Guardians of Time (7 page)

Meg had pursed her lips, unable to deny what
was an obvious truth. Bridget had suitors lined up around the block
looking to court her, though she herself had never given a single
one the time of day, even if they didn’t seem to mind her size
fourteen hips. In truth, not only did the value of being stick thin
not exist in the Middle Ages, but the concept of overweight applied
usually only to rich men who drank so much wine they got huge and
suffered from gout.

Then Mark Jones, the former computer expert
at MI-5 and currently Callum’s chief supply officer, had sat
himself in the first row of seats that faced front, his laptop case
beside him. He too had lost much of the pudge that had sat around
his middle upon his arrival in the Middle Ages and had even learned
to use a sword to defend himself. He might never be a warrior—or
want to be one—but like Bridget, he’d discovered over the last year
that his skills and brain were adaptable, even to a place without
electricity. He’d become more than a computer whiz.

Bridget had swung around to speak to him.
“What about you? Are you looking forward to living in the
twenty-first century again?”

Mark had been focused on buckling his
seatbelt, but he’d looked up at her question. “Me? I’m not staying.
Didn’t you know?”

Bridget had stared at him. “What? We’re all
staying. That’s the whole point.”

“That may be your point, and what David told
you, but it certainly isn’t my plan,” Mark said. “I’m coming to
help David get what he needs, but then I’m returning with him.”

“Why do you get to do that, and I don’t?”
she’d said.

“I told him I’d come with him in the first
place only if I didn’t have to stay,” Mark said.

Bridget’s eyes flashed. “You
told
David that? And he agreed?”

Mark shrugged.

Her lips in a tight line, Bridget had turned
to look at David, who had been standing at the front of the bus
talking in low tones with Callum and Peter. Bridget suddenly
realized that none of them were staying in the twenty-first
century, though nobody had thought to mention that fact to her
until then.

Now, standing beside Peter with her heart in
her throat, Bridget had no idea what to say to him. She’d kissed
him, and he’d left the bus. And now the bus was gone, and the two
of them were left in the Middle Ages.
What had she
done?

She put out a tentative hand to Peter. “I’m
sorry—I mean—if you—” she stopped, knowing she was babbling, and
then said with a rush, “I’m sorry you won’t get to see your
parents.”

“It was my choice,” he said.

Bridget eyed him, hoping he’d add to the
comment. He’d planned to return to the twenty-first century, and
now—because of her—he found himself left behind. She opened her
mouth, trying to think of a way to ask if he wanted to talk about
the kiss, though that would surely be the most awkward conversation
in history, especially standing on this bluff above the road with
Ieuan, Goronwy, and Justin.

But before she could speak, Peter said,
“After you left, David asked me if I would be willing to keep an
eye on things here, and I said that would be okay with me.”

Only ‘okay’ didn’t sound very promising.
“Did you ask Darren to talk to your parents?”

Peter nodded.

Bridget bit her lip. “At least they’ll know
you’re alive.”

“It might be better if they didn’t.”

Bridget shook her head. “I’m pretty sure not
knowing the truth is worse than knowing it—especially since you
are
alive, even if you can’t come home.” Bridget already
knew that he had one older sister, who was married with two kids,
which was good. If he’d been an only child, it would have been much
harder for him to stay away.

Peter didn’t answer for a second. His eyes
were on the other men, who were now conferring among themselves,
probably deciding momentous issues of the realm. Then he spoke
softly, “I could have stayed on the bus.”

With a swell of emotion, both for her and
for him, Bridget felt for his hand, and he surprised her by not
only allowing her to take it, but to keep it. The action gave her
the courage to ask him another question. “Is this trip the reason
you stopped talking to me this autumn?”

That got Peter to actually look at her. “Is
that what you think happened?”

“After Canterbury, you hardly spoke to me
unless I made you.”

Peter closed his eyes for a second. “You
were going back, and I was never going to see you again.”

It was a relief to finally have that bit of
truth spoken. “David had already conceived of this plan? That’s not
what he told everyone.”

