Chapter 8
The time is out of joint;
O cursèd spite,
That ever I was born
to set it right!
—Hamlet, Act I, Scene 5
William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
English dramatist and poet
Isle of Mull
Scotland, 1515
Isobella floated in a painless world, thinking she was dead and expecting her first peek of Heaven. Until she caught a glimpse of Elisabeth. Isobella frowned, feeling a bit fuzzy-headed and not certain about anything other than the fact that she did not appear to be dead. Well, that was something positive, at least. After enduring Elisabeth’s fierce glare for a few seconds, Isobella did manage a weak, “What?”
Elisabeth’s green eyes were full of fire. “What happened? I feel like I’ve been thrown out of a rocket traveling a million miles an hour.” With a bewildered expression, she paused to look around.
“Are we in hell?”
“Try again,” Elisabeth said.
Isobella looked around. “I’d say we’re in the middle of nowhere.”
“Good guess, but we might get a better answer from that specter of malevolence hovering over there.”
Isobella turned her head and saw a vaporous, glowing light taking solid shape. She recognized the emerging human figure immediately. “Did you send us through a vacuum that sucked us up and dropped us here?” she asked angrily, though still a little awed that she was talking to the greatest warrior in Scottish history. “Are we still in Scotland, and if so, where?”
“Aye, ye are in Scotland, on the Isle of Mull.”
“And you brought us here for a reason?”
“Aye,” he said with a nod. “As bidden.”
“But we didn’t.” Bidden? A nice, Middle English word, she thought, but not often used in the present time. “Ah, you mean because I cried back at St. Bride’s when we visited your crypt?”
“Aye, yer tears reached out across the centuries to summon me. I might have been a mighty knight in the service of my king, but a woman’s tears were ere my undoing.”
Isobella could well believe that, but she didn’t get to think upon it further, due to Elisabeth’s persistent rib jabbing, which she ignored. How could she explain that this was truly the archaeological opportunity of a lifetime? Instead of digging through ruins for answers, she had her own personal history book in the flesh, so to speak.
There he stood, a bona fide knight-errant, right out of medieval Scotland’s romantic past and wearing the clothes of his knighthood: chausses and a mail tunic called a hauberk and a light blue tunic, belted low about the hips. He was a handsome man, not overly tall by twenty-first century standards, but tall for the fourteenth-century male, slender with well-developed muscles, dark blue eyes, and hair of the blackest black. The legendary Black Douglas was a medieval heartbreaker if she had ever seen one.
It was all so terribly romantic, at least to Isobella, and she thought it divine good fortune that she was there. For a moment, her mind wandered off to think about what her contemporaries would give for an opportunity like this. Her sister, on the other hand, could not be charmed if Jude Law and Orlando Bloom were standing in front of them, with Patrick Dempsey and Johnny Depp as backup.
Elisabeth suddenly found her voice. “Are you really the Black Douglas? No, never mind. Don’t answer that. It isn’t possible,” she said, her tone one of pure disbelief. “You cannot be a ghost because ghosts don’t exist.” She put her hand to her forehead and looked around, as if searching for help. “I don’t believe this is happening. It’s impossible. When people die, they stay dead.”
“And yet I am here. Do ye have a better explanation?”
“All right, if you are a ghost, then undo this mischief. Take us back to our car.”
Isobella took a deep breath and glanced tentatively around the narrow glen. The level stretch of ground rose to a slope at one end, rocky and choked with boulders, before dropping away to a ravine or gorge, or whatever they called it in these parts, for she could see the dark brown ridge of a mountain rising some distance beyond it. The rest of the glen was lined with a thin stand of larch trees and a thick tangle of briars that gradually thinned behind them to reveal an open moor.
“Thank you for this little excursion to Mull, but we really need to go now. We must find a town to rent another car. We are flying home in a few days and have many places to see, but Mull isn’t one of them.”
“We have no cars, buses, or airplanes.”
