Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (3 page)

Uncertain about his next move and sure
that he was missing something important, Callum moved closer to the
castle entrance. He spent a few minutes scanning the face of every
tourist who entered the castle. With each person who passed by,
Callum’s irritation and suspicion rose, until he remembered that he
hadn’t yet spoken to the groundskeeper.

“
Who’s watching the back
gate?” Callum said, cutting through the chatter amongst his men
that came constantly through his earpiece. He hadn’t cut them off
earlier in large part because men standing around talking looked
more natural than men glaring at the crowd.

“
Agents Jeffries and Leon,
sir,” Natasha said.

“
Excuse me, sir,” Agent
Leon said, “but Chapman and Stevens were assigned to the rear of
the castle. Jeffries and I have been up on the wall in the middle
bailey for the last thirty minutes.”

“
That’s not right, sir.
Chapman and I were tasked with watching the car park,” Stevens
said.

Bollocks. “Stevens, check the back
gate. Jeffries, find the groundskeeper.”

“
They haven’t slipped past
us from the front,” Natasha said. “I’m sure of it.”

“
I’m going to have a look
at the cellar again as a precaution,” Callum said.

Of all the times to screw
up the assignments
. That had been Natasha’s
job, but it was ultimately Callum’s responsibility. If he couldn’t
stop Meg from jumping off the balcony, the head that would roll
would be his. Callum trotted back into the passageway that led to
the wine cellar.

Tourists’ wet boots had made the
stones slippery, and Callum was glad for the good tread on his
rubber soled work shoes. No electric light or torch guided his feet
as he descended into the darkness of the wine cellar, but as he
neared the bottom of the stairs, dim light came from the doorway to
the balcony. Callum reached it a second later and pulled up,
stunned by what he saw.

“
Stop!”

At Callum’s shout, the
woman—Meg—pushed back the hood of her cloak and glanced over her
shoulder, letting the rain sweep into her face. Goronwy, the
shorter, squatter, and greyer of the two men, already stood on the
wall that overlooked the Wye River. He glared at Callum, who
couldn’t blame him, given that for the last twelve hours MI-5 had
chased him across the length and breadth of Wales. All three
fugitives looked as tired as Callum felt.

Goronwy’s hand strayed to the hilt of
his sword, but he didn’t draw his weapon. Llywelyn didn’t even
glance at Callum. Instead, he hoisted himself up onto the stones to
stand on the wall beside Goronwy. It wasn’t a wide wall, either,
maybe a foot deep. Both men balanced there securely, even Llywelyn
with his gimpy heart.

“
Please. Let us go.” Meg
clutched her skirt in one hand and gripped Goronwy’s hand tightly
with the other.

“
Don’t make another move
except to step down slowly. I need you to come with me.” Callum put
a hand to his ear, noticing the absence of conversation, and
realized that his earpiece had gone on the fritz again, blocked by
the stones above his head.

Meg dropped her skirt and reached for
Llywelyn’s hand. “We can’t. We have to go home.”

While Callum watched, helpless to stop
them, the two men lifted her onto the wall. Callum took a step
forward, one hand out, fumbling with his other hand in the pocket
of his trench coat for his phone. What he didn’t do was pull his
gun from its holster under his suit jacket. Callum needed to end
this before it escalated further, but not with a bullet
wound.

He pressed ‘talk’ and put the phone to
his ear. As the phone rang, Meg, Llywelyn, and Goronwy sidled
closer together. Goronwy and Llywelyn clutched Meg around the waist
while she slipped her arms under their cloaks and held
on.

Even as Natasha picked up
with a distant
Hello?
Callum lowered the phone.

“
Don’t do it!” he
said.

“
Sir?”
Natasha’s voice came from Callum’s phone.

Callum wanted to answer but the
situation was too delicate. A wrong move by him might encourage
them to jump. If Callum couldn’t come up with the right thing to
say, that headline on the front page of the national rag was going
to be written after all.

Then feet pounded in the corridor
above him, the metal fittings of boots rapping loudly on the
stones. Callum didn’t know if Meg heard the noise or if it was an
instinctive twitch from him that gave the game away. As Meg bent
her knees, Callum dropped his phone, took a step, and threw himself
forward in a flying tackle. He managed to wrap his arms around
Llywelyn’s shins, but he was too late. Their feet had left the
balustrade. Their combined weight and Callum’s momentum carried him
over the wall.

The water rushed four stories below
him. As he fell, seconds passed as if they were days. He forgot to
breathe. And then a great chasm of blackness opened beneath him and
swallowed him whole.

Callum hit the river and went
under.

Six Months Later
…

Chapter One

May 1289

Kings Langley Palace, Hertfordshire,
England

Callum

C
allum brought his sword down on David’s shield and then
sidestepped a countering move by mere inches. The king had gotten
the jump on Callum early in the fight and had kept him on the
defensive ever since. The two men drove back and forth—thrust,
parry, block—until Callum’s arm was shaking with the effort. For
the mock fight, they were using blunted swords that were a half
pound heavier than Callum’s personal blade. The added weight made
the fourteen years Callum had on David and the years of swordplay
David had on Callum more evident with each minute that
passed.

David’s shield splintered. He dropped
it, leaping to the attack with two hands on the hilt of his sword.
Callum countered yet again, using his greater weight to push back
until the two men grappled together, their faces a foot apart.
They’d been going at it for half an hour now. David had cleared the
small courtyard of watchers, but Callum could feel the eyes of the
garrison on them, watching surreptitiously from the battlement and
the top of the keep.

“
Enough!” David shoved
Callum away from him.

Callum dropped his sword and shield to
the ground and bent forward with his hands on his knees, breathing
hard. “Give up, do you?”

