5. This Reality
It took Zoe a long time to understand the world around her. The world of hundreds of years ago. It'd taken her a while to accept that she had literally traveled back in time. It just wasn't possible according to what Zoe believed. Science couldn't explain something like this, therefore it couldn't be right: this had to be some sort of hallucination, some sort of coma or maybe she was just mad.
She'd spent the first week stuck in what was supposed to be a bed because of her ankle, and after that the guards wouldn't let her through the gates. Since she didn't understand Latin, it was pointless to try to argue with them, and their weapons made her nervous. Sharp objects and untrustworthy-looking, possibly insane men didn't go together well in Zoe's life.
As for what had happened-she firmly believed that it could all be explained somehow. Her personal favourites were madness, hallucination or, failing this, some kind of science experiment gone wrong. Because magic did not exist. She could not have magically traveled through time. Magic was not real and neither was the TARDIS, so that option was ruled out. She had no fucking idea how she got here. She decided that if she wasn't mad or hallucinating, then this must be some sort of English Bermuda Triangle. Aliens were more plausible than anything else she could come up with.
But she seemed to be stuck in this strange world. Every day she woke up in the house of a little old lady with the herb obsession instead of her own bed, a hospital or the wet grass where this insanity had started.
She missed her family. Her mom, her dad, her sisters and even her annoying little brother. She missed her dog, Ripper, and even the goldfish. Zoe missed her friends. She constantly thought about Suze, Mike, Andy, Brit, Simon and all the others. What would they have thought when she didn't get back to the house? Would she be officially dead now? How were her family coping with all of this? And worse, what if they were here, too? What if they were all stuck in the past? What if she just included them in her mad vision?
She hadn't spoken to Arthur, Lancelot or Gawain again after those two days when they kidnapped her. When she'd woken up Lancelot and a really tall man, bald like the one in the bed next to hers, were there. They'd been talking, but when she woke up they turned around. They waited until she'd woken up sufficiently, given her the clothes she'd left in the room that morning before the really tall one carried her outside. They had talked to her and must have tried to explain what was happening, but with Zoe's communication skills being what they were they failed dismally.
They'd put her on a horse and led it over to a little old lady's house. She had white hair, more wrinkles than Zoe had ever seen on a woman before and Zoe was apparently to live with her. It took about a week for her ankle to heal fully, during which time the old woman had been very patient with her.
Actually she was just very patient full stop. The little old lady put up with Zoe's inability to speak in a language she recognized, as well as with her initially frequent temper-tantrums. There were days when Zoe refused to believe in anything at all. She would simply not get up from where she had slept, close her eyes and cry. And on those days, when the little old lady disturbed her in any way, Zoe would sit up and yell at her, using the worst language she knew. But the little old lady would wait for her to start crying and wrap a blanket around her, patting her shoulder and murmuring soothingly until Zoe's tears had more or less stopped.
She missed her pets, her friends, her family. She'd think of them, and what they'd be doing and she'd start yelling at the old woman, because the old woman wasn't a friend or her family. Yeah, sure, the old lady had been nice, but seriously, she'd been kidnapped and aliens had abducted her and taken her back in time or whatever. She could not expect to be happy about the situation.
The nice little old lady lived in a shack outside the main town, but still part of it. It was near the Roman fort, but not close enough to see any of the goings-on there. The old lady seemed quite happy to talk at Zoe when Zoe was in her better moods and she pointed to the Roman fort quite a lot. She also talked a lot about Arthur, which was one of the few words Zoe could recognize. And this lady didn't even speak in Latin, but some Celtic-sounding tongue instead. Talking together was impossible, despite Zoe's best efforts on some days and the old lady's never-stinting patience, and they found that communication through mime was possible, if slow and frustrating. Zoe did wonder why the old lady had taken her in, but in trying to mime that they both got incredibly confused and Zoe gave up. It still wasn't a comfort. But the old lady was, particularly when she was humming to herself as she did the work around the house and Zoe attempted to help.
Zoe missed a lot of technology. Like plumbing. The first few weeks with the stinking drop-toilet that everyone used was terrible. The lack of baths or showers made her feel constantly dirty. No electric light or heat. It was much harder to cook food, and cleaning looked like a bitch. She'd never realized how much everyone had to thank the dishwasher, let alone the washing machine for. It was apparently hard work, living out here. And all of it done in very uncomfortable dresses. The old lady had been both fascinated and horrified by her tracksuit pants. She had marveled over the material they were made out of, studying the weave of it carefully when there was enough light. But when Zoe had put them on and walked around in them the old woman had broken into quite rapid speech and thrust a dress in Zoe's face. She had even gone so far as to stand in front of the door until Zoe put the dress on.
