Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Do you know how much farther?” Clare spoke these words in Welsh, revealing a proficiency that equaled that of Humphrey de Bohun. David resigned himself to not being able to keep his communications with Lili a secret, not if all four of them could converse interchangeably in Welsh, French, and English. It was just his luck that he was associating with the only two Normans who’d bothered to learn the language of their subjects.

  “No,” David said. “Do you know, Lili?”

  “Not exactly,” she said. “But there’s nothing but farms and fields between here and Painscastle.”

  “Then we ride as hard and as fast as we can until we reach it,” David said.

  Lili sniffed the air and pointed to the southwest. “We’ll have more rain soon. Tomorrow or the next day, I think.”

  David smiled, but didn’t say what he was thinking—that he didn’t have to be in tune with the weather to know that in Wales, rain always came eventually.

  It was only five miles from Clifford to Painscastle. They’d come half that distance already, and the remainder were the longest miles of David’s life. The moon shone brightly down, illuminating every tree and hillock, but leaving too much in shadow. It felt to David as if the English soldiers that Lili had seen lurked behind every obstacle. While logic told him that the soldiers couldn’t have gotten ahead of them, and that they might even have left their pursuers behind, at least temporarily, his pulse didn’t believe it for a second.

  Finally, they came out of a field and onto the road that looped around to the north of the castle. “I don’t hear any pursuit,” Clare said.

  “Nor I,” David said. “And now it doesn’t matter. Ride!”

  Never had he been happier to see the gatehouse of a castle. At a lifted hand from David, one of the members of the garrison opened the wicket gate beside the portcullis. David dismounted and helped Lili down, before leading his horse into the courtyard of the castle. Torches lit the expansive space, almost as if it were day. David opened his mouth to speak to the soldier who came to greet them—

  Goddamn it!

  “My lord!” The man-at-arms grabbed the bridle of Gilbert de Clare’s horse, speaking in English. “W-w-we had no idea you’d be arriving tonight. Or-or-or rather, I mean … this morning!”

  David’s hand went to the hilt of his sword but Lili reached around him and gripped his wrist before whispering close in his ear. “Wait.”

  She was right. Clare spoke to the soldier in a calm voice, also in English. “I can see that.” He gestured to the refuse pile by the blacksmith’s shop. “You have some work ahead of you.”

  The man swallowed hard. “Our captain died during the taking of the castle. We haven’t had time …” His words trailed off as Clare glared at him.

  The Marcher baron waved a hand at David, William, and Lili, who crowded up beside him. “See that a meal is brought to us immediately. My companions and I have ridden hard.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The man blinked. A more motley escort for the Earl of Gloucester couldn’t be imagined. David tried to look unthreatening, but he knew he wasn’t always successful, given his size.

  “Did you kill all the Welsh defenders?” Clare said.

  “N-n-no, my lord,” the man said, back to stuttering. “Not all of them. That wasn’t in our orders.”

  David was pleased to hear that. Clare apparently was too.

  “Good,” Clare said. “Where are they? I’ve come all this way to speak to one of them. Pray he is not dead.”

  The man stiffened into a more soldierly bearing. “We put them in the dungeon under the barracks, sir.”

  “How many men do you have?”

  “Only a dozen still standing, sir. Our spy tainted the mead so we could take the castle two nights ago, but the potion didn’t have the same effect on everyone and some resisted strongly. We lost several men.”

  Clare harrumphed his baronly disgust for this admission and dismissed the man with a sharp jerk of his head. Then he touched Lili’s arm. “Come.” She nodded, though she glanced once at David, who shrugged, and gave way as Clare led them towards the keep which rose above them on its motte. What else could they do, given this strange turn of events?

  David tried to put on an aura of assurance as he stalked across the bailey of the castle, his hand in the crook of Lili’s elbow, to make sure she kept up too. When the Welsh had taken Painscastle in 1285, the motte had been guarded by a barbican and a drawbridge. These features had been destroyed three years ago and not been rebuilt. A makeshift bridge spanned the ditch at the base of the motte and they crossed it to reach the steps up to the keep.

