Guardians of Time

by Sarah Woodbury

  “Excellent idea.” James perched a hip on what Anna hoped was a somewhat stable stone and swung his right leg over the wall, followed by his left. Math held out a hand for James to grasp, and James jumped down onto the roof of the bus, landing with a thunk. Math caught his arm to steady him, not wanting him to slip on the wet surface.

  “James!” Callum poked his head through the trap door. “What are you doing here?”

  James’s mouth fell open, but then he laughed. “Is this your doing? Would it be possible for me to find myself in captivity without you affecting a rescue? Especially one as dramatic as this.” He stomped a foot on the roof of the bus, and the sound echoed metallically. Unfortunately, since the bus abutted the tower, it also caused a few more stones to fall, and everyone moved away from it towards the rear of the bus.

  “If you would prefer not to be rescued, you’re free to climb back into your disintegrating cell.” Callum grunted as he pulled himself through the trapdoor and sat on the edge, his feet dangling into the interior of the bus. He’d put on his medieval garb in the time it had taken to drive to the bridge, and his sword was belted at his waist.

  “That is quite all right.” James bent and held out his hand to Callum, who smirked and allowed his friend to pull him to his feet. Then the two men grasped each other’s shoulders in an affectionate way.

  Callum released James in order to gesture to Math and Anna. “I see you’ve met Lord Math and Princess Anna.”

  James bowed at the waist. “It is an honor.”

  “My lord!” The shout came from the ground outside the tower.

  They all turned to see Bridget, Peter, and a man Anna didn’t know grinning at them from the ground on the east side of the bus. The bus had been driven into the tower at the front, such that it was oriented north/south and blocked the whole of the road. Until they moved it—if moving it was possible—no horseman could get by without riding into the adjacent field or swimming in the moat.

  Callum bent forward, his hands on his knees. “I don’t suppose there’s any point in asking what you’re doing here?”

  Peter gestured to James Stewart. “We were on his trail.”

  James shook his head with something that looked like rueful dismay. “How many lives do I owe you now?”

  “Ach.” Callum straightened and clapped a hand on James’s shoulder again. “You would do the same for me. But now—” He turned around and gazed towards the castle.

  Anna looked too: a crowd of people—perhaps as many as a hundred—had come to stand on the bridge across the castle’s moat, on the battlements of the castle, and in the outer bailey, which was effectively an island in the middle of an extensive moat. She couldn’t see anyone’s expression from this far away, but nobody seemed to be moving or speaking.

  That they were feeling shock wasn’t surprising. By now, many people had heard of the giant orange and turquoise bus that had appeared out of nowhere in the midst of a battlefield a year ago, but seeing it with one’s own eyes was something else entirely.

  “Whose castle is this?” Callum said.

  “Fulk Fitzwarin’s,” Peter said.

  “Ah yes,” Callum said. “This is Whittington. And how, exactly, did James Stewart end up a prisoner in his tower?”

  James cleared his throat. “I was riding to Dinas Bran in the company of Geoffrey de Geneville and Jacques de Molier, an emissary from the French Court, when a band of ruffians ambushed us. They brought me here. I didn’t know where I was until this moment for they blindfolded me, and my room had no windows until this—” he paused, searching for the word, “—vehicle created one.”

  Callum ran a hand through his hair, in what looked to Anna like disbelief. “Why would Fitzwarin abduct you?”

  “My lord,” Peter said from the ground, “it isn’t Fitzwarin’s doing, or not in the main. Red Comyn and Aymer de Valence are at the root of this.”

  Anna had never concerned herself much with Scottish politics, but even she knew that marriage had allied these two, and David had worried about it from the first he’d heard of it. “Where are they now?”

  “Here!” A voice bellowed as a host of horsemen materialized on the other side of the bus—the west side—from Peter and Bridget. Every man in the company wore armor and held a sword or axe bare in his hand. Horses filled the road that ran beside the moat and intersected with the road that ran in front of the tower, to which the bus was currently semi-attached.

