Prince of Time (Book Two in the After Cilmeri series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “And he probably was Welsh,” I said.

  Dad turned to Lili. “Would you fetch me some wine, my dear?”

  “Of course, my lord.” Lili stood and sketched a wave to me, before leaving the room.

  I looked at my father, waiting.

  “I almost died,” he said. “Are you ready?”

  “I’ll never be ready,” I said. “And you didn’t die.”

  “How many close calls can one man survive?” Dad asked. “I’ve already lived longer than most men.”

  “Mom will not be happy with that kind of talk,” I said, “especially because where she comes from, many people live well into their eighties.”

  “Save me from such a fate!” Dad said, and actually laughed, though he cut it short abruptly with a hand to his side. I eased him down further in the bed and grabbed another pillow to hold against his ribs. “I would rather die before I lose all my teeth and am bent double with age, barely able to stagger from the bed to the dinner table and back!”

  He sobered and held out his hand to me. I leaned forward and he kissed my forehead and then each cheek. “You are my beloved son,” he said. “Whenever my end comes, you will be ready, whether you realize it or not.”

  His words made me lightheaded, with tears behind my eyes. I had to breathe deeply to fight them back. “I’m not as strong as you,” I said. “Nor as wise.”

  “You are young and not as alone as I was at sixteen.” Dad looked down at his hands and I waited, wondering what was coming and if this was really why he’d sent Lili away. “I need to know, son,” he said, “why did you come back? You didn’t have to.”

  “I know,” I said, relieved that the question was so easy. “It was my choice. I wanted to come home.”

  “But you jumped not knowing if it would return you to your time or end your life.”

  “With the English bearing down on me, Dad, my life was over. Ieuan’s life was over. It wasn’t just a risk I had to take, I didn’t even view it as a risk at the time. All my choices had narrowed to two: die on an English sword, or jump.”

  Dad squeezed my hand. “I have stood on that cliff many times, son. Thank you for coming home. Thank you for saving my life again.”

  “Everything happens for a reason, Dad. Even if I’d died there, it would have been for a reason. You pray, you try to make the right choice, the moral choice, and then you let it go, and it’s amazing sometimes how things turn out.”

  Dad laughed lightly, containing it so as to not hurt his wound. “I would have to agree, Dafydd. Since you and your sister arrived in Wales, amazing is a word of which I’ve grown very fond.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Bronwen

  “Mmmm,” I set the plate of doughnuts on the table in front of Ieuan and sat down.

  “What are those?” he asked, gingerly picking one out with his thumb and forefinger. “They look like lumps of dough that have been fried in lard.”

  “Exactly,” I said, grinning. “Except that the dough is sweetened with more honey than usual, and we let it rise once instead of twice.”

  Ieuan took a bite and his face took on a quizzical expression. “Good,” he said. “What do you call them? Dough lumps?”

  “Doughnuts, or rather ‘doughnut holes’ which makes even less sense if you think about it,” I said. “Until I came to Wales they were one of my four main food groups, the others being diet cola, onion rings, and coffee.”

  “I have no idea what you just said,” Ieuan said. “Is coffee what you have there?” He pointed to the cup in my hand.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve had a headache on and off since the day after we got here, and I’m hoping this will help.”

  Ieuan took the cup from me, sipped it, and grimaced.

  “I know. It doesn’t taste very good, does it? I put in lots of cream, but no sugar, as there is none. I’m going to have to give it up, I think.”

  “Prince Dafydd had three sugar packets,” Ieuan said, popping two more doughnuts in his mouth and talking around them. “I asked him to bring them here from the hospital. I would give them to you, as part of my betrothal gift, to put in your final cup.”

  “Ieuan,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek. “That’s so sweet.”

  “Isn’t it?” he said, looking pleased with himself.

  I took a doughnut. They were rather good. One of the things I’d found when I’d traveled the world with my parents was that the memory of certain foods created a longing that was only sated by that particular food. Then, once you had that food again, it not only was no longer a desperate need, but it never tasted as good as you imagined. I don’t think this is the case with doughnuts, though.

