Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (14 page)

“I’m sorry I wasn’t there,” Cassie said.

“You going to tell me about this Middle Ages
thing?”

As his speech grew more casual, Cassie could
tell that he was more at ease with her now, as if they were sitting
on his porch on a hot August day, drinking lemonade and
talking.

“Not right now, if that’s okay,” Cassie
said. “I want to talk to you about it in person.”

“I’ll wait, then,” he said, leaving
but
don’t wait too long
unsaid. Her grandfather was in his early
seventies, and if he’d had one ‘heart event’, he could have
another.

“Yes, Granddad.” Cassie teared up again. “I
have to go.”

After they hung up, Cassie leaned both hands
on the desk, collecting her thoughts and trying to bring her
emotions under control. She’d needed to speak to her grandfather,
just to hear his voice again, but now that she had, her old life
and all that she’d left behind, and lost, came rushing back. She
wished an ocean and a continent didn’t separate her from him.

It could be Callum was feeling the same.
Cassie wasn’t worried that he missed his old girlfriend. He loved
Cassie. But David had been right to question how they would each
feel about returning to the Middle Ages with him. It wasn’t hot
showers and coffee that would keep Cassie here. She’d learned to
live without those things. But the people … to return to the Middle
Ages would be to turn her back on her family, on her obligations,
and to die to them all over again.

She took in a deep breath and let it out,
trying to put the uncertainty aside for now, and went to the door.
Callum opened it just as she reached it, and they stood looking at
each other for a moment without speaking.

“Are you okay?” he said.

“I guess so. That was a difficult
conversation.”

“Is your grandfather all right?”

Cassie nodded.

“I wish I could make it easier for you.”
Callum reached for her hand. “Come on.”

Cassie strode down the hall with him,
hustling to keep up with his longer legs. “What’s the hurry?”

“We are meeting Driscoll in ten minutes in
the cafeteria but arriving from a different direction,” Callum
said.

“You want to see how freely we can move
about the building without an escort,” she said, not as a
question.

“Yes.” Callum drew out the ‘s’ in a hissing
sound. “I’d like to avoid Smythe or Lady Jane, if possible.”

Cassie could understand why Callum wouldn’t
want to run into Smythe, but she had kind of liked Lady Jane. She
reminded Cassie of her father’s mother, who’d died when she was
fifteen. Cassie hadn’t been very close to her father’s side of the
family—the white side—but she’d spent a little time with her
grandmother. She’d been a smart, tough woman, who in a cultural
opposite to the Indian side of Cassie’s family, was always happy to
speak her mind and cared not at all that nobody wanted to hear it.
Even so, one day after she’d lectured an uncle in no uncertain
terms about the error of his current course of action, she’d put
her arm around Cassie’s shoulder and whispered:
always certain,
sometimes right
, mocking herself for her outspoken ways.

Cassie had laughed and gotten along well
with her grandmother after that. Lady Jane seemed to be cut from
the same cloth, and Cassie hoped that maybe she would have her
grandmother’s common sense too.

Cassie and Callum took the stairs down to
the lobby floor, but stopped in the stairwell before exiting
through the door. Callum peered through the narrow glass window
into the foyer beyond it. A bank of elevators faced them, and
several people got on and off.

“No alarm yet,” Cassie said.

“Seemingly not. Maybe we need to give it
another minute.” Callum went through the door. To their left was an
expansive lobby that was divided in half by a glass partition and
guard boxes. Anyone coming into the Office had to pass through
security scanners before entering the building proper.

“Would your ID get us past that if we had
arrived like normal people?” Cassie said.

“My badge wouldn’t,” Callum said. “It has a
bar code that in the past was updated once a month. This, on the
other hand—” He pulled out his phone, “—this has all the updates
programmed into it. Did you know that at the airport check-in you
can scan your mobile, and it substitutes for a boarding pass?”

Cassie stared at him. “No.”

“MI-5 identification now operates on the
same principle.”

“What if you lose your phone?” she said.

“It’s the same as losing your badge.” Callum
shrugged. “At the very least, if there was a question as to my
identity, my iris won’t have changed.”

