Part 4 (1/2)

Clearly, she was still very much alive. There were things like virtual reality, but so far, this game bore no resemblence to any computer odyssy she had any knowledge of. It just didn't jibe.

Bella waited until she was alone to drop to her bare feet from the high bed. The hem of her nightgown floated down to the floor. She ran to the lone window and pressed her face close to the thick and hazy diamond panes of gla.s.s. They made it very difficult to see anything other than the gloomy overcast sky and the rain piddling down in zigzagging rivulets.

The stone wall was deep and thick, covered on the interior with smooth, painted plaster. The wooden sill and frame holding the window panes didn't have the smooth finish of normal millwork. It was rough and gouged. The iron latch had the appearance of being hand forged and it was rusty.

Bella twisted the latch, then pushed the heavy pane out as far as she could and leaned over the sill. She was in one of the cupola towers she'd seen on approaching the castle. The tower was situated at the corner of the inner ward above the manor house, very high off the ground.

This window looked down on the gatehouse that she thought she remembered entering. There was still daylight out doors, but it was fading fast.

Numerous crude lanterns provided some additonal light in various positions for the dozen sentries she counted posted on the allure. They were all in chain mail, sporting infamous English long bows for weaponry and appeared oblivious to the steady rain.

Beyond the castle walls, she could see no asphalt roads, no paved parking lots, no utility poles or wires strung along the landscape. There was nothing to see but raw, cleared land to the crest of the nearby hills. No highways, no restaurants with flas.h.i.+ng neon signs advertised their wares or prices. No cute tourists signs, no halogen lights brightened the gloomy twilight. No airplanes buzzed across the lowering sky. No satellite discs and definitely no television antennas poked up from the roof of any building in plain sight.

This was definitely not the England Bella had motored through that morning.

She didn't like the sight of the choppy, green, lichen- covered water in the moat one bit. A river twisted away from the complex, devoid of commerce, bridges, motorboats and houses.

This was not good news.

Bella slammed the window shut then sank to a heap on the floor and just stared at the unlit room. She reached to her left hand to twist her rings around her finger, an old habit when she was feeling stress. Her rings were gone. A thick band of yellow gold encircled her ring finger. She could not twist or slide the heavier band off her finger.

Where had it come from? She pressed the fingers of her left hand against her mouth and thought back to each and every event that she remembered happening this day.

She had a huge void of time. She went back to the moment when she'd woken up and got out of bed, showered and ate breakfast with Ari at their London hotel, and motored down to Lewes on their way to Brighton for the afternoon. Her memory was clear and intact until she left the Anne of Cleves Museum. From that point on, events began to jumble and swirl and disconnect.

There had been Ari in his khaki shorts and white s.h.i.+rt, smirking while he demanded a divorce. Black ravens and sun, lightning, wind that had toppled a power pole, and a moil that had turned into a maelstrom--and Ari had laughed when she fell into the void.

How she got from the green field at Lewes to being naked and filthy in the black knight's arms, Bella could not explain.

There was a dullness, a blankness in her, as if that bolt of lightning had struck deep in the core of her emotions. She wasn't dreaming. She was wide awake and more alert than she'd felt in years. Was she dead? Was this the afterlife? Heaven, h.e.l.l or purgatory?

What if she had travelled through time?

No. She couldn't have, could she?

And what about that other woman...the one who looked just like her...the one who had cut her own wrists? What about her? Who was she?

Another woman...from another time...whose name was the same as hers...who looked just like her? It wasn't possible. Was it?

That's when Bella began to shake and s.h.i.+ver and clutch her arms against her body moaning no, no, no, no, no.

Because it wasn't possible that she, Bella Wynford, could have fallen through some fifth dimension hole in the earth and travelled from one time to another. It wasn't possible. It wasn't.

These people thought she was somebody else. That man did...Sir John...but there were no such things as Doppelgangers, soul twins, stretched across time and place co-existing in opposite planes, were there? Am I crazy? Have I lost my mind?

The cat padded over to Bella, meowed, and very determinedly rubbed the top of its head against her hand demanding her attention. It struck Bella that the cat's show of affection was more than she'd been given in the past year from her husband. That same husband had howled with delirium, ”It's over, Bella.”

Yeah, it was over all right. Look where she thought she was--in the Fourteenth Century!

A cat wouldn't get cozy with a perfect stranger. Yet this cat again insisted on climbing onto her lap, sat and purred loudly.

Aristotle the cat's behavior with Bella seemed incontrovertible proof that she wasn't in the same world that she'd woken up this morning. And maybe not the same person either. Both thoughts were utterly terrifying.

Bella drew the animal into her arms and hugged it, accepting the companionable comfort it offered. Its eyes closed and its motor revved, contentedly. Dear G.o.d in heaven, now she'd lost her parents and family, her friends just like she'd lost her son, her Iain. Tears overflowed her eyes and blurred her vision.

