Chapter 7
For one blissful moment, Elodie kept her eyes closed and told herself she was in her London flat. The lumpy bed was her lumpy bed. The distant sounds were just the neighbours being weird again. Any second now, her phone alarm would go off and she’d have to—
“Bloody buggering hell,” she whispered, and opened her eyes to medieval stone walls.
Pale morning light crept through the narrow window, painting a stripe across the floor.
Her chamber was small but clean—she’d been too overwhelmed to notice much last night beyond the bed and the basin.
Now she cataloged details from the iron candle holder on the wall to the simple wooden chest at the foot of the bed, and to the wool gown draped over a stool.
Lady Margaret’s gown. Gareth’s sister. As an only child, Elodie had wished for a sister or brother, but the thought of losing them, and the look on his face, made her rethink that wish.
She’d found the toilet last night during the restless hour she’d spent exploring every detail of her tiny room instead of sleeping.
A small door in the corner that she’d assumed was a cupboard turned out to be a garderobe—a medieval loo, essentially.
A stone seat with a hole that dropped into.
.. she’d decided not to think too hard about where it dropped into or who had the disgusting task of emptying the barrel.
At least it was private, which meant she’d been given a guest chamber of honor.
She used it quickly, trying not to dwell on the complete absence of toilet paper (there was a basket of moss and old rags, which—fine, she could adapt, she was adaptable), and was splashing water on her face from the basin when someone knocked at the door.
“My lady? Are you awake?”
The voice was young, tentative. Elodie grabbed the rough blanket and clutched it to her chest even though she was still wearing her shift from last night. “Yes! I mean—come in? Is that what I say? I don’t actually know the proper form for—”
The door opened to reveal a girl of perhaps fourteen, dark-haired and round-faced, carrying a second basin of water that steamed in the cool air. She stopped short at the sight of Elodie standing in her shift, still talking.
“—this situation, obviously, because I’ve never been a guest in a castle before, well I have, but they were in ruins, which is quite different from having someone knock on your door expecting you to know what you’re meant to—” Elodie clamped her mouth shut.
“Sorry. I ramble when I’m nervous. Which is most of the time, honestly. I’m Elodie.”
The girl’s eyes were the size of dinner plates. “I know, my lady. Everyone knows.” She bobbed what might have been a curtsey. “I’m Marian. Bertram sent me to help you dress.”
“Marian. Lovely name. Very—”
Very Maid Marian, actually, which—stop it, Elodie, Robin Hood isn’t even a thing yet. Or is it? When do the ballads start? God, you’d think someone with a PhD in medieval studies would know this.
“—very pretty,” she finished lamely. “You really don’t have to call me ‘my lady,’ though. I’m not nobility. I’m just... nobody, really. Elodie Hart, failed academic and accidental time traveller.”
She regretted the last bit immediately, but Marian just looked at her with polite incomprehension, her mouth partway open.
“Bertram says you’re to have Lady Margaret’s things. For as long as you’re here.”
The words carried the tone of unasked questions. Where did you come from? Why are you here? Are you really a faerie?
“That’s very kind of him. And Lord Gareth.” The name felt strange in her mouth, too intimate somehow. “I’m sorry about the loss. Of Lady Margaret, I mean. Bertram said she was Lord Gareth’s sister?”
Marian’s expression softened with something like genuine grief. “She was kind, my lady. She would have liked you, I think. Like you, she talked a great deal too.”
Elodie wasn’t entirely sure that was a compliment, but she decided to take it as one.
Getting dressed, it turned out, was a production.
First came a clean shift—Marian turned her back politely while Elodie struggled out of the old one and into the new.
Then stockings, held up by ribbons that tied above the knee.
Then the navy wool gown itself, which laced up the sides and required Marian’s help to manage.
“This would be so much easier with a zip,” Elodie muttered, then caught herself. “I mean—never mind. Just thinking out loud.”
Zippers won’t be invented for another seven hundred years. Stop referencing things that don’t exist yet.
“Do you talk to yourself often, my lady?”
“Constantly. It’s the only way to have an intelligent conversation some days.” She smiled to show she was joking, but Marian just looked confused. “That was—never mind. Different sense of humour where I come from.”
Then came a simple belt, and something Marian called a “wimple” that Elodie absolutely refused to wear.
