The Corridors of Time Read online

  Sverdrup blinked at the prisoners. ‘I might well wish to be Fledelius, if so fair a lady craves to see him. But alas, no, I am only a poor old squire from the Skaw.’ He fumbled in his clothes, dislodging a substantial colony of fleas. ‘Here. I trust your schooling is less rusty than mine.’

  Ulfeld scowled at the parchment. His men came back. ‘None but the landlord’s family, Herr,’ one reported.

  ‘So, so, did I not tell you?’ the innkeeper chattered. ‘Herr Torben has guested the Golden Lion in former years, my lord. He is known to me, and I have always had a good name, ask the burgomaster if Mikkel Mortensen is not an honest loyal man.’

  Ulfeld tossed the letter on the table. ‘We will keep a watch,’ he decided. ‘The outlaw may still show himself. But give him no chance of a warning. You two —’ he pointed at a couple of his mercenaries. ‘Remain here for the time. Guard each door and arrest any who enter. Let no one leave. You others, follow me.’

  ‘Will you not even have a pot with a lonely old man?’ Sverdrup urged.

  ‘No. I must see these prisoners questioned.’

  If need be, with rack and pincers and the bone-crushing boot. For Auri— Through a mist that swirled, Lockridge stared at the man behind the table. ‘No, wait,’ he croaked. ‘Help.’

  The pouched eyes drooped. ‘I am sorry, little maiden,’ Sverdrup mumbled. ‘But so many are dead, so many more soon to die.’ He traced a cross.

  A hand thrust Lockridge toward the door. He dug in his heels. The butt of a pike cracked across one knee. Pain lanced through him, he stumbled and cursed. Auri’s hood had fallen back, and a soldier snatched her by a lock of hair.

  ‘No!’ the girl screamed. ‘We belong to Her!’

  Sverdrup’s mug banged down on the board. Auri drew a sign in the air. Lockridge couldn’t make it out, something of her own ritual, dead and forgotten, a blind cry —

  The big man reached under the table and climbed stiffly to his feet. From the cloak that had covered it on the floor, a crossbow looked forth, cocked and loaded.

  ‘Not so hasty, my lord,’ he puffed. ‘Not quite so hasty, I beg you.’

  Ulfeld spun on his heel. The sword gleamed up. German spears poised amidst obscene oaths.

  If a bear could grin, it would look like the man who must be Jesper Fledelius. ‘Calmly, now, calmly,’ he said. ‘One move, one least of little moves, and my lord the knight will not be so handsome any longer. We do not wish to distress the ladies of Viborg, do we?’

  ‘They’ll kill you!’ the tavernkeeper wailed. ‘Jesus have mercy on us!’

  ‘Well, they might try, after this lady I embrace has said her one sharp word,’ Fledelius nodded. ‘But here is also my sword. It’s made meals off a good many Swedes, and Holsteiners, and even Danes. Naught is so tasty as a Dane who’s forsworn the old eagle – unless maybe a German hireling. We might have a most interesting discussion, we several. However, you, Herr Knight, would unhappily be forced to a spectator’s seat, and even though you would doubtless be given one befitting your rank in Hell, nevertheless, any of these lads who outlived the night would not be thanked for losing a life so precious. They might even be asked to dance on a rope’s end, eh? So do let us try to settle our dispute by peaceful, scholastic means, as is seemly for Christian men.’

  A silence closed in that made Lockridge’s breath more loud in his ears than the wind and thickening rain outside.

  ‘Mikkel, my good man,’ said Jesper Fledelius, ‘you must have somewhere a length of rope. With that we may bind these excellent fellows, rather than cut them down like Turks. Of course, it is a Turkish fate to lie in a tavern and have no means of drawing beer. But someone will happen along tomorrow. Men are always thirsty. A symbol of the Evangelicum, think you not? – beer laving the throat as salvation leaves the sin-parched soul.’ He beamed at Auri. ‘Scripture speaks truly of wisdom in innocence, little maiden. Words might not have moved this cowardly old carcass of mine, for words are cheap and crafty. But you showed me Her token, which does not lie. I thank you.’

