Warden of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book 8)

by Sarah Woodbury

  There were a few nods around the table.

  “I took it as a good sign,” Bronwen said. “I thought your plan might be working.”

  “Apparently not,” I said.

  “Who in Wales in particular did he bribe?” Bronwen said. Ieuan’s lands were in eastern Powys, and Bronwen would know all the players there.

  “Several barons we thought loyal to King Llywelyn,” Bevyn said. “We have spoken with the king and have set a watch on them. If Lee is still in contact with them or has plans that will undermine the king, we will know of it before it happens.”

  Most of these lords lived in the former March—the southern and eastern portions of Wales—which for two centuries had been fought over by Welsh and Norman barons, and where, in many places, the people had grown accustomed to English rule. Consequently, it was here that my father’s rule was least accepted.

  “Why would Lee do any of this?” Peter said. “Why murder his only friends? What’s his motivation?”

  “We don’t know,” Callum said. “It probably has something to do with freeing Ireland from Norman control, but frankly, we don’t know anything about him or what he’s doing beyond what the few people who were willing to talk told us. It isn’t much.”

  “I saw fear in their eyes when I spoke with some of them,” Huw said, uncharacteristically offering information for which he hadn’t been asked. “I haven’t seen fear like that in grown men in a long time. Maybe not since I was a boy.”

  Bronwen took another sip of her coffee, sighed, and set it down. “He didn’t just arrive in the Middle Ages and decide to become a traitor. He’s done something like this before.”

  “You aren’t wrong, Bronwen,” I said. “Callum, Cassie, and I were talking about what happened last year in Cardiff and wondering if Lee had played a role in the bombings.”

  Carew’s brow furrowed as he looked at me. “My lord, given the effort Lee expended plotting treason against your father in Wales, I’m surprised he consented to come to England in the first place.”

  I tsked under my breath. “I wondered that today too. He may have seen it as an opportunity, and I didn’t really give any of them a choice. I spoke to them personally, at my mother’s request. Mike sneered, Noah looked blank—”

  “—as he always did,” Lili said, “not to speak ill of the dead.”

  “—as he did,” I agreed. “Lee gave me an appraising look before nodding his consent. At the time, I was simply relieved that I wasn’t going to have to drag them away from Caerphilly in chains. My mother couldn’t have endured any of them for another day.”

  “When did you start to think that we’d misjudged Lee, sire?” Darren said.

  “That’s a very generous, ‘we’, Darren,” I said, “and sadly, I didn’t. Not more than a little, and certainly not enough to do more than wonder. It was the Order, at Callum’s urging, that decided to take another look at everything we thought we knew about them.”

  Since coming to the Middle Ages, I’d encountered more than a few men of dubious morality. Mike had fallen into one of the lower levels of bruiser/brawler/drunk. If he’d had a wife, he might have hit her. Over time if Mike had remained in the modern world, his personal trajectory might have resulted in an expanded waistline and diminished prospects, both of which would have soured him on everything and everyone until he fell into a bottle and never came out.

  Noah, on the other hand, had struck me from the start as cut from a different cloth. Small and wiry where Mike was big and blustery, he’d done nothing since he’d arrived in the Middle Ages. Quite literally. I hadn’t ever heard him speak more than a few words except those to me when I spoke to him directly. He seemed to know better than to openly defy either me or my father, and he seemed to fit somewhere in the middle between Lee and Mike. He had been a follower, but a loyal one, and appeared to do as he was told.

  I really wished I’d paid more attention to what had been happening at Caerphilly, and I blamed myself for being blind and innocent—more innocent than Huw. My friends might be frustrated at the way I took the responsibility for their actions onto myself, but I was the King of England. Whether or not any of them liked it, the blame and responsibility for those in my charge always trickled up to me.

  “For my part,” Callum said, “vague curiosity coalesced into actual concern when Lee started associating with the king. I set men to watch all three and make note of their doings, and I asked the Order of the Pendragon to trace their activities in Caerphilly.” Callum gestured to Huw. “This is the result.”

