Outpost in Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  By now, David and Callum were standing on the chest-high perimeter wall, which, like the gatehouse, wasn’t built for defensive purposes but to keep out stray animals. The wall even had a stile built into it to allow someone to climb over it rather than be forced to go around by the gatehouse.

  Meg supposed she couldn’t really get any wetter and accepted David’s hand to climb up next to him. Soon, the six of them were standing on the wall, looking towards the river.

  “They fly no flag,” David said.

  “Those are Drogheda’s river boats,” Robbie said.

  “You’re sure?” David said.

  “Yes. We saw them yesterday when we crossed the bridge to speak to Red Comyn.”

  “Dear God,” Meg said.

  Llywelyn grunted his dismay. “They’re headed to Trim.”

  Magnus turned to David, his fist to his heart. “Tell me what to do, my lord, and I will do it.”

  “Thank you, Magnus.” David ran a hand through his wet hair. “We can’t do anything about those boats right now, but believe me when I tell you that we will.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Drogheda

  James

  For hours, James had been cursing himself for the idiot that he was. If he’d figured out at the start that Gilla O’Reilly was being taken right back to Drogheda Castle, he could have caught up with Christopher and the others before too much time had passed and they were irretrievably separated. But he’d left it too late, and now James was right back where he’d started the day before, staring down at the town of Drogheda. Worse, while most of Comyn ships remained at dock, a quick count revealed that there were fewer than before, and all of Drogheda’s river boats were missing.

  As James crouched in the trees not far from where he and his charges had observed the ships’ arrival yesterday, he had to accept the fact that not only had Clare and O’Rourke allied to take down Gilla but they were also allied with Comyn and Tuyt. Disconcerted didn’t even begin to describe how James felt.

  Gilla O’Reilly had disappeared inside the castle a quarter of an hour before, but James watched the front gate for a little while longer, just to see if anything else was going to happen. He didn’t even know if Comyn and Tuyt were still there, though it seemed unlikely given the absence of the boats. Neither O’Rourke nor Clare had been among the riders either, which meant that all four leaders were roaming the countryside, together or separately, and James had no idea where they’d got to.

  He had learned over the years to put aside what he couldn’t control, and the whereabouts of the ringleaders was one of those things. His immediate concern instead was the missing flat-bottomed boats. With them, the Boyne River was navigable to the bridge at Trim Castle, twenty-five miles upriver. James could only think that they intended to besiege it, else yesterday Comyn would have simply said that he was part of a new Scot delegation to the Irish Parliament. He didn’t need five hundred men for that, of course, but it would have been a plausible answer. And yet, it wasn’t one he’d given James.

  Sadly, James had to admit that rescuing Gilla O’Reilly all by himself was an impossible task—a death sentence in fact. Christopher’s strategy of the Trojan Horse passed through his head, but the only gift that Comyn and the others would accept would be James himself—and that wasn’t one he was willing to give, not if there was even a chance he would find himself in a cell next to Gilla O’Reilly.

  For the first time since he’d lost Christopher, a smile came to James’s face at the thought of the proud Irishman behind a barred door. It wasn’t that James enjoyed the idea of caging Aine’s father, but rather that James had heard the man speak. He was quick of mind. Even more, he was quick of tongue and had an ability to talk incessantly. His captors might well be regretting his presence already.

  With that thought, James made up his mind. He mounted his long-suffering horse and turned its head inland, as he should have hours ago. He didn’t know where Robbie and the others were now, but last he’d seen they were making for Trim. They were on foot, however, and he’d delayed too long informing David that his cousin was astray in Ireland, never mind the insurrection that had sprung up unexpectedly in his domain.

  He trotted through the morning mist and rain that seemed endemic to Ireland, his thoughts as gloomy as the weather. While David rightfully would never trust him again, he might even think that James was secretly working with the rebels and had abandoned Christopher on purpose. James’s brother-in-law was the Earl of Ulster, after all. Who was to say that he and James weren’t in league with Comyn and Tuyt, if not with O’Rourke and Clare?

