Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  Rachel tied a last knot on a bandage and stood. “What is it?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m afraid—” Anna couldn’t articulate what she was afraid of because it was too awful. She started across the field, picking up the pace as she got closer and saw Papa lying on the ground. His eyes were closed, and his mouth was open, his breath coming in gasps. Mom must have wrestled him out of his mail tunic, because it lay beside him, and he wore only his shirt. Cadwallon stood sentry above him, his face drawn and white.

  “I thought he was fine! He said he was fine.” Anna fell to her knees beside her father. She couldn’t see any blood, so her thoughts went instantly to his heart. He was past sixty now. Anything could have gone wrong with him.

  “He just says it hurts. I’m not even sure what it is, or that he knew it was this bad before he realized he couldn’t ride,” Mom said. “And even then, he passed it off to David as saddle soreness.”

  “Did David believe him?” Anna said.

  “His father ordered him to go,” Mom said, “and David agreed that he shouldn’t leave what was happening at Harlech to be sorted out by someone else.”

  Rachel knelt on the opposite side of Papa from Mom and Anna. “I need you to translate,” she said to Mom, who nodded and sat back on her heels.

  “Sire,” Rachel said.

  Papa turned his head slightly and opened his eyes to look at Rachel.

  “Are you having trouble breathing?”

  Mom translated, and Papa shook his head and nodded at the same time. “Just hurts.” His voice came as barely more than a whisper.

  Rachel seemed to understand what he said, but Mom translated into English anyway. Rachel opened her backpack and removed a small black case. She unzipped it and pulled out a stethoscope. She glanced at Mom, who’d clasped her hands in front of her lips. “I’m a doctor.”

  Anna put a hand on Mom’s shoulder and leaned in to whisper. “She’s actually a surgeon, though still in residency.”

  “Thank God,” Mom said.

  Rachel listened all around Papa’s heart, lungs, and abdomen and then pressed gently on Papa’s breastbone.

  “Hell!” He jerked upward and twitched away from her hand.

  A number of men had clustered around them by now, and Papa’s exclamation deepened the looks of worry and fear on their faces.

  “Did you fall from your horse?” Rachel said.

  Papa’s breathing eased back to shallow as he tried to master himself. “I don’t remember.”

  Cadwallon made a small movement with his hand, and everyone looked at him. “The king’s horse stumbled and threw him moments before—” he gestured helplessly towards the bus, “—it appeared.” Cadwallon seemed to fear that someone would blame him—or perhaps he blamed himself—because he continued, “None of Madog’s men got near the king, and when I helped him to his feet, he said not to fuss over him.”

  Rachel’s eyes narrowed, and this time she felt at Papa’s head, probing with her fingers and watching his face for indications of pain. Then she sat back on her heels and spoke to Mom and me. “I’d love to do an x-ray, which I realize isn’t possible. I think he has several broken ribs and a concussion.”

  “So his heart’s okay?” Anna said.

  “Is there some reason to think it might not be?” Rachel said.

  “He had pericarditis three years ago,” Mom said.

  Rachel’s brow furrowed. “How did you take care of that?”

  Anna didn’t want to tell her that sometimes they could time travel by choice, but she would find out eventually, and it was better not to lie. “Mom jumped off the balcony at Chepstow Castle with Papa and ended up in modern Aberystwyth.”

  Rachel’s only reaction was a slight widening of the eyes. Then she turned back to Papa. “In the past, I would have bound your ribs, but to do so can prevent you from taking deep breaths and, particularly in your case because you aren’t a young man, it could lead to pneumonia. You aren’t going to want to move, so I won’t bother warning you not to move abruptly.”

  Mom translated what Rachel had said, and threw in a, “you’d better listen to her,” of her own at the end. Papa reached out a hand. Mom clasped it and leaned in to kiss his forehead. When she spoke next, there were tears in her voice. “I’d thought I’d come back only to lose you.”

