Robin Hood 1192 (The Symbiont Time Travel Adventures Series Book 7) Read online

  Robin Hood, 1192

  The Symbiont Time Travel Adventure Series, Book Seven

  T.L.B. Wood

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  Copyright © 2021 by Tara Brooks Wood. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-1-64457-186-6

  Contents

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Before You Go…

  Acknowledgments

  Suggested Reading List

  Also by T.L.B. Wood

  About the Author

  For Raquel and Gabrielle

  Up the airy mountain,

  Down the rushy glen,

  We daren’t go a-hunting

  For fear of little men;

  Wee folk, good folk,

  Trooping all together;

  Green jacket, red cap,

  And white owl’s feather.

  William Allingham

  Introduction

  Before the Normans arrived from France, the language spoken in England was Anglo-Saxon, otherwise known as Old English. This speech was an amalgam of different languages spoken by the tribes that invaded England over a large expanse of time. The Normans brought a French dialect to add to the mix, and consequently, Old English, French, and Latin were spoken. The languages were one part of the mixing of cultures, and the times were challenging and politically complicated.

  This book is a creation of fiction and is a product of the imagination of the author. It is not an attempt to write a historically accurate account of the times. However, an attempt is made to keep the action within the boundaries of what would be realistic for 1192. Any resemblance to anyone other than documented historical figures is purely coincidental.

  One

  “What’s with Ivanhoe?” Kipp asked, pausing in his reading to stand, stretch and yawn, opening his mouth wide like a hungry alligator about to snap. “I’m trying to wrap my head around the culture of the day.” He turned to glance at me. “And I don’t think I’m making any progress.”

  It was spring in the piedmont of North Carolina, and I was taking full advantage of the lovely mild weather to sit on the steps of my front porch to watch the world go by. Kipp, at my side as always, had been staring at his Kindle for a good hour. Occasionally, the stylus would drop from between his teeth, and he would sigh like the biggest martyr in the world, hoping I’d turn the pages for him. A woman walked by with a small, energetic dog tethered to her side with a leash. She paused at the end of my walk to smile at me, fellow dog lovers, or so she thought.

  “Your dog is simply beautiful!” she gushed, showing her teeth as she waited for me to return the compliment. Her furry companion stared at Kipp and became still as he realized that Kipp, despite his canine appearance, was not a dog. It didn’t take much effort for him to become entangled in his human’s legs as he sought cover from something inexplicable and therefore threatening in his world.

  I murmured some appropriate, expected words, and after the dog-loving woman managed to unwrap the leash from around her legs, she continued on with her walk. The sidewalk in front of my house was uneven, the concrete broken by the stubborn roots of old trees. I hoped the lady would not trip and go flying to the ground. Ignoring Kipp, I glanced across the street and noticed that both Philo and Peter’s cars were gone from Philo’s driveway. Last year when my friend and boss, Philo Marshall, decided to move smack dab in my neighborhood, I’d worried that too much closeness could breed discontent. But it hadn’t, and I’d found I enjoyed his company.

  “Hey, are you listening to me?” Kipp asked, turning his bright amber eyes on my face. He poked my side with his long, pointed muzzle to make a point, literally.

  How could I not listen to Kipp, I wondered? He was my bonded partner and as fellow symbionts in a human world, that meant quite a lot. We’d traveled back in time on many occasions to unravel mysteries and smooth out the bumps in the historical record of humanity. And since we were telepaths, I had to listen to him. A year had passed since we’d been present at the assassination of Abraham Lincoln, but for us symbionts, such a passage of time was insignificant. We were long-lived, and I’d actually been born in 1604 and had managed, with my former lupine partner, Tula, to rack up quite an impressive record of fact-finding trips in my four-hundred-plus years.

  Kipp, ignoring my lack of response, turned his eyes back on his Kindle as I stared at the top of his furry head. The sun, which was at its zenith, broke through the dense canopy of green leaves, and a shimmering ray of gold discovered Kipp, who looked like a puddle of molten copper. He was much older, technically, than I, but then again, not really when one takes into account the magic of time travel. Although he’d zoomed to contemporary times from some 70,000 years distant, he was maybe only two hundred years old in real time. I thought Kipp was sulking, just a little bit, and reached over to tousle the hair on his large head. He ignored me until I tickled the spot he couldn’t reach between his upright ears.

  “So, back to Ivanhoe,” he huffed, exhaling loudly as if bothered. “Explain the culture, please.”

