Guardians of Time (5 page)

“We need to get Shane to a hospital,” David
said. “That’s our first priority. Then we can see about what Mom
needs.”

“Mom has a strong need for Italian food,
maybe some coffee, and definitely chocolate,” Mom said, speaking of
herself in the third person.

“We need to bring some doughnuts home for
Bronwen,” Anna said.

Having come with David to Wales in 1285—2013
by Avalon reckoning—Bronwen was the first of the time travelers
outside of the family to choose to stay in the Middle Ages. She’d
married Ieuan, David’s former captain, who’d remained David’s
right-hand man even after David had taken the throne of England.
Bronwen was pregnant with her second child, which was why she
hadn’t come with them to Avalon. In fact, until David talked to her
about the possibility of
traveling
with him, Bronwen hadn’t
told anyone but Ieuan about this baby.

Bronwen had experienced multiple
miscarriages since giving birth to Catrin four years ago. Now,
however, she was already four months pregnant, so there was real
hope that she could keep the baby this time.

David looked around at the members of this
small group who’d come on the journey with him: Math and Anna, Mom
and Dad, Darren and Rachel, Callum and Cassie, and Mark Jones. His
throat thickened with emotion just looking at them—at how much he
loved and trusted them, and the amazing fact that the love and
trust was returned.

Sensing what he was feeling—like he had ever
been good at hiding from her what was going on inside him—Mom gave
him a smile. “We’re good, David. Let’s get to work.”

Callum shifted in his seat in order to plug
in his cell phone and jack, and then all those who hadn’t yet done
so followed suit. David shared a rueful look with Dad, who didn’t
have a cell phone either. Even Anna and Mom had them, thanks to the
purchases made by Cassie and Callum last year.

“Do you have any extra?” David said to
Callum.

“No, but we’ll get you one.” Callum grinned
as he jerked his head towards the Tesco, which proclaimed itself to
be a superstore. Then he turned on his phone. “This’ll be
interesting if someone has my number on a watch list.”

“If we’re discovered, it’ll be my fault more
than yours.” Mark Jones was rapidly scrolling through a series of
screens David couldn’t see from where he was standing. “It’s harder
to hide my presence from my phone. I’d use my laptop, but I can’t
reach Tesco’s wifi from here.”

“Er, David?” Brian, one of the bus
passengers, had come up the stairs at the back of the bus, and he
stood on the top step, shifting nervously from foot-to-foot.

“What’s up?” David glanced outside the
window. Most—if not all—of the bus passengers who’d left the bus in
such a hurry were still mingling in the parking lot. David checked
the time on Anna’s phone. It had been only a few minutes since
they’d left, though it seemed like a lot longer than that to
David.

The passengers had had time to make some
more calls, stomp around in the snow a bit, and discover where they
were, the same as David’s family and friends.

And maybe have second thoughts about their
abrupt departure.

“Er … well … my sister isn’t answering her
mobile … and … well … I don’t really have any place to go. A bunch
of us don’t, you know … I mean …” His voice trailed off into
inarticulateness.

Darla, appeared behind Brian. She was one of
the bus passengers who’d spent the whole year at Caerphilly
grousing about how much she hated the Middle Ages and refusing, to
the best of her ability, to participate. Along with her husband and
teenage daughter, Darla had responded to David’s decision to take
everyone back to Avalon with
it’s about time!
In David’s
conversations with his mother, he hadn’t listed fear as one of the
reasons to return. Yet for one of the bus passengers to take
matters into his or her own hands and attempt to force Anna or
Mom—or David himself—to time travel had remained a genuine
possibility. Lee had done it, as had Marty a few years before
him.

“My brother isn’t answering either.” She
turned her cell phone screen outward so David could see it. “The
mobile lines are busy or not working.”

“It’s Wales on Christmas Eve,” Mark Jones
said. “They’re over-subscribed.”

Darla shot him a sour look for interrupting.
“All of our credit cards are probably cancelled, and it isn’t like
we have enough cash for a hotel.” She glared at David. “I hate
Wales. It was the worst mistake we ever made deciding to visit
Cardiff on the weekend.”

