Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (32 page)

Not of here
. That was a code she
understood, for Dafydd had used it often, as a way to talk about
places and things in that far-off world of his. She swallowed hard.
Given that
he
was here, against all expectation, Lili was
willing to wait for an explanation. She nodded, letting him know
she understood. Then she looked towards the boat and back to
Dafydd. “Where are Cass—?”

Dafydd’s grip tightened on her arms. “I had
to leave them. I swear I didn’t want to, but I had no choice.”

A chill grew in Lili, starting deep in her
bones. “You mean—?” Lili hadn’t known Cassie long, but she missed
her already and didn’t want to think about what she might be doing
now, stuck in a foreign land, even if it had once been her land.
Cassie wasn’t going to be happy there.

“I believe they’re safe. The three of us
went together, but only I could return. Callum was wounded, and I
couldn’t bring him home—” Dafydd caught Lili up in a fierce hug,
kissed her, and only then turned towards his companion in the
boat.

Most of the crowd that had followed Bevyn
from the gate had sunk to one knee at the sight of their king, but
when Dafydd reached down a hand to haul his companion out of the
boat, several scrambled forward to help.

Lili looked at the newcomer curiously. Like
Dafydd, he was fair-haired and tall, though less muscular. He wore
no armor or cloak, just a simple shirt and breeches, damp now from
the river. Like Dafydd, his eyes were bright.

“This is Tom, from Maidenhead. One of many
villagers who have come to our aid tonight.” Dafydd looked over
Lili’s head to the men behind her. More continued to spill from the
gate. “We should get back inside. This isn’t over yet.”

“By God, it won’t be long now.” Bevyn’s
mustache quivered. He was more pleased than Lili had ever seen him.
“Not with the army you’ve brought.”

“I did very little.” Dafydd strode towards
the gate, getting the people to their feet and herding them ahead
of him with wide sweeps of his arm.

Lili hurried to catch Dafydd’s hand, and
Bevyn hustled along behind her. When Lili had plunged through the
crowd to greet Dafydd, Carew and Anna had held back, but they met
them at the gate. Dafydd embraced his sister, and then reached out
to shake Carew’s hand. “Thank you for being here.”

“I am honored that you requested my
presence,” Carew said.

“I never considered asking another,” Dafydd
said, proving true what Lili had told Carew. She wondered if Carew
would ever discuss with Dafydd how he’d felt mistrusted by him.
Probably not. From the way the two men were nodding at each other,
Carew’s concerns were long gone.

Dafydd looked down at Lili. “How is Arthur?
Not ill at all?”

“He remains well. Sleeping now,” she
said.

“Good.”

Lili peered up at her husband, suddenly
suspicious. “Is there some reason to worry?”

“That is another matter to discuss with
you—Anna, Bronwen, and you—later,” Dafydd said. “For now, I bring
word from Ieuan to Math, as I hear he defends Windsor.”

Carew bowed and gestured towards the street
which led to the southeastern gatehouse and Math’s headquarters.
“This way, my lord.”

When they entered the house that served as
Math’s command post, they found Math leaned back in a chair with
his feet propped up on the table in front of him. His eyes were
closed and remained closed, even amidst the clamor in the room. A
group of men were gathered around the table, among them a bandaged
Henry Percy, Dafydd’s Uncle Rhodri, and Sir George, the castellan
of Windsor. The men were arguing and gesticulating at one another,
a fact to which Math appeared oblivious. At the arrival of the
newcomers, Sir George recognized Lili. “My queen! Lord Ieuan has
come!”

“So I have seen,” she said.

Then at the sight of Dafydd entering the
room right behind her, Sir George’s jaw dropped. “B-b-but—”

Dafydd merely held up his hand in
greeting.

Anna went to Math and rested her arm on his
shoulder. Without opening his eyes, he put an arm around her
waist.

Anna leaned down to him. “I brought you
someone you’ll want to see.”

“Who is it?” Math didn’t open his eyes.

The other men had given way for Dafydd, as
they always did. “Sleeping on the job, are you?” he said in Welsh.
“That’s hardly what I pay you for, is it?”

