Two weeks ago, Sophie might have brushed off such cynicism. She didn’t now.
Halfway along the corridor from the tower lay Gwenllian’s bedroom, and Sophie followed the sound of the girl’s voice coming from it. Gwenllian had her cousins under her spell, quite literally, as she was reading to them from the first Harry Potter novel. The listeners even included Bronwen’s Cadwaladr, only nine months old, who was tucked into Catrin’s lap, and Alexander, who was missing Lili and sucking on his thumb to comfort himself. They understood their cousins were listening, so they should be too.
Sophie hesitated in the doorway, marveling at how well—and yet how differently—the book translated to these medieval children. Some of the quirks of the stories, such as writing essays on parchment, speaking Latin, wearing thick cloaks and robes, and using torches and candles for light, completely passed them by, since these were normal parts of their lives. But the core of the story—fighting evil, the desire to protect loving family and friends, and striving at all times to do what was right—was timeless.
As were tales of witches and wizards, though if anyone outside their family were to object to the fact that the four five-year-olds—Bran, Arthur, Elisa, and Padrig—had been waving sticks and yelling expelliarmus! at each other at the top of their lungs an hour ago, Sophie would have told them their play was a new take on the King Arthur story. Or Jesus Christ. Which ... it actually was. David would defend to the death the right for the children to hear the story, so she didn’t expect pushback from the medieval people of the court.
These days, David could do no wrong, a fact that part of her found profoundly disturbing, but she was happy about in this instance. The Harry Potter series had been some of her favorite books growing up too. Sophie herself had been born the year the first book had come out, and she’d finally been old enough to watch the fourth movie in the theater—despite her mother’s concerns that even then she was too young.
That the children were so engrossed in the story made her feel a bit better about the fact that she was here. And a bit ashamed too that a moment ago she’d been questioning their humanity. That the children of these twenty-firsters had so much in common with children in Avalon was something that gave her hope for the future. Back when she’d only half-believed Chad Treadman that time travel was possible, the idea that modern people like Meg, Anna, Bronwen, and David really could raise children who could bridge the gap between the medieval and the modern had sounded highly unlikely.
“They’re happy.” Anna came to a halt at Sophie’s shoulder and peered through the doorway at the children. “I’m so glad Mark was able to bring us so many books, even if we need electricity to keep the tablets charged.” She paused. “I’m glad you thought he seemed okay.”
“I don’t know if okay is the operative word. If anything, he was angrier after the battle than before it.”
“Why do you think that was?”
“Because his anger had found a better target than David, Callum, and the universe in general.”
“That’s good, right?”
Sophie raised her eyebrows. This, of course, was part of her problem too. She was angry, for much the same reasons as Mark. John Balliol and his rebels deserved a little anger directed at them for making war necessary. But that’s not what she said to Anna.
“Are you hoping he’ll start to feel better about coming here?” She didn’t mean to sound mocking, though after the words were out of her mouth, she realized she had.
“Of course.” Typically, Anna refused to take offense and answered with the straight-forward truth. “I feel guilty about bringing him. I feel guilty about bringing you too.”
Sophie didn’t know what to say. Without her, Beeston still would have been won—the rockets would have seen to that—but more lives might have been lost, particularly those of the captives, and it might have taken weeks to take the keep, by which point Henry Percy would have been dead.
“I couldn’t let MI-5 lock you up and throw away the key. You had children to come home to.”
“Thus, my guilt.” Anna smiled sadly.
Sophie shook her head. “You shouldn’t feel guilty. I wanted to come, even if I have large dollops of regret. We said yes. I said yes. Even if nobody at home will ever believe this is real, I know the truth, and I wouldn’t change a thing about that.”
As soon as the words were out, Sophie knew they were true, and for the first time since the battle, she started to feel just a little bit better.
Anna looked at her intently. “But you want to go home.” It wasn’t a question.
Sophie took in a breath, not ready to reveal her inner feelings to someone she’d known only a few weeks. Though, if she were to say what was in her heart to anyone other than George and Andre, it would be to Anna.
After a moment, when Sophie didn’t get any words out, Anna put a hand on her arm. “I can only say again that I’m sorry. When you’re ready to talk, please know I’m here and ready to listen. We have all stood where you are standing right now.”
“I know. I appreciate it.”
Anna gave her another regretful look, understanding more than Sophie really wanted her to. “And not just me. Mom would listen too. And Elisa and Ted have just arrived as well. You are all in this together. We are all in this together. You don’t have to go it alone.”
Sophie nodded, a little dumbly. Anna squeezed her arm and entered the room, circling around the outside of the cluster of children so as not to disturb them. Sophie went to follow her, thinking that listening to a chapter of Harry Potter might be exactly what she needed right now, but movement and a hurried tread in the corridor behind her had her peering in the direction she’d come.
At first all she saw was a shadow moving quickly in the darkened hallway, and her heart beat a little faster to think it was a messenger bringing news of the war. Just because her part in it had ended with a result favorable to David didn’t mean the rest of the war would follow suit. Too much of life was chance and happenstance, and she’d studied enough history to know that far too often the good man died and the evil man won.
