Ashes of Time (The After Cilmeri Series) Page 4

  “I know.” David picked up Mom’s uneaten roll and dropped it without tasting it. “I’ll say the same to you as I said to Gwenllian. They’re going to be fine. Maybe Anna will even remember to bring back lip balm for Bronwen.”

  Math didn’t crack a smile, and David had to admit it was probably too soon for joking. Cadell came over and sat in his father’s lap, his sword still in his hand. He didn’t look at Math or David.

  It was time to speak to everyone. David took in a breath and raised his voice to cut through the babble in the room. “Okay.” The noise instantly ceased. Goronwy had his hand on Dad’s shoulder; they’d been speaking quietly but now they both looked up. “Here’s what happened and what we’re going to do. Kids—” David gazed around the room at each of them and managed to gain their attention, however briefly, “Grandma and Aunt Anna have gone on a little trip. I know what happened in here was scary, but they are both completely fine.”

  “That man cut Mom,” Cadell said. It might be a long time before he could see something other than that image whenever he closed his eyes.

  “It was a surface wound, like a scrape,” David said. “A couple of years ago, Grandma and Grandpa went away with Uncle Goronwy. Some of the littlest of you weren’t born yet. They left because Grandpa was sick and the people there made him better.” David rubbed Cadell’s cheek with one finger. “Grandma is going to make sure that your mom stays safe.”

  Cadell put his arms around his father’s neck and held on.

  “Marty, however, is not fine.” Dad scrubbed at his face with both hands, and then dropped them to take Elisa into his lap.

  “I can’t say I’m sorry about that,” Math said into Cadell’s hair.

  Ieuan appeared in the doorway leading to the west corridor. David had been waiting for him to return before deciding what to do next. Bronwen went to her husband, and he put his arms around her. Catrin had gone back to her meal, which at the moment consisted of a well-buttered roll that dripped with honey.

  After Bronwen released Ieuan, she glanced at Dad, who’d sunk into his chair and didn’t look like he had the strength to leave it. Then she said to David, “You’d better go talk to everyone else, David.”

  He sighed. They had to come up with a story to explain the disappearance, and as usual, it would be that Mom and Anna had traveled to Avalon. “Dad?”

  Dad grimaced with what David hoped was regret rather than pain. “I’m with you, son.” He rose to his feet, Elisa still in his arms. David was glad to see that some of the color had returned to his face, though his skin was still grayer than David liked. Long and lean, with only a speckle of frost in his dark hair (though more in his beard), he didn’t look that different from how he’d looked nine years ago when Anna and David had saved his life by driving their aunt’s minivan into his attackers at Cilmeri. His twin two-year-old children may have worn him out at times, but they also kept him young, and most of the time David didn’t notice the twenty-year age difference between him and Mom.

  Today, however, was not one of those days. “Thanks, Dad.”

  Bronwen lifted a hand, almost as though she were in school. “I have an idea.”

  “I am open to any suggestion,” David said.

  “Then I need you to give me a second.” She looked at Goronwy. “Will you come with me?”

  “Of course.”

  With a last squeeze of Dad’s shoulder, Goronwy followed Bronwen as she darted out of the room. Carew moved to Dad’s side in Goronwy’s place. Dad looked up at him but didn’t nod or speak before looking away again. Everyone waited. David had no idea what Bronwen was up to or what to expect, but he trusted her, which was why he’d agreed to whatever she wanted without first asking what it was.

  Five minutes later, she returned with a triumphant expression. “Goronwy has everyone gathering in the great hall. Come on.”

  Bunched into a group, kids and adults together, the family descended the stairs from the queen’s hall directly into the inner ward. Lili held Arthur’s hand and walked beside David. As they reached level ground, a bard’s clear tenor soared from the open door to the great hall. “Afalon peren a pren fion …”

  David groaned. “Bronwen, what have you done?”

  “If you’re going to stand up there and talk about Meg and Anna traveling to Avalon, at the very least everyone can be in the right mood to hear it,” she said. “Right now, we have a dead man at the base of the tower—”

  “—I ordered his body moved to the chapel, actually,” Ieuan said.

