Yesterday's Queen

By Linda Kay Silva and Alex Westmore

Witches, female pirates, spirits, and the mighty Bian Sidhe abound in this fourth installment of the time travel quests of Jessie Ferguson.

Duncan's son is missing and there is a warrant signed by Queen Elizabeth for his death. When Jessie returns to Elizabethan England as Spencer, she realizes Spencer and Duncan must face the Queen's henchmen to fight the charges of kidnapping and murder.

When the beheading of Jessie's ally, Mary Queen of Scots, is imminent, Jessie has her hands full with witches, spirits and a sexy female pirate, all of whom threaten to destroy the man she is in this time.

Treachery and danger on the high seas are only the beginning as the past threatens to wash over Jessie's future.

An ordinary woman caught in extraordinary times and events, follow Jesse Ferguson's calls to the past in this exciting series for adventurous readers of all ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Storm Enterprise
• Release date: Sep 18, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223808411

Book preview

Chapter One

16th Century England

They were going to behead her. Duncan couldn’t believe it. How on earth could one matriarchal cousin actually order the execution of the other? It seemed impossible, yet every source he contacted had confirmed his darkest fears; Queen Elizabeth had signed the order to execute her captive and rebellious cousin, Mary of Scotland on grounds of treason.

Duncan stared at the young man who had brought him his fifth confirmation of this vile news that had plagued him day and night since he’d first heard. It was bad enough that poor Mary had been imprisoned for almost twenty years, but to decide, after all these years, that she deserved to die? That she was simply too much of a threat to allow to live her life out? Just the thought made his heart hurt even though Mary wasn’t even his queen. Elizabeth was his queen, but he had a special place in his heart for her cousin. His best friend, Captain Spencer Morgan, was a Scotsman, and Spencer was intensely loyal to Mary. His run-ins with Elizabeth nearly put his head on the other end of a pike, and there was no love lost between them. It would ruin him to know that Mary’s days were numbered by Elizabeth’s own hand.

Looking down at the message, Duncan pinched the bridge of his nose. It had been too long since he had visited his old friend and his family. They had visited on and off over the years, always enjoying the time they spent together. Duncan wished the next time he saw Spencer, it would be under better circumstance; not with this shadow hanging over them. And it was a dark shadow, indeed. Elizabeth could not possibly be prepared for the other lives that would be lost because of this singular act of desperation; and desperation is what it had to be for the ruling monarch of the most powerful country in the world to make such an order, for what threat was Mary now? She was like a dog whose teeth had been pulled. All those years as captive to the Queen of England had certainly diminished her desire to bite the crown. What had changed to make Elizabeth fear her so that she would do the impossible and order her execution? Elizabeth had what she would never allow Mary to have: the love of her people and the crown on her head.

The people loved their virgin queen and most would have followed her to the depths of Hell. Whatever had prompted this final, irrevocable act had to have come from those vultures she called advisors. Those men were dangerous. They would torture their own mothers for a toehold on Elizabeth’s rising star. The order must have come from them.

Sir?

Duncan looked up from his thoughts. The wheels are in motion, then, he said, taking in a deep breath. This had all the markings of those bastards, Gresham and Walsingham; power hungry carrion responsible for so many secret deaths. Duncan had no doubt that history would show them for who they truly were, but at this moment, they were the Queen’s trusted advisors who most assuredly had a hand in the death warrant signed by their queen.

Do we know when? Duncan asked.

No sir, but my master expects it to come quickly so there is no time for people to gather sympathy.

Running his hand through his long, blonde hair, Duncan nodded. Yes, making a martyr of Mary would not bode well with the queen. He took a cautious deep breath and asked the question he was most afraid of. And what news of my son?

Same, sir. He has not been heard from since his ship left, but his name is still marked. The warrant is forthcoming, with many other names, I’m afraid. They say the queen’s men are going to clean up any remaining riff-raff left-over from Mary of Scotland’s reign. The list grows ever longer and the people are very afraid.

Aye. Housecleaning. Something must have happened to make everyone so afraid.

