Elizabeth and her Men in Black ended up staying three days in Glasgow.  Elizabeth spoiled her children.  Erin and the children’s nursemaid did their fair share of spoiling as well.  Sir Leslie was very generous.  Jack Horner said something about sparing the rod and spoiling the child.  MacDonald and Campbell argued most of the time about stupid things, like which clan made the best haggis.  O’Neil, the Irishman laughed a lot.  Duchamp and DeWindt made peace with David, and found they had many things about which they could relate, not the least their all being from the continent and wanting nothing to do with haggis.  James and John watched over the women and children, but then, everyone had questions. In the evenings, Elizabeth did her best to answer the question she could.

Our Earth was formed about four and a half billion years ago.  The creation of the universe was more than twice that many years ago.  There are star-suns that have planets that are twice as old as Earth.  Some planets are just now forming around some star-suns.”

“What is a billion?” David asked what many wondered.  Elizabeth went through the numbers.

“One, ten, one hundred, one thousand.  One thousand, ten thousand one hundred thousand, one million.  One million, ten million, one hundred million, one billion.  One billion, four and a half billion when the earth was formed.  She showed with her hands and arms.  The universe was created more than ten billion years ago.”

“Good Lord,” Jack spouted at the incomprehensible number.  “But look.  The Holy Book tells us the age of the earth is six thousand years old.”

“The age of modern humans.  There were many ages before that.  In the beginning, in our beginning, a darkness was on the face of the earth and the Spirit of God moved across the waters.  The whole earth had been flooded.”

“Noah?” DeWindt asked.

“Not yet,” Elizabeth said and struggled to find the best way to explain it all.  “The Earth entered a cold spell and much of the land became covered with ice.  The seabed lowered.  It is a long story, but basically, the ice all melted at once.  A moon, not our moon and not Venus, bumped the earth roughly on the north pole and set it to wobbling.  The Earth cracked and erupted if you know what a volcano is.  The ice all melted at once and the sky filled with steam, ash, dust, and smoke, so the world fell into darkness.  I mean dark as night, not an evil darkness, though it may have been that as well.”

“Then God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light,” Jack recited.

“The sky cleared,” Elizabeth continued with a nod.  “And some men were saved through that flood, though I am not at liberty to say how.  The other people who were made on this world were taken off world to planets of their own.”

“Wait…” Sir Leslie wanted to object but Elizabeth held up her hand.

“This is a Genesis planet, one of only half a dozen in this galaxy—in this area of space.  You know what Genesis means.  I should not have to explain that.  But in four and a half billion years, many people have been made here.  After the meltdown, flood, and let there be light, only humans remained, mostly.  People built a world-wide culture, all speaking the same language.  It was a garden-like existence, for sure, but the people screwed it up.  You know, like Adam and Eve.   The earth began to freeze over again until the asteroids, some comets trailing after the little moon that hit and glanced off the north pole, caught up with us and smashed into several places, notably Greenland.  Everything melted suddenly again.  That was Noah.”

“But the age of the earth…”  Jack was not for giving up.

“Six thousand years ago, or a little more, there was another change event.  Nimrod the moron built a tower.  In Scripture it is called the Tower of Babel, and it fell, and great was the fall of it.  And God said he would never again destroy the Earth by waters of a flood for as long as the Earth abides.  Let me say, the ages represented in the Bible are correct, only there is some missing information not meant for the general public in this day and age.  Basically, after Noah, people stopped living for eight hundred years and eventually started living eighty.  But that was gradual, and there are scientific reasons for that which I am not prepared to go into.  A narrowed population will do that.  But consider this, all the men mentioned in the Book of Hebrews trusted God, though they never witnessed the promise when the Messiah walked among us.  They lived faithfully, though they did not know the whole story.  So, let me just say the languages became confused after Babel, marking the beginning of modern man, and I was first born under that doomed tower to try and keep track of it all.”  She paused to let them digest that bit of information and was not disappointed by Jack.

“Good Lord.”

###

The travelers reached Perth on one of the few sunny days.  The road to Sterling would be a push if the weather turned, but they figured they might make it in a day.  It would be another day after that to reach Glasgow, which appeared to be where the Kairos settled.  Lincoln read about the alien encounters and the Men in Black that began in 1649, but as usual, he was not sure what it was safe to say until certain events played out.  He understood both Katie and Tony were past their era of expertise.  They would not necessarily know more than the others.  He wondered if it was safe to mention that Charles I, King of Scotland, England, and Ireland would be beheaded at the end of the month.  He would have to think about that.

