Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (25 page)

And that night, I lay awake thinking of
battle, unable to sleep, even as I wrapped my arms around Meg to
hold off the coming challenge:

May twenty-second, in the year of our Lord,
twelve hundred and sixty-six. I pace across the great hall of my
castle at Brecon. Although it belonged originally to the Bohuns, I
took it from Clare in 1265. Mortimer thought it should have been
his. He cannot forgive me.

The men are waiting; they’ve been waiting
for days as we’ve watched the progress of Mortimer and his men
across the plains, up and down the ridges and valleys that lead to
Brecon. They crossed into Wales at the great Dyke, and I wish every
day of my life that it still stood as it once did, a barrier
between my people and those who seek to conquer us.

I mount Glewdra and she tosses her head in
expectation. Battles don’t scare her. She’s fought in many,
carrying me through all of them with a surety that makes her one of
my staunchest friends. I pat her side.

“
Another chance, cariad.”

She whinnies and trots forward, head up and
proud, for she knows that it is her place to ride at the head of
any host of men. I’m joined by Goronwy and Hywel. We cross the
drawbridge and take the main road out of Brecon. Once past the
village, however, we head across the fields, making for the heights
above Felinfach, the last major ford before Mortimer can reach
us.

“
You are prepared,” I say to Goronwy, not
as a question, but a statement of fact.

“
Yes, my lord,” he says. “They will crowd
the ford. It is the best place to hit them, and the farthest they
will reach into Wales, now and perhaps forever.”

“
You are that confident?”

“
Do you remember Cymarau?”

“
I could never forget such a victory,” I
say.

“
It will be like that,” Goronwy
says.

I nod, sure in his assurance, and turn my
attention to the road ahead and the task that lies before us. We
will turn Mortimer back, and he will not raise another army for
many a year.

The sun rises over our heads as we climb the
ridge, a hundred feet above the ford, but sloping down to it over
less than a quarter mile. Goronwy has spent some time thinking
about his plan of attack and has prepared the ground accordingly.
Trees blocking our view of the river have been cut down and hauled
away, and now the archers crouch behind a stone wall he built over
the course of three days, a perfect one hundred yards from the
ford. At Goronwy’s signal, they will stand and fire.

As horseman, we wait just inside the stand
of trees at the top of the ridge. Mortimer doesn’t know we’re here,
hasn’t realized that our scouts have been following his progress
throughout the last three days. Mortimer’s stronghold at Wigmore
Castle in Herfordshire is not far away, but this is a foreign land
and he doesn’t know the terrain.

I suspect, though I do not know, that
Mortimer’s attempt at Brecon is actually an attack on Clare, whom
he despises, even as he welcomes him back into the royal fold. King
Henry gave Brecon to Clare, if he could take it from me, that is.
As he cannot, Mortimer sees it as fair game.

A mistake.

“
They’re coming, my lord! They’ve reached
the ford of the Dulas!”

Goronwy’s hand rises and then falls, loosing
the arrows the archers have been holding. The arrows fly, arcing
through the morning light, the sun glinting off their metal heads.
They hit, and the carnage begins at the ford. Another flight of
arrows flies, and then another. Underneath the cover of the last,
Goronwy releases the cavalry. They race forward, screaming to the
heavens, a lance headed straight for the heart of Mortimer’s
men.

For once, Goronwy has convinced me to stand
with the rear guard, to watch as a sentinel on the hill. Under
normal circumstances, it is my role to lead my men, but today,
there is something he wants me to see.

And there it is. On the left flank of
Mortimer’s army is the man himself. He has led a host of men and
horses away from the ford and is attempting to cross at a more
southerly point. Yet, the horses flounder in the current. I could
have told them that the Dulas runs deep there. Any Welshman could
have. But he is of the Marche, and has received some bad
advice.

With a shout, I urge the men with me into a
gallop. We race down the slope to the point where Mortimer will
come across, if he makes it. He sees us coming and even from this
distance I see him shake his head. Almost at the same moment,
another flight of arrows passes over our heads and slams into the
hapless riders on the opposite bank. The archers have moved east so
as to not hit us, and have found better ground from which to
kill.

