Warden of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book 8) (12 page)

“I don’t know,” I said. “I don’t think we have the time to go toilet to toilet, not if whoever planted this here discovers that we’ve found it. It could be set off remotely, right?”

“I think it’s a timer with a digital clock,” Callum said. “This one looks like it came right out of a terrorist’s manual. You can find out how to make one in two minutes on the internet.”

“Last I checked, we have no internet,” I said.

“We do not. Nor C-4.” He glanced at me. “Given the amount of C-4 here, telling you to stand back is perhaps a waste of air, but I’d like you to stand back.”

I obeyed, moving outside the guarderobe itself into the little corridor that led to the main gallery running through the walls of the keep.

“It’s the timer that caused the glow.” Callum’s voice echoed out of the little room. “You can buy ones that don’t light up, but it seems whoever did this didn’t think about that until he put the bomb together. C-4 is quite stable and explodes only when combined with a detonator. It’s the detonator that is set off by an electrical charge, which then sets off the C-4.”

“My God,” I said. It was such a simple arrangement to cause the incredible destruction we were facing if we couldn’t stop it. I peered around the corner again, so I could see him. “Can you make this one safe for now?”

“When it isn’t connected, the detonator is more dangerous than the C-4,” Callum said. “But that isn’t to say—”

He broke off as feet pounded toward us, coming along the corridor. So much for quiet. The older soldier had returned. I stepped out of the doorway into the passage and grabbed his arm. “My family—”

“George woke them. They’re out, and the top floors are cleared.” He looked around the corner to see Callum on his knees, his arm reaching into the toilet chute. “His lordship’s wife went with them. What do you want me to do now?”

Before I could answer, Ieuan arrived, skidding to a halt behind the soldier. “I have done as you ordered. Bevyn is awake and has the evacuation well in hand. Many of your guard are reluctant to leave before you, but they are following orders anyway, particularly once told that you’d sent Lili and Arthur to St. Mildred’s. Why are we doing this?”

“Explosives,” I said. C-4 would mean nothing to him, but he’d seen the effect of gunpowder. Only Callum and I knew that C-4 would result in a much greater explosion than any gunpowder producible in the Middle Ages.

Then Justin appeared at Ieuan’s right shoulder, having brought a half-dozen of my men with him. Any more and I’d have a small army. They ranged down the corridor behind him, ready for whatever threat came at them, though the one we were facing couldn’t be stopped by any of them. Another man I didn’t recognize, slender and stooped, who couldn’t have been more than a few inches over five feet, stood a pace behind Justin, wringing his hands.

“The soldier you sent to me spoke of a glow in the toilet,” Justin said. “I don’t know what this is about, but your urgency infected him to the point that I sent a few men to find out if other toilets in the keep have a glow inside them too. And I found Tom, here, thinking that I would bring him to you to see if he could help. He is one of the men who cleans the latrines.”

This was why I kept Justin around. His initiative had always impressed me. “When was the last time you cleaned this latrine, Tom?” I said.

“Yesterday morning, sire.” Tom’s voice shook. “Just after midnight, it was.”

I put a hand on his shoulder, trying to calm him. “How many latrines are there in the keep?”

“Er—”

I gazed at him, waiting for an answer.

“He can’t count, sire,” Justin said. “I believe there are ten, two on each level but the first.”

“I just wants to do my job, my lord,” Tom said.

“Are you saying you like cleaning the latrines?”

Tom ducked his head. “Nobody bothers me. I just do my work, sire, and don’t have to talk.”

I’d never considered the possible benefits of being a latrine cleaner before, but I could see how a certain personality might prefer it to many other jobs. “But the smell—”

“Oh, you get used to it, sire. I find I can’t smell anything anymore. Or taste anything neither.” Then Tom looked past me, his eyes widening.

I turned to see Callum, still on one knee in the guarderobe. He’d carefully removed the detonator and laid out the pieces of the bomb on the stone floor: the block of C-4, a slim silver detonator with wires running to a nine-volt battery, and a kitchen timer, purchasable at any store back in Avalon.

