Susan Squires - [Da Vinci Time Travel] (5 page)

She pulled her bag over her shoulder, popped the trunk, and got out. She ran around to the passenger door and opened it. He swung to face her. “You cannot look like a
warrior,” she said as she began to unbuckle his greaves. “You need a healer.” She grabbed his wrist and unfastened the hardened leather from around his forearms each in turn and tossed all the pieces into the trunk.

“You stitch me.” It was a command.

She glanced to his arm. The slice went right through his chain mail over his deltoid muscle to his biceps. “Too much wound for me.” After being cut with some filthy sword he needed antibiotics, too. She pulled him out and he leaned against the car, blinking and looking around in wonder. She unbuckled his scabbard and tossed the huge sword in the trunk. He didn’t even protest. He was looking stunned, as though he just had absorbed that everything had changed.

“No mailcoat.” That’s what they called chain mail. This was going to hurt, but he had to lift his arms. She bit her lip, surveying him.

He grabbed the hem of the chain tunic and pulled it over his head with a grunt of pain.

“You are a brave man,” she murmured. He was wearing a leather tunic that laced up the front over a billowy shirt probably made of flax or something. Right now it was crusted with blood and sweat. He had on leather breeches with a pouch on a belt and soft leather boots. He’d look like some homeless guy with a fetish for leather to the ER staff, or maybe a down-on-his-luck rock and roller. She heaped the heavy mail into the trunk in a cascade of shushing metal.

“What is your name?” she asked.

“Medraut,” he said. So much for the idea that he was Arthur.

“Is that a first name or a last name?”

“Medraut of Orkney.”

“We will call you Jim Medraut. Can you remember that?”

He nodded but raised his brows in question.

“No one can know you do not belong here,” she explained, thinking of all the questions he would raise, and questions about her sanity. Worse yet, would she be forced to tell the police or the army or anybody at all about Leonardo’s machine? That machine was dangerous. Very dangerous. She had to have time to think what to do. “You tell them you live on the street, yes?”

“Will they speak my language, then, as you do?”

Uh-oh. Forgot about that.
Why
did
she speak his language? “No. I must speak for you.”

A gleam came into his eyes. “For a while.” She didn’t like that gleam. It suddenly occurred to her that she didn’t know anything about this guy, other than that he had been about to get killed. What if . . . what if he wasn’t one of the good guys? The morals of the fifth century might not be honor and justice at all. Maybe that was just a dream, like a shining city of Camelot.

He must have seen her misgivings. “I need you,” he said, looking straight into her eyes. “I will not harm you. I will not harm anyone.”

She heaved a breath and felt better. That was just what she wanted him to say. She pointed to the brightly lit entrance to the ER. “We will go there for a healer.”

Diana took Medraut by the arm and guided him out the doors of the ER and across the street to the parking structure. Instead of delivering him to Social Services on the second floor, as the doctor had recommended, she filled his prescriptions for Keflex and Vicodin in the pharmacy and they left. Through it all, Medraut had been watchful. He thought the televisions in the various waiting rooms were scrying pools. Now
that
been difficult to explain.

The thought of her little apartment had never seemed so good. It was only midnight, but it seemed like she’d been up for days. She had no choice but to take Medraut home with her. Was that stupid? But he’d seemed so sincere in his promise not to harm her. At the least he knew he needed her. She’d be okay. Maybe she needed him, too. It occurred to her that her stalker might be waiting for her at her building. It might not be so bad to have a guy around right now. Medraut might be wounded, but the stalker wouldn’t know that. And Medraut sure looked fierce.

As they headed down Laguna again, Diana realized that giving him a place to sleep for the night was the least of her problems. He was a fifth-century guy now stuck in a century he couldn’t possibly understand. The folly of bringing him here washed over her. Even if she hadn’t
changed history, she still had a guy who didn’t speak the language, thought television was a scrying pool, and made his living with a sword.

Could she send him back in time again after his arm was healed? To when? Before she had appeared? That was condemning him to death. After? Yeah, after would be better. Maybe. Maybe he was meant to be in this time. . . .
How are we screwed? Let me count the ways.