Mortimer glances left then right. He shouts
at me words I can’t hear properly over the rush of the water and
the screams of dying men and horses. He brandishes his sword, but
then turns his horse’s head and retreats up the bank. His men
follow.

Soon the defeat becomes a rout. Mortimer’s
army is decimated; defeated so entirely that only a handful of
knights and men-at-arms are able to flee to the woods on the other
side of the Dulas.

The archers fire at their backs and more men
go down. The horsemen outpace the foot soldiers, who are racing
away, but still not fast enough because Goronwy gives the order for
our cavalry to cross the river after them. They splash through the
river shoulder to shoulder and give chase, running Mortimer’s men
down from behind, one by one. In the final count, Mortimer loses a
hundred and fifty foot and twenty horse at the ford of Felinfach.
We lose less than a tenth of that.

Death is everywhere, but yet again, has not
come for me.

Chapter
Seventeen

I
slipped out of
bed and pulled the extra blanket that lay at its foot around my
shoulders, careful not to wake Llywelyn. For the third night in a
row I was having trouble sleeping. Now, here it was at nearly dawn
and I’d slept no more than a few hours. I knew why, knew not
sleeping wasn’t going to help me deal with what I was facing. But
telling myself over and over to relax was helping no more this
night than it had the one before.

I hopped onto the window seat the Bohuns had
so generously built under the only window in the castle of any size
at all, and pulled the curtain half-way across to hide the light
from the open shutter.

Brecon was a fortress, built on a rise at
the confluence of the Usk and Honddu Rivers. The Honddu River
rushed by in the moonlight thirty feet below my feet. The view was
so spectacular I imagined I could see London from where I sat,
though mountains rose between us and the plains of England. The
water in the river was high from yesterday’s heavy rain, muddy and
full of debris washing in from the banks and tributaries. The snow
had long since melted away and the spring rains had come.

I glanced at the curtain that separated our
room from the one adjacent, but no noise came from behind it.
Although reluctant, I’d bowed to the inevitable pressure and moved
Anna out of our room to one where she now slept with her nanny.

After more than two months in Wales, I
didn’t know if she even remembered what home had been like. I
imagined that if she were to see it again, it would come back to
her, but she’d adapted well to the day-to-day life of the castle. I
didn’t know how I felt about that. She would grow up as a
thirteenth century woman, and despite what Llywelyn had said about
not seeing much difference between how people were on the inside,
it worried me. At least I would ensure she could read, write, and
do math. But she wasn’t ever going to understand about
dinosaurs.

The rushing water tempted me to dangle my
feet as if sitting on a dock, but I resisted. Even I could see that
it wasn’t seemly behavior for the companion to the Prince of Wales,
even when no one else was looking
.

And then someone was looking.

Llywelyn slipped his arm around my waist,
lifting me slightly so he could slide in behind me, his back to the
wooden wall that formed the box of the window seat, and one leg
braced against the stone of the window frame. I rested against his
chest,.

“Not sleeping again?” He shoved the curtain
wide to let more light from the bright moon into the room and then
pulled me closer.

I bent my knees and pulled my nightgown over
them so it formed a tent over my legs and covered my feet. “What do
you mean, again?”

“Tonight, last night, the one before. Did
you think I wouldn’t notice you were gone when I rolled over?”

“You seemed to be sleeping deeply.”

“My hope was that you would share your
concerns with me, and then we could both sleep, but clearly that
hasn’t happened.”

“Oh, Llywelyn,” I said. “I—”

A
snick
came from the door to the
room as the latch lifted. We froze and watched, unmoving, as a
crack appeared between the frame and the door. A hand clenched the
edge of the door, silently opening it further to give room to an
object that pointed at the bed.

A crossbow!

My breath caught in my throat. The sound I
made was slight, but carried loudly enough in the silent room for
the assassin to swing the point of his arrow from the bed, where he
thought we’d be, to the window seat.