“So you’ve said,” Mom said in a low voice as
she gazed at her shoes, “about a thousand times. If not more.”

Dad’s lips twitched, and David wanted to
kick his mother for almost making him laugh.

“How can I help with that?” David said. “I
don’t even own a cell phone myself—nor do I have any British
pounds.”

Darla’s face twisted into a parody of
innocence—eyebrows raised, eyes wide, and a fixed smile. “You have
gems and coins. I know you do.” The last sentence came out with an
edge. She’d managed to hide her underlying anger and resentment for
approximately three seconds.

“You want money too?” Anna said.

David didn’t share Anna’s surprise at
Darla’s audacity. He was beginning to think that taking the whole
lot of them back to Avalon would have been the best idea ever even
if he’d died in the process. They didn’t deserve to stay if they
couldn’t see what medieval Wales had to offer.

“It isn’t like any of this is our fault.”
Darla kept up the stare.

Callum dropped his phone into the inside
pocket of his suit jacket and headed down the aisle towards the
exit. “I’ll deal with this.”

David decided not to stop him. “Thanks,
Callum.”

The bus passengers had always respected
Callum more than David, regardless of what station David held in
the Middle Ages. Callum was British himself, an MI-5 agent, and
spoke with authority. Many of them had never been able to see David
as anything more than a punk kid.

“Is he going to use his own money?” Jane
asked.

“Yes, but it’s all right,” Cassie said.
“Callum and I figured this might happen. We have an account that
won’t be cancelled and has plenty of money in it. We can pay to put
everyone up.” She looked at David. “They’re used to relying on you,
even as they resent you. We can’t just cut them loose.”

“I had no intention of cutting them loose,”
David said, exasperated. “They were the ones who left the bus as
fast as their feet would take them off it.”

“That was before they discovered they were
in Caernarfon instead of Cardiff,” Mom said dryly.

“Why Caernarfon, do you think?” Anna
said.

“It’s closer to Aber.” Dad turned in his
seat to look out the window, though the bright lights from Tesco’s
parking lot prevented anyone from getting a good look at the
landscape.

Dad wasn’t the only one who was pleased at
the news of their location. David knew north Wales better than
south, in large part because his early years in Wales had been
spent here. At that time, Gwynedd had been all that his father
controlled.

Plus, as they’d come in, he’d spied a
McDonalds on the other side of the highway, and his mouth watered
at the thought of a double cheeseburger, milk shake, and fries. Not
that eating French fries was such a big deal anymore. Mom and Anna
had brought more than the bus back to the Middle Ages a year ago.
The first crop of potatoes had been harvested, and although the
vast majority were being saved for seed for next year to really get
the crop going and he wasn’t the potato lover Callum was, he’d been
afforded a few bites.

“Why does there have to be a reason?”
Shane’s dad, Carl, said. “We made it. That’s what matters.”

“Yes, but in the past we’ve ended up in a
place where—” Mom paused, frowning at how to explain it to someone
who might not share her faith.

“Where we were meant to be,” Anna said, and
when Carl opened his mouth to protest again, she hurried on, “I
know that sounds stupid because where we end up has to be where we
were meant to be, but it’s more that it’s the place where we make a
difference. Or where things work out in an unexpected, but good,
way.”

Carl looked almost offended. “It seems like
you’re asking a lot.”

David couldn’t argue with that, since it was
asking a lot. He would have preferred not to have come through on
the wrong side of the highway, but if nobody had died as a result,
he could handle things being a bit hairy for a few minutes.

Mom took up the explanation. “Last time,
Anna and I ended up in the middle-of-nowhere Oregon, which would
have been very disconcerting if Cassie and Callum hadn’t been only
a few miles away, spending Thanksgiving with Cassie’s
grandfather.”

“Oh.” Carl started to nod. “I get it now.
That makes sense.”

“Often—maybe even usually—we don’t know
about that good thing until we’ve been there a while,” Mom
continued. “Anna and I had to walk quite a way through the woods in
the dark and cadge a ride from a total stranger before we found
Cassie and Callum out looking for us.”

