Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (27 page)

“Next time, warn me first,” I said. “I’m
going to keep you on a tighter rein than before.”

She made a face at me, but I took her hand
again and we cat-walked up the steps to the great hall. As in the
gatehouse, the scene that faced us in the hall brought us to a
halt. My men had fallen where they sat at the end of dinner. At the
time, I’d noticed that the meal had been less raucous than usual,
but I’d attributed it to some hard riding during the day.

“Anna,” Meg said, and took off toward the
staircase. She hiked her skirts and went up them two at a time. I
caught her by the time she entered the hallway and we pushed open
the door to our room together.

Our bed lay as we’d left it. The window to
the right of the bed was still open, but with an arrow lodged at
head height in the frame. That pulled me up short, but Meg pulled
aside the curtain blocking Anna’s room and looked in.

She sighed. “Anna and Maud are asleep. I can
see them breathing.”

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was
holding, and then spun towards the open window at the echo of
pounding hooves. The wall of the castle curved west, away from the
river, and I stretched out the window to see around it. A man
appeared beneath the castle wall where it abutted the river and ran
toward a dozen men on horses who rode towards Brecon from the
north.

“Stay here!” I ordered Meg. Without waiting
to see if she obeyed me, but thinking that with Anna close she
would, I raced out of the room, down the first flight of stairs to
the great hall, and then continued down the second flight to the
kitchen. Like the rest of the castle, it was deserted, and I
hurried across the floor to the pantry and the postern gate.

A curtain separated the kitchen from the
pantry but once through it, I braked at the sight of a man standing
in front of me. He’d been facing the other way, towards the vaulted
undercroft that led to the postern gate. My footsteps had given me
away and the man did a double take as he recognized me, and I him.
“You!” Lacey said. He reached for his sword but mine was already in
my hand.

I ran him through.

I pushed and shoved Lacey’s body past the
doorway and onto the stairs beyond. With a final kick, I rolled him
down it, and then slammed the door to the passage. I dropped the
locking bar across the door. Fearing that I didn’t have time for
this but had to take the time nonetheless, I wrestled one of the
big chopping tables from the kitchen, through the pantry, and laid
it sideways across the door. If someone had an axe, they could chop
through the sturdy oak, but otherwise, they were going to have a
tough time getting through it.

I raced back to the great hall and nearly
collided with Meg in the doorway. “Where’s Anna?”

“With Maud,” she said. “She’s awake and
well. Those men, whoever they are, are milling about in the field
to the north. They’ve discovered that both gates are closed and
don’t seem to know what to do.”

“Their man intended that they’d walk in
unhindered. Come with me.” I led Meg through the great hall with
its unmoving men, across the bailey, and into the armory in the
back of the main gatehouse. “Can you shoot a bow?”

“No,” she said. “Are you kidding? Those
things are so huge I don’t know if I can even stretch it six
inches.”

“It needs to not just be me up there, so I’m
going to dress you like a soldier and we can see who this is and
what he has to say.” I fitted her into a mail shirt and dropped a
helmet on her head. It had a hideous-looking feather on the top of
it and I hoped whoever was out there would be so distracted by the
bizarre presentation that he wouldn’t realize my companion was
shorter than average—and certainly not Goronwy.

“Maybe there’s a box I can stand on,” Meg
said, tugging a tunic with my colors on it over her head.

“Excellent idea,” I said and grabbed a
wooden crate in which arrowheads had been stored from the
storeroom. I dumped its contents on the ground. “Let’s go.”

We climbed the circular staircase up to the
top of the gatehouse tower, Meg laboring a bit behind me under the
unaccustomed weight of the armor. We popped out on the top of the
battlements and I put the box on the ground so that Meg could see
between the crenellations which were at chest height for me.

I didn’t like what lay before us.

“Who is it?” Meg said.

“My cousin, Roger Mortimer,” I said. “He’s
one of the few Marcher lords who remained faithful to the crown
throughout the Baron’s war. Humphrey de Bohun the elder spoke of
him to me just the other day.”

“So we’ve got Bohun, who’s gone home; Clare,
who’s defying you in Senghennydd, and now Mortimer, here in Brecon.
I thought the Bohuns had owned Brecon?” Meg said. “Or at the very
least, Clare, from whom you took it. Have the Mortimers ever had
it?”