  Worry occupied James for three-quarters of the journey to Trim. At the approach to Navan, he considered leaving the main road, uncomfortable with riding under the eyes of the castle there. If Tuyt could betray Geoffrey de Geneville, anyone could, including the Angulo family, who controlled Navan Castle. Like Tuyt’s ancestor, the Angulos had come with Strongbow at the first conquest of Ireland. But as was the case with all these lords, they held their estates at the behest of David, who remained the Lord of Ireland.

  On one hand, the uncertainty of their allegiance meant that James didn’t dare risk enlisting their help. On the other hand, he decided that they wouldn’t view a lone rider on the road as a threat, and he rode through the town as if the devil himself was at his heels. Which wasn’t, in some sense, far off.

  James could have crossed the Boyne before the bridge at Trim. Good fords existed along the river, usually wide places where the water spread out enough to allow a not too wet crossing. But James was hesitant to trust any Norman lord, not just the Angulo family, and he had to assume that every ford would be guarded. At the same time, rather than riding straight across country from Navan to Trim, he opted to take the longer route that brought him close to the river. He wanted to be able to provide useful information to David to make up for all the bad news he was also bringing. In this case, he could give him an accurate picture of how far the river boats had traveled.

  Finally, just short of Trim, the host of flat-bottomed boats hove into view in the distance. He peered ahead, cursing his distance vision, which wasn’t what it used to be. It had been difficult going for James to ride into the wind for the last twenty miles, and it must have been far more heavy work rowing up the Boyne in this weather. Comyn’s men had nearly done it, however, passing Bective Abbey, which lay to James’s left, within moments of he himself reaching it. Both they and James had five miles to go.

  But rather than push his exhausted horse on to Trim and beat the boats there, James slowed. Despite having come this far, any further effort would be wasted because the men on the walls of Trim Castle would see the boats coming towards them long before James himself could reach the castle. David might want to know what had happened to Christopher, but in the face of such an imminent threat, there would be little he could do about it. At this point, it would be far better for James to turn north and see if he could find his young friends himself.

  In addition, James found it unlikely that Comyn would have committed his army to battle in Ireland without commensurate support from allies other than Tuyt. In fact, the more James thought about it, the more likely it seemed to him that Trim might already be under siege. Even more than at Drogheda, James didn’t want to find himself caught while Christopher and the others were still lost.

  Knowing he had to rest his horse, regardless of his urgency, and in the hope of at least learning something of the boats and the number of men and horses they carried, James turned onto a path to the river. But as he neared the entrance to the abbey, he reined in at one of the strangest sights he’d ever seen: five men and one woman were standing on the eastern wall that protected the abbey, staring at the boats as they rowed by.

  Then, as he watched, one of the men put a hand on the shoulder of another, in a gesture that James would have recognized a mile away. Callum was on that wall, standing next to King David. Then one of the other men pushed back his hood and turned to speak to Callu
m. It was King Llywelyn. At long last, God had brought James to the right place at the right time.

  “Yah!” James whooped and spurred his horse towards the entrance to the abbey. His call, and the sound of the horse’s hooves, traveled the distance between him and the people on the wall, who turned to look.

  James continued riding, but by the time he reached the gatehouse, he had sobered considerably. He had been fearful of telling David that he’d lost his cousin, but for David and Callum—along with the king and queen of Wales—to be standing on the wall at Bective Abbey with no guards or anyone to support them but two retainers, whose faces James hadn’t yet made out, things were far worse than he had feared.

  Leaving his companions to make their own way down from the wall, David leapt agilely to the ground and loped to the gate, opening it just as James reined in. The monastery’s gatekeeper had been caught on the hop and was only now huffing towards them through the rain from one of the buildings surrounding the courtyard.

