Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (17 page)

“It’s in flood, my lord!” Hywel shouted over
the roar of the water.

“If I’d not seen it myself, I wouldn’t have
believed the snow could melt so quickly,” Humphrey said. “It’s
become so warm, I can hardly believe we’re only a week into
February.”

“What are we going to do?” I said.

Humphrey shrugged, while Llywelyn pondered
the river. I wasn’t at all happy at the idea of crossing it on the
back of a horse, especially not with Anna on my lap.

“There’s really a ford here?” Humphrey
said.

Goronwy turned to glare at him. “You will
not take advantage of the generosity of my lord to work against
him.”

“What was that?” I said.

Humphrey shook his head. “The location of
fords are open secrets among the common folk, but to betray such
knowledge to an enemy is worthy of death. Lord Goronwy doesn’t care
for the fact that I will know the location of this ford. It’s too
close to the castle for comfort.”

One of Llywelyn’s men had dismounted to
probe the water with a stick. He took a step, determined how deep
the next step was, and then hopped forward through the water as he
found a path. He reached the other side without mishap. “It’s five
feet deep at the most, my lord,” he called to Llywelyn across the
water.

“We will cross,” Llywelyn said. “Castell y
Bere isn’t far and it’s worth a little wet and cold to reach it
today.”

Llywelyn sent two men into the water
together. Their horses didn’t even balk, which surprised me, but
they were extremely well-trained. The men had reached the middle of
the river when one of the horses suddenly sank another foot into
the water.

“Careful!” Hywel shouted.

“I’m all right!” The man said, and his horse
managed to right itself on the next step.

Goronwy came back to me. “I’ll take Anna,”
he said. “You may need both hands on the reins.”

“Okay,” I said, and passed her over, glad
she was content with the arrangement. She liked Goronwy.

Goronwy directed his horse into water, with
two men-at-arms on either side. Anna’s head swiveled right and
left, as curious as always about what was going on around her. All
three horses avoided the potholes in the ford and soon they were at
the opposite bank and trotting up and out of the river. Anna didn’t
even get wet. Goronwy turned back to the river and Anna waved to me
from her seat on his lap.

I still didn’t want to cross, balked at it
far more than any horse, but then Humphrey pulled up beside me.
“We’ll go together. I’ll cross downstream from you, so that if you
fall, I can catch you.”

I thought that was very noble of him, and
with no more excuse for cowardice, urged my mare into the river. I
pulled my knees higher, not wanting to get my feet wet. The water
quickly rose almost to his withers. We’d taken care to avoid the
hole that the first rider had hit, but all the same, half-way
across, my luck failed. Unfortunately, Humphrey’s did too. At the
same instant, our horses’ right forefeet sank. I fell sideways,
clutching at the reins and trying to keep my seat. I tried to grab
the mane of Humphrey’s horse, but his horse had overbalanced more
than mine and foundered.

We went into the water together and it was
so cold my heart froze in my chest. I came up sputtering.

“My lady!” Humphrey reached for me but
within half a second, he’d sailed three feet further downstream
from me. Voices behind us at the ford rang out above the roar of
the rushing river, but it took only another second for both of us
to plunge out of reach.

“Llywelyn!” I caught a glimpse of him,
urging his horse into the water after us, and a flash of Goronwy
clutching Anna to him before I spun around a bend and lost sight of
anyone but Humphrey.

The rough river swamped me. I swallowed a
gulp of water, choking on it as it went down. I wasn’t a strong
swimmer under the best of circumstances, and the heavy cloak,
petticoats, and boots I wore weighed me down and made it hard for
me to keep my head above water. I pulled up my knees to try to work
my boots from my feet, but my fingers were already so stiff from
the icy water they didn’t want to move.

I manage to kick the boots off, however, as
well as unpin the broach that held the cloak around my neck.
Further on, Humphrey fought the force of the water, trying to swim
toward me, but in vain. The river swept us downstream and further
apart with every second that passed. Then, our river met another
and spun us into a larger channel twice as big as the first. Debris
sailed past me and I tried to grab onto something that would keep
me afloat.