“I saw it in his eyes every time he talked
about one of the bus passengers. About the deaths of Mike and Noah.
About Lee,” Peter said. “Whatever he told us, or told himself, this
has been a long time coming.”

“Why did David want you to stay behind?”

Peter lifted one shoulder. “He had a bad
feeling that he shouldn’t take all of us to Avalon. That one of us
at least would be needed here. I was relieved myself—up until the
moment the bus disappeared into that cliff face. Now who knows what
kind of trouble Darren’s getting into without me.” He shook his
head. “I hate even to think.”

That was more words strung together in a row
than Bridget had heard Peter say in months.

“Why was the king relieved?” Justin, David’s
red-headed captain, had approached without Bridget noticing. All
she could think about was her hand, which was still engulfed in
Peter’s much larger one.

“He’s worried about what could happen here
while he’s gone,” Peter said.

Justin looked affronted. “He doesn’t trust
us.”

“I’m sure that isn’t it,” Bridget said.

The rain continued to fall, but Bridget was
reluctant to move, even though there wasn’t anything more to do or
see. Besides, if they left, she’d have to let go of Peter’s hand in
order to mount one of the horses, of which she supposed she could
have her pick, since there were so many extra, now that everyone
who’d ridden in on them had gone. She felt the same reluctance in
the men, since none of them were making any moves to leave either.
It was as if they were held in suspended animation, waiting for the
bus to return, even though they knew it wouldn’t. At least not
today.

Then hoof beats sounded on the road from
Llangollen. Everyone swung around to see who was coming. A member
of Dinas Bran’s garrison reined his horse at the top of the road
and dismounted in order to run forward to stand in front of Ieuan.
“The queen sends word to King Dafydd—” He looked wildly around.

Ieuan glowered at the man, though David’s
absence was hardly the messenger’s fault. “He isn’t here at the
moment. What is it?”

The man ducked his head. “Your sister
thought that might be the case. She asks that you—all of you—return
to the castle. The English ambassador to France has come in search
of King Dafydd.”

“Geoffrey de Geneville?” Ieaun said. “He’s
supposed to be in Paris.”

“He was traveling with an emissary from the
French king. They were ambushed on the road not five miles from
Wales, on the high road from Shrewsbury. And—” The man shifted from
one foot to the other.

“And what?” Ieuan said.

The man looked pained. “If you could please
come with me, the queen can explain everything.”

“At once,” Ieuan said.

The men dispersed. Bridget took one last
look back at the place where the bus had disappeared, but since
Peter was still holding her hand, and he was plainly intent on
walking to where the horses had been left, she went with him rather
than let go. “There’s nothing more to see here anyway,” she said
under her breath, not necessarily for anyone’s ears.

For all that she’d founded her own business
in Shrewsbury, Bridget felt herself to be an unlikely candidate for
someone who would have done well in the Middle Ages. She hadn’t
been educated at Cambridge like Callum nor had she been in graduate
school in history or archaeology like Meg and Bronwen. A bunch of
the others had been good in school. She could have told that just
by looking at them, even before she learned that Rachel was a
doctor or Darren, with years of night school, had worked his way
from being a bobby on the street to MI-5.

She didn’t have a university education. Her
parents had urged her to quit school at sixteen and get a job, and
she hadn’t struggled against their wishes. School hadn’t been so
much fun that she saw the point in continuing with it. Nobody in
her family had ever gone to university, and it seemed silly of her
to think that she would succeed at it either, especially when
nobody else could see the worth of it or imagine her working a job
that required a degree.

Her first job, then, had been in a handwork
shop in Monmouth, not far from where she was born and raised on the
English side of the Wye River. She’d worked there for three years
before landing a job at a much bigger store in Cardiff, where she’d
been for the last five.

She was good at what she did; she knew that.
She understood wool, which was more than she could say for
ninety-nine percent of twenty-firsters (as she called them), who
thought the only important thing to know about wool was that their
jumper had just shrunk in the wash.

