Sunder (10 page)

The guards hadn’t offered to escort him when he came through the gates, nor did they search his car. So Alfredo had walked alone into the darkness of the launch depot, down the long hallway with only the emergency lights to guide him. The hallway seemed longer in the dark; the office doors on either side were shut, the windows a mask of black. His vision improved after turning the last corner to bring him into the east wing, where the eight launch stations and their accompanying prep rooms stood open, with no doors and walls made of glass. They had been designed so openly intentionally; only bad things could come of allowing people privacy with such powerful machines. Alfredo walked past the first two stations; he would use Station 3—Etienne’s launch station. It was only fitting to use this station to undo what that monster had wrought upon his family.

Alfredo turned into the station to find it brightly lit by the travel console, which was already turned on.
Intelligence probably left it on when they were scrubbing the hard drive.
The light from the display hurt his eyes a bit, so it took him a moment to focus on the screensaver. It was a picture of Isabella’s wedding day, a candid shot. The photographer had caught Etienne kneeling down in front of Isabella, helping her remove one of her high heels from her aching feet. She was smiling down at him as if he were the only man in the world.

“Disgusting bastard!” Alfredo hissed as he roughly tapped the menu to get rid of that picture. His trepidation gone now, Alfredo’s fingers flew through the menu commands to send himself to last week. It was forbidden to travel within your own life span of course, so the system immediately prompted him for his override code. One little code and he would be on his way to last week — to keep his daughter from taking this trip, to convince her not to tell Etienne about the annulment proceedings. Everything would be fixed with one conversation.

He finished typing in his override for short-distance travel, but just as he did, a long beep erupted from the console.
What was that?
He peered into the screen only to see one word blinking at him:
Unauthorized.

“We had them taken offline, Fredo.” The disembodied voice shattered the silence behind him.

Alfredo spun wildly around, his heart in his throat. His eyes had grown accustomed to looking at the bright screen and it took them a moment to adjust to the dark room. When they finally did, he was relieved to see Padre Lopez-Castaneda standing alone in the doorway to the launch station. No guards accompanied him.

“What are you doing here?” Alfredo barked. “We agreed to keep the launch depot sealed! Only the search party crew is supposed to be here.”

“This poses the interesting question of why you’re here, my son.” Padre’s voice was tight, angry, and as he came closer to the console, Alfredo could see the fury that lit up his face. He was not wearing his collar, just jeans and a simple button-down shirt. He was also wearing a pistol on his hip.

“What, are you going to shoot me, Padre?” the younger man returned to the console, trying to quiet his anxiety. “I told you before – this is my world and I will protect it. I can override whatever you’ve done to this machine.”

“Yes, that’s true,” the priest said softly, drawing the gun out of his holster.

Before Alfredo could turn his head around to make his planned snide remark, the eighty-seven-year-old slammed the butt of the weapon into Alfredo’s forehead. Pain exploded in his skull and rung in his ears as he fell face down onto the gleaming floor.

“Your world, is it?” Padre kneeled down in the blood next to Alfredo’s face. “This is
God’s
world, Boy. We are simply living in it.”

Alfredo winced against the sting of an open-handed slap on his cheek.

“I’ve watched you lie, and lie, and lie some more. You sent a man to his death for committing a lesser crime than you yourself are guilty of! And I stood by because I was afraid of the alternative.” The old man’s voice broke now, dry from anger and age. “No more, Alfredo.  Your days of playing with us like a child plays with a doll are over.”

Angry and disoriented, Alfredo could do little else besides lay on the floor in his own blood, still oozing from his face.

“You can’t tell,” he managed feebly. “It was in confession. You can’t tell where I’m from – what I did.”  Alfredo closed his eyes in an attempt to keep the blood out of them, and he heard the old man sigh.  Then, he was being lifted into a sitting position by his shoulders.  The movement hurt his head, and he gave a yelp of pain as his priest of forty years propped him roughly against the wall.  Even the thought of opening his eyes caused him pain, so he kept them clamped shut.  He could hear Padre sitting heavily down next to him, leaning against the very same wall he had just slammed Alfredo into.

