Guardians of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  They wended their way through the lines of people waiting to enter through the front gate. The corner of the square was only a few yards away. Sawhorses blocked the street, as they had from the beginning, but only a single man stood guard. He was swathed from head to foot in all-weather gear, and from what Anna could see of his face, he was David’s age or younger.

  “Did you give Tate the what-for about the clinic yet?” Anna said.

  “I did,” Callum said. “He claims only to have been doing his due diligence. I decided, under the circumstances, that any more recriminations on my part would be unproductive.”

  “Huh,” Anna said. “I don’t trust him.”

  “If we get what we need from him and get back to the Middle Ages in one piece, it won’t matter, Anna,” David said.

  Callum picked up the pace, loping down the sidewalk on the north side of the street, headed away from the castle entrance. As they approached the barriers, he reached into his breast pocket. The guard on duty lowered the walkie-talkie he’d been speaking into, tension in every line of his body, but then Callum pulled out his MI-5 badge. He left it open long enough for the guard to get a good look at it.

  “Sir.” The policeman stiffened to attention.

  “As you were.” Callum gestured to the others. “They’re with me.”

  Anna gave the policeman her most sincere smile. “The line is too long.”

  “American, eh?” the guard said.

  “Yup,” Anna said, throwing in another Americanism for good measure.

  With another nod at Callum, the guard waved them through the barrier. Callum slipped the badge back into his breast pocket. Anna had heard him speaking to Cassie earlier about how they wanted to keep a low profile and not wave their badges around if they didn’t have to, but desperate times called for desperate measures.

  “We’re through the barrier, David,” Callum said. “I chose to show my badge.”

  “Tate knows we’re here, so I don’t think it matters,” David said. “I’m hoping Tate has warned the rank and file by now to be on the lookout for Lee.”

  “He told me he would,” Callum said.

  “The guard barely blinked at us,” Anna said.

  “Lee is an Irishman with an Irish accent,” Callum said. “Clearly not you.”

  “Could be me or Mark,” Math said. “He didn’t even ask.”

  “You were with an MI-5 agent,” Callum said. “He wouldn’t see it as his place to ask.”

  Anna looked over her shoulder as a man ran up to the first guard and began talking and gesticulating, showing the sense of urgency they were hoping for.

  “We’re circling around the water side of the castle because it turned out we couldn’t get to the square from the east or the south,” David said. “The guard may have let you through, but it looks to me as if Tate is, in fact, moving quickly to tighten security. Too little too late if you ask me, but I hope I’m wrong.”

  “You’re not going to be able to get here from there either, David,” Anna said. “We’ve just come through there. They’re ramping up the security even more on that side.”

  Callum looked down at his phone, where a text message had just appeared. “Tate says they’ve called out the canine unit to inspect the castle and the city, but they won’t be here for at least an hour.”

  “What’s the canine unit?” Math said.

  “Dogs,” Darren said. “They’ve been trained to sniff out bombs.”

  “It may be the only way to find Lee and his friend,” Callum said.

  “Again, too little too late,” David said.

  “Lee could be moving up his time table too,” Anna said. “I couldn’t swear that he didn’t see me when he looked back, though his eyes didn’t pause as they swept over me.”

  Math put a hand on her shoulder. “He would never expect you to be here today. In that wooly hat and coat, you look nothing like you do at home.”

  “I borrowed this coat from Cassie’s aunt. I was wearing it when he first met me,” Anna said.

  Math frowned. “I’d forgotten that.”

  “What is he doing in the meantime to secure the castle?” David said. “Honestly, Tate ought to let you, me, and Darren in, Callum. We know what to look for. What do you bet the bombs are in the toilets?”

  “I told Tate about that too,” Callum said. “He appeared to take me seriously, but I also know that he believes in his own methods and doesn’t see how Lee could have circumvented them. He’s focusing on protecting the prince, which is fine as far as it goes—”

  “—but he doesn’t really believe Lee could have set bombs in the toilets without being detected,” David said. “Great.”

