Guardians of Time (30 page)

David had expected to find his wife limp and
exhausted, but Lili’s head came up, and her expression was
fierce—though dried tear tracks showed on her face. “I am not going
to die like my mother did. I’m not going to leave my children
without a mother.”

“Lili.” David’s voice caught in his throat,
but he managed to speak around it. “You are the strongest woman I
know. There is nothing you can’t do, including this.”

Abraham stepped into David’s line of sight
and made a gesture with his chin. “Can you help her onto the
table?”

Between David and Branwen, they lifted Lili,
who even pregnant weighed only two-thirds of David’s weight, and
settled her onto the examining table. It wasn’t the same kind as in
the modern world, obviously, but it was clean, covered by a long
cushion and a sheet with a pillow at the far end. They lowered Lili
so she lay on her left side. David moved to her head to hold her
hand and kiss her forehead.

“David said you’re seven months along?”
Abraham hands moved along Lili’s belly.

“Maybe more,” Bronwen said, from the
doorway.

David looked up, startled. “More?”

“Lili told me after you left that her dates
could be very off,” Bronwen said.

Abraham straightened. “By two months?”

“Possibly a month and a half,” Bronwen
said.

Abraham nodded. “That’s good news for both
of them.”

David kept his head close to Lili’s, unable
to speak. Now was not the time for recriminations, but then Lili
opened her eyes to look into his face. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you
ages ago.”

He shook his head. “
Cariad,
you have
nothing to be sorry for. If anything, I should apologize to you. If
I’d been paying better attention, I wouldn’t have left you to carry
this burden on your own.”

Abraham broke in. “Lili, I’m going to lift
your gown and examine you. Has Rachel done this?”

Lili gave a slight nod, which David
confirmed. “Once or twice.”

“But her water hasn’t broken?”

Bronwen shook her head. “No.”

“More good news.” Abraham went to a nearby
basin of hot water from which steam rose. He used the soap and
scrubbed at his hands.

Lili breathed through another contraction.
Her tears hadn’t returned, and David could hear her whispering a
psalm over and over again. He bent to her and chanted it with
her.

Abraham pulled out a stethoscope from the
inside pocket of his coat and put the ends into his ears. David
wouldn’t have been surprised to discover that he had an entire
array of medical tools secreted in various pockets about his
person. The man was nothing if not prepared.

Abraham put the end of the stethoscope to
Lili’s stomach and, after a moment, he nodded. “The baby’s heart is
strong.”

David let out the breath he’d been
holding.

“I need everyone in this room to wash their
hands, even if you have already,” Abraham said.

David obeyed, followed by the women.

Abraham eyed them for a second. “Bronwen,
Branwen, is that right?” He pointed from one to the other.

Bronwen smiled. “I know. It’s confusing.
Wait until you realize that every man in Wales is either Dafydd,
Gruffydd, or Rhys. You won’t find any Toms, Dicks, or Harrys
here.”

Abraham looked to Branwen. “I need fresh hot
water and warm cloths. Can you get those for me?”

Bronwen translated into Welsh, and Branwen
said, “Yes, sir.” She left the room with the now dirty basin.

Abraham turned to David. “I have medical
gloves, but I fear a greater need for them in the future, so with
your permission, I’ll examine her barehanded.”

“Do what you have to do,” David said.

Lili nodded too, and Abraham lifted Lili’s
gown.

While Abraham examined Lili, David put his
forehead to hers, both of them breathing slowly through another
contraction. At one point, Lili moaned and, without opening her
eyes, said, “I can’t do this anymore.”

“You can,” David said, with absolutely no
evidence to support his claim except that he knew his wife. “You
can be strong and still allow other people to take care of you. You
don’t have to hold on so tightly. Let go. Let your fear go.” David
had a moment of insanity where he thought about quoting the Litany
of Fear from
Dune
, but immediately thought better of it,
instead quoting King David as Abraham had done a lifetime ago at
the entrance to Caernarfon Castle: “The Lord is my light
and my salvation; whom shall I fear?”

Abraham straightened. “She’s only nine
centimeters dilated, but the baby is, in fact, turned the right
way. I believe the problem to be that the head hasn’t been centered
properly on her cervix, and I can feel that the baby’s hand is up
to his head.” He looked over at Bronwen. “It isn’t surprising,
given how long the labor is taking, that the midwife thought the
baby was turned wrong.”

“None of the usual birthing positions were
working,” Bronwen said. “Once we understood that the baby was
coming whether or not we were ready, Lili paced around the castle
all night.”

“I’m sure your midwives are very
knowledgeable,” Abraham said. “I don’t want to interfere, but this
is one instance where keeping Lili upright hasn’t been helping.
Just as I examined her, I felt the baby’s head shift slightly and
settle more fully onto the cervix.”

“Can you do something for Lili?” David
said.

“At the moment, she doesn’t need me to do
anything for her. What she needs is a little sugar and protein for
energy for what’s to come.”

Branwen had returned with the fresh water,
and at a quick word from Bronwen, she immediately left again.

“She’ll see to it,” Bronwen said.

“David, will you come with me to talk to the
midwife?” Abraham said. “You need to be part of the consultation
and probably translate for me.”

Bronwen moved to take David’s place at
Lili’s head, though not before David kissed Lili’s temple. “I’ll be
right back. You and the baby are going to be okay.”

He and Abraham returned to the central room
where Aaron and Catriona were standing. Neither of them had been
talking, and both started towards him when David appeared, speaking
in unison, though saying different things in two different
languages.

