Children of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book Four) (18 page)

Neither Llywelyn nor Goronwy objected further. Once in the car, I bent to show Llywelyn how to buckle his seat belt but he brushed aside my hand. “Who do you think took you from your chariot at Cricieth?”

I smiled. “You did.”

“Besides, I drove with Dafydd at Buellt a few years ago.”

It was odd, with all the advances in technology, how little seatbelts had changed in the twenty years since I’d driven into Wales the first time. I adjusted my seat and when I put my hands on the wheel, I swallowed hard. I was sitting on the right side of the car, what was to me the ‘wrong’ side compared to how I might drive in the United States. I would have to drive on the left side of the road, too. Thankfully, Ted had rented an automatic, not a stick shift. I drove out of the parking lot and pulled onto the road, heading north and all the while reciting,
stay to the left, stay to the left.

“Where are you taking us?” Llywelyn said after we’d left Stwyth behind us. I had yet to overtake another car, or have one pass me on the right.
Small blessings
.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I don’t have any holdings this far south,” Llywelyn said.

“I know,” I said. “Even if you did, it’s not like any of your castles are still habitable. We can’t camp out at Castell y Bere. The walls are only a few feet high in most places and none of the buildings have a roof anymore. Dolwyddelan is the only one that’s been semi-rebuilt, but it’s far away, and I can’t see the point of going there.”

We drove in silence for two more miles. I glanced at Llywelyn. He gazed stonily ahead. Rain continued to pour down and I set the wipers on a higher speed, so they flicked back and forth at a constant interval. I checked the speedometer. I was driving forty miles an hour. Neither man had ever traveled this fast before. Llywelyn clenched his fingers around the handle on the door and Goronwy’s face was pale in the rearview mirror.

A turn out appeared up ahead, so I slowed and pulled into it. After turning off the car, I twisted in my seat so I could see both of them at the same time. “I need your help figuring out what to do, because I don’t have all the answers—or maybe any answers. I am from this time, but I’ve never experienced anything like this either. We all want to go home, right?”

“Yes,” Llywelyn said. “Though I have my concerns about the trip.”

“I guess I knew that,” I said. “What concerns you, specifically?”

“The last time you were pregnant, when it came time to deliver Dafydd, what happened?” Llywleyn said.

I took in a deep breath and let it out. “I took Anna back to my mother’s house. I know. I’ve thought about that too.”

“In addition, it almost happened to Anna before she gave birth to Cadell,” Llywelyn said.

A rueful expression crossed Goronwy’s face. “Could we … wait? Wait until you are ready to deliver the babies?”

“And then what? What are the odds that at the moment my water breaks, you two are holding on to me?” I said. “I disappear into the Middle Ages, leaving you here alone? No.” I shook my head. “If it happens, it happens, but I won’t risk you two spending the rest of your lives in the modern world without me.”

Llywelyn pursed his lips and looked out the window. “When you put it that way, it does sound like a poor choice.” He reached out a hand and took mine. “I’m worried.”

“I don’t want you to worry,” I said, “but I do feel that it’s better to go home now, safely, without new babies in my arms. When my time comes, we’ll deal with whatever happens.”

“We need a plan,” Goronwy said.

“We need to feel like we have a plan, anyway,” I said. “If we do manage to get back to the Middle Ages, I don’t know where we’ll end up. I’m open to your thoughts—and honestly, just because you’re from another time doesn’t disqualify you from having a better idea than I have at the moment, since I don’t have any.”

“How far can this vehicle take us?” Goronwy said.

“As far as we want to go,” I said. “We can be anywhere in Wales or England before morning.”

“You’re telling me that Chepstow, which is at least a hundred miles from Aberystwyth, is reachable tonight?” Llywelyn said.

I checked the clock on the dashboard. It said 10 pm. It felt like it had to be two in the morning by now, but it wasn’t. “We could be in Chepstow in three hours. We could easily be in London by dawn.”

Llywelyn allowed that to sink in. “What kind of condition is Chepstow Castle in? You said that Aberystwyth is a ruin, as are all of my—” Llywelyn swallowed his words without finishing the sentence, his earlier amusement gone.

