Children of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book Four) (20 page)

“Bevyn came to me six years ago. He asked if he might—” Goronwy seemed to struggle to find the right words “—might organize a separate—even somewhat independent—group of men to protect Dafydd.”

“I’m not understanding you,” I said. “You mean, besides his
teulu
?”

“Well, yes.” Goronwy shot Llywelyn another look. “More secret.”

“Like a spy ring?” I said.

“Somewhat,” Llywelyn said.

“Hmmm,” I said. “There has to be more to it than that or you wouldn’t have kept it from me.”

“Something you said about Ted and his friend, whose wife works for the government, reminded me of it. She’s a spy, correct?” Goronwy said.

“So I understand,” I said. “MI5 is the internal spy organization of the British government. MI-6 takes care of foreign activities.”

“But there are other organizations, secret organizations, that exist in your world as well,” Llywelyn said.

“As in yours,” I said. “It isn’t as if Math or Tudur speak of their network of informants.”

Again with the glance. “What are you not saying?” I said. “Did you encourage Bevyn to create a secret order to protect David?”

Both men nodded.

“Ha!” My laugh came out like a bark. “And you didn’t tell him?”

“No,” Llywelyn said.

“That’s because he wouldn’t have liked it,” I said. “What’s it called?”

“The Order of the Pendragon,” Goronwy said.

I laughed again. I couldn’t help it. David really wouldn’t have liked it, but he would have appreciated the symmetry: He gets a secret society and the Land of Madoc becomes Avalon. “Why are you telling me now?”

“Because we may have to rely on them when we return, depending upon where we return, and I didn’t want to have to explain where the help came from when we were in a hurry or in danger,” Llywelyn said.

“Okay,” I said, and it really was okay. We’d been through so much in the last four days that learning about a secret society whose purpose was to protect David seemed like a small matter. “You’re telling me that this Order functions in England as well in Wales?”

“The men are mostly in England,” Goronwy said. “That’s where connections and information are most needed.”

At that point, our food came. I forced myself to eat it, even though I had lost my appetite. My problem wasn’t the Order of the Pendragon. I actually thought the idea kind of amusing, even if David might not, particularly if he were in one of his more serious moods.

Thinking about returning had focused my attention on the
where
as well as the
when
. In previous trips, whoever was doing the time traveling had left the modern United States and gone to medieval Great Britain or vice versa. This trip had broken the pattern. We’d gone from medieval Wales to modern Wales. What would happen when we tried to go from modern Wales to medieval Wales? At worst (well, other than finding ourselves on Mars), we’d find ourselves in medieval North America. Medieval Wales would then be completely inaccessible to us—forever. At that point, we really
would
be in the Land of Madoc.

Chapter Sixteen

19 November 2016

Meg

A
s we were finishing our breakfast, the restaurant began to clear out. I took one last sip of coffee, paid the bill, and we attached ourselves to a group of a dozen re-enactors, all in period costume.

“Would anyone know what we look like, other than Ted?” Llywelyn said.

“Um … yes.” This was the part where Llywelyn and Goronwy just couldn’t grasp the reality of the twenty-first century. While I had been trying to think as a covert operative might (and certainly failing), he was the medieval King of Wales. Modern Wales wasn’t as wired as many places in England or in the United States, but the spa had cameras, stop lights had cameras, and for all I knew, the restaurant we’d just been in had cameras. Our faces could be plastered across every television and web page on the planet by now.

Yet here we were, in Chepstow, and we could do nothing about how desperate our situation had become except get through it. I’d relaxed for a while in the restaurant, comfortable among the crowd, but Llywelyn’s question renewed my anxiety that our pursuers would descend upon us at any moment. We crossed the street amongst ten or so of our new friends and entered the parking lot in front of the castle.

Here, too, cameras glared down at us. They perched on every light post. One sat above the entryway into Chepstow Castle. My only consolation was that the rain meant that we had an excuse to keep our faces hidden in our hoods, allowing us to blend in with the other re-enactors, and the spots of rain on the camera lenses might blur what watchers could see of us. Although Llywelyn claimed to have seen them earlier, no black SUV lurked in the shadows. Had they given up and gone home? Their absence worried me almost more than the presence of the cameras.

