Prince of Time (Book Two in the After Cilmeri series) Read online

  “Cousin,” I said, though we looked nothing alike, with David a Viking to my Celt.

  “And the other guy?”

  David spoke this time. “Our friend. He’s visiting from Wales and doesn’t speak any English.”

  “They don’t speak English in Wales?” the policeman asked.

  “Not always,” I said, and gave David a speaking look. From Wales. No wonder their voices sounded familiar.

  “Excuse me, sir, ma’am,” one of the EMTs interrupted, walking over to stand next to us. “We’re taking your friend into the hospital.”

  “Can I ride with him?” David asked. “He’ll be lost without me.”

  “No, sir; I’m sorry, sir; that’s against hospital policy. Anyway, we’ve sedated him, so he won’t remember the trip.”

  “I’ll need certification from you that this was a gunshot wound,” the policeman said to the ambulance technician.

  “No gunshot, sir. Looks like he fell on something sharp. It bit him between two of his lower ribs. He’s lost some blood, but it missed his lungs.”

  The policeman glared at us while the ambulance man returned to his work. We stood and watched them load Ieuan into the ambulance, and then the policeman spoke again. “I thought you said he’d been shot.”

  “I thought he had!” I said, looking at David.

  “I’m sorry,” said David. “I must have misspoken.”

  “Don’t make a habit of it,” the policeman said. He snapped his notebook shut. “I hope your friend recovers soon.”

  “Thanks,” David said, and the policeman walked away. David turned to me. “Will you take me to the hospital?”

  I bit my lip and looked up at him, meeting his blue eyes. They were bright and sincere and fixed on mine. I shook my head to say no, but found myself saying yes to him again.

  Surely I will regret this!

  David grinned.

  Chapter Four

  David

  It was an amazing feeling to sit in the car as Bronwen drove it through the nearly empty streets of State College to the hospital. The interior was dark, except for the lights of the dashboard, and when we’d pass a streetlight, the light would fill the car before dissipating again as we drove by it. I gazed out the window, watching the reflection of the tall apartment buildings, forming canyon walls on either side of the street, flash past.

  I was progressing through the stages of adrenaline crash with my usual rapidity. First: jubilation! It was the dirty little secret of battle that afterwards it wasn’t horror, or fear, or revulsion that we felt, but utter joy at having survived another day. I’m alive! And they’re not! Against all odds, I will live to see another sunrise! The whole time we were with the police officer, I’d been in a euphoric, dreamlike state, yet so confident that things were going to go my way that I was completely unsurprised when they did.

  I can’t believe it worked! I’d spent the last two and a half years in and out of danger, but I recognized the moment with the English soldiers bearing down on us as the end in a very concrete sense—far worse than when Edward of England had leered at me across his pavilion. That first soldier would have run me through without hesitation if I’d not jumped off the cliff with Ieuan, who would have died from the arrow, if not the sword. I’d been thinking about possible ways to return to the twenty-first century for years, as had Mom and Anna. It was really Anna’s idea to jump—she’d wanted to try it from the tallest tower at Castell y Bere, back in the early days. I’d dissuaded her, not wanting her to risk her life even if it left us ignorant.

  This time, however, it was no kind of risk at all to jump. Now, of course, the question was how to reverse the process and go home. Would we be able to go home? I stopped myself before I began to dwell on those thoughts. Put it away. Put it away. There’s too much else to think about.

  The post-battle optimistic and joyful feeling was generally followed, in my case, by chills. Feeling them coming on, I rolled down the passenger side window. It was a warm night, typical for August in Pennsylvania. I set my elbow on the door frame and rested my head against my fist. I could feel Bronwen watching me, checking my profile between glances out the front windscreen. I wanted to gain some measure of control before I talked to her and tried to explain anything.

  I am so tired. As soon as the thought passed through my head, I squashed it, told myself to put it away again. For the first time in years, I was safe. Really safe—unless Bronwen was about to get us in a car accident. I looked over at her. She looked competent. She sat, slim and dark beside me, back straight, brown hair up in a no-nonsense bun, her left hand resting on the wheel while her right worked the gear shift.

