Wings of the Storm Read online

  Wings of the Storm

  By Susan Sizemore

  1

  "Step into my time machine," said the drunken boy. He wasn't joking.

  David Wolfe had Jane cornered in the back of his private lab, and it was obvious he wasn't going to let her out of the door. There was a tall blue booth behind her. He kept trying to herd her into it.

  He was smiling stupidly, an expression ill-suited to his unfinished-looking face. Normally, he wore a furious scowl. It went well with his fashionably shaved head and the gold hoop earring in his right ear.

  "It'll be fun," he told her, taking a step closer. "You want to go. I know you do. You have to. It'll only be for five years."

  "No, I don't." She tried to be reasonable. "Dr. Wolfe, you're not yourself."

  "You know too much. You said you saw five years into the future. Can't allow you to know about the future. You want to know about the past."

  Jane Florian wished she hadn't stayed late in her lab at the Feynman Institute's Time Search Project.

  She'd remained long after the rest of the Time Search Staff left, partly because she didn't want to drive home in a bad spring thunderstorm, partly because she found her work more interesting than what she had to drive home to,

  She'd even declined an invitation to party with the particle physicists down by the accelerator ring. It seemed a new quark had just gotten discovered and it had been declared an occasion for champagne.

  She wished she'd gone. If she had, she wouldn't have been by the screen when the lightning caused the power surge and the impossible happened. She'd ended up seeing into the future instead of the past. The time monitor was only supposed to scan backward, not forward.

  The whole thing had lasted for no more than five seconds. In those five seconds she'd seen previews of five years' worth of upcoming events—wars, celebrity weddings, earthquakes. Wolfe had come in just as the screen faded to black. He hadn't seemed his usual serious self, but she'd been too upset to notice at first. She'd told the young physicist what happened.

  He hadn't wanted to know what she'd seen. He'd said it was best if no one knew. He wasn't really interested in listening to her at all. It had become obvious to her that he'd been partying down in the

  quark lab. A rare occurrence for the reclusive young genius.

  "This is the perfect opportunity. You've got to come to my lab," he'd said, smirking. "I've got something better than quarks."

  In his lab he'd shown her the blue booth and told her what it was. Apparently the little twerp had actually gone and invented a time machine. He wanted to use it on her.

  If anyone could do it, Jane supposed, it was David Wolfe. Actually, he wasn't little or exactly a boy. He was only twenty, but he was well over six feet tall. This egotistical twenty-year-old was in charge of Time Search, the Feynman Institute's most prestigious research program.

  He backed her another step toward the machine. He was not small, and he was not giving her any chance to duck past him and out of the room. "You have to go," he said. "You'll destroy the future." Another step. She backed up. "I know the perfect place in the twelfth century. In 1168, to be precise," he went on. "At that big convent in the south of France. Font..."

  "Fontrevault? It's not in the—"

  "Right. You'll be safe and out of the wa—"

  "I don't want to be a nun!"

  "Can you think of anywhere safer in the Middle

  Ages?"

  "Nothing was safe. Nowhere was safe. Not from fighting or disease or famine. This is murder."

  "You'll be fine. I'll see you in five years."

  She started to protest, but as she took another backward step she tripped over something. She fell into the booth. The walls were made of blue glass. Before she could get up, Wolfe quickly tossed the bags she'd tripped over in on top of her. He hurried to a control console on the side of the room.

  The glass room disappeared. She teetered forward; the world rushed up to slam in her face. She fell through the blue tiled floor. The blueness rippled and changed; it was like water, then like the sky, then like

  being dragged through an undertow in an ocean oi blue paint. As she fell out of the paint she saw the round stone tower rushing up to meet her. She slid, screaming, but insubstantial as smoke, through the rotting boards of the roof to land—

  Jane sat up with a spine-wrenching jolt, her eyes wide with terror. She saw a stone wall in front of her. When she reached out tentatively her hands encountered hard stone beneath her.

  She blinked. Stone? Closing her eyes, she waited for her ragged breathing to return to normal. She tried to think. Stone. Cold. "Where am I?" She opened her eyes.