  “With Lee, you really need to think outside the box,” Anna said.

  “As we discovered to our loss.” David released a breath that came out a hiss through the phone’s receiver. “Wait where you are, guys. We’re coming.”

  Chapter Twenty-two

  David

  As it turned out, David should have listened to Anna. Though he, Abraham, Darren, and Dad were able to circle around the castle to the west, once they reached the north side past the sea wall, a line of barricades blocked their way into either the city or the square beyond, even though Anna’s group had just passed through there. Their only choice was to go back, which would look suspicious, given the number of security men on guard staring straight at them, or stand in the line of people waiting to get into the castle.

  They joined the line.

  “This should be interesting,” Dad said.

  “Darren can get you out of this with his badge,” Callum said into David’s ear.

  “No.” David said. “This is what I wanted to do in the first place, and I’m not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.” David felt a bit like Harry Potter on the day he drank the lucky serum. The whole of the last twenty-four hours had conspired to bring him to this point; he was meant to enter the castle, right here, right now.

  “David.” Mom’s voice held a warning, and David could picture her in the van with Cassie and Rachel, all three of them with their eyes narrowed, openly opposing what he was about to do. “I don’t like you going in there. Once you get inside, you may be stuck there all day, and Callum is going to have to come get you.”

  “Lee could be in there, and none of Tate’s men knows what he looks like,” David said. “They need us whether or not they know it.”

  “Remember too,” Abraham said. “I’m supposed to be here. We’ll be all right.”

  Even if it wasn’t true, David was grateful for the support. Rachel’s dad wore an old-fashioned fedora hat, currently covered in snow, and looked as confident and polished as he sounded.

  “I agree. This is good,” Dad said.

  “We can check the toilets for bombs,” David said. “Knowing that it has been done will make me feel a lot better about leaving Lee in Tate’s hands.”

  Callum gave a low growl. “Abraham’s invitation is for him alone, and Darren is the only one with a badge. They may not let David and Llywelyn inside.”

  “In which case, we’ll know this was the wrong choice,” David said.

  “The line is moving pretty quickly,” Dad said. “They’re letting people in.”

  “Llywelyn—” Mom’s voice echoed resignedly through the receiver in David’s ear. “Take care of one another.”

  “David and I have always had each other’s backs,” Dad said. “This time will be no different.”

  They were only a few feet from the entrance. Men stood at the gate with dogs, though from what Tate had said, they weren’t here to sniff out bombs. Then he saw why the line was moving so fast: anyone with a backpack or bag larger than a very basic purse was being turned away and shunted through another set of barricades into the square.

  The tourists weren’t being allowed to come back once they’d ditched their bags either, and David wondered if they should have known they couldn’t bring in backpacks, or if it was a new rule based on the informat
ion Callum had given Tate about Lee. But even David, the non-MI-5 agent, could see that leaving so many tourists to their own devices on Christmas Day in Caernarfon created a security nightmare, which might be exactly what Lee was counting on.

  “You’re going to kill yourself if you can’t learn to be more detached,” Abraham said to David from a pace behind him.

  “What?” David said, turning in surprise to look at him.

  “I’ve seen many young doctors burn out because they can’t separate themselves from their responsibilities,” Abraham said. “You need to learn this too if you’re going to survive.”

  “I’ve told you the same thing, son,” Dad said.

  “You have, and I’m trying,” David said, resigned to having the conversation, even under these circumstances. “Years ago Mom talked to me about living more lightly, and I do mean to, but being King of England doesn’t make that easy.” He stopped talking as he saw in his mind’s eye the enormous list of things he had to do and worry about each day. No wonder every American president, regardless of what party he belonged to or how poorly he managed the job, went gray within the first four years of office.

  “I can only imagine what your life is like,” Abraham said. “I don’t suppose there’s much in the way of self-help books in the Middle Ages?”

