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

by Sarah Woodbury

  “So what do you want from me, exactly?”

  “Creative uses for gasoline,” David said. He opened the trunk and surveyed the contents with satisfaction.

  I stepped to look with him. “Oh,” I said.

  Aunt Elisa was a pack rat. I understood now why David had been so nonchalant about siphoning gas out of the vehicles and the containers in which we would put it. Not only did we have the 6 root beer bottles in my car that Aunt Elisa had given Ieuan, but another two dozen lay jumbled in the back of her car, along with a staggering array of twenty-first century garbage.

  “You wouldn’t know it by how her house looks,” David said. “Maybe it’s just her cars.” He pulled a six foot length of plastic tubing from the pile of items and held it up for inspection. “I saw this when we drove the van the last time. Poor Aeddan had to contend with all this junk when I stuffed him in the trunk so I could drive the van out of here. I didn’t think anything of the hose at the time, but I remembered it later, during the siege of Bronllys in July, and wished I had more time to come up with a way to use it.”

  I joined him and began gathering the glass bottles into a grocery bag. David lifted up the floor of the trunk and took out a two gallon plastic gasoline container.

  “Okay,” I said. “We need to start the siphon, and then it’s a piece of cake.”

  “This is the part that I was most worried about,” David said. “Is it as easy as it looks on television?”

  “I can do it,” I said. “My youth was apparently more misspent than yours.”

  Bevyn strode into the clearing. “My lord!” he said. “Tudur and Goronwy have reached the castle and your father requests your presence, as soon as possible.”

  “Thanks, Bevyn,” David said. He turned to me. “Can you handle this? Just fill the container and bring all the bottles back to the castle. You can prepare the bottles there.”

  “Go,” I said. “I’m fine.”

  David nodded at Bevyn, who held the branches open for him to pass.

  “My lady,” Bevyn said before he followed David, “I will send Cadwallon to you, and leave you a further ten men for your protection.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said.

  I returned to the task at hand. The key with siphoning gasoline was not to get any in one’s mouth, which I’d watched my father do once when his car was out of gas and our neighbor’s wasn’t. Clear tubing, such as Aunt Elisa had bought, helped. I shoved the tube into the minivan’s tank, stepped into the trunk so I stood higher than the top of the van, and sucked. The gasoline rose up the tube until it was about a foot from my mouth. I stopped it with my tongue, and then my finger, before climbing down and lowering the end of the hose into the plastic carrying container. Done!

  Cadwallon appeared just as it finished filling. He approached me and the vehicle with obvious trepidation.

  “Did you ride in it before?” I asked.

  “Yes, my lady,” he said. “It was an experience of a lifetime.”

  “But you wouldn’t like to ride in it again?”

  He shook his head vehemently. “I would prefer to leave the Prince’s miracles for him and him alone.”

  His words could have been full of fear, but instead he spoke with reverence. I straightened and Cadwallon looked at me, his face shining. “You are a lady of Avalon too,” he said. “I’m honored to assist you.”

  Uh oh.

  “Then carry this for me,” I said, and pointed to the gas canister.

  He hefted it easily. I shut the trunk, we walked back through the bushes to my car, and Cadwallon put the container inside. I tried to figure out what to say to him. I didn’t want to diminish David’s authority, but surely such worship wasn’t healthy.

  I’d wondered initially how a high school kid could so easily—not that it was ‘easy,’ granted—make the transition to being a prince of Wales. But really, many Americans behaved routinely just like the sons of the British aristocracy had two hundred years ago: they played lots of games; they cared about fashion; they attended college in great part to go to parties and have a good time; they wore their entitlement like a cloak. They walked the streets as if they owned them—which in the United States they did!

  “You realize, Cadwallon,” I finally said, “Dafydd doesn’t claim to be Arthur.”

  “But he wouldn’t, would he?” Cadwallon said. “He already serves Wales in the same fashion as Arthur did. It’s up to us to remind him who he really is. He’s everything Arthur was. You can’t deny it.”

