Trogir - to meet Prince Andrew at long last

Liz has already realized to have only a quarter to noon. However she sets off two by two to the limestone treads.

To get to the wall walk, about 30 meters high from the inner ward, she must climb more than 80 stairs, with their high rises roughly cut and loose.

- Bon sang! With half meter per second velocity, I get to the top in a minute.

She canters upward with feet almost unaware of treads. Seldom does the Croatian sun shine as cruelly as now just as to burn her brain dead out.

When her lean figure romps around at the next flight of stairs, the white hot slabs of the stronghold wall panic her as if to knock her out for good.

- Totally flawsome of you, Andrew, to have us to see your death at noon!

She paces the stairs, as heedless as she is, and takes on her steely determination to see at long last how and why Prince Andrew died in the past.

Here in Trogir and in 1241 when Mongols occupy Hungary.

- Now me and Alex will detect and certify that Prince Andrew is still alive here and now in Trogir!

Contrary to official historians who register Prince Andrew to die at the Halych siege in Galícia in 1234.

- Alex is nowhere as always.

Although Liz has been accustoming to how Alex treats time but now a lot is at risk.

- Merde si tu oublies cette satanée épée chinoise. Damn if you forget the bloody sword of Chinese hilt! Always a von Croy in a quandary.

- We must not miss the the bell tolls Maria detailed in her description of Prince Andrew’s last moments.

Invisibility has stored the memory of Prince Andrew up to those moments in time only. Maria’s narrative has been accurate so far.

Once up on the wall walk, Liz is turning quickly tails as if the courtyard echoes footsteps. The inner ward below is empty however. Only fiery flat-stones emit up to the wall walk their flaming whites in puffs from the castle courtyard below.

Still 12 minutes to noon.

Up there along the walkway, the merlons allow as jigsaw puzzles do to see bits and pieces of the town, Trogir.

The Karmelengo stronghold on the island looms above the town Trogir. The stronghold has crenels with solid widths, these are the merlons between, to reveal below the offshore row of docks of the island with roadsters, already fetched or just pulling off.

Cars are wimpling around the rows of red roof houses along the streets at the mainland shore.

Far and high on the hilltop of the southern direction, there is the chapel of St. Eustance with her tiny white belfry.

Nobody after such frenzied efforts of clambering stairs can will paresis, a complete lax of all the limbs.

Liz trusts although her kinetic skills but now vertigo lets its forces capture her like secret words make darkness trembling.

How to have her eyes seeing without willing to look, how to have her vocal chords moving without willing to sound?

After several nagging meets of Maria, her urges, stirs and begs, Liz cannot miss to see now - because of what the applied kinesiology of the human body prescribes - what she must not will to see.

Object have their kinetic energies. Her skill has to help that object fly back into the past.

- Putain, where are you Alex with the Chinese sword?

Without that Prince Andrew is exposed, unprotected. His death has so far had been smothered to an unearth-able historical hush-up anyway.

Standing in a trance on the merlon yet mentally alert, Liz smiles when Alex stops short behind her.

- "Touche! Just in time!"

Her pupils however are already being turned up, she is looking straight ahead now into the distance only with her whites.

- "Be on my left."

The width between the crenels, the merlon, is about 50 centimetres. Hardly wide enough for Alex to climb on and to have his shins pinned against the crenel sides. Nothing else, but those to recline to and to resist the pull of the depth.

- "Time?"

- "Spiffing. No idea for us yet why to be unhappy."

A sword, thinly having wings, is profitable for a tightrope dancer to counterweight gravity. But in Alex’ left hand now it is choosing to set up for itself when sliding out of its sheath.

- "Bollocks!"

- "Tu te dépêches! Keep its Chinese hilt before my forehead. Get it in line of me eyesight. Time?"

Luckily Alex triumphs both sword and gravity. His watch pities him, revealing hour hands. Two minutes to noon.

- "Hope you see golly. Then what?"

- "Throw the sword away, back into the past."

- "Splendid. But the sea below rather."

Now St. Eustance tiny belfry starts tolling the bell with her cordial lay, intermixing the noises of the town with.

It is noon.

Liz is standing on the merlon with arms stretched to sky when her voice, peculiarly deep, brings these words out aloud:

- "Who is that flying near the star? Alighted Turul wings afar. On the ground his golden deer, from time to time they both appear."

A bit shocked by her chanting, Alex gets to remember to throw the sword into the void with a sec delay. The sword flies off into the depth, swishing with sheath and web detached.

- "Right hand eye of God is the burning sun. Left hand eye of God is the silver moon. God sweats and gasps in the running breeze."

Liz' deep, guttural chanting voice fills and echoes only in the air.

- "Ravishing, I bet" - Alex says breathing relieved at last when watchfully he climbs off the merlon. Liz usually makes wonders with her kinetic skills, but this one now, what she has insisted to try, is a long shot for Alex.

He shrugs shoulders and is turning to the stairs when he stops. How weird to hear? To hear the calm? The bell tolls only! No background noise of the traffic of the town!

- With kinetics there must also come pathophysiology of my hearing.

He turns back again. Trogir is nowhere.

The bell still tolls, but no houses, no yachts. Instead green meadows reflect only a sweet sorrow, as if being sad to cover up all the upshots of Trogir town.

The single building, far and high on the hilltop of the southern direction, is the chapel of St. Eustance with her tiny white belfry.

Down in meadow and close to shore, either of two men in a blue and red surcoats is picking up the sheath from the ground and handles it over to the other.

The other has the sword of the Chinese hilt in his hand.

- Is he Prince Andrew?

The knights both in their thirties talk as friendly knights discuss their common matters.

The channel below separates the island from the mainland, and there is a respectful figure in a boat rowing. The knights are paying tribute to him before they turn and start going toward the hills.

- Thrilling!

Alex although amazed but a little, he still wonders to see himself and Liz in 12th century garments.

- "I never get accustomed to swapping suits to surcoats."

They are setting out on their second occasion into the past since they have started their quest in Dulmen.

- "Let us join the party."