  Given that Clare hadn’t betrayed them yet, it seemed he might not and that his gratitude for his rescue was genuine. It would be interesting to see how long it lasted. David certainly wasn’t going to betray Clare by informing the English soldier that he wasn’t one of them, any more than David was, and that David had picked the Marcher lord up while Clare was escaping from Clifford Castle.

  Whoever the main conspirators on the Norman side were in this war, they didn’t seem to have communicated their chain of command to those below them beyond the barest minimum. The soldiers at Valle Crucis Abbey had thought Mortimer was their commander. The soldiers at Buellt had claimed it was Clare, despite wearing Mortimer colors too. Now, these at Painscastle took Clare’s appearance at face value, even though a third party had to be behind the Norman invasion.

  At the same time, David didn’t know what game Clare was playing. For now, it was enough that he hadn’t pointed out to these soldiers that David was the Prince of Wales. If Gilbert de Clare was a prize, David was the whole carnival.

  Plus, if Humphrey de Bohun was really on the way to the Tower of London, then the capture of William would have been well-received also. The boy, however, had done well. He hadn’t betrayed himself or them, and had uncharacteristically kept his mouth shut since they’d returned to Wales.

  David glanced at the boy. William’s head was down and he looked neither left nor right as they walked up the thirty or so steps that took them to the top of the motte. David hadn’t ever seen William this subdued, not even after the attack outside Buellt. David hoped it wasn’t a precursor to another rebellion. In William’s mind, they had to moving backwards and now were further from rescuing his father than when they’d started.

  Clare took them to the entrance to the great hall, through it, and to a doorway at the far end. Beyond, a short hallway led to several rooms. He entered the first one, which proved to be the castellan’s study. Like David, it seemed that Clare had been here before. Clare stood with his back to the door, staring out of the window.

  David gestured Lili around the only table in the room, to the stool behind it, while David perched on the table’s edge. Nobody said anything until two servants appeared with food and drink and left again. David gestured to William to close the door behind them. He obeyed unquestioningly, and then leaned his back against it.

  The four accidental companions gazed at the food for ten seconds before Lili said, “I’m hungry.”

  “May I join you?” William said.

  Lili nodded and William tugged a bench from its position near the door towards the table, and sat. The two were similar in size and David couldn’t help smiling at their similar dishevelment. Lili still wore the same boy’s breeches she’d put on to shoot in at Buellt, but her entire outfit, like William’s, was definitely the worse for wear.

  David grabbed one of the small loaves of bread and a hunk of cheese and walked to stand beside Clare. Only one of the window shutters was open. David pulled open the second one, peered into the darkness, and then closed it again. “We’re forty feet above the bailey. Nobody can hear us,” he said.

  Clare walked to the table and plucked one of the loaves from the tray. He gestured towards David with it. “What have we got ourselves into?”

  The we and Clare’s evident good humor had David feeling remarkably cheerful all of a sudden. For now, it was ‘we’. Allies,
no matter how unlikely, should always be made welcome.

  “I met with Humphrey de Bohun three days ago. He warned us that you Normans were moving against Wales.” David eyed Clare. “Your name came up.”

  Clare snorted. “I can see why Bohun might suspect my involvement. Ever since Evesham …”

  It might have been twenty years ago, but certain things cannot be forgiven. Even so, David let it go. “English soldiers took Buellt Castle two days ago. We took it back, but it does seem that whichever baron is moving his pieces on this board, he has a well-conceived plan. It’s not his fault that certain elements didn’t go entirely according to his intention.”

  “That would be because of Lili, my lord, and you,” William said.

  “And you, in truth,” Lili said. “While I hate to admit it, your flight into England hasn’t been without benefit.”

  “Certainly to me!” Clare said.

  “But who is it that plots against Wales?” William gestured with his belt knife to Clare. “My father suspected you, my lord, it is true, but Buellt was taken in your name.”

