Into the Dim (17 page)

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.

I shook my head.
Unbelievable. Freaking Eleanor of Aquitaine.

Her fame had endured over a thousand years. Born in 1122 to the Duke of Aquitaine, her only brother had died young, leaving Eleanor the richest heiress in Christendom. At barely fifteen, she'd been married off to the weak and overly pious French heir, who within two weeks would become King Louis VII. By all accounts the marriage had been cold and loveless. Two daughters. No sons. Fictional accounts claim Eleanor and the fiery future king of England had fallen in love at first sight. But it was likely only good politics when she divorced Louis and quickly married Henry.

Still, Eleanor and Henry had been happy for a long time. The eight kids that followed proved that. Until it all came crashing down when Henry hooked up with “Fair Rosamund” Clifford. That did not sit well with the prideful queen, and Eleanor had eventually sent her sons to war against their own father. In punishment, Henry had imprisoned his rebellious queen in a remote castle for sixteen years.

Well, I guess no marriage is perfect.

A squirmy feeling oozed over me. What would happen if—no, when—we brought Mom back? How would my own mother react when she found out another woman had already taken her place?

T
HE TRAFFIC THICKENED AS WE NEARED THE TOWERING STONE WALLS
. The massive construction of gray stone and mortar stretched its strong arms to encase the city like a protective father.

I squirmed in anticipation as we waited in the long line. At the gate, guards searched some of the wagons, but mostly they just waved people through. Fine carriages rolled past us and were admitted with flourishes and deep bows.

Apparently, even in this time, rich people got all the perks.

Everyone relaxed when we were waved through with little more than a glance. Once through the thick gate, we emerged into a fairy tale.

A very stinky, very grungy fairy tale.

The thatched roofs of two- and three-story buildings leaned precariously out over twisting, rutted lanes. Dirty snow still clung to shadows and roofs. The smell caught me off-guard at first, and I had to cover my nose. Rotting garbage and raw sewage. Wet wool and manure. Every so often, the sweet stench of decaying meat. I didn't want to think what kind. All of it overlaid with a pervasive pall of wood smoke that hung in incremental layers in the air around us. As I sucked in the mélange of odors, I frowned. It was bad. Really bad.

“Be glad it's winter,” Phoebe said, noticing my expression. “Bet it would knock you to your knees in summer.”

I wrinkled my nose. “Right.”

The feeling eventually faded as we lurched deeper into medieval London. Vendors shouted wares on every corner. Rags and copper pans. Hot potatoes. Boots. A strong, fishy odor wafted by as we passed a man crying, “Oysters! Get yer oysters here!”

Phoebe and I exchanged a glance. Oysters were one of the things we'd been warned against. Not that I'd ever dream of eating one. They were riddled with typhoid.

Phoebe gave her upper arm a significant rub, where she—like Collum and I—sported brand-new typhoid boosters. I'd had my initial shot two years earlier, when my mother first spoke of taking me on some of her more remote lecture tours. Apparently I'd also been inoculated for smallpox. Though at the time, I'd had no clue. Doug claimed Lucinda had pulled some strings for that one, since the disease was eradicated in our time. I remembered thinking it odd that the “nurse” had come to our house, then had tea with my mother afterward.

Staring now at the crowds and the filth, I was suddenly and deeply grateful for the shots.

Horses and wagons clogged the streets leading to the center of the city. The smell of wet horse and unwashed people grew thicker as we slogged ever forward through the straw-covered muck.

“You don't think about them having traffic jams in the Middle Ages,” I said to Phoebe when we stalled for an overturned cart.

A beefy, red-faced baker doffed his cap to us as we jounced past. We both laughed when his equally rotund wife jabbed him with her twig broom.

At the edge of the great market that packed the yard before St. Paul's Cathedral, we parted ways with the family. Mud squelched under my boots as I gaped up at the famous church. In this time it wasn't yet Christopher Wren's elegant, domed marvel I'd seen in so many photos. That wouldn't be built for hundreds of years. Still, the cathedral's high stone walls and square Norman towers were imposing.

Hundreds of tents and ramshackle booths crammed the vast area before the front entrance. People clogged the straw-strewn, muddy aisles, wrapped to the eyeballs in dark cloaks and nubby scarves. Somewhere, a hammer banged rhythmically on steel. Voices and laughter carried across the space as men tipped horn flasks to their lips and warmed their hands over fires set in iron barrels. Women haggled with vendors. Everywhere people had gathered into loose circles to watch the dozens of performers. Acrobats flipped a woman into the air. A monkey crept into the crowd to steal a farmer's hat. A dwarf offered odds on any newcomer who'd chance wrestling with his burly partner.

