The Mammoth Book of Time Travel Romance

Jean Johnson Saint James’ Way

The merchant was grumbling again. Phinneas grunted and hoisted his bulky girth on to the low stone wall lining one side of the rutted road. Anne nibbled on her lips to hide her smile, watching him check the leather of his left sandal and mutter about wanting a horse to finish the trip home. The monk, Thomas, tutted and reminded his fellow pilgrim that the point of making the journey on foot was to show their Creator how pious and penitent each of them were.

The two nuns, Muriel and Lisette, were plodding along in their brown and cream robes at the same slow but steady pace as always. They passed the merchant and the monk with courteous nods, but otherwise said nothing. Their pilgrimage wasn’t for penance, merely for piety, but they had taken a vow of silence for the trip, allowing themselves to speak only five times each day, save for prayers.

Three of the others were up ahead, two farmers and one of their wives, and two more followed the monk and the merchant, being a miller and a shoemaker. At the head of their little parade of piety strode Sir James Fitz William, hired guard and guide. At the rear strolled Anne, quiet, soft spoken and watchful of everything.

“Can’t you do something about this?” Phinneas demanded as the shoemaker drew close, peeling back the separating layers of his sandal. That wasn’t what he actually said, but the transceiver behind Anne’s ear translated it as such. “I cannae, m’laird, ’til be nightfall. Ye knoun it since mornin,” the shoemaker shot back.

Do not forget to remind Simon to load Middle Scottish next time, she repeated silently. Even with the transceiver’s help, his accent was thick. Low Middle Scottish, she added as the shoemaker said something else — something not so easily translatable, but which she thought might possibly be crude in nature, mainly because one of the farmers overheard it, understood it, and laughed. Guffawed was more like it.

“Hurry up, everyone!” the horseless knight called out from his position at the forefront. “The well of San Vicente Marantes is just up ahead, and we’re late in reaching it. We need to be over the river before nightfall.”

“If my shoes weren’t falling apart, I would hasten in a more seemly manner,” Phinneas countered out loud.

“We were only in Compostela for a week. They will not have fixed the flooded bridge by then, and the raftsman does not ply his trade at night. The choice is either camping out in the woods on this side of the river, or in comfort at the hostel on the other side,” James explained patiently. “I suggest you make what haste you can.”

The merchant hauled himself off the wall and muttered under his breath, “Whatever you say, Saint James. ”

Sir James just waved him off and kept walking. The younger man was as straight-backed and strong as he had been this morning, despite the weight of his chainmail hauberk, his plate shoulder and knee guards, and the sword and dagger slung around his waist. That didn’t include the roll of his cloak and provision bag slung over his back, similar to everyone else. He was the only one armed with anything longer than a dagger, save for the two farmers, who carried the yew bows and capped quivers stuffed with arrows that marked them as Englishmen. Everyone else had a walking stick, some worn with years of use and some new, selected just for this trip.

The flapping of Phinneas’ loose sandal kept distracting Anne, as did the older pilgrim’s constant muttering about his discomforts. Anne reminded herself firmly of her mantra as a temporal anthropologist. I am here to make accurate observations about pilgrims in the early fourteenth century. Not to perpetuate stereotypes.

Even if I am looking at a fat, greedy, lazy merchant. Thank goodness tonight is my last night among these people.

The one she would actually miss was James. The knight wasn’t particularly wealthy; as the third son of some English nobleman up in the Middle Countries, he hadn’t many prospects, particularly in the lull between French and English territory wars when there was no chance of grabbing a plot of land or bringing home loot or a foreign noble for ransoming. She didn’t even know if he had a horse, but then he wouldn’t be using one while escorting pilgrims down to the Iberian peninsula and back; that wouldn’t be suitably pious.

