Footsteps in Time (36 page)

“
To the
great wall built by Hadrian.” I spurred Bedwyr forward.
These questions are so
difficult
. The longer I lived in Wales, the
easier to pretend that the twenty-first century was impossibly far
in the future. On the outside, I was nothing more or less than a
prince, the son of the Prince of Wales. I liked it that way—wanted
it that way—but then the façade crashed down and I was left with a
truth that only a handful of men from the thirteenth century knew.
Aaron was one, and to open the circle to Ieuan was hard, even
though I trusted him.

I was five strides
ahead of Ieuan before he signaled Llwyd to catch up with me. I
could almost hear him thinking:
The Roman
Wall? What could he want with it?

* * * * *

We chose to rest before it
was fully dark, in a copse of trees that could hide us from prying
eyes.

“
How much farther?” I asked
Aaron.

“
If we rise at first light,
we should reach the place in less than two hours.”

“
Excellent,” I
said.

Ieuan grumbled. “If I knew
what we were doing, and how long it would take, it would make it
easier to prepare for what I might have to defend you against,” he
said.

“
Just the English,” I
said, clapping him on the shoulder. “As usual.”

“
Oh,
that’s just great.” He turned away, but not before I caught him
rolling his eyes at Aaron. Bevyn would have cuffed him but I
ignored it.
Better to ignore it. I want a
thinking man more than one who merely obeys.

“
I will take the first
watch,” Aaron said. “I don’t sleep until after midnight under
normal circumstances, much less on the ground with only my cloak
for warmth.”

“
Sorry, Aaron,” I said,
feeling contrite. “I wanted you along for your knowledge, but
didn’t think how uncomfortable it might be for you, out here under
the open sky without a fire.”

“
You’re allowed a brief
lapse, every now and then,” Aaron said. “I’m here by my choice as
well as yours. Don’t think on it further.”

I nodded, accepting as I
often had to the sacrifices of those who surrounded me. Instead, I
jerked my head at Ieuan. “Come,” I said. “We’ll sleep and let the
old man keep his own counsel.” I threw myself on the ground,
wrapped my cloak around me, and used my arm for a pillow. What I
hadn’t admitted to anyone was my delight in being out in the open,
with only Ieuan and Aaron for company. It felt great to run Bedwyr
under the open sky with nothing more pressing on my mind for the
next couple of days then picking up a few of my mom’s
things.

Ieuan lowered himself to
the ground and braced his back against a tree. He rested his head
against the trunk and closed his eyes. I followed suit and was
trying to empty my mind for sleep when Aaron spoke.

“
You Welsh remain a
mystery to me.” His voice was so matter-a-fact, he could have been
commenting on the weather.

I squinted at him, trying
to make out his expression through the fading light. Then I
realized he wasn’t looking at me, but at Ieuan. I feigned sleep so
as not to disturb their conversation.

“
Excuse me?” Ieuan
said.

“
You bicker among
yourselves, you hate the English, you sing with fervor and you love
absolutely. You have an intensity that contrasts so sharply with
the English. Is that why they have defeated you time and
again?”

Ieuan was insulted.
“They’ve not defeated us this time. They will not. They wouldn’t
have even had King Edward survived.”

“
What’s the difference
this time?” Aaron said, and then stopped before Ieuan could answer.
“Ah.” Reflexively they both looked at me, and then away
again.

Ieuan took the watch after
Aaron, and I after him. This far north, dawn came quickly and I
woke both of them with a shake just as the sun peeked over the
horizon. We mounted and rode east, through wide open country. After
three years among the mountains and forests of Wales, the empty
space disconcerted me. I glanced at Ieuan. Beneath his armor and
cloak, his shoulders tensed. “When I rode north to join Prince
Llywelyn in Gwynedd,” he said, “I thought I’d come a long way from
Twyn y Garth. In the last few days, I’ve learned how little of the
world I knew.”

“
I’m no different from
you, Ieuan,” I said. “I’ve lived across the sea, but never traveled
beyond the borders of Wales into England until this
week.”

We hugged the border
between Scotland and England for safety’s sake, but after an hour
turned south and made a run for the Wall.

“
Let me ride ahead to
ensure it’s safe,” Ieuan said, once the fort came into
sight.

Aaron and I slowed our
horses to a walk while Ieuan spurred Llwyd forward. In order to
reach the actual fort, he had to lead Llywd across a half-filled
ditch. He entered the fort through an opening in the wall. Five
minutes later, he reappeared, waving. Aaron and I followed the path
he’d taken.

“
Let’s get the bag,” I
said. Though I would have loved to explore the whole area, we
didn’t have time. We picked our way to the western side of the fort
and entered a little room where Mom had found Sir John de Falkes’
nephew, Thomas, a year ago almost to the day. I shifted some rocks.
Her backpack lay underneath, exactly as she’d described. I turned
to Aaron. “Are you ready for this?”

He nodded, his eyes
bright, reminding me of Ieuan. I knelt and opened the bag. Sure
enough, it was full of Mom’s incredibly useful twenty-first
century items, including . . . I pulled out a
brown candy wrapper and sniffed.
Heaven!!
It’s been so long!

I tipped the bag and dumped
three candies into my hand. I held one out to Aaron. “Chocolate,” I
said, without explaining what that meant. It would be over three
hundred years before another European would taste chocolate, which
without sugar would taste more bitter than coffee. I gave a second
candy to Ieuan who’d appeared in the doorway of the little room and
ate the third one myself.

“
My God,” Ieuan said.
“What is this?”

“
Good, huh?” I said.
“Let’s keep going. We’ve more things to collect.”

“
Those are your mother’s
possessions?” Ieuan said.

“
It’s her pack.” I handed
it to him as I passed him.

