The plane barely cleared a stone wall and afterwards a stand of trees—and then they were soaring over the castle, circling around the Treadman property. The sun wasn’t yet up, and Anna realized it was the morning of the spring equinox. She looked through the window at the ground, searching for Stonehenge, which she knew was somewhere off to the west of London, hoping to see the people dancing around it.
After circling over the castle once, the plane flew northwest. Once they steadied, George set out their meal, and Anna soon found herself with another full English breakfast in front of her, much like the one Mark had cooked the previous morning in Callum’s apartment. The food was very good and without a doubt the best airplane meal she’d ever eaten. Mark spent the whole time he was eating studying the screen of yet another phone, which he’d set beside his plate.
“What are you doing?” Anna finally asked, having finished her meal.
“Downloading a file Chad sent me.” He didn’t look up.
“From the plane? How?”
He looked over at her, his brow furrowing in puzzlement, and spoke slowly, “Through … the internet?”
“Oh.” Anna frowned. She could tell by the way he’d ended his comment with a question mark that her question had been clueless. She remembered that her mom had talked to Aunt Elisa on the phone from MI-5’s plane, but—
Sophie’s voice came again over the intercom, interrupting her astonishment. “Friends, if you’d look outside …”
Anna obeyed, gazing down at the landscape that was taking shape in the gray light of morning.
“We’ve just crossed into Wales, which, I’m sorry to say, in this world means nothing to those fighter jets trailing us.”
With a gasp, Anna pressed her face to the window, but she couldn’t see them. “Would they shoot us down?” She looked anxiously at Mark.
“No.” Mark shook his head vehemently. Then he paused. “But they might force us down. There’s a military airstrip on Anglesey. I think that’s the closest one.”
The plane flew on, and Anna could hear Andre speaking into his headset, presumably talking to the men controlling the fighter jets, though he didn’t share any information with his passengers.
Earlier, while they’d been eating, Sophie had kept up a running commentary on the details of the plane. From that, Anna knew the plane could fly over five hundred miles an hour. If they’d crossed the border between England and Wales two minutes ago, they could be on Anglesey in another seven, since it was only seventy miles from Llangollen to Bangor. Even she could do that math in her head.
“More news,” Andre said. “They’ve just informed us of the arrest warrant for Anna and Mark. I’m sorry to say we can’t ignore it.”
Anna stood up and moved towards the front to a pair of seats behind the cockpit. A moment later, she found Mark in the seat opposite, and Ted standing in the aisle between them. George, Elisa, and Elen stayed in the back of the plane.
“Do what they say,” Anna said to Andre. “None of you have done anything wrong. This isn’t your fight.”
She felt Ted’s hand on her shoulder. “That’s where you’re wrong, Anna. We’re in this together. That’s what family is.”
Anna spoke even more urgently. “Chad runs one of the largest companies in the world. People depend on him. He can’t be in trouble with the law.” She looked at Mark. “And you. I got you into this—”
“I got myself into this a long time ago when I boarded that bus in Cardiff, knowingly intending to help Callum and you against the wishes of MI-5. I’ve been working for you ever since.”
Anna had no answer to that. She looked at each of the people with her in turn, and then faced front, to what lay before them. She accepted that she shouldn’t second guess their past life-changing decisions.
Instead, she presented them with another one. “Do you see what I see?”
They all looked ahead to where she pointed.
“What?” Ted said.
“That’s a mountain, and we’re in a plane.”
There was a moment’s pause as everybody reconciled her words with what she could be suggesting. All of a sudden, it seemed obvious what the answer was: there was trouble in medieval Scotland, and here she was in a plane that could take her there, just like a plane had taken her mother and Cassie.
“I’m not saying you have to,” Anna said. “I’m just laying it out there as a possibility. My family wants to come with me, but the rest of you didn’t sign up for this.”
“We did, actually.” Sophie flipped some switches above her head.