Everything that was dear to her was gone. It's over, Bella. She had never felt so forlorn, lost and alone in her life. Is this what death was? Did you just wake up and find yourself some place else? What, dear G.o.d, happens now? Did she have to stay here? Was there someplace else to go? Could she go back? Or was this her punishment for the sins of her lifetime?

THE ROSE OF LORRAINE.

-5.

Bella dashed her tears away as she lurched onto her feet. She wouldn't sit wallowing in self-pity. She must do something to go back where she belonged. She began searching through the room, looking in every nook and cranny, wardrobe and trunk.

She could not open the double doors when she pulled on the handle. Behind the only other bolthole door, there was a garderobe, a privy.

Bella gawked at the lavish round room set in a round bartizan, jutting off the side of the tower. It had an incredible peaked dome ceiling and beautiful painted tiles on the floor. A polished wooden shelf offered a seat for doing what was necessary, though she feared it drained into that slimy moat she'd seen out the window.

Knowing she couldn't afford to be squeamish, she checked for spiders and scorpions anyway. Back home in Texas where there was still an outhouse or two in the open countryside, one was mighty careful where one sat.

After examining every inch of the king's bedroom, Bella stood beside a plain three-legged table, thinking. The huge cylindrical room had exactly five pieces of furniture; the ma.s.sive bed, an escritoire and chair, this table with its lyre stool and an impressive high-backed chair that faced the fireplace.

This room may be given over to the king of England when he was in residence (Bella retained her doubts about that) but it was clearly the favored haunt of a woman. Or else her prison, Bella thought darkly, looking at the locked doors that were the only exit.

She came to grips with the fact that there must be an Isabella de Saint Pierre of the fourteenth century who had married the cold-hearted Norman Bella had had the dubious pleasure of meeting earlier.

Now what? Where was the woman who belonged here? Bella curiously touched the writing tools on the escritoire; quills and pen, stoppered ink, blotter, parchments and razor sharp penknife. The quill was fragile and delicate and had no feel of weight or substance to it.

In the whole room she found only one leather-bound prayer book. Each page was handwritten in cramped Gothic script. Bella felt a headache brewing as she tried to decipher the Latin words by the light of a single candle. She laid the prayer book on the desk and turned round and round, lost, searching for any touch of reality that would make her sane again.

Another burst anxiety welled like an overflowing drain at the back of her throat, making her want to scream and howl. Before the scream came out one of the dark, heavily carved doors swung open. A liveried footman granted Clarise entrance. She bobbed into the room bearing a laden tray between her hands.

”Your supper, milady.” Clarice curtsied again. ”And the young masters will be up to see you just as soon as we've got you ready to receive them. Now, just you come sit and eat a bit. You'll feel much better then, to be sure.”

Clarise's company and cheerful tone was a G.o.dsend at that moment, grounding Bella back to reality. Life went on with certain rituals unchanged, meals and conversation.

Bella sat to the table and ate the strange a.s.sortment of food. She was famished, terribly hungry. The whole grain bread had speckles of charcoal in its crust. A minute crock of b.u.t.ter lacked salt flavoring and had no artificial coloring added to it. It tasted sweet, like freshly churned b.u.t.ter that she remembered eating as a child on her parents' farm.

While Bella ate, Clarise puttered around the room, gathering clothing from the various trunks and a standing wardrobe. Bella didn't care about anything except the food, which she devoured like someone who was starving without questioning what any of it was.

Replete at last, Bella summoned the patience to sit while Clarise worked the snarls out of her hair with a wide tooth wooden comb. The woman coiled strands skillfully, and turned the coils into a coronet on top of Bella's head. She used carved wooden pins to hold keep the coronet in place.

There was no looking gla.s.s in the chamber, which Bella thought odd. She knew that mirrored gla.s.s would be rare indeed for this time, but a polished silver handmirror ought to be part of this obviously indulged and wealthy lady's possessions.

Dressing proved a much easier task than Bella had feared it would be. First, came an unbleached muslin undergown Clarise called a cotte. It had wrist length sleeves and the bodice crisscrossed over Bella's b.r.e.a.s.t.s and was tied by tapes sewn at the waist. That was followed by an overgown, or bliault, of heavy sendal, dyed a deep, rich green. To Bella's eye this garment was little more than a floor length vest with a deeply flaring skirt, sewn at the shoulders, but open down the sides. It was fitted very closely to her body by lacing cords through grommets. Then the strong laces were tightened until the gown hugged Bella's torso.

The laces dropped from her armpit down her sides only as far as the crest of her hip where her thigh broke forward to stride. Spreading the now layered skirting with her hands, Bella was frankly surprised at how perfectly the two gowns fit and allowed her freedom to move.

The neckline dropped in a deep vee, which had more than enough cleavage exposed, almost too much for her taste.