Slack-jawed, the twins stared at each other and then at him. Elisabeth threw up her arms in exasperation. “So send us to Beloyn so we can get our car.”
“I canna do that today,” Douglas said.
“You mean we have to wait until tomorrow?” Isobella asked.
Douglas shrugged. “’Twill be no different tomorrow.”
“Then when can we go back?” Elisabeth asked.
“Who knows? Mayhap never. Mayhap when the spirit moves me.”
“What kind of answer is that?”
“Never mind that,” Elisabeth said, turning back to the Black Douglas. “I did not ask to come here. Why did you bring me? Isobella put her hand on your effigy, not I! You had no right to drag me along.”
“’Tis no fault of mine that ye managed to stick like a leech to yer sister and now ye are here.”
“Stick like a… listen, you vacuous vapor, I had nothing to do with this. I only came on this trip to keep her company. It seems to me you are the one at fault here. So tell us how we get out of here.”
He looked around. “Weel, you could go that way,” he said, pointing to his right. “Or you might try that way,” he said, pointing to his left. “Or mayhap ye should go both ways,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest and pointing in both directions.
Elisabeth threw up her hands. “I would like a straight answer for a change. One that makes sense.”
“Let’s back up for a minute,” Isobella said. “Where can we rent a car or catch a bus?”
“Ye willna find those things here,” he said.
“Why not?” Isobella asked.
His expression was rather mischievous. Isobella thought that finally they were getting somewhere. Then he said, “Ye are in sixteenth-century Scotland, and we havena such things.”
Isobella gasped. “You mean the sixteenth century? The Early Renaissance period? Oh, Lord! What are we going to do?” She turned to Elisabeth. “Do you realize what this means? We have traveled back five hundred years to the beginning of the Renaissance.”
“All I am thinking right now is how much I would love to punch you, flat out.”
Isobella ignored her and turned back to Douglas. “Is Henry VIII King of England?”
“Aye.”
“I knew it!” Isobella fairly jumped around, thrilled and dumbfounded at the same time. One rational thought managed to slip through and she smiled. “I guess that’s one way to get rid of Jackson. He hasn’t even been born yet.”
Elisabeth was not looking very happy and obviously didn’t give a flip whether Jackson had been born or not. “You’re jesting, right? This really isn’t the sixteenth century, is it?”
“Aye, ’tis the year 1515.”
“Who is the king of Scotland?” Elisabeth asked, her brows knit with serious intensity. Isobella gave her an astonished look. Elisabeth wouldn’t know the correct answer if it was written down on a piece of paper and handed to her. Isobella had to think hard for a moment before deciding that was when King James V was just a babe.
“’Tis the infant King James,” he replied.
“Why did you bring us to Mull?” Isobella asked.
“Ye are here because ye asked to be.”
Isobella shook her head. “I never asked to come here. Why would you say that?”
She saw a spark of amusement in the blue depths of his eyes. “Ye will understand when the time is ripe.”
They were interrupted by the animated sounds of rolling chaos that suddenly filled the air around them. They listened to the clamor of clanging swords and the shouts of warring men. “I think we better stop talking and start praying,” Isobella said, looking over Elisabeth’s shoulder to stare at the warring knights.
“I hope they are friends of yours,” Elisabeth said, turning toward the Black Douglas, “Could they be English?”
“English!” Isobella almost spat the words out. “You can’t leave us to the mercy of those English bastards!”
A smile curved across the fine mouth of the Black Douglas. “That’s a lass!”
“We need more than compliments,” Isobella said. “This isn’t looking good for any of us. Well, not you perhaps, since they can’t run you through, but it’s something we need to worry about.”
Elisabeth agreed. “You’re already dead. They can’t hurt you. But our predicament is a bit different. Are you going to take us back or just hand us over to the enemy?”
They had only a brief glimpse of his broad smile before his image began to lighten and grow dim, before it faded completely away.