Still restless, even though I felt relief that I’d made a decision, I stared at myself in the mirror above the dresser. What did Ieuan see in me? I leaned closer. If I went to Wales, how long before I no longer recognized myself? David spoke of his role as Prince as a duty, a responsibility, but there was more than that in his voice. He loves Wales. I could hear it when he talked of returning. What is it that I want for me? And how do I find it?
Chapter Thirteen
Ieuan
Prince Dafydd entered the room. His clothing rustled as he removed it and slipped into his bed on the floor. I turned onto my back.
“Ieuan?”
“I’m awake, my lord,” I said.
“I was hoping you’d stay asleep. We have a long day tomorrow.”
“I was asleep, but my dreams woke me.”
“What did you dream?” Dafydd asked.
I sighed. “The same as you.”
“Oh,” he said. He knew what I meant. Each man learned to live with battle, with killing, in his own way, but our dreams wouldn’t let us forget what we put aside during the day.
“That raid last year haunts me,” Dafydd said, and I heard the rustle of the sheets as he rubbed the scar that marked his leg where the English soldier had struck him. “I see the man shift, knowing that I am too late to counter him. In my dreams, Bevyn isn’t there to save me and I fall from my horse.”
“You dream he kills you?” I asked. That was an omen every knight feared.
“No,” he said, and I relaxed. “I wake before I hit the ground.”
“I’ve been falling in my dreams,” I said. “A black abyss opens beneath my feet.”
“I know what that dream is,” Dafydd said.
“You’ve had it too?” I asked.
“No,” he said. “I’ve seen it awake—twice. It’s the abyss we crossed when we came from Wales to this world.”
“And you hope to see it again tomorrow.”
“Yes,” he said. Silence fell between us. Then David spoke again. “I talked to Bronwen. Perhaps I shouldn’t have. Your love life is none of my business, but I couldn’t help myself.”
“What did you talk with her about?” I asked.
“About marrying you.”
“I didn’t speak with you before I asked her to marry me. That is my lapse, not yours,” I said. “I apologize for assuming you would accept my choice.”
Dafydd sighed. “It’s not that I don’t accept your choice, Ieuan. All things being equal, she is a great choice—if she weren’t a twenty-first century woman who we’re asking to come with us to the thirteenth century.”
“You think she will say ‘no’; that she will leave me and return to her university?”
“I told her to say ‘no’,” he said. “I told her I had the power to deny you the right to her.”
I felt like he’d punched me in the gut. “My lord,” I said. The words came out strangled in my effort not to shout them. “What...what...why?” I threw off the covers and got to my feet, my hands and teeth clenched. “How could you?”
David’s voice came out of the darkness. “Because I don’t want to take her to Wales only for her to find that loving you can’t make up for what she misses here. I don’t want her to suffer as my sister and mother have suffered. They didn’t have a choice about coming to Wales, and she does. Bronwen has no idea what it’s going to be like for her.
“You don’t know how it is, Ieuan. We grew up as Bronwen has—not as well-traveled, but sheltered and safe. We were free then, as she is now. Soft.”
David had sat up. An outside light shone through the window, illuminating his face. He hugged his knees and rested his head on them, his hands tugging at his hair as if he would tear it out. “Anna cried the first time she sent me away to battle. She didn’t think I saw her tears, but I did. My mother tries to hide her fears—for me, for my father, and for Anna, but I’ve heard her in the night. Here, in this world, anything Bronwen wants to do or be is hers for the taking. All she has to do is reach out and grasp it. In Wales, she becomes your wife—nothing less than that, but nothing more either. She’ll live in fear—for you, for herself, for your children.”
Suddenly, I felt sorry for him. He honestly thinks that people in his world don’t live in fear? I’d spent the afternoon watching his television. Program after program showed his people, running from their lives, drowning their fears in alcohol and sex, instead of acknowledging death and embracing the truth of it��and living as free people.
“It’s not your place to make that choice for her, Dafydd,” I said. I squatted down beside him and on impulse, wrapped my arm around his shoulder. “Nor for me. I knew when I asked her to marry me that the chances of her accepting were slim. I accepted that. Her choices, though, are hers alone. We can’t ever have all the information we need, or want, in life. God hasn’t given us that kind of control. In your world, you think you have it, but you don’t, anymore than we do in Wales.”
Dafydd put his face into my shoulder. “God, I’m so sorry, Ieuan. I’m a sixteen-year old idiot and I was wrong to talk to her. You have every right to be angry with me. Please forgive me.”
“You carry the future of your entire country on your back, my lord. But this—this burden is only for Bronwen and me.”
* * * * *
I didn’t feel as forgiving the next morning, however, when Bronwen didn’t put in an appearance at breakfast and her car was gone.
“She left?” I asked Dafydd. “Without even saying goodbye?”
“I’m sorry, Ieuan,” my lord said. “I can only say it again, even though I know it doesn’t make it better.”
Further recriminations were useless, so I gathered my belongings—including my root beer—and tossed them into the backseat of Aunt Elisa’s car. Discarded items—old clothes, single gloves, empty bottles—had littered the floor and seat, but Dafydd had gathered the refuse in a large white sack and left it in the garage.
