Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  They reached the room off the kitchen intended for bathing. A fire burned in the hearth, heating water, which the servants poured, a bucket at a time, into the wooden tub. Magnanimously, Anna allowed Maud to bathe first, while she plunged her hands into the warm water of a nearby basin and washed her face. “You and Hugh will be safe here,” Anna said.

  “I know,” Maud said.

  Anna glanced at her. “You do?”

  Maud turned to her. “My dear. Out of nothing, you conjured our escape from Montgomery, found horses for us to ride, and led us through the wilds of Wales to this castle. I have no idea how you managed any of it, but after my initial fear of what the guards might do to us if we were discovered, I’ve not been afraid.”

  Anna swallowed. She hadn’t considered how Maud might feel about all of this. Truthfully, she’d barely considered Maud at all. It had been a long time since she’d met a woman of this time with whom she could carry on a conversation that felt normal to Anna, one in which they talked about ideas, or politics, or something other than the specifics of child-rearing or household management. Most of the time, she didn’t try.

  “I’m sorry about your husband,” she said. “I don’t know what we can do for him.”

  “He has always looked further into the future than I could see,” Maud said. “I wouldn’t count him out just yet.”

  The women took turns bathing, but the water cooled quickly and they finished sooner than Anna would have liked, since she wanted nothing more than to laze in the tub until she fell asleep. They arrived in the great hall just as Edmund was concluding the story of their escape.

  “—and the princess led us here.”

  Anna felt Goronwy’s eyes on her as she sat down. She looked back at him and smiled. She’d been only two years old when they’d met. They’d missed each other for a long gap of fourteen years during which Anna had grown up in the modern world. But the connection between them remained tangible. Goronwy had not married or had children (at least none whom he claimed). He viewed Cadell as a grandson.

  “Your father will not be pleased to learn of what has happened to you,” Goronwy said.

  “You’re too polite,” Anna said. “That’s a gross understatement. Fortunately, it was David’s task to tell him about the English invasion, not mine.”

  “I will send a rider at once to inform the garrison at Aber of the threat they face,” Goronwy said.

  “They should already know about the threat to the south,” Anna said. “Come to think of it, you should already know about that part too. Math sent a rider to warn you days ago; he left Dinas Bran within an hour of us knowing ourselves.”

  “We have heard nothing from him,” Goronwy said.

  An ache settled into Anna’s belly that had nothing to do with the baby. “Ask your rider to continue on to Anglesey,” Anna said. “Bevyn must hear of it too.”

  “A man will leave within the hour,” Goronwy said.

  “And we should follow in the morning.” Her heart sank at the thought. The last thing she wanted to do was get on a horse again. Ever.

  Goronwy canted his head and studied her. “You, at least, need not travel more. Dolwyddelan is safer than Aber. For the sake of your family, you should stay here.”

  “Isn’t the crown stored in the treasury there? And the piece of the true cross in the chapel?” Anna said.

  Goronwy looked discomfited. “Of course.”

  “Then if Aber is at risk, we can’t leave them there. If the English capture the castle, possession of our House’s most sacred relics will give them a terrible hold over Papa.”

  Goronwy couldn’t deny it. Anna herself knew it from what King Edward had accomplished in her old world. With Papa’s death at Cilmeri, they’d stolen the relics from their hiding place at Aber, and in the seven hundred years that had passed between 1282 and the twenty-first century, had never given them back to Wales. That the heir to the crown of England was called the Prince of Wales from then on, Papa’s former title, made mockery of all that the Welsh—her people now—had fought for and sacrificed.

  Anna studied her old friend. “I would let you go in my stead, but you cannot ride that far, Papa told me. As much as I hate to admit it, we can’t leave this to anyone else.”

  “I am not so enfeebled that I—”

  “Don’t even start with me,” Anna said. “You can’t ride until your wound heals. I will go with an escort, and then I will come back, as quick as I can.” She turned to Maud. “If you will care for Cadell for me—just for two days?” Anna didn’t like leaving him. At home at Dinas Bran, there were times when she had been called to attend a birth—and sometimes the birth lasted for two days. She always fretted about him when they were apart, but would return to find Cadell content and see that he’d been spoiled by everyone in the castle in her absence.

