Time Travel Romances Boxed Set (114 page)

“
England! Whoa - do you
have any idea how far that is?”

Niall shook his head, his pulse leaping that
the information he desired could be so close.

“
Need the other map for
that.” Derek rummaged and pulled out another, unfurling it on top
of the first and weighing down the corners. Niall leaned over it,
astonished by the amount of land shown. It had been quite a while
since he had seen a map of the known world and it had been only the
barest glimpse of a precious treasure held by the archbishop, but
he was certain Christendom had not been shaped like
this.

Or been so extensive.

Derek poked a finger at a markedly small
island, its shape heartwrenchingly familiar. Niall could even make
out the name of the town of Carlisle, not so far from all he
knew.

“
There’s merry olde England
right there. And we’re over here. But it’s even worse than it
looks, because you have to go around the continents. Now, once upon
a time, you had to go all the way down here, by Tierra del Fuego,
but since the Panama Canal opened in 1914 - a little marvel of
modern engineering - you can zip through here…”

But Niall wasn’t watching the course of
Derek’s finger any more. He was staring at his companion in shock.
“In
1914
? This was the year of its opening?”

The older man didn’t even look up, despite
the tightness of Niall’s voice. “Yeah, it’s heard to believe it’s
only been there for eighty-five years or so, we’ve gotten so
reliant upon it…”

The year 1914 was eighty-five years past?
Niall’s head nearly spun at the implication of that. He must have
misunderstood. “What is the date this day?” he asked hoarsely.

“
Um, well, it would be the
twenty-seventh of September, come to think of it.”

“
And the year?”

Now, Derek glanced at Niall. He grinned
crookedly. “Been on the island long enough to lose track of time,
huh? Or were you really getting into your historical re-enactment?”
He snapped his fingers in sudden recollection. “Look, your chain
mail is in a hockey bag there, don’t forget to take it along with
you. Hope you don’t mind but I had a look - it’s really great
stuff. Looks like the real thing. You probably ought to hang out
that cape to dry before it wrinkles all to hell.” He cleared his
throat. “Where do you buy stuff like that, anyway? If for example,
I was interested…?”

“
At an armorer.”

“
Right. Gotta go to the
medieval faire.”

“
The year,” Niall said
through gritted teeth. “What is the year?”

“
Easy, cowboy! It’s 1999,
of course. Everyone knows that.”

Niall sat back in astonishment, for he had
not known any such thing. Where they were had not surprised him
overmuch, for he had guessed they must be at a distance from
Cantlecroft. Perhaps not this far, but still.

’
Twas
when
they were
that shook him to the core.

Because Niall could not imagine how any
mechanism of man could hurl them across six centuries on the power
of a wish alone. He thought of Viviane’s moonstone and his innards
curdled. Could that talisman be magic after all?

Or was it some cleverness of the men of this
time, that only seemed magical to Niall in his ignorance of its
mechanism?

Six centuries! ’Twas a long time.

Suddenly Niall realized the import of
hurtling so far into the future. All he knew were wormfood, and
wormfood long forgotten. Majella had not only had her child, but
they were all long dead, babes and she.

Niall sat down heavily. The archbishop was
no more, indeed Cantlecroft might not even stand any longer. The
bile rose in his throat at the thought. Every soul to whom he had
made a pledge was dead.

What had they thought of him, as they lived
out their days, awaiting him to keep his word? Had his only sister
thought him faithless? Had his patron thought him trapped in some
netherworld? Or dead by some horrific fate? But a day since Niall
had tousled his nephew’s hair and they were lost to him
forever.

’
Twas enough to sicken
him.

“
You all right?” Derek’s
concern interrupted Niall’s thoughts. “You look a bit pale. It
is
a bit choppy today.”

“
I am well enough,” Niall
insisted stoically, his fingers gripping the table so tightly that
his knuckles were white. He glanced down at them and saw the
inscription in the corner of the map.

Based on survey data from 1989 A.D.

