Guardians of Time (33 page)

“He simply asked me to give you his
Christmas Day greetings,” Peter said.

“He’s in Shrewsbury?” Fulk’s eyes had
narrowed.

Aymer and Comyn were whispering to each
other, both leaning back in their chairs as Fulk leaned forward. He
gave them an annoyed glance, and then returned his gaze to
Peter.

“He celebrates Christmas with the king.”
Peter opted not to mention that the celebration would be
occurring—if at all—in Avalon.

Comyn was listening closely now. Peter
didn’t know if he had met Callum several years ago when Callum
brokered the deal for Balliol to become king, but he thought it
likely. “The earl is here?”

“At Dinas Bran.” Peter wished he could have
avoided saying that, but he didn’t feel like he could lie outright.
Politics were not his thing.

However, Bridget smiled. “He commemorates
the birth of our lord with the ambassador from the French court and
James Stewart. We are honored to have been invited to share the day
with him.”

Peter gave a short bow in Comyn’s direction.
It was obvious why he was called
Red
, given the color of his
hair and the millions of freckles covering his face. “I’m sure, my
lord, that you would be welcome if you cared to travel the last few
miles to Dinas Bran with us.”

Comyn gave what had to be an involuntary
shake of his head, and Aymer just managed to arrest the sneer that
had formed on his lips.

“Please give my regards to your lady wife,
my lord Fulk,” Bridget said. “We should be on our way. We wouldn’t
want to be late for the Christmas feast.”

Fulk gave her a sickly smile. “I won’t keep
you. Godspeed.”

With a last nod, Peter spun Bridget around
and directed her towards the door of the hall.

“That went well,” she said.

“Let’s not count our chickens until we’re
free,” he said. “You took a risk mentioning Stewart.”

“What good is it to be here if we don’t
learn what they did with him?” Bridget put out a hand to the door
and pushed through it. “Did you see Comyn’s face pale when I said
James’s name?”

“You could hardly miss it.” Peter glanced
back before he followed her. No alarm had been raised.

Bridget hesitated on the top step. “Are you
sure we should just leave? What if James is locked in one of the
towers?”

“We are only two, three with Simon,” Peter
said. “We have what we came for. If Aymer de Valence has truly
conspired with Red Comyn to murder the ambassador from France and
abduct James Stewart, then the sooner we tell Samuel and Lili about
it, the better.”

“And if Fulk is completely innocent of the
attack on the emissary?” Bridget said.

“When has Callum ever condemned an innocent
man?”

Bridget nodded and preceded Peter down the
stairs. A dozen men moved about the courtyard, many speaking Gaelic
or English with a thick Scottish accent. That the men in Fulk’s
garrison or their Scottish visitors had left Molier and Geoffrey
for dead and killed everyone else in their party wasn’t a good sign
as to what would happen to them if they were found to be spies.
Peter urged Bridget towards the gatehouse and the bridge.

“If he is not innocent,” Peter took her arm
again, “then I am quite worried about what he might do to us if he
learns that we aren’t really passing through or that you are not
yet my wife.” Peter said the last few words with some hesitation.
He hadn’t mentioned the wife issue since last night and hadn’t
really meant to say anything about it again unless Bridget did, but
the situation seemed to call for it.

“I don’t mind, by the way,” Bridget
said.

Peter glanced over at her. “You don’t mind
what?”

Bridget tipped her head back to look up at
the sky, laughing silently. “All this time I’ve been stressing
about not replying, and you forgot within moments of asking me,
didn’t you?”

Peter stared at her for a second, the rain
dripping off his forehead. He wiped at it with the back of his
sleeve and then swallowed hastily.

“I hadn’t forgotten. I was just distracted
by the case. Do you mean it?”

“I mean it,” she said.

“When?”

“When what?”

“When will you marry me?”

“You want to decide that now?” Bridget was
laughing at him, but Peter didn’t care.

Once he’d decided she was the girl for him,
it was as if the words were just waiting on the tip of his tongue
for him to say them. “I love you. I’ve loved you from the moment
you stuck that first wool hat on my head.”