I do not know, sir. I just know that William’s name will be on a warrant like the one in your hands. If he is caught, he will be executed for high treason. They are dispensing with protocol and executing almost immediately. I wish I had better news, sir, but as you know, William’s name can only be removed by the queen and she does not appear to be in a very forgiving state of mind.

Duncan dropped some pence into the messenger’s hand. He paid for bad news as well as good; something not all men did.

Sir?

Yes? Duncan closed his bag and steadied his horse.

What will you do once you locate William?

It was a question Duncan and his common law wife, Ennia, had been discussing for weeks, coming to the single-minded conclusion that they would go after him and get him to the safety of the continent. Why do you ask, Samuel?

The young messenger pulled himself up to his full height. Some of us wish to help in whatever way we can, sir. Your wife…your…Mistress Ennia, sir…she has helped many people over the years. We are eager to repay her for the many lives and limbs she has saved, sir. Including my own.

Nodding, Duncan mounted his grey mare. Ennia was the healer in their village and had managed to help many villagers in times of any health crisis. I shall let her know, Samuel. Thank you. We may be in need of a lithe young man such as yourself. In the future, should you see my daughters approaching on horseback, know they come for your aid. Please assist them in whatever manner they need. I shall entrust their safety with you.

Samuel bowed low. I’ll rise to that occasion, sir. You have my word.

Duncan turned the mare toward home. Keep your word, Samuel, or lose your head.

I understand, sir.

Spurring his horse forward, Duncan road back home, wishing he had better news for his mistress, the woman of his three children, the lady who loved him, needed him, and wanted him, but refused to marry him. She was a Druid priestess, after all, and needed no sanctioning of any governing body in order to love and cherish him. That defiance made him love her even more. It always had. She was an amazing woman, his Ennia. There was little she did not know of this world or the next.

As he rode on, Duncan shook his head. He wouldn’t be delivering news to Ennia. Because of whom she was, she already knew.

Chapter Two

Ennia would not be pleased, and though she had pledged her life to the Goddess of the Druid path, maintaining a peaceful attitude was becoming harder and harder, especially since Elizabeth’s advisors were preparing to send out a warrant for William. It did not bode well for anyone, not even a Queen, to anger a Druid priestess, and Elizabeth had certainly done so when she signed her name a year ago to an anti-witchcraft law that sent every non-Christian, in both Protestant and Catholic countries scrambling for cover.

It was a cover Ennia refused to take.

Ennia was afraid of nothing, and though Duncan found that refreshing from the many other women he had bedded, there were times when that fearlessness was a double-edged sword. He remembered the last time he had tried to get her to move further into the hills for safety.

I’ll not raise our daughters in fear, Ennia had said to him the first and last time he had dared brooch the subject. Since that day, it was Duncan who had lived in fear, and if Queen Elizabeth could order the beheading of her own cousin, what were a few dozen Druid deaths?

As usual, Ennia won all of those arguments, and would do so if he brought it up again. The instability and volatility of the Queen’s advisors scared him. They would stop at nothing to worm their way deeper into her good graces, but by the Goddess, they would not use his son as one of those steppingstones.

Duncan shook his head as he rode and tried to shake off the cold black fear winding its way around his heart. He had tried to stop William from leaving in search of a way to help Mary of Scotland. William had always been more attracted to his mother’s arts than to Duncan’s warrior ways, and when he’d heard that Elizabeth had signed the anti-witchcraft order, William would have no more of it and decided his fate lay with helping Mary escape one of the many prisons Elizabeth had relegated her to.

Duncan had done everything he could to stop his son from leaving, but he was every bit as headstrong as his mother, and so it was no surprise to Duncan when he awoke one morning to find William gone and the twins crying. They had always had a preternatural sense about their older brother, knowing when he was hurt and if he was hungry. When they woke up that morning, they knew he was gone.

Duncan had wanted to go after him, but Ennia said no. The boy needs to find his own way.

Those words would haunt her now--now that he was in danger.

Danger.