Niall’s stomach rolled. This made no sense!
’Twas impossible, it defied belief.

Yet he was here.

And it was 1999. Mathematics came to his
rescue, his mind tabulating the difference by habit. Six hundred
and four years, gone missing in the blink of an eye.

With nary a reasonable explanation in sight.
Niall tightened his grip on the table, uncertain whether ’twas the
vessel swaying or him.

“
Yeah, well, you don’t look
so good. As soon as we hear back…” The little machine sang out
once more, distracting Derek. “Ha! There’s a message from
Horace.”

Niall pushed to his feet and leaned over the
man’s shoulder to read along. Now that he thought to look, he
noticed the dateline, complete with its damning year. Niall
deliberately took a deep breath, trying to steady himself, the
numbers wavering slightly before his disbelieving gaze.

There had to be a rational explanation, he
merely had to find it. Indeed, six hundred years of clever men
could well explain all the marvels surrounding him. If naught else,
he knew now that they were not magic.

And that this was not Avalon. Nay, ’twas
Salt Spring Island, according to the map.

The missive revealed that Horace was very
excited about the coin. With Niall’s permission, Derek dropped it
on what he called a scanner, which apparently dispatched an image
of the coin to Horace.

Moments later, Horace professed himself
delighted, listed a sum that made Niall blink and offered to
transfer half in good faith, the remainder on receipt of the coin.
’Twas only reasonable that he would confirm of its authenticity -
Niall had been known himself to bite a gold coin with his own teeth
to ascertain that ’twas real.

“
Suit you?” Derek
asked.

Niall rolled the numbers through his head
and had no qualms whatsoever. Surely by the time his four coins
were sold and all the resulting coin spent, he’d know how to return
to Cantlecroft, his task completed?

Niall could only hope.

“
The agreement seems one of
good sense,” he agreed, appreciating anew that this man had vouched
for him. He was, however, skeptical that Horace would truly pay
such a sum in the local currency for a single gold coin.

Even a fraction would suit him well
enough.

“
Yeah, Horace is a bit of
an oddity, but a straight shooter. Look if you like, we’ll go back
into town and courier the coin to him, after we’ve checked that
he’s transferred the payment.”

“
This also seems of good
sense to me.”

Derek stood and stretched his legs. “So does
a celebratory beer.”

“
Beer?”

“
Ale, wine, the hard stuff,
your choice.” Derek winked. “Tell you what, I’ll buy and you can
tell me about your gift with numbers.”

Niall nearly fell on his new friend with
relief. “An ale would be most welcome,” he said heartily and Derek
chuckled.

“
Yeah, I know that feeling.
It’s good for what ails you.” He struck a succession of buttons
once more, asked Niall for his new passbook, then sent an agreement
off to Horace. When that man replied, they headed for
town.

Coin and ale, in that order.

Niall had no quibbles with that.

*

Niall could not have known that his parting
with that single gold coin would prompt serious repercussions. You
see, the coin was not where it should have been, a fact which
became of particular import when it left Niall’s fingers and lost
all reasonable hope of returning to medieval Cantlecroft.

Which was, of course, where it belonged.

The coin was the first tangible thing that
either Niall or Viviane parted with in their new location, and as
such, its movement cast strong ripples across the surface of
ensuing events.

For starters, the coin’s sudden appearance
in the late twentieth century Pacific Northwest exactly doubled the
world’s known supply of Cantlecroft gold coins. That rather
severely affected the value of the formerly sole Cantlecroft coin,
a fact which directly impacted the financial circumstances of the
man who owned it.

He was the same man who bought Niall’s coin
through Derek. Horace Thorogood III loved coins with a passion that
had irked every one of his three ex-wives, even the last one, who
had been a coin collector herself.

It is an oddity of human nature that few
women take kindly to having their spouse find dirty bits of metal
more fascinating than their own company, particularly at the
exclusion
of their own company. Horace had never cared for
much of anything other than coins - though he liked women well
enough - and his passion had only intensified as he grew older. By
the age of fifty-three, he was thrice divorced and had reconciled
himself to the reality that no woman would tolerate him.