“You signed up to drive this plane into Mt. Snowdon and come to the Middle Ages with me?” Anna had hardly spoken two words to Sophie since they’d met. She didn’t know her at all—and yet, she was agreeing without hesitation to this. “You can’t have.”
“Mr. Treadman didn’t tell you that he filled the cargo hold.” Her eyes were bright. “You’re going to love what we’re bringing.”
“You have to be sure.” Anna decided she’d deal with that bit of news at a later date. “There might be no coming back.”
By way of an answer, Sophie tipped her head to Andre, who calmly turned the plane and flew straight for Snowdon’s peak. It wasn’t a big mountain by American standards, but it rose into the clouds, and was plenty big enough for their purposes.
“Buckle up!” Andre took off his headset, from which loud squawking sounds came. Presumably the fighter pilots weren’t happy with the change of direction.
Anna fought for the seat belt in her new seat.
Meanwhile, Ted shouted to Elisa in the back that she should secure herself and Elen. “It’s time!”
Anna, who was both sick and excited about what was going to happen, couldn’t mistake his glee. “What about George?” Until this moment, she’d forgotten him. “He’s in the galley!”
“He agreed to this too!” Sophie was alight, hyped up and panicked at the same time.
Anna bent her head, her hands clutching the armrests of her chair. She had led, and everyone else had followed. She didn’t think her idea to evade the fighter jets was wrong, but like her decision to accept the help Chad offered, it had been a bit more ruthless than she felt comfortable with.
And still, Anna wouldn’t take any of these decisions back—even as Andre dove the plane towards the nearest peak at five hundred miles an hour.
Chapter Thirty
20 March 1294
David
David stood at the base of the Hill of Tara and looked to the eastern sky. On this first day of spring, the morning of his crowning as High King of Ireland, the sun was going to be visible as it rose above the horizon. How many rainy spring equinox mornings had there been since the Stone of Destiny had been put up by those ancient Irish three thousand years ago? How many thousands of people, at those hundreds of cairns scattered on mountain tops all across Ireland, had left disappointed at not seeing the sun rise and shine on the exact spot they wanted it to?
So it was a huge relief this wasn’t going to be one of those cloudy mornings. David would have been crowned anyway. He’d agreed to be Ireland’s new High King because the alternative was continued warfare, and if he was going to take the crown—in many ways against his better judgement—then the occasion might as well be as memorable as possible. David was the first High King of Ireland in over a hundred years, since 1169 when the Normans had arrived and overthrown the prevailing social order.
A crowd had come, bigger than David had hoped for. The fields around Tara had already been filled with men who’d fought in the battle yesterday, but since the fighting had ended, their families had come as well, any who lived within twenty miles of the hill. Never to be left out of a good story, Rupert, the twenty-firster news reporter, had arrived near midnight, and he’d spent all night interviewing everyone about the battle. Christopher was again a favorite, though David thought his cousin’s jubilation was more tempered than it might have been even a month ago. Men had died. He’d almost died. If a man was decent, it m
ade him think. If Christopher was anything, he was a good man.
“It’s time, my lord.” Gilla O’Reilly bowed before David. Beside him were the other great lords of Ireland—Hugh O’Connor, Niall MacMurrough, James Stewart, John de Verdun—each holding one of the marks of David’s new office. These included a staff, a shield, a brooch, and a crown (of course). There had been a great deal of jostling as to who should have the honor of putting the crown on David’s head, and since everyone believed in the divine right of kings, it had ultimately fallen to the Church. David had put in a good word for Abbot John of Bective Abbey, who now found himself at the center of attention—a place with which he was not entirely comfortable. He was waiting for them on the top of the Hill of Tara, beside the Stone of Destiny, or Lia Fáil in Gaelic.
