Crossroads in Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  Anna sighed at having to be the one to say it, but her admittedly cursory evidence couldn’t be denied. “Were they dosed with a potion to keep them asleep? In the mead perhaps? Cadell and I had none of it.” Anna hadn’t drunk any mead because she was pregnant. And although some mothers allowed their children mead, Anna was not one of them.

  Goronwy nodded, though grudgingly. “Most are still struggling to wake.” He glowered again at Edmund. “All the more reason to suspect treachery from the Normans in our midst.”

  “If my intent was to murder everyone in the castle, would I have stayed to witness it?” Edmund said. “And to be accused of it by you?”

  “Probably the culprit has slipped away by now,” Anna said. “I would count the men in the garrison, and the servants, and determine who—if anyone—is missing.”

  Goronwy took in a deep breath and let it out. He pinched his fingers at the bridge of his nose. “You’re saying that the presence of Normans at Dolwyddelan is coincidental to the fire?”

  “I’m saying exactly that,” Anna said. “Wales is under attack on many fronts. It is why Edmund and Maud are here. It is why someone tried to burn Dolwyddelan to the ground. Surely you don’t believe that Maud would risk the life of her son?”

  “No.” The word came out abruptly, but without hesitation.

  “We can’t stay here now,” Edmund said. “Any of us.”

  “No, we can’t,” Anna said, “even if a few hours ago, I couldn’t have imagined a safer place in Wales to leave my son.”

  “Surely you’re not suggesting that we ride anywhere today?” Maud said. “Perhaps if we stayed in the village—”

  “We can’t, Maud,” Anna said. “It’s neither safe nor healthy for the boys to stay here, not with what they’ve been through.”

  “Every mile I travel that brings me further from England makes me feel like I will never return,” Maud said. “Where is Humphrey in all this?”

  Anna could understand that particular question because she felt the same way each time Math went away. She missed him every second they were apart. Anna hoped that he was safe, and that she would see him again, standing well and whole in front of her. She put her hand on Maud’s. “We’ll be okay. Humphrey will be okay too. My brother will see to it.”

  Maud shook her head. “You Welsh and your optimism. Nobody born in the March would ever say that, because life is rarely, if ever, okay.”

  Anna didn’t correct Maud, didn’t tell her that it was the American in her that had brought the word, and the concept to Wales. Somehow, neither she nor David, despite all that had happened to them, could abandon the idea and the hope that little word gave them.

  Chapter 21

  28 August 1288

  Dolwyddelan Castle

  Anna

  The destruction at Dolwyddelan would take weeks to clean up. Goronwy left Marc in charge of it. He confessed in an aside to Anna that the burning of the castle, coming hard on the news of a danger to Anglesey, had lit a fire under him he hadn’t felt in years. He was the same age as Papa and had entered semi-retirement, but all of a sudden, he wasn’t quite ready to hang up his sword.

  It was shortly after noon on the day of the fire that they arrived at Caerhun, the fort that guarded the passage across the Conwy River. The garrison captain, a man named Alun, came out to greet them, his face grave. He’d been prepared for their coming by a second rider in the last twenty-four hours, who warned him of what had happened to Dolwyddelan Castle.

  One look at Goronwy’s face had Alun grabbing Goronwy’s arm while the older man dismounted. “My lord, let me help you.”

  Anna had ridden beside Goronwy the entire ten mile journey from the castle. Any movement of his horse or a shift in the saddle had sent a pain through him that Goronwy couldn’t entirely disguise. By the time they reached the Conwy River and turned north to ride along the west bank, his face had turned as gray as his hair.

  Goronwy shook his head. “I don’t need your help. I’m not bedridden yet.”

  He dismounted and glared at Anna, who dismounted too and set Cadell on his feet, still clutching his new puppy, who’d fallen asleep in his arms during the ride. Anna stepped close to Goronwy, lowering her voice to protect his pride. “You can’t ride another yard, Goronwy.”

  His jaw bulged with denial. “You can’t talk me out of going with you—”

  “Maud, Hugh, and Cadell should not ride to Aber,” Anna said. “You can keep an eye on Maud while I watch Edmund.”

