Shades of Time kobo

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Someone’s arrived.”

  Ted almost dropped the phone. “You’re sure?” And then he amended. “Of course you’re sure, or you wouldn’t be calling me in the middle of the night. Can we go get him?”

  Visions of David’s arrival in Avalon when he was sixteen danced in Ted’s head. He’d come home to find his nephew in full armor, sword and all, in his kitchen.

  And then his heart skipped a beat at the thought that David could have returned with Christopher.

  “My men were not as alert as they should have been, and they didn’t tell me until just now. Believe me, heads will roll. But Mark was. He just drove out of Thames House. I have men following.”

  “Where’s he going?”

  “I don’t know yet. The initial scan showed whoever’s here arrived inside Westminster Palace. That place is a fortress, and I don’t want to expose my involvement unless it’s absolutely necessary. My men are watching and waiting. If Mark isn’t successful in retrieving whoever this is, I’ll send them in.”

  “What can I do?”

  “You are going to sit tight. If I’m to persuade David to let me help him, I can’t send my men in guns blazing. He’ll never trust me, and I have no interest in getting on the wrong side of MI-5. Where’s the phone Mark gave you?”

  “In my briefcase.” Ted strode into his office where he’d left his briefcase by the door.

  For months he’d kept the phone Mark had given him in his pocket or on the bedside table next to his regular phone, hoping daily for a call telling him exactly the news Chad had just given him. That kind of vigilance was exhausting, however, and in the end he couldn’t sustain it, though Elisa still kept her phone with her. At the moment, it was in her purse beside the bed. It had been a rocky moment when she’d found out he wasn’t keeping his phone at his side 24/7 anymore. To her it was a kind of betrayal—a loss of faith.

  But it hadn’t been that. He’d put it away when he and Chad had come to an understanding, and with the technology of Treadman Global at his disposal, he’d told himself that he didn’t have to carry the phone anymore. Now, he pulled it from his briefcase, his heart in his throat at the thought that Christopher had called and he hadn’t answered. But there was no activity on the screen, and no voicemail.

  Not that there could have been from Christopher directly. He didn’t have this number. But Mark did, and Mark hadn’t called.

  “What time do you all head into London?” Chad asked.

  “Seven.” Back in the kitchen, Ted checked the clock on the coffee maker. “Everyone will be up by six.”

  “You’re going to have to pretend everything is normal until you hear from me. If Mark calls or, God willing, David, you can’t let on you know about his arrival already.”

  “I don’t see why I can’t tell him, Chad. It would be a lot easier to convince David to let you help if I was honest from the start. I need at least to tell Elisa.”

  “You can’t! Nobody can know. Not even Elisa. I know it’s hard to keep this from her, but we agreed.” Then, at Ted’s silence, Chad tsked through his teeth. “David trusts Mark, and you haven’t told him about any of this because we need him to trust you, and we didn’t want to spook him. If David’s initial response to the idea of working outside MI-5 is negative, I don’t want to lose everything we’ve worked so hard for or have him no longer trust you.”

  Ted sighed. “All right. We’ll do it your way. But David is a smart man.” He laughed. “As smart as you.”

  “And what if it isn’t David? What if it’s Meg or Anna? They’re going to need something different. You also don’t know why they’re here. Maybe somebody is sick.” Chad sounded almost hopeful. “Make sure they know I can get them the best care, privately, with no questions asked and no records kept.”

  “I know. I know. Whatever they need, we’ll be there for them,” Ted said. “But that means you have to trust me too. You may not want me to tell them the whole truth up front, but I will if I have to. It’s the lives of my family members on the line.”

  “I do trust you.” Chad drew in an audible breath. “I can’t believe this is finally happening. Thank you, Ted. Thank you for trusting me with the truth.”

  “Well, we’ll see soon enough how this plays out.” Ted’s heart was racing almost more than before at the thought. “No way am I going back to sleep.”

  “Are you kidding me? Who can sleep? We’re going to do great things together!” Then Chad sobered. “I hope it’s your son, Ted. Truly.”