  The landlord began to sob. A woman and a couple of children stuck terrified faces out from the back entrance. ‘Be of good cheer, Mikkel,’ the outlaw said. ‘Plainly, you and yours must leave this town with us. A pity, to let this fine hostel fall into the oafish hands of Junker bailiffs. But the Coven will feed and shelter you.’ The gross face flashed momentarily with utter love. ‘And when She returns, you shall be rewarded.’

  He gestured with his chin at Lockridge. ‘Herr, be so kind as to remove the weapons from these’ – the expression was shocking in that cool tone – ‘and get them secured. We must be off as fast as God allows. Our Lady’s business does not wait.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Rain roared on the hut. It was a shepherd’s huddling place, alone on the heath, deserted in this season; a thing of peat where a man might rest, so crude and poor that the Tenil Orugaray would have disdained it. But Auri slept, curled on the ground, head pillowed in Lockridge’s lap.

  Mikkel Mortensen crouched outside with his wife and brood. The American felt humiliated by that, still more so by their unresentfulness of him. whom they took for an Adelsmandm, resting somewhat dry, Fledelius had insisted. ‘We’ve secret matters to talk of, you and I, and these creaky bones will not let me do more than wheeze along when we go afoot tomorrow.’

  There had been no way to get horses through the smugglers’ tunnel that went under the walls of Viborg. The fugitives were not far from the town. But outside reigned an emptiness and a blackness broken only by an occasional lightning flare. Then every twig of heather, every hurtling drop of rain and runnel of water across soaked earth stood forth briefly and blindingly white.

  Fireless, the inside of the hut was thick with night and cold. Lockridge’s drenched garments were worse than useless, he had stripped to his hose like Fledelius, hugged his ribs and tried to keep the teeth quiet in his head. Auri lay naked and unbothered. He ought to have taken in one of the tavern-keeper’s children, rather than her; but she needed his presence, in this world of iron and cruelty, more than they needed the roof.

  Another bolt clove the sky. Thunder crashed in its wake. For an instant, Jesper Fledelius’ battered countenance made a gargoyle in the doorway. Sightlessness returned. The wind yammered.

  ‘Understand,’ the Dane said earnestly, ‘I am a good Christian man. I’ll have naught to do with that Lutheran heresy the Junkers and their toy king are foisting on the realm, and surely not with the heathendom of the witches. Yet there is white magic as well as black. Is there not? And it was ever old custom to leave offerings for the unseen ones. They do not really invoke Satan, those poor ignorant peasants who gather on May Eve and tomorrow. Nor yet the false gods you may read of in the chronicles of Saxo Grammaticus. Viborg was once Vebjörg. Holy Mount. Where the cathedral now stands was a sanctuary ancient before Odin led his folk in from the East. Spirits of earth and water – may not a man appeal to them without grave sin? These days, the peasant has often none else to turn to.’ He shifted on the damp dirt. ‘However, I myself am only in touch with the Coven. I do not belong to it.’

  ‘I understand,’ Lockridge said.

  He believed he spoke truth, and saw more than he uttered. Dim and enormous, the pattern had begun to grow before him.

  Man’s history was the history of religion.

  What Auri had, who slept so peacefully here among thunders, and Auri’s people, and the Indians he had seen in Yucatán, and every primitive race he knew of whose culture had not taken a completely perverted turn – was wholeness of spirit. It was purely a question of taste whether that made up for all they lacked. The fact remained, they were one with earth and sky and sea in a way that those who set the gods apart from themselves, or who denied any gods, could never be. When the Indo-Europeans brought their patriarchal pantheon to a land, they brought much that was good; but they created a new and lonely kind of man.

  There was no sharp dichotomy. The old ones endured. After a time, they ble
nded with the aliens, transfigured them, until ageless forms stood clear again and only names had changed. Dyaush Pitar, with his sun chariot and battle ax, became Thor, whose car was drawn by honest earthy goats and whose hammer brought the rain which was life. No blood was offered the Redbeard; he was himself a yeoman. And when Odin, one-eyed wolf god to whom the warlords gave men, fell before Christ and lived in memory as no more than a troll – Thor called himself St Olaf, Frey was St Erik whose wagon was drawn out each spring to bless the fields, and She took on the blue mantle of the Virgin Mary. And always and forever there were the little gods, sprites, hobgoblins, leprechauns, mermaids, so much in the world that they were not even called gods, whom men made into signs of help and harm, love and fear, every wonderful mystery and fickleness which was life.

