Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (22 page)

The difference was how I treated myself. I
knew what it was to be Trev’s wife, but it was a very different
thing to be Llywelyn’s wife. Llywelyn’s wife was competent,
thoughtful, and treated well by all. I never had to worry about
Llywelyn hitting me, even when something happened over the course
of the day to make him lose his temper. I didn’t have to
manage
him—to walk on eggshells half the time and avoid him
the other half. Llywelyn
told
me what he was thinking, and
why, and what made him angry was that I hadn’t expected it.

“I thought you told me that men and women
were equal in your world,” he said.

“They . . . are,” I said. “They can be—even
supposed to be, I guess. It’s just that I wasn’t when I was with
Trev.”

“Humph,” Llywelyn said. That was generally
his response every time Trev came into the conversation, which
fortunately wasn’t often. “Well, it’s time you started being as
equal as a thirteenth century woman, then. I don’t have much
patience for the twentieth century if there are still men like Trev
in it. We have enough of his kind here.”

By sheer necessity, I began to fit in.

I hadn’t worn a watch the day I’d come to
Wales, and I realized that I didn’t miss it. I loved how time
moved, slowly or quickly, but without being marked in small
increments. There was more time for Anna. Each day had a natural
rhythm. Things happened, and if something didn’t get finished,
tomorrow would come soon enough. In winter in particular, the days
weren’t very long, and people thought nothing of sitting over
dinner for hours in the evening after a long day or riding or
walking, because there was nowhere else to go and nothing better to
do but listen to a forty-five minute tale sung by a bard.

One of the few nights we tented in the
middle of a forest, I found myself sitting on a log, sandwiched
between Goronwy and Llywelyn, with Anna curled onto my lap, dozing
in the warmth of the fire. I’d put away my guitar for the evening,
once my fingers got too cold to play. Marshmallows and hot
chocolate would have made the moment perfect.

“You’re happy here, aren’t you?” Goronwy
said.

A quick glance at Llywelyn showed him
pretending to ignore us and focusing intently on a stick he’d stuck
in the fire. “I am, Goronwy,” I said. Llywelyn eased a touch closer
to me. I hid my smile and kept talking. “I miss my mother and my
sister, but I do love it here, even if it’s not at all what I would
have expected.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know if I can explain,” I said.
“You know that the way we live in America is very different from
Wales, right?”

Goronwy shrugged. “Prince Llywelyn has
spoken with me of this.”

“We dress differently, most people know how
to read, people die of fewer diseases, though we have different
ones too, and as a rule, women have a better lot in life. But
people who live in that world don’t realize what they’ve lost along
the way.”

“And that is?” Llywelyn said, proving his
ears were as wide open as I’d suspected.

“People are more aware of how others feel
and what they think. Everyone is adept at reading everyone else,
and genuinely interested in figuring them out.”

Neither man was impressed. “Of course,”
Llywelyn said. “We have to live together, don’t we? That’s not the
case in your world?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head at how obvious
it was to him. “As a rule, you’d never look at or talk to a person
you didn’t already know—whether on the street, at a meal, or in a
shop. Everybody behaves as if they are completely alone, even
when—or especially when—surrounded by a crowd.”

Both men gaped at me. Even in the flickering
firelight, I was good enough now at reading people myself to see
the disbelief reflected plainly in their faces. “Why?” Goronwy
said. “How could that be?”

“Because chances are, you’ll never see any
of those people again. It isn’t worth the time and effort
invested.” And then the real reason struck me. “It’s because we
don’t depend on each other anymore.”

Goronwy shook his head. “Every man depends
on every other, from the lowliest serf who hoes the field, to the
knight who rides into battle, to the monk who prays for our
souls.”

“And when a man dies, he has companions to
remember and celebrate his life, and to mourn him,” Llywelyn said.
“I don’t see how your people could imagine otherwise.”

“Yes, well,” I said, “that’s another
difference. People in my time don’t think about death.”

