Hamelton (Dr. Paul) (13 page)

A colder William than I remembered said, "There will be plenty of time for discussions after dinner. For now we are losing light and need to prepare to eat."

We helped build a fire as several more men arrived with poultry to cook. Handy tagged around behind William the whole time. Once the food was cooked, the men ripped the food apart and gobbled it down with a thorough enjoyment. As the night grew deeper the men kept lowering the fire so the light could not be seen from the mansion. John the Friar stood mostly off to the side in the dark. I noticed that all the men were wearing weapons. Their faces looked stern. Despite the somewhat friendly greeting, there was an unmistakable nightmarish feeling about the way the flickering fire shed light on these desperate looking men. Hanna, Jeff, Cindy, and I stayed to ourselves and talked little.

William started loudly at first to speak and everyone stopped to hear his words. "I must admit your appearance here was a surprise to me. I suppose the strings of time travel together. Let me explain to you what has happened since your yesterday. We arrived into the Garden of Eden that morning. Life was beautiful. We had all the food we wished and a long walk to town gained us more drink then anyone could wish for. It was hard at first to sleep in the sunlight but we got used to it. Within weeks of arriving, we noticed that the constant sunlight dehydrated a good portion of our food supply. We harvested what we could and stored it. Some of the plants were saved in a healthy manner due to tents we put up every half day to imitate night for the plants. Then the water supply went bad. The streams that fed my irrigation canals ran dry because we no longer had rain in the upper mountains to fill the mountain lakes. Once the lakes emptied, there was no irrigation water."

Jeff interrupted, "Empty a lake? That would take years?"

William continued, "My friend, we are talking years and years. We never aged. We had no way to tell when a day passed. But I would think probably the same ninety-six years passed in the Garden of Eden as they passed in this world. Ninety-six years of no night, sickening food and ill water. Do you not understand?” His voice got louder, “I was wrong, the Garden of Eden is not the escape to heaven, but it is inHell itself.”

Passing to recollect himself, “Back to where I was. Let‟s see… The irrigation water was not much more then mud. The well for drinking lasted for a long time but ended up going bad too. We lost one man to the bad water. The ill water could still nourish some plants that made food. Most of our nourishment came from the bottled wines we found in the homes of Hamelton and a nearby winery, in time even the bottled wine went bad. Without animals or fish we had little to do but survive on what we could. We tried often to return through the tunnels but there was no way out, until two days ago when we finely broke through. We found ourselves here. I apologize how rude our eating may seem to you, but remember, we have not had meat for ninety-six years. Now we find ourselves in a land of plenty. Well that is all I can tell you, and I knew I must say something because I knew that you must have been confused." With that, his band of men started to chat among themselves and the conversation with us seemed over.

The men all had drinks and drank late into the night. We had no better place to be and we were too nervous to go to sleep with all the rough men walking around.

Hanna whispered over to me worried, "They have also not seen a woman for ninety-six years."

Jeff and I felt that it was our duty to watch over the girls. We were very lucky that the men drank themselves to sleep since anyone of those armed men could destroy me in battle. We slept off to the side of the fire on the ground. Handy and several men slept on some mattresses inside the house. With all the time travel and arriving in different time periods at any hour of a day, my body felt exhausted and needed a good night‟s sleep.

XIV

I was awoken at the rise of the sun. Jeff, I found out, had been awake all night due to fear for himself and standing guard for the rest of us. He wanted to nap so I stood myself up, dusted off, and walked around while he slept. Three of the men from last night had slept where they fell down in drunkenness by the fire. The fire had gone cold hours ago, but there is something about looking into the ashes of a fire that almost tells its own story of what happened around it in its short life.

The few men lying around me looked as if they must have been so numb that they slept in rather uncomfortable positions. I had a good chance to look at the men close up in the light. Their faces were sun worn. They had wrinkles like men 10 years older than the men I had seen just days ago. The clothes they wore did not seem to be the same as they had left in. Each of the three men all wore matted filthy beards, I could not remember which was which from the night before, and they all seemed to act in the same manner.

