Chapter VIII

Behind Justin, moments later, Will Molineux, brandishing his pewter tankard, emerged from Sam Adams' house, roaring his rage and anger. Even as he cut for Long Lane, Justin once again felt a curious undefinable flicker of memory--the same that had troubled him while listening to Ortine--and once before recently on an occasion he could not recall.

For a few brief moments, while Justin slithered up the uneven icy surface of Long Lane, Molineux's shouts were blanketed by the corner buildings. But before Justin had proceeded more than fifty yards past his lodging place of the night before, a rising outcry struck his ears--ominous not only because of its closeness but because it no longer issued from one throat. Evidently Molineux's gang was joining the chase.

To his right the uninviting walls of close-set shops and houses offered no refuge. But to his left the houses were larger and fewer, with stretches of solid wooden fence between. If he could only get through into the inner-block area of yards and gardens, he might be able to cut across them to Arch Street and thence to the Wilkins house.

The hue and cry was growing louder by the moment--his pursuers would emerge in sight of him and the chase would be as good as over unless he did something and did it quickly.

Providentially he stumbled, stretched out a hand, struck a small door in the fence which gave under his weight. With a sobbing gasp of relief Justin lunged through it, shut it behind him, leaned against it, panting, while the sounds of pursuit swept past.

Getting through the various yards and gardens was not easy because of the deep snow. It took him a good fifteen minutes but he finally worked his way through a manure-hole--mercifully the cold weather kept it from reeking--into a barn.

Horses, well wrapped but chilly, stamped in their stalls as he made his way to the front of the building. Justin found a small door, slipped through it and made his way to the snowpile against the Wilkins shed.

Luckily there was no lock on the window of Deborah's room. Justin crawled through it, sick with relief, closed it after him--and promptly skidded on the hardwood floor with a snow-covered heel and crashed into a small table by the bed.

Before he had time to put the table back up Justin heard heavy masculine footsteps on the stairs, heard Deborah protesting, "But I promise ye--there's no one there. It must ha' been the old house creaking."

The bedroom door was wide open. Justin stood there, unable to think of a thing to do. He wondered what sort of man Deborah's sire would be like.

While he waited helplessly, Justin irrelevantly saw the spider lying on the floor, half beneath the bed. He must have left it in his pajama pocket, Debby must have found it and put it on the table he had overturned. Out of sheer reflex action Justin stooped to put it in his pocket.

He rose reluctantly, his eyes first noting a pair of large black shoes with silver buckles, then heavy white hose covering long sturdy legs, grey kneebreeches and waistcoat and a maroon broadcloth coat with silver buttons.

Atop this tall stocky body was a square not-unhandsome face, distinguished by a rather flat nose, a low broad forehead, angry hazel eyes and some of the fieriest red hair Justin had ever seen. The hazel eyes were regarding him even balefully.

"And who in hell be _ye_?" the newcomer inquired. He swung about as Deborah appeared behind him in the doorway, the back of one hand to her mouth. He said, "Is this some scurvy trick to put me further still in the thrall of my wretched wife?"

"Charles!" Deborah whispered reproachfully. "Ye promised...."

"I know it," Justin replied desperately, "but I had to hide somewhere. There's a mob chasing me through the streets."

"But e'en so ..." the girl began, then hesitated as the faint sound of the hue and cry could be heard from the streets outside.

The red-headed man's voice was sharp as the crack of an Australian bullwhip. He said, "That's Will Molineux!" Then, fiercely, to Justin, "What have ye done to bring Will and his cutthroats on ye'r tail?"

"I had a little trouble with Mr. Adams," Justin murmured.

"So!" The big man took a menacing step toward him. He glanced at Deborah, who appeared stricken, then said, "'Twould appear there is more in this entire episode than meets the eye. Mayhap ye'r one with my wretched wife and her wretched Tory friends."

He took another step toward Justin, obviously measuring him for a blow. Deborah gave a little cry and leapt forward, seizing his right arm and dragging upon it with all of her weight.

"Please!" she cried. "_Please_, Master Otis...."

Otis! Justin was stunned. The resemblance to his well-known portrait was unmistakable. Here was James Otis, the brilliant and powerful young Boston lawyer who first, in that very month of February, in that very year of 1761, stood up for four hours in the Province House and defied the right of the Crown to issue the unlimited search warrants known as "Writs of Assistance" in order to check smuggling.

Here was the man who resigned his lucrative position as King's Advocate for Massachusetts, defied his wealthy Tory wife and all his wife's friends to make the first open plea for Colonial freedom.

Here was the man who gave heart to the Adamses, to Hancock and, in a vastly widening circle, to the Virginians Patrick Henry and, later, Thomas Jefferson. Here was the man who led Boston toward freedom until the tensions of his own career and domestic life drove him at length to madness.

Worse, as Justin quickly realised, here was the man to whom Deborah's friends and family were asking her to give herself. Justin understood their motives all too well. Apparently, unless he found some outlet away from his strife-torn home, Otis' friends already feared for his sanity. Employing an age-old therapy they had selected Deborah to supply that outlet.

Even in the misery of the moment, Justin found his mind ranging back to Ortine and his motives in having the girl go through with her assignment. In untampered-with history the girl must have turned Otis down. Perhaps in that turn-down Ortine read the outraged pride that had led Otis to stand up and make his revolutionary speech. By having the girl acquiesce Ortine figured, probably correctly, that the attorney would never be so inspired. The chain reaction that led to Independence Hall, to Saratoga, to Yorktown, would not have been touched off.