And even with all these changes it took a while for Zoe to accept she was really there. While many people would dream of being zapped back into history, Zoe would prefer reading about it from the safety and comfort of her bed back home, thank you very much. It took a brush with death for her to really start to believe she was truly in Medieval England, that she had to live there and that she could possibly die there.
This brush with death, as Zoe somewhat self-pityingly called it, was a bout of severe food poisoning, or some other stomach-based illness. She'd gotten diarrhoea, the worst case she'd ever had and couldn't hold down food for a week or so. The little old lady had carefully fed her watery plant stuff that was possibly supposed to be some sort of tea or soup - Zoe was too sick to work out which. Stomach cramps were a million times worse without any painkillers, she realised. And then there was the vomiting… She couldn't stomach anything before bringing it back up again, especially any milk-based products. The illness had lasted a week or so, Zoe wasn't exactly sure, but it was the single most horrible, painful and disgusting experience of her life to date.
When she didn't feel the urge to run to the hole that passed for the toilet, Zoe thanked the little old lady. While she didn't understand the words, she understood the sentiment and smiled before patting Zoe's shoulder.
About all Zoe could do to communicate was wave her hands and mime. That took a while and Zoe frequently yelled her frustration at the poor old woman, who took it all in stride. She didn't even know the lady's name until about a week later when she thought to ask as best she could. Mostly by pointing at her and making questioning noises, but she was asking. It took a while for the old lady to understand, but Zoe eventually found out she was called Braewyn.
It took a long time for Zoe to learn enough Latin to be able to speak, not to mention the other language Braewyn spoke. She understood most of it, and she knew how to say 'I don't know what you're saying', but learning Latin and what was probably some kind of Celtic language like this was so different to the structured lessons she'd had in French at school and Arabic at university that she had no idea how to go about it. So Zoe still didn't know how to say much, even though she understood most of it. And, because she was learning from what Braewyn said, some areas of her vocabulary were lacking. Such as swearing.
Braewyn didn't swear, no matter how much Zoe yelled at her, or threw her things around. Zoe had been a real bitch, she knew, when she had just moved in. Gradually, though, as she got better, Zoe was able to get her temper under control. Some of the first grammatically correct sentences she'd said to her host had been apologies for the way she'd acted. Except she'd said half of it in Latin, the other half in the Celtic-type tongue. Braewyn had had to tell her the difference while Zoe stared at her feet, cheeks burning with embarrassment.
She tried to apologize in other ways as well, not just by speaking to her in her language. To do this, Zoe, while she was living in Braewyn's house, helped the old woman with the work. She got water from a well, but after getting sick from drinking it she refused to let either herself or Braewyn drink it unless it had been boiled. They used more water that way, it took more painful trips from the well and Braewyn scolded her for being stupid (at least, that was what Zoe thought she was saying), but they didn't get ill again. Zoe had no desire to repeat the experience.
Although Zoe had tried to chop wood for the fire they needed for cooking and keeping warm she was too little and too weak to do very much. So she got Braewyn to talk with a man who lived nearby named Byron, and organized a deal through a complex series of miming. He chopped wood for their fire; Zoe would wash and mend his clothes when she washed hers and Braewyn's. It was heavy work, and Zoe's arms ached after hauling wet clothes around and scrubbing them. Her hands were raw, red and wrinkly afterwards. But Zoe gradually got used to it, and it helped when Braewyn showed her how to make a good soap out of lavender and thyme and animal fat. It was rather disgusting to make, but it got the clothes clean.
Braewyn also showed her how to make soap for when the two of them washed and how to make a shampoo out of nettles. It was uncomfortable, but it got the grease out better than anything else.
That was one of the things Zoe hated most about this time. Nobody was properly clean. Braewyn laughed at Zoe for washing herself every two days with water she'd pulled up from the well and boiled, but Zoe still felt disgusting. She really missed showers and toilets and running, clean water. Not to mention a long, hot soak in a proper bath. She'd kill for that. But Zoe wasn't going to die here of some disease she could have prevented with a bit of effort. She was going to find a way to go home, and she was going to go home healthy.
To that end Zoe took charge of cleaning the house as well. For the first week or so she had been disgusted with the conditions. The fire in the middle of the floor made the whole place smoky, there were no windows to get rid of it. Braewyn slept on the ground in a pile of furs that smelled terrible and were infested with bugs. Zoe had refused to sleep near those furs; she'd sulked when she found out that she was expected to sleep on them. What ever happened to proper beds with mattresses and sheets? Instead she slept on the other side of the fire, without any coverings on the dirt floor. It hadn't helped and she'd still been bitten by the fleas that jumped from the animal pelts.
Braewyn had rubbed sage on the bites and made soothing noises when Zoe had screamed about how disgusting it was. Then Zoe had grabbed all of Braewyn's furs and helped Braweyn treat them with a plant called fleabane, which Braewyn mimed would kill the horrible bugs. Watching the dear little old lady mime dying fleas made Zoe laugh and hug her impulsively. The old lady had smiled a rather toothless smile and hugged her back, handing the herb to Zoe, who used it several tiems before beating the dirt out of the furs and washing them again.