But she didn’t speak medieval Welsh, old
English, or anything better than schoolgirl French. She certainly
didn’t know Flemish, which would have been very useful once she set
up her own shop in Shrewsbury, since the Flems (as she called them)
seemed to have cornered the market in medieval textiles.

She’d had a job in Cardiff that she enjoyed
for the most part. She’d found it inherently satisfying to find the
perfect yarn, the perfect fabric, or the perfect pattern for a
customer to make her happy, but she’d never imagined how much
better it might be to make a difference to so many people. It was a
heady feeling, and one that she hadn’t wanted to give up, even if
Bridget had never intended to start an entirely new industry in the
medieval world—nor provide a central spot for Callum’s spy network
to meet.

When David had approached her about
returning to the modern world, her first reaction had been to jump
for joy, just on principle. She’d started cataloging all the things
she was going to do (most of which involved food), but then the
more she’d thought about it, the more her stomach had twisted in
dismay. She’d made a special trip up to Shrewsbury Castle, where
David had been staying, just to tell him she’d changed her mind and
wouldn’t go.

But then David had looked at her with that
puppy dog gaze of his that implied sympathy and superior wisdom all
at the same time, and she’d bowed to his request after all.

With her hand warm in Peter’s, Bridget told
herself that maybe it was time she stopped making these kinds of
mistakes. For practically the first time in her life, she had
listened to her own heart instead of letting other people’s ideas
about what was best rule her.

Getting off the bus had been the right thing
to do.

Bridget

D
inas Bran was an
enormous castle, spread across the top of a hill a thousand feet
above the valley floor and the village of Llangollen. Back in her
old life, on holiday with a few girlfriends, Bridget had hiked up
to it. At the time, it had been impossible for her to envision an
actual castle from the ruins that remained. Lord Math (Bridget
couldn’t think of him as anything other than ‘lord’, even if she
could call Anna by her first name) had rebuilt the castle after it
was destroyed by the English and made it twice as fine, according
to those who’d seen the old one, with a great hall, guest quarters,
barracks, a stable, and two kitchens.

However, Bridget found the lack of running
water unforgivable. She would never, ever, get used to latrines, no
matter how long she lived in the Middle Ages. Just last night,
Bridget had drunk a little too much in anticipation of their
departure today, and she’d begged David to put the invention of
toilets and showers at the top of his agenda. Having drunk almost
nothing himself, he’d laughed, saying that they weren’t that hard,
and he’d see to it.

And now he was gone. Arrogant little
bugger.

Stretching the full length of the summit of
the mountain, the castle was surrounded by a high curtain wall and
a series of ditches and ramparts dating from Celtic times. Anyone
who approached the castle had to wend his way through the ramparts
in order to reach the gate. Even Bridget, who’d grown up in Avalon,
had no trouble imagining archers shooting down at her from the top
of the walls on both sides. She craned her neck to see them but
couldn’t in the fading light.

“Don’t worry. They’re there,” Peter said
from beside her.

Another good sign as to Peter’s intentions
was that he hadn’t left her side yet. Even when Justin slowed his
horse to confer with Peter about who might be responsible for the
attack, Peter hadn’t abandoned her and had even included her in the
conversation. Of course, it was just business, and since her shop
was the clearinghouse for news from the whole of western England,
she might have as much to say on the subject as he.

Though she didn’t. She had no idea who might
have ambushed an emissary from France. David had his nobles pretty
well under control as far as Bridget knew, and while she didn’t
know the Welsh situation as well, she’d thought Llywelyn did too.
Apparently, she’d thought wrong.

Bridget tagged along with the others,
uncertain of her right to listen in on the conversation with the
ambassador, but she figured if someone didn’t want her there,
they’d tell her. Peter had helped her dismount, and though he
didn’t take her hand again, he didn’t object to her company either.
They entered Math’s receiving room behind Goronwy and Ieuan, though
Bridget hung back against the wall. She still wore her modern
clothing and thought it best that she didn’t call attention to
herself.