Children of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book Four) (15 page)

“I can see how that would be awkward,” Ted said. “Yet we can’t ever understand
why
you travel in time unless you talk with someone who might know more than you.”

“Do you have someone in mind? Someone you trust?”

He took in a deep breath and let it out. “I have a friend. He’s a guy I went to college with. He teaches here in the UK, at Cambridge.”

I eyed my brother-in-law, suspicion rising in my chest. “You already called him, didn’t you?” My face flushed and I leaned forward. “You told him about us?”

Ted didn’t even have the grace to look abashed. “I did.”

“What? When? What if he tells someone else?” I leapt to my feet and paced to the picture window beside the French doors. The rain continued to fall against the pane. “What if someone from the government finds out?” Coming hard on the heels of the revelation about the camera image, Ted’s idea was not at all welcome.

“That’s ridiculous.” Ted waved a hand dismissively. “Why should you be afraid of the government?”

“Why should I be—” I broke off as three dark SUVs swept up the driveway and stopped in the roundabout by the front door to the spa.

“What is it?” Ted rose to his feet and came to stand beside me. Six men dressed in black protective gear—maybe it was armor, even, though I couldn’t be sure in the low light—stepped from the front two vehicles. They didn’t head straight for the front door of the spa, however. They hovered by the back of the second SUV, talking to each other and looking towards the third vehicle.

“Oh, Ted.” I felt in my pocket for the key to our suite. “Take this. Go get our stuff.”

“What?”

I pointed at the trucks. “If they’re not here for us, that’s fine, but what if they are? Goronwy needs his sword.” Llywelyn’s sword was still propped against the wall in his room, where he’d insisted I leave it, along with the rest of his gear.

 “Meg.” Ted kept his tone reasonable, like he was trying to convince a child that vanilla ice cream was just as good as chocolate. “You’re overreacting.”

“Am I?” I was already heading down the hall to Llywelyn’s room. “Call me when you’re safe and we’ll meet up.” I threw the words over my shoulder and didn’t look back. I needed Ted to do as I asked and not argue with me, which he would continue to do if I gave him a chance.

As I burst into the room, Llywelyn was awake, sitting up and smiling. I eyed him. He looked bulkier under his hospital gown than he had even this morning.

“We’re going now,” I said.

Goronwy fixed his eyes on my face. “Something’s gone wrong, hasn’t it? What?”

“I don’t know for sure, but we need to get Llywelyn out of here. Immediately.”

Llywelyn didn’t wait to be told twice. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed, stood, and ripped off his hospital gown. Then I understood why he’d been smiling. He’d put on his shirt and breeches and then worn the gown over the top. I could have kissed him, but it would have taken too much time.

Meanwhile, Goronwy reached for Llywelyn’s sword and strapped it to his own waist. With the black leather jacket, he looked more like a pirate than a medieval man. Either way, the sword was terribly conspicuous. It wasn’t as if we could leave it, however. In the Middle Ages, a man’s sword defined him. I helped Llywelyn shove his feet into his boots, which the pool water had neither shrunk after they’d dried nor destroyed with chlorine. Of course, his manservant had been coating them with lanolin, a natural waterproofing, every week since they were made.

I thought about returning to the waiting room and leaving the building via the patio, but I didn’t dare pass by the nurse at the desk. I wished I could see if the men in black were still in the driveway or if they’d entered the spa. In my head, I traced the path they would take to reach Llywelyn’s room. It wasn’t far. They could be here any second.

“This way.” With Llywelyn’s cloak over my arm and his armor in the plastic bag that had held his clothes, I led the way out of Llywelyn’s room. He’d gotten dressed because he was feeling perverse and stubborn (which would have driven the nurses mad if we’d stayed through tomorrow), but I was glad for it now. He moved well for a man who’d been happy to have used the toilet by himself for the first time thirty-six hours ago.

“I’m really okay,” Llywelyn said.

“You probably won’t be
okay
for a few months,” I said. “Not if what the doctor said about what happened to your heart is true. But you look pretty good, I admit.”

