Daughter of Time: A Time Travel Romance (3 page)

A black strap of yet another material unlike
any I’d ever seen held her in her seat. I fumbled to find its ties,
grateful for the bright light coming from the ceiling of the
chariot. I was ready to pull my knife to cut through the straps,
but almost as an after-thought, noticed the strap ended in a large
red square near her waist. I pressed it. The strap released and the
woman slumped sideways. I slid my arms around her back and under
her knees and pulled her to me, lifting her out of the chariot.
Then, carefully balancing on the logs, I cat-walked back to Goronwy
and transferred her to his arms.

He had waited patiently, as if this task was
the most normal thing in the world for us to be doing. He held the
woman, but otherwise didn’t move, since his position on the end of
the log allowed me to balance near the chariot. “She’s beautiful,”
he said, checking her from head to toe as her head lolled back on
his forearm.

I gave him a quelling look, though it wasn’t
like I hadn’t noticed. Her long hair was shot with every shade of
brown imaginable and though her long lashes were down-turned in
sleep so I couldn’t see her eyes, I had no difficulty imagining
them gazing at me. She was slender as an unwed girl, but she looked
so much like the girl behind her, she had to be her mother.

“So’s the little one,” I said. I moved back
to the chariot, sliding one foot forward and then the other, but as
I did so, the pressure in the marsh shifted and a sucking sound
pierced the silence. The chariot sank another foot, tipping forward
so now it lay only a few degrees off vertical.

“Is there time, my lord?”

“I will not leave that child to die,” I
said. “I don’t think the risk to me too great.”

Afraid that movement near the front of the
vehicle would upend it further, and at the same time worried about
getting caught in the chariot’s draft if it did sink into the
marsh, I pulled on the latch to the rear door, which opened just as
had the door in front. Although the child appeared to be in some
kind of special seat designed expressly for her small size, a red
circle sat in the center of her chest. Hoping that there was a
system here, I pressed it and as in her mother’s case, the straps
released. The rear wheels were so high in the air now that the
opening in the vehicle was at chest height—making it easy for me to
reach into the chariot, but forcing me to lift the child from her
seat with only the strength in my arms.

“Come,
cariad
,” I said.

Her eyes were wide as she reached for me,
but she appeared unhurt. I pulled her to me and she wrapped her
arms around my neck, swiveling her head to the left and right as
she took in her surroundings.

“My lord.” Goronwy’s voice sounded a warning
behind me and I took a step back, away from the chariot, and then
another, my arms clutched around the little girl.

The pounding of my heart at last began to
slow as Goronwy and I backed off the logs. “How do you want to do
this?” Goronwy said, the woman still in his arms. “She’s not a sack
of turnips, but she’s heavier than one.”

I set the baby on the ground, pleased she’d
stopped crying and was willing to stand sturdily on her own feet. I
crouched to speak to her. “Stand here. I’m going to take care of
your mother.”

All I caught of the girl’s reply was one
word, similar to Mam:
Mammy
, I surmised, though I didn’t
know of any children who called their mother that.

I mounted Goronwy’s horse and Goronwy passed
me the woman. I settled her across the horse’s withers. Because the
girl wore breeches, I could rest her directly in front of me, with
her back leaning against my chest, and her head tucked under my
chin. While her clothes were entirely too provocative, in this case
I was glad she was wearing them. Otherwise I would have had to
cradle her in my arms or hike her skirt up past her thighs, which
might provide us with a pleasant view, but was even more
immodest.

I wrapped one arm around her waist and
grasped the reins with the other. Goronwy bent down for the child,
who allowed him to pick her up, her little arm wrapped around his
neck as she’d wrapped it around mine. She said something to Goronwy
that I didn’t catch and he answered in an undertone.

Then I saw his face. The look was one of
pure panic, but he revealed a hitherto unknown adeptness with
children and shifted her to his hip.

“I’ve got her, my lord,” Goronwy said.
“Though I’m not sure she understands the words we’re saying.”

“She’s very young.”