  “You’re not going to get rid of me that easily.” Papa’s voice was soft and breathy, but there was humor behind it.

  Two of Papa’s men levered him to his feet, and then they and Mom walked very slowly with him to his tent, which had been set up near the river. No movement was going to be comfortable for him for a good long while. The two women watched him go, and then Rachel looked intently at Anna. “I was worried that he’d punctured a lung. I’m not seeing that now. If he has internal bleeding, we’ll know in the next few hours. Same with the head wound. Under these conditions, I’m not sure I can do anything about any of it.”

  Anna studied her for a moment, but she didn’t really need to think hard about what she said next: “With your permission, I would like to put you in charge.”

  Rachel blinked. “In charge of what?”

  “Everything medical,” Anna said. “For years, Bronwen—that’s Ieuan’s wife—Mom, and I have been working with medieval doctors, some of whom are very good. But you have more knowledge in your little finger than all of us combined. We need you to coordinate research and treatment for the entire country—or rather, countries: Wales and England.”

  Rachel was very good at controlling her expressions, but Anna had learned something of her in the past five minutes and noted the tightening of the muscles around her lips before she relaxed them again. “You’re not serious.”

  “I am completely serious,” Anna said. “Rachel, there is nobody else.”

  Rachel looked away from Anna, taking in the order growing out of the chaos and carnage on the field. “How do you live like this—live with this?”

  “Up until now, we’ve had no choice,” Anna said. “But if there’s one thing we’ve discovered—all of us who’ve traveled here from the modern world—it’s that by staying here, we have a chance to make a difference in people’s lives. I imagine that’s why you became a doctor?”

  She nodded. “Of course.”

  “Well … you’ll never have a better chance than this.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  November 1291

  David

  Callum had sent a rider to let David know that his father was okay. Or if not okay, at least that he wasn’t about to die. When Dad had told David he was too sore to ride with him to Harlech, David had been surprised but happy, as if his father were finally showing some common sense. After he’d ordered David to leave, however, David had begun to have second thoughts. His father still didn’t always tell him the whole truth, as if David were a boy who needed protecting from it. This time Dad had probably just wanted David to go in his stead and would have said anything to make it happen.

  Harlech Castle was situated on a cliff edge above the sea. In the modern world, the sea had moved far from the castle, but in this time, the water lapped at the bottom of the rock on which Harlech perched. This Harlech Castle was not the same one that Edward had ordered built in 1283 either, since in this world he’d never conquered Wales. Here, Dad had commissioned Harlech himself, and it was built in stone in a style similar to Rhuddlan. The castle was impenetrable from the west, with a defended stairway that plunged two hundred feet down to the water, and had a main gate that looked east. Its towers loomed over the landscape for only a short distance, though, because the ground increased in elevation as it went inland.

  That was Harlech’s main weakness and the reason for the massive gatehouse with three portcullises, as well as the tricky twisting entrance that prevented an enemy force from bringing a siege weapon to bear on the door. Even as a stone castle, it was also vulnerable to fire arrows launched from beyond its curtain wall that could burn the wooden structures within.

&n
bsp; All of this David knew before he arrived at Harlech. The initial journey to Maentwrog had taken a few hours on horseback. The village was located at the ford of a river that became an estuary farther west. Therefore, they had to ride east from Beddgelert in order to go west to Harlech.

  Gratifyingly, especially since this country had once belonged to Madog’s father, a thousand men had gathered, mostly spearman and bowman from the surrounding countryside. A few herdsmen were less well-armed with axes and farming implements. Many fathers had brought their teenage sons. War had become rare here since King Edward had died, but that didn’t mean the citizens wouldn’t come when Dad called.

  David had sent scouts ahead in a wide swath, needing to know what they were walking into before they walked into it. If it had been summer, he might have rested his men through the night, in order to take advantage of the sun rising behind them as they approached Harlech. But while the fog of the morning had burned off, clouds had moved in, and the temperature hovered around freezing. They were due for snow or very cold rain by tomorrow. Because the men they’d picked up at Maentwrog were fresh, David decided it was better to keep moving and march the nine miles to Harlech before the sun set.