What he did have was a keen mind, a good wit, and a distinct flair for observing people. A natural social scientist at heart, though he called himself a philosopher-knight. When evening fell and they gathered around the fire, whether it was in a hostel or in a camp, he would regale them with stories of other pilgrimages he had led. The cost of hiring a boat to sail from the southern coast of England to the northern shores of Castile and the Compostela region, depending upon the journey, was considered a reasonable price to pay, given the continuing squabbling between England and France as to who owned what chunk of land.

So far, the troubles, which would eventually lead to the conflicts collectively known as the Hundred Years’ War, were staying up in the French territories. There were other dangers to watch out for, though. Banditry was always a potential problem even on well-travelled roads such as this one. Feral livestock was another. One of James’s previous trips had involved a wild bull. He had been quick to praise the Englishmen on that trip, who had dispatched the beast while he himself had done his best to dodge the bull’s horns. Anne couldn’t help but think of the curly-haired knight as a matador whenever she thought of that tale, though it was hard to picture him in a matador’s “suit of lights” instead of his dusty, tabard-draped armour.

They reached the well, which stood between the road and the little cluster of stone and plaster huts that passed for a village — or maybe a hamlet at best, since there were no more than five houses. Children headed their way, ready to gawk at the return of the foreign pilgrims. Their parents, used to such travellers, kept their attention on their chores.

By the time Anne reached James, everyone else had already drunk from the bucket, emptying it. He lowered it and winched it up again, giving her time to pull her drinking cup from her makeshift pack. He filled her cup, then fetched out his own. Both were simple wooden vessels, the sort which wouldn’t break if dropped on the ground, and which wouldn’t cost much to replace if lost. He satisfied his own thirst, then eyed her with his green eyes and smiled.

“And how fare you, Mistress Anne? Was Compostela everything you imagined?”

“I fare well enough,” she murmured. Field anthropologists weren’t supposed to interact much with their subjects, but James insisted on being friendly. Particularly with her. She was supposedly portraying the part of a freeholder’s widow, undertaking this pilgrimage to commemorate the anniversary of her husband’s death.

“And?” he prompted her.

“And it was all I imagined. And more,” honesty prompted her to add. Her previous assignment had been in Germany, and had involved a similar pilgrimage, but the land and the people of the Black Forest were very different from this corner of Europe. That trip also hadn’t had a Sir James in it.

He leaned in a little closer and murmured, “I think you’ll be utterly bored when you return home. Presuming you want to return home. You take to this life on the road with great ease. You’re no milksop maiden. Nor, I think, would you enjoy being under your brother-in-law’s thumb.”

“What makes you think that?” Anne asked, bemused by his claim.

“You told Sister Muriel you couldn’t donate any land to the Church in your late husband’s name, since his brother inherited everything but for a bit of coin and your personal things. And that it was a relief to be away from his family for so long, despite the hardships and dangers of taking a pilgrimage,” he said.

“Your ears are sharp, to have picked up so much,” she countered without directly agreeing with him.

“Anything involving an angel would hold my attention. Doubly so, when that angel is you,” he murmured, leaning in close enough that she could feel his breath against her cheek and ear. Unlike some of the others, he took care daily to freshen his breath, usually with a bit of some herb plucked along the road. Today, it was mint. Yesterday, it had been parsley.

He had also picked up the habit of bathing relatively frequently. Clad in his armour, he did smell of metal, rust, oil, dirt and sweat, but she had seen him carefully washing himself on more than one occasion. He had also brought a second set of clothes, fresh hosen and thigh-length cote-hardie as clean as could be kept while travelling, and a fine, embroidered tabard. James had donned them just before reaching the cathedral, and had taken care to wipe down his armour with an oiled rag before their arrival so that it would gleam. Her own gown, a simple linen cote-hardie which barely touched the ground, suitable for her station, was rather dusty by comparison.

“I am no angel, Sir Knight, nor a creature to be venerated and adored,” she demurred. Protocol demanded she turn down any such offers. Inside, however, she felt very flattered by his attentions. She kept her gaze on the nuns, who along with the others were taking the opportunity to disappear into the bushes across the road from the well, attending to the needs of nature. “You should not say such things on a pilgrimage.”

