Champions of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  And still, Michael deserved answers. David just didn’t have any to give him.

  Three people, each tall, dark, and wearing earpieces, two men and one woman, came around the corner at the far end of the hall. They were MI-5 for sure, and David squared his shoulders. He couldn’t leave William alone, so he had to take what was coming as best he could.

  Out of the corner of his eye, David saw Michael move into a similar stance. “What’s going on, David?”

  “I don’t know. I guess we’ll find out in a second.”

  “Is this the firefight walking towards us?”

  “I hope not, but I’ve learned not to rely on hope.”

  By now, the man in the lead was within conversational distance.

  “Stop right there.” David put out a hand to confirm the order, in case the trio missed the wariness in both him and Michael.

  The man put up his own hand. “I’m Reg. This is Mali and Joe.” He indicated his two companions. “Chad Treadman sent us.” He held out a phone. “He wants to speak to you.”

  Beside him in an undertone, Michael said, “Dude, Chad Treadman again? Who are you?”

  David didn’t answer Michael and simply accepted the phone, though he didn’t take his eyes off the three people before him. “Hi.”

  Chad’s voice came loudly in his ear. “Thank God. Everything okay?”

  “Yes.” Back at Beaumaris, David had returned the woman’s phone to her once the ambulance had come, and it honestly hadn’t occurred to him to ask to borrow another to call Chad again. David had told Chad where he was, and he had assumed that Chad was doing something on his end about it. David had been right about that, but the panic in Chad’s voice indicated that he’d been stressed out. Anna was right that the ease of communication in Avalon had made everyone impatient with silence.

  “Okay, good. I gather you’ve met the triplets?”

  David had to laugh at the characterization, which was right on, and some of the tension in his shoulders eased. “In a manner of speaking.”

  “Any sign of MI-5?”

  Out of the corner of his eye, David could see Michael startle again. David put out a hand to him, trying again to be reassuring. He supposed he had the volume up too loud on the phone, but he didn’t know how to turn it down. “No, and I don’t understand why not. They were quick enough to go after Anna. They have to have someone up here in Gwynedd, don’t they?”

  Now it was Chad’s turn to laugh. “It’s Wales. For a long time they didn’t even have an office in Cardiff. That’s where the only Special Branch office is too. I think the folks from Manchester are more likely to get to you first. I have eyes on them, and it’s obvious they’re scrambling. They know you’re here. They just don’t know what to do about it.” He paused. “Things aren’t quite the same as when Anna left.”

  David detected a note of pride and even pleasure in Chad’s voice. “Why would that be? It was only two weeks ago.”

  “Well—” Chad cleared his throat, “that may be down to me.”

  David didn’t know whether to cheer or groan. “What did you do?”

  “Not long before Anna arrived, my purchase of WMC went through.” Chad said this as if what WMC was and what it might mean that he’d bought it should be obvious, though it surely wasn’t to David.

  He said so. “I don’t know what that is.”

  “World Media Conglomerate. It’s the boringest name ever, I know. I thought about changing it, but it’s nice and neutral, and tells you nothing. Basically, I now own fifteen percent of the world’s media outlets. And I’ve been—” He paused again. David had never met the man, but he could picture him waggling his head, “—directing content recently.”

  David found himself staring at Michael, who had stepped back a few feet so he couldn’t hear what Chad was saying, but his expression mirrored David’s concern.

  Chad continued, now laughing openly. “There’s no reason you should know what I’m talking about, so I’ll just tell you. Two weeks ago, it was the spring equinox. Two thousand people had gathered in a valley below Mt. Snowdon, and just as the sun rose, every single one of them saw my plane fly into the mountain and disappear. It was a genuine miracle.”

  David answered automatically because the rest of his brain was working on the problem. “Miracles are only convincing to the people who see them, and with the ability to manipulate images that I know you have these days—”

  Chad cut him off. “That isn’t what happened. It’s a new world you’re in, David. Do you mind if I call you David? Sire is awkward here.”

  “David is fine.” He was impatient with the question, though if he’d had the wherewithal to think properly beyond what Chad had just told him, he would have appreciated the courtesy of asking what he preferred. It was a far cry from the dismissal and disrespect he usually encountered in Avalon. “What do you mean it’s a new world?”

  “Every one of those two thousand people on that mountain had a phone, and a third of them were filming the rising sun. A BBC film crew was there to mark the occasion—they were intending to make a documentary on modern pagans and apparently a ley line goes through Snowdon—and one of them had already heard from his superiors before the plane passed into Wales that the RAF had scrambled fighter jets to go after it. The entire world has seen the video of the plane disappearing. Your time of anonymity is over.”

  David took in a breath, a thousand questions circulating in his head at once. He knew that a ley line was a path on the landscape believed to have spiritual significance only from extensive reading of fantasy fiction, so he could picture in his mind’s eye the scene Chad described. He also had some idea of what these phones could do, and a live TV crew certainly gave credibility to anything that was filmed. But— “I don’t understand why MI-5 would care what anyone thought. They never have before.”

  “They never have had the attention on them that arresting you would bring. Remember I mentioned that I had been influencing content? I have spent the last two weeks broadcasting not only the videos of the plane disappearing, but also a documentary of your life.”