  Bronwen shot her husband an impatient look. “You know what I mean. It’s the only explanation that makes sense when so many people saw Anna and Meg vanish in midair.”

  David blew out his cheeks, knowing he was cornered and knowing she was right.

  “You haven’t fought this battle for years, Dafydd,” Lili said. “Why fight it now?”

  “I haven’t fought it because you told me to do so would be a waste of effort,” David said. “I prefer the story about the Land of Madoc, though.”

  “People from the Land of Madoc are solidly in this world. They don’t have the ability to vanish,” Dad said.

  That was unfortunately true. “I don’t like it. I’m not Arthur,” David said.

  “I’m Arthur!” David’s two-year-old son gazed up at him with bright eyes.

  David put a hand on his son’s head and bent to kiss his nose, amazed that he’d spoken so clearly, but pleased too. “Yes, indeed you are.”

  Bronwen grinned and said with some of her old graduate school snark, “He speaks truth to power.”

  David scoffed, though not because she wasn’t right. He and Lili had named Arthur with an utter cynicism about what they were doing and what it would mean to the people David ruled. Still, he didn’t have to like it.

  The group entered the hall as the bard was finishing his song. All conversation ceased as the entire royal family of England and Wales crowded through the doorway. Goronwy bowed from the dais. All of the inhabitants of the hall followed suit. Aaron stood to the right with his son, Samuel, and David caught his eye. He nodded gravely. Samuel was staring at his feet and didn’t look up. They, along with a handful of other advisors, knew the truth about who David was, and that meant they also knew what had happened to Mom and Anna. Aaron, in particular, had seen it before. Goronwy had lived it.

  There was no help for it, David opened his mouth and boldly lied to everyone else. About what had just happened, about Avalon, about who he was.

  Avalon. Lili took its existence for granted—both what she knew of the reality and the myth. Although David used the myth to his own advantage, what he actually wanted was to make Avalon real, not just for himself and his family but for everyone. The poets had foretold it centuries ago, though David’s vision wasn’t anything like what the legends described. Avalon wasn’t a fantasy world infused with magic. It was the place he’d been born.

  And what made that place—America—special was what it brought to the table, namely an ideal of freedom and justice for everyone. The Avalon David wanted to build here was a mirror of that. More to the point, the reason David hadn’t dared to speak about it out loud to anyone before, even to his family, was because he wanted to start the American Revolution five hundred years early. Against himself.

  It was a big dream. A huge, impossible, ridiculous dream. But he’d been thinking about it for nine years, ever since he’d quoted Patrick Henry to his father before the defeat of King Edward at the Conwy River. At that time, David had thought it might be possible to achieve a united Wales, even if it took his lifetime and many generations of his descendants to accomplish it. Instead, it had taken three years. Now, as King of England, David had the power to make the much bigger dream a reality, and if any dream was worth chasing, it was this one.

  He found it ironic, too, that many generations of kings of England had fought for this dream as well, though they’d pursued it at the point of a sword, which to David’s mind would defeat the entire purpose.
The United States of Britain. Even King Edward, God rest his soul, might have approved.

  Chapter Four

  November 2019

  Meg

  Meg rolled down a slight incline, crunching through a bed of frozen leaves. After two revolutions, she came to a stop at the bottom. She breathed hard, the black abyss fading from her mind’s eye, and sat up. Snowflakes fell steadily from the sky. The ground wasn’t covered in white, however, so it seemed they’d started very recently.

  Before she had a chance to panic, Meg spied Anna at the top of the bank she’d just come down. Anna pushed to a sitting position and looked down at her mother. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m good.” Meg got her feet under her and stood, shaking out her cloak and dress as she did so. “What about you?”

  Anna rubbed at her forehead. “My head hurts.” Then she swung her legs around and slid down the slope to arrive on a level with her mother.

  “You’ve had quite a day,” Meg said. “How’s your neck?”