  I gazed at Cadwallon. He believed it.

  * * * * *

  The sun was bright for once. On a whim, I climbed to the top of the castle wall and walked all around the top of it, the breeze on my face, and contemplating the green countryside around me. Lili’s parting words passed through my head: Prince Dafydd has lost control of this. He can’t stop it now. Tell him he shouldn’t try.

  I turned to the south, thinking of Lili’s prescience and wishing I shared it. I found the road that would return Ieuan to Buellt, but no dust stirred it. With a sigh, I stepped inside one of the rounded battlements. Anna sat cross-legged on the stones nursing Cadell, her back against the eastern wall. I hesitated, one foot forward.

  “Come in,” she said. “You won’t disturb us. Every castle has at least one spot for me to hide, and this is it for Buellt.”

  “I thought it was only me who looked for places like that,” I said. “I didn’t know you were shy, too.” I looked west, my back to Anna. The sun shone in my eyes and the breeze pulled at my hair. Someone had told me that this signaled a change in the weather. Rain then.

  “Math has gone off on a quest for David, and Ieuan too, I hear,” Anna said. “Looking for the ingredients for weapons.”

  “Bevyn told me when I entered the bailey that David, Prince Llywelyn, and your mother are closeted with Tudur and Goronwy. Apparently three of the English lords chose to side with us.”

  “Really?” Anna asked. “That’s unexpected.”

  “Maybe they like Wales too,” I said. “Or maybe they realize that the crown of England is weak and think this is the better option.”

  Anna sighed. “Why can’t the English just leave us alone? Wales is beautiful, but there isn’t much else here, is there?”

  I smiled. Below us, the river Irfon wended around the village. The hills rose just beyond, becoming mountains in the distance. It wasn’t even sufficient to say the air was clear. Twenty-first century people have no idea how clean their air used to be—could be again one day, given effort.

  “Can I ask you a question?” I said, turning back to look at her.

  “Yes.”

  “You married Math. What made you decide that you could make a life here?”

  “You’re thinking about you and Ieuan?” Anna said.

  “Yes,” I said. “But also about you. You’re younger than I am, and younger still when you came to Wales.”

  “I chose to grow up,” Anna said.

  I hesitated over my next question. “And Math?” I asked. “Can it really work for Ieuan and me?”

  Anna laughed. “Love helps a lot,” she said, “but it isn’t enough. You have to look at the kind of person they are; figure out whether you can live with their character for the rest of your life. That’s even more important here, where divorce is so rare, though it happens. I didn’t want to follow my heart with Math at first. I tried to persuade him that he wasn’t interested in me. David is the one who encouraged me to look at him more closely, because he and Math had become such good friends. Finally, Papa, David, and I sat him down and told him where we were from, and explained what that might mean for him and me.”

  She stopped.

  “And then what?”

  “It was such a relief for Math to realize that it wasn’t him that I was afraid of, but committing to this life. After that, I couldn’t lie to myself anymore. We married soon after.”

  “And since then?”

  “I’m so thankful I didn’t choose differ
ently; that I have Cadell and Math and a complete life here.”

  “Your feelings haven’t changed even with the knowledge that you might be able to return to the twenty-first century?” I asked. “Like David did?”

  “Life is the people you live it with, not the time you’re in,” Anna said. “That life is so far removed from what and who I am now. I can’t imagine trying to fit in as a teenager in Oregon having lived as I have. I’d have to pretend that none of this had happened; that it was all a dream, like my mother had to when she went back before David was born. I have a child now, as she did. How could I choose to go back? Mom wouldn’t have either, had she been given the choice.” Anna stroked Cadell’s head with her free hand.

  I stared into the distance.

  “Don’t jump,” Anna said.

  “Excuse me?”

  “In the first weeks I was in Wales, I used to stand at the top of the wall at Castell y Bere, before the English burned it to the ground, and think about jumping. I thought maybe I wouldn’t hit the ground, but be transported home, and perhaps I was right.”