  “Once it became clear that Lee had been plotting treason,” Bevyn said, “Huw and I rode for London as quickly as we could.”

  “But I wasn’t there,” I said.

  “Thus the further delay.” Bevyn’s expression was one of frustration, which I shared. He’d been ten steps behind Lee from the start. While I had missed the starter’s gun entirely, he’d almost caught up, but almost hadn’t been good enough.

  “Obviously, we should have arrested them first and asked questions later.” Callum glowered in the direction of the door, as if he could time travel back to a point three months ago when he’d made the decision to watch them.

  “So what’s Lee’s plan, and what are we going to do about it?” Bronwen said.

  “We won’t know that until we catch him,” Callum said.

  Cassie lifted her hand to gain everyone’s attention. “Has it occurred to anyone else that there now may be two people who want to unseat David: Lee and the pope? Is that too much of a coincidence?”

  Callum spread his hands wide. “How could Lee and Acquasparta possibly be working together?”

  Cassie lifted one shoulder. “I’m just asking the question.”

  “It’s a disconcerting thought,” I said.

  “If Lee does have you in his sights,” Bronwen said, “who’s to say the next King of England wouldn’t be as strong as you and far more ruthless.”

  Ieuan snorted under his breath. “Gilbert de Clare springs to mind, even if he has no royal blood.”

  “To sum up,” Bronwen said, cutting through the chatter, “we know of no connection between the current Irish resistance to Norman rule and Lee. We have no clue as to why Lee murdered Mike and Noah, and little insight as to why he took their murders as the opportune time to splash his slogan above their bodies. Is that about right?”

  I laughed. I couldn’t help it. “Pretty much.”

  “Then maybe, for now, we need to put aside the why and focus on what happens next,” Bronwen said.

  I sobered instantly. “I was going to suggest that we have too many simultaneous problems, and we need to take a multi-pronged approach.”

  Bevyn’s brow furrowed. “What was that?”

  I’d used an Americanism he didn’t know. Searching for how better to explain what I meant, I waggled my hand at Callum, who obligingly stepped in.

  “We need to come at our current troubles from many directions,” he said. “We can’t choose only one path, because we don’t know which one will turn out to be the best.”

  “Right,” I said. “We may have very little time until Lee reveals himself again, or we may have weeks. Acquasparta, on the other hand, is more of a known quantity. I urge the Order put aside the issue of Lee for now.”

  “I agree with the king,” Callum said. “His pursuit requires fairly straightforward police work.”

  Darren bobbed his head. “Peter and I are on it.”

  I nodded, confident in their abilities. The color of Darren’s skin was no more a barrier to getting the job done here than it had been in Avalon. On one hand, he stood out in medieval England and attracted attention wherever he went. On the other hand, people came right up to him who otherwise might have avoided the authority he represented, and he’d found that those who felt out of place or beleaguered recognized themselves in him and were more likely to open up and speak the truth.

  “What do you require from the Order, then?” Bevyn said.

  “I ne
ed to know everything about Boniface there is to know: his weaknesses, his debts, to whom he owes obligations, and what he may have said privately about me,” I said. “I am asking both you and our trading partners for this information.”

  Bevyn shot a quick glance at the others before nodding. “We will see to it, as quickly as we may. I know that our Jewish friends already have an extensive portfolio on him. The Order has not paid him as much attention up until now as perhaps we should have.”

  That initial group of Jewish merchants who’d come to Wales after my mother’s return from Avalon had grown to a network of spies, moneylenders, and merchants that stretched from Aberystwyth to Constantinople. The Pope usually didn’t choose to borrow money from Jews, but that didn’t mean they wouldn’t know everything there was to know about him as a matter of self-preservation.

  “How did you leave it with Cardinal Acquasparta, my lord?” Ieuan said.

  I grimaced. “We set a tentative date of two weeks from now for some kind of response from me regarding the Pope’s ‘concerns’, as Acquasparta called them.”

  Bevyn grunted. “Two weeks.”

  “A lot can happen in two weeks,” Cassie said.

