Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (31 page)

“That is exactly what I intend.” If his trip
to the twenty-first century had taught David anything, it was to
take advantage of the power he had been handed to change the world.
There, he’d been treated like a valuable but semi-inanimate object,
to be passed around for whatever information anyone could get out
of him. Otherwise, his thoughts, opinions, and contributions had
been ignored. He was a twenty-year-old kid, to be humored, at best.
At worst, it had been implied, even if not said, that he was to
leave the thinking to the grown-ups.

Well, screw that.

Now a shout came from the other side of the
village. William de Bohun leapt in front of David, his sword
out.

“Sire!” It was Tom.

“It’s okay, William.” David nudged the boy’s
arm. “He’s a friend too.” At the green, David caught the bridle of
Tom’s horse as he dismounted. “Where’s Emma?”

“Safe with Lord Ieuan,” Tom said. “He agreed
that I should return on the better horse without her.”

David didn’t ask how long it had taken Tom
to persuade Emma that he should return alone. David had believed
her when she’d said that she was the superior rider. It wasn’t
David’s problem, however. Tom and Emma were going to have to work
that out between them.

“How far away is Lord Ieuan and how many men
does he have?” David said.

“He marches with over a thousand strong,”
Tom said. “Lord Ieuan asked me to tell you that he would be
grateful if we met him at St. Leonard’s Hill as soon as
possible.”

Ieuan had named a spot that in the modern
world was adjacent to the Windsor Legoland (David knew this through
Callum). Rather than mention it, David raised a hand, calling his
new captains to him.

“This will put us to the west of Valence’s
main force, is that right?” David said to Tom.

“Lord Ieuan says so,” Tom said.

William made a fist and slammed it into his
palm. “We will crush him, once and for all.”

David narrowed his eyes at the young man.
“Do other barons of your acquaintance share your animosity towards
Valence?”

“The day you banished Valence was a day of
celebration among my father’s peers,” William said. “Didn’t you
realize? I know of nobody who doesn’t want to see him hang.”

September, 1289

Lili

W
hen Anna thrust a
piece of bread wrapped around slices of cheese and meat at her,
Lili just stared at it, too tired even to know what was in her
hand.

“What is this?”

“It’s called a sandwich. You need to eat
it,” Anna said.

Lili looked at the food dubiously. She’d
seen Dafydd eat something like this—wolf it down in four or five
bites, in fact—on many occasions, but to her, each of the different
components, the buttered bread, the cheese, and the meat, should be
eaten separately.

“Is Arthur awake yet?” she said between
bites.

Anna shook her head. “Perhaps this will turn
into a long stretch. It’s nearly dawn and he’s been asleep since
midnight.”

“That’s when he usually nurses the most.” If
she spent more than two hours away from Arthur, Lili felt the
tether that connected her to him stretching tighter and tugging on
her. Since the attack began, Anna, Bronwen, or one of the
maidservants had come to get her whenever Arthur needed to eat. It
had kept her connected to him, but the strain of being apart from
him so much had long since grown wearing. She wanted nothing more
than to lie in bed and snuggle him against her chest.

One of the other archers appeared behind
Anna. “My queen,” he said.

Lili gestured that he should speak,
preparing herself for the latest bad news he was bringing. “What is
it?”

“Our stock of arrows is all but
depleted.”

Anna gasped in dismay, but Lili nodded and
dismissed the archer. She’d been expecting to hear that since the
sun had gone down. They were all thankful that Windsor had been
prepared for an assault to the degree that it had been, but they
hadn’t been prepared enough, not for what Valence was throwing at
them.

“We’ve been in a lull since midnight,” Anna
said. “The bowyer and fletcher are working overtime. All is not
lost.”

“I know,” Lili said. “I haven’t given up
hope.”

“Math wanted me to tell you that the men
need to be prepared to shoot at the siege engines—or rather, the
men working them—when they come against us,” Anna said.