  Ted drew in a breath and let it out before he had the wherewithal to answer, and nine months of heartache and grief were compressed into three simple words. “I do too.”

  Chapter Five

  19 March 2022

  Anna

  Anna wasn’t the type to pass out, which she was regretting at the moment since losing consciousness would have come as a relief. Her head hurt, her wrist hadn’t improved in the last minute, and the floor of Westminster Hall was cold.

  She lay still enough, however, that the cop came over to make sure she was alive. Anna watched his approach through eyes half-closed against the pain. He had his gun out and was pointing it at her, and she closed her eyes all the way to shut him out. He could do what he liked with her, but she wasn’t going to watch the bullet come, if that’s what he felt he needed to do. She wasn’t a threat to him, and she didn’t know what had scared him about her so much he needed his gun.

  Then she felt him next to her, so close she could hear him breathe, and he touched her shoulder. She opened her eyes, telling herself not to be a coward, and looked into his face. Though his expression remained grim, he’d holstered his weapon. Another policeman stood behind him, which appeared to be making him feel safer.

  Her poor horse lay unmoving on the ground six feet away. Even from here, there looked to be an awful lot of blood. It was a mess she was happy not to have to clean up, but unfortunately, it was a mess she was still going to have to explain.

  The pain had filled her eyes with tears, but what she was feeling now wasn’t fear or sadness so much as anger. She’d almost died—far from home, without Math or her boys, and with the threat of treachery still unresolved. “Did you really mean to kill the horse?”

  “I acted appropriately,” he said stiffly.

  Anna had nothing to say to that, and whatever came next, she’d much rather meet on her feet, so she made a move to sit up.

  “Stay where you are.” The cop’s voice was commanding. “An ambulance is on its way.” Then he softened enough to peer at her. “Is it your arm?”

  “My wrist, I think.” Anna lay back down, though with reluctance.

  There was no way she was going to fly under the radar now. Truthfully, that hope had died the moment she’d arrived in the hall. Under the principle that everything happened for a reason, as part of some grand plan she wasn’t a party to, she had to assume the power that had saved her life yet again would continue to protect her. In her head that power was God, an acceptable concept back in the medieval world but a bit too TV evangelist to say out loud here. Regardless, whoever or whatever had brought her to Avalon wanted the full court press of police and medical services to scoop her up.

  Which meant an anonymous entry would have been even worse. The thought had her shifting gears from concern that things were continuing to go badly awry to confidence that this disaster would result in something better. She began to look for a way out of her predicament, telling herself that, just like on the road from Heledd’s house, an opportunity for escape would come if she could bide her time.

  Then the door at the far end of the hall opened, and two more police officers entered, though they came to a halt ten feet away beside the second officer who was already present, gawking at the sight of the horse and Anna on the floor with their fellow officer hovering over her. One of the new arrivals appeared to be of higher rank, judging by the chevrons on his uniform, and he gestured to the other officers that they should quarter the room.

 
The original officer stood and saluted. “Sergeant.”

  “As you were, constable.” The sergeant looked around. “Anyone else with her?”

  “Not that I’ve seen,” the first cop said.

  “Nobody appears on the cameras either. But this—” the sergeant gestured helplessly to the horse, “—this is going to blow up in our faces if we don’t keep a lid on it. I don’t intend to become the laughing stock of the Met. You remember what happened to Daniels.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Anna suddenly really wanted to know what had happened to Daniels, but the initial cop continued speaking: “What about the ambulance, sir? She’s hurt.”

  “It’s already outside. Any weapons on her?”

  “Not now.” He pointed to the other side of the horse where Anna had tossed her dagger. “She had that in a sheath.”

  The sergeant gestured to the younger cop to go get it, while he crouched three feet away from Anna. “How did you get in here?”

  Anna felt awkward talking to him from the floor, but the first cop had told her to stay down, so she did. “It’s a long story.”

  “It would have to be.”

