Footsteps in Time (7 page)

Bevyn pulled out his sword.
David had dropped his in the snow, once he saw the size of the
boar. He held his spear with two hands, bracing himself to ram it
into the boar because his only alternative was to drop it and run.
Another spear hit the boar, low on the right side of his neck. He
opened his mouth to squeal.

David squealed too, though
his throat was so full of spit and fear no sound came out. At that
moment, the prince appeared on David’s right and grasped David’s
spear with both hands.

“
Ready?”

“
Ready!” David said,
though nothing could have been further from the truth. He and the
prince threw themselves forward just as the boar charged—and rammed
himself onto their spear, which went straight down its
gullet.

The boar’s momentum carried
it past David, knocking him sideways as he released the spear.
David rolled, arms over his head. Boar and boy came to rest no more
than six inches from each other. David opened his blue eyes in time
to stare into the boar’s brown ones before the life left
them.

“
Are you all right, son?”
Prince Llywelyn fell to his knees beside David, patting him all
over to make sure he wasn’t bleeding anywhere. David carefully sat
up, feeling his arms and legs. His heart still pounded, but he
grinned at the prince.

“
I’m alive!” David said,
not thinking about who could hear him and how juvenile that
sounded.

“
I’m glad to hear it,”
Prince Llywelyn said in the same dry tone he’d used with David
earlier. “First hunt, indeed.” He helped David to his feet and
handed him his sword. “I suppose Bevyn could rely on you after
all.”

“
Yes, he could and did.”
Bevyn tousled David’s hair, and then the three watched as the
handlers soaked a cloth in the boar’s blood to satisfy the hunger
of the dogs and call them off the hunt. It turned David’s stomach,
and he glanced away. He didn’t want to watch the preparations to
move the boar and bring him back to the castle.

“
What a great day. Makes
one glad to be alive, doesn’t it?” The prince looked down at David
and gave him a wicked grin before walking toward the other noblemen
who gathered on the other side of the boar to mount their
horses.

“
Can you ride?” Bevyn
said.

“
Am I that pale?” David
said.

“
Yes.” Bevyn whistled to
Hywel, who’d been watching and now hurried over with Taranis.
“Exhilaration comes first, then chills as the energy drains from
you. When it is a man you’ve killed, the next emotion is revulsion,
perhaps nausea, but this is a boar, an evil creature. Don’t allow
his death to trouble you that way.”

“
Yes, sir,” David
said.

Back at the castle, David dismounted,
even more exhausted than he usually was after patrol because, as
Bevyn had warned, the adrenaline had seeped away, leaving him
shivering and weak.

“
Go and rest,” Owain said.
“I’ll rub down Taranis.”

David shook his head. “Thanks, Owain,
but I’ll do it. I’ll feel better when I’m done.”

An hour later, men carrying the boar
appeared in the courtyard. For the rest of the afternoon, the
kitchen was busy preparing it and then roasting it, with the odor
of cooking wafting into every corner of the castle. It was dark
outside by the time David found Anna on their usual bench and
plopped down beside her. Usually she wrinkled her nose at his
smell—sweat and horses and no bath for more than a week—but not
today.

“
I hear you killed
it.”

“
Prince Llywelyn killed
it,” David corrected her. “I was merely holding onto the same spear
he was when he did it.”

“
Uh huh,” she said, not
believing him. “I’m glad your day was more interesting than
mine.”

“
I’m sorry you’re so
bored,” David said.

Anna shrugged. “I’ll
live.”

David stared at her,
waiting for more. He’d given her an opening to complain and she
hadn’t taken it. David had even felt up to listening for
once.

I killed a boar
today!

Chapter Five

Anna

D
avid intercepted Anna on the way to breakfast two days later.
“How’d you like to learn to ride a horse? I talked to Bevyn, and he
said that we could take you out in the mornings after breakfast
when the weather is good.”

As
good
in Wales meant
not raining or snowing
,
Anna didn’t know how often they’d get to ride, but the idea itself
was enough to lift her spirits. It was still bitterly cold, but she
didn’t care. She threw her arms around David’s neck and hugged
him.

“
Yes,
please!”
At last, I can
do
something
!

They rode that very
day, and it was refreshing to be outside, even if Anna’s muscles
were so sore the next day she could barely walk, much less sit on a
horse. She sat the next day anyway, determined to shake off her
gloomy thoughts and focus on what she could do in Wales, rather
than what she couldn’t.
Which is
everything.
Since their arrival at Castell
y Bere, she’d had no opportunity for exercise, other than walking
from her room to the solar, to church, to the great hall, and back
again. Her karate instructor would have been
appalled.

So riding was one good
thing in her life, and within the week, Anna discovered another:
Prince Llywelyn’s only child, Gwenllian. Her mother, whom Prince
Llywelyn had married late in life, had died at the baby’s birth.
Consequently, her caretakers were a wet nurse and a nanny, who were
frazzled most of the time because Gwenllian was a fussy child.
Although she was six months old, not an infant, she cried at any
hour of the day.

One afternoon, Anna was sitting and
sewing among the women in the solar, listening to Gwenllian’s
constant wails, when she realized that her head would explode if
she had to endure another minute of either sewing or crying. She
put her useless work aside and left the room.

Anna went to Gwenllian’s
chambers and found her wet nurse, Heledd, pacing with her around
the room, trying to get her to nurse. The nanny, Mari, was making
unwanted suggestions. They looked at Anna as she entered, and Anna
simply held out her hands for the baby. After shooting a speaking
look at each other, perhaps deciding in that instant that she was
trustworthy, the nurse handed the baby to Anna, and she took her
into the great hall. Because it felt like the right thing to do,
Anna put Gwenllian onto her shoulder and, just by chance, she
burped hugely and stopped crying.