“You’re right. I can’t tell what you did that day in the time stream.  I can’t tell about the life you took, or about the change you made to God’s entire world.  I can’t even tell about that business with Monica.” He took several labored breaths. “But I can and will tell what you tried to do tonight. I knew you would do this. I knew you would try to change it all again. You never learn, do you?”

Alfredo used his shirt to wipe the blood off his face. “I’ll have you thrown off the council for what you did just now.” He knew the tremor in his voice belied his threat, but he couldn’t let the old man speak without offering a retort.

The priest let out a humorless laugh. “I don’t have the authority to take the launch stations off-line.  The entire Council met the day after Isabella was Lost.  We
all
agreed to protect you from anything you might do out of … grief.”

Finally willing his eyes open, Alfredo looked over at the old man who used to be taller than him. “She’s my baby, Padre. How do you expect me to let her go? That boy did this to us!” His whisper turned into a hiss as he thought of Etienne, smugly refusing to tell where he sent Isabella. “God doesn’t want this for me. It’s my responsibility to fix it.”

“Told you that, did he? Of course you only think of what you want. You don’t even wonder for a moment if this is part of God’s plan for Isabella?  Perhaps He took her to save her soul – save her from you. It’s only a pity he didn’t take her when she was still a girl.”

“Don’t you dare talk about my child! You didn’t know her. All you knew was what she wanted you to see. She loved me, she—” Alfredo broke off.  So little time, and he was referring to her in the past tense. 

Padre reached over and put his hand on Alfredo’s shoulder.

“Yes, she did love you. Maybe too much. Pleasing you was the motivation of her every decision. Do you know why she chose to become an archer instead of an equestrian? She loved horses, but she chose the bow. Do you know what she told me?”

Alfredo didn’t bother to shake his head.

“Parents weren’t allowed to observe archery lessons. The only time a parent got to see his child with the bow was at the contests. Riding would have been different. She knew you would be ringside every time she got on the horse, and she couldn’t learn to do anything with you watching. You would be mad, she said, if she didn’t succeed on the first try.”

“That isn’t true.”

“Not entirely, no. But you weren’t easy to please. And after Monica died, Isabella’s need for your approval bordered on fanatical. There was only one way to do things, Alfredo—your way. I know it, Monica knew it, and Isa learned it as well. And look what she became as a result—a self-absorbed liar who committed serial adultery. Just like her father. You must be so proud. At least she took steps to ensure she never had a child with her lover, which is more than I can say for you.”

“I never did wrong by Elizabeth.”

“You never did right by her, either. You kept her as servant to her own sister and now that she’s grown and has known no other life, you’ve sent her away. It would have been kinder to place her as a ward of another family. Fredo, listen to me.” Padre scooted on the floor until he was directly in front of the still-bleeding councilman.  “Through your whole life, you have done everything you could, in your world and in this one, to ensure that your will was done. Maybe it’s time for both of us to admit that we were wrong in our actions designed to preserve
the greater good
, and allow
His
will to be done.

“God knows, I have my own actions to repent for. Not the least of which is giving you and Isabella the Eucharist every Sunday.” He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and pressed it to Alfredo’s head wound. “But I have faith that we can move forward from this. We —”

A shrill alarm sounded throughout the dark and empty launch depot, followed by a mechanized female voice.

“
Attention. An emergency retrieval is occurring in launch station one. Retrieval technician, please report to launch station one for traveler assistance and initial debrief. Emergency retrieval in launch station one.”

Alfredo and Padre looked at each other. Was it possible?

“Are the members of the search party accounted for?” Alfredo asked franticly.

“They’ve all returned except for Bernal. He’s not due until Wednesday.”

“Well help me up, for Christ’s sake!”  The two men supported each other as they both painfully rose from the floor and stumbled hurriedly out into the hallway. The launch stations were separated by forty feet of hallway, and it seemed to stretch to infinity as they walked toward launch station one.

They were five feet away when they both heard it, and stopped.

“Thank you, God.” It was only a whisper, but it was definitely a female voice.

Unable to stand it any longer, Alfredo shook off Padre’s grip and bolted into the launch station.

