Chapter Fifteen
Meg
I was glad Elisa wasn’t with me. She would have had dark words for me about being with Llywelyn. Mom, on the other hand, once she got over the existence of time travel and all that, would have been just as starry-eyed over Llywelyn as I was. He’s the Prince of Wales! Our beloved, lost Llywelyn!
Elisa thought I should have gotten therapy after I left Trev. The idea that I’d married Llywelyn—at least in our own eyes—would have sent her running for the phone book. I could hear her in my head: “You’ve known him for how long?” or “You’re on the rebound” or “He’s too old for you. You’re still trying to replace Dad.” She was probably right. I didn’t have any answers for her, other than that I loved Llywelyn. Back in Radnor that might not have been enough. Here in Wales, it most definitely was.
Nobody treated me any differently than before, but I felt different about myself. By the first week in March, I’d been with Llywelyn for over a month. Each day we woke, traveled a little further on our journey to Brecon, and went to bed at night, whether that was in a castle, a manor, or one time in a tent on the ground. None of this was worthy of notice or comment by anyone other than me. I was surprised, even, by how easily Llywelyn’s men accepted me. I was Llywelyn’s woman, always there, and that was enough to be going on with.
The difference was how I treated myself. I knew what it was to be Trev’s wife, but it was a very different thing to be Llywelyn’s wife. Llywelyn’s wife was competent, thoughtful, and treated well by all. I never had to worry about Llywelyn hitting me, even when something happened over the course of the day to make him lose his temper. I didn’t have to manage him—to walk on eggshells half the time and avoid him the other half. Llywelyn told me what he was thinking, and why, and what made him angry was that I hadn’t expected it.
“I thought you told me that men and women were equal in your world,” he said.
“They . . . are,” I said. “They can be—even supposed to be, I guess. It’s just that I wasn’t when I was with Trev.”
“Humph,” Llywelyn said. That was generally his response every time Trev came into the conversation, which fortunately wasn’t often. “Well, it’s time you started being as equal as a thirteenth century woman, then. I don’t have much patience for the twentieth century if there are still men like Trev in it. We have enough of his kind here.”
By sheer necessity, I began to fit in.
I hadn’t worn a watch the day I’d come to Wales, and I realized that I didn’t miss it. I loved how time moved, slowly or quickly, but without being marked in small increments. There was more time for Anna. Each day had a natural rhythm. Things happened, and if something didn’t get finished, tomorrow would come soon enough. In winter in particular, the days weren’t very long, and people thought nothing of sitting over dinner for hours in the evening after a long day or riding or walking, because there was nowhere else to go and nothing better to do but listen to a forty-five minute tale sung by a bard.
One of the few nights we tented in the middle of a forest, I found myself sitting on a log, sandwiched between Goronwy and Llywelyn, with Anna curled onto my lap, dozing in the warmth of the fire. I’d put away my guitar for the evening, once my fingers got too cold to play. Marshmallows and hot chocolate would have made the moment perfect.
“You’re happy here, aren’t you?” Goronwy said.
A quick glance at Llywelyn showed him pretending to ignore us and focusing intently on a stick he’d stuck in the fire. “I am, Goronwy,” I said. Llywelyn eased a touch closer to me. I hid my smile and kept talking. “I miss my mother and my sister, but I do love it here, even if it’s not at all what I would have expected.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know if I can explain,” I said. “You know that the way we live in America is very different from Wales, right?”
Goronwy shrugged. “Prince Llywelyn has spoken with me of this.”
“We dress differently, most people know how to read, people die of fewer diseases, though we have different ones too, and as a rule, women have a better lot in life. But people who live in that world don’t realize what they’ve lost along the way.”
“And that is?” Llywelyn said, proving his ears were as wide open as I’d suspected.
“People are more aware of how others feel and what they think. Everyone is adept at reading everyone else, and genuinely interested in figuring them out.”
Neither man was impressed. “Of course,” Llywelyn said. “We have to live together, don’t we? That’s not the case in your world?”
“No,” I said, shaking my head at how obvious it was to him. “As a rule, you’d never look at or talk to a person you didn’t already know—whether on the street, at a meal, or in a shop. Everybody behaves as if they are completely alone, even when—or especially when—surrounded by a crowd.”
Both men gaped at me. Even in the flickering firelight, I was good enough now at reading people myself to see the disbelief reflected plainly in their faces. “Why?” Goronwy said. “How could that be?”
“Because chances are, you’ll never see any of those people again. It isn’t worth the time and effort invested.” And then the real reason struck me. “It’s because we don’t depend on each other anymore.”
Goronwy shook his head. “Every man depends on every other, from the lowliest serf who hoes the field, to the knight who rides into battle, to the monk who prays for our souls.”