  But then it didn’t matter because the medics arrived, followed immediately by a half-dozen policemen in riot gear. “We’ve secured the perimeter, sir,” one of them said to the sergeant.

  He nodded. “I want a complete news shutdown. We’re taking care of everything in-house. Is that clear? If the press gets wind of this before we’ve straightened it out, there will be hell to pay—not just from me!”

  “Yes, sir!” The men in riot gear departed as quickly as they’d come. In Anna’s opinion, the response was very fast for three in the morning, and she wondered what might have happened in the last fifteen months to warrant it. Christopher hadn’t spoken of anything disastrous, but then, he’d been finishing his senior year in high school and might not have been paying close attention to what was happening in Britain. Admittedly, she’d arrived in Westminster Hall itself, behind locked gates and doors. The seat of Parliament was probably as heavily guarded as Buckingham Palace.

  The sergeant moved out of the way to allow the medics to tend to her. Unfortunately, when they rolled her onto her back, one of them bumped Anna’s arm, and she screamed as intense pain shot through her. Stars danced before her eyes, and while she didn’t genuinely pass out, her uneven breathing prompted the medic to put a mask over her face to feed her oxygen.

  Anna had been hoping for a way to avoid questions and to appear more helpless than she was in order to lull her captors into complacency, so she couldn’t have asked for anything better. Nobody thinks a person wearing an oxygen mask can be a serious threat, and as soon as it settled on her face, the cops stopped trying to talk to her and started to behave in a much more business-like fashion. One of the medics stabilized her wrist in a splint, which she observed through eyes closed to mere slits. Then they loaded her onto a stretcher, wheeled her out of the hall, and lifted her into an ambulance parked inside Westminster’s vast gates.

  Once the ambulance doors closed, they transported her to a nearby hospital, located a stone’s throw from Lambeth Palace and just across the river from Westminster. She allowed herself an inward grin of delight that it was the same hospital, if she was remembering correctly, that had ended up on the moon in Dr. Who. The night was unreal enough that if she’d ended up on the moon herself it would have seemed about par for the course.

  She ended up in a little cubicle in the emergency room. The people around her transformed from cops to doctors and nurses, and an intern lowered a portable x-ray machine down from the ceiling to take a picture of her wrist right there in the bed. She hadn’t known such a thing was possible.

  With no policeman actually in her cubicle with her, she lifted off the oxygen mask and focused on the middle-aged man in a white coat who’d just pulled back her curtain. He wore a stethoscope around his neck and carried a computer tablet in his hand—a tablet like she’d seen Captain Picard use on Star Trek. Everyone here had one. David’s hands would be itching to use one, but he’d probably be frustrated by them too, since he wouldn’t know how to work one any more than Anna did.

  The doctor put out his hand to shake. “Hello. I’m Doctor Jamison.”

  “Hi. I’m Anna.”

  The corner of the man’s mouth quirked. “You’re American.”

  She nodded.

  Putting down his tablet, he washed his hands in the little sink next to the bed and pulled on a pair of medical gloves. “May I?”

  She nodded again, and he examined her neck and head, which somewhere along the way had been stabilized in a brace. Maybe she genuinely had passed out at some point because she didn’t remember anyone putting it on her.

  “How do you feel?”

  “My wrist hurts.”

  “The x-ray shows your wrist has a hairline fracture. In a moment, we’re going to put a brace on it. How’s the head?”

  “It doesn’t hurt.”

  “We’re sending you up for an MRI just to be certain.”

  As Anna rested her head against the pillows, a nurse wiped at her left temple with a cloth in a gloved hand. The cloth came away with blood, so Anna put her own hand up to her head. “I don’t remember hitting it.” Probably that was the reason for the neck brace and for them to have found credible that she’d had trouble staying focused all this time.

  Then a raincoated man stepped into the entrance to her cubicle. The doctor turned with a frown. “Who are you?”

  He held up a badge. “Inspector Smithem, Scotland Yard. I need to ask her a few questions.”