  From Maentwrog, they followed the coastal road west along the south side of the estuary and then headed southwest to Harlech along the cliff edge upon which Harlech perched. The sea frothed below them, another sign that a storm was coming, as if the dark clouds that squatted on the western horizon weren’t warning enough. The sun—such as it was—was close to setting by the time they came to the edge of the plateau upon which they’d been traveling. There, they formed a line half a mile from the castle, looking down on it from four hundred feet above. Madog’s pavilions lay below on the plain that had been cleared of trees.

  Carew blew out a breath. “It isn’t taken.” Smoke curled into the air from inside the castle but David saw no flames. In fact, he didn’t see much in the way of activity anywhere.

  “They’ve hunkered down for the night,” Math said. “The scouts’ reports were accurate.”

  “I never believe them until I can see what they say with my own eyes,” Carew said, reflecting a sentiment after David’s own heart. “Whoever Madog has left in charge hasn’t made an attempt to take the castle.”

  William rubbed his chin in mimicry of Math and said sagely, “Surely he knows that Madog is dead, his forces defeated, and that you are coming, my lord? Why is he not better prepared for our arrival?”

  “We didn’t encounter any scouts on our journey here,” Justin said. “Maybe the leader down there doesn’t know.”

  Carew barked a laugh. “If that’s true, I can’t decide if Madog was so confident in his overwhelming numbers and in his strategy that he didn’t think he needed them, or if he was merely sloppy.”

  “The scouts could have seen our numbers and abandoned their companions rather than share their fate,” Ieuan said.

  While they spoke, a groundswell of murmurs came from the men. They’d known as much as David about what they might face, since he’d shared with them the scouts’ reports, but no one had dared believe it.

  “Unfurl the banners,” David said.

  Justin repeated the order, more loudly than David had given it, and his dragon banner rose above his head and caught the wind. The banners of the other lords who rode with him appeared a moment later. David put the binoculars to his eyes and focused on a group of men clustered near one of the tents. In the growing darkness, he’d nearly missed seeing them. They seemed to be conferring, and then a lone man broke away from the group and strode in David’s direction. He followed a well-worn pathway that led straight up the hill to their position.

  David focused the binoculars on his face. “Madog.”

  “Madog is dead,” Ieuan said from beside David. “You killed him.”

  David handed Ieuan the binoculars, knowing he would recognize the man’s face. “Not that Madog.” It would have been easier to keep everyone straight if the Welsh didn’t insist on choosing baby names from the same pool of ten. Of course, the English did the same with their Toms and Harrys. Those names were just easier for native English speakers to pronounce.

  Ieuan looked through the binoculars for a few seconds without speaking, and then he dropped his hands to his chest. “Huh.”

  “Your orders, sir?” Justin said.

  David could feel the unreleased tension behind him. The thousand men who’d marched from Maentwrog hadn’t come all this way to stand around. Though that was exactly what David viewed as the best-case scenario, and what he’d made clear to them before they started. He glanced down the line. The bowmen were ready; some had arrows resting in their bows, but none of the bows had been drawn.

  “Ieuan, you’re with me.” David dismounted to a tsk of disgust that Justin couldn’t suppress. Justin hated it when David exposed himself to the enemy. The Kevlar vest underneath David’s mail wouldn’t help him if an archer aimed at his eye.

  “Who is Madog?” Math said.

  “You’ll recognize him when he gets closer. He was the leader of our bowmen at the battle of Painscastle, back when I was sixteen,” David said.

  That didn’t sit too well with anyone within earshot. David had liked Madog, the little he’d spoken with him, and he was, quite frankly, surprised to see him leading Madog ap Llywelyn’s siege of Harlech.