I sat on a stone and faced them, now I had the time to understand what was going on. I did not immediately trust anything I heard, despite my like for William, he seemed to have been through a lot and I wanted to see if what he had said checked out to be truthful. William said the year was 1736, how did he know that? He also said he had been here several days, he no doubt asked someone in town. The Hidden Six appears unused by the people staying in the mansion as Maggie told me it was most of the time.

We arrived around the same time in history as William. To answer that I thought that we originally appeared in William's time when he opened the gate to the Garden of Eden. The second time we arrived, he had resumed his experiment. That was the time when he finally opened the gate again. Before he left he said the tunnel was getting smaller, maybe the tunnels open and close. It would be likely that my gate from the bedroom would follow the rifts in time he had made. That made sense to me that we were following William because he kept ripping the fabric of time as he went along.

As far as what happened to the Garden of Eden, turning into a dried out hell and all, William had said when we walked through the Garden of Eden together that he had once spent about five days there and the time of day never changed. Therefore, his time would have always been just after day break. The soft gentle sun never setting, never lessening for years on end could dry out the fruit trees as he said. Never having rain to replenish the water supply would eventually contaminate the stagnate water. Why did it not rain if there was evaporation? When we were in the Garden of Eden, we felt no wind, so there was no air movement and therefore no rain, just humidity. The earth literally stood still, no rotation, no wind, and no rain.

The men themselves were my next question. They had different clothes than they had left with. In the Garden of Eden they could pick up any outfit from any house in the world, and as far as the condition of the clothes I must remember they were made ninety-six years ago and William's men have been roughing it for several days. One interesting thing I had noticed last night was that William was wearing both his sword and dagger. Strange when his short sword was on my belt. He must have recovered his weapons in the Garden of Eden from the spots handy and I were standing when he left and worn them back into the real world. That means at that moment there was the two of the same dagger, in the same place, at the same time.

As far as the question of the condition of the men? I had read in school that age happens when our body's cells multiply themselves and slightly mutate each time. Theoretically if the cells multiplied perfectly, we would never age. That seemed to be what happened to these men. Their faces looking so worn could easily be blamed on the drying of the skin from the sun. The once very religious men becoming a bunch of drunks would be because the only drinkable liquid is bottled spirits. And as far as an endless supply, all they would have had to do was pull a cart to the nearest winery and fill it up with a year‟s supply.

In the modern world one of my physicians questioned this scientifically, “If the cells in the body don‟t mutate with reach regeneration then how come the men gained wrinkles, grew beards and why would the cells in the trees and wine mutate?” Frankly, I don‟t know and did not think of it at the time. Maybe it had something to do with why animals, including humans, were not supposed to be in that dimension? Maybe the “modern” knowledge of genetics is as flawed as the scientists of 1641 thought the world was flat? The answer is simply “it just was”. I then asked the good doctor, “Why do humans have an appendix if no one knows what it does?”
Everything William said seemed to make sense and was logical. Although I had learned William is not above lying when it suits his purposes, I saw no reason not to believe his explanations. Now the question that faced me was, is he the same good man he was ninety-six years ago? He seemed distant now. His manner of talk was different. He still had the respect of his men at least.

The men started to stir. The area came to life with the quiet men from both inside the house and outside cleaning up the campsite as if no one had used the place the night before.

William came out and sat near me. "So my friend, I was impressed with your conclusion about my followers and my intentions to enter the Garden of Eden the last time we met. What do you see in the stars for the future now?"

"I don't really know what your intentions are", I said cautiously.