“She spoke to me just now in a language that
was unfamiliar,” Goronwy said. “I couldn’t even begin to tell you
what it was.”

“English?”

“No,” Goronwy said. “At least no sort of
English I have ever heard, even lisping from the mouth of a
child.”

“When her mother awakes, we’ll have some
answers.”

“We certainly have many questions. Most
pointedly,
what is that vehicle?
”

“I would add,
“How did you fall into my
marsh? What are those strange materials, metal, and
clothes?
”

“Could they be English?” Goronwy said,
leaping ahead to the most crucial question. He strode along beside
me, he and the girl finding a rhythm to his walk as she continued
to take in her surroundings. “Returning crusaders have brought many
new discoveries to Europe from the east. When I was last at Dinas
Bran, I met such a man—he opened his own tavern, of all things—who
told me of a glass through which one could see far distances. I
very much would like one of those.”

“I will look into it,” I said. “Right now,
our concern is somewhat more mundane. We need to get these two to
the castle safely tonight, but come daylight, we must return to the
vehicle with the woman. She has much to explain, both what it is
and how it works.”

I directed the horse towards the causeway,
aiming for the road we’d left and anxious not to stray into the
bog. Since Goronwy was unhorsed, I rode more slowly than I might
have otherwise. I was never outside the castle without my guard and
felt strangely vulnerable, almost naked, without them.

We’d reached the road when Goronwy suddenly
stopped and spun around. I reined in, and then heard what had
gained his attention: another sucking sound, louder than when we’d
stood on the logs. I looked back. It was as if the vehicle were in
a tipped up wheel barrow, sliding its cargo even deeper into the
marsh. In three heartbeats, the light in the interior was
extinguished, and then in a rush, as if a giant mouth had opened
beneath it, the chariot disappeared.

It was almost a prayerful moment, though my
priest certainly wouldn’t have liked me saying so. Goronwy, more
aptly, cursed. “By the arse of King Solomon, now we’ll never
discover its mysteries, beyond what the woman can tell us.”

“I’m glad we weren’t close to it,” I said
soberly, clicking my tongue to get the horse moving again.

“Any delay and the woman and her child would
have died,” Goronwy said.

“It was only by chance that I was on the
battlements. I was thinking of other things and watching the colors
change on Yr Wyddfa when it appeared.”

“Chance, my lord? I think not,” Goronwy
said, but anything further he thought to say was cut off by
shouting in the distance. A company of my men galloped out of the
village and into view.

“Prince Llywelyn!” One of my captains, Hywel
ap Rhys, called. Another soldier held a torch in his hand as they
trotted up to me, eyes widening at the girls in our arms.

“All is well.” I held up a hand to my men
and Hywel closed his mouth on his questions. All of my men knew
better than to disobey, but there would be no stopping some of them
later. Hywel himself was a son of a noble house and believed
himself all but my equal, though I was a prince and he a mere
baron. Many times, I cursed the independence of the Welsh nobles,
even the ones who fought by my side. Especially the ones who fought
by my side.

The men fell into formation around us. We
certainly formed a strange company. Goronwy and the girl continued
whispering to each other and finally Goronwy spoke up. “I believe
her name is Anna.”

“You believe?”

“Well, it still isn’t clear what language
she’s speaking. She appears to understand bits of what I’m saying,
but I understand nothing of her words except ‘Anna.’ I have
reassured her, to the best of my ability, that her mother will be
well.”

We filed through the village, quiet now that
it was full-dark. A few heads poked out of doorways. Hywel nodded
at the blacksmith, who stood under the eave of his shop to watch us
pass. We trooped up the hill to the castle and along its circuitous
road to the gatehouse.

The bailey, once we reached it, was in
turmoil. “You surprised us all, my lord,” Hywel said as he
dismounted. He was tall, even for a Welshman, with the biggest feet
any of us had ever seen. From the moment he joined the company we’d
called him Boots. Half the men had probably forgotten his real
name.

He reached for the woman, whom I allowed to
slide off the horse. He was more than capable of bearing her
weight, but when I got down myself, I quite deliberately took her
back from him.

