Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  The big double doors were pulled wide—it was summer so the horses were plenty warm enough—and Edmund poked his nose into the darkened building. It smelled of horses, hay, and alfalfa. “Hello?”

  Anna caught up with him, gently tugged Cadell from Edmund’s back, and set the boy on his feet. She held Cadell’s hand, finding that this was one of the few times that her son clutched her hand tightly too, with no interest in exploring or getting away.

  Scuffling came from the back of the building and a young man in his early twenties loped out of the darkness, holding a lantern. “Yes?” When he saw Edmund he stiffened, his shoulders squaring, and came to a halt in front of the Marcher baron. “My lord!”

  “I’ll need three horses, Andrew, just as soon as you can.”

  “Of course, my lord,” Andrew said. “Is something wrong—?”

  A shout echoed from the road they’d just come up. Anna couldn’t hear hooves, but that didn’t mean riders weren’t minutes away.

  Edmund gripped Andrew’s upper arm. “You have always served me well, Andrew. Will you again? These men who look for us must not find us.”

  Andrew didn’t hesitate. “Of course, my lord.”

  Cadell released Anna’s hand and wrapped both arms around her thigh, pressing his face into the fabric of her skirt. “Mama—”

  Anna caught him up in her arms. He clutched his legs around her waist and his arms went around her neck. “Don’t talk now, sweetheart,” Anna said. “We’re going to hide—like when we play hide and seek at home. You have to be really quiet, okay?”

  Andrew led them down the central aisle, past a dozen stalls, only half of which contained horses, to an empty one on the left. Andrew scraped his boot across the floor to sweep aside the hay that covered it. Beneath the hay lay a ring to a trap door. He bent, grasped it, and pulled it up. It came free with no squealing of hinges and revealed rickety stairs leading down.

  Edmund patted Andrew’s shoulder as he passed him.

  “Thank you,” Anna said, as she, Maud, and their boys followed into the darkness below.

  “This way.” Edmund led them towards the front of the barn and stopped directly underneath the front door. He tipped his head back, listening hard for the sound of their pursuers.

  Cadell pressed his face to Anna’s neck. He was frightened now—perhaps more so than he’d been since the ambush. Anna tightened her arms around him. Back at the stairs, Andrew closed the trap door so it was once again flush with the floor. She could hear the sweep of his boot as he brushed the hay back over the ring to disguise that the door had been used—or even that it existed at all.

  Maud settled onto an overturned bucket, with Hugh between her knees and her arms around him. Anna still held Cadell close, though her face was upturned like Edmund’s, looking through the thin slats in the ceiling above them. The light from Andrew’s lantern pierced through the gaps—and then went out.

  “They’ll question him,” Anna said.

  “Yes, they will.” Edmund sounded resigned. “We’ll see how good an actor he can be.”

  They didn’t have long to wait. The trapdoor had been closed for no more than a minute when horses’ hooves sounded on the gravel in the driveway. The lead rider reined in at the doorway and dropped to his feet with a thud that rang hollowly on the wooden floor of the barn. “Anybody here?”

  Edmund’s shoulders jerked at the voice. Anna stood only inches away from him, and although she couldn’t see his expression, she sensed his dismay. She wished she knew what it was about the man that had startled him.

  Their hiding place was darker than the barn itself, and through the slits in the wood above her head, Anna could just see the shadow of the rider’s arm as he waved his men off their horses. “Spread out and search. This is where’d I’d come if I were running.”

  Andrew appeared out of the back, lantern in hand as before, and strolled towards the questioner. “May I help you, my lord?”

  Above them, the man said, “I’m looking for my brother, traveling with two women and their children. Have you seen him?”

  So that’s what had shaken Edmund. It was his brother, Roger, personally doing the looking. It was a good thing that emotions weren’t visible. Anna could feel the anger rolling off of Edmund in waves.

  “It’s been quiet here,” Andrew said, “except that one of the horses got out about two hours ago—his stall wasn’t latched properly—and I had quite a time catching him. That was before full dark, though. If Lord Mortimer passed through here then, I wouldn’t have seen him.”

