Chapter 3
Three
DARCY
By the time I reached the tree line, my lungs were burning and my boots squelched with every step. My sopping wet jeans clung to my legs, my jacket felt as though I’d stuffed the pockets with bricks, and I had sand in places no woman should ever have to discuss with another living soul.
I stopped behind an oak wide enough to hide me from the beach and bent over, hands braced on my knees while I dragged air into my lungs.
Behind me, somewhere beyond the rise, horns sounded over the crash of the sea. Not a film set, then. Maybe very committed re-enactors.
I put one hand against the rough bark and closed my eyes.
“Right,” I whispered. “Panic later.”
It had always worked at a fire scene. Panic later. Fall apart later. Survive now.
My body worked. I didn’t have any broken bones, there was one scratch on my cheek from the thorn bush, and an angry red circle in the center of my palm from the brooch.
My phone, purse, and wallet were gone. So was the brooch.
I’d searched the beach twice. Checked every pocket three times. All I had left from the antique fair was the burn in my palm and the old woman’s final words.
Find him.
Very helpful.
England contained a multitude of men. I pushed away from the oak and moved inland. The path beneath the trees was narrow but well used, packed hard under wet leaves and twisted roots. It smelled of damp earth, old bark, mushrooms, and woodsmoke carried on the wind.
Not petrol, melting plastic or electrical wiring. There was no chemical bite at the back of my throat. No antique fair pavilion in any direction that I could see. No Hastings I recognized. No cars, power lines, distant sirens, or aircraft.
The smells of a forest, thatch, and open fires filled my nose. Normal smells. Except nothing about this was normal.
The trees thinned without warning, and below sat a village, though village was a generous word.
A scattering of thatched buildings huddled along a muddy lane, their walls made of timber and woven branches plastered with something that looked suspiciously like mud.
Smoke curled from openings in the low roofs.
A small stone chapel stood at the far end, gray against the gray sky, without a tidy sign announcing opening hours or railings to stop tourists climbing on history.
Chickens scratched near a dung heap. A pig tried determinedly to break free from a fence Somewhere, a dog barked.
The people were preparing for war. That was the part that ended the last of my film-set theory.
Nobody wandered around waiting for someone to shout action.
Men tested bowstrings, checked spearheads, and carried shields from one building to another.
Two boys rolled barrels toward a larger timber hall.
Women hurried between houses with sacks of grain, wrapped bundles, clay jars, and baskets of food.
An older man led three cows toward the trees while a girl drove geese after him with a stick and the expression of someone who’d already had quite enough of the invasion.
Children stayed close to the adults. I knew those looks. They were watching the grown-ups to decide how frightened they should be.
This wasn’t a village that had never seen danger. These people knew exactly what armed men could do. They were moving food, hiding livestock, gathering weapons, and watching the roads.
The realization settled cold in my stomach. They knew. They’d done this before. Perhaps not the Normans pouring out of the sea with enough horses and weapons to swallow a kingdom, but war wasn’t new to them. Raids weren’t new. Armed men turning up to take what they wanted certainly weren’t new.
And here I was, standing above them in a dark blue waterproof jacket, wet jeans, and rubber-soled boots.
Lovely.
I couldn’t have stood out more if I’d arrived carrying a flashing sign reading WOMAN FROM THE FUTURE. POSSIBLY CURSED.
A goat near the lane lifted its head and stared at me.
“Don’t start.”
“That is far enough.”
The voice came from behind me.
Slowly, I turned with my hands raised, palms out.
A boy stood several paces away with a spear pointed at my stomach.
He couldn’t have been more than seventeen, all wrists and elbows, with fair hair hacked roughly around his ears and a face still deciding whether it belonged to a boy or a man.
Behind him stood a broad-shouldered woman with red, work-roughened hands.
A little girl clung to her brown wool skirts.
The woman wore a faded green gown over a lighter underdress, with a linen cloth covering most of her hair, though damp brown strands had escaped around a face made stern by fear rather than age.
I used my calm voice. The one I saved for smoke-filled kitchens, trembling civilians, and men who insisted they were perfectly fine while bleeding on my boots.
“I’m not going to hurt anyone.”
The spear wobbled but didn’t lower.
“You came from the trees,” the boy said.
“I did.”
The woman eyed my jacket. “In devil’s cloth.”
I looked down at myself.
“It’s not devil’s cloth. It’s...”
Waterproof nylon didn’t seem likely to improve matters. “Foreign.”