Hugh and Niall together draped the fur-lined robe around David’s shoulders. The ritual had been orchestrated to be as inclusive as possible, not in terms of religion, since everyone here was Christian and Catholic, but with each kingdom having a piece of the action. David had hoped more women would be involved—or any woman, for that matter—but none of the women he’d encountered, Gilla’s daughter, Aine, among them, had consented to participate in the traditionally all-male ceremony. It was irksome that David hadn’t had time to make them understand his goals, because he’d wanted to start as he intended to go on.
David’s father was still playing the role of neutral facilitator, though obviously he was far from neutral in this matter. He led the procession out of the tent and through the lines of watching people, who fell silent as an Irish trumpet played, announcing David’s approach. As he left the tent, David glanced out of the corner of his eye at the horizon, thinking they were cutting it a little close to sunrise, but the Irish didn’t hurry and processed up to the top of the hill in good order.
Unlike in modern times (according to David’s mother), the Stone of Destiny did not stand upright at the top of the hill. It had always been intended as a base upon which the high king would first kneel and then stand when he was crowned. Legend had it the Stone of Destiny would roar when the king put his feet on it, which wouldn’t be possible if it were a three-foot-tall oblong pillar.
Because Tara hadn’t been used as a seat of the high kings in several hundred years, all that remained of the various buildings that once housed a royal court were the turf walls and ditches that protected it. Today, people stood on them, trying to get a better view of the coronation. They’d left an open pathway heading east, however, so the sun, when it rose, would strike the top of the hill and the crown on David’s head.
As he walked, David was very conscious of the smell of newly cut grass and the fresh breeze that marked the rising of the sun. Since David’s back was to the east, he couldn’t see the eastern horizon anymore. Instead, he focused on the not-quite-half-full moon hanging in the sky above him. It was the one white thing in a land of endless blue and green.
David approached Abbot John, and the music ceased. Next, a bard was supposed to have sung a ballad, but a quick wave from David’s father, who came to a halt on John’s left, told him they had, in fact, timed the coronation a little too closely, and the crown needed to be put on David’s head immediately, lest they miss their moment. David strode towards the stone and knelt on it. It didn’t shout with joy, which he hadn’t expected but some in the crowd might have.
Then Abbot John raised the crown above his head, quoting from Samuel: Then all the tribes of Israel came to David at Hebron and said to him, “Look, we are your own family. Even when Saul was king, you were the one who led Israel in battle. The Lord said to you, ‘You will be a shepherd for my people Israel. You will be their leader’.” And then first in Latin, then in Gaelic, and then English, he said, “May God bless David, the High King of Ireland!”
He settled the crown on David’s head at the exact moment the sun rose above the horizon to the east. It was too early in the year to be warm, but the light was bright, and since David was facing him, he saw Abbot John blink as the rays of the sun hit him full in the face. Their figures also cast long shadows in the grass, and the crown atop David’s head looked larger than life. With a nod, Abbot John stepped back, and David rose to his feet to stand directly on the Stone of Destiny. He turned in a circle, away from the abbot and towards the sun, and in the same motion pulled his sword from its sheath to raise it above his head. “Chun onóir na hÉireann! For Ireland!”
The crowd shouted its approval, which David thought expressed sufficient joy to please anyone who was disappointed the stone hadn’t screamed. That is, until a plane burst from the sky in front of the sun, its engines roaring, and soared over Tara a hundred feet above their heads.
Half the crowd dove for the ground, terrified, while the rest gaped up at it, David included, though it was William de Bohun, of course, who said what was on everyone’s minds. “You’ve got to be kidding me!”
“I’ll get your horse, shall I?” Callum was beside David in a half-second. He hadn’t played a significant role in the crowning because there’d been so many other men who’d needed to participate. One of the headaches of being king and having as much power as David was that men vied for his attention. Callum had no ego in that regard, so David had willfully put him at the back of the line.