  David laughed. “It’s called the Bible, but sometimes it’s a little short on specifics.”

  “Is it?” Abraham said. “I quote you the words of a different King David: The Lord is my light and my salvation; whom shall I fear? That, to me, is the path to detachment.”

  “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living,” David quoted back. “I know another Jewish doctor you’re going to get along with really well. You can both harass me while trading verses from the Old Testament.”

  That got a laugh from Abraham, which carried them to the front of the line and made them seem innocuous—just four friends out for the once-in-a-lifetime experience of seeing the Prince of Wales. The irony of that was not lost on David.

  The guards took them one at a time, directing each in turn to open their coats to show they had no weapons of any kind. Earlier, after a hurried conference with Callum, Darren had left his gun in the van for Cassie, who didn’t have one. David wasn’t even wearing a knife. He’d left his medieval gear in a bag in the van, ready to put on for the return journey. He was looking forward to showing up at home dressed right instead of in inappropriate modern clothing.

  The guards waved them into the castle one at a time, David entering last. “You didn’t show him your invitation,” he said to Abraham once he reached the spot where he, Darren, and Dad were waiting.

  “He didn’t ask for it, and if I had done so, my name would have been recorded. So far, Tate doesn’t know I’m here, and I don’t see why we shouldn’t keep it that way,” Abraham said.

  “That’s why I didn’t show my badge,” Darren said. “I don’t want Tate to know we distrust his security or we don’t think he’s doing a good enough job.”

  As they passed the gift shop, which was doing a thriving trade in water bottles and Welsh cakes, David reconnected to the conference call. “We’re in.”

  Cassie came on the line at the same moment. “I have the supplies, Callum. Tate came through for us. It’s a go.”

  “Good,” Callum said.

  As David listened, he followed the other tourists through the inner bailey of the castle. A pavilion had been set up on the west end, near the bathrooms, and despite the continued snowfall, castle officials were herding people onto the various wall-walks, of which there were many.

  Caernarfon Castle, like many of Edward’s castles, had corridors inside the stone curtain wall. Back in the Middle Ages, rooms, if they were small, had been built in the walls themselves or were meant to be accessed through doorways that led to the courtyard. By the twenty-first century, however, all of the buildings that would have existed back in 1284 were gone, destroyed by time. Many would have been built in wood in the first place, which never lasted.

  “Where are you now, Anna?” David said.

  The companions entered the first doorway straight ahead, which took them into a long corridor heading east. It was good to be out of the snow, and David wondered if the Prince of Wales was really going deliver his speech in the middle of what was shaping up to be a blizzard. Probably that was what the pavilion was for.

  “I’m still with Math, Callum, and Mark, near the NatWest bank on the opposite side of the square from the castle,” Anna said, though the deeper they walked within the walls, the more broken up her voice became. “There are hundreds of people in the square, with more coming every second. Some of the shop owners have even opened their stores.”

  “How un-English of them,” David said.

  “Probably most of them aren’t English,” Darren said.

  “Many tourists were turned away at the entrance to the castle, and they have nowhere to go,” Anna said.

  David had been very aware of the cameras above the entrance that had been trained on his face as he entered the castle. But, as Callum had assured them back on the bus when they’d first arrived, the guards hadn’t asked for ID, not even for such an event as this, and David could see why they didn’t bother—if someone was up to no good, he’d have a fake ID anyway, so there was no point in wasting the guards’ time. The cameras were a much better preventive measure, since they could be linked to facial recognition software. If Lee had gone so far as to undergo plastic surgery to change his features, he deserved to win.

  Static came over the earpiece, and Callum spoke words David interpreted to be you’re breaking up. Reception being what it was in Wales—sucky—and with the many feet of stone surrounding them on all sides, it wasn’t surprising they’d lost contact. Hopefully the gap in service would be brief.

  David put a hand up to his ear. “If you can hear this, we’ve started checking the toilets, beginning on the east side of the castle.”

