Warden of Time (The After Cilmeri Series Book 8) (26 page)

I hugged her, throwing off the anxiety that had briefly consumed me, and laughed. “That so totally didn’t work like I planned.” I glanced upwards again to the tower. “I’m lucky to be alive.”

Lili looked to the top of the battlement too and took in an audible breath. It had been a long way to fall, especially looking at it from down here. “Justin and I were watching from the top of the gatehouse. I never want to see anything like that again.”

“My lord!” Ieuan elbowed his way through the crowd to stand at the top of the rampart beside Justin. “I saw it all—” His eyes were wide and staring.

“I’m okay, Ieuan,” I said. “I’m okay.”

“How did you do that?” he said.

“Do what?”

Following his sister down the embankment, somewhat less gracefully in his heavy boots, Ieuan slipped and slid until he came to rest in a squat just above the level of the water. Lili and I were sopping wet, of course, but he managed to keep all but the toes of his boots dry. “I’d never seen the traveling from the afar before.”

“What do you mean?” I said. “I didn’t travel. It didn’t work.”

“Dafydd,” Lili said. “It did work. You disappeared and came back.”

“I did?”

“You disappeared halfway down and then reappeared about a foot above the water,” Ieuan said.

Lili looked stricken and gestured helplessly with one hand. “Lee didn’t return with you.”

It was like I’d been punched in the gut. I believed her because she couldn’t be mistaken about something like that. I hadn’t been able to find Lee because he wasn’t here. I finally noticed the great welts across the end of my left thumb and two fingers. They’d been burned by the barrel of the gun when it had fired.

 “He fired the gun at me, and instead of dying, I came home.” I could hear the wonder in my own voice. “Coming back here saved my life.”

I’d jumped from the roof of the hospital in Cardiff in complete belief that I would end up back in the Middle Ages. It wasn’t that I took my own importance for granted or that the power behind my family’s ability to time travel had been resolved. We had a lot of theories, but I’d come to the conclusion that we possessed a quirk in our genetics that opened a wormhole in time at moments when our lives were in danger, and usually in a time of abject terror as well.

To that end, in the space of a few seconds, I’d gone to the modern world,
dropped Lee off
, and returned.

Lili put a hand to my cheek, and I pulled her closer, renewing my tight embrace. It had been a very near thing. Then I looked at her brother over the top of her head. “How many people were watching, do you think?”

“Many,” Ieuan said.

“More people than at Rhuddlan?” I said. “We managed to keep that situation contained.”

“We won’t be able to contain this,” Ieuan said. “You’re the king, and people who haven’t had the privilege of meeting you before witnessed a miracle just now.”

I made a move to run a hand through my hair and stopped myself, since my hand was wet and covered in muck from the moat. The very idea of miracles made me uncomfortable, never mind that I might be part of one myself.

“Did Callum find the C-4?” I said.

“Yes. You kept him busy long enough to disarm three of them,” Lili said. “Lee put the bombs in the latrine shafts in the tower, just like at Canterbury.”

I looked down at Lili, hearing the
but
in her voice.

“He was working on a fourth when you jumped,” Lili said.

Ieuan stuck out a hand to me. “Let’s get you out of there.”

I grasped his hand and allowed him to help me out of the water, and then we both pulled Lili up the embankment. It was only when we were at the top of the turf wall that I really took notice of the hundreds of people silently watching our progress. They lined not only the wall-walk on the battlement above the ditch but also the pathway that led back to the gate. I raised a hand in acknowledgement of their presence, and then fisted it, as if in triumph. As one, they bowed to me, which gave me a moment to gather my thoughts. I had nothing to say to them, no words that could explain what had happened, but I was their king, and I had to say something.

“All is well.” I gestured that they should rise.

Several men, led by Sir Stephen, hustled out of the castle. Jeeves was among them and he was carrying blankets. In a moment, both Lili and I were warmly wrapped.

I put Lili’s hand in the crook of my arm and started walking towards the gatehouse, as if being soaked from head to foot was a normal occurrence and we were out for a Sunday stroll. The crowd of onlookers parted to let us through, many falling to their knees as I passed. I couldn’t blame them, really. I was still in awe of what had happened to me too.

