Guardians of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  She was good at what she did; she knew that. She understood wool, which was more than she could say for ninety-nine percent of twenty-firsters (as she called them), who thought the only important thing to know about wool was that their jumper had just shrunk in the wash.

  But she didn’t speak medieval Welsh, old English, or anything better than schoolgirl French. She certainly didn’t know Flemish, which would have been very useful once she set up her own shop in Shrewsbury, since the Flems (as she called them) seemed to have cornered the market in medieval textiles.

  She’d had a job in Cardiff that she enjoyed for the most part. She’d found it inherently satisfying to find the perfect yarn, the perfect fabric, or the perfect pattern for a customer to make her happy, but she’d never imagined how much better it might be to make a difference to so many people. It was a heady feeling, and one that she hadn’t wanted to give up, even if Bridget had never intended to start an entirely new industry in the medieval world—nor provide a central spot for Callum’s spy network to meet.

  When David had approached her about returning to the modern world, her first reaction had been to jump for joy, just on principle. She’d started cataloging all the things she was going to do (most of which involved food), but then the more she’d thought about it, the more her stomach had twisted in dismay. She’d made a special trip up to Shrewsbury Castle, where David had been staying, just to tell him she’d changed her mind and wouldn’t go.

  But then David had looked at her with that puppy dog gaze of his that implied sympathy and superior wisdom all at the same time, and she’d bowed to his request after all.

  With her hand warm in Peter’s, Bridget told herself that maybe it was time she stopped making these kinds of mistakes. For practically the first time in her life, she had listened to her own heart instead of letting other people’s ideas about what was best rule her.

  Getting off the bus had been the right thing to do.

  Chapter Six

  Bridget

  Dinas Bran was an enormous castle, spread across the top of a hill a thousand feet above the valley floor and the village of Llangollen. Back in her old life, on holiday with a few girlfriends, Bridget had hiked up to it. At the time, it had been impossible for her to envision an actual castle from the ruins that remained. Lord Math (Bridget couldn’t think of him as anything other than ‘lord’, even if she could call Anna by her first name) had rebuilt the castle after it was destroyed by the English and made it twice as fine, according to those who’d seen the old one, with a great hall, guest quarters, barracks, a stable, and two kitchens.

  However, Bridget found the lack of running water unforgivable. She would never, ever, get used to latrines, no matter how long she lived in the Middle Ages. Just last night, Bridget had drunk a little too much in anticipation of their departure today, and she’d begged David to put the invention of toilets and showers at the top of his agenda. Having drunk almost nothing himself, he’d laughed, saying that they weren’t that hard, and he’d see to it.

  And now he was gone. Arrogant little bugger.

  Stretching the full length of the summit of the mountain, the castle was surrounded by a high curtain wall and a series of ditches and ramparts dating from Celtic times. Anyone who approached the castle had to wend his way through the ramparts in order to reach the gate. Even Bridget, who’d grown up in Avalon, had no trouble imagining archers shooting down at her from the top of the walls on both sides. She craned her neck to see them but couldn’t in the fading light.

  “Don’t worry. They’re there,” Peter said from beside her.

  Another good sign as to Peter’s intentions was that he hadn’t left her side yet. Even when Justin slowed his horse to confer with Peter about who might be responsible for the attack, Peter hadn’t abandoned her and had even included her in the conversation. Of course, it was just business, and since her shop was the clearinghouse for news from the whole of western England, she might have as much to say on the subject as he.

  Though she didn’t. She had no idea who might have ambushed an emissary from France. David had his nobles pretty well under control as far as Bridget knew, and while she didn’t know the Welsh situation as well, she’d thought Llywelyn did too. Apparently, she’d thought wrong.

  Bridget tagged along with the others, uncertain of her right to listen in on the conversation with the ambassador, but she figured if someone didn’t want her there, they’d tell her. Peter had helped her dismount, and though he didn’t take her hand again, he didn’t object to her company either. They entered Math’s receiving room behind Goronwy and Ieuan, though Bridget hung back against the wall. She still wore her modern clothing and thought it best that she didn’t call attention to herself.