  The knothole above Anna’s head gave her a good look at Roger. He looked away from Andrew, gazing west and chewing on his lip. Andrew peered past him to the empty saddles of his companions. “Your men are welcome to search, if they like.”

  “They are already at work,” Roger said. Just then, one of the other men came around the corner from the north, took the lantern from Andrew without asking, and headed for the stalls behind him. For a moment, he stood on the planks just above Maud’s head. None of them moved. Anna feared that her heart was beating so loudly that he could hear it. Thankfully, he detected her fear no more easily than Edmund’s fury.

  Then he began moving from stall to stall. “Were these empty all day?”

  “Yes sir. We’re not often full.” Andrew looked back at Roger. “What’s this all about, my lord?”

  “Nothing that need concern you.” Roger walked the length of the barn. At that point, Edmund put a hand to Anna’s shoulder and pushed her into the shadows of the side wall, next to one of the posts that supported the ceiling and augmented the earthen foundation. He had a finger to his lips.

  Anna nodded. Cadell’s eyes were closed, his face hidden in Anna’s hair, which had come down from the bun at the back of her neck in their journey from Montgomery Castle. He appeared to be asleep, or close to it. Thank God.

  The men walked back and forth through the barn for what seemed like an eternity, though their search was something less than thorough if they never thought to look beneath their feet. One of the men did climb the ladder to the loft and declare it empty.

  “All right.” Roger spun on his heel and marched back to his horse. “We can’t waste any more time here.” His companions followed, one handing the lantern back to Andrew as he passed him.

  The other horsemen had returned, too, with rueful shakes of their heads. “Nothing in the woods,” one said.

  Lord Roger had removed his riding gloves when he arrived and snapped them into his palm, punctuating his dissatisfaction. “Either he didn’t come this way, or he went to ground.”

  “We’ll keep looking, my lord,” one of the other riders said.

  Roger mounted his horse, but bent towards Andrew once he was seated. “If they arrive here, I’ll need you to reassure them that they are safe, and then contact me at the castle.”

  “Yes, my lord,” Andrew said.

  They rode away.

  Anna leaned in to Edmund. “Do we stay here or flee? Will they keep a watch on the stables?”

  Edmund still had his head tipped back, looking up at the ceiling. “It disturbs me that Roger assumed Andrew’s loyalty was greater to him than to me.”

  Anna didn’t know what to say to that. This had not been a good day for Edmund Mortimer.

  The trap door pulled up. Andrew’s feet, and then his face appeared, illumined by his lantern. “They’re gone, but they may well be back. I can set you on your way by quieter paths than the main road, but you should leave now.”

  Edmund nodded. “If we stay, they’ll find us eventually. Roger knows about this cellar, and will recall it given time. We should risk it and go.”

  * * * * *

  The wind whipped into Anna’s face, screaming out of the western skies, unrelenting. At the same time, it kept her on the right track. Safety was to the west. They could lose the men who pursued them in the mountains that rose before them. She clutched Cadell to her. He slept as only a child could, sprawled across her lap. T
he urgency that Anna had felt back at Montgomery had increased tenfold. It pounded in her temples and affected her breathing. The English were coming to attack Gwynedd. She needed to hurry so she could warn the defenders at Aber and on Anglesey before they did.

  The four of them—including Andrew, who had refused to abandon his lord and return to the stables—had ridden twenty miles in the dark and the wind, always heading northwest, picking their way from one track to the next until they found the old Roman road that led to Caer Gai. They had turned due north sometime after what Anna gauged to be three in the morning, and then fought onward towards Dolwyddelan, fifty miles in all. From Dolwyddelan, the castellan could send a fast rider to Aber to warn the garrison of the English approach.

  Anna felt at times that if it weren’t for Cadell sleeping in her arms, they could have walked the distance faster than they were riding. By the early hours of the morning, Maud was also nodding in the saddle, while trying to contain Hugh who rested against her chest.