Before Duncan decided to settle down with Ennia, his life had been nothing but danger. He and Spencer Morgan had been respected and feared privateers of the high seas, amassing a fortune by stealing the gold right out from underneath the Queen’s nose from some of her best seamen. Their lives had been fraught with danger at every turn. They had even gone after the Queen’s bum boy, Francis Drake and made him look the foolish fop he truly was. Spencer was an outstanding captain and loved his life on the sea. Duncan had once lived a life filled with wine, women, and warrioring. He had bedded over a hundred women and killed over one hundred more men in his life. He had once been a man with no compunction about running another man through and had actually enjoyed it once upon a time, but that was sixteen years ago, before Ennia, before the children, before Duncan realized how empty that life had really been. He had been fooling himself sixteen years ago, when he thought life was about killing and plunder.

Oh how times had changed.

Sixteen years ago, he got off Spencer’s ship and waved goodbye to a life at sea, to a life that took other lives for gold and gain. And although he and Spencer were still friends and saw each other a couple of times a year, they no longer lived lives filled with danger at every turn. They had stopped sailing to other countries and meeting people so very different from them.

And the truth was…Duncan missed it.

It wasn’t something he thought about or regretted. He hadn’t lived the last sixteen years looking back; just the contrary. He loved his quiet life with Ennia and his family. They were warm and loving, with busy days and sweet nights. The girls had softened him, made him see that the finer things in life were not at the end of the sword. They had brought sunshine to every corner of his life, and there was nothing he wouldn’t do for them.

No, the past wasn’t something he carried with him, and he gladly left that life behind. So it surprised him when he woke up one morning about a month ago feeling the familiar throes of wanderlust. There was an emptiness he wasn’t able to fill with riding or farming or loving his woman. He knew what it was and tried to shove it deep down, but Ennia wasn’t someone he could hide from. The moment she woke up, she knew something was different in him, but she didn’t push. She never pushed. She wasn’t like other women that way, and though she knew something was bothering him, she would wait until he wanted to discuss it.

So far, he had chosen not to. What was there to say? Surely, this feeling would go away. He just needed to bide his time and work on getting his son back. And if need be, he would allow Ennia to do the one thing he had sworn he would never do himself; he would allow her to send her soul through the portal to another time…a time where someone lived who might be able to help them; who would help them if they asked.

And if he couldn’t find William soon, Duncan would, most assuredly, ask.

Chapter Three

21st Century

Jessie pushed away from the library table she’d been sitting at for what felt like days and pinched the bridge of her nose. She’d been reading an abstract on the origins of Druidry and the Craft forever, and it just droned on and on. Her Master’s thesis was becoming increasingly harder and harder to write as she’d tried to meld research with what she knew from her own time travels back to the first century and beyond. All that crap about the Druids participating in human sacrifice was akin to saying that all Mormons were polygamists or all Indians scalped white guys. These gross generalizations from renowned specialists were bullshit, and she just couldn’t take it anymore. History hung its hat on what few pieces of text were still intact. Reconciling her truth with what was considered fact put her thesis on a snail’s pace that was beginning to get on her nerves.

Standing up, she stretched and rubbed the back of her neck. She needed a break, so she started her usual routine of walking the aisles of the library running her hand along the spines like a woman might the back of her naked lover. She loved the cracked leather bindings of the oldest books and the smell slightly wafting into the air. The quiet, the respect, just the ambience of the library brought both a calm and a steadiness to Jessie she couldn’t explain to anyone who wasn’t a bibliophile. She also loved the gold filigree and ornate writing of books filled with men and women long since past, but near enough that Jessie might even meet them someday.

Someday.

It had been almost two years since she’d last stepped through the portal to ancient Egypt, during the reign on Akhenaten and Nefertiti. Two years since she had walked in the hot sand as the priestess Sakura; a woman bound to Nefertiti and the Goddesses they both honored and worshipped. Two years.

Jessie missed her travels through time, but the portal was not a tour company. It was not something at her disposal to use when she was bored or even curious. Before her time with Nefertiti, Jessie had been in sixteenth century England as the pirate Captain Spencer Morgan, a cutthroat privateer who sailed the seas looking for, and usually finding trouble. It was there she learned of the true nature of her calling, but it was after being with Sakura that Jessie had a name for it.