“Isabella!” He skidded to a stop when he saw the girl sitting on the floor. The disappointment of seeing it was not his daughter was so crushing, it took him a moment to realize he knew the young face gazing up at him. The wild brown hair, the freckles, those lovely green eyes. It had been so long, but he knew that face.

“I’m afraid not, Sir.” Her eyes shifted as Padre came into the room. “But I have news of—”

Now it was the girl’s turn to stop short. Her mouth gaped as she recognized to whom she was speaking.  Her eyes filled and she looked up at each of the men in front of her, before letting her eyes settle firmly on Alfredo’s face.

“Oh my God.” Her voice was husky with tears as she shifted her long skirt to stand up. “Hi there, Kiddo.” Her voice took on a hard edge. “You remember me?”

9

Dusk fell on Shaftesbury, driving the already cool air into a sharp chill. Isabella breathed a sigh of relief. She had been waiting for the light to fade, as darkness was easier to hide in. Tonight’s hiding place was the sheep and goat paddock behind the Great Hall on the down-slope of the hill, and she was enormously glad to have found it. At the end of the day, it was mostly deserted.  With the evening meal being well underway, there was no reason for anyone to come looking for an animal to slaughter. Some horses were penned immediately next to the goat paddock, but it was unlikely anyone was still out riding. She could rest easy with the knowledge she would not be discovered.

Freezing and alone, Isabella had been sitting in the straw and animal droppings for the better part of three hours. Such was her life now; she had no care for the dirt, the smell, or the small irritation of sheep knocking against her. Actually, the warmth and the odor of the animals were rather comforting compared to the absolute horror of the rest of her day.

For the past two months, each of her days had started exactly the same way.  The screaming baby woke her before dawn, and as Saoirse suckled the infant into silence, Isabella suffered the indignity of peeing into a bucket with absolutely no privacy. Though her paltry straw bed and flea-ridden fur blanket did little to keep out the cold, simply getting up in the morning was an exercise in determination, and it was only the first of many.

Prior to eating, Isabella, Saoirse, and a multitude of kitchen girls (one of whom, horrifyingly, was missing an eye)  had to walk all the way down the hill—past the animal paddocks, the blacksmith’s, even Redwald’s smelly hut—to get to the well, which served the entire city.  Without water at the ready, there would be no food, so Isabella and the other women were tasked with retrieving it. Every. Single. Morning.

Wearing a yoke with a bucket dangling from each end, Isabella would draw water from the well, deposit it into the buckets, and then make the agonizing walk back uphill. The wooden yoke dug into her shoulders painfully even when empty, and being saddled with the weight of water sent sharp pains down her back and made the muscles in her legs shake with the effort.

The backbreaking work was cold and miserable, but the morning water runs at least had the benefit of being quiet, with only the servants and peasant wives awake. Once the rest of the town arose, Isabella’s day only got worse, particularly if Annis made her presence known.

Isabella was surprised to find noblewomen did not live lives of leisure. Rather, Annis had her own set of chores and stayed blessedly as busy as the servants she lorded over.  The lady of the house made clothing, did embroidery, and watched her children—the three holy terrors who ran amok on a nearly constant basis.  Wyrtgeorn was fourteen and considered a man, the least often seen and by such a definition, the least irritating. Rumors abounded Cædda was seeking a suitable wife for him. Dægberht was eight and Esmund was five. The two younger boys spent the majority of their time out of doors, but their rowdy fights sometimes spilled into the kitchen, causing messes, chaos, and delayed meals. Luckily, Isabella spent very little of her day at the Great Hall.

After the water drawing and the morning meal of a thick stew, it was off to the market. The first few weeks after she arrived, Saoirse or one of the kitchen girls had always accompanied her to translate. But lately, Hilde made Isabella go alone. Hilde would tell her what was needed and make Isabella repeat the phonetic list until she had it memorized.  Trying to remember all the strange sounds the first time was enough of a burden, but upon arriving to the market, everything got fantastically worse.  Mostly, she had no idea what the words she spoke meant. So like a proper spastic, she tapped random women on the shoulder.

“Cawl? Cawl hwǽr?” The woman would laugh at her and point to a vendor. On one particularly unhappy occasion, Isabella discovered she was to purchase a cow, leaving her to trudge up the hill with a burlap sack full of produce, a stubborn lactating brown cow trudging behind her, and the expected stares of all the people around her. Two months of daily trips to the market and they all still stared at her.