  “Kipp, the setting of Ivanhoe predates me, also, since I’m not quite that old,” I said, lifting a dark eyebrow. I knew to humans I seemed to be a young woman, maybe in my mid-to-late twenties after a night of good sleep. It was following a time-shift, when I’d returned from a visit to the past, that I felt my age. Such things tended to be more difficult as I grew older. “So, it was just like anything else involving humans. Culture and societal mores change and evolve over time. The world now does not resemble what might have existed in, let’s say, the year 1100.” I knew he wanted more. “The French Nor
mans invaded England and fought the resident Saxons, going on to establish dominance over the country. That act changed the entire relationship between the people and established new rules about land ownership and that sort of thing.” There was more, but he’d become distracted.

  A brown SUV was pulling into Philo’s driveway, and that meant Peter and his lupine partner, Elani, were home. Four symbionts sharing one house seemed like a lot to me, I thought critically, before realizing I was in the same boat. I’d opened my home to Fitzhugh and Juno, elders in need of housing at the time. Shaking my head, I berated myself for the hypocrite that I was. Kipp tensed next to me, his muscled body feeling like a coiled spring. Elani, beautiful and sleek, had jumped from the SUV and was staring our way, her plumed tail waving. Even from the distance as the sun struck her dense pelt, the fur seemed to give off an iridescent shine, and she somehow managed to sparkle, like a rare gem amongst the ordinary. And although Elani was trying to control it, waves of her feelings towards Kipp wafted across the street in the mild breeze that also brought the sweet scent of flowering plants. Spring, it seemed, brought beautiful flowers and blooming trees, as well as love.

  Kipp exhaled again, forcefully. He and I shared an unusual—for contemporary times—level of access to one another’s thoughts since I’d encouraged Kipp to do what was natural for him. In our current symbiont culture, such a thing was considered rude, intrusive and possibly aggressive. But even with our constant enmeshment in each other’s brains, I couldn’t tease out the depth of his feelings for Elani. She was bright, beautiful and kind-natured. What was there not to love?

  Peter, on the other hand, was no mystery. He turned and waved his hand at us before beginning to unload groceries. I’d reluctantly become a mentor and trainer of sorts for him and Elani, and that had morphed into our working as a quartet, which was very unusual in the symbiont world, since the usual configuration was a humanoid paired with a lupine partner. But our collective at Technicorps liked to be progressive and pushed the new way of visiting the past. I knew I could be stubborn and resistant to change, but it actually had been okay, and when forced, I would admit I’d benefited from the relationship. Their youth challenged me in ways I was just beginning to comprehend.

  “Are you ever going to get a new car?” Kipp asked, dropping his Ivanhoe queries for a moment. “Philo has a nice SUV so that he and Vashti can ride in comfort. Peter and Elani have one, too. And look at your, uh…” he struggled, trying to find a word.

  “Jalopy?”

  “Yes, whatever that is. I mean, you can’t even take Fitzhugh and Juno to work because we can’t all fit in that little heap of rust with wheels.” Kipp huffed again. “You don’t like change.”

  A tiny breeze had curled around the side of my house to ruffle my hair, pushing a tendril across my face. As my hand went to stay the errant strand, I touched the thick braid of hair at the back of my neck and realized Kipp was right. I never changed my hair style and just pulled it back into a braid for convenience, too lazy to do anything else. Glancing down, my lips tightened as I took note of the worn, faded jeans I wore and the t shirt that had a yellow paint stain on the front. Maybe I was a slob at heart and didn’t know it yet? Internally I began to justify my sloth. When traveling, I often had to wear clothes that were uncomfortable, restrictive, hot, heavy and all sorts of other unpleasant adjectives. At home, I did as I pleased. I almost snorted in defiance.

  “I’m willing to look at a new car,” I said, surprised to hear the reluctant words spring from my mouth. “But I enjoy our walking to work,” I began, turning to look at Kipp.

  “I do, too, but when it’s raining,” he began.

  “Okay, Kipp, quit pushing,” I grumbled.

  The door behind me opened, and the tall figure of Fitzhugh loomed, almost casting a shadow. I craned my neck back to stare at him. Odd, even when in a good mood, he had the appearance of a foreboding wizard, ready to cast a spell upon me. He’d taken a nap, something he’d learned to enjoy of late, and was daring me to tease him about his unusual activity, since he was not given to laziness or a lack of discipline. I noticed his eyes were still a little puffy from sleep, and his long, gray hair was mussed.