“Norman?”
“No.”
That came out with enough feeling to make the woman blink.
“Definitely not Norman.”
The boy’s grip tightened. “You speak strangely.”
“Yes, well, I’ve had a strange morning.”
The woman made a quick sign across her chest. The little girl peered around her skirts, eyes enormous.
I lowered my voice. “I was on the shore. Men came in ships. Men with horses and mail. I ran.”
That changed things. It wasn’t trust. We were a long road and several miracles from trust, but I had their attention.
The woman glanced toward the distant smoke.
“You saw them?”
“Yes.”
“How many are they?”
I thought of the ships rolling on the gray water. Men wading through the surf. Horses being dragged down ramps. Barrels, weapons, sacks of supplies.
“Too many.”
The boy swallowed.
“Enough that standing in the open hoping they go away seems like a poor plan.”
His brows drew together. “What plan would you have, then?”
“A better one than pointing that spear at the person warning you.”
His ears went red. Good. Embarrassed was better than frightened. Frightened people holding weapons made mistakes, and I preferred my internal organs on the inside.
Before he could answer, movement in the lane caught my eye. Two men were coming toward us.
I noticed the older one first. Gray-bearded and lean, he moved with the careful economy of someone whose knees had seen too many winters.
Then the younger man got closer, and everyone else faded away.
Younger wasn’t quite the right word. He was somewhere in his thirties, perhaps, though hardship had a way of putting years on a face.
Tall and broad through the shoulders, he wore a dark wool cloak pinned at one side with a plain metal brooch. Beneath it, I caught the glint of mail. Leather wrapped his forearms. Mud stained his boots.
A sword hung from his hip as naturally as my radio had hung from mine before I’d been ordered to take a few days off.
Before a strange old woman had handed me an ancient brooch and apparently flung me out of my own century.
His hair was fair, darkened by rain and tied at the nape of his neck. A short beard roughened a face that might have been handsome if life hadn’t taken a chisel to it. A pale scar crossed one cheek. Another marked the back of his hand.
Then I saw his eyes. Blue, but not a soft summer blue. Cold water. Winter sky. The sea a heartbeat before a storm.
He stopped several feet away and looked me over thoroughly, taking in my clothes, the wet hair plastered to my face, my boots, the scratch on my cheek, my empty hands, and probably the fact that I looked as though the Channel had spat me out and covered me with sand.
“You saw the ships?” he asked.
His English was strange. I understood it, mostly, but the words were thick and old at the edges, their shapes almost familiar and yet slightly wrong, as though someone had taken modern English apart and put it back together by candlelight.
The impossible part was that I understood him at all. If this truly was the past, which it wasn’t, because that was ridiculous, he should have sounded like complete nonsense. Instead, meaning arrived half a beat after the sound, like a voice coming through a bad radio signal.
Judging by their faces, my speech sounded just as peculiar to them.
The burn in my palm throbbed.
“I did.”
“Where?”
“The shore.” I pointed behind me. “Not far. I woke there.”
The older man muttered something I didn’t catch as the blond man’s gaze sharpened.
“You woke there?”
Brilliant. Excellent work, Darcy.
Why not tell him about the vanished magic jewelry next and save everyone the suspense?
“I fell,” I said, which was true in the broad spiritual sense. “I may have hit my head. I woke in the sand soaked to the skin, saw armed men coming off the ships, and decided leaving would be wise.”
“It was.”
There was no smile or warmth, but no immediate murder either, which I counted as progress.
“My name is Darcy Patterson.”
He studied me for another moment.
“I am Wulfric of Ashford.”
Wulfric.
Of course. He couldn’t have been called Nigel or something. The name suited him. Solid. Severe. Built to survive unpleasant weather and equally unpleasant men.
Find him.
The old woman’s words surfaced without invitation.
I looked at Wulfric.
No. Absolutely not. I’d known him for twelve seconds and he’d already brought a sword to the conversation.
“This is my village,” he said. “These are my folk. You come from the shore in cloth no one here has seen, speaking with no tongue we know, and you ask us to believe you bring warning and no danger.”
“I didn’t say no danger.”
I glanced toward the trees, though the sea was hidden beyond them.
“I’m saying the danger behind me is worse.”
The woman made a small sound. The boy’s spear drooped a fraction.
Wulfric didn’t move. “What do you know of these men?”
Nothing I could say without sounding mad.
“They’re not raiding.”
His expression changed, though only slightly.
The older man beside touched the blade at his hip.