“How soon?” Lili gazed over the wall towards
the enemy lines. The fields of barley and wheat, or grass for
sheep, had been trampled by Valence’s army. Fallen men, some
wounded, some dead, lay every few feet. Windsor’s arrows had held
out long enough to kill many, and any attempt to rescue the wounded
had been met with more arrows. It was cruel, inhuman even, but Math
had insisted that it was necessary. He wanted to sow discontent
among Valence’s men and push him towards raising the white flag
when they faced more resistance than he was prepared for.

“Not long. Dawn, he thinks,” Anna said. “You
need to be aware that Valence will focus first on the towers that
defend the sluice gates.” The sluice gates were what diverted the
water from the Thames around Windsor. If Valence could close the
northwestern gate and open the northeastern one, he could stop the
flow of water and clear the moat.

“As he should,” Lili said.

When the captain of the archers had been
hit—not killed, but badly injured—somehow it had fallen to Lili to
organize the men on her section of the wall. With the destruction
of the bridge, Valence’s men had abandoned any attempt to attack
the north side of the castle and village, so the defenders had
turned their focus elsewhere too. Lili had moved to a section above
the postern gate of the castle. This position overlooked the
northeastern sluice gate, which made it a doubly weak point in
their defenses. She was inside the castle, however, and that made
Carew happier.

The two women looked at each other, and then
Anna put her arm around Lili’s waist.

“I know I’m not the first to wonder who
those men on the other side are,” Lili said. “But … do they fight
for Valence because they love him and believe? Or are they
following their lord because they must, because they can’t imagine
any other life?”

“There’s some of all of that, I’m sure,”
Anna said. “And then there are those who are paid. Many may believe
that it makes no difference who is king. That’s for noblemen to
worry about while common folk struggle to put food on the
table.”

“How did I come to be in an English castle,
married to the King of England, fighting for a country which up
until a year ago was my sworn enemy?” Lili said.

“I don’t know the answer to that any more
than you do.” Anna shook her head. “It seems a strange path for all
of us to have taken.”

“I want this over and Dafydd home safe,”
Lili said.

“When he returns, ask him to take you home
to Wales for a time,” Anna said. “He’ll do it gladly.”

“I haven’t wanted to burden him—”

Anna took Lili’s face in her hands. “You are
his wife. He won’t know what you need if you don’t ask for it.”

Lili put her head into the hollow of Anna’s
shoulder. They stood still a moment, their heads bowed. Then Anna
took a breath and stepped back. “I have a sliver of hope that our
penicillin paste might be working. We have treated every injured
man with it, and so far none of the wounds have suppurated.”

“That is good news!” Lili said.

“That is the best news!” Nicholas de Carew
mounted the stairs. “And there’s more.”

“What more?” Lili said.

“I have to show you,” he said.

Lili was reluctant to leave her post, but
after a quick word with the five archers who shared her particular
stretch of wall, she walked with Carew and Anna around the
battlement until they reached the stairway that led to the lower
bailey of the castle. Arthur and the other children slept in the
castle’s northwest tower, and though part of her longed to go to
him, even if he was asleep, she allowed herself to be tugged along,
out the gate, and into the town of Windsor.

“Where are we going?” Lili said. “I thought
you wanted me to stay in the castle.”

“Some things are worth making an exception
for.” Carew smiled. “Have you heard the king say that it is always
darkest before the dawn?”

“You’re awfully cheerful for someone who’s
found himself in the middle of a war we’re currently losing.” Lili
gestured to the sky, which had gone from pitch black to murky while
they’d been walking. “Dawn is coming. Anna said that Valence will
attack with the rising of the sun.”

“We aren’t going to lose,” Carew said.

“How do you know that—?” Lili cut herself
off at the sight of dozens of men—archers,
scholars-turned-soldiers, and villagers—crowding onto the
southwestern wall-walk above her. They’d reached the exact opposite
corner of the town from where she’d been standing earlier.

“Make way for the queen,” Carew said, and
everyone did.

Lili climbed the stairs up to the wall-walk
and rested her hands on the stones of the crenel, staring southwest
through the gap. Valence’s men were there, of course, though fewer
than their original two thousand strong. But beyond them, covering
the entirety of the hill behind the enemy encampment, torches
shone.