Disgusted, Isabella threw a rock across the paddock, hitting one of the goats. It bleated in protest, but Isabella wasn’t sorry. Her face was wind-chapped from the constant cold and the near-constant rain; her neck hurt so badly she could barely move sometimes. So she couldn’t be bothered to care about some animal that would likely be put into a stew in the near future.

Looking into the evening sky, Isabella decided it was dark enough to begin her trek down to the church. During one of her Saxon lessons, Thorstein had suggested she join him in his thrice-weekly sessions with Sigbert. Perhaps his act of charity had been inspired by Isabella’s humble apology for having insulted him that first night. Regardless of Thorstein’s motivations, his invitation led her to the warm rectory, where she could have the only truly enjoyable moments of her new life.

She stood up and took a moment to brush the straw from her clothing. It was probably in her hair as well, but she didn’t want to risk it falling out of the bun she had wrapped it into.  Father Sigbert had mandated she should wear her hair up, as only unmarried women wore their hair unbound. Since her husband had discarded her, the priest said, the Church would view her as a widow. If Shaftesbury had some other, less charitable clergyman, Isabella knew her status would likely not have been anything so honorable.

Finished with her cursory grooming, Isabella walked over to the paddock fence and felt for the latch. She had just found it when she heard a noise behind her. With a stab of fear in her stomach, she looked over her shoulder. Luckily, it was not Hilde or any of her other task masters. Rather it was the quiet warrior who had ridden with Garrick that first day. Tall and slim, he was older than most of the others, and kept his face grizzled with a five o’clock shadow. Thorstein told her he was universally known as Selwyn the Silent because he almost never spoke. A bonus for her, since it was unlikely he would go tattling that she was hiding in the sheep paddock.

He looked at her with the same blank expression he always did and started taking the tack off the horse next to him.

“Hello Selwyn,” she said, determined to match his disinterested face. At least, she thought as she took several steps out of the paddock, she knew how to say greetings in Saxon now.

“Hello Isabella,” he said in Latin.

Stopping short, she turned to gape at him. He had the horse’s bridle and saddle off and released the animal into the paddock. He wasn’t looking at Isabella, and it seemed he hadn’t spoken at all.

“You speak Latin?”

The lanky man merely shrugged his shoulders at her and walked away. He was the first Saxon to call her by her real name. Maybe he could be an ally, but since she had little contact with the warriors, she doubted he could be of any use to her.

Sighing listlessly, she moved quickly down the hill, intent on getting to the church without being seen.

***

“No, Father. I can’t say I am enjoying
anything
about my life.” Isabella smiled up mischievously at the exasperated priest.

“Refusing to do your chores will have that effect, I’m afraid.” Sigbert leaned back in his chair and eyed Isabella as she sat with Thorstein on the floor.

“I didn’t refuse anything. I just noticed Saoirse gets all the easy work while I’m tasked with cleaning the latrines. I don’t find that to be acceptable, so I simply barter for a more balanced work schedule. It’s logic, not disobedience.”

Saoirse had once again tried to saddle Isabella with emptying all the household piss buckets. The annoying teenager didn’t speak Latin, so there was no arguing with her. Tired of fighting with Hilde, or worse Annis, Isabella had simply nodded her agreement. But as soon as Saoirse was gone, Isabella left the Great Hall and went into the kitchen to help the other women make candles, which was surprisingly fun. Immediately afterwards, Isabella had taken up her post in the animal trough. Obviously Saoirse had returned, found the task undone, and complained to Sigbert.
What a bitch
.

Sigbert’s brow lowered. “Saoirse works mostly indoors due to her needing to be near her child.” He started flipping through the Bible in his lap. “Our Lord has said we should take joy in our work.”

She snorted through her nose. “Oh yes, nothing more delightful than scooping shit and tearing up my fingers. Honestly, you should charge admission to this place, Father.”

Thorstein burst out with laughter next to her.  Despite his insistence that he was, in fact, a man, he still had the giggle of a young boy and Isabella laughed every time she heard it. Joining in with his laughter, she finally relaxed in the warmth of the small rectory—her respite from the glares of Annis and her pack of hags.
 