  “A lot has happened in one day,” Bronwen said.

  “What’s the other avenue you thought to pursue, Dafydd?” Lili said.

  “A more familiar one,” I said. “Do we know where Gilbert de Clare is at present?”

  “My maid says he’s in Kent,” Lili said, speaking of Branwen, who was not so much an inveterate gossip as an able listener. Lili had invited her into the Order of the Pendragon, but she’d sniffed her disdain and commented that she would prefer to join whatever order was designed to protect Lili, a sentiment for which I could only honor her. “He may not know you are here, however.”

  “I need him,” I said.

  “Why in particular?” Carew said.

  “I may have to start a war—or at least pretend to.”

  As one, my companions gaped at me, but I laughed. They’d reacted as I’d hoped. My constant preoccupation with politics meant I had to take my amusement where I could. “Boniface is concerned about my claim to Aquitaine, right? He fears that if I pursue it, we will have a war with Philip of France, who also claims it.”

  “So you want to go ahead and start that war now?” Cassie said.

  “I want him to believe that I plan to,” I said. “Look—the Archbishop brought out three items that he wants from me: he wants to prosecute heretics in England; he wants the money Pope Nicholas gave me from his taxatio; and he wants me to back off from my claim to Aquitaine. Doesn’t it strike you as an odd list? On the surface, the first item should be the most important to him. Refusing it is certainly the most important to me, and today Acquasparta gave every impression that heretics are to be rounded up whenever they are found.”

  “But you don’t think that’s really it?” Cassie said.

  I made a maybe motion with my head. “He cares about it. Callum and Carew assure me that he cares about it, but we’re talking about a handful of people in the whole of England.”

  “There are more in Wales,” Lili said. “It may be that the pope is pursuing you first as a way to set a precedent for negotiations with your father, who he deems the stronger.”

  “You are usually right about these things,” I said, “but the numbers are still small—certainly fewer than a hundred people.”

  “So far,” Cassie said.

  “Okay, true,” I said.

  “The principle is the important thing,” Carew said. “You openly defied the Church when you welcomed heretics into England. He can’t have that. It sets a bad precedent for the rest of Europe.”

  “I know that,” I said, annoyed that they were undermining my well-conceived thesis with their logic. “But I don’t see why he would link that issue with these other requests, ones much more material in nature if heresy is really his chief concern. Specifically, he has no business meddling in Aquitaine, which a) has nothing whatsoever to do with the pope, b) indicates an alliance with Philip, all of which, c) seems deliberately designed to raise my hackles. It feels like he wants me to defy him.”

  “Which is why we were thinking that Aquitaine might be what Boniface cares most about,” Callum said. “If that’s the case, by pretending we care most about it too, we might induce him to bend on the issue of heresy.”

  “That is remarkably devious of you, my lord,” Cassie said. “I’m impressed.”

  She never used my title except in public, so I smirked and bowed. “Thank you.”

  “So, I gather that by calling in Clare and marshalling his forces as well as yours, you want to give the impression of going to war,” Ieuan said. “Will Clare support such a move?”

  “Of course he will,” Carew said. “His new wife brings him lands in Aquitaine. He wouldn’t want to see the duchy fall to the King of France.”

  I might rail against having to spend so much of my energies on politics, but Gilbert de Clare lived them. As a young man, he’d fought with Simon de Montfort to unseat King Henry III. He’d allied with my father at that time to divide Britain among the three of them, and then switched sides at a crucial moment, all but giving the country to Henry and bringing about Montfort’s death. He’d also led a massacre of Jews right here in Canterbury nearly thirty years ago, as part of Montfort’s plan to wipe out the indebtedness of the nobility in one go. As with many aspects of the persecution of Jews, their treatment had less to do with religion than with money and power.

  After the Barons’ War, Clare had gone on Crusade with Edward, who was not yet king, to atone for his sins. I hadn’t asked if he counted the massacre as one of them, but he had never objected to my open door policy towards Jews. Clare was nothing if not pragmatic. He cared little, if anything, for high-minded ideals. His wealth and lands had grown under my watch, and I had no doubt that he would embrace the idea of going to war—or pretending to—if it gave him the opportunity to add to his lands in France.