  Anna put a hand to her throat and then removed it to look at her fingers. They came away bloody. She tilted up her chin so Meg could see her neck. “What do you think?”

  Meg gently touched Anna’s skin. “It isn’t bleeding much.” She pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of her dress and dabbed at the wound. “I think it’ll be okay, though it would be better if we had a couple Band-Aids.”

  “Yeah, well.” Anna took the handkerchief and continued dabbing. “Maybe in a bit we’ll actually be able to get some.” She looked around. “Where do you think we are?”

  Anna was being really calm, and Meg didn’t know if it was because coming to rest in a modern forest was less traumatic in comparison to being knifed by Marty, or if Anna really was this good in a crisis. Meg’s initial panic was still subsiding, so she stalled for time before answering her daughter, chewing on her lower lip as she took in their surroundings more fully. They had fallen into a forest, in the snow, in the same murky heading-towards-nightfall that they’d left in Wales.

  “Listen!” Anna held up a hand.

  Meg didn’t hear anything at first, and then her heart skipped a beat as a distant engine roared overhead.

  “I don’t believe it,” Anna said.

  “Given that the alternative would be lying at the base of the tower at Rhuddlan, this is much better,” Meg said. “Did you think it wouldn’t work?”

  Anna shook her head. “I don’t know. It’s been so long since I did this. You and David have been back and forth a bunch of times, but I’ve only traveled with David in Aunt Elisa’s minivan or with you. It has occurred to me more than once that I might not have what it takes to travel like you guys do. It would be logical if it were just you and David who have the genes—or whatever—for it.”

  “You almost came here when you went into labor with Cadell,” Meg said.

  Anna wrinkled her nose. “True. I’d forgotten about that.” She shrugged. “I’m still not sure that really happened.”

  Meg hadn’t seen it, but David had been sure. Meg didn’t want to argue about it, since it didn’t matter at the moment. She and Anna had traveled, whether because of Anna, Meg, or both.

  Meg wiped her hands on the edge of her cloak. “I’m really cold. We should start walking.”

  “To where?” Anna said.

  “Downhill,” Meg said. “Isn’t that what Math taught David? Follow the contours of the land downhill and then find a river to follow downstream.”

  If Meg had traveled back in time to Cilmeri with David and Anna, she would have had a lot to say about the sink-or-swim nature of that early training of David’s. But she hadn’t been there, and she could hardly complain about the man Llywelyn had turned David into, or the little bit of knowledge Meg herself could now relate because of what Math had taught him all those years ago.

  “I have spent so little time in the woods over the last nine years it isn’t even funny.” Anna fastened three more of the wooden toggles that kept her cloak closed. The hall at Rhuddlan had been cold, and everyone in the Middle Ages wore their cloaks indoors as a matter of course, a fact for which Meg was intensely grateful now. “Could we be near Mt. Snowdon?”

  “The trees look wrong to me for modern Wales,” Meg said, “though what do I know? Maybe pine trees and Douglas firs predominate in one of those tree farms they’ve planted.”

  “If we can find some sign of civilization, we’ll know.” Anna gave a half-laugh as she pulled a leaf out of Meg’s hair. “We’d better hurry before it turns completely dark.”

  Both women were wearing boots rather than slippers, which was another piece of good luck, but Meg missed her mittens. If they weren’t close to a settlement, this was going to be a tough night. Walking would warm them, however, and the snow wasn’t falling any more heavily than it had been when they’d arrived.

  They started downhill, aiming for brighter patches between the trees. The woods didn’t close in around them, and the trees were predominantly conifers. By November throughout most of the east coast of the United States, a thick blanket of deciduous leaves covered the ground, and most of the trees would have been bare, which ruled out all but a few locations in Pennsylvania as a possible landing site.

  The snow provided some ambient light, particularly since, after falling fairly heavily for twenty minutes, it had slowed and then stopped. Within another twenty minutes, the clouds cleared enough to reveal stars. There’d been a new moon two days earlier in Wales. Meg didn’t know whether 2019 wherever-they-were had a similar astronomical schedule to 1291 Rhuddlan, but for the moment, they were stuck with stars and not much else to see by.

