Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Which means that whoever holds the castle does not know of my father’s pledge.” William’s color was high.

  “How strong was the garrison?” David said.

  “A dozen men,” William said. “No more.”

  David exchanged a glance with Lili. “We have some experience with traitors among the garrison, do we not?”

  “Money can buy many men,” Lili said. “We saw that at Buellt.”

  “And at Aberdw three years ago.” David dismounted and caught his horse’s bridle. With a tug, he got him moving into the woods to the north of the road. “We need to get closer.” The trees formed a buffer between the road and the Wye River and would provide them with adequate cover while they approached the castle.

  As they entered underneath the branches, David’s breathing eased. He’d lived in Oregon for ten years, and the last five in Wales. He felt comfortable out of doors, and in the woods in particular. He was no tracker, but his feet made almost no noise on the bracken beneath their feet. Lili, too, was nearly silent, having spent her life in her brother’s wake. William tried to follow their lead, though he was somewhat less successful in keeping quiet.

  A hundred yards from the castle, David stopped. Rain dripped from the leaves above his head and down his neck. But it was a warm rain and he was hot in his armor. “We should rest here until dark.”

  Lili shivered and David reached out an arm to pull her closer. “We’re going to be okay.”

  “Are we?” she said. “In the last two days, I’ve ridden behind you in battle, stormed a castle, been shot with an arrow, and followed a wayward boy into England. The world is a far bigger place—and more menacing—than I had thought.”

  Chapter 15

  27 August 1288

  Near Clifford Castle

  Lili

  Lili shivered. The rain had abated once the sun went down, but now a fog had moved in. She couldn’t see anything at all if it wasn’t moving. That Dafydd was with her was only evident by the fact that he held her hand.

  “You’re sure about this?” she said. “Trusting William, I mean?”

  “I don’t think he means to get us killed or captured,” Dafydd said. “He’s twelve. I was more sure of myself and self-righteous than he at twelve—until coming to Wales blew my world apart.”

  Lili smiled under the cover of the darkness because Dafydd was still pretty sure of himself, hence the journey into England in the first place. He could have let William go, or ordered other men to follow the boy. But no—he had to do it himself. As far as she could tell, Dafydd wasn’t the least bit afraid to be stumbling about in the dark near Clifford Castle, looking for what Lili feared might be a non-existent ford, or one impossible to use if the earlier rain had raised the level of the river past the point that it was safe to cross. Concerned, Dafydd might be. But not afraid—and even what he felt of that emotion would be more for Lili and William than for himself.

  “Just a few more paces.” William pulled up at the edge of the trees that buttressed the castle to the northeast.

  The original builder had located the castle at a bend in the Wye River. It was hard for Lili to get her head around the geography, but the river started in the mountains of Wales, flowed southeast, then turned north past Hay. Two miles north of the town, the Wye flowed eastward before heading north again for a brief stretch (Clifford Castle had been built at this curve in the river). It then turned southeast as it wended its way through England to the sea.

  Taking advantage of the winding river, the original builder of the castle had built an earthwork dam upstream from the castle to flood the little valley to the west and south of it. Thus, with water all around it, the only real access to the castle was from the northeast.

  “I think it’s low enough to cross.” Dafydd peered through the trees towards the ford. “So much of the water has been diverted to the valley, that the dam has made the ford on the river even shallower.” He had read Lili’s thoughts.

  “I told you we could use it,” William said.

  A faint light filtered to them from the battlements of Clifford Castle which towered above them. They’d gotten far closer than Lili had thought they might. The wait until the end of the day, and then the walk in the dark, had seemed endless and ultimately for no good reason. It wasn’t like her to be so pessimistic, but the forces arrayed against them—against Wales—seemed far too powerful and omnipotent for them to counter. At least they hadn’t gone hungry, as Lili had packed food in her saddlebags for the journey back to Buellt which she had planned to make.

  Or had she always known that she would ultimately share what she’d brought? Even Dafydd had commented that she’d brought enough for the three of them to eat for a week. Could she really have left Dafydd again? It would have been for the last time, and she’d known it, even as she’d watched his face and told him her plans. She’d thought it the right thing to do. But now, the longer she was with him, the more impossible it seemed that she could walk away.

  Lili shivered again, though the air was only damp, not cold. She wore her wool cloak tucked tight about her with her hood up. One hand held her horse’s bridle, while her other hand was dry and warm in Dafydd’s. He gripped it tightly.

  “A figure moves in the upper window of the near tower,” William said. “That’s not a sleeping chamber. It’s for prisoners. We have no dungeon because it was impossible to burrow into the rock below the tower.”

  Lili peered closer. The mist wasn’t quite so thick in this location and her eyes picked out the shape. “I see him.”

  Without asking permission, William stepped out from under the trees, still leading his horse. Dafydd released Lili’s hand to grab his shoulder. “No, William. Stay back. Look!” Dafydd pointed to one of the members of the garrison who paced along the wall-walk. Another few steps and William would have been out in the open for him to see.

  William subsided without protest, though tense anticipation emanated from him. “But what if—?” He cut off his sentence abruptly.

  Did he think the figure was his father?

