasped the huge diamond at the end of the lever. The lights flashed on the lunch box.

“Get back,” he ordered. It was too dim to see the color of his eyes. She realized she missed watching them change with his moods. “I have to do this alone, Diana. You know I do. If you get stuck back there, or something happens to you, who knows what else might change?”

“Same to you, buddy. You promised me I could go.”

He shook his head. “I didn’t. You know I’m right. You’ll just be a distraction. Don’t make me tie you to one of these struts.”

She sighed, as though in acquiescence. Two could play the lying game. “Okay. I don’t want to be a distraction.” She backed up but made sure none of the iron girders were in her way. “Come directly back when you’ve done it!” she called over the rising hum of power that throbbed in her lungs. His expression was . . . full. Of what she couldn’t tell. Perhaps the enormity of what he was about to do.

Beams of colored light stabbed across the ceiling in crazy patterns. Gawain murmured something lost in the whir of many metal gears. Frowning, he slowly turned back to the machine.

“Concentrate on when and where to appear!” she shouted. The gears slowed to a crawl.

This was the moment. She tried to dart forward, but she was moving in slow motion.
No!
Had she misjudged the timing? Her limbs flailed slowly toward Gawain. Half-there. The gears began to grind again. She had only seconds to reach him. But her legs speeded up along with
the machine. She was racing toward Gawain. The very fabric of the air begin to stretch. She was too late! She threw herself forward, arms extended, falling. The slingshot snapped. She got an arm around Gawain’s waist. Then she was torn apart as they hurtled into blackness.

Diana raised her head. The world swirled enough to make her stomach churn. About all she could tell was that it was night. She was cold. She laid her head down again, against . . . against something even colder. And rough. Metal. It clinked and moved. Chain mail.

Gawain.

She raised her head again, cautiously.
Better.
It was night. She was sprawled across Gawain, who did not move. Was he dead?

She jerked up and the world went spinning again. She ducked her head to still it. When she could swallow without gagging she stretched a hand to his throat. His pulse beat back at her. She realized she’d been holding her breath. He was alive. She had to get him to someplace safe.

Where were they? She knelt cautiously and looked around. Trees loomed around her, old growth, black sentinels against the shadows behind them. Above them a giant oak spread its canopy, dwarfing even the other trees. She’d never been in a forest at night. The sheer absence of city sounds pounded her senses. There
were
sounds, though, if she listened. Rustlings and wind in the trees, water running over stones. The rustlings were probably animals. Maybe big animals.

Don’t have a heart attack for God’s sake,
she scolded herself.
No time for the vapors.

Well,
that
was pure romance writer. Apparently being an historical romance writer did
not
prepare you for history. Or forests. She turned around, expecting to see only more trees, or maybe a wolf or something. What she saw was the machine, glinting against the black night and the stars. It was still, just as though it hadn’t flung them through time. It looked like something from a Dalí painting, sitting in the forest like this, the contrast between its polished metal and the rough and shadowy nature around it shocking.

As shocking as traveling through time.

She turned to Gawain. There was no place safe to take him in a forest that undoubtedly had wolves in it. At the least. And he was too big for her to drag anywhere anyway. His sword lay a few feet away. His shield was still strapped over his out-flung forearm.

Why wasn’t he awake? She took his shoulder and pulled him over as gently as she could. He groaned.
That’s a good thing,
she told herself as the sound sent shivers of fear through her. His head lolled to the side. She saw the problem immediately. His head was bleeding above his ear. A trickle of blood trailed down his cheekbone. A flattish rock under him was smeared with some dark substance. Her brain filled with images of crushed skulls and subdural hematomas and all sorts of other things no one could do anything about in the fifth century.

His eyes fluttered open.

“Thank God,” she murmured. She took his head in her hands and turned his face toward her. “Can you see me?”

He blinked slowly. “Dilly?” His voice was husky.

“Yeah.” She smiled in relief. “It’s Dilly.”

He put a hand to his head, grimacing.

“You landed on a rock. Probably have a concussion.” If not something worse.

He pushed himself up with a grunt, then hung his head. A concussion undoubtedly made the nausea of time travel even worse.

“You need medical attention,” she said as he struggled to command his stomach. In the fifth century that probably just meant they’d bleed him with leeches or something.

“No,” he said, getting to his hands and knees. “But we do need food and shelter.” He looked around, blinking. “The village should be a couple miles to the east.” He grabbed his sword and staggered to his feet. She slid an arm around his waist to steady him. He looked at her in sudden consternation. “And what are you doing here?” he growled. “I thought I told you . . .”

“You did tell me. But this is my fault. I wasn’t going to let you sacrifice yourself alone.”

“I wasn’t going to sacrifice myself,” he said, looking around to get his bearings. How he would know one section of the forest from another she had no idea. But he seemed to anchor himself on the sound of water gurgling and started off, leaning on her. The forest didn’t seem quite so menacing now that she wasn’t alone.

“So you weren’t going to disable the machine once it was back here, so it couldn’t bounce back where I could use it to come after you?” she asked as she stumbled beside him.

He set his lips and wouldn’t answer, which was just as good as an admission that she was right. “I thought so.” She’d written about heroes all her writing life, and yet this man was the real thing: difficult, stubborn, altogether inconvenient, but a hero nonetheless.

After a few minutes’ walking, they came to a large boulder, perhaps twice the height of a man, beside a small
stream. Gawain grunted in satisfaction. “The river isn’t far now.” He knelt and splashed some water on his face. “Do you recognize this place?”

She blinked in shock. She had been here, as a child? “N . . . no.” Disappointment stabbed through her. If she’d been here, wouldn’t that bring back all her memories? Apparently not. “Should I know it?”

“Not necessarily. This was the stream we fished. You broke your ankle just a little farther down toward the river.” His tone was noncommittal, but perhaps he wanted her to remember, too. Why else would he bring it up? He straightened and walked on his own this time.

He was right. The river wasn’t far. The Cam was broad and lazy here, with marshy banks.

“We’re going to have to get wet to cross it.”

Yuck.
“Maybe we should wait until morning.”

“I don’t want to be out in the open. I’m not sure I could protect you in my current state.” He seemed disgusted with himself. “We’re better off in the village. It’s worth a swim.”

“In a river with who knows what lurking in it in the middle of the night?” She was
so
not doing that.

“Fish lurk in it. Just fish.” He was marching toward the east along the bank. “There’s a place up here where you can practically walk across it.”

Now that they were out of the forest the crescent moon rose in front of them, clear and cold in the sky. Some things didn’t change, even in fifteen hundred years. Were they really back in time? Forests were forests. Rivers were rivers. The moon was the moon.

Diana was bone tired by the time they saw the flickering lights of the village. Gawain pointed. Those warm, flickering lights sure did look inviting. And behind the village were the palisades and the half-finished stone towers of Camelot. This time there were no raging fires,
no fleeing families, no knights thundering around on chargers. The scene was quiet and domestic, the castle shielding its village with a protective shoulder against whatever would come.

He came up in front of her and in a single, sudden move threw her over his shoulder as if she were no more than a sack of flour. “What are you doing?” she squeaked.

“Keeping the fish from eating you, my lady,” he said, with a chuckle. He was already striding toward the river’s edge. “Quit squirming unless you want to risk getting dropped.”