Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  Bevyn nodded. “Safer to head south and beach themselves on the Great Orme. That’s where ships always wreck.”

  “I was hoping they’d try to beat the storm to Anglesey.” The first drops of rain spat on Anna’s head.

  “No such luck,” Bevyn said. “Let’s move under the gatehouse.”

  They stood together and watched the storm overtake the English ships. First came the waves that pulled the boats apart from one another; then the gale winds that they’d been fighting the whole time, but that now threatened to upend them if they didn’t pull down their sails.

  As the clouds loomed over them and the rain began to fall, a few of the boats seemed to lose their bearings and founder—perhaps taking on water. The rest, however, had the look of reaching shore.

  And then the weather boxed Aber in. Anna could see nothing but black clouds and driving rain. It poured down on them, as if someone had turned a fire hose on their heads. It gave a hint of what the English were experiencing in their open craft. They would find little shelter on the beach, and even less when the men of the garrison at Caerhun, along with volunteers from the villages that lined the Irish Sea, penned them onto that beach and slaughtered them.

  If that was indeed what Bevyn had planned. Anna didn’t really want to know.

  Anna eyed her old friend. He hadn’t said and she hadn’t asked what was in store for the English. It wasn’t that Anna didn’t care about their fate, but she understood this world she lived in a little more clearly every day.

  Anna stood under the gatehouse roof with Bevyn for another minute, feeling the thunder of rain on the wooden planking above their heads. “I know you received Goronwy’s warning,” she said. “But you had to think that he’d warned Aber too. Why did you come? Why didn’t you stay to defend the Anglesey shore?”

  Bevyn turned his head to look at her and when she met his gaze and smiled at him, he guffawed a laugh. “Not much gets past you, does it, girl?”

  “I like to think not,” she said. “Though you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to. I’m only guessing.”

  “Guesses can be worse than the truth.” Bevyn laughed again. “It was luck, is all. Luck brought me here.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Bevyn’s eyes lit. “I have a son, did you know?”

  “I knew your wife was expecting a child,” Anna said. “I didn’t know that he’d been born. How old is he?”

  “Three weeks.” Bevyn didn’t temper the joy in his voice.

  “And—?”

  “My wife’s mother came to visit.”

  Anna laughed. The sudden surprise and amusement burst from her and felt good. “You don’t like your mother-in-law? That’s what brought you to Aber?”

  Bevyn managed a sheepish expression, despite his enormous mustache which to Anna’s eyes made him look more like a revolutionary than a contrite husband. “My wife suggested I patrol for a few days with my ‘lads’, as she called them. She even pointed me here.” He paused. “She has a touch of the sight sometimes.”

  Anna canted her head as she looked at him. “In addition to knowing you very well, she loves you.”

  “I hope so,” Bevyn said. “I love her.”

  Anna didn’t press him beyond that remarkable admission. “So you came to Aber.”

  “And found it held against us. Luck, as I said.”

  “But not luck that we could enter through the tunnel,” Anna said. “This eventuality has been long planned, I gather? You expected the boy to do as he did.”

  “From the days of King Llywelyn’s grandfather, at least,” Bevyn said, “and maybe since the time of Arthur, those tunnels have made us vulnerable. They are a weak point in our defenses. At the same time, they have long been a comfort to the residents of the castle. Sometimes it’s better to flee in the night in order to live to fight another day.”

  “Have the Normans ever attacked Aber before today?”

  “Not that I know of,” Bevyn said. “Perhaps not since the time of Arthur.”

  Anna knew that in her old world, after Papa’s death at Cilmeri, the Normans had taken the infant Gwenllian from Aber. They’d locked her in a convent for the rest of her life, so that she couldn’t produce an heir to threaten England. By then, all but a handful of castles had already fallen to the Normans and she’d had nobody to protect her. Gwenllian was six years old now, safe with Mom and Papa at Caerphilly. But still, Anna shivered at the thought.