Hundreds of them.

As Lili watched, a campfire blazed up, and
then a few more, until the whole of the land to the south and west
of Windsor was covered with light. “How—?” Lili couldn’t speak
more.

A smile split Carew’s face from ear to ear.
“They appeared less than half an hour ago, all at once, as if every
soldier had lit his torch at the same time, which perhaps they
did.”

“How many have come?” Anna pressed between
Lili and Carew, drinking in the sight of the oncoming army as
eagerly as Lili was.

“From the number of torches, I would have
said more than a thousand,” Carew said, “but they keep lighting
more—”

“A thousand, did you say?” Anna said.
“That’s more like five thousand.”

Roger Bacon wended his way through the
crowd. “Valence will have to decide which direction he will attack,
and if he will attack. The fact that our force has taken the high
ground puts him at a further disadvantage.”

“We’re sure they’re here to fight for us?”
Lili said.

Carew pointed. “Look there, at the very top
of the hill where there are no trees.”

Lili squinted. The torches shone all around
the hill, and many seemed to be directed at its peak. “Is it … is
it a flag?”

“I would say so,” Bacon said, squinting
too.

“It’s a flag with a dragon on it. How many
armies that fight for Valence would carry such a thing, do you
think?” Carew said.

“That’s David’s personal banner.” Anna’s
brow furrowed. “Normally, it isn’t flown unless David is physically
present on the field.”

“Ieuan must be flying it.” Pride in her
brother rose in Lili’s chest. He deserved every bit of trust that
Dafydd had placed in him.

“Has to be,” Carew said. “Though I have no
idea how Lord Ieuan found so many men so quickly.”

A clamor came from below. “There’s a boat
coming down the river!”

Archers all along the wall-walk shouted and
leveled their bows at the intruders. They had been expecting some
renewal of Valence’s assault on this side of the town, and with
such a force hemming them in, now would be the time for an attack.
The window of opportunity for taking Windsor was closing.

“Don’t shoot! Don’t shoot! We’re
friends!”

The color drained from Lili’s face. That was
Dafydd’s voice. She knew it like she knew her own face in her
looking-glass. But it couldn’t be him; it had to be a trick, and a
very cruel one to deceive her in this way.

Anna ran along the wall-walk, screaming at
the archers, her skirts pulled up to her knees to free her legs.
“Stop! Stop! It’s the King!”

Several archers were so focused on the
river, they didn’t hear her. Breathless that Anna could be right,
Lili sprinted after her.

Bevyn, who still maintained charge of the
northern gatehouse tower, bellowed at the men: “It’s just one boat!
Put up, you fools!”

By the time Lili made it down the stairs
that led to the gate, Bevyn had it ajar. She and a dozen others
darted through the opening, making for the narrow wharf, located to
the east of where the bridge had been and almost directly under the
castle walls.

The wharf was long but not wide, jutting out
into the river only the length of a man, but with many
indentations, much like the crenellations on a battlement, where
boats could tie up. Fortunately, a few men had the foresight to
bring torches, and as they raced towards the oncoming boat, Lili
could see that it had two men in it. One reached for a rope tied to
an iron ring attached to the dock, and as he grasped it, he looked
towards the crowd coming from the town.

Lili pulled up short, drinking the sight of
Dafydd in. Even after a year of marriage and the birth of their
child, he never lost the power to stop her in her tracks. He caught
sight of her and lifted a hand; then Bevyn reached down to help him
scramble onto the dock. “What are you doing here, my lord?” Bevyn
said in Welsh, always the one to get straight the point.

“It seems I was needed.” As he spoke, Dafydd
turned in time to catch Lili, who barreled into him, wrapping her
arms around his waist and pressing her face into his chest. He
hugged her, bending his neck to rest his cheek on the top of her
head.

Then her brow furrowed. She pulled back and
pressed a hand to his chest, feeling the smooth yet hard armor
covering his torso underneath his shirt. It had felt strange to her
cheek. “What are you wearing?”

He grasped both of her hands. “It’s not of
here,
cariad
.”