“No,” I said. “Though Roger appears to be
putting in a claim. I defeated his men two years ago before he
could reach this far into Wales. The battle became such a rout that
I’d heard he’s been unable to raise another army.”

“It seems he’s trying stealth instead.”

“Coward.”

“And it’s his sons who kill you,” she
said.

“Have a heart, Meg!” I said. “I’m not dead
yet.”

“No, no! I didn’t mean that! You’re just
taking this so well.”

“He can’t touch us up here,” I said. “No
archers.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Have a little chat,” I said. I lifted my
chin and raised my voice. “Cousin! What brings you to Brecon so
early in the morning?”

Roger pushed his helmet to the back of his
head. “So it is you. I shouldn’t be surprised. You always did have
the devil’s own luck.”

“Life is full of surprises,” I said. “I
live, no thanks to you, it seems.”

Roger tsked through his front teeth. “It was
you, then, who entered not long ago through the southern gate?”

“You saw us?”

“From a distance,” he said. “Apparently, our
efforts here were for naught.” Roger spun his horse around,
effectively ending our conversation. I’d expected more.

He called words to the other men-at-arms who
rode with him, words in English that I didn’t understand, and
pulled his sword from his sheath. He spurred his horse and galloped
towards his men. As he approached the lone man standing, the one
who’d run out of the passage to greet him, he swung his sword and
severed his head from his body. The man hadn’t a chance. His body
fell and Roger continued on without looking back.

Meg stepped away from the wall, ripped her
helmet from her head, and vomited on the stones at her feet.

“
Cariad
.” I wrapped my arms around
her waist. “It’s all right.”

“It isn’t.” Tears streamed down her face.
“How can it be?”

I scooped her up and carried her down the
stairs and across the bailey to the hall. As we entered, several of
my men stirred. Some had even gotten so far as to stagger onto a
bench in order to rest their heads in their forearms on the table.
I put Meg in my chair and crouched in front of her. Her face was
wet from tears.

“Is this what it’s going to be like for our
child if we have a son?”

I studied her, not completely sure what she
was asking, but knowing at the same time there was only one answer.
“Yes.”

“I love you, Llywelyn,” she said. “I want to
have a child with you, but I’m afraid to raise a son here. I don’t
want him to grow up to be like Roger Mortimer.”

“What if he were like me?”

She gazed at me, tears still leaking out of
the corner of her eyes. “You are who you are because of a childhood
that is not one I would wish on any boy. What you have done—what
others have asked of you—is not what I want for my son.”

“He will be what God makes him,” I said.

Meg shook her head. “He will be what we make
him, and what the world makes him. Look at Humphrey de Bohun. He’s
struggling to find his way in a world in which the rules keep
changing and he’s not strong enough inside to withstand pressure
from men like your brother.”

I think I finally understood what she was
saying, and had an answer for her. “Our son will be what he needs
to be because you will make him that. He will be smart and strong,
loving and courageous, because you are all those things. Our son
will be the Prince of Wales, and they will call him
Fawr
,
just like my grandfather.”

“Everyone will ask too much of him.” Her
tears had dried and her gaze was steady on my face. “And so much of
me. They already ask too much of you.”

“Only because I am what they need,” I said.
“I can think of no one I would rather have as the mother of my son.
If anyone will be capable of facing down Edward and England at my
side, it’s our son.”

Chapter
Nineteen

“
M
y tongue feels
like the backside of a dog,” Goronwy said. I mopped his brow with a
warm washcloth. He’d woken, ill as all the men were, and now lay
sprawled on his back on one of the benches in the hall. He’d
vomited when he’d tried to lift his head earlier, and both of us
were loathe for him to try again.

“I believe it was the mead,” Llywelyn
said.

“I did not over-drink last night!” Goronwy
said, conscious enough now to work up the energy to thwart any
aspersions on his character.

“I didn’t say you did,” Llywelyn said. “The
healer believes it was poppy juice, which can cause deep
sleep—sometimes too deep, but thankfully not in this case.”

“By the Saints! Who’s the witch who poisoned
us?” he said.