  “How’s Dafydd?” Bevyn hadn’t asked that yet, and in retrospect, it showed how careful Bevyn was to have put the life he’d led before behind him.

  “In the south, I hope,” Anna said, not really answering his question. She didn’t actually know if her brother was well or not. “The English may be crossing the Severn Estuary even now.”

  “I was going to say that I wish I was with him,” Bevyn said. “But I don’t. My place is here.”

  “David misses you,” Anna said. “He’s said so. But I agree. You were needed here.”

  Chapter 25

  29 August 1288

  Near Caldicot Castle

  Llywelyn

  Rain dripped down the back of Llywelyn’s neck. In his haste to prepare for battle, he hadn’t gotten the leather collar of his helmet and his mail to overlap properly. He could have worn his mail coif but he hated how it restricted his vision and movement, so instead he wore a mail shirt with supplemental plate on his chest and a tin cup helmet (as Meg called it).

  The moment he thought of her, he brutally forced aside the image of her face that rose before his eyes. It was battle that he had to think on. The English had wavered, as Math had hoped, caught between the storm and the beach. In the end, they’d split in two. Those in the tail of the fleet had fled back to the English shore, and the rest had decided take their chances on the beach.

  Llywelyn had overheard two of his soldiers discussing which water passage was more dangerous: the Menai Straits or the Severn Estuary. Llywelyn knew the truth (the Menai Straits, of course, his home ground), but the argument had been heated and Llywelyn had to admit that the southern man had some good points, particularly in regards to storms.

  The Menai Straits was a narrow passage between Anglesey and the Gwynedd mainland. When crossed in front of Aber Castle, the Straits stretched two miles to the Anglesey shore. At Bangor, however, the distance was only three hundred yards and was proportionately more perilous. The water could shift direction without warning at the change in the tide. At least on the Menai, however, a boat had a chance of reaching shore. Out here … Llywelyn shook his head to see the bulk of the English fleet still half a mile from the Welsh beach, facing Llywelyn’s army if they went forward, and only more storm between them and safety to the rear.

  When he’d come out of the blind, Math had been in his element. Given the way he’d rallied the troops into action, he must have gotten some Berserker blood from a hither-to-unknown Viking ancestor. Math had flung himself onto his horse and put himself in front of the Welsh cavalry before their charge. Llywelyn could see him now, fifty yards ahead, heading down the beach towards the English soldiers who’d managed to land their craft before the storm hit.

  By their position in the fleet, these men had been eager to be the first to assault the Welsh position, but now with the menace of the storm, had been unlucky enough to find themselves first onto the beach. One of the young men from Llywelyn’s teulu reined his horse and shot Llywelyn a grin as he fell in beside him. “God is with us, my lord!”

  It seemed just so much hubris to agree, but an exhilaration rose over Llywelyn. By God, He is!

  Llywelyn hung back with two dozen of his men. Their job was to form a defensive wall to the southwest of the main Welsh force, to prevent the English from fleeing down the beach in their direction. One of Llywelyn’s men glanced over his shoulder to make a comment to his neighbor, and his jaw dropped.

  Llywelyn looked too. It had been raining hard for half an hour now, but it was nothing in comparison to what was
coming. A wall of rain was driving up the Severn Sea towards their beach.

  “They have a hundred heartbeats. No more.” Awe resonated in the man’s voice. He, too, had grown up in the north, in Gwynedd, where the mountains dominated the landscape as much as the sea. For Llywelyn’s part, he’d never been on the sea during a storm. Hearing about the one that had shipwrecked Meg was bad enough.

  Llywelyn tightened his grip on his sword. His horse’s legs were splayed, bracing against the wind that threatened to blow Llywelyn right off of him. Further up the beach, Math’s men drove into the English soldiers who’d left their boats.

  And then the storm hit.