  “Philo invited us over for a cook-out, and I wondered if you are going to change that stained shirt into something more presentable or just go as is?” Fitzhugh’s voice took on a low rumble as he summed up his opinion of me without really having to say anything more.

  “Yes, dad, I plan on changing my shirt.” I laughed softly as he dug his toe into my back. He wasn’t my dad nor anyone else’s, but it was fun to tease him.

  “And you promised to make a salad,” he added.

  With a groan, I finally stood. “First Kipp, now you. I was just trying to enjoy this pretty day, and he is bothering me about Ivanhoe, and now you won’t let off about my shirt and a salad. And then there is the discussion about why my car is not as nice as the ones Peter and Philo are driving. In case you’ve not noticed, they have car payments, and I don’t.” I finished in a rush.

  “You’re just cheap,” Fitzhugh remarked. “You won’t spend money on anything if you can get by with less.”

  “Yeah,” Kipp added for emphasis.

  “Okay, you guys are ganging up on me, so I plan on working on a salad, preferably in peace.” I gave one last look at my yard and the surrounding neighborhood. My house was shadowed by large trees; occasionally, when the wind would blow, the canopy of leaves would part like a door opening to allow light. The house was ordinary, small, with a parlor, two bedrooms, a kitchen, and a shotgun hallway with a squeaky wooden floor. But I couldn’t think of living anywhere else. Something in my heart was soothed by a compact dwelling almost hidden by the surrounding trees and shrubs. I brushed past Fitzhugh and made my way to the kitchen, which, due to the row of windows stretching the width of one wall, was cheerfully well-lit. It was clear my home would never be profiled in a magazine, as it was filled with an eclectic assortment of mismatched furniture, some of which had passed the qualification of well worn. In addition, for many humans, my tendency to crowd my dwelling with collected artifacts and broken and forlorn pieces of junk would be disturbing. But what else would one expect from a traveler between the centuries? I suppose I find some degree of comfort from those items which, at one point in time, were connected to human beings. In my fantasy moments, I speculated the objects carried with them the experiences and even feelings of previous owners. Of course, I would then and still do deny any sentimentality in regards to my behaviors.

  A large salad bowl rested on the chipped tile of my kitchen counter. Another mark against me, I thought, as my lips turned down. Many people would be annoyed by the lack of perfection in the surface of the tiles, but I rather liked the fact the damage made it unique. Maybe I was just an odd symbiont with a strange way of viewing the world?

  “Yes, you are peculiar,” Kipp said, having followed me into the kitchen. Juno, not quite as old as Fitzhugh but close enough, was resting on the floor, her tail thumping in greeting as I entered. Kipp touched her grizzled muzzle lightly with his before choosing a place where the sunlight pooled on the worn, wooden floor and, after circling, plopped down with a heavy thump. “But I love you regardless.”

  I was not to have any peace since Fitzhugh trailed a moment later, followed by Lily, a feline who’d adopted Kipp. She proceeded to wind her small striped body in and out of my legs, meowing loudly as she performed perfect figure eights.

  “Have you not fed her?” I asked Fitzhugh, feeling cross for no good reason.

  “No, she likes it when you do it,” he replied smoothly, taking a seat at the battered old dinette table that served as my fine dining room ensemble. Fitzhugh was obviously aiming to aggravate me and was doing a magnificent job. I noticed he was tracing the burn pattern made by a pot in the past, his finger-tip dragging along the top of the table. He ignored me and turned his attention to Kipp. “What is your interest in Ivanhoe?” he asked.

  “Well, as I was re
ading an article about an upcoming movie, I ran across a character named Locksley, and that translated into Robin Hood. So, I have done some research and found that the character of Robin Hood could never be verified as having been an actual individual who lived. He could have been a composite of many of the outlaws who existed over a period of many years, or there could have been a discrete person with whom the legend of Robin Hood began.”

  “And?” Fitzhugh was smiling at Kipp.

  “I asked Victor to do a library search, and he found that no symbiont has ever tried to research the truth behind the stories.” Kipp glanced at me briefly before returning his attention to Fitzhugh. “I find it interesting no one has made an attempt, despite the frequency and popularity of the legend throughout human culture for many years.”

  I knew what was coming and began to explore my own memories of some of our collective history. The notion of a time-shift that could be filled with such complexities was challenging, and I felt my shoulders creep upward with tension. My fingers began to tear at lettuce as I took a deep breath.

  “And?” Fitzhugh said, again.

  “I think I am going to propose a trip to medieval England to investigate the truth behind the legend of Robin Hood,” Kipp replied.