Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series)

by Sarah Woodbury

  She didn’t make the mistake of washing her hair, because that would ruin the balance of natural oils that had taken years to achieve, but she scrubbed at her scalp with her nails and soaped up the rest of her. The two minutes went by far too quickly, and then she was out, and Mom was in.

  Anna stood with the towel wrapped around her body and stared at the long mirror above the sink. She hadn’t seen herself properly in nine years. Most mirrors in the Middle Ages were simply highly polished metal circles of bronze, tin, or silver. Mirrors made of thin sheets of glass backed by metal had been invented, but they were expensive. Anna had a small one at Dinas Bran, but she’d grown used to not seeing what she really looked like.

  The woman who stared back at her was hardly recognizable as the seventeen-year-old girl she’d last seen. Leaning forward, Anna inspected her face. It was thinner than she remembered, and when she smiled, tiny crow’s feet appeared at the corners of her brown eyes. She hadn’t cut her hair in nine years either, and even with the curls, it fell past her hips, dark on her white skin.

  “It’s weird to see yourself, isn’t it?” Mom stepped out of the shower. “I thought so too when I came back the first time.”

  “I’m not even the same person,” Anna said.

  “I would hope not,” Mom said.

  Anna turned to look at Mom, thinking about the girl her mother had been—and she herself had been—the first time they’d time traveled to the Middle Ages. “I’ll just ask this once because it needs to be asked: are you sure you want to go back?”

  “Do you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Showers, sugar, antibiotics—they don’t draw you?” Mom said.

  “Of course they draw me.” Anna snorted laughter. “But hot showers are hardly what living is about.”

  “It may take some effort to return,” Mom said. “And it will be dangerous.”

  “I know. And you didn’t answer my question.”

  Mom blinked. “I didn’t think I had to. But I’ll say it out loud if you want: yes. My life is there, not here. I spent every moment since your brother was born trying to get back to Llywelyn. I’m not leaving him now.”

  “It would be easier.”

  “Would it?” And then Mom nodded. “It’s hard work caring for other people. Being a mom. Sometimes you just want to go to bed and sleep for a week.”

  “But you never can,” Anna said.

  Mom smiled. “Living isn’t for the faint of heart, is it?”

  Chapter Eight

  November 2019

  Meg

  Anna had taken a shower first, but Meg was ready before she was. While Meg was waiting for her daughter to come out of the bathroom, Callum pulled her aside. “Do you trust me?”

  “Of course,” Meg said. “Why do you ask?”

  “There may come a moment when I will need you to do what I say, when I say it, without asking questions,” he said.

  Meg raised her eyebrows. “You forget who you’re talking to. Llywelyn has asked that of me more than once.” She looked down at herself, arms spread. “The modern clothes are just a cover for the medieval me.”

  He coughed and laughed at the same time. “Are you saying you’re a submissive medieval woman now?”

  “It hasn’t been my experience that medieval women are all that submissive,” Meg said dryly. “Uneducated and without rights, yes.” She paused. “What I meant was that taking orders won’t offend me—you know more about what’s going on than I do. I don’t have a problem with that.”

  He nodded.

  Meg looked at him carefully. “Don’t think for a second that Anna and I aren’t aware what you’re risking for us.”

  Callum didn’t try to deny it. “It’s my job.”

  “Your job is not to smuggle us out of the United States. You could lose everything if you do.”

  “Not everything,” he said. “I went down on one knee before your son and swore my allegiance to him. If smuggling you out of the United States is the best way to serve him and keep you safe, then that’s what I’m going to do.”

  He was sincere and serious, and Meg fumbled for a reply. David was her son, and she adored him, but because he was her son, the fact that he was the King of England too usually passed her by. “I’ve watched him grow into the leader he’s become, but it’s so strange to me how he manages to turn everyone around him into loyal followers.”

  Callum’s brow furrowed. “Is that what you think I am? Some sycophant?”