The time travelers had been given a true
taste of medieval Wales on their long journey from the battlefield,
where they’d arrived, to Llangollen. Bridget, whose backpack had
been full of yarn, had spent the whole journey knitting hats for
everyone. She’d made a gray one for him, and practically his first
words to her had been
thank you.

“I’d marry you tomorrow if you’d have me.
Once we’ve decided, what’s the point in waiting?” He gestured to
the moat. “This is the Middle Ages. Life is short, and it isn’t
like we can move in together, is it?”

“You don’t think we need more time to get to
know each other?” she said.

“You’re smart, honest, adventurous, patient,
and kind. Are you saying you’ve been keeping a dark side of your
personality from me all this time that’s going manifest on our
wedding night?”

Bridget had the back of her hand to her
mouth. “All right, then.” And then she laughed and dropped her
hand. “For someone who’s a terrible communicator, you do all right.
Better than some.”

Peter smiled down at her. Maybe he would
never stop smiling. He guided her across the bridge in double time,
and they had almost reached the outer bailey on the other side
when—

“My lord! My lord!” Peter looked back to see
the steward with his hand up to gain their attention. There was no
mistaking that he wanted them.

“Damn,” Peter said under his breath.

The steward started across the bridge, and
Peter felt he had no choice but to wait for him. By the time the
steward reached them, he was breathing hard. “Lord Valence begs you
to return to the hall. He has a gift for you to bring to the
king.”

“That really isn’t necessary,” Bridget
said.

“He acknowledges that the king’s invitation
should not be lightly discarded, and he pledges not to
inconvenience you unduly,” the steward said.

Bridget and Peter looked at each other.
Peter had to accept that there was no real way to deny the request,
but his feet itched to be on the other side of the moat. He took a
step towards the outer bailey. “We really should go.”

The steward made a move to tug on the fabric
of Peter’s cloak. “I must insist—”

And then with a
whuff
as if all the
air had suddenly been sucked out of the atmosphere, the Cardiff bus
burst through a gash in the sky, just like it had a year ago.
Except this time, instead of driving through the middle of a
battlefield, it soared through the air for a half-second before
settling with a jaw-rattling thud on the road to the north of the
castle and then its momentum carried it headfirst into the
northeastern watchtower itself.

The tower shuddered, and the unmortared
stones that made up the top floor crumbled onto the roof of the
bus. The steward gaped in shock and astonishment. But Peter grabbed
Bridget’s hand and took off at a run towards the outer bailey.
While Simon may have warmed the horses and even unsaddled them in
their absence, he’d known enough to be ready at a moment’s notice
because he had all three horses out of the stable and waiting as
Peter and Bridget ran up. From his position, he couldn’t have seen
the bus come in, but there was no mistaking the hurry Peter and
Bridget were in.

With a quick boost, Peter settled Bridget
into her saddle and then mounted his own horse. With Simon, they
spurred their horses towards the gatehouse. The portcullis was
still up—probably because the two guards who were supposed to be
attending it were staring towards the moat, mouths open at the
arrival of the modern bus. Peter had a better understanding now of
what the shock of his own arrival a year ago must have been like
for the medieval onlookers. For his part, he felt only satisfaction
as he led the way out of the gatehouse and onto the road.

While Peter could honestly say he would have
been happy never to see the bus again, there was a certain
satisfaction in knowing that he and Bridget were free of
Whittington—and that Callum and David had returned.

Anna

C
assie killed the
bus’s engine and turned to look at her friends. “Who’s
screaming?”

Anna swept her gaze around the few friends
who’d returned with them, all of them sitting frozen in their
seats, hearts pounding at the suddenness of the transition from the
twenty-first century to the thirteenth. They were all accounted
for, which meant they had a stowaway. When he found out, David was
not going to be pleased, and none of them had thought to give the
bus the once-over to make sure they were alone.

She stood. “The noise is coming from
upstairs. I’ll check it out.”

Without waiting for anyone else’s thoughts,
she trotted down the aisle towards the stairs at the rear of the
bus, which projected all the way across the road, blocking it
completely. Footsteps behind her told her that someone was
following, and she wasn’t surprised to see that it was her
husband.