  “Of course,” Maud said.

  Goronwy’s chin jutted out as if he would protest, but at Anna’s look, he closed his mouth. She’d used the word ‘wound’, but Goronwy suffered badly from hemorrhoids, such that sitting, even at the high table, was painful much of the time. Riding was intolerable. He would ride, of course, if he had to and if it came to open battle. When Papa returned from the south, Goronwy would get himself to Aber, come hell or high water and if he had to walk the whole way. But not today. Not with any kind of speed. It was only twenty miles. She could reach Aber in a half a day and return the next.

  “You are too headstrong, just like your mother.” Goronwy grumbled under his breath. “I will strip Dolwyddelan of its manpower for this endeavor. As soon as Bevyn hears of this, he will rouse Anglesey and marshal more men than I have at my disposal. With the garrison at Caerhun, we should have enough soldiers to protect Aber and the surrounding area.”

  Edmund leaned forward in his seat, positioned on Anna’s other side. “You can’t protect the whole coastline.”

  “Of course not. Nor can King Llywelyn defend the whole of the south,” Goronwy said.

  “But the countryside will fight for us,” Anna said.

  “And we have not been idle these last three years,” Goronwy said.

  Which put down Edmund very nicely without telling him anything at all. David had hoped that the threat of what he might throw at the English would act as a deterrent to whatever invasion plans they might think to concoct. He hadn’t tried to squash the stories that came out of Wales, only to prevent the actual details from leaking out. But maybe the Normans hadn’t heard enough rumors—or if they had, hadn’t believed them.

  “I will ride with you, of course, Princess Anna,” Edmund said.

  Anna eyed the Norman lord. “There is no need—”

  “There is every need,” he said. “I am in your debt, which feels uncomfortable enough, given past events. I will not add to it by allowing you to ride into danger without me. Your father would have my head.”

  As if he wouldn’t anyway. But Anna didn’t say that.

  Edmund grinned. “Besides, I’m looking forward to seeing some things I shouldn’t.”

  Goronwy growled at that. Edmund, his eyes alight with mischief, saluted him.

  Chapter 20

  27 August 1288

  Dolwyddelan Castle

  Anna

  “Edmund is a spy,” Goronwy said. “Dafydd would warn against riding with him.”

  The remains of dinner lay on the table in front of him. Anna had shooed Cadell off to bed, with a maidservant to watch over him in case he woke and was confused by sleeping in a strange place. Maud and Edmund had also retired. But Anna felt restless. She knew she needed to sleep, but the danger the Normans were bringing to Wales weighed on her.

  She brought her fingers to her forehead and pressed hard, trying to drive away the incipient headache that had plagued her since they’d arrived. At least she was inside and warm. The wind had blown all day here, too, whistling through the cracks in the old stones and whipping down the gap between the stables and the keep, making even Cadell reluctant to play outside. The ski
es had cleared, but Goronwy rubbed his knee—an old war wound. It would rain again soon. Anna feared that when it did, she would be out in it.

  “You’re talking about my brother, right? The man who met with Humphrey de Bohun in secret in the middle of the night and accepted charge of his eldest son?” Anna said. “William is a spy. Maud is a spy. Edmund is a spy. Even Andrew is a spy. What any of them learn in the next few days may help the English defeat us in the next war, but I can’t worry about that right now.”

  “I sent a pigeon to Bevyn on Anglesey,” Goronwy said. “If they invade his shores, he’ll be prepared.”

  “Only one pigeon?” Anna said. Goronwy’s fondness for his messenger pigeons was well known. If he allowed one out of his sight, it had to be for a good cause. It was the reason he’d spent the summer at Dolwyddelan in the first place, because this was where he bred them.