  “No-no!” Meg put out a hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you at all. We all follow him.”

  But Callum was still shaking his head. “You really don’t understand, do you?”

  Meg eyed him. “Understand what?”

  “Who David is.” When Meg didn’t answer, he added, “His rule isn’t about accruing followers.”

  Meg looked away, a little ashamed. “I know.” She lifted one shoulder, trying to explain. “I look at him sometimes, and I don’t even know him anymore. He makes a decision and it affects three million people. How can such a person be my son?”

  “I’m sorry I haven’t been there to help him carry the burden for the last two years,” Callum said.

  Meg let out a dry laugh. “I remember when he was in middle school—those boys with their machismo and their fears—they mocked him for all those qualities that have turned him into a king—honesty, integrity, and righteousness. How David hated it.”

  “And now we rise—or we fall—on his decisions. It’s his shoulders that carry us. His qualities that determine our future.”

  “Anna isn’t ready to return home because she’s figured that out about him too,” Meg said. “She sees him the same way you do.”

  “You’re his mother,” Callum said. “You see his flaws. The rest of us can’t afford to.”

  Meg bit her lip and looked away. Callum wasn’t entirely right. She adored her son. She’d known how special he was before he was two years old. She’d forced herself to see his flaws because if she didn’t, who would?

  “By the way,” Callum said when she didn’t answer him, “I’ve spoken with your brother-in-law several times over the last two years and hopefully patched things up a bit between you.”

  Meg was glad for the change of subject. “I have worried about what happened to him after Llywelyn and I left, but since I had no way to find out, I tried to put it out of my mind.”

  “Aye,” Callum said, reverting to his Scottish roots. “I worried about him too.” He gave a rueful smile. “I didn’t fear for his life, but Lady Jane could be a bit merciless when she chose. She could have thrown him into a cell, whether or not he was an American citizen. But after Chepstow, Lady Jane let him go. Cassie and I stopped in to see them on our way home from Oregon two years ago, and I gave him and your sister your best wishes.”

  “Thank you,” Meg said, and then her breath caught in her throat. “If Homeland Security or this military contractor know that we’ve arrived, even if way out here in Oregon, is Elisa going to find men in black beating down her door at 3 am?”

  Callum made an ‘ach’ sound at the back of his throat. “To say, ‘I hope not’ isn’t adequate, I know. If someone from your government discovers you’re here and cares that you’re here, he might contact them. It is something to be concerned about.”

  “I should warn them,” Meg said.

  Callum shook his head. “You can’t. Not yet. It could be the red flag that starts the ball rolling. Besides, Elisa and Ted know what to do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Callum let out a whuf of air. “This was all theoretical before two hours ago.” He looked up at the ceiling for a second, marshalling his thoughts. “Cassie and I have been working on this problem—your problem—nonstop for two years. We knew one of you could come through at any time, and we wanted to be ready. It was an impossible task, I know, but we tried to think of every contingency, every possibility. It meant that Cassie and I spoke at length with Ted and Elisa, trying to impress upo
n them the extent of the threat against you if the government came knocking. We concluded, with their consent, that it was better for them not to know anything. That way, they wouldn’t have to lie.”

  “That means I can’t talk to my sister.” Meg looked down at her shoes.

  “That’s what it means.”

  Meg brought up her head to find him looking at her thoughtfully.

  “I admit I didn’t expect you to arrive on Thanksgiving night in the wilds of Oregon.” Callum gave a bark of laughter. “When the best-laid plan comes face to face with reality, guess which loses every time.”

  Twenty minutes later, the four of them piled into Art’s truck, Cassie at the wheel. Callum was an equal-opportunity kind of guy, but still, having her drive didn’t strike Meg as his natural tendency any more than it had been Llywelyn’s when she had driven across Wales in the dead of night, pregnant with twins. But driving on the right side of the road would have been even less natural for Callum. Also, it had started snowing again, and Meg was willing to bet he hadn’t had a ton of experience driving in snow either.

