Castaways in Time (The After Cilmeri Series) (23 page)

Lili remembered her first fight at the
battle of Painscastle; it was the same day she’d admitted to
herself that she was head over heels in love with Dafydd. She’d
stood with the other archers to shoot, and shoot, and shoot again.
Tonight she hadn’t even nocked an arrow and she was already tired.
Math had sent her away twice to see to Arthur, but she had refused
his entreaties not to return. As Math had confessed, he needed
her—maybe not more than Arthur did, but Arthur could do without her
for a time tonight more easily than Math.

“Keep your heads down.” The command came
from below. “We don’t want that bastard to know how many we
are.”

Lili smiled to hear Bevyn’s gravelly voice.
He had come with Math to Windsor to confer with Dafydd, though Lili
thought the real reason was to check up on her husband and make
sure he was still the same boy he’d taken under his wing nearly
seven years ago. Bevyn had been disappointed to find Dafydd
gone—and in particular, gone to Ireland—without him. Bevyn had made
do with a few days’ consultation with Math and Ieuan about the
state of England’s defenses, staying longer than he perhaps needed
to. He had been planning on departing for his home on Anglesey
tomorrow. Nobody was sorry tonight that he was among them.

Now he stomped up the steps to the top of
the wall and crouched beside Lili, before taking a moment to peer
between two of the battlement’s merlons at the darkness below them.
It was so quiet Lili could hear the lap of the Thames against the
wharf.

“How are you, lass?”

“I’m well,” Lili said.

“Is Dafydd going to have my head for letting
you fight?”

“I thought it was Math’s head he was going
to have,” Lili said.

“Mine’s a little lower to the ground.” Bevyn
chuckled, the sound coming low and melodious. “I’d fall on my sword
for you if need be.”

Lili patted his arm. “I love you too.”

Oddly, Roger Bacon had been instrumental in
developing the plan they were following: to remove the torches from
the walls all around the town and let no man poke his head above
the top of the battlement. The idea was to lure Valence’s men
closer than they might have come otherwise, and to convince them
not so much that Windsor was undefended, but that it was poorly
defended. If Valence couldn’t calculate their numbers, he would
have a harder time deciding where to strike.

“Lights or no lights, someone will have told
Valence by now that Dafydd isn’t here,” she said.

“Valence came here to challenge your
husband. That I believe absolutely. Dafydd’s absence will increase
Valence’s confidence, and his well-established prejudices will tell
him that Dafydd’s rule is incompetent and that he has succeeded up
until now out of pure luck,” Bevyn said. “Lord Math intends to do
nothing to dissuade Valence of his opinion, right up until he is
proved otherwise.”

“I hear something!” The message was passed
down the wall-walk from one man to the next. The archer on the
other side of her, a man named Hywel, wiped the sweat from his
brow. Lili could just make out his expression in the faint glow of
the torch that lit the street below them. He looked at her, and
they both nodded, finding courage in their camaraderie.

Lili listened hard, brushing the baby hairs
that had come loose from her braid out of her eyes and peeking over
the wall with Bevyn. They stood on the north rampart, overlooking
the bridge across the Thames River. To the south, on the opposite
side of the town, a hundred camp fires lit up the farmland. Valence
was making a big show of numbers on the south and east side of
Windsor, but where Lili and Bevyn looked remained dark.

Half of the archers were posted here, Lili
among them. Their job was to defend the bridge. They all hoped that
the first assault would be on the other gatehouse. The host of men
posted there had every intention of throwing Valence’s army back.
But everyone knew by now that Valence was tricky. At times like
this, silence was louder than marching feet. It wasn’t to be
trusted.

“There!” Lili pointed and then quickly
dropped her hand and her body below the level of the crenel.

“My eyes aren’t what they once were,” Bevyn
said. “What do you see?”

“Shadows move along the road.” Lili wished
for the binoculars, but Math had them at the main gate. She
squinted into the darkness, pulling at the corners of her eyes to
expand her vision. “I can’t make them out well and strangely, I
can’t hear them.”

“Valence wouldn’t be the first commander to
muffle the feet of his horses and men.” Bevyn cat-walked to the
town side of the wall-walk and waved a hand at an approaching
messenger, a girl not yet grown into womanhood. “Tell Lord Math
that he was right. Valence comes at us from the north as well as
the south. We can’t yet say as to his numbers.” The girl nodded to
indicate she understood and departed at a run.