  Meg and Anna plodded along for at least another half hour, Meg worrying that she didn’t know what she was doing, any more than she had when she’d come through three years ago with Llywelyn and Goronwy. They’d survived and escaped MI-5 during that trip, but it seemed due more to luck than any skill or intelligence on Meg’s part. But she supposed that if luck was all they had, she would have to make it work for them.

  But she wasn’t feeling particularly lucky at the moment, and that made the edge-of-panic feeling that filled her hard to fight off. She continually scanned the terrain ahead—what she could see of it—for any sign of a man-made anything, all the while very aware that her heart was in her throat. It was a feeling she often got when she was waiting for something to happen—usually for Llywelyn or a child to return from whatever had taken them out of Meg’s sight. She was growing to despise the vacillation between the sweet taste of anticipation and the sour one of crushed hope.

  Given how she was feeling, she could understand why Anna didn’t want to talk. Still, as her mother and being nosy by nature, Meg hated not knowing what her daughter was thinking, especially in a situation like this.

  “The boys will be fine,” Meg said after they’d walked another hundred yards, thinking of Elisa and Padrig and trying to tell herself the same thing. Whether Llywelyn and Math would be fine was something else entirely, but Meg didn’t want to complicate matters by bringing them up.

  “I’m trying to tell myself that a few days apart will be good for them,” Anna said. “But it isn’t like I can call Math and remind him to brush their teeth before bed. Even if I’ve lived in the Middle Ages for nine years, I’m not a medieval parent.”

  “Lili and Bronwen are there,” Meg said. “Not to mention that Cadell has bewitched every woman in the castle with his smile. They have many adults to watch over them.”

  “But they’re not me!”

  It was a wail that Meg understood completely because she was feeling the same way. The invention of the cell phone had been a godsend to her as a parent. It meant that she could always reach her children no matter where they were, and they could reach her. Nine years ago when Meg’s sister, Elisa, had called to say that David and Anna had disappeared, Meg’s first impulse had been to call their cell phones. They hadn’t answered them, of course, and the nightmare of their unexplained absence had begun.

&n
bsp; Then Anna calmed a bit. “I think what I’m struggling with most is that I’m gone, and they don’t know where to. Bran will be easily entertained away from thinking about my absence, but Cadell not so much.”

  “All the adults but Math and Lili have experienced exactly this before,” Meg said. “They can explain to him what it’s like, even if he can’t really understand it. He knows that you’re from this world, even if we call it Avalon.”

  Anna nodded. “That’ll help. And I suppose you’re right that it’s a good thing we’re here since otherwise we’d be dead.”

  Meg reached out to touch Anna’s hand. “Do you want to talk about the fact that Marty didn’t come with us?”

  “Now that it’s over, I feel bad for him. He just wanted to go home,” Anna said.

  “I get that,” Meg said, “but I can’t forgive him for threatening my daughter’s life.”

  “He was holding on to me, pressing against me, while I was holding on to you. But then his grip loosened there at the end, which gave me a second chance to fight him off. He screamed and let go of me. I don’t know why.” Anna choked a bit over the words. “We were already falling.”

  “What’s done is done,” Meg said matter-of-factly. “The last thing you should feel is guilt about what might have happened to Marty. Now, we need to focus on getting back.”

  “I could do with a shower,” Anna said. “Is that too much to ask before we return? One shower?”

  Meg laughed. “I can’t answer that. We have no money, no I.D., and we possess only what we stand up in. A lot is going to depend on where we are, and who we can call on for help.”

  “Cassie and Callum will help us,” Anna said.

  “We have to find them first,” Meg said. “If we can find an internet café, we can look up MI-5 and send Callum an email.”

  Anna scoffed under her breath. “Do you think it will be that easy? MI-5 is a secret government agency.”

  “I imagine if I put we’re here in the subject line, someone will pay attention,” Meg said. “I don’t want to end up in a cell like David, but it might be preferable to freezing to death out here.”