“And when a man dies, he has companions to remember and celebrate his life, and to mourn him,” Llywelyn said. “I don’t see how your people could imagine otherwise.”
“Yes, well,” I said, “that’s another difference. People in my time don’t think about death.”
“That’s just foolish,” Llywelyn said. “People don’t die in your time? You yourself said that your father and husband died.”
I pulled the blanket tighter around myself and snuggled closer to Llywelyn. “They die but nobody talks about it. Death here is part of daily life in a way it isn’t in the twentieth century, at least in America. Here, it’s always at the table with you, like an uninvited guest who insists on staying for dinner. It doesn’t matter if people die from disease, battle, or childbirth—death is always with us.”
“Of course,” Llywelyn said.
“You say ‘of course’,” I said, “but it’s not ‘of course’ where I come from! Here, people don’t shy away from talking about it and they don’t pretty it up with phrases like ‘He’s moved on’ or ‘She passed away’ which everyone in my town uses. For you, it’s ‘He’s dead and I’m sorry (or not sorry) for it,’ or ‘Me mam died last winter. I miss her.’ You just say it straight out.”
I was unusual for a young woman in the twentieth century in that I had seen death, in both my husband and father. I didn’t know a single classmate whose parent had died, or if they had, they didn’t talk to me about it. Death was swept under the rug and you were supposed to get over it in whatever fashion you were able and get on with your life.
Here they did all get on with their lives, but nobody forgot. In fact, everything important to the Welsh I lived with revolved around people who’d died: they wove tapestries and rugs depicting past battles; most of the songs were about famous, dead people; and most of their mythological stories ended badly. You couldn’t pay me to read a book that ended with the hero dying, but the people around me assumed that he would—and yet, they went about their lives with the quiet hope that this time, just once, he wouldn’t. The entire country was full of optimistic pessimists.
* * * * *
We turned our horses off the road, following the men ahead for a brief stop. “Where are we?” I gazed at the fallen stones.
“This?” Llywelyn said. “It’s a Roman fort. We often rest here.” He lifted me from the saddle.
“Yes, but . . .” I stopped, trying to take it in. The fort had lost its roof, but the walls still stood fifteen feet high and each at least fifty feet wide, built in a square. I walked across the grass in the clearing and through the open front door, vacant now, and into the cavernous space on the other side, with trees and bushes growing where once a legion had lived. A shiver went down my spine as I touched the stones that men—born two thousand years before I—had chosen, and crafted, and placed here.
Lost in thought, I walked from room to room. I loved everything about history, and the best part was walking in the steps of people who’d come before me—which was good, given that I’d been living history these last months. I came out of my reverie, however, when I entered a small room, nestled in a building along the eastern wall. An altar sat in the center of the room, with words carved into the stone and a picture of a bull.
“What happened here?” I asked Llywelyn, who came to stand beside me.
“It’s a chapel, though not to our God. Soldiers worshipped Mithras here. None of the men like to come this way.”
I stood uncertainly in the doorway. “I won’t either, then. Pagan gods or not, I’m a Welshwoman now. I can respect what they feel.”
Llywelyn put his arm around my shoulder and turned me back the way we had come. “Goronwy told me when you first arrived here that he thought he’d call you ‘Morgane’—that you saw the future not because you lived it, but in a scrying bowl.”
“He didn’t!” I said. “Besides, Morgane was Arthur’s sister. I don’t even have a brother.”
Llywelyn laughed and pulled me to him. “You’ve bewitched me. I suppose that’s all that matters.”
* * * * *
The night before we reached Brecon, we stayed at a castle set at the junction of the Usk and the Senni Rivers. It was a castle built by Llywelyn and one which he oversaw directly, through his castellan, Einion Sais. Einion had his own castles too, but this was one of the largest in the area, next to Brecon. It was also the most modern, since Llywelyn built it himself. I had to like that.
What I didn’t like was the tension among Llywelyn’s men. That first evening after dinner, as I rocked Anna to sleep in her cradle, Llywelyn explained.
“The closer we get to England, the worse it will get. Ten miles? Twenty miles? It’s hard to know where Wales ends and the Marche begins. We’ve fought over this land for centuries, and we all can feel it.”
No, I didn’t really understand. Llywelyn shifted in his seat to lean forward, his words earnest and heartfelt, and elaborated further. “We’ve hallowed this ground with the blood of our ancestors. They lived here, plowed these fields, hunted in these mountains, all the way back to the time before the Romans came. Their remains are spread over every inch of this land, and for me to give that up, to negate their sacrifice because of some neglect on my part, means that I give up the very part of myself that is Welsh. It is impossible and unfathomable.”