Bevyn patted Lili’s shoulder. “I have men to
see to. Wait for my signal.” He disappeared into the darkness under
the wall-walk, heading towards the gatehouse that guarded the
bridge.

The idea that Valence had left the London
road dark to lure them to send out their women and
children—possibly Lili herself—in a lightly defended force was one
that Lili had immediately accepted, but she was still a little
stunned that it had been proved true. If she had fled as Roger
Bacon suggested, Valence would have captured her, and the war would
have been over before it started. Dafydd, or Math in Dafydd’s name,
would have agreed to anything, promised anything, to get Lili and
Arthur back.

Would Dafydd really have given up the
kingship? That she couldn’t say, and in truth, it wasn’t his to
relinquish. The people had chosen him to rule them, which appeared
to be something Valence had yet to comprehend. Some of these
Normans had spent so long dominating the Saxons they’d conquered
that they’d forgotten how to rule by anything other than force, if
they’d ever known it.

Lili huddled behind a merlon near the other
archers, every so often peering around it to see what was happening
beyond the walls. Directly below her lay a cleared space in front
of the gatehouse, and then the wooden bridge across the Thames.
Over fifty-feet in length, it was made of wood and easily wide
enough for a cart to cross, though not for two to pass
side-by-side.

“Waiting is hard,” she said to nobody in
particular.

“It’s always like this before a fight.”
Nicholas de Carew appeared at her left shoulder in the place Bevyn
had vacated. Lili glanced up at him, taking in his patrician
profile outlined against the glimmerings of stars in the night sky,
and then she shifted her eyes to the front again, straining to make
out the shapes of Valence’s men. The shadows bobbed and weaved in
places, coalescing into individual men here and there as they came
on. She still couldn’t hear their marching feet or make out their
exact numbers.

“You’ve participated in many battles,” she
said, not as a question.

“I’ve fought some beside your husband.”
Carew paused as if he was thinking to add to his statement and then
turned to look at her fully. “Tell me, my queen, have I offended
the king?”

Lili’s eyes widened. “No … no … why would
you think that?”

“I used to be much in his confidence, but
these days he turns more to Clare or this new Earl of Shrewsbury,
Lord Callum.”

This wasn’t the first time one of the Norman
lords had come to her rather than Dafydd for an explanation of his
actions. For some reason, they found her more approachable. She
wouldn’t have thought this was the best time for it, but that Carew
would speak to her about his concerns in this moment was an
indication of how troubled he was. So she did her best. “My lord
Carew, if you fear that you have lost my husband’s favor, I assure
you that you are in all ways incorrect.”

“I pray that you are right. Please tell me,
in what way have I misunderstood?”

“Has he not put the whole of southwest Wales
into your keeping?” she said. “With that and your new lands in
Cornwall and Somerset, your estates have doubled in size compared
to what they were before you threw in your lot with us. He has
given you this authority and power because he
does
trust
you.”

Carew nodded. “And yet, he no longer calls
me to court. I care for his estates and mine, I pay my taxes, and
yet I had heard nothing from him, barring the announcement of the
birth of his son, for the past three months until this week. And
then when I do come to London, he isn’t here to greet me.”

Lili bit her lip, searching for the words
that would convince Carew how completely he’d misunderstood the
situation. “Dafydd has a saying. Perhaps you’ve heard it before,
and it certainly applies to you in this case:
keep your friends
close and your enemies closer.
”

Carew’s face was shadowed. He stood totally
still, making his emotions difficult to read, but she forged ahead
anyway.
“
If Bohun sails with my husband to Ireland, it isn’t
because Dafydd trusts him or his counsel more than yours. It’s
because he
doesn’t
. Dafydd can leave a large portion of his
lands in your very capable hands and never worry that you will
betray him or undercut his rule. He has left you alone because you
do very well on your own.” She canted her head. “I can tell you
that just the other day he said to me that he misses your
companionship, but he wasn’t calling you to court because he didn’t
want you to think he didn’t trust you to manage his and your
affairs without his direction.”