“That’s just foolish,” Llywelyn said.
“People don’t die in your time? You yourself said that your father
and husband died.”

I pulled the blanket tighter around myself
and snuggled closer to Llywelyn. “They die but nobody talks about
it. Death here is part of daily life in a way it isn’t in the
twentieth century, at least in America. Here, it’s always at the
table with you, like an uninvited guest who insists on staying for
dinner. It doesn’t matter if people die from disease, battle, or
childbirth—death is always with us.”

“Of course,” Llywelyn said.

“You say ‘of course’,” I said, “but it’s not
‘of course’ where I come from! Here, people don’t shy away from
talking about it and they don’t pretty it up with phrases like
‘He’s moved on’ or ‘She passed away’ which everyone in my town
uses. For you, it’s ‘He’s dead and I’m sorry (or not sorry) for
it,’ or ‘Me mam died last winter. I miss her.’ You just say it
straight out.”

I was unusual for a young woman in the
twentieth century in that I
had
seen death, in both my
husband and father. I didn’t know a single classmate whose parent
had died, or if they had, they didn’t talk to me about it. Death
was swept under the rug and you were supposed to get over it in
whatever fashion you were able and get on with your life.

Here they did all get on with their lives,
but nobody
forgot
. In fact, everything important to the
Welsh I lived with revolved around people who’d died: they wove
tapestries and rugs depicting past battles; most of the songs were
about famous, dead people; and most of their mythological stories
ended badly. You couldn’t pay me to read a book that ended with the
hero dying, but the people around me
assumed
that he
would—and yet, they went about their lives with the quiet hope that
this time, just once, he wouldn’t. The entire country was full of
optimistic pessimists.

* * * * *

We turned our horses off the road, following
the men ahead for a brief stop. “Where are we?” I gazed at the
fallen stones.

“This?” Llywelyn said. “It’s a Roman fort.
We often rest here.” He lifted me from the saddle.

“Yes, but . . .” I stopped, trying to take
it in. The fort had lost its roof, but the walls still stood
fifteen feet high and each at least fifty feet wide, built in a
square. I walked across the grass in the clearing and through the
open front door, vacant now, and into the cavernous space on the
other side, with trees and bushes growing where once a legion had
lived. A shiver went down my spine as I touched the stones that
men—born two thousand years before I—had chosen, and crafted, and
placed here.

Lost in thought, I walked from room to room.
I loved everything about history, and the best part was walking in
the steps of people who’d come before me—which was good, given that
I’d been
living
history these last months. I came out of my
reverie, however, when I entered a small room, nestled in a
building along the eastern wall. An altar sat in the center of the
room, with words carved into the stone and a picture of a bull.

“What happened here?” I asked Llywelyn, who
came to stand beside me.

“It’s a chapel, though not to our God.
Soldiers worshipped Mithras here. None of the men like to come this
way.”

I stood uncertainly in the doorway. “I won’t
either, then. Pagan gods or not, I’m a Welshwoman now. I can
respect what they feel.”

Llywelyn put his arm around my shoulder and
turned me back the way we had come. “Goronwy told me when you first
arrived here that he thought he’d call you ‘Morgane’—that you saw
the future not because you lived it, but in a scrying bowl.”

“He didn’t!” I said. “Besides, Morgane was
Arthur’s sister. I don’t even
have
a brother.”

Llywelyn laughed and pulled me to him.
“You’ve bewitched
me
. I suppose that’s all that
matters.”

* * * * *

The night before we reached Brecon, we
stayed at a castle set at the junction of the Usk and the Senni
Rivers. It was a castle built by Llywelyn and one which he oversaw
directly, through his castellan, Einion Sais. Einion had his own
castles too, but this was one of the largest in the area, next to
Brecon. It was also the most modern, since Llywelyn built it
himself. I had to like that.

What I didn’t like was the tension among
Llywelyn’s men. That first evening after dinner, as I rocked Anna
to sleep in her cradle, Llywelyn explained.