  Now onion rings—I was going to try those next. They should be easy.

  “You all right, lass?” Ieuan asked.

  “I think so,” I said. “How long have I been here, in Wales?”

  “Six days?” he said, his mouth full again. “Something like that.”

  “So it’s August 14th,” I said. “I’ve known you for ten days.”

  “A lifetime, really,” he said.

  I laughed, because he was right, and then sobered. “I’ve begun my life completely over,” I said. I started up from the table at the thought, feeling panic rise in my chest. “Is my professor at Penn State worried about me, or have they already given my office to someone else? Ieuan! What if Elisa didn’t find my letters? My friend, Kate, must be frantic!” What was I thinking? Why do I never think?

  My heart raced as the thoughts tumbled over each other in my head. Ieuan was staring at me, his mouth half-open. “Lass? Bronwen?” he said, a doughnut half-way to his mouth.

  “What have I done?” I moaned, sat, and laid my head on the table.

  “You’ve saved the life of the Prince of Wales,” Ieuan said.

  Suddenly, it was as simple as that. I raised my head. “I did, didn’t I?” I said. In the space of a single second, I understood what David had been talking about, back at his aunt’s house. What had he said? This is so much bigger than I am; so much more important that I am. I would be a blind man not to see it.

  “We are, each one of us, here for a purpose, lass,” Ieuan said. “You know that.”

  “I guess I do, at that.”

  Lili appeared beside Ieuan. “Can we talk?” she asked, without bothering with a greeting.

  Ieuan and I glanced at each other. “Let’s go where we were before, Ieuan,” I said. Privacy was remarkably hard to come by in a castle. There were too many people in too small a space, but Ieuan and I had found a private spot in the kitchen garden where we’d sat late last night before going to bed. There was a bench, screened by a lattice. It had been quiet there.

  We left the hall and passed quickly through the kitchen. The workers looked up as we went by, but Ieuan waved them away and they went back to their work. The kitchen garden was a walled enclosure, protected from the wind by a high wall all around it. Many of the vegetables were harvested already, or would be ready soon, but there was nobody inside when we walked in.

  “This way,” Ieuan said, and led us down a side path to the bench. Lili and I sat and he leaned against the wall, still behind the lattice, but to the left of us.

  Lili began, sounding ill at ease, which contrasted sharply to the confidence I’d seen in her so many times before. “I need...can I ask you? . . .” She stopped and tried again. “A moment ago, I overheard Prince Dafydd speaking to Lord Tudur of the land from which he came.” She spoke faster as the words started to come more easily. “You told me, Ieuan, that he was from the land of Madoc, but he said he was from the future. Prince Llywelyn confirmed it.” She stopped.

  I kept my voice gentle. “Did you speak to Dafydd about this?”

  “Just now, but I...I couldn’t ask him. That’s why I’m asking you, because you’re from that land as well and you’re a woman so . . .”

  I looked up at Ieuan who was regarding his sister. “Prince Dafydd knows that you know?” he asked.

&
nbsp; “Yes,” Lili said.

  “Then I don’t see any harm in talking about it,” Ieuan said. He sat beside Lili so we flanked her. “He took me there, Lili. The English were upon us and would have killed us both, but the Prince lifted me in his arms and jumped off the edge of a cliff and brought me into his world—Bronwen’s world.”

  Lili clasped her hands tightly in her lap. “And you forsook your world to come here, to marry Ieuan?”

  I met Ieuan’s eyes. They twinkled at me, obviously amused. “Yes,” I said. “I did.”

  “Prince Dafydd chose to leave, and then chose to come back. You too, Ieuan. Why? That world must be wonderful beyond imagining.”

  “But it doesn’t have you in it,” Ieuan said.

  Lili had recovered enough to sneer at him. “You’re not serious. That’s no reason.”

  “It’s reason enough,” Ieuan said.

  “Could you take me there?” Lili turned to me.