  “Is Llywelyn really your last name?” I asked her, breaking the silence.

  She smiled. “Yes, it is. I didn’t lie. You really shouldn’t lie to the authorities, David.”

  “I actually didn’t lie either. Ieuan was shot.”

  “Where was the bullet? Did it just graze him?”

  I didn’t want to answer. “He was shot with an arrow,” I said, after a moment’s reflection.

  “An arrow! What are you talking about?” Bronwen was looking at me instead of out the windscreen of the car.

  “We were being chased by men and they shot at Ieuan,” I said.

  “But this is ridiculous!” Bronwen said. “They’re still out there! You need to go back and tell the police.”

  “You heard the EMT,” I said. “There’s no indication now that he was even shot, much less by an arrow. What would the police say to me, dressed as I am, still with no identification?”

  “What if they shoot someone else?” she asked.

  “They’re long gone,” I said, not yet ready to explain further. “Leave it be.”

  Bronwen ground her teeth.

  “Thank you for helping us,” I said, trying to distract her.

  Bronwen didn’t look at me, and her fingers clenched tightly around the steering wheel. “I’ve had a lousy day,” she said. “This feels pretty much par for the course.”

  “Do you live far from here? You can drop me off and I can take care of things myself.”

  “How are you going to deal with the hospital with no ID?” she asked.

  I felt a funny twist in my stomach at her words. “I’ve no money either,” I said. “Will the hospital treat him even if we can’t pay?”

  “Why would you have to pay? It’s been a couple of years since you had to pay.”

  “Really?” I asked, and then Bronwen gave me a confused look so I didn’t say anything more. What else has changed since 2010?

  Bronwen didn’t say another word for the rest of the short drive to the hospital. She was thinking something but maybe I didn’t want to know what it was. She parked the car and got out, jerking the door handle and slamming it closed behind her. The parking lot wasn’t full, and we walked across it to the emergency room entrance. The ambulance men had already unloaded Ieuan and together we peered through some glass doors into a room where he was being worked on by a doctor and two nurses. Bronwen headed for the nurses’ station.

  “Do I need to sign him in?” she asked.

  A woman behind the desk looked up. “Yes,” she said, handing Bronwen a clipboard. “I’ll need his full name, birth date, ID number, and current address.”

  Bronwen looked over at me. I shrugged and put out my hand for the clipboard. We walked to some chairs, set against a wall in the hallway, and studied the paperwork.

  “How closely are they going to check all this right now?” I asked.

  “It’s all in the computer,” Bronwen said. “They’ll know immediately if something isn’t right.”

  This was going to be a little more difficult than I’d thought. I picked up the pen and wrote Ieuan’s name and nothing else. I had no ID numbers, no address, and certainly no credible birth date, so I left it all blank and walked back to the desk.

  “My friend is from Wales,” I said. “I don’t know his ID number.”

  The nurse looked
irritated. “May I see your ID then?”

  “I don’t have any. I’m only sixteen,” I said, taking a cue from Bronwen.

  “Social security number?” the nurse asked.

  “I don’t know it.”

  Pursing her lips, the nurse wrote INDIGENT in big letters across Ieuan’s form. I hoped he would still get decent treatment from the doctors, since that’s why I had brought him here in the first place.

  I went back to Bronwen. She had a cup of coffee balanced on her lap and was in the process of loading it up with cream and sugar. She ripped off the top of the packets of sugar, two at a time, and dumped them in until I lost track. She saw me watching her, and smiled.

  “Like a little coffee with your sugar?” I asked.

  “Coffee is one of the four basic food groups, didn’t you know?” she said.

  “And apparently cream and sugar are two more,” I added.

  “No, no, no. They’re included in the coffee group.” She stirred her coffee with one of those tiny straws that came with Styrofoam coffee, but were remarkably ineffective, especially given the quantity of sugar in her cup. “I don’t actually like coffee,” she confessed. “What I drink is basically hot coffee ice cream.”