  Anna didn’t think that ploy would work and it didn’t.

  “You should stay here,” Goronwy said. “Edmund and I will ride to Aber.”

  “Cadell will be more comfortable staying at Caerhun if you do.” Anna didn’t feel guilty for one second about playing the grandfather card. She glanced over her shoulder at the two boys, who naturally had glommed together again. Hugh was as bright and cheerful as Cadell—he’d even gotten one of the other puppies so as to match his new friend—but Maud wove in the saddle and her dismounting was matter of falling off the horse into Edmund’s arms.

  Anna turned back to Goronwy. “We’ve been over this. I am perfectly well. It’s a skip and a hop to Aber—another ten miles. With all that I’ve been through since I left Dinas Bran, that’s nothing. Your men will ensure my safety on the way there, we’ll sleep at Aber tonight, and return in the morning. What could be simpler?”

  Goronwy still hesitated. He looked west, in the direction of Aber, though he couldn’t see it from where they stood. The road to her father’s seat followed a path over the high hills, through the pass at Bwlch y Ddeufaen and its ancient standing stones, and then curved north to the Irish Sea. After a moment, Goronwy nodded his grudging admission and turned to Alun. “How many men can you send with her?”

  “Twenty, prepared to mount immediately and ride to wherever you wish,” Alun said. He was a wiry man, though firmly muscled, without an ounce of fat on him. “As soon as your messenger arrived yesterday afternoon, another twenty rode north to defend the coast and rouse the countryside.”

  “Good,” Goronwy said.

  Alun lowered his voice. “The rider I sent to Aber has not returned with word of the status of the garrison there. That fact doesn’t surprise me, necessarily, and he could be on the road even now, but you should know before you send her that all may not be well to the west.”

  Goronwy grunted his acknowledgement and eyed Anna. “I wish I could go with you.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Anna said. “Alun and his men can take care of me. With Alun riding with me, you’ll have more than enough to do here at Caerhun.”

  An hour later, after a bite to eat and a lullaby to settle Cadell for a nap (at which point Anna had almost fallen asleep herself), Anna mounted a fresh horse. She was the only woman in the company, which wasn’t unusual for her. The men kept her boxed in the middle of their mass, riding three abreast across the high hills to Aber.

  Just before the road jagged north, heading past Aber Falls to Aber Castle, the two men that Alun had sent ahead to scout their route came galloping back, in the company of a third man whom Anna would have recognized from a hundred yards away, if only by his mustachios.

  Bevyn.

  Alun spurred his horse to greet him and Anna followed. They reined in twenty yards ahead of the rest of the company.

  “My lord!” The lead rider’s horse skittered sideways as he tried to control the headlong rush. “Aber has been taken!”

  Alun’s face blanched. “By whom?”

  “Normans.” Bevyn’s eyes tracked to Edmund, who’d trotted up after Anna, and they narrowed. “What is he doing here?”

  Anna urged her horse closer. “Edmund was made captive in his own castle, by his own brother. He is here because I was captured too and the men who’d ridden at my side killed. He helped me to escape from Montgomery Castle.” When Bevyn continued to glare at Edmund, Anna added, “Goronwy allowed him to ride with me.”

  Bevyn subsided, though his face remained set i
n grim lines. “Does your husband know where you are?”

  “No,” Anna said.

  Bevyn’s nostrils flared, but what else could she say? It was the truth.

  “Did the rider that Math sent reach you?” Anna didn’t want to argue with Bevyn. She put out a hand to him and he lowered the volume on his glower enough to clasp it. Despite Bevyn’s gruffness and the tenseness of the moment, Anna’s heart had lightened at the sight of him.

  “No,” Bevyn said. “But Goronwy’s pigeon did. I rode for Aber as soon as I got it. At worst, I would waste a day. At best …”

  “David has long trusted your instincts, Bevyn,” Anna said, “and since they’ve proved prescient yet again, I’m grateful for them. Please tell us what you know.”

  “Not here,” Bevyn said. “We’ve set up camp at the foot of Aber Falls.”