  The lead man, whom Anna didn’t recognize, bared his teeth at Callum. “And who might you be, sir?”

  Callum pulled his sword from his sheath, though he kept it pointed at the roof of the bus. “I am Alexander Callum, Earl of Shrewsbury, which the man beside you could have told you if he’d had a mind to do so, Aymer.”

  Anna looked to the man on Aymer’s left, noting his shockingly red hair and understanding that this was Red Comyn.

  Aymer’s eyes didn’t quite skate to the left, but his horse shifted, and he had to tug the reins in order to keep him under control. The men around him were murmuring too. Callum had been central to the negotiations in Scotland that had put John Balliol, their king, on the throne. Even if David would have preferred Robert Bruce as King of Scotland, he hadn’t forced the issue, and Callum was well-known and well-respected for the role he’d played in averting war.

  “You should go, Aymer,” Red Comyn said, his eyes on Callum instead of his brother-in-law, “right now, while you still can.”

  “What? Why?” Aymer jerked his chin to indicate Callum and—as it turned out—the rest of Anna’s family, including Mom, who had climbed onto the roof of the bus too without Anna noticing. “They’re outnumbered. We have the advantage.”

  “I wouldn’t be too sure about that. I imagine cousin Fulk is reconsidering his position right about now,” Red said.

  Aymer’s face twisted in fury. “Coward! This jumped-up earl holds no power over you.”

  David had been called an upstart prince more than once by angry Norman lords, but Anna had never heard Callum referred to in such a derogatory way. Medieval people, familiar with nobility, could tell at a glance that he had been born with a silver spoon in his mouth, and the mantle of authority rested naturally on his shoulders.

  Red kept his expression serene. “I’m cutting my losses, Aymer. I should never have listened to you.”

  “This is as much your doing as mine, Scotsman.”

  The murmuring rose in volume among Red’s men, not liking the tone of Aymer’s voice.

  “I say otherwise,” Red said, “and I can muster witnesses to prove it.”

  Aymer scoffed, while at the same time raising his sword above his head and speaking to the Frenchmen among the soldiers behind him. “We’re leaving!”

  “I don’t think so,” Callum said.

  Aymer threw a glance up at him. “You can’t stop me.”

  “I can.”

  “You have no army.”

  Callum pointed to the road behind them.

  A swell of relief filled Anna’s chest. Whether or not Aymer escaped, none of them were in danger anymore: the road behind Aymer was filling with soldiers from the garrison of Whittington, who had filed out of the castle while Callum had been talking to Aymer—perhaps even stalling him. They’d followed the same route from the castle entrance Aymer had taken, circling around the moat to the south and west before turning north to make up three sides of the square. At the same time, thundering hooves sounded, coming down the western road. Thirty seconds later, Samuel, with Callum’s entire guard behind him, appeared out of the rain.

  Even better, Aymer wasn’t going anywhere because the Scottish guard that surrounded him chose that moment to close ranks. Their loyalty, it seemed, was to Red Comyn, not Aymer.

  Callum sheathed his sword. “We done here?”

  He glanced at James Stewart, who shrugged. “I am at your service, my lord.”

  “What I want to know,” Anna said, “is if there’s any way I can get home to Dinas Bran in the
next few hours in order to celebrate Christmas with my sons?”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  Meg

  From the moment the bomb had gone off at Caernarfon Castle, Meg hadn’t been able to think about anything but the whereabouts of David and Llywelyn. Throughout the discussions of how to get themselves back to the Middle Ages, she’d sat unspeaking, in kind of a comatose state.

  No matter how many times she told herself that David would have contacted them if he’d been in the modern world, and that Director Tate had reported only four bodies in the ruins of the tower, her heart had been beating too fast, while at the same time her whole body felt stiff, even frozen.

  She’d played no part in the decision to return the rental van—if only because Cassie and Callum would have had to pay for it if they didn’t—and return to the Middle Ages in the Cardiff bus. She wouldn’t have seen Rupert enter the bus because she hadn’t been looking. All she could see was the empty seat beside her where Llywelyn should have been sitting.

