Chapter Text
Alonso pulled up to the school on his scooter, just before the bell rang. He smiled as he watched Blanca run out of the front doors with a crowd of other children.
“Daddy!” she cried out, dashing towards him.
“Blanca!” he exclaimed, lifting her up and kissing her on the cheek. “How was school today?”
“Great!” she replied excitedly, as she climbed into the scooter’s sidecar. “Anna and I made paper dolls and Ms. Van Houten taught us numbers and we played tag at recess!”
“That sounds like fun!” Alonso replied. “What do you want for lunch today?”
“Chicken nuggets!” Blanca exclaimed.
“Again?” Alonso asked.
“The dinosaur ones!”
“Well, if it's the dinosaur ones…” Alonso relented. Chicken nuggets were easy to make, now that he'd finally figured out how to use the air fryer Elena got him for Christmas last year.
Alonso adjusted Blanca's helmet, which she had haphazardly placed on her head, before putting the scooter into gear and heading home. It had been four years since Alonso left Spain and moved to the Netherlands for Elena’s new job. Alonso didn't get out much, but he didn't in Spain either. He found that he actually liked life here for the most part.
He and Elena bought a nice home just outside the city, with a large garden for Blanca to play in and a garage for Alonso to keep his (and Blanca's) toys. His neighbors seemed nice enough, what little he was able to communicate with them. Both he and Blanca were still learning Dutch, though she was much further along than he was at this point. Elena usually arranged Blanca's playdates, since she was fluent in five languages.
Alonso’s days were mostly the same every day. Elena took Blanca to kindergarten on her way to work, while Alonso stayed home and did housework. At noon, he would pick Blanca up from school and make her lunch, followed by cartoons, a siesta, and playtime before Elena came home. On weekends, the three of them would ride bicycles together or go to the beach if the weather was good. It was a nice life.
Alonso took the chicken nuggets out of the freezer and pushed the buttons on the air fryer to set it to the right time.
“My friend Matti said he got a puppy!” Blanca informed him. “Can we get a puppy, Daddy?”
“No,” Alonso said, perhaps a bit too quickly.
“Why?” Blanca asked, borderline pleading.
“Because…we need to ask Mommy first,” Alonso said, deflecting the question. He really did not want to get a puppy. Between his early years in his Spanish army and Blanca's baby years, Alonso was done cleaning up excrement.
“Okay. Can I have some juice?”
Alonso breathed a sigh of relief, glad that a puppy was not something Blanca was determined about. Blanca could be incredibly persistent when she was determined to do something. It was a familial curse.
Alonso pulled the bottle of juice out of the fridge and poured some into a cup. Just as he set the cup down at Blanca's spot at the table, there was a knock on the door. Thinking it was likely another parent from Blanca's school, Alonso went to open the door.
“Alonso de Entrerrios?” The man standing at the door was not someone Alonso recognized. He was tall and blonde, which meant he was probably Dutch. But he had pronounced Alonso's name correctly, which he had yet to hear any local accomplish on the first try.
“Sí…ja?” Alonso answered.
“My name is Steven Kuipers,” the man said, in perfect Spanish. “I’m here because the Ministry needs your help.”
“No. No no,” said Alonso, waving him off. “I live here now. I’m not going back to Madrid.”
Mr. Kuipers let out a subtle laugh. “Not the Spanish Ministry. The Dutch Ministry.”
Alonso just stared at him.
“You didn’t think Spain was the only country in the world with a Ministry of Time, did you?” Mr. Kuipers asked.
“Yes,” Alonso replied.
“Well. Let me dissuade you of that notion,” Mr. Kuipers said. “Not every country has one, mind you. God forbid if the Americans had a Ministry.”
Alonso nodded. Even if he hadn’t dealt with Darrow, he’d watched enough of the news lately to know how much of a disaster that would be.
“Anyway,” Mr. Kuipers continued. “The Dutch Ministry of Time needs help in protecting William of Orange. One of our agents got injured by a kangaroo while on a mission with Abel Tasman, and we need someone who can act as a bodyguard. Mr. Jimenez said you’re the best man for the job.”
Of course Ernesto would be the one to put him up to this.
“I can’t,” said Alonso. “Someone has to take care of Blanca after school.” Not knowing anyone in the Dutch Ministry of Time, Alonso wasn’t exactly willing to simply drop Blanca off with the boss’s secretary. Blanca could wind up in the care of Vincent Van Gogh, God forbid. He wanted his daughter to come home with both ears.
“We have a comprehensive childcare program for all our agents,” said Mr. Kuipers. “I believe one of Blanca’s classmates is enrolled in it. Mathieu, his name is.”
“The kid with the puppy?” Alonso asked.
