Prince of Time (3 page)

“We can’t risk you,” Aaron said.

“I note your objections, Aaron, but Bevyn isn’t here to overrule me. Ieuan and I are unmistakably Welshmen and in much more danger here in England that you are, even as a Jew. You may not be welcome everywhere, but we’re not welcome anywhere. You, at least, can get away.”

“He’s right, Aaron,” Ieuan said. “I can take care of him. Truth be told, we can ride more quickly without the burden of the goods you carry.”

Aaron gave way. We loaded all of Mom’s things into his saddlebags, folded the duffel tight, and stuffed it in with them. Then I buckled Mom’s backpack to one of the bags and hung a cloak over it.

“Go, Aaron.” I glanced over my shoulder at the riders. “They’re not close enough to make you out and the sun is in their eyes.”

Aaron leaned down and put his hand on my shoulder. “Keep safe, my lord. I will circle around Carlisle and make for the boat. If I can’t reach it safely, I’ll head south for Wales by land, though I dread the thought of appearing before your father without you.”

“It’s my decision, Aaron.”

“Yes, my lord.” He turned his horse away.

Ieuan had been watching the English the whole time. “They’re coming this way. Do we run?”

“Can we reach Scotland before they intercept us?”

Ieuan shook his head.

“Then we mount and head back to Carlisle on the southern side of the wall. If they’re so anxious to meet us, we’ll let them come to us. We’ve done nothing wrong. We’re merely two businessmen, taking in the sights.”

“Except we saw their king die,” Ieuan murmured, under his breath, as he threw a leg over Llywd’s back.

“And we say
nothing
about that!”

Ieuan and I trotted our horses along the old Roman road that followed the wall. Before long, a man shouted. With a rueful look at Ieuan, I slowed Bedwyr. We’d reached a spot on the wall that was little more than a low barrier, some three feet high. The years had filled in the ditch on the northern side. The lead horseman came to a stop ten paces from me. He was shorter than I, older, and dressed well, in a mail hauberk underneath a red and blue surcoat.

 “How goes it, sir?” I said, trying out my English. I’d been practicing the thirteenth century dialect.

“Who are you?” the man said. “What is your purpose here?” He looked past me to Ieuan, who bowed but didn’t speak.
Thank God! He read my mind!
They might have run him through and asked questions later.

 “May I know to whom I have the pleasure of speaking?” I said.

“Sir John de Falkes, castellan of Carlisle Castle and commander of King Edward’s forces in the northwest of England.”

While my mother and I had discussed the possibility that I might encounter Sir John de Falkes in Lancaster, this meeting defied incredible odds. But as my father once said, coincidences weren’t something he believed in anymore.

“David of Chester, at your service.” I bowed.

“And your companion?” Falkes said.

I turned to Ieuan. “Ieuan ap Cynan, of Twyn y Garth. He doesn’t speak English.”

Ieuan had started when I spoke his name. I gave him a reassuring smile, and turned back to Falkes, who was now staring at me, his mouth slightly open.

“Why do I keep encountering the Welsh along this wall?” he said. “What is the attraction?”

“My lord?” I said.

“I met a Welshwoman here this time last year. Perhaps she was one of your kinfolk? Her name was Marged ap Bran. You have heard of her?”

“Yes, of course. Marged is my mother.”

“Of course she is,” he said. “How could it be otherwise? How goes it with her?”

“She is well, my lord,” I said. “My companion and I have traveled to Newcastle and I wished to see the wall. It is a pleasure to meet you as well, as you were so kind to her.”

Falkes, however, narrowed his eyes. His astonishment in abeyance, he reverted to the custodian of the north he was. “I don’t believe you.” He scanned our equipment and gear. “You must come with me to Carlisle.”

“I was hoping to begin our return journey to Chester by this evening,” I said.

“You will have to postpone it,” Falkes said crisply.

At a signal from him, his men surrounded us. Fortunately, Falkes didn’t take our swords or search our belongings. Ieuan’s bow always drew my eyes like a magnet, but as Falkes was a soldier, perhaps he thought nothing of it. At the same time, I was glad I’d borrowed Cadwallon’s sword and left mine with him before we left the boat. Mine was far too fine a weapon for the man I was pretending to be. Not that a merchant should have a sword at all, and perhaps that was what made Falkes uneasy.

