Shades of Red (18 page)

“But what about Friar Priamos?” asked Paris.

Anne gave an unladylike snort. “He tells me that his life is now to be devoted to helping those in need. But what about me? I am in need, as is his king — in need of help from the pope. The friar seems to think that he can have no influence in this situation, and he has washed his hands of us. Socorro would never have done this to me. The books are yours if you want them, as a memory of him.”

A horse whinnied outside the cottage, and Delaney growled low in his throat. “I have never seen this volume before,” said Darrell slowly. She slipped open the cover and scanned the first page, then looked over at Paris, her eyes wide. He was examining the notebook with the russet cover.

“Lady Anne. Perhaps you would care to explain why you find yourself here in this nasty little hovel with such unsavoury company?”

Darrell looked up through the doorway to see a woman she remembered as one of Katherine's ladies. Lady Margaret was being lifted lightly off her horse by the captain of the guard. Darrell quickly slid the smallest book into one of the pockets of her skirt.

As Anne turned to the door, she slipped the menorah into a pocket of her own. “I have come to bid
farewell to these travellers,” she said smoothly. “They have received word from their family that all is once again well in their small village. The sweating sickness has passed and they are returning home. They are merely gathering the last of their possessions before departure.”

Lady Margaret shook her head disbelievingly. “Do you take me for a fool, Anne? I have watched for months as that filthy friar has been spiriting people in and out of this cottage in the dark of night. I knew in my heart you must be involved in some manner.”

She strolled over to Paris and plucked a volume from his hand. “I believe I'll just take this ledger,” she said sharply. “For if it is evidence of any sort of treasonous behaviour on your part, Anne, your hopes for stealing the king from Queen Katherine will be soon dashed.”

Anne shot a warning glance over her shoulder at Darrell. “You are far too fond of Katherine, Margaret. The king is poised to cast her aside when the annulment comes through from Rome. She is barren, unable to mother a male heir to the throne. One day it will be my chance to do just that.”

“That chance will not come if you are shown to be supporting heretics over the Church,” spat Lady Margaret. “Perhaps these ledgers will be your undoing.”

She whirled to face the door. “Guard! Arrest these two strangers at once.” She looked up into Darrell's startled
face. “I knew you were up to mischief from the moment I saw you,” she said in a low voice. “Your deformity is a mark of the devil, as is the one carried by that witch. I will live to see you rot in the Tower as a heretic before God.”

Darrell locked her gaze on Paris, and he swallowed audibly. “Just let us say goodbye to our dog,” he said. “Here, boy!”

And before the startled eyes of Anne, Margaret, and the captain of the castle guard, Paris clasped Darrell's hand tightly. The two travellers and their dog stepped through the low closet doorway and into the thundering winds of time.

Darrell sat on her bed at school, staring out the great curved window as the rain coursed down the glass in torrents. She held a small and very old book between her knees.

“The chief disadvantage to living in a temperate rainforest is that it frequently seems to be raining,” Kate muttered as she climbed out from under her covers for her blurry first look at the day. “I thought you were spending the whole weekend with your uncle,” she said. “Did you shop the entire city out and have to come back early?”

The joke died on her lips when she looked over at Darrell's grief-stricken face.

“I didn't kill him,” she whispered quietly. “I just sent him to hell.”

Kate rubbed her eyes and looked at Darrell again.
“You went back?” she asked, pulling one of her blankets up around her shoulders.

Darrell nodded. “Took Paris with me, by mistake.”

“What? You took Paris? How did that happen?”

“He knew something was up after we disappeared down in the tunnels under the school that time. I never realized how much he missed Conrad — and I guess Paris listened in on enough conversations to know that I knew something about Conrad's whereabouts. So he waited in the library every night for about a week knowing I might try to sneak away. When he tackled me through the doorway, we ended up there together.” She smiled a little. “I was going a little farther away than he'd realized, I guess. He spent the whole time barfing, though, so I don't think he'll be doing any time travel again in the near future.”