As we’d ridden up the road, I found myself
going over in my head the sudden arrival of the girl and her child
in my head, and agreeing with Goronwy that what others ascribed to
chance, I was willing to view as a gift from God. Or the devil, I
supposed. It wasn’t something I would ever mention, not even to my
closest advisors, but in the thick of the moment it wasn’t always
easy to tell the difference between the two.

All I knew was that I didn’t
want
to
let her go. The feeling was a new one, and yet, I’d learned to
trust my instincts and knew myself well enough by now not to fight
them. I’d had many women over the years—more than I could count,
truth be told, which I’m sure had kept my confessor busier than
he’d liked. But I’d not welcomed one into my bed in several months
and hadn’t truly cared for any woman for much longer than that. I’d
attributed my disinterest to my advanced age—and a natural
evolution toward more circumspect and judicious taste
.

With the girl in my arms, I strode toward
the inner bailey which housed my private apartments, my men parting
before me. Goronwy matched his steps to mine as we entered the
great hall. Tudur ap Ednyfed Fychan, my steward, stepped toward me
and bowed.

“Shall I have a room prepared for her, my
lord?”

“No,” I said, hearing the flatness in my
voice and knowing he would obey it. “She stays with me.”

I
opened my eyes to
a candle, guttering in a pottery dish on a small wooden table
beside the bed on which I lay. It took only half a second for me to
register that all was not as it should be.

“
Oh, my God
!” I reared up from the
pillow. A man sat in a chair by the fire, reading a book the size
of a coffee table dictionary. He looked up and smiled, and the
smile was so disarming I just gaped at him, mouth open, knowing
that nothing about him or the room was right, but unable to
articulate why it wasn’t.

The room was built on a grand scale. A long
table surrounded by chairs sat near a closed door, twenty feet from
the foot of the bed. The bed itself was a massive four-poster, with
thick, crimson hangings all around. Only one side was open—the side
on which I lay.
The floor was comprised of wooden
slats set tightly together. Rather than polished, it was faded and
worn with what could only have been years of use.
I took it
all in, flicking my eyes from one item to the next, before
returning them to the man in the chair.

He shifted and then stood to walk to a
bookshelf on the other side of the room. He laid the book flat on
top of several others, taking a moment to align them neatly one
with another. While his back was turned, I looked around the bed,
more panicked than ever because I realized that I was wearing
nothing but a nightgown—and a gorgeous one at that, with
embroidered lace and puffy sleeves; that my clothes were gone and
my hair was braided in a long plait down my back.

By the time he turned back to me and spoke,
I’d scooted up the bed until I was sitting upright, the covers
pulled to my chin.

“
. . .” he
said.

I had no idea what he’d said
.
Confused because his words were completely unintelligible, even as
they tugged at my ear with familiar tones, I didn’t move or saying
anything, just stared. He tried again. I shook my head,
uncertain.

He stayed relaxed, his hands at his sides
and walked toward me, speaking a little louder, as if somehow that
would help. I was desperately trying to make sense of what he was
saying, but as he got closer, my breath rose in my chest until it
choked me. He must have seen the fear on my face because he
stopped, about three feet from the bed. I finally found my
voice.

“What?” The words came out as little more
than a squeak. “Who are you?” I dragged my eyes from his and
flashed them around the room again, seeking somewhere to run but
not seeing anything but the long distance to the door and the man
standing between it and me. He didn’t answer my question but again
tried one of his own.

“
Beth ydy'ch enw
chi
?” he said.

“
Meg
dw i
,” I said, then gasped. I’d answered automatically.
‘
What is your name?’
he’d said in Welsh
. ‘My name is
Meg.’

I stilled myself and
studied him as he stood, still calm, two paces from me. Had what
he’d spoken before been in Welsh that I hadn’t understood, perhaps
too fast, and too complicated compared to what I’d learned from
Mom? Through my foggy brain, I focused with an effort. Who is he?
He still hadn’t told me.