Champions of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

“Who has been in command?” Math said.

  “The only man I’ve seen recently is Roger Lestrange.” FitzWalter paused. “You know of him, of course.”

  “We do.” Callum said.

  Venny leaned into Sophie. “Do you?”

  Sophie nodded, understanding instantly why Beeston hadn’t surrendered even after Roger Mortimer had left. Lestrange was what, in Avalon, would be called a true believer. In Avalon’s history, he’d been at the forefront of the conquest of Wales and had even controlled Dinas Bran for a time after Llywelyn’s death. He had served at King Edward’s pleasure, but had never been granted extensive lands of his own. David had not taken to him, for good reason, and so in his discontent with the new order of things he’d taken up with Roger Mortimer.

  Callum turned to Venny. “When did you last see Lestrange?”

  “Yesterday,” Venny said, “though only from the window of our room. His quarters were in the gatehouse, so perhaps he was there when it blew.”

  Callum pursed his lips. “Once daylight comes, we’ll start to clear the rubble and try to find him.”

  “I see the prisoners weren’t killed.” FitzWalter’s voice held genuine hope, knowing that his fate depended on whether or not they lived. “Those were my instructions, but ...” He couldn’t have looked more miserable.

  Venny took in a breath. “We’re alive and, for the most part, we were treated well.”

  Sophie turned away, unable to bear looking at FitzWalter’s battered face for another second. Then she found herself meeting Hugh Venables’ eyes. He said gently, correctly reading her discomfort, “War is no place for a woman.”

  She gave him a rueful smile. “Really, it isn’t a place for men either.”

  Chapter Twenty-three

  2 April 2022

  David

  By the clock, it was six in the morning. David lay with his eyes open, staring at the ceiling above his head. He had managed to find his bed before midnight, so six hours of sleep was pretty good, considering the events of yesterday. On one hand, there was so much he wanted to do, but on the other, none of it rose to a level of urgency that he wanted to waste the short amount of time he had in Avalon with it.

  He could take a movie home with him, as it turned out. What he couldn’t package up was what being in Avalon felt like.

  Which was why he rolled out of bed and reached for his shoes. He knew one of the triplets, or another clone, would be standing in the hallway beyond his door. Probably more were patrolling outside. He wondered at the cost of all this, and if he should feel guilt about Chad Treadman spending it. Would either of them regret the debt in the end?

  He opened the door.

  Sure enough, a man stood outside it, but it wasn’t one of the triplets or any of Treadman’s other security people. Michael leaned against the wall opposite, his arms folded across his chest and his feet crossed at the ankles.

  “Hi,” David said. “Tell me you slept.”

  Michael gave a single bob of his head. “I did. I just got up.”

  David wanted to believe him. “Okay. What do you think about going for a walk?”

  Michael pushed off the wall. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “Five knows where I am. If I hadn’t invited Livia, they would have followed me. I’m not exactly hiding.”

  “I believe Mr. Treadman is more worried about reporters.”

  “Are there any at the gate?”

  “Not as far as I know.”

  “I need to breathe.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Michael headed down the stairs, and David followed, though instead of turning into the kitchen as Michael did, he moved towards the rear of the house. The farmstead, of which the house was a part, was located some five miles from Bangor. It was farther from the hospital than David might ideally have liked to be, but it had the benefit of being isolated.

  It had terrible sightlines, however. French doors opened onto a garden and woods. There could be any number of reporters hiding amongst the trees, but David clicked the lock and went to stand on the flagstone patio anyway. Slate had been mined in North Wales for a thousand years—as he himself could personally attest—and the rock had been used throughout the house.

  The sun had just risen, and a mist lay over the grass. A wooden split-rail fence separated the back of the yard from the trees beyond. It was chilly in his shirtsleeves without his cloak. He’d collected it from William’s room before he’d left the hospital, but if he was going to wander, he needed a modern coat.

  “Are you thinking to walk to the Middle Ages?”

