Footsteps in Time (30 page)

Two scouts traveled to
Brecon the next day. On their way there, they met a caravan. Since
the burning of the village, Hereford’s castellan had evicted the
victims from their land and forced them north, hoping to burden
Prince Llywelyn with refugees.

“
What have you done!” one
man shouted when the scouts led them to the camp. “Fields burned;
homes fired; a lifetime of labor lost in one night!”

“
Are you English or Welsh,
man!” barked one of David’s men (another Gruffydd), before the
peasant could speak again. “You like living under Bohun’s boot, do
you? Even if he has no love for Edward, he should not rule in
Wales!”

The man shook his fist in Gruffydd’s
face, not appeased in the slightest.

“
Llywelyn, Prince of Wales,
invites you to travel north where you will be made welcome,” Bevyn
said, ignoring the man. “Trust that your sacrifice is not in vain,
and we will unite all Wales under his banner.”

“
And the end justifies the
means,” David said, though only to himself.

The scouts brought quite different
news from the Clifford holdings. The town of Hay was already
furiously rebuilding and shoring up its defenses. At Bronllys, the
people had deserted the village and moved into the castle proper.
Bevyn suggested that they should return there in order to determine
their next move. David agreed. The next day they surveyed the
damage from a nearby wood.

“
We could take the castle,
my lord,” Ieuan said. “The castellan must be an innocent to have
brought the villagers inside. He won’t have enough provisions to
feed them for long.”

“
Ieuan is right,” Bevyn
said. “It would be negligent of us not to take advantage of the
opportunity.”

“
We’ll need more men,”
Ieuan said.

“
We’ll send word to my
father.” David had accepted the idea and was planning ahead. “We’ll
keep them penned inside until reinforcements come. When we take it,
the man father sends can have the castle as a reward.”

The messenger rode to Buellt and back
in two days. He returned with exactly what David needed: Madoc, a
younger son of Gruffydd ap Gwenwynwyn, and a force of fifteen
cavalry and thirty foot soldiers Madoc had force-marched the twenty
miles from Buellt.

Madoc brought the news, too, that
Buellt was Llywelyn’s once again. Hereford’s men had fought, but
only so they might retreat safely back to England. Gruffydd ap
Gwenwynwyn, contrary to David’s suspicions, had remained true to
Wales.

Bronllys starved in less than two
weeks, far more quickly than Bevyn had hoped, though far longer
than David thought he could stand. As it turned out, they’d had
food for only eight days and had gone hungry for five. David’s
company were lucky, really, to be in the right place at the right
time, unlike the people of Bronllys. As David rode beside Madoc
through the gatehouse, the smell and the cries turned his
stomach.

“
Get these people food!”
David ordered.

Madoc looked at him,
surprised at his vehemence. In response, David spoke more harshly
to him than perhaps he should have. “These are
your
people now,” he said. “Their
lives are your responsibility. I expect you to see to them as a
lord should.”

Madoc blinked. “Yes, my lord,” he
said.

The castle priest came out of the
chapel, his arms in the air. “My Prince!” he said. “We thank you
for our deliverance from the English usurpers. May God bless and
keep you and your father, the Prince of Wales.”

David gazed at the weakened
peasants, most of whom hadn’t the energy to stand. Though these
people were Welsh, they couldn’t have had any love for him. David
felt both guilt and pity. He dismounted and came face to face with
the former castellan of Bronllys. He was only a boy, with blonde
hair and red-rimmed eyes. He stood before David, ramrod straight,
though his chin was set. “My lord. I am Roger de Clifford. I
surrender Bronllys to your keeping.”

“
Ah. The
Clifford heir,” Bevyn said.
“What’s he
doing here?”

Roger’s father, also named Roger, had
died during the English defeat at the Menai Straits in November of
1282, and Llywelyn had word of his grandfather’s death in France
just recently. A hot rage rose in David. If the fates had been
different, this could have been him.

David’s hands
clenched involuntarily and he had to take a deep breath and let it
out.
Who is most to blame for the current
situation? Me for attacking the castle, or him for making an
emotional decision by allowing them to seek refuge within
it?
Perhaps he’d thought Hereford would
come to relieve the siege? Perhaps he hadn’t known that his people
were better off outside the castle walls? Perhaps, not long ago,
David would have chosen as he did.

“
Relieve him of his sword,
get him a horse, so that he may find his way to safety in England,”
David said to Ieuan.

“
What of my men?” Roger
said.

“
They will help us rebuild
the village.”

* * * * *

David’s company spent the next week
rebuilding the houses they’d burned. David was unused to the manual
labor and each night he went to bed with aching shoulders. He was
glad to do it. He didn’t know if his men felt the same, but there
were two sides to every war and it was a lesson he needed not to
forget. Unlike his men, David had spent all of his time in Wales on
the winning side, without much thought for the peasants who labored
for the defeated lords.

Nonetheless, even David was
grateful when the time came to head north. Ragged and in need of
rest, he reached Buellt in the second week of July. Laborers
crawled all over the castle, working as quickly as possible to fix
the damage done by the English. David could laugh at the irony of
his men spending the last week doing the same thing—except they had
repaired the damage that they themselves had done.