  Thus, the two men had a moment alone together in the shelter of the gatehouse. Both spoke at the same time. “What are you doing here?”

  David gestured with one hand, to suggest that James go first, but James bowed and said, “Please, my lord. What brings you to Bective Abbey?”

  “Trim Castle has been taken. Twenty lords were murdered where they sat in council.”

  James was aghast. “By whom?”

  David made a frustrated sound in the back of his throat. “An alliance of Irish, English, and Scots. Now your news. Have you seen Christopher?”

  “Not since last night.” James hesitated. “How did you know we were separated?”

  Before David could answer, the rest of the party—including Robbie Bruce, of all people—joined their circle. James and Robbie stared at each other for a moment, equally horrified that the other was there.

  “You—” James began.

  “Christopher decided—” Robbie started to say.

  David waved a hand. “Robbie has told us everything that happened up until he left the others in the middle of a field southwest of Drumconrath.”

  James was still in shock. “You left them too?”

  Robbie grimaced. “We decided that King David needed to know what had transpired, so I left the others to ride to Trim. It just so happened that the insurrection there began right after I arrived. I escaped the castle with Lord Callum and King Llywelyn.”

  James gave him a baleful look, hardly able to argue since he himself had left Christopher for what at the time had seemed to be a very good reason. And then he related what he’d done, which was far less—merely trailing Gilla O’Reilly’s captors to Drogheda.

  Once James finished, David again ran a hand through his wet hair, pushing it off his forehead. “Good news and bad news.”

  The others looked at him questioningly. “I’m having trouble seeing the good news aspect of our situation, my lord,” Callum said.

  David lifted one shoulder. “It was one thing for this—” he waved a hand, “—gang? cabal?—to assassinate the most powerful lords in Ireland in one go. Okay, that’s bad. But the fact that they’re going in the other direction is a little bit crazy. And good news for us.”

  “I’m sorry, my lord,” James said. “What do you mean by going in the other direction?”

  “It’s something we talked about earlier.” Meg put a hand on David’s arm, letting him know that she wanted to answer. “What David means is that the likes of Feypo, Clare, and O’Rourke are second tier barons compared to those they killed. While it’s bad that they’ve created an unprecedented alliance in order to take over Trim, for them to turn around and take down Gilla O’Reilly, a relatively minor lord who might have been on their side if they’d made overtures to him, indicates that their alliance isn’t coherent and might even be transitory.”

  “These are men who’ve never seen the benefit of allying at this level before,” David said. “What would it take for them to turn on one another? What can I offer some of them to save their own skin?”

  “You would bargain with rebels?” James stared at David. It wasn’t that such a move couldn’t be wise, but that he never would have thought such a proposal could come from David’s lips.

  David scoffed. “To avoid civil war? I would.”

  Llywelyn spoke for the first time, his expression thoughtful. “Years ago, I allied with Simon de Montfort and Gilbert de Clare. We were three disparate men with the temporary yet concurrent interest of removing King Henry III from power. Later, others accused me of disloyalty to Montfort in that last battle, but I merely saved my men to fight another day after the cause was lost. Gilbert de Clare had already turned his coat and sold us out to Henry and Edward when they made him a better offer.”

  David looked at James. “I’m sure I will find the process as distasteful as Edward must have when he returned Gilbert de Clare to his fold.”

  “First we have to figure out who else is in the alliance,” Meg said. “They took Trim, but they missed you, David, and lost men, whose heirs might not be as supportive of the endeavor as the men who died.”

  Llywelyn canted his head towards his son. “There lies opportunity.”

  David’s hands clenched into fists as he looked as his father. “We will not allow Ireland to be taken over by men who gained their position by murdering their predecessors.”

  Everyone else was silent for a few heartbeats, and it was Robbie Bruce who put into words what all of them were thinking. “So what’s our better offer? And how exactly do you propose we stop them?”