Kate took one look at the dark circles beneath her friend's eyes and climbed out of bed. She pulled a sweatshirt on over her PJs. “You'd better come with me,” she said, stuffing her feet into runners. “We'll go find Brodie and Paris and maybe a latte and you can tell us all about it.” She threw a hoodie on over the eclectic outfit and pulled Darrell up off the bed.

“So how did you send Paris to hell?” Kate asked as they settled into chairs in a quiet corner of the dining hall.

She had her hands wrapped around a big cup of caffeine and had added a pair of sweatpants before going to wake Brodie and a very groggy Paris. The dining hall was almost deserted, with most students choosing to sleep in on a Saturday morning.

“I didn't go to hell,” said Paris smugly. He was sitting with the remains of an enormous breakfast on the tray in front of him, and Darrell was pleased to see a little colour in his face. He bent over and whispered, “I went to England. And not only that, I'm planning to go again.”

“Maybe your next visit should be by airplane,” said Darrell dryly.

“Listen, you guys. No matter what Darrell says, that was the most amazing experience of my life. I can't believe that you've all been doing this for so long and I knew nothing about it.”

Kate glared at Paris. “Can you keep it down? The reason we've been able to do this is that we
know how to keep our mouths shut
,” she hissed.

Paris grinned, unperturbed, and lowered his voice. “So — you wanna hear who we met? Henry the Big-Wig Eighth, that's who!” He looked around the table triumphantly.

Kate cast a wary glance at Darrell. “Something tells me this is not all fun and games,” she said in a low voice. “Who did you send to hell, Darrell?”

“Conrad,” she said simply and pushed the diary across the table to Kate.

October 12, 1519
This is a hard day. It always is, and has, I must admit, grown a bit easier over the years, but it still wearies. So, with no fear that anyone will ever be able to decipher it, I'm going to do what my patron has suggested so often in the time we have spent together and write some of it down. I have written nothing more than my name for sixteen years, and already my hand aches from the unfamiliar feel of the pen. But as there is no one alive who will ever be able to understand more than a few of the words I write and certainly no one to criticize my spelling or syntax, I will do as Brother Socorro suggests. I doubt it will bring me peace — but perhaps less pain, and that is something.

Even with this simple start my hand aches. For today, that will have to be enough. I have many other duties to attend to. No one in the monastery knows or could possibly care that, not
accounting for a minor five-hundred-year glitch in the middle, it is my thirty-second birthday today. An anniversary of sorts. I have lived as long in this century as in the one into which I was born.

“Conrad was thirty-two when he wrote that?” Brodie shook his head. “It's hard to even think it could be true. And I'm sorry, but those words don't sound like him at all.”

Darrell shrugged. “I know, the language sounds pretty formal, but you have to remember that he was writing this after learning to speak a form of the language he didn't know before,
and
he'd been speaking that way for sixteen years. Besides, people change. When you have a chance to read more of this, you'll see what he has been through.”

“How did you get this thing?” said Brodie, gesturing at the worn and ancient notebook.

“Anne Boleyn had it — she got it from Brother Socorro.” Darrell turned to Paris. “I was right, you know. When you read the diary, you'll see. It was Socorro who found Conrad and pulled him out of a madhouse.”

She dropped her head into her hands. “I sent him to a madhouse,” she said, her voice muffled. “I sent him into hell.”

Kate patted Darrell on the shoulder. “Okay, enough of the dramatics, as my mother would say. I really want to hear what happened. Now Paris tackled you through the doorway — then what?”

“It was more of a push with a twist,” Paris interjected modestly.

Kate glared at him. “I want to hear this from Darrell,” she said sternly. “You'll have time to explain yourself later.”

Paris shrank back in his seat, chastened.

Darrell leaned forward. “Well, the portal brought us through to Windsor Castle in England during the early sixteenth century. The biggest problem was that the longer I was there, the more I realized you and Brodie were right. I just didn't have enough information about the time period.” she shook her head. “I even forgot who Anne Boleyn was.”