  “What will Pope Boniface say when he discovers you are marshalling men to cross the Channel?” Cassie said.

  “We won’t know for a while, will we?” I said.

  “That would be great, but what if your plan doesn’t work?” Cassie said. “What’s the worst thing that could happen? Besides war, I mean, which is bad enough.”

  “If David doesn’t bow to the pope on these issues, Boniface could put England under interdict and excommunicate him,” Callum said.

  Understanding had grown in Ieuan’s eyes too, but it was replaced almost immediately by puzzlement. “What if Boniface calls your bluff? Would you really take England to war against France?”

  “If I have to,” I said. “I will not give way on what matters most. I will not.”

  Chapter Ten

  I lay in bed, staring up at the canopy, my brain churning with worst-case scenarios.

  Lili rolled over and put a hand on my shoulder. “You could at least close your eyes and pretend to be trying to sleep.”

  “I’m deciding whether or not to get up.” I flung a forearm over my eyes, forcing them closed. They itched with tiredness, but my brain wouldn’t let me rest. It had been a wild day.

  “If you don’t sleep, you won’t be good for anything tomorrow.” Lili laid her head on my chest, and I put my arm around her.

  “That’s why I hadn’t gotten up yet.” I turned my head to look towards the window. I’d left the shutters open to better hear the rain on the window, hoping the steady drumming would help me empty my brain. Lili’s breathing slid into sleep, and after a moment, I eased away from her, leaving her head pillowed in the crook of her arm.

  I was a lucky man, no doubt about it. I didn’t actually intend to throw my kingship away, which was one reason I’d focused my attention today on rescuing the heretic rather than repeating my speech about freedom of religion to the townspeople. I would fight for my throne as long as there was something to fight for, because I didn’t feel like my work was finished yet
, but knowing that I had Lili to come home to made the possibility of any other loss easier to bear.

  I’d sent a rider to Clare at Tonbridge, but his castle was in western Kent, forty miles away. It would be a day or two before I would hear back from him. I tried not to wish for a cell phone more than once a day. Since the busload of people had arrived, we’d acquired some technical ability we hadn’t had before, and a telegraph line was in our future. But not yet, and even if we did have it, odds were it wouldn’t have run from Canterbury to Tonbridge.

  Meanwhile, I’d spent the day in conference with my advisers and cabinet, preparing for the possibility of war. The logistics were ridiculous. Just feeding the thousands of men I’d have to bring across the channel took an army of cooks. Weapons, ships, siege engines—not to mention strategy—all had to be worked out. The pope was not going to be pleased. And even if the preparations were a complicated bluff, it had to look real. It had to be more than talk and pretense, and that meant some serious activity on our part.

  If Acquasparta had spies at Canterbury Castle, I wanted them to be reporting to him that I was going to war. I wanted him to be lying awake staring up at the ceiling too.

  I pulled on my breeches and boots, since stone floors are really cold on the feet, tucked in my shirt, and threw the warm black cloak I’d worn to the Archbishop’s palace around my shoulders.

  Before leaving the room, I poked my nose through the doorway to where Arthur slept in an adjacent room. My three-year-old son lay tucked up in his big bed, as befitted the future King of England. His nanny slept on a trundle bed beside him. Most nights, he ended up in our room anyway, wiggling under the covers between Lili and me. It was early enough that he hadn’t yet woken. I was thinking it must be somewhere around two in the morning. I’d lain awake a long while, but we still had some hours before dawn.

  “Sire.” The guard on duty outside my door bowed as I passed him.

  “As you were,” I said.

  Another guard stood at the top of the stairs at the end of the corridor. At the sight of me coming towards him, he disappeared, only to return almost immediately. I knew what he was doing: the word would be spreading throughout the keep that the king was awake and on the move. It wasn’t fair that everyone else had to be awake when I was, which was why I hadn’t left my room earlier.