  “My name?” Clare froze in the act of popping a roasted mushroom into his mouth. “Have my enemies sunk that low?”

  “So it seems, my lord.” William poured each of them a cup of mead from the pitcher. He handed the first cup to Lili, who smiled at him as she took it.

  “And yet, those same English soldiers wore Mortimer colors,” David said.

  “Which Mortimer?” Clare raised his eyebrows. “Young Roger, surely. Edmund conspires with Bohun if he conspires with anyone.”

  That was news to David and something Humphrey de Bohun had neglected to mention.

  “We had assumed it was Edmund,” David said. “But it didn’t matter in the end because it was your name on their lips.”

  “It does seem that we have found ourselves caught in a complicated plot, doesn’t it?” Clare said. “Too complicated, if you ask me. Every moving piece raises the risk that one weak point will bring down the whole.”

  “And where do you stand, at present?” David said. “From the behavior of the men out there, they think you are one of the conspirators in this war. Why aren’t you?”

  “I’m as mystified as you as to why my captivity was kept secret,” Clare said, “though surely grateful for it as well. But Valence has many plots and stratagems up his sleeve. Who’s to say that playing one baron off another isn’t useful to him? You thought I was with him until you found me hanging from a rope outside of that tower.”

  “D-d-did you say, ‘Valence’?” David said, stuttering just like the English captain had when they’d entered Painscastle.

  Clare’s eyes turned wary. “You didn’t even know that William de Valence was involved? It is his mind that is behind … well …” Clare gestured expansively, “all of this.”

  “No, we did not,” David said.

  Clare let out a deep breath. “Valence has more power and reach than any other lord in England. I’m sure that the commander of my knights, Ralph de Quincy, betrayed me to him. Ralph is the only one of my men who could command unquestioning obedience from the rest, all of whom would assume his orders came from me. Valence must have bought him.”

  William de Valence had been uncle to King Edward. He crusaded with Edward before he became king and as the former Earl of Pembroke (he’d lost his lands to Wales, too, with the Treaty), was the most powerful man in England who wasn’t a regent, with the possible exception of Clare himself, whose estates were spread across twenty-two English counties.

  That Valence wasn’t a regent had more to do with his upbringing in France, and the bad influence (from an English perspective) of his French relatives, than his lack of actual power. His Pembrokeshire base had been the jumping off point for King Edward’s 1282 campaign against David’s father. In fact, it was he who had replaced Clare as commander of the English forces in Wales towards the end of 1282. The two men openly despised each other.

  That Valence hadn’t been at Lancaster when King Edward died was pure luck. And surely, the man thanked God every day for it.

  Lili had been looking from Clare to David and back again. “Please—who is William de Valence? Bohun didn’t mention him, did he?”

  David turned to Lili. “No, he didn’t. Valence was King Edward’s right hand man, up until the day of his death. We’ve had no indication that Valence was involved until now.”

  “That must have been his intent,” Clare said. “Valence is in a perfect position to orchestrate men and events according to his desires. In order to ratify the Treaty with Wales, the regents had to appease him by compensating him for his loss of Pembroke, with lands to the north and west of London, else he ruin all. He has courted Archbishop Peckham to the point that the Archbishop thinks the sun shines out of Valence’s arse. Never doubt that Valence has his ear.”

  “So, it was Valence who imprisoned you in the tower at Clifford Castle?” Lili said.

  “His men ambushed mine,” Clare said. “I recognized Valence’s commander from past wars in Wales. Despite the natural assumption made by the soldiers here that every Norman in the March supports this war, Valence and I rarely see eye-to-eye. I am not one of his conspirators.”

  “Why not?” David said. “You’ve worked with people you despised in the past.”

  Clare shot him a dark look. “I want Caerphilly back—you know that.”

  David nodded. Of course, Clare did.

  “But the plan as Valence explained it to me was not what I would have chosen. I was willing to wait a little longer, for the right moment to make my move. Not Valence’s move. Mine.”

