27

As they walked through the quiet town, the sheriff told Kendra about the buildings they passed.  

“That is Saint Peters,” he said softly, and gestured to the right toward a church with a single tower at the back, “with walls bolstered by old Roman tiles.”  He looked down at Kendra’s face, and smiled, evidently mistaking for historical wonder her expression of disbelief at having so narrowly escaped beheading.

“Ah, yes.  Cambridge is far older than her excellent universities and churches.  The Benedictine brothers built Magdalene College,” he gestured to the left toward the building that Kendra had thought was a second castle, “atop the ancient road of the Romans, who settled here more than a thousand years ago.”

As she listened to his quiet voice, Kendra realized what it was that made the sheriff different.  He seemed completely unafraid, and that freedom from fear left him calm as no one else she’d met in that time had been.  Kendra had to admit that even few in her own time moved with such grace.

They crossed the River Cam, and turned right at Saint John’s College.  The street was cobbled, and Kendra stubbed her toe on one of the rounded stones, and bit her lip with the effort not to cry out.

“Forgive me,” said the sheriff.  “You are cold and weary, and I chatter like a jay.  We draw nigh.  Beyond Trinity College there on the right is the high ward,” he gestured ahead, “and my home, not a furlong yonder.  Will you find yourself able?”

“Yes,” Kendra said, the pain in her toe throbbed, an improvement.  She shivered so hard that even the one short word wavered.  The sheriff patted her hand, still looped over his other arm, and spoke no more.  Kendra felt buoyed by his strong arm and silence.  She walked through the wave of fatigue that might have pulled her into sleep even on her feet.

“Here we are,” said the sheriff.

Kendra looked up from the cobbled road at which she had been staring, single-minded in her resolve not to stub her toe a second time on the rounded stones.  His house seemed grand.  Between the broad dark timber frame, its white walls glowed in the moonlight.  It was taller than the cottages she had passed on her way to town.  The roof looked tiled rather than thatched.  She thought the windows even had glass.

The sheriff walked her up two steps and through his front door.  “Please, sit here,” he led her through the dark to an armchair, “while I light the fire.”

The wood of the chair was smooth and well shaped, not like the curate’s rough furniture.  Kendra sat with her frigid hands jammed into her armpits, but found little warmth even there.  She was so cold that her bones ached. 

The fire in the sitting room ahead of her grew tall enough to cast a dim light around her.  She saw that she was in the front hall.  A draft swept up her back.  Kendra cringed.  Reflexively she stood, and walked toward the growing warmth of the fire without waiting to be invited.

She stood for long minutes, hands held out to the fire, warming the front of her body.  She completely forgot her host as the warmth spread slowly, delightfully through her skin. 

Not until Kendra turned to warm her back did she see the sheriff.  From a seat in the shadows just beyond the fire’s circle of light, he watched her.  His eyes glittered so eerily with reflected firelight, that Kendra jumped a little.  Her hand flew to the fob under her blouse.

“Tell me,” he said, “how you came to England.”

“I-I was born here,” she stammered.  Does he know?

“I think not.  The guards on the Northway may offer this university town two reasons for embarrassment, but they did manage to secure the fact that you knew not where you are.”

Was it too late to play dumb?  “Whatever you say, my lord.”  She looked down meekly, and clasped her hands behind her back, where they’d be warm.  Most distressingly, her front had already begun to cool.

The sheriff laughed long and hard.  “Whoever you may be, I must thank you for that laugh.  I have not enjoyed such a hefty measure for a long while…but tell me why you shiver still?  Surely the fire has warmed you.”

“My feet are wet, sir,” Kendra said, still trying to seem humble.

“I can offer a remedy that should suit, though it will not fit, I am sure.”

He left, but returned swiftly with a pair of long woolen stockings, and slippers of sheep’s wool.  Kendra could not clearly see his face when he knelt to set them at her feet, and he did not look up when he moved a chair in front of the fire for her.  She noticed that he still wore his gloves.  Only when he’d returned to his chair in the shadows did he look up. Was he hiding himself from her?  He did not speak until she had changed her footwear.

“Those are most unusual stockings,” he commented on her wet socks.  “Would you do me the courtesy of holding one up so that I might study its design?”

The stockings he’d given her were little more than tubes stitched shut at one end.  Hers were modern, with an offset seam over the toes, and a fitted heel.  Damn! 

“My lord, I cannot.  Such humble things…are not worth your notice.”  She glanced up and saw him grin broadly.

“Guest, I declare you are a mystery.  Your eyes mark the Orient as your place of birth…yes,” he said when she looked up sharply.  “I have traveled the Far East.  I have traveled the world as far as horse or ship can bear me, lack just one.  I have yet to sail to the Indies.”  He waited, but Kendra said nothing, her eyes on the floor.

“You must cease this pretense of having no intelligence.  It makes of you a tiresome companion.”  The sheriff sounded impatient for the first time.  “Your habit of speech, though most unusual, has given you away, and before that, your staunch claim that you are no witch, and swift offer of evidence in support of that claim.”

“I am not a witch, my lord.”

“Of course not, but you give a further clue of exotic provenance.  No Englishwoman would call a sheriff ‘lord’ else every small official think himself royal.  No, all in this land know sheriffs, those few who remain, as ‘sir’ only.”  He brought his hands together in a steeple before him.

Kendra wished heartily that she had studied the history of the period before she’d jumped.  How foolish she had been.  Was it better to have her mother be the exotic one, or her father?  Mother, she decided without further thought.  “My mother lived in Asi--ah, in the Orient--”

“Your mother?” interrupted the sheriff sounding amused.

“Yes,” Kendra insisted, grumpy at the interruption.  How was she to create reasonable lies if he interrupted her.  “My father was a sailor.  They met--”

“And fell in love in some exotic port, coupled, and produced you.”  The sheriff sounded bored, as he summarized the lie she’d planned to tell, but then his voice became playful, almost flirtatious.  “Again, fair guest, your tale luffs like the sails of a becalmed ship.  The roads to the Orient have been closed by the Moors for more than a century, and you seem far too young to be the offspring of such long ago coupling.”

“Parents, did I say parents?” quavered Kendra.  “I meant grand…ah, great grandparents.”

“Of course!” he laughed.  “Pray, continue.  Tell me how a sea captain brought a child to England.”

“Oh, no, sir!” Kendra objected.  “My great grandfather was Portuguese, and he did not bring my grandfather to Portugal with him until my grandfather was eleven.”

“And that lad was forbear to your mother or your father?”

“My mother.”  Kendra’s voice faded as she struggled to integrate the implications of her answer into her fabricated past.  The whole story within a story had become so complicated that her head ached.  At least her feet had warmed.  She yawned.  Her head was so heavy…

The next thing she knew, she was on the deck of a wooden ship under full sail.  She heard the timbers creak as the boat rolled over moonlit waves.  Kendra felt herself lifted faster than the waves lifted the boat, and jerked awake.

She opened one eye a sliver, just enough to see that she was still in the sitting room but in the sheriff’s arms.  She looked up to see, for the first time in adequate light, that his was the perfectly smooth white face of a vampire.