But when a crisis came, Callum was the man David trusted most here in Ireland, other than his father, who would want a horse of his own too. Abbot John was bent over, his hands over his eyes, and appeared to be praying. David put a hand on his shoulder and raised him up. “Do not fear. I know what this is, and I will see to it.”
“Yes. Yes, of course.” John stared at David with an amazed expression that he also saw on the faces of most of the people who surrounded him.
If things had gone as planned, there would have been a receiving line and a feast, and David would have accepted the obeisance of the lords here. As it was, the ceremony would have to wait. He’d stepped off the stone while the plane had circled the hill, but he went back to it and raised both arms, sword still in hand, signaling to the crowd for silence. They wanted reassurance, and they quieted to listen to him. He didn’t even have to shout. “Please don’t be afraid. All is well. Someone has come from Avalon.”
Before last year, he would have assumed that someone was his sister, since both he and his mother were here, but now he had a twisting in his gut that it was Arthur again, and that something catastrophic had happened to his family in Wales. That anyone was here at all was horrifying enough. Time travel happened to his family members when their lives were in danger. It was sickening to think that, while he’d been fighting here, his family had been suffering at home.
He left the stone and loped down the grassy slope towards the royal tent. The crown fit well enough that he didn’t have to worry about it falling off his head, but the robe was heavy and hot, and he needed to do something with the relics before he mounted his horse.
Fortunately, Gilla had followed him, and when they reached level ground, David was able to hand him the scepter, the brooch, and the shield. Aine helped take off the cloak. When David turned to thank them, Gilla spoke before he could, “The stone roared, my lord. I’ve never heard such a sound.”
His expression was one of awe, as if he’d just seen a miracle. By his standards, he had. David could tell him that a hundred-thousand planes flew every day in Avalon, but it was unlikely to help.
“It wasn’t the stone but the plane, which isn’t magic. I want to tell you about it, but I don’t have time to explain right now.”
“Is it from Avalon?” Aine asked.
“Yes. Christopher has told you?”
She nodded. Then Christopher edged his way through the crowd, the rest of his friends in tow. “Do you think—” He cut off the sentence, his eyes to the east where the plane had gone to land, unable to articulate his hope.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” David said.
William stepped closer. “May I come?” He had been David’s squire, so he’d rubbed shoul
ders with the twenty-firsters almost more than any person from this world, barring Lili, Ieuan, and Math.
“Of course.” David looked around at his companions. “All of you can come. We have nothing to hide.”
By then, Callum had arrived with David’s horse, a white one, which had been a gift from Hugh O’Connor. David swung himself into the saddle and then reached down to Christopher to help him mount behind him. “Let’s go find our family.”
Chapter Thirty-one
20 March 1294
Anna
“Did we do it? Did we do it?” Elen was wide-eyed and gasping. “Who are all those people down there?”
Anna flung herself towards the window and pressed her nose against the glass. She couldn’t make out individual people necessarily, but a crowd of thousands had gathered on a green hill. Many were prostrate or cowering, their hands over their ears, but others craned their necks to look up at them. There were no power lines or radio towers anywhere, so she was able to answer Elen, “Yes, I think so.”
“Do I put down?” Andre’s voice trembled slightly, which was the first hesitation she’d heard from him.
“We could fly on, but I don’t know to what purpose,” Anna said. “It isn’t as if a thousand people didn’t just see us come in.”
“Where do I put down?”
“There are a lot of fields,” Mark said dryly. “I thought this plane could land anywhere. Pick one.”
Anna glanced back at him. This was exactly what he hadn’t wanted. “I’m sorry.”
He gave her a rueful smile. “How could it have ended any other way?”
By Anna’s reckoning, there were lots of other ways it could have ended—if this was, indeed, an ending, but she saw no reason to disrupt Mark’s evident equanimity with her doubts.
“Is that an airstrip?” Andre had circled the plane around the hill by now.
Anna bent over with a hand on the co-pilot’s chair. “It can’t be.” They were in the Middle Ages. There were no airstrips.
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