Guardians of Time (23 page)

“You read my mind.” Llywelyn touched the
brim with one finger in a silent salute. “I would be grateful.”

“Anything for my king,” Abraham said in
Welsh.

“Do I hear a touch of irony in your voice?”
Llywelyn said.

Abraham stepped forward out of the doorway
and closed the door behind him. “If you did, it was not my intent.
My life has been upended in the last twelve hours since Rachel rang
me up, but I am blessed beyond measure to have her back.”

“You have my son to thank for that,”
Llywelyn said.

“Can one not see the father’s hand behind
the actions of the son?” Abraham said.

Llywelyn laughed. “Only when he’s doing the
right thing.” He sobered. “Which my son does virtually all of the
time.”

“He bears great responsibility for one so
young,” Abraham said. “Power over life and death is not to be taken
lightly.”

“As you know, being a doctor,” Llywelyn
said.

Abraham canted his head. “I grant you
that.”

“Your daughter, for whom I must, in turn,
thank
you
, knows it too.”

“No training could ever have prepared her
for the difficulties she’s faced, but from my own experience, I
know that becoming a doctor taught her how to make the decisions
that needed making.”

“As did David’s training,” Llywelyn said,
“though there is a goodness in him, an innate righteousness, that
defies my understanding.”

“I suspect the kingdom is better for it,”
Abraham said.

Llywelyn smiled again. “I have a friend with
whom I think you would get along very well. His name is Aaron. He
is a doctor too.”

“Rachel mentioned him.” Abraham looked away
for a moment, seemingly to gather his thoughts, and then he turned
back to meet Llywelyn’s gaze. “It is a great thing you have done
for my people, sire.”

Llywelyn didn’t need clarification to know
what Abraham meant. Jews had been persecuted in Europe throughout
history. “Again, you can thank my son for that more than me. It’s
hardly a triumph on my part to live up to the Christian ideal I
espouse.”

“I don’t think so,” Abraham said. “A
lifetime of prejudice is difficult to overcome. Few men have the
capacity. You could have paid a heavy price for it had the gamble
not paid off.”

“There’s always that chance when one does
the right thing. It shouldn’t stop a man from doing it anyway,”
Llywelyn said.

“Ah. See.” A smug smile lifted the corners
of Abraham’s mouth. “I knew I saw the father in the son.”

Llywelyn shook his head. “I am neglecting my
duty. I must walk the perimeter. Would you walk with me?”

“I would be honored, but I need to visit the
clinic,” Abraham said. “I have affairs to set in order and a few
things to collect.”

“I am not going to try to convince you not
to come. My children are everything to me too, and the years I was
parted from them were more than trying.” Llywelyn looked up at the
tower above him. “But I must ask, what will become of this
place?”

“Aber will go in trust to the Welsh nation,”
Abraham said, and then at Llywelyn’s astonished look, he shrugged.
“I bought it because I wanted it and wanted to care for it, but
with Rachel gone, I had no heirs. Why not leave it for generations
of children to appreciate?”

Llywelyn put his heels together and gave
Abraham a slight bow. “I give you the thanks of past generations
too.”

Abraham waved a hand dismissively, though he
was smiling. Llywelyn realized he hadn’t seen Abraham smile very
often. He put out a hand before the doctor could enter his car,
which had been parked on the edge of the circular driveway.

“Darren is a good man, Abraham. As one
father to another, I know how hard it is to see your child make a
choice you wouldn’t necessarily have made.”

Abraham stopped, one foot already inside the
car. “It isn’t that I don’t approve of Darren, and please don’t
think that the color of his skin has anything to do with my
objections. It’s more that I don’t want her to be with him only
because she doesn’t want to be alone.”

“And he’s not Jewish,” Llywelyn said.

Abraham made a helpless gesture with one
hand. “My wife wasn’t either, and look what happened. We
divorced.”

“Marriage isn’t easy, no matter the
circumstances,” Llywelyn said. “I have been very fortunate in that
I married women I loved, which isn’t necessarily usual in my world.
Darren is a good man. He loves Rachel. Give him a chance.”

Abraham took in a deep breath and let it
out. “I will try. Thanks.”

