Footsteps in Time (18 page)

“
Me?” Mom laughed through
her tears. “What about you? Have you been here all this
time?”

“
We have,” David said.
“Let’s get you home.” He put his arm around his mother’s shoulder
and looked at Anna over the top of her head. When they’d last seen
their mother, she and David had been same height. Anna held tight
to her mother’s hand as David herded them, along with a very
bemused Aaron, back to where they’d left the horses.

“
You mentioned that you
had known the prince many years ago,” Aaron commented, “but I
didn’t quite catch that you’d given him a son.”

“
I couldn’t tell you,” Mom
said.

A few steps further on,
Math waited to be introduced. Anna took his hand and pulled him to
her mother. “This is my husband, Mom. Mathonwy ap Rhys
Fychan.”

“
I’m pleased to meet you,
Madam,” Math said, in his most formal Welsh.

Mom stuck out her hand, as
if meeting Anna’s husband was a perfectly normal thing to do, but
then ruined it. “You’re married?” Her hand went to her head before
Math could take it. “How can you be married?”

Anna tightened her grip on
Math’s other hand. “I’m sorry you missed it, Mom, but well ... you
weren’t here.”

With that, Mom melted
again. She started crying; then Anna started crying, and they fell
into each other’s arms. Math kissed the top of Anna’s head and
patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll leave you a moment.” He tipped
his head to Aaron who moved past them towards the horses and out of
earshot.

Once again, Anna struggled to regain
her composure, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her
hands.

“
How long have you been
back here?” David said. The control in his voice told Anna he was
determined to remain on an even keel.

“
Beginning of August,” Mom
said.

“
How
did you get back here?” Anna said,
finally able to calm down enough to marshal her
thoughts.

“
By plane,” Mom
said.

Plane? Hadn’t I just
dreamed of a plane?

“
Near Hadrian’s
Wall.”

“
Hadrian’s Wall?” David
said. “And you made it here all by yourself?”

“
I had help,” Mom said,
“most recently Aaron’s.”

“
Hadrian’s Wall is a long
way from here,” Anna said.

“
It is,” David agreed.
“Father is going to freak.”

Chapter Two

David

M
om froze, her hand on David’s shoulder, her face still.
“Father?”

“
He’s alive, Mom,” David
said. “And he’s here, at Rhuddlan.”

“
Oh, David.” Mom put the
back of her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t dare...I mean, I hardly
dared to even think that he might be, that I might be able to see
him again. So you think...” She stopped.

“
Do I think he’ll want to
see you?” David said. “Yeah, I know he will.”

“
But how did you ... how
did you find him? How did you know?”

“
We didn’t,” David said.
“Father did, the moment we arrived. We literally drove into his
attackers at Cilmeri and saved him.”

“
He
went
to
Cilmeri?!” Mom’s voice went high. “He
went
to Cilmeri on December
11
^th
?”

“
It’s okay, Mom,” Anna
said, trying to calm her down. “He felt he had to, despite your
warning.”

“
He could have died!” Mom
glared at David and then at Anna, and then the two women burst into
tears again.

All David could do
was stare at them in amazement. They should be
happy
! Two of the smartest, most
independent-minded women in all of Wales, both of whom had managed
to trek miles and miles across unfamiliar terrain, surviving
entirely on courage and nerves, were falling to pieces
again
.

Mom turned to David, her
cheeks wet, blinking her eyes to rid them of tears. “This is too
much to take in. You were a child last time I saw you, David, and
now you are grown and Anna is married.” She turned back to Anna.
“You got married at what? Seventeen? Eighteen?!”

David tried injecting
rationality into the proceedings. “Math’s a great guy, Mom. He
can’t believe how lucky he is to have her; and the marriage secures
a beneficial alliance for Father. It’s all worked out really
well.”

“
Besides, I’m nineteen
now,” Anna said.

Mom stared at them for a
second and then gave a laugh that was almost a bark. “See!
Precisely my point!” And then, more thoughtfully, she said, “Does
Math know where you’re from?”

Anna nodded.
“He
knows
, but I
think he’s just beginning to
believe
.”

“
It’s always been
impossible to believe,” Mom said. “And I’m living it.”

“
Math is pretty grounded in
the here and now,” David said. “He told me that if Anna looks
Welsh, speaks Welsh, and is acknowledged as Welsh by the Prince of
Wales, that is good enough for him.”

“
I guess there is something
to be said for that,” Mom said. “We will need hard-headed and
practical people in the new Wales.”

“
Don’t you remember when
you came to Wales the first time?” Anna said. “Do you remember what
it was like trying to find your way when you didn’t speak the
language and knew nothing about anything that was
important?”

Mom sighed. “I do remember.
I remember very well. If not for Llywelyn, I don’t know that I
would have survived. Before I knew it, we were in love and I was
pregnant with David. I managed to bypass most of the trauma by
ignoring it.”

“
We couldn’t ignore it,
Mom,” Anna said. “It was all so awful at first.”

Mom nodded. “I know,
sweetheart. That you’re standing in front of me, whole and happy,
tells me that you and David have done remarkably well, at a much
younger age than I was.”

“
We did have each other,”
Anna said.

“
And we also had Father
who knew who we were from the start,” David said.

“
It would
have been different if we’d appeared in Cilmeri and
not
killed Papa’s
attackers,” Anna said. “Imagine trying to make your way in Wales
with no help from anyone. We could have starved to death. David
could have ended up a stable boy, and me a scullery
maid.”