Math’s eyes popped open, but he must really
have been tired because it took him a moment to recognize Dafydd
standing before the table. Then his feet hit the floor with a thud,
and he was upright and coming around the table to embrace his
brother-in-law. “Good God! How is it that you are here?”

“That’s the first question everyone has
asked me in these last hours, and the one I can’t answer,” Dafydd
said. “Brother, you really don’t want to know.”

Math stepped back, his eyes focused on
Dafydd’s face. Lili knew Dafydd didn’t want to say more and hoped
Math would know exactly what he meant.

“But I want to know.” Carew said.

Dafydd turned to look at the Norman-Welsh
lord and then glanced at the onlookers and Lili. She raised her
eyebrows and shrugged. She didn’t have any idea what would be the
right thing to say. Dafydd’s eyes flashed—with intelligence and a
bit of that reckless streak he usually didn’t let show—and then he
said, “I meant to go to Ireland but went to Avalon instead.”

The men in the room gasped. While on the
wharf, Lili had worked out what had happened, of course, but Anna
seemed not to have understood until now how Dafydd had reached
Windsor. Her face drained of color. “What?”

“I know, I know.” Dafydd reached for his
sister’s hand and clasped it.

“Where are your men? Where are Callum and
Cassie?” Anna said.

“Once the storm hit, I lost track of my
men,” Dafydd said. “I arrived here tonight as you see, alone and
without a guard.”

Anna had her hand to her mouth, staring at
her brother and more shocked than Lili might have expected, given
the frequency with which time traveling happened to her family.
Maybe because Lili had never been to that other world, she was more
accepting of it. Usually, she managed to forget about Dafydd’s
origins in the daily business of living. Dafydd was her husband,
the father of her son, and the King of England. That was all that
mattered most of the time.

But that was the crucial word, wasn’t it?
Time.

“Callum was wounded. He and Cassie stayed
behind,” Dafydd said. “I’ll be going back for them as soon as I
can.”

Carew absorbed Dafydd’s news with a pinched
look on his face. “How did that happen?”

“I cannot tell you how,” Dafydd said, “only
that it did. In this, I know little more than you.”

“Tell me something.” Carew clenched his
hands into fists and strained forward. “Tell me
why
.”

“It seems I wasn’t meant to go to Ireland
because I was needed here,” Dafydd said.

Those simple words had Carew settling back
on his heels. His expression cleared. “That certainly is true.”

Dafydd stepped towards Carew. “Sometimes,
against all expectation, good things do happen. I—”

Someone knocked at the door, and Dafydd
swallowed down whatever he’d been about to say.

“Enter!” Math said.

The door opened, revealing a messenger
standing on the doorstep, sweaty and unkempt. He stuttered a bit,
looking from Dafydd to Math, perhaps thinking about whose presence
he was in for the first time instead of the news he brought.

Nobody held his appearance against him.
“What is it?” Math said.

“My lord!” The man stepped through the
doorway. “Lord Valence has raised the white flag!”

Other men murmured
thanks be to God!
And
the Lord has delivered us
, but Math pursed his lips and
said, “Thank you. Wait outside for my response.”

The man bowed and departed to the street.
Everyone else in the room fell silent, looking between Math and
Dafydd. “It’s what I wanted—hoped for—but I didn’t expect him to
fold his tents this quickly,” Dafydd said.

“It feels too easy,” Anna said.

“What do you intend, my lord?” Carew wasn’t
looking at Math, but at Dafydd. While Math was still the commander
of Windsor’s forces, and thus had spoken to the messenger, everyone
in the room knew that the ultimate decision lay with the king.

“I intend to talk to him, of course,” Dafydd
said, “but to take some additional precautions, some which some of
you aren’t going to like.”

Carew stood with his hands on his hips,
still looking defiant. “We need to capture him. He cannot be
allowed to wiggle away this time to incite new mischief
elsewhere.”

“Agreed.” Dafydd said.

“What are your orders?” Math said.

“We will show our good will by allowing him
to gather his wounded on the field in front of the town, even
sending down our men to assist the efforts of his soldiers. We will
provide medicines and healing herbs as needed.” Dafydd glanced at
Anna, who nodded. “I imagine in the chaos, certain … things … might
be left behind, hidden in the grass.”