“You gave me my wife back. It’s the least I
could do.”

Abraham laughed and shook his head at the
same time. Then, still chuckling, he entered his car and drove
away. Llywelyn watched until the red lights at the back of his
vehicle had disappeared. Then he started his circuit of the
castle.

House.

Chicken farm.

Disgust rose again in his throat at what had
become of his beloved Garth Celyn, which was the ancient name for
Aber. It was from here that he’d written of defiance to King Edward
a month before Cilmeri. He had to acknowledge, years after the
fact, that he’d done so out of the same surety that had convinced
him to admit the Jews of Europe into Wales when everyone else
rejected them. Doing the right thing was its own reward, even if it
meant his head on a pike at the Tower of London.

Llywelyn walked all the way around the
property, taking his time and looking beneath every bush and up
every tree for watchers. By moving slowly, he was able to get a
feel for sky and earth. He listened hard for any movement that
wasn’t natural. It took a while to filter out the noise from the
motorway below him, though at four in the morning on Christmas Day,
that sound wasn’t as constant as it had been the night before.

Then he heard the crunching of gravel on the
driveway, and he came back around to the front of the house in time
to see Abraham stop the car by the front door.

The doctor started speaking before the car
door was fully open. “The clinic is surrounded. I decided I’d
better not try to get past everyone to reach my office.”

“We should inform Callum.” Llywelyn led the
way into the house without asking for more information. He knew why
the clinic was surrounded; he just wished this Tate had been as
good as his word.

Callum was standing at the counter, talking
to Cassie and Darren and drinking coffee. Beyond them, in the
darkness of the sitting room, Llywelyn could see the mop of Mark’s
dark hair sticking out from his blankets where he lay on the floor.
He and David had set their computers up in here last night and had
spent hours downloading information and printing it. The backpack
Callum had bought at the Tesco in Bangor sat on an adjacent table,
full to nearly bursting with the paper that had resulted. Llywelyn
hoped David had found most of what he’d wanted because he feared
their time had just run out.

Callum looked over as Llywelyn came in. “We
were just about to leave to scope out the rendezvous point well in
advance. Would you like to come? I could use your experience.”

“We have some new information that changes
everything.” Llywelyn gestured to Abraham, who’d come into the
kitchen behind him.

“Someone, I’m presuming it’s MI-5, has
surrounded my clinic. That doesn’t seem like a friendly act to
me.”

“No, that’s not good.” Callum let out a
sharp breath. “Tate lied to me.”

“He probably wouldn’t call it lying,” Cassie
said. “More like covering all his bases.”

“Were he to use a baseball metaphor, yes,”
Callum said.

“We should change the meeting point to a
place we know,” Darren said, gesturing with his cup of coffee to
indicate the world beyond the house. “Give them a half-hour’s
notice they can take or leave.”

Callum stood with his hands on his hips,
looking down at the ancient wood floor and thinking. Nobody
interrupted him because they were all doing some thinking of their
own. For Llywelyn’s part, he couldn’t be the least bit surprised
that Tate had changed the terms of the agreement. These were the
same men who’d locked up his son.

Callum looked over at Abraham. “Tell me
exactly what you saw.”

“My clinic is on a side road, as I’m sure
you recall, but it’s visible from a certain spot on the hill above
it, which I was driving down when I saw the vehicles: four SUVs and
two police cars.”

Callum rubbed his chin. “They are taking
this seriously. How long before they find you here?”

“If they dig hard enough, not long,” Abraham
said. “At the same time, my corporation is heavily invested in real
estate in this area, so they’ll have at least a dozen properties to
search. This is also listed as a clinic, not a residence.”

“You know,” Cassie said, “to give Tate the
benefit of the doubt, they might be at the clinic because of the
bus. The police officers would have told them it was there, and so
they started looking for it there. They may not have connected
Abraham to us at all.”

“All it will take is one of the bus
passengers mentioning Rachel’s existence,” Llywelyn said. “She
disappeared a year ago, just like the rest of them.”

“Then we can be thankful, again, that it’s
Christmas Day,” Darren said. “Don’t forget that Meg’s family was
checked into the Black Boar, but have now gone missing. Tate is
going to assume we’re all together.”