  What she saw was far from promising. She was in a circular stone room with no door, just a narrow arched opening letting in watery light and a damp breeze. There was windblown bracken lodged in the crevices, and a fuzzy patch of moss was growing up the wall opposite the doorway, splotching the gray, pitted surface a dark green. A rotting timber staircase circled up to a second story.

  The damp cold penetrated her skin. She was shivering as she got slowly to her feet. She noticed the short skirt and knit top she'd been wearing were now little more than tattered rags. She'd been left uninjured by the long, impossible fall, but her clothing was so badly torn and singed she thought it might fall off if she moved. She hugged herself to try to stop the shivering, and the right sleeve of her sweater slid from her shoulder to dangle like a knit bracelet from her wrist.

  Jane wondered what she was going to do. Then she noticed a trio of large canvas bags. She remembered tripping over them. She remembered them landing on top of her before she was engulfed in suffocating blue. She quickly went to investigate whatever it was David Wolfe had sent into the past with her.

  The first thing she found was a bundle of clothing wrapped in a green wool cloak. There were three long, simply cut dresses. She recognized the style of the clothing, and knew how it was supposed to be worn. Her clothes were falling off, and she was cold.

  She quickly stripped off her modern clothing and dressed in the triple layers of linen, silk, and wool. She found a belt, shoes, and head veils. She put them all on. Medieval clothing was one of her hobbies;

  she'd made and worn many costumes when she'd been involved with a medievalist club for years. This was not a costume she'd made herself, though the rich colors suited her tawny complexion perfectly.

  So where was she? Had Wolfe's crazy experiment with the time machine really worked? No. She must be dreaming.

  But the tight knot of fear in her stomach and the all-too-vivid memories told her this was no dream.

  Dr. Wolfe had been planning this little trip all along, she thought, remembering the speculative look he had given her when he'd asked her to recommend a reading list a few weeks ago. She had thought the boy genius was getting interested in the fun part of the Time Search Project. He had been planning a little excursion instead. Planning on sending the resident historian where no one had gone before.

  She shook her head. The egomaniac had actually expected her to volunteer. The accident had just been

  a convenient excuse.

  Jane dashed her tears away and tried to shake off the memory of David Wolfe's face and glittering gold-

  green eyes. He didn't care. He had a mission to use

  his time machine. She'd ended up doing exactly what he planned.

  But where was she? she wondered, making herself accept the present, whenever this present was. Did it work? Was she near Fontrevault Abbey? Or was this Oz? Or a ruined silo just up the road from Feynman? Her head ached and she was hungry and chilly despite the heavy clothes.

  She dragged the canvas bags into the patch of sunlight coming through the doorway. Sitting down, she p
ulled the nearest bag to her, untying the leather string holding it closed. Out tumbled several more dresses, yards and yards of brightly colored silk fabric, and many skeins of embroidery thread. She reveled in color for a few minutes, realizing Wolfe had sent it along as trade goods. How nice, she thought sourly, refolding and stuffing the material away in the bag. It looked like the man had raided a fabric store in search of items he thought a medieval lady might find handy.

  "I'd rather have five years' worth of M and M's," Jane complained, and went on to the two smaller bags. In them she found other rare items such as semiprecious stones and Chinese lacquer boxes filled with heady incense, foodstuffs, spices, and dried fruit. Expensive delicacies, she acknowledged as she ate a few apricots. She'd have preferred some camping equipment and a large supply of toilet paper, though.

  "A few good paperbacks," she added aloud. "An old cassette player, batteries, tapes. A flashlight. Aspirin. An Uzi. Yeah"—she rubbed her hands together—"something in a semiautomatic with a large supply of ammo would do nicely."

  At the bottom of the last bag she found a change of clothes. There was also a silver-hilted dagger in a brown leather sheath and a pouch containing small squares of gold and silver bars tucked inside one of a pair of cloth shoes.