  “We can wait until we’ve established the guard’s pattern before we get any closer. We’re safe here. Wales is just there.” Dafydd gestured to the west. “If someone ventures towards the woods, we can leap on the horses and gallop like hell.”

  Someone else, however, wasn’t going to wait. A hand flung a rope out the window of the tower room. The twist of the loop at the end caught in the light from the torches along the battlements, giving Lili no doubt as to what she was seeing. The rope fell and swung three feet from the top of the curtain wall.

  Because the tower formed one corner of the castle’s defenses, once the owner of the rope climbed down it, he would find himself outside the castle proper, though hardly safe, since the drop to the ground from the top of the wall was considerable—at least fifteen feet. And since this spot overlooked the ford, not the lake on the other side, if he were to take a few steps and leap into the water, it wasn’t deep enough to provide him with a cushion. If he jumped that far, the man would break his legs, at the very least.

  “Dafydd —” Lili said.

  “I see him.” Dafydd rummaged through the saddle bags on his horse.

  “What are you doing?” Lili said.

  “Do either of you have rope?” Dafydd said.

  “There’s a length in my bag,” William said. “I saw it when I was looking for food earlier.”

  “Give it to me.” Dafydd held out his hand. William, his hands shaking as much as his voice had when he’d spoken, untied the strings on his pack, took out the coil of rope, and handed it over.

  Dafydd glanced once towards the castle—the soldier who’d walked the battlements earlier had disappeared—and then leaned in to kiss Lili on the forehead. “I’ll be right back.”

  Reeling from his touch, Lili watched Dafydd’s shadow stride across the cleared space between the woods and the base of the tower. By the time he reached its foot, the man at the top had gotten himself
out of the window, down his rope, and balanced precariously on the edge of the wall. No guard below him in the bailey called a warning, and no man moved along the top of the wall-walk towards them.

  Her heart in her throat, Lili strained to see well enough with the mist and the distance. She couldn’t make out much more than shadows and darker shapes moving in it. She did note the moment Dafydd threw his rope up to the man, who caught it. What felt like hours later, but could only have been a few dozen heartbeats, Dafydd and the man he’d rescued ran across the clearing.

  “William, take Lili’s horse!” Dafydd pointed the newcomer to William’s horse, which was larger than the one Lili had ridden. Dafydd then threw himself onto his horse and pulled Lili up behind him. “Let’s go!”

  Lili peered at the man, but she didn’t recognize him. “Who—?”

  “No time!” Dafydd turned his horse’s head and urged him out of the woods and down the slope towards the Wye River. “The alarm has been raised.”

  Even as their horses surged into the water at the ford, a cry came from the battlements. Lili cast a glance back. A man-sized shadow blocked the light from the tower room that the prisoner had vacated.

  A voice called from behind them in English, “There! In the river!”

  The sound of the rapids below the ford and the pounding of Lili’s heart were so loud, Lili didn’t realize that a member of the garrison had shot an arrow until the stranger on William’s horse grunted and spoke in French, a language in which Lili felt more comfortable than English. “That was too close.”

  He plucked an arrow from where it had stuck into his saddle bag, the feathered end quivering, and spurred his horse after William, who was the first to reach the opposite shore.

  The shouts grew louder, following them through the trees that bordered the Wye River. The ford wouldn’t prove any more of a barrier to the English than it had to them.

  “With the fog and the dark, we have a head start, at least,” the stranger said, still in French.

  “Do you know the area?” Dafydd urged his horse abreast of the man, speaking in the same language.

  “Not as well as I might,” he said. “We’re in Wales, you know, and even as a boy, I didn’t venture on this side of the river often.”

  “You weren’t always at war with my father,” Dafydd said.

  “Be that as it may—” the man said.

  Dafydd ducked his head under a low hanging branch. “Now that I think about it, I’ve never been here before either. Painscastle is due west from Clifford, is it not?”

  “It is,” William said.

  “You left Bronwen’s chariot only two miles to the northwest of Painscastle when you came through the last time,” Lili said, speaking in Welsh for Dafydd’s ears alone.

  The stranger picked up on her mention of the castle, and spoke again in French. “Painscastle is less than five miles as the crow flies from here, but the passage through the Dyke might be held against us.” Offa’s Dyke as it stretched north of Hay, served as the treaty boundary between England and Wales. Not that the English behind them were going to respect it any more than the men who’d pursued Humphrey de Bohun.

  “We won’t go by the road,” Dafydd said.

  “Who is this, Dafydd?” Lili dropped her voice so the man couldn’t hear. “Why are we helping him? Why is he riding to Wales with us when he’s obviously Norman?”

  “I apologize, Lili,” Dafydd said, “I thought you recognized him. Meet Gilbert de Clare.”

  Lili swallowed hard. The Red Earl. Questions boiled up inside her, the first of which was what was he doing locked in the tower of Clifford Castle? She had no time for any of them, however, as another arrow whined past her head and lodged in a grassy tussock to her left. She looked back. The figure of a man stood out in relief on a low hill on the western side of the river. He was too far away to shoot accurately, but even so, as Clare had said earlier, that had been far too close.