“Caernarfon Castle,” Abraham cut in. “The
Prince of Wales is giving the Christmas Day speech from the bailey
this afternoon. The whole city will be full of tourists and
security forces.”

Llywelyn’s eyes narrowed. “Did you say
the Prince of Wales
?” Llywelyn had wanted to meet this
English upstart from the moment Meg had told him how he himself had
lost his life at Cilmeri.

“So that’s what’s got Tate in a tizzy.”
Cassie was nodding her head. “It isn’t us. It’s protecting the
Prince of Wales. Security is higher, everybody’s on edge, and now
the time travelers are back. No wonder Tate is doing everything he
can to find us.”

“If he labels us terrorists,” Callum said,
“he can make any security force, policeman, or reporter, for that
matter, do his bidding.”

Llywelyn turned to Abraham, for whom his
respect had grown with every minute he’d spent with him. “Why do
you suggest we meet Tate at Caernarfon if that’s where the Prince
of Wales will speak?”

“I don’t mean for us to meet him in the
castle itself,” Abraham said. “There’s a swinging bridge over the
river that runs along the south side of the castle. I know the man
who manages the controls for the swing, and I have a friend with a
boat. MI-5 could leave the supplies on the bridge, and my friend
could take them away in his boat.”

Callum stared at him. “They would do that
for you?”

“Of course,” Abraham said with utter
certainty.

“On Christmas Day?” Cassie said.

Abraham shot her an amused look. “Jewish.
Remember?”

“Crowds were the reason we rejected Bangor
Cathedral as a meeting place,” Callum said, “but Abraham may be on
to something. Meeting in a public place—especially if none of us
but Mark ever has to show himself to MI-5—will allow us to lose
ourselves in the crowd. Even if we split up—which we should do in
order to scout the area—we can keep in touch by mobile.”

“It could be much like when Goronwy, Meg,
and I arrived at Chepstow,” Llywelyn said, not without a touch of
pride at the memory. “We won’t stand out because we’ll be ten among
hundreds. Also much like at Chepstow, the weather can only help
because everybody’s faces will be covered by hats and hoods.”

Callum gave him a sour look. “Believe me, I
remember.”

“Do we really think they plan to grab us?”
Cassie said.

“Tate didn’t sound like that’s what he
wanted last night,” Callum said, “but he’s a politician and a
professional liar.”

“Nobody will question apprehending possible
terrorists on the day of the prince’s speech,” Darren said. “If
that is, in fact, his intent, it’s a perfect set up for him.”

“It also might mean that he doesn’t believe
what I told him about Lee. I am officially irked.” Callum crumpled
up a cloth that had been lying on the kitchen counter and threw it
at Mark’s head. “Wake up!”

Mark groaned, but he sat up and put his hand
to his eyes to shield them from the light. “What?”

“Tate’s up to something,” Callum said. “We
need you.”

“Tate won’t want to hear the plans have
changed,” Darren warned.

“Then he shouldn’t have surrounded Abraham’s
clinic,” Callum said. “He’ll have to agree to what we want if he
doesn’t want us to disappear.”

“Merry Christmas!”

Llywelyn turned to see Anna yawning as she
pulled a sweater, what Bridget called a
jumper
, close around
herself. She put her arms around Llywelyn’s waist and squeezed.
“What’s happened to make everyone so unhappy? I’m guessing
trouble.”

Llywelyn hugged her back. “Yes indeed. It
seems, yet again, that we can’t go anywhere without it.”

Anna

W
hile the others
continued to discuss strategy, Anna woke the rest of the house. She
felt particularly bad about waking Mom and Aunt Elisa, who’d stayed
up far too late talking. Then she had to practically jump on David
to wake him. He sat up, bleary-eyed and with his hair stuck up on
end. He ran his hand through it in a feeble and unsuccessful
attempt to tame it.

“What’s up?” David said.

Anna explained about the change in
plans.

Ten minutes later, they were all back in the
kitchen, where Callum told everyone, “Tate wasn’t happy to hear
from me, but he didn’t argue either.”

“Isn’t that suspicious?” Anna said. “What
excuse did you give him for changing the location of the meet?”

“The weather,” Callum said.