Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (10 page)

Natasha pursed her lips.

“Yeah. I thought they might have,” David
said.

“That’s why you came quietly, isn’t it?”
Natasha said. “You knew that we knew you were here.”

“Callum told me you would know,” David said.
“I suspected you would chase us if we ran.”

Natasha looked down at her paper, suddenly
still, which David thought was odd. Did she really think Callum
wouldn’t have told him? He wished he knew what Callum had revealed
so far, if anything. Had he mentioned that he was the Earl of
Shrewsbury? Somehow, David guessed not. David, for his part,
resolved to keep Callum and Cassie out of this conversation with
Natasha as much as possible. He would tell the truth, but his
friends weren’t here, and he didn’t want to guess what MI-5 thought
about them—or had done with them.

“Your mother ran,” Natasha said.

“With good reason, as it turned out,” David
said.

Natasha grimaced. “We knew at the time that
we’d fumbled the initial contact.”

“And yet, given your treatment of me, you
learned nothing from your encounter with her. If you’d picked us up
at the pier without your jackbooted thugs, put me in a conference
room, and asked your questions with the three of us together, this
could have been so much more pleasant for all of us.”

“As was the case with your mother, it wasn’t
my call.” Natasha had the fortitude not to eye the one-way glass,
though David did. Natasha could still be playing the good cop, or
she could be telling the truth, not caring that her superiors were
present and aware of the fact that she’d just disowned them.

In the end, it didn’t matter to David if his
incarceration was Natasha’s decision or someone else’s, because he
was still locked up and distrusted. “Callum assured me that your
sensors were sensitive enough to detect my location. You might not
know that I had come through, but you would know that one of my
family members had. I decided I’d spare you having to chase me
around Wales for two days until I could figure out how to get back
home.” He looked pointedly at the door. “It seems I made a
mistake.”

“I repeat: we mean you no harm,” Natasha
said.

David stood. “I guess I’ll just leave,
then.” He went to the door and pressed on the handle, which wasn’t
a knob but a lever. It didn’t move. He looked back at Natasha,
who’d turned in her seat to watch him try the door.

She didn’t admit wrong-doing but merely
pointed at the chair opposite her. “Please, David. Don’t make this
more difficult than it already is. Sit.”

“I’ll sit if you stop pretending that you’re
my friend or on my side or that I’m anything but a prisoner.” David
folded his arms across his chest.

“Fine. This can be adversarial if you want
it to be. Sit,” she repeated.

“Oh, so now it’s
my
fault,” David
said, but he returned to the chair opposite Natasha and sat in it,
rocking it back on the rear legs. The muscles around Natasha’s eyes
tightened, telling David that his sullenness annoyed her.
Excellent.

“Who is William de Valence?” Natasha
said.

“Now, now.” David wagged a finger at her.
“You got your question—more than one, in fact. Now I get what I
want. I need a computer connected to the internet, a printer with
paper in it, and a backpack. And I need to talk to someone from the
CDC.”

“You need to talk to whom?”

“Someone from the Centers for Disease
Control,” David said. “It’s in Atlanta.”

“I know it’s in Atlanta,” Natasha said.

“Or if you prefer, I can talk to someone who
works for an equivalent institution in the UK. Your choice.”

“Why do you want to speak to someone at the
CDC?”

David tsked through his teeth at the
question. “We’re looking at measles, scarlet fever, dysentery,
leprosy, not to mention the Black Death coming up in sixty years.
I’ve got some big problems on the horizon, and I need help dealing
with them.”

Natasha stared at him. “You really think
you’re going back to the Middle Ages, don’t you?”

“Do you really think you can stop me?” David
crumpled the now empty lunch sack and lobbed it towards a garbage
can in the corner. He raised two fists in the air in victory when
it went in, sparking a cough of laughter from Natasha. Then he
lowered his arms. “I’m the King of England.”

“So you said.”

“Then you must realize that I have a job to
do, and I can’t let anyone stop me from doing it. Now, are you
going to get me what I need, or are we going to stare at each other
for the rest of the day?”