“The English don’t understand this at all.”
“Don’t understand and don’t care,” Llywelyn said. “They themselves are newcomers to our shores. They conquered the Saxons, who came after Rome fell, but only after we’d already lost all but our small corner of this island. The English kings only care for the land because of the power and wealth it gives them, not because it gives them life.”
“I’m English too, in that sense,” I said. But I recognized the fervor in Llywelyn’s voice and respected it, even if I couldn’t share it. “That’s what you’re most afraid of, isn’t it? Not dying for your own sake, but because of what Wales will lose if you do.”
“Yes,” Llywelyn said. “I don’t want to die, of course, but you tell me that when I do die, Wales ceases to exist and that my people are subject to seven hundred years of English oppression. I can’t comprehend that. I told Goronwy that you were from the future and he still doesn’t believe me, but even he can see that the future you foretell is so frightening and devastating that it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. What matters is that you’ve presented it as a possibility, and now that I’ve heard it, I must do everything in my power to ensure that it doesn’t come to pass.”
“I hope that you can, Llywelyn,” I said. I rested a hand on his knee. “I hope that I haven’t just given you foreknowledge of a future that you can’t change.”
“I think we’ve already changed your future, haven’t we, Meg? If you were to return to your time, you wouldn’t be the same woman who left.”
“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t, but neither is Wales the same place with me in it. I still don’t understand how so little of your daily life got written down.”
“Didn’t you tell me that history was written by the victors?” Llywelyn said. “Who wrote our history?”
“The English,” I said. “I know. It would be helpful if more of your people were literate, because it’s a lot harder to suppress a people when they have their own voice to pass on through the ages in books.”
Llywelyn stared into the fire. “Your world is so far away, Meg. I can’t comprehend the enormity of those years. I can’t even begin to imagine the changes that have occurred.” He transferred his gaze to me. “But then again, you’re here, a young woman of Welsh descent who only invites comment because your Welsh is accented strangely. How is it that the world has changed, but the people in it have not?”
I shook my head. “I think the changes are mostly on the inside,” I said, “just like we talked about before. Those changes don’t show.”
Llywelyn was right too, that fourteen years from now seemed a long way off—I’d be not quite thirty-five. Would I still be with him? Would he send me away like the other women who couldn’t give him a child? Would I even be alive? Thirty-five was nothing to a twentieth century woman—I’d barely have started living. At thirty-five, women were often grandmothers, perhaps not ready for the grave, but old. I didn’t want that to be me either.
* * * * *
“You rutting bastard!”
I stopped short. My hand was out, ready to push open the door onto the battlements, Anna on my left hip.
After my conversation with Llywelyn the night before, I wanted to see the countryside, to feel what he felt. Too often these last weeks, my focus had been on keeping Anna happy or how sore my back and rear were, not on the land through which I was riding. It was always beautiful, but so densely packed with trees on every side that you couldn’t see more than the road in front of you and occasionally a hill rising up ahead or behind.
Instead of going through it, I backed away from the door, uncertain if I should listen in case it was important, or leave because it was merely two men fighting over a woman.
“If our lord discovers your failure, he’ll have both of our heads!”
“Then don’t tell him,” the second man said.
“You were supposed to have finished this already.” It was the first man again.
“Well I haven’t!”
“Young Humphrey . . .” the first man began, but his partner cut him off.
“Humphrey de Bohun is a bloody traitor! He turned his back on me. He had the nerve to say that though I’d been loyal through many battles, it was only because of that loyalty that he would pretend he hadn’t heard my plea. He’ll have none of this. I’m lucky he didn’t turn me in to Prince Llywelyn.”
Now I knew who the second man was at least: Humphrey’s companion, John de Lacey, the man sent by Humphrey’s grandfather. Then heavy footsteps sounded on the other side of the door, pounding along the battlements. Hywel’s voice penetrated the stairwell. “You there!”
“Yes sir!” It was the first voice.
“What good is a guard who stands in one place? You know how close to England we are here!”
“Yes, sir,” the man said.
I’d starting backing down the stairs at Hywel’s speech, but now turned and fled. My breath came in short gasps as I followed the curve of the tower. I was out of sight of the door in a few steps. If one of the men opened it, however, they would know by the pounding of my feet that they’d been overheard.
With a rush, Anna and I burst out of the stairwell and onto the second floor landing—and ran full-on into Llywelyn.
“What is it?” he said, his hands grasping my forearms to stop my headlong rush.
“I’ve just heard . . .” I gasped, trying to catch my breath. “There were men talking on the battlements . . .”
“In here,” he said, and pushed me into the room he was using for his office.
