Shades of Time kobo

by Sarah Woodbury

  Venny thought he had been, but he could admit to himself that his head felt a bit like mush trying to make heads or tails of what was happening here. “If I understand correctly, Mortimer is supporting Balliol’s quest for the throne because he thinks he will be able to control Balliol. And—” he paused a moment to think, “if it comes to the point that the barons demand Balliol’s head, Mortimer will be the last one standing, since he will be married to Elizabeth. Because Mortimer himself has neither the power nor the reach to murder David in Ireland, Balliol controls Mortimer by holding Elizabeth hostage—until the crown of England is placed on Balliol’s head.”

  Almost for the first time in Venny’s life, his father looked at him proudly. “You understand now.” He smiled. “Mortimer insisted you not be told the whole story, but you put the pieces together yourself, and very quickly too.”

  “And because you support Mortimer now, you will ride the hem of his cloak to more power and land for yourself.”

  “I do this for you and your heirs. I had feared you’d fallen under the king’s spell, or worse, that of his witch mother, but I’m pleased to see you have come to your senses in time.”

  “I am still not clear as to why Mortimer thinks King David wants Scotland,” Venny said, trying to sound musing. “He could have taken it a few years ago and didn’t.”

  “Hasn’t King David gone to Ireland to force his rule upon the barons there? Everybody knows he would like nothing better than to wear the crown of the High King.”

  Venny bit his lip, wondering how much he could say. “Last I heard he wanted to give Ireland back to the Irish.”

  “Pah. He said that to put everyone off their guard. When his father dies, he will have Wales. Through his mother, he will claim Scotland. He rounds it out with Ireland because he descends directly from its great kings as well.”

  While Venny had been talking to his father, Mortimer and FitzWalter had been conferring closely in heated tones, but finally Mortimer gave a sharp clap of his hands. “It is time to swear.”

  He waved his hand at a servant, who’d been standing in the doorway. The man left for a moment and came back with a priest, who went to the altar where an open Bible lay. Venny’s father came forward to stand at Venny’s left shoulder.

  Venny allowed himself to be urged forward and then again onto his knees. A moment later, he found himself pledging life and limb to Roger Mortimer.

  That detail taken care of, Mortimer headed for the door, but before he reached it, it swung open to reveal an agitated Henry Percy. “I have had word from my grandfather.” His words came out slurred. “He sent a rider.”

  Not a man to suffer fools, Mortimer glowered at Henry, who was weaving on his feet. “Spit it out!”

  “Lord Mathonwy sent William Venables here as a spy.” Henry pointed a finger. “He still serves the king.”

  Mortimer swung around to look at Venny, who backed up, hands raised defensively. “Did I not just swear? I already gave you this exact news!”

  Mortimer’s nostrils flared as he looked between Henry and Venny.

  Venny’s father stepped between them. “He did just tell us this. Lord Mathonwy believes my boy is faithful, so that’s what he would have told Warenne.”

  Mortimer looked at FitzWalter for a rare piece of advice, and FitzWalter shrugged. “It’s up to you.”

  “Collect his men from the outer ward and confine them to the barracks.” Mortimer then turned to Venny and his father. “You two will be confined to the keep for the time being.”

  “But, my lord—” Venny’s father started to protest, but Mortimer held up a hand.

  “It’s late, and I’m of no mind to make any more decisions tonight. Be grateful you’re not in the dungeon.” He gave everyone, including the drunken Henry Percy, a long look. “God willing, we will hear from Balliol’s men in Ireland in the morning.”

  Chapter Twenty-seven

  19 March 2022

  Mark

  “What do you want me to do?” Andre said.

  “Stop here, out of the light.” Mark indicated a spot not lit by the lamppost in the layby, located roughly halfway between Chalfont St. Giles and London. He had a map of every CCTV camera in Britain on his laptop, and so far they had avoided all but two of them. The moment they entered the motorway, however, cameras would proliferate, taking pictures on the fly of every vehicle passing underneath them, along with images of their drivers and passengers. These were sent to a central database at GCHQ. Mark had known this before he’d set out, but had done so anyway until Livia had sent yet another urgent warning not to come to London, and Andre had turned off the road.

