Chapter 3
Three
HARPER
On the fourth morning of my imprisonment they brought me to the great hall. I’d been expecting it, had seen it coming the way you saw thunderstorms approach across open ground, but I still wasn’t sure exactly what to expect.
The great hall of Thames Castle was the size of a small cathedral and roughly as welcoming. Rough stone walls rose toward a ceiling lost in shadow. A long table dominated the center of the room, and at the head of it sat the Baron, flanked by men who oozed authority.
And then, despite everything, despite the guards on either side of me and the genuine possibility of execution, my brain staged a small mutiny.
The hall was real.
Not a museum replica. Not a film set. Not a careful reconstruction from architectural drawings.
Real.
The rushes on the floor were exactly the sort described in household accounts I’d catalogued, layered with dried herbs worked through them and smelled like they’d been recently changed.
The iron sconces were hand-forged. The tapestries hanging on the walls held colors so vivid they made my fingers itch with the desperate urge to examine them properly.
The trestle tables showed the grain of oak polished smooth by generations of use.
I wanted my cotton gloves, my camera, and eight uninterrupted hours and permission to lose my mind over the fact that I was standing inside a genuine thirteenth-century great hall.
Focus, Harper.
You are about to be interrogated by men who can legally kill you.
This is not the time to admire the ceiling joists.
Geoffrey stood near one of the windows, positioned just slightly apart from the others in a way that suggested he didn’t entirely want to be counted among my interrogators.
I held onto the sight of him with an embarrassing intensity.
He was the only person in this castle who’d shown anything approaching uncertainty about whether I deserved immediate execution.
The Baron smiled at me like he was about to explain a joke I wouldn’t enjoy.
“Tell us,” he said, “what you know about the charter.”
My mind, which had spent the last four days constructing possible explanations for my presence in 1215, hit a wall.
“The charter?” I repeated.
“The Great Charter,” one of the other men said. Younger than the Baron, cold-eyed, with the careful voice of someone who probably enjoyed causing pain. “The one the barons are drafting at Runnymede. The one that will bind the king.”
My mouth went dry.
So this really was 1215. Not simply 1215 in some vague historical sense, but close to Runnymede. Before the Magna Carta. Before King John would be forced to sign it. The reality of my situation, hit me like a wrecking ball, to quote a singer from my own time.
I was standing in a room full of medieval men who were about to participate in one of the single most important political moments in English history.
“I don’t know anything about a charter,” I said carefully. “I’m not local so I don’t follow politics.”
“You’re from somewhere,” the Baron said, leaning forward. “Somewhere you possess knowledge of things that have not yet happened. Someone who claims to have traveled over eight hundred years through time should be expected to have opinions on what was happening at her moment of arrival.”
I thought about this very carefully, wishing I’d kept my big mouth shut, and had come up with some story about being a widow set upon by bandits. But no, I had to go and tell the truth.
They were right that I had knowledge. I could probably recite large sections of the Magna Carta from memory.
I could explain how the charter would evolve through later reissues, which clauses survived, which vanished, how the entire arc of constitutional law stretched outward from this exact historical moment.
I could also absolutely get myself executed for witchcraft if I sounded too much like a medieval fortune-teller.
“The charter will succeed,” I heard myself say.
Immediately, every survival instinct in my body screamed.
No. Bad. Stop talking.
“I mean,” I continued quickly, “political movements generally have outcomes. That’s not prophecy. That’s just understanding cause and effect.”
“But you know about this one specifically,” the Baron pressed. “How?”
“I don’t,” I said, then immediately ruined everything.
“I know about Runnymede because every student of history knows about Runnymede. I know that in mid June the king will be forced to accept a charter limiting his power. I know it becomes one of the most important political documents in human history.”
Silence spread across the hall.
The sort of silence that made the back of my neck prickle.
The Baron rose slowly from his chair.
“You know the exact date,” he said. “The exact location. You know what will happen and when. You know the king will surrender.”
“I—”
Wonderful. Excellent work, Harper. You survived four days in medieval England only to accidentally speed your own witch trial.
“That’s just logic,” I said quickly. “If the barons are gathering and drafting demands, the likely outcome is—”
“The likely outcome,” the Baron interrupted, “is that King John crushes the rebellion and executes the ringleaders. That is what every reasonable man in this room expects. That is what the king himself is preparing to do. Yet you know otherwise.”
My mind raced through terrible options.
Divine revelation.
Druidic prophecy.
Insanity.
Or the truth.