“Are you sure you saw the vehicles, Llywelyn?” I said.

He had a tight grip on my hand. “Yes.” He lifted his chin and pointed ahead. “If I had any doubt, there’s Ted.”

Llywelyn was right. I tugged him and Goronwy to a standstill, allowing the rest of our group to get ahead of us. Ted stood with another man, wearing a suit and trench coat, watching the crowd from the main gate. Each person had to file past him to enter the castle. We had no way of getting by them undetected. As I hesitated, a new herd of people, who had entered the grounds from the grassy area to the west of the castle, overtook us and temporarily blocked Ted from my view.

I pulled my hood closer around my face, unsure of how to proceed, but knowing that Ted would recognize us in a heartbeat if we got close. “I should never have brought you here. I didn’t know what else to do.”

“This is not your fault,” Goronwy said.

“We’ll have to use the other gate,” Llywelyn said.

“It won’t be open,” I said.

“How do you know?” Llywelyn said.

“I guess, I don’t,” I said, “but the last time I was here, admittedly years ago, it wasn’t what you might call
accessible
.”

“Be that as it may, it’s the only way inside,” Llywelyn said. “We’ll have to wait until someone opens it or find away to open it ourselves.”

More cars drove into the parking lot, the rain fell harder, and as one, we turned away. We walked around the edge of the parking lot, heading west so we lost sight of the entrance to the castle as we followed the wall towards the rear entrance. Chepstow Castle stretched along the Wye River, which ran from west to east at this location (in general, the river ran north/south, but it wandered as it did so). We left the main gatehouse behind, heading for the second gate at the far, western end of the complex.

“Why would they post Ted at the front entrance, knowing we’d see him?” Goronwy said. “Maybe they want us to come to this gate so they can capture us quietly.”

Llywelyn stopped. We had come fifty yards along the side of the castle and it loomed above us on our right. The rain continued to fall. “What will happen if we are captured, Meg?”

“I don’t really know, but I imagine that we’d find ourselves in separate rooms, being questioned by people we’d prefer didn’t question us,” I said.

“Questioned about what?” Llywelyn said.

“Who we are, what we’re doing here, time travel,” I said. “That is, if this isn’t all a hallucination on my part and I haven’t concocted a threat where there is none. I simply don’t want to stick around to find out.”

“We want to go home, regardless,” Llywelyn said. “Let’s find a way to do that.”

“So, we must enter through the far gate, regardless of what faces us,” Goronwy said.

Llywelyn nodded. “The far gate.”

The version of Chepstow Castle which Llywelyn had taken from Roger Bigod in 1285 wasn’t as fancy as this one. Bigod had continually expanded and upgraded his fortress throughout his tenure, such that instead of the more modest rear gate we’d inherited at home, this Chepstow sported a far more expansive protective structure. A cart path led up to it, along with a ramp that allowed access to the castle through what had become essentially a service entrance. The double doors were closed.

We studied the doors from a nearby stand of trees. Due to the rain, anyone who passed by took no notice of us. “Let’s give it some time,” I said.

“What time?” Llywelyn gestured to the parking lot below where we stood. A near constant stream of cars turned off the street into it, filling parking space after parking space. “What do you call these people—tourists, right? The more people who fill the castle, the more difficult it will become for us to get to the balcony and jump off it.”

“But the more easily we’ll be able to blend in with the crowd,” I said.

The three of us drifted further into the trees and closer to the rear gate. Despite the rain, it looked to be a big day at Chepstow Castle. “If we wait a while, maybe the soldiers will give up,” Goronwy said. “Perhaps they’ll decide that we aren’t coming and leave.”

“We can hope for it,” I said, “but we can’t depend upon it.”

“I can’t see anything from here.” In his frustration, Llywelyn’s brow had furrowed and his mouth turned down.

“I will scout the exterior of the castle.” Without waiting for assent, Goronwy strode out of the trees and onto the pathway, headed back the way we’d come.

“Goronwy, wait—” I said, but Llywelyn put a hand on my arm.