  Mark slouched in the passenger seat of the car, which had been the most obscure vehicle in Chad Treadman’s massive parking garage, in large part because it wasn’t Chad’s at all, but his cook’s. They’d borrowed it (with permission), in hopes that Mark could get all the way to London without being noticed. Thankfully, MI-5 was still keeping the hunt in-house, so as of yet his and Anna’s images had not been plastered across every news outlet and web page.

  Mark had also taken the precaution of transforming his appearance, having shaved his beard and mustache before getting into the car. The beard hadn’t been MI-5 sanctioned anyway. He’d started growing it nine months ago after Christopher had left for exactly this reason. Nobody had confronted him about it, despite how daft he looked with a beard. In retrospect, it was an indication of how little regard his bosses had for him.

  Livia had left Thames House, having been released from questioning and told not to return until the crisis was over. She’d been followed home, but the tail had been desultory. It seemed now that Mark’s decision to accept her help had been inspired. The two of them had never rung each other, they’d emailed only about work matters, and had engaged in no social contact before today. Even the hyper-paranoid MI-5 could see that she’d been doing only as he’d asked her and could not be faulted.

  Mark liked to think that if he’d been running the operation, he would have detained Livia until Anna was in custody. As it was, once her tail departed, Livia had changed clothes, ducked out of her flat through a back door, and returned to a bench at the bus stop across the street from the exit of Five’s parking garage. With yet another new phone, her first act had been to contact Mark and warn against his grand plan to return to MI-5.

  Her voice had been only the latest in a loud chorus, including Chad’s, who believed that by turning himself in, Mark ran the risk of exposing where Anna was. In turn, Mark had argued that the men running the operation remained behind the curve. Mark was the only one left from Callum’s days, which meant they’d have more to gain by listening to him and working with him than throwing him in prison. In truth, Mark himself had been over the video showing Anna’s arrival in the middle of Westminster Hall a dozen times. It was shocking to him, so he could imagine what anyone who didn’t know the truth would think. By working with Five rather than against it, he could mitigate their tendency to think the worst.

  Regardless, Mark was regretting his earlier hubris. Not quite twenty-four hours earlier, he’d been remarking to himself how important all those CCTV cameras were to the safety of his nation and that a surveillance state wasn’t really all that bad. Now, he was furiously sifting through all the images taken from around the embassies and the museum, accessed via Chad Treadman’s resources, knowing it was only a matter of time before someone wondered about the Treadman Global cars that had driven by that morning.

  As far as Livia knew, Ted, he, and Anna hadn’t been caught on camera getting inside the cars or later on one of the motorways. But Livia was out of the loop now, which was why she was sitting across from Thames House trying to get a feel for what they were going to do next rather than reporting to him from inside Five.

  Chad’s estate could even be monitored, if only because the British state monitored everyone. It wasn’t a question Mark had thought to ask before today, and Livia hadn’t been able to query that herself without exp
osing herself or Chad to her superiors.

  Andre rested his elbow on his armrest and looked at Mark’s screen. Currently playing was a video Livia was taking of the entrance to the parking garage, showing the arrival of a darkened SUV with diplomatic plates. “CIA.”

  “That would be my guess,” Mark said.

  “This went up the chain of command faster than it should have,” Andre said.

  Mark laughed. “Five would have to be thick to ignore a dead horse in Westminster Hall and the disappearance of its rider with the aid of a Security Service officer. Too many others saw Anna. A bobby killed the horse. And anyone who heard her would have known she’s American.”

  “The official secrets act covers many ills.”

  “Sure, but between the ambulance, the hospital, and the knackers, that’s a lot of people to enforce silence upon. It was on the news.” He looked at Andre. “I’m sorry I bungled this so badly. It’s going to lead to your boss. He could be charged with harboring a fugitive.”