“Chepstow is in pretty good shape for a ruin,” I said. “The balcony is still there, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“We could go there—jump off it again?” Goronwy leaned forward so he could hear better.

“We could,” I said. “It wouldn’t be much different than a few days ago.” I coughed a laugh. It felt like months since we’d been in the Middle Ages. “It’s November and we’d risk getting soaked again.”

“What’s the worst outcome we could expect?” Goronwy said.

“We fall in the river,” I said. “With all this rain, as at home, the Wye must be running high. We’d float downstream and someone would come along and fish us out.”

“What about these government men?” Llywelyn said. “Will they pursue us?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “Surely they won’t expect us to drive to Chepstow. They don’t even know that we have a vehicle.”

“If we did jump from the balcony, and failed to return to our time, we’d be vulnerable. How likely would it be then that these men from the government would catch us?” Goronwy said.

“It would depend on where we beached, and what shape we were in when we did.” I shrugged. “Possibly we could buy life vests and wear them.”

“Buy what?” Llywelyn said.

“Life vests,” I said. “Flotation devices. Items we stick around our necks so that we don’t drown.”

“I like that idea,” Llywelyn said. “I feel no need to swallow any more water that I don’t intend to drink.”

“Do you think it will work?” Goronwy said.

“I have no idea about that either,” I said. “We’ve never traveled
to
the Middle Ages except by car.”

 “So, let’s go,” Llywelyn said. “If it doesn’t work, we still have the car. Maybe we can use it instead.”

I didn’t want to think about purposefully creating a car accident to get home, like David had done, but I started the car and we drove off again. Nobody pursued us, still, though the closer we got to Devil’s Bridge and the road leading from Aberystwyth, the more traffic we encountered. I couldn’t see much besides the road in the dark and the rain, but both men looked with interest out the window as we crossed the Devil’s Bridge, which spanned a canyon that would have been impassable without it. They’d journeyed in this area at one time and had taken the long way around.

Then we headed east, across the mountains that ran through the middle of Wales, down a road that hardly qualified as a road to my mind. It narrowed to a single lane as we rattled across a cattle guard. The drive was harrowing, between the rain and the sheep, which would appear beside the road unexpectedly and cause me to jerk the wheel every time. Still, we saw only two cars, both going the other way. We reached Builth Wells by midnight.

I’d intended to drive through the town without stopping. Llywelyn didn’t need to know that what had once been the great keep of Buellt Castle was nothing more than grassy mounds in the back of a housing development.

But he had a different plan.

“Cilmeri is to the west,” he said.

I glanced at him. “What? No—”

“You can’t keep it from me, Marged,” he said. “I have to see it.”

I breathed in deeply through my nose and then out through my mouth. “It’s dark and it’s raining …”

“You said yourself that we’d reach Chepstow by the time it got light. Surely we have a moment to see where I died.”

I would have closed my eyes and said a prayer for patience if I hadn’t been driving. Instead, I gave in to my husband. At the next round-about, I followed it around to head west again as Llywelyn wanted. We soon came to the Irfon River, the site where the bulk of Llywelyn’s army perished (supposedly) after the Mortimer brothers had ambushed and killed him at Cilmeri.

“This is the bridge?” he said.

“Nobody knows what happened to your army, Llywelyn.” At his raised eyebrows, I said, “I’m serious—nobody! All the stories about your death and the battle that followed were written much later. That your men defended and died at the Irfon Bridge makes no sense. Why would they do that when they had the high ground to the west? Besides, the description of the battle bears a disturbing resemblance to the Battle of Stirling Bridge in Scotland.”

“If you say so.” Llywelyn gazed out the window at the darkness beyond. Trees flashed by, caught in the glow of an occasional streetlight and just visible through the rain, which continued to fall, unrelenting.

I pulled to the side of the road, outside of Cilmeri’s village center. The windshield wipers flicked back and forth. Llywelyn sat in the car, thinking hard through a long count of ten. “This isn’t it, surely? The hill where Anna and Dafydd rescued me is over there.” He pointed to his right. “I think.”

I sighed and reached for his hand. “I know that. But history doesn’t. Llywelyn—you have to understand what happened after you died. King Edward eliminated all mention of your seat at Aber from the royal records, took the sacred piece of the true cross, your crown and your scepter, and began a program of cultural genocide. We don’t even know where your body is buried.”

