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Arabel had spent her journey in perpetual tears, distraught over being torn from her children and fearful she would never see them or home again. The only reason she had survived the passage was because of the kind attention and encouragement of Garsea Manrique, an imp of a man who used his small stature and puckish face to amuse her as best he could.

“Miss Arabel, I beg of you not to cry,” he had said repeatedly in his excellent English whenever he came to bring her food and drink. “If only I could see you smile, my miserable existence would be very much improved.”

Eventually to humor him she had managed a fleeting smile.

Then he had said, “If only I could hear you laugh, my sad troubles would seem but small things.”

Eventually she had blessed him with a small laugh.

Finally, he had said, “If only you would tell me tales of your happy life on Earth, I would be your faithful servant forever and ever.”

By the time they arrived in Burgos, they had become fast friends and the only thing that would dry her tears was the wicked smile and lilting voice of the small man. Señor de Zurita, a more educated and substantial man than the frivolous Manrique was wholly without humor, but he recognized the calming effect the imp had on the woman. So when they arrived at the castle, he insisted that Manrique have a room beside hers to keep her in the best possible spirits for the king.

High in the castle keep, Arabel awoke from a nap on the evening of her first day in Burgos, to see Manrique dangling his short legs off the edge of her comfortable bed.

“How did you sleep, Lady Arabel?” he asked.

Her lower lip quivered. “I dreamt I was home with my babies. But I’m not.”

“But I am also your baby, am I not?” he said sticking his thumb in his mouth and eliciting half a grin. “While you were in sweet, sweet slumber, ladies of the household were laboring with needle and thread and they have made you a beautiful new dress to wear to meet the king.”

“I don’t want to meet the king.”

“But you must. He is the king and he commands it. I was told by servants of the household that he has been as excited as a puppy dog.”

She sighed loudly. “Tell me about him.”

“I was trying to do just that during the whole of our journey but you would not listen.”

“I suppose I’d better listen now.”

“Well, he is a fine figure of a man, young and robust. I have seen him with mine own eyes for, oh my goodness, two hundred years or more since I did myself arrive, and I have rarely seen him afflicted by illness. He is strong in body and mind, an able hunter, able soldier, formidable ruler.”

“What was he in life?”

“He was a king. An ancient one, ruling well before my own time.”

“How ancient?”

“Oh my goodness. Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years gone past. I do not even know.”

“Does he have a wife, a woman? Garsea, I don’t even know the questions to ask.”

“He has a queen, Queen Mécia. In life she was a Portuguese woman of noble birth, not as ancient as the king, but more ancient than your Garsea. In truth I do not know her well because she chooses to live in a palace in Bilbao. She has a very strong temper and I do not think the king likes to be in her presence. As to other women, well, of course, he is a man and a king and kings have many women. Any woman he desires, he can have.”

“Will he?” She seemed unable to finish.

“Will he what?”

She shook her head. “Will he force himself on me?”

“Oh my goodness, Lady Arabel. I could not possibly speak on such a subject. Come now. Rise and perform your ablutions. You will meet the ladies who will attend to your needs. They will bathe you, powder you, bring you cakes and sweet wine, and at the appointed hour, they will dress you and bring you to the king who is laying on a feast in your honor. Did I tell you he is as excited as a young puppy?”

She did not resist the onslaught of servants who descended on her, plain women with dull eyes who were skin-and-bones thin and spoke no English. She could tell they knew she was different from them, but because they feared her or feared the king, they assiduously avoided eye contact. She submerged in a wooden tub but when she allowed her eyes to close succumbing to the pleasure of soaking in the soapy warm water, in her mind she saw Sam and Belle asleep in Solomon Wisdom’s house. Recoiling, she bit her lip hard to subject herself to pain.

The servants backed away when she began to cry but suddenly something came to her that brought her tears to an abrupt halt.

What would Emily do, she thought?

What would Emily do?