“We don’t actually know that, though, do
we?” Cassie said, as the new idea struck her. “Could the time
traveling have altered our DNA? Have we been disassembled and
reassembled like on the transporter platform in
Star
Trek
?”

Callum glanced at her, his eyes widening,
but with a smile on his lips. “I don’t think I want to know the
answer to that.” Leaving his phone on, Callum put it back in his
pocket.

Cassie eyed the action. “You want them to
stop us.”

“I want to know if they feel the need
to.”

Instead of heading out to the lobby, Callum
turned the other way and walked past the elevators and into a maze
of branching corridors, all unlabeled. He reached an equally
unmarked set of double doors and pushed through it, revealing a
fully equipped cafeteria.

Driscoll was already seated at a table on
the left-hand wall, near a bank of windows that overlooked a
central courtyard. He’d been talking on his cell phone as they
entered the cafeteria, but waved them over when he saw them. “I
chose an assortment: soup, bread, fish and chips.” He gestured to
the food on the table in front of him. “I didn’t know what you
liked, and I know it’s been a long time since you’ve eaten anything
like this. Can I get you a coffee, Cassie?”

“Yes, please.” Cassie accepted the seat
Callum pulled out for her. He was being particularly chivalrous
today, and she couldn’t decide if it was for Driscoll’s benefit, or
if the change of scenery had awakened old habits.

Driscoll seemed to have gotten on board with
the time travel thing, or was pretending really well for their
benefit. He set a cup of coffee in front of Cassie with what looked
like Bronwen-proportions of cream and sugar in it. Cassie hadn’t
witnessed Bronwen’s habits in person, of course, since coffee
wasn’t available in the Middle Ages, but she’d heard about
them.

“What nosh did you miss the most?” Driscoll
seated himself across from them.

“Nosh?” Cassie said.

“
Nosh
.” Driscoll snapped his fingers.
“You know,
food
.”

“Oh,” Cassie said. “That would have to be
chocolate—”

“Potatoes—”

Cassie laughed and poked Callum in the
shoulder. “You are just so
English
to miss potatoes.”

“You don’t have potatoes in the Middle
Ages?” Driscoll’s brow furrowed. “How is that possible?”

“They’re what David calls a New World food,”
Cassie said. “They weren’t brought to Europe until after 1492. Same
with chocolate.”

Driscoll was staring at her with his mouth
open. “How do you
live
?”

Cassie laughed. It felt good to be having a
regular conversation with someone who was truly
listening
to
her instead of questioning her sanity.

Callum leaned across the table and lowered
his voice. “Have you heard anything?” He didn’t have to explain to
either Cassie or Driscoll that he was asking about David.

Driscoll shook his head. “I haven’t had a
recent update.”

“How about a less recent one, then?” Cassie
said.

“He’s in sub-basement two in one of the
interrogation rooms,” Driscoll said. “Natasha is with him.”

“What about the sack over his head?” Cassie
said. “That didn’t look good.”

“I can assure you that he’s fine.” Driscoll
put down the cup from which he’d been drinking.

Callum sat back and tapped his fingers on
the table. “I need to know what’s happening with David. I need to
be part of his interrogation.”

Driscoll shook his head.

“I’ve been reinstated,” Callum said. “How
can they not let me in?”

“
I
might not be let in,” Driscoll
said.

“Then we’ll have to get through to Natasha,”
Callum said.

“You’re not understanding me,” Driscoll
said. “Lady Jane herself has taken over Cardiff station. She’s the
one you have to get past. David is not your responsibility now. Let
it go.”

“We can’t let it go. You are literally
asking for something we cannot do,” Cassie said.

Callum had moved infinitesimally closer to
Cassie while they’d been talking and had started pressing gently on
her right foot. He was trying to stop her talking, and it occurred
to her only now that Callum might not trust Driscoll, and she was
kind of running at the mouth. She put her lips together and sat
back. “You’re right. We need to be patient.”

Callum draped his arm across the back of
Cassie’s chair. “The mission is paramount. While all I want to do
is help, I can accept that my help is not wanted at present.
Tomorrow I will speak to Lady Jane about what I
can
do.”

Cassie cleared her throat. “Lady Jane said
something about housing us here in the Office. Is that what you
understood?”

