Warden of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book 8)

by Sarah Woodbury

  “I think we perhaps should have gone to Chilham with Carew,” Callum said.

  “We still can.” Cassie slipped her hand into Callum’s.

  “What is the hour?” I said.

  “Five in the morning, give or take,” Cassie said.

  I shook my head. “I just need three hours of sleep. We can be in Chilham by noon, depending on what the dawn brings us.”

  Romeyn and Aaron exchanged an inscrutable look, one at which both of them seemed very accomplished, and Romeyn said, “This way, sire, if you will.”

  Romeyn ignored the steward, who’d been hovering on the far side of the anteroom, and who’d wanted to take me elsewhere. Instead, Romeyn led me to his own room on the first floor of the palace. I loosened my sword belt, removing it in order to lean my sword against the wall, and fell face first onto the bed fully clothed. I heard the door close behind me, and then I slept.

  Chapter Sixteen

  I’d learned over the last four years to put away troubles in a locked box in my mind so as to clear it for sleep. I was so exhausted, I didn’t have to do that this time, but my dreams were troubled: a presence with Darth Vader’s voice recited a laundry list of incomprehensible tasks that faced me, while fire and smoke poured out of a hole in the ground in front of me. I woke with a start to a sunlit room and the squeak of a door opening behind me.

  In a flash, I spun off the bed, my belt knife in my hand. William stood before me, his mouth open in surprise. I stopped when I saw him and straightened, slipping my knife into its sheath. “Sorry.”

  William bowed. “I apologize, sire, but you asked to be woken in three hours. It has been four.”

  Now that I was upright, the room came into focus. I’d slept in a four-poster bed with gold curtains that I hadn’t bothered to undo and sleep behind. Someone had thrown a blanket across my back—I credited Cassie for the thought—and I hadn’t moved from the position I’d first lain down in. I was standing on a wooden floor, worn in places but otherwise spotless. Steam rose from a basin of water on a table near the window. I hadn’t heard the maid come in to bring it.

  “I don’t fault you. Obviously, I needed the sleep. Did you manage any?”

  He shrugged. “A little.”

  I took that to mean ‘no’.

  “I slept a few hours in the castle before it blew up.”

  “What did I miss?” I said.

  “Nothing of note, sire. Lord Ieuan sent a rider to the constable at Dover Castle to tell him what happened here at Canterbury and that we fear French involvement, though we have no proof of it. It is too soon to have heard back.”

  “I’m glad someone was thinking last night,” I said.

  “The men of Dover are always ready for an attack from across the Channel, so that will be nothing new to them,” he said, “but they will warn the other ports to be on the alert.”

  Located on the east coast of Kent, less than twenty miles from Canterbury, Dover town and castle was one of the longest-established communities in England, dating to Anglo-Saxon times. Ports like Dover had protected England from foreign invasion since before there was an England. I also saw them as our first line of defense against diseases coming from the Continent and had worked extensively with the ports’ representatives to document all boats coming in and out of England. At times I’d felt almost like a supplicant. The men of the ports had a strong independent streak and were not to be dictated to, even by the king. Perhaps especially not by the king.

  But although medieval people struggled with the concept of invisible pathogens, once the portsmen understood that my aim wasn’t to tax them to death, they’d risen to the challenge. Most of the new policies and procedures that regulated shipping had been proposed by them. The Black Death might still be sixty years away, but it wasn’t the only incipient pandemic out there, and the only way it was getting to England was by sea.

  Thus I was glad Ieuan had the foresight to send word to the constable at Dover, one Stephen de Pencester. He operated under the oversight of Edmund Mortimer, whom I’d named Lord Warden of the Cinque Ports, one of the most powerful positions in England. Mortimer represented these port towns in my cabinet. Although he’d had little connection to eastern England up until now, I’d essentially bribed him with this responsibility to keep his eyes off opportunities for expansion of his personal estates into Ireland. It was one of the things about being King of England I hated most—doing something I wouldn’t normally have approved of in order to accomplish what I saw as a greater good.

