Unbroken in Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  While Peter drifted towards one of the fire circles, Callum hovered around the back of the wagon, studying the sleeping form of a man who’d set his bedding under it, as an effective protection from the rain. He could even have been the self-same gunner.

  Deciding he’d come too far to turn back now, Callum gently separated the tarp that formed a kind of door for the bed of the wagon, pulled his penlight from his pocket, and shined the light over the LMG. Loaded, but without extra ammunition, it weighed twelve pounds.

  When they caught him, George deserved any punishment David felt like meting out. But Callum could be grateful that its light weight meant he could take it with him. It also explained how George had managed to smuggle it onto the plane—probably in a duffel bag.

  Deciding there was no time like the present, Callum simply leaned into the bed and lifted out the LMG. A dozen thudding heartbeats later, he had it clutched to his chest under his cloak, which he wrapped tightly around himself, and was walking purposefully away from the wagon in the direction of the city of Angoulême, every second fearing a crossbow bolt would land between his shoulder blades. He was wearing Kevlar underneath his armor, so being shot wouldn’t kill him, but depending upon how far away the crossbowman was, a bolt might break a rib and/or throw him forward onto his face.

  No shot came.

  He passed the spot where the guard he’d subdued was huddled on the ground, holding his head. He didn’t even look up as Callum broke into a loping run and blew by him without a backwards glance. Within another twenty yards, Callum leapt a stone wall and kept going.

  At that point a final French guard rose out of the grass, pike in hand, and blocked Callum’s way. A glint off the metal head was all the warning Callum had, but it gave him a half-second notice to move to his right to evade a first blow. Unfortunately, his foot caught in a hole as he did so and he stumbled. Since he was going down anyway, he lowered his shoulder and turned the fall into a roll.

  He didn’t come up quite as gracefully as he might have a few years ago, but the grass was rain-saturated and soft, so he didn’t hurt himself, and he managed to hold onto the LMG, gripping it in both hands in time to parry another thrust from the guardsman.

  Initially, Callum had barely been able to see him in the dark, but from his new position on the ground, the guard was a clearly-outlined shape above him. Having knocked away the tip of the pike, Callum surged upward, driving his shoulder into the man’s stomach like an American football tackle, which brought the guardsman flopping on his back in the grass. Callum stayed on top, reared back, and drove the butt of the LMG he still held into the man’s forehead. The guard’s head flopped to the side. By this point, two of Callum’s own men from Angoulême, who’d been looking for his return, had leapt the wall that marked the other edge of the field and raced towards him. “My lord! Are you all right?”

  “I’m fine.” Callum rose to his feet, hoping his hands were shaking from the effort rather than fear. “Bring him.”

  They gathered up the enemy scout and hustled with him back over the wall and then another fifty yards to the road that would take them to Martin’s Gate and Angoulême.

  As they reached the next sentries, Callum turned to look back the way he’d come. “Binoculars.” He held out a hand.

  The sentry relinquished his pair in exchange for the LMG, which he clutched to his chest, much as Callum had done during his mad dash to safety.

  Callum trained the binoculars on the wagon first, finding it undisturbed. Cassie and Peter were nowhere in sight, and the camp itself was otherwise silent.

  He handed the binoculars to the sentry and took back the LMG. “Send word if there’s any movement in this direction.”

  “Yes, my lord!”

  Callum set off at a trot for the main gate. By the time he reached it, Cassie and Peter were coming through it from the other side, having returned to the city through the tunnel.

  Wordlessly, Callum handed off the LMG to Peter, who gaped at it for a moment before setting off for the keep, holding the weapon to him like one accustomed to its use. Meanwhile, Cassie and Callum climbed the stairway to the battlements once again.

  Hugh met them there, an uncharacteristic smile on his face. “All is quiet. They appear to know nothing of what we’ve done.” He brandished a triumphant fist at the enemy lines.

  “I don’t think we should celebrate quite yet,” Callum took what felt like a full breath for the first time in hours, “but, I agree, so far so good.”

  Chapter Nineteen

  Day Two

  Lili

  “You aren’t asleep.”

  “Apparently you aren’t either. What’s going on?” Lili had been facing away from Dafydd, trying not to move in case she woke him, but now she rolled all the way over and tucked her hand under his shoulder as he lay flat on his back staring up at the ceiling.

  He laughed softly. “You first.”

  “I’ve been thinking about poor Joana and the boys. Her heartache must be immense.”

  Dafydd turned his head, and she knew he was smiling by the flash of his teeth, which was all she could see of him, beyond his profile, in the darkened room. Then he raised his arm so she could move closer and put her head on his chest.

  “I love your soft heart, and the way you empathize with everyone, even those who oppose us.”

  “I don’t think Joana opposes us. I imagine all she wants is her family back together.”

  Dafydd sighed. “Unfortunately, that isn’t something she can ever have.”

  “But she can have her husband. And she has boys who need a father.”

  He nodded. “I was actually thinking about how to get you and our boys out of the city.”

  Lili snuggled closer, content now that he was talking. “Straight out the Templars’ tunnel seems like one reasonable idea.”