While we watched, he detached the timer from the battery and detonator, and then he stared down to where it lay in the palm of his hand. The faint white glow that had lit the toilet chute now shone into his face. His look of concern had me taking a few steps toward him. “Callum?”

He looked up, hesitated for a second, and then handed the timer to me.

It read 14:53. As I watched, the readout went to 14:52, and then 14:51.

“We can’t assume this bomb is the only one. We have to move,” I said. “Now.”

Chapter Eleven

W
e moved. We only had to go down another flight of steps, cross the great hall, and exit by the main stairs to get out of the keep, but Justin took us down another flight to the kitchen. “I feel like you’re a target, my lord,” he said to me by way of explanation. “I don’t know who’s waiting for us out there. By now, we’ve evacuated a hundred people from the castle. More. If the danger is as great as you say, and the men who did this are watching, they’ll know the alarm has been raised.”

“There was no help for that after a certain point,” I said.

“We don’t have to think too hard about who set the explosives,” Callum said as we ran across the deserted kitchen and exited through the back door, which had been left open.

“No, we don’t,” I said. “How many hours in advance could that timer have been set?”

“Up to twenty-four hours, I’d guess,” he said. “I’d have to look at the timer once it stops counting down, but it’s a clock too and appears to have the capacity for keeping military time.”

A flight of steps led up to the bailey, and we took them. Carew was waiting for me at the top. He was another who hadn’t been willing to leave the castle without me.

The rain had stopped, which was too bad. Pouring rain could have gone a long way to damping things down after an explosion, and it would have made the people more likely to move faster in order to get under cover.

I halted on the top step, taking in my surroundings with a swift glance. The evacuation of the keep may have occurred with dispatch, but the bailey was in chaos. Every horse had been released from the stable and now many milled about, undirected, as the men who’d released them went back for other animals or people. Too many people had too many possessions they didn’t want to leave behind. Canterbury Castle obviously hadn’t done a fire drill in far too long.

I spied Bevyn and Huw near the town gate. Bevyn’s mouth was open, shouting at the people to get them moving, though I couldn’t hear his words and few seemed to be heeding them. Huw had his arm around a woman with a baby in her arms. More soldiers were trying to herd the people in question—craftspeople, servants, and hangers-on to my court—all in varying stages of undress, towards either gate. One man went so far as to throw a woman, who’d been screaming incoherently at him, over his shoulder and run with her to the exit.

“Only a few understand the danger,” Ieuan said.

“They can’t,” Callum said. “None have seen what C-4 can do. The gases expand at eight thousand meters per second.”

“Fire?” Ieuan said.

“It isn’t like black powder. It doesn’t set things on fire, but fire is part of the explosion.” Callum looked at me, a helpless expression on his face at trying to explain the unexplainable. He took in a breath. “Short answer, it won’t set the keep on fire.” Ieuan looked relieved, but Callum’s face was white and drawn. “David, it won’t matter. We can’t outrun this explosion. It isn’t like in the movies. Half a kilogram of C-4 can destroy a lorry.”

I hadn’t actually wanted to hear that. In Avalon, I’d seen the remains of royal castles destroyed by explosives during the time of Oliver Cromwell. He’d blown big holes in them and undermined towers, for the express purpose of making them indefensible. At that time, people hadn’t been living in them, but Canterbury keep was home to many. Even if the walls didn’t entirely come down—which they might since C-4 had many times the power of seventeenth century gunpowder—it would destroy everything inside. Including people, if any had been left behind.

“We need to get the people moving,” I said.

“Sir Justin!” A young soldier burst from the entrance to the keep and ran towards us. He pulled up panting. “We counted at least three more lights!”

“Did you touch them?” Justin said to the soldier.

He shook his head. “We did as you ordered, sir.”

Justin nodded and looked at me. “I told them to look for them and then to run.”

“As they should have,” I said. If we’d known sooner, between Callum, Peter, and Darren, maybe we could have disarmed them all, but now we didn’t have time.

Three more soldiers spilled out of the main entrance to the keep. One of them raised his hand, signaling to us. “That’s everyone!”

Ieuan held my upper arm in a strong grip. “Dafydd, we need to get you to safety.”

Justin nodded vigorously.