“
Or worse.” Mom’s
expression darkened.

“
A lot worse!” Anna said.
“Imagine if the English had captured us!”

More settled, at least for
the moment, they walked back to the horses. David mounted Taranis
and pulled Mom up behind him. “So, how did you get from Hadrian’s
Wall to Wales?” David turned Taranis, heading south to the castle.
“Planes, trains, automobiles?”

“
Try feet and horses,” she
said. “And then, of course, the ship.”

“
Oh, Mom.” David said. “How
bad was the seasickness?”

“
That’s how I made friends
with Aaron,” she said. “He gave me a concoction to settle my
stomach, which helped, and then he kept me distracted from my
stomach by stories of his family. In the end, though, it didn’t
make any difference since the storm broke up the boat and dumped us
into the sea.”

Within a few minutes, they
approached Rhuddlan Castle. Mom got very quiet. As they rode in
under the gatehouse, David glanced up to see a familiar figure
standing at the top of one of the towers. Father looked down at
them—and it felt like the whole world paused and took a
breath.

“
Llywelyn,” Mom gripped
the back of David’s cloak. “I look terrible! My hair, my clothes
are full of salt. I don’t even have shoes. He can’t see me like
this.”

David ignored her,
not dignifying her concerns with a response.
As if Father will care about those things.
He didn’t know if Father knew what he was seeing, but he left
the battlements the instant they arrived and reappeared at ground
level so fast he must have run most of the way. He crossed the
bailey with his characteristic long stride, his head steady and his
eyes fixed on Mom, and then halted at her knee. He reached for her
and she slid into his arms.

“
I never meant to leave
you, Llywelyn.” She shook her head. “I didn’t want to keep your son
from you.”

He didn’t dignify that with a response
either. Llywelyn slipped one arm around her waist and brought her
close to him while threading his other hand through her hair. “I
never for a moment thought you did,” he said, and kissed
her.

* * * * *

“
So what’s the story,
Mom?” Anna had whisked her mother off to her room to get cleaned up
and into proper clothes and now everyone was back together, ready
to listen to what Mom had to say. Seating himself behind his desk,
Father pulled up a chair for Mom beside him and waved Math, Anna,
and David to a bench on the other side of the table.

“
I spoke with my priest,”
Father said without preamble, “and he sees no reason why we can’t
get married tomorrow. It’s not like we have any consangual
relationships.”

“
None among your advisors
will object, Father?” David said.

“
Marged’s return is more
than they ever dared hope for. Our marriage will secure your
legitimacy in the eyes of the Pope and the English nobility, if and
when the interdict is lifted.”

Mom narrowed her eyes at
David and spoke in English. “Has he asked me to marry him, or is he
just assuming I will?”

“
Assuming, I think. You
will marry him, won’t you?” David held his breath, against the
chance, even after all this, that she’d say no.

“
Of course,” she said. “I
just wondered.”

“
What are you saying?”
Father said, obviously disgruntled at all the English.

“
I’m sorry, my lord,” Mom
said in Welsh, laughing. “I asked David if I’d heard correctly. Am
I right that you are asking me to marry you? Because it wasn’t
entirely clear.”

Father swore and thumped his fist on
the desk. “You try me, woman!” Events were way out of control for
him and his talking to the priest had been an attempt to get things
back on track.

Mom studied him. “You’re
still excommunicate, then.”

He took her face in his hands and met
her eyes. “And every day we live the best we can, as we hope God
would wish.”

Mom didn’t move, just kept staring at
him.

“
It’s been sixteen years
since you pledged yourself to me,” Father said. “Will you say the
words of marriage in front of my people?”

“
Yes, Llywelyn,” Mom said.
“I missed you every day we were apart.”

“
Good!”
Father kissed her for a long time. David looked away. It was great
that his parents were together, but ...
Enough! Let’s move on to the story!

As if they’d heard his thoughts, they
broke apart.

“
I want to know everything
that has happened to you since you left me,” Father
said.

“
Everything?” Mom said.
“That will take a long time, Llywelyn.”

“
Since I cannot take you
to bed, I have nothing else to do,” Father said.

David could feel his face getting hot.
Mom gave him a pitying look.

“
Papa!” Anna
said.

Father ignored them both. “Talk!” he
said to Mom.

First, Mom explained how she’d left
Wales the first time. “I’d gone to you in the night, Anna. You’d
had a dream that scared you and woke you up.”

“
I often do,” Anna said. “I
don’t know why.”

Mom nodded. “I took you to the
garderobe. When I crouched in front of you, I heard a ‘pop’. My
water had broken as I went into labor with David. I gasped, and we
were gone.”

“
Just like that?” David
said.

“
Just like that,” Mom said.
“I found myself in the grass outside Grandma’s house.”

“
So, any shock could send
us back,” Anna said.

“
That,” Father said, “would
be unacceptable.”

David agreed. There was no way he was
going back now.

“
I wish I could reassure
you,” Mom said. “But how it happens is a mystery to me.”

“
We’ll table it for the
time being,” Father said.

Mom then talked through the next
fourteen years of their lives, until she reached the point where
Anna and David disappeared from Pennsylvania.

“
My sister called me when
you two didn’t arrive to pick up your cousin.”

“
Called you?” Math
said.

Mom hesitated, and then explained. “In
our time, a person can speak into a machine that transmits her
voice to another person far away.”