“We travel on pilgrimage to know and honour the miracles of the Creator. It is well known that God made man in His image, and then made woman to be the companion of man,” James reminded her.

Anne started to roll her eyes. She had been exposed to too much equality between the genders after becoming a temporal anthropologist to put up with such chauvinism. At least not in her personal life.

“And, as any artisan will tell you,” the curly-haired knight continued smoothly, “the first attempt in crafting something is always the worst, while the second is always the better. If I am a good man — and I think I am — why then you as a woman must surely be better. Every evidence of my eyes, ears and mind support this idea. so why should I not venerate and adore you? To do otherwise would be a sin of denial against the sheer craftsmanship of God.”

She blushed. The weeks spent in his company had proven him a reasonably pious man; she knew he believed what he was saying. She also knew it was the courtship style of the day, the courtly manners and florid flirting which had tamed and tempered the brutal force of the warrior caste in medieval Europe. “If you seek to place me upon a pedestal, you must know I am not a lady of noble birth.”

“You are a lady in all the ways that matter: courteous, kind and competent. You have an innate nobility that no measure of birth-rank can match.” Shifting so that he could look into her eyes, James touched her hand. “I chose this life because I wanted to study all manner of ranks and births, of educations and crafts. I have seen men and women of the highest birth behave with the poorest of concern for their fellow beings, and the lowliest of ranks sharing what little they have with the compassion of the saints they venerate.

“I have trod this road with women of all ages and persuasions, and no one I have found has felt so much like a. like a kindred spirit as you. You understand people. Like I do,” he finished, cupping her fingers beneath his. His skin was calloused from his many daily practices with his blade at dawn and dusk whenever they camped, but his touch was gentle. “I care not that you come with no lands and no name of note — I am a third-born son, myself; my portion is small at best — but I care about you.

“When you return to your home, Mistress Anne. or what is left of it. I would ask leave to court you. I doubt I am liable to find another woman quite like you.”

Involuntarily, the corner of her mouth quirked up. James smiled back.

“I amuse you? Good. A man should be amusing and genial,” he asserted smugly.

She laughed. “You are not likely to find another woman quite like me, no.” Beyond his green eyes and blond curls, she saw the merchant, Phinneas, grunting and groaning his way into the bushes. Her smile faded. “Ugh. He’s making those noises again, the ones he makes whenever he’s about to spend far too much time in the bushes.”

“What, the merchant? Yes, I can hear it, too. I fear between his crumbling sandal and his rumbling gut, he’ll keep us from reaching the raftsman before sunset.” Lifting his gaze from her face, he looked off to the west. “Fill your stomach and your waterskin while you can. Hot weather makes for thirsty pilgrimages, but rain and mud are far more miserable to endure. At least the weather looks like it’ll hold. For now.”

Nodding, aware he had been escorting pilgrimages for at least five years, Anne let him haul up another bucketful while she drained the dregs of her waterskin into her wooden cup. She didn’t say it, but she did think the thoughts uppermost in both her heart and her mind. I’d love to accept, Sir James. You’re remarkably enlightened for your day and age, and I think I’d enjoy being courted by you, wherever it might or might not lead. but I come from the distant future, one which does not involve you. A pity, but for the sake of temporal continuity. I have to leave you.

Don’t look back. don’t look back.

“Anne?”

She almost jumped out of her skin. Whirling, she faced the shadowed silhouette of her confronter. The campfire the others had built was just visible through the trees behind him. “Oh! James. uh. ”

He moved with remarkable quietness. It wasn’t until he was close enough to touch that she realized he wasn’t wearing his armour. He must have taken it off while she had been gathering wood for the fire.

“Where are you going?”

“To. to the river, of course. It’s not that far,” she managed as casually as she could, half turning towards it.

“Why?” James asked, moving to intercept her. “And why take your bedroll?”