 What kind of time do we have, Callum?” I said.

He checked the timer. “Not quite eleven minutes.”

It had taken only four minutes to get this far. I looked back up to the keep. Despite the soldiers’ assurances, I wasn’t convinced that nobody had remained inside, but we were past the point where anyone could go back to check. Even three bricks of C-4, properly placed, could reduce an entire floor to smithereens.

It shouldn’t destroy the castle.

Maybe.

It depended on their location and if they were tied to some kind of accelerant. In Avalon, gasoline could multiply an explosion many times. We didn’t have that here, but I didn’t know if putting the bombs in the latrine chutes, with their stew of gases, would have a similar effect.

Cassie ran up, leading a horse.

“You were supposed to have gone with Lili,” I said.

She looked at me blankly for a second, because I didn’t often tell her what to do, and then said, “I’ve been helping. The people aren’t leaving. They don’t understand why they should. I don’t understand why they should.”

Callum took the horse’s bridle from her. “C-4, Cassie. There are at least three more bombs beyond the one I defused.”

Her face paled. She was from the modern world, and while she hadn’t been a soldier there, she was lately of MI-5. She knew C-4’s destructive power. She’d seen it with her own eyes in Cardiff last year when it had brought down the courthouse and city hall. I hadn’t been there, but everyone had told me what it had been like. I hoped the castle didn’t contain as much explosive as had been used then, though it would take far less to reduce Canterbury Castle to rubble.

“Are Bronwen and Catrin here too?” Ieuan was looking at Cassie, fear for his wife and daughter in his eyes.

“They went with Lili and Arthur,” Cassie said, and then looked past Ieuan to me. “William went with them to keep them safe. Others too.”

I took in a breath, turning my attention to the people before me. Both gates were wide open. One led straight into the town along Castle Street, the other to farmers’ fields. These people needed to go through them. I glanced at Callum. Another two minutes gone. My heart was pounding hard, but not so much it deafened me—or stopped me from thinking.

I threw myself onto the horse Cassie had brought. “The people will go if I order them to. Find horses for yourselves because we’ll need them later, and then get out of here. I want this bailey cleared with two minutes to spare. These people aren’t sheep, but they’ll move together if we get them going.” I slapped the reins on the horse’s side. “Ya!”

I didn’t wait to see what the others did, but directed the horse to the left. A young man was dragging a crate across the bailey. He saw me coming and looked up wide-eyed. I slowed as I approached him, leaned down, and said, “Run.”

I didn’t need a crown on my head for everyone at Canterbury Castle to know me by sight. His mouth dropped open. And then he ran.

Like a sheepdog herding his flock, I sent the horse through the center of the bailey, riding in a curving arc to herd the people towards Bevyn and Huw at the town gate. Then I turned back and rode the other way, urging everyone who remained towards the back gate. A little girl crouched crying on the ground while her older brother tried to drag her with him. I reached down my hand. “Pick her up. She can ride with me, and then you need to follow us out of here.”

The boy grasped his sister around the waist and lifted her. I got my arm around her waist and tugged her across my lap. She was heavier than she looked. Then I raised one hand into the air, wishing I had my sword too. I pointed at the keep and shouted. “My friends! The keep is coming down. We must leave here now!”

Callum, who’d found a horse to ride, cupped his hands around his mouth. “Four minutes, sire!”

“Go!” I bellowed the word, and finally the fifty people who’d remained in the bailey surged towards the two gates.

Ieuan appeared out of the crowd, running between two horses. Cassie had mounted my horse, Cadfan, and three more horses followed on leading reins behind her. With her long black hair flowing down her back and her cloak wrapped around her tightly, she could have been a native princess in the wild west, rounding up wild horses. Justin and each of my soldiers had mounted too, and then Carew swung onto one of the horses Cassie had corralled.

Fortunately, the remaining untethered horses weren’t wild and wanted to follow. Although the people were panicked because we’d woken them in the middle of the night to evacuate the castle—and because they’d heard a fear in my voice that hadn’t ever been there before—the keep was still intact. The threat was still theoretical.

I pulled in beside Callum. We had only fifty feet to go to reach the gate. “What’s the time?”