  “I will send one a day until such a time as I hear from you.” Goronwy leaned closer to put his arm around Anna’s shoulders and hug her. “My girl.”

  “I am your girl,” she said. “I always have been.”

  Goronwy bent his head to look into her eyes. “I have loved you since you were two years old and I carried you from your mother’s chariot. I’m not going to lose you now. You take care of yourself.”

  “I love you too, Goronwy.” Anna felt her eyes fill with tears and fought them back. “I will stay as safe as I can.”

  * * * * *

  Anna had barely gotten to sleep, or so it felt, when she awoke with a sudden start to find Cadell straddling her, his hands on her shoulders. “Mama! Mama!”

  Anna wrapped her arms around him. “Shh, shh, what is it, cariad?”

  “The puppies! The puppies are going to die!”

  Anna came fully awake, though it seemed Cadell was still dreaming. She grasped her son around the waist to move him so she could sit up. “What’s wrong with the puppies?”

  “The stable roof is on fire and the puppies are inside!” Cadell sobbed into her shoulder. “I saw it.”

  Anna scrambled to her feet. “Show me.”

  He pointed to the window that overlooked the bailey. It wasn’t midnight, as she’d thought, but nearly dawn, and a faint light filtered through it. Anna ran to the window, pulled open the shutter all the way, and saw instantly that what Cadell said was true. She ran back to him and scooped him up. “We have to wake the castle.”

  With Cadell in her arms, Anna dashed into the hallway. She hammered on each door along the corridor as she ran down it. “Fire! Fire! Wake up! Fire!”

  She didn’t wait to see if any of the occupants responded, but swung Cadell onto her hip and clattered down the stairs to the great hall. She burst through the doorway. It was deserted. Something was very wrong, and not just because the stables were on fire. How could it be that she and Cadell were the only two people awake in the castle?

  Dolwyddelan’s keep consisted of the two floors above the hall, plus the kitchens, which had been cut into the foundation itself. The stables and the West tower, constructed by Papa, housed the armory, offices, and barracks for the men. It lay across the courtyard from the keep.

  Anna hustled down the next flight of stairs to the kitchen, where she found a dozing kitchen boy and the cook, yawning over his bowl of bread. “The stables are on fire!”

  The cook looked up, his eyes half-lidded. “Wha—?” Perhaps he didn’t think he’d heard her correctly. The sight of the princess of Wales in her night shift with her son on her hip, however, was enough to have him pushing up off the table. He weaved in front of her, but managed to reach out a hand to the sleeping kitchen boy. “Wake up!”

  Anna pushed past the cook and flung open the door to the outside. Across the courtyard, the roof at one end of the stables had gone up in flames. The fire was dangerously close to jumping from there to the West tower. While the tower was made of stone, the roof was thatch and wood, as were many of the fittings.

  “The puppies!” Cadell said.

  Anna turned to the kitchen boy, who like the cook, wasn’t standing solidly in front of her. “I see two of you, my lady,” the boy said.

  Anna stared at him, and then decided he was all she had to work with so he would have to do. “I don’t know why none of the garrison is awake, but you must run to the West tower and raise the alarm.”

  The boy nodded, his eyes wide and his pupils too large. He left by the back door. Anna thrust Cadell into the cook’s arms, which went around the child instinctively. Anna put her hands on either side of Cadell’s face. “Mama is going to help the puppies. Can you stay here with Cook and have a biscuit?”

  Cadell was used to adults and their comings and goings, for all that Anna had always been his constant. He nodded. Anna headed out the door.

  “What are you going to do?” the cook said, clutching Cadell to him.

  “I’m going to free the horses if I can,” Anna said. “And the puppies.”

  Anna ran across the courtyard. The flames had consumed the back half of the stables, not surprisingly since that was where the hay was stored. Fortunately, the stables were long and low, without a hayloft above. If these stables had been built in the same way as Edmund Mortimer’s extra barn, the burning hay would have dropped right onto the horses below them. As it was, the roof had collapsed in the back, but hadn’t yet destroyed the whole.