“Ah yes, Wout van Bark. Very cute, we’ve all seen pictures.”
Alonso eyed the man skeptically. “I’ll need to speak to my wife,” he said, his voice trailing off at the end.
“Of course,” Mr. Kuipers replied. He handed Alonso a business card, with what Alonso assumed was his contact information. “Just let us know by 7 a.m. Monday.”
Alonso watched as Mr. Kuipers got into a car and drove away. There was no way he was going to help this orange guy, whoever he was. He was done with time travel, for real this time.
Still, something pulled at him. He never had friends as close as those he made during his time at the Ministry. Julian and Maite came to visit this summer now that their kids were old enough to travel, but it wasn’t quite the same. It would be nice to have someone here to talk to, other than Elena, who was over the age of five.
***
By the time Elena got home that evening, Alonso had been stewing over his visit from Mr. Kuipers all afternoon. He tried not to let it show how preoccupied he was, for Blanca’s sake, but Elena could tell the second she walked in the door.
“Did something happen at the school today?” Elena asked, setting her bag down near the front door.
“Matti got a puppy!” Blanca exclaimed before Alonso could answer. “Mommy, can we get a puppy?”
“What does your father say?” Elena asked her.
“To ask you,” Blanca replied.
Elena side eyed him. Alonso mouthed a silent ‘no’ at her.
“I’ll have to think about it,” she said, to Alonso's dismay. “Now, go get washed up for dinner.”
As Blanca ran out of the room to wash her hands, Elena walked over to Alonso to greet him properly. “That look on your face tells me it’s not a dog you’re thinking about,” she said, giving him a kiss on the lips.
“Someone from the Dutch Ministry of Time came to see me today,” Alonso informed her.
“Ah. Irene told me they were coming,” Elena replied. Alonso was surprised. How was it he was always the last person to find out about things? “Did they say what they wanted?”
“To protect some orange man,” Alonso said.
“William of Orange?” Elena asked.
“Yeah that’s it,” Alonso replied.
“Which one?” Elena asked.
“What do you mean ‘which one’?” Alonso replied.
“One of them was the first King of the Netherlands. The other one became King of England. For your sake, I hope they mean the latter,” said Elena.
Alonso looked at her in bewilderment, wondering how she could think he would ever prefer the English to the Dutch.
“It's just one mission, right?” Elena asked. “You could use some time away from the house. If you don't like it, you don't have to go back.”
Elena was right, as she always was. It was only one mission.
“Alright. Just this once.”
***
Alonso arrived at the Ministry office at 6:50 a.m. Monday morning. He had called Mr. Kuipers over the weekend, who had given him the Ministry address and directions for how to access the secured parking. Alonso was surprised to learn that the Ministry was not in Amsterdam, like he expected. “If we were located there, the Ministry would be underwater,” Mr. Kuipers explained to him. Alonso wasn't sure why the same wasn't true for The Hague, but he didn't care for a geology lesson, so he didn't bother asking.
Alonso opened the Ministry doors and immediately found himself standing next to a metal detector like the ones they had at airports. It was a good thing he hadn’t decided to bring his rapier, but Alonso did wonder why the metal detectors were there. The Spanish Ministry never needed them.
Mr. Kuipers was waiting for him on the other side of the security check. He waved at the woman sitting at a reception desk and said something to her in Dutch before escorting Alonso through a series of corridors. The walls were painted a stark white and the space between closed doors was taken up by various inoffensive art pieces that portrayed little more than color gradients. It was entirely modern in every sense of the word. Alonso hated it immediately.
The office to which Mr. Kuipers led Alonso was just as sterile, like it had been designed by the people who ran that large furniture store Alonso detested. If there wasn't someone sitting at the desk, Alonso would have doubted that anyone worked there.
The woman sitting behind the desk stood up to greet him. Alonso tried his best to keep from scowling. The one time that the Spanish Ministry was run by a woman, Alonso had been infected with a deadly virus. But Elena had spent the last five years drilling it into him that women were perfectly capable of running important entities and that he shouldn't let his one bad experience taint things. He decided to reserve judgment on this woman - for now.
“You must be Alonso de Entrerrios. Welcome to the Ministry of Time,” said the woman in accented Spanish. “My name is Julie van de Wilde, I'm the head of this Ministry. Please, have a seat and I'll brief you on your mission.”
Alonso sat down in the open chair, next to another woman who hadn't bothered to get up. He watched as Mr. Kuipers left the room, which he hadn't expected.
“Mr. Kuipers informed you that we need assistance in protecting William of Orange, I assume,” said Ms. van de Wilde.
“Yes, but my wife tells me there are two of them,” said Alonso.