“
Now that’s much better,
isn’t it?” Anna said. Gwenllian seemed to understand American
English perfectly.

She was clearly a bright
child, alert and curious, with un-Welsh-like blond, curly hair,
blue eyes, and chubby fingers she used to point at anything and
everything. They spent the afternoon looking at the huge hearth in
the great hall in which a fire burned twenty-four hours a day,
poking their noses into the kitchen to steal a biscuit, which
Gwenllian managed to spread all over her face, and sitting at one
of the tables to watch men play chess while Gwenllian gummed one of
the chess pieces.

Two hours later, Gwenllian
started fussing again, and Anna brought her back to her nanny. The
wet nurse had just woken up from a nap and stretched out her arms
for the baby. It was a very pleasant day for everyone and from then
on, Anna cared for the baby every afternoon. She was happy to do
it. It gave purpose to her day, in addition to the riding and her
feeble attempts to learn Middle Welsh.

David, on the other hand, continued to
make great strides towards becoming a man as understood by the
Welsh of the thirteenth century. For him, life in Wales was a real
life role-playing adventure. His friends at home would have been
falling all over themselves to experience it with him—that is until
they realized the swords were sharp and a real war was coming, one
in which David might well play a part.

Except for the daily ride, Anna
usually saw him only at meals. However, one day in early January,
she heard a commotion in the great hall. Anna hurried in and saw
David and another boy standing before Prince Llywelyn. Bevyn
accompanied them, along with the grizzled older man who’d first
taught David to fight on the way north from Cilmeri.

The other boy, who was more
than two years older than David as well as bigger and burlier, had
a black eye and a swollen nose. It was unlike David to get into a
fist fight, but it looked like that was what had happened. Bevyn
and the older man spoke calmly to each other. David stood unmoving,
staring fixedly ahead with his feet spread and fists clenched. He
was doing some of the breathing exercises he’d learned in
karate.

Prince Llywelyn, standing
straight with his hands clasped behind his back, looked from one
boy to the other. He spoke to David, who replied. Prince Llywelyn
then put a hand on David’s shoulder, leaned down, and looked him in
the eye. Whatever he was saying, he enunciated so clearly that had
Anna known enough Welsh she could have read his lips. At last, the
two boys gripped forearms in sort of a handshake, and the group
broke apart.

David spotted Anna leaning against the
wall and walked over.

“
What happened?” she
said.

He half-laughed. “I was in a fight.
Can’t you tell?”

Anna looked him up and
down. “No, I can’t. The other guy sure looks like it,
though.”

“
Fychan and I were
fighting with wooden swords,” David said. “I won fairly. No one has
ever defeated him before, and he was mad about it, I guess. He
shouted at Bevyn that I cheated. I tried talking to him, but he
wouldn’t listen, so I turned around and walked away. Next thing I
knew, he jumped me!”

“
Uh oh.”

“
Yeah. He caught me
off-guard, and I went down on one knee. His arms were around my
shoulders, but I threw him off and turned to face him. I heard
someone shout at us to stop, but I was seeing red, and I think he
was too because he rushed at me. He believed he could overpower
me.”

“
Let me guess,” Anna said.
“He took a swing at you, you blocked his arm, kicked him in the
groin, and when he doubled over you came up into his face with your
knee.”

“
Pretty much,” David said.
“I was so mad I was ready to hit him on the way down too, but a
couple of the guys pulled me off.”

“
So what did Prince
Llywelyn say?” Anna said.

“
Fychan was in the wrong,”
David said, “so there wasn’t any question that I had the right to
defend myself. But Bevyn was concerned that I let my temper get the
better of me, and the knee in the face was unnecessary.”

“
It was, especially since
you had people calling you off before the fighting
started.”

“
I know,” David said. “Then
Prince Llywelyn said that a leader couldn’t afford to allow anger
to affect his decisions, and that I needed to understand that there
was a time for making an example of a man, and a time for showing
mercy. He didn’t object to the way I’d conducted the fight, but
that I’d done it while hot, instead of cold. A leader has to be
cold in order to mete out true justice.”

“
A leader, huh?”

“
You caught that too, did
you? I’m not sure what to make of that.”

Anna knew. Her brother was going to
succeed in this world even more easily than in the old one. She’d
feared that no one would appreciate David’s talents, but it seemed
that here, stripped of the trappings of modern society and with
over seven hundred fewer years of accumulated knowledge, it was
impossible not to.

* * * * *

As Anna’s misery abated,
despite the continued absence of hot showers, she became more aware
of the increasing activity in the castle. A martial mentality was
in evidence, with men-at-arms moving purposefully through the
courtyards and more men peopling the great hall at dinner. David
came to her one day to show off his mail armor, though his eyes
were hooded with concern. He sat on a bench near one of the
tables.

“
I may have to kill
people,” he said. “They expect me to kill people.”

Anna had been wondering at
what point he’d realize that all the training he was doing would
end in actual warfare in which he was destined to participate.
She’d hoped he would come to her when it happened. Anna hadn’t
exactly come to terms with what had happened at Cilmeri, but as it
was an accident, she tried not to let it bother her. David would be
killing people on purpose, knowingly.

“
I know,” Anna said. “I’m
sorry.”

David stared at the floor. “Do you see
an alternative?”

She’d been thinking about
this since David’s first mock sword fight with a stick. She shook
her head. “We’re in the wrong time, but even in our time it’s not
immoral to fight if you have to—if you are attacked, or to protect
people. You would be defending your people against invaders. If the
English defeat us, Wales ceases to exist as a separate
country.”