Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (28 page)

“Yes, Goronwy.” He was right. I’d chafed at
Llywelyn earlier about the fate of our son, but I should have known
better who Llywelyn was. I
had
heard him in the night.

I’d also seen the young men, pale and
stammering after the skirmish at the Gap, and seen the vomit mixed
with blood on the road. What scared me was how human they all still
seemed, even though their daily lives were full of what no man
should have to bear—and what he couldn’t bear and remain the person
he was before the killing. That’s what I feared for my son, and
didn’t know how to deal with, despite Llywelyn’s reassurance.

I’d had a friend who’d joined the National
Guard in college and was sent to Kuwait during the Gulf War. His
tank was one of the first to cross into Kuwait City. Seven hundred
years later, men talked about war in the same way men did here: in
public, bravado and beer; in private, hollowness in their voices
and vacancy in their eyes when the emotion they held tight inside
their chests threatened to overwhelm them.

Too often in the twentieth century, we
thought of war as not unlike playing a video game. Killing was
mostly from a distance, with our bombs and our long-range mortars.
But not my friend. His tank had killed hundreds of men, he said,
and there were nights he lay awake, reliving the deaths of every
single one of them.
Just like Llywelyn.

Goronwy was still looking at me and I met
his gaze. He nodded. “If you really are who you say you are, Meg, I
can’t imagine what your world must be like.”

“I almost can’t either, anymore,” I
said.

“What else might be in store for us?” he
asked. “Can you tell me?”

“I don’t know of any coming battles. Not for
a long while, but I’ve been wrong before.”

“That history of yours, Meg,” Goronwy said,
fingering his lip. “I’m not sure that very much of it is
right.”

“Quite honestly, I don’t either,” I
said.

“Are you sure about what happens at
Cilmeri?”

“Yes,” I said. “That I’m sure of.”

Then Llywelyn put a hand on Goronwy’s
shoulder. “By the way, Meg and I have some good news, my
friend.”

“Do you now?” Goronwy looked from Llywelyn
to me. A grin had split Llywelyn’s face and he punched the air. I
tried hard not to smile, but I couldn’t keep it suppressed in the
face of Llywelyn’s joy.

“Really? Do you mean . . . a baby?”

“Yes!” Llywelyn clapped a hand on Goronwy’s
shoulder.

It was a bit different from Trev’s reaction
when I’d told him I was pregnant with Anna. He’d been mad at
first—understandable in retrospect, given how young we both were,
me especially at not even eighteen. We’d gone for a walk in a
park—the best way I could see to tell him—and he’d driven off
without me after I told him. I’d walked home, crying. I’d already
told Mom, and when I’d informed her of Trev’s reaction, her face
had taken on a calm expression, instead of anger.

“Well then,” she’d said. “We’re on our
own.”

But then Trev had called and apologized and
I’d forgiven him. Mom said that if someone had told her what he’d
become after Anna was born, she wouldn’t have been surprised. But
we hadn’t known, either of us.

Llywelyn, however, was having a hard time
containing himself. “We aren’t going to tell anyone else, not for a
while, not until it becomes obvious,” he said, bouncing up and down
on his toes. The two men grinned at each other and I wouldn’t have
been surprised if their heads had come off and floated around in
the great hall all by themselves.

“Your brother won’t be happy,” Goronwy
said.

“Ha!” Llywelyn said. “You have the right of
it!

“I hate to rain on your parade,” I said,
“but it’s going to be an impossible secret to keep. Do you imagine
Maud doesn’t know already? Or the maidservant? Everyone within a
hundred mile radius of Brecon is counting the days until they’re
sure I’m late.”

“At least there won’t be any questions about
paternity,” Goronwy added, “not with as close as you’ve kept
her.”

I narrowed my eyes at him for speaking of it
so openly.
Men.

* * * * *

We were half-way through May when King Henry
of England responded to Llywelyn’s letter in which he requested
that either King Henry intervene in the dispute with Clare, or he
allow Llywelyn to go in himself. Henry’s response was one of
placation and equivocation. Llywelyn read me the letter, and then
mocked it.