  There had been times before when she’d thought she’d lost him. He was twenty years older than she and the King of Wales, which meant that war and warfare had been a way of life since the day he’d walked away from his family at sixteen and joined his uncle’s court. Though Meg hadn’t seen the explosion at the castle, she’d seen Anna’s white face, and that was all she needed to know about what had happened.

  And yet, she hadn’t felt his death in her heart. Love for Llywelyn wouldn’t let her go, wouldn’t let her rest, and was the only thing keeping despair at bay. That and the knowledge that David might have known what was coming and would have known to hold onto his father with all his strength. She found some comfort in the knowledge that wherever they were, they were together.

  She didn’t know who had come up with the idea to drive headfirst into the center stem of the archway on the Menai Bridge, but even she had to admit, in the moments she was capable of rational thought, that to do so was a genius way to get home. The consequences of hitting it, had the time traveling not worked, would have been irretrievable.

  Meg had believed in the moment of impact that she would survive, for the sake of her five children, if not her own. And thus, she was in no way surprised when the bus dropped onto the road in time to rescue Bridget, Peter, and James Stewart, of all people, from the malicious hands of Aymer de Valence.

  Honestly, Meg was good with that.

  She was even better with Fulk Fitzwarin’s offer, seemingly worked out with Callum as part of his penance—Meg hadn’t bothered with the details—to give them horses to ride home to Dinas Bran and carts to haul all their stuff with them, which thankfully had been well packed into the bus’s storage compartment and hadn’t been damaged in the collision with the tower. It was obvious to anyone looking that the bus wasn’t going anywhere any time soon.

  They had only seven miles as the crow flies to ride, though of course a bit longer by road. No journey she had ever taken had ever felt as long. Riding, she was surrounded by friends and family—as well as Red Comyn and his Scots. Testimony by the various witnesses had revealed that James’s abduction had been a mistake from start to finish—in that Red and Aymer had meant to disrupt the emissary’s journey but then found they had more than they bargained for in James Stewart. Faced with the decision to either kill him, which had been Aymer’s choice, or grab him, Red had insisted on the latter.

  His protection hardly made up for the death of the French emissary’s entire guard, and it wasn’t as if Comyn was forgiven his actions. But arresting a nobleman was a different matter entirely than arresting a commoner, and Red Comyn knew he was far better off surrendering, apologizing, and admitting fault than running. He had lands and status, which, if he fled to another country, he abandoned. In the Middle Ages, starting over wasn’t quite the same as in the twenty-first century. It wasn’t as if he could just go get a job.

  Thus, Callum—and James Stewart, in fact—believed rehabilitation was the better path to follow in this instance; and that furthermore, it was possible.

  Callum was known for making those kinds of decisions.

  As, in fact, was David.

  “We’re almost there, Mom. Hang on,” Anna said.

  “There’s no guarantee they’re even here,” Meg said. “What if they ended up in Scotland?”

  “Then that’s where they needed to be,” Anna said matter-of-factly.

  Neither of them mentioned—nor would they—the possibility that David and Llywelyn could be dead. If they weren’t at Dinas Bran, Meg would wait. Painfully and dying a little herself each day perhaps, but she would wait.

  “How can you be so calm?” Meg knew the question had come out a wail, but she couldn’t help it.

  “In a few more minutes we’ll know, and knowing will be better than not knowing,” Anna said.

  The sky was darkening as clouds formed on the western horizon, and the sun, never high to begin with, sank behind them, shrouding in semi-darkness the mountain they were climbing. Meg kept glancing towards where she hoped to see the battlements, but trees hid her view of them until they reached the final switchback.

  Turning, they crested a rise, and Anna gasped and pointed. “Mom! Look!”

  The towers above the gatehouse were clearly visible, and each flew a flag. On one tower flapped the three lions that were Llywelyn’s personal crest, and on the adjacent tower flew the red dragon of Wales. Neither flag would have been flown had David or Llywelyn not been in residence.