Llywelyn grinned and stood taller. As we turned the corner of the hallway, however, Goronwy put a hand on my arm. “They’re coming!”

I listened. Worse, they were coming from the wrong direction. I’d expected them to reach us by going through the lobby, but booted feet rapped in the corridor ahead of us. Without giving myself time to think too hard about it, I pulled Llywelyn and Goronwy into a room, also on the right, with its door ajar. Once inside, I left the door open slightly so I could peer through the crack between the door and the frame. Four men in black tromped past the room and then turned the corner. I didn’t doubt they were headed for Llywelyn’s room.

I’d been too distracted when we first entered the room to worry about who was in it with us, but now looked towards the window. A very startled elderly woman sat up in her bed. The staff had turned off the lights in the room everywhere but on the headboard. They shone on her permed, white-pink hair.

“I apologize for disturbing you,” I said in Welsh.

“You should have knocked,” she said in the same language.

“I know. I’m sorry. We’re merely passing through,” I said.

I went to the window, a metal and single-paned glass affair with hinges along the left side. I undid the latch, but I couldn’t get it to swing outward. It was two feet wide and three tall, set at waist height above the radiator. One edge of the metal frame was bent. I banged on it with my fist, frustrated.

We could escape into the gardens beyond if we could just get through it.

“It’s stuck,” the woman said, though I clearly already knew that. Her eyes were on Llywelyn. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he had undone the laces on his breeches so he could tuck in his shirt, and then laced them up again. He also pulled out the needle the nurse had left in his arm in case she needed to reinsert his IV. Goronwy slapped a cloth over it.

“I need you, Goronwy,” I said.

“Hold this to the wound while I help Meg,” Goronwy said.

Llywelyn pressed on his vein while Goronwy put his shoulder into the window. It popped open, and its momentum crashed it against the outside wall.

More boots sounded in the corridor. I hated to think they (that ubiquitous, and yet unspecified ‘they’) had raised a spa-wide alarm already. I was hoping they’d assume we’d taken Llywelyn for a walk. While Goronwy climbed awkwardly through the window, I wrapped Llywelyn’s cloak around his shoulders. He looked at me with bright eyes. “I haven’t had this much fun in a long time.”

I pressed a hand to his chest. “Hush. Tell me the moment you need to rest. You moved more quickly tonight than you have in weeks.” I held his hand to steady him while he clambered out of the window after Goronwy, and then I scrambled out myself, ending up in a rhododendron. Bent double, Goronwy and Llywelyn set off across the grass. Before I closed the window, I leaned through it to speak to the woman in the room. “That was the true Prince of Wales.”

The woman’s eyes widened. “It was?”

I pointed towards the door. “There are men here now who want to lock him up to prevent him from claiming the throne. If you could—”

“They won’t get anything out of me!” The woman pulled her covers up to her chin and glared at me, defiant.

“Thank you.” I closed the window. I couldn’t latch it, but I shoved at it hard and it caught, as it had before we’d opened it. Then I turned and followed Llywelyn into the night.

Chapter Thirteen

18 November 1288

David

W
e spent the last night before we were to reach London at Windsor Castle, only twenty miles from the city. All we had left was a morning’s ride that we could complete before noon. That we were staying tonight at such a famous estate (thanks to a special dispensation from Humphrey de Bohun, who controlled it due to his station as regent) had prompted giggles from Lili. Since it had become my quest to find more joy in my life, it made me laugh to hear her.

At the same time, the closer we got to the village that surrounded the castle, the more solemn we all became. “It starts now, doesn’t it?” Lili said.

“What does?” I said.

“Being careful,” she said, “of everyone and everything.”

“I think it actually started the moment we set foot in England,” I said.

Dong … dong … dong.

“What am I hearing?” I reined in. “Church bells?”

I’d long since shed the habit of checking my left wrist for my watch, but this time I couldn’t figure out what hour the bells were chiming. Sunset wasn’t for another hour and there wasn’t a monastery here anyway, though Windsor did have its own leper hospital.

“It seems so, my lord,” Clare said.

The town was situated on the southern side of the Thames River, which we’d cross tomorrow morning before continuing to London. We had to pass through the town to reach the castle. The western gate lay ahead of us, open wide.

