A Knight in Central Park(29)
Alexandra turned and marched toward the barn.
“Once again, she blames me,” Garrett complained.
Ignoring the kid, Joe looked up at the moon, making sure it was still there.
“Dumb, beetle-brained woman,” Garrett went on. “I begged Grandfather to let me go when the time came to use those stones. I would have found a real hero, someone brave enough to use his fists. My warrior would have put Harig ten feet under. He never would have stood there like an old witless mutt.”
Frowning, Joe turned and followed Alexandra to the barn. Nope, he didn’t like kids. They made him feel things he didn’t want to feel: lost, angry, frustrated, confused...things that reminded him of his own childhood.
Alexandra stepped around the ancient plow and stepped inside the barn. “Susan, are you in here?”
Joe followed her inside. Two heavy beams, one above the other, connected by vertical struts, held the place together. The barn must have been built before the house. It was made mostly of wattle and daub instead of stones and timber.
Alexandra made her way across the earthen floor toward the stalls. A horse’s tail swished. Chickens scrambled out of her way, clucking, their flapping wings kicking up dust. The pungent odor of manure far outweighed the smell of smoke. The smell was almost too much to bear.
A small head popped up, and then a little girl stepped out of an old crate. She ran to Alexandra’s side and grabbed hold of her sister’s legs. Joe guessed the girl’s age to be about six-years old.
Alexandra kneeled low, wrapping her little sister in her arms, her expression filled with relief when yet another girl of about fifteen, maybe older, stepped out of the last stall. Both girls were dressed in rags with torn hems and stained cloth.
Alexandra pushed tangled hair from their faces. The girls had blonde hair and blue eyes, neither resembling their red-headed, green-eyed older sister.
“Thank God you are both well. Where is Mary?”
“Sir Richard’s men took her,” the older girl said, her lip trembling. “She was trying to protect us, afraid they would kill us if she refused.”
Alexandra gently stroked her sister’s back.
The six-year-old stared up at Joe with big round eyes. He managed a smile. Despite the soiled face and ragged clothes, for a kid, she was kind of cute. She slid a dirty thumb into her mouth, making him wince.
“This is Sir Joe,” Alexandra told her sisters. “He’s come to help us.”
Joe felt his jaw twitch. “We need to talk about that,” he said.
The older girl’s name was Susan. She was pale with grief, unable to stop the tears from coming forth. “I should have never let them take Mary,” Susan cried. “For all eternity my poor sister will be shackled to that heartless beast...and all because of me.”
Joe jangled the change in his pocket. He’d never been good with this sort of thing...dealing with people’s emotions. There was nothing worse than watching a female cry. He knew it was a perfectly reasonable and logical reaction for her to do so, but nonetheless it made him feel incredibly uneasy.
Without any explanation, he turned and went outside. The air felt thick and cumbersome. It was hard to breathe, making him feel as if he were drowning...the way he used to feel when he was young and bitter and all alone. The walls were closing in.
He kept walking, anything to get the oxygen flowing, to regain some semblance of control. The house had burned quickly, already a pile of smoldering rubble. His gaze swept over the land around him as he searched desperately for signs of normalcy.
Fields of tall wheat, meandering hills, and myriad trees stretched on for miles. He watched the sky for the blinking lights of an airplane, listened for the familiar sounds of sirens, anything that would tell him he hadn’t journeyed through time after all. But even as he strained his eyes to see what was clearly not there, he knew the implausible had happened. Somehow he had traveled hundreds of years, through some sort of invisible region in space. He didn’t know what year it was, couldn’t remember what Alexandra had told him back in New York, but judging by the iron-shod plow and harrow he’d seen in the barn, not to mention the ancient mill and the oxen in the field, he figured he had to be in another century altogether.
Traces of panic began to set in. He needed to get home.
Now.
He rubbed at the increasing pressure at the back of his neck. He didn’t want to think about what year this was or how the hell this had happened to him. He wanted to get home, dammit, and come hell or high water that’s what he was going to do.