Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (12 page)

“
We could,” I said. “But
we won’t.”

Humphrey gazed at me, hope
etched in his face.

Hywel’s eyes showed
resigned contempt, but he stood and held out a hand to help the boy
to his feet.

“
Do you swear not to
attempt an escape?” Goronwy said.

“
I swear it,” Humphrey
said. “On my honor as a Bohun.”

Goronwy nodded. “And
perhaps you’ve suddenly discovered what that means, and you care
more about it than you thought you did. You may sleep in the hall
with the other men.”

“
Who is your companion in
the other stall?” Hywel said.

I’d forgotten
him.

“
He’s one of Owain’s men,
one Dai ap Maredudd.”

“
He’ll keep, then. He will
make a good messenger to your grandfather,” Hywel said.

* * * * *

We were into the early
hours of the morning before I managed to escape my duties and find
my bed. With no maid to assist her in undressing, it looked as if
Marged had fallen asleep in what she stood up in. I made a note to
myself to remedy that in the morning. There had to be a local girl
Goronwy could conscript. It was unseemly that she was unattended. I
watched her breathe slowly in and out before blowing out the candle
and crawling into bed beside her. Or rather, beside Anna. The
thought made me smile and for the moment put away the concerns of
the day.

I’d decided that we would
stay in the lodge for several days, hoping for the recovery of some
of my men and for reinforcements from Criccieth and Castell y Bere.
We needed to spread a wide net in hopes of picking up Owain ap
Gruffydd Gwenwynwyn and the men who remained with him, and to
quickly determine what had happened to the inhabitants of the
village. Why had they left their homes in the dead of winter? It
could be for a dozen reasons—disease, famine, marauders—any one of
which would require keeping a close eye on the events in the
surrounding countryside.

It seemed I’d hardly
closed my eyes before I woke to sunlight trickling through a crack
between the wooden shutter and the frame. Anna still slept, but
Marged was awake, her eyes open, studying me.

“
Did you sleep well?” I
asked in French. Goronwy had informed me that her Welsh had
improved over the course of the ride from Criccieth—as if she were
remembering something she’d merely forgotten instead of learning it
from scratch—but she was more comfortable in French and I wanted
precise answers this morning.

“
Well enough,” she said.
“I don’t know that I really expected to, after
yesterday.”

“
It was your first
battle,” I said. “One hopes that it will be your last.”

“
The older man who died
was your friend. I’m sorry.” She fingered the embroidery on the
pillowcase, not looking at me, and then glanced up to check my
face.

“
He was my seneschal,” I
said. “My steward. His father served my grandfather and my Uncle
Dafydd, and then when he died, Geraint took his place.”

“
I’m sorry I couldn’t help
him,” she said.

“
I know. But you helped
the others.”

“
I hope so,” Marged said.
“As you say, I’ve never seen a battle before, never even imagined
it would be anything like that, despite what is shown in
movies.”

There it was again.
That
difference. “What was that
word?
Movies
?”

She didn’t answer, chewing
on her lower lip as she thought. “I don’t think I can explain,” she
said. “I don’t understand how I came to be here. I’ve been with you
for two nights and a day, and already my life before coming here
seems impossibly far away.”

“
And
where is that life? That land that speaks
American
?”

“
You won’t believe
me.”

“
You’re sure of
that?”

“
Yes,” Marged said. “I
wouldn’t believe it myself if I weren’t living it.”

“
Tell me,” I said.
“Nothing can be as bad as you imagine. Push through your fears and
just say it.”

Anna stirred. Marged
smiled down at her, still stalling I thought, and swept a handful
of curls out of the little girl’s face and tucked the blanket more
firmly under her chin. “The bards speak of Madoc ap Owain Gwynedd,”
Marged said, finally capitulating. “Nearly one hundred years ago,
he sailed from Wales to a new land, a new world nobody had ever
seen before.”

“
Yes, of course. I know
the tale well. I am a descendant of Owain Gwynedd, Madoc’s father,”
I said. “Madoc sailed away to escape the infighting among his
brothers at his father’s death. He returned, but then left again.
He died in that land across the sea.”

Marged took in a deep
breath and eased it out. I waited, not wanting to stop her now that
she’d started.

“
I think the easiest way
to explain who I am is to say that I am a descendant of Madoc’s
people,” Marged said. “I am from the land that he discovered. We
call it America.”

I gazed at her, lips
pursed, not quite able to marshal my thoughts for an adequate
reponse. It wasn’t that she’d surprised me, though she had, but . .
. “I entertained a dozen notions of who you might be, and from
where you might have come, but this never occurred to me,” I
said.

“
How could you? How could
anyone?”

“
In one sentence, you have
upended all expectation,” I said. “My family has wondered for
generations what became of Madoc. We looked for him, trust that we
did, but his sails never appeared on the horizon again. I’m glad to
hear that he survived to produce descendants.”

“
America has many people
in it.”

“
If he’d stayed in Wales,”
I said, “his line may have ended, given the fratricide that
followed Owain Gwynedd’s death. My grandfather was one of the few
who survived it.”

Marged bit her lip and I
watched her warily, since that couldn’t be all she had to say. The
vehicle, for instance, remained unexplained.

“
And . . .”

“
The explanation gets a
little more complicated after that,” she said.

“
Hmm,” I said. “I imagine
it might.” We lay silent, me still studying her and Marged gently
curling a lock of Anna’s hair around one finger.

“
Are you ready for the
rest?” she said, once the silence had grown awkward. “It’s a bit
harder to hear.”

