[I]Somewhere outside Leicester, August 1966[/I]
Ian leaned against his Morris and lit his cigarette and Pierre did the same as they waited for Hugo. "Sometimes I wish we didn't have that bloody rule, it's damn cold here and it's August", muttered Ian.
"We're outdoors in the country of the Midlands, Ian. You're from Yorkshire, you ought to be used to chilly weather", teased Pierre.
Ian exhaled and gave the black-haired man a look. "You're a Northerner yourself, mate. And the bloody weatherman is always wrong", he retorted.
They had drive down from Manchester that morning and they were waiting at the supposed site of Bosworth outside of Leicester. The skies were dappled with lighter and darker areas in different shades of grey and appeared to hang lower than usual as a fine misty drizzle fell down and clung like a gossamer blanket to their skin. The cool but humid air smelled like damp earth and wet grass and somewhere off in the distance they could hear a cow mooing.
There was a quick flash of light and their leader Hugo Letang appeared as he carried an unconscious man in armor. Hugo's ever-changing appearance now showed him as a very tall, sturdy man in simple farmer's clothes with a flat gray cap over his graying-black hair. He looked in their direction and his silver eyes gleamed in his tanned face like the shimmery fins of freshly caught herring, the only clue he wasn't quite a normal person. "This is him, hurry back to Manchester", he said in a deep voice with its odd French-Breton accent.
"We will, Hugo. Au revoir", said Pierre.
"Au revoir, mes amis", replied Hugo before he disappeared before them.
Ian and Pierre laid the man down across the backseat of the Morris before they drove away. "Imagine the coppers' faces if they caught us", said Ian with a wry chuckle.
"Of course, so that's why we must be at exactly the speed limit. Lucky he has a blanket over him", said Pierre.
"He really doesn't look like the bloke in the painting, but then again those paintings were done years after he died. And they made him look like such a bastard, plus I didn't see any sort of hunchback. He wouldn't be wearing armor then", said Ian.
"Shakespeare wrote it almost a century later, no one in living memory knew what he looked like. And Hugo wouldn't have saved him if he was a baddie", said Pierre.
"We'll talk more when we get to the house", said Ian.
Soon they were headed west towards the M6 and had joined up with the motorway headed north towards Manchester. The sky was still grey and rain drizzled onto the glass the bonnet as Ian drove north, careful to keep to the speed limit. The dark blue Morris Minor attracted little attention as Ian was sticking to the speed limit and not changing lanes. An hour later they had crossed the narrow part of the Mersey and were in Lancashire as they continued north towards Manchester, the skies having gotten even more grey and heavy.
Ian drove up to the driveway of a modest red brick house in Didsbury and parked the Morris inside the garage before he turned off the engine. "Bring him up to the room, Olga and I prepared it for him", said Skye, Ian's sister.
"All right, Miss Bossy Pants", he teased.
Skye tried not to laugh as the corner of her mouth twitched. "That's why I'm the head nurse of our unit, Ian. I have to see how badly he's hurt, and if he needs to go to the hospital", she said.
"Is that the king? And how could he get around in that?", asked Alexei dubiously when he saw the armor.
"Sort of, he's not a king anymore. And the armor was custom-made", explained Pierre.
The men carried him upstairs to the spare room on the second floor. Skye and Ian's wife Olga had washed their hands and donned long white aprons over their clothes as they brought him upstairs to the room and laid him down on the bed. "We ought to see if we can get cash for these bloody things", Skye muttered as she looked at his armor.
"Spoken like a practical Yorkshirewoman", teased Olga.
"Aye, we're a practical, canny bunch. Help me get it off him", she said.
After a few minutes of pushing and pulling, they managed to take off his armor and left him in a thin white linen tunic which covered his torso down to his knees. Skye carefully examined his head for injury as she checked his scalp under his curly black hair and then his face and the back of his neck. She noticed the faint scar on his left cheek and a smaller one on the left side of his upper lip, a few cuts from swords on his arms of which were mostly older but a few that still oozed trickles of blood as Olga handed her a bottle of rubbing alcohol and gauze bandages. He flinched as she wiped the cuts with the alcohol and applied bandages, his breath coming out in a shallow gasp. "I suppose they only had boiled witch hazel, this is better", she chuckled.
"Other than the cuts, he's in very good shape. Hugo must have gotten him before the battle became intense", said Skye.
"Then Henry Tudor claimed victory over an imposter. The Welsh git and his pious mother probably thought they defeated the White Rose of York, only we know better", said Pierre with a grim smile.
"I know, but we'll explain everything to him when he wakes up. He'll wake up too early if you don't shut your gobs", said Skye.
"Just because Tanya isn't here, you don't have take over the bossy role, Skye", teased Olga.
"I know, I miss Tanya. But let him sleep", she said as they all left the room.