Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “But, my lord—please—” Rhys said.

  Dafydd cut off Rhys with a bark. “I don’t have time to determine the truth.” With a nod from Dafydd, Evan hauled Rhys towards the other prisoners.

  “I will send men to bring in the Englishmen from the ford,” Math said. “They can stay with their brothers in the cells beneath the barracks.”

  “Do it,” Dafydd said. “I’d prefer not to kill them, even if some might call me weak for staying my hand.”

  Math’s eyes gleamed. “I don’t think you have any need to worry about that, my lord.”

  Weak! Lili shook her head too. If anything, Dafydd had become too hard. Dafydd tipped his chin towards the men in his teulu. “Whom should we leave in charge? I miss Owain already.”

  “Evan—” Math began.

  “You note his skill and measured thinking too?” Dafydd shook his head. “He’s not ready yet. Or perhaps, I’m not ready to ride without him.”

  “I wish I’d brought more of my men,” Math said, “but I left ten to garrison Dinas Bran and others to ride with Anna, thinking it better not to leave the north undefended.”

  “We’ll have to leave at least another ten here,” Dafydd said. “As those loyal to us recover, they can augment the garrison. We can’t risk any of the English soldiers overpowering the guards and escaping. Or worse, retaking the castle.”

  “Fifty becomes thirty becomes twenty,” Math said.

  “Twenty will have to be enough,” Dafydd said. “We ride through the night to Brecon Castle.”

  Chapter 7

  26 August 1288

  Near Dolforwyn Castle

  Anna

  “How much farther?” Cadell wiggled on Anna’s lap.

  “Not far.” Her mood lifting, Anna pointed through the trees to the looming bulk of Dolforwyn Castle, the first stop in their journey. She’d let Math go with David without protest, but had wrung from him permission to travel to Caerphilly with Cadell to be with her mother and Bronwen—and Lili if Ieuan could get her to go. She’d want to be in the midst of the fighting, of course, but that might require her to speak to David, which so far she’d refused to do.

  Anna thought the whole thing ridiculous. Papa was behaving exactly like any other king of this time, which was to say, putting his country above the welfare of his son. This son, however, wasn’t of this time and never would be. He wanted Lili. Bronwen had laughingly described a conversation she’d had with her graduate school adviser, once upon a time, about the difference between determined, stubborn, and pig-headed. As far as Anna was concerned, both David and Papa were skating very close to the latter.

  Not that she couldn’t be pretty stubborn herself. Math had been reluctant to allow her to leave Dinas Bran with the onset of hostilities looming. Any loving husband, medieval or modern, would have felt the same way. But Math and Anna had been married for five years now, and Anna had pushed him into being less stubbornly protective than Papa still appeared to be. Besides which, Caerphilly was impregnable. Bohun had been sure that they had a week before Clare would have his forces together enough to begin his assault on their southern borders. That was plenty of time to reach it. She and Cadell could be safer there than at Dinas Bran.

  Not that the distances between any two points were ever very great in Wales. The entire country was all of one hundred and forty miles long, and maybe fifty wide. The roads weren’t always direct, however, and it was usually easier to skirt the hills and mountains than to go over them. These were the same mountains that had allowed the Welsh to maintain their independence for the last two hundred years. As it turned out, guerilla warfare wasn’t invented by Swamp Fox Marion in the American Revolution, like she’d been taught in school. The Welsh hadn’t invented it either, but they’d employed it for a thousand years so far, first against the Romans, then the Saxons, and now the Normans—and on occasion to great effect.

  Although she thought she’d be happy to be on the road again after several months of not leaving Dinas Bran, Anna had felt unsettled from the moment they’d left the castle. Everyone in the party had felt the same way. The captain of her small company had come to her two hours ago, suggesting that they push on past the point where she might have wanted to stop, in order to sleep safe tonight at Dolforwyn Castle instead of in one of Papa’s lesser holdings. He’d been nervous about how exposed they were, and that he had only ten men.