  “Yes, but who might be watching for two women and four children?” He made a grunting sound she could hear all the way down in his chest. “I don’t know what else George might have told Nogaret, and I fear exposing you.”

  Lili lifted her head and rested her chin on her hand, looking into his face. “What do we know about George?”

  He shifted sideways so they could face each other. “Not enough.”

  “Christopher was right you didn’t seem surprised at what he’d done.”

  “No.”

  Her eyes narrowed, though he couldn’t see her expression, since her back was to the window. “I knew you didn’t trust him. You told me that a long time ago. But you never told me what put you on to him in the first place.”

  “It was you, actually.”

  “Me? What did I do?”

  “You didn’t like him.”

  “True.” Lili bit her lip. “He struck me as a bit too good to be true. And he was a bit too dismissive of any of us women.”

  “A good reason not to like him.” Dafydd settled again on his back, now having flung one arm above his head.

  “So that’s it? I didn’t like him, so you distrusted him?”

  “You have good instincts.”

  When Lili didn’t immediately reply, Dafydd turned his head again to look at her. “I didn’t want to talk about it to anyone at first—not to you, not to Callum. But as I spent more time with George in the first months after he arrived, I began to notice unexplained absences and irregularities in his behavior that concerned me.

  “It was you, again, who wondered out loud what he was up to one day. You’d discovered he was missing from the castle we were staying in because you’d overheard a maid saying she hadn’t needed to make up his bed.”

  “That was at Windsor,” Lili said. “I asked him about it as casually as I could, and he claimed to have been with a woman.”

  Dafydd snorted. “Women like him, for some reason.”

  “Some women like him.”

  “Livia never did either,” Dafydd said. “I asked her and Michael not to speak about their concerns because I didn’t want George to know any of us
suspected him of being something other than what he was—an Avalonian, an employee of Chad Treadman, and a friend.”

  “So you sent him away.” She nodded, finally understanding.

  “I had to give him something important to do. Sending George off on his own was a huge risk, but it also kept him away from our family. Unfortunately, that meant sacrificing my hopes for luring Marco Polo to England.”

  Lili knew all about Marco Polo, though it was yet another piece of history that seemed preposterous on the surface. Polo had recently returned from a twenty-four-year journey to China and back and was currently seeking alliances in Venice’s war against Genoa. To that end, rumor had it the Venetians were sending a delegation to France.

  Even without the presence of Marco Polo, the Venetian delegation would have been significant in its own right. Given that Venice was a seafaring state, an alliance with France could not only upset the balance of power currently being maintained between England’s and France’s navies, but give France the ability to harry Britain’s ports—not to mention expand its trade routes into Asia all the way to China.

  The idea of trading with far distant lands wasn’t unprecedented either. Earlier in the decade, King Philippe had been in talks with the Mongol ruler in Baghdad about a Mongol-French alliance against the Mamluks, which could have ultimately resulted in the return of Christian rule to Jerusalem. In the end, however, those talks hadn’t come to anything, not even expanded trade.

  George’s assignment had been to find the delegation before it left Venice and convince Marco Polo—and maybe everyone with him—that their destiny lay not with France or with the current war between Genoa and Venice, but with England. And maybe to suggest that an expedition to the New World that Dafydd knew was there, financed by England’s deep pockets, should be his next adventure. That idea had inherent problems, of course, but since the Vikings had already gone as far as Newfoundland, and more would follow, David wanted to get in on the ground floor rather than leaving others to decide how things were going to go.

  “I thought the task would keep George occupied for the amount of time it took us to accomplish what needed to happen in Paris,” Dafydd said.

  “We haven’t heard from him since our meeting at Dover, have we?”

  “Nope, not since May when he sent word through a courier that Marco Polo wasn’t in Venice.”

  Lili harrumphed. “That was three months ago.”

  “I am well aware. At this point, I don’t even know if George ever went to Italy. It’s possible George told Nogaret about the search and why it was important—and the French are looking for Marco Polo too.”

  “What about the fact that George worked for Chad Treadman?” Lili asked. “Does it make you distrust Chad now too?”

  “If Chad suspected George was in cahoots with a spy agency or was working with him, he wouldn’t have told me about the CIA’s plan to abduct one of the children.”

  “Cahoots.” Lili couldn’t lie still anymore, and she sat up in bed, swung her legs over the side, and walked to the window to look out. “You know the strangest words.”

  They were high up in the keep, only one level from the top, in the suite used by Jacques de Molay when he visited Paris. The children were in an adjacent room. She’d checked on them three times already tonight. She didn’t know how long it would be before she could bear to have them beyond arm’s length.

  “I also know you aren’t telling me everything.”

  “Well, I don’t really know anything more. Callum and I decided the risks we were taking were too great to go against our guts—or yours, for that matter. We needed to marginalize George. If George proved false, the consequences were terrifying.”

  “Thus, the mission to find Marco Polo.”

