Warden of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book 8) (19 page)

Callum had gone to speak to the owner of the inn, which the maid Beatrice had mentioned last night. When I asked if he’d learned anything new, he shrugged. “It’s a start. This is the way investigations work: you ask questions and follow your nose until you either run into a wall or learn something that leads you to more questions.”

Once I brought Callum and the others up to speed on our latest news from Dover, I said, “What we have to ask ourselves now is where Lee went from here, and what role the French have played in his plans.”

“Frenchmen in Canterbury and French spies at Dover have me envisioning white sails on the horizon,” Callum said.

“That was my first thought, too. It isn’t something I want to see in my lifetime,” I said.

England had been invaded from Europe many times. The Romans had done it. The Saxons/English themselves were the product of a long invasion process over the course of several hundred years, which had pushed the Britons into Wales and turned them Welsh. In 1066, William the Bastard had successfully landed at Pevensy before marching up the coast to Hastings, where he defeated the Saxon king, Harold, to open the path to taking the throne of England himself.

Since then, French troops had landed on England’s shores in two wars: during the civil war between Empress Maud and King Stephen a hundred and fifty years ago, and in the time of King John when many barons had been discontented with John’s rule and essentially invited the French king in.

However, without a support network in England to prepare the way for the invasion, crossing the English Channel to disembark safely on one of its many beaches was a daunting task. It might be only twenty-one miles across the Channel (to Dover), but the Channel was a fickle body of water. Storms could blow up without warning. Ships were small and an invader needed dozens, if not hundreds, to carry the requisite number of troops and horses, making the organizational aspect of the conquest daunting. Finding a hospitable beach was a huge task in and of itself, since no port would welcome them. Plus, no matter who was making the attempt, they would surely be woefully outnumbered by the soldiers who faced them.

King Philip had shown himself to be a daring ruler, however, and if he was already working with the pope to weaken my position in Aquitaine, he might believe himself so strong he was willing to attempt it. I had been working to grow my navy since my crowning, but Philip had a head start. Since 1284, the French crown had been building a naval base at Rouen, modeled after the Spanish shipyard at Seville. He was building Genoese-style galleys and clinker-built barges, not dissimilar from the English barges for which the Thames was famous. My spies had informed me ages ago that Philip’s endeavor was on a similar scale to my own galley-building program.

Unlike the historical England of this time, I was in the process of building a standing navy. It functioned more like a border patrol most of the time, with a dose of search and rescue thrown in for good measure. The men of the navy worked with the Cinque Ports—not to limit their power, but to augment their forces. Most of the patrolling occurred along the stretch of coast that fronted the European continent. Dover, as the closest geographical point to France, was at the center of the patrol. This concession had appeased the men of the Cinque Ports and reaffirmed their importance and power.

I couldn’t attest to the seaworthiness of Philip’s ships or their ability to cross the English Channel in a storm, but if Philip wanted to invade, it might well be that he had the wherewithal to do it.

“I’m torn between wanting to pursue Lee wherever he’s gone and believing I should be coming with you to Dover,” Callum said, “because that’s where you’re going next, isn’t it?”

 “I have to,” I said. “You, however, can do more good here. I have other men who can help me deal with the Church and the French. As your wife pointed out to me ten minutes ago, you were trained for this kind of thing.”

“Darren and Peter even more than I.”

I waved my hand dismissively. “You are the Earl of Shrewsbury and from Avalon. Your presence will give weight to their authority, and you have access to how Lee thinks. Find him. Ieuan and Justin are more than capable of keeping me safe on the road to Dover.”

Callum nodded his consent. “By the way, I checked in with Sir Thomas. Mike and Noah will be put in the ground by noon. Shall Cassie and I attend the burial as your representatives? I can’t imagine there’ll be a large crowd.”

I sighed. “Yes, go. It should be me, but—”

“You should go to Dover,” Callum said. “Their deaths are not your fault.”

“Have you figured out yet why Lee killed them?” I said.