By then, he didn’t much care. He had his
coins and they filled his days and his nights with pleasure.

Derek managed Horace’s other investments, so
knew exactly the man to call when the subject was coins. Horace was
so excited by the possibility of there being another Cantlecroft
gold coin available that he had to have it.

He probably paid too much, even given the
information available at the time. He didn’t care though, once the
coin - in such good condition that it appeared freshly minted -
fell into his hands.

His third ex-wife, however, did.

For the sudden expense of acquiring Niall’s
coin cut rather deeply into Horace’s liquid assets, making it
impossible to pay that ex-wife’s monthly alimony installment on
time. She did not take kindly to this omission, having rather too
many credit card collectors calling her by her first name, and
showed up at Horace’s bedraggled estate toting her gun.

Now, Horace was quite used to Esmeralda’s
theatrics - they were, in fact, a contributing factor to that
divorce as such theatrics interrupted the peaceful contemplation of
coins - so he paid little attention to her show. He chose instead
to enthuse over his new acquisition. If Horace thought she would be
swayed by this news as a fellow coin lover, he was sorely
mistaken.

Just as Esmeralda was mistaken when she
thought the safety was still on. She pointed the gun at Horace and
demanded her money or else, quite certain she’d only put a little
fear into him when she pulled the trigger.

Horace had time to look up and no more.

In the ensuing unscheduled drama, the coin
in question fell unnoticed from Horace’s fingers. It rolled under
his desk and secreted itself in a crack in the parquet floor.

More than one Cantlecroft gold coin would
not be found amongst Horace’s possessions - although the receipts
for both were readily accessible. The resulting legal battle -
among Horace’s various children by those terminated marriages -
would outlive his three ex-wives and consume so many legal fees
that in the end, there was precious little of Horace’s hard won
fortune for the victorious heir.

The elusive gold coin would be found some
eighty years later by a construction worker involved in demolishing
the house, thereby putting him on the front page of every paper in
America and convincing his recently departed wife to move right
back in.

But as important as where Niall’s coin was,
was the issue of where it was
not
.

It was not in Cantlecroft, it was not
passing from Niall’s fingers to a butcher, a baker or a candlestick
maker in that fair burg. Nor was it even slipping to the fingers of
his sister Majella, where no coin lingered long.

And that was equally problematic.

For it is the nature of man to keep track of
what he deems precious. There are tallies made of coinage minted
and tables kept of the weight of silver and gold passed from one
tradesman to another, and so there always have been. And when the
sum was made in Cantlecroft, it was clear to the archbishop’s
chancellor that the man responsible for melting the archbishop’s
gold bars and transforming them to Cantlecroft coins had shipped
short of the measure.

The weight of one coin and one coin exactly
was missing.

The archbishop was not one to overlook this
sort of thievery and Aaron Goldsmith was summoned to make an
accounting. Aaron, unfortunately, could offer no decent explanation
for the missing weight.

Indeed, he insisted that he had counted and
delivered all of the coins. It was an obvious lie - for the numbers
in the ledger did not lie. The archbishop and his chancellor knew
that Jews
did
lie, however, for they had the example of
Judas in the great book itself as a reference, and they were not
inclined to be lenient with Aaron Goldsmith.

It was suggested that those Jews in
Cantlecroft might be overdue for a lesson on their real place in
Christendom, particularly if they had become so bold as to believe
they could cheat the archbishop himself.

When Aaron’s wife vouched for her spouse’s
honesty and swore even upon the Old Testament that she had counted
the coins herself, the court shook their heads in disgust.

The Goldsmiths hung together.

That might have been that, if Aaron had not
been so well-liked and respected in Cantlecroft. He had been
God-fearing, if not Christian, he had raised his sons well and he
was a man who could be relied upon.