Simon Hawke: The Timekeeper Conspiracy

"So you believe their target to be Richelieu?" said Lucas.

"We don't know for certain, Captain. Our agent died before he could complete his message. But we're assuming that Cardinal Richelieu will be involved, either directly or indirectly. He was without a doubt the most influential man in France at the time and he's a pivotal character in history. However, our research department has brought out yet another factor which we find extremely significant.

"The month of April in 1625 was when a young man named D'Artagnan arrived in Paris."

The last time she had been in France had been almost five hundred years earlier. Her name had not been Andre de la Croix then. It was not her real name, but her real name no longer mattered to her. That had been another time, another life.

She had not belonged in 12th-century England any more than she belonged in 17th-century France. She had been born in the western Pyrenees, Basque country, but she often felt that she did not belong in any time or place at all. The feeling of being different, of not fitting in, went back almost as far as she could remember.

It had started when her parents died, leaving her to take care of her little brother. She had been just a child herself. It had not taken her very long at all to find out just how vulnerable a young girl could be, so she had learned to act the part of a young boy. That deception had constituted the first major change in her young life.

She had continued the masquerade into adulthood, having learned that being a man offered far greater opportunities than being a woman. Her breasts were small and easily, if uncomfortably, concealed and the hard life she had led as a "young boy" had given her a body that was lean and strong. After years spent as itinerant thieves and beggars, she and her brother had been taken in as squires by an aging knight-errant whose brain had been befuddled by one too many injuries. The old knight had never learned her secret and he had trained her in the martial arts of chivalry. That had been the second major change in her life.

She had known that living free in a time when freedom was a commodity in scarce supply meant becoming strong and self-reliant. She worked hard, developing her body into an efficient fighting machine. She was taller than most women of her time, broad-shouldered, and long of limb. Her drive and physical characteristics combined to give her a body and a degree of fitness that would be unknown to women for several hundred years. She became the physical equal of most men in strength and the superior of most in endurance and reflexes. After the death of her mentor, she took her own brother as her squire and became a mercenary knight, a "free companion" with the fictitious name of Andre de la Croix. She chose for her device a fleury cross of white on red. Guarding her secret with her life, for that was what exposure as a woman would have cost her, she entered into the service of Prince John of Anjou. Shortly thereafter, she met a man she took to be a sorcerer and he had brought her to the third and greatest change in her young life.

His name was Reese Hunter and he, too, did not fit into his own time. On the day she met him, his time would not yet come for another fourteen hundred years. He was a deserter from the Temporal Corps and he possessed a device he called a chronoplate, a machine for traveling through time.

He had told her that he was not a sorcerer, yet what he called "science" seemed nothing less than magic. Though he had learned her secret, he was the only man she had ever met who did not treat women as inferiors, as possessions. He had told her that there would come a time when she would not have to resort to her deception to live life on her terms. That time would not come for many hundreds of years, but he could take her there. He had told her of the life he led, the times and places he had been to, and she had been both awed and frightened. She would not have believed him, would have thought him mad, had he not demonstrated the power of his science. He said that he saw in her a kindred spirit, a person out of time. He had offered her an equal partnership, on her own terms.

She had lost her brother to a traitor's sword and Hunter had helped her to avenge his death. Once that was done, there had no longer been a reason for her to remain in England or in the year 1194. She had joined Hunter and left England and her time behind. She became part of the underground.

Antoinette de la Croix was not her real name, either. She felt less comfortable with it than with her masculine alias. They had only just arrived in the 17th century and it had taken Hunter some time to purchase what he called "necessities." These included their clothes, their horses, their carriage, and the services of liveried footmen. They were on their way to Paris and they had stopped for the night at a small roadhouse.

Andre had undressed to her undergarments. She didn't like them, but at least they were more comfortable worn alone than with her outer clothing. The silks and ruffles, the lace and the dainty shoes were all impractical and, worse, uncomfortable. She recalled that armor had never been comfortable to wear, but at least it had a function. She could see no purpose to her ornate apparel and she had remarked to Hunter that in this time, at least, the role of women seemed not to have changed at all. They were still dressed as dolls for men to play with, only now they had to dress up more. She had gone along with the clothing, but she had refused to have her hair "arranged." Instead, she had worn a wig that Hunter had bought for her, a wig of tight blonde curls whose color matched her own somewhat shorter, straighter hair. She had ripped it off upon entering their rooms and now she paced back and forth like a caged animal, scratching her head irritably. She much preferred the apparel of the men, though even that seemed senselessly foppish to her.

She thought that Hunter looked amusing in his scarlet doublet, ornately worked baldrick, and long cloak of dark burgundy velvet. Somehow, she thought he looked more natural in the magician's robe he had been wearing when they met, back in Sherwood Forest. His high boots seemed practical for horseback riding, but the lace collar, cuffs and boot tops seemed out of place, as did the wide black sash he wore around his waist. What puzzled her the most was Hunter's rapier.

He had laid it down upon the bed when they came into the room and now she picked it up, hefting it experimentally.

"This is a sword?" she said, dubiously. She had been curious about it all that day, but she had not wanted to overburden Hunter with too many questions.

"It's called a rapier," Hunter said, "and yes, it is a sword."

She swung it once or twice, holding it awkwardly, as though uncertain of its sturdiness.

"There is no weight to it," she said. "And the blade is far too narrow. It would never penetrate armor and a single stroke with a good sword would break it in an instant." She threw it back down onto the bed disdainfully.

Hunter picked it up. "To begin with, it isn't meant for use against an armored knight. And no one uses broadswords here. In this period, things are done a little differently. I suppose you'd say that this was a more genteel weapon."

He made a few passes with the rapier, showing her the wrist action, a beat and riposte against an imaginary opponent, and a lunge.

"It's used primarily for thrusting, but you can also slash," said Hunter. "It's called fencing."

She frowned. "So is the enclosure used to keep in goats. I see no connection."

"There isn't one."

"So why is it called fencing?"

"I don't know why it's called fencing. It just is, that's all."

"It's foolish. These clothes are foolish. This is a foolish time. I do not like it. This is nothing like what you told me."