“Well. it’s a warm night, so I thought I’d wash it. And myself. Away from prying eyes. I don’t like the way Phinneas looks at me sometimes,” she improvised. “Like I’m a widow with a fortune for him to marry.”

“Somehow, I don’t believe you. My instincts, which I have honed by watching people time and again. say that you’re running away from us,” James stated. He cupped her shoulders, his thumbs gently rubbing her through the linen of her summer-weight dress. “Did I scare you off with my stated intentions? You shouldn’t be frightened by me. I meant no harm. I just. thought we would well suit each other. I care for you. And I really don’t think it is wise for a woman to try travelling on her own. There are all manner of feral beasts out there. Some of them run on two legs instead of four, you know.”

Anne could have protested that she would be fine. No anthropologist was allowed into the field without completing several courses in basic and advanced self-defence, including courses in the targeted time frame’s weapon styles. But he wouldn’t believe me, and I don’t have the time to convince him. Not without raising awkward questions.

I’m supposed to leave the group by oh-one-hundred hours tonight, and it’s just half-past twenty-one. How do I distract him so I can get far enough away that I can be picked up and returned to the future without anyone noticing?

He solved her dilemma for her. Sort of. “All right, so it’s been a hot and dusty day. A dip in the river does sound good. I’ll walk you down there. The others should be safe enough, since they have their numbers, the fire and our good yeomen-farmers to keep watch through the first and second quarters of the night. But I’ll not risk you to a wild beast, or a bandit, or even a slip and a fall which might injure your head, or a cramp which might cause you to drown.”

“James, it really wouldn’t be appropriate —”

One of his hands lifted from her shoulder, his finger finding and sealing her lips. “Shh. I insist. Surely the night is far too dark for me to see anything. inappropriate.”

That wasn’t entirely true; the moon was waxing towards full. Though its light did shine down in faint silver patches here and there, the forest canopy hid most of its light. Down by the river, which at this part ran north—south, it would shine fully upon the water, and on anything nearby.

“Come.” Sliding his other hand down her arm, he laced his calloused fingers with hers and gently tugged her through the trees. The ground sloped gradually down as they made their way eastwards, until the thickness of the underbrush forced them to detour to the south. A small break in the bushes a modest distance upriver provided access to the water. It was also far enough away that the light and the noise of the pilgrims’ campfire could no longer be discerned.

This is my last night with him, Anne thought, catching sight of his face in the pale silver moonlight. And my last and only chance to be alone with him. I’m not being picked up until oh-one-hundred hours. We have time. and maybe I can exhaust him into sleeping deeply.

It wasn’t exactly in the rulebook, but neither was it expressly forbidden on this trip. Anne had heard other field anthropologists being given lectures against such things for specific missions, but she hadn’t been lectured. Shrugging out of the rope holding her bedroll together, she untied it with the practice gained from weeks of travel and spread it out over the ground.

James moved closer. “Aren’t you going to wash that?”

“I’ve changed my mind. Besides,” she murmured back, strolling close enough to touch him, to brush her body against his own, “shouldn’t I get it dirty first, before I scrub?”

She could see his frown, thanks to a small shaft of moonlight. James stepped back. “I find I do not quite trust this reversal, Anne. Why were you so coy before, yet so forward now?”

All the instincts of a natural anthropologist, or maybe a psychologist or sociologist. Sighing, she gave him as much of the truth as he could handle. “I’m leaving the group. A friend will be meeting me shortly, and we’ll be on our way elsewhere. I was told that once I reached the river after our visit to the Cathedral, I should diverge and head upriver — and I will be fine,” she added as his frown of distrust deepened into a worried look. “This isn’t the first time I have travelled, nor the first time I have struck out on my own, even for such a short distance as this trip will be.

“You need to stay with the others,” she reminded him. “They’ll need your protection, since it’s still a long way back.”

“And you’re offering yourself to me? What has prompted it?” James asked her.