“What you’re telling me is that somebody guessed as to the location, and put a rock up in his field,” Llywelyn said.

“In a word,
yes
.” I gestured towards the stone pillar in the meadow to my left. “At first, there wasn’t even a sign to tell visitors what this was. Still … someone has left a fresh bouquet of flowers.” I pushed open the car door and stood up.

When I’d come here before, twenty years ago when David was a baby, I’d cried—and despaired. Now, I just felt defeated. I hadn’t wanted to show Llywelyn this, but he was a grown man and the King of Wales. There was no stopping him.

Llywelyn got out of the car, followed by Goronwy, who’d been asleep until we stopped. “What is this place?” Goronwy said, straightening.

“My tombstone, apparently.” Llywelyn pulled up his hood to protect himself from the rain. Not for the first time, I longed for an umbrella. Now that we had the duffel, I should have gotten out my cloak. But I didn’t move. Instead, I watched the men.

“Interesting,” Goronwy said.

Llywelyn smirked and headed for the gate. He pulled on the latch and passed through the opening to stop in front of the stone. Two streetlamps shone down on the field. I didn’t think they’d been there when I’d come here last time. Llywelyn walked all around the monument, and then came back to me. “And the well? Where is it?”

“Llywelyn—”

He came forward, put a finger under my chin, and bent his head to kiss me. I leaned into him, my arms around his waist.

“I’m not fussed.” He eased back after a moment. “This isn’t my world, but I want to see it.” He gestured towards the monument. “This stone is a reminder of why Dafydd and I do what we do, why you and Goronwy brought me to your world, and why we have to go back.”

“Okay,” I said, without adding
it’s your funeral
. That would have been too morbid, but the thought created a bubble in my stomach—of laughter—and eased the tightening in my chest. “It’s over here.”

I led them to a path and a short flight of stairs down to a wooden box under a low hanging tree. I lifted the lid, revealing the access to the well, or stream, as it had probably been in Llywelyn’s time.

“This is where the Englishman washed your severed head?” Amusement sounded in Goronwy’s voice.

Llywelyn peered past Goronwy, studied the well, and then looked to me. “Really?”

Goronwy laughed. Llywelyn, who had been grinning, joined him. Their laughter crescendoed until they both staggered, bending over and holding their stomachs. Llywelyn wiped his streaming eyes. “Don’t you see, Meg?”

I was smiling too, though more because of their laughter than my own amusement. “See what?”

“My dear.” Llywelyn threw his arm around my shoulders. “We Welsh are a gruesome bunch, aren’t we?”

“You two.” I shook my head. This was yet another example of their pessimistic optimism that I’d noticed when I’d first come to Wales and had never been able to successfully wrap my head around.

Llywelyn pulled me closer. “What did Dafydd say? There’s something freeing about facing that which you most fear?”

“But you don’t fear this, Llywelyn,” Goronwy said.

Llywelyn had finally gotten control of himself. He straightened. “No. No I don’t. I fear for my people and my country, but this …?” He nudged the toe of his boot against the wooden frame of the box. “Edward did everything he could to crush us, including cutting off my head. But Wales lives, even in this time.” He turned to me. “Doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

We headed back to the car, Llywelyn with his arm across my shoulders, both of us with our heads down against the driving rain. Llywelyn’s laughter had faded, but Goronwy still chortled ahead of us. He pulled open the rear door of the car and got in, but Llywelyn stopped with one hand on the roof and the other around my waist.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

I looked up at him. The light from the lamp post was behind him so his face was shadowed. “For what?”

“For being so hard on Dafydd,” he said. “You’ve stood by and watched, and bit your tongue more times than I can count.”

“I never wanted to argue with you,” I said.

“You told me about your time and what happened in it.” Llywelyn gestured to the stone, but seemed to indicate the world at large too. “I believed you, but never understood. I see now that for all that Dafydd is my son, he still lives here inside his head much of the time.”

“Do you think so?” I said. “I wouldn’t say that, so much as that his attitudes and responses were forged here. He’s never going to compete for the crown of England. You know that, right?”