  “What about Lee?” I said.

  “No, my lord. No sign.”

  I nodded, having expected nothing better. In retrospect, Lee seemed too much of a professional to have stuck around to watch the destruction of Canterbury Castle. He wasn’t a criminal or a serial arsonist, at least as far as I knew. He was a terrorist, with specific goals and aims. Getting caught watching the results of his handiwork would have been sloppy of him.

  Though he’d met with Frenchmen, I wasn’t sure what kind of connection there could be between Lee and King Philip, or Lee and Acquasparta, but I could easily see a link between Acquasparta and Philip, since it was Acquasparta himself who had informed me of the pope’s support of Philip’s claim to Aquitaine. The pope or Acquasparta wouldn’t even have needed to speak to Philip directly, and all three could be working through underlings. Plausible deniability wasn’t a modern invention. Any one of them might want to be able to stand before me, or another questioner, without having to lie outright.

  Cassie appeared in the doorway, tipping her head to William to indicate that he was dismissed. She had a fresh shirt and tunic bundled in her arms, and she handed them to me. I splashed water on my face from the basin of warm water, and as I dried my skin, I eyed her warily. She wanted to talk. I wasn’t sure I was going to be happy with what she wanted to talk about.

  “Does Callum know you’re here?” I said.

  She laughed. “Are you afraid of what I’m going to say?” We were speaking American English, which allowed her to leave off ‘my lord’ or ‘sire’.

  “Where is he?” I said.

  “He went off with Darren and Peter, ‘pursuing a lead’.” She shook her head. “I had my eyes closed at the time so I didn’t ask for more.”

  “I need to talk to him.”

  She ignored that. “I don’t agree that you should be a part of the team that goes after Lee. He isn’t worth your direct attention.”

  “How can you say that? Lee tried to kill me.” I stripped off my shirt, dropped it beside the basin, and pulled the new one over my head, tucking it into my breeches and then tying the strings that kept the neck closed. Next I put on the dark green tunic, which was slightly shorter than those I normally wore, falling to just above my knees. It fit me across the shoulders, and I suspected that Cassie had quested among my men for a spare that would fit. She helped me buckle my sword belt around my waist to keep everything in place.

  Cassie shook out my cloak, now clean and dry, and swung it around my shoulders. “Exactly. It’s personal with you. I don’t think it is with him.”

  “I don’t think you’re right in that,” I said. “Looking back, he played me perfectly. He wasn’t a sycophant—he knew I wouldn’t respond well to flattery—he was acerbic and witty, with just the right amount of irreverence to draw me in.”

  Cassie didn’t respond right away, and I added, “You saw right through him, didn’t you?”

  She scoffed. “Hardly. It was Lili who was paying the most attention. She didn’t say anything because she was afraid her worry came from jealousy, because he was from Avalon and she wasn’t. She feared that because of it, she couldn’t understand what you needed—and that you needed something more than she could give you.”

  I groaned. It was clear I had some patching up to do with my wife, and I wished she were right in front of me so I could make a start. “She wasn’t jealous. She was smart. Unlike me.”

  “Like I said, I don’t think you should take this pe
rsonally,” Cassie said. “Lee is one man, and while he did a lot of damage, you have bigger fish to fry. This thing with the pope, for starters.”

  “This thing with the pope, as you say, may be tied to this thing with Lee.” I shook my head. “I need to do something other than running back to London to hide. If I do that, it feels like I’ve ceded the whole country to him.”

  Cassie wrinkled her nose at me.

  “What?”

  “You do realize that some of us—I’m not talking about me—have experience investigating terrorism, right?” she said. “That was Callum’s job back in Avalon.”

  I made a gurgling sound in the back of my throat. It wasn’t like I’d forgotten. We’d talked about it while standing under the trees near the chapel. I started to wonder if my decision to stay in Canterbury had been the right one, even if it had felt right in the heat of the moment. I’d probably just get in Callum’s way.

  “I haven’t thanked you and Callum yet, by the way.”

  “For what?”

