Guardians of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

She looked up as David entered and said before David could ask, “She didn’t want me touching her.”

  David crouched in front of his wife. Not sure if it was okay for him to touch her either, David put his hands on either side of Lili’s thighs. “I’m here, Lili. I’ve brought Abraham, Rachel’s father. He’s a doctor.”

  David had expected to find his wife limp and exhausted, but Lili’s head came up, and her expression was fierce—though dried tear tracks showed on her face. “I am not going to die like my mother did. I’m not going to leave my children without a mother.”

  “Lili.” David’s voice caught in his throat, but he managed to speak around it. “You are the strongest woman I know. There is nothing you can’t do, including this.”

  Abraham stepped into David’s line of sight and made a gesture with his chin. “Can you help her onto the table?”

  Between David and Branwen, they lifted Lili, who even pregnant weighed only two-thirds of David’s weight, and settled her onto the examining table. It wasn’t the same kind as in the modern world, obviously, but it was clean, covered by a long cushion and a sheet with a pillow at the far end. They lowered Lili so she lay on her left side. David moved to her head to hold her hand and kiss her forehead.

  “David said you’re seven months along?” Abraham hands moved along Lili’s belly.

  “Maybe more,” Bronwen said, from the doorway.

  David looked up, startled. “More?”

  “Lili told me after you left that her dates could be very off,” Bronwen said.

  Abraham straightened. “By two months?”

  “Possibly a month and a half,” Bronwen said.

  Abraham nodded. “That’s good news for both of them.”

  David kept his head close to Lili’s, unable to speak. Now was not the time for recriminations, but then Lili opened her eyes to look into his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you ages ago.”

  He shook his head. “Cariad, you have nothing to be sorry for. If anything, I should apologize to you. If I’d been paying better attention, I wouldn’t have left you to carry this burden on your own.”

  Abraham broke in. “Lili, I’m going to lift your gown and examine you. Has Rachel done this?”

  Lili gave a slight nod, which David confirmed. “Once or twice.”

  “But her water hasn’t broken?”

  Bronwen shook her head. “No.”

  “More good news.” Abraham went to a nearby basin of hot water from which steam rose. He used the soap and scrubbed at his hands.

  Lili breathed through another contraction. Her tears hadn’t returned, and David could hear her whispering a psalm over and over again. He bent to her and chanted it with her.

  Abraham pulled out a stethoscope from the inside pocket of his coat and put the ends into his ears. David wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that he had an entire array of medical tools secreted in various pockets about his person. The man was nothing if not prepared.

  Abraham put the end of the stethoscope to Lili’s stomach and, after a moment, he nodded. “The baby’s heart is strong.”

  David let out the breath he’d been holding.

  “I need everyone in this room to wash their hands, even if you have already,” Abraham said.

  David obeyed, followed by the women.

  Abraham eyed them for a second. “Bronwen, Branwen, is that right?” He pointed from one to the other.

  Bronwen smiled. “I know. It’s confusing. Wait until you realize that every man in Wales is either Dafydd, Gruffydd, or Rhys. You won’t find any Toms, Dicks, or Harrys here.”

  Abraham looked to Branwen. “I need fresh hot water and warm cloths. Can you get those for me?”

  Bronwen translated into Welsh, and Branwen said, “Yes, sir.” She left the room with the now dirty basin.

  Abraham turned to David. “I have medical gloves, but I fear a greater need for them in the future, so with your permission, I’ll examine her barehanded.”

  “Do what you have to do,” David said.

  Lili nodded too, and Abraham lifted Lili’s gown.

  While Abraham examined Lili, David put his forehead to hers, both of them breathing slowly through another contraction. At one point, Lili moaned and, without opening her eyes, said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

  “You can,” David said, with absolutely no evidence to support his claim except that he knew his wife. “You can be strong and still allow other people to take care of you. You don’t have to hold on so tightly. Let go. Let your fear go.” David had a moment of insanity where he thought about quoting the Litany of Fear from Dune, but immediately thought better of it, instead quoting King David as Abraham had done a lifetime ago at the entrance to Caernarfon Castle: “The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear?”