  A company of riders burst from the gatehouse. It was a scene Meg would play over and over again in her mind, seeing Llywelyn riding towards her, his face split by a glorious smile. Meg dismounted without waiting for help from Math and ran to him. As Llywelyn approached, he reached down and, with a strength that denied his sixty-plus years, scooped her up and pulled her in front of him like he might have twenty years ago when she’d been a girl and life had held nothing but possibility.

  Meg flung her arms around his neck and sobbed. She couldn’t find the words to tell him that she’d feared she’d lost him, but he didn’t need to hear her speak to know how she’d felt.

  “I am well, cariad, and so is David. And … you and I have another grandson.”

  Of all the things he could have said, Meg had never expected that. She pulled back slightly, eyes streaming tears, though she was starting to recover. “When?”

  “Just now. We arrived in time for David to be here for the birth.”

  With that, as had been the case so often in the past when emotion overwhelmed her, Meg began to laugh—and the tears that flowed now were joyous.

  Chapter Thirty

  David

  By the time six in the evening rolled around—which David knew because of the cell phone he still had in his pocket—word had spread throughout Llangollen that not only had he and his father gone to Avalon and returned, but that David had a second son. By eight o’clock, the hall at Dinas Bran was full to bursting for Bridget’s and Peter’s wedding, which, while impromptu, was an appropriate finale to an incredible day.

  Then the whole family, except for Lili and the baby, who were sleeping, and Darren, who was drugged up on poppy juice, shared a meal with the people of Llangollen.

  Math munched away happily from beside David. “Finally, real food.”

  “Abraham fed us real food.” David glanced towards the end of one of the long tables that ran down the hall.

  Their friends who weren’t royal or noble sat there, and even though eating with Gentiles was forbidden among observant Jews, tonight Aaron remained among them, sitting next to Abraham.

  Aaron had taken Rachel’s father under his wing, though it might not be long before he discovered, as David had, that it was really the other way around. Rupert sat with them too, morosely eating his roast pheasant and onions. So far David hadn’t heard him speak a single word, which seemed to be due less to the concussion he’d received than his anger at finding himself in the Middle Ages. David would have thought he’d have be
en happy that his underlying suspicions had proved true.

  Of course, as long as Rupert was here, he wasn’t going to have the chance to write his story, and David certainly wasn’t taking him back to Avalon so he could.

  While time travel wasn’t a get out of jail free card, and David still didn’t think he’d ever used it as such, God help him, he wasn’t sorry for the gift either.

  David gazed down the table at his family, relieved beyond measure that he hadn’t screwed up so badly that anyone had actually died. If things had gone even a tiny bit more sideways, they could have been mourning on Christmas Day in the years to come rather than celebrating. That was a legacy he didn’t want to leave his children.

  David had the sense that his family and friends were feeling similarly—that the brush with death was only adding to the already festive mood, since Christmas was as huge a holiday in the Middle Ages as in the twenty-first century. Children raced about the hall, led by Cadell, who was amped up on sweets and the return of his parents. They played tag among the tables, looked upon indulgently by all and sundry.

  The bus remained at Whittington Castle, guarded by Samuel and his men. Eventually, someone would need to figure out how to move it. The front axle had broken so it was no longer drivable. Despite the damage, the bus had exceeded its design specifications in more ways than one. David wished he could send the company that built it a letter of commendation.

  The repentant Fulk Fitzwarin had imprisoned Aymer de Valence in his tower—inside the castle, rather than in the one next to the bus—until such a time as Callum and David figured out his punishment. Callum had allowed Red Comyn and his men to form part of the escort for Mom, Anna, and the others to Dinas Bran. The Scots had one of the long tables to themselves, and David was in something of a quandary to know what he and Callum were going to do with any of them either.

  That, however, along with David’s relationship with the pope, John Balliol, and King Philip of France, was a problem he was going to kick down the road until tomorrow—or maybe January. Thankfully, Jacques de Molier had woken, and it appeared now that he would live. He lay in the infirmary in a room next to Darren.