  Thankfully, it was August, not cold, and they were in Wales, which meant that sunrise came only ten hours after it had set, instead of sixteen like it did in the height of winter. Anna had never been so grateful in her life to see the first rays of the sun shoot above the eastern horizon. The warmth of it was short lived, however, because soon after, the wind that had blown unceasingly up until then, brought a wash of rain with it. Anna hunched with Cadell over her horse, trying to keep both of them as dry as she could.

  “How much further?” Edmund said. “It has to be soon or we will need to find a place to sleep.”

  Anna was loath to stop. “We’ll be there by noon,” she said, hoping her internal calculations were correct. She felt responsible for Hugh and Maud. It was she who’d provided the impetus to get them out of Montgomery. “We could sleep in a shepherd’s hut if we have to, but I’d rather push on.”

  Edmund didn’t argue. “The threat of war is a great weight.”

  He had that right.

  They passed a derelict croft not long later, one that seemed to be standing only because a tree had grown close to a side wall, supporting it. Anna didn’t turn aside, even though it had begun to rain harder. This journey reminded her of another one—another ride—although that one had been in winter after a traitor let the English into Castell y Bere. Now, instead of Gwenllian, her little sister, she held her own son, warm within the blanket she’d appropriated from the stables.

  Maud turned her head and looked at the hut too—longingly, Anna thought—but when Anna opened her mouth to apologize, Maud wouldn’t allow her to get the words out. “I’m afraid of pursuit too,” Maud said. “It seems unlikely that they’d search this far from Montgomery, if they haven’t already found us, but we don’t know how far your brother’s ambition stretches, my lord.”

  “Far enough for me not to want to stop either,” Edmund said. “He might put great effort into recapturing me, if only because I’ve hurt his pride.” He urged his horse closer. The wind whipped his hood from his head and instinctively Anna tucked hers tighter in response. “Are you well, my lady?”

  “Well enough,” she said. “I am more thankful than I can possibly express that we are no longer in Montgomery Castle.”

  Edmund barked a laugh that the wind caught and blew away east. “I feel the same, for all that the castle has belonged to my family for three generations.”

  “Have we lost our pursuers, do you think?” Maud said. Hugh, who rode before her in the saddle, began to wiggle and she gripped him more tightly. “If Roger returned to the stables—”

  Edmund reached out a hand and patted Maud’s arm in reassurance. “We rode south and then west. Andrew knew what he was doing when he said that he would help us to escape my brother’s clutches. With every mile, we head deeper into Wales.” They were following the old Roman road which provided the most direct path through the mountains. It was the high road—and one Roger might assume they’d take, but Anna also breathed more easily with every hour that passed.

  “Thank you for aiding us,” Maud said, turning to Andrew who brought up the rear.

  “It is my pleasure, my lady,” Andrew said.

  Anna glanced at Edmund who turned in the saddle to gaze past his servant to the direction from which they’d come. The road behind them stretched into the distance. Not a soul moved on it. “We left no sign of our presence,” he said. “Perhaps Roger decided not to waste any more effort in catching us, an effort that would be better spent elsewhere. Even though I am his brother, you are Bohun’s wife, and Anna, a princess of Wales, we are only five people. Six, now, with Andrew. We are not worth his time.”

  “Roger has a country to win,” Anna said.

  “We are safe in Wales, Maud,” Edmund said, and then added tactlessly, “unbelievable as that may seem.”

  Anna didn’t know if she should get up the effort to take offense or not. It had been Edmund, after all, who had tried to murder Papa. It was his men that Anna and David had driven into at Cilmeri almost six years ago, saving Papa’s life. Anna looked away, knowing she should let it lie, but in the end spoke anyway, though only loud enough for Edmund to hear. “Don’t think I’ve forgotten.”

  Edmund glanced at her. “I would never presume that, my dear. Does it help if I tell you that Cilmeri was my brother’s idea?”

  That was easy enough for him to say now, though given Edmund’s present situation, it could be the truth. “Papa is your uncle,” Anna said.

  “I know,” Edmund said.

  He didn’t elaborate and Anna didn’t press him. No present accusation could change the past. Besides, Edmund owed her now, just like Humphrey de Bohun owed David for keeping his son safe, even though they still weren’t clear as to the threat against him.