  She took a sip and sighed. I sat beside her again.

  “May I ask you a question?” I said.

  “You can ask,” she answered, her eyes closed now and her head resting against the wall behind us.

  “Since you share his name, do you know of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, a Prince of Wales from the Middle Ages?” I asked.

  “You mean the last Prince of Wales? The one the English killed in 1282?”

  “Yes, that’s the one.” I let out a breath, and it was like a cold rush of water had been poured over my head. I felt lightheaded, almost ready to pass out. It was as I’d feared and suspected: my Wales existed in a different dimension. We weren’t time travelers, but travelers to another world, separate, and parallel to this one.

  I stared off into the distance, taking in the bustle of the emergency room without really seeing it. Riding across the Scottish countryside with Ieuan and Aaron, I’d had a moment where I’d felt myself free, but Bronwen’s words truly loosed the chains that held me. If I got back to Wales—no, I wouldn’t think it—when I got back to Wales—I could do and be what I wanted, without fear of affecting the future into which I’d been born.

  A nurse came over to us. “We’re moving him upstairs now. You may follow us to his room,” she said.

  “Thank you,” Bronwen and I said together and stood up.

  Ieuan lay unmoving on his gurney. “Is he going to be all right?” I asked the nurse, before she turned away.

  “We believe so. He has two broken ribs and the wound where the object entered, but we’ve bandaged it and are giving him IV antibiotics. We’ll keep him overnight, but by tomorrow or the next day he should be well enough to go home.”

  “Thank you,” I said again. I turned to Bronwen. “You should go home. I can come find you tomorrow, after you’ve slept.”

  “That’s okay. I’ll come with you,” she said. “As it’s tomorrow already, I might as well see this through. I would like to see for myself that your friend is okay.”

  She walked forward to follow the nurse and I gaped at her retreating back. My statement hadn’t been a question or a suggestion at all—if I’d spoken that way in Wales, everyone would have known that it was an order. I shook my head. I’d clearly lived in the Middle Ages too long. I expected people—and especially women—to do exactly what I said, when I said it, and not ask questions. How Anna and my mother must confuse the men around them.

  Bronwen signaled to me from the elevator. “Come on!” She mouthed.

  I obeyed her. How cool is that?

  Chapter Five

  Ieuan

  I awoke on my back in a bed under white coverings with a soft pillow beneath my head, in an unfamiliar room. And what a room! I stared at the ceiling. It was composed of white, gridded squares, with tiny holes speckled all through them. They occupied my attention for a time, and then I started hearing sounds: one was rhythmic and high pitched, but unlike any bird call I’d ever heard; another went ‘wump, WUMP; wump, WUMP, also rhythmically. The sounds were coming from some—I don’t even know what to call those things—to my right. Little lights went on and off in the boxes and a wavy line skittered up and down on the face of the—thing.

  A third sound penetrated. Voices talked softly beside me. English voices. I turned my head, and there was Prince Dafydd, smiling at me, with a beautiful girl beside him.

  Trust him to find a beautiful girl! Some men have all the luck.

  She and the Prince were seated in front of an enormous window, so clear it was almost as if it wasn’t there. The window coverings had been pulled back and bright lights shone from the tops of long posts. Further along, chains of lights moved in rhythm, some white and some red. There were even lights high in the sky. They weren’t stars, or at least looked like no star I’d ever seen or imagined.

  The girl had dark brown hair, blue eyes, a short stubby nose, and a wide, full mouth that was made for laughter. Or kissing. She was laughing now at something Dafydd had said. I found myself staring at her and couldn’t stop.

  Dafydd noticed. “May I introduce you to Bronwen ferch Llywelyn, Ieuan,” Prince Dafydd said. “She helped us find someone to treat your wound.”

  “I’m pleased to meet you, Ieuan ap Cynan,” she said with a smile. Her Welsh was accented strangely, but had a lilt I liked.

  “It is my honor, my lady,” I said.