I was fighting my way to the bank when
Humphrey cursed. He hung in the water twenty yards ahead of me and
though I couldn’t see what he’d hit, it was big enough to hold him
steady in midstream. In the half a second I had to think about it,
I braced myself for the impact.

A thick branch projected out from the
northern bank and I slammed into it further into the stream than
Humphrey. Much of the year, it might have hung above the waterline,
but with the heavy rains and flooding, the river had risen to meet
it. Humphrey and I hung on, bent at the waist and exhausted, with
the water flowing over and around us, undeterred. The impact had
forced the air from my lungs and I struggled and spit, glad to have
stopped moving but aching from the cold and the effort of holding
on.

Humphrey grabbed my arm. “This way. We have
to get you out of the water.” He tugged on my arm to get me
moving.

Slowly we edged our way along the log to the
northern bank of the river. Humphrey grasped a low-hanging tree
branch and pulled himself out of the water. He fell forward on his
hands and knees on the muddy bank in relief. I wasn’t far behind
him, standing to the waist in the swirling river, but was still
having trouble moving my legs with my dress wrapped around my
ankles.

“My lord,” Humphrey said and coughed. “Help
her.”

I looked up to see Llywelyn’s brother,
Dafydd, standing on the log beside me. He hung onto a branch above
him to keep himself upright, and reached with the other hand
towards me. And grinned.

I stared at Dafydd—and at his hand, which he
held out to me—and refused it. I turned away, thinking that
throwing myself back into the water was a better option than
accepting rescue from him. Humphrey, not understanding my sudden
fear, lunged back to me and caught my arm before I could slip away.
Dafydd, in turn, grasped me around the waist and heaved me onto the
bank.

“My lady!” Humphrey said, his breath coming
in gasps, still thinking that Dafydd had saved us. “Are you all
right?”

I lifted my eyes to his and he closed his
mouth. I don’t know what he saw in my eyes that silenced him. I
only know that I shivered as much from fear as from the cold of the
river. I was afraid of Dafydd—of what he might do out of mischief
and amorality. Though it wasn’t for myself that I feared so much as
for Anna, who couldn’t possibly understand where I was, except that
I wasn’t with her.

Dafydd, still grinning, scooped me off the
bank and tossed me onto his horse. Again, it appeared that my sole
function these days was to act as a dead weight or useless object
for men to throw this way and that and use as they pleased. He
swung onto his horse behind me, leaving Humphrey on his knees in
the muddy leaves and dirt beside the river. Humphrey scrambled to
his feet but we were away before he could counter Dafydd.

“Did you miss me?” Dafydd said, his voice an
erotic whisper in my ear.

I shuddered. Unfortunately, he interpreted
the motion as a request for warmth. He more snuggly wrapped his
cloak around me and pulled me to his chest.

“Please let me go. I don’t want to be with
you.”

“You will,” Dafydd said, all confidence.

I didn’t want to mention Anna, afraid that
he would use her in some way against me later. I refused to speak
to him and the hour’s ride to the sea passed in a blur of cold and
fear, and growing numbness, both physically and mentally. With the
sight of the beach, however, the horror came back in full force.
Boats had been pulled onto the shore and we made for them.

“You see,” Dafydd said. “We came
prepared.”

“You couldn’t have planned this,” I said.
“You couldn’t have known I would fall at the ford.”

“It wasn’t you that I was prepared for,”
Dafydd said. “I confess I’d put you from my mind entirely. Owain
wanted to rescue Humphrey, but I know that tight-assed youth better
than he does and told him he wouldn’t come, not even if we asked.
It was Llywelyn we wanted.”

“You think you could have taken him?” I
said. “How?”

Dafydd smirked. “Never you mind.”

He dismounted and pulled me from my seat on
the horse. I fell into his arms, wobbly again, but in that instant,
I knew I couldn’t go quietly with him. My feeble attempt at gaining
an advantage over Llywelyn that first night in Wales had been a
failure, but I told myself I wouldn’t enter that boat with Dafydd
under any circumstances.