  “For siccing the Order of the Pendragon on Lee,” I said.

  Cassie shook her head ruefully. “It was too little too late.”

  “Without you, I might have lost more than a castle,” I said.

  “The people will take it as a sign that God is still with you.”

  I didn’t voice the disparaging comment that formed on my tongue. It was an honor to be the King of England, and the people deserved something more than cynicism for having placed their trust in me.

  “Sire!” William de Bohun was back. He swung around the frame of the door, holding onto it with one hand to stop himself from hurtling too far into the room. “News has come from Dover!”

  I caught William by the arms. “Slow down.”

  “The queen sends word from Dover that two French spies were caught trying to leave the beach under cover of darkness!” The boy could hardly breathe in his excitement.

  I couldn’t make sense of what he was saying, seeing as how I’d gotten stuck on “the queen sends word” and “Dover”. Before I could ask for more information, Ieuan appeared behind William in the doorway. “The boy speaks the truth. Word has just come from Dover Castle that two Frenchmen were apprehended as they tried to sail from Dover without passing inspection first.”

  “William said the queen,” I said. “What does he mean by that?”

  Ieuan grunted. “For some reason, Lili didn’t go to Chilham. She went to Dover.”

  “Where two French spies were caught trying to flee England.” I put both hands up to the sides of my head and squeezed. Four hours of sleep clearly hadn’t been enough. “Your sister—”

  “She’s your wife, my friend,” Ieuan said. “I had some idea when you married her that you’d rein her in, but it was never more than a faint hope.”

  The two of us looked at each other, shaking our heads and smiling. Dover Castle was possibly the largest and most well-defended castle in England. I could hardly complain about her safety now, even if getting there might have been riskier than going to Chilham.

  “David, you and Ieuan should head to Dover,” Cassie said. “Leave Lee to the rest of us.”

  “I hate to part with any of you, but events seem to be conspiring to make me accept that you’re right.” My thinking from the start had been that it would be best if modern people were at the forefront of the pursuit. My departure would leave only modern people in the party, since I would take Justin, Ieuan, and William with me.

  “They will be more than up to the task,” Ieuan said.

  “I hate to think what kind of damage Lee can do with a sack full of C-4,” I said, “but I concede that this can’t be about my personal issues with Lee. I need to speak to these Frenchmen.” I looked at Ieuan. “Any word from Clare?”

  “No, my lord,” Ieuan said, “though with the dawn, word of the destruction of Canterbury Castle will be spreading far and wide.”

  “Lee will know, if he doesn’t already, that he failed to kill me,” I said.

  Ieuan chewed on his lower lip. “Will he try again?”

  “Unless Canterbury has some intrinsic value I don’t know about, and its destruction, not my death, was the point, he may well believe he has to,” I said.

  “Don’t mention that to Callum unless he brings it up himself,” Cassie said. “He won’t want to let you out of his sight.”

  “He will have to accept that neither of us can be in two places at once, just like I have to.” I turned to William. “Where’s your father?”

  “Hereford, I think,” he said.

  “Too far. I need his men now, not in two weeks,” I said.

  “Why do you need his men?” William said.

  “To defend the coast, of course,” I said.

  “Who do you think is planning to invade?” Ieuan said. “Philip?”

  “How can I not think it?” I said. “Too many threads are coming together before our eyes. They point to a conspiracy that somehow involves Acquasparta, Philip, and Lee, though how each of them fits into it I don’t know. I can’t imagine how they all got together. I never would have wanted to see Canterbury in a pile of rubble. I certainly don’t want to fight a war with the King of France, even if I threatened Acquasparta with it yesterday. But Lee met with Frenchmen, and we’ve captured two French spies. Pope Boniface supports Philip’s claim to Aquitaine over mine. If Philip has plans for me, we need to be prepared.”

  “I will send a rider to Dover to inform Lili and Sir Stephen that you will be arriving later today.” Ieuan bowed and departed, taking William with him.

  “You can’t defend the coast with two hundred archers and fifty men-at-arms,” Cassie said.