Katie and Nanette noticed and confirmed a familiar face among the patrons in the inn.  The man sat with friends at a nearby table.  They confronted the man over supper in the big room, and Katie named the man.  “Bishop Pierre Cauchon.”

The man looked up from his seat.  They saw his face and imagined his mind raced through a hundred ways to deny what they called him, but in the end, he smiled and said, “You got me.”

“Lord Peter?” one of the men seated with him wondered what these women were talking about.

“It is Lord Peter Cameron, actually, and being a good covenanter, we will leave the bishop part in the past.”

Nanette remembered Joan of Arc, that lovely young girl they met so briefly in that day, and she spoke.  “Condemn any innocent young women for witchery lately?”  Her voice sounded hard and full of anger.

“Not lately,” the man said in a voice that suggested he may have used the charge of witchcraft at some point or other.  “I have been busy with my assignment, helping Scotland shatter to pieces.  We have Montrose, royalists, covenanters, engagers, clans fighting clans, and Argyll the stubborn fighting everyone.  I’ll admit, the battle of Sterling did not turn out the way I wanted.  I was hoping for all-out war, but we take what we can get.”

Lockhart and Decker came up to fetch the women to their table, and Katie spoke.  “Why would you want Scotland divided?  Though I assume the Masters would not want peace in general.”

Lord Peter smiled some more.  “Invasion,” he answered.  “Most of Scotland will stay home when the invasion comes.  They will not take up arms to fight alongside people who they count as enemies and traitors.  Scotland will fall to a military dictatorship, and it will happen centuries before Hitler.  And the Scottish will not rebel, so there will be no reason the greatly improved army should not invade the continent.  Soon enough, the army on the continent will make a pact with the Vassas and the Hapsburgs to fight the Ottomans, and we will have the First World War two hundred years ahead of time.  Of course, the Masters hope they beat each other senseless, but one can only hope.”

“Cromwell is not that kind of man,” Katie said, as Lord Peter stood and got his men up from their meal.

“A push here.  A whisper there.  Men are malleable,” he said, and marched for the door, his men following.

“What was that about?” Decker asked.

“Why did that man look familiar?” Lockhart asked.

“Bishop Pierre Cauchon who killed Joan of Arc.  Now, Lord Peter Cameron planning to turn Oliver Cromwell into Adolph Hitler and bring war to the entire continent and beyond.”

Lockhart looked at the door and reached for his handgun.  Decker ran to the door, but the man was not to be found.  He cursed when he returned.

“You should have killed him on the spot,” he said.

“Decker?” Nanette asked what he meant by that and only partly protested.

“Servant of the Masters and a repeat face that is not one of the good guys.  That is an enemy combatant.  You should have shot him immediately.”

“Decker?” Nanette asked again, not knowing what to ask, but Katie spoke.

“Yes.  I should have.”

###

Elizabeth said goodbye to her children in the morning and sent them on the way to Gray Havens.  In the afternoon, Sir Leslie and Jack Horner came up with another question.  Jack quoted the scriptures.

“It is appointed a man once to die and after this the judgment.”

Sir Leslie added, “I assume that goes for women, too.”

Elizabeth nodded.  “But that is just it.  God won’t let me die.  Oh, I feel all the pain and loss of death.  It is hard every time.  I get right up to the point of going over to the Heavenly shores, and my spirit gets stuck in another womb, like it or not.  I have no say in the matter, and nine months later, I get born somewhere new on the planet.  As a baby, I have no idea I ever lived before.  Those thoughts don’t occur to me until I am twelve…  Ten?  Thirteen or fourteen?  It varies.  But then I discover things are happening that will throw all of history off track unless I act.  So, we are acting.”

“That must be hard,” Sir Leslie said in his most sympathetic voice.  “To die again and again and never be allowed to go to heaven.”

“Who?” Jack asked, but she knew what he was asking.

“I call them friends in the future.  They may be angels deciding where I need to go.  In any case, they could only do such a thing under God’s watchful eye.”

“Assuredly,” Jack said.

Elizabeth stopped the group in front of a big house in the country.  She pulled a handkerchief and dabbed her eyes, before she got down and said, “The home of Bram Buchanan.  His son, Clyde evidently set the Wolv free.”