Guardians of Time (9 page)

Lili gripped Bronwen’s hand and nodded.
“Just tired of sitting.”

Goronwy was already at Lili’s other side,
and together he and Bronwen helped her to her feet.

Bridget herself shifted, tired of standing
and sensing it was a good time to leave. She nudged Peter with a
finger to the small of his back.

He nodded imperceptibly before putting his
heels together and bowing to Lili and then to Geoffrey. “If you
think of anything—anything at all—that might help me in identifying
those responsible, please don’t hesitate to say so.”

“Of course,” Geoffrey said.

Peter moved towards the door, lifting his
eyebrows to Bridget as he passed her. She curtseyed and turned on
her heel to follow him out the door. They crossed the great hall at
a rapid walk, making for the door that would take them into the
courtyard. The hall was nearly deserted, even at this hour on
Christmas Eve. Was it just last night that it had been full to
bursting with friends?

It was only now that it hit Bridget that in
allowing the bus to go to Avalon without her, she was not only
turning down her last chance to see her parents ever again, but she
would also never see any of the bus passengers again. Some of them,
like Darla, had been unpleasant, but many had been kind, and she
had liked knowing that others in this world shared her
experiences.

Once outside, Peter headed for the
multi-storied guest hall. Unlike the keep, the guest hall was built
in wood, though with a stone fireplace that ran up the back wall
where the building met the inside of the curtain wall. It was as
warm and comfortable as a medieval house could get, especially
because it had a semi-modern chimney, which was properly vented so
the sitting room didn’t fill with smoke. The ground floor had ten
small guest rooms, with more on a second level reached by a narrow
flight of stairs. Most of the time travelers had been housed last
night in Llangollen, but as Callum’s employees, Peter and she had
stayed at the castle: Peter with Darren, and Bridget with
Rachel.

Peter paused at the bottom of the stairs. “I
know time is pressing, but we have to change out of these clothes
before we go any further.”

Hardly able to believe that he wasn’t
telling her to stay behind, Bridget went up the stairs and pushed
open the door to her room. She and Rachel had shared a narrow bed,
and the room was so small there was only a foot between the bed and
the walls on either side. Bridget had been happy to share, though
she missed the loft where she slept above her shop in Shrewsbury.
The town had grown in population in recent years as prosperity had
come to England under David’s rule, and it was full to bursting
inside its walls. Callum had set her up in the middle of a winding
street, sandwiched between a baker and a wool merchant.

Moving quickly because Peter would be
waiting and she didn’t want him to change his mind and leave the
castle without her, Bridget stripped off her modern clothing and
dressed again in her medieval garb. Almost all clothing in England
and Wales at this time was made of wool—cotton being hard to come
by and not very warm—though Bridget herself could afford expensive
linen undergarments.

Once dressed, she looked longingly at her
insulated, waterproof down parka—really the only piece of modern
clothing she preferred over the medieval version—before throwing
her wool cloak around her shoulders. Among her belongings she had a
down coat, which she’d made herself. But even boiled wool, which
was remarkably waterproof with its natural lanolin, couldn’t keep a
heavy rain from soaking through eventually. At that point, instead
of a nice warm insulating parka, she’d just have wet feathers.

She and Peter returned to the stable so
quickly after their arrival at Dinas Bran that the long-suffering
stable boys had hardly had time to brush their horses. Still, one
of them lifted Bridget’s saddle from its rest and placed it on the
back of her horse. Bridget stood patiently waiting until he
finished strapping it to the beast’s back, and then, once both
horses were ready, mounted with a boost up from Peter.

She held her tongue until they had actually
passed underneath the gatehouse before asking the obvious question.
“Why are you letting me come with you?”

Peter glanced at her. “I need a partner,
someone I can bounce ideas off. You do realize, except for Bronwen,
that we’re the only twenty-firsters left in the Middle Ages?”

Bridget stared at him for a second. She’d
just been thinking about the bus passengers, of course, but— “I
hadn’t thought that far. What with Lili and Ieuan—”

“I know they both can speak American, and
Ieuan’s been to Avalon, but when it comes to it we’re the only ones
who are really in this together. When David said he was taking
everybody back, he meant it.”