Roger Bacon’s eyes went wide and flicked
from Carew to Dafydd to Math. “Surely, you will abide by the rules
of safe conduct, my lords?”

Dafydd eyed him. “You forget yourself.”

Roger Bacon swallowed hard and took a step
back. Dafydd didn’t often show this side of himself. His face had
turned to granite, and his blue eyes had gone cold. Lili shivered.
She wouldn’t want to be wearing Valence’s boots this morning.

“I don’t care how you capture him.” Anna was
one of the few people in the room who didn’t concern herself with
Dafydd’s temper or status. “But I do care what you do with him
afterwards. The sooner you think about what that is going to be,
the better.”

“I have thought about it. I’ve spent far too
much time thinking about it.” Dafydd ran his fingers through his
hair and began to pace, too restless to stand still. Anna had told
Lili that he’d always been like that, ever since he was nine months
old and decided walking and talking went together.

“I know what you should do,” Anna said, “but
it won’t be easy.”

“What that is worthwhile ever is?” Dafydd
lifted his chin. “Tell me.” If some of the men in the room thought
it was odd for the King of England to be taking advice from his
sister, none of them said so, even when Anna’s next words were
meant for them as much as for Dafydd.

“Are we a rabble seeking revenge or
civilized men seeking justice?”

Some of the men shifted uncomfortably, but
Dafydd gave Anna a small smile and said, “The latter, of course,
but I’m not sure what that means to you.”

“Do what you have to do to take Valence in,
but once he’s in custody, you have to do this the right way. He
should be tried by a judge and jury of his peers, not beheaded or
hanged from the battlement at Windsor, even if it would provide a
good lesson to others.”

Lili was surprised at her sister-in-law’s
adamancy, but she wasn’t the only one nodding, either. All three
traditions—Welsh, Saxon, and Norman—had developed a court system by
which fines were leveled and men punished or set free. In fact, in
this instance, the Normans had expanded upon the justice system of
the Saxons, codifying trial-by-jury in
Magna Carta
and other
documents, for all men. No nobleman wanted an all-powerful king,
even one as popular and as even-handed as Dafydd, and for more than
a hundred years had pressed for the ability to reign their ruler
in.

Dafydd studied his sister for a long moment,
and then nodded. “We will do as you say. There never really was
another choice. Not for me. Thank you for making me see it.”

September, 1289

David

T
he sun was fully
up by the time Valence rode from his command tent with his
entourage, and David rode out of the castle with his ten men. He’d
left everyone else—Ieuan, Math, Carew, Edmund, William, this new
Uncle Rhodri, and a dozen others—behind. It wasn’t to slight them.
David could have brought any number of men instead of these few.
But he meant to send an unmistakable message to Valence.
He
,
David Arthur Llywelyn Pendragon, King of England, ruled here. And
neither Valence, nor anyone else, would be wise to forget it.

David could feel his wife’s eyes on him as
he came to a halt two hundred yards from the town gate and an equal
distance from Valence’s camp. Lili had her bow in hand and stood
with most of the archers who could still stand on the wall-walk
above the southeastern gate. Valence had pitched his tents out of
arrow range, but the designated meeting point was within it from
both sides. David eyed Valence’s lines, and particularly the
archers, wondering from which one treachery would come. A
well-placed arrow had killed more than one king in England’s
history.

He’d set the parameters of the meeting very
clearly, even to the point of having his men stake out how far
Valence’s men should ride and where Valence’s horse should stand
when he greeted David. He’d carefully orchestrated every aspect of
this meeting, except, of course, for Valence’s response. David
hoped Valence would take these actions as David’s attempt to
control the situation (which it absolutely was), and not grasp that
it was also an artful mask over his back-up plan should Valence
fail to come to heel.

Up until now, Valence had shown a tendency
to underestimate David, even as David defeated him. He believed
David to be lucky but naïve. David wanted to do nothing to dissuade
Valence of this opinion. He couldn’t know that David was dispensing
with any pretext of inherent goodness today. He was planning—if
Valence forced his hand—to show the world that he could be just as
mercenary as his predecessors.