Footsteps in Time (37 page)

“
And we
say
nothing
about
that!”

Ieuan and I trotted our
horses along the old Roman road that followed the wall. Before
long, a man shouted. With a rueful look at Ieuan, I slowed Bedwyr.
We’d reached a spot on the wall that was little more than a low
barrier, some three feet high. The years had filled in the ditch on
the northern side. The lead horseman came to a stop ten paces from
me. He was shorter than I, older, and dressed well, in a mail
hauberk underneath a red and blue surcoat.

“
How goes it, sir?” I
said, trying out my English. I’d been practicing the thirteenth
century dialect.

“
Who are
you?” the man said. “What is your purpose here?” He looked past me
to Ieuan, who bowed but didn’t speak.
Thank
God! He read my mind!
They might have run
him through and asked questions later.

“
May I know to whom I have
the pleasure of speaking?” I said.

“
Sir John de Falkes,
castellan of Carlisle Castle and commander of King Edward’s forces
in the northwest of England.”

While my mother and I had
discussed the possibility that I might encounter Sir John de Falkes
in Lancaster, this meeting defied incredible odds. But as my father
once said, coincidences weren’t something he believed in
anymore.

“
David of Chester, at your
service.” I bowed slightly.

“
And your companion?”
Falkes said.

I turned to Ieuan. “Ieuan
ap Cynan, of Twyn y Garth. He doesn’t speak English.”

Ieuan had started when I
spoke his name. I gave him a reassuring smile, and turned back to
Falkes, who was now staring at me, his mouth slightly
open.

“
Why do I keep
encountering the Welsh along this wall?” he said. “What is the
attraction?”

“
My lord?” I
said.

“
I met a Welshwoman here
this time last year. Perhaps she was one of your kinfolk? Her name
was Marged ap Bran. You have heard of her?”

“
Yes, of course. Marged is
my mother.”

“
Of course she is,” he
said. “How could it be otherwise? How goes it with her?”

“
She is well, my lord,” I
said. “My companion and I have traveled to Newcastle and I wished
to see the wall. It is a pleasure to meet you as well, as you were
so kind to her.”

Falkes, however, narrowed
his eyes. His astonishment in abeyance, he reverted to the
custodian of the north he was. “I don’t believe you,” he said. He
scanned our equipment and gear. “You must come with me to
Carlisle.”

“
I was hoping to begin our
return journey to Chester by this evening,” I said.

“
You will have to postpone
it,” Falkes snapped.

At a signal from him, his
men surrounded us. Fortunately, Falkes didn’t take our swords or
search our belongings. Ieuan’s bow always drew my eyes like a
magnet, but as Falkes was a soldier, perhaps he thought nothing of
it. At the same time, I was glad I’d borrowed Cadwallon’s sword and
left mine with him before we left the boat. Mine was far too fine a
weapon for the man I was pretending to be. Not that a merchant
should have a sword at all, and perhaps that was what made Falkes
uneasy.

“
This was part of your
plan?” Ieuan asked me in Welsh.

“
We can fit it in,” I
said, in the same language.

“
I wish I understood the
language better,” Ieuan said. “I recognize words as you speak them,
but then they come so fast I can’t keep up.”

“
It doesn’t necessarily
help,” I said. “They say words you think you know the meaning to,
but then it turns out entirely differently than you’d thought. It’s
almost worse to know what they’re saying, because you listen to the
words instead of focusing on their actions.”

“
That is my task, then,”
said Ieuan.

The sun had reached its
zenith and begun to descend before we approached Carlisle. We
crossed the Eden River some distance from the city and then
clattered through the east city gate. We wound our way through
Carlisle and up to the castle which perched on the hill to the
northwest of the city. I looked left and right, trying to get a
sense of how the streets were laid out. Falkes noted my
attention.

“
You find Carlisle to your
liking?” he said.

“
Yes, my lord,” I said.
“It’s been years since I have seen such a grand city as
this.”

Falkes seemed pleased
enough by my compliment to abandon his watch over me. He rode ahead
so he could lead his men through the gate that separated the castle
from the city proper. Just before he reached it, however, a rider
burst from underneath the gatehouse and nearly collided with
Falkes.

“
My lord!” His horse
sidled sideways as he tried to control it.

Falkes reined in his own
horse. “What is it?”

“
King Edward is
dead!”

Falkes asked neither when
nor how but gestured to the messenger. “Come with me.”

He urged his horse through
the gate, his men surging to follow and shooing us along in front
of them. Welsh castles were small, often merely a stone keep
surrounded by a single wall. We positioned them on hilltops to
augment their strength. Carlisle Castle was nothing like that. It
was enormous, built of reddish stone cut in thick square blocks,
and was situated in a flat area that was bigger than a football
field. I couldn’t begin to guess the number of soldiers it could
hold. It had an inner and outer courtyard, both protected by
enormous, square gatehouses.

Veering off before entering
the second gate, men herded us to a rough building which squatted
against the western curtain wall, directly across from the main
gate. The space encompassed by the walls had a variety of buildings
in it, including a barracks, stables, and craft-houses. We stopped
in front of the blacksmith’s workshop. Two men worked the iron
inside and the fireplace in the center of the shop shone bright in
the darkness of the interior.

With swords drawn, the men
urged us to dismount. The situation had an ugly feel to
it.

“
Why are you doing this?”
I said.

“
Put your hands in the
air.”

Ieuan and I obeyed, and
though I mentally ran through various techniques to get free, I
didn’t implement any of them. Falkes’ soldiers outnumbered us fifty
to one. They took our swords and our knives and shoved us through a
door to the right of the shop.