Bridget’s gaze went to her gloved hands,
which were clenching the reins tighter than necessary. She couldn’t
say that she’d loved every minute she’d spent in the Middle Ages,
but she’d stayed because what she had here was better than what
she’d left in the twenty-first century. Like Peter, before she’d
stepped off the bus, she’d had to ask one of the other passengers
to let her mum and dad know she was okay. It wasn’t that she never
wanted to see them again. She was concerned about them and knew
they’d care that she was missing.

But she hadn’t ever been convinced that they
loved her all that much. She’d been born long after a much older
brother and sister, both of whom had children of their own before
Bridget herself had come along as a surprise to her mum, who by
then was already past forty. Another child—perhaps pretty or less
prone to dreaming—might have been doted on, but Bridget had always
felt like her mother did nothing but sigh over the inconvenience
Bridget had brought into her life. And her dad spent every evening
after dinner (which was eaten in front of the telly) down at the
pub. Growing up, Bridget had been put to bed most nights before he
came home, or put herself to bed when her mother couldn’t be
bothered.

From the moment David had explained his plan
to her, Bridget had entertained two opposing fantasies about what
would happen when she showed up on her parents’ doorstep on
Christmas Eve. In one, her family cried tears of joy to see her,
asked about her adventures, and sat riveted through her tale of
life in the Middle Ages. In the other, after a perfunctory hug from
her mother, her father told her not to make up stories and went
back to watching his programme.

Maybe it was a failure of imagination on her
part, but she had little doubt which of the two scenarios was
genuinely more likely.

Math

T
hough darkness had
fallen, hiding the world outside from his immediate view, Math was
still recovering from the crash that wasn’t. In his mind’s eye, he
could see the bus hit the cliff wall, which he knew, as surely as
he knew his own name, would kill the woman he loved most in the
world, only to have it vanish as if it had no more substance than a
puff of smoke.

As Jane directed the bus down the road,
having left the other bus passengers to their own devices, Anna sat
with her hand in his. “You okay?”

“Ach. I’m fine,” he lied boldly. “It’s you
I’m concerned about. You’re still shaking.”

“It’s one thing to time travel by mistake,”
Anna said. “It’s quite another when we do it deliberately. I’ve
actually never done it on purpose before.”

“Your brother has, however, and is a
madman,” Math said, more calmly than he actually felt.

“I heard that,” Dafydd said, though he
didn’t turn around. He was bent over beside Jane at the front of
the bus, peering out the windshield. Snow fell in fat flakes, which
the wipers flicked away.

“What about the time it doesn’t work?” Anna
said.

“O ye of little faith,” Dafydd said.

“We will cross that bridge when we come to
it,” Meg said, glancing at Dafydd and then back to Anna. “Let’s not
borrow trouble.”

Dafydd spun on his heel to look at his
mother. “You need to call Aunt Elisa.”

“I do, but I kind of wanted to know a bit
more about what we’re doing first.” She gestured to the others,
most of whom were focused intently on the screens on their
phones.

“Give us another minute.” Callum craned his
neck to look at something on Cassie’s screen.

Math had glanced at Anna’s phone, but
nothing about it made any sense to him. If, for some reason, they
had to stay here longer than Dafydd intended, he’d learn how to use
one. But until that day, he’d rather focus on his surroundings.

He’d grown familiar with the bus over the
last year, such that it had ceased to be more than a curiosity, but
its low growl as it moved along the road had him rethinking his
complacency. When he’d ordered the road to the cliff built to
Dafydd’s specifications, he’d been unable to picture exactly how
Dafydd’s plan was supposed to work. Now that he was here, Math
could understand why it was necessary to make the road as smooth as
possible. They were moving faster than Math had ever moved in his
life, and yet he was sitting still, holding his wife’s hand. The
bus hardly rocked.

The lights and trees beyond the bus flashed
past. Math felt a little queasy, in fact, looking at them, and he
bent forward to look out the front window instead. Red lights from
vehicles in front of the bus shone in the darkness. He sat back,
shaking his head. “I am a stranger in a strange land.”