  Abraham straightened. “She’s only nine centimeters dilated, but the baby is, in fact, turned the right way. I believe the problem to be that the head hasn’t been centered properly on her cervix, and I can feel that the baby’s hand is up to his head.” He looked over at Bronwen. “It isn’t surprising, given how long the labor is taking, that the midwife thought the baby was turned wrong.”

  “None of the usual birthing positions were working,” Bronwen said. “Once we understood that the baby was coming whether or not we were ready, Lili paced around the castle all night.”

  “I’m sure your midwives are very knowledgeable,” Abraham said. “I don’t want to interfere, but this is one instance where keeping Lili upright hasn’t been helping. Just as I examined her, I felt the baby’s head shift slightly and settle more fully onto the cervix.”

  “Can you do something for Lili?” David said.

  “At the moment, she doesn’t need me to do anything for her. What she needs is a little sugar and protein for energy for what’s to come.”

  Branwen had returned with the fresh water, and at a quick word from Bronwen, she immediately left again.

  “She’ll see to it,” Bronwen said.

  “David, will you come with me to talk to the midwife?” Abraham said. “You need to be part of the consultation and probably translate for me.”

  Bronwen moved to take David’s place at Lili’s head, though not before David kissed Lili’s temple. “I’ll be right back. You and the baby are going to be okay.”

  He and Abraham returned to the central room where Aaron and Catriona were standing. Neither of them had been talking, and both started towards him when David appeared, speaking in unison, though saying different things in two different languages.

  David made a slashing motion with his hand, cutting them off, and then held out his hand to Abraham. “This is Abraham, Rachel’s father and a doctor from Avalon. Abraham, this is Aaron and Catriona.”

  Catriona curtseyed, and Aaron and Abraham greeted each other, one Jewish man to another. Then Abraham went straight to the point. “What have you given her, and what do you see as the problem?”

  Both Aaron and Catriona looked blank until David translated, first into Welsh, which was the only language Catriona spoke, and then into medieval English.

  Aaron responded by gesturing to Catriona. “Birth is not my area, though I have been learning.”

  “For a second baby, the birth is taking a very long time,” Catriona said. “I have given her raspberry tea, rubbed her with rose oil, and she’s taken a tincture of vinegar and honey.”

  “She couldn’t keep the latter down,” Aaron added.

  David translated for Abraham, who grimaced at David. “Most of the herbs I know that are helpful in birth are native to North America.”

  “Can you do a c-section?” David blurted the words out before he could stop them, glad that neither Aaron nor Catriona could understand American English.

  Abraham turned to face him fully. “I will if I have to, but as long as the baby’s heart is beating strongly, I will do everything in my power to help her deliver the child naturally.” He gestured to Aaron and Catriona. “In the modern UK, the vast maj
ority of babies are born with midwives, and Lili has been in good hands up until now. It may be that what she needed was you, not me, and only you could say to her what she needed to hear.”

  David opened his mouth to reply, but was interrupted by Bronwen skittering through the doorway. “She says she has to push!”

  David took off at a run for Lili’s room, and as soon as he reached the head of the table, Lili wrapped an arm around his neck and held on. Abraham and Catriona followed, Catriona carrying a birthing chair, which she set on the floor at the end of the table.

  “Do you want to sit on that?” David asked Lili when the contraction passed.

  “I want the baby OUT!” Lili still hadn’t let go of his neck, so without asking for permission, David picked her up in his arms and carried her to the stool. As she sat another contraction took her. She gripped the sides of the chair, screaming bloody murder but also pushing as hard as she could.

  Catriona crouched in front of her, while Abraham stood to one side, counting through the contraction. Abraham indicated that David should take over the counting, in groups of ten as Lili pushed, while he and Catriona washed their hands one more time.