“It covers your hair, my lady. It’s proper.”
“I’m sure it is, but I’ve already given up—”
Jeans. Jumpers. Hot showers. Central heating. The internet. Cadbury chocolate.
“—quite a lot, actually. I’m not wearing that.”
Marian looked scandalised but didn’t argue. She did, however, insist on braiding Elodie’s long hair and coiling it at the nape of her neck in a style that felt surprisingly secure.
“There,” the girl said, stepping back to assess her work. “You look almost normal now.”
“High praise indeed.” Elodie caught sight of herself in the small polished metal that served as a mirror.
The woman looking back at her was a stranger—same face, but utterly altered by context.
The green of her eyes looked different against the navy wool.
Her freckles stood out more without her usual concealer.
I look medieval, she thought, and had to swallow against a sudden tightness in her throat.
“Are you hungry, my lady? I’m to take you to the hall to break your fast.”
“Starving, actually.” Her stomach growled in confirmation. When had she last eaten? The bread and cheese last night felt like days ago. “Lead the way.”
The castle corridors were nothing like the ruins of other castles she’d walked a hundred times in her own century.
For one thing, they were alive—servants bustling past with purpose, the smell of cooking fires and unwashed bodies and rushes underfoot, the sound of voices and footsteps echoing off stone.
Elodie nearly walked into a wall because she was too busy staring at a tapestry.
“Careful, my lady!”
“Sorry—sorry, it’s just—” She reached out to touch the fabric, then snatched her hand back. Don’t touch the artefacts, Elodie. But it wasn’t an artefact, was it? It was just... a thing. A household object. Someone’s decoration.
“The weaving technique,” she breathed, examining the tight, even stitches. “The dyes—look at that blue, that’s woad, isn’t it? And the mordant work on the red, the way it’s held its colour—I spent three years of my li—”
She stopped herself before PhD could escape.
“Of my studies. Looking at pieces like this behind glass. And here it is, just hanging on a wall like it’s nothing special.”
“It’s been there since the last lord lived here,” Marian said, with the tone of someone humouring a madwoman. “Would you like to see the hall now?”
“Yes. Right. sorry. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? The rambling thing?”
“A bit, my lady.”
“It’s a character flaw. One of many.” She forced herself to stop examining the tapestry and follow Marian down the corridor. “Feel free to tell me to shut up. My friend Jennifer does it all the time. Well, technically she signs it, because she’s deaf, but the sentiment is—”
She tripped on an uneven flagstone and stumbled forward, catching herself on the wall.
“—the sentiment is the same,” she finished, face burning. “I’m also clumsy. Did I mention that? Legendarily so. Once knocked an entire display case of Roman pottery off its pedestal. They still talk about it in the conservation department.”
They descended a spiral staircase—Elodie kept one hand on the wall the entire way, hyperaware of the worn stone steps and the complete absence of handrails or adequate lighting—and emerged into the great hall.
It was even more impressive in daylight.
The massive hearth crackled with a fire, but morning light streamed through high windows to illuminate the space.
Trestle tables lined the hall, and people sat eating—servants and guardsmen, from the look of their clothes, grabbing bread, cheese, and ale before starting their day.
Everyone stopped talking when Elodie appeared.
“Right,” she murmured. “Still the local curiosity, then.” She caught a few of them crossing themselves, and others kept looking at her shoulders, likely looking for the wings from her costume. Guess gossip traveled quickly in a castle.
Marian guided her to a seat at one of the lower tables—not the high table at the far end, she noticed, though she wasn’t sure if that was protocol or kindness.
A servant appeared with the same bread, hard cheese, and a cup of weak ale as the rest of the inhabitants of the hall were eating and drinking.
“Is there—” She stopped herself just in time. Tea. You were about to ask for tea. Tea that won’t reach England for another five hundred years. “Is there anything else? To drink, I mean?”
“Water, my lady. Or milk, if cook has any fresh.”
“Ale is fine. Ale is perfect. Very... fortifying.”
She ate quickly, trying to ignore the glances and whispers. The bread was coarse but fresh, the cheese sharp and crumbly, the ale better than she’d expected. Simple food, but her body practically sang with relief at having something substantial in her stomach.
I can do this, she told herself. One meal at a time. One day at a time. I can figure this out. There has to be a way to go back.