Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  Cassie tried to calculate how long the phone had been on. Their actual conversation with Smythe and Lady Jane had stayed within the required two minute time frame, but that didn’t mean Smythe wouldn’t have had Jones punch up the specifications of Callum’s phone and turn on the GPS remotely as soon as they hung up.

  “How about you get the two men who are not David to open the door, and I go through it?” Callum said.

  “That was the sum of my plan.” Cassie eyed him. “You realize that Lady Jane does trust you, or she wouldn’t have left you with your gun.”

  “That’s a nice thought. Perhaps it was on her orders that nobody patted me down. I’m not sure what’s going on except that if we wait until the Security Service arrives in force, David’s chances of getting out of this alive decrease significantly.”

  “You really think agents would come in here guns blazing?” Cassie said.

  “I don’t know what to think,” Callum said.

  Not for the first time, he showed Cassie his underlying self-confidence. He could admit how much he didn’t know and yet push through this problem anyway. He wasn’t hampered by fear or indecision. He thought he knew what they had to do, and by God, they were going to do it.

  “We’ve come a long way since rescuing Samuel and James Stewart at that fort in Scotland,” Cassie said.

  Callum gave a snort of laughter. “We did all right then. We can do this now, and this time we don’t have a horde of angry Highlanders after us.” He looked down at his gun. “That was the last time I held this gun with the intent to use it if I had to.”

  “Let’s hope you don’t have to.”

  “Very little of what has happened so far makes sense to me, Natasha’s defection—if that’s what it is—being at the top of the list.”

  Cassie unwound her hair from the bun at the back of her head and let the long braid fall over her left shoulder. Then she pulled out the mop, dry as it was, and began sweeping it around the floor in front of the apartment door. Callum pressed himself flat against the wall to the left of the door, on the opposite side from the handle.

  After a quick intake of breath for courage, Cassie bumped the handle of the mop into the door and then a few seconds later did it again, this time making it scrape along the wood a little longer. Footfalls came from the apartment, but the door didn’t open. Cassie passed the mop along the floor, scraping the door a third time, and then a fourth.

  The door opened abruptly, and Cassie straightened. She had made sure she was more to the right than the left of the door, so whoever opened it would look towards her and not to Callum. When the man opened the door, his mouth was agape, as if he was ready to curse her out—or whomever he found scraping at his door—but at the sight of Cassie, his teeth snapped together.

  Until Callum, she’d never thought of herself as beautiful—certainly not enough to stop a man in his tracks—but the man who faced her was so struck by her appearance that he didn’t speak. She gave him a shy smile.

  “Who is it?” Someone spoke from behind the first man, who turned his head to talk to his partner. “It’s just the maid—”

  Callum shoved his left shoulder into the door, knocking it from the man’s hand. The next second, he snapped his right elbow into the man’s throat. He staggered backwards, his hands coming up to his neck and his face a rictus of agony. The man’s calves banged into the couch behind him and, because he was still unbalanced, he fell sideways and cracked his head against the side wall of the room.

  Callum didn’t wait to see any of that. He continued through the door, which flew inward and slammed against the wall to the left. Callum’s gun was steady in his hand and pointed at the second man, who had the sense to put up his hands.

  “Step away from the stretcher,” Callum said.

  Cassie’s eyes flicked from Callum to the fallen man, who moaned and curled into a fetal position. She moved into the doorway, the handle of her mop at the ready. If he tried to get up, she would whack him.

  “You don’t want to do this, son,” the man by David’s stretcher said in an American accent.

  “I really think I do,” Callum said. “Cassie, help David.”

  Cassie abandoned her vigil, leaving the mop and bucket just inside the doorway. She sidled behind and around Callum, so she wouldn’t get in the way of his line of sight, and went to where David lay.

  “He’s alive,” the man said.

  “He’d better be.” Cassie leaned over David, patting his cheek and speaking softly to him about how he was going to be fine. After a few seconds, David took in a deep breath and then coughed. He tried to turn onto his side, gasping a bit at the effort, and she shushed him, though that cough was the nicest sound she’d ever heard. “It’s okay. It’s me.”

  David hadn’t really opened his eyes until that moment, and now they widened in recognition. “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey yourself. We’ve come to get you out of here.”

  “That’d be nice.” David’s words came out slurred.

  Cassie looked more closely into his eyes: his pupils were very dilated. The IV drip was almost completely full, so whatever it was, it hadn’t taken much to put him out. Cassie had never turned off one before, but there was a little dial on the tube that led to David’s arm and she turned it.

  “What did you give him?” Callum said.

  The man’s chin jutted out, and he didn’t answer.

  “Tell me,” Callum said.

  “Or what? You’ll shoot me?” the man said. “Then you’ll get no answers.”

  “Don’t push me,” Callum said.

  “He can shoot you in the leg,” Cassie said. “Your mouth would still work.”

  “Get him out of here, Cassie,” Callum said.

  She got behind the stretcher and pushed David towards the door, out it, and down the corridor, aiming for the exit door through which the men had brought David an hour earlier. As she reached it, Anders met her.

  “Thank you,” she said.

