Guardians of Time (14 page)

“Tell me your name again?” Rupert had his
phone in his hand and looked like he was prepared to write
something into it.

“Anna and Math Rhys,” Anna said before Math
could stop her. He heard a tsk coming from the phone, which meant
Callum would have preferred she’d made up a name too. “We’re just
visiting.”

“Did she tell him what I thought she just
told him?” Callum said.

Math put the phone back up to his ear in
order to answer. “She did.”

“Get rid of him!” Callum said, and then
added somewhat under his breath, “A reporter.
Jesus
Christ
.”

Math grimaced, but Callum was right that it
was time the conversation ended. He put his hand on Anna’s shoulder
and spoke in Welsh. “Go. Let me deal with this.”

Anna looked at him warily, but with a tug on
her elbow from Llywelyn, they got her moving away, back down the
corridor.

Rupert’s attention became fixed on Math.
“You’re not from around here, are you?”

“I assure you, I was born in Wales and have
lived here my whole life. Now—” Math studied Rupert, who didn’t
exactly wilt under his gaze, but some of his aggression seemed to
leave him. He might have thought he could bully Anna, a woman, into
giving him the information he wanted, but Math was a different
story. “I know that you have no cause to enter here, and my wife
and I have far more pressing issues than answering questions about
things we have no answers to.”

Rupert glared at him, frustration rolling
off him in waves. Math started to close the door, but Rupert jammed
his foot into the gap before Math could close it all the way. “All
of you know more than you’re saying. I was hoping, sir, that you
could explain the flare-out.”

“The … what?” Math said. The corridor was
freezing now, and snow had blown in such that it had accumulated in
the doorway to an inch in the time they’d spent talking.

“The bus vanished from the middle of
downtown Cardiff on a Saturday morning over a year ago. The
flare-out was caught on video. Research shows that a change
occurred in that location at the subatomic level.” Rupert was still
wedged into the doorway so Math couldn’t close the door. “Do you
have anything to say besides
alien abduction
?”

Math’s eyes narrowed; this wasn’t making
Rupert go away. If anything, he seemed more interested than before.
“No.”

Rupert grunted and then reached into a side
pocket of his jacket to pull out a small rectangle of paper, which
he handed to Math. “Ring me if you have any information that might
help track down the bus.”

Math took the paper automatically, with no
real idea how it would help them contact Rupert, but he slipped it
into his pocket anyway. “Of course.”

He paused as it struck him that Rupert’s
tone had changed completely. He was giving way—except Math didn’t
believe for a moment that Rupert was giving up. More likely, he was
trying to appease him, and when Dafydd and the others returned, he
would be right behind them, following them to wherever they went
next. Callum wouldn’t thank him for allowing that.

“You might consider a trip to Caernarfon.
That’s where the real action is tonight.”

“Caernarfon.” Rupert sneered. “Right.”

He didn’t believe Math, of course. It had
been a faint hope that he could divert Rupert, even if telling him
that answers lay in Caernarfon had been the truest thing Math had
said so far.

Then Rupert’s phone rang, and he stepped
back from the door to answer it. This gave Math the opportunity to
close the door, but he hesitated in order to eavesdrop on Rupert’s
conversation.

“What did you say?” Rupert barked into the
phone, one hand to his other ear to better hear the person on the
other end of the line. Then he looked up, his eyes fixed on Math.
“The Black Boar Inn in Caernarfon town? Right.” He disconnected the
call.

“I told you the action was in Caernarfon
tonight,” Math said, with a grin he couldn’t help.

His grin faded, however, as he closed the
door. Rupert was already walking quickly to his car, excitement
evident in every step.

Bridget

“W
hy didn’t you say
anything about Clare and King Philip of France when we were back at
Dinas Bran?” Peter said. “Lili and Geoffrey need to know.”

Bridget shrugged, feeling hard pressed and
helpless. “I couldn’t talk in front of all those people, and I know
Callum said something at least to David before he left. We put the
pieces together only a few days ago, and he had no chance to talk
to anyone about it until we all arrived in Dinas Bran. Clare is in
Ireland and Philip in Paris, so it wasn’t something David or Callum
thought they could do anything with right now.”