Ever since she was a young girl, she had looked up to her older sister. Emily had always been the smarter of the two, more ambitious, and infinitely more accomplished. While Emily was getting advanced degrees in physics, she was temping in London and going to wine bars. While Emily was building MAAC she was in Australia working as a waitress on Bondi Beach. While Emily was elevated to research director of the Hercules project she was having babies, and while Emily was running half-marathons and learning martial arts she was a TV-watching single mom, reeling from the untimely death of her husband.

But now she was being tested in a way that Emily herself had been tested.

Emily had survived.

Emily had survived and had made it home. She would have to rally and do the same. For her children. For herself. She had to be strong.

She had to survive.

Maybe she wasn’t as clever as Emily. Maybe she wasn’t as fit as Emily. Maybe she didn’t know how to defend herself. But she was a Loughty and Loughtys were tough old Scots.

She would survive.

The female servants seemed to sense a change had come over her and whispered among themselves in their native tongue.

Arabel climbed from the tub and when a woman came forward to dry her she snatched the towel away and dried herself.

She pointed at the red silk dress laid out on the bed so they would understand her.

“I’m ready to see the king.”

When she entered the grand and vaulted banqueting hall, her red gown dusting the floorboards, Arabel felt hundreds of eyes upon her. Men and women stood, not by protocol, but to catch a better glimpse of her. She tried to control her breathing and with each deep inhalation her bosom swelled and threatened to burst from the revealing dress.

All of a sudden she was aware of Manrique by her side. He was dressed in a fancy waistcoat and long jacket, which made him look much like a lawn jockey. He must have interpreted her smile as signifying delight and he told her he was happy to see her too.

He offered his small hand and said, “I will accompany Lady Arabel to the king’s table. He is anxious …”

“I know, like a puppy.”

“Precisely.”

The highest nobles of the court were positioned at the front of the hall at the elevated table that had to be reached by a short run of stairs. An imperious man dressed like a peacock in a colorful, ruffled doublet stepped away from his chair and approached.

“Is that him?” Arabel asked.

“Oh no,” Manrique said. “That is the Duke of Aragon.”

When they were face to face the duke sniffed at her with such abandonment that she wondered where it might end but Manrique broke the spell by introducing her in Spanish.

Aragon replied sonorously and Manrique translated.

“He said you are like a precious flower, my lady. He believes the king will be delighted. You will sit between his majesty and the duke.”

“And you?” she said. “You know I can only say hola, adiós, and buenas noches.”

“Fear not. I will be hovering over your shoulder like a hummingbird.”

At the center of the table was an empty chair Manrique said was hers. Next to it was an ornately carved, high-backed chair with a silk cushion that so precisely matched her dress, Arabel wondered if it had been cut from the same cloth.

The hall was so quiet that the scrape of wood on wood from the simple act of the duke pulling out her chair seemed jarring and loud. She sat and looked over the hall of bearded men and a smattering of women and felt like an actor on a stage, an actor who had not only forgotten her lines but the very subject of the play.

All eyes suddenly turned from her to the rear corner of the room. There she saw a fairly young, swarthy man enter through a curtain. He had an oval face, a full beard, short and black, and long curly hair spilling out from under a wide-brimmed, floppy hat. He was not a large man, perhaps her height. Like the Duke of Aragon, Pedro had adopted a style of dress more of the seventeenth century than his own era and he was resplendent in a green and silver doublet and velvet sash, wide lacy collar, shiny green breeches, and black boots.

Pedro saw her from across the room and seemed to pay attention to no one else as he made his way forward. In response she neither smiled nor frowned. When he stood before her, looking first at her face, then her bosom, she heard Manrique speaking her name in some kind of formal presentation.

Pedro said nothing in return but Manrique confused her by saying, “The king extends his welcome to you and wishes to learn about your person.”

As Pedro took his ornate chair, Arabel whispered, “But he didn’t say anything at all.”

“He did not have to speak,” the little man said enigmatically. “You may sit now.”

Pedro nodded to no one in particular and servers appeared from all corners of the hall bearing trays of meats and game pies. A servant filled his goblet, then Arabel’s and the duke’s.