Peter had been standing a few feet away, talking to Cassie, while Callum and I had been speaking. Now he cleared his throat and came closer. “My guess, my lord, is that they’d become a liability. They knew too much about Lee and his plans.”

“That seems likely,” Callum said. “They helped Lee set the charges in the early hours of yesterday morning, left the castle with him, and then before they’d gone far at all, he killed them rather than risk exposure through them. Wherever he was going, he didn’t want them to come.”

“He no longer believed he needed their help.” Peter started to turn away, but then he stopped and looked back.

“What is it?” I said. “If you know anything that might help us here, don’t keep quiet.”

“Well—thinking about Lee’s connection with Ireland. Please correct me if I’m wrong, but last night did you say that you want the Normans to leave Ireland but haven’t yet found a way to make it happen?”

“Yes, of course,” I said. “Didn’t you know that?”

Peter licked his lips. “No. You’ve played those cards close to your chest, my lord. It occurs to me that Lee and I have talked about some things that I should have shared with you sooner.”

We’d moved to one side of the courtyard, away from the stamping of horses’ hooves as my men prepared to ride yet again. The smell of fresh bread wafted to me from the palace kitchen, and my stomach growled. I hadn’t eaten yet, and I would have given a small fortune to surprise the cook with the pleasure of serving the King of England. Perhaps it was callous of me to be thinking of my stomach at a time like this. Regardless, I felt events pressing me forward, so I simply gestured that Peter should continue.

“Lee’s uncle died when he was five,” he said. “He was killed in the Greysteel massacre. I’d never heard of it before Lee told me about it.”

“I know of it,” Callum said. “That would have been around 1993, at the start of the peace process.”

“I don’t know anything about it,” I said.

Peter sighed. “Members of the Ulster Defense Force opened fire during a Halloween party at an Irish Catholic pub.”

“Oh,” I said.

Atrocities had been committed by both sides during the centuries of strife between Catholics and Protestants, Irish and Anglo-Irish, for the rule of Ireland—to neither side’s credit.

“He never talked about any of this to you?” Peter said.

“No,” I said. “I’m coming to realize that he never talked about anything of importance to me.”

A clattering of hooves on the cobbles drew our attention to the gate, through which Darren appeared. He reined in and dismounted, and then made a beeline for us.

“You’ve found something,” Callum said.

Darren’s eyes were bright. “We found where he was staying. He was there as late as this morning, though he left with the dawn. We’re canvassing the area now for anyone else who noticed where he might have been headed.”

The lines around Callum’s eyes smoothed for the first time since I’d shown him the bomb in the latrine. “That’s our first bit of luck. It means we aren’t as far behind him as I feared.”

Chapter Eighteen

T
hankfully, the journey to Dover was the most uneventful thing that had happened to me in the last two days. It didn’t even rain during the ride. We came over a slight rise to the north of the castle by early afternoon, and suddenly there it was, just across a few fields from us. I’d sent scouts ahead of me, of course, and they hadn’t reported anything amiss when they’d returned, but I didn’t want to walk into another trap either. We took a moment to regroup before riding the last third of a mile to the gatehouse.

I was suspicious enough of everyone that I even feared the message from Dover hadn’t come from Lili at all but had been a means to lure me into an ambush. “What do you think?” I didn’t need to pass Ieuan the binoculars through which I’d been examining the castle. Bronwen had given him his own pair last Christmas, made by artisans in London who’d combined technology from Avalon with knowledge learned from Muslim scientists in the Holy Land.

I had never been to Dover, which now that I was here, I realized was an oversight on my part. The castle was huge, even by London standards, and overlooked the English Channel from the top of the white limestone cliffs for which Dover was famous. It had a great square keep, designed by the same man who’d designed Canterbury, along with inner and outer curtain walls, towers, and gates. It had an actual counter-defense tunnel, too, built years ago during the first Barons’ War at the time of King John, when
he’d
had to defend against a French invasion.

“It looks okay,” Ieuan said. “The flags fly normally, and I see men along the wall-walk. They appear to be in a state of alert.”

“As they should be,” I said. “Hopefully the castellan has had enough time to prepare for our arrival.”