David made a slashing motion with his hand,
cutting them off, and then held out his hand to Abraham. “This is
Abraham, Rachel’s father and a doctor from Avalon. Abraham, this is
Aaron and Catriona.”

Catriona curtseyed, and Aaron and Abraham
greeted each other, one Jewish man to another. Then Abraham went
straight to the point. “What have you given her, and what do you
see as the problem?”

Both Aaron and Catriona looked blank until
David translated, first into Welsh, which was the only language
Catriona spoke, and then into medieval English.

Aaron responded by gesturing to Catriona.
“Birth is not my area, though I have been learning.”

“For a second baby, the birth is taking a
very long time,” Catriona said. “I have given her raspberry tea,
rubbed her with rose oil, and she’s taken a tincture of vinegar and
honey.”

“She couldn’t keep the latter down,” Aaron
added.

David translated for Abraham, who grimaced
at David. “Most of the herbs I know that are helpful in birth are
native to North America.”

“Can you do a c-section?” David blurted the
words out before he could stop them, glad that neither Aaron nor
Catriona could understand American English.

Abraham turned to face him fully. “I will if
I have to, but as long as the baby’s heart is beating strongly, I
will do everything in my power to help her deliver the child
naturally.” He gestured to Aaron and Catriona. “In the modern UK,
the vast majority of babies are born with midwives, and Lili has
been in good hands up until now. It may be that what she needed was
you, not me, and only you could say to her what she needed to
hear.”

David opened his mouth to reply, but was
interrupted by Bronwen skittering through the doorway. “She says
she has to push!”

David took off at a run for Lili’s room, and
as soon as he reached the head of the table, Lili wrapped an arm
around his neck and held on. Abraham and Catriona followed,
Catriona carrying a birthing chair, which she set on the floor at
the end of the table.

“Do you want to sit on that?” David asked
Lili when the contraction passed.

“I want the baby OUT!” Lili still hadn’t let
go of his neck, so without asking for permission, David picked her
up in his arms and carried her to the stool. As she sat another
contraction took her. She gripped the sides of the chair, screaming
bloody murder but also pushing as hard as she could.

Catriona crouched in front of her, while
Abraham stood to one side, counting through the contraction.
Abraham indicated that David should take over the counting, in
groups of ten as Lili pushed, while he and Catriona washed their
hands one more time.

By the time they crouched in front of Lili
again, she was bent double, pushing for dear life, and then as the
contraction ended, in a wave of frustration, she pulled her
loose-fitting birthing gown off over the top of her head and threw
it in a corner, revealing a short t-shirt-like shift which was all
she had on underneath. Bronwen crouched nearby with a fresh linen
cloth to wrap the baby in when it came. David knelt beside Lili as
another contraction took her, counting out to ten in a calm
monotone.

Catriona gasped as Lili’s water broke in a
rush. “It’s coming! It’s coming!” She looked up at Lili. “The head
is right there, Lili. Do you want to feel it?”

Through streaming tears, Lili nodded. Then a
fifth contraction rose in her.

“Yes! Yes! You’re doing it, my dear,”
Catriona said, her affectionate tone an indication of how birth was
an equalizer, and there were no kings and queens in the room, just
parents. “One more. Dafydd’s going to count it out again, and by
the time he gets to ten, you’re going to have your child.”

Lili nodded, pushed harder than ever, and
then the head was out, followed by the rest of the baby, with no
worries about a cord, though the baby’s hand was up to the side of
its head as Abraham had predicted.

Lili rested against David as Bronwen placed
their newborn baby boy in Lili’s arms.

Rupert

R
upert had decided
that the best defense was a good offense, and if he was going to
get to the truth, he needed to be more aggressive in his pursuit of
it. Was time travel real? The people in the Black Boar swore up and
down that it was. So far, he’d been chasing after leads but hadn’t
been able to find any independent confirmation. These bus
passengers were like UFO abductees—all talk and no substance.
Though admittedly, they had been gone for a year, and he recognized
many of the names from the list of the missing after the Cardiff
bombing.

It was time to dig into the heart of the
matter. If that meant not milling about in the castle square until
someone from the security forces deigned to talk to him, so be it.
There was a larger story here, and he had bigger fish to fry.

He had hardly dared to believe his luck at
first when he caught a brief glimpse of the girl in the purple
parka, Anna, whom he’d talked to at that clinic in Bangor. She was
walking away from the square with another man, one he didn’t
recognize. But as they hustled through the snow with barely a look
backwards, he made the instant decision to leave his vigil at the
barricade at the northeast corner of the city and follow. He tailed
them to the Tesco, to a black van that sat immobile in the middle
of the car park.

He warred with himself then as to whether to
follow the man back to the castle once he dropped off the girl in
the purple coat, or to wait in the car park. Because it just so
happened that he’d left his own car nearby, he decided the
coincidence was too great to ignore. He was hot on the scent now,
and he could feel the back of his prey’s neck between his jaws. If
he hung on, soon he’d have the story of a lifetime. A thrilling
shiver went through him that his quest might finally be at an
end.

He thought he might have a long wait, but
within a half hour, two men turned into the car park, walking from
the direction of the castle. The initial bloke wasn’t with them,
but he recognized one of the men—the one who’d worn a sword back at
the medical clinic—and the trench coat the other wore indicated
government service.

Grinning, Rupert started his engine. He
watched as one of the men sat in the front seat of the black van
beside the driver—a woman—and the other climbed into the back.
Rupert was too far away to hear what they were saying, beyond a
single echoing, “Let’s go.”

The van pulled out of the car park, and
Rupert settled into what he hoped was the right distance for a
tail. He couldn’t get so close that they’d notice him, but he
couldn’t