“
I wouldn’t want an old man
to get hurt.”

“
You’re only twenty,”
Callum said. “I wouldn’t call that old.”

David laughed and gazed at
Callum with that particular expression he often wore—of amusement
and intelligence and
am I really the King
of England?
He didn’t often turn it on
Callum, and it made Callum straighten and forget the fight,
instantly wary of what might be coming.

“
You’ll have muddy roads
all the way north, unless this good weather lasts,” David
said.

Callum swallowed down laughter and
incredulity. “So that’s what this was all about? A test? You wanted
to see if I was ready to go off on my own?”

“
You’ve been cooling your
heels as a glorified bodyguard since you came here,” David said.
“Today has been a long time coming.”

“
You’re saying I’m to go to
Scotland for you?” Callum clenched his suddenly shaking fists and
took a step towards David.

“
You speak Gaelic. How
could I not send you?” David said. “I once stood in your shoes, you
know.”

Callum took in a deep breath and let
it out, acknowledging that few men could understand Callum better
than David. He had arrived in medieval Wales at the age of fourteen
and grown to be the King of England. “That isn’t something I could
ever forget, even if others might.”

“
You could have told me how
you felt,” David said.

“
You’ve had enough on your
plate without worrying about me. I didn’t want to make your life
harder. But you’re right. If I have to spend one more day with
nothing of value to do, I might lose my mind.”

“
Then this is the right
time for you to leave,” David said.

In the early days of his sojourn in
the medieval world, Callum had hoped that the near constant
activity involved in learning this new way of life would be enough
to sustain him until he could return to the modern world. But as
the weeks and months had dragged on, it became increasingly clear
that the opportunity for return was not going to be forthcoming—not
from Meg, not from her daughter, Anna, and particularly not from
her son, David, who had a kingdom to run.

Callum had come to accept that he was
stranded in the Middle Ages for the time being. He hadn’t asked Meg
to take him back to the modern world, and after living for six
months among these people, it seemed less likely with each passing
day that he could. He understood that he would only be able to
leave if an opportunity dropped into his lap. He couldn’t plan on
it. It would be a matter of being in the right place at the right
time for once, as he’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time on
the balcony at Chepstow.

By treating his life here as just
another mission, and by living the life of a soldier again, Callum
had also hoped to have banished the PTSD for good. But the enforced
inactivity of late winter had unveiled new symptoms, worse ones.
Callum dreamed every night of his old life in MI-5, or on bad
nights, of the flash of exploding IEDs and death. He would wake
with grit in his teeth, more tired than when he went to sleep. He’d
taken to pushing himself physically so he could go to bed
exhausted. If that didn’t work, or Callum awoke in the night and
couldn’t go back to sleep, he would return to the hall and consume
more beer than was good for him. A drinking companion was never
hard to find in medieval England.

David hadn’t said anything to Callum
about his behavior. The king might be all of twenty years old, but
he was still effectively Callum’s boss. As odd as that was, David
never took advantage of it, never threw his weight around, and
never implied that he knew more than Callum about what was best for
him. Even if he did.

Callum had spent much of the
spring—when he wasn’t learning impossible languages or practicing
sword-fighting as he’d done today—riding with the garrison on
patrol as if he belonged with the other men. Everyone knew Callum
didn’t. The men humored him, even accepted his company as his
horsemanship improved, but he could never be one of them. Callum
had finally concluded that he needed something real to
do.

And it seemed that David, despite his
total silence on the subject, had understood that too.

David tossed his weapon into a pile
with Callum’s sword and shield. Then he pulled off his gloves and
sweat-soaked shirt, effectively giving Callum permission to do the
same. The day had grown warm. David sat on a bench in the shade of
a north-facing wall and leaned back, stretching his long legs in
front of him. “From that first day at St. Paul’s, I had every
intention of using you. It was a matter of finding where your
interests and mine aligned.”

Until now, David hadn’t asked anything
of Callum, just provided: food and shelter, tutors, weapons
training—anything that Callum thought he needed, and some things
that he hadn’t known he needed to take his place as a knight in
medieval England. David hadn’t said one word about Callum serving
him.

But now … now Callum had a task he
could sink his teeth into.

Since Christmas, Callum had been
catching up on all the British history that had bored him stiff in
school. A matter of kings and crowns and untimely deaths, only some
of which had turned out to be the same here as back in the old
world.

David’s current headache had to do
with who would sit on Scotland’s throne, empty since the death of
the last king, Alexander III, in 1286. Scotland had been ruled
during the three years since by a council of Guardians: two
Scottish bishops, two Scottish lords, and two English noblemen.
Callum’s headache was keeping them all straight, but it helped that
one of the English lords happened to be Gilbert de Clare, a strong
ally of David. The other English lord had died and hadn’t been
replaced.

These Guardians had held the throne in
trust on behalf of Alexander’s last legitimate heir: his
six-year-old granddaughter, Margaret. Fearful to wait until she
grew up, her father, Erik of Norway, had sent the girl to Scotland
to stand before her people as their queen. Margaret had died during
the journey from Norway, however, before she could be
crowned.

The girl’s death had happened in the
old world too, and King Edward had stepped in to mediate the
succession. As the new King of England, it was David’s task now,
and all of Britain was counting on him to stop Scotland from going
off the rails.

David tapped a finger to his lips. “I
promised the Scots I would ride north to meet Margaret and speak
before their Parliament, but I was hoping to put it off until the
summer. Now that she’s dead, I’m stuck with that promise and have a
pressing need for a delegation. The Scots are still expecting me to
come, but I can’t go. You’ll have to convey my regrets to
them.”