“
Oh me, oh my! What’s to be done with
that Clare fellow?
The man writes as if he didn’t rule the most
powerful kingdom on earth!” Llywelyn said. “It’s his fault this is
happening in the first place, since he was the one who told Clare
during the Baron’s War that he could keep whatever lands he took
from me. It set a bad precedent.”

Llywelyn swung around to me as I sat on a
cushion on the window seat in his office. I set down the guitar I’d
been playing, trying to work out the melody for one of the Welsh
ballads, and paid attention.

“The King has always been weak. Such was the
complaint of the barons in the first place,” said Tudur, who’d
brought Llywelyn the letter.

“And Clare’s letter?” I said.

“Now there’s a piece of subtlety,” Tudur
said. With my pregnancy, he’d softened towards me somewhat, but
didn’t trust me.

Llywelyn picked up Clare’s letter and waved
it at me.

“I don’t understand,” I said, peering at the
paper. Clare hadn’t written anything on it.

“It is of the finest parchment,” Llywelyn
said, “but it says that he doesn’t care about diplomacy; he’s not
even going to bother with appeasement or carefully crafted lies.
The page is
blank.
”

“He’s saying,” Goronwy said, “that he
doesn’t care to talk to us. He’s going to continue with his
building project and the devil take us, damn that whoreson to
hell.”

“Goronwy,” Llywelyn said.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’ve heard it
before.”

“When do we move?” Goronwy said.

“I’d like to be in Senghennydd by mid-June,”
Llywelyn said. “No foot soldier is going to want to leave his
planted fields or herd animals, but I can’t allow the work at
Caerphilly to continue without a show of force.”

“I’ll send out the word,” Goronwy said.
“It’s going to be a long summer.”

* * * * *

So Llywelyn left Brecon with an army. For
the first time in my four months in Wales, I was alone, with just
Anna. At first, I didn’t know what to make of myself. There seemed
everything and nothing to do. Anna and I could entertain ourselves
well, and a certain part of every afternoon required a nap for both
of us, but the absence of Llywelyn in my bed left me with an ache
in my heart I couldn’t assuage. More than one evening, I found
myself sobbing after I put Anna to bed, sure I would never see
Llywelyn again and I would be forever lost in the thirteenth
century.

Anna, at least, was a delight. She would be
three years old in August and time was passing more quickly than I
could have imagined. We played in the kitchen garden, walked along
the river, and tried not to get underfoot. Because Llywelyn and I
weren’t officially married, I was not the mistress of the
castle—that role belonged to Tudur and a man named Madoc who ran
things when Llywelyn was somewhere else. That left me at loose
ends, with no real tasks.

The castle was also on the edge of a war
zone, so few women and families lived there, as at Castell y Bere.
The good part of that was I didn’t have to spend time in the
women’s solar, sewing. The bad part was there wasn’t anyone to talk
to. Not that I had anything in common with thirteenth century women
anyway.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. I was
pregnant, and that fact alone was enough to prompt comment from
everyone at every turn. I found it strange to
be
pregnant,
and yet have no ultrasounds, no blood work, no monthly visits to
the doctor. I just lived as I had before, but with a growing life
inside me.

What made me the most uncomfortable was the
idea of having the child without a doctor or midwife. Anna’s had
been a natural birth in a birthing center with no drugs, but the
hospital had been only seconds away and I’d felt safe. Here, it was
up to me to make sure everyone washed their hands and boiled
whatever instruments they might want to use. I’d talked to the
midwife, Alys, already. She’d raised her eyebrows at what I’d said,
but not disagreed. Carrying the future Prince of Wales had it uses,
after all.

A c-section, though, was not going to be
possible. Whenever I thought of it my mind shied away. I’d brought
it up with Llywelyn, though, before he left.

“I’m scared,” I said, flatly. “Scared for
you, right now, scared for me later.”

We lay in bed together and he’d pulled me to
him and tucked me under his chin. “I’m scared too, not so much for
me. This adventure with Clare isn’t without peril, but not of great
concern to me. But you . . .” he stopped.

“The birth with Anna went well. I’ve no
reason to think I’ll have a problem, and yet . . .” I stopped too,
as afraid to articulate our fears as he was.

“You’re afraid you’ll lose the baby,” he
said, his voice barely above a whisper. “You’re afraid you’ll die
and leave me and Anna alone.”