Lili put a hand on my arm. “Dafydd—Look at the people.”

“They’re kind of hard to miss,” I said, though I couldn’t figure out what was exciting enough about the arrival of our company that the townspeople of Windsor would feel the need to crowd the battlements of the town wall. Below, those who couldn’t fit on the heights jostled one another as they passed through the gate and lined both sides of the road. The people we’d encountered in England so far had treated us well and hundreds had greeted us throughout our entire journey, not just at the first village, or at Gloucester Castle. However, this took it to a new level.

“What do we do?” Lili said.

“Keep riding,” said Carew.

“A smile and a wave wouldn’t go amiss,” Clare added.

Lili obeyed, raising her hand in greeting to the first people we passed. Her smile was a little sick, but the crowd cheered anyway. She shot me a wide-eyed look but I had no answers for her. With people crowding the horses on both sides, this was about as far from being careful as it was possible to get. Still, I smiled too, and held up my hand to the onlookers as we passed under the gate. More cheers. Instead of lifting my spirits, this got me really worried. Did they have me confused with someone else?

Once inside the town walls, we rode along the main road until we reached the town center, at which point a gathering of men greeted us. Windsor had received a royal charter from Edward in 1277 and was one of the most important towns in all of England, with a vibrant and active merchant class. I was looking at a dozen of the town’s most upstanding citizens.

I could read Bevyn’s face. Back at Chepstow, he’d been optimistic as to how welcoming the English would be to us, but now that it came to it, he couldn’t stop his eyes from flicking to the left and right, looking for threats.

“My lord—” Bevyn said.

I held out a hand to him, which the crowd seemed to interpret as another wave because they cheered again. “It’s okay. Nothing’s going to happen to us today.”

Trying to portray a confidence I didn’t feel, under the principle of
fake it ‘til you make it
, I dismounted. That meant everyone else had to dismount too. It was a matter of convention and a sign of respect to me, at least in their eyes. One of the townsmen stepped forward. He wore a large floppy hat, which he swept off his head, revealing thick white hair and blue eyes. His beard matched his hair and if he’d been wearing red, he would have been a dead ringer for Santa Claus.

The man bowed to me and the men behind him followed suit. “Welcome to Windsor, my lord David,” he said. “I am James, the headman of our town.”

“Thank you,” I said in English. “You honor me with your kind welcome.” The heads of the rest of the men popped up. Their expressions showed surprise, and then relief that I could not only understand them, but could respond in kind.

I stuck out a hand to James, who started at the sight of it, but I left my hand there, and after a moment he tentatively took it and shook with a credibly firm grasp. I worked my way through the rest of the men, shaking hands with each one. When I finished, I turned back to James. He held out a key on a thick chain. “The key to our fair city, my lord.”

I took it and put it around my neck, as gravely as I could, though internally the whole scene had me thinking
what the hell?
If James hadn’t referred to me as David, I would have been even more convinced he had the wrong man. Even so, it was nice to see that they’d thought of Lili too. Bevyn had helped her from her horse, so as to allow a group of four girls to give her a handmade doll (admittedly, all dolls in the Middle Ages were handmade). The doll’s blue eyes, black hair, and green dress bore a surprising resemblance to Lili herself, and I wondered if they’d known in advance what Lili looked like. Of all the things that had happened today, I found that most hard to believe, and yet, likely.

Lili took the doll with a smile which didn’t falter when a group of boys approached and handed her a wooden sword. She stood there, with a toy in each hand and a bemused expression on her face. Then James said, by way of explanation, “For the coming child, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, though inwardly I ground my teeth. That Lili was pregnant had been the least well-kept secret in Wales, but that the news had spread so quickly all the way to Windsor shocked me. “We thank you again.”

Carew had stayed nearby throughout the small ceremony, and now he gestured that Lili and I should remount our horses. I thought about it for half a second, and then gave a quick shake of my head. If we were going to do this, we might as well do it right. I took the gifted sword from Lili and slipped my other hand into hers. “I think we should walk.”