  I looked over the battlements. It would be so easy to step off the edge and fall. Could I return that easily, or would it kill me? Either way, the thirteenth century and Ieuan would be lost to me.

  “What stopped you?” I said.

  “I didn’t want to be a coward, and I didn’t want to abandon David.”

  “I don’t want to go back.” I don’t want to go back! The realization flooded through me and I felt like someone had lifted off the top of my head and filled me up with emotion. I swung around to face Anna. “It may sound crazy, but despite everything that has happened to me since I came to Wales, I love it here.”

  “Do you really?” she asked. “When David told me he’d brought you back with him; that you were going to marry Ieuan, I was, quite frankly, shocked. I asked myself, why would anyone choose to come to the thirteenth century? Even for an historian, the fascination can pale pretty quickly, once the absence of anything resembling a hot shower sinks in.”

  “But . . .” I said, and gestured to the land around us. “Wales is beautiful, and I hardly miss those things. Most are more of a burden than a help anyway. Admittedly, I grew up without much in the way of material possessions, what with the yurts and the shacks my parents called home.”

  “I see your point, even if most of the time my inner child doesn’t agree,” Anna said. She lifted Cadell, put him on her shoulder, and kissed his little cheek as she patted his back. “There’s a thirteenth century equivalent for most things that we need that are manufactured in the twenty-first century, but that didn’t stop me from crying over the baby fingernail clippers David brought me, or Mom over her cotton socks. I like luxury.” She reached out a hand and I helped pull her to her feet.

  “Those first hours and days in Wales, totally overwhelmed me.”

  “And now?” Anna asked.

  “Now I wouldn’t even consider jumping,” I said, and meant it.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Ieuan

  I rode towards the western side of Painscastle with my lord Dafydd and Goronwy. It was near the end of the day and the setting sun lit the castle, earlier now that September was only two days away.

  “Your men must have worked like demons!” Dafydd said, dismounting from Aneirin, his new stallion, named for the great bard. The tunnel that Goronwy’s men had dug began at a low point, a hundred yards from the southern castle wall. The troops had set up wooden barricades to shield them from watchers’ eyes. The majority of Goronwy’s men camped at the edge of the trees, two hundred yards away and out of bow range. Dafydd walked into the entrance and gazed down the long tunnel. Timbers supported the roof, which stretched into the darkness.

  “As you can see, my lord, we’ve begun the undermining process,” Goronwy said. “The men are near the castle walls now. Conveniently for us at this stage, the rampart is in front of the ditch. The wall’s foundation is deep, however, and it won’t be easy to bring it down.”

  “The black powder should take care of that,” Dafydd said.

  “We captured the messengers Tosny dispatched to England,” Goronwy added. “No others have left the castle since.”

  “Good,” Dafydd said. “Edward has been dead nearly a month, and this is the last thing any of the English lords want or need. We take this castle, and Brecon after that, and they’ll come begging for peace.”

  “Hereford won’t,” I said.

  “Hereford won’t have a choice,” Dafydd said. “He’s more than a Marcher lord now. As regent, his responsibility is to the whole of England—a new concept for him, I admit, but one that the other regents will force him to see. I want to take the castle before Tosny’s reinforcements arrive, if they arrive.”

  “Tonight?” Goronwy said.

  Dafydd canted his head toward the wagons behind us. “We should be able to bring down the castle wall with the powder we’ve made. If it works, that is. This could be very dangerous, so I need your most experienced miners to set it up.”

  “I will see to it,” Goronwy said.

  “Just let me know when you’re ready.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  Dafydd nodded and he and I returned to our horses. Bevyn had brought Llywd home for me. He’d weathered the trip with no difficulties. It still rankled Dafydd that circumstances had required him to leave Taranis in a ditch beside the road in England. I assured him that dying in battle was a noble ending for a warhorse, but he wasn’t comforted. He viewed Taranis’ loss as careless and—stupid, was the word he used.