“
Are you going to tell me
that your mother doesn’t really live in Radnor?” I said.

“
No. She does.” Now, a
waver entered Marged’s voice for the first time. She swallowed it.
“I haven’t lied to you. Not once. I don’t want to start, either.
It’s that . . . well . . . the Welsh settlers who came to America
named towns for places in Wales that they loved and
remembered.”

I smiled at that, just for
a second, until the questions began to pile up in my mind again.
“So . . .” But Marged cut in before I could properly formulate a
question.

“
I know what you’re
thinking. I can see it in your eyes. You’re noting that I didn’t
arrive in the marsh at Criccieth from a boat. You’re wondering
about my vehicle—how it was made—how I brought it here.”

“
Yes,” I said. “I was
wondering exactly that.”

Marged took another
breath. “You absorbed the first part of my explanation without too
much difficulty, but the next part is harder. Please remember, when
you stop believing me, that I said it was complicated.”

“
I am the Prince of Wales.
My life is nothing if not complicated.”

“
Okay,”
she said. (There was that word again, which seemed to mean
everything and nothing
)
“I’ll tell you straight out: I’m not only from
that other land but from another time.”

I stared at her. “I’m not
understanding you. What do you mean—another time?”

“
Please, Llywelyn,” she
said. “Please tell me what year this is I’ve fallen
into.”

“
It is the year of our
Lord, one thousand, twelve hundred and sixty-eight.”

“
Oh, my lord,” Marged
said. She eased back from Anna who seemed more deeply asleep now,
and turned her head to bury her face in the pillow.

“
That’s the second time
you called me by my title,” I said. “You’re improving.”

Marged twisted back. Her
hair had fallen over her face and she pushed it away. Her voice,
when she spoke, had tears in it. “How can you laugh? Two days ago,
I was living in the year of our Lord, one thousand, nine hundred,
and ninety-six. I was born in America, seven hundred years from
now.”

The smile faded from my
face. For once, I was lost for words. How could that be true? She
obviously believed it, and yet. . . .

Marged huddled under the
covers with her hands over her ears as if a storm were raging
outside instead of the clear blue winter sky. I wanted to put my
arms around her and comfort her, but didn’t want to scare
her.

“
Marged,” I said instead, aiming for reasonableness. “Why are
you telling me this? Surely you can come up with a far simpler
explanation for your appearance at Criccieth without
this
.”

“
I knew you wouldn’t
believe me. I didn’t want to tell you,” she said, her face back in
the pillow, her words muffled by the down, “but there’s no other
way to explain who I am and why I know what I know.”

“
You’re telling me that
this is why you knew about the ambush in advance? Because you are
from a future time where the events we are living now have already
happened? That’s not possible, Marged.”

Marged lifted her head.
“Yes and no. I knew there had been an ambush in this forest, but I
still don’t remember it being an attack on
you
.”

“
Ah yes,” I said. “You
spoke to Goronwy of this ‘Owain Glendower’.”

“
Owain
Glend
ŵ
r,
really,” Meg said. “Glendower is how the English say his
name.”

“
And who was
he?”

Marged sighed. “He was a
man who attempted to unite Wales under his banner about two hundred
years from now. I believe he was a descendant of one of your
brothers, but I can’t remember which one. Not Dafydd. Do you have
one whose name begins with
R
?”

“
Rhodri,” I said, speaking
automatically as I processed what she was saying, which appeared
both more and less absurd as she added detail. “You say attempted?
You know my future, then? You know what becomes of me, of
Wales?”

Now Marged rolled onto her
back, her fingers plucking at the blanket. “Yes,” she said. “I do.
At least, I know what did happen, before I came here.”

“
Now I’m lost again. Speak
plainly.”

“
In my century, traveling
through time is talked about, speculated upon, in books and among
scientists.” She tipped her head to look at me. “I don’t know what
you call them in this age. Philosophers? Physicians? People who
study the world and how it works.”

“
Ah,” I said. “Like
Aristotle.”

“
Oh, yes!” Marged said.
“Exactly like that. I have traveled to your world, in a fashion
completely outside the range of explanation. What changes will your
world incur because this happened? In the future that I left,
neither books nor myth about medieval Wales mention me. Does that
mean I’ve already changed history enough to make the future that I
came from different? What changes will you make now in your life
because I came here—or will it make no difference at all?—was I
destined to come here and are we making the same choices we always
made?”

“
None of what you’ve just
said makes any sense, Marged.”

“
Tell me about it.” She
lay on her back, one wrist across her eyes, completely
still.

“
So this is why you were
afraid of me—was it only last night?” I said. “You didn’t believe
me when I said I was the Prince of Wales.”

“
No,” Marged said. “I
didn’t. It didn’t even occur to me that you could be telling me the
truth.”

“
And why is that? Is there
no Prince of Wales in your world?”

Meg stillness deepened.
“There is, but he isn’t Welsh. He’s English . . . well . . . of
German descent even, I think. His mother is the Queen of
England.”

“
What is this leading to,
Marged? What do you need to say to me that you’re not saying? If I
accept your proposition that you are from the future, than you do,
indeed, believe you know mine. You believe there is a future for me
that I’m not going to like, isn’t there?”

Marged flipped the blanket
over her face but her voice came through it, strong and steady. “In
late November, 1282, you travel south, out of Gwynedd. On December
11
^th
, you are lured away
from your men by a false promise of allegiance and killed. With
your death, King Edward . . .” she pulled the covers down again and
glanced at me. “He’s not king yet, is he?”