  “Chad Treadman is a big boy—and he’s more powerful than you know. Nothing will come of it. You’ll see.”

  After another few minutes, Livia had to move her location to an all-night coffee shop that gave her a less good angle on the garage, but at least she could now work openly on her laptop. People kept coming to Thames House, and so far nobody notable had left. It was a really bad sign for the director of the CIA to arrive at MI-5 after hours and not leave. Something big was going down. Mark had already spoken to Chad Treadman several times. The tech genius had put out feelers too, but if Five were moving in a particular direction, they weren’t telling anyone else about it.

  Then, near midnight, a car pulled up behind them. Andre straightened in his seat, where he’d been dozing. “Copper.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding me.” Mark turned in his seat, and at the sight of the flashing lights, he closed all of his electronics and slid them into his backpack. He’d left his go bag at the castle in case Anna needed anything in it, which at this point might be just as well, since he had put a gun at the bottom of it.

  The bobby knocked on the window, and Andre pressed the car’s power button in order to slide the window down. “May I help you, officer?”

  “What are you doing here?” He pulled out his torch and shined it into the car.

  “Talking,” Andre said.

  The light was bright in Mark’s eyes. The officer also wore a camera as part of his gear, so Mark’s face was now broadcast to every law enforcement agency in the country, should they choose to access the feed. “What about you?”

  “I’m the one he’s been talking to,” Mark said, trying project the right balance between innocent and flip that wouldn’t be suspicious.

  The muscles around the cop’s eyes tightened. He was thinking Mark and Andre were a couple. Andre realized it too, and he put a hand briefly on Mark’s knee to better sell the idea. The officer’s eyes tracked to the motion, and then Andre moved his hand away. They were fully dressed and had the appearance of being and doing exactly what they’d said.

  Still, the officer couldn’t let it go, “Let’s see some ID.”

  There was no help for it. Andre took out his driving license. After a pause and a canter around the idea and the possible consequences, Mark handed over his journalist’s badge, the same one he’d used in the hospital. It was a risk, especially if the officer looked up the number, which was backstopped by MI-5, but it was better to deal with this problem now, even if it created a bigger problem later. The cold knowledge settled on his shoulders that returning to London had become a nonstarter. He was on the run, maybe for the rest of his life. “We were just talking, officer. Surely there’s no crime in that?”

  The officer continued to look stern. “Why have you been sitting in this layby?”

  “It seemed a quiet place to meet,” Andre said.

  “Does this have anything to do with what happened at Westminster last night?”

  Inwardly, Mark cursed that the officer had asked that question, since the conversation was being recorded by the officer’s personal surveillance gear. Mark had to hope the mention of Westminster would get lost in the shuffle of a thousand people saying the same word over the course of the day. What with the dead horse, maybe more like a million. It would be too many to follow up with every encounter.

  Meanwhile Andre made his expression very serious. “It does.”

  Andre’s answer was finally enough to convince the officer that no crime was being committed. He nodded, returned their IDs, and headed back to his vehicle.

  Andre looked at Mark. “We should go back to the castle. Your presence at Thames House will do nothing more than pour oil on the fire. You know too much, and they’ll break you.”

  Mark took in a breath. “I keep making mistakes. I thought I was cut out for spy work, but I’m not.”

  Andre studied him. “What could you have done differently?” And then at Mark’s disgruntled look, he added, “No, I mean it. Anna arrives at Westminster Palace on a horse and is immediately placed in police custody. What do you do differently?”

  “I should have disabled more cameras at the hospital. We should have left the city immediately.”

  Andre shook his head. “In a movie, sure, but you take down the entire suite of hospital cameras, and the security staff are going to notice and respond immediately. I know the protocols for that hospital, because London police use them. The cameras there are linked directly to the Victoria embankment headquarters. Bringing down those cameras would have brought attention sooner than if you and Livia had waltzed in there and flashed your MI-5 badges. It was six hours at least before any paperwork was filed.”