  “Back way or highway?” Cassie said to Callum, starting the truck and shifting into drive.

  “I’d like to avoid metropolitan areas if possible.” Callum glanced at Anna and Meg sitting in the back seat. The space between Meg’s knees and his seat wasn’t a lot, but the seat was comfortable and the heater blasted warm air into her face. “At least nobody is following us out of this driveway, and with no mobile phones and an ancient truck—” He put out a hand to Cassie, “—no offense to your grandfather, Cassie.”

  “None taken,” she said.

  “—nobody, whether MI-5, Homeland Security, or anybody else, can track us.”

  “I looked up the Oregon DMV online before we got in the truck,” Cassie said. “There’s a pair of highway cameras at Arlington and another at Biggs, before the turnoff south to Bend. Then it gets worse. Highway 97 through Bend has a ton of cameras.”

  “That’s not ideal,” Callum said. “And those are only the ones we know about. What are our other choices?”

  “We could head south out of Pendleton on 395. There are only three traffic cameras between here and the California border,” Cassie said. “There’s a lot less traffic, too, and it’ll take longer, so those are two drawbacks.”

  “Less traffic is bad?” Anna said.

  “You can’t get lost in the crowd if you’re the only car on the road,” Cassie said.

  “It’s still Thanksgiving night,” Meg said. “If we can get farther faster, would that be better?”

  Callum spread a map across his lap. He nodded as he looked at it.

  Meg sat back in her seat. “I can drive too, Cassie.”

  Anna poked her mother in the arm. “You haven’t driven a car in three years.”

  “It’s like riding a bike,” Meg said. “You never forget.”

  “I thought you needed glasses?” Anna said.

  Meg grimaced. She’d forgotten that her night vision was particularly awful.

  “We can get you glasses at Wal-Mart,” Cassie said. “Maybe in Klamath Falls.”

  “How are we going to do that?” Meg swallowed down an accompanying snort of disbelief.

  “You wouldn’t believe what they’ve got kiosks for these days,” Cassie said. “They craft the lenses right then and there. You stick your head in this machine, it evaluates your eyes, and once you choose the frames, it makes the lenses to fit.” She glanced up to the mirror again to look at Meg. “You probably ought to choose simple metal frames so they don’t cause comment at home.”

  “I’d like that.” Meg swallowed back the emotion that had formed in her throat, not only over the idea of being able to see again, but at Cassie’s use of the word home. Meg had been inadvertently responsible for Cassie spending five years alone in the Middle Ages. Cassie had never faulted Meg for it or complained about it when she thought Meg wasn’t listening. And now it seemed that Cassie was taking for granted not only that it was home for Meg but that it was home for her too.

  Nobody else seemed to have noticed Cassie’s use of the word, or at least they didn’t comment on it.

  Because of that, Meg decided she’d better bring it up. She wasn’t a big fan of elephants in the living room, even if they were of her own making. “Are we all on the same page here about going back? Anna and I have already talked, and I’ve gathered from brief conversations with both of you that you’re on board, but maybe we should all just say it. Or say we don’t want to.”

  Cassie and Callum exchanged a quick glance and neither answered, prompting Anna to lean forward. “Mom and I have husbands and children there—a whole family, in fact. You two are part of our family, but you have each other and are under no obligation to return to the Middle Ages with us. David would understand, Callum.”

  Something was going on, because still neither answered. Then Callum said, “Say what you’re thinking, Cass.” They were on the highway now, heading west.

  Cassie took in a breath. “Okay. Here’s the truth, which is what we all need to put out there: I’ve thought about it a lot. So much that sometimes I think I’m going crazy thinking about it.” She glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Meg’s eye. “Two A.M. is not my friend.”

  “I hear you,” Meg said.

  “I’ve known for a while, though, that I don’t belong here as much as I belong there. Those five years in Scotland changed me. It isn’t just that I found Callum, but that I found myself.”