  She repacked everything, then stood and fastened the dagger and pouch to her belt. Time to inspect the premises, she told herself, knowing she couldn't hide in the stone tower forever. She took a deep breath, squared her broad shoulders, and stepped through the doorway. Before her stretched an overgrown clearing; beyond that were dark woods. A narrow but steep-banked stream snaked past the tower and into the trees. She could barely make out the rutted line of an unused path. The ground underfoot was damp and muddy, but there were traces of snow still in the withered undergrowth. What time of year was it? she wondered. It was spring at home. Late winter, perhaps? She sniffed the air. It smelled of moss and rainwater and, faintly, of pig.

  For someone who'd spent her life in downstate Illinois, this earthy aroma was almost reassuring. It meant there was a farm nearby. People. Civilization. But was that necessarily a good thing? Jane's full lips pressed firmly together as she balled her hands into fists.

  She concentrated on being angry rather than afraid. Angry at fate, at herself for not finding a way out of the situation, at David Wolfe. She concentrated on coping because panic never helped anybody survive. Damn Wolfe, anyway!

  Stop thinking about him, she commanded herself—the shaved-head little geek! Six foot one was

  not little. Fine. He wasn't little. He was still a scrawny geek, and she was still stuck in the twelfth century.

  "What a wonderful opportunity for a historian," she mocked, her rich contralto voice dripping venom.

  She turned her attention to the ruins in the middle of the clearing. The round tower was only two stories high, with narrow windows cut in the thick stone of the second story. The defensive tower of a manor house, she guessed. Jane crossed her arms beneath her cloak and walked around the clearing, trying carefully to avoid ice-glazed puddles, afraid of what would happen if the flimsy leather shoes she wore got soaked. It didn't take her long to find evidence of tumbledown outbuildings. The wattle-and-daub structures would have been flimsy to begin with; a few seasons left to the weather and they'd molder back into the earth. The place looked to have been abandoned for quite a while.

  Of course, the question wasn't so much what the ruins were, but where and when. She was supposed to have arrived in France, near the abbey of Fontrevault, in Anjou. Jane rubbed her upper arms briskly, not so much from cold as from nerves.

  "Well, it isn't Kansas," she said to a crow perched on a fallen branch. "And I bet it isn't even France." The crow gave a scoffing cry and flew away.

  Jane watched black wings beating the air until the bird disappeared into the trees. As she turned to follow its flight, she heard something crashing through the undergrowth, followed by a loud snuffling noise. Her gaze shifted from the sky to the ground, coming to rest on a humped-backed creature with short, brindled fur and a great tusked head with small, evil eyes. She jumped, gasping with alarm as the cloven-hoofed animal barreled forward, followed by a half dozen large beasts just like it. She ran, mindless of puddles now, until she was inside the vague shelter of the tower.

  She peeped out the doorway, watching as the snorting and squealing animals fanned out across the clearing, blunt noses pushing hungrily at the wet bracken. Their stench reached her and she began to laugh, the sound fueled by the adrenaline that was still coursing through her.

  "Pigs," she said, wiping her hand across her veiled brow. "Just pigs." She stepped back to the center of the doorway—just as the swineherd came into view. He was a boy of no more than ten, muddy and dressed in ragged homespun, butter-yellow hair hanging in braids. He leaped nimbly across the narrow stream. Jane started to retreat into the shadows, but the lad had seen her. He hurried forward, a pair of his pigs following like puppies on his heels. He called to her. Jane didn't recognize the language.

  He stopped in front of her, questioning her in a guttural chatter. She listened carefully but couldn't make out a word of it. It sounded sort of like German, sort of like Dutch, and seemed as though it should be familiar. Jane read Latin, and two types of medieval French, the everyday langue d'oil and the langue d'oc, language of the troubadours. She had a feeling what she was hearing was English, of a sort. Not the recognizable language of Chaucer's time, but an earlier dialect. Perhaps she had landed in the right time after all. But if this was English, she certainly wasn't in the right place.

  When the boy stopped talking, she shrugged, and

  replied in Norman French. "Hello. Those are very nice pigs. Could you tell me where I am?" She spoke slowly because she was more used to reading langue d'oil than speaking it.