Dafydd kissed Elisa goodbye and said something that I didn’t catch, as it was in English. She hugged him, and then pushed him toward the car. Before I opened the door, I bowed. She raised her hand. We settled ourselves in the front seats.
“Give me a second,” Dafydd said. “I need to figure out the stick shift.” Dafydd started the car. I watched as he pressed the ‘clutch’ and shifted through the gears. “Ready?” he asked.
I nodded. “Yes, my lord.”
He hesitated. “You called me ‘Dafydd’ last night,” he said. “The first time, I think.”
“And the last, perhaps,” I said, “though if we stay in this world, I can’t go around calling you ‘my lord’ in front of others. Every time I’ve said it in Bronwen’s presence, a smile forms around her mouth.” I fell silent at the thought. Dafydd eyed me, and then shifted into first gear. Not a happy topic.
Slowly, Dafydd raised the clutch and pressed the gas peddle. Knowing I was interested, Bronwen had explained how the gears and clutch worked during the drive to Bryn Mawr, and I peered under the steering wheel to watch Dafydd’s attempts. The engine revved, Dafydd released the clutch, the car jerked forward twice, and then died. I sat back in my seat.
“Sorry,” he said, shifting into neutral and starting the car again. “I’ll get the hang of this eventually. I saw my mom do it often enough.”
Again he revved the engine and released the clutch. The car jolted forward but this time it caught. We eased forward, at not more than five miles an hour. Elisa had a long driveway and Dafydd was about to shift into second gear when a car appeared in front of us. Dafydd slammed the brake, stalling the car.
Bronwen.
Bronwen had braked hard too, skidding into the dirt beside the driveway in order to stop in time. She shoved at her door and leaped out of the car. Her door slammed behind her. “What are you doing?” she demanded, her hands on her hips and her chin pointed at the pair of us.
Dafydd had his hands up in the air, defensively. “We thought you’d gone!”
“You
thought I’d gone,” she said. “You think so little of me that you assumed I would leave without saying goodbye!”
“There was no note!” Dafydd tried again.
“And you!” Bronwen turned on me, coming around to my side of the car and poking her finger at my chest through the open window. “What did you think?”
“You hadn’t given me an answer,” I said. “I didn’t know what to think, but when my lord said that he’d spoken with you last night . . .”
Bronwen interrupted me. “Your lord,” and the way she said it was not complementary, “tried to convince me not to come with you. That I didn’t love you. Well—” She put her hands on either side of my face, ducked her head into the car, and kissed me hard. “So there,” she said. I put my hands on her shoulders and pulled her closer. David cleared his throat. We released each other, and we all laughed.
“Where did you go?” Dafydd asked.
“Elisa was out of coffee,” Bronwen said. “If you can bring all those papers with you, I can bring coffee.” She stalked back to her car, bent in through the open door and brought out a cup and a small brown sack. “See,” she said.
“We almost left without you,” Dafydd said.
“I got lost,” Bronwen said, putting the coffee back in her car. “These roads are confusing.”
“Yeah, no kidding,” David said, under his breath. He looked at me. “Are you ready for this?”
“Is Bronwen going to drive?” I asked.
“You!” Bronwen stood impatiently by Dafydd’s door. She pointed at him. “Out!”
“Yes, madam,” my lord said, and opened his door.
She climbed into his seat and worked the gear shift, much more agilely than Dafydd had. Satisfied, she started the car, looked at me, grinning, and backed the car down the driveway to Aunt Elisa’s door.
“Get your stuff,” she said as she reached for the door handle. “I want to put my stash of coffee in the backpack.”
“Wait,” I said, and reached for her. I caught the back of her neck and pulled her to me for another kiss. I could have sat like that all day, but Dafydd opened the door to the rear seat.
“Let’s go, love-birds,” he said. “Aunt Elisa filled her tank for the drive, Bronwen. How about yours?”
“Just now,” she said, and tugged away from me. “You, sir, look entirely too pleased with yourself.”
I hadn’t let go of her and now pulled on her thick braid that fell half-way down her back. “That would be because I am,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen
Bronwen
As I climbed into the front seat of my car, my stomach had that unsettled, excited-sick feeling that I often got before a test or, when I was younger, before the airplane taking us to another country took off. This is impulsive. This is crazy. This is absolutely right. And yet, I hadn’t been impulsive as all that—I’d left letters for Elisa to mail to my family and friends if we didn’t come back, though not ones, of course, that told the whole truth.
David had trudged back and forth from Aunt Elisa’s car to mine with their things, before plopping himself into the front seat. Ieuan was in the back. David looked over at me. “Shoot,” he said.
“What?”
“I wasn’t prepared for you to come with us. You’re not dressed right.”
I inspected my clothes. I wore jeans, a t-shirt, and a cardigan; the very same clothes I’d worn the day before, as a matter of fact. David turned to Ieuan who’d already popped the top of a bottle of one of those fancy brands of root beer that Aunt Elisa had given him, and was taking a sip. “We’re going to have to find her a dress,” he said.
Ieuan swallowed. “I like her the way she is,” he said.
