Geoffrey I could manage. He had shown me kindness, or at least the closest medieval equivalent available to a man who’d initially locked me in a tower. I understood his motivations well enough to navigate around them.
Aldwin was another matter entirely. He had openly advocated for my execution. Winning him over was going to require a level of charm I wasn’t certain I could sustain indefinitely.
I was moved out of the tower that evening.
First came the clothes.
A maidservant appeared carrying an armful of fabric while I was still attempting to process the fact that I’d apparently been promoted from possible witch to state-sponsored historian.
“You cannot continue wearing those,” she said, staring openly at my jeans. The zipper fascinated and horrified her in equal measure. She touched it cautiously, jerked her hand back when it moved, and crossed herself beneath her breath. “What manner of fastening is that?”
“It fastens with metal teeth,” I explained weakly. “Very common where I’m from.”
She gave me a look suggesting my homeland was clearly under demonic influence. Then she shook out the garments she’d brought.
A linen smock, a russet wool kirtle, and a linen veil. My brain immediately forgot every survival instinct I possessed. The linen alone nearly made me emotional.
Not the coarse rough wool blanket from the tower. Properly woven linen, smooth beneath my fingers with the unmistakable weight of quality fabric. I knew this textile. I’d catalogued fragments of it. Preserved pieces kept under controlled humidity in museum archives.
But those had all been faded to nearly transparent by time. This was new. This was what medieval cloth actually looked like before eight hundred years happened to it.
“May I?” I asked before the maid could stop me.
The wool kirtle was even better. The dye remained rich and saturated, deep russet threaded with warmth I’d never seen survive in museum collections. Medieval colors faded catastrophically over centuries. Historians forgot how vivid the medieval world truly was because everything surviving into modernity had dulled with age.
But this?—
This looked alive.
“You’re staring,” the maid observed cautiously.
“I study old things,” I said before I could stop myself. “I’ve never seen one so…” New. Complete. Entirely untouched by time. “Well-made.”
Something in that answer must have satisfied her because she softened slightly and stepped forward to help me dress.
What followed was a twenty-minute lesson in medieval clothing construction and the practical reality that women in the thirteenth century apparently required assistance simply existing inside their garments.
The smock came first, then the kirtle, laced at the sides with enough complexity to make me miss modern zippers with near-religious devotion. Then the veil, which involved a wire frame I hadn’t anticipated and immediately made me feel both ridiculous and strangely appropriate to the century surrounding me.
The maid folded my jeans carefully afterward, handling them with the same caution one might apply to a relic capable of cursing entire bloodlines. She placed them neatly on the shelf.
“Best not discuss my clothing too much,” I said.
The clothing might matter if I ever figured out how to get home. Then again, I didn’t exactly understand how magical time-travel manuscripts operated, so perhaps none of it mattered at all.
The maid gave me one last unreadable look before leaving.
I stood alone in linen and wool and felt something deeply strange settle over me. Historian and subject. Observer and participant. Two versions of myself occupying the same body.
The rooms they gave me occupied the third floor of the keep, above the great hall but below the family’s private chambers. Accessible without being intimate. Comfortable without implying freedom.
There was a proper bed and a window. And a lock I deliberately did not inspect too closely.
Geoffrey found me arranging my few possessions when he arrived later that evening carrying dinner.
“Your father agreed to let you keep me alive?” I asked.
“My father sees strategic value in not executing you immediately,” Geoffrey corrected gently. “That isn’t quite the same thing.”