Mark raised a hand. “MI-5’s sensors should
have detected us when came in. I suggest that we have sat here too
long.”

“I don’t disagree.” David bent to look for
Callum out the window. He was glad Jane had turned off the lights,
though the lights in the parking lot were bright enough that anyone
looking could be wondering why a Cardiff bus was sitting in the
middle of the Caernarfon Tesco’s parking lot with a crowd of people
outside of it.

“I know why we’re here.” Rachel said,
copying Mark by raising her hand as if she was in school. “It’s
because of my dad. He’s a physician with an office near Bangor.
While he isn’t an oncologist, he has the equipment and the skill to
take care of Meg up to and including performing a biopsy.”

Darren looked like he was the only one to
whom that was not news.

“He has his own full-service women’s
clinic,” Rachel added. “His name is Abraham Wolff.”

“How will he feel about helping us out on
Christmas Eve?” Jane said from the driver’s seat.

Shane had crawled into her lap and was now
curled into her, fast asleep. The initial signs of childhood
leukemia were somewhat nonspecific, and included fatigue, fever,
loss of appetite, weight loss, and night sweats. Shane’s symptoms
had progressed to swollen lymph nodes, bruising for no reason,
nosebleeds, joint pain, and occasional trouble breathing. It was
the speed at which he’d moved from the first collection of symptoms
to the second that had prompted David to act today. A child could
die of leukemia in months if untreated. Shane no longer had
months.

“We’re Jewish,” Rachel said. “Hanukkah ended
on the eighteenth.”

“And what about your mother?” Jane glanced
down at her son’s sleeping form.

“My mother divorced him when I was
little.”

Jane released a burst of air that was almost
a laugh. “Understood.”

That was good enough for David too. “Do you
want simply to show up on his doorstep, or do you want to call him
first?”

Rachel looked at Darren, who spread his
hands wide and said, “How many bombshells do you want to drop on
your father all at once?”

“You mean, which will get the worst
reaction—the fact that I spent the last year in the Middle Ages, or
the fact that I’m in love with a black man?”

Darren shrugged, apparently finding the
question amusing, though another man might not have. “Your
call.”

“I’ll ring him,” Rachel said. “He’ll need to
meet us at his clinic anyway, so it’ll save time if we go straight
there after we leave Shane and his family at the hospital.”

Darren stood up and held out his hand to
Rachel, who took it to rise to her feet. He looked back at the
others. “Give us a minute.”

David lifted a hand, giving permission,
though since Darren wasn’t his subordinate here, it wasn’t his to
give. As far as David was concerned, they could take all the time
they needed. He didn’t doubt that his mother would be in good hands
with Rachel’s father. David, of course, had known that Rachel’s
father was a doctor with a clinic near Bangor, but he hadn’t
mentioned it to anyone else because the odds of appearing in his
vicinity had seemed infinitesimal to David. He should have known
better.

Then Callum reboarded the bus. Snow dusted
his coat and hair, and he brushed it off in the shelter of the
doorway before coming all the way up the steps and making his way
down the aisle towards the others.

David lifted his chin. “Are we good?”

Callum released a little snort of laughter.
“One of the local inns, the Black Boar, had a block of
cancellations due to a wedding that’s been called off. They were
desperate, and I didn’t tell them that I was too, so we got a great
deal on rooms and meals for three days for everyone who wanted
them.”

“Do I need to drive them there?” Jane
said.

“Buses have been known to drive through the
streets of Caernarfon, though it isn’t recommended. Regardless, the
passengers decided to walk. First breaths of freedom and all that.”
Callum gave a slight tsk. “It is my impression that they want to
get as far away from us and the bus as possible on the off chance
that time traveling happens again. They don’t want to be caught up
in it.”

Cassie put her nose up to the window, her
hands cupped around her eyes so she could see better. “They’re
really gone? Just like that?”

“Just like that,” Callum said.

Meg

C
allum shrugged out
of his coat and hung it over the back of a chair to dry, giving
something of a self-deprecating smile as he did so. “I gave them my
mobile number. We may hear from some of them again.”

“Yeah, you can bet we will,” Meg said, not
in an undertone this time and still unforgiving.