Two years ago, she discovered her purpose; her journey--the reason why she had been called by Cate the first time.

She was the Guardian of the Gate; responsible for making sure the portal to the past and future wasn’t abused by anyone using it for personal gain. Her job was to maintain the balance between what is and what was. It was a huge responsibility, but she liked it. No, she loved it. She loved meeting the three people she had once been; Cate McEwen, a Druid Priestess, Captain Spencer Morgan, a pirate, and Sakura, a priestess of Isis. She loved seeing what life had once been like, what she had once been like. It had changed her life, giving her a goal, a meaning, and saved her from a life of reckless rebellion down the dark path of drugs and alcohol. Jessie had always felt something missing in her life; something she could not name or put her finger on. She just knew she wasn’t right, but she had no idea how to fix it. How do you fix something when you don’t know it’s broken?

In an effort to save her from herself, her parents picked up from San Francisco and moved them and her little brother Daniel to New Haven, a small town perched on the rocky cliffs of the tumultuous Oregon coast where they renovated a Victorian Bed and Breakfast. It was in the inn where Jessie discovered the room that acted as a portal or seam through which her soul could travel to the many other lives she’s lead. She didn’t go there with her body, of course. That feat had yet to be possible, but she didn’t doubt Time was the true final frontier for man to mess up. From what she’d seen in history, if it could be ruined, man would do it.

She’d been on a path of self destruction, ruining her life in as many ways as she could until that wonderful day when Cate, the Druid priestess, had come across time to tap Jessie on the shoulder asking for help. Jessie helped prevent the complete destruction of the Druids, and in the process, saved herself. Being the next Guardian was important to her, and she took her job seriously. That helped keep her focus on her studies—the more she knew, the easier it would be to help when she was called again. There was nothing more incredible that stepping through the portal and becoming who she once was.

Now, here she was, five years later, at the tail end of her Masters degree, a completely different and very whole person, all because she knew how to send her soul through time. In doing so, she found a new passion for history; but it was a passion marred by the incredible inconsistencies and inaccuracies of the historians, and she realized very quickly just how slanted all history really was. Knowing history as she did made it difficult to read the many inaccurate guesses made by historians. It was the hardest part about getting her degree.

She knew.

Not a day went by in her life that she didn’t think about Cate and wonder what she was doing and if she and Maeve were well. At seventeen, Jessie Ferguson had known absolutely nothing about the people or the time she was beckoned back to. Nada. Nitch. Nil. Zippo. Now, she was collecting her second degree on her way to a PhD. Now, at twenty-two, she was far older and wiser than she was when her parents forced her to come to the backwoods of Oregon. She’d been a city girl, after all, and the harsh Oregon climate was as foreign to her as the surface of the moon. Trees everywhere, rain constant, she thought she would drown here. Instead, she thrived. After graduating with honors from the University of Oregon, she dove right back into the mix chasing after her Master’s degree, and right now, it was giving her fits.

She had never really anticipated how difficult it would be to write a history paper that had so little truth to it. If history was written by the victors, then the winners were big liars. Facts seldom were corroborated by other facts, and even dates sometimes hovered in the hazy, gray nothingness called statistics. Jessie knew. She’d been there. Heroes had been turned into villains, Christians into witches, witches into Druids; the whole thing was nothing but the poorest of eye-witness accounts, secondary sources, and sometimes, boldfaced lies. So, how was she supposed to write a paper around so many misdirected half-truths and shadowy figures?

The truth was, while she and Cate occasionally visited in the Dreamworld they shared, Jessie missed her. Cate had been the only thing in Jessie’s life that had managed to bring her out of her funk when all she could do was self-medicate to the point of unconsciousness. But Cate lived lifetimes away and Jessie had her hands full with her own life now that she was working toward a PhD and working at the inn.