  Callum didn’t answer.

  “There’s one in here.” Abraham, who to nobody’s surprise knew Caernarfon Castle well, led the way up another staircase into one of the east towers of the castle. For all that security was incredibly tight getting into the castle, once inside, far fewer guards were visible. David supposed the security people felt everyone inside had been vetted—and certainly nobody had been able to smuggle in so much as a thimbleful of C-4, so they didn’t need to be watched closely.

  “Am I to understand that neither of you have ever been here before today?” Abraham said to David and his father.

  “Caernarfon Castle was built by Edward to subdue the populace,” David said.

  “That would be after my death.” Dad grinned. “Strange to think about, isn’t it?”

  Abraham shook his head. “I will never think about the Prince of Wales in the same way again.”

  “You’d better not if you’re coming with us,” David said.

  Caernarfon Castle was the largest castle in north Wales and modern for its time. It had seven towers built into the curtain wall, not including the towers that guarded the two main gates. As a result, it had dozens of toilets on multiple levels. David ducked into a second one. He used his phone as a flashlight and shined it into the recesses of the toilet shaft. No C-4. He heaved a sigh of relief. The absolute best outcome would be to spend the day in the castle, hear the prince’s speech, and go home.

  “Why isn’t anyone else in here?” Dad said.

  “Because Tate didn’t listen to Callum,” David said. It made him kind of angry to be disbelieved. Again.

  “Are you sure you want to return to the Middle Ages?” Dad said.

  At first David thought his father was talking to Abraham or Darren, but Dad was looking at him when he spoke. David laughed. “We’re really not going to go over this again, are we? People need to stop asking me that.”

  Dad held up his phone. “This is a miraculous world.”

  David scoffed and w
as about to make a sarcastic comment when they turned a corner, heading for the last of the toilets in the east wing.

  Dad was slightly ahead of him—so he saw Lee first and stopped cold in the middle of the corridor.

  Lee was coming straight at them from the other direction, dressed in a Caernarfon Castle maintenance uniform, with the little logo for CADW, the Welsh historical preservation society, on the breast pocket. The detached part of David’s brain told him that it made sense for Lee to be wearing the uniform since that had to be how Lee could have gotten inside the castle without being stopped. He might have even come by the uniform legally, since he could have heard about the prince’s speech as soon as it was announced, seen the implications, and applied at Caernarfon for a job.

  They were still twenty feet apart, but Lee had noticed them too, so David didn’t see much point in retreating. He put out a hand, trying to think of something appeasing to say to Lee while at the same time whispering a warning into his earpiece. As before, he got no response from Callum.

  “You.” A gun materialized in Lee’s hand—maybe the same gun he’d brought to the Middle Ages and shot at David with last year—and he pointed it at them. “Put up your hands, David, or your father dies.”

  David obeyed, hoping that Lee hadn’t seen Darren, who was still in the toilet corridor, or Abraham, who was shorter than either Llywelyn or David. Abraham had stopped in the shadow against the wall. David tried to make himself look bigger and more looming, even as he heard Abraham take a few quick steps backwards. David hoped he could bring help, or at the very least get to some place with better reception. David turned his head slightly sideways, tracking him out of the corner of his eye.

  But before Abraham could get far, a second man moved out of the shadows farther down the corridor. He held a gun in his right hand and shoved at Darren’s back with his left. Darren edged forward until he reached Abraham’s side. The man waggled the gun, urging Darren and Abraham to move past David towards Lee.

  David would have told them to stall, but Abraham couldn’t read minds and obeyed the terrorist instead of David’s unvoiced thought. With a gun in his face, David couldn’t blame him. Lee’s accomplice came forward too until he was four feet away from David and Darren, with Abraham and David’s father standing beyond them, closer to Lee. David had by now turned fully sideways, one arm outstretched towards Lee and the other towards his accomplice, keeping them both at bay.