  Then he canted his head. “As to leaving the city, you could only have done so if you had a vehicle and some place to go.”

  As Andre started the car, Mark stared out the window. “I should have arranged months ago to garage a car. I wasn’t as prepared as I thought.”

  “You needed a team and more time to plan, and it was just your bad luck she arrived when and where she did. If she’d ended up in some farmer’s field, she could have ridden the horse to the nearest house and simply rung you.”

  Mark turned to look at him. “So why didn’t she?”

  Andre frowned as he executed a three-point turn and headed back the way they’d come. “Why didn’t she what?”

  “Why didn’t she appear some place where she wouldn’t have ended up in police custody right away?”

  Andre snorted. “Because she didn’t.”

  “No.” Mark shook his head. “You don’t understand. She ends up where she’s supposed to.”

  “Well …” Andre was focused on his driving, backtracking across the countryside exactly as they’d come to avoid cameras. “I said she could have rung you, but could she have? How would she have reached you—or her aunt and uncle? They’d moved to England, so new numbers all around, yeah? And you changed your name, not to mention the fact that you work for MI-5. What could she have done … rung up Thames House and asked for you?”

  “I used to work out of Cardiff, so that location might be the last thing she knew.” Mark settled back in his seat, the tension easing out of his shoulders. He felt all of a sudden as if he’d been here before.

  Andre noticed too and shot him a look through narrowed eyes. “What just happened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You relaxed.”

  “I stopped worrying. I’ve been looking at this the wrong way round. My job isn’t to understand what’s happened. It’s to go with it, even if that means I end up back in the Middle Ages.” Mark managed a genuine laugh. “It may be I’m supposed to.”

  Andre’s expression indicated he thought Mark had gone mental.

  “Just you wait.” Mark settled farther into his seat. “It’s like David always says. You do what you can and what is right—and let the chips fall as they may.”

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  20 March 1294

  M
ath

  Math could barely breathe for the hay dust, and it irritated him to no end that not only had Warenne completely fooled him, which was indignity enough, but he couldn’t be bothered to cover his head with a woven bag. Wool would have been better than this hemp sacking that was making him sneeze.

  He was guessing his wine had contained poppy juice because the events of the rest of the evening had completely passed him by. He groaned and shifted his legs, to find his feet butting up against something with some give to it.

  Then Ieuan said, “Stop it, man! It’s bad enough that my head hurts without you poking your boot into my ribs.”

  Pleased to find his friend alive and irritated, Math sat up. His ankles and wrists were bound, but knowing he was with Ieuan improved his chances of escape enormously. He wriggled closer. “Get this thing off my head, will you?”

  “My hands are tied behind my back. You?”

  “Same.”

  The pair managed to maneuver around each other so that Ieuan’s fingers could grasp the sacking over Math’s head, and then Math rolled over to free Ieuan. Gasping at the effort, they lay on the floor of their cell, which turned out to be a genuine prison, with stone floor, iron bars, and dampness seeping down the walls. At least they hadn’t been thrown into the pit of the dungeon Math knew lay in the basement of each of Lyons Castle’s five towers. Perhaps those black pits had been reserved for his men. If they weren’t dead.

  Still, Math saw no reason to suffer more than necessary and worked to free Ieuan’s hands. “In retrospect, Warenne chose his words very carefully last night, did you notice? I’m not sure he even openly lied. I wasn’t mindful of the danger.”

  “We were completely fooled. Hospitality doesn’t appear to be what it once was.”

  Math snorted laughter, pleased Ieuan still had the ability to mock, and then he laughed again as the rope around his wrists loosened. Ieuan’s hands were tied even tighter behind his back, which told Math that the hemp sacking and rope bonds were purely vindictive, given the bars that separated the prison cell from the adjacent guardroom. Math hadn’t realized he and Ieuan were so hated. Or maybe that was Dafydd.