Exiles in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (26 page)

Four MacDougalls had escaped outright
but the rest were dead, including the three men who couldn’t run
and who’d been killed before they’d taken ten steps. Martin would
be dealing with the aftermath of this battle for weeks to
come.

Afterwards, Callum, Cassie, and Martin
had conferred hurriedly, a conversation in which Martin repeated
“My God!” about a dozen times as he absorbed the idea that Cassie
and Callum were time travelers too. Then it had taken some time for
him to settle his people. By noon, though many remained on the
green, some of the shock had passed. A few still stood guard on the
bridge. A posse of ten men had followed the remaining MacDougalls
up the trail. Callum had tried to stop the villagers from killing
whomever they found, but his exhortations had gone unheeded. Even
Martin couldn’t control his people in this.

And now they had to deal with what
Callum had done. “How bad do you think it is?” Callum
said.

“
It depends,” Martin said
in American English. He came forward from the doorway to his barn,
a bemused expression on his face. He still looked the part of
headman of his village, but now that he knew Cassie and Callum to
be kindred spirits, he came across as more comfortable in his
surety and less pompous. Cassie studied him. Perhaps it was Martin,
of all of them, who had found—rather than lost—himself in the
Middle Ages.

“
It depends on what?”
Callum said.

“
On what we want to say you
did,” Marty said.

“
I fired a pistol at two
men and killed them,” Callum said. “How do we pretend
otherwise?”

“
The same way we always
do,” Marty said. “Surely, you haven’t gotten this far—” Marty
gestured to the whole of Callum’s appearance and presence, “—by
telling the truth about yourself? It has been all lies and
half-truths for me. Until I had enough of a history here, I
couldn’t speak of my life without deception.” He chewed on his
lower lip, thinking. “I should have known something was up with you
two by your reaction to my weapons.”

“
They’re not exactly
standard medieval issue,” Cassie said.

“
My guess is that you
salvaged what you could from your airplane,” Callum
said.

Marty went very still. “How do you
know about that?”

“
Because David, the new
King of England, is your friend Meg’s son,” Callum said.

Now Cassie knew how Callum had felt
when he’d told her that she wasn’t alone in this world. The
expression on Marty’s face was, quite frankly, awesome to behold: a
mixture of stunned surprise, disbelief, and incipient
joy.

“
Meg—Meg’s alive?” Marty
said.

“
Callum knows her well.”
Cassie didn’t think it would have been possible for Marty’s eyes to
widen, but they did. Cassie nodded. “Yup. You’re standing there
thinking it can’t be possible, but it is.”

Marty paced around in a circle,
shaking his head. “I just can’t believe it!”

“
So tell me this.” Callum
leaned forward. “You flew off and left her. How could you do
that?”

Callum’s accusation cut through some
of Marty’s shock. “I wasn’t in my right mind—as I’m sure you can
understand—and I was pretty confident she wasn’t either. I thought
I’d give her some time to cool down.” He stopped his pacing and
sighed. “By the time I came to my senses, I’d run out of fuel and
had to put down.” He tipped his head, pointing to the west. “In the
loch, if you must know.”

“
And then what?” Cassie
said.

Marty snorted. “And then I discovered
Meg was right and we were in the fucking Middle Ages. The people in
this village took me in.”

“
And the plane?” Callum
said.

“
It’s slowly rusting just
below the surface of the loch. The carcass is just enough out of
sight to be out of mind for the most part.” Marty paused. “So Meg
made it.”

“
No thanks to you.” Callum
wasn’t ready to forgive him.

“
Tell me more … that would
make Meg the Queen of Wales?”

Cassie thought Marty was so caught up
in the story, he hadn’t noticed Callum’s disapproval. Cassie, who
hadn’t even met Meg yet, had to admit that she wasn’t ready to
forgive him either.

“
I believe Meg told you
before you abandoned her that she had come to the Middle Ages and
been with King Llywelyn twenty years ago?” Callum said.

“
Yeah, she mentioned it,”
Marty said, “right before I dumped her off. I knew that she had a
kid named David, and that he and his sister had disappeared a few
years earlier. You’re telling me the truth—they came here
too?”

Callum nodded. “As I said, David is
the new King of England.”

The repeat of that bit of information
hardly fazed Marty. He lifted his chin. “What about you
two?”

Cassie didn’t think trusting Marty was
necessarily the best plan, but Callum said, “Cassie was caught in
the vortex of the time-space anomaly caused by your airplane and
came here when you did. She’s been living twenty miles to the south
of this village nearly the whole time.”

That, of all Callum and Cassie’s news,
seemed to surprise Marty the most. He jerked away and went back to
his pacing, his eyes focused on the floor of the barn. “I’m
sorry.”

“
My coming here wasn’t your
fault,” Cassie said, “and it occurs to me only now that I need to
stop blaming Meg for bringing me here. It wasn’t her fault
either.”

“
What do you mean?” Marty
said. “Of course it was.”

“
You’d lost your
instruments, right?” Cassie said.

Marty nodded. “A storm blew up out of
nowhere. Blew us right out of the sky.”

“
Right,” Cassie said. “Your
airplane was about to crash into a mountainside right on top of me.
If Meg hadn’t brought you here—and unintentionally brought me
too—all three of us would have been killed.”

Marty rubbed his chin. “I suppose you
have a point.” He eyed Callum. “What about you?”

“
It’s my own fault I’m
here,” Callum said. “Because I didn’t believe time travel was real,
I tried to stop Meg from returning to the Middle Ages.”

“
What—what was that?” Marty
said, freezing in mid-stride. “Stop her?”

“
Six months ago, Meg and
Llywelyn came to the twenty-first century,” Callum said. “I was
with the team that tried to detain them and prevent their return to
the Middle Ages.”