  “Yes. I knew at the time I was guessing. I’m not happy my guesses turned out to be correct. If I’d been wrong, I would have hurt an innocent man, and that’s why I didn’t want to talk about it, even to you, beyond the basics. I didn’t want George treated differently. While Christopher has turned into an exceptional officer, sometimes he has an instinctive response he can’t hide. William too, though he’s learned to affect an admirable poker face when he needs to. But Robbie or John Jr.? Even with their terrible fathers, they never met an emotion they didn’t show. We needed George to act, not run.”

  She swung around to look at him. “Does Andre know of your suspicions?”

  “He does. At this point, I trust Andre as much as any of the Avalonians, and I told him so.” David sat up too and came to the window. “Even then, I didn’t bring him into Paris.”

  “Somebody needed to babysit the plane, though I wish now we hadn’t brought it.”

  Dafydd let out a breath. “We need it.”

  Lili drew in a long breath herself. Her husband had arrived in Wales at fourteen, a man in her people’s eyes but not in his own. In the following years, he’d grown up under some of the most rigorous circumstances and training it was possible to experience. She’d traveled much of that road with him, and still, there were parts of his mind she had no way of understanding.

  But she knew his heart and, furthermore, knew that she and their sons were embedded in the core of his being. “I know how we can escape Paris.”

  Dafydd looked down at her, his expression questioning. The rain had stopped and the clouds were clearing enough to see his face fully by the light from the heavens.

  “That was why you couldn’t sleep, wasn’t it?”

  He laughed. “By your tone, you think I’m not going to like it.”

  Now that she thought about it, his mood had been almost jovial since she’d wrapped her arms around his waist as they stood at the prow of the boat yesterday, watching Paris come closer. Somehow, now that they were in the midst of what they’d planned for so long, he was almost carefree.

  “Just tell me.”

  “We should dress as Jews and mingle with everyone else as they leave the city. We could even wear those loathsome yellow badges. Nobody will give us a second thought.”

  “That could work.” Dafydd rubbed his face with both hands. “I just wish it wasn’t such a long way down the Seine to Rouen. If I had a car, I could get you to the English Channel in three hours. The plane would be even better, though, at this point, it’s too dangerous to go near it in case George has found it and is watching.”

  “So we’re stuck with boats, horses, and feet.”

  “Don’t I know it.” He actually chuckled as he turned her back towards the bed. “So you’ll sail or ride for as long as necessary. At least you will have many able companions going with you. We do what we can with what we’ve been given.”

  “As we always do.” She snuggled down next to him.

  It wasn’t until she was almost asleep—and Dafydd was breathing in a gentle way that was almost a snore that told her he was finally asleep—that she remembered his choice of words and came sharply awake. He’d said you’ll sail or ride, not we’ll sail or ride. She glared at him, even though he couldn’t see her expression, and said, “If I’m going down the Seine without you, my love, what exactly are you going to be doing?”

  He was too deeply asleep to hear her, however, and by the time she awoke, long after the sun had risen, and remembered her question, he was gone.

  Chapter Twenty

  Day Two

  Philippe

  Philippe found himself awake at a far earlier hour than he would have preferred, given the events of the night. Many times during the last weeks, he’d wanted to bury his head in his pillow rather than rising. He would have done it this morning too if so much hadn’t been depending on his ability to prevaricate. He’d come to learn, for better or for worse, that he was quite good at it.

  This morning found him standing before a full glass mirror, admiring the cut and stitching of his new blue robe. At least in his compliments to his tailor he could be sincere.

  Then Nogaret walked in. “Sire, you gave us quite a scare last night when I couldn’t find you. And
here you are now, up so early.”

  Philippe raised his eyebrows without turning around, assuming Nogaret could see his face in the mirror. “Do I hear criticism in your voice?”

  “No, sire. I wouldn’t dream of it.” Nogaret bowed deeply.

  The façade that implied Philippe remained in charge of his own life had to be maintained. It appeared to suit Nogaret too, in that he always put forth the persona of adviser, rather than revealing himself to anyone—even Philippe—as the power behind the throne. It was a fine line they walked, pretending that Philippe still had control over his own kingdom, but at the same time knowing within themselves that he did not. Even in private, they were unwilling to pierce the veil of deception. This reluctance was, in fact, what had allowed Philippe to free David in the first place. As long as he pretended he didn’t know what his advisers were up to, he could get away with quite a lot.

  Thus, whether or not Nogaret was scared should be of no concern whatsoever to the King of France, so Philippe continued to walk the line between haughty and accommodating. “I appreciate all you’ve done for me, Nogaret. Just the fact that you saved me from a humiliating situation with my wife deserves many thanks. But a man has the right to his private moments without anyone looking in on him.”

  “My apologies, sire. I never meant to impose, but when I looked for you in your private quarters, you weren’t there, and I felt I must widen the search.”

  Philippe bent his gaze on his adviser. “What did I just say?”

  Nogaret blinked, as it took him a moment to realize what Philippe was telling him. Even then, he didn’t entirely give way. “For future reference, may I ask if the latrine I found you in is the one you think you might retreat to if similar conditions were to arise again?” He put out a hand as Philippe continued to look sternly at him. “Not that I would ever mean to disturb you. I merely would like to be aware of where you are if I can’t find you in any of your usual situations.”