  Lockridge was agnostic himself (child of a sad, brain-heavy and gut-light time which he now saw must not have long to live) and passed no opinions on the objective truths involved. As far as he knew, Mary might be the actual Queen of Heaven, the Triple Goddess only an early intuition of her. A sensible man like Jesper Fledelius could believe that. Or both might be shadows cast by some ultimate reality; or both might be myth. What mattered in history was not what men thought but what they felt.

  And into this great slow conflict and interweaving of two world-views the time war had entered. Rangers engineered the march of the war-making tribes and their militant gods; Wardens found secret ways to keep what was old and make the invaders over into its image. Rangers urged on the tomahawk people, who obliterated the cult of the passage grave; but Neolithic herdsmen became Bronze Age farmers and seafarers, and the sun was no longer a fire spirit but earth’s guardian and fructifying husband. Christendom entered, with books and logic and the first god who ever punished incorrect beliefs about his own nature – and erelong the people’s hearts belonged to Mary. The Reformation brought back Jehovah, armed with a terrible weapon against instinct – the printing press – but religion itself was subtly divided, dicredited, emasculated, until the world five or six hundred years hence felt its own barrenness and yearned for a faith which went deeper than words. Lockridge looked into the century after his own and did not see science triumphant; he saw men gathered on hills in the name of a new god or of an ancient one reborn.

  Or a goddess?

  ‘How did she come to you?’ he asked.

  ‘Well, now.’ Fledelius’ voice rumbled hoarse, coarse, and reverent. ‘The story is a bit long. You must know, I am – was – the squire near Lemvig, as my fathers before me since the first Valdemar. That’s a poor district, we Fledeliuses were never of the high haughty houses, we were close to our peasants; and in Jutland to this day the commons are more free than in the islands, where serfs may be bought and sold. On my grounds there is a kaempehøf – I know that dolmen, Lockridge thought in eeriness – ‘where folk were wont to make little offerings. They spoke of wonders glimpsed from time to time, strange comings and goings, I know not what. But if the priest said naught, who was I to meddle with old usage? Bad luck comes from such. The Lutherans will learn that, to the land’s sorrow.

  ‘So. I fought in the wars. Let me say naught against my lord King Kristiern. Sweden was his by right going back to Queen Margrete, and I call Sten Sture a traitor that he raised the realm against Danish rule. Yet … I am no milksop, understand, I’ve split my share of pates … yet when we entered Stockholm, pledges of amnesty had been given; and still bodies were piled high and headless, like cordwood, those freezing days. So with some heartsickness I returned home and vowed I’d stay on my own sandy acres. My wife died too – well, she was a good old mare, she was, and our only son studying in Paris and no doubt looking down on me who can scarcely write my name.

  ‘And then one summer eve, when I walked the fields by that curious dolmen, She came forth.’

  From his clumsy words, as he struggled to describe her, Lockridge knew Storm Darroway again.

  ‘Witch or saint or eternal spirit of the land, I cannot say what She is. Belike She put a spell on me. What of that? She sought not to lure me from Christian practice, rather She told of matters I’d not known about, like the Coven, and warned of troublous times to come. And She showed me wonders. This poor old brain cannot well grasp Her notion about traveling from past to future and back; but are not all things possible under God? She gave me gold, which I had sore need of after being so long in the wars with so little plunder. But chiefly I serve for Her own sake and the hope of one day seeing Her anew.

  ‘My duty is light. I am to be at the Inn of the Golden Lion each All Hallows Eve for twenty years. You see, She is in a war. Her friends and Her enemies alike flit about, even through the air; they may be anywhere, any time. The warlocks – not the commons, who come only for a bit of heathendom, but their leaders who can command them – the warlocks are Hers, part of Her net of spies and agents. But they cannot show themselves in respectable places as I might. If any came, like you, needing aid, I was to be there, and direct them to the Sabbath where they might find strong arms and magical engines. Another man was chosen for May Eve, but he is dead now. Easy service for much gold, not so?’

  The equinoctial nights, Lockridge thought; those belonged to the earth gods. Summer and winter solstice were the sun’s – the Rangers’.

  Fledelius’ words roughened yet more. ‘No doubt She thought that in my embitterment I would stay neutral, and thus safe, in the struggle She must have foreseen. But I failed Her. Far too often, I could not be there. Do you think any died on that account?’