  It was only then that Llywelyn saw the real danger—not to the boats out at sea, though that was certainly bad for the English—but to his own men. The storm and the tide were almost perfectly synchronized, with the tide turning at the same moment that the storm was hitting. From what the southern soldier had boasted, the sandy beach on which they stood could go from dry, to two inches deep in water, to waist height two waves after that. And it was already happening.

  “Retreat!” Llywelyn grabbed the horn his banner bearer carried and sounded it himself. “By God! Retreat!”

  The men ahead of him didn’t stop. Either they were too caught up in the blood lust of battle to think of anything else, they refused to accept a retreat when victory was right before them, or they honestly didn’t hear the horn call over the storm. Llywelyn shoved the horn back into the man’s hands. “Make it sing!” Llywelyn had barely been able to hear it himself over the sound of the rain pounding rat-a-tat-tat on his helmet.

  Without waiting for the standard bearer to obey, Llywelyn spurred his horse towards Math. His guards followed as a matter of course, rather than because they had any idea what the king was doing. Llywelyn circled around the fighting to the north. Math’s men were actively engaged with the former occupants of at least twenty boats that had reached the shore, though a handful had attempted to escape back into the Estuary once they saw the size of the force that greeted them. Perhaps that was the safest place to be right now, but Llywelyn didn’t see how anyone could think that, even if they were English.

  Men seethed near the shore, but further back, the Welsh cavalry danced on the margins of the fight, their horses skittering and everyone nearly blinded by the rain. Llywelyn thrust through a gap to where Math had pulled up, watching the storm come in and the English boats fall back in disarray. Already, bodies floated in the shallows, some with open wounds, the blood mixing with the salt water. More were caught up with every wave that drove onto the shore. Some of the English boats must have capsized further out.

  Llywelyn grabbed Math’s arm. “We must get off the beach!”

  “What?” Math turned to him. His color was high, but at the sight of his father-in-law’s grim face, some of the light in his eyes faded. “What’s wrong?”

  “With the storm breaking and the turning of the tide, we’ll drown where we stand.”

  Llywelyn didn’t need to say more. Math may have been a child of the mountains, but with that upbringing came a healthy fear of the sea.

  “Back! Back! Back!” Math stood in his stirrups and sounded the retreat, first with his voice, and then with a high, piercing whistle. That caught his men’s attention when the horn hadn’t. At last the men began to obey, turning their horses’ heads and making for the dunes that lined the beach to the north.

  Llywelyn glanced to the southwest. The waves surged ever higher. A moment ago, his horse had been standing twenty yards from the water. Now he was five. The men who’d been engaging the English noticed the change too and broke off the fight. Some of the men who’d been unhorsed or come to battle on foot had lost their footing and fallen into the water, while their horsed companions struggled to save them.

  Llywelyn risked a delay to collar a man-at-arms—a boy really, he couldn’t have been older than Dafydd was when he came to Wales—and haul him upright.

  “Thank you, my lord.” The boy coughed and sputtered. “I thought I was a goner.”

  Llywelyn removed his foot from the stirrup so the boy could boost himself onto the horse and sit behind him. “We’re not out of this yet,” Llywelyn said.

  Helping the boy meant that Llywelyn had fallen behind many of his men. He put his head against his horse’s neck and spurred him towards the dunes that ran along the rim of the beach, while the boy clutched at his waist and held on for dear life.

  Llywelyn checked behind him again. Bile rose in his throat at what he saw, along with real honest-to-God fear that he hadn’t felt since that day at Cilmeri when he knew he was going to die. He wasn’t ready to die, even if Dafydd was ready to be king. The wind blew the rain into him. His horse struggled to find purchase in the water-logged sand. The men still on the dunes waved and shouted, desperate to help and yet aghast at what was happening to their compatriots.

  Llywelyn looked up and saw that the first of his men had reached the grass-covered dune that fronted the fields behind it, Math among them. Math turned, his eyes seeking. Llywelyn knew Math looked for him and opened his mouth to shout—but a wave overtook him before he could.