“Lili will have him eating out of her palm by now,” Ieuan said.

With that hope, we left the relative safety of the woods and showed ourselves to the men on the battlements. Carew and Sir Stephen, the Dover constable, met us as we entered the castle grounds. I greeted them quickly and immediately asked to see Lili. Leaving Ieuan and Justin to sort out the men and horses, I went to the hall, where she was waiting for me. I hugged her tightly, heedless of who was watching, and moved to a smaller receiving room off of it so she and I could speak in private.

In crossing under the gatehouse, for all that I was the King of England, I had felt like we were breaching the walls of an enemy fortress—and that was essentially what Lili said to me when she explained why she’d come to Dover instead of riding to Chilham. “We fought the English for years, you know.”

“I fought the English for years too,” I said. “How does that explain your presence here?”

“You sent me to Chilham, I know, but once we arrived at the stable to collect the horses for the men who would accompany me, I started thinking more carefully about what Lee had done and why. I remembered the Frenchmen he’d met with, whom we didn’t know anything about. Ieuan had sent men to do a house-to-house search of Canterbury yesterday, but with the castle destroyed, I thought there was a good chance the Frenchmen had gone already rather than stay to watch Lee’s handiwork.”

“With the castle fallen, the Frenchmen would have been worried about accusations and blame directed at them,” I said.

“That’s what I thought too. And then I put myself in the place of any of us before you became the King of England. Your father almost died ten years ago. At that time, we would have rejoiced to have had the means to destroy Canterbury Castle.”

“I wouldn’t have liked killing civilians,” I said, “but you’re right. C-4 would have felt like a godsend.”

“We’ve become the very people we despised,” Lili said.

I shook my head, wanting to deny what she was saying but knowing that I couldn’t. Lili put out a hand to me. “For the people of Wales and Scotland, nothing could be further from the truth, but to the King of France, or to the native Irish in lands conquered by your barons, you are still the enemy.”

“I can see that,” I said. “How does this get you to Dover again?”

She smiled. “I simply started thinking like a Welshman, and what we would have done ten years ago. We wouldn’t have stayed to view our handiwork. You and your men would have fled back to Wales. These men, however, are from France. It occurred to me that they—”

“—would try to go home to France. Of course,” I said, glad I had Lili to do my thinking for me because I’d been really slow on the uptake.

“I explained my thinking to Carew,” she said. “He didn’t want to go against your wishes, and we spent precious minutes debating the right course of action. But then he decided that I could be right—and if I was, it was worth the extra ten miles of riding to find out.”

“I’m glad he listened to you,” I said.

She waved a hand dismissively. “It is you, however, who really made their capture possible.”

I scoffed because it couldn’t possibly be true. “How kind of you to say. Why?”

“You’ve locked up our ports so tightly that no ship comes in or out without inspection. It’s easier to get
out
of England because your primary concern is disease, not smuggling, but your patrol ships stop boats and check for papers. Dover patrol had already caught the French spies, who’d put to sea from the beach rather than the harbor, before we arrived. Carew was all set to mobilize a small army to scout for them, but then it wasn’t necessary because the patrol boat returned to port with the Frenchmen in custody. Then it was merely a matter of sending word to you.”

“Wow.” I shook my head at Lili. “You well deserve your membership in the Order of the Pendragon.”

She smirked. “So Carew said.”

I laughed, remembering what Callum had taught me about managing any organization, whether medieval or modern: find the best people—people you trust, pay them well, and then leave them alone to do their job. It just so happened that one of the most trustworthy and intelligent people I knew was my own wife.

Lili laughed with me, but then she sobered. “The constable here, Sir Stephen, has also had a message from Henry de Lacy.”

As the Earl of Lincoln, Lacy had been a confidant of King Edward before his death. At Gilbert de Clare’s urging, in another blatant act of bribery, I’d named him commander of my tiny Royal Navy. It wasn’t that he needed greater standing in court, since he was already one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in Britain. Standing meant nothing, however, without the king’s trust. I didn’t want him working behind my back because he thought he didn’t have it.