  It was a voice David didn’t recognize, and he turned to see Chad Treadman himself standing in the doorway. He hadn’t met him yet, but he recognized him from his picture.

  David canted his head. “I wouldn’t leave William.”

  Chad walked towards him and then circled all the way around him, as if inspecting a car on the way to purchasing it. David held out both arms expansively, humoring him—and himself, since he found himself amused. They ended up with Chad standing with his back to the garden and David facing him.

  “What do you see?”

  Chad shook his head. “This was all so theoretical before Anna arrived, and now with you here ...” His voice trailed off.

  David studied him, seeing a brown-haired man in his late thirties, with a thin build as befitting a geek. He wore a black down jacket and black workman’s boots.

  “Would you like to walk with me?” David asked.

  “Walk and talk? Sure.” Chad lifted his chin in a gesture to someone behind David, and David turned to accept the coat and hat Michael offered. A man in a black trench coat stood behind Michael, and he put a hand to his ear, perhaps summoning more help.

  Chad gestured south. “We can follow the farm track.” He set off towards the side of the house, and David followed, having shrugged into his coat and pulled the wool hat down low over his ears. He was nice and anonymous, just the way he liked it.

  Or did he? The thought was enough to give him pause. He wasn’t anonymous in Earth Two anymore, though less because so many people knew what he looked like than because of the entourage he traveled with. He’d journeyed all over England and Wales in the twelve years he’d lived there, but most people wouldn’t know him from Adam. If he was alone, despite being the King of England, he could walk into almost any castle, and nobody would look at him twice. Here, nobody but a very small handful of people had ever spoken to him, but everybody knew what he looked like.

  At first the two men strode along without speaking, and then they found themselves walking side-by-side, each following a rut in the road. “Other than the barbed wire on top of the fence posts, we could be in the Middle Ages,” David said, deciding he could be the one to come up with the conversation opener.

  “I hear you’re facing a war.”

  David let out a laugh at the dispensing of small talk. “Yes.” And he laid out for him how everything had been when he’d left.

  They chugged up a fairly steep, wooded slope and then stopped, and David realized they were amidst the ringworks of an old hill fort. To the north, they could see the Menai Strait and Anglesey beyond it. To the south were the mountains of Snowdonia, though as was often the case, their peaks were hidden by clouds. “William will be released from the hospital this morning. He’ll be tired still, but his wound isn’t life-threatening.”

  David folded his arms across his chest. “That’s what the doctor implied to me. He said William was lucky it was a through and through in that particular spot. Any other location and there could have been heavier bleeding and nerve damage.”

  Chad laughed. “You have the term through and through in Earth Two, do you?”

  “We certainly have through and throughs there. The crossbow was shot in Earth Two, remember? But no, those were the doctor’s words, not mine.”

  Chad sobered, and his eyes scanned the landscape instead of looking at David. “Do you know why only you and your family have th
e ability to travel?”

  “No.”

  Chad turned to look at him, skepticism on his face.

  David spread his hands wide. “Really, I have no idea. We have guesses, that’s all. Even when the Time Travel Initiative was up and running, we had only guesses. I’m not a god, nor a savior. The best suggestion I heard was that my family is like the X-Men: mutants with the ability to shift between worlds and shape that reality around us.”

  “Is that what MI-5 thinks now?”

  “I have no idea what MI-5 thinks,” David said. “Their chasing of Anna feels like a knee-jerk reaction to me. Livia and the D-G implied as much. Like the saying, when all you have is a hammer, everything starts to look like a nail.”

  “You may be right about MI-5, but I know what the CIA want,” Chad said. “They never gave up on the time travel project. Did you know?”

  “Suspected, more like. And again, Livia said as much to me. What do they want?”

  “They want Earth Two to be their emergency bunker.”

  “Excuse me?”