Anne shrugged. “I decided I’d rather not leave with any regrets. I like you, I enjoy your company, and I desire you. If we weren’t destined to part company tonight, I would honestly consider your offer of courtship far more seriously than circumstances allow.”

He closed the distance between them, slipping his arm around her waist. “Well. If we do enjoy each other’s company, and this. dalliance. proves fruitful?”

She smiled wryly. “After so many years of barren marriage, I doubt it will.”

Particularly given the birth-control methods all field agents use. There were rumours of certain agents being sent into the past to “acquire” genetic material, but not having been approached herself, Anne wasn’t sure if those whispers were true, or just lascivious gossip.

“I am not your late husband.” Pulling her close, he nudged her with his loins. In specific, with the lump of his manhood. “You may find me to be the better man.”

His line almost made her laugh, except she sensed he meant it in several ways, not just the most obvious one. Softening her reaction into a smile, Anne lifted her hands to his hair. Fulfilling the longing she had suppressed throughout the trip, she buried her fingers in his springy blond curls, enjoying their slightly coarse texture.

He complied with her guiding touch, tilting his mouth into the perfect angle for meeting hers. Then pulled back, apparently startled by the touch of her tongue on his lips. Anne pursued his mouth, rising up on her toes and bringing his head back down to hers. He tasted more like the roasted turnips and rabbit they had eaten than like the mint of earlier, but mostly he tasted like a man. Delicious.

It took only a few moments before he returned her caresses. His own tongue grew more bold, as did the hands on her back, one skimming up to cradle the back of her head, the other sliding down to cup the curves of her bottom. Anne caressed his shoulders, then shifted her hands to the front of his cote-hardie. He had changed back into his travelling clothes this morning, to save his good outfit for the visits to the Cathedral, but even his second-best tunic was made of a finer weave of linen than her own. Unfastening the buttons as they kissed, she reached his belt and fumbled with the knotted leather.

Stepping back, breaking their kiss, James unfastened his belt himself, along with the rest of his cote-hardie. Anne took the opportunity to remove her own girdle and work on her buttons. Their garments fell to the ground, which was sparsely covered in tufts of grass and the felted wool of her bedroll. Moonlight obscured some of the details of his body and highlighted others. She could see scars from old wounds, and the ripple of muscles bunching and flexing when he stooped to remove his shoes.

She bent over in turn, unlacing her sandals and peeling down her hosen, only to blush when she heard him speak.

“God bless widows who know what they want,” he murmured. “God and all the saints. I’ve never been interested in a shy, retiring maiden who knows nothing of the ways of men and women.”

“I thought my behaviour had been rather circumspect and demure,” Anne quipped as she straightened. She pulled the pins and ribbons out of her hair, releasing it so that he could play with it if he wanted.

“Circumspect, maybe, but your experience of the world shows through in all the little things you do.” Moving back to her, he wrapped his arms around her, bringing their bodies close together. “I like it.”

Anne kissed him again. The evening had cooled enough that neither was damp from sweat, allowing their bodies to rub gently together. She enjoyed the crisp-textured hair of his chest brushing against her breasts, the soft press and nibble of his lips. The jut of his arousal rubbing against her belly. Her fingers skimmed through those chest curls, lightly tugging and teasing until he captured her hands and pressed them flat. She could feel the rhythm of his heart and knew it matched her own, faster than it should be, and stronger.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had made love with anyone. At least a year ago. Long enough for each touch, each caress to feel new. Long enough to make her wish for a softer bed than a scratchy wool blanket laid on a somewhat lumpy stretch of ground. The shift of his lips from her mouth down to her breasts distracted her, though. He laved and worshipped them, wringing gasps and whimpers from her as he played with their sensitive tips.

One of his hands caressed her clenching belly, then slipped down between her thighs. Anne gasped and tossed her head back, thumping it against the ground, but the pain was brief and mild; the pleasure of his seeking fingers was too good to resist. Covering his hand with her own, she showed him exactly where she liked to be touched and how firmly he should rub.