  “What does that mean exactly?” David had a definite chill in his belly overlaying the dismay.

  “I’ve documented all the incidents of time travel, starting with your mother’s disappearance in 1996 before you were born.”

  David found himself unable to breathe. “You’ve told people my name? All of our names?”

  “I’ve told them everything. Last night’s show was an interview with Shane and his parents. That was a good thing you did there. The bus passengers couldn’t wait to tell their stories. It makes compelling television. Ratings have been astronomical.”

  David would have hung up. He wanted to snap the phone in half he was so angry, but he didn’t, just gripped it more tightly and instead of saying how dare you! he merely asked, in as calm a voice as he could manage, “Have you included my picture?”

  “Of course. And before you bite my head off, if I hadn’t done this, someone else would have. That plane disappearing was the last straw. A journalist has been working on the story since Rupert Jones left, starting from his notes, which he found in Rupert’s desk. He hadn’t come forward earlier because he would have been branded a lunatic, and he doesn’t write for The Sun. I have to say that his research and presence has given the story added weight.”

  The phone in David’s hand dinged, as did Michael’s and those belonging to Chad’s other people.

  “There you go.” Chad sounded inordinately pleased. “I just got my new update on your story. I must say, you’re looking every inch a king.”

  Michael had pulled out his phone and was staring at it. “You’ve got to be kidding me.” He brought up his gaze to meet David’s eyes.

  David grimaced and put up one finger to Michael. “Hold on a second. Just ... just wait.” Then into his phone he said, “What just happened? What is everyone looking at?”

  Down at the nurse’s station, a man exclaimed, “Wasn’t this
bloke just here?”

  “Look at the screen on your phone, David,” Chad said, patience for the technically challenged evident in his voice.

  David did as he asked and saw a message on the screen with the headline, Time Travel is Real! followed by text that had his stomach sinking through the floor. “Chad—”

  “CCTV footage of your arrival at the hospital has gone planet-wide. Plus, at least a dozen people had their cameras trained on the archer’s target when he missed and hit your friend, who clearly appears out of nowhere with you. Cameras have always picked up the flash as you come in, you know.” He paused. “I suppose you’ve never seen it, but you can now. It’s unreal. Just click play, and you can see the post.”

  David didn’t want to click play. He didn’t want to stay in Avalon another second. “Why did you do this?”

  “To protect you, of course. MI-5 can’t touch you now.”

  David had a horrible feeling that what Chad had done was going to end up worse than being chased by MI-5. Michael was looking at him like he’d murdered a baby seal. Heads were poking out of doorways all along the corridor behind Chad’s security force. Then three people moved around the nurse’s station to gawk. Since David was the King of England, he was used to turning heads as he went by. Heck, people bowed to him. But that was in Earth Two. If Michael and the people at the nurse’s station were any kind of example, everyone here was just going to stare. One nurse had his phone up, and he was talking into it. After a moment, David realized that he might be taking a video.

  Chad had made David into a freak.

  He started to take a step back, more hesitant than he had ever felt in his life—and that was saying something. The urge to run was almost overwhelming. He understood now what Anna had meant about feeling like the world had accelerated into the future and left her more behind than the twelve years they’d lived in Earth Two should have done.

  But then Michael, rather than the triplets, put out his hand to the man taking the video and took several steps towards him. “Don’t do this. He has a right to privacy in a hospital.”

  Immediately, the man dropped his arm. “Right, man. Sorry.” He peered around Michael to look at David. “Sorry. I got carried away.”

  David lifted a hand, astonished and a little humbled by the apology, enough so that he swallowed his dismay and was gracious. “It’s okay.”

  In a lowered voice, the nurse said to Michael, “That’s really him?”

  “It is,” Michael answered, seemingly sure, though how he could be, David didn’t know.

  Because in that moment, David was sure of nothing. He’d fallen down a rabbit hole unlike any he’d entered before, and he knew, as surely as he knew his own name, that it was going to be a long drop to the bottom.

  Chapter Ten

  1 April 1294

  Bevyn

  Bevyn ripped the sacking off his prisoner’s head. “Tell me your name!”

  Perhaps if Dafydd had been here, he wouldn’t have condoned the sacking and rough treatment meted out to the assassin, but then again, the man had tried to kill him. Maybe he wouldn’t have been as forgiving as all that.

  The man was dressed in faded breeches and an aged cloak that had been torn around the hem even before he’d tried to escape down the wall of the castle, swim a moat, and been shot with arrows. His buttocks and calf, where Morgan’s arrows had hit him, had been bandaged, but he wasn’t sitting very comfortably.

  He did not appear, however, to be in any way subdued.

  Lili stood a few feet behind Bevyn. She was dressed in her new skirt and breeches, with her bow and quiver on her back. Needless to say, the residents of Chester were on high alert, and that included the Queen of England. She’d denied herself inclusion in the war party that had left the castle for Beeston and sent Constance in her stead, but that didn’t make her any less determined to keep her family and her people safe.

