“It’s been a while,” David admitted. “My sister had to do something like this ten years ago after the English burned down one of my father’s castles.”
“You speak of the English as if you yourself aren’t one of them.”
David laughed under his breath. “I wasn’t then.”
“Tell me of this journey your sister undertook.”
Clouds had blown in as the night had worn on, to the point that David thought they would have to stop because of his inability to see the path in front of them. They’d persevered in part because they were going so slowly that any obstacle came into focus long before it became a problem, and because David was afraid that if Philip lay down, he wouldn’t rise again. Now, however, the sky was turning a murky gray with the coming of the dawn.
While Philip was functional, his wound was still bleeding to the point that David had needed to change his bandage twice more. The French style of clothing at this time was to wear a long shirt covered by a kirtle that fell to the knees. Philip’s undershirt was of better quality than most, which meant it was holding up well to a soaking in the river and then being pulled tight as a bandage. David’s ministrations had reduced the garment to something that looked more like a modern t-shirt, but Philip still wore his long kirtle over the top, so he looked respectable. Once David had given up his tunic, he didn’t really have any more cloth to rip, other than his breeches, which he was hoping to keep intact.
Throughout the long night, David had found himself splitting his time between elaborate calculations as to how far they’d come and evaluating how much blood Philip had lost compared to what was left in his body.
And because of his fears about Philip’s chances, David told the story Philip asked for. “The English had tried to kill my father, and they were hunting him.”
“That was at this place called Cilmeri, yes?”
David nodded. “We’d made it to Castell y Bere, and that was where my father and I left my sisters, Anna and Gwenllian, thinking they’d be safe, in order to wage war on Edward, my predecessor.”
“But they were not safe.”
“No. A small company of soldiers snuck deep into Wales. They bribed the captain of the guard, and he let them in the front gate. They slaughtered the garrison and burned the castle.”
“Your sisters were not there, however.” Philip obviously knew something of the story, because it wasn’t a question.
“She had spied out the English, learned of their plans, and fled in the night with baby Gwenllian, a wet nurse, and a stable boy.”
Philip’s expression was strangely satisfied. “If she can do it, I can do it.”
What David didn’t tell Philip was that during Anna’s journey, there had been a moment where she’d had to accept that the eighteen miles left to go could have been eighteen hundred for all the difference it would have made. David and Philip had come perhaps ten of the forty they needed to cover but, unless David found medical treatment for Philip or a faster means of transport, whether they had three miles to go or thirty, the French king wasn’t going to manage them.
“I know who seeks my throne,” Philip said all of a sudden. “Your story has given me insight.”
“Who?”
“My brother, Charles.”
David almost laughed, and he would have if he and Philip hadn’t been under such strain. “How did my story help you to that conclusion?”
“King Llywelyn’s brother, Dafydd, was the one who gave the information about Castell y Bere to the English.”
David stared at the French king. “How do you know that?”
Philip shrugged. “I don’t remember. It was a long time ago, but isn’t it obvious, given what came after?”
David shook his head. “It’s comforting to know that it isn’t just the Welsh kings who can’t trust their families.” Welsh history was full of rivalries among brothers, and Philip was right that David’s uncle, Dafydd, had been only the most recent example. Before David himself had come to Wales, Uncle Dafydd had attempted to assassinate David’s father. He’d been thwarted by a snowstorm and the guilty conscience of one of the conspirators. If Philip was right that Uncle Dafydd had sold out Castell y Bere, it was only one more betrayal out of many.
“Why do you name Charles in particular?” David said.
“He has always objected to having been born second. He is two years younger than I and thinks himself more capable.” Philip looked at David out of the corner of his eye. “He wants a throne, any throne, and resents my insistence that he curb his ambition.”
“Jealousy is the most poisonous of emotions,” David said. “So is lying to yourself, and they seem to go together a lot of the time.”
Philip grunted, whether in agreement or pain David didn’t know until he said, “Is that what you think of me? That I reached too far because I listened to the wrong people and chose to believe what they told me?”
“Didn’t you?”
“I know you English think our court is full of pretension and excess, but if I reach too far, it is because God has given me the authority to rule.”
“He hasn’t given you the authority to rule England,” David said, “or Aquitaine.”
Another grunt. “My brother and your Gilbert de Clare seem to have convinced themselves otherwise.”
David couldn’t disagree. Aymer de Valence, who’d plotted with Red Comyn last Christmas to undermine David, was rotting in the Tower of London because he had convinced himself that David was weak and distracted. He was far from the only discontented lord within David’s or Philip’s domains. Even if David made it home in time to stop whatever plot Clare was hatching, there would always be another disaffected baron and another plot. It was a constant struggle to maintain a balance between using the power he’d been given as king, and following the path he’d laid out at the start to use power differently. Just thinking about it made David tired.