I wondered what the explanation was going to be this time: had Avalon accepted Lee and spit me out? Or could I spin it in such a way as to say that the journey had saved my life while at the same time taking Lee off my hands? That certainly was the way I was choosing to see it.

We reached the stairway to the Fitzwilliam gatehouse. Geoffrey de Geneville met us on the bottom step leading up to the entrance. “Sire.”

“Geneville,” I said. We started up the steps—and not two at a time.

Bronwen met us at the top. “How did you do that?” she said as she hugged Lili and then me, heedless of the fact that we were both soaking wet.

“We’ll talk about it later,” I said. “Right now we have bigger problems.”

“Bigger problems than Lee?” Bronwen said.

I barked a laugh, filled suddenly with a feeling of exhilaration. “It isn’t as if he’s a problem anymore, is he?”

Her brow furrowed. “I suppose not.”

Lee was gone. I hadn’t had to arrest him and see him hanged. His fate was out of my hands. Even with all I’d learned about him—everyone he’d hurt and what he’d destroyed—it would have been hard to do what had to be done with him. Medieval justice, as my mother would have put it, would have been his fate. And it would have been I who would have had to mete it out. I’d have done it out of a sense of justice, and justified it to myself for that reason. But I wouldn’t have liked it.

“Lee told me the King of France is coming,” I said.

Concern entered Bronwen’s eyes. “That’s what everyone is saying.”

“Lee was going to blow a hole in the outer ward so Philip would have an easier time taking the castle,” I said. “He wasn’t here for me.”

Bronwen patted me on the shoulder in a consoling way, half-serious and half-joking. Being the King of England meant that I tended to assume most things that happened in my vicinity were about me. It was a bad habit to get into, except that it had developed because I had been accused of being an insensitive jerk for
not
realizing the effect I had on other people.

“Preparations have begun to counter him,” Ieuan said. “It would be good to know where the fleet intends to land—and we still need more men.”

Many soldiers lined the battlement above the outer ward, and one leaned through a crenellation to look down at us, waving a hand to get my attention. “It’s Clare, sire!” He pointed northwest. “He comes!”

I looked at the soldier for a beat or two as I processed what he’d said. And then all of us took the steps up to where he stood. An army was coming towards us. It was the very thing I needed. Valence may have been fooled by my citizen army back at Windsor, resulting in his capture and hanging, but I needed real soldiers if I was going to repel an invasion army.

“Clare to the rescue,” Bronwen said. “Again.”

Lili slipped her hand into mine. “He relishes that role. Admittedly, he’s also very good at it.”

Chapter Twenty-five

I
t took the rest of the morning for Clare and his men to reach Dover Castle. By the time the company passed underneath the gatehouse and Clare had made his way to my receiving room, I’d had time for a quick bath and had dressed in yet another set of borrowed clothes—these somewhat finer than the ones I’d acquired either from the Archbishop’s palace or from Jeeves the night before. I decided not to ask who was going shirtless at my behest.

I’d made good use of the time too, calling all my advisers currently at Dover in to talk to me. Geoffrey had become a veritable font of good information about how to repel the King of France with efficiency and the least loss of life. As I’d said to Bronwen, the aftermath of Lee’s disappearance was still before us—uncovering his allies sprang to mind—but if I’d really taken him to Avalon, he himself was no longer our problem.

“Sire.” Clare stopped fifteen feet from me and bowed. He was of average height, but that was the only thing about him that was ordinary. He had graying red hair, piercing blue eyes, and a way of looking at you that made you think he could see right through you. His line was as noble (though not royal) as any man’s in England (more so than mine), and he dressed the part in silk and linen. He was also sporting a newly trimmed mustache and, fascinatingly, a goatee. Like the hair on the top of his head, the red goatee was liberally salted with white, reminding me of my father. I rubbed my still unshaven chin. If I grew one of those, Lili might never kiss me again.

I waved a hand for him to rise and moved forward to embrace him the French way, with a kiss on each cheek. “You came.”

“You summoned me, sire.” His brow furrowed. “I hear there’s been some trouble.”