James proved a willing student. Between her breasts and her loins, he sculpted her into a squirming, gasping, shuddering thing of bliss with his mouth and his hand. Drifting down from her climax, Anne sighed. “Oh, James. I wish I could take you with me. ”

“If I had my way,” he murmured, kissing a path back up to her lips, “you’d never leave me.”

Lifting her knees, she made room for him. Welcomed him with her lips and her palms and her thighs. He pressed himself home with a sigh of her name and a slow flex of his hips. It felt better than she remembered, much better. Each inward stroke had a near-perfect angle to stimulate everything she liked best about this part of lovemaking. It didn’t take him long to have her gasping and shuddering again, whispering his name until he, too, climaxed and slumped, breathing heavily himself.

He finally rolled off her, but not to abandon her. Instead, James pulled her close, cuddling with her. Sweat made their skin stick awkwardly in places, though the cool air wafting up from the river did its part to help dry them again. But the sweat and the breeze and the lumpy ground under the blanket couldn’t distract her from the warmth of his embrace.

Tired from a long day of walking and a delicious round of lovemaking, Anne dozed for a little bit. She was sure James did, too. When she finally decided to move, inhaling slowly and deeply to wake up a little more, she felt his arm tighten around her shoulders.

“Ready for more?” he murmured, proving he wasn’t asleep.

Her internal transceiver warned her it was getting close to midnight. But I still have time. And this feels too good to skip a second chance. Smiling, she pressed a kiss to his collarbone. “Nothing would please me more. Since you’re a scholar at heart, the same as myself. let me show you some of the things I’ve learned.”

His murmured consent was the last coherent thing he said. It didn’t take much to reduce him to gasps and half-bitten oaths, just the application of her tongue, teeth, and lips from his throat to his groin. The lattermost goal made him choke on her name and bow his back, fingers tangling in her hair. From the surprise in his voice, she guessed he had never experienced this before, and applied herself with more enthusiasm and care, wanting to make it as enjoyable for him as possible.

Her attentions invigorated him so much, she found herself flipped on to her back, her head pointed down the modest slope of the bank and her legs hoisted high. Hands clenching in the blanket and the sparse tufts of grass, Anne accepted his enthusiasm for the compliment it was, and for the delights of the inventive position. He growled as he climaxed, trembling and sweating all over again. Shifting a hand to touch her folds, he rubbed as she had shown him, and chuckled when she, too, trembled in bliss. Breathing heavily, James lowered her hips back to the ground, then her legs, before slumping once more at her side.

“I think. I know. how your husband died,” he muttered between breaths.

“Oh?” she managed, wary of his sudden choice in topic.

“Very, very happily.”

Anne laughed. Not because it was the truth — far from it — but because his compliment tickled her. She wanted to tell him the truth about her so-called marriage, but between her orders and this latest bout of passion, she kept her mouth shut. Content, she snuggled against him, reminding herself not to doze for long. She still had to leave by oh-one-hundred hours so that she could be returned to the future. Her weeks of observations needed to be recorded and analysed. Including this interlude, however much she wanted to keep these moments by the moonlit river to herself.

Just a little bit of a nap. then I really will leave him. I will.

The crack of a twig woke both of them. James scrambled for his belt, grabbing and drawing his sword even as he stood. Anne rolled away from him and rose in a defensive crouch of her own, eyes straining to see through the night-shadowed trees.

“Who goes there?” James demanded.

“A friend. I mean you no harm.”

Anne relaxed slightly, recognizing Simon’s voice. Then blushed hotly, mindful of two things: her naked state, and the hour. A mental check of her sub-dermal transceiver showed the hour was half past one. She was late. That was a potential sin in the temporal handbook, a black mark on her record. But her superior didn’t sound upset.

“I do not recognize you,” her lover stated, blade still bared and held between them and the source of that shadowed voice. “Name yourself!”