  Geoffrey de Geneville paced impatiently before the fire, while the heavily pregnant Queen of England tried to appease him.

  Though Bridget had seen Geoffrey de Geneville only once, she’d heard about him in great detail from some of the other twenty-firsters. Tall, thin, and white-haired, with fine clothes and a haughty manner, he was everything a medieval lord should be. He’d lost his heir not long ago, however, and Bridget’s impression of him was that he wore his grief around him all the time like a cloak.

  “My lady, I must see the king!” Geoffrey was saying at the very moment Ieuan pushed open the door.

  “He’s gone to Avalon, Geneville.” Ieaun didn’t even look at Geoffrey as he spoke but strode towards his sister. He caught her hand and kissed the back of it. Then he glanced at his wife, Bronwen, who sat a few paces away from Lili’s chair, her hands folded in her lap. She’d been looking at the floor while Geoffrey had been speaking, but she looked up at Ieuan’s approach, her eyes flashing. He gave her a nod, which Bridget interpreted to mean all is well. And Bridget supposed it was—from a certain point of view.

  Meanwhile, Geoffrey’s face had transformed into a look of stunned surprise, and he took a hesitant step forward. “What did you say?”

  Ieuan smiled grimly and didn’t repeat himself. He’d spoken loudly such that Geoffrey had to have heard him. “It was an urgent matter, which the king could not put off any longer. I can’t say when he will return, but it will be as soon as he can.” He made a dismissive gesture. “It should make no difference. We should treat whatever is the matter here the same as if a crisis occurred in Windsor while he was at Canterbury.”

  “He chose to leave at the Christmas feast in hopes that it was during these few days that he would be the least missed,” Lili said. “I suppose we can’t be surprised that something like this would happen the moment he turns his back.”

  Geoffrey barked a laugh that held no trace of amusement. “King David left for the same reason King Philip chose to send Jacques and me on this journey this week of all weeks—out of the hope that we’d be less conspicuous.”

  Lili added, for the newcomers’ benefit, “The emissary’s name was Jacques de Molier. Geoffrey reports that he is dead.”

  Bridget started at that. Up until now, she’d been on the receiving end of news and information, but she hadn’t ever encountered a situation as earth-shattering as this. She knew, as did everyone else in the room, that the death of the emissary of France on English soil was only a step or two from open war.

  Then Lili gestured to her brother. “Please tell Ieuan what you remember of the attack.” Lili might be female and pregnant, but her right to be heard in this conference was undisputed. Goronwy, too, had moved to stand near her chair as an indication of his support. David might be gone, but his authority—and thus hers—remained intact.

  Geoffrey threw out a hand in a sign of impatience. “Not enough! At Molier’s insistence, we rode in his carriage, which I despised, mind you. With only some five miles to go, we were looking forward to food and warmth, but then one of the men at the head of the company shouted a warning. I stuck my head out of the window to see what was the matter. Upwards of a dozen men had emerged from a nearby wood. They wore black masks and no lord’s colors.r />
  “I tried to hear what my guards were shouting to each other, but Molier was babbling away about barbaric English roads and how he’d warned King Philip not to trust King David. Not to speak ill of the dead, but his hands were fluttering! At the very instant I turned to tell him to be quiet, the carriage’s horses reared and bolted. As they did, one of the rear wheels came off entirely, which I know only because I saw the scene afterwards. Then the carriage overturned, and I hit my head. That’s all I remember.”

  Geoffrey raised his hands and dropped them in a gesture of helplessness. “I awoke alone in the wreckage of the carriage. I dragged myself from it only to find the carnage on the road. All of my men were dead, along with Molier himself and the three Frenchmen he’d brought with him. A surviving horse cropped the grass in an adjacent field, still with saddle and bridle. I mounted him and rode in haste here.”

  Ieuan had listened to Geoffrey’s story with a finger to his lips, and now he dropped his hand. “A very bad business. Did you check all the bodies? There were no other survivors?”