  Chad shook his head, not so much because he was saying no but to sweep away David’s question. “Just like in the movies. Somebody got the idea that if things go too much to hell here, the greatest minds—or rather the ones that can pay for it—can hide out in Earth Two and start over. With their weapons and technology, they could carve out a nice piece of the planet for themselves.”

  David stared at Chad as the implications hit him like a punch to the gut. “Like a Mars colony except in the past?”

  Chad nodded.

  “That can’t happen.” David didn’t even voice the far worse thought of what might happen if another member of his family came here, and how much more vulnerable they would be. Arthur’s sweet face rose before his eyes, and he almost choked on a sudden rage.

  “It can if they keep you locked up and then force you to travel, say, on a giant bus.”

  David turned away to look at the woods, not wanting Chad to see the struggle to control his horror. “Earth Two can’t be accessible to this world. I don’t care what plans the CIA think they have. I would rather be dead than help them.” He turned back to Chad. “I need to go.”

  “I can protect you.”

  “For how long?”

  “For now. On Monday, we’ll find a way to send you home, if that’s what you want.” Then he dropped his chin and said softly. “What do you want, David?”

  David gave a tsk. “To go home.”

  Chad pressed his lips together and didn’t immediately reply.

  David raised his eyebrows. “You think I should want more?”

  “I’m hoping for it.”

  “I’m not the King of England here. It isn’t my place to want anything—other than to be treated like a human being instead of a pawn.”

  Now it was Chad’s turn to scoff. “In this world, that is asking for a lot.”

  David didn’t know how to answer that. He’d been pretty powerless in 2010 as a fourteen-year-old kid, but he’d had every expectation of eventually having the autonomy to choose the life he was going to live. Maybe that was teenage arrogance, but anything else was just despair.

  It turned out that Chad was thinking along those same lines. “You are a beacon of hope to this world. We have screwed it up badly. To know that there’s another world out there, and that we’re not alone ...” his voice trailed off for a moment in an unusual degree of uncertainty. But then he squared his shoulders and added, “And though you haven’t said it outright, you don’t want me having access to that world either. I’ve talked enough with Ted—and with Anna when she came—to see how protective you all are of Earth Two. It kind of proves my point, actually, since you think that if just anybody could come to Earth Two—or heaven forbid, a government could somehow have access to it—they would screw it up.”

  “Yes. I think that.”

  “So do I. That’s my point.”

  David looked at him warily. “What point?”

  “Things are worse here than you know.”

  “I’ve done some reading and some talking to others. Sadly, most of your wounds seem to be self-inflicted, so I don’t see how I can help, the CIA’s plans aside.”

  “Would you help us if you could?”

  The question brought David up short. His impulse was to say, of course, but really, “It depends on what kind of help you’re asking for.”

  Chad nodded. “I’m not asking for what the CIA wants.”

  David snorted. “You wouldn’t get it.”

  “I know.” Chad sounded almost sad. “In the short term, if you could bring back a few things with you next time you come, I—and the whole planet—would be grateful.”

  David’s interest was actually piqued. “What could I possibly have on Earth Two that would help you here?”

  “It gets very little press, deliberately, but have you heard of the Global Seed Vault?”

  “The one in Norway?”

  Chad cackled. “Silly of me to think you didn’t know of it. Yes, that one. Its purpose is to preserve the world’s seeds, before modification and after. What you probably don’t know—and few people do because it might cause a global panic—was that the block containing the bulk of our pre-industrial seeds was flooded by a sudden incursion of rising sea water. All the heirloom seeds were destroyed.”

  David’s eyes narrowed, waiting for the punchline. “That isn’t good, I presume, but there are other storage sites.”

  “The U. S. government stopped funding theirs three years ago. Other countries have done even less well.”

  “But ... you still have strawberries, right?”

  “We do, but they’re genetically modified, either directly or with breeding over time. A modern strawberry has one-third of the nutritional value of a strawberry grown a hundred years ago. Not only has our soil been leached of nutrients, but we’ve bred for beauty, not taste or nutrition.”