It occurred to David, now that Clare’s duplicity was clear to him, that Clare could have easily been behind Valence’s scheming. Valence, Comyn, and Fitzwarin were proud enough that it would have taken only a few subtle—or not so subtle—suggestions that the time was ripe for rebellion to set them on their chosen course. Then, once David and Callum were distracted by Valence’s overt and poorly planned treachery, Clare had the freedom to work unhindered on his much more dangerous and complicated scheme.
David and Philip reached yet another stone wall at the edge of a farmer’s field, having soaked themselves to the knees with early morning dew. Listening hard, David held up a hand so Philip would stop and listen with him.
The French king halted and leaned against the wall with a low groan. Then his head came up, having heard the hoof beats that had gained David’s attention. “I hadn’t realized we were so close to a road.”
“Me neither. Let’s move a little farther, and I’ll check it out.” David helped Philip over the wall and propped him against a nearby tree. Then he hastened through the brush and foliage towards the sound.
A plan was forming in his mind. Philip couldn’t walk the thirty miles they had still had to travel, but if he could ride—
David crouched in the dirt and grass beside the road, listening to the hoof beats pounding along like David’s heart. They resolved into a single horseman coming towards him from the east. David couldn’t see the crest on the man’s surcoat from here, and he warred with himself, knowing that the quickest way to acquire the horse was to take it by force. But his cursed sense of rightness told him that he couldn’t simply assault an innocent man. As it was, if there had been more than one rider, David would have assumed they were Clare’s men and stayed hidden.
David took a breath and stepped out of the ditch to stand in the middle of the road, his hands up and out at his sides. Given the hour, he didn’t want to appear threatening to the rider or he might race right by. David faced the same problem as before at the village: he wore no armor or sword, and showed no allegiance to any lord. He was also damp from th
e river and grimy with sweat and dirt.
The rider slowed at the sight of him, and then he reined in, still some fifty feet from David. He wasn’t wearing colors David recognized. “What do you want?”
Now that it came to it, what he needed was the man’s horse, and David had been naïve to think the man would just give his horse away. But he had to ask. “I have a wounded friend, and I was hoping you might help him to the nearest village.”
“Did you now?” The man’s tone softened, though that didn’t make it more friendly. “A wounded friend, did you say? And who are you?”
David had a bad feeling about this, but if he was going to get real help, it was as the duke, not a simple traveler. “The Duke of Aquitaine.”
The man guffawed. “He’s dead. I’m thinking you killed him.”
“No!” David took several steps backward. “I mean you no harm, and you will be richly rewarded for helping me.”
“Yes, I will.” The rider pulled his sword from his sheath and spurred his horse at David.
With a curse, David dove back into the woods the way he’d come. He didn’t feel like he had a choice, since this man was clearly influenced by Clare’s lies. Countering a man on horseback when he had neither sword nor knife was a losing proposition at best. The only way to survive a charging horse was by running away. David couldn’t survive such a ridiculously one-sided game of chicken.
By now, they were within a half-hour of dawn, so it was light enough to see a little bit, even in the thick woods. The horse would be far faster than David, so David didn’t have much room to maneuver. Thirty yards from the road, he spied the tree he was looking for and swung up into the branches. It was an oak tree located to the left of the path. David had noted it on the way to the road because he still had a kid’s-eye view of trees, always looking out for good ones to climb.
The rider charged after him, hardly slowing as he entered the woods. David crouched on the branch he’d chosen, about eight feet off the ground, blocked from the rider’s view by the tree trunk and many leafy branches. Just as the rider went by, not as warily as he should have, his eyes peeled for David’s running form ahead of him, David launched himself from the branch.
He caught the rider around the shoulders, and the two men fell to the ground on the far side of the path. They landed with a whuf and a cry from David as pain shot through his chest. He’d been so fired up until that moment that he’d forgotten about the damage the two arrows had caused. His chest felt a lot more than bruised now.
The man lay underneath David, the wind knocked out of him, and David took the opportunity to speak to him again. “I don’t want to hurt you. I really am the Duke of Aquitaine.”
“The Duke of Aquitaine is dead.” The rider rocked his hips back and forth, trying to throw David off. “And you killed him.” He threw out an elbow which caught David in the jaw, and instinctively David fell back slightly, which gave the rider enough space to scramble away.
Cursing, David surged upward too, throwing himself at the man again and knocking him to the ground so that he lay on his left side in the dirt, and David again pressed down on him with the full weight of his body.
Because the man’s sword had fallen in the brush three feet away, both men went at the same instant for the knife at the rider’s waist. David’s opponent got his right hand on the hilt first, but David grasped his wrist with his own right hand, pressing down on the knife, determined to prevent the man from drawing it.
David’s chest ached, and he feared that the trials of the last day had left him weaker than he should have been, while this rider was strong and just as determined to live as David. “I don’t want to hurt you! I just need to borrow your horse!”