It was overwhelming and deafening. The most disgusting, the most beautiful, sight I'd ever seen.

“Wow,” I breathed, trying to look everywhere at once. “I mean . . . wow.”

Collum's lips twitched as he and Phoebe exchanged a grin. “Aye,” he said. “I know.”

I jerked as something damp and wooly brushed against my fingers. Glancing down, I saw a dingy sheep nibbling at my cloak. The smell of moldy, wet blankets floated in a cloud around us as a young boy smacked the animal with his crooked staff. It ambled on, unconcerned, joined by a dozen bleating cousins.

“It's like a flea market,” I said in wonder, “except instead of tube socks and cheesy artwork, they're selling armor and live sheep.”

Phoebe's eyes flicked from one ramshackle booth to the next. “Ohhh, would you look at all this stuff.”

“Oh no.” Collum snatched the back of Phoebe's cloak as she darted away. “I know that look. Don't even think about it. We're going straight to Mabray House.

Lucinda, Mac, and Moira's previous, unsuccessful trip to London a few months earlier had provided us a place to stay, a rented house, not far from the square. And Moira had tracked down the merchant who'd brokered the deal for the tapestry. For a few coppers, he'd given up the nobleman's name. Unfortunately, the merchant told them, the baron lived far out in the country, nearly to Wales. They'd had no time to get there before the Dim came to take them home.

My mother had last been seen at the massive Baynard's Castle, near the Thames. Historically, Baynards—a private residence of that noble family—was the most elegant castle in London, shadowing even the Tower and Westminster Palace, which had stabled horses and barracked soldiers during the recent civil war. Research claimed Henry and Eleanor had taken it over upon their arrival, gathering their nobility there, while the royal palace of Westminster was made livable again.

Yet the man who'd commissioned the tapestry was named Babcock. Not a member of the wealthy Baynard family at all, as far as we could tell.

Why some stranger would commission a tapestry of my mother in the first place, we didn't know. But with the king and queen's arrival, it was a good bet he'd be back for the coronation. No nobleman would take the chance of snubbing his new monarch.

The big problem was getting inside. Our first choice, posing as the children of a wealthy merchant, held less risk but might open fewer doors. The backup plan involved forged papers that proved we were the children of a minor lord from the far north of England. Moira's intensive research had located a real baron who did indeed have three children and was known to have been something of a hermit.

The second plan was dicey, though. If the nobleman had decided he'd better head down to London to meet the king, or if one of his neighbors knew him or his children by sight, we could end up in a crap-storm of trouble.

“So this house Mac rented . . . ?” I squinted at the rows of two-story wattle-and-daub structures that lined the narrow streets. Each lane twisted and crooked off with little sense of direction. “Do you know where it's located, exactly?”

Collum ignored me as he squinted at one path after another.

“I know we couldn't bring the map,” I pressed. “But if you're having trouble, I got a glimpse of it, and—”

“I'll find it.”

Phoebe grunted. “Coll, you should listen to Hope. She's got a bloody photographic memory . . .
Hello.
Then we wouldn't have to spend half the day searching.”

“Don't say ‘bloody,'” Collum said distractedly. “It's not yet in use. And I said I'd find the house, so quit gawking at me. Belongs to some Finnish merchant who rents it out by the year. Comes with a couple of servants to maintain the upkeep too.” He set off into the market. “Let's go. We need to get settled. Seventy-two hours, then we have to be back at the clearing. Sunrise on the third day.” He glanced up at the smoggy sky. “And this one's half done over.”

“The number three has always had significance to the ancients,” Doug had told me a few days earlier as he fiddled with the computer keyboard before the great monitor. “Jesus rose on the third day, and so on. But there's one immutable rule. Exactly seventy-two hours from the moment you arrive, the pattern in the ley lines will repeat. I'll power up the device at that exact moment, and the wormhole will open to bring you back. If you miss that window, there's no telling if or when the pattern will come again. You must be back within a few feet from where you started. And you must,
must
be wearing the lodestone.”

I trudged after Collum, but a chill raced up my back, thinking about what had happened to Julia Alvarez's brother. According to the journals, the man had lost his stone while carelessly hopping a stream. Though his father had wrapped him in his arms, without a stone on his person Luis Alvarez had been ripped in half trying to get home. If for some reason we didn't make it back to the glade by sunrise on the third day? Poof. Left behind. Just like Michael MacPherson. Just like my mom. I groped for the lodestone snug beneath my bodice and clutched it tight.