Children of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book Four) (21 page)

“They should have guarded the rear door,” Goronwy said.

“It was locked,” I said. “Besides, maybe they felt they couldn’t commit their full resources to Chepstow and the nine men Llywelyn saw is all they have. Ted might have told them that the only way we’ve succeeded in returning to the Middle Ages so far is in a vehicle.”

“At which point they would think of his abandoned vehicle and go back for it,” Goronwy said.

“And then realize that it’s gone and beat Ted until he confessed to leaving us the keys,” Llywelyn said, though not without a twitch of his lips and a glance at me.

I spared a second for a grateful thought that the spa had been built in a remote location, and that the road I’d taken from Devil’s Bridge had been hardly more than a paved cart track. No cameras. We’d been off the grid until we entered Buellt.

“I liked it better when we decided Chepstow would be considered a long shot and a potential waste of manpower,” Goronwy said.

“I liked it better too,” Llywelyn said. “But they’ve committed enough to this endeavor to post men and to keep them watching.”

“We should have driven the car into the river,” I said, realizing it too late. “They’ll be on the lookout for it, and if they find it without us in it, they’ll know we’ve come to the castle.”

“But not that we’ve entered it,” Goronwy said. “They posted most of their men outside, in the hopes of stopping us before we got inside. From here, I see only three.”

“Five,” Llywelyn said.

“Where?” I said.

Llywelyn tipped is head to point at the two men standing on either side of the doorway into the lower bailey.

My stomach clenched. “We have to get past them if we’re going to reach the cellar. We have only fifty feet to go!”

“It could be five thousand feet for all the difference it might make,” Llywelyn said.

The speaker ended his speech and at once, the crowd began to break up. “We’ll separate,” Llywelyn said. “Find someone to talk to.”

I let go of his hand and fell into step beside a girl of about twelve who was heading towards the lower door. “Hi.” I kept my head bent towards her and my hood up. “Where are you from?”

“Crickhowell.” The girl smiled at me. She and I were of similar height and coloring, which is why I chose her. I was hoping that anyone watching would assume she was my daughter. I stayed close enough to her so that our shoulders brushed as we approached the door. I couldn’t see Goronwy or Llywelyn but had to hope they were okay.

“That’s a pretty dress.” I fingered the fabric and she looked down at her skirt. Thus, with two bent heads and in close conversation, we passed through the doorway, straight past the men in black, who’d had to move aside to allow the crush of people through it in a timely fashion. They still watched, but I wasn’t going to check their faces and they didn’t ask to see mine. I was more and more thankful for the rain with each minute that we weren’t caught.

Now that I was in the lower bailey, I said goodbye to the girl, who was headed towards the pavilion, and ducked through the doorway that led to the kitchens. The passage was crowded with people, and despite the tension whizzing up and down my spine, I noted how closely the crush resembled midday at Chepstow in the Middle Ages. By keeping close to the wall, I slipped down the steps and into the hallway that led to the cellar stairs. Relief rushed through me at the sight of Goronwy, leaning against the wall, waiting for me. He shook his head at my raised eyebrows.
No Llywelyn.

Goronwy rubbed his chin. “He was right behind me.” He peered through the doorway into the kitchen, and then fell back as two women passed him carrying trays of food.

Llywelyn popped out of the doorway that came from what had once been the great hall—in time to almost run one of them over. “
Esgusodwch fi!
” he said,
I’m sorry!
He spied me, grabbed my arm, and turned me towards the wine cellar. “Come on!”

Goronwy’s feet clattered on the steps behind me. “How is your heart, Llywelyn?”

“I’m fine.”

I glanced at him, hoping he was telling the truth and not hiding his distress under all this activity. He’d been in a hospital
yesterday
and it wasn’t like he’d gotten discharged. We swung around the corner at the bottom of the steps that led to the balcony. It was deserted and I stopped abruptly, surprised to have actually made it this far. Goronwy almost collided with my back.

I started moving again. “Don’t wait. Don’t think. Let’s just go!”

Before I’d even finished speaking, with a bit of creaking of the knees, Goronwy had climbed onto the low wall that overlooked the Wye River. I held out my hand to him so he could help me up—

“Stop!”