Justin saw, as if in slow-motion, Otis fling back his arm to clear it of the girl's desperate grip--saw her tossed against the wall. Her head struck with a sickening thud and she dropped to the floor in a pathetic unconscious heap.

Justin forgot about his near-worship for James Otis and sprang forward to do battle. He landed a hard right high on the lawyer's cheek, then felt the snow on a heel again betray him into slipping. Out of the corner of an eye he caught a quick glimpse of a large fist emerging from a ruffled cuff and arching directly toward his own jaw. He felt a jarring impact....

* * * * *

Justin found himself once more lying on a portable bed in one of the cubicles of Ortine's Belvoir dormitory. His jaw hurt and there was a tender spot over his right ribs that would, he knew, grow sorer with time.

He sat up, rubbing his chin, discovered he was still wearing the ill-fitting clothing with which Deborah had fitted him out. He glanced around--and his heart did a ground-loop. Alongside his own cot was another--and on it lay the girl.

Justin forgot his own sorenesses and went to her, put a hand on her face, felt his knees turn to oil as he discovered her face was warm, felt the rhythmic softness of her breath against his fingers.

She opened her eyes and smiled--and Justin felt his insides melt at the trustful happiness of her expression. He said, "It's all right, Debby dear--Ortine's brought us back to Belvoir."

"As long as we're still together," she whispered. Then, frowning, "My head hurts in back--a little."

A familiar sardonic voice spoke from the doorway. "I am glad," said Ortine, "that you find your return here so pleasant. I don't suppose you have the slightest inkling of what this unexpected insanity of yours has cost."

Justin considered for the first time the possible consequences of what he and Deborah had just managed to accomplish. He said, "We fouled up the works?"

Ortine stared at him for a long moment. Only by rigidity of manner did he give indication of the anger he must have felt. He said, "You show rather more discernment than I had expected, Justin--but I fear you still fail to realise the enormity of your sabotage.

"Time, as you conceive it, has no meaning for me, of course--yet I have had to spend vast amounts of it, searching, searching the entire course of human history, to select the exact men and women for my purpose, the exact moments in which they could be effective.

"The essence of my entire plan was simultaneous alteration of the historic line," Ortine went on. "Only thus could the salvation of humanity be effected without dislocation amounting to chaos. By your insane romantic aberration you two have disrupted the entire process."

Justin thought it improbable that Deborah could understand much of what their host was saying, yet the impact of his tone upon her was dynamic. She slipped from her bed, skirts whirling, marched up to Ortine and said, "I care not what ye think, Master Ortine. Neither Charles nor I asked to be brought here. Aye, and furthermore I'll not have ye using that tone to Charles."

Ortine said to Justin, "Perhaps we'd better talk this over in private."

"So ye can soft-talk Charles into doing ye'r bidding--and leave me to face Master Otis alone?" Deborah's defiance was magnificent and Justin put an arm around her.

He said to Ortine, "Since time is of no account to you, perhaps you'll give us a little of it together."

"As you wish." Ortine shrugged and turned to leave. "I shall await your summons."

"What did he mean?" Deborah asked Justin, when he had gone.

Justin studied her briefly, kissed her, then said, "Debby, just how did our friend explain himself to _you_?"

"Oh...." The girl looked vague for a moment. "He told me that if I failed to heed Master Otis' plea the redcoats would come to Boston and burn my home and kill my father and mother and brothers--aye, and ruin me."

Suddenly Deborah's arms were around him tightly, her worried face peering searchingly into his. She said, "Through my willfulness will all these dreadful things come to pass, Charles darling?"

"Debby," he told her gently, "I don't know. But I'm going to find out."

"Ye'll not desert me?" she pleaded.

He smiled down at her. "Debby, I don't think I could desert you if it meant the end of the world--and it may yet."

"Ye'r jesting," she said. "Kiss me."

He did--and again they were interrupted by a throat-clearing in the cubicle doorway. Dr. Phillips said in his old-fashioned London accents, "I don't quite ken why our friend has brought us back--but I see things are the same betwixt the two of _you_."

"Why, Dr. Phillips!" exclaimed the girl. "Ye'r clad in ye'r breeks now."

"I thought it might be a wise precaution before returning to my nap," said the professor mildly.

Justin said, "Come in, Doctor." He set Deborah on her cot, swung onto his own, while Dr. Phillips accepted the one chair in the cubicle. He seemed not at all surprised to find two beds where one had stood before.

"Dr. Phillips," said Justin, "I've been hoping you'd turn up here again. On our first visit I saw a Roman soldier down the hall toward the dining saloon. He was with a Mohammedan-looking female. Do you have any idea of who he is--or what his assignment is?"

Dr. Phillips nodded. "Aye," he said. "I forget his name--it is of no moment in history. He is--or was--a mere field officer in the suite of a Judaean sub-Praetor during the reign of Augustus."

"And his assignment?" Justin asked quietly.

"I believe to the best of my memory--" Dr. Phillips frowned as he delved into his own mind--"that this chap was supposed to arrest a fellow named John Something-or-other outside of Jerusalem and hold him on a trumped-up charge."

"I take it," said Justin, "that Roman Judaea has not been one of your fields of study."

"Gracious no!" replied the don. "My only knowledge of Latin is derived from an effort to study its imprint, if any, on the pre-Christian tongues of Northern Europe--including Scandinavia."

"Thank you, Dr. Phillips," said Justin, slipping off his couch again. "By the way, how do you summon Ortine when you want him?"

"Just press this button," said Dr. Phillips, indicating a circular buzzer almost invisible against the wall near the corridor door. "Well, in that case I'll be going."