Prince of Time (33 page)

“Wait my lord!” The man who guarded David spoke. “You have it wrong. This one is the Prince of Wales!” It was Ieuan’s father, Cynan.

Hereford snorted in my ear. “You’re mistaken, old man. The other man is the one from the campfire.”

“But—” Cynan began.

“Move!” Hereford said. He urged me forward. I obeyed. Ieuan walked stiff-legged ahead of me.

Hereford still had his arm around me, and it was awkward to be held so closely while trying to walk. We struggled along the Dyke. Twice in the first fifty feet, I stumbled on the uneven ground and each time Hereford clenched me more tightly around the waist and pulled me upright.

Cynan tried again. “My lord, this man here is the Prince of Wales. He and I spoke at Buellt when I delivered your message. The other one is an imposter.”

Hereford appeared to be listening now. “Who is the other one then?”

My throat constricted in fear for Ieuan, but Cynan didn’t answer. Perhaps he didn’t respect his son, but didn’t want to see him die on Hereford’s sword either. David must have been thinking similar, desperate thoughts, because he interrupted the Englishmen, speaking in Welsh into the silence Cynan had left hanging. “Bronwen, remember your work with Anna?”

Cynan had to lower his sword to do it, but he cuffed David in the side of the head. “Quiet!”

“Yes,” I said.

“Now!”

I bent my knees, tucked my chin, and drove the back of my head into Hereford’s nose. He staggered backwards, releasing me as he tried to recover his balance. I dropped to a crouch, underneath whatever line of fire might come my way.

David, meanwhile, took a quick step forward, spun to the right, and knocked Cynan’s blade away with his right forearm. Then he grabbed the hilt of Cynan’s sword with his left hand and drove his gauntleted fist into Cynan’s belly. The chain mail the man wore wasn’t stiff enough to protect against such a punch, especially since it had the force of David’s entire body behind it. Cynan went down and at the same time David relieved him of his sword.

Leaping over Cynan’s body, David strode toward Hereford, who was on one knee, holding his nose with his left hand. David kicked the inside of Hereford’s right wrist with his foot. As at Penn State, the knife skittered away.

“Halt!” David said. The three soldiers with Ieuan had turned back at the noise and now stared at us in disbelief.

David stood to one side of Hereford, his sword aligned with the back of Hereford’s neck, as if he was about to chop off his head. I scurried after the knife and came to my feet on the other side of Hereford, holding the knife as David had taught me, at my side, the blade pointed behind me.

“Let him go,” the soldier said, “or we will kill your Prince.”

“Cynan was right. He’s not the Prince,” David said. “I am.”

Hereford grunted and spoke, his voice altered by his clogged nose. “I should never have listened to Tudur.”

David barked a laugh. “He’s spent a lifetime in service to the Prince of Wales. That means more to him than whatever you could promise. Now, drop your weapons.”

The soldiers didn’t move and David gently rubbed the back of Hereford’s neck with the edge of his sword, drawing blood.

“Do it!” Hereford said. The soldiers dropped their swords. Ieuan moved three steps behind the soldiers and pulled out his own sword. Cynan moaned on the ground.

“Do we have something to tie their hands with?” David asked in Welsh. “That was their mistake and I don’t want to repeat it.”

I stowed the knife at my waist and pulled at my hair for the ties that bound the top and bottom of my braids.

“Tie them,” David said.

Though my hands shook, I managed to secure each of the soldiers, plus Hereford, at the wrists, their arms behind their backs. Ieuan helped his father to his feet and tied his hands with the leather thong that held his own hair out of his eyes.

“Let’s go,” David said, when we’d finished. He grasped Hereford underneath his left arm and pulled him to his feet. Ieuan prodded the other soldiers forward and we made an awkward group as we walked back the way we’d come.

After twenty minutes, we reached the spot where we’d left the car, just off the road that led to Huntington, and picked our way down from the Dyke to the English side. David didn’t stop at the car, however, but kept going until he reached the command center that Prince Llywelyn had established.