He said, "Are we back to that game again? I have only had the same people to speak to for a lifetime. I will make you a deal. I will tell you what my intentions are if you tell me your honest opinion of me. I do this because my numbers are short and your group are the only others I trust in this world. You are as stuck here as I am, and I feel that we should act together. Do we have a deal as far as honest negotiation goes?" I nodded in acceptance then he continued, "The way I see things are that my estate was willed to the people of the town of Hamelton. My family fortune was spent to improve that town. They ate, drank, and lived off my wealth. They owe me! I will take back what is rightfully mine. That seems fair to me, they took from me, and I will take from them! An eye for an eye. I will split my fortune evenly with those who help me. Now, please, tell me what you think of me, and will you consider asking your friends to join me?"

I paused to comprehend what he had said before I answered. The thought that came to me at that moment may sound prejudiced at first, but on the contrary, if you think about it, it is realistic. In history, when one race or group is harmed by another, the harmed group expects the descendants of the men who harmed their ancestors to repay the debt. I feel sorry for the men who died unfairly in war, but I see no reason to condemn the victorious army's grandsons. Nor do I think the grandsons of the men unfairly treated should lay back and expect to be given free assistance from some kind of guilt they expect other people to have. Neither of the two grandsons had any control of their forefathers nor anything to do with each other. This equation was more simple, the people of Hamelton had no bad intent, they merely accepted what was freely give to them from William. I could see no debt.

I told him, "Unfortunately, your money was most likely spent years ago and it was your decision to give it to the town. I doubt these townspeople will give more than a warm welcome and a thank you. We can ask and see how big their hearts are. I agree that we should stay together, but under what terms should be discussed."

William's eyes grew big as I talked. He seemed insulted but calmed down immediately, or hid his emotions. "So Chris, if I understand you, you think we should crawl into the town that my grandfather built and beg for coins? I...don't...think...so." Forcing to recompose himself again he continued, "Why don't you go on an excursion with some of my men and think about it today." We shook hands and he went off to supervise some of his men.
William asked Handy to stay with him, which was both unfortunate and unavoidable. The other four of us walked off with John the Friar and two other men. They talked very little to us. After hopping the wall and heading toward town on the dirt road we came upon a man riding a horse and pulling three more behind him with ropes.

John the Friar's big body blocked the road as he stood tall with his arms spread out wide.
The man on horseback stopped and said, "My good fellows, how can I help today?"

John the Friar spoke as one of the other men took the reins from the man on horseback. "We have need of your horses, get off and be gone."

Both my friends and the man on horseback were amazed with the request. The man on the horse silently refused to move. John the Friar walked up to him and hit him with the side of his arm. The man fell of his horse and into the dirt. The man got to his feet and charged his attacker. John the Friar slapped the man again and the man flew about three feet high and six feet away from the blow, then rolled another six feet. John the Friar turned his back to the man. When he turned to face the man again he held that large sword in his large hand and was approaching the now cowering injured man. He lifted the sword high in his hand as if preparing for a final blow. I drew my long dagger and put myself between them, facing John the Friar.

"Move!" The attacker simply demanded.

I said to him in a high voice, "No. If you want to harm this man again, you will need to go through me." He started advancing. "If you kill me, you will need to explain your actions later." That got his attention. "You have the horses, why do you need to kill him anyway?" That did it. He put his sword back into its sheath and checked over his new horse.

I reached into my pocket and pulled out a gold coin. I slid the man the coin without John the Friar seeing. I said "This should pay for your losses." The man thanked me and asked the name of his protector. "My name is Chris Blake," I told him.

He replied, "Well, Chris Blake, my name is Edward Mulligan and you have the everlasting thanks for my life. If I could ever repay you, come see me at the town stables in Hamelton."

I went over to find out from John the Friar what was the idea stealing this man's belongings and almost maiming or killing the unarmed man. I stood behind the Friar as he continued to examine the horses he just stole with the animal‟s rightful owner standing timidly off to the side of the road. I knew that John the Friar knew that I was behind him, but he either did not want to talk to me or felt he had nothing to say.