“This was part of your plan?” Ieuan asked me in Welsh.

“We can fit it in,” I said, in the same language.

“I wish I understood the language better,” Ieuan said. “I recognize words as you speak them, but then they come so fast I can’t keep up.”

“It doesn’t necessarily help,” I said. “They say words you think you know the meaning to, but then it turns out entirely differently than you’d thought. It’s almost worse to know what they’re saying, because you listen to the words instead of focusing on their actions.”

“That is my task, then,” said Ieuan.

The sun had reached its zenith and begun to descend before we approached Carlisle. We crossed the Eden River some distance from the city and then clattered through the east city gate. We wound our way through Carlisle and up to the castle which perched on the hill to the northwest of the city. I looked left and right, trying to get a sense of how the streets were laid out. Falkes noted my attention.

“You find Carlisle to your liking?” he said.

“Yes, my lord,” I said. “It’s been years since I have seen such a grand city as this.”

Falkes seemed pleased enough by my compliment to abandon his watch over me. He rode ahead so he could lead his men through the gate that separated the castle from the city proper. Just before he reached it, however, a rider burst from underneath the gatehouse and nearly collided with Falkes.

“My lord!” His horse sidled sideways as he tried to control it.

Falkes reined in his own horse. “What is it?”

“King Edward is dead!”

Falkes asked neither when nor how, but gestured to the messenger. “Come with me.”

He urged his horse through the gate, his men surging to follow and shooing us along in front of them. Welsh castles were small, often merely a stone keep surrounded by a single wall. We positioned them on hilltops to augment their strength. Carlisle Castle was nothing like that. It was enormous, built of reddish stone cut in thick square blocks, and was situated in a flat area that was bigger than a football field. I couldn’t begin to guess the number of soldiers it could hold. It had an inner and outer courtyard, both protected by enormous, square gatehouses.

Veering off before entering the second gate, men herded us to a rough building which squatted against the western, curtain wall, directly across from the main gate. The space encompassed by the walls had a variety of buildings in it, including a barracks, stables, and craft-houses. We stopped in front of the blacksmith’s workshop. Two men worked the iron inside and the fireplace in the center of the shop shone bright in the darkness of the interior.

With swords drawn, the men urged us to dismount. The situation had an ugly feel to it.

“Why are you doing this?” I said.

“Put your hands in the air.”

Ieuan and I obeyed, and though I ran through various techniques to get free in my head, I didn’t implement any of them. Falkes’ soldiers outnumbered us fifty to one. They took our swords and our knives and shoved us through a door to the right of the shop.

I ducked my head under the frame and into a windowless room attached to the shop. It smelled of urine and horses. Hay lay on the floor in dirty clumps and the pumping of the bellows sounded through the thin wooden wall that separated the room from the workshop. The door closed behind us and the bar dropped. I pushed on the door.
Nothing.

“Why didn’t they just run us through?” Ieuan said. “It would have saved time.”

“Perhaps Falkes doesn’t know what to do with us,” I said. “We’re neither dangerous enough for the dungeon, important enough for a room in the keep, nor harmless enough for him to let go.”

“I don’t like it.” Ieuan sounded like Bevyn.

“The postern gate is set in the wall not far from here,” I said.

“I didn’t see it,” Ieuan said, but the knowledge cheered him considerably. “It’s almost as if Falkes wants us to try to escape. Then his men could kill us as we fled.”

“Falkes has a free hand in the north,” I said. “He answers only to Edward, who is dead, along with his brother and many lords of the March. If he were to throw half of his people into his dungeons, who in England would gainsay him? There’s nobody left.”

Ieuan lowered himself to the ground and leaned his back against the curtain wall which formed the rear of the room. “I would dearly love to hear that messenger’s report.”

At that, a scratching sound came from behind me, prompting me to turn and look. A blue eye gazed at me through a knot in the wood.

“Hello,” I said, in English.

“Hello,” the voice answered in the same language. It was high and I couldn’t tell if it belonged to a boy or a girl.

“May I be of service?” I said.

The eye blinked, then disappeared. It reappeared in a larger knothole, two feet higher and to the right of the other one. “I’m Thomas. Your mother saved my life.”

