Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (8 page)

Goronwy escorted us to our room, where the
same maid from before waited.

“Hello, Dana,” I said. “I see we need more
clothes.”

She’d piled two sacks beside the door to the
room. Goronwy signaled to the guard waiting outside for us that he
should carry them away. Then Goronwy hesitated in the doorway,
looking at me as I stood in the center of the room, my hands
clasped in front of me. Dana knelt on the floor in front of Anna,
helping her into an extra petticoat.

“You’ll be all right, then?” he said.

I honestly didn’t know, but didn’t tell him
that. “Thank you, Goronwy. We’ll be fine.”

“I’ll return for you in a few minutes,” he
said, and closed the door. I gazed at the closed door, a cold
feeling in my chest at the knowledge that I was going to have to
turn off that part of me that needed to question what was happening
and go with the flow of things.

Dana dressed Anna like a miniature adult,
with cloak and hood like mine. On the bed lay further clothes for
me. The dress split up the middle, designed for riding astride. The
thick black wool cloak hung heavily on my shoulders, the clasp at
the throat. It had ties up the front so I wouldn’t have to keep it
clutched around me while we traveled, and two slits for my hands
instead of sleeves.

Goronwy knocked on our door again.

“Thank you, Dana,” I said in Welsh as we
left.
Diolch.

“My pleasure, Madam.”

Once in the same courtyard where I’d last
seen Llywelyn, a boy stood off to the right of the stairs with a
horse, waiting for us.

“Up with you,” Goronwy said. I gazed up at
the horse. It was huge—not that all the horses weren’t huge from
the ground, but this one seemed to loom over me in a most
uncomfortable manner. All around us men and horses jostled each
other to mount and I hugged Anna closer to me. I would be the only
woman on the journey and all the men, like Goronwy, wore full
armor, with long swords at their waists. At least a dozen of them
also had giant bows and quivers strapped to their saddlebags.

“I’m supposed to ride this horse to Brecon?
I couldn’t take my eyes off the monstrous beast in front of me.

“Your chariot is sunk in the marsh,” Goronwy
said. He took Anna from me.

“I’ve been thinking,” I said, stalling for
time. “We’re spending tonight at that place you mentioned, Coed y
Brenin?”

“Yes that’s right,” Goronwy said.

“Isn’t that where Owain Glendower was
ambushed and died?”

“What did you say?” Goronwy said.

“Isn’t that the place? My mother sings a
song about it. He rode into a gap in the road with high hills on
either side and archers attacked him and his men. He and his men
fought, but they all died. It was a lot like how Llywelyn . . .” I
stopped, horrified. I’d run at the mouth. I shouldn’t know how
Llywelyn would meet his death.

“Who was Owain Glendower?” Goronwy said.

“He—”

“We’ll discuss this later.”

Llywelyn had come up behind me. Without
warning, he put his hands around my waist and threw me into the
saddle. I plopped onto my bottom on the seat and then managed to
swing my right leg over the horse to get both feet in the stirrups.
I wiggled into a more comfortable position and gathered the reins,
as I’d seen actors do in movies. Llywelyn handed Anna to me and she
snuggled into my lap, her knees tucked inside her cloak.

“Are you sure about this?” My voice came out
high. The horse stepped sideways restlessly and then swerved back
to avoid another horse.

“We ride only twenty-five miles,” Llywelyn
said. “Was that my brother on the battlements with you?”

I looked down at him, uncertain at the quick
change of subject. “Yes.”

“What did you talk about?” He looked at me
very intently.

“You,” I said, going for honesty.

“Good.” He patted my knee before walking to
his horse which a groom held still a few yards away.

“I will ride with you, Madam,” Goronwy said,
also mounting. He made it look so easy.

“Meg,” I said.
“Marged
dw i
.”

“
Lady Marged, then, when
we speak in Welsh,” he said. And then he caught me off guard with
another question. “What language is it that Anna speaks? It’s
unknown to me, yet she has some Welsh.”