She turned on Twenty-second Street and cut over to San Jose. Her apartment building was made of brick with clapboard bays and fire escapes zigzagging down the front. It was a tad run-down, but since it had been built in the thirties, the apartments had arched doorways and coffered ceilings. More personality than those sterile concrete boxes they built these days. She drove through the wrought-iron gates to the left of the building and around to the back. Somehow she coaxed Medraut into the creaky little elevator with his sword, since he wouldn’t leave it in the car.

He followed her in, looking around as she snapped on the light.

What would he see? A cramped one bedroom with a little kitchen visible through the bar and little dining area. She had a fold-out couch, thank goodness, in slightly sagging brown tweed. The bright autumn shades of the quilt her mother helped her make when she was fifteen brightened it up a bit. A potted ariaca palm and a huge philodendron made the place look alive. Books occupied three floor-to-ceiling shelves she’d gotten at one of those stores that specialized in cheap oak furniture. Her desk sat under the big bay window that looked into the street. Simple, but hers.

“Is this your abode?” Medraut asked.

“Yes. You can sleep here.” She pointed to the couch. “Until . . .”
Until what?

He nodded. “Thank you.” The warm light of the apartment should have softened his bold features, but they didn’t. Women would think he was a handsome man. Strange, but he held no attraction for her. She gave a mental shrug. Just as well, since he was going to be here until she could decide what to do about him. And when would that be?

She eased her bag off her shoulder and realized with a shock that the book inside no longer held its strange attraction for her. She pulled it out and put it on her desk. Once she would have felt anxious about putting it down. She looked inside herself. Now . . . nothing. She ran her hands over the tooled leather. A wonderful book, to be sure, but not an obsession. Was that because she had used the machine it described?

She certainly hadn’t gotten what she wanted. Far from seeing Camelot in its shining moment, she’d seen its downfall, and in the few minutes she had been back there she’d seen some magic, sure, but no honor, no love, only fierce and bloodthirsty warriors, a man with eyes that changed color, and a gawky boy. She hadn’t been transformed. The experience wasn’t going to help her work in progress. She
had
learned she spoke Proto-Celtic. What did that mean? She was too tired to think. She should just get Medraut’s bedding and fall in bed herself.

Instead, she felt drawn to the window. She pulled aside the filmy curtain. The street was quiet. It was still Sunday night. Cars lined the streets. As she watched, the door on some kind of SUV opened and a big man got out. He must have been waiting there.

Her heart skipped. She swallowed. Was it the stalker?

He wandered over to the pool of light from a street lamp and stood there. Brazen. Dark hair. Fair skin. Six three or four if he was an inch. Heavily muscled. Bulkier than the older man who wandered through the apartment behind
her, exploring. She couldn’t tell the color of his eyes from here, but she could imagine them from that time at the liquor store. Gray-green. Why had her stalker been shocked when he looked at her, even in the liquor store? She was sure shocked. He’d had an immediate and unwelcome effect on her. The very effect he was having now even from outside in the street. She shook herself. Of course, a man like that would have an effect on women. He was probably used to that. Arrogant bastard. He stood in the light now just to see her afraid. That’s what stalkers did. It gave them a feeling of power.

Did
he have power over her? Why was she so attracted to him? Was it because of the danger? But she wasn’t attracted to the dangerous guy in her apartment. Not at all.

The stalker . . . reminded her of someone, actually. She just couldn’t think who it might be. Again the feeling that she knew him washed over her. She twitched the heavy drapes together, the rings hissing over the metal poles. She wouldn’t be afraid. She wouldn’t. Let him stay out there in the cold all night if he wanted. He couldn’t get in here. There was a security keypad downstairs and a dead bolt on her door. The fire escapes didn’t pass her apartment. And if push came to shove, there was Medraut’s big sword.

“Do you have food here, witch?”

She blinked. Medraut must be famished. She was hungry, too, now that he brought it up. “Yes. Yes of course. Sit here while I prepare some.” She pointed to the comfortable leather chair next to the desk. He eased himself down into it. She could tell he was in pain. First things first. She poured a glass of water from the tap and ripped open the bag from the pharmacy. She shook out some pills. His eyes were big as she handed them to him.

“Where does the water come from?” he asked.