The rider wasn’t listening. Reaching up with his left hand, he clawed at David’s face, and when David reared back to avoid his fingernails, the man got his knife loose from its hilt. With a quick twist of his hips, he reversed their positions, and David ended up flat on his back in the path with the man straddling him. David bucked and kicked desperately, while at the same time trying to keep the man’s knife away from his chest. The man had both hands on the hilt now, pressing downward with all his strength, while David pressed upwards, his hands on the man’s wrists and both men grunting and straining with effort.
“Please. I am. The Duke. Of Aquitaine.”
The man only pressed down on the knife harder.
Gritting his teeth, knowing he had no choice but to finish this before his strength gave out completely, David let go of the man’s left wrist, which he’d been holding with his right hand and brought up both knees with sudden force, jackknifing his body so that the man was knocked forward. That brought David’s chest closer to the knife, and the rider plunged the point downwards. But the move also allowed David to access the arrow he’d been carrying all this time on the outside of his right boot. Thus, at the very moment the tip of the man’s knife hit the ceramic plate in David’s Kevlar, he drove the point of the arrow with all his strength into the man’s neck.
* * * * * *
With what felt like the last of his willpower, David got Philip astride the horse, and they began moving west again. David had claimed the sword and armor of the man he’d killed, as well as one of his two knives. He gave the one they’d fought over to Philip, even though he wasn’t in any shape to use it, and kept the man’s boot knife for himself. He’d done no more with the body than drag it off the path into the surrounding brush, but he’d reacquired the arrow and had transferred it to the horse’s saddle bag. Characteristically Welsh in its fashioning, it was still the best and only proof David had that the man who’d shot him hadn’t been French.
David walked beside the horse, leading it, though he kept glancing up at Philip every few seconds to make sure he remained seated. Rather than feeling relief now that things were looking up, rage clogged David’s throat. The anger wasn’t at the man he’d killed. He’d been doing his duty. It was at Clare, and at Philip—and if he were honest, at himself. It was he who’d led his company to Chateau Niort. It was he who’d been too trusting and allowed Clare’s men to murder his friends and companions. Grief for Justin rose up and threatened to overwhelm him, and David furiously tamped the emotion back down. He had thought he’d come to terms with what this world required of him, but he’d been wrong about that too.
Philip cleared his throat. “You did what you had to do.”
“I know.”
“I, for one, am grateful.”
David ground his teeth, wanting to argue that if Philip hadn’t sent his spies to Canterbury, none of this would have happened. Canterbury Castle would still be standing; there would have been no battle of Hythe; and he wouldn’t have had to kill that man in this godforsaken region of Aquitaine.
But that wouldn’t be true. Philip’s men had supported Lee’s efforts to undermine David’s rule, but Lee could have turned to someone else for aid—Philip’s brother, Charles, for example—or simply gone ahead and blown up Canterbury Castle on his own.
And it wasn’t as if good hadn’t come out of it. Since then, David had stood up to the pope; he’d found an ally in Archbishop Romeyn; the people of Hythe had turned back the subsequent French invasion, to the great honor of England; David had gone to Avalon and back, returning the bulk of the bus passengers to the modern world; and Lee had died.
Philip tried again. “Clare deserves a similar fate.”
David took in a breath and let it out, feeling his shoulders sag. Philip—and Clare—were men of their time. They had done only what they knew how to do. Back when Wales had fought England for its sovereignty, David had gone to equal lengths to further his father’s interests.
He looked up at the French king. “I know that too.”
Chapter Seven
13 June 1293
Carew
Bridget and Peter had an important task in riding to Shrewsbury, but really they were just messengers. Lili had entrusted the responsibility for David’s safety to Carew, and th
ough he had attempted to sleep after their midnight meeting, he’d lain awake until the early hours of the morning wondering if he’d lost his mind to approach his brother with a seeing. Godfrid was a churchman after all. Perhaps he would view Lili’s dream as from the devil rather than a gift from heaven.
Then reason reasserted itself. Carew was David’s loyal servant. He’d chosen that role years ago and never had cause to regret it. In fact, he’d been rewarded for his loyalty beyond all expectation. It would be foolish of him to falter now. He would go to his brother with the story that spies had reported a possible plot headed by Clare, and he hoped that the Templars would be ready to aid their king in his time of need.
On the surface, Carew’s request was a simple one, but his relationship with his brother was complicated. The two men had experienced numerous ups and downs and, until David had asked him last year to pursue a relationship with the Templars, Carew hadn’t seen his brother in more than five years.
Godfrid had been born a bastard a year after Carew himself had been born. Among the Welsh, as long as a father acknowledged his son, illegitimacy was of no matter. But Carew’s father had placed himself fully in the Norman camp. While the family had Welsh blood, his father subscribed to Norman law, which gave short shrift to children born outside of wedlock.
With an English mother, Godfrid had spent his life walking a very narrow path—a knife edge, even—between Norman snobbery and English aloofness. There had been times, particularly in their younger years, when Godfrid and Carew had been inseparable, and other times, starting in their middle teens, when Godfrid’s resentment of Carew’s position, and Carew’s (to be totally honest) lofty superiority had driven them apart.
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