Hamelton (Dr. Paul) (12 page)

Well, that was not completely true; a bag of gold pieces was still not referred to as a “trifle” in William's time. Also a hand full of gold coins was not an outrageous fortune worth retiring in mine; however these were in perfect mint condition. They were a very rare find which museums and collectors would lust for.

With that understood, we walked with William to the Hidden Six. His band of about a dozen were standing in front of the house, I wish now I had thought to count them. Handy had asked William if he was sure that he did not need him on this trip.

William said, "I need you here my friend to wield that sword in my defense, should it be needed. If I do not return by nightfall, I will not return."

Handy took the same spot that John the Friar had been in several days before to guard the house. The rest of our group also stayed outside the house.

I walked along with William as we went up stairs. "You are not coming back are you? That speech this morning was for us. You are all intending to stay in the Garden of Eden."

William gently took my arm and said, "Your friend would want to come with me and that is the wrong move for such a young man."

"I'm surprised that you lied to us. You had proven yourself such an honest man."
William said with a kind and humble smile, "And for those lies, I apologize. I also lied that things are going to turn back to the way they were for me. King Charles is not known for ever forgiving anyone who has proven himself untrustworthy. The king has recently imprisoned several good knights for supposed treason. It is rumored that a civil war is on the horizon. Soon both I and my property would be confiscated. This way at least the town of Hamelton can survive off my estate. These are the only lies I told you. They were necessary. Tell our friend Handy that I will not return and convey my apologies to him. Good-bye my friend. Did you see the sunrise this morning? For eternity I will be looking up at it. Think of me." With that and a twitch in the corner of his mouth he turned and joined the other men in the large room.

The men lay on the floor and prepared to travel. I sat at the top of the stairs and thought what a beautiful dagger was given me. I thought that I should return it to him now so he could take it with him. Then I remembered John the Friar's sword laying in the Garden of Eden. How clever William was, he could give away his prize possessions to us and still have them in the next world. I thought about why he had chosen that time to leave. He is in disfavor with the king. His band of followers were down to just the faithful. He just postponed the king to help support the town for several months. Upon his confirmed disappearance, his estate would revert back to the people of Hamelton and the town would flourish. He had all the angles covered. What a shame it is that 300 years after he is gone, the people of the town he loved so, will refer to him so badly.

William had said that a civil war was on the horizon, I thought how dumb I was not to have any knowledge of what was happening at that time in history. I thought how easy it would have been to smuggle a book of English history with me. During the time since I first went there I never thought of or asked about what was going on outside of Hamelton.

A flicker of light caught my attention. The men in the next room had a glow about them. Then for a moment, a transparency then the glow again. This repeated numerous times until the room was empty of all life. I sat and wanted to cry for them, but I knew that someplace they were alive. Very solemnly I walked down the stairs. Handy was standing guard outside the door.

"Let's go back to our own time, we are all done here now," I said as I walked past him.
"What?" Handy yelled.

I faced him and looked at him in the eyes and said, "I swear, on our friendship.... that William said to me he is not planning on coming back. We knew that before we came here. Now is the time to leave."

"He said he would be back before dark, and I will wait for him," Handy said with his teeth clenched together and his hand on the hilt of his sword.

Knowing that both he and I had promised William to wait until dark and guard the door I knew that Handy would not understand if I crossed William by not doing so. I sat down across the porch from where he was standing. The other friends excused themselves and went back to spend the day at the house. I realized that my friendship with Handy was easily worth spending the day in boredom to convince him to come back to the twentieth century with us. We did not say a word as he stood there as still as can be. I sat there digging holes in the dirt with my dagger. It was the same dagger that will hang in my room when I first sleep in the mansion. Its sheath had a belt so it could be worn and used as a small sword. I wondered why the sheath no longer existed in the twentieth century. Jeff did bring us some lunch. But that did not break the silence that Handy and I were facing.

Sunset came and went. The stars were out and night was surely upon us. Handy just stood there like a sentry at the palace gate. I had enough of this cold treatment from him. I had done nothing to hurt him. I had to confront him and make him come out of this depression.

I jumped up and stood with my face staring right at his. "He is not coming back. I told you he said so. He apologized for lying to you. Now cut this crap and let‟s get the hell out of here!" I yelled at him.

He took a step toward me while taking a tight grasp on the hilt of his sword. He said slow and carefully through tight lips, "You can leave if your word means nothing to you."

"My word! Like you kept yours about staying together as a team. And as far as staying here, its past night fall. He's dead or gone. Either way I'm leaving."

As I was speaking, Handy first pulled his weapon out half way then whipped it fully out toward my direction. I fell backward over a plant as his sword whizzed past me and shattered a window of the house. I fumbled backward as he recovered his balance and lifted the sword over his head.

"Your word!" he yelled, approaching me, "You said she was mine, and you took her."
The blade came down at me but the aim was unquestionably off as would be expected from someone using a sword for the first time. As I rolled over and put distance between us I stumbled to my feet and unsheathed my smaller weapon. I held it in front of myself firmly to detour the possibility of yet another attack. Looking at Handy, weapon to weapon, I knew my size and strength would have a good chance against him even without possessing my dagger. He walked toward me with his sword above his left shoulder and both hands on it preparing for another swing. I knew I didn't want to be in this fight and I was not sure if he was really trying to hit me. I had a sudden desire to throw my dagger into the wall of the house to show a sign of peace. Without really thinking about the full consequences, I heaved the dagger at the house. Unfortunately the effect would have been better had the thing stuck into the wood to show superiority of skill, but perhaps the "ting" sound that it made as it bounced made him notice the act more. He froze as he stared at me. I dropped my hands to my sides. Tears came to his eyes. The sword seemed heavy in his arms. I walked to him and hugged him as tight as I could. The sword fell to the ground behind him like a hovering item that just realized gravity. He sobbed on my shoulder for some time. I must admit I cried for him too.