I twisted out of Dafydd’s arms and the
second my feet hit the sand, I ran. The long emersion in the cold
water, however, coupled by the hour-long ride on the back of a
horse, had tightened my muscles so that they refused to move like I
wanted them to. I stumbled along the shore, moving as fast as I
could but not fast enough.

“Get her!” Dafydd said.

I looked back. The rider Dafydd had directed
to chase me gained on me with every thud of his horse’s hooves. I
swerved up the beach, cursing myself for running in a straight line
like the idiots always did in movies, but I’d come to my senses too
late. The rider leaned down, grasped me around the waist, and
lifted me off my feet. He carried me back to Dafydd like the sack
of potatoes I’d become (or turnips, here, since they didn’t have
potatoes yet), and dumped me into one of the boats.

“Swine!”

Dafydd laughed. He actually laughed.

“I love a woman with some spirit in her,” he
said.

Then he tugged at my arm and pulled me onto
a bench away from the feet of the oarsmen on either side of me. I
sagged against him, purposefully giving him the impression that I’d
given up, but he took it wrong and grabbed my chin. He kissed me
and I let him, recoiling inside all the while.

Smirking, he released me. My shudder should
have been apparent to the blindest man but he didn’t see it.

“See, gentlemen,” he said when I slumped on
the seat. “So much more effective than the back of my hand. Women
just need some attention every now and then.”

I said nothing and lowered my eyes to stare
at the bottom of the boat. The men began to row and Dafydd sat
beside me, content. I shivered, even in his cloak.

Laughing again, he thrust it off me in a
careless move and began to untie the laces at the back of my
dress.

“You need to get out of these wet clothes,”
he said.

A choke caught in my throat and I glared at
him, but he merely smirked again. He was right, however, that the
heavy fabric only made me colder and at his urging I pulled my arms
out of the sleeves and wiggled out of the dress. It left me in only
my shift.

I hated it that Dafydd watched me the whole
time, even if the majority of his men averted their eyes. Then he
threw his cloak over me as he had during the ride from the river. I
huddled on my seat in the boat, sodden, sick, and angry. I hated
men. Every single bloody last one of them.

Chapter
Twelve

“
H
oly Mother of
God!” The sight of Marged, spinning down the Cadair River behind
Humphrey de Bohun nearly had me diving in after her. Thankfully,
she’d let go of the horse’s reins and allowed the water to take
her, rather than struggling against it along with her horse.
Instead, one of my men dove into the river after the horse, but
Marged was already too far away to reach.

“After them!” Goronwy pointed at men who
hadn’t yet crossed.

But he needn’t have said anything, as half a
dozen men-at-arms, including Hywel, already raced away. By the time
I’d turned Glewdra in the swift current, Goronwy had spurred his
horse into the water. Anna held on to the horse’s mane, her eyes
wide, but not crying.

“They’ll find her,” Goronwy said, tipping
his chin towards the way the men had gone.

I grunted noncommittal agreement. I could
depend on them to find her if she were possible to find. As boys,
we’d spent many hours in this river and we both knew the dangers,
both from the more northern Cadair, and the Dysynni, which flowed
from the south and merged with it a dozen yards downstream.

We skirted the trees that grew close
together on the bank and pushed our horses down a track that ran
along the fields that lay on our side of the river. We rode as hard
as we could, but the trail was a rough one and I didn’t want to
lose Glewdra to a gopher hole. That would slow us down more than
caution now. Then a shout came from up ahead.

“Quickly!” Goronwy and I crashed through the
bushes to our left and trotted into a small clearing near the
river. Humphrey stood in the middle of it, white-faced and sopping
wet but otherwise unharmed. He held a spear-length stick in his
right hand and leaned on it like a crutch. His shoulders sagged
when he saw me. I reined in sharply.

“Where’s Marged?”

“The whoresons took her, my lord! I tried to
stop them, but without my sword, I was no match for them.”

“
Who
took her?” Goronwy said.

“Owain, my lord, with ten of his men,”
Humphrey said. “And your brother, Dafydd.”

“What?” I’d been about to charge out of the
clearing, but checked Glewdra at his last words. “Did you say that
Dafydd was among them?”