  The prisoner lifted his chin. “My name doesn’t matter. The king is dead. I am avenged.” His Welsh was southern and fluent, though it had a lilt of something else that Bevyn couldn’t place. His facial structure spoke of Norman antecedents, but there’d been so much inbreeding among the Normans and Welsh in the south that it was hard to tell the difference between them anymore.

  “Do you recognize him?” he asked Lili.

  “No.” Her arms folded across her chest, Lili tipped her head to one side as she studied the prisoner. “His accent is noble, though, so I think he intended his garments to be a disguise.

  “I know who he is.” Rupert, the Avalonian journalist, crossed the threshold of the guardroom that fronted the prisoner’s cell.

  Bevyn guffawed. The journalist was quite literally the last person he had expected to remain behind. “Why aren’t you with the army?”

  “Beeston will fall with or without me. There was a story here, perhaps the more important one. I’ll catch up.”

  Lili laughed. “Rupert hates waiting. It’s only twelve miles to Beeston. If he leaves by noon, he’d make it walking by three.”

  Rupert scowled. “It is a known fact that you will send someone to Callum once you get out of this fellow what can be got. I sent others ahead, and they’ll catch me up once I reconnect with them. In the meantime ...” He brandished a foot-long piece of paper and held it facing outward so others could read what was written on it. Bevyn’s written English wasn’t great, but even he could make out the Wanted at the top. Below were two sketches labeled Thomas de Clare and Aymer de Valence. “See for yourself.”

  Lili gasped and took the paper in order to look at the images more closely. “Where did you get this?”

  “I had it made,” Rupert said. “I was intending to have many more printed than just this one. We were going to paper all of Britain and Ireland with them.”

  Bevyn looked from the paper to his prisoner, whom he now knew to be Thomas de Clare. “Who drew these, and how did he know what these men looked like?”

  “I met Aymer when we came through on the bus, remember? We all did. And plenty of people in Ireland knew what both men looked like. Thomas is married to a Fitzgerald after all. Then, in the aftermath of Tara, I suggested to David we cover the country with their pictures, to leave them no place to hide. I thought to print the poster on the press in Dublin once we returned there and get an artist to duplicate the images on every one.” He shrugged. “I’ll do a new one now without Thomas’s picture, and maybe we’ll get Aymer too.”

  Bevyn felt a rumble of satisfaction welling up in his chest. Handing the paper back to Rupert, he moved to stand again in front of his prisoner and spoke in Welsh. Thomas’s family had held the Lordship of Glamorgan, in addition to the Earldom of Gloucester, which was how he’d learned the language. Gilbert de Clare had spoken it too. From all appearances, however, Thomas was a pale copy of his elder brother. He didn’t have an outsized ambition or as sharp an intelligence. All he’d wanted was to be left alone in his little region of Ireland. Even his hair was a shade or two less red than the vibrant color Gilbert had grown.

  And seemingly, with this latest attempt on Dafydd’s life, Thomas had become all rage and no brain, though Bevyn perceived a mind to be in there, somewhere, if he ever managed to put the anger aside.

  “Where’s Aymer?”

  Thomas sneered. “I wouldn’t know. Skulking in a cave, no doubt.”

  “You were allies,” Lili said.

  “He’s weak. A coward. He wouldn’t come with me here to finish the job. He didn’t have the stomach for a real fight.”

  “The real fight being shooting the King of England with a crossbow from thirty yards away?” Bevyn said. “Today wasn’t exactly a battle. King Dafydd was unarmed. Who’s the real coward?”

  Thomas’s jaw clenched tight, and he didn’t answer.

  Bevyn folded his arms across his chest. “How did you get into the castle?” Now that they knew the identity of the prisoner, his questioning had taken on a new urgency. Bevyn needed to know if they had another traitor in their mi
dst, one within the staff, perhaps, or among the garrison, who’d conspired with Thomas. He’d penetrated the castle’s defenses, and Bevyn wanted to know how he’d managed not only to get inside but to acquire a crossbow from the armory.

  “Why would I possibly tell you?” Thomas was genuinely incredulous.

  Bevyn made an expansive gesture. “Where are your friends now? It seems to me they convinced you to sacrifice your life for a cause from which you will gain nothing. You owe Roger Mortimer that much, do you?”

  Thomas spat on the ground. “I didn’t do it for him.”

  “Then it’s Balliol who holds your allegiance?” Lili spoke softly from behind Bevyn. “Why? What did he ever do for you?”

  Thomas focused his attention on her. “He gave me a chance to regain my honor. David took everything from me.”

  Bevyn scoffed. “King Dafydd had nothing to do with your inability to hold onto Thomond. You decided before he ever set foot in Ireland, before you’d even met him, that you were going to betray him—out of fear of what he might do rather than waiting to hear what he proposed and giving him a chance to earn your trust.”

  “He killed my brother.” Thomas looked like he might spit again.

  “That wasn’t Dafydd.” Bevyn moved to catch Thomas’s chin in his gloved hand. “Don’t disrespect your king.”

  Thomas grimaced around Bevyn’s pinching fingers. His lip was bleeding, and he had blood on his teeth. Somewhere along the way, someone had hit him in the mouth. “He was never my king, and he can’t ever be mine now that he’s dead.”