  “You do realize I live in Britain, right? It isn’t exactly a haven for fruits and vegetables.”

  “I know that, but I also know that you are resourceful, and you are the King of England. You can get what you want if you want it badly enough. When you come back next, if at all possible, please bring seeds.”

  David was taken aback by his earnestness, but he understood too. Potatoes were transforming the medieval food system in Earth Two, but he wasn’t pleased to learn that their nutritional value might be less than it should be. At the same time, he was grateful to have them at all. 1293 had been a bumper crop; potatoes lasted forever; if that was all they had to eat, he could keep his people alive.

  His mother and Bronwen had been speed reading the (digital) history books Mark had brought back and had told him that 1294 was a year of famine in Britain, brought on by unending rain from midsummer to Christmas. They were late planning for it, but there were still some things they could do to prepare.

  “What seeds do you need?”

  Chad pulled a piece of paper from his shirt pocket. “Will you do it?”

  David took the list. “I will. If at all possible, I will.”

  Chad heaved a sigh of relief.

  “Wow. This really is important to you.” Both the fact that Chad had the list at the ready and the sigh told David that.

  “Oh yeah, David.” Chad started walking back the way they’d come. “You have no idea.”

  And when they arrived back at the house a short while later, David realized Chad hadn’t even mentioned the interview tomorrow night.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  2 April 1294

  Bronwen

  “Thank you for coming.” Bronwen stood as Bevyn ushered Margaret, Thomas’s sister, into the solar. Having left immediately after Bronwen’s discussion with Lili and Bevyn, the rider had made good time to the holy well—and clearly Margaret had accepted the urgency of their request since she’d traveled the same distance in time for breakfast today.

  “I’m sorry for the circumstances.” Margaret caught Bronwen’s
hands and looked her up and down. “You look well.”

  “Well enough for a woman whose king has been betrayed again.”

  Margaret took in a breath. “I can only apologize, over and over if I must. I’m sorry for the role my family has played in these troubles.”

  Bronwen let out a quick breath of her own. “It is hardly your fault that your brothers chose the paths they did. Have. Did the messenger tell you why I asked you to come?”

  “Thomas attempted to assassinate the king.” Margaret’s expression was genuinely horrified, and her eyes swam with tears for a moment before she blinked them back. “Is it—” she swallowed hard before continuing, “—does the king blame my husband somehow?”

  “No.” Bronwen kicked herself for not realizing that Margaret would immediately make that leap. Kings had been known to condemn an entire family because one of its members was a traitor, and here the Clares had produced two in as many years. “David didn’t punish you or your husband for what Gilbert did. He isn’t going to blame you for Thomas’s actions either.”

  A lone tear streaked down Margaret’s cheek. “We will never recover from what they’ve wrought, however.”

  Bronwen squeezed her hand. “You never know. Just look at the Bohuns.”

  “I try not to,” Margaret said, recovering something of her normally dry wit.

  Bronwen grinned for a second and then sobered. “David is alive, so the attempt failed.”

  “And my brother?”

  “He is well too, relatively speaking. In his attempt to escape the castle, he was shot in the backside and leg, but we patched him up.” She looked at Margaret a bit harder. “He is in a cell. That won’t be easy to see.”

  Margaret nodded. “It is no more or less than I expected.”

  “Would you be willing to talk to him?”

  “Of course. I would have come at your summons regardless, but I assumed that’s what you wanted. I don’t know what good it will do, though. You already know he is allied with Balliol, and I don’t know that he will be willing to tell me anything more.”

  “We thought it worth asking, since he won’t speak to us. Worst case, he tells us nothing more. But the way this plot fell out makes us feel as if there’s still another shoe to drop. Roger Mortimer remains defiant, despite David’s successful return from Ireland, not to mention his crowning as High King there. Balliol too. They’ve been far more confident, in fact, than it feels they have any right to be, considering who they’re going up against and how their plans have so far gone awry.”