Heroes Live Forever (Knights in Time) (5 page)

Queasiness washed over her at the grim vision of their deaths filled her imagination. Basil glanced at Guy. Almost imperceptible in its brevity. A remote emotion flickered and disappeared in Basil’s expression. Guy remained impassive, offering no additional information regarding their deaths. She sensed Basil had left a piece of the story out. What else? What wasn’t he saying, she wanted to ask. The time wasn’t right. Elinor opted to change the subject and get some ghost questions answered instead.

“Since you owned this land when you were killed, are you...” She tried to be tactful. “Are you...not condemned, but confined here. Or, can you travel?”

“We can travel but we prefer not to. We stay because we’re comfortable here,” Basil replied. “For the same reason, we choose to array ourselves in this apparel. We’ve been to London a number of times. It gets very wearing, too crowded.”

Elinor agreed. “Tourist season is a madhouse, the worst, and the traffic is horrible all day long.”

“Not crowded with mortals, crowded with our kind milady,” Basil said with a low, throaty chuckle. “They’re everywhere. Sooner or later, you run into someone you know. More often than not, it’s someone you never liked in life. Trust me, death doesn’t make them any more likeable.”

Guy snorted and muttered a concurrence.

Elinor laughed too. She never considered that possibility. “This is fun,” she said, warming to the subject and her uninvited guests and enjoying being addressed as “milady.” She looked to each. “What sort of things can you do?”

Basil frowned as though stumped by the question. He turned to Guy, who shrugged looking as confused.

“What do you mean, what else can we do?” Basil asked.

“Obviously you can walk through walls and make torches and things appear, but what else? Can you move stuff, rattle chains? You know, ghostie things.”

A simultaneous “Ah!” came from the knights.

“Yes, we can move things.” Guy looked baffled and asked, “What do you mean by rattle chains? What sort of chains?”

To Elinor the question was self-explanatory. “I don’t know. Don’t you know? You’re the ghost.” She blurted the first thing that came to her mind. “Dungeon chains, I guess. That’s what it seemed like.”

Their brows lifted high. “You know other ghosts?”

“Certainly not.”

Why were they acting so confused? She suspected they were being deliberately obtuse. Or, maybe spirits were like magicians and couldn’t discuss their secrets. A ghost
code of silence
. It was a viable possibility.

“Dungeon chains...so you met some of the lads from the Tower, then?” Basil asked.

Exasperated, she said, “I didn’t meet any ‘lads from the Tower.’ Ghosts in movies always rattle chains.”

Basil and Guy exchanged a look of shared bewilderment.

“Odd business, I don’t know anyone who get up to that sort of thing, other than the Tower chaps. Do you?” Guy said to Basil.

Basil shook his head.

Elinor took a deep breath and waved the topic aside with an impatient hand gesture. “Oh, never mind about the chains. What other stuff can you do?”

“We’re capable of quite a bit,” Guy said with a certain hauteur. “Was the weight of your paintings not lightened as you placed them?”

“Yes, that was very sweet of you both,” she said, pleasantly surprised. “Thank you. I’ve another question. When I was hanging the paintings, something incredibly light brushed against my legs. A touch that wasn’t a touch. You again?”

Basil nodded. “Our presence can be felt in that way.”

She stifled a yawn, tired, but too curious to go to bed. “I don’t understand how you can move objects or lift things.”

“Allow me a moment, while I try to think of the simplest way to explain.” Basil paused and his eyes searched the four corners of the room and then settled on the television.

“Once, while watching the telly with your grandmother, we saw a man who could bend spoons with his mind. It’s comparable to that. We can compel force within our power in a similar manner. The action requires a great deal of concentration and drains our energy. We’re usually unseen during the effort. Only with tremendous exertion can we lift or move heavy objects and stay materialized.”

“I always thought that spoon fellow was a charlatan.” She laughed softly at the irony of the situation, at herself. Here she sat accusing someone of chicanery while engaged in a conversation with two ghosts. The explanation also clarified his semi-transparent appearance those first few minutes.

“May I?” She reached over to touch the sword at Basil’s side. Her finger passed through the weapon. “A manifestation?”

“Yes.”

“It looks real, as does the rest of your armor.”

“We’re able to recreate the appearance of different objects. We can’t reproduce them in solid form. We can only alter our appearance with, as I said, great effort.”

They’d talked well into the night. Elinor stifled another yawn. Basil and Guy had seen the effort and rose from their chairs. “I believe you might be more comfortable under your blankets.”

Basil’s suggestion sounded good to her. Elinor scurried upstairs. She didn’t need to undress. The white man’s dress shirt was her sleepwear. She crawled under the covers, propped herself up on two pillows and waited.

The knights drifted into the room. Each took a side and lay next to her. Medieval bookends. She hadn’t anticipated this turn of events, but their actions didn’t fluster her either. The little thrill that shot through her when Basil lay down was another story.

In novels a woman can lust over anyone from tortured artists to vampires. Perfectly acceptable—in fiction. In real life, one just didn’t get hot over a ghost, even when he turned out better than a fantasy knight from a painting. Weird, way too weird
.
She decided to ignore the issue.