I froze. There was so much
to remember with all this the other-worldly craziness of what was
happening to us. I was having a hard time keeping straight what I
should know and what I shouldn’t. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have
talked about Owain Glendower because he hadn’t been born yet, if
this was really the thirteenth century
.
Was I
actually going to sit here and think that
I’d—what?—time-traveled to medieval Wales?
And then I looked around and wondered what other explanation
there could be and how I could think anything else.

Goronwy still waited for
my response.

I stuttered while I
thought. “She speaks American,” I said, in an instant coming up
with an answer that wasn’t even a lie and would allow me to avoid
the dreaded word ‘
English
.’

“
That language is new to
me,” Goronwy said. “I’ve never heard of it.”

“
No,” I said. “You
wouldn’t have.”

Goronwy looked away.
“Huh.”

Up ahead, Llywelyn had
also mounted. He sat with a straight back. He was naturally thick
through the chest and shoulders but armor had bulked him up too,
just like all the men. With a sinking feeling, I acknowledged that
they weren’t built that way as a result of playing football or
lifting weights. It was their work with swords and bows that had
caused it.

“
Let’s move!” A man riding
next to Llywelyn raised his sword and twisted it in his wrist like
a baton.

With a click of his tongue
on his teeth, Goronwy urged his horse forward. I shook my horse’s
reins and was startled when he obeyed, moving to match Goronwy’s
horse. Everyone paired up to ride underneath the gatehouse and onto
the road that led from the castle. As we rode under the final
tower, I looked back. Castell Criccieth soared above us. Two
soldiers stood on the battlements at the top of the two great
towers, still and silent. The wind whipped Llywelyn’s flag on its
pole.

The road, comprised of
hard-packed dirt, led to a small village at the foot of the
promontory on which the castle rested. Admittedly, it looked just
as I thought a medieval village should, with a scattering of
thatched-roof huts around a central green space, on which a few
sheep grazed. We rode among the houses while men, women, and
children came out of them to wave, a few of the children running
beside the horses to keep up. As the village church came into view,
a priest appeared. He stepped forward to block the road and confer
with Llywelyn. They spoke, their voices low, and then the priest
made the sign of the cross, blessing all of us.

Llywelyn bowed his head in
answer and the priest moved aside. As I rode past him, I ducked my
head and pulled my cloak over my face, not wanting to meet his
gaze.

There it was. I couldn’t
turn aside from this no matter how I might want to deny it. Anna
and I were in the Middle Ages.

Chapter Six

Llywelyn

“
M
ay I ask your thoughts, my lord?”
Goronwy asked. We’d stopped to water the horses at a stream and to
allow men to dismount and see to their needs. Goronwy had taken the
opportunity to tell me of his conversations with Marged.

“
I am at sea with her,” I
said. “Too many things she says don’t add up.”

“
Do you have second
thoughts that she seeks to betray you? Do you believe she’s
lying?”

“
No,” I said. “No, I
don’t. But that doesn’t make what she says true either. Yet if I’m
not mistaken, she didn’t believe I was the Prince of Wales when she
awoke last night. She so thoroughly didn’t believe me that she
attacked me with a knife.”

“
My lord!” Goronwy said.
“You didn’t tell me that!”

“
No, I didn’t,” I said,
suitably chastened. “In truth, she knew so little of its use that I
was never in danger. What most concerned me was her
fear—particularly her fear of me.”

“
She rightfully feared
retribution for her audacity,” Goronwy said. “Many a lord who would
have behaved differently, punished her certainly, and wouldn’t have
kept her with him after that.”

I smiled. “But I am not a
typical lord now, am I?”

Goronwy nodded. “Might I
say, my lord, if you excuse my impertinence, that you can be
confident to a fault.”

“
Ha!” I said. “When have I
ever rebuked you for impertinence? I tried once, as I recall, when
you defeated me at wrestling. Nothing ever came of it.”