“We appear to be home,” Math said, with that
dry wit he often brought out in times of crisis.

“It seems so.” Anna ducked her head slightly
so she could see out the windows. “But I’m not sure where we
are.”

“England?” The word came out of Math’s mouth
with something of a sneer, the automatic reaction of a Welshman to
finding himself in the wrong country. “I believe we have driven
into a watchtower.”

Anna gestured with her head to the stones
that were hitting the top of the bus before falling past the
windows to the ground. “I have never seen this castle before.”

“Nor I,” Math said.

They took the stairs to the upper level two
at a time, Anna already wishing she was back in her jeans instead
of the medieval dress she’d changed into so she would fit into the
Middle Ages once they’d time traveled again. Though Math had
showered at Abraham’s house—every medieval man needed to try it
once—he was wearing the same clothes he’d come to Avalon in
yesterday.

Anna and Math popped out of the stairwell to
find the source of the screaming. A man stood before them, blood
streaming down his face from a giant contusion on his forehead.
That they had a stowaway, that it was Rupert, and that the accident
had injured him was just bizarre enough to prompt sudden laughter
from Anna. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Rachel appeared at Anna’s shoulder, took in
the situation with an assessing glance, and walked down the aisle
towards the front of the bus.

Rupert staggered backwards towards the
windshield, his hands reaching for the metal bar beneath the
window. “Stay away from me!”

“I’m a doctor,” Rachel said.

Rupert’s panic didn’t abate. “What have you
done?”

“Time traveled. What did you expect?” Math
edged his way past Anna and strode down the aisle too.

Though Rupert was still shrinking back
against the windshield, he didn’t turn away from Rachel, who
reached out a hand to him. “What-what are you going to do to
me?”

“Help you,” Rachel said at the same time
Math clicked his teeth and said, “Nothing.” He stopped halfway
along the aisle and reached up to the ceiling.

Anna frowned and moved towards to her
husband. “What are
you
doing?”

“Someone in the tower is shouting ‘help!’
Can’t you hear him?”

Anna held her breath and listened. The
insulation in the bus was good, which was why the faint sounds
hadn’t come more clearly sooner. Math pulled a lever and a trapdoor
in the ceiling lifted up with a hydraulic hiss. Then, putting a
booted foot on the back of one of the adjacent seats, he hoisted
himself through the opening.

A moment later, he stuck his head back
through the hole, followed by his arm, which he stretched out
towards Anna. “You coming? It looks like the stones have stopped
falling.”

“Of course I’m coming!” Anna grasped Math’s
hand and stepped onto the back of the seat as he had.

She wasn’t as tall as Math, nor as strong,
but as he pulled her through the opening, she got her elbows out on
the roof of the bus and then, with another assist from Math, was
able to scramble upright. It was raining, which was no more than
Anna would have expected, and about thirty degrees warmer than it
had been in Bangor. Whatever snow had come with them on the
exterior of the bus to the Middle Ages had already melted.

She found herself twenty feet in the air
with a spectacular view of the surrounding countryside. Anna turned
around and saw that her head was nearly level with all that was
left of the top floor of the collapsing tower, over the stones of
which leaned a dark-haired, dark-eyed man with a slender, patrician
face. His eye had been blackened, and the knuckles of both hands
that clutched the stones in front of him were scraped and
bruised.

Math gazed up at him and spoke in English.
“I am Mathonwy ap Rhys, Lord of Dinas Bran. Who are you?”

“James Stewart, High Steward of Scotland,”
came the reply—in English but with a distinct Scottish accent.

Anna clutched Math’s arm for balance as she
moved closer to the window. “I’m Anna, King David’s sister. I’d ask
what you’re doing here, but maybe questions can wait, and you
should just come with us. I don’t know how much longer that tower
is going to be standing.”

“Excellent idea.” James perched a hip on
what Anna hoped was a somewhat stable stone and swung his right leg
over the wall, followed by his left. Math held out a hand for James
to grasp, and James jumped down onto the roof of the bus, landing
with a thunk. Math caught his arm to steady him, not wanting him to
slip on the wet surface.