“He knows what he’s doing. And besides, of the three of us, who do you think these government men noticed the least?”

“Goronwy’s noticeable to me,” I said, “but of course you’re right.” I subsided, even as my hands twisted together under my cloak.

We waited what felt like a long time—at least half an hour—for Goronwy to come back. I’d lived with medieval people long enough to know that time didn’t mean to them anything close to what it meant to me. Goronwy was scouting. He was making himself knowledgeable about every angle of approach. I would have been surprised if he hadn’t surveyed every street in old Chepstow before he came back to us.

When he finally did, he appeared from behind, his finger to his lips. “See them?” He pointed down the slope to two men in black, striding towards the rear parking lot. “They patrol in twos and Ted no longer watches the front entrance.”

“Is this crazy?” I said. “Should we even be doing this? Maybe we should find another wall to jump off.”

“No.” Llywelyn was still insistent. “This is the one we want.” As soon as the men had passed out of sight, Llywelyn left the trees and walked up the path to the rear gate, which had remained locked this whole time. He pounded on the door with his fist. I waited, my heart in my mouth, fearing that the soldiers would return and see him, since he was out in the open. But after a minute, someone from behind the door said, “A moment!”

Llywelyn waved at us with his whole arm, and by the time the door swung wide, we stood together on the doorstep.

“You’re supposed to enter at the front,” said the man who greeted us. He wore brown coveralls and had grease on his hands, which he rubbed at with a dirty cloth.

Since the man spoke in English, I stepped in. Taking a chance, I said, “Don Jones told us to enter this way.”

The man didn’t balk at my blatant and fraudulent name-dropping. He looked us up and down, seemed to like what he saw, and shrugged. “Come on, then.”

“Thank you!” I said.
And thank you Don Jones
. He had said he’d been coming here for many years. Though I hadn’t thought much about it at the time, Don had struck me as one of those people who couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without getting to know everyone involved.

We passed into Chepstow Castle while the man pulled the gate closed behind us. Once inside, I tried not to gawk, though Llywelyn and Goronwy were swiveling their heads from left to right.

“It’s so strange to see the castle like this,” Goronwy said. “It’s as if the castle is the ghost from the past instead of us.”

“It would have been fun if our world wasn’t a different one,” I said. “Anna could have left us a message and we could have hunted for it.”

“Fun—except for the part where I died at Cilmeri.” Llywelyn looked down at me and smiled as we hurried through the barbican. “I’m still thinking about the Englishman washing my severed head.”

“I don’t think she was suggesting a preference for that outcome, Llywelyn,” Goronwy said.

We’d reached the upper bailey, which was all but deserted. “Where is everyone?” Llywelyn said.

A handful of tourists had braved the rain to explore the far end of the castle. I didn’t see any men in black, for which, of course, I was intensely grateful.

“Not here, anyway,” I said. “Maybe it’s the rain.” Then we entered the middle bailey and stopped short. At least two hundred people filled the space, a number which it easily accommodated. A man near the far gateway stood on a box and lifted his hands. “Welcome!”

He then launched into a speech about the historic occasion this date commemorated.

“What is he talking about?” Llywelyn said.

“I have no idea,” I said. “We might have to pretend we care, however.”

“Let’s lose ourselves in the crowd,” Llywelyn said.

I gripped Llywelyn’s hand while Goronwy kept close to his other shoulder. We slipped along the margins of the onlookers, but had to stop every few feet to pretend we were listening. The speaker went on to enumerate the day’s events, which included archery, periodic firing of the trebuchet, and a medieval feast under the pavilion which had been set up in the lower bailey. The stone building which had once held the great hall was a ruin, but the kitchens hadn’t entirely disappeared. That was where we needed to go if we were to get into the wine cellar and out to the balcony.

That was a big
if.
So far, we’d managed to blend in with the crowd, now composed of equal parts re-enactors and tourists, who continued to swarm into the castle. But once the talk was over and the crowd dispersed, it might be harder to avoid being spotted. “Up there.” I jerked my head towards the top of the wall above the bailey. Two men in black rain slickers spoke to each other before looking to a third man on an accompanying tower.