“Funny you should say that,” Meg said. “It’s
the title of a book about a human raised on Mars who comes to
earth.”

Math smiled. “I was quoting Exodus.”

Meg laughed. “Of course you were.” She
tipped her head to Dafydd. “Do you know where we’re going,
kiddo?”

“The hospital first,” Dafydd said. “It’s
nearer to Bangor than Caernarfon and on the way to Rachel’s dad’s
clinic.”

“I can’t believe we’re finally home,” Jane
said from the driver’s seat. “It’s like a dream come true.” She
glanced at Dafydd. “Thank you.”

Dafydd bent his head in silent
acknowledgement.

“I would agree that it is like a dream,”
Math said. “I keep waiting for the moment when I wake up back in my
own bed in Dinas Bran.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t turn very quickly
into a nightmare,” Anna said.

Meg pulled out her own phone from the bag at
her feet—a
backpack
Anna called it, for good reason as it
had big wide straps that fit snugly over the wearer’s shoulders. It
was the same bag Dafydd had retrieved years ago from where Meg had
left it near Hadrian’s Wall. She took out a ‘phone jack’, which
Math knew about from a primer Anna had given him as she’d packed
her own phone into her pack, and plugged it into the side of the
bus.

Then she looked at Dafydd. “Are you sure our
phones are untraceable?”

He raised both shoulders in an exaggerated
shrug. “You’re asking me? I wasn’t here last time. You bought them
in Oregon a year ago, barely used them, and then disappeared. If
the US government wants us, and they are willing to put effort into
tracking us through those phones—and leaving a trace on them that
could be picked up a year later—then more power to them. We’ll see
who’s awake on Christmas Eve.”

“MI-5 may be aware of us too,” Callum said,
somewhat absently as he was still reading on his phone. “We’re
going to have to bin these and get different ones.”

“That’ll be a trick on Christmas Eve,” Meg
said.

“Tesco’s open,” Cassie said. “A sign on the
front of the store said they’re open for a few hours tomorrow
too.”

“Damn American influence,” Callum said with
a smile directed at his wife, who was, of course, an American.
“They ruin everything.”

“What about identification?” Dafydd said. “I
don’t have any.”

“It’s only you, Math, and Papa who don’t,”
Anna said. “I brought my driver’s license. Even though it has
expired, I thought it might do in a pinch.”

“In England, the authorities aren’t allowed
to ask for identification unless you’re suspected of a crime,” Mark
said with the same absent tone Callum had used. He was focused on
his laptop, which he’d hooked up to his phone by a long cord. Math
knew that Mark had kept his laptop charged thanks to the electric
power available in the bus barn, just so he could use it the minute
they arrived in Avalon. “Checking for weapons is different.”

Dafydd spread his hands wide. “If they stop
the bus, they’ll find my many weapons, but I’m just a student who
forgot his ID at home.”

Anna coughed and laughed at the same time.
“Anyone who believes that is an idiot.”

“It’s how I’ve been treated whenever I’m
here,” Dafydd said. “I can’t see why it’ll be any different this
time.”

“Ideally, you won’t get separated from us
this time,” Callum said, “so it won’t be an issue.”

Jane exited the motorway and, a few moments
later, stopped the bus near a well-lit complex of buildings with
the words ‘Ysbyty Gwynedd’ emblazoned on a large sign at the
entrance. Ysbyty was a word Math hadn’t known until Rachel had
introduced the concept of a hospital and suggested he build one in
Llangollen. His hospital was called ‘Ysbyty Gwynedd’ too.

Anna patted his knee. “Why are you
smiling?”

He pointed with his chin to the sign. “I
like the continuity of it.”

“Right,” Dafydd said. “This is where you
guys get off.”

Math peered at the hospital entrance. A man
in green was standing several paces away down the sidewalk, a white
stick that smoked and glowed orange between his fingers. He was
watching the bus with interest, smoke pouring from his nostrils as
he breathed out. Math stared at him, confused as to what modern
devilry this could be. Then, with a flick of his fingers, the man
shot the stick into the snow and strode back towards the glass
doors at the front of the hospital.