  “Since when have you been such a defeatist?” I said. “Anyway—” I waved a hand. “—I walked away from a destroyed castle with no casualties. You were right to say that my people will believe God is still with me. They will come when I call. As it turns out, Lee might have done me a favor by destroying my castle. It will rally the people around me.”

  The definition of a great king in the Middle Ages was one who won battles. Back in Avalon, King Edward was almost universally lauded for his strength, though he’d won the accolade at the expense of Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and France. The English—and the historians who wrote about Edward—didn’t consider the cost in their evaluation.

  Similarly, Richard the Lionheart had spent all of six months in England during his ten-year reign but was remembered as a good king. Nobody seemed to care, then or since, that ransoming him when he was captured by an Austrian duke on his way home from the Crusades had bankrupted the country.

  I wasn’t much concerned about my legacy, but I did want the power to do what I thought England needed while I was king. And for that to happen, keeping the overall goodwill of the people was essential.

  Acquasparta himself appeared in the corridor as I left Romeyn’s room, and I halted when I reached him, fighting down the feeling of animosity that rose within me at the sight of him. “Your color is better than yesterday, your eminence,” I said.

  He had a handkerchief clutched in his right hand, and he dabbed the sweat from his forehead with it. “The fever has broken again.”

  “You shouldn’t be upright at all,” I said. “You’ll bring on another relapse.”

  “I needed to speak to you before you left,” he said, and at the beginnings of another protest on my part, he raised one shoulder in a classic Italian shrug. “I assure you, King David, that I never intended for the arrest of that heretic to result in a riot. Canterbury is known for its holiness and peaceful acceptance of pilgrims.”

  I just managed not to laugh. “Thirty years ago, the people of Canterbury slaughtered the Jews in this town. Surely you were aware of that?”

  “The Jews killed Christ. What happened to them in Canterbury is another matter entirely,” he said.

  I contemplated him a moment, suppressing my disgust—and disconcerted that he’d actually brought up the issue of blood libel, which Pope Inno
cent had called baseless as recently as 1247. I was also shocked by Acquasparta’s complete disregard for the actual reason the populace had been incited to riot then—and why they had rioted yesterday. Again, it wasn’t because the Jews killed Christ or because heretics believed something different from what the Church taught.

  The people had followed where a powerful and charismatic man had led.

  Thirty years ago, that man had been Gilbert de Clare at Simon de Montfort’s request. Yesterday, it was on behalf of Acquasparta and the Church. “We will have to agree to differ on the cause of that atrocity. Popes have asked that kings such as I protect the Jewish communities in the lands we rule, but it is heretics, not Jews, who brought you to England.”

  “Indeed. I am grateful to you for defusing the situation, but that does not detract from the underlying issue at hand. The Church must be allowed to prosecute those who deviate from the true Faith.” He paused briefly, and when I didn’t reply, he added, “It is my duty to warn you that this might not be the only such incident if you continue on the path you have chosen.”

  Genuinely appalled at where this was going, I moved closer to him and lowered my voice. “You will not arrange for the arrest of any more men in my country, whether or not you believe them to be heretics. You will not incite my people to riot.”

  “The arrest was at the command of His Holiness, the Vicar of Christ,” Acquasparta said defiantly, though it didn’t come off as he might have hoped, since he was swaying on his feet from his illness. “I do not answer to you.”

  “As long as you are in England, you do.”

  Acquasparta gazed at me, his shoulders stiff. I longed to shake him, or to see him shaken, but he was unbending. “I have heard your words and will convey them to the pontiff. I cannot promise what his response will be.”

  “I have no desire to dispute with the pope, but you can tell him that I do not fear his wrath. Regardless of the action he takes, I can promise him that my answer will remain the same.” It was a hard line to take, openly and at this stage of the game, but I had almost been blown up a few hours ago, and I wasn’t feeling conciliatory. I also didn’t like the fact that Acquasparta was treating me like a boy who could be bullied into conformity. If he thought I would bend, he had sorely misjudged my resolve.