Carew took in a breath and let it out. “You
comfort me. I have lived so long among those whose mouths speak
nothing but falsehoods that I sometimes become confused by a king
who tells me the truth. You have eased my mind and yet—” He paused
and looked at her carefully. “I am concerned as to
why
he
asked me to come to Windsor on the heels of his own departure.”

“Why would you be concerned about that?” she
said.

“I came here in a temper, angry because I
believed him to be mocking me by requesting my attendance on you
instead of him. I couldn’t understand why he wouldn’t speak to me
in person.”

“He would never mock you,” Lili said.
“Never. Don’t you know him well enough by now not to think it?”

“Your courtesy has shamed me.” Carew gazed
out over the battlement, and Lili realized that he was fully
exposed to the enemy across the river. She didn’t feel she could
tug on Carew’s cloak to get him to drop down, and perhaps by now it
didn’t matter. The oncoming soldiers would expect at least one
sentry on the wall. They didn’t have to know how many additional
men awaited them.

“I will beg his forgiveness next I see him.
I should have known that for the king to ask for my presence at
Windsor while he was absent meant no more or less than it appeared
on the surface and was an indication of trust—”

“Of extreme trust,” Lili interjected.

“He requested that I watch over you.” Carew
shook his head. “With Lord Math and Lord Ieuan at Windsor, why
would he choose me? Why place you in my keeping?”

“They had many duties already, so he
relieved them of the most important one by giving it to you.”

Carew nodded but didn’t speak, and it seemed
to Lili that even an old soldier like Carew could find himself
undone by a gesture from her husband.

And then she added, “It isn’t so much
me
that he charged you with, is it, Lord Carew? He charged
you with the protection of our son.”

She didn’t know why Dafydd hadn’t made sure
he was here when Carew arrived, but then, why would he bother? He
knew that he could rely on Carew, and that was the end of the
matter. It was too bad he hadn’t explained all that to Carew,
however.

She put a hand on his arm. “Have you ever
had any reason to mistrust Dafydd’s instincts?”

Carew cleared his throat. “Never.”

“Then don’t question them now,” Lili said.
“You are here because he wanted you here, and for my part, there is
no knight among all of Dafydd’s men whom it suits me more to have
by my side tonight.”

Carew bowed. “No matter what Valence brings
against us, I will be your shield.”

“I am grateful,” Lili said.

As Lili spoke those words, the sound of
marching feet finally came to her. She braced herself, eyes
searching for Valence’s banner, but then a shout from across the
Thames split the silence. “We’re friends! Let us through!”

Lili peered into the darkness beyond the
river. Bevyn shouted, “Who goes there?”

“Rhodri ap Gruffydd! Uncle to the King!
Hurry! Valence’s men are right behind us!”

“It has to be a trap,” Lili said.

Bevyn signaled that the torches on the
bridge be lit. Once done, they revealed upwards of fifty men.
They’d arrived at the far end of the bridge and at their head was a
small man who’d removed his helmet, exposing his pure white hair.
Bevyn stepped to the front of the men who guarded the city gate, a
broad door with iron fittings and hinges. He looked up at Lili, who
leaned through the crenel to speak to him. “I know of this Rhodri,”
she said, “though I’ve never met him.”

“I have,” Bevyn said. “I don’t trust
him.”

“You trust no one,” Lili said.

“I will speak to him.” Bevyn lifted his
chin. “Let Lord Rhodri through!”

The soldiers on the bridge gave way. Some of
Bevyn’s men formed a circle around him, hemming him in, and he met
Bevyn at the near end of the bridge, right underneath Lili and
Carew.

“I am Rhodri ap Gruffydd. I have brought
fifty men to aid Windsor.” He trained his eyes on the battlement,
observing the people watching him through the crenels. “I believe I
can be of service in this matter.”

Lili had never met him, but this uncle
Rhodri was one of the four brothers born to Dafydd’s grandfather,
Gruffydd. Owain, the eldest of Gruffydd’s sons, had died in 1282
before Dafydd had come to Wales. Llywelyn, the second son, was
Dafydd’s father, and Dafydd, the youngest and most wayward of the
brothers, had died a few years ago after allying himself with King
Edward against Llywelyn. Rhodri, the third son, had never involved
himself in the struggles for Welsh independence. He’d been a very
small boy when his mother had taken him to England in the 1240s
when Gruffydd had been imprisoned in the Tower of London. Rhodri
had never returned to Wales.