There were still a few bugs, but putting a stick smeared with animal fat near the pelts drew them to that rather than to either of the two women. It was a trick Zoe remembered from one of the more realistic fantasy novels she'd read. They threw the stick into the fire the next morning, Zoe getting a kind of malicious pleasure in watching the bugs burn.
Another thing on Zoe's list of 'things to clean' was what passed for a kitchen. Sure, she couldn't do much about the dirt floor, but she could make sure that the food was prepared hygienically. Or, as hygienically as possible. Braewyn did the actual cooking, though, as Zoe was relatively disastrous without a modern stove or oven. Her first effort at making bread here had turned into a burned up, inedible lump. It was better not to talk about Zoe's try at making stew for herself and Braewyn.
There was a vegetable garden out the back that Zoe helped Braewyn tend to. She learned which plants were food, which were medicinal herbs and which were weeds. She'd pulled out quite a few of Braewyn's precious herbs in the first month or so, but she'd made sure that the cupboard where the vegetables were kept was clean. She'd hunted down as many holes as she could find in the cupboard and plugged them with mud mixed with straw, which the man who helped with the wood, Byron, in a combination of that Celtic language and mime, explained would hold against the rats.
She'd put hellebore, which Braewyn had indicated (through a sequence of highly amusing mimed gestures) was rat-poison, in the corners of every shelf, and kept a careful watch on it. Eventually, their house became astonishingly rat-free compared to Byron's, the only other house she entered on a regular basis. Zoe had been astonished at first how many rats were in his house, but then she saw how he kept his food and it all made sense. Despite being particular about draughts, Byron wasn't all that concerned with how he stored his food supplies.
Zoe, however, was. Not only was there the vegetable garden to tend to, but Zoe, once she had a basic grasp of both Latin and the native language, was sent by Braewyn out shopping. They had gone together a few times, while Zoe got used to the atsmophere of the market, the money, who Braewyn bought from and what the two of them needed. Zoe even got used to the armed Roman patrols wandering the market, to a certain extent. The first time she had run into them she had clutched Braewyn's hand and hadn't let go, despite the old woman's attempts to soothe her. As the vendors got to know Zoe and Zoe became more comfortable, the old lady begged off, saying she had things to do during the day, and Zoe was sent out all alone to the market that had grown up around the Roman fort.
She learned how to barter, although she generally didn't get very good bargains due to both her lack of language skills and general uneasiness with the world in general. She came home with things like flour and meat, and, if there was enough money left over, special treats for herself and Braewyn like cheese (which Zoe was very uneasy about) and honey (which Zoe was considerably more comfortable with). All this Zoe carefully stored, making sure not to keep the meat around for longer than necessary. The lack of refrigerators was really annoying, and she hadn't realized how quickly meat went off.
It was three months before Zoe deemed the place as clean as it was likely to get. Her grasp of Latin and what she'd discovered was the native language of the native British people, allowed her to participate in basic conversations now. Simple conversations became easier, and as she practiced, slowly Zoe learnt more and more.
For another two months after that Zoe learned the two languages. Extraordinarily slowly. She was competent with Latin and the native tongue. At least, she'd learned most of the words she needed to know to buy food and clothing and Braewyn and Byron understood her. She had actually started to learn the herbal remedies Braewyn dealt with. It was Braewyn's job, and it earned just enough to support the two of them.
Zoe asked one day why Braewyn had taken her in. Thankfully she was now capable of asking such a question.
'Arthur asked me to,' Braewyn had replied. Apparently it was as simple as that, even with Zoe's temper tantrums and inability to communicate. When Zoe pressed for more details Braewyn reluctantly parted with them.
'You were the last one of a group of Christians traveling from the East, the rest of your group were slaughtered by Woads. Arthur told me that your crucifix is the work of the Easter Empire, and that you had forgotten Latin because of the attack. He did say that your clothes were very strange, and he hadn't seen the like of them before.'
That explained a lot, Zoe thought. It certainly explained why Arthur had paid such attention to her crucifix, and why he had been so insistent on getting her on a horse and out of there. It also explained why he had gone out of his way to make her comfortable-not many refugees would get the same personal attention from the Roman commander, Zoe thought. But she had learned that even if the men he commanded were pagans, Arthur himself was Christian, and extraordinarily kind.
When Zoe had asked more about Arthur and why a request from him could induce an old woman like Braewyn to take in a brat like her, Braewyn had said only that he was a good man, a man who was going to do great things.
'I would like to help in my own small way,' Braewyn had said, and sent Zoe out to weed the herb garden. 'You must prove you are no longer a brat,' the old woman had commanded, despite the twinkling in her eyes.