  Bronwen laughed. “I’m no lady! Don’t even think it. I’m glad you’re awake.”

  Dafydd had been staring at her during our exchange, and now found his voice. “You speak Welsh! How is it that you speak Welsh!”

  “As you pointed out earlier, my last name is Llywelyn. I’m Welsh, though I haven’t lived in Wales for many years.”

  “We’re...not in Wales, my lord?” I asked.

  “What do you remember?” Dafydd asked.

  “I remember being chased by English soldiers, and being hit by an arrow, and falling from my horse. You picked me up...and then you jumped! You jumped off the cliff!” I tried to sit up in my excitement, and pain shot through my back. I moaned, and Dafydd and Bronwen scrambled to their feet to settle me down again.

  I looked up at Dafydd. “I saw the cliff rushing by, and then a blackness came over me. I remember nothing after that. How did I get here?”

  “English soldiers?” Bronwen asked. “He thinks English soldiers shot at him?”

  “They did,” David said. “It’s a long story which you aren’t going to believe.”

  Bronwen’s features stiffened. “We’ll see about that,” she said, and crossed her arms across her chest. I wanted to warn her that it wasn’t her place to become angry with the Prince of Wales.

  “You really want to know?” Dafydd said.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “If I tell you, you can’t overreact,” he said. “You can’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  Bronwen opened her mouth, closed it, and then sat back in her chair and crossed her knees. “Fine. I’m all ears.”

  But then Dafydd hesitated, and instead of telling her anything, asked her a question. “Look at me and tell me what you see.”

  Bronwen shifted, uncomfortable under Dafydd’s scrutiny. “I see a young man of sixteen, dressed in what appears to be medieval-authentic linen shirt, brown leather armor, tunic, trews, leather boots, and a cloak. You look like you need a bath. Your teeth are straight. You have blue eyes and light brown hair and are a couple of inches over six feet.”

  “How about our weapons?” he asked.

  “I didn’t get to examine them closely, but what I saw indicated that they were beautifully worked and . . .” she paused, her brow furrowed. “They’re of a very old design. Are they antiques?”

  “What if I told you that all of our clothes, including our boots, are handmade? That
the weapons were handmade too and are over seven hundred years old? What would that say to you?”

  “That you are very rich, obsessive members of the SCA who refuse to carry ID or money?”

  “What’s the SCA?” I asked.

  “Society for Creative Anachronism,” Bronwen said, “but from your ignorance maybe that isn’t the case either.”

  Society for Creative Anachronism. I had no idea what any of those words meant, separately or together.

  “Do you know about old weapons?” Dafydd asked, following his own train of thought.

  “I’m a graduate student in archaeology,” Bronwen said.

  Another word I didn’t know. “What’s ‘archaeology’?” I asked.

  Bronwen gave me a look, and then returned her attention to Dafydd. “Why doesn’t he know?”

  “Because where he comes from, there’s no such thing,” Dafydd said. He sat beside her then and put his head in his hands.

  “Would you mind leaving us for a time?” Dafydd asked. “You’ve been up all night. Perhaps now you could go home to sleep?”

  “You haven’t answered any of my questions,” she protested.

  “I can’t answer them,” Dafydd said. “Not right now.”

  Bronwen grimaced. “I don’t get this, but that’s fine. You don’t have to tell me. I don’t know you at all. Goodbye.”

  She headed for the door.

  Dafydd stood and held out a hand to stop her. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I want to explain, just not here, with Ieuan ill. Where can I find you again, to give you the explanation you deserve, and to get our weapons back?”

  Bronwen jerked the door to the room open. “At the archaeology department,” she said. “Right where I found you.” The door slammed shut behind her. Dafydd contemplated the space where she’d been, his hands on his hips.

  “That’s hardly the way to win a girl, my lord,” I said.

  “Win a girl?” Dafydd laughed. “She’s at least five years older than I am. She would never be interested in me.”

  Really? “You’re the Prince of Wales, my lord. Every girl is interested in you.”