Goronwy smiled and I was
glad to see it. He worried too much these days and it had put lines
between his eyes. “There’s much about her that we don’t yet know,”
he said. “I’m most interested in the mystery of her chariot, its
manner of propulsion and material.”

“
She has more to tell us,”
I said. “Not that we’re going to believe it either.”

Goronwy snorted a laugh.
Then he checked his saddle bags and mounted his horse. I followed
suit, all the while contemplating the woman in question. Throughout
my conversation with Goronwy, she’d knelt on her cloak, clapping as
Anna ran around the clearing. The little girl would run to one tree
and then another, and then back to her mother, while Marged
counted, seeing how fast the little girl could leave and
return.

My men had glanced at them
often, every one with an amused expression on his faces. Marged was
obviously genuine, obviously loved her daughter—but I wasn’t sure
about anything else about her. How could I be? She’d hardly sat on
a horse before today, given the unprofessional nature of her seat
and the stiffness in her walk when she dismounted. How had she come
from Radnor? It was a six day ride in full summer for a woman, not
to mention in the dead of winter with snow in the mountains and a
small child to care for.

Marged gathered Anna to
her and walked back to where her horse was tethered. It was the
walk that got me thinking. Marged walked unlike any woman I’d ever
known. I pictured her as I’d seen her striding across the bailey at
Castell Criccieth. She moved along as if she were a man wearing
breeches (which admittedly she
was
wearing when I found her) and not used to the
hindrance of a dress around her ankles. That walk of hers was a
signpost that told me there was more to Marged’s differences than
merely a matter of dress or of the strange vehicle in which she
came to me.

It was also in the way she
spoke, not only to me but to everyone. On one hand, she had yet to
accord me my title, ‘my lord,’ in Welsh, French, or even this
‘American’ that Goronwy informed me was her native tongue. On the
other hand, she tossed around ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to anyone
and everyone in a manner which indicated she was supremely
confident in her own station, unconcerned with the station of
others, or viewed every person, whether low or high, as her
equal.
Now that was a daunting
thought.

She reminded me a bit, in
fact, of my mother—not so much in later life when she was
embittered by years of imprisonment and loss—but when I was a small
child and it was only my brother, Owain, and me in her house. She
was loving, protective, and without fear. She would stand up to
anyone when we, her cubs, were threatened, even my father. When I
was young, I do believe she loved me.

As I gathered the reins
and led my men out of the clearing, I glanced toward the sea,
eyeing the clouds that moved closer with every breath. At noon when
we’d left Criccieth, they were still distant. I’d allowed only this
one short rest at mid-afternoon because the clouds were beginning
to crowd the space between the sea and the sky and I didn’t think
we had much longer before the rain hit.

“
Reminds me of when your
Uncle died,” Geraint said, tipping his head to the western
sky.

Dark clouds had gathered
in the east that day, which we’d taken as a sign of trouble to
come. Trouble always came from the east, though the weather almost
never did. The storm had broken, with cacophony of hail and
crashing rain, unusual for Wales at any time of year, where the wet
was generally steady and unrelenting, but quiet.

“
Uncle Dafydd liked to
describe England as a looming storm, biding its time before it
struck, downing us without warning with lightening and thunder,” I
said. Twenty years later, the menace was less evident, yet the only
difference was that I was older, and that the men of Wales had
rallied around my masthead, more prepared to weather any storm
England could inflict upon us.

“
But we should only have
snow today, praise God.” Geraint’s body swayed with the easy walk
of the horse. “We need to reach the manor before the sun
sets.”

Watching him clutch his
cloak around himself, I had a pang of regret that I’d brought him
on this journey. I valued his advice and selfishly wanted him with
me, but if I needed extra cushions on the road, he needed a bed.
God willing, we wouldn’t spend any night on the open road. The
mountains between us and Brecon formed a barrier that was only
thirty miles across—forty miles if we took the old Roman road from
Llanio—but in a blizzard, forty miles could be four hundred for all
the difference it would make.