  “That’s sort of where this gets worse,” Lili said, with a rueful smile.

  “Worse?” Ieuan said.

  Geoffrey grunted. “We were traveling with James Stewart, who was among the riders. I heard his voice above the initial fray, but neither he nor his horse were in evidence when I awoke.”

  Bridget took a step forward. “James Stewart, the High Steward of Scotland?”

  Up until now, she hadn’t said anything. It wasn’t her place, but the words had burst from her. Her ancestry was Scottish, and she knew more about Scottish history than English—or Welsh for that matter. Both in Avalon and here, James Stewart had managed to retain his title, even though he’d supported Robert Bruce’s claim to the Scottish throne over its current occupant, John Balliol.

  “The same,” Lili said, with a nod in Bridget’s direction, hopefully indicating that she hadn’t been too out of line in speaking, “not to mention the fact that he’s Earl Callum’s friend. The hope, of course, is that James got away, but I would have thought he would have made his way here by now if he had.”

  Geoffrey shook his head. “It strikes me as more likely that he was captured. If he were injured, these bandits would have chased him down and murdered him too. They had no compunction about killing all of my men! And Molier’s!”

  “Why was James Stewart riding with you?” Goronwy asked Geoffrey.

  “Under other circumstances, it would not be my place to say.” Geoffrey grimaced. “England and Scotland have been allied recently, and I would hate to undermine that hard-earned trust, but—” He broke off.

  “Now is not the time to equivocate,” Lili said. “Tell them what you told me.”

  “James Stewart heard a rumor that John Balliol had sent an embassage to Pope Boniface regarding the current conflagration between England and France. Balliol desires to underscore that Scotland does not support King David’s more rebellious tendencies and to assure the pope that Scotland remains steadfastly obedient to the Church.”

  Goronwy’s eyes narrowed. “King Dafydd has heard nothing of this from his own ambassador, Archbishop Romeyn.”

  Geoffrey spread his hands wide. “I understand that Stewart’s knowledge of this ploy came from the Scottish end, not the Italian.”

  Ieuan scoffed a laugh. “Is Balliol hoping to take Carlisle while Dafydd is on Crusade? He prostrates himself before the pope now in the hope that Boniface turns a blind eye to war on England later?”

  “It sounds absurd on the face of it,” Geoffrey said, “but we already know that Balliol is allied with certain interests in France—men who are unhappy with the way King Philip himself has encroached on his vassals’ lands.”

  Goronwy gave a growl of disgust, deep in his throat. “And now Stewart is missing, and Molier is dead.” He was speaking French with Geoffrey, a language they both spoke perfectly.

  “As we speak, Cadwallon and Samuel are leading companies in pursuit of the bandits,” Lili said. “More men, led by Hywel, stand guard over the ambush site and the bodies of the dead.”

  Peter stirred beside Bridget. Samuel, as the Sheriff of Shrewsbury, was his direct boss. Callum had promoted the former English soldier to oversee his lands in his absence. But since Samuel’s responsibilities were far broader than police work, more often than not, investigations fell to Peter. Back in Avalon, Peter had been a member of the peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan and the Sudan, where roadside ambushes had been common. This attack had occurred on the high road from Shrewsbury in medieval England but, despite the transposition in time and place, perhaps wasn’t so different as all that.

  Of the other men Lili had mentioned, Cadwallon was King Llywelyn’s captain, another medieval man not included in the adventure to Avalon, and Hywel was one of Math’s liege men at Dinas Bran. Bridget had heard what she was sure was only part of his story: born a shepherd, he’d been a stable boy at Castell y Bere ten years ago when he’d saved Anna’s life before the English had burned the castle to the ground. He’d been in the right place at the right time, and he’d risen to the occasion. He’d proved his worth since then, and his rise, by medieval standards, had been meteoric—though not unheard of these days. In their quest to find able men, David and Callum looked far more to a man’s capacity than to his birth.

