Chapter 8
The knock at the door became a banging at the door. Something hard and metal pounded on it, upending the entire facade of
our secluded Eden. Suddenly this all felt like camping, like we were in a tent and had overstayed our welcome. Voices called
for us outside. Through the gaps around the doorframe, shadows shuffled in the morning sun.
Simon and I leapt from bed and threw on clothes. I looked at Simon for direction—I had never answered the door in this century.
We had no windows to peek out of. Simon grabbed a knife and demanded the person on the other side of the door identify himself.
“John Abbenhale of the Crown Equerry,” said a man.
Simon looked at me with bewilderment and shrugged.
He slipped the knife under his tunic and went to the door.
He slowly unlocked it, then pushed it open fast and wide.
Both Simon and the man on the other side stepped backward from each other as it swung open.
The spotlight of the morning sun lit up every inch of rustic squalor around us. I squinted.
“Don’t move.”
Five men surrounded the door with bows and arrows raised. We froze.
The men were richly dressed in decorative armor, which had been strapped together over thick layers of colored fabric. Muscled,
stoic horses stood behind them. One man with a sword (the one who had knocked) cautiously approached while the others kept
their bows raised and pointed at us. He kept his hand on the sword’s hilt and with the other raised a rolled piece of paper.
“Which one of you is George Green?”
I took a second to reply. “I’m George,” I said, stepping forward. “Not Green, but from Greenwich, yes.” My head was tilted
instinctively toward the ground, wincing at the arrows pointed at me.
“Your presence is requested at an audience with His Majesty the King Edward on the evening of the fourteenth of June, in the
twenty-ninth year of His Majesty’s reign. You will be allowed one horse, no arms of any sort. You are to be escorted into
his presence by Piers Gaveston, an equerry to the Prince of Wales, who will meet you in Kirkdale and bring you to the royal
caravan stationed at Thirsk.”
He handed me the scroll, which was tied with red string and a wax seal. I opened it but could hardly read the handwriting—I
could at least make out the date, the village name. I had never been to Thirsk but I knew it was a day’s journey west, north
of York. The messenger and the other men were already back on their horses.
“Wait, but why?” I said. “What’s this for?”
He looked down at me with haughty surprise. “When you’re summoned, you’re summoned. You can bring your squire if you wish,
given current wartime mandates. Believe me, if we knew what the summoning was for, there’d be no reason to summon you.”
The men rode away, leaping over our half-built canal. Mud splattered under hoof. It all felt unreal. The richness of the colors
in their clothes had made the men look more costume-like than anything I had encountered here. The horses looked like show
ponies. I looked back at Simon and he was in a transfixed state of whispered, panicked prayer, eyes closed, head bowed. He
was actually jolted by this. “Simon?” Only when the sound of the men was far away did he finally exhale and stop reciting.
That old sense of unreality came back to me again—this just didn’t feel real. I looked down at the scroll, the thick red wax
seal, the expert penmanship. I realized this had to be just as out-of-this-world for Simon too.
“What wartime mandates? Who are we at war with?” I said.
Simon shook himself from his reverie and stepped outside with me. “I don’t know. Wales, Scotland, France, everyone.” He looked
supremely worried. “Let me see that.”
I handed him the scroll. He examined it closely, even though he couldn’t read. He marveled over the royal seal.
“This has to be about me, right?” I said. “How’d they find us out here? Is this for real, like from the actual king?”
“Yes, it’s from the king,” said Simon.
“Well that’s a relief,” I said. I brushed away the indent of a horse hoof on the ground. “I guess . . . we have to go? Do you think we’ll actually meet him? How long do you think it will take us to get to Thirsk?”
Simon looked at me perplexed. “Are you not terrified?”
“Well, I’m not terrified,” I said. “I’m surprised maybe. Intrigued. They probably didn’t need to point bows and arrows at us, but it could have been
worse. My first thought was they were going to take us back to London or something, so I’m actually feeling quite relieved.”
I still knew so little about anything. I knew the king was King Edward—the First, although they didn’t call him the First
because how would they know about the next ones. I knew he was old, that he was on his second wife, that he was tall and ruthless,
a warrior king—that’s all I had learned about him in my time here. Most people were reverential, almost pious when they spoke
of him, but in quieter moments, at pubs, after a long day of work, I had witnessed people joking about him like they would
in modern times. Simon was still white in the face, worried and pacing.
