Footsteps in Time (8 page)

“
True.” Then he continued
softly. “Killing will change me. It harms the soul of anyone who
does it.”

“
Yes,” Anna said. “It
does.”

But there was nothing they
could do about it. Wales was at war. On three separate occasions, a
lone man arrived, his horse steaming, having ridden hard from a
distant castle. King Edward of England wasn’t finished with the
Welsh, not by a long shot, even if he’d failed to kill the prince.
Anna’s impression was that Prince Llywelyn was waiting for
something. She didn’t know if the problem lay with his allies,
including his own brother, or a change in English
strategy.

One day, in the
second week of January, David and
Anna
came back late from their ride,
with darkness almost upon them by the time they rode through the
gate. David had duties to attend to and hurried through the
grooming of his horse, leaving
Anna
alone in the stables.

After he left, she
deliberately delayed her own return to the great hall.
Wouldn’t it be great if I had something important
to do that needed my immediate attention?
She combed her horse’s mane again and again.
He was a gentle fellow, ironically named Madoc for
a great prince of Wales, though he was little bigger than a pony.
Bevyn had decided he would suit her, and Anna was very happy with
him. As a child, she’d dreamed of spirited horses and begged for
one of her own, but at seventeen, the reality of them was entirely
different. Small and gentle was just fine with
her.

Anna was giving Madoc a
farewell pat when an odd creak came from behind her. She looked
around Madoc’s head, but couldn’t see anyone except a groom raking
hay in one of the stalls. The torchlight revealed no unfamiliar
shadows.

“
Hello?” she called, in
Welsh.

An arm slipped around her waist and a
gravelly voice said. “Hello, missy.” Alcohol fumes wafted past as
the man hugged Anna to him.

“
Excuse me.” Anna batted
at the man’s hand, but he didn’t let go. The stable boy stood
twenty paces away, and their eyes met. He dropped his broom and
raced out the stable door.

Great. I would’ve
liked some help.
The man slobbered
disgustingly in Anna’s ear. She didn’t know who he was, didn’t
recognize his voice, and didn’t care. Taking matters into her own
hands, Anna stepped to her left, her right hand clenched in a tight
fist, and swung it into the man’s groin. As he bent over in reflex,
she turned and met his face with a strong punch from the left. The
man collapsed to the ground, groaning.

Anna poked him with her toe. She’d
never done karate in a dress and was glad to see it still worked.
She was turning to leave when David burst through the stable door,
followed by Prince Llywelyn and Goronwy and a small crowd of
people. As it turned out, the stable boy hadn’t abandoned her but
had gone for help.

“
He doesn’t look good,”
David said, in English.

“
He was drunk,” Anna said.
“It wasn’t much of a challenge.”

“
Is he a member of the
garrison?” David asked Prince Llywelyn.

Goronwy answered. “He was
sent off today for drunkenness while on duty. He will hang for
touching Anna.”

Anna opened her mouth to
protest, but Goronwy and the prince had their heads in close
conference.

“
Hang?” she whispered to
David.

“
When you make a mistake
here, Anna, the price is very high.”

Two men-at-arms helped him to his feet
while he continued to moan.

“
Come on.” David took her
arm. “There are some things you don’t need to watch.”

Anna shrugged out of his grip. “I’m
not a delicate flower, David! I’ve as good as killed that man.
Shouldn’t I watch the result?”

“
And what would have
happened if you hadn’t stopped him?” he demanded.

Oh, I see the
problem.
David thought this was
his
fault for leaving her
alone in the stables.

Anna stepped closer and gripped
David’s tunic. David brought his head down to hers. “I hate this,
David. So often I hate this.”

“
I do too, Anna, but we
just don’t have any choices.”

* * * * *

Nobody but Anna seemed to
care about the death of the man, and the escapade earned her some
distinction among the women for a few days. One of the girls,
Gwladys, asked what she’d done to him. When Anna demonstrated,
Gwladys stared at her, not so much appalled, as amazed. Her
assumption, shared by most of the women, was that other than
screaming and struggling, there was nothing they could do to stop a
man once he had his hands on them. If Anna could have explained
better in Welsh, she would have told them that being the ‘weaker
sex’ didn’t mean you couldn’t fight if you had to.

Unfortunately, things settled back
into their old, dull routine pretty quickly and Anna found herself
painfully ripping out the stitches on yet another pathetic
embroidery project. As usual, desultory conversation went on around
her. Over the last week, she’d noticed that she was better able to
follow conversations, and in this case, understood enough to know
that it had to do with people and places she’d never heard
of.

Then one of the girls
Anna’s age said, “—the green dress anyway. It was mine.”

“
Hush, Elen,” her mother
said. “It’s not your place to question the orders of Prince
Llywelyn.”

Elen refused to be
silenced. “I don’t see why we have to be so nice to her. She’s
stupid and ugly. Look at her. She can’t even sew a straight
stitch.”

Anna tried to cover
her surprise at this speech by dropping her needle. She didn’t want
anyone to realize she at long last understood them, not when she
was finally hearing something interesting. She
had
thanked Elen for the loan of the
dress, after all. Head bent, Anna continued to
sew.

Elen’s comment was met with
disapproval, to Anna’s relief.

“
She’s beautiful, and you
know it,” Gwladys said. “You’re jealous that she has found favor
with Prince Llywelyn. He will find a husband for her who’s more
important than the one you marry.”

Now another woman spoke,
“There have been rumors—”

Have there? Prince
Llywelyn has found a husband for me?
Anna
was appalled, but at the same time, all ears.