  He helped her lift the stretcher over the threshold and into the parking lot. A chill wind greeted her, reminding Cassie that she’d left the windbreaker in the maintenance closet. More days like this and she’d have clothing scattered all over Cardiff.

  “Where are you going with him?” Anders said.

  Cassie pointed to the SUV, still parked on the street. She couldn’t remember if Callum had left the doors unlocked, but it didn’t matter because by the time she and Anders got David across the street, Callum was hurrying out of the apartment building, still with his gun in his hand. He unlocked the SUV from across the street. Apparently, he had a button for that on his mobile too.

  Cassie opened the rear door and crawled inside in order to put down all the seats but the front ones. While she worked, Anders and Callum dropped the height of the stretcher to a few inches above the ground so it would fit inside the vehicle. Then Cassie slid out to allow the men to lift David into the back.

  When David was securely inside, Callum got in the driver’s side. He started the engine, and Cassie turned to Anders. “Thank you, again.”

  “Always happy to help the Security Service,” he said, but as he turned to leave, he hesitated. “You know, though. I’m pretty sure the bloke who rented the flat was one of you.”

  “Why would you think that?” Cassie said.

  Anders looked a little sheepish. “He took a stack of pound notes out of his wallet to pay the rent but then dropped his keys. When he bent to pick them up, I took a closer look at his wallet and saw that he had an ID like his underneath.” Anders pointed to Callum, who had turned around to look at them from the driver’s seat.

  “What was that?” Callum put a hand to his ear.

  Cassie flapped a hand at her husband. “Just a sec.”

  Cassie didn’t ask Anders if he’d taken a few more bills from the man’s wallet too and instead said, “But you didn’t see who he worked for?”

  “Sorry,” Anders said. “I didn’t have time.”

&n
bsp; Cassie nodded at the apartment manager. “Thanks for the information—and the help.”

  “No problem. I never liked that bloke anyway.”

  Cassie climbed in after the stretcher and Anders shut the rear door. After another wave, he crossed the street and returned to the apartment building. Thinking about the mess he had to clean up, she stuck her head out the window. “You might call the police, just to cover yourself.”

  Anders shot her a grin and waved a hand in acknowledgement.

  Cassie crouched by David’s head. “Do you hurt anywhere?”

  David was struggling to wake; he rolled his head from side to side but didn’t seem to have the wherewithal to answer properly.

  Callum looked at them through the rearview mirror. “You two okay back here?”

  “I guess,” Cassie said.

  While they’d been inside, the daylight had faded, and though it wasn’t yet fully dark, evening had arrived, along with a few scattered drops of rain. Callum allowed several cars to pass him before pulling into the street heading east. The rain began to pick up, and he turned on the windshield wipers and the headlights.

  “I’m really glad you came.” David’s eyes were open, and he struggled to push up onto his elbows. Cassie shushed him and forced him to lie back down.

  “Did you find out what they gave him?” Cassie said to Callum. His hands were clenched around the steering wheel, and he was driving faster than the weather and the streets might normally allow.

  “A cocktail of pain killers and something to get him to talk,” Callum said. “He wouldn’t tell me anything else without more effort on my part, and I was in a hurry to get back to you.”

  “What did you do to him?” Cassie said.

  “I didn’t kill him if that’s what you’re asking.” Callum gave her a quick glance over his shoulder to let her know he was joking and that he didn’t believe she would think that.

  Cassie just shook her head at him.

  “If you must know, I duct taped them both with a roll they’d kept handy for use on David and phoned the police.” Callum held up his cell phone. “But not before I took their photos. If they’re in the system, facial recognition software should get us an ID.”

  “Anders thought one of them was MI-5,” she said, “though that wouldn’t account for him being an American.”

  “They did look ex-military,” Callum said.

  “What’d I tell you?” David threw an arm across his eyes and Cassie wondered if the bit of light coming through the windows hurt them. “If you think someone’s out to get you, you’re paranoid only if it turns out not to be true.”

  Cassie smiled. For the first time since they arrived in the twenty-first century, his mind and hers were working along the same lines. “I’m pretty sure, in this case, paranoia is our only hope.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  September, 1289

  Lili

  From the entrance to the castle on the northeastern end of Windsor town, it was a matter of three hundred yards to the gatehouse where the King’s Road ended at the city gate, and an equal distance to the town end of the bridge across the Thames River. Messengers, young boys and girls mostly, scurried back and forth from gate to bridge to castle and all around the city in a near constant stream, keeping Math updated on the status of the defense and what was coming against them. Lili had heard men say that watching the lower lands outside the moat fill up with enemy soldiers as darkness descended upon the castle and town was more terrifying than fighting an actual battle, and she had to agree.

  Lili remembered her first fight at the battle of Painscastle; it was the same day she’d admitted to herself that she was head over heels in love with Dafydd. She’d stood with the other archers to shoot, and shoot, and shoot again. Tonight she hadn’t even nocked an arrow and she was already tired. Math had sent her away twice to see to Arthur, but she had refused his entreaties not to return. As Math had confessed, he needed her—maybe not more than Arthur did, but Arthur could do without her for a time tonight more easily than Math.