David and Anna had rewritten one of those events when they’d saved Llywelyn’s life twelve years ago—and rewritten a great deal more since then—but that wasn’t to say history would always be on their side.
When whoever it was in the corridor didn’t seem to be drawing closer, Sophie took a few steps away from the doorway, just to see why he or she had stopped, and saw the back of Cadell’s head disappearing up the tower stairwell, a heavy pack on his back.
If asked, she would have sworn a moment ago he’d been sitting among the listening children, but now she thought about it, the upturned faces she’d seen hadn’t included his. And the fact that he wasn’t among the other children was odd enough to encourage her to follow him.
Earlier in the great hall, his voice demanding Voldemort’s surrender had been the loudest and, at a nearly nine years old, he lived a rich fantasy life, very much like her own as a child. Cadell had been named for the founder of the Kingdom of Powys, of which Dinas Bran had once been the seat, and the young Cadell lived and breathed every legend involving chivalry and nobility he could get his hands on or get someone to tell him. Unlike Sophie as a child, however, Cadell had a real chance of becoming a knight one day.
After Beeston, however, Sophie retained no such hope for herself. She’d never seen a dead man before, much less seen one killed. But now, unless she worked really hard to think about something else, dead bodies were the only thing before her eyes when she closed them.
By the time she reached the bottom step, Cadell had already climbed past the curve of the stairwell. “Cadell?” She butchered the pronunciation of his name, of course, but continued to do her best.
No answer came except for more hurried footfalls as Cadell picked up his pace. Alarmed that he was up to something he shouldn’t be, Sophie started up the steps, pleased she was wearing the skirt she and Lili had designed that freed her legs. Sophie had no d
oubt many women of the court would soon be wearing them, even the women born in Earth Two, because what the Queen of England found acceptable quickly became acceptable to everyone.
This particular tower at Chester was the tallest, with a ridiculous number of steps to reach the top. As she pounded up them, Sophie was glad she’d spent all those hours at the gym. She’d needed a high level of fitness to do what she’d done at Beeston. Rather than think about what she’d witnessed there, she focused intently on her feet, not wanting to miss a step.
Her heart in her throat, as it had been for most of the last two weeks, this time for someone other than herself, she reached the door to the top of the tower, which had just banged shut behind Cadell. The boy had realized someone was following him and had picked up the pace for the last stretch of stairs, no longer trying to be quiet. Sophie herself was finding it hard to come up with an acceptable explanation for Cadell to climb up here wearing a backpack, and her concern had grown with every step up the stairwell.
Pushing open the door, she was greeted by both pouring rain and Cadell, who shot her a quick look over his shoulder, alarm on his face. As she hesitated in the doorway, he launched himself into a crenel that to her would have been waist high, but reached his chest. Landing on his belly, his head poked precipitously far out from the wall. She gasped to see it and started forward.
“Stay away! If you come any closer I’ll jump!”
His shout stopped her in her tracks.
By holding onto the merlon beside him, Cadell managed to get to his feet, standing upright in the crenel with a hand on each of the merlons beside him.
“I can’t stay away, as you well know. Please, your mother is just downstairs.” Sophie took a step closer, gauging the distance from the door to the wall as about ten feet and wondering if she was capable of pulling a Callum and launching herself across the space—if Cadell really decided to throw himself from the battlement. Her arms reached towards him pleadingly. “Don’t do this.”
Cadell’s fierce expression was visible even in the minimal light shining from the torch that lit the stairwell behind her. She’d left the door open, in hopes that someone, somewhere would hear them.
“I’m going to go. If I do it, then nobody else has to.”
“Do what, Cadell? What are you trying to do?”
“Rescue Uncle David, of course. I’ll go and get him, and we’ll come right back. It was supposed to be before anybody even knew I was gone.”
His certainty and confidence were breathtaking. Sophie took another step forward, hoping Cadell wouldn’t notice. By now the rain had completely soaked both of them, and she feared Cadell would slip off the wet stones unintentionally, before she could get to him.
“Why?” She was pleading with him, desperate to say the right thing that would get him off the wall.
“Because we need him.” Cadell spoke as if it were obvious, and he was right that it was probably an obvious truth. Without David, the party would continue, but at half or third measures. He was the King of England and the pivot around which everything else, and everyone else, spun.
“What’s in the backpack?” She was trying to distract him and keep him talking.
“Stuff to sell.” He wasn’t fooled by her gambit. “Don’t come any closer!”
She stopped moving. “You mean for money?”
“Of course for money.” His rudeness was an indication of how amped up he was. He’d been raised to be polite to everyone, never mind that he was a prince. “We always end up where we’re supposed to, so that means Uncle David should be right where I land. But if he’s in trouble, or it takes a while to actually find him, I’m going to need money.”
Sophie was horrified by the casual we and his assumption that he had the ability to time travel like his uncle, but she couldn’t fault his overall logic.