“No witch, Goronwy,” Llywelyn said. “Merely
a man who worked for Roger Mortimer against me. He has paid for his
mistakes with his life.”

“You caught him, my lord?” Goronwy said. “Do
we know him?”

“Mortimer removed his head from his body to
show his displeasure at the outcome of the plot,” Llywelyn
said.

“The whole thing wasn’t very well planned
anyway,” I said. “Why did the man keep the gates open, when Roger
Mortimer rode in from the north? He couldn’t even get into the
castle from the north because both the towers are built to block
access to the gatehouses from any direction but the
drawbridges.”

“He could, actually,” said Llywelyn. “The
ford of Rhyd Bernard is just upstream of the confluence of the Usk
and Honddu. He didn’t think he needed it, though.”

“Because he had the gate in the
undercroft.”

“Well, yes, but was he going to lead those
horses through there one by one?” Llywelyn said.

“Okay, you’re right,” I said. “I was
surprised at all those stairs for horses to navigate at Castell y
Bere, but here—were they going to get up from the kitchen to the
hall?”

“That’s the point, of course,” Goronwy said.
“The stairs leading down to the postern gate at Castell y Bere are
behind the stables as an added protection in case someone decides
to enter that way. I confess, I never thought of putting the door
in the kitchen.”

“Anyway,” Llywelyn said, “Mortimer said that
his scouts saw Meg and me enter through the southern gate. They may
have been close behind us when we went in, but as soon as we closed
the portcullis, were forced to ride west to the nearest ford across
the Usk.”

“A long way as it’s in flood,” Goronwy
said.

“That they rode around is the reason we had
enough time to do what we did,” Llywelyn said. “Luck, as Roger
said.”

“Luck serves those who are best prepared, my
lord,” Goronwy said. Llywelyn and I exchanged a look. Llywelyn
settled himself on the bench at Goronwy’s feet and Goronwy lay
back, his hand across his eyes. “It isn’t as if it hasn’t worked
before.”

“Taking a castle by stealth, you mean,”
Llywelyn said.

“You mean like the Trojan horse?” I
asked.

Llywelyn smiled, his eyes alight. “You’ve
read Homer?”

“Not in the original, but yes.”

“But you know the story,” he said, “how the
Greeks built a giant horse to hold their men. The Trojans, thinking
the offering a gift to their gods, brought it inside their
city.”

“They had to tear down their own gates to do
it, I believe,” Goronwy said. “Certainly a lesson to us all.”

I touched Llywelyn’s arm and spoke in a low
voice. “They found the city. Six hundred years from now they
uncovered the walls and the gold—much as Homer described.”

Goronwy and Llywelyn gaped at me.

“Sorry,” I said.

Llywelyn took in a deep breath. “Don’t be
sorry, Meg. It’s disorienting to have you speak thus. At times, I
don’t know what’s real and what’s not.”

“I know what’s real,” Goronwy said, “and it
has to do with a man trying to assassinate you. It’s convenient for
Mortimer, isn’t it, that the conspirators are all dead?”

“Mortimer knew what he was doing,” Llywelyn
said. “What else does he have in store for us?”

“You really think there was only the
one?”

“Two,” Llywelyn said. “Lacey’s body is in
the kitchen. He must have gone north to Wigmore Castle to meet
Mortimer, and then returned with a companion to implement their
plot. I killed Lacey before I blocked the door to the passage.”

“Oh.” I looked away, unable to ask him how
he felt about that—how he could take a life and then shrug it
off—or appear to shrug it off. Was that what he was going to teach
our son?

Goronwy read my thoughts. “You think it
doesn’t bother him, Meg? You’ve never heard him talking in his
sleep, words you might not understand? Shouting sometimes,
even?”

“Goronwy,” Llywelyn said, a warning in his
voice.

I kept my eyes on Goronwy. “I’ve heard
him.”

Goronwy nodded. “Don’t let the bluff talk
and the bravado fool you. If you think that our prince will not
relive the moment he killed Lacey, or forget the light fading from
his eyes, then you don’t know him, or any of us. We live with it
every day. Too many men allow the drink to take them rather than
admit how much they care; and it’s then that they cease to be
Welshmen and become something less than human, which is of no use
to me, in battle or otherwise.”