  “Your grandfather told me that he liked who you became there,” Callum said.

  Cassie smiled, but her eyes were very bright, and when she spoke next Meg could hear the tears in the back of her throat. “The last thing my grandfather said to me when he hugged me goodbye just now was that we needed to go if we could. He believes that everything happens for a reason, and I would be wrong to turn off the path laid before my feet.”

  Meg gave that admission the moment of silent respect it deserved. It was exactly what she herself thought. Then she looked at Callum. “What about you?”

  Callum turned in his seat so he could see Meg and Anna better. “Does David want me back?”

  Meg choked on a laugh. “Want you back? Are you kidding me?”

  “That’s a ‘yes’, then?” Callum said.

  “Definitely a ‘yes’,” Anna said. “He trusts you and sometimes feels like he’s ruling Britain by the seat of his pants. He has plans, but a lot of the time I don’t think he trusts himself completely.”

  “What do you mean?” Cassie said. “Is this a power corrupts thing?”

  “Power, adulation,” Anna said, making Meg think about the conversation she’d just had with Callum. “But more than those two, David worries that he’ll take short-cuts and compromise his beliefs. That he’ll come to think that the end justifies the means. He knows he needs all of us to keep him sane and on the right track. It would be easy to get off it.”

  “I’ve tried to put all my responsibilities back there out of my mind since I couldn’t do anything about them,” Callum said. “But I have to ask: am I still the Earl of Shrewsbury?”

  “You are,” Anna said. “David has taken personal responsibility for your people while you’ve been absent, Samuel continues to oversee the day-to-day stuff, and Math has been checking in from time to time too. You have a very capable sheriff, which is good, and everyone knows that you are in Avalon and will return when you can.”

  Cassie laughed. “Did you say ‘Avalon’?”

  “She did,” Meg said, “and you might want to laugh, but it’s the only explanation that anyone can accept. If David has to put up with it, we all do. And honestly, thank God for it because otherwise we’d all be branded as witches.”

  “Which we want to avoid,” Cassie said. “I’m good with that.”

  “What happened when David returned to you?” Callum said. “We haven’t even asked.”

  Now it was Meg’s turn to laugh. “A war, that’s what!” And between her a
nd Anna, they spent the next hour as Cassie drove west down I-84, telling them about William de Valence’s rise and fall, along with the continued development of reforms David and Llywelyn were working on in England and Wales. They concluded with David’s vision for the future he’d just told them about.

  When they’d finished, Callum folded his hands at the back of his head and stared up at the ceiling of the truck. “I wish Lady Jane could have been here to hear this.”

  “It’s just as well she isn’t,” Cassie said. “The time travel initiative can die an unmourned death, and we won’t be here to answer anyone’s questions. If we can get out of our current situation in one piece, that is.”

  “I hope we don’t have a military contractor on our tail.” Meg patted Callum’s arm. “I thought MI-5 was bad, but they sound much worse.”

  “I’m about to be sacked,” he said, “so I can hardly complain if you point out how poorly you were treated.”

  “David was treated worse,” Cassie said, “and it was the military contractor that drugged him. I’d take Homeland Security any day over them.”

  Callum glanced at his wife. “They aren’t the buffoons the media makes them out to be. They have resources and the full power of the American government should they choose to wield it.”

  The windshield wipers started sweeping faster, and Meg put up a hand to wipe away the steam on her window. The snow was falling harder. “We probably should go all the way to I-5 in Portland,” she said. “The road to Bend is often closed with blowing snow in winter.”

  “I know.” Cassie ground her teeth. “It isn’t even December! Why is it snowing?”

  “You’ve lived in Britain for too long,” Meg said.

  “We’ll all be back in Britain a bit sooner than we intended if the snow keeps up,” Anna said, looking out her window. “We won’t have to worry about finding a tower to jump off.”