  When she’d acquiesced immediately, his shoulders had sagged in relief. “Thank you, my lady,” he’d said. “You have eased my mind considerably.”

  Now, however, even though the sun hadn’t quite set (and as it was August, it wouldn’t set until well after suppertime), it was time to get off this horse. Dolforwyn Castle stood on a wooded hill above the Severn valley. Papa had built it as a forward position in his territory, to overlook the Norman lordship of Montgomery which the Mortimers controlled.

  The Mortimers. How Anna hated them.

  It was Edmund and his younger brother, Roger, who had lured Papa into the trap at Cilmeri in December of 1282. Edmund had done it, so the story went, to prove to King Edward that he was worthy of his father’s title and his lands. King Edward had withheld them for some time after the death of Edmund’s father, even as the king had acknowledged the rights of Edmund’s younger brother, Roger, to lands of his own.

  That must have stuck in Edmund’s craw, to have a younger brother in better favor with the king. At the same time, up until the death of his elder brother, Edmund’s lot had fallen to the Church. Even after the brother’s death, he’d remained at Oxford until his father died in the same year. Subsequently, it had been a challenge for Edmund to prove his worth as a soldier to men who’d fought in the saddle since they were fourteen.

  Of course, that had been the situation in which David had found himself when he arrived in Wales and he’d done okay.

  Cadell pulled out his wooden sword that Math had given him only last week and waved it at the skyline. He wore the sword in its little sheath, strapped around his waist throughout the day and had insisted on sleeping with it every night. At first, the table legs in the great hall at Dinas Bran hadn’t been safe. They bore testimony to the vigorousness and enthusiasm of Cadell’s assaults and his determination to master this new skill.

  Watchful and ever mindful of his duties, however, Math had taken Cadell in his lap shortly after he’d given the sword to him. He’d set the weapon on the table in front of them. “A sword is a bringer of death to men,” Math had said, the echo of David in his words.

  Cadell was very young to understand what his father was trying to tell him, but he noted the sadness in his father’s voice, and since then, had shown a greater maturity in the sword’s use, though no less intensity. The table legs were safe, but every man-at-arms who walked through the great doors of the hall found himself confronted by the grim face of a three-year-old boy and a fierce, “Who are you to enter my father’s domain?”

  More often than not, Cadell followed this with laughter at catching yet another man unawares. And then, the man would grab a stick from the kindling pile and give Cadell the mock battle he wanted, before picking him up on one arm or throwing him over his shoulder while Cadell squealed in delight.

  Cadell struggled to stand up in front of her, his feet on the saddle, but Anna clutched him tighter around the waist. “Soon. We’ll stop soon.”

  She’d spent the last three years trying to contain her son—a child who crawled at five months, walked at nine, and spoke in complete sentences before he was eighteen months old. He was so much like David had been as a little boy, in ways that even Anna remembered, though she’d been a child herself. Meg still laughed that the best thing about David’s precocity was that he understood everything you said to him. Anna would boss him around, and even at nine months, David toddled happily after her and did her bidding.

  “I’ll take him.” One of the men at arms, Tad, rode closer.

  Cadell leaned towards him. “I can jump!”

  Anna laug
hed. “No, no, no—”

  “Look out!”

  Ten men dressed in red and white surcoats surged onto the road from either side, swords at the ready. The horse belonging to the man-at-arms just ahead of Anna reared, dumping the unprepared rider on his seat in the road. Anna’s horse, Dyfi, skittered sideways to avoid him, panicked by the uproar. Anna clutched at the reins with one hand while holding onto Cadell with the other, trying to contain him in her arms and control Dyfi at the same time.

  “To arms!” Tad pulled his sword from its scabbard while his horse whinnied, trying to evade an English soldier’s clutching hand. For that’s who these men had to be: English. Anna would have known they weren’t Welsh even without the surcoats, what with their full beards, short-cropped hair, and fringed boots.