He held it up. Its dark
blue, artificial fibers were, quite naturally, unfamiliar. But this
was Ieuan and he was intuitive and smart. Without asking, he slung
it on his back, one strap hanging down unused just like a
twenty-first century student.

I was glad I’d brought him.

“
We’ve further to go,” I
said. “The wall passes a small lake somewhere to the east of here.
My mother left a larger bag hidden near it.”

Still carrying the pack,
Ieuan mounted Llywd. “Why was your mother so far from Wales? I
thought the land of Madoc was west of Wales, across the
sea.”

I was done lying to him.
“She flew here in a machine we call an ‘airplane.’”

Ieuan blinked. “She flew?
You mean like a bird?”

“
She was inside a machine
much like my chariot, but with wings. The man piloting it landed
here, Mom got out, and then he flew off by himself.”

Ieuan picked up on the last
point. “How dare he do such a thing!”

I laughed. “He obviously
cared less for her than we do.”

“
Your mother did just fine
on her own,” Aaron said. “Few women could have reached Wales in one
piece, as she did.”

“
You helped, Aaron,” I
said. “My father and I haven’t forgotten it.”

Aaron bowed his head, but
seemed to shrug his shoulders simultaneously. He still had a hard
time taking a compliment, however deserved. He’d lived nearly a
year among people who treated him respectfully even though he was a
Jew, but that wasn’t enough time to overcome a lifetime of
persecution in England.

We left the fort by the
northern exit and again headed east. I watched the sun, trying to
guess how long Mom had walked before she reached the fort. From her
own description, she’d traveled for several hours, but it was hard
to judge how quickly a horse might cover the same
distance.

“
There!” Ieuan pointed. I
saw it too: a small lake nestled in a little valley, glimmering in
the sun.

Mom had given me what
I thought were clear directions, but at first we couldn’t find the
rock, the tree, and the specific bush she meant. I sent Aaron to
the southern side of the wall to look again, and Ieuan and I walked
down the hill to the beautifully clear lake. I picked up a stone
and skipped it across the water.
One, two,
three, four.
Ieuan found one for
himself.
One, two, three, four,
five.

“
Hey!” I
said. I found another stone.
One,
two.
Ieuan had a handful of stones and each
one he sent skipping across the water to the count of five or
six.

“
What did Edward say, my
lord? Something about putting an ‘upstart Prince’ in his place?”
Ieuan couldn’t contain the laughter in his voice.

“
Oh, now.
That isn’t fair.” I stepped back from the lake and searched until I
found a large rock, more like a boulder. I picked it up, muscled it
to the edge of the lake, and threw it, aiming for a spot about a
foot from where Ieuan was standing.
Thunk
. It sent up a huge splash,
soaking him from head to toe.

“
Ha!” I said.

Ieuan, devilry in his eyes, reached
into the water and threw a handful of water at me.

“
Over here, my lord!” Aaron
interrupted our play.

Laughing, we pawed our way
to the top of the hill, racing to see who could reach it first.
When we found Aaron, he had the bag out and open and was staring at
Mom’s laptop.

Wow! I wonder if it still
works!

“
It seems the bush was
uprooted by an animal which covered over the bag,” he
said.

“
That won’t fit in the
saddle bags.” Ieuan said.

“
It folds very small,” I
said. “We just need to take everything out of it and distribute the
contents first.” I bent forward to do just that, but before I could
start, Ieuan hissed a warning. I swung around: men on horseback,
still dots on the horizon, rode steadily in our
direction.

“
Men. Coming,” I said to
Aaron. “Stay down. Maybe they haven’t seen us yet.”

“
Are they
from the north or south?” Aaron said.
Scots
or English?

“
The west, from Carlisle,”
I said, “and not riding hard, but a company of them, perhaps
twenty.”

“
What are we going to do?”
Aaron said.

I made an instant decision.
“Aaron, you take all of Mom’s things and ride south, right now,
away from here.”

“
What? I can’t leave you,
my lord!” he said.

“
Perhaps they aren’t
unfriendly,” Ieuan said.

“
We can’t risk the contents
of my mother’s pack,” I said.

“
We can’t risk you,” Aaron
countered.

“
I note your objections,
Aaron, but Bevyn isn’t here to overrule me. Ieuan and I are
unmistakably Welshmen and in much more danger here in England that
you are, even as a Jew. You may not be welcome everywhere, but
we’re not welcome anywhere. You, at least, can get
away.”

“
He’s right, Aaron,” Ieuan
said. “I can take care of him. Truth be told, we can ride more
quickly without the burden of the goods you carry.”

Aaron gave way. We loaded
all of Mom’s things into his saddlebags, folded the duffel tight,
and stuffed it in with them. Then I buckled Mom’s backpack to one
of the bags and hung a cloak over it.

“
Go, Aaron,” I said. I
glanced over my shoulder at the riders. “They’re not close enough
to make you out and the sun is in their eyes.”

Aaron leaned down and put
his hand on my shoulder. “Keep safe, my lord,” he said. “I will
circle around Carlisle and make for the boat. If I can’t reach it
safely, I’ll head south for Wales by land, though I dread the
thought of appearing before your father without you.”

“
It’s my decision,
Aaron.”

“
Yes, my lord,” he said.
He turned his horse away.

Ieuan had been watching the
English the whole time. “They’re coming this way,” Ieuan said. “Do
we run?”

“
Can we reach Scotland
before they intercept us?”

Ieuan shook his
head.

“
Then we mount and head
back to Carlisle on the southern side of the wall. If they’re so
anxious to meet us, we’ll let them come to us. We’ve done nothing
wrong. We’re merely two businessmen, taking in the
sights.”

“
Except we saw their king
die,” Ieuan murmured, under his breath, as he threw a leg over
Llywd’s back.