  Finally, as the noon hour approached, Dolwyddelan appeared out of the rocks in front of them. It was here that Anna had fled with Gwenllian after the English had burned Castell y Bere. Anna hoped the precedent boded well for her today.

  It should have been a relief to ride under the gatehouse, but all of them—horses and humans—hung their heads in exhaustion. Anna felt like throwing up. Whether that was because of the child she carried inside her, the lack of sleep, or what might be happening on Anglesey just then, she couldn’t decide.

  “My lady!”

  All of a sudden, the day grew brighter. The steward of Dolwyddelan, a stout older knight by the name of Marc, came out of the keep. He was followed by its castellan, Goronwy, her father’s right hand man since they were boys. Thank you, Lord. Anna sent up a prayer and kissed the top of Cadell’s head.

  He squealed and reached for Goronwy, who came to a halt at Anna’s stirrup and took up the boy as a matter of course. “What are you doing here, Anna?”

  Anna would have teased him for not giving her a nice to see you or how are you? but the concern in his eyes had her biting back her retort. Cadell wiggled and Goronwy set him down so the child could gather up one of the unsuspecting barn cats. Even though nobody else in Wales seemed to have the same tolerant view of pets that she did, Anna had taught Cadell not to chase them.

  “It’s a long story,” Anna said. “Can you help me down? I can barely feel my feet.” Anna was numb all over from the ride and she was comfortable enough with Goronwy not to hide her discomfort.

  “I missed you, my girl.” Goronwy caught her up in a bear hug before her feet touched the ground. “But I have a feeling that whatever news you’re bringing isn’t going to be something this old soldier wants to hear.”

  “No, it isn’t.” Anna gestured to her companions. “You’ve met Edmund Mortimer, of course.”

  Goronwy’s jaw dropped. His eyes had been only for Anna but now he turned to Edmund. “I can’t say this is a pleasure.”

  “Nor for me,” Edmund said, in Welsh, “although I’d appreciate it if you do not pass judgment until you hear what I have to say. I find I am in your princess’ debt—one that I may never be able to repay.” Anna, Maud, and Edmund had spoken mostly in French up
until this point. His Welsh was better than Anna would have expected. But then, his grandmother had been a Welsh princess, daughter of the great Prince of Wales, Llywelyn Fawr.

  “Come inside and tell me.” Goronwy took Anna’s hand and kissed it. He lowered his voice. “You look exhausted. Are you with child again?”

  “Goronwy.” Anna put her hand to his cheek. “I could never keep a single secret from you. Please don’t tell anyone. Even Math doesn’t know.”

  “Not a word. But I worry for you.”

  “And I for you,” Anna said.

  The steward’s wife had hastened out of the keep after her husband. “May I draw a bath for you, my lady?”

  Anna put a hand to her head, her lack of sleep catching up to her between one breath and the next. “Yes. Thank you. We can ride no more today.”

  “How far have you come?” Goronwy said.

  “From Montgomery,” Edmund said. “Under some duress.”

  “All of you?” Goronwy tightened his grip on Anna’s hand.

  “Thus, the tale we have to tell,” Edmund said.

  Anna glanced at Edmund. He was back to his old form, with dry tongue and bemused expression. Anna herself felt short-tempered and hag-like. Cadell, of all of them, was feeling the most cheerful. Still holding the cat, he ran with Hugh to the stables where they’d spied three puppies playing in the hay.

  “I’ll watch them, my ladies,” Andrew said.

  Anna nodded, accepting his offer, though he had to be tired too. She made a note to herself to speak to Marc about finding someone to relieve him soon.

  “Eat or bath first?” Goronwy took Anna’s arm to escort her inside the keep.

  “Bath,” Maud and Anna said in unison, and then smiled at each other. Anna had been impressed with Maud’s fortitude over the last two days. Separated from her husband and older son, she’d escaped from Montgomery and trekked across the spine of Wales without complaint. And her son hadn’t complained either. They raised them tougher in the March than Anna’s prejudice against Marcher lords would have given them credit.