Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (11 page)

“
What are your plans?”
Goronwy had said.

Callum tipped his head as
he looked at him, unsure if he’d heard him correctly, given how
monumentally weak his French had been at the time.
Plans?
“I don’t
understand.”

Goronwy’s brow had furrowed. “Is it
your intent to serve King Llywelyn? You are not Welsh. You do not
have ties to him or our country.”

It had been a delicate moment. Callum
had thought through what he was going to say before he said it, so
Goronwy couldn’t misunderstand. “I have no plans. I have no
allegiance to anyone else in this world but your king.”

In truth, Callum’s big plan had been
to stand in the gentle rain and stare out at the medieval world for
a while longer and then to find more of the beer they’d served
earlier in the hall. Beyond that, he hadn’t had a clue.

Goronwy had leaned over the battlement
and looked down on the soldiers who paced the lower wall-walk above
the Thames River. “Meg could jump from here and return you to your
world.”

Callum hadn’t replied. That had been
just a bit too close to what he had been thinking when he first
looked over the wall himself.

Goronwy had nodded. “You think to
wait. You think you can be patient and she will eventually give you
what you want. You are mistaken.” He’d gripped Callum’s upper arm
so tightly it hurt, but Callum hadn’t wrenched away.

Goronwy looked into Callum’s eyes. “If
you do anything to hurt her, I will stop you.”

“
I would never harm Meg.
Never,” Callum said.

Goronwy released Callum’s arm. “You
did no more than your duty in coming here, in trying to stop us. I
might have done the same had I been wearing your boots. But you
will not ask for what she should not give. She would help you out
of guilt or pity.”

Callum cleared his throat.

“
You do not want that, no?”
Goronwy had said.

“
No.”

Goronwy had nodded and as Callum met
his eyes, he understood that Goronwy would kill him if he perceived
that Callum posed even a hint of a threat to Meg. And he would do
it without a single twinge of conscience.

Now, Callum gazed at Cassie, wishing
that he could tell her anything but the truth. “How did you
survive, Cassie?”

“
I had my bow and wire for
snares in my backpack. I had a water bottle. It was summer, so I
could feed myself with meat and plants I recognized. These aren’t
my mountains but what is natural here was sometimes an invasive
species at home.” Cassie shrugged. “Blackberries grow in Scotland
too. Mostly I walked and slept rough, until after a week I got up
the courage to approach a village—well, really it was a castle
associated with a village.”

“
It must have been a shock
to realize where you were.”

Cassie made a sound of dismissal.
“Even then, I didn’t know where I was. I made a fool of myself,
talking American, thinking I could get help. My saving grace was
that my hair was short then, boyish, and I wore a jacket and a hat
against the rain. They thought I was a boy, a stranger, even
English. The Scots blame everything on the English, you know, from
a change in the weather to poor crops. The people in the village
shut their doors in my face and fortunately, I had the sense to
retreat to the woods. It was only later that they hunted
me.”

Callum didn’t like the sound of that.
In fact, he didn’t like the sound of any of this. His stomach
clenched as he pictured her—a girl alone—in the middle of medieval
Scotland. “So you hid?”

“
I hid; I ran; I never
slept. And then I made a friend.”

“
Who was that?”

“
The clan chief, Patrick
Graham. His seat is at Mugdock.”

Callum sputtered into his drink. “Did
you say Mugdock?”

Cassie laughed. “I was squatting on
his land and he knew it, but he hadn’t forced me out, for reasons
he has never shared with me. By then, the villagers knew I was a
woman, though a very strange kind of woman. I’d gotten a reputation
as a hermit, which was far better than a witch. They didn’t shun me
anymore and let me warm myself every once in a while over a drink
in the only tavern in the district. Maybe they began to accept me
because their crops were really good the year I arrived.

“
Then, about six months
after I settled here, I spotted a band of Stewarts riding across
Graham land. I’d learned some Gaelic by then and knew of the
rivalries and feuds among many of the clans. I took the opportunity
to tell Lord Graham they were coming. He repaid me by speaking to
his people on my behalf.”

“
And you’ve lived here
alone ever since?” Callum said.

“
It’s not so bad most of
the time,” Cassie said. “It’s better than being stranded on a
desert island. I’m rarely hungry now …” Her voice trailed off,
probably in reaction to Callum’s expression. He couldn’t hide
either his horror at what she’d experienced or the realization that
she’d been here so long. He’d lived in the Middle Ages for six
months and had tried very hard not to look that far into the
future.

“
I don’t know if I would
have had your strength,” Callum said, and meant it.

“
Why? How did you get
here?” Cassie said. When Callum didn’t answer right away, she moved
closer, her expression intent. “You know something. Tell
me.”

Callum had to tell her. It wasn’t fair
not to, not when she’d come so far all by herself. “It’s a terrible
thing that was done to you, Cassie.” He took in a deep breath and
let it out. “Let me say first that you and I are not the only ones
from the future who have made their way here.”

Cassie pressed her fingers to her
cheeks. “What do you mean? It’s obvious that you’ve done very well
for yourself, given that you serve the King of England, but …” She
clenched her teeth together.

“
I came the same way you
did, hitching a ride,” Callum said. “In my case, however, I was
trying to stop them.”

“
Stop who?” Cassie
said.

That was the real question, wasn’t it?
Callum cleared his throat and leaned forward resting his elbows on
his thighs and looking straight into Cassie’s face. She knelt in
front of him, focused on his face and gripping her knees with her
hands.