Driscoll nodded. “Yes.”

“Personally, I’d like to see a little of
Cardiff.” Cassie glanced at Callum. “I’m particularly fond of the
castle.”

“You aren’t supposed to leave the building,”
Driscoll said. “If you try, I believe you will be stopped.”

“Both of us?” Cassie said.

“For now.” Driscoll’s phone beeped at him.
He pulled it out and read the screen. “I have somewhere to be.”

“Where?” Callum said.

“Nothing important.” Driscoll rose from his
seat, about to leave, but then he hesitated.

“What is it?” Callum spoke softly. “What’s
going on?”

Driscoll jerked his head, as if he’d decided
something, and then turned back to them, leaning on his hands which
rested flat on the table. “I want to do what’s right. If you need
help, you can count on me.”

The reversal was a bit too sudden for
Cassie, and she didn’t need Callum’s warning touch to know that
caution was required. She put her lips together and let Callum do
the talking.

“I’m glad to hear it,” Callum said.

“If time travel is real, I want to be a part
of it,” Driscoll said. “But I don’t believe in using David, even in
the name of national security, and you need help from someone on
the inside. In return, I ask that you take me to the Middle Ages
with you when you go.”

His words left Cassie stunned, but Callum
contemplated his former colleague without a change of expression.
“It’s not an easy life. Why would you want to come with us?”

“Why wouldn’t I?” Driscoll looked down at
their upturned faces. The slightly ironic expression he’d worn up
until now was wiped away in favor of a bright-eyed enthusiasm.

“What about your wife?” Callum said.

“She left me three months ago, we have no
kids, and I haven’t spoken to my parents in two years,” Driscoll
said. “I have nothing to keep me here.”

“I lived there for five years,” Cassie said.
“I know what it’s like and what it takes, and you really don’t want
to come with us.” The conversation with her grandfather had shaken
her a bit, and she didn’t know any more if she herself wanted to go
back, but now wasn’t the time for waffling on that decision in
public. She and Callum needed to have a serious talk about all of
this. But not now, not in front of Driscoll.

“I do,” Driscoll said.

“I don’t know what to say. I don’t even know
where to begin.” Callum rubbed at his chin.

Driscoll looked at his phone again. “For
now, you should sit tight. I’ll touch base with you later.”

Callum grinned. “You’ve been watching too
many American police procedurals. I almost hear a southern accent
in there.”

“Shut it,” Driscoll said, though he smirked
as he pushed off from the table and departed.

September, 1289

Anna

T
he five minutes it
had taken for the three women to travel from the upper bailey to
the lower one had been spent in heated argument, and this time Anna
found herself on the side of practicality, rather than emotion. The
tears in the stairwell had wrung her out, but because of them she’d
been forced to admit—to herself only, since neither Bronwen nor
Lili had said it out loud—that she’d been thinking entirely about
herself.
She
didn’t want to hurt more. Well,
who
did?

And they were right about the living part
too. She hadn’t been living. She’d been going through the motions,
even after Bran’s birth. Her family had been kind enough, and
loving enough, not to slap her out of it. Somehow she was going to
have to let this fear go, not simply shove it down deeper inside
herself and pretend it wasn’t there. The middle of a siege seemed
both hardly the time, and the perfect time, to start anew.

“We have to bring them inside the castle,
Anna!” Bronwen said.

“We can’t,” Anna said matter-of-factly. “You
know we can’t.”

“They’ll die out there,” Bronwen said. “If
Valence gets through the walls, his men will show no mercy.”

Anna stopped and turned on Bronwen. Lili
stayed two paces away, not interfering, for which Anna was
grateful. Lili had known instinctively that the patients in the
infirmary adjacent to the abbey could not be brought inside the
castle itself. The city walls would protect them and the nuns who
cared for them. Bronwen, however, wasn’t seeing it their way.

“Some of them are very ill, Bronwen,” Anna
said. “Many will die, no matter what we do for them. What happens
when we bring them inside the castle and they start to die in here?
Where will that leave us? Are we going to put wounded men alongside
sick children and hope both groups survive that contact? You’d be
all but writing a death sentence for the injured!”