  By the time they crouched in front of Lili again, she was bent double, pushing for dear life, and then as the contraction ended, in a wave of frustration, she pulled her loose-fitting birthing gown off over the top of her head and threw it in a corner, revealing a short t-shirt-like shift which was all she had on underneath. Bronwen crouched nearby with a fresh linen cloth to wrap the baby in when it came. David knelt beside Lili as another contraction took her, counting out to ten in a calm monotone.

  Catriona gasped as Lili’s water broke in a rush. “It’s coming! It’s coming!” She looked up at Lili. “The head is right there, Lili. Do you want to feel it?”

  Through streaming tears, Lili nodded. Then a fifth contraction rose in her.

  “Yes! Yes! You’re doing it, my dear,” Catriona said, her affectionate tone an indication of how birth was an equalizer, and there were no kings and queens in the room, just parents. “One more. Dafydd’s going to count it out again, and by the time he gets to ten, you’re going to have your child.”

  Lili nodded, pushed harder than ever, and then the head was out, followed by the rest of the baby, with no worries about a cord, though the baby’s hand was up to the side of its head as Abraham had predicted.

  Lili rested against David as Bronwen placed their newborn baby boy in Lili’s arms.

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Rupert

  Rupert had decided that the best defense was a good offense, and if he was going to get to the truth, he needed to be more aggressive in his pursuit of it. Was time travel real? The people in the Black Boar swore up and down that it was. So far, he’d been chasing after leads but hadn’t been able to find any independent confirmation. These bus passengers were like UFO abductees—all talk and no substance. Though admittedly, they had been gone for a year, and he recognized many of the names from the list of the missing after the Cardiff bombing.

  It was time to dig into the heart of the matter. If that meant not milling about in the castle square until someone from the security forces deigned to talk to him, so be it. There was a larger story here, and he had bigger fish to fry.

  He had hardly dared to believe his luck at first when he caught a brief glimpse of the girl in the purple parka, Anna, whom he’d talked to at that clinic in Bangor. She was walking away from the square with another man, one he didn’t recognize. But as they hustled through the snow with barely a look backwards, he made the instant decision to leave his vigil at the barricade at the northeast corner of the city and follow. He tailed them to the Tesco, to a black van that sat immobile in the middle of the car park.

  He warred with himself then as to whether to follow the man back to the castle once he dropped off the girl in the purple coat, or to wait in the car park. Because it just so happened that he’d left his own car nearby, he decided the coincidence was too great to ignore. He was hot on the scent now, and he could feel the back of his prey’s neck between his jaws. If he hung on, soon he’d have the story of a lifetime. A thrilling shiver went through him that his quest might finally be at an end.

  He thought he might have a long wait, but within a half hour, two men turned into the car park, walking from the direction of the castle. The initial bloke wasn’t with them, but he recognized one of the men—the one who’d worn a sword back at the medical clinic—and the trench coat the other wore indicated government service.

  Grinning, Rupert started his engine. He watched as one of the men sat in the front seat of the black van beside the driver—a woman—and the other climbed into the back. Rupert was too far away to hear what they were saying, beyond a single echoing, “Let’s go.”

  The van pulled out of the car park, and Rupert settled into what he hoped was the right distance for a tail. He couldn’t get so close that they’d notice him, but he couldn’t stay so far back he’d lose them. He realized as he went along that he was out of practice.

  As a result, as they neared Bangor, he fell back, the Christmas Day traffic being thin to say the least, with few lorries to hide behind. He was also focusing on the snow and the slick roads, so when the van switched lanes at the last second to exit before Y Felinheli, he was already past the exit before he realized it had gone.

  In a panic, he swore and slammed the butt of his hand into the wheel. Then he pressed the pedal to the floor, hoping no police were patrolling this particular stretch of road. He sped all the way to the next exit, praying the whole time to a god he didn’t believe in that he hadn’t lost them for good.