  ‘No,’ Lockridge said. We found you. Remember, the war is worldwide and agewide. Yours is only one outpost.’

  He wondered, chillingly, how many there were. No one could oversee every part of space and time. Storm would have had to establish such small half-comprehending alliances: like a pagan cult, born of despair, founded on immemorial symbols that she furnished and interpreted. Other eras had other secrecies. All were created just to be there in case of need.

  And the need was very great now. She lay bound at Brann’s triumph, thirty-three hundred years ago; when his technicians arrived, they would suck her dry of what she knew and cast the husk aside; and more and more, Lockridge saw what a keystone she must be of her whole cause. If this one band of Jutes could help her, it would – maybe – justify the thousands upon thousands throughout Europe who were caught and burnt alive by the witch hunters of the Reformation.

  He didn’t want to pursue that thought. Instead, he speculated on what enclaves the Rangers maintained. In Akhnaton’s court? Caesar’s? Mohammed’s? The Manhattan Project?

  ‘You see,’ Fledelius pleaded, ‘after the king fled to Holland – well, I’d forgiven him Stockholm, when he gave so many rights to the people – why, even sorcerers were only to be flogged out of a city – I went with Soren Norby to fight the usurper. And afterward I sailed with Skipper Klement, and stood at Aalborg last year when they finally broke us. Hence I am outlaw. But I did find a priest who would forge for me a letter and seal by which to enter Viborg. And mine host Mikkel knows me of old, and belongs to the Coven himself. So I was on hand when you came. Is that not so?’

  ‘Indeed so,’ Lockridge replied most gently.

  Fledelius slapped his sheathed sword. Doubts and guilts departed; he became again the man who had gibed at Junker Erik. ‘God be praised! Now your turn, friend. Who’s it our task to send to the devil?’

  As nearly as language and concepts allowed, Lockridge told him.

  On a hill in the wastes burned the witchfire. Light flickered red off a high boulder to which Auri made obeisance. It had been an altar in her own time. Overhead the stars of All Hallows Eve glittered many and remote. The land was still, the air frosty.

  Lockridge paid little attention to the worshippers. They were a handful: shaggy peasants in smocks and woolen caps, villagers in patched jerkin and hose, their teen-aged children, an incongruous bawd from Viborg whose finery was pathetic in this skyey dark. They had stolen from hut and house and trudged acr
oss miles for an hour’s release, reassurance, appeasement of the land’s ancient Powers, and a little, little courage to meet their masters next day. Lockridge hoped he could remove Auri hence before anything started. Not that the orgy would shock her as such; but he didn’t want her to see what must be a degraded remnant of her own joyous mysteries.

  His look and mind went back to the Master.

  Tall and lean stood Marcus Nielsen, his alien features shadowed by the cowl of a tattered Dominican habit. In this age they knew him as a hedge priest. Unlike England, where he called himself Mark of Salisbury, Denmark did not persecute Catholics; but magicians were once more in danger of their lives. He was born Mareth the Warden, two thousand years after Lockridge, and he flitted the byways of Reformation Europe to serve Storm Darroway his queen.

  ‘You bear evil tidings,’ he said. The diaglossa gave him French to use with the American, incomprehensible to his flock or to stolid Fledelius, and he had ordered Auri to stand beyond earshot.

  He paused, then: ‘You may not know how critical she and Brann are. So few are capable on either side. They become like primitive kings, leading their troops into battle. You and I are nothing, but her capture is a disaster.’

  ‘Well,’ Lockridge said brusquely, ‘you’ve been warned now. I suppose you have access to the future. Organize a rescue party.’

  ‘Matters are not that simple,’ Mareth answered. ‘In the whole period of history from Luther to – beyond your time – the Rangers are ascendant. Warden forces are concentrated elsewhere. We maintain only a few agents like myself in this century.’ He twisted his fingers together and frowned at them. ‘In fact, frankly, we seem to be cut off. As nearly as our intelligence can learn, every gate through which one might go very far futureward is watched. She should have told you to seek a point of Danish time when the Wardens are better established. Frodhi’s reign, for instance. However, she was personally involved in setting up this watchpost, because the milieu is so difficult and dangerous. So I imagine it was what first crossed her mind, in the short while you had to talk.’