  Bevyn led the company from the high road they’d been traveling on, down into a cleft in the hills that came out among trees that grew below Aber Falls. Anna couldn’t see Aber Castle from here, which comforted her, since whoever had taken it couldn’t see them either.

  “Aren’t we too close?” Anna said. “Surely the English have sent out scouts.”

  “Not that we’ve seen,” Bevyn said. “They wouldn’t have wanted to, especially if they are wary of the local populace.”

  “As they should be,” Alun said. “Do they fly a flag?”

  “No,” Bevyn said. “But they were mistaken if they thought they could take the castle unnoticed. The village is all abuzz with the news.”

  “Many villagers work in the castle, of course,” Alun said.

  “Those that went to work today haven’t been allowed out,” Bevyn said.

  “They must be frightened.” Anna had spent many months at Aber and knew most of the inhabitants of the little village, which lay just across the Aber River from the castle. “What are they saying?”

  “That the garrison was lax,” Bevyn said. “A few Englishmen disguised themselves as peasants and entered the castle in disguise. When night came, they overcame the few guards on watch and let the rest of their companions in.”

  Anna took in a deep breath. “At least we have no word of traitors among my father’s men.”

  “How many men do you hav—” Alun cut off the sentence. They’d entered the camp. Bevyn had only six men with him.

  “I could have brought twenty, but I thought the English threat to Anglesey was greater,” Bevyn said.

  “How did you get here without being seen?” Anna said. “Not over the sands?” The Lavan Sands stretched across the Menai Straits between Anglesey and the beach at Aber. For millennia, travelers had crossed them at low tide. They were easily visible from Aber’s towers.

  Bevyn shook his head. “We came across the Straits at Bangor.”

  Edmund had been listening closely to their conversation. “We have nearly thirty men. That’s enough to encircle the castle. Unfortunately, it’s not enough to lay siege to it.”

  “We don’t need to lay siege to it,” Anna said. “Provided we can get inside undetected.”

  Edmund eyes grew wary. “And how are we going to do that?”

  Bevyn didn’t balk at the we, even if the expression on his face indicated he wanted to. Instead, he pointed to a cluster of trees to the east, in which a barnlike building stood, bearing a striking resemblance to the shepherd’s hut Anna had rejected as a stopping point on their journey north. The barn was so rickety it looked like the next wind storm would bring it down.

  “We’ll enter through the tunnel,” Bevyn said.

  Chapter 22

  28 August 1288

  Near Aber Castle

  Anna

  Edmund had never heard of the tunnel beneath Aber Castle. He was offended that he hadn’t.

  “This is the one of the things you’re not supposed to know about,” Anna said, “though it’s an open secret among the people of Gwynedd.”

  Edmund raised his eyebrows, clearly expecting more of an explanation. Anna glanced at Bevyn, who gave her a slight nod. “Aber is built on a Roman site,” she said, “with hypocausts and a bathing room. Plus two tunnels: one that leads north to the beach, and a second that comes up over there.” She pointed to the barn.

  “So …” Edmund looked from Anna to Alun to Bevyn, “we’re going to enter Aber through the tunnel?”

  “They’ll never even know we’re coming.” Bevyn rubbed his hands together and grinned wickedly.

  “Is Princess Anna participating in this dangerous venture?” Edmund said.

  “Of course, I am—” Anna said, while at the same time, Bevyn scoffed, “Of course, she’s not—”

  Edmund’s face held a bemused expression as he looked from one to the other. “Which is it?”

  “I’ve come this far,” Anna said. “When the queen of Deheubarth remained behind while her husband rode to Gwynedd to enlist allies, the Normans attacked. She rallied her men and defended her country. Do you think me less capable of playing a part in the defense of my country than she?”

  “As I recall, the Normans hung her from the battlements when they captured her castle,” Bevyn said. “I don’t think that’s the story you’re looking for.”

  Anna tried again. “If you left me here, you would lose some of your strength in protecting me. Am I more likely to get into trouble out here, or in the tunnel? Edmund and I will hang back, won’t we Edmund?”