Natasha rubbed her chin and didn’t
answer.

David leaned forward, aiming to sweeten the
pot. “If you find me a laptop sooner rather than later, you can ask
me all the questions you want while I work.”

September, 2017

Callum

“
H
ave I mentioned
that I love you?” Cassie stood beside Callum at a picture window,
admiring the view of downtown Cardiff. With five stories above the
lobby floor, the MI-5 building (called ‘the Office’ by everyone who
worked in it) certainly wasn’t the tallest building in Cardiff, but
from their angle, they could see the old castle standing on its
motte, overlooking the old city. Callum could hardly believe that
he’d been in this very spot the day before in 1289, riding a horse
to the harbor where they’d boarded the ships to Ireland.

“You have.” He put his arm around his wife’s
waist and pulled her to him. “As you should.”

“Are we being monitored?” Cassie pulled back
a little.

“We should assume it,” Callum said.

“Good,” Cassie said, and gave him a long
kiss.

Callum broke off the kiss with a laugh. “The
transition leaves you breathless, doesn’t it?”

Cassie shook her head. “I’ve been here only
a few hours, and it’s already as if the last five years never
happened.” She smiled. “Except that I’m standing here with
you.”

“Five years ago, I’d just left the army and
joined the Security Service. I came to Cardiff a little over a year
ago, six months before the events at Chepstow Castle. The city
hasn’t changed at all.”

“Which is what makes this so hard,” Cassie
said.

Callum nodded. “Because we
have
changed. For the better.” As much as the medieval world had knocked
him flat when he’d first arrived, it had been transformative. How
could it not?

“Anyone who could see Cardiff in 1289 would
be appalled at what’s been done to it,” Cassie said. “Have you
noticed the air?”

“It was the first thing I noticed,” Callum
said. “Well, other than the thousands of buildings, of course. That
gray pall hangs over everything, even when everyone here thinks the
sky is perfectly clear.”

“They don’t know what they’re missing.”
Cassie looked up at him.

“This world can’t turn back the clock. It’s
too late.”

“But we can,” Cassie said.

Callum was silent a moment. “I’m going to
have to think about this.” He’d experienced culture shock a time or
two. If he stayed, he would again, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t
be happy here in the end.

“Can you talk to me about what you’re
thinking?” she said.

“If the Security Service really accepts me
back, I could serve David just as well—or maybe better—from here.”
He couldn’t say to her that the idea of risking her life to return
to the Middle Ages had his heart stopping in mid-beat.

“Our obligations are very real in both
centuries,” Cassie said. “I need to talk to my grandfather.”

Callum kissed her again, and then said, “I
will go wherever you go. For better or for worse.”

“I know,” she said, “but this needs to be
our
decision. Together.”

“It does seem that we have a little time to
think about it.” Callum rubbed at Cassie’s arms, feeling the soft
wool of her cloak under his hands. She’d put the cloak on over the
top of the dry clothes she’d changed into: trousers and shirt that
fit the modern world. He’d had the cloak made for her especially
for this trip, an evergreen hue, thinner for early fall weather,
with embroidery at the edges: tiny stags from the McCallum crest
she’d modified for his own use as the Earl of Shrewsbury.

In turn, she adjusted his tie. The first
thing Driscoll had done was find them new clothes. This suit, in
fact, had been one that Callum himself had kept in his office as a
spare. At his departure, it had gone into the Office’s collection.
More than one agent had hurriedly found himself a new shirt from
the wardrobe before reporting for duty after being up all night on
a case—or having spent the night some place other than his own
home.

After that, Driscoll had left them in a
small office adjacent to this conference room, where they’d spent
over an hour concocting Callum’s report on an old-fashioned
typewriter. The powers that be had put a moratorium on any kind of
written electronic communication until further notice. Callum
hadn’t known if that extended to shutting off the cameras that
monitored them, but he and Cassie had assumed it didn’t. Cassie had
insisted on talking normally because they had nothing to hide, just
as David had said. Callum had gone along. They
had
been
living in the Middle Ages. Whether or not anyone believed them
didn’t change that fact.