Zoe's interest in the herbs Braewyn used had started when Braewyn had offered her a tea made of wood betony to help her with her monthly cramps. She'd been moaning about how she missed her painkillers, and pads and tampons and how much she hated using the rags for pads when Braewyn had come up with a steaming clay mug. She'd drunk whatever was inside and it had actually worked. She had to admit to being dubious as to the benefit of some of the cures that Braewyn insisted worked, but she was learning that they were surprisingly effective.
She also realized that Braewyn was somewhat ostracized by the community. When she went to buy meat in the market, which was teeming with Roman patrols on some days, she heard words like 'witch' and 'crone' thrown around.
'Why is a young girl like you living with an old witch? Are you learning witchcraft, too?' a soldier had asked her one day, while she was examining some meat.
'It's not witchcraft. It's just plants,' she'd answered meekly, putting a hand up to the cross she wore at her neck. Men with swords still scared her, despite the frequent patrols in the market. They were tolerable at a distance, but Zoe was incredibly nervous at being in such close proximity to them.
Zoe had also discovered a church here, on one of her trips to the market. It was right in the shadow of the Roman fort, where Arthur and the famous knights lived. It had taken a while for her to get the courage to enter, as there were armed men constantly visiting it, and Braewyn still scoffed whenever she visited, but she found herself there frequently.
Zoe wasn't overly religious; the cross she wore had belonged to her grandmother before her death a few years ago, but Zoe found that it helped her believe that she would go home someday if she was in the church. Maybe it had something to do with the incense that burned there, maybe it was the familiarity of the Bible (a reminder of her Christian education), but she found a connection with her time in the church that she wasn't willing to give up.
She saw Arthur in the Church sometimes, but she never talked to him. Whenever he was here he always prayed with a startling intensity, one that did not invite interruptions. Zoe could respect that. She knew she enjoyed the silence as well. Pity Arthur's subordinates, the knights, couldn't respect that. They'd come in here to retrieve their commander sometimes when Arthur had been praying for too long. She saw the relief in Arthur's face when they came for him, and their need for him, so she didn't begrudge them the noise they created. What she did resent was their camaraderie.
Zoe had no friends here. Her friends were all over a thousand years in the future, or back in the real world. She cried herself to sleep occasionally, missed her friends terribly and her family even more, but she knew she was here unless she could find the way back. But going up to people and asking 'Excuse me, I'm from the future and I took a wrong turn into your time, do you know how I can get back?' was only going to earn her a trip to whatever qualified as the loony bin here.
After what she thought might be four or five months living in Roman Britain, Braewyn suggested that she go and get a proper job. Offended, Zoe asked what was wrong with what she was doing.
'We need more money so we can buy food for winter,' the old lady replied, pushing her white hair behind her ears.
It had been Braewyn's choice to accept Zoe into her house, and now Braewyn demanded that she work for the privilege to stay here? If Braewyn wasn't able to cope with the financial demands of having an extra person, then she should have told Arthur so, and not agreed meekly. Zoe really didn't think she was capable of getting a job. Her language skills weren't good enough for her to carry on a conversation much above basic level. And to impress an employer she needed to be able to speak with relative fluency. Surely Braewyn could understand this?
'You need to meet more people, Zoe,' Braewyn said, sounding irritatingly like Zoe's mother.
But she wasn't Zoe's mother. And she shouldn't even try to fill that role. Zoe's mother was over a thousand years in the future, probably worrying over her insane daughter. Braewyn just wanted Zoe to work so she could have more money and was trying to guilt-trip Zoe into agreeing with her.
'I don't need anybody,' Zoe told Braewyn. 'I'm fine with just you and Byron.'
'Byron has a life of his own, Zoe, and I won't be around forever.'
'Neither will I,' Zoe had snapped. She spent the rest of the day sitting in the church, praying that she would go home. To her real home, with her family, pets and friends. She cried herself to sleep that night, as Braewyn rubbed her back in comfort and forgiveness.
xxx
A/N: This is a really, really long chapter, but I couldn't split it up. It's all about Zoe, and nothing about the knights, really. She needs to get used to where she is before she can start forming any relationships with them. This was much easier to write than the last chapter, I have to say.
To my wonderful beta, homeric, I love you and this story wouldn't be half so good without you pointing out all my stupid mistakes and plot holes. Thanks a million.
To everyone who has put my story on their favourites list, or who has put my story on alert, I hope this lives up to your expectations, and thanks. I never expected so many people would like it this much. To my one reviewer from last chapter-thanks a million! Despite all the times I've been put on alert, I get a special thrill when I find a review in my inbox.
To all those who have read this, thanks for doing so, and please, review if you liked it, or with suggestions. Particularly about Mary-Sueishness, which I am terrified this story might descend into.
Disclaimer: I own nothing, if you sue, you will get nothing.