Cadell was still speaking. “He could be in prison, or—or—” The boy shook himself. “I’ll figure it out, and money will help.”
Again, he wasn’t wrong. Cadell had probably spent a great deal of time thinking and planning for this moment, and he’d come to the decision to go to Avalon only because he believed he had to. It could even have been her description of Robert FitzWalter’s imprisonment that had tipped him over the edge.
She tried again to put out her hand to him, moving another step closer at the same time, and gave voice to her doubts, “You don’t even know if falling off this tower will work.”
“Of course it will work! It did for Arthur.”
Sophie was finding it difficult to breathe, much less think, and she forced herself to breath in and out as she took one more step towards him. She was only six feet away now, almost close enough to grab him.
Ten minutes ago, she had been choked up at the thought of going home, wanting it so badly she could taste it. She’d wanted to leap at Anna and shake her, begging her to do exactly what Cadell was proposing: jump off the nearest tower and take her home.
The dream had become a nightmare.
She took another step forward, and when Cadell didn’t object, took a few more hurried steps and made it all the way to where he stood.
But, as it turned out, rather than having doubts, Cadell had merely been readying himself for his departure. As she reached up to grab his arms, he stepped backwards off the wall.
Her scream came automatically: “No!”
Since he had been standing in the crenel, his head had been a good three feet higher than hers. Thus, as he fell, the bulk of his body passed in front of her, giving her a split-second chance to lunge forward, and she managed to hook the fingers of her left hand around the front strap of his backpack where it rested on his collarbone.
The weight of his body almost pulled her left arm out of its socket while at the same time dragging her forward so she ended up chest down on the stones of the crenel as Cadell had been earlier. She braced her right arm on the merlon beside her, scrabbling with her fingers for some kind of purchase. The merlon itself was too big to get her arm around and hug, however, and worse, Cadell was flailing his arms and legs in an attempt to dislodge her fingers. With the rain continuing to pour down, if she was going to hold onto him, she needed both hands.
Fighting panic and on a mental count of three, she flung her right arm towards her left and managed to get both hands around the strap. Unfortunately, moving her right arm unbalanced her even more. The weight of her upper body and Cadell pulled her dangerously over the battlement. She hadn’t yet fallen only because of her legs wedged against the sides of the merlon and her splayed feet.
“Let! Me! Go!” Cadell was scrabbling at her fingers with his own, trying to pry them off the strap.
“I can’t!” Tears streamed down Sophie’s cheeks, mixing with the raindrops. “Help!” She tried to call to someone—anyone—but the pressure on her stomach and chest was so great that she couldn’t get enough air to project her voice.
She had no idea where the tower guard was or why he hadn’t been up here in the first place. He was probably safe and warm inside, out of the rain, which had picked up even more, and it was as if buckets were being poured over her head. Even if she’d been able to shout, the wind and the rain drowned out all other sound.
Nobody could hear them. Nobody was coming.
Some ambient light came from windows below Cadell’s legs, so she could make out the boy’s white face against the dark ground below him. This tower didn’t overlook the moat. If he fell, and the time traveling didn’t work, it would be to his death.
And her hands were starting to lose their grip.
This was the nightmare of every climber—that moment when everything had gone wrong and the only thing between a climbing partner and certain death was Sophie’s own very human hand.
She was going to lose either Cadell or her position on the wall. One or the other. Between one breath and the next, the realization she had to make a choice became a certainty, along with the sure knowledge of which choice she would be making. If Cadell was
right, and he had the same magic in his veins that coursed through his mother’s—and maybe there was no reason why he wouldn’t—she could have a little faith too. Time travel was real. She had lived it. She certainly couldn’t let a medieval boy time travel to Avalon alone.
And if it didn’t work, if he didn’t have the magic, then she would never know it.
“Stop wiggling!” Then she laughed mockingly at her acceptance of what was part doom, part destiny, and allowed Cadell’s weight to pull her headfirst the rest of the way through the crenel. “I’m coming with you.”
With the astonished face of Cadell looking up at her, she fell with him towards the ground.
Chapter Nine
3 April 2022
Michael
Though Reg had told Michael of the flash on a private communication line, he hadn’t wanted to say more when their conversation could be intercepted. Trying not to appear to be walking too hastily, Michael and Livia moved to the door, which was guarded by two WECTU soldiers, who acknowledged them with a nod and let them through.
Once outside the warehouse door, the wind buffeted rain into Michael’s face. The water was coming down in sheets, and the only positive thing to say about it was the wind was blowing mostly west to east instead of north to south, which would have driven it straight through the warehouse door. Mali met them just outside the doorway to guide them to where Chad waited. She hadn’t been wearing her hood, so her black hair was soaked and plastered to her skull. With the amount of rain coming down, perhaps that had happened just in the walk through the car park to the warehouse.
Beside him, Livia tsked. “I brought my raincoat without a hood. Who makes a raincoat without a hood? I should have remembered this is Wales, and it always rains in April.”
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