TWICE IN TIME

CHAPTER IV Time Travelers

They left the hall, and moved down a side-street. One of the townsfolk, a simple-faced fellow with a beard and a loose coat, almost bumped headlong into them—then started aside, staring. His big hands twitched up, crossing himself. Nostradame smiled and signed himself in turn with the cross, whereat the fellow stared the more widely, and all but dropped to his knees. They went past him hurriedly.

"And so we are seen, of simple folk at least," said Anne.

"Simple folk?" repeated Nostradame. "Say rather of those whose wisdom is the greater because they do not muddle it with plans for oppression or deceit. Look ahead of us."

It was dusk by now, and lights gleamed from the windows of wooden houses, shabby and old, along the middle distance of the street.

"We enter a quarter of poor men," said Nostradame. "Here we shaft be seen, perhaps heard—"

"And these houses will burn like tinder," finished Anne for him. "Look to the building with the dome and spire. Surely it is a church of the Russian kind, and in the little cottage beyond must dwell the priest."

Some children on a doorstep, too concerned at the coming of the invader to play or chatter, watched the pair as they passed. They were too small to wonder or dread, but they were plainly and honestly curious. Anne and Nostradame gained the cottage by the church.

"His door is open, good man," said Nostradame. "He may be a poor priest, but he is a wise one. We will go in."

The priest sat at a table among stacks of old volumes with the strange Russian character, and his walls were hung with icons. He was simply robed and his beard was long, thick and gray as iron. Up he started as the two appeared on his threshold.

"Who are you appearances?" he demanded, or seemed to demand in his tongue they did not understand.

Remembering the citizen on the street, Nostradame made the sign of the cross.

"Do you speak French or Latin, good father?" he asked.

"French—a little." The words were slow and accented, but understandable. The priest's eyes were wide, but the fear in them was under control. "Ghosts—I see through you, to the wall beyond. Yet no evil can you do in this holy place. Have the fear of God before your eyes, and return to your graves!"

"Father," said Anne, "indeed we are not dead ghosts, but messengers sent—it is too long to say how—for your help against the ill-come foreigners."

A moment of silence, and the greater preoccupation overrode the lesser. The priest shrugged his shoulders—they were broad, peasant shoulders beneath his gown—and lifted his hands to heaven.

"Nay," he said. "What can be done? They have taken our city for their base of war—"

"How if there be not a city?" broke in Anne. "If it be burnt—"

"I know you are devils, both of you," the priest broke in, "or you would not council the ruin of this holy place, ancient beyond—"

"Reflect, Father," interrupted Nostradame in his turn. "Holy you call your town, but its ways and buildings are fouled by the tyrant. Holding it for his base, he may win over all Russia. Left without it, he must fall back, lest he freeze."

The priest was on his knees, praying. Then he looked up, his eyes wide, but this time joyous.

"It is true!" he cried. "Your words are wise and blessed. Say, are you saints or angels?"

"We are as common folk as your good self," said Nostradame. "But haste to what you must do."

The priest was on his feet again. He strode to the open fire and caught from it a brand that blossomed with tongues of flame. Back to the wall, he stripped from it the icons, and caught up such books as the crook of his big arm could hold. Then he held the fire to the hangings at the window. There was a hungry leap of orange flame. The dry wood of the sill caught. A moment more, and the priest was in the street, waving his torch and shouting in Russian. People ran to listen, and he exhorted them, and they answered him with shouts of wild approval and enthusiasm.

"Hark to them," said Anne to Nostradame. "Are they not Russians, Muscovites? Loving their land before all things—"

"Leave this doorway," urged Nostradame. "The cottage burns, and its blaze spreads to the church."

They gained the street, and looked back to the red glow in the windows of the priest's home.

A patrol of the invader troops was hurrying up the street. Its leader gained the door they had left, but shrink back before a great puff of smoke.

"Already the fire is too great," said Anne. "Ha, hear the tall soldier curse, his fingers were scorched. And see to the Russians—that one in the smock catches a brand from the burning and runs to fire his own house. And others also!" * * *

Perhaps the time of the vision hurried for them. It was as though they saw in moments what might normally take hours. The row of houses blazed up in a score of places. Shouting citizens, inspired to grim action, carried torches elsewhere. A great stable was aflame, horses ran from it. From a public square rose a swirl of conflagration like the throat of a volcano.

"Nought can quench it now," said Anne. "It is brighter than day, though the night darkens. My eyes cannot see—"

And the shouting died, the bustling figures faded. Again the two were in Nostradame's study. Anne sagged on her tripod, and Nostradame took her elbow and led her into the lighted front room.

Gravely, softly, they spoke of what they had known together.

" 'Twas done," Anne said shakily, again and again. "We, from this our Sixteenth Century, went to another time and place, and did a small thing that grew to a great thing—I tremble!"

She sat on the couch, and recovered enough to smile. "I would be an ill comrade to faint now, when—was I not brave?"

"As the archangels are brave," Nostradame assured her.