“Excuse me, ma’am,” Simon said. “I may not
be understanding you correctly, but are you suggesting that King
Philip would somehow arrange to kill his own emissary to King
David? That doesn’t make sense.”

“It does if Philip is looking for an excuse
to go to war with England, this time with perceived right on his
side,” Bridget said.

Simon made an expressive gesture with his
hands that reminded Bridget of Geoffrey. “Clare holds lands in
Aquitaine and has benefitted from David’s control of the region,
not to mention David’s rise to the throne of England. He has no
reason to help Philip.”

“I know it seems that way,” Bridget said. “I
don’t want to be dramatic, but we know from past behavior that
Clare has always looked after himself first and foremost. Remember
the Barons’ War.”

Bridget didn’t have to elaborate to Simon or
Peter about that. England’s Barons’ War was recent history here.
Twenty-five years earlier, Clare, Simon de Montfort, and Llywelyn
had become allies with the plan that, upon the defeat of King
Edward, they would split Britain among them. Clare, however, only a
few months after signing the treaty, switched sides, turning
against Montfort and ensuring his death and defeat. What Clare did
seemed crazy to Bridget, since Montfort was winning at the time.
Edward must have promised him something really good, though it was
hard to imagine what could have been better than half of England.
Perhaps Philip had done the same.

“Clare and Philip have never been closely
connected,” Peter said. “Even if Clare decided to betray David,
doing it with Philip defies reason, no matter what Philip might
have offered him.”

“Maybe,” Bridget said, “but if David has to
go on Crusade with King Philip, he leaves his throne
unattended.”

“That might be good for King Philip if he
wants David close by so he can murder him, but why would it be good
for Clare?” Simon said.

“He could be king, given the right backing,”
Bridget said. “He’s one of England’s most powerful barons.”

“He’s England’s most powerful baron, full
stop,” Simon said.

“Still, I have a hard time believing Clare
would be so half-arsed about it,” Peter said. “He strikes me more
as the type to arrange his scheme so everything falls into place at
the same moment.”

“If you don’t believe Clare would betray
David over his power in England, how about Ireland?” Bridget
said.

Peter grunted. “That’s more likely.”

“Before David goes off on crusade,” Bridget
said, “he really is going to have to deal with what’s going on
there.”

“If the issue is Ireland, however,” Peter
said, “it isn’t just Clare who could rise up against David when he
starts reining his barons in.”

Sometimes Bridget could hardly believe it
was she who was having this conversation with Peter. The word
poorly
wasn’t an adequate description of how she’d done in
school, which was one reason she’d left at sixteen. She’d loved
reading, but she’d had to sneak her books up to her room underneath
her coat and many homework assignments had been left undone because
her mother hadn’t liked seeing her with her nose in a book all the
time, thinking it was a bad way to attract a man.

Once she’d left school, her mum couldn’t
stop her from reading a thousand free ebooks on her mobile phone,
and access to books was probably the one thing she missed most. She
hoped that someone on that bus would think about loading up a phone
with books. They would need electricity to power it, but if put in
airplane mode, it wouldn’t have to be charged very often.

When she’d mentioned to Callum that she
couldn’t really be the person he wanted to manage his spy network
centered in Shrewsbury, he’d scoffed at her, accusing her of
denigrating her talents in an unbecoming way.

“I mispronounce words all the time because
I’ve only ever seen them written,” she’d said.

“At least you’ve seen them written,” Callum
said.

“I left school at sixteen!”

“And our esteemed King David left at
fourteen.”

Bridget had shaken her head. “He doesn’t
count. He’s a genius.”

Callum had looked her in the eyes and
replied, “Here, you can become what you choose to be. Like he
has.”

It was probably those words from Callum,
more than anything else, that had made her get off that bus. Even
if things didn’t work out with Peter, it had still been the right
decision to stay.

Peter waved a hand, as if smoke instead of
conversation had obscured the air. “Does Clare have estates close
by?”