  “I don’t think so,” I said, nonplussed, “and even if I could, I wouldn’t. It isn’t like a door that just open and closes—one minute you’re there and the other not. It’s dangerous to go—and I think you have to be in great danger to go there.”

  “Why, Lili?” Ieuan asked. “Why do you want to go, other than to see the wonders there.”

  “Because I want to be like Bronwen,” Lili said.

  I was confused. “Why would you want to be like me?” I asked.

  “Have you noticed, Ieuan, how she walks differently from any other woman you know?” Lili said. “She holds her head up, like a queen, or I imagine a queen would, and strides like men do. When she healed Prince Llywelyn, she ordered you about. She talks to you as if she believes herself equal to you—as if she is equal to you. She doesn’t care what anyone thinks about her. I can’t tell if she even knows what effect she has on those around her. If she does, she doesn’t appear to care.”

  “Now I really don’t understand,” I said.

  “She acts like a lord, yet she’s a girl,” Lili said. “I want that for myself.”

  “But you do act as I do,” I said. “You wear breeches, and shoot a bow. When we first met you were about to take Prince Dafydd’s head off with your knife.”

  “Defiance is not confidence,” Lili said. “Bravado is not courage.”

  “At fifteen, most girls in my country are not confident in themselves either,” I said. “You are still very young.”

  “But girls must see other women like you all the time? You’re not unique in your country?”

  “I suppose I’m not at that,” I said. “I’m no different than a hundred other women I know, yet I understand what you’re asking. Girls in my country learn from the cradle to walk and talk and be as I am. I can’t help it. Our confidence comes from believing, down to our very core, that we are worthwhile people—smart, capable, educated, confident.”

  “Can you teach me that?”

  “Maturity is a matter of learning to live up to your own expectations,” I said, “whether you’re a man or a woman. I wouldn’t want you to become something other than the beautiful person you are, but we can certainly talk about it, and I think I know some other women who can help too.”

  “Princess Marged,” Lili said. “Princess Anna.”

  “I imagine that what you want for yourself is exactly what they want for all the women of Wales,” I said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if they have some ideas as to how to achieve it.”

  Lili looked from her brother to me. “You accept it in your future wife, Ieuan,” she said. “Can you allow it in your sister?”

  “That’s something you need to relearn, right there,” Ieuan said. “You don’t need to ask that. Tell me: ‘I need this, Ieuan.’ Don’t ask me what’s right for you. Know it. Know yourself well enough to reach out and grab what you need to be a complete person.”

  Lili nodded. “I need this Ieuan,” she said. “I need it more than I can tell you.”

  * * * * *

  The talk of the day was the return of Tudur, with the castellan of Aberedw’s head in a sack. Ieuan and Goronwy had inspected it, once Tudur finished his audience with David, and then sent two men-at-arms to bury it outside the castle walls. In doing so, they denied him consecrated ground, underscoring for anyone who hadn’t been paying attention, the seriousness of his offense.

  David spent the rest of the day with his father and didn’t descend into the hall until it was time for the evening meal. Ieuan and I sat at a table that ran perpendicular to David’s. He sat in his father’s chair with the more powerful lords on either side. We’d only just begun to eat, however, when a rider from Hereford demanded entry.

  “I have a message for the Prince of Wales,” he said. He was of average height, with black hair, beard and mustache, and a pristine tunic. He must have changed before he entered the hall.

  “He is unwell,” David said, “but recovering. What is the message?”

  “Who are you?” the man asked. His chest puffed out a little with his own importance.

  Tudur pushed back his chair and stood, his back to the great stone fireplace. “He is Dafydd ap Llywelyn, heir to the Principality of Wales. You were expecting someone else?”

  “Er,” the man hesitated, looking from Carew, to Tudur, to Goronwy, and then back to David. They all gazed back at him, stone-faced.

  “You didn’t expect to find me here, did you?” David asked.

  “No, my lord,” the man said. “I had heard, er . . .” he stopped.