  “Not right now.” Doctor Jamison hastened towards him. “She’s injured—” He moved the detective out of the way as someone in blue scrubs brushed past them carrying a plastic brace for Anna’s wrist.

  “I must question this woman.”

  “What’s she charged with?” Doctor Jamison asked.

  “Trespassing on government property.”

  The doctor snorted. “I will let you know when she’s ready to be questioned. As I said, she is injured, and she needs an MRI before I’m going to allow anyone to talk to her.”

  Inspector Smithem was clearly frustrated by Dr. Jamison’s dismissal. He tried to move into the cubicle, as if he intended to ignore the doctor’s prohibition, but Dr. Jamison put a hand on his chest. The doctor was taller and burlier than the detective and seemed to grow larger as he filled the doorway. “I said no.”

  The detective gaped at him, seemingly shocked at being touched, and then he glared at Anna. Anna averted her eyes, recognizing that Dr. Jamison was something of an ally, and she would do well to continue to let him run interference for her. She preferred to look at her new brace, which was purple and warm, and she had no need to feign reluctance to answer the detective’s questions.

  Once the detective was backed out of the doorway, the medic explained to Anna how to adjust the brace and said she could take it off to shower if she wanted. It wasn’t quite Star Trekian, but medical advances remained the best reason Anna could think of to return to Avalon. Of course, in this instance, she wouldn’t have broken her wrist if she’d stayed at home.

  Meanwhile, Dr. Jamison continued to refuse the detective’s request to question Anna, and after a count of ten, Inspector Smithem gave a grunt of disgust. “Call me when she’s ready or let the uniform on duty know.”

  He gave the doctor his card and then jerked his head at an officer standing outside the cubicle. She hadn’t seen this cop before, and the number of people who knew about the manner of her arrival here appeared to be growing by the minute. It didn’t look to Anna as if, despite the sergeant’s wishes, what had happened in Westminster Hall was going to remain a secret for long.

  Still, Anna was glad to see the detective leave and even more glad she wasn’t handcuffed to the bed. She knew herself to be strong and capable. She’d married a medieval man, was raising two sons, and faced the everyday challenges associated with that world with a mea
sure of equanimity. She’d chosen to stay there. But the manner of her arrival had thrown her off her game, and it was taking some time for her to get her bearings back.

  It wasn’t as if she, David, and Mom hadn’t discussed their traveling many times. It was the three of them who were at risk for ending up alone in Avalon, which for all they’d been born there, wasn’t home anymore. It was they who bore the brunt of the time travel quandary they found themselves in again and again.

  They didn’t know why they traveled, except that it happened to save their lives. And even then, it was about more than that: it was to save Wales first and foremost, but also to preserve the special world their arrival there had created. Lying here in this bed wasn’t going to do that.

  In some ways it would have been easier to face the detective if she really did time travel rather than shift between universes. None of the changes they’d made in the Middle Ages carried through to the modern day because they were dealing with two separate universes. As a result, she couldn’t sit here and tell the good Inspector Smithem she was Princess Anna, one of the original time travelers, and hope to be believed. If she said anything at all about what she was really doing in Westminster Hall, she would end up in the psychiatric ward.

  Anna might be a princess, but she wasn’t a princess in a tower, waiting for Prince Charming to come rescue her. Nobody was coming, and she was going to have to do her own rescuing.

  If David had been the one to come to Avalon under similar circumstances, perhaps he would have been able to talk himself out of captivity, though he hadn’t managed it even with Callum at his side. Then her heart skipped a beat at the thought that David could be here too, if what that captain back on the road to Dinas Bran had said was true. He appeared to believe what he’d told her: David’s life was in danger. And Mom’s. Either one of them could be here even now and have no idea she was here too.

  And that meant she had to get in touch with Mark. It was the reason he’d stayed behind after Caernarfon in the first place. But a great deal might have changed since then, and the moment she put in a call to the MI-5 switchboard, they were all going to be on the grid. She didn’t want to do that to him if she could help it. Better to get out of here first and then make a more thorough assessment.