  The boy blinked pale fringed lashes at her as she spoke. His eyes were very blue, the expression in them changing from curiosity to cautious neutrality. She supposed he was a Saxon. He probably didn't know a word of his country's conquerors' language.

  And what did he make of her in her bright colors, with her brown eyes and creamy brown complexion and her slender height? She was five foot seven, tall for a male in this time, ridiculously tall for a woman.

  The boy might not speak her language, but he reacted, though not as Jane expected. He wheeled around and, shouting loudly and waving his arms, he gathered up his herd and drove them back into the woods. He gave Jane only one furtive look before leaving the clearing. She wiggled her fingers in an attempt at a friendly wave. Perhaps the lad took this gesture as some sort of evil sign, because her waving only made him move faster.

  Forgetting the short veil, Jane scratched her head. The gesture dislodged the square of linen. A breeze caught the light cloth, blowing it back into the tower room. Jane followed after, grumbling, and tripped over the canvas bags. Once she righted herself she retrieved the veil and fastened it securely over her recently permed brown curls. Then she took a seat on the tower stairs, stared out the doorway, and wondered what would happen next.

  2

  Not overly long after the swineherd's retreat, Jane heard the clop of a horse's hooves approaching the clearing. She reacted by scrambling up the steps to the second floor of the tower. The floorboards beneath her feet were rotting, covered in decaying leaves. Three tall but very narrow windows were cut in the deep stone. They let in some light, but more came from the hole near the center of the low ceiling. She stepped cautiously across the creaking floorboards to peek through one of the arrow-slit openings and had a clear view of the rider as he came into sight.

  His horse was very large, powerful muscles rippling beneath its shiny black coat. The high-stepping animal moved with almost delicate grace across the uneven ground. Jane's knowledge of horseflesh was minimal, but even she could recognize a warhorse when she saw one. That, she told herself, was a Rolls-Royce on the hoof. On the horse's back rode a man swathed in a heavy black cape. Jane could make out spurred boots
r />   and a sheathed sword riding on his left hip. A knight, she realized.

  "The perfect accessory, found on better warhorses everywhere," she muttered sarcastically.

  When the horse halted before the tower door the rider threw back his hood, revealing a great deal of long dark hair. He looked up toward the window, and she saw a starkly handsome face. Jane caught her breath and corrected herself. His attractiveness wasn't so much stark as it was minimalist, as though a brilliant artist had sketched an ideal of masculine beauty in simple, bold lines. He was also young, she realized, eighteen, maybe nineteen. When he jumped lightly down from the horse she saw that he was taller than she'd expected a man of his time to be. He was long and slender; his body looked to be wiry and strong, but not quite finished. The young man's coloring was all dark and light, pale skin contrasting with blue-black hair and brows.

  Even as she stared at this remarkably handsome young man, she was asking herself what she was going to do. What would a Norman lady do? Go out and face the armed foe or cower in terror? She was personally rather in favor of cowering, but there wasn't anywhere in this bare tower to hide. She backed away from the window.

  Besides, she added in thought, lifting her head proudly, she wasn't very good at cowering. If Wolfe hadn't been drunk— Forget about it. That was in the past—future.

  "I can see tenses are going to be a real problem from now on," she muttered. Men in armor might be more of an immediate danger, she reminded herself, getting a firm hold on her nerves. She was apparently going to have to live in this world, so she might as well get on with it. If she didn't get on with it she might as well curl up and die right there and then.

  She adjusted her headgear, flicked some dried mud off her green cape, and forced herself to walk down the stairs, her long skirts trailing gracefully behind her.

  The knight was standing inside the doorway by the time she reached the bottom of the circular staircase. When she paused on the second step, Jane found herself meeting a pair of intense black eyes. From the distance of the tower window she'd thought the young man's features ascetic, but the expression she saw in his dark-fringed eyes hinted at passion far from any religious calling. And his mouth was amazing, almost too wide for the narrowing face, the lips almost too thin, yet wondrously expressive. As he gazed up the stairs at her, he was managing to convey interest, a hint of worldly sophistication that said he appreciated what he was seeing, and a bit of reassurance, all with only a hint of a smile. Jane found herself smiling, rather shyly, back.