  Back in the trees again, we rode north along a path that was just out of bowshot of the walls, and reached the line of archers that hovered on the edge of the woods, occasionally firing off a shot in the direction of the ramparts. It was exactly as it had been at Bronllys, except the terrain here was less hilly.

  Dafydd dismounted again. “My lord?” I asked, wondering why he’d stopped, and then saw who’d caught his attention: Lili. As we watched, she pressed and loosed an arrow. Despite my misgivings at her presence, I congratulated myself on teaching her such good form. In truth, she was wasted in this company. A mass of arrows, fired in unison at the enemy and which came down like a rain of hail would win the day, not accuracy.

  Once darkness descended, the archers and siege engines could move closer without being seen from the castle. The archers would shoot our new fire arrows, the trebuchets would throw caskets filled with black powder and metal fragments we’d laced with gasoline, and the powder would explode the castle walls.

  “I feel your disapproval like a black cloud over my head, my lord,” Lili said. She looked at Dafydd over her shoulder.

  He spread his hands wide, conveying his innocence. “Did I say anything?” he asked. “I don’t recall saying anything.”

  “But you thought something,” she said.

  “More along the lines of ‘what’s she doing here?’ I admit,” he said.

  “Your sister and mother are to the rear, aiding the wounded,” Lili said. She glanced at me. “Bronwen is there too.”

  “We’ll see them now, before it gets dark and the world goes crazy,” Dafydd said.

  “Aren’t you going to order me away from the line?” Lili asked.

  “No,” said Dafydd. He stepped away and remounted Aneirin. “You’ve sworn you can take care of yourself. I expect you to do just that.”

  Lili’s face was a pale circle in the darkness under the trees. “Yes, my lord,” she said. We left, me with my mouth shut and my tongue between my teeth.

  Marged greeted us as we entered the pavilion for the wounded. Dafydd stopped short—given pause by the number of men who already lay on the ground around him. “What’s this?” he asked his mother.

  “Accidents, mostly,” she said. “One poor man over there almost chopped off his foot with an axe.”

  I whispered in his left ear. “Malingering, my lord?”

  Marged overheard me. “Don’t say that,” she said.
“That’s the last thing we need, though I don’t see it as a concern at all. Overall, my impression is that morale is very high.”

  Dafydd looked past her to Anna. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

  Anna’s brows furrowed. “What are you talking about? Why shouldn’t I be here?”

  “What about Cadell?”

  “He’s sleeping in the car with his nanny. Like every other baby ever born, he fell asleep within minutes of starting the car. Wena promised to come get me when he wakes and Bronwen will drive me back to Aberedw.”

  “Right,” Bronwen said, from her post at a man’s side. She was winding a strip of cloth around a cut on his wrist while he sat on a stool in front of her. I walked over to her and patted the man on his shoulder.

  “You’re in good hands,” I said to him.

  “I know it,” the man said. “And not just because of your beautiful lady. This is just a scratch. It could have been an arrow’s wound. I was walking up the hill and slipped in the mud just as an arrow shot over my head. I’ll be back in the line by sunset.”

  “They’re all like this, Ieuan,” Bronwen said. “Not one of them will hear of staying behind.”

  I kissed the top of her head and turned to leave, but Bronwen grabbed my hand and followed me out of the tent. “I heard that you’re going to lead the assault through the breach in the wall, if the black powder brings it down as David hopes,” she said.

  “Bronwen—”

  “I heard you volunteered to do it.”

  I wanted to touch her, but she’d folded her arms across her chest. “This is who I am, Bronwen,” I said. Goronwy had offered to lead the footmen in their attack on the castle, but Prince Llywelyn had dissuaded him of it. That job belonged to a younger man. Me.

  “Why?” she said, anguish in her voice. “When we rode with Dafydd to get the car, I had no idea what we were getting into. Now, I do.” Her shoulders sagged and she softened her stance. Recognizing that her need matched mine, I tugged her into my arms.