He hesitated, perhaps unbelieving, and then
shot—but Llywelyn had already moved. Between one breath and the
next, he pulled me with him into a dive out the window, headfirst
towards the Honddu River. Somehow, he was able to turn us in a
complete flip so we hit the water with a mighty splash, feet first,
before I even had a chance to catch my breath.

Cold!
The shock forced all the air
from my lungs and caused Llywelyn to release me. Our combined
weight had pulled us well under and I struggled to the surface,
fighting for air and against the current that pulled us downstream,
away from the castle. I bobbed to the surface.

“Meg!”

“Here!” I said. He was five yards from me,
moving in a faster current and I spun in a complete circle, my legs
working furiously, before I managed to angle myself more towards
him. He reached for me and I grasped his fingers, allowing him to
pull me to him. I stopped fighting the current and began floating
with it, thankful to be alive.

“What is it about water in this country!
What in the hell am I doing in a river again?”

Llywelyn sputtered with laughter,
understanding my resentment. At least it wasn’t February and the
water wasn’t
quite
as cold as before.

We followed the Honddu under the bridge that
led from the castle to the town, and then for the short distance it
ran before reaching the Usk. The water was frighteningly choppy
now, as it swung us into the main current of the larger river.
Llywelyn tried to stop us at the ford across the Usk, but even his
long legs couldn’t resist the force of the high water.

We sailed a hundred yards before we passed a
rocky outcrop in the river that had created a sandy spit on the
western bank. I kicked off for it. My sluggish limbs could barely
move and my teeth chattered.

Llywelyn grabbed my arm. “No!”

“Why?” I swung around, uncertain. He got an
arm around my waist and we slid past the spit.

“They will look for us there first. There is
another place, a half a mile downstream.”

“Are you sure?”

“The river curves east,” he said. “We’ll
find safety there.”

A log floated by to our left and he grasped
it, swinging it in front of us so I could hold it too. Another
three minutes, and Llywelyn was able to push us toward the southern
bank. The riverbed had widened and grown more shallow as it swung
east, and consequently slowed. My feet hit bottom and we stumbled
onto a sandy spit on the southern side of the Usk, formed as the
river curved. I fell to my knees and crawled out of the water, and
then turned onto my back. Llywelyn threw himself onto his stomach,
his arms and legs sprawled wide.

“I’m clearly too old for this kind of
exercise,” he said.

I coughed, choking on the mix of water and
laughter. “You’re only forty-something, you silly man. You’d better
not be too old. We’ve a long road ahead of us.”

“We’re only a half a mile from the castle.
Admittedly, I don’t spend much time walking, but I don’t think that
distance will task me greatly.”

“That’s not what I meant.” I lay flat on my
back, my hand resting on my belly.

Llywelyn rolled onto his side and pushed up
on one hand so he could see my face. “What do you mean?”

I turned my head to look at him and didn’t
speak. Couldn’t speak. He must have seen something in my look
because his eyes narrowed. “Speak plainly, madam.”

“I’m going to have your baby,” I said.
“That’s why I haven’t been sleeping.”

“What?” Llywelyn loomed over me so he
blocked the moonlight. He patted me up and down. “Are you all
right? Mary, mother of God! I can’t believe I just threw you into
the river!”

“I’m fine, Llywelyn. Honest. A little cold
water can’t hurt the child.”

“How late are you?”

“Ten days,” I said. “I’ve never been this
late before except pregnant.”

“I can’t believe it!”

“So you’re happy?” I was suddenly a little
worried. He
had
to be happy.

Llywelyn laughed. “By all the Saints in the
Heavens! I hadn’t a hope it would come this soon!” He laughed again
and pulled me into his arms. I’d never seen him laugh like this,
but it wasn’t the same for me.

“I’m scared, Llywelyn,” I said.

“You’ll be fine. I know it.”

“It’s just—” I couldn’t articulate
everything I was feeling: I was afraid of dying in childbirth, of
what a sibling would mean to Anna, of raising a child in the
thirteenth century. Not for the first time, I longed to see my
mother.