I was glad to laugh. “You could say that.”

Trouble was Clare’s middle name, and he would probably be the first to admit it. For all that he had vacillated between loyalties in his younger years, I had no doubt about his loyalty to me now. He had a magnetism and sincerity about him—and no claim to the throne himself—that had convinced me, as it had convinced Edward, that he could be trusted.

“Carew met me on my way in and related some of the recent events that have occurred, though he didn’t have time to go into detail. Are we sailing for France?”

“We might have been, if the last day had not happened. I know you are concerned about your lands there,” I said. “But no—France is coming to us.”

Clare raised one eyebrow. “That is bold of Philip.” The nonchalance was typical of the man.

“He thinks me weak,” I said.

“He is wrong.”

“Perhaps so, but I was certainly foolish,” I said. “For the last three months, I have harbored a traitor in my court and allowed him to connive unimpeded. I have seen the error of my ways, but only because my loyal followers intervened. They were almost too late, and we almost died. It was Lee, as I’m sure Carew told you.”

Clare’s lips twisted in a grimace.

“I see you didn’t like him either,” I said.

“I didn’t know him for a traitor,” Clare said.

“I was arrogant and didn’t listen.”

“It is the other side of the coin we all store in our purse, my lord,” Clare said. “You make decisions every day that would bring a lesser man to his knees, and you must know your own mind in order to do that.”

“I wish I’d been wiser.”

He gave a rueful smile. “I imagine you already are.”

I nodded, unsurprised that he, of all my advisers, understood how events had fallen out as they had.

“I have sent for the leader of the port authority and the commander of the navy,” I said, relieved to put the
mea culpa
part of our conversation behind me. “The Dover Portsman is inappropriately named Jack Butcher. The latter is an old friend of yours, I believe.”

“Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln.” Clare nodded. “I was the one who counseled you to put him in charge of your navy.”

“Well, either he’s really that good, was very lucky, or has better spies than I do, but he sent word yesterday that he believes the King of France is on his way.” I settled a hand on Clare’s shoulder. “His report has been confirmed twice over from unrelated sources.”

“Including Lee, I hear.”

“Yes,” I said.

“Does Lacy know where Philip intends to land?”

“No,” I said. “Nor did Philip’s spies.”

Clare smoothed the goatee he was sporting into a perfect ‘v’. “Would it do any good for someone else to speak to them?”

“Geoffrey de Geneville believed them when they claimed not to know,” I said. “I was witness. More extreme measures of questioning might only reveal what we want to hear, rather than the truth.”

“That Philip moves now is incomprehensible to me,” Clare said. “I can’t understand what he’s thinking.”

I’d heard an earful of what Philip was thinking from Lee, of course. “He thinks he has all the advantages and we are set back on our heels.”

“He’s wrong, sire,” Clare said.

“You bet he is.”

Chapter Twenty-six

“
H
ythe! He’s landing at Hythe!” These words shouted in the corridor followed by a pounding at the door woke me.

Goddamn it!

I’d been standing in an ice cream store, gazing at the various choices, with the server waiting to select my favorite flavor. The dream winked out, superseded by the threat of a French invasion, and I rolled out of bed. I wondered why I even bothered sleeping these days, since some new disaster was going to waken me before I was ready.

Lili rubbed her eyes. “What is the hour?”

“I don’t know.” I turned back to her and leaned heavily on the feather bed, my hands forming fists to support my weight. I bent close to her and kissed her temple. “I’ll find out what’s happening. Stay here for now, and I’ll return when I know more.”

“Send word at the very least,” she said, knowing that sometimes these events got out of control very quickly, and I might not have even a moment to speak to her myself. She snuggled back down under the covers, yawning. “Don’t forget.”

“I won’t.”

I pulled on my breeches and wrapped my cloak around myself before going to the door. It was William de Bohun who’d woken me. He’d returned from Canterbury, it seemed. I stepped into the corridor and pulled the door almost closed, so we could speak without keeping Lili awake. Her pregnancy meant she needed sleep, even in the middle of a war. Short of joining the archers on the walls (which I wouldn’t have put past her), she couldn’t do anything about the preparations at this point anyway.