After several attempts to talk through his breathless gasps he indicated he wanted to sit down by gesturing toward the ground near a wall. We sat against the wall and just looked at the shadows the moon made as the gentle wind shook the leaves of the trees around us. There were several shooting stars in the sky, it must be August I thought.

"I'm sorry. I wanted to kill you," he said. I smiled at him and said, "It's a good thing you haven't learned to use that thing yet." We both laughed at that.

He told me that he felt like the fifth member on a double date. Putting that together with the words he shouted at me when he was attempting to kill me, I told him that I had not, was not, and would not date or sleep with Hanna. He apologized for having made a wrong assumption and changed the subject. I know Handy well enough that he probably didn't believe what I said. At least we were talking and I was sure that mutual trust would come in time. We sat for about an hour chatting about good times when we were very younger. This seemed a safe subject for both of us at the time.

We went back to the mansion. As we left sight of the Hidden Six, Handy looked back at it and lifted his hand as if making a toast to William. I lifted my hand and made an invisible toast to William also.

XIII

When I woke up the next morning, I remembered to look to make certain Handy's sleeping body in the bed next to me, was still there. The time was early and the sun was barely up. I wanted to get out of that place as soon as I could. I first woke Jeff then Handy. I asked Jeff, not wanting to be seen near Hanna in front of Handy, to get the girls ready. Once ready, we five sneaked over to John the Friar's room.

John the Friar was obviously not there because he left with William. I opened the curtain to bring light into the dark room. For the first time I felt free to look around the room in this time of history before I left it. I looked above the bed at the large cross that hung prominently there. Next to the bed was a table with a large drawer in it. Looking in the drawer with Cindy complaining that I had no right to pry, I saw a set of books. They were all named "Quest for Paradise." These are the books I will read over 300 years from now.

For the detailed oriented, you may have noticed that there was 1 original book and 3 copies in modern time in the library. But William had said John makes 5 copies of the original, thus 6 books made. What happened to the other 2 books? I never knew. Maybe they were stolen, burned, misplaced or fell apart because of age. Perhaps they are sitting in a garage sale someplace. Some questions are never answered.
We took our positions on the floor and prepared to travel. All went well until we found ourselves in the limbo stage. The negative feeling from Handy shocked us all. He was so full of hate for all of us that we unintentionally backed our bodies away from him; this seemed to anger him more. Our bodies crowded together in fear. Handy felt that we were ganging up against him and retreated into depression. At last the tunnel sucked us up, putting an end to that horrible and frightening feeling.

Everyone awoke around the same time. We all knew what had just happened but no one wanted to react to it. Handy looked around at us with his eye lids half shut. I was so glad that we had him back in our own time so we could help him.

But my thoughts were not correct. The weapons were not on the walls of my room. I was stunned. The idea of being stuck in the Garden of Eden was not what I wanted. I looked around with my head jerking back and forth as I looked at the room. The cross was not over the bed as it was just a moment before. The furnishings on the wall were unfamiliar to me. I stood up and looked at the same bed that seemed to have always been and will be in this room. I looked out the window into the garden. There were men putting away their tree trimming equipment for the evening. None of this was familiar to either of the two time periods I had been to before.

We decided to get out of the room and perhaps the house as soon as we could. Jeff looked out a crack in the door and said that the coast was clear. We all tiptoed down the main hallway like characters from a cartoon. When we reached the entry way, the staircase going up was there. A suit of armor was mounted on the bottom floor next to each staircase. After waiting for a servant to vacate the lower floor, we slipped out through the kitchen door.

The back garden had more bushes then the other times I had seen it. The bushes were cut high which made an excellent mask for our escape. Not knowing what else to do and feeling intimidated and insecure in our unfamiliar surroundings, we headed for the Hidden Six hoping to hideout until we knew what was happening. We made it to the Hidden Six without being seen. We stopped short of our goal and lay down behind some shrubs to spy on the house to see if it was unused. The paint seemed the same color as it was in the year 1641 but the paint was badly peeling. The window that Handy broke last night seemed to have been fixed years ago. The house appeared not to be used at this time. We began to stand to go into the house of sanctuary when we saw movement from behind the house. We all fell back to our hiding places. A filthy bearded man walked around to the front of the house and entered the front door.

"Looks like a vagrant has found a home," Hanna whispered.

We watched for a while longer then another man approached from the bushes on the right side of the house. He was as dirty and long haired as the last. This man however was carrying a dead bird by its feet. He also seemed comfortable to enter the house freely through the front door. That man and two different men emerged a moment later with the bird and started to build a fire and pluck the bird. One of the men was clean shaven despite his long hair. His shirt was dirty and loose fitting. He wore a cape and carried a sword on one side of his belt and a dagger on the other.
Handy suddenly yelled, "William!" Handy stood and waved, then ran down the hill to the men like a child home from camp.

William looked up from his kneeling position by the fire. An amused look came over his sun worn face. He stood and greeted Handy with a hug. Feeling somewhat safer then we had, we all raised and walked toward the men at the fire. We were well greeted by William. The other two men, who were some of William's followers who went with him to the Garden of Eden, seemed indifferent toward us.

After the basic "How are yous," William asked, "How did you find us here, in this time I mean?"
"I don't know, where is...when is this?" I asked.
He said, "The year is 1737. The last time I saw you it was 96 years ago. Now answer my question."
Handy said, "I waited for you until midnight last night. I told Chris that you would return. I knew you would."
William asked firmer, "Does that mean you were not looking for us?"
Handy said, "No. We were on the way home. How have you been doing? Did you find the missing follower?"