Time Travelers Photography - open from 11am to 4pm

Trigger warning: historical accuracy may not be the best, and certain historical figures are not treated with proper care. Everything is used in a non-serious manner.

Arthur placed the cup of tea on the table. It was the porcelain cup with the floral pattern which we usually stored in the glass cabinet to spruce up the place for whenever unbearable guests visited. Now it was here filled with hot water, milk, one sugar, and ground tea leaves.

“This isn’t happening,” I groaned.

“Do you not love my tea?” Arthur displayed theatrics equivalent to a wounded and dying thespian.

I flicked the cup (but only lightly because it was damn expensive). “What is it you’re after this time?”

The last – shall we say, under the table? – business request, five months ago, came from an anonymous source. It turned out to be Barry from the bank the next street over, but that’s side-tracking a bit. Barry had asked our business – Arthur, in particular – if we could acquire for him a paintbrush used on the Mona Lisa. A job of that caliber requires skill, precision, and finesse. It had been fine at first, until Arthur said “Hey, nice beard, Leonardo” like they were best friends. Stealth, it seemed, was not Arthur’s forte when it came to someone having magnificent facial hair.

Nothing had changed in present day, except maybe there were more Italians with beards. The results could have been severe. Luck favored our business that day, and it wasn’t one I was going to repeat, even for a million dollars. No way. Never.

“Barry is offering two million dollars,” said Arthur.

I drank the tea. “What’s the job?”

Arthur pulled out a notepad. “Battle of Hastings. Anglo-Saxon shield. And he wants us to take a couple pictures of the thing. Specifically, the charge down the hill when they, er, you know.”

“Lost?”

“Yeah. And he wants a spear or two, and a Norman shield. Sounds like a cinch.”

There was no cinch to time travel. Oh, sure, you had the ability to hurl yourself to a specific date and location. But what good was that when you were having a heart attack after every twig you stepped on? Nuts to it, I say. Nuts, nuts, and money.

Two million dollars cascaded itself over my mind; when I was in the shower, the money was the water. When I was bleeding out, the money was my blood. It wasn’t my fault I could time travel, and nor was it my fault that we were using it in a surreptitious manner for financial gain. We were doing what anyone would do, or at least what someone would do, and that made it righteous and, dare I say, just.

“Grab the camera,” I said. “I’ll grab the cloaks.”

No matter the century, fashion never stayed the same. Why couldn't everyone wear the same thing for all eternity? We had discovered a grey cloth covering our person acted as the best cover for our work, as it made us look like poor old mendicants (and it saved on money buying the correct clothes for each era, yadda, yadda, yadda).

“Kathleen,” Arthur’s voice called from across the hall. He trotted up to me. “I think the camera’s broken.”

He showed me the blank screen. I popped the cap off the lens and the screen captured our floor.

“Wonderful,” he said. “You should stop putting that on. It makes me look like a big idiot.”

I rolled my eyes and laughed. Our usual business was photography. Historical photography. Time Travelers Photography was a respectable business, there couldn’t be any doubt. We went back to landmarks in time, in secret, to obtain the perfect pictures our clients asked for. They always played the “Wow, how did you get this?” card when we handed them the photos. That’s how I liked it.

However, there was always the odd customer who saw through our clever and cunning ruse. Barry the banker being one of them. They asked for a little more than just pictures. We knew they couldn’t snitch on us to the authorities, because then they’d lose their only source of historical artifacts. People always saw money above everything else. The fools.

“Let’s hit the road,” I said. “Or the, um, time.”

I flipped the cloak around my shoulders and wrapped my belly with the fraying fabric. I held out my hand. Arthur took it, and we counted to three.

On three, we were in England. Northwest of the town of Hastings in the year 1066, to be more accurate. A place filled with Anglo-Saxon sweat, and Norman perspiration. We had chosen a place close to the action: Senlac Hill. Perhaps too close, as we watched the Anglo-Saxon army a few feet in front of us tower the Normans below. At our side, a horse brayed. It was a shame it wasn’t a horse without a rider, because the rider stared at us with deep, penetrating eyes.

We smiled. He didn’t. My knowledge of history was decent (it had to be in this line of work, and I realized we should have done a bit more research before diving in), and I had seen many artworks depicting certain historical figures. King Harold Godwinson, the leader of the Anglo-Saxons, was a big man. Bigger on a horse than, say, on the ground.