I ducked my head
under the frame and into a windowless room attached to the shop. It
smelled of urine and horses. Hay lay on the floor in dirty clumps
and the pumping of the bellows sounded through the thin wooden wall
that separated the room from the workshop. The door closed behind
us and the bar dropped. I pushed on the door.
Nothing.

“
Why didn’t they just run
us through?” Ieuan said. “It would have saved time.”

“
Perhaps Falkes doesn’t
know what to do with us,” I said. “We’re neither dangerous enough
for the dungeon, important enough for a room in the keep, nor
harmless enough for him to let go.”

“
I don’t like it.” Ieaun
sounded like Bevyn.

“
The postern gate is set
in the wall not far from here.” I had noticed it before we were
locked up.

“
I didn’t see it,” Ieuan
said, but the knowledge cheered him considerably. “It’s almost as
if Falkes wants us to try to escape. Then his men could kill us as
we fled.”

“
Falkes has a free hand in
the north,” I said. “He answers only to Edward. If Falkes were to
throw half of his people into his dungeons, who in England would
gainsay him? There’s nobody left.”

Ieuan lowered himself to
the ground and leaned his back against the curtain wall which
formed the rear of the room. “I would dearly love to hear that
messenger’s report,” he said.

At that, a scratching sound
came from behind me, prompting me to turn and look. A blue eye
gazed at me through a knot in the wood.

“
Hello,” I said, in
English.

“
Hello,” the voice
answered in the same language. It was high and I couldn’t tell if
it belonged to a boy or a girl.

“
May I be of service?” I
said.

The eye blinked, then
disappeared. It reappeared in a larger knothole, two feet higher
and to the right of the other one. “I’m Thomas. Your mother saved
my life.”

“
So she did,” I
said.

The lone eye inspected me
up and down. “You look like I thought you would,” he said. “Will
you say a few words of Welsh?”

“
Of
course.” And then continued, “
Mae’n dda gen
i gwrdd â chi
.”

“
What does that mean?”
Thomas said.

“
I am very pleased to meet
you.” I spoke in English again.

“
Ask him to tell us about
Edward,” Ieuan said.

I stepped closer to Thomas.
“Is King Edward really dead?”

“
Yes.” Thomas nodded
vigorously. “The messenger rode into the castle just before you
arrived. Uncle John spoke with him in private and then announced
the news to everyone in the hall. They say it was plague but Uncle
John doesn’t believe it. I heard them whispering about a traitor
among King Edward’s men. He thinks the Welsh are involved. But you
aren’t, are you, since your Prince is dead too?”

“
What was that?” I
said.

“
They found a boy wearing
the red dragon surcoat among the dead. Wouldn’t that be Prince
Llywelyn’s son?”

I quickly translated what
Thomas had said. Ieuan whistled through his teeth.

“
We had no hand in the
death of your King, Thomas.” I turned back to the boy. “As a
Welshman, you must understand that I don’t mourn him, but don’t
fear for us in that regard.”

Thomas surveyed me through
three heartbeats. “I must go.” With that, he disappeared. Light
shone through the hole, and I put my own eye to it. Thomas ran away
from us across the courtyard without looking back.

“
I’d forgotten about that
surcoat,” I said. “Edward ripped it from me during the fight and we
just left in a corner. All that work to hide our presence and erase
any trace of our camp, and I made a foolish mistake like
that.”

“
But look how it’s turned
out,” Ieuan said. “Falkes will never suspect who you really are
now.”

“
It must have been Moses,”
I said, picturing him with his father. “He had all night to arrange
the bodies as he saw fit.”

Ieuan rubbed his hands
together in gleeful expectation. “What mischief you could make, my
lord, now that you’re dead!”

I ignored
that.
No more Cadwaladr! No more Robin
Hood!
“I’ve been so focused on Edward’s
death, that I’ve given little thought to the death of all the
others: Edward’s brother, Edmund; Robert Burnell; the Mortimer
boys”—Ieuan made a ‘hooray!’ sound at that—“Gilbert De Clare; John
Gifford, not to mention my Uncle Dafydd. What will happen
now?”

Ieuan swept a hand
through his hair. It had come loose from the thong that normally
held it at the nape of his neck. “Hereford,” he said. “He’s all
that’s left.”
Humphrey de Bohun, the third
Earl of Hereford, Lord of the March.

“
He’s ambitious and
clever,” I said, “much like Edward, in fact. What will he make of
these deaths?”

“
Nothing good,” Ieuan
said. “Worse, news of your death will spread and your father may
hear of it before we can reach him.”

I tried to picture
it: Edward had tried to kill me on the evening of July
31
^st
.
The next morning, Carew, Aaron and I had observed the Scot
encounter with the camp’s sole survivor, Aaron’s nephew, Moses. At
the news of Edward’s death and the supposed plague in the camp, the
Scots had turned tail and run the other way as fast as their horses
could carry them. We’d departed from the fishing village of Poulton
shortly thereafter.

“
We
docked at Annan on the evening of August 2
^nd
, only two days after Edward’s
death. Tonight is August 3
^rd
.”

“
It’s less than eighty
miles from Lancaster to Carlisle. A man can ride that distance in a
day if he pushes his horse,” Ieuan said.

“
Hereford could have
arrived in the camp with the Archbishop of Canterbury within hours
of our departure. He’s two days ahead of us; he’s had two days to
plot something we’re not going to like,” I said.

“
First, he would have
ridden as hard and as fast as he could to London,” Ieuan said.
“Edward II is only sixteen months old. The deaths of Edward,
Edmund, and the others, leaves a huge whole in the power structure
of England that Hereford will be only too glad to fill.”

“
He has few allies in
England,” I pointed out. “His loyalties have been to himself, far
more than to Edward. Other men know that and won’t trust
him.”