  He decided the fact that no police stopped him was a good sign, and he followed his gut where it led him, circling the roundabout until he was heading the other way, west towards the village.

  He had driven no more than a quarter of a mile when—

  “Bloody hell!” Rupert’s words echoed in the silence of the car as the van and then the Cardiff bus—the goddamned Cardiff bus—blew by him going the other way. His heart pounding a million miles an hour, he felt almost lightheaded as he spun the wheel and performed a U-turn for which there was barely room on the narrow road. He managed it without bottoming out the undercarriage on the grassy verge of the road.

  Hardly worried now about secrecy, he sped after the bus. That they’d chosen to drive it in broad daylight told Rupert that something was up, and he wasn’t going to lose them again—despite the fact that he didn’t actually know who them was.

  With pound signs flashing before his eyes—and, dare he even think it, a British Journalism Award—he coasted to a stop against the curb on the wrong side of the road just before the entrance to the car park of a car hire firm, which both the van and the bus had entered. There wasn’t really room for the bus to park in front of the building, so the driver backed it up until its tail was parallel with his car, except that it was in the car park on the other side of the sidewalk while Rupert was parked in the street.

  He sank down low in his seat, hoping the driver wouldn’t notice him, and as she opened the front door in order to exit the bus, the back door opened too. It stayed open as she disappeared around the front of the bus, heading towards where the van had parked. Maybe she didn’t know to press the button by the front door that would close both front and back doors.

  Spurred by an impulse he didn’t choose to examine closely, Rupert pushed open his car door and ran at a crouch across the three feet of sidewalk between his car and the back door of the bus. He hit the bottom step with a thud and went up the stair to the interior of the bus, and then up the stairway to the upper level. Once in the aisle, he bent more than double so that his head remained below the level of the seats and the windows, and cat-walked towards the front of the bus. It was in his head that if he could find a seat at the very front and keep down, they wouldn’t see him even if someone checked upstairs.

  He really had no plan at this point other than a desire to find o
ut what in the hell was going on. The Cardiff bombings had haunted him from the first he heard about the disappearance of the bus. He’d spent more time in this god-forsaken country in the last year pursuing this story than in his previous thirty-nine. When his editor had taken him off it for lack of new information, he’d used his weekends and holidays to return to Wales in a quest to find one more person to interview, one last piece of evidence that would make the whole puzzle complete.

  Something about what was happening here wouldn’t let him go.

  So when he heard people boarding the bus, he didn’t move. His thought was that he would cadge a ride to wherever they were going and decide at that point whether or not to reveal himself. He had his mobile with him, and this morning he’d made sure that it was fully charged, so it would be a simple matter to telephone for a ride if it became necessary.

  A murmur of voices reached him, but he couldn’t make out what they were saying. The driver—probably the woman with the dark hair who’d driven it earlier—started the bus again, and he held onto the metal rail that ran across the front of the bus. He risked putting his head above it so he could see out the front window. Snow had fallen so thickly on the windscreen in the few minutes the bus had been stopped that it was building up on the wipers. Then they activated and flicked the snow away. He’d noticed when the bus came in that they operated in tandem with the wipers on the main windscreen downstairs.

  He saw now why the driver had parked as she had, because it was a simple matter to leave the car park by pulling forward and turning onto the side street they’d come down initially. On his knees, he watched the road ahead, feeling a bit like the kid he’d once been when his father had taken him for a Sunday tour of London on one of the red double-decker buses. The Cardiff bus entered the main road again, navigating through a series of turns that took it into Bangor proper, and then headed towards the Menai Bridge, the easternmost and smaller of the two bridges across the Menai Strait.

  The bus picked up speed, the windscreen wipers struggling to keep up with the snow, and because he was watching the wipers instead of the road, Rupert failed to notice at first not only the speed at which they were driving, but the fact that they were driving down the center of the road, rather than in their designated lane. Worse, they were approaching one of the more hazardous features of this bridge, which was a double archway with a central pillar centered in the middle of the span.