Callum had started out typing with his usual
two fingers until Cassie had elbowed him out of the way to finish
it with all ten. They’d written volumes about specific experiences,
but remained light on the personal details. Until Callum knew whom
he could trust, he was determined to say as little as possible
about anything but his mission.

The door to the conference room opened,
prompting Callum to release Cassie. Driscoll stood hesitating in
the doorway, but then someone behind him urged him forward, and a
small crowd entered the room. Driscoll gestured to the conference
table which took up the central portion of the room and had fifteen
chairs around it. “Please, sit.”

Callum held out a chair at the end for
Cassie before sitting himself. The chair was faux black leather,
soft and padded, and he took a moment to revel in the way it rocked
back gently under his weight, cushioning him in a fashion he hadn’t
experienced since last November. As a companion to the King of
England, he merited goose down bedding, but there was something to
be said for memory foam.

Eight of the chairs filled with men Callum
knew marginally well, and then the last person entered the room:
‘Lady Jane’ Cooke. Of uncertain age with too-stiff over-permed
hair, she was the dragon-boss of the Security Service, the Deputy
Director General, whom everyone was, quite frankly, terrified to
cross. It was her husband who was the physicist at Cambridge and
the friend of David’s Uncle Ted, who’d started this ball rolling in
the first place. Her boss, known as the DG (the Director General),
was a political appointee who had little to do with the actual
running of the Security Service.

Lady Jane stalked to the seat at the head of
the table, which everyone had wisely left vacant. Her secretary
hastened to pull it back for her, and she sat. Callum had steered
himself and Cassie to the opposite end when Driscoll had suggested
they sit, and now the two women—the only women in the room—glared
at each other from opposite ends of the table. Callum fought a
smile. If she’d been born in another time and place, Cassie would
have had the wherewithal to fill Lady Jane’s shoes.

The two women continued to look at each
other, though both of their expressions had softened slightly by
the time the men in the room arranged themselves and removed files
and documents from their briefcases. Their electronic tablets
remained resolutely dark. Then they all waited, pen to paper, for
Lady Jane to say something.

“Put everything away,” she said. “I don’t
want anything we say here to leave this room.”

The men hesitated for a second and then
obeyed. Callum continued to rock back in his chair, studying
everyone else. This was little different from the daily conferences
with David in the hall of whatever baron or nobleman he happened to
be meeting that day. David would gather minor lords and their
underlings together, listen to them bicker about this and that,
their rights and responsibilities. Meanwhile, he’d be gauging their
strengths and weaknesses for himself—and relying on Callum as a
second pair of eyes.

Lady Jane straightened the edges of a stack
of papers in front of her, which appeared to be Callum’s report,
and then looked straight at Callum. “So. You’re back.”

Callum righted himself in his chair and
clasped his hands on the table in front of him. “Yes, ma’am.”

“Perhaps you would introduce me to your
companion?” She looked down her long nose at Cassie.

Callum held out a hand to Cassie. “Director,
this is my wife, Cassandra. Cassie, this is the director of the
Security Service, Jane Cooke.”

“It’s nice to finally meet you,” Cassie
said, completely without irony.

Lady Jane inclined her head regally. “And
you as well.” She looked around the table at the men in the room.
“We have all read your report, Agent Callum, but of course we have
many questions. Smythe, you may go first.”

Callum controlled his expression as best he
could. Thomas Smythe was now Lady Jane’s right hand man, and he
made Callum’s skin crawl. To everyone else, he was eminently
respectable in his suit and tie, with chiseled jaw and firm
handshake from hours spent in the Security Service’s athletic
facility.

“Who is the man downstairs?” Smythe
said.

“David. He’s the King of England,” Callum
said.

With a nod from Lady Jane, Smythe reached
into his briefcase for a folder and pulled it out. He flipped
through the pages, read a few words silently to himself, and then
said, “Edward I was King of England in 1289.”