  “Keep your heads down.” The command came from below. “We don’t want that bastard to know how many we are.”

  Lili smiled to hear Bevyn’s gravelly voice. He had come with Math to Windsor to confer with Dafydd, though Lili thought the real reason was to check up on her husband and make sure he was still the same boy he’d taken under his wing nearly seven years ago. Bevyn had been disappointed to find Dafydd gone—and in particular, gone to Ireland—without him. Bevyn had made do with a few days’ consultation with Math and Ieuan about the state of England’s defenses, staying longer than he perhaps needed to. He had been planning on departing for his home on Anglesey tomorrow. Nobody was sorry tonight that he was among them.

  Now he stomped up the steps to the top of the wall and crouched beside Lili, before taking a moment to peer between two of the battlement’s merlons at the darkness below them. It was so quiet Lili could hear the lap of the Thames against the wharf.

  “How are you, lass?”

  “I’m well,” Lili said.

  “Is Dafydd going to have my head for letting you fight?”

  “I thought it was Math’s head he was going to have,” Lili said.

  “Mine’s a little lower to the ground.” Bevyn chuckled, the sound coming low and melodious. “I’d fall on my sword for you if need be.”

  Lili patted his arm. “I love you too.”

  Oddly, Roger Bacon had been instrumental in developing the plan they were following: to remove the torches from the walls all around the town and let no man poke his head above the top of the battlement. The idea was to lure Valence’s men closer than they might have come otherwise, and to convince them not so much that Windsor was undefended, but that it was poorly defended. If Valence couldn’t calculate their numbers, he would have a harder time deciding where to strike.

  “Lights or no lights, someone will have told Valence by now that Dafydd isn’t here,” she said.

  “Valence came here to challenge your husband. That I believe absolutely. Dafydd’s absence will increase Valence’s confidence, and his well-established prejudices will tell him that Dafydd’s rule is incompetent and that he has succeeded up until now out of pure luck,” Bevyn said. “Lord Math intends to do nothing to dissuade Valence of his opinion, right up until he is proved otherwise.”

  “I hear something!” The message was passed down the wall-walk from one man to the next. The archer on the other side of her, a man named Hywel, wiped the sweat from his brow. Lili could just make out his expression in the faint glow of the torch that lit the street below them. He looked at her, and they both nodded, finding courage in their camaraderie.

  Lili listened hard, brushing the baby hairs that had come loose from her braid out of her eyes and peeking over the wall with Bevyn. They stood on the north rampart, overlooking the bridge across the Thames River. To the south, on the opposite side of the town, a hundred camp fires lit up the farmland. Valence was making a big show of numbers on the south and east side of Windsor, but where Lili and Bevyn looked remained dark.

  Half of the archers were posted here, Lili among them. Their job was to defend the bridge. They all hoped that the first assault would be on the other gatehouse. The host of men posted there had every intention of throwing Valence’s army back. But everyone knew by now that Valence was tricky. At times like this, silence was louder than marching feet. It wasn’t to be trusted.

  “There!” Lili pointed and then quickly dropped her hand and her body below the level of the crenel.

  “My eyes aren’t what they once were,” Bevyn said. “What do you see?”

  “Shadows move along the road.” Lili wished for the binoculars, but Math had them at the main gate. She squinted into the darkness, pulling at the corners of her eyes to expand her vision. “I can’t make them out well and strangely, I can’t hear them.”

  “Valence wouldn’t be the first commander to muffle the feet of his horses and men.” Bevyn cat-walked
to the town side of the wall-walk and waved a hand at an approaching messenger, a girl not yet grown into womanhood. “Tell Lord Math that he was right. Valence comes at us from the north as well as the south. We can’t yet say as to his numbers.” The girl nodded to indicate she understood and departed at a run.

  Bevyn patted Lili’s shoulder. “I have men to see to. Wait for my signal.” He disappeared into the darkness under the wall-walk, heading towards the gatehouse that guarded the bridge.

  The idea that Valence had left the London road dark to lure them to send out their women and children—possibly Lili herself—in a lightly defended force was one that Lili had immediately accepted, but she was still a little stunned that it had been proved true. If she had fled as Roger Bacon suggested, Valence would have captured her, and the war would have been over before it started. Dafydd, or Math in Dafydd’s name, would have agreed to anything, promised anything, to get Lili and Arthur back.

  Would Dafydd really have given up the kingship? That she couldn’t say, and in truth, it wasn’t his to relinquish. The people had chosen him to rule them, which appeared to be something Valence had yet to comprehend. Some of these Normans had spent so long dominating the Saxons they’d conquered that they’d forgotten how to rule by anything other than force, if they’d ever known it.

  Lili huddled behind a merlon near the other archers, every so often peering around it to see what was happening beyond the walls. Directly below her lay a cleared space in front of the gatehouse, and then the wooden bridge across the Thames. Over fifty-feet in length, it was made of wood and easily wide enough for a cart to cross, though not for two to pass side-by-side.

  “Waiting is hard,” she said to nobody in particular.