Consequences Unforeseen

Notre Dame Paris 1959 and 1299 - The Douglas

He had been here before he felt sure and so confident of this that he opened the only door behind the alter and knew what he was going to find there with certainty. He was so lost in his thoughts that he failed to realize that Shona had arrived by his side.

And he was right. As the door creaked open, his mind felt like it was being sucked out of his eyes, his ears, his nose and his mouth simultaneously. He felt like he was on a zip line through time itself…

Notre Dame 1299

The boy opened the door without thought.

The girl chasing him down was almost upon him. She was relentless, ruthless in her pursuit and going to tickle him to death when she caught him. She was older and wiser than him and had herded him to the deepest part of the Temple where she intended to torture him to his end.

Lizzy Doyle was determined to catch the Douglas as she called him and prove that a Doyle is just as fierce and ruthless as his own lineage. She was bodily aware beyond her sixteen years, fluent in French and had grown up in Paris where her mother was Superintendant in the household of Guillaume de Lamberton, the master of the Temple, and soon to be Bishop of St Andrews.

The Douglas was fourteen-years-old, muscled and honed to be the Knight he would become. Right now he was a Squire to Lamberton and under the full rigor of his grueling blood letting training with the sword, dagger and spear. His father William Douglas ‘le Hardi’ (the Bold) was tortured and murdered in the Tower of London just the year before. This boy James Douglas was determined to avenge his death with vigor and without mercy. His father had told him the stories of his brotherhood with William Wallace: The battles won and lost and the rescue of Dunnottar castle and slaughter of the English garrison there. He missed his dad so bad that he ached inside. Lizzy though helped him forget for short periods of time. It was what the Doyle women had done for centuries.

She had a huge crush on him and intended to make sure that he lost his virginity to her. Many of the girls back home in Scotland were married with several kids by her age and she considered herself lucky to be out of that rat race and settled in a wealthy Parisian environment.

She would be on him in a moment and as he opened the door to escape her she tripped and fell headlong into his back, propelling them both through the door and into the chamber beyond.

The darkness was a surprise, but the first prevailing assaults on their senses were the atrocious stench and the pain filled screams which, as their eyes adjusted, they saw were coming from the dozen or so people chained and fettered spread-eagled on tables and alters in a cavern stretching far back into the distance.

They were or were about to be victims of the prevailing drawn and quartered punishment and torture inflicted on enemies of the state. The fact that the mix was both male and female left no doubt in Douglas’s mind that the women probably suffered even more than the men.

The biggest shock to both of them was that the person standing tall and above everything on a stage was Lamberton himself directing proceedings with a deep and powerful voice that reverberated from the walls and was amplified by the acoustics of this huge cave.

He saw the two crash into the room and fall face down into the blood and gore and laughed out loud when he saw the state of them.

“Get over here the two of you,” he bellowed, “and let me see what your mischief has achieved.”

In shock and chastened they approached him.

“Don’t be afraid in here and you’ll get used to the smell soon enough,” he spoke above the noise. “This is where we destroy the enemies of Scotland. The traitors and their women who would see Scotland fall even more beneath English control.”