  Dafydd found a trail that let them pick up their pace, though how he could tell where they were going in the fog and the dark Lili didn’t know. She just held on, her arms tight around his waist and her cheek pressed against his back.

  He urged his horse up a steep incline and Lili tightened her hold even more. “Ease up, Lili,” he said. “I won’t let you fall off.”

  Her arms relaxed incrementally, perhaps not as much as he would have liked, but he patted her hand anyway.

  “Why are we bringing Gilbert de Clare with us?” she said.

  “What else would I do with him?” Dafydd said. “Leave him to be recaptured?”

  “What if he means to trap us in his net? What if—”

  “He didn’t know that we were going to be outside Clifford Castle, just now,” Dafydd said. “We didn’t know that we were going to be there. Men locked him in, men he thought were his allies, and he got out.”

  “The enemy of your enemy is your friend, is that it?” Lili had heard Dafydd say that phrase during the last war.

  “It’s possible,” Dafydd said, “though an hour ago the idea that I’d be riding into Wales with Gilbert de Clare beside me would have been a laughable one.”

  “At the very least, I’m in your debt,” Clare said. The trail had narrowed suddenly, bringing Clare closer to them such that he overheard their conversation—even as they’d been speaking in Welsh. They’d have to be more careful about what they said to each other in private, if Clare was going to understand their words.

  “They’re still coming, my lord,” William said from behind them, back to French.

  “I know,” Dafydd said. “Can you see how many?”

  “No, my lord,” William said. “All I know is that there are too many.”

  “We could go to ground?” Clare said.

  Lili felt Dafydd shake his head. “With yesterday’s rain, our tracks stand out plain as day.”

  Lili still couldn’t see anything, but those following had torches and she could see how easy it would be to track them in the mud. The terrain steepened, and then Offa’s Dyke rose up before them, the bulk of it evident even in the dark. Now that they had come further from the river, the fog that had enveloped them, and had helped to hide them, thinned. A pale moon shone above their heads. Compared to the murk under the trees, this was as bright as day. The Dyke showed decay in this spot, as it did in many locations along the wall. Even though it formed the boundary between Wales and England, neither side had seen fit to put effort into repairing it.

  “Where are we in relation to Painscastle?” Lili said.

  “North of the road that leads to it from the east,” Dafydd said. “Hold tight, Lili, we’re going up.”

  Their horse had found a path that zigzagged up the face of the Dyke. Lili clutched Dafydd around the waist and leaned forward with him to counter the sharp angle.

  “How did you know this was here?” she said. “You haven’t been here before.”

  “Not here, no,” Dafydd said. “But the country folk cross the Dyke every day. You know they do. Here, at Dolforwyn, at Dinas Bran. Even when the roads are guarded, they have a way through. I was willing to travel a lot further than this to find a path if we’d had to.”

  “If our horses can navigate it, our pursuers’ beasts can too,” Clare said.

  Dafydd shrugged. “By then we’ll be in Wales, which means we’ll be safer than they are. On top of which, I don’t hear dogs. Without them, they won’t know exactly where we’ve crossed.”

  The horses reached the top. On the heights, a quickening wind blew. They’d been sheltered from the west wind while climbing the Dyke. Lili turned her face directly into it, knowing by the same instinct shared by every Welsh child that the weather blew in from the southwest at this time of year.

  “I don’t see a way down,” William said.

  “I don’t either,” Dafydd said. “But you don’t need to. Trust your horse.”

  Lili glanced east. The scattered clouds had parted to allow the moon to shine more brightly. Three English rid
ers came out of the trees on the far side of the field they’d just crossed. She tugged on Dafydd’s cloak. “They’re coming. And surely they can see us up here!”

  “Down we go,” Dafydd said.

  Chapter 16

  27 August 1288

  Near Clifford Castle

  David

  The Dyke was comprised of mounded earth, but the turf was thick, and even what had looked from the top like a sharp drop to the bottom, didn’t turn out to be quite as severe a decline as all that. David had told William to trust his horse, because he knew it was the right answer, not because it came naturally to David either. He’d had to learn it, as he’d learned so many things since he’d arrived in Wales six years ago.

  The base of the Dyke on the Welsh side was fronted by a deep ditch, mostly filled in after several hundred years of wind and weather, and they scrambled up it without too much trouble. That they were in Wales would normally have given David every confidence, but the English soldiers would follow. What did they have to lose? The Treaty was dead, stamped into the mud at their feet.

  David hadn’t realized how angry that made him until just now. He and his father had known that the Normans would violate the Treaty eventually—of course they would. Every single Norman had heard a lifetime of slander and mockery towards the Welsh, ridiculing them as a people and condemning them for their barbaric ways. His mother’s academic colleagues would have called it treating them as the other.

  For all that, however, David hadn’t been prepared for the Normans to come at them with such force and under these circumstances. And David had to admit that what maybe bothered him the most about the events of the last few days was that he hadn’t predicted any of them. It was painful to acknowledge his arrogance in thinking that he could.

  They crossed two fields, and headed into the woods on the other side, with still no sign of the English riders behind them. Maybe they had stopped at the Dyke?