  It lifted the hooves of Llywelyn’s horse off the ground and swept Llywelyn and the boy right out of the saddle. Llywelyn tried to hang onto his horse’s bridle but the strong current pulled him away and under the churning tide. Jumbled now, unsure which way was up, Llywelyn struggled for air. He knew how to swim, but his clothing had gone from rain-soaked to waterlogged and he couldn’t get his limbs to move.

  “Jesus Christ, Dad! Don’t do this to me!”

  Llywelyn’s last thought before he lost consciousness was that the voice sounded an awful lot like Dafydd’s, though of course it couldn’t be, and that when he saw him next, he would speak to him about taking the Lord’s name in vain.

  Chapter 26

  29 August 1288

  Near Caldicot Castle

  David

  Through the driving rain, David had seen his father misjudge the wave and go under. The boy whom Dad had rescued had kept his head above water and was swimming towards shore. The horse had nearly made it to the beach. But not Dad.

  David couldn’t see Math from where he sat—couldn’t see any of his father’s teulu who could help. Probably most of them couldn’t even swim.

  David threw himself off his horse and launched himself into the sea, arms and legs spread, like he’d seen lifeguards do—and he’d played at doing a time or two in a pool--though he’d never had to do it for real himself. He hit the water hard and kept his head above it, more by luck than because he knew what he was doing. Instantly, his boots filled with water and his clothes gained forty pounds in weight. At least his mail armor didn’t actually soak up the water.

  The force of the current that picked him up the instant he hit the water stunned him. It spun him into a rock that lay inches below the surface but which David couldn’t see through the muddy water. With his shoulder and hip aching, David righted himself and swam with long strokes towards where he’d last seen his father. Forty yards from where David had gone in, he finally closed in on him.

  David reached out to catch at his father’s arm, missed, kicked hard, and surging forward, grasped the collar of his father’s shirt. David had seen him go under at least twice. He didn’t believe the old tale that you only had three chances, but even so, Dad had surely used up more than he could spare.

  David slipped an arm under his father’s shoulders and turned towards the shore. The water was more than six feet deep and he couldn’t touch. He struggled against the current to keep both his and his father’s heads above the boiling surf.

  It was raining so torrentially, it was as if David was swimming at the base of a waterfall. The rain threatened to drown him more completely than the sea.

  “I’ve got him, my lord!”

  Four hands reached out from above David and grasped his father’s arms. David treaded water while two stumpy fishermen hauled Dad into their dingy. Rope
s led from iron rings on the boat’s rail to the shore, where a line of men held the ends, so the dingy wouldn’t float away with the tide.

  Dad was the same size as the two fishermen combined and they fell backwards onto the floor of the boat with the king on top of them. David grasped the rail of the dingy and rested his cheek against the smooth planks of the side.

  Another wave swamped him and he coughed. “Is he alive?” David could barely hear himself speak above the rush of water all around him.

  A retching sound came from inside the boat and David kicked up, hauling himself out of the water with the strength of his arms, to rest his stomach on the rail. His father lay on his side in the center of the boat while the fishermen worked him over, pumping his arms and pressing on his chest, trying to force the water out of him.

  David eased forward face first into the boat, shedding water as he did so, and settled in the stern. He didn’t know what else he could do for his father than what the men were doing, so he rested, his head on his knees. He prayed silently. And then Dad coughed twice more and the water he had swallowed and breathed in poured out.

  Only then did David crawl towards him, careful not to upset the boat which continued to rock violently in the high winds and waves. It had accumulated two inches of water in the bottom thanks to both. David glanced over his shoulder at the shore. Men shouted and gestured at him, and others began to haul the boat in, hand over hand.

  His father’s forces might not have been prepared for the storm that had overtaken them, but the local men they’d included in their company had kept their heads. Math stood at the front of the line, straining with the effort of pulling in the dingy.