  David found the bread he was eating sticking in his throat and he brought down his hand without taking another bite. “You were going to wait until my father died. Your idea was that I would be weakest then. You were going to test me.”

  Clare shrugged. “Be that as it may, I did not see any benefit to being hasty when great loss could come from it. In Valence’s conspiracy, I would have been one of several rival lords—and late to the game at that.”

  David could see Clare’s point. Conspiracy was nothing new to Clare. Twenty years ago, Clare—then a young man of twenty-two—had conspired with Simon de Montfort and David’s father (who at the time was still a vassal to the English crown) to divide England and Wales among themselves. The size of Clare’s ego had never been in doubt.

  “But I underestimated their resolve,” Clare said. “I received an invitation from Humphrey de Bohun to visit Clifford Castle and discuss alternatives.” He spread his hands wide. “Needless to say, the message wasn’t from Bohun.”

  “Who is himself on the way to the Tower of London,” David said.

  “Is that what you heard?” Clare’s eyes went to William’s face. “Ah,” he said, in response to what he saw there. Defiance, David thought. Or guilt. “Were you in England with the Prince of Wales on your heels because you thought to rescue your father all by yourself?”

  William flushed red to the roots of his hair.

  “We’ve been over that,” David said. “Did you know that Bohun had spoken with me?”

  “No,” Clare said. “But seeing you together with young William put the pieces in place. Bohun does have an alternate plan. I find it very interesting that he has formed a counter one so quickly. Valence is right to be wary of him—and of me.”

  “Indeed,” David said.

  Clare canted his head. “You are not concerned to be with me in a castle held against you, with no plan for getting out?”

  “You don’t have a plan that includes me? I felt sure you did,” David said. “You’ve gotten us this far, haven’t you?”

  Clare studied David. “Tell me what you think we should do?”

  David shrugged. “There are men loyal to Wales here, albeit imprisoned. I say, we break them out.”

  Chapter 17

  28 August 1288

  Painscastle

  Lili

  “Why haven’t they killed our men?” The ques
tion had niggled at the back of Lili’s mind from the start.

  “I don’t know,” Dafydd said. “I’ve wondered that too. The English soldiers killed Welshmen in taking the castle, but once victorious, they rounded the defenders up, both here and at Buellt.”

  “It’s because Valence plans to actually rule Wales, not just conquer it,” Clare said.

  “What a remarkable idea.” Dafydd picked at his upper lip as he gazed at Clare. “And he thinks by showing mercy to a handful of Welsh soldiers, he’s taking a step in that direction?”

  “He needs the loyalty of all the people in the region, both Welsh and English, once he establishes his puppet Prince of Wales,” Clare said.

  “You’ve lost me,” Dafydd said. “What are you talking about? What puppet Prince of Wales? Certainly, not me.”

  Clare snorted laughter. “No.” He canted his head. “You don’t know that either?” And then at Dafydd’s steady gaze added, “You really don’t know.”

  “Tell me,” Dafydd said.

  Clare’s look of amusement set Lili’s teeth on edge. Dafydd had managed to keep his face serene but he had to be cursing Clare inside. She hated it when older people—men in particular—looked down on Dafydd because he was only nineteen.

  “Valence has the eldest son of Owain Goch, King Llywelyn’s older brother, in his pocket.”

  “He hasn’t!” Lili said.

  Dafydd barked a laugh. “Of all things for you to say, I never expected that. I didn’t know my uncle Owain had a son.”

  “Didn’t you?” Clare seemed genuinely surprised—and amused, as always.

  “I didn’t know he fathered any children. My father has never spoken of them, and even when my uncle Dafydd was alive, before my father publically claimed me as his son, it was always Uncle Dafydd who would be his heir.”

  “Your uncle Dafydd certainly wouldn’t have mentioned it, would he?” Clare said. “He wouldn’t have wanted to distract attention from his own inheritance. Your existence was offensive enough.”