  As they’d been talking Madog had covered all but the last hundred yards to David’s army. Ieuan and David walked the rest of the way to meet him.

  Madog stopped and bowed a few paces before he reached David. “My lord.”

  “I would not have expected to find you here,” David said.

  Madog’s eyes went to dragon banner on the bluff. “How many have you brought?”

  “Over a thousand. What happened to your scouts?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “I have two hundred bowmen. They could cause you damage.”

  “They could,” David said. “But I have bowmen too, and I imagine that my man, Evan, who defends Harlech, has seen our banners.”

  “Every commander knows that he can’t maintain a siege when the enemy comes behind him,” Madog said.

  David’s shoulders relaxed slightly. Every commander did know that, and for Madog to state it boldly gave David hope that he was looking for a way out. “Until this moment, I would not have said that I was your enemy. Nor my father.”

  Madog stared down at his boots and didn’t answer.

  “How came you to fight for Madog ap Llywelyn?” David said.

  “My father and his father before him served Rhys ap Maredudd,” Madog said. “He called us to him, my brothers and me. They went, and I followed to protect them.”

  This had always been the way of it for the common man. He fought for his lord without question. The idea that a man’s lord and his country were not the same thing was foreign to David.

  But it was David’s problem today—maybe his most important problem. Back at Rhuddlan, Bronwen had enumerated the barriers thrown up by the Church, Ireland, or David’s own barons that would divert his quest to form a united and peaceful Britain. But it was Madog’s heart and mind that David really needed to win—not for himself—not because he was Madog’s lord, prince, or king—but for Wales, and ultimately, Britain. And if David had them, he had everything.

  “It is hard to accuse a man of treason when he fights beside his brother,” David said.

  Madog lifted his head. David saw hope in his eyes—and he hoped that Madog saw understanding in David’s.

  “What of Lord Madog and the sons of Rhys?” Madog said.

  “Madog is dead,” David said. “We have not seen Rhys or Maredudd.”

  Madog nodded at this, accepting their disappearance, as he had his scouts’, without comment and as one of the realities of war. “If I surrender to you, what of my men?”

  “If they lay down their arms, they walk free,” David said.

  “Most serve because they always have,” he said. “None of u
s have an argument with King Llywelyn.”

  When David didn’t answer right away, Madog nodded, taking his silence as meaningful, though David had been thinking again about what it meant to be a patriot. “I will speak to the men. We surrender. You may do with us as you will.” Madog bowed and turned away.

  Unlike the other Madog, this Madog hadn’t even asked about himself.

  David returned to his men. “We have won.” He kept on walking, past where Math and Justin waited for him, into the ranks of men who’d come when Dad had called.

  The men bowed and gave way before him. As David approached each man, however, he raised him up, grasping the arm of whoever would take his (everyone) and thanking him for his offer of service. It may have been that the offer was to David personally or to his father, and not to Wales. David had heard his mother refer to such loyalty as the ‘cult of personality’. She hadn’t meant David to overhear her, because she’d been talking about him.

  “What about Lord Rhys, my lord?” one man said, and David recognized him as one of the men he’d spoken to at the earlier encampment. He must have appropriated a horse for himself in order to finish what he’d started. “He won’t be so easy to defeat.”

  “No, he won’t,” David said. “But we won’t be fighting him—or anyone else—today.” David had been about to keep walking, but then he had another thought. “You are Cadoc, yes?”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Who represents your village at Brecon, Cadoc?” David was referring to the meeting of the Welsh Parliament, the most recent congregation of which had taken place during the summer.

  Cadoc smiled and thumped his chest. “I do, my lord.”

  David nodded, not at all surprised, given how outspoken Cadoc was. “If my father were to call you to vote rather than to battle, would you come?”

  “Every time, my lord.”

  “What if you were given the opportunity to elect your leader, as happened in Scotland two years ago? Would you take it?”

  Cadoc looked taken aback. He lowered his voice. “The king—he is well isn’t he?”