As Jessie strolled among the books, she slowed when she read the title of a thick tome on pirates. While Cate and Sakura had felt so familiar to her, Spencer Morgan had been, by far, the strangest incarnation of them all. Unlike the two peaceful priestesses, Spencer was a cutthroat rogue of the seas who looted with abandon, sending ships aground all in the name of booty. He had not known of the portal, nor had he remembered who he had been; the task incumbent upon all of Sakura’s incarnations. No, it had taken both Cate and Jessie to show Spencer who he really was and what he was capable of doing. The most shocking thing of all was how much Jessie had enjoyed being him. He was a funny, quirky fellow who was a great captain and an even better pirate. He and his best friend, Duncan, had been a thorn in Queen Elizabeth’s side and delighted in tormenting her golden boy, Sir Francis Drake.

Drake had also been a pirate, but the history books seldom painted him as such. That was when Jessie realized how utterly erroneous history books were. Like a poorly played game of telephone, great ages and greater people had been incorrectly translated by historians through the ages until the final products were merely cartoons of the truth. Francis Drake had been Elizabeth’s pirate-bitch, and they both built a nice fortune on the backs of the Spanish galleons he had raided in her name.

In California, where Jessie had been raised, there were streets, towns, restaurants, and high schools named after him. It made her wonder if there would be a Charles Manson University or Hitler Avenue some day. She sure hoped not.

Opening the book, Jessie turned to a color plate of the deck of a galleon as it was being attacked. The plate was beautifully rendered and had been painted in the mid fifteen century. She traced a fingernail over the swordsman in the forefront of the picture. She had loved wielding a sword and swashbuckling around. She had really…

And then it happened. That familiar vertigo washed over her from head-to-toe, and she had to close her eyes to try to regain her balance.

It was happening.

Awash in a residual memory carried deep within the recesses of her soul, Jessie was on the deck of a Brigantine ship wielding a sword and swinging it with all her might at the head of a man who was in no position to defend himself. As a memory, it was like watching a movie starring Spencer Morgan. In real life, when she returned to her present-day senses, the memory lingered like a really vivid dream.

This one was different.

While she, as Spencer, handled the long sword and stepped over corpses of one of his men, she realized that Spencer was older than when she’d last seen him. Of course, so was she, but he was much older than when she had last been him. The last time she’d been inside his soul, he was in his twenties and full of fire and energy, enjoying the victory and the kills.

But this man was different. This Spencer Morgan was all business now. There was nothing fun about watching the blood spurt from the neck he’d just embedded his sword into. He wasn’t gloating like usual, nor was he eagerly looking for the next head to detach from its body. He was killing these men as a necessity for some reason. She didn’t know the reason…couldn’t remember.

Remember.

Why was she remembering this now?

Excuse me, miss, are you okay?

Jessie’s eyelids slowly opened and she found herself looking at a handsome young man who was staring hard at her through light blue eyes. Umm…yeah.

You sure? You’ve been standing there for a couple of minutes.

Jessie nodded and she closed the book. Just, uh, taking a breather, that’s all. Reshelving the book, Jessie turned and found him still staring at her.

You’re Jessie Ferguson, aren’t you?

Jessie was slightly taken aback. Yes. How did you know?

I work in the Special Collections and Rare Books Archives here in the library, and…well…librarians’ gossip, you know?

Oh do they? Jessie’s eyes bore into him, making him obviously uncomfortable. She guessed his age to be near hers. Light brown hair swooshing across his forehead, clear skin and a flashing grin, he was quite handsome.

Well…you don’t really want to hear it.

Now her curiosity was piqued. Sure I do.

His cheeks got redder and his eyes darted away. They, uh, say you fondle the spines like a blind lover. He shrugged. More or less.

She chuckled. Try more.

Licking his lips, he exhaled loudly. They’re a little petty because so many of the Profs here refer back to you and the papers you’ve written or the original research you’ve done. You’re like a rock star in the history department. He looked back at Jessie and ran a hand through his hair; a nervous gesture she thought he was probably unaware of. I can’t believe you don’t know that.

She smiled softly. I’m pretty busy with my life on the coast to bother with gossip…

Oh. He extended his hand to her. Peter.

She took his hand. Nice meeting you, Peter, but trust me, I’m no rock star.

"That’s not how we hear it. Apparently, your original research rivals some of your professors’ work. I read the article you wrote for Archeology Past and Present. It was deserving of the hubbub it garnered here."