“
Let me ask you this first:
I know you’re an American, but did you ever learn enough about
British history to recognize that what is happening now in Great
Britain isn’t what happened in our world?” Callum said.

Hesitantly, Cassie shook her head. “I
studied biology in college. A little anthropology. If you knew my
background, you’d understand why British history before Columbus
held no interest for me.”

“
You’re Native American?”
Callum said.

Cassie nodded.
“One-quarter.”

“
Okay, so … departing from
history into the realm of science fiction, from what we’ve been
able to piece together, we’re in an alternate universe that has
followed a different path from the history of our world. I don’t
know if it always was different or if it became different after
travelers came from our world to this one.”

“
Who are
we
?” Cassie
said.

“
I worked for MI-5, the
British internal security service,” Callum said. “We learned about
travelers between these two worlds when the brother-in-law of one
of them told one of our people about it.”

Cassie coughed a laugh and then
stopped herself when Callum didn’t laugh with her. She studied him
with her head tilted to one side. “You’re serious.”

“
I’m here, aren’t
I?”

“
And who are these
travelers
?” she
said.

“
Well, for one, our new
King of England.”

Chapter Six

Cassie

“
T
hat’s not possible.” Cassie eased away from Callum, a wariness
filling her that she hadn’t felt up until now. It was as if he’d
become the lunatic the Scots had thought her to be.

“
I know it sounds crazy,”
Callum said, “but it’s true. I came here six months ago, on the
coattails of the King of Wales and his wife, Meg. Meg was born in
Pennsylvania and our new King of England is their son,
David.”

“
You are out of your mind,”
Cassie said, trying to stave off the hysterical laughter that was
brewing in her chest. She’d been taught to swallow down her
emotions, but she couldn’t swallow this. “You have to
be.”

“
Meg has traveled back and
forth to this world three times,” Callum said. “The first time was
in 1268 when she met and married Llywelyn. She returned to our
world later that year before David’s birth. The second time was in
August of 1284 when she was flying in a commuter plane from Pasco,
Washington to Boise, Idaho.” Callum paused.

Cassie’s mocking laughter dissipated
in an instant. Her breath caught in her throat and she could barely
speak around it. “What?”

“
The pilot lost control of
his plane in a storm that shorted out his instruments. Instead of
crashing into a mountain, he brought Meg to the Middle Ages. They
came through somewhere on the west coast of Scotland, though they
didn’t land there. The pilot, Marty, immediately flew south. He
dumped Meg off at Hadrian’s Wall and then came north, never to be
heard from again.”

Cassie had both hands to her mouth,
trying to calm her breathing which was coming in quick bursts. “So
… so … so you’re saying … can you really be saying that he brought
me?”

“
To be fair, it wasn’t the
pilot who had the ability to travel between worlds, but Meg. She
has no real control of it. It isn’t conscious, but seems to happen
when world shifting will save her life.”

“
And the third time?”
Cassie said.

Callum’s voice dropped to a whisper.
“Six months ago. That was my turn.”

In Cassie’s family, white Englishmen
didn’t engender a lot of sympathy, no matter how difficult their
struggles, but her heart stirred for Callum now. “How did that come
about?”

“
I was trying to stop her
from coming back,” Callum said. “It’s my own fault I’m
here.”

Cassie eased back from him, realizing
that as they’d been speaking, she’d moved so close to him that
their faces were only a foot apart. “Then Meg could take us back,
Callum. Back home. Couldn’t she?”

Callum had been leaning forward too,
but now he straightened. “Who’s to say?”

His tone struck Cassie
as
off
. As if
they’d been revealing truths to each other and now he was hiding
something. “But she’s done it three times. Why couldn’t she
again?”

Callum let out a sharp breath. “The
problem is the way she does it. I’ve spent far too much time
considering the possibilities myself, believe me. What’s she
supposed to do to help us? Fly an airplane into a mountain?
Deliberately cause a car crash? Jump off a cliff?”

Cassie pursed her lips as
she studied him. “I didn’t really catch it the first time, but you
meant that her
traveling
happens only when she’s in danger, is that
right?”

“
When we fell through time
most recently, when I came here with her, she jumped off the
balcony at Chepstow Castle. It’s a four story drop into the Wye
River.”

Cassie sat back on her heels, her
enthusiasm squashed. She felt reality condensing around her again.
“Oh. That’s a problem.” Then she got to her feet and turned towards
the fire so Callum couldn’t see her face as she composed
herself.

“
Just because you can’t get
back to our world doesn’t mean you have to stay here, in this
place,” Callum said.

Cassie stopped in the act of stirring
the pot over the fire, the spoon suspended over the porridge. “What
do you mean?” she said without turning around.

“
David is the King of
England,” Callum said. “He grew up in Oregon, like you, until he
was fourteen. He would welcome you to London or to any of his
castles in Wales, any time you wanted to come. You don’t have to
live alone anymore.”

Cassie held very still.
Callum’s words had frozen her feet to the floor.
Not live here?
One hand
went to her long braid. Cassie caught the end in her fist and she
tugged on it. “Let’s—let’s leave that for another day.” She tossed
the braid over her shoulder and turned to look at Callum. “We have
more important things to worry about right now.”

“
Like getting word to King
David about what has happened?” Callum said.

Cassie laughed. “Not hardly. That can
wait. Aren’t you concerned about what the MacDougalls have done
with the rest of the men in your party?”

Callum’s mouth dropped open. Cassie
had surprised him. “You mean there were survivors?”

“
About a dozen,” Cassie
said. “The MacDougalls gathered them up and marched them away,
heading west.”

“
Do you know where they
took them?”