“So she did,” I said.

The lone eye inspected me up and down. “You look like I thought you would. Will you say a few words of Welsh?”

“Of course,” I said, and then continued, “
Mae’n dda gen i gwrdd â chi
.”

“What does that mean?” Thomas said.

“I am very pleased to meet you,” I said, in English again.

“Ask him to tell us about Edward,” Ieuan said.

I stepped closer to Thomas. “Is King Edward really dead?”

“Yes.” Thomas nodded vigorously. “The messenger rode into the castle just before you arrived. Uncle John spoke with him in private and then announced the news to everyone in the hall. They say it was plague but Uncle John doesn’t believe it. I heard them whispering about a traitor among King Edward’s men. He thinks the Welsh are involved. But you aren’t are you, since your Prince is dead too?”

“What was that?” I said.

“They found a boy wearing the red dragon surcoat among the dead. Wouldn’t that be Prince Llywelyn’s son?”

I turned to Ieuan and quickly translated what Thomas had said. He whistled through his teeth.

“We had no hand in the death of your King, Thomas.” I turned back to the boy. “As a Welshman, you must understand that I don’t mourn him, but don’t fear for us in that regard.”

Thomas surveyed me through three heartbeats. “I must go.” He disappeared.

Light shone through the hole. I put my own eye to it. Thomas ran away from us across the courtyard without looking back.

“I’d forgotten about that surcoat,” I said. “Edward ripped it from me during the fight and we just left it in a corner. All that work to hide our presence and erase any trace of our camp, and I made a foolish mistake like that.”

“But look how it’s turned out,” Ieuan said. “Falkes will never suspect who you really are now.”

“It must have been Moses,” I said, picturing him with his father. “He had all night to arrange the bodies as he saw fit.”

Ieuan rubbed his hands together in gleeful expectation. “What mischief you could make, my lord, now that you’re dead!”

I ignored that.
No more Cadwaladr! No more Robin Hood!
“I’ve been so focused on Edward’s death, that I’ve given little thought to the death of all the others: Edward’s brother, Edmund; Robert Burnell; the Mortimer boys”—Ieuan made a ‘hooray!’ sound at that—“Gilbert De Clare; John Gifford, not to mention my Uncle Dafydd,” I said. “What will happen now?”

Ieuan swept a hand through his hair. It had come loose from the thong that normally held it at the nape of his neck. “Hereford. He’s all that’s left.”
Humphrey de Bohun, the third Earl of Hereford, Lord of the March.

“He’s ambitious and clever,” I said, “much like Edward, in fact. What will he make of these deaths?”

“Nothing good,” Ieuan said. “Worse, news of your death will spread and your father may hear of it before we can reach him.”

I tried to picture it: Edward had tried to kill me on the evening of July 31
^st
. The next morning, Carew, Aaron and I had observed the Scot encounter with the camp’s sole survivor, Aaron’s nephew, Moses. At the news of Edward’s death and the supposed plague in the camp, the Scots had turned tail and run the other way as fast as their horses could carry them. We’d departed from the fishing village of Poulton shortly thereafter.

“We docked at Annan on the evening of August 2
^nd
, only two days after Edward’s death. Tonight is August 3
^rd
.”

“It’s less than eighty miles from Lancaster to Carlisle. A man can ride that distance in a day if he pushes his horse,” Ieuan said.

“Hereford could have arrived in the camp with the Archbishop of Canterbury within hours of our departure. He’s two days ahead of us; he’s had two days to plot something we’re not going to like,” I said.

“First, he would have ridden as hard and as fast as he could to London,” Ieuan said. “Edward II is only sixteen months old. The deaths of Edward, Edmund, and the others, leaves a huge hole in the power structure of England that Hereford will be only too glad to fill.”

“He has few allies in England,” I said. “His loyalties have been to himself, far more than to Edward. Other men know that and won’t trust him.”

“He’ll play that down, especially as so few men remain to gainsay him. Watch,” Ieuan said, “they’ll name him regent within a week.”

“He holds one of those ‘Great Offices of State’ doesn’t he? What’s his—the sixth highest in England?” I said.

“He’s Lord High Constable. That makes him fifth, though at this point, he’s probably moved up because at least a couple of the men in front of him are dead.”