“It didn't help that we were introduced to her as Nan Bullen,” said Paris practically. “I haven't taken any history at all except for what Gramps has taught us this year, so I didn't know any of this stuff.”

“Everyone knows that Henry the Eighth had six wives,” said Darrell scathingly. “I can't believe I didn't put it all together until I saw the king himself.”

Brodie gave a low whistle. “Now there's a man I would've liked to meet,” he said. “One of the most powerful men in the history of the world. Changed the
face of religion and politics forever.

“Was he fat?” asked Kate. “He's always fat in the pictures I've seen.”

Darrell shook her head. “No, but he wasn't that old yet. I think he was just in his late thirties when we saw him. He was really big though — remember how small the people were as a rule?”

Kate nodded. “I wonder if it's just a myth that he was so big and fat.”

“I don't think so,” said Darrell. “The man sure loved to eat. We were there for two feasts and the food was amazing.”

“Uh — I didn't really enjoy that part,” admitted Paris.

Brodie looked at him with interest. “So you were sick for the entire trip? Must be some kind of time sickness, maybe like motion sickness in a car or a boat. How long were you there?”

“Three or four days,” said Paris. “Cool how we were only gone for a few hours from here, though.”

Brodie nodded. “That's how it usually seems to work. Time compresses as it passes somehow, so when you travel, the proportion goes off. You can seem to be there for a long time and only a few minutes or hours pass here.”

“Okay, we know all that,” said Kate, impatiently. She clutched Darrell's sleeve. “What do you know now that you didn't before?”

Darrell paused to think for a moment. “I guess I know that I have to read more of this book to find out what happened to Conrad,” she said. “The next time I go back, I don't want to make so many stupid mistakes. If I'd known Nan was Anne Boleyn and remembered who she was going to marry, I might have at least figured out where we were a little sooner.”

“So — do you think she was a witch?” asked Kate, with a glance over her shoulder.

Darrell shook her head.

“She made a mean time sickness potion for me,” said Paris. “It was the only thing that kept my stomach steady the whole time I was there.”

Darrell shrugged. “That just means she could have had a simple knowledge of natural medicine. We've had plenty of experience showing how women who had basic medical knowledge were often treated as witches.”

“But I read she had six fingers and a giant mole on her neck,” said Kate. “More exaggeration?”

Darrell nodded. “She wasn't really a great beauty, but she wasn't a monster, either.”

“She sure had a way of looking at you that made you feel she was beautiful,” said Paris.

Brodie grinned at him. “Caught your eye, did she?”

“Speaking of eyes — hers were almost pure black,” said Paris. “And they kind of sparkled when she laughed and her teeth were really good — whiter than most, I'd
say.” He wrinkled his nose at Darrell. “I think that's one thing I'll never take for granted again,” he added. “Good dental care is worth it. I don't think I've ever seen so many missing and black teeth in my life. And the breath of some of those people!”

“Made all those years in braces worth it, eh, Paris?”

He shrugged. “I only wore braces for two years,” he admitted, “but I'll think more kindly of dentists from now on!”

“Listen you guys, I'm really tired,” said Darrell, standing up. “I'm going to go have a bit of a nap. We can talk about this more later, okay?” She picked up the book and trudged out of the room.

“She looks really beaten up,” said Brodie quietly.

Kate nodded. “I hate to see her this depressed. I think we need to keep a close eye on her for a while.”

“Anybody want to hear my English accent?” asked Paris, grinning around the table.

October 25, 1519
It's been hard for me to pick up my pen to write as my days are so full. No, that is a lie. I really just don't want to remember, and on top of that I don't want to go to the trouble associated with remembering to write in a language I haven't spoken for so many
years. It was always hard for me to write. I hated school. Always in the lowest class, with the other kids who hated school, too.

One school was different, and I was only there long enough to mess things up.