“Rutting bastard!” Anna said, her voice cheery. “Rutting bastard!”
“I gather you’ve been listening where you shouldn’t, too, young lady,” Llywelyn said, rubbing Anna under her chin. He turned to me. “Now tell me.”
“I wanted to walk on the battlements, just to see the countryside,” I said. “Before I could push through the door at the top of the stairs, I overheard angry voices. Two men, one of whom sounded like Humphrey’s man-at-arms, arguing about something—a plot against you, I think.”
Llywelyn’s face darkened. “I misjudged him, then.”
“No, you didn’t,” I said, hastening to redirect his thoughts. “They were angry because Humphrey refused to help them.”
“Ah.” Llywelyn stood in front of me, his hands on his hips, thinking. “Did you hear any of what they were planning?”
“No. I’m sorry. I ran because I was afraid John would come through the door and see me.”
“Understandable.”
“Hywel interrupted them, anyway. He saw them; he would know who the men were. Maybe he observed something else that would help.”
“You have a tendency to end up right in the thick of things, don’t you?” he said. “The solar would be safer.”
“But not nearly as interesting,” I said. “I don’t want to bore you.”
Llywelyn’s mouth twitched. “No, we wouldn’t want that, would we?” And then. “Let’s find Hywel and see what he says.”
I was pleased he was letting me come—he certainly didn’t have to—so I passed Anna to Maud, her new nanny, who was darning stockings in the next room. She was a widow a few years older than I, whose two children and husband had died in a sickness two years before. The thought brought me to my knees, but she hadn’t given up as she might have—as I can imagine I would have if I’d lost Anna—and was loving and fiercely protective of Anna, who in turn adored her.
Llywelyn and I mounted the stairs I’d just run down. This time we went through the door at the top. It was a gorgeous, spring day, with a scattering of white clouds in the blue sky. Flowers bloomed, particularly the early bulbs, and Llywelyn said that the farmers were already planting crops in the lands along the coast and the warmer, richer lands in southern Wales.
The guard who paced the four corners of the tower stiffened in salute as Llywelyn walked by him. I couldn’t tell by looking at him if he was the same one who’d talked to John, so trailed after Llywelyn. Hywel spied us from his post on the top of the gatehouse tower, thirty yards on, and met us half-way down the walkway.
The castle was roughly rectangular in shape, with the round gatehouse tower protruding from the southern wall and the square keep taking up another corner. Llywelyn had explained that the round tower was built first, purely as a defensive measure, before the keep was built for comfort.
“My lord,” Hywel said, with a quick bow.
“Just now you encountered John de Lacey and another man arguing, did you not?” Llywelyn said. “Meg overheard them.”
“Did she?” Hywel said, looking past Llywelyn to me. “I didn’t see you, madam.”
“I was behind the door.”
“They were arguing about a plot they’d conceived,” Llywelyn continued. “We were hoping you knew more than she.”
“No,” Hywel said shortly. “I sent my man, one Huw ap Cadoc, to his quarters. I was not pleased with his lapse in attention as it was.”
“We’ll need him now if we are to confront Lacey,” Llywelyn said.
“Yes, my lord. I’ll bring him to the hall.” Hywel strode away, back towards the gatehouse tower, and Llywelyn and I backtracked to the stairs and the great hall.
We’d only just entered, however, when Hywel appeared through the great double doors to the keep.
“He’s gone,” Hywel said, without preamble, “along with John de Lacy.”
Llywelyn swung around to stare at him. “You’re sure?”
“I spoke to Humphrey who is with the squires in the bailey. Nobody saw them leave, but as the postern gate lies behind the stables . . .” his voice trailed off at the expression on Llywelyn’s face.
“I know, dammit!” Llywelyn said. “I built the place.” He strode to the entrance doors and stared out them.
“Should I order men to follow?” Hywel came up beside Llywelyn.
“Yes,” Llywelyn said. “They’re probably long gone—making for Huntingdon no doubt—but let’s make sure of it.”
“Yes, my lord,” Hywel said. “And your plans? Have they changed?”
“No. We leave for Brecon tomorrow. Bohun will come for Humphrey and hopefully we will be rid of the lot of them.”
I placed a hand on Llywelyn’s arm. “Next time I’ll listen longer.”
“You certainly will not!” Llywelyn said. He wrapped an arm around my shoulders and pulled me to him in a tight squeeze. I put my arms around his waist and hugged him back.
“Women make good spies,” I said. “Nobody ever suspects us.”
“Not my woman,” Llywelyn growled. It was exactly what I would have expected him to say. “It’s bad enough to have plots and subterfuge every time I turn around without worrying about you too.”
“Yes, my lord,”—and smiled to hear myself say it.