  “It seems so,” Edmund said, back to his near-perpetual state of amusement. He bowed to Bevyn. “I will protect her.”

  “I don’t like it,” Bevyn said. “Your husband—”

  “—isn’t here.” It wasn’t recklessness that drove Anna. Motherhood had rid her long ago of whatever sense of it she possessed before she came to Wales. It was, rather, the knowledge that she could help. And thus, she should. It may be that she wasn’t trained to wield a medieval sword. Yet she’d proven back at Montgomery that she knew how to fight.

  One of Bevyn’s men, a man named Gruffydd, approached with a boy of about twelve. “He says that the English took Aber with twenty men, no more,” Gruffydd said.

  “Rode right in,” the boy said, “once their spies opened the gate.”

  Bevyn looked hard at the boy. “You’ve done your job, have you?”

  “Yes, sir.” He scuffed at the dirt with his big toe. “Both north and south. My mum is still inside—”

  “Nobody has forgotten it,” Bevyn said. “We can only pray that none of our friends have been hurt. We will rescue her just as soon as we can.”

  “How many patrol the battlements?” Bevyn said.

  “Ten,” Gruffydd said.

  “Archers?” Edmund said.

  Gruffydd shrugged. “Not that we’ve seen.”

  “So they are English,” Edmund said.

  “That surprises you?” Anna said.

  Edmund pursed his lips. “So much of what has happened diverges from first appearances. You tell me that men wearing my colors entered Wales near Dinas Bran, though they were not my men. Who is to say that the English who took Aber are really English? What if Clare has paid mercenaries from Germany to do his dirty work?”

  “Or even Welshmen,” Alun said.

  “That has often been the way of it in the past,” Bevyn said, admitting without apology what they all knew to be true.

  Anna lifted one shoulder. “Since Uncle Dafydd died at Lancaster, fewer Welshmen have fought on the other side, or so Papa has thought. Not to say you’re wrong, but maybe it doesn’t matter just now. We have to take Aber back regardless of who took it from us.”

  Bevyn snorted under his breath: “We.”

  “You, then,” Anna said. “But we cannot allow the Normans to fortify it against us.”

  Alun lifted his chin. “The sun sets. Who knows if the English are sending more men to fortify the castle, now that it’s taken? We should be in position before dark, even if we don’t go in until midnight.”

  “How are we to get from the tunnel into the castle?” Edm
und said. “Surely the entrance is barred and guarded.”

  “If King Llywelyn were in residence, it would be. None of the men of Aber’s garrison will tell the English of it,” Bevyn said, “and the boy …”

  Edmund slowly nodded, as comprehension filled his face. “You thought of this, of course, long since. This was what you meant when you asked the boy if he’d done his job.”

  “What are you talking about?” Anna said.

  “Treachery is always the easiest way to take a castle,” Bevyn said. “The kings of Wales have planned for this day since Arthur built his fortress on the ruins of the Roman villa.”

  “When the boy saw the English enter the castle, he left by the very tunnel through which you now propose to enter it,” Edmund said. “But what’s to stop the English from discovering the unbarred door?”

  “They might eventually, if they have time to explore, but he left the door closed, along with the trap door that leads to it,” Bevyn said. “Chances are, we’ll get inside safely if we move soon.”

  And then the men were all action. Anna left Bevyn to scout the entrance to the tunnel, arrange the men at its entrance, and come up with a viable—if hastily conceived—plan with his captains. She, in turn, took care of all that she could, specifically food, clothing, and rest for herself, in that order.

  Anna begged a spare pair of breeches and a leather coat off one of Bevyn’s smaller soldiers whose daughter worked as a serving maid inside the castle. She acquired a small loaf and a portion of dried meat from the soldier tending the smokeless fire. While Anna was strapping a second knife to her calf, Edmund planted himself in front of her.

  “You are Morgana,” he said.

  Anna snorted in disgust. “Not that again. I am not. I’m tired of people saying it, much less thinking it. I am no more or less than a princess of Wales. How about we leave it at that?”

  “And your brother? He is Arthur returned.”

  Anna glared at him. “Think what you like. He puts on his breeches one leg at a time just like you do.”