“James. it’s all right. It’s my friend. The one I told you I was going to meet?” Touching his elbow, she gently urged him to lower his weapon. Once he did, she made the introductions. “Sir James, this is Simon, a freeholder and long-time friend of my family. Simon, Sir James, the escort hired by my fellow pilgrims.

“As you can see, I’ll be fine from here on. You can rejoin the others with a clear conscience as to my safety,” Anne told James.

“Did I mean nothing to you?” he hissed.

“You meant a lot. But I must go my way for now, and you must go yours. Return to the others. If I can, I’ll come find you in England later.”

“Actually. he cannot return to the others,” Simon stated.

The blade came back up, silver-blue moonlight glinting off the beaten metal. “Why not?”

“Simon?” Anne strained to see her superior’s face. He moved closer, ignoring the threat implied in James’s blade. She caught a glimpse of his expression, the pinch of worry between his dark brows. “Am I in trouble for being late, and not alone?”

“No more so than Rachael was,” Simon murmured.

Comprehension dawned, relieving Anne of much of her worry. She hadn’t black-marked herself in the rulebook by making love with the man at her side.

“You both speak in riddles. Make yourselves clear,” James demanded.

“Peace, brother. and put your hosen on. Both of you. We have time for you to dress before we must go.”

“Anne?”

“I trust Simon with my life, James. You can, too. More than you yet know.” Stooping, Anne rummaged through the clothing scattered on the ground, separating out which garment belonged to whom by touch, since James’s clothes were of a higher quality than her own.

He hesitated only a moment before accepting his hosen, undershirt and cote-hardie. Setting down his sword, he dressed as quickly as she did, shaking out his boots and strapping on his belt. After sheathing the blade at his hip, he waited while she fastened the last of the buttons on her over-gown, then faced the shadowed silhouette of their visitor.

“We are dressed, as requested. Now, tell me what you mean. Why should I not return to the others?”

“If you had been with them, instead of having followed Anne here, you would have suffered the same fate they just did. A short while ago, a group of Castilian bandits came upon the pilgrims’ camp, ambushed the farmer on watch, and slaughtered the rest in their sleep. Even as we speak, their bodies and belongings are being looted.”

Anne heard James half-draw his sword and quickly put her hand on his wrist. “We are not what you think. Neither of us is in league with the robbers.”

“How do I know that?” James hissed. “You urged me to go back there, then lured me into staying here! How do I know you didn’t decide they would be more vulnerable and thus easier to kill without my protection?”

“Because I didn’t tell her what the fate of the pilgrims would be. Nor could I interfere to save their lives, even indirectly, without it causing irreparable harm to the future. Which, if you continued to live in this time frame, your own presence would also do.”

James struggled to draw his sword. Anne forced it back into its sheath by pinching one of the nerves in his wrist; from his startled hiss, she guessed he wasn’t expecting so much strength from her, nor the sudden pain shooting up his arm. “James, Simon and I are scholars of the past. Literally, we come from the far-distant future. We, and others like us, travel through time by a special means. We immerse ourselves in a time period, in a culture, in a situation, and observe.

“Just like you do,” she stressed. “You chose to travel as a pilgrimage escort so that you could be a student of humanity, to observe people from all stations of life. We do that, too. But because we do it in the past, which cannot be changed overtly. sometimes we cannot stop what happens, because it is vital that it should happen.”

“From the future. you’re not actually from northern England, are you?” James accused. “Just how much of what you have told me has been a lie?”

“My place of origin, my inheritance, my brother-in-law. ”

“Your late husband?” he demanded. “Was even that a lie?”

“Only in part,” Anne confessed. “I was married, and my husband did die. It was in May, in the city of Abbeville in France, not at home in northern England as I claimed. And it was in the Year of Our Lord 1940, in an era when what you know of as the many states of the German kingdom was at war with France. I was an anthropology student — someone who studies societies and cultures and the ways how people live. My husband was also a scholar; he was giving a lecture on mathematics at a school in northern France when there was an unexpected, rapid advance of the German army. He died in the attack. I saw him cut down, and ran. I probably would have perished, too, if I hadn’t seen an exchange student sneaking for the basement of the university building, and followed her instead.