  David had been right to be wary of depriving his kingdom of too many men who had authority, Peter among them. Bridget found herself a little irritated at his foresight. He hadn’t been right to make her go back to Avalon with him, but it looked like he’d been right about everything else.

  Ieuan knew it too, which was why he turned to Peter now and gestured him forward. “My lord Geneville, this is Peter Cobb, Samuel’s lieutenant. He has more experience than anyone here with investigating crimes like this one.”

  It had never occurred to Bridget before Ieuan used the word that, speaking in French, lieutenant made perfect sense. It meant, quite literally, one who stands in the place of another, and thus made sense to everyone in the room. Regardless of what role they were playing, they were all standing in the place of another.

  “Peter, please tell me whatever you need to proceed,” Lili said.

  “First I need a little more information.” Peter bowed in Geoffrey’s direction. “My lord, do you know how long you were unconscious?”

  Geoffrey made another expressive motion with his hands. “A quarter of an hour, perhaps? It didn’t feel like long—certainly what light there was hadn’t changed. The attack happened less than two hours ago.”

  “Then we can’t be far behind them,” Peter said. “The fact that you awoke and came here immediately may in the end save James Stewart’s life.”

  Geoffrey shook his head. “I could do nothing else.”

  “Was your purse stolen?” Peter said.

  “Yes,” Geoffrey said.

  “What about the emissary’s?” Peter said.

  “Yes to that as well. The bandits took all our gold, along with the letter from King Philip to King David,” Geoffrey said. “And, of course, they took James Stewart.”

  “That is where they made their mistake,” Goronwy said.

  Geoffrey turned to him. “In what way?”

  “We see before us, on one hand, basic theft,” Goronwy said. “On the other, diplomatic intrigue.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” Geoffrey said. He didn’t sound offended, merely curious that another man could have had an idea that hadn’t yet occurred to him.

  “You were left for dead,” Peter said. “It could be that we were meant to assume the men who attacked you were simple brigands. We might still be thinking it if not for the abduction of Lord Stewart.”

  “It was foolish of them to murder Molier too,” Lili said, with a bit of tartness in her voice. “Any time a man of his stature is killed, one has to assume it wasn’t an accident.”

  Geoffrey’s chin bobbed in Lili’s direction in a mini-bow. “They are criminals, and thus fools by definition.”


  “My lord,” Peter said to regain Geoffrey’s attention, “perhaps it isn’t my place to ask, but knowing the answer could move us towards understanding the reason for the ambush, if it wasn’t, in fact, theft. Can you tell me what was in the letter from King Philip to King David?”

  Bridget smiled to herself at Peter’s eloquence and tact. It was one of those mysteries about him that he could be so talkative when he was involved in an investigation and nearly silent the rest of the time.

  Lili nodded her assent. “Tell him, Geoffrey.”

  Geoffrey pressed his lips together for a second, thinking, and then said, “As I hope you are aware, King Philip was less than pleased with the outcome of this autumn’s events. He regrets the ill-fated invasion at Hythe and what it has done to his relations with England, as well as the subsequent falling-out with Pope Boniface. Now that David has been installed as Duke of Aquitaine, Philip suggests a meeting on neutral ground.”

  “Thank you for that, my lord.” Peter bowed again. “One wonders who gains most by preventing such a conference.”

  “It is, in the main, too early to say,” Geoffrey said.

  Goronwy turned to Lili. “While Scotland isn’t that far away, I’m inclined to look closer to home for the one causing this mischief. We shouldn’t place blame without evidence or rule anyone out just yet.”

  Geoffrey gave a snort that from him came out dignified. “It’s more than mischief, Goronwy.”

  Lili canted her head. “I can’t imagine Balliol has condoned an attempt on his own High Steward’s life. As both of you say, we should make no judgements as yet.”

  Geoffrey and Goronwy bowed. Bridget didn’t get the sense that the two men had been really disagreeing, but rather that they enjoyed their back and forth as an intellectual challenge. David encouraged this type of interplay among his advisors, so that all sides of an issue could be examined without hard feelings on any side.