“Because I’ve read about it,” I said quietly. “Where I come from, the Magna Carta is famous. Every student learns about King John and Runnymede. It’s taught in schools.”
“Schools,” the Baron repeated.
“Places where people learn history.”
“What kind of place teaches women history?”
The question came from the cold-eyed man, clearly intended to expose the impossibility in my story.
“Places in my time,” I said. “Women are educated where I come from.”
The Baron looked slowly around the hall at the other men. I could see the moment my words truly landed. Not the specifics. The implications.
I wasn’t merely claiming to come from somewhere impossible. I was describing a future where the entire structure of society was different.
“Guards,” the Baron said.
Two men seized my arms.
“Take her back to the tower. We’ll determine what to do with her after Runnymede. If the charter succeeds as this woman claims, we may have further use for her. If not, we’ll have more pressing concerns.”
They were dragging me toward the door when Geoffrey moved. He didn’t shout. Didn’t make some dramatic heroic gesture. He simply stepped between me and the exit.
“I want to question her further,” he said to the Baron. “Before you decide her fate. She’s mentioned strategic knowledge. We should understand the full extent of what she knows before making decisions about her execution.”
The Baron stared at his younger son as though Geoffrey had abruptly started speaking Italian.
“You wish to question a woman accused of witchcraft? Why?”
“Because,” Geoffrey said carefully, “if she truly is a spy sent from some enemy we cannot conceive of, then we are already compromised. And if she is not a spy, then she may be the most valuable person in this castle. A witness to the future.”
“She’s dangerous,” the cold-eyed man snapped. “She should hang.”
“After the charter is signed,” Geoffrey said. Something in his voice made the Baron pause. “Give me time to determine exactly what she knows. Either I’ll discover she’s a fraud, or I’ll gather intelligence that may prove useful.”
The Baron studied Geoffrey for a long moment.
“You’re thinking like a strategist,” he said finally. “Very well. You have a fortnight. But if she causes trouble, attempts escape, or behaves suspiciously in any way, she hangs immediately. Understood?”
“Understood.”
The guards loosened their grip slightly as the immediate threat of execution receded.
Marginally comforting.
* * *
Geoffrey came to the tower that afternoon carrying food and fresh water.
“That was stupid,” I told him before he could speak. “What you did in the great hall. Publicly associating yourself with defending me.”
“Yes,” Geoffrey agreed. “I didn’t think it through properly. But my father was correct about one thing. If you know what happens at Runnymede, we need that information. And he was wrong about execution being the proper response to knowledge we don’t understand.”
“I’m a witch,” I said. “I traveled through time. In this century that usually ends with fire.”
“In this century,” Geoffrey said, “we also acknowledge that some things exist beyond ordinary understanding. Saints. Miracles. Phenomena the Church recognizes without fully explaining. Your situation may fall into that category.”
“May,” I repeated. “Comforting.”
“No,” he admitted. “But it’s what I have to offer. A fortnight of uncertain mercy in exchange for everything you know about Runnymede. After that… will depend on what Runnymede brings.”
I studied him carefully. Geoffrey de Warenne. Baron’s second son. Strategist. The man trying to keep me alive by convincing everyone else I might still be useful.
And suddenly I remembered his name, why it kept niggling at me. A passing reference in an academic paper from the 1260s. Geoffrey de Warenne had survived long enough to appear in historical records.
Which meant, unless I accidentally destroyed the timeline somehow, he wasn’t going to die anytime soon.
Unfortunately, my own survival prospects remained significantly less certain.
“The charter will succeed,” I said quietly. “King John signs it. It becomes one of the most important constitutional documents in the world.”
Geoffrey nodded slowly, absorbing the weight of that.
“And the king?” he asked. “What becomes of him?”
I hesitated.
The historical record surrounding John’s final years blurred together in my memory with civil war, revisions, and political chaos.
“He lives another year,” I said finally. “Then there’s a siege, I think, and he dies. But I’m not entirely certain of the details.”
“You’ll tell my father what you’ve told me,” Geoffrey said. “Carefully. No exact dates. No specific prophecies. Frame everything as knowledge gained through study. Can you do that?”
“I can try,” I admitted. “I’m not especially good at lying.”
“You’re already lying,” Geoffrey pointed out gently. “You’re simply not lying about the important part. Continue lying about the smaller things, and the larger truth becomes mysterious instead of heretical.”
He left me with that thought as I sat alone on the pallet afterward thinking about the fact that a medieval nobleman had just given me a lecture on strategic cognitive compartmentalization.
And worse, he’d been right.