"You say you know that false master of Europe, with his strut and his forelock. Let the winter not comfort him unsheltered! How is he named?"

Nostradame gestured the query aside. "A name of no account, by descent or virtue. I do not give it, even by implication or anagram, in my writings. See these quatrains, for other visions of him." And he brought them from his study.

Deep in the heart of Europe's Western land

A child of poorest parents shall be sprung,

Whose tongue shall sway and rule great troops and grand

Until his fame to Earth's last land is sung.

"And here," said Nostradame, offering another, "is my glimpse of his end."

By thunderbolts his flag is driven low,

He shall be struck while shouting in his pride,

His haughty nation yields before the foe,

His deeds shall be avenged when he has died.

"And now we know how he will fall from the point of his highest rise," went on Nostradame. "To think that we—you and I—were the instruments for that fall! I must record it at once." * * *

He sought writing materials, improvising aloud:

"Through Slavic lands a horde moves, dire and great,

But falls the town to which the raider came,

He shall see all the country desolate,

Nor knows he how to stem the burning flame—"

"Do as you will," Anne begged, "leave his name out of your writings, but tell it to me."

"Why not, child, if you are curious? He will be called Napoleon Bonaparte, and when Moscow burns about his ears, the beginning of his end is upon him… ."

It was the next night, and Nostradame sat alone in a house that seemed triply lonely and empty because Anne had been there, and was elsewhere now.

She must not, he had told her, endanger her relationship with the proud and dictatorial Lady Olande by slipping away night after night. They would find a way to communicate in days to come, and meanwhile he would scan the future alone. Of that he was stubbornly sure. Anne had almost swooned with the experience. She was not strong enough in body to match her brave spirit.

But, though he would not take her exploring in time again, she had shown him a thing he could do. Here and there he might be revealed to the best men of those coming times, to help them with a word—or revealed, perhaps, to the worst men, and frighten them as a ghost can frighten. And some time he would dare to publish his records, as a warning to the world that would be. Meanwhile, again the strange phrase was groping in his mind… . "Atoma divisa… ." * * *

A knock at his door. So late—was Anne disdaining his sober council and coming back? He went and opened.

A slender prankling youngster stood there, the very ideal of a great lady's saucy page. He wore doublet and hose of rich purple, with a gay plumed hat set rakishly upon his carefully combed ringlets.

"Young sir?" said Nostradame, concealing his dislike of the interruption.

"I am from the Lady Olande, worthy doctor," said the page. "At her home I am her most trusted retainer, and by me she sends you a message."

"Give it me," and Nostradame held out his big hand, but the page made a graceful gesture of negation.

"Nay, this message is by word of mouth. The Lady Olande bids me say that she was hasty and ill-mannered early yesterday. She cries your mercy for what she sought to do you in harm, and swears that she rejoices it came to nought."

"And what beside?" demanded Nostradame. "For such talk presages the asking of a favor."

"You are wise as well as worthy, messire. The Lady Olande is taken of an illness—surely, she bids me say, it is a punishment for her sins to you. And she begs you put out your hand to heal her."

"Ill, is she?" Nostradame, the doctor, could not refuse such an appeal from his most deadly foe. "What form doth the illness take?"

"Nay, I know not. You must diagnose and prescribe."

"Wait." Nostradame returned to his study, stowing his gear of mystery away. Into a sachel he put phials and parcels of such remedies as might, one or another, be of service. Rejoining the page, he emerged into the street, where two horses were tied. The page held one for him to mount, then vaulted into the saddle of the other. A moon was coming up, light enough to show them the road to the estate of the Lady Olande de la Fornaye.

The manor house of la Fornaye was a square-built structure of stone, forthright enough in its outer appearance. As they gained its front entry, a dog barked from somewhere, and someone came forward to take the horses. The page opened the heavy door for Nostradame, ushering him into a pleasant hall, its floor carpeted richly and its walls tapestried gaily. There was an open fire against the chill, and a long table on which stood a wine service and a silver bowl of fruits.

From an arched inner doorway came the Lady Olande, dressed as for a ball in a gown of cramoisie, snugly fitted to her torso and bosom but full in the sleeves and the skirt. Jewels gleamed in her hair, at her throat, and on the hand she held out as in welcome.

"Madame, you are better," said Nostradame at once. "I had expected to find you in sorry case."

"True, I am better," she replied, "and now that you are here I am about to be eased forever of my torment."

"What is it?" he asked.

"A grave illness," she said, and her smile was of radiant mockery. "For a whim, perhaps, I made an enemy of you. To have such as you for enemy is such a malaise as one might perish of, sir."

There was a heavy clank behind him. The page had bolted the door. From the arch behind Lady Olande came two armed men.

"Thank you for coming to my request," said the woman. "Here upon mine own lands, I am supreme and peer of all save the King himself. It is my right to dispense the high justice, the middle, and the low. I can kill if so I wish, and at present, Messire Michel de Nostradame, I wish to kill you."