  Anna ripped off the hem of her nightgown, dunked it in the water trough outside the stables, and tied it around her head so that it covered her face and nose. Then, braving the smoke, she plunged through the main door. The horses neighed and stamped their hooves. The puppies, fortunately, had been sleeping at the entrance to the stables and she scooped up all three at once and dumped them into the arms of a lone craft worker who had appeared, staggering and not fully awake.

  Anna ran back into the stables and pulled the latch of the first stall she came too. The horse reared and pitched, but sensed freedom when Anna opened the door. He galloped past her, going in the right direction, away from the fire and towards safety.

  “Yah! Yah!” She slapped the rear of a second horse and he galloped away. Smoke billowed past her hair and she crouched lower, hardly able to see beyond her hand and knowing that she didn’t have much time before she might succumb to the fumes. The stables housed thirty horses and every stall was full. She had a lot more animals to free.

  She started tugging out pegs that held the doors closed, not worrying about whether or not the horse inside the stall had the sense to depart. Fortunately, at that point, other helpers appeared, passing her, hurrying, but she couldn’t make out their faces for the smoke. Then an arm came around her waist and tugged at her, trying to haul her towards the stable door.

  She pulled against the man, but he wouldn’t let her go. “What are you doing? We have more horses to save!”

  “Other people can save them, Anna.” It was Edmund. Of course it was.

  She coughed hard, her hand to her chest. He stopped trying to coax her away and just scooped her up and ran for the door. The air outside was smoky too, but it felt clean to Anna after the interior of the barn. Once Edmund sat her down on one of the steps to the keep, which hadn’t been touched by the fire, she took in deep, heaving breaths. The wind blew into her face, still coming from the southwest, and she turned into it, letting it blow the smoke from her lungs.

  It was the weather, in fact, that had saved the West Tower. Even the fierce blaze couldn’t jump the thirty feet between it and the stables, not against the wind. The keep lay to the south of both, and thus the wind had protected it too. The rest of the outbuildings weren’t so lucky. All of the craft huts and stalls had sat downwind of the stables and were smoking wrecks. It could have been—it might still be—a horrible loss of life.

  The cook, who’d been watching for Anna, approached with Cadell in his arms. Tears spilled down Cadell’s cheeks and Anna pulled him to her. “The puppies are safe, Cadell,” she said. “One of the workers has them.”

  Edmund stood with his ha
nds on his hips, gazing down at them. “I can see to that, at least.”

  Anna didn’t know what he meant by that, but he came back two minutes later with a wriggling puppy in his hands. He set it gently on Cadell’s lap and Cadell hugged and petted it while the puppy licked his face. It was a particularly ugly mutt, spotted black and brown, with a flat face and floppy ears. He obviously had a friendly disposition. Anna gazed up at Edmund and mouthed the words, thank you.

  “I think thanks to you are in order, rather,” Edmund said. “I hear you raised the alarm.”

  Anna shook her head. “Cadell woke me, worried about the puppies. He’d seen the fire.”

  “Lucky he did,” Edmund said.

  “Do we know what started it?” Anna said.

  Edmund glared at the burning stables. “Not a single guard remained on duty.” He shrugged. “I’m sure Lord Goronwy will get to the bottom of it.”

  Maud’s hand was to her throat as she looked at the destruction of Dolwyddelan. She settled herself on the step above Anna with Hugh beside her. Andrew was among those in the human chain that ran from the well to the stables, passing buckets of water hand to hand to contain the fire. Anna felt she should be among them, but she was so tired.

  “Betrayal. That’s what this is.” Goronwy strode up to them. He sent a hard look at Edmund, and then at Maud.

  Anna followed his gaze. “Edmund and Maud didn’t have anything to do with this, Goronwy.”

  “Didn’t they?” Goronwy said. “I’m surprised you would defend a Mortimer.”

  “Only this Mortimer,” Anna said.

  “How could all the guards fail in their duty?” Goronwy said.