“Say ‘cheese’,” said Arthur, snapping a not-so-furtive photo of Harold II.

“Normans?!” said Harold in disgusted surprise. His accent wasn’t like any of the modern-day English accents.

“No,” said Arthur, pointing to himself and me. “Americans.”

I dragged him back, sending my knee somewhere deep into a carrot and two sprouts.

I cleared my throat, recalled all the acting classes I had taken (none), and harnessed my latent acting ability (non-existent).

“Please, my lord,” I cried. “We are humble peasants thrown at your mercy. We lost ourselves on the long trek after our home was raided by Norman brigands. We have nothing, but we’ll fight for you. With a shield and spear, we’ll die for you.”

Harold grunted. He yelled for weapons and shields. My superb acting had worked, not to anyone’s surprise.

“Now we just need a Norman shield,” I whispered to Arthur as we lined up towards the back of the nearest platoon. The rounded shields were umbrellas in front of us; the mud a disgrace to our shoes.

“And the pictures,” Arthur pointed out.

“You took a picture of the leader of the Anglo-Saxons and told him to say cheese. I think that’s good enough. Unless you want to take one when the arrow goes through his head, but I’ll leave that up to you.”

We decided to separate ourselves from the inevitable battle and hide somewhere safe in the encampment before the army charged down the hill and lost their advantage. Why they had made that decision, I’ll never know. It had to be a stupid leader to order his army to charge in and die.

“Hey, you know,” Arthur’s voice caught the wind. He was no longer at my side, but beside Harold’s horse. “I think you could take them. The Normans. If you charged down there, they’d be caught by surprise and flail about the place. It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.”

I slapped my face. They had barrels, sure, and they had fish. But the guns would be missing for a while yet. But that was beside the point. He had just initiated a horrible sequence of events which would unfold into hundreds upon hundreds dying. This was so much worse than time he acted like a college professor and rejected that poor boy’s artwork in Austria. I could only hope nothing would change in our present day.

Harold must have lost his senses after talking to Arthur (I don’t blame him), as he ordered his soldiers to charge and meet the Normans head on. I was left covered in dirt kicked up by the advancing army. I coughed and sat down at the top of the hill. I couldn’t watch the bloodshed. I waved in the direction of the fight. “You go down and pick up a shield when you can,” I said.

“Why me?” said Arthur.

“Because you’re so damn annoying.”

“Fair enough. I’ll be back in a bit. I’ll snap a few pictures, too. Barry loves his pictures.”

With his cape fluttering like he was a hero about to stop the war, Arthur tripped and rolled part way down the hill.

It took a while for him to return. Unless my sense of time was off. It wouldn’t surprise me. I think I had stopped aging since I had discovered this power. Forever twenty-two. Forever worried what might happen when word of our business reached certain ears.

“Hey!” Arthur waved the elongated, pointed shield. “I got one. And I think Harold’s dead.”

“Good thing we got a picture of his wonderful smile,” I said, dusting off my butt. “Let’s go back home and give Barry his expensive crap.”

Another day, another job done. Arthur had gone to visit Barry and hand over the merchandise. I sat back, stretching, relaxing, breathing in the scent of the money soon to be in my hands. Two freaking million! While the risks worried me endlessly, sometimes you got to be a little crazy. History would sort itself out, regardless of what we did and how much money we earned. The Anglo-Saxons were going to lose, anyway. We just picked up a couple things after they didn’t need them anymore. There wasn’t a law against grave robbing (not in that period, anyway... I think).

The door swung into the bell with a jingle and clicked shut. My relaxation had hit its peak with a broad smile and closed eyes after Arthur placed the case on the table. I didn’t even need to open it. I could sense every note inside. It must have been another ability I had.

But the smell changed from rich paper to a beverage seldom brewed in our home of business when it was just the two of us. My eyes opened and struck the cup of tea on the table beside the case.

Arthur had used another one from the fancy, ostentatious glass cabinet. One with an ornate avian design and a golden curved handle.

“Oh, no,” I cried. “We just got back! What is it now?”

“Barry wants a cigar fresh from Fidel Castro’s mouth. And one of the lovable communist leader’s beard hairs.”

“Fan-freaking-tastic. How much?”

“Three million.”

I drank the tea.