I froze and looked over my shoulder. A man in a tan trench coat stood in the doorway, his hand reaching toward us. Llywelyn already had one boot on the wall and, ignoring the man, hitched himself all the way up before turning to face him. I clutched my skirt in one hand and gripped Goronwy’s hand tightly with my other. “Please. Let us go.”

“Don’t make another move,” he said, “except to step down slowly. You must come with me.”

“We can’t,” I said. “We have to go home.” Very slowly, my heart pounding at my nerve, I dropped my skirt and reached for Llywelyn’s hand. The two men lifted me onto the wall with the strength of their arms so that I now stood between them.

The man took a step closer, one hand palm out, telling us to stop. His other hand strayed to his pocket and came out with a phone. The three of us sidled closer to one another and Goronwy and Llywelyn clutched me around the waist. I slipped my arms under their cloaks and looped my fingers through their belts.

“Don’t do it.” The man was only five feet away.

But we did.

Without needing to talk or count to
one-two-three
, we pushed backwards off the wall. At that same moment, the man launched himself towards Llywelyn in a flying tackle. He was too late—Llywelyn’s feet had already left the wall—but we’d jumped up as well as out and at the last second, the man’s arms came around Llywelyn’s knees and he fell with us.

We hit the river with a mighty splash and went under.

Chapter Seventeen

19 November 1288

Lili

W
e wended our way through the London streets, everyone swiveling their heads this way and that, trying to look at everything at once. Most of Dafydd’s entourage had stayed behind at Castle Baynard, where Clare would house them. Dafydd, a handful of retainers, and I were to stay at Westminster Palace. Dafydd had suggested that I rest for a while before facing the intensity of the attention we’d receive, but I had insisted that I was fine, and would come with him despite my stomach.

I would rather face what must be faced than wait another hour.

Baynard’s Castle lay below St. Paul’s Cathedral on the north bank of the Thames River. Westminster Palace was on the same side of the river, directly opposite Lambeth Palace, which was the seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Dafydd leaned into me as we approached the gates of Westminster and said, “This should be fun.”

I glanced at him, startled by his cynicism, and almost laughed. The sound caught in my throat, however, when I spied my father standing under the gatehouse. So far he hadn’t looked at me, though my skin crawled as if he had. Surely he knew that I had married Dafydd?

Fortunately, Edmund Mortimer, Gilbert de Clare, and Nicholas de Carew were with us, acting as Dafydd’s heralds. Cynan greeted them first.

“I’m sorry he’s here,” Dafydd said, as we waited to pass under the gatehouse. He glanced at me.

“I can’t think … I can’t move,” I said.

“Hang on. It’ll be okay.” He put his head close to mine. “You do realize that I’m meeting your father for the first time since I threw him out of Buellt?”

He smiled at me and touched my cheek, and I found that I could match the laughter in his eyes.

“What has come over you?” I said. “You’ve been in a good mood ever since we left Chepstow. Maybe you should drink too much mead more often.”

“It wasn’t the mead,” Dafydd said, “but the absurdity.”

Dafydd had distracted me sufficiently to allow us to reach the bailey, having ridden past my father without looking at him. Men milled around us to take our horses. Dafydd helped me from my horse and then all of sudden my father was in front of us, bowing. “If I may escort you into the castle, my lord,” he said.

Dafydd nodded and I even managed a gracious tip of my head. My father didn’t acknowledge that he knew me. Still, we followed him across the bailey and into one of the many large buildings that made up Westminster Palace. It had been built on a grander scale than any Welsh castle—bigger by ten fold. Wales still had far to go if it was to compete with England, or at the very least make an attempt to do so. Maybe all this luxury was a waste of money—Dafydd would argue that it was—but money was power. So far, everything I’d seen in England had indicated that the Normans still had far too much of both.

Bohun waited for us in a resplendent room and was dressed in a robe of equal splendor: deep blue velvet embroidered in gold. He’d come far from the field at Evesham where he’d lost his father and Montfort had lost his head. Bohun was a regent of England, as high a station as he could ever have hoped to reach. And his son might well do better.

“Bohun.” Dafydd nodded to him.