Basil and Guy went back and forth describing their victories in jousts, their prowess both on and off the battlefield. Several arguments ensued regarding female conquests.

Elinor rolled her eyes at the predictable nature of men, even dead men. Consistent, if nothing else, at least regarding women. Chivalry had changed though. It was sorely lacking in the modern world. Conversely, her medieval bookends had been quite gallant to her grandmother, their old world values evident.

Elinor’s sleepy voice interrupted a squabble. “Basil.”

“Yes.”

“Thank you for being so kind to my grandmother.” She dozed off before hearing his answer.

The knights moved off the bed and wandered around the room. One oblong glass bottle caught Basil’s eye.
L’interdit
was written across the front in a gold feminine script. French for “The Forbidden.” With such a title, he had to know the contents. He unscrewed the top and sniffed the liquid inside. He recognized rose and jasmine, but not the faint essence of spices mixed with them. He sprayed a thin mist of the liquid in the air. He’d never smelled anything like it. He found the unusual fragrance more enticing than the heavy rose perfumes worn by women of his time. It wasn’t a scent he’d have associated with Elinor. Now he’d never associate it with anyone else.

A silver-framed photo of Elinor and her grandmother sat on the dresser. He touched a finger to Theresa’s image, remembering the day the picture was taken. He missed the old woman.

Elinor’s lips parted with a muffled sigh as she rolled over. Guy stood by the side of the bed as she slept. “Were this another time and place, I’d have given the lady a much better reason to rest contented other than decorating.”

“Were this another time and place, do you think I wouldn’t have vied for the lady’s attention also?”

“I’d be disappointed if you didn’t.”

As Guy amused himself with the clock radio, Basil watched his childhood friend. Always sought after, Guy was adored by all the women, young and old, both the highborn and the servants.

The ladies were mad for him. When they spoke to Basil about Guy, women claimed he was special. “He makes you feel like you’re the only woman in the world.” The declaration was consistently followed by a dreamy sigh and a nauseating, besotted gaze. Basil always wondered how he was supposed to respond. The temptation to tell them how long it took Guy to perfect that look hovered on the tip of his tongue.

Their feelings were reciprocated. His friend liked all women and charmed them equally. At banquets, he’d dance with the plain ones as often as he danced with the fair ones. Hearts melted when he entered the hall.

For reasons Basil never grasped, Guy enjoyed talking to women about all and sundry subjects. They’d discussed this on occasion. Basil recalled his skepticism. “Engaging women in non-frivolous conversation is silly,” he argued. “If it doesn’t lead to tupping, what’s the point?”

He turned his attention to Elinor and pictured the women he knew, comparing them to the woman asleep before him. She wasn’t an incredible beauty like some. But she had a classic elegance to her.
A knight would be proud to carry your favor, milady. In another age, I’d have made certain it was me who garnered that token.

Sunlight poured through the bedroom's leaded window waking Elinor. The events of the previous night came back. She sat up, and scanned the room. No knights. It was only a dream. What did she expect? The realization disheartened her.

She slid out of bed and padded barefoot into the bathroom and paused, hand on the doorknob. “What if it wasn't a dream? What if, by some strange miracle it's true and they come back and I'm in the shower?” They could watch and she’d never know. Elinor shook her head at the bizarre scenario she pictured. If, and it's a big if, they were real, why spy on her when they could spy on a gorgeous movie star? The situation was too ludicrous to even think about. She didn’t bother to close the door.

Elinor dressed, trudged downstairs, and made a pot of coffee. The pungent smell filled the kitchen as it percolated. Brochures for pre-fab stables sat on the counter unread while visions of the knights invaded her thoughts. Silly as it was, she wished they were real.

Unable to concentrate, she grabbed a mug of coffee, the brochures, and headed for the woods. A damp mist still clung to the ground, cloaking her house and the trees. Here, on the far side of the Fens, it would be another hour before the vaporous haze burned off.

She made herself comfortable at the base of an ash tree and watched a squirrel scamper at the edge of a nearby stream, one of the many mini tributaries of the Nene that riddled the area. The squirrel made several trips to the water and back up a tree on the opposite bank. “Do you have a nest of babies up there, little one?” She’d remember to bring nuts next time.

Elinor sorted through the brochures and read the more practical ones. She leaned back, sipped the coffee and mentally measured the area needed for Guardian, her thoroughbred. Knees up, mug in hand, she sat lost in thought.

"Your stable should be made of stone."

Elinor jumped, sloshing coffee everywhere.

Basil jerked backwards, "Milady!"

"Basil, are you crazy? You nearly scared me to death!" She held a hand to her chest waiting for her heart to slow.

"Sorry," the apology choked out over his laughter.

“You are real,” She said and stared at him wide eyed. “When I didn’t see you this morning, I...well; I assumed I’d dreamt you.”

“I was often told ladies dreamed of me,” Basil teased.

Guy plopped down on the other side of her. "Jumpy?"

The aside earned him a stern look. "No, not usually. But I don't have much experience with spooks sneaking up on me. You could've called out first."

“Duly noted, milady. As to being the object of ladies dreams, my list of sleeping beauties is legion.” Guy sniffed and bent forward, challenging Basil to comment.