The king began conversing earnestly with Aragon as if she were not seated between them. She drank some wine and tasted some roasted meat that was tough but delicious. Both men leaned in front of her to speak. Aragon smelled as unpleasant as all the Hellers but the king’s aroma was masked by aromatic perfume.

Finally, in exasperation turned to Manrique. “What are they talking about?”

“They speak of the Moors. They are raiding the south. Always when we are weak, they invade.”

On their journey, Manrique and de Zurita had spoken of the recent defeat of the Iberian navy at the hands of the English.

“Weak because of the British?” she asked.

“Yes, I am sure.”

“Does the king know I’m British?”

“He does not mind, I think.”

In time the men stopped their conversation. Pedro then smiled broadly and said something to her, several sentences worth.

Manrique leaned over her shoulder and said, “The king says he is most interested to know how a live woman has come to Hell. He says the price paid for you was not too great for you are very beautiful. He says that you have very beautiful breasts too.”

“Did he now?” she said.

“Yes, this is what he says.”

“First tell him that I am flattered. Then tell him I will not sleep with him. Finally tell him that if he tries to force himself on me I will kill myself.”

Manrique’s face fell. “You wish me to say these things?”

“Just as I have said.”

“I hope I will survive this night,” Manrique said.

After Pedro heard the translation he fell silent for several moments before laughing uproariously.

All conversation stopped at the other tables.

Pedro replied to Manrique who appeared visibly relieved. “The king says he is a patient man who has been in Hell for a very long time. He says it is his fate to remain here forever. He will not force himself on the lady. He says he will wait for as long as it takes until the lady decided she will force herself upon him.”

Standing five-feet four-inches in stockinged feet, Joseph Stalin had always relied on the strength of his personality to make him seem a much larger man and now, raging and florid, he seemed enormous.

He and his senior staff were being housed in a fine house off the inner bailey of King Frederick’s Marksburg Castle high over the Rhine but he complained of feeling like a bear in a cage.

“Bears must be free,” he bellowed in Georgian. “I must be free.”

Only some of his generals and advisors spoke his native language. Pasha, an Englishman, leaned over to General Kutuzov and asked, in his shaky Russian, what the tsar had said.

Kutuzov, a big-bellied, fat-lipped man with downy white hair whispered back, “Something about bears, I think.”

Stalin switched to Russian to continue his rant. “This German, this medieval barbarian whose face looks like a prune pit, this fucker Barbarossa likes nothing better than plumping up his position by keeping me waiting in this ugly castle.”

“I am assured we will have the promised war council tonight,” Kutuzov said.

“Who gave you this assurance?” Stalin asked.

“The Duke of Thuringia.”

“Him?” Stalin said. “Thuringia? He is as ancient and ridiculous as his master.”

“He believes he is a contender to be named chancellor to replace …”

“Do not even dare to say that toad’s name.”

“Well, to be named the new chancellor.”

Heinrich Himmler had been left behind in the mud after John Camp broke his neck the day the Germans and Russians were routed. It was the only piece of good news Stalin had received after his ignominious defeat. He hoped Himmler’s body had been torn apart by wolves. Anything less would have been too good for him.

“Doesn’t the king have anyone more able than that old fool, Thuringia?”

Kutuzov said, “Himmler made fast work of all his rivals. I apologize. I was not supposed to mention his name.”

Stalin rolled his eyes at his bumptious field marshal whose most illustrious campaign in life had been to repel Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812.

“Rainald van Dassel was the last effective advisor the king possessed,” Kutuzov continued. “Himmler, sorry, effectively purged many at his own level of command, and when he took Rainald’s head last month, there was no one else but him who might be considered a credible chancellor. Now there is a dearth of able men for King Frederick to choose from.”

“Perhaps we can exploit this situation,” Stalin said.

“How so?” Kutuzov asked.

“I’ll say no more,” Stalin replied with a tug on his moustache and a wink. “Now Pasha, tell me what you have discovered about this new English cannon.”