  Chapter Seventeen

  Beyond the Pale

  Christopher

  They came out onto a road near a real town, and all together breathed a huge sigh of relief to have finally reached some place familiar.

  “Kells,” Aine said.

  For the last few miles, they had steered towards the ninety-foot watchtower that was part of the abbey here, where the Book of Kells (even Christopher had heard of it) was kept.

  “We need to avoid the castle,” Christopher said. “Aine’s father told me that its castellan, Walter Cusack, is in league with Tuyt and Comyn.” Then he realized how that sounded, and he started to laugh.

  The others looked at him warily, and he was sorry he couldn’t share the joke with them because they wouldn’t know anything about ancient Egypt. He’d tell David, though, when next he saw him: Tuyt and Comyn. Tutankhamun.

  Even better, Kells had an inn, sitting about twenty yards away, the first building any visitor encountered when entering the town from this direction. Christopher wouldn’t have known it was anything other than a slightly larger than normal house if it weren’t for the sign hanging in front, a picture of a white horse. Probably the proprietor couldn’t read anyway, the same as all of his clientele, so there wasn’t any point in bothering with lettering. Christopher was glad it wasn’t a black boar, since that had been the inn that they’d had such bad luck with in Caernarfon.

  It was the middle of the day, and it was still raining, but even so, there was movement in the streets. As in England and Wales, if people didn’t do stuff in Ireland because it was raining, they never did anything at all.

  William’s stomach growled. “We have money. We can buy food.”

  Christopher turned to his friend, intending to grin at him, but his pinched look was one that Christopher had never seen before on William’s face. He didn’t ask what was wrong. He knew. They all knew, and though he was worried too, Christopher put out a reassuring hand. “Give me a second.”

  “What are we waiting for?” Huw said.

  “For me to decide that it’s safe,” Christopher said. “I don’t want to escape Drumconrath only to find ourselves captured by somebody else. We know we can’t trust Cusack. Tuyt and Comyn are in cahoots. So are Clare and O’Rourke. Who else might be? And who else might be unhappy about the four of us wandering the countryside together?”

  It was a long speech for Christopher, but he’d spoken fairly author
itatively and managed not to laugh about the names. Since all four of them, even soaking wet, would be known as lords or at least wellborn, by entering the inn they would immediately call attention to themselves. They would get food and warmth if they asked, but Christopher had been abducted less than twenty-four hours ago. If Gilla O’Reilly had thought he was a prize, it was in Christopher’s head that other people might think so too.

  The worst treachery Christopher had experienced before Gwenllian and Arthur had arrived in Avalon was at the hands of bullies at school. Usually what those bullies had in store for Christopher was a bit less life-threatening, and at least then he’d known what he was facing and could make plans to avoid the boys he feared. Here, it was hard to fight when you didn’t know who your enemies were.

  He hadn’t known it at the time, but life back at his parents’ house hadn’t been nearly as complicated as he’d thought. Mostly, he tried not to think about his family and Avalon. He had to assume that everyone was okay and that they’d survived their run-in with the FBI and whoever else had been chasing Gwenllian and Arthur. He hoped they weren’t worrying about him all the time, though that was a faint hope in his mom’s case. Mothers worried. It was pretty much their job.

  Huw’s hand came down on his shoulder. “Maybe we shouldn’t stop. We could head straight to Trim.”

  Christopher chewed on his lip but ultimately shook his head. “I think the opportunity to eat and get warm is worth the risk. We have a long way to go yet. It would be even better if we could buy horses because then we could travel faster.”

  “What about James and Robbie?” William asked.

  Again, Christopher tried to be both reassuring and realistic. “It isn’t like we can wait somewhere for them, since they don’t know where we are. Maybe we should have stuck together. Part of me wishes we had, but I don’t really regret letting Robbie go. I honestly think he made it to Trim, which means that David knows what’s happened. It makes the fact that we’re cold and wet right now a lot less of a big deal.”