  Dyfi danced sideways and then whipped around one hundred and eighty degrees so that she faced back the way they’d come. On instinct, Anna dug in her heels, still pressing Cadell to her chest. He sent up a wail and she eased her grip. “It’s okay,” she said. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Dyfi took off, heading back up the road to the north. Anna bent over the horse’s neck, hanging on to the reins and Cadell with equal intensity. She’d never become an expert horsewoman and this ride was at the limit of her skill.

  “Mama! You’re squishing me!”

  “I know. I know. Just—”

  Hooves pounded behind her, a match to her thudding heart. She chanced a look back. Two English soldiers were coming on fast. She spurred Dyfi again, would have whipped her if she thought it would do any good, but the poor creature was neither racehorse nor war horse, and couldn’t maintain the speed. Even so, they held off the two soldiers for another quarter mile before the closest rider caught up with them, cursing at Anna and the horse in English. He grabbed Dyfi’s bridle and forced her to slow.

  “No! Let us go!” Anna kicked out at the man and Cadell did his part by swinging his little sword, nearly smacking it into Anna’s arm. Cadell then brought it down hard on the soldier’s fingers.

  “Little devil—”

  Unfortunately, the soldier didn’t release the bridle and Dyfi was done running. She slowed to a walk, sweating and shaking. Anna was shaking herself and she took in deep breaths, trying to fill her lungs with air and at the same time, marshal her thoughts. One second she’d been thinking only of dinner and how put out the cook at Dolforwyn would be to find a dozen extra mouths at her table, and the next …

  Anna twisted in the saddle to look back down the road. A bend hid the ambush site. Anna felt herself a coward, but she was glad to be spared the sight of riderless horses and men in green and white, dead in the road. Certainly, she was glad that Cadell couldn’t see them.

  “Why are you doing this?” she said in English to the man who’d caught Dyfi’s bridle.

  “Just doing what I’ve been told,” the man said. “No need to take more offense than that.”

  “On whose orders?” Anna’s eyes tracked from one man to the other. They both wore surcoats with the Mortimer crest over a mail tunic, and leather armor everywhere else. Only one wore a sword. The other had a broad axe tucked into his belt. Neither wore a quiver, but then, as Englishmen—or Saxons, as the Welsh still called them—they weren’t trained in the use of a bow for war.

  “That doesn’t concern you.”

  Anna studied him, unsure of what Math would want her to do or say now. Whatever it was, it needed to keep them alive. “I don’t see why you would want to capture me. I’m just a woman with a young child.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  Anna swallowed. He was right, of course. She tried again. “You do realize that you’ve violated the treaty between England and Wales to capture me? You’d best return to your own country before you find yourself on the wrong side of a fight.”

  The man smirked. “I’m not worried about that.” He pointed with his chin, back down the road towards the south. “I believe we already took care of anyone who could counter us.”

  “I ask again, on whose orders have you captured us? Edmund Mortimer’s?” She wanted the man to name the Norman, to give her someone at whom she could direct her anger. But, of course, it was foolish to ask, wasn’t it? Who else could it be? Just as at Valle Crucis Abbey, these men wore Mortimer colors, and the road had been Mortimer territory on and off for decades—centuries even—before the Treaty of 1285 stripped them of it.

  Instead of confirming her guess, the man pulled on the front of his tunic and scoffed under his breath. “This? Don’t read anything into this. We serve the House of Clare. Soon, every man in England—and in Wales—will belong to our lord.”

  Anna chewed her lip, finding herself far calmer than she might have expected. Cadell, for his part, sat still and silent on Anna’s lap, staring at the English soldier, subdued now that the race was over.

  “Did he tell you that himself?” Anna said. “Clare has always been arrogant. But we have a King of England already in Edward’s son.”

  The man smiled, showing ragged and gray teeth, and his smile was all the more sinister for it. “The child King Edward is dead.”

  Anna’s heart sank. The boy had survived in the old world, becoming Edward II, and one of the worst kings England had ever experienced. Events were moving far too quickly. Bohun might not have reached London by now, which meant that if Clare was on hand at the young king’s deathbed, he would stand in a good position to take the throne, especially if he had the support of the other regents and the Archbishop of Canterbury.