Bohun had been standing behind a table, leaning on his hands as he studied the papers in front of him. He looked up at our approach. “Leave us,” he said to Cynan who hadn’t entered the room and instead had waited in the doorway. My father put his heels together, bowed, and departed. I let out a sigh of relief. That hadn’t gone badly at all.

But then I looked into Bohun’s face and clenched Dafydd’s arm at the hostility I saw there. Dafydd patted my hand, though he had to be feeling the same sinking feeling in his stomach that I was, and that threatened to upend the lunch I’d just eaten.

“What is it?” I said, blurting out the question in a rude and untimely fashion, but we’d been through too much with William and the Bohuns to equivocate.

“You have betrayed me.” That was about as blunt as one might expect from Humphrey do Bohun, but not the greeting we were hoping for.

“I most certainly have not,” Dafydd said. “And that’s a fine welcome for an ally.”

Bohun put a fist to his mouth, coughed, and then said, “Welcome to Westminster. I wish you hadn’t come.”

 “You were the one who invited us,” I said.

Bohun’s chin jutted out and his jaw was clenched tight. “You should not have accepted.”

“So my advisors have told me a dozen times,” Dafydd said. “We would just as soon have stayed in Wales, but both you and William asked for us specifically. What has changed since then?”

“Everything. It was a mistake.”

I eyed him. His throne-like chair sat in front of the fire, but he ignored it and didn’t invite Dafydd or me to sit either. Dafydd nudged my side, directing my attention to a spindle chair with a cushioned seat. He led me to it. “Bohun might be heedless of propriety, which is my usual
modus operandi
,” he said, “but you don’t need to be made uncomfortable. Sit here while I find out what has Bohun in such a state.”

I nodded and squeezed his hand. “It will be okay.”

Bohun paced in front of the mantle. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

Carew, who had remained to the left of the door, stirred. I glanced at him. He raised his eyebrows and lifted his shoulder half an inch. He was as much at a loss as I.

Dafydd planted himself in front of Bohun. “I have no idea what has discontented you. William marries Joan on Friday. I support that. It’s what you wanted.”

“I wouldn’t have invited you if I’d known that you were planning to claim the throne for yourself!” Between one second and the next, Humphrey’s face had flushed so dark it was almost maroon.

I managed not to laugh. No wonder my father stayed with him. Both were irrational and temperamental.

“I have done no such thing,” Dafydd said.

Humphrey continued to glare at Dafydd, but as my husband gazed calmly back, some of the fire left him. Bohun moved closer and studied Dafydd’s face more carefully. “You’re telling the truth.”

“Of course I am,” Dafydd said. “To whom have you been speaking?”

“How can you—?” And then he stopped, looking to Carew, and then to Edmund, and then Clare, all of whom gazed back without expression. I was impressed that none of these men had leapt to Dafydd’s defense. Maybe they finally trusted him enough to know that he could handle himself, no matter the threat.

“You don’t know. You really don’t know!” Humphrey turned away, paced to the fire, and then came back to stand in front of Dafydd again. “You haven’t heard the rumors?”

I assumed he was speaking of the way that the legend of King Arthur had dogged Dafydd’s steps, but then Carew coughed once, his fist to his mouth. It was the same gesture Humphrey had used earlier, and I thought maybe that many Normans employed it when they were about to impart unwanted truths. “Prince David doesn’t know, but I’ve heard them,” Carew said.

Dafydd didn’t object or criticize, but merely said, “Tell me all, Carew. I might as well hear it before this gets any worse.”

“I didn’t tell you because I dismissed the news at first, and then as more people spoke to me of it, I needed confirmation before I troubled you with it,” Carew said. “None has been forthcoming.” He tipped his head towards Bohun. “His lordship is the first person who seems to know more than rumor.”

Dafydd tsked through his teeth. “Will someone
please
tell me what we’re talking about?”

“Your claim to the throne, of course,” Bohun said.

“Yes, I got that part,” Dafydd said, “but I haven’t put forth a claim because I don’t have one. I have no royal blood.”

Again, Bohun put his fist to his mouth and coughed. “Apparently you do, my lord,” he said. “The Archbishop of Canterbury reports that you have a claim through your mother. He has proof.”

Dafydd scoffed. Of all the answers Bohun could have given, that was the least expected and the most unlikely.