“The closer we get to England, the worse it
will get. Ten miles? Twenty miles? It’s hard to know where Wales
ends and the Marche begins. We’ve fought over this land for
centuries, and we all can feel it.”

No, I didn’t really understand. Llywelyn
shifted in his seat to lean forward, his words earnest and
heartfelt, and elaborated further. “We’ve hallowed this ground with
the blood of our ancestors. They lived here, plowed these fields,
hunted in these mountains, all the way back to the time before the
Romans came. Their remains are spread over every inch of this land,
and for me to give that up, to negate their sacrifice because of
some neglect on my part, means that I give up the very part of
myself that is Welsh. It is impossible and unfathomable.”

“The English don’t understand this at
all.”

“Don’t understand and don’t care,” Llywelyn
said. “They themselves are newcomers to our shores. They conquered
the Saxons, who came after Rome fell, but only after we’d already
lost all but our small corner of this island. The English kings
only care for the land because of the power and wealth it gives
them, not because it gives them life.”

“I’m English too, in that sense,” I said.
But I recognized the fervor in Llywelyn’s voice and respected it,
even if I couldn’t share it. “That’s what you’re most afraid of,
isn’t it? Not dying for your own sake, but because of what Wales
will lose if you do.”

“Yes,” Llywelyn said. “I don’t want to die,
of course, but you tell me that when I do die, Wales ceases to
exist and that my people are subject to seven hundred years of
English oppression. I can’t comprehend that. I told Goronwy that
you were from the future and he still doesn’t believe me, but even
he can see that the future you foretell is so frightening and
devastating that it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. What
matters is that you’ve presented it as a possibility, and now that
I’ve heard it, I must do everything in my power to ensure that it
doesn’t come to pass.”

“I hope that you can, Llywelyn,” I said. I
rested a hand on his knee. “I hope that I haven’t just given you
foreknowledge of a future that you can’t change.”

“I think we’ve already changed your future,
haven’t we, Meg? If you were to return to your time, you wouldn’t
be the same woman who left.”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t, but neither is
Wales the same place with me in it. I still don’t understand how so
little of your daily life got written down.”

“Didn’t you tell me that history was written
by the victors?” Llywelyn said. “Who wrote our history?”

“The English,” I said. “I know. It would be
helpful if more of your people were literate, because it’s a lot
harder to suppress a people when they have their own voice to pass
on through the ages in books.”

Llywelyn stared into the fire. “Your world
is so far away, Meg. I can’t comprehend the enormity of those
years. I can’t even begin to imagine the changes that have
occurred.” He transferred his gaze to me. “But then again, you’re
here, a young woman of Welsh descent who only invites comment
because your Welsh is accented strangely. How is it that the world
has changed, but the people in it have not?”

I shook my head. “I think the changes are
mostly on the inside,” I said, “just like we talked about before.
Those changes don’t show.”

Llywelyn was right too, that fourteen years
from now seemed a long way off—I’d be not quite thirty-five. Would
I still be with him? Would he send me away like the other women who
couldn’t give him a child? Would I even be alive? Thirty-five was
nothing to a twentieth century woman—I’d barely have started
living. At thirty-five, women were often grandmothers, perhaps not
ready for the grave, but
old.
I didn’t want that to be me
either.

* * * * *

“You rutting bastard!”

I stopped short. My hand was out, ready to
push open the door onto the battlements, Anna on my left hip.

After my conversation with Llywelyn the
night before, I wanted to see the countryside, to feel what he
felt. Too often these last weeks, my focus had been on keeping Anna
happy or how sore my back and rear were, not on the land through
which I was riding. It was always beautiful, but so densely packed
with trees on every side that you couldn’t see more than the road
in front of you and occasionally a hill rising up ahead or
behind.

Instead of going through it, I backed away
from the door, uncertain if I should listen in case it was
important, or leave because it was merely two men fighting over a
woman.

“If our lord discovers your failure, he’ll
have both of our heads!”

“Then don’t tell him,” the second man
said.

“You were supposed to have finished this
already.” It was the first man again.