Ms. van de Wilde let out a chuckle as she sat back down in her chair. “Some people refer to William III as William of Orange - the British mainly. Here in the Netherlands we mean William I. We've received word from 1581 that Balthasar Gérard has been spotted getting a little too close to William and is already planning to assassinate him.”
“Why would someone want to assassinate him?” Alonso asked. He took note of the date, only eleven years after he'd been declared dead.
“Because King Phillip II of Spain declared William a traitor,” Ms. van de Wilde answered.
“If the King of Spain declared him a traitor, then he must be a traitor,” Alonso averred.
The woman sitting next to him, silent until now, muttered something under her breath in Dutch. Alonso thought he caught the word “mistake” but he wasn't certain.
Ms. van de Wilde sighed. “Whether he's a traitor or not is beside the point. William isn't supposed to be assassinated by Gérard until 1584. If he's killed in 1581, his youngest son won't be born and the entire royal line, including our current King, will cease to exist. It would be absolutely disastrous and not just for the Netherlands.”
Alonso didn't try to hide his displeasure any longer. “So you want me to protect this traitor?”
“Only for a few days, until Gérard goes to Luxembourg like he's supposed to,” said Ms. van de Wilde. “Mr. Jimenez warned me that you wouldn't be keen on this mission, but I hope you can set your personal feelings aside for the good of preserving history.”
Alonso grunted. The woman next to him didn't look too happy either.
“Now, Mr. Jimenez also mentioned that 1581 is quite close to your time of origin. That's where Ireen comes in.” Ms. van de Wilde gestured at the woman sitting next to him. “She'll keep away any Spaniards and anyone you may have encountered in battle in Flanders. Your only concern is William.”
Ms. van de Wilde’s mention of Spaniards made Alonso realize that he still had a way out of this mission. “There is a problem,” he said. “I don't speak Dutch.”
“That's not a problem at all,” said Ms. van de Wilde. “William is fluent in Spanish. He's quite knowledgeable about Spanish politics as well. You'll have more ease speaking with him than with a modern Spaniard.”
Alonso sank down in his chair and scowled. He couldn't believe he let Elena talk him into this. His first mission back from retirement and he had to protect a traitor.
“Come with me, I'll get you outfitted with the right clothing.” Alonso was surprised to hear the woman next to him - Ireen - speak to him in his native language, since she hadn't said a word to him before.
“Does everyone here speak Spanish?” Alonso asked, standing up from his chair and following the woman out of the office.
“No. Spanish is only required for those of us who specialize in the Renaissance period. But everyone here must be fluent in at least three languages. I assume your Ministry doesn't have such stringent requirements.” Alonso could hear the derision in her voice. If she were a man, he would have challenged her to a duel right then and there. Instead, he chose to ignore her.
Ireen led Alonso through a series of corridors, all just as sterile as the office they came from. They passed a few people, all wearing badges with their photograph, name, and what Alonso assumed was their title. Most of them nodded at Ireen but looked a little confused by Alonso's presence. It was a fair reaction, Alonso thought, since he was probably just as confused as they were as to how he wound up there.
Eventually, Ireen opened the door to the wardrobe room. The room was staffed by a handful of people, most of them hand-stitching various articles of clothing. Ireen spoke to one of them in Dutch. The employee set down the project she was working on, walked over to a clothing rack, pulled an outfit off a hanger and handed it to Alonso. Ireen then gestured at a changing room
Alonso donned the Dutch military uniform supplied to him, disgusted with himself. He spent his entire military career fighting this army, only to now become one of them. He hoped Spinola wasn't in Flanders in 1581, so that there was no chance his hero would see him like this.
Alonso emerged from the dressing room so that the tailor could inspect him. “Do I have to wear this ridiculous thing?” he asked, holding up a large neck ruff.
Ireen, now wearing a bar maid’s outfit, let out an exasperated sigh. “Yes. It’s part of the uniform. You think I like wearing this dress?” Alonso eyed the dress she was wearing. It looked comfortable to him, but it was a bit immodest. Though he suspected that wasn’t the basis for her objection.
Reluctantly, Alonso put the ruff on over his neck. Not only was it impractical, it was itchy as well. Alonso cursed whoever it was that thought this was fashionable.
After a brief stop at an armory for a period appropriate sabre and pistol, Ireen led Alonso to an elevator, which opened up a few floors down to a hallway filled with doors. Unlike the rest of the building, this part of the Ministry looked just like the one in Spain. Were it not for the difference in clothing style, Alonso would have thought he was in Spain. Already he was starting to feel a little better about this mission.
Once she found the door they needed, Ireen opened it and stepped in, not bothering to wait for Alonso. Alonso crossed himself and kissed his hand, as he always did before stepping through time. Then, he stepped over the threshold and into the 16th century.