  “You had heard that I was dead,” David said.

  “Er, yes,” the man said. He bowed, taking refuge in the enforced formality of David’s position.

  “What is your message?” David asked.

  “I was told to give the message only to Prince Llywelyn,” the man said.

  “Fine,” David said, inspecting the fingernails on his left hand. “Return to your master. It’s all one to me.”

  Ieuan had risen to his feet when the man entered the hall and now stood, his feet spread, with cold eyes and his fists clenched at his sides.

  The messenger waffled, and then capitulated. He straightened and called out in a loud voice, in Welsh: “Hear the words of Sir Humphrey de Bohun, third Earl of Hereford, second Earl of Essex, Lord High Constable of England and co-regent for King Edward II.”

  He paused to breathe and David asked, “Who are the other regents?”

  “Er,” the man said, confused at being interrupted. “John Kirby, the Lord High Treasurer and Robert de Vere, the Lord Great Chamberlain and Earl of Oxford.”

  David nodded, though I didn’t know if those names meant any more to him than they did to me. “Continue,” he said.

  “The Lord High Constable has exhibited great patience through the trials of the last years. In his office of co-regent, he orders you to cease and desist in your depredations against his holdings and those of the other English lords whom you and your men have inconvenienced, nay besieged, with behavior unbefitting a vassal to the throne of England. In particular, he claims the castles of Bronllys, Buellt, Dolforwyn, Dryslwyn, Carreg Cennan, Dinefwr, Llandovery, and Pembroke. You are ordered to vacate those castles and quit their vicinity forthwith.”

  David leaned toward Carew, who sat a few paces from me on David’s right side. “We’ve taken Pembroke?”

  Carew raised his eyebrows. “Apparently. I think we’ll keep it. What say you, my lord?”

  “I’d say so too,” David said, rising to his feet. He walked around the table, still rather stiffly, and approached the messenger, who’d backed up a step at his approach.

  “How long does Hereford give me to reply?”

  “He did not say, my lord.”

  “Well, you tell Bohun that he can have my answer now,” David said. He poked the man in the chest with his index finger. With each poke, the messenger took one step backwards and David stepped forward, such that the words that followed was punctuated by ‘poke, step’; ‘poke, step.’

  “First, Hereford has no auth
ority over me, or any lands, in Wales. Second, in future, we expect any messages from the throne of England to the throne of Wales to be sent in the proper fashion, with the pomp and glory that befits our station, not carried and shouted in the hall by a little weasel such as you; and third, inform your master that from this moment, the throne of Wales is confiscating all holdings in Wales not held by a baron loyal to my father. He and his friends have thirty days to either vacate their former estates and castles, or submit a petition indicating their new loyalty to my father.”

  “My lord!” the messenger said. David and the messenger had reached the door to the great hall. David towered over him, still poking him in the chest.

  “Furthermore, in case your master is confused as to what constitutes the boundary of Wales, there is a wall, we speak of it as the Dyke, built long ago to keep the Welsh penned inside their mountains. We claim all territory to the west of that line and from this moment forward, will defend it to the last man, woman, and child. One of my lords took two castles for me just this week.” He tipped his head towards Tudur. “That must be some kind of record, eh, Tudur?”

  “As you say, my lord,” he said, laughter behind his words.

  “If one, just one, of your master’s men whom he has sentried on the border between our countries sets foot into our territory, we will not be responsible for the consequences. Do you understand your charge?”

  “Yes, yes, my lord,” the man said, groping for the door handle.

  David spun on one heel and stalked back up the hall. “That man,” he pointed back at the messenger, “needs an escort across our border. Ieuan, will you—” David stopped in front of Ieuan. “What? What is it?”

  “That man,” Ieuan said, his eyes fixed on the man by the door, “is my father.”

  “Your father?” David said. He swung around to look at the messenger, and then back to Ieuan. “Anything you want, Ieuan. Anything I can do for you or you need. Just tell me. It’s yours if it is possible to command it.”