“
There are no rumors,”
Elen’s mother said stoutly.

“
That’s
all very well for you to say,” Elen said. “Father was with the
prince at Cilmeri and
knows
all about them. But he won’t tell me until he has
the prince’s permission. I don’t see why it is such a secret. Silly
cow.”

Shocked silence
followed the last statement.
Such gossip!
Were the women like this all the time, and I hadn’t known it?
Perhaps it was a blessing not to know Middle
Welsh.

“
I want to know what this
language is they speak,” said a woman sitting across from Anna.
“It’s very strange, unlike any English I’ve
encountered.”

“
And what about Prince
Llywelyn?” said another. “I heard she healed him at Cilmeri with a
touch of her finger!”

That was news to Anna.

“
She’s a witch!” Elen said,
triumphantly.

“
Don’t be ridiculous!”
Gwladys said. “She’s not a witch. If she were, do you think she’d
be sitting there, taking abuse from you?”

With that, Gwenllian and her nanny
came into the room, interrupting the discussion. With reluctance,
since Anna was eager to hear more, even if it wasn’t nice, she rose
and took the baby. Deciding that discretion was indeed the better
part of valor, Anna left the room and went into the great
hall.

She’d just settled on a
bench against the wall when a group of men strode in, her brother
amongst them, and gathered around a table upon which pieces of
parchment lay. Prince Llywelyn came out of his study and joined
them. They talked and gestured over the papers and, once again,
Anna was astonished to find that she understood them.

One man said, “Our men have reached
Dafydd at Dolwyddelan Castle. Others are coming every day. What are
the total numbers now?”

“
Many thousands, Cadog,”
the prince said.

“
When do we join them?”
another man said. “We can’t allow Edward to come this far into
Gwynedd.”

David turned to look at Anna cradling
a sleeping Gwenllian, and said in English. “Anna, could you come
here for a minute?”

Surprised, Anna rose.

David made room for her in front of
the map.

“
What is it?” she
said.

David spoke in English. “Do
you remember what Edward did after—” He stopped with a glance at
Prince Llywelyn. “You know.”

“
Edward
moved down the northern coast and then headed inland, but the
prince—” Here too, she stopped. Anna didn’t think he could
understand her but didn’t feel comfortable saying
the prince was dead
when
he was standing right in front of them. She looked at David. “Do
you think it’s time we talked to Prince Llywelyn about Wales—about
the future of Wales? Do you think he would speak with us, away from
all these people? In the solar, there’s already discussion that I
might be a witch.”

David put an arm over
Anna’s shoulder and together they faced the prince. “Could we have
a moment of your time, my lord—in private?”

* * * * *

Anna gave Gwenllian to her nanny and
then joined Prince Llywelyn in his study. David, Goronwy, and
another of Llywelyn’s lieutenants, a young man named Tudur, were
there when she arrived. Prince Llywelyn dismissed Tudur and Goronwy
and then indicated that David and Anna should sit in two chairs on
one side of a table. He sat down across from them, stretched out
his legs, heaved a sigh, and fingered the papers in front of
him.

Then he straightened,
apparently having come to a decision. “It is time for me to tell
you what you need to know.”

David and Anna looked at each other in
confusion. They’d imagined themselves telling him the very same
thing.

“
It
begins and ends with Marged, your mother, who became my friend many
years ago.” Prince Llywelyn used her formal name, instead of
Meg
which everyone called
her at home.

“
What?” Anna
said.

“
What did you say?” David
stared at the Prince, his jaw on the floor. “You knew our
mother?”

Prince Llywelyn held up his
hand. “Let me get this out. You may have wondered why I’ve not
expressed more curiosity about your sudden arrival in the meadow at
Cilmeri, or pressed you, despite your lack of Welsh, concerning
your strange chariot. In truth, it was not the first such vehicle I
have seen, and you aren’t the first of your kind I’ve come across.
Your mother came to me fifteen years ago, after the death of her
husband. You were with her, Anna, and she appeared in front of me
one day, just as you and Dafydd did last month.”

Prince Llywelyn held out
his hands, upturned towards them. “I’ve put off telling you this
because I haven’t known how, but maybe I’d better just say
it.”

Anna nodded, trying to be
encouraging.

“
We loved each other,” he
said. “The result was you, Dafydd. You are our son.”

“
What?” That was Anna
again.

David said nothing, just stared at
Prince Llywelyn, his face pale. Was he angry? Afraid? Hurt? Prince
Llywelyn’s story seemed impossible, a delusion.

The two continued to gaze at each
other in silence.

“
Please tell me,” David
said at last.

Prince Llywelyn eyed
David carefully, but took encouragement from his calm words. “It
was close to this time of year, late in the day, and already dark.
I stood alone on the ramparts at Criccieth, a seaside castle built
by my grandfather. One moment, I was alone with the sea and the
birds, and the next, your mother appeared in her blue carriage,
her
Honda
, lights
shining from the front. She came out of the woods near the shore
and slid down a slope toward the sea. The vehicle became mired in
the marsh and began to submerge. Marged had lost control of the
vehicle in her world and slid through a barrier into this one. At
least that’s how she described it to me.

“
Astonished, I raced down
the steps, out the postern gate, and onto the shore. Marged had
lost consciousness, and her baby—that was you, Anna—was crying in
the rear seat. Without knowing how I knew to do it, I opened the
door of the chariot and pulled you both free. Soon after, the car
sank into the mire and disappeared. I imagine it would still be
there, if you knew where to look.”