I tried to think concretely. “There’s some travel implications. We’ll need someone from the village to come up and feed the
animals while we’re away. Other than that I don’t see—I think we should be fine . . . I mean, I have nothing of value to offer
them, so there’s nothing to fear. I’m not afraid of doing something that would upset events in the future or rewrite history
or whatever because if I’d have done that, I’d probably have already done it, or something, however that paradox works.” I
tried to think of what the modern equivalent to something like this would be. A summons from a king would be, well, a summons
from a king. But a scary king, a dictator, or something. I felt completely inadequate.
Simon walked away from me, shaking his head.
“What?” I called after him. “Hey, what?”
“You don’t care.”
“What?”
He turned around. “You think this is a joke.”
“Not at all. Simon—”
“Something like this happens and all you can do is think about it with your time traveler brain. You think this is all beneath
you. I’ve seen it in your face before, when we go to Scarborough. You think you’re cleverer than them. You’re doing it now.”
I was completely taken aback. “OK that’s not true at all. I don’t think this is beneath me.” Now I was annoyed. Where was
all this coming from? “I’m just saying I’m relieved it wasn’t something worse. I thought they were going to shoot us. And
I don’t know—I don’t understand why you’re afraid. We get to meet the king. That’s exciting, isn’t it? Scary a bit, sure,
but we’ll be fine? Maybe he’ll know about Greenwich, or maybe he’ll think I’m some foreign whatever, but the second he meets
me he’ll understand. We probably won’t even get that far—we’ll meet this Piers Gaveston guy and he’ll call it all off.”
Simon came back to me fast, right in front of my face. “This is a man who kills people, George. Who tortures people—personally.
Pulls them apart into pieces. I know you have your nice friendly old king back in future-land, but that’s not what we have
here. This is a man who banishes entire races of people—wipes them out. And we’re gay, I’m an escaped slave, you’re an escaped
prisoner and a foreigner. He’ll kill me—that I’m certain of. He’ll get what he needs from you, then he’ll kill you. He’ll
make his son fuck our corpses.”
“You’re being ridiculous.”
“You’re being ridiculous!” Simon grabbed me by the shoulders.
I tried pulling away, weirded out, but he pulled me closer.
“I’m looking in your eyes and I can see it right now—you don’t get it!
I know how you think, George, I’ve seen it in how you look at things out here.
You’re constantly bewildered by regular people out here, you’re so in your own head, and yet I’m the one overreacting by—”
“Stop.” I put my hands on his arms and held him still. We stood like that for the longest time and stared at each other. Panic
and nerves coursed through us. He was right, there was a difference there. His blue eyes were manic and darting all over the
place. We shared a common bewilderment at the king’s summoning, but bewilderment translated into terror for Simon; only lostness,
maybe even bemusement for me. Searching each other for an opposite reaction only made things worse. As I held him, I’m sure
he felt the same crude cap, wanting to pull away from me now. Weirded out.
Simon stayed on edge all night and the next morning. No matter what I said I couldn’t convince him I was taking things seriously
enough. I was—really, I was—but I couldn’t summon a fear of death to match whatever he was feeling, I just couldn’t. I had
nothing to hide and felt we had no other recourse. What else could we do besides comply?
As the weeks ticked by into June, a buzz began to swell in the nearby hamlets—which we visited more frequently in order to keep track of the date, as our own timekeeping methods were never strictly maintained.
The royal caravan was coming and each day there was gossip among the villagers about routes the king might take, manor houses he might stay at, and what this all meant for the war—a war no one had really known anything about in the first place, except now was a topic they were all experts on.
We didn’t tell anyone about our summons.
I began to feel a sense of seriousness—not that I hadn’t felt it earlier, but a new kind of hysteria I couldn’t square myself
with. I felt flashes of it, and anytime I mentioned it, I felt Simon close off from me, assuming I was just doing it for his
benefit. Our differences seemed magnified now. Those early days we had spent in bed, that love we had unearthed with such
emotionality—it felt like a mistranslation—and when I clung to Simon now, I clung to someone I feared I had completely misunderstood.