“Yes,” I said, releasing a breath. “It isn’t
so much dying itself that worries me, though I surely don’t want
to. I don’t want her and you to have to go on living without me.
I’ve left too much undone.”

“Every man feels that way,” he said. “When I
raise my sword and order my men to charge, my last coherent thought
before the fire of battle overtakes me will be of you, and what I
lose if either of us doesn’t survive the year.”

“And as always, in your case especially,
what Wales loses,” I said.

“Yes. Always that.” He paused. “The priests
tell us that we should pray for the Will of God. That’s hard to do,
when so often what comes out is, ‘Please Lord, I need to
live.’”

* * * * *

As my pregnancy became more obvious, which
it did far sooner than when I was pregnant with Anna, I received
more and more attention for it. On one hand, I was protected at
every moment, most especially when I left the castle, which only
happened when Anna and I walked across the drawbridge into the town
for the weekly fair. On the other hand, every person I passed
wanted to touch my belly (for luck it seemed) since I was carrying
a child that the Prince—and all of Wales—never thought they’d
see.

Llywelyn and his army had been gone two
weeks and should have reached his lands in Senghennydd, when Dafydd
appeared on the doorstep. He arrived just as the evening meal was
finishing, striding up the hall as if he owned it.

“My lady,” he said, bowing. He straightened,
his eyes blatantly traveling from my face, to my breasts, to my not
quite protruding belly.

From his place beside me, Tudur leaned
toward him over the table. Llywelyn’s chair, on my right, was
empty.

“Dafydd,” he said, not according him any
title, least of all ‘prince’. “Why are you here?”

Tudur and I still weren’t getting along that
well, but I’d never been happier to have him by my side. From his
tone, he at least preferred me to Dafydd. I might be a witch or a
spy who’d captivated his Prince, but Dafydd was a traitor and a
killer, and not to be tolerated.

“I’ve come to throw my full support behind
my brother,” he said. “We seek shelter for the night, and then
we’ll be off south.”

Tudur leaned back in his chair and gestured
toward a seat to the left of him at the high table. “Of course. Sit
yourself. We would have news from the north.”

Dafydd signaled to his captain, who’d waited
in the doorway of the hall for approval. Within minutes, Dafydd’s
men began finding seats next to the twenty or so men that were all
that was left of the Brecon garrison. Madoc exchanged glances with
two of his men and they got to their feet, ostensibly to offer
their seats to another, but I didn’t think that was it.

It looked like they were quartering the room
with their eyes, determining sight lines and defensible positions.
They ended up in opposing corners of the hall. Madoc leaned
casually against the wall to the left of the fireplace. Another man
stood by the great front doors, and the third propped his shoulder
near the spiral stair up to our apartments, his eyes only half on
the game of dice being played by the men closest to him.

“I don’t like this,” I said, keeping my
voice low.

“Nor I,” Tudur said. “We’re vulnerable and
outnumbered, and having Dafydd and his men here is like inviting a
wolf to dinner.”

“Surely his men are loyal to Llywelyn?”

Tudur gave me a pitying look. “Who pays
them?” Then he answered his own question. “Prince Dafydd. They will
do his bidding, just as did the men who attacked our lord at
Coedwig Gap.”

I realized how insensitive I’d been to one
of the sources of Tudur’s animosity towards Dafydd—it was Dafydd
who’d indirectly caused Geraint’s death.
How could I have
forgotten that?
I put a hand on his arm. “I’m sorry.”

Tudur nodded, his eyes watchful. Dafydd took
his seat and helped himself to the remains of the meal. Tudur
signaled to a servant, who cleared our places and brought several
fresher dishes for Dafydd.

“You look well, my lady,” Dafydd said.
“Certainly no worse for having gone for a swim in the best waters
Wales has to offer.”

I stared at him, shocked that he would bring
up his attempt to abduct me and kill his brother—and brazen out his
criminal behavior. I leaned forward so I could see past Tudur to
answer him, but Tudur put his hand on my arm to shush me. I sat
back, not knowing what else to do. I wanted to berate him, but was
afraid of him too, and afraid to make things worse or say something
that Llywelyn wouldn’t want. Tudur must have felt the same thing
because we sat together in silence.