“A lake outside the city. Pumps bring it to each house.”
Did she get the word for “pumps” right? “Do you know pumps?’

He nodded, thoughtful, and downed the pills. “Tell me where I am.” His voice was a command. “To what world have you taken me, witch?”

Well, he had to know sometime. “The name is Diana. And I’m not a witch.” He might need a drink for this. She opened a Ruston Syrah from the little wine rack she kept at the end of the counter and poured him a glass. He took the wineglass she’d gotten from Cost Plus because you could put them in the dishwasher as if it were a chalice encrusted with jewels. Yeah, glass was precious back then. He brought it to his lips but hesitated.

“It isn’t poison,” she said. Though with the Vicodin, it might send him a little loopy. “Why would I save your life, just to kill you?”

He grimaced in acknowledgment and sipped. He looked surprised. “This is good.”

Better than the wine they had back then. Everything would have had to be shipped in from the vines the Romans planted in France. (Best gift from an invading army ever, better even than roads and bridges and aqueducts.)

He looked up in speculation. “You must be wealthy, witch.”

She took a breath. “You are in the future. More than fifteen centuries in the future. The metal machine . . . the machine you saw travels through time. I live here. This place is not magic to me. And I am not a witch.”

“Can this be true?” He spoke more to himself than her.

“Yup.” Let him chew on that for a minute. What was she going to feed him? She didn’t think he’d be wild about the Lean Cuisine that filled the freezer. Or the Kraft Macaroni & Cheese she kept on hand for comfort-food emergencies. She opened the fridge. Chicken breasts. She had a package of those. And she always had pasta and salad
stuff. She clipped some sage from the little pot in her kitchen window. Sage pasta, a broiled chicken breast, and a salad. Not exactly Julia Child, but . . . nourishing.

“I would know more of your world,” Medraut said as they sat to eat. And all the questions he had been hoarding silently came rushing out. He marveled at the salt and savored every taste. When she brought out some Sara Lee chocolate cake, she realized someone enjoyed her guilty pleasure as much as she did.

“What weapons do you have in this time? No one wears swords.”

“Uh . . . swords have been . . . uh . . . replaced.”

“By something which deals death more quickly?” he asked, his expression sharpening.

“Yes. Unfortunately. We call them guns. They . . . fling a small piece of metal called a bullet through the air.” She had no word for “shoot.” “It does great damage to a body.”

“I would like such a weapon.”

“That is not a good idea.”

“I would study everything about your time,” he said, changing the subject. She was willing to bet he wasn’t giving up on guns. Warrior and all. “My time can learn much from it. Then you will come back with me. My knowledge and your magic will make me the greatest king.”

“I do not wish to go back there.” Still . . . there were things she wanted to know. “Was the Camelot I saw in Arthur’s time? Do you know that name?”

He grew wary. “Arthur is dead.”

“Oh.” Her last bit of hope whispered away like ash on the wind. She put down her fork. “Well, I guess if there was a shining moment, it was over,” she muttered to herself in English. Maybe there was no possibility for happy endings.

“The Saxons wait to pounce on the kingdom if we cannot unite behind a successor. I am the only one who can
hold it. I will marry his queen. I’ll give her what she didn’t get from him.” His expression was self-satisfied.

Marry Guinevere? This man? Perhaps he was some king of a smaller kingdom. Orkney? “Perhaps she will mourn too much for Arthur to marry. Or perhaps she would go to Lancelot.”

“Who? I know not this man.” He was wolfing down the pasta.

She thought so. Lancelot had been made up in Medieval times. She heaved a sigh. “It is not important.” Camelot wafted away like the dream it was. It had been literary dream, not a real one. She should be used to that. Wasn’t her specialty making up stories about finding true love in unusual places? She liked to think she wasn’t writing fantasy, that’s all.

She answered his questions patiently, as well as she could, as she did the dishes. Then she showed him how to use the bathroom to wash and relieve himself. She felt obligated to explain that in this time men were expected to bathe daily. That was a shock to him. When he finally emerged from the bathroom with the towel around his waist, she had the pullout bed made up. She glanced up to see that he had a lean body with ropy muscles. Not her type.