“
She
wanted
to come back here?” Marty said.
“What—what is she—insane?”

“
Her son is the King of
England,” Cassie said.

Marty actually laughed. “There is
that.” He stretched his arms above his head and bent back and forth
at the waist. “So, how many jumpers are there, exactly? Just Meg?
Or David too?”

“
What—what do you mean
by
jumpers
?” Callum
said.

“
Jumpers.” Marty snapped
his fingers impatiently. “Time jumpers—how many are there compared
to how many of us?”

“
Meg and her two children,
David and Anna, can time
jump
, as you say,” Cassie said, kind
of liking the nickname Marty had concocted. “You, me, Callum, and
Bronwen, a friend David brought back with him a few years ago,
can’t.”

“
So it’s genetic,” Marty
said.

“
It looks like it,” Callum
said.

Marty nodded. “What about their
kids?”

“
Whose kids?” Callum
said.

Marty gave Callum an exasperated look.
“Isn’t David’s wife pregnant? Didn’t Meg have twins? I heard about
it all the way up here. Are their kids jumpers too?”

Callum gazed at Marty, his mouth open.
“I’ve never considered it. I don’t know. I guess we won’t know
until somebody tries it, willingly or unwillingly.”

“
Hmm. It might be
interesting to be there when they find out.” Marty clapped his
hands together. “Well … what a day, huh? I suppose it’s time to see
to my people.”

“
What are you going to tell
them about the gun?” Cassie said.

“
What they’ll believe:
England is experimenting with hand-held cannons, and that as a
confidant of the king, David gave you the prototype.”

“
That could be dangerous,”
Cassie said. “Wouldn’t it be better to say nothing? Callum has put
it away. In this case, rumor might be no worse than
fact.”

Callum hunched forward on his bucket,
his hands gripping his knees. “I agree you have to tell them
something, and what you suggest is as good as anything I’ve thought
of. I’m going to have to say the same to James and Samuel, who have
probably heard about it already. Thank God they didn’t witness the
shooting. If they had, I doubt that explanation would
suffice.

“
It might be best to say
that the gun was destroyed in the firing,” Cassie said.

Callum nodded. “Early cannons often
broke apart after a few uses.”

Marty pursed his lips. “Maybe you
should come too. They’ll take it better if they think you have
nothing to hide.” He headed for the door. Thirty seconds later,
Cassie could hear him talking to his people and responding to
questions he couldn’t possibly answer with the truth.

Cassie held out a hand to Callum, as
he had to her earlier in Marty’s hut. “Ready?” she said.

“
I suppose.”

Cassie squeezed Callum’s hand and then
hauled him forward, leading the way out of the barn. Callum didn’t
exactly balk, but he moved slowly. “I feel like I’m headed to the
gallows,” he said.

“
You’re not. It’s going to
be fine,” Cassie said, more to comfort him than because she felt
confident herself.

The rain had temporarily ceased,
though the clouds hovered twenty feet above the ground, coating
everything in a fine mist. Men, women, and children had gathered on
the green to hear Marty speak. At the sight of Callum, everyone
hushed. They stood, nearly fifty people, staring at Callum in total
silence for a count of ten, and then the girl who had been abducted
gave another screech—this time of joy—and launched herself at
him.

“
Thank you!” She wrapped
her arms around his neck, almost choking him. “Thank you!” Her
smiles turned to tears and she pressed her face into Callum’s
shoulder, sobbing and laughing at the same time. A bandage wound
around her neck but she seemed otherwise undamaged from the
confrontation. Upon closer inspection, the girl was nearer to
sixteen than twelve and knew it, given how tightly she held
Callum.

After a moment of hesitation, he put
his arms around her and patted her back. “It’s okay,” he said,
forgetting to speak Gaelic, but the girl didn’t seem to mind and
Cassie had actually heard ‘okay’ twice in the last few hours from
two different villagers. Marty’s influence, she guessed. After
another twenty seconds, Callum managed to extricate himself from
the girl’s embrace, and as he put her to one side, the girl’s
father came forward with his hand out.

“
I was angry when you
brought the Stewart here, but today will be remembered as a good
day,” he said.

“
Thank you.” Callum clasped
the man’s forearm. The motion seemed to remove the villagers’
suspicions completely and they crowded around Callum, offering
their thanks. The fight at the bridge would be the talk of the
village for many days—maybe years—to come. Cassie was glad that her
part in it was over.

Or maybe not. As the crowd was
beginning to disperse again, the messenger whom Marty had sent east
rode out of the mist. A company of twenty men followed, led by a
tall soldier in mail armor.

“
I must speak to James
Stewart!”

Chapter
Fifteen

Callum

T
he man who spoke sat at attention on his horse. He had a
narrow face underneath his helmet, and was so thin that Callum
wondered how he could possibly stay in the saddle, much less wield
a sword. Though he’d come prepared for war, not for a village full
of merry people, he recovered quickly and directed his men to
dismount.

Callum was glad that he’d already put
the girl aside, though not at all sorry that Cassie had been
looking daggers at him while he held her. He might have known
Cassie for only a few days, but that was three months in medieval
years. It was about time she started thinking about him as
something more than a friend.

Besides, Cassie should know better
than to think that Callum was remotely interested in the girl. He
was twice her age. Whatever the acceptable practice in the Middle
Ages regarding relationships between older men and younger women,
no thirty-four-year old man should be satisfied intellectually and
emotionally by a sixteen-year-old girl.

“
I’m here, Walter.” James
stood in the doorway of the hut, resting his shoulder against the
frame and holding his hand to his newly bandaged side.

“
You’re hurt!” Walter’s
sternness dissipated in his concern for his master. “When the boy
rode into the castle this morning, we feared the worst.”