“My lord!” Bevyn said, hurrying over. “What is this?”

“Hereford, and four of his men,” David said. “See that they are well contained in the dungeon at Buellt, will you? I need to speak to my father.”

“He is near.”

“Good.” David turned away and then hesitated. Bevyn was watching him and when their eyes met, Bevyn bit his lip.

“Your guard, my lord. What has become of them?”

“They’re dead, Bevyn, along with so many others.”

Bevyn placed a hand on David’s shoulder. “Every victory has a cost, my lord,” Bevyn said.

“Witless sap.” Cynan spoke in Welsh, and that could only be because he wanted to ensure that we all understood him. In response, Ieuan spun on his heel. His hand flew up, but David caught it before he could backhand his own father across the face.

“Lord Ieuan!” he said, and then more softly. “Ieuan, no.”

Hereford spoke over the tension that had encompassed our little group. “Release me and I’ll see that you live, Prince Dafydd. Edward once offered your father lands in England. I could be equally generous.”

David laughed, and it even sounded genuine. “You think you’re arguing from a position of strength, do you? I’ll take my chances, Bohun.” David took a step closer to him. “Did you not notice my surcoat, Hereford? It shows the red dragon of Wales. As long as I live, this is where I’ll be, standing between you and my people.”

Within the hour, Bevyn and a troop of men rode away with Hereford and Ieuan’s father under guard, in chains in the back of a cart.

Ieuan shook his head. “I wouldn’t have believed it. Not in all these years of meeting in discord and resentment did I ever think I would see him thus.”

“Do you want me to release him, Ieuan?” David said. “You have only to ask.”

“No,” Ieuan said. “I can’t ask that, and he wouldn’t want it. It gives him one more thing to hold over my head. I’ll not deprive him of the pleasure.”

“Can you explain to me about Tudur?” I said. “I’m still not clear what happened with him.”

“He made his choice, Bronwen,” Ieuan said, but then hugged me to take the sharpness out of his words. “And this time it was the right one.”

“That he’s injured near to death is my fault,” David said. “I finally convinced him to tell me the truth about his involvement with Hereford. Once he admitted it, he swore his oath to my father again and agreed to play double agent.”

“Double what?” Ieuan said.

“To spy for us, while making Hereford think he spied for him.”

“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me,” I said, hurt.

“Again, that is my doing,” David said. “Only Father, Goronwy, and I knew at first, and then I told Ieuan so he could keep an eye on Tudur tonight. Any more and we’d have found the charade difficult to maintain. A simple gesture at the wrong moment could have given the game away.”

Ieuan shook his head with regret. “I popped my head over the top of the Dyke right into the arms of a sentry,” Ieuan said. “He hauled me into the camp. Tudur and Hereford were surprised to see me, but of course, only Tudur knew who I was. Hereford was prepared to run me through, right there and then, but Tudur stayed his hand.”

“By telling him you were the Prince of Wales,” I said.

“Yes,” Ieuan said.

David stared off into the distance. “I doubted him. I won’t again.”

Epilogue

David

M
y father and I sat together on our horses, our lines of men stretching for two hundred yards in either direction along the top of the great Dyke. Below us, in a field not far from where Bronwen, Ieuan, and I had appeared two months before, lay the English camp. We wouldn’t have a repeat of what happened in Lancaster. This time, the English had come to us.

It was a clear day for October, with only a threat of rain in the air. Hopefully, we’d be long gone before the skies opened. But it didn’t matter if they did. We’d won.
Wales
had won, and the world was never going to be the same.

“I see the Archbishop,” my father said. We walked our horses forward, followed by a company of a hundred knights. Carew was with us, along with Math, the princes of Debeuharth, and Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, whose eyes were alight with glee and only a little malice. Gruffydd had never liked Hereford either. Tudur was still recovering from his wounds, but would live.

“I don’t want any surprises,” I said.