In the courtyard of Buellt, David
dismounted and left Bevyn in charge of the welfare of the men.
David’s only thought was to see his father and let go of his
responsibilities. When he entered the great hall, however, Llywelyn
had company: Lord Nicholas de Carew. At David’s approach, Carew
stood and bowed.

“
I’m pleased that you have
survived the last few weeks unscathed,” he said.

“
Are you?” David walked the
last few paces to the table where his father sat and collapsed into
a chair.

“
Dafydd.” His father’s
tone was admonishing, but when David met his gaze, his father’s
look softened. “I’m glad to see you, son.”

Carew very politely ignored
the exchange. “My lord, Dafydd. I am here to request permission
that, instead of Goronwy, I come with you to Lancaster.”

David froze, a water goblet
half-way to his lips, so surprised he didn’t know what to say.
“What of Pembroke?” he said finally, setting down the
cup.

“
I have left the siege in
capable hands,” Carew said. “This is more important.”

Father fingered the stem of his goblet
but didn’t respond.

David sighed, recognizing that his
father was leaving the conversation to him. “Why?”

“
Because I’m a powerful
ally for you, and it will give weight to your negotiations with
Edward.”

That sounded just about as arrogant as
one might expect from Carew. Though that didn’t make it less true.
David dropped his head into his hands and dug his fingers into his
hair. All he really wanted was a bath, a change of clothes, and a
long sleep in a bed.

Carew sat down again and
picked up his wine. “You don’t trust me.”

David turned his head to the side and
met Carew’s eyes. Carew was tall, with almost white blond hair, of
an age almost equidistant between Llywelyn and David. In truth,
David liked Carew, as did Llywelyn.

“
No,” David said. “I trust
half a dozen people and you are not one of them. I would like to
trust you. I’m willing to work with you, but I don’t understand
your motives.”

Carew laughed. “My motives are clear.
I’m interested in power.”

“
Edward can give you more
of it than we can,” David said.

“
But Edward is interested
in only power too. That means we don’t work well together. You, on
the other hand, care so little about power it’s hard to believe you
are a prince. I understand you not at all, but I do trust you. That
makes the difference.”

David raised his head to look at his
father, who lifted his eyebrows and gave him a small
smile.

“
Fine,” David said. “You
can come.”

“
Good,” Carew said. “You
won’t regret it.”

* * * * *

David
found his father in the stables the next morning,
standing in one of the stalls with his back to the door, brushing
his horse, Teyrngar, in the dim light.
David
walked past him to the next
stall and picked up a brush so he could work on Taranis. They were
alone in the stables. That happened so rarely, Father could only
have sent everyone away to make it possible.

“
Do you miss where you came
from?” He rested his arm across Teyrngar’s back and looked at his
son over the horse.

“
Yes,”
David
said.

“
There are many wondrous
things in your world,” Father said.

David
studied him, wondering what this was really about,
and then shook his head. “It’s not the things that I miss, or the
people, which is kind of sad if you think about it. I missed Mom
before she came, and I miss knowing what’s happening with everyone
there. Sure, I would prefer to have books, telephones, good roads,
food, central heating, and hot showers available. I could go on and
on about the ‘things’. The twenty-first century has a lot of ...
well ... stuff, that makes life a lot easier.”

“
But you just said that’s
not what you miss,” Father said.

“
No,”
David
said. “That’s not what I miss.”

He waited,
forcing
David
to go
on.

“
What I
miss most is the knowledge that it is
here
where reality exists;
here
is where I stand and
you can’t move me from it. That may sound very strange to you, but
when I crossed into this world, everything I thought I believed in
was blown apart. I have had to figure out how the world works and
what my purpose in it is, but without any of the guideposts that
are a normal part of my old world.”

“
So you would return to
your time if you could?” Father said.

Ah, the real
question
. “I can’t get certainty back by
returning to the 21
^st
century and pretending this never happened. How
would that work? No. Even if I could cross through the barrier
between our worlds, I would spend the rest of my life looking for a
way back. My place is here.”

Llywelyn didn’t speak for a
long minute and he used that time to carefully brush out Teyrngar’s
mane. “I can’t feel guilty for wanting to keep you here. Wales
needs you. I need you.”

“
I
know,”
David
said.
“If Edward captures and kills me like he did Uncle Dafydd in the
old world, then I might be sorry. But for now, I see what you
see.”

Father opened his
mouth to speak again.
David
knew
he was going to say
something about how he didn’t have long to live.
David
didn’t want to hear
it. To forestall him,
David
changed the subject. “Want to go for a ride in my
car?”

Llywelyn’s eyes brightened.
“Bevyn will want to come.”

“
And
Ieuan!”
David
said.
“We probably need a few more men, just to be
safe.”

Llywelyn nodded
and
David
left him
so he could round up the men.
David
found Ieuan first. He was very pleased, as
David
knew he would be.
Fifteen minutes later everyone gathered in the courtyard, ready to
ride.

“
Let’s
hope there are no English about today,”
David
said. “You’re not superstitious
are you? Our stays in Buellt are never
uneventful.”

Bevyn rolled his eyes. “Lead on, my
lord. We’ll follow you.”

When they reached the
meadow, Father dismounted and paced around the spot where he’d
almost died. The men fell silent as he began to describe what had
happened that night in December when Anna and
David
first
appeared.