With the fire always blazing, Thorstein and Isabella would sit on the floor while Sigbert would read (in Saxon, unfortunately) from the Bible or other text, telling a story about Jesus or one of the saints. This evening’s lesson had been about Job, one of her least favorite Bible stories. But more importantly, Sigbert stressed the divine mandate of obedience. It was obvious to Isabella that Sigbert was directing this reading to her activities earlier in the day. 

Finally done laughing at her, Thorstein reached over and brushed a piece of straw out of Isabella’s hair.

“You look so lovely with both your eyes open. See you don’t encourage someone to swell one shut again.”

Isabella smiled back at him, his flirtations amusing her. “I haven’t seen Garrick in over a month. And I can handle Hilde’s lecturing.”

Sigbert raised his eyebrow at that and said something in Saxon.

“I don’t understand you when you talk so fast, Father,” she said without hiding her frustration.

“Then you had best listen more carefully because we have taught you most of these words.” He repeated his Saxon sentence more slowly.

Though her Saxon vocabulary had drastically improved, it was still a struggle to have full conversations. Saxons organized their sentences strangely and verbs had several parts, very similar to Germans. So all she understood was:

“You – beating – think – girl?”

She shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t deserve a beating. I never promised to obey Saoirse, thus I have no intention of allowing her to tell me what to do. Anyway, Annis won’t be likely to take the side of some little girl who bore a bastard with her husband.”

Sigbert and Thorstein froze, leaving the popping from the fire as the only sound.

“Was that supposed to be a secret?” Isabella asked, looking to Sigbert cautiously.

Father closed his Bible and set it on the crude shelf next to his chair. “It’s not a secret. But it is not something to be discussed. A man’s sins are between himself and the Lord. Saoirse  discusses it because her people are not Christians and do not understand marriage is sacred.”

“She’s not a Saxon?”

The priest shook his head. “She’s a pagan – one of the Celtic tribes. I’m not certain where exactly she’s from.”

“Do her people worship rabbits?”

Sigbert laughed a little. “I don’t think so. Why?”

Isabella told him about the late-night trip to the edge of town she and Saoirse had taken, how the girl had put a small cake down the rabbit hole, and had been so thrilled to show Isabella the circle of mushrooms.

Sigbert glanced over at Thorstein, who returned his knowing look.

“She believes in Fairies,” Thorstein told her. “She calls them the Good People. The cake was an offering to them, and the mushrooms sound like they were in a Fairy Circle. It’s said that such a circle is evidence of a gathering, and blessing will be given to anyone who stands inside it.”

Isabella tightened her mouth. “You seem to know an awful lot about Pagan beliefs.”

Thorstein looked down and his ears grew red.

“Thorstein was not a Christian when he came to us,” Sigbert interjected. “But he opened his heart to God and Jesus Christ after several months of meeting with me. Saoirse, I’m sorry to say, has not come to know the Truth yet. Lord Cædda believes her to be a Christian, as the girl routinely accompanies the family to Mass. But she is still an unrepentant Pagan.”

“What about the baby?” Isabella asked sharply. “Will you allow her to raise him as a Pagan?”

She had never wanted children for herself, but Isabella couldn’t tolerate the idea of letting an innocent child be damned because of the mother’s sins.

“The child has been baptized. Beyond that, I can only work to convert the mother.” Sigbert had a disappointed tone to his voice, and his sadness stilled the room for a moment.

“I think it’s time we went home.” Thorstein spoke quietly and stood up to offer his hand to assist Isabella. 

Weighed down by her skirts, Isabella gratefully accepted the hand and stood up next to the younger boy. She wanted to assure Father that she would help if she could, but decided to return to the subject later, perhaps at confession when Sigbert could speak freely.

“I’ll see you tomorrow morning at Mass,” Sigbert said as he held his thick arm out towards the door.

Isabella smiled at him and sucked in her breath as she stepped out into the cold. Her layers of wool did little to halt the cutting wind, unfortunately, so she crossed her arms tightly against her chest and trudged up the hill in the direction of the Great Hall, her body aching with the effort.