“Ieuan,” David admonished. “Be reasonable.”
Ieuan laughed. “We’ve been here long enough for you to forget who you are? She’s no different in this from your sister and your mother. After witnessing their arrival, is anyone going to think ill of my beloved?”
His beloved. I looked at him in the rear view mirror. He winked.
David turned back to the front and buckled his seat belt. “Okay, fine. Let’s go.”
Shaking my head at my crazy men, I started the car. I pulled out of the driveway, turned right as David indicated, and started driving. After a few minutes he stopped giving directions and just sat, his arms folded across his chest, looking out the window. I drove and drove, up one winding road and down another. Except for the slurping, Ieuan was silent in the back seat. Every time I reached a more populated area, or one of the main streets through the Main Line, David had me turn around and go back the way I’d come.
Finally, after forty-five minutes of this, I pulled to the side of the road. “What exactly are you looking for?” I asked.
“I don’t really know,” he said. He ran his hand through his hair. “It’s been nearly three years and it was snowing. The terrain looks completely different today. The trees have leaves and the roads are lined with flowers instead of snow. How far are we from my aunt’s house?”
“A couple of miles,” I said. “I’m not really sure.”
“Good. Just keep driving.”
Fine. He’s an escapee from an insane asylum and I’m just as bad for humoring him. I started the car again and pulled into my lane. I went up one hill, down another, up again and was just heading down another, following it as it curved to the left, when David tensed and leaned forward, anticipating something that he saw but I didn’t.
“What?” I asked.
He didn’t answer. We took the curve at a higher rate of speed than I normally might, and I braked, before straightening once we were on the other side of the hill. David turned in his seat to look behind us.
“Pull over and turn around,” he said.
I did as he asked, driving through someone’s circular driveway before heading back the way we’d come. We drove back up the hill and when I was a hundred feet past it, straightening the wheel, David asked me to turn around again.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“I’m trying to figure it out,” David said, without really explaining. “Pull over again.”
I did so, about fifty feet from the curve, and he got out of the car. David walked away from us and stood at the corner, on the right side of the road, looking ahead to the part of the road I couldn’t see. He stood, watching who knew what, while four cars passed us.
Then, all of a sudden, he turned and came running toward us. “Start the car, Bronwen!” he said. “Let’s go!”
I was already accelerating forward as David threw himself into his seat. As before, we crested the small rise and were taking the downhill curve to the left when a large truck came lumbering up the hill in our direction. David leaned over to grip the wheel. He turned it hard into the truck and then pulled it back just before we hit it.
“Are you insane?” I screamed, slamming on the brake and wrenching the wheel from him. In doing so, I overcorrected. In five seconds we went from perfectly safe and normal to totaled. I skidded sideways into the truck. And then through it.
A black gaping maw encompassed us. “Hang on!” David said.
In a moment we were bumping and jerking over a grassy field near a small stand of trees. A turf wall loomed ahead and I managed to twist the wheel hard to the right so as to avoid hitting it. We stopped.
David reached over and turned off the engine. “Excellent,” he said. He looked back at Ieuan who was sprawled in the back seat, his long arms stretched from door to door to hold himself steady. “Except for the fact that I don’t know where we are. This isn’t where I thought we should end up.”
“That was quite invigorating, my lord,” Ieuan said. And then to me. “You are not injured, cariad?”
I shook my head but couldn’t speak. I was listening to my heart beat, feeling the car settle, breathing the sweet air coming up from the meadow through the open window. The grass was green and still dew-covered, with a foggy layer near the ground. Trees shimmered in the distanc
e, with mountains beyond. Birds sang, accepting our existence.
I wrapped my arms around my waist and leaned forward, my eyes closed, almost in tears. The doors opened on either side of me and a second later, Ieuan had replaced David. He leaned towards me across the gear shift, wrapped his left arm around my shoulders, and pulled my head into his chest. I tried to breathe deeply. “You told me the truth,” I said, stunned. He was from the thirteenth century. I am in the thirteenth century.
“He did,” David said from his post on the other side of the driver’s side door. “I’ve lived with lies all the years I’ve been in Wales. For better or for worse, we told you the truth. I thought you believed us.”
He strode away from me, clearly angry. Ieuan brought my chin back around with his hand to look at him. “Don’t worry about him,” he said. “He carries the weight of the world on his shoulders and sometimes feels too alone. I think, in a sense, he was as lost in your world as I was, more so perhaps, because he thought he should understand it.”
Together we gazed at David, who stood on the turf wall, staring over the meadow. Ieuan spoke again. “When I asked you to marry me, you didn’t think I was serious, did you?”
Was he right, after all? Was David? I looked down at my hands.
“So, now do you say ‘yes?’” he asked.
Did I? How could I know? “Yes,” I said.
Ieuan flashed me that fabulous grin and squeezed my shoulders. “Good, because the tide has turned. You’re in my world and we have a journey ahead of us. You are going to have to trust me.”
* * * * *
We got out of the car. “Where are we?” I asked.
“In England, it looks like,” Ieuan said. He climbed onto the turf wall to stand beside David.
Prince of Time (Book Two in the After Cilmeri series) Page 12