  Edward I had been a strong king—perhaps the strongest since William the Bastard himself. With him dead, the crown of England had fallen to his infant son. But even with all the barons of England swearing allegiance to him, it would have been many years before he could claim the crown for himself. Those years would have been full of jostling and infighting among those very same barons for power. Although King Edward had fathered a dozen children, none of his sons but his namesake had survived him, and now this one was dead too. With the failure of the male line, Clare—young, vibrant, and powerful—would see himself as first in line for the throne, regardless of what blood ran in his veins.

  Anna tightened her grip on Cadell and on the reins. “And again I say, by what right? Clare has no royal blood.”

  “By the only right that matters,” the man said. “Force of arms and the courage of the men who call him lord.” He reached out a hand and chucked Cadell under his chin. “Who is your father, boy?”

  “Lord Mathonwy ap Rhys,” Cadell said.

  Gah. Anna hadn’t coached Cadell not to answer that question. Neither she nor Math had ever considered that their three year old son would have to learn deceit. Admittedly, even if she’d tried, Cadell had too much of his Uncle David in him, even at the precocious age of three, to answer any differently. Ultimately, Anna couldn’t regret that.

  The man grinned. “A son proud of his father. Obey your mother, boy.” He tugged on Dyfi’s bridle to turn her around and get her heading back down the road to the ambush site.

  “What will you do with us?” Anna said.

  The man grinned. “Hostages taken in war can be exchanged,” he said. “Your father has no hope of victory, but that’s not to say a feckless nobleman won’t find himself in difficult straits. To have a princess of Wales and her son in our possession will prove useful.” He shrugged and looked her up and down. “In more ways than one.”

  Anna hugged Cadell to her. For once, he didn’t complain about her tight grip. As they returned to the point where the English soldiers had come out of the woods, she covered Cadell’s eyes. Dead men and horses were something he’d see often in his life, but these men had been his friends. And he was only three.

  “Mama, where’s Tad?” Cadell had tears in his voice.

  Anna was having a hard time holding back those same tears, but swallowed them down so he wouldn’t hear a tremor in her voice. “I’m sorry, Cadell.”

  Cadell turned inwards, towards her body, hugging her,
his chubby arms tight around her neck. My precious boy. Math and Anna had lost a son to disease six months earlier, and that grief remained always just below the surface of her heart. Baby Llywelyn had died three months after his birth in a measles epidemic that had nearly taken Cadell as well. Anna had thought when she’d lost Llelo that her grief would drown her. The fear of losing Cadell shortly after had nearly driven her insane. Anna still didn’t know how women survived losing child after child without becoming cold inside. She didn’t know what she would do if one day she was numbered among them.

  And still, life was unrelenting. She hadn’t told Math—she hadn’t told anyone—but another child quickened inside her. With effort, Anna forced her thoughts of this new baby and her fear aside. David had once explained to her that the greatest warriors were great because they fought without fear of death. It made them strong. She’d asked him how they could overcome that fear and he explained that in their minds, they were already dead.

  Anna decided she could live with the fear.

  “You’re safe, sweetie.” Anna rubbed his back. “It’s going to be okay.” She said this, although she didn’t see how that was possible from where they now sat.

  At least they were alive, and as long as that was true, they had a chance. These Englishmen knew enough not to harm her and Cadell, at least for now. How long would that last? She’d never met this Gilbert de Clare, but she’d heard of him. He was just like the rest of his Marcher peers: ruthless as they come and changeable as the wind, depending on which loyalties served him at any given moment.

  Anna whispered into Cadell’s ear: “I’m going to put your sword away.” She slipped a hand under Cadell’s cloak and carefully tucked his toy sword under it. It was wooden, but it was a weapon. The soldier had taken away her belt knife first thing. She had a second knife strapped to her calf under her leggings, however. If she saw an opportunity to free herself and Cadell, she would use it.