“I wanted to warn her to get out of there, to follow me in making a run for safety. But instead of being trapped and killed as was happening to the others elsewhere. she told me she was going to rescue me. She did it by transporting me even further into the future, offering me sanctuary and a new way of life.” Anne hesitated, then continued. “I honestly did not know what fate would befall the others tonight. All I knew was that I had to leave the rest by the middle of the night, so that I could be picked up and returned to the future, where my observations could be reported for posterity. I swear, I did not know.”

“Most field agents aren’t told,” Simon confirmed. “Compassion is wonderful, but if it interferes with the path of history, it can cause complications.”

“I don’t understand,” James murmured. “I think I can believe Anne when she says she didn’t know, but. how could not saving their lives be the right thing to do?”

“If your grandfather was the sort to beat his serfs and tax them into starvation, if his actions had blackened your family name from long before you were born, would you want to go back in time to kill him when he was young, to stop him from harming so many people over all those years?” Simon countered. “I know I would. but if you went back in time and killed him before he had sired your father. you would no longer exist, because your father would not have existed.”

“For another example,” Anne offered, “if he was a good man, one who had intended to marry one woman, who died by, oh, falling off a cliff, and instead married another after her death, a woman who became your grandmother. if you went back in time to save the first maiden’s life. wouldn’t your grandfather marry her instead? Wouldn’t they have different children? Perhaps a daughter instead of a son that year. meaning yet again that you would not have been born?”

“Time is tricky. We are sent back to observe and learn, not to interfere,” Simon stated. “Anne has saved your life, and it is not our policy to kill those whose lives are accidentally saved. but your life now comes at a cost. You cannot return to your family without irrevocably altering the future. or risking circumstances arranging themselves so that you are slaughtered in some other way, and soon. You can, of course, leave us and take your chances. but the future is changeable only in tiny degrees, while death versus life is a major change. I do not know the exact pathway to your death, but it is out there waiting for you, and it will come very soon. The pressure of history will ensure it.”

“So. what am I to do? I will not end my life willingly; such things are a sin,” James said. “But even I know that the world has changed greatly over the last thousand years. If I am to go a thousand years into the future, how much more will it have changed? How would I live? Unless you have need for a guard on yet more pilgrimages. ”

Anne smiled and tucked her hands around his elbow. “I think I know why Simon is so willing to take you with us. and why Rachael was so willing to save me from the Germans, despite what fate might have otherwise decreed. You are as much an anthropologist at heart as I am, James. A true student of humanity. The rest is just catching up on a thousand years of history and all the many advances people have made in the ways that they live.”

“You might not ever come back to this moment in time, of course, but some of our best field agents have come from centuries past,” Simon added. “You know far better than we how to behave and blend in. though as you have seen, some of our anthropologists are more adept at blending than others, even outside their natural time frame.”

James considered their offer. Anne could sense him thinking, in the tensing and relaxing of his muscles, in the quiet, deep way he breathed. After a long, quiet moment, he turned to her.

“If I come with you. were your words from earlier true? Would you still be interested in my. in my courting you?”

“As you yourself said, we have much in common. and I do care for you, James,” Anne admitted. “I would be honoured to know you better.”

“I will go to the future,” he decided. “I am indeed a scholar at heart, and I find that the part of me that longed to explore distant lands is now equally curious about distant times.”

“Good. We should be going — you won’t need the bedroll, or anything else,” Simon added as James started to bend down. “In the morning, travellers will stumble across the campsite, and your disappearances blamed on the bandits, along with the others’ deaths. But by then, we’ll be 1,317 years into the future. and, once there, I think I can safely predict your lives will be reasonably long and relatively happy.”

“Good. You’ll answer to me if things turn out otherwise,” James warned him.

Simon chuckled, and Anne blushed. Holding on to her lover, she braced both of them for the trip to the future.