“No,” Bridget said.

“That isn’t helpful,” Peter said.

“It isn’t, is it?” Then her brow furrowed.
“But you know, it wouldn’t have to be a place he owns. He could be
visiting an ally, staying as a guest somewhere. What if he’s
working with the Mortimers? They’re close by at Montgomery.”

“A conspiracy that includes King Philip,
Clare,
and
Edmund Mortimer?” Peter said. “I don’t believe
it.”

“You don’t want to believe it,” Bridget
said.

“Do you know how many little hamlets we’re
talking about searching through?” Peter said. “It’s twenty-five
miles as the crow flies just from Llangollen to Shrewsbury.”

“I know.” Bridget said. “Clare’s all the way
down in Gloucester, but he could have sent men this far.”

Hoof beats pounded on the road, a much
louder sound than had heralded the arrival of the messenger from
Lili back at the bus hanger at Llangollen. They turned to see a
company of ten coming up the southern road. It was Cadwallon
returning from the hunt. He reined in and dismounted.

“What do you have for us?” Peter said.

Bridget didn’t object to him taking charge.
For all that David intended for women to take their place in
society as men’s equals, they weren’t exactly there yet. Cadwallon
would feel more comfortable reporting to a man, and truthfully,
while she knew a great deal about the local region and its
politics, Peter was the detective.

“Many riders travel this road every day,”
Cadwallon said, “but nobody saw a company of masked men. Nobody
knows of any marauders holed up in the forest attacking
travelers—not within ten miles of this spot.”

Peter studied Cadwallon for a moment.
Bridget didn’t know what Peter was thinking, but she had to
struggle to keep the dismay out of her expression. Like Justin,
Cadwallon was more than able as a commander. Given his long
recovery from William de Bohun’s attack many years ago, he had the
respect of his men. He was loyal, brave, and true, which was
exactly what King Llywelyn needed in the captain of his
teulu
. But he didn’t have a devious mind, and he wasn’t the
best man to send to track down criminals. He couldn’t think like
them if his life depended on it.

“Did you ask if anybody saw an unusual
number of riders on the road, in groups or alone, whether or not
they wore masks?” Peter said.

Cadwallon frowned. “I suppose several people
mentioned an unusual number of riders on the road. I didn’t think
anything of it because they weren’t masked, and it is Christmas
Eve. Many people are traveling today.”

“Did they say where the men were going?”
Bridget said.

“A farmer’s wife near Chirk mentioned seeing
riders along the road towards Whittington.”

“You traveled far,” Bridget said, trying to
make Cadwallon feel better about the fruitlessness of his
search.

“Many miles, but not all in one direction,”
Cadwallon said, half-apologetically, as if it would have been
possible for him to cover more than ten or fifteen miles in the few
hours since the attack. “Lord Samuel was charged with riding east
and north. We headed west first, and then turned south before
doubling back and riding up the road from Shrewsbury.”

Cadwallon’s English was passable, but Lili
had been wise to send him to search primarily in Wales for sign of
the bandits rather than England.

“Thank you for your help,” Peter said.
“We’ll take it from here. I’m sure Queen Lili and Lord Geoffrey
would like a complete report.”

“Surely you’re coming back to the castle
too?” Cadwallon reflexively checked the sky. It was covered with
clouds and completely darkened.

Bridget pulled her hood closer around her
face and cinched tighter the scarf under her chin that held it in
place. She was glad for her wool mittens too. Various people had
told her that she would eventually get used to being cold all the
time, but it hadn’t happened yet, and she didn’t believe now that
it ever would. She’d started her store in part so she’d have better
access to higher quality wools to keep herself warm.

“We’ll head south,” Peter said.

Cadwallon raised his eyebrows. He could
probably count on one hand the number of nights he’d spent in
England in his whole life.

“Please tell Samuel which direction we’re
going,” Bridget said. “Maybe we can get as far as Whittington
tonight. It’s what? Five miles from here?”

“A little more by the road.” Peter nodded at
Cadwallon, who departed with his men.