“Hereford will have something up his sleeve,” my father said. “John Peckham is honorable in his own way, but he’s a tool of the English crown, thinks little of Welsh law, and will bend to the regents if required.”

My father and the Archbishop had spent the last weeks in constant communication. Our final raid into England had done what the taking of Painscastle, Montgomery, and Brecon had not: convinced the regents they must sue for peace, else they squander the resources of England on a war they weren’t winning, and which only Hereford and a few remaining Marcher lords cared about winning. Defeating Wales had been a matter of pride to King Edward, not practicality. As far as the vast majority of English landholders were concerned, we were a poor province that drained the exchequer and brought them little in return. Hereford had been forced to give way.

Hereford, unsurprisingly, was not a happy man. He rode to my right, under guard. We were exchanging him, as a matter of our good will, for the entirety of Morganwg and Gwent in southern Wales. It was a huge concession, but we’d refused to settle for anything less, and the English hadn’t the stomach for a full scale assault on Wales. Not now. Not without Edward. Whether Hereford would have any clout left, given the high cost of ransoming him, remained to be seen.
And isn’t my problem.

We reached the pavilion, our men positioned behind us in a ‘v’-shape, forming a safety zone between us and the road to Wales.

“Noble lords,” Peckham said. He’d been sitting in an elaborate chair, cushioned and carved, but now rose to his feet. “Let me make you welcome.”

My father and I dismounted, followed by Math and the others. Hereford was allowed to join his co-regents behind Peckham. My father and I stepped into the pavilion, but didn’t accept the chairs that Peckham offered. As a result, all of us stood, the Welsh on one side, and Hereford, Vere, and Kirby on the other, forming two half circles, with Peckham in the middle. Behind the regents, other great lords of England gathered, including Roger Bigod, whom we were forcing to give up Chepstow Castle, and William de Braose, who was losing castles along the southern coast of Wales. At the same time, these lords
were
still alive. They’d benefited profoundly from their decision
not
to obey King Edward’s orders to travel to Lancaster.

“We are here to bring peace,” Peckham said. “The lords of England agree to quit Wales, forgoing their holdings to the west of the great Dyke and the River Dee, which the Welsh have so bravely defended. In turn, the nobility of Wales agree to forfeit whatever claims they might have to land in England in perpetuity, and to return Lord Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and co-regent of England, to his countrymen. At this time, I am also revoking the edict of excommunication against the throne of Wales and welcome your lordships into the Christian fold once again.”

I managed not to laugh. We’d done just fine without his blessing and this whole peace charade was a direct product of that fact. It was important to my father, however, so I controlled myself.

My father and the three regents stepped forward to the document table, taking their turns to sign and seal the treaties. When they were finished, Peckham signed the documents as well, before speaking again. “The final agreement, without which this treaty is incomplete, is the formal engagement of Edward II, King of England, with Gwenllian, daughter of King Llywelyn I of Wales.”

The silence in the tent was so loud my ears rang with it. My father froze in the act of handing his seal to Goronwy. His knuckles went white with the tension in his grip, and the two men studied each other, speaking without words. I could almost hear their thoughts in the stillness:
Do I ruin all by refusing?

My father turned to Peckham. “Although you insult our person by not inquiring in advance whether or not such an agreement is acceptable to us, we choose not to be offended. We accept in principle your proposal because I desire peace between our nations from this moment. But know this, no claim may be laid to the throne of Wales through her. That assumption will lay the foundation of any charter between us.”

“Of course, King Llywelyn,” Kirby said. He and Vere bowed. “We meant no disrespect and were unaware of your ignorance of this provision.” Vere turned his head very slightly, but it was enough for me to realize whose idea it had been.
Hereford
. Even languishing in our dungeon, he still had power.

Another paper produced, another treaty signed, and it was done. We mounted our horses and rode back the way we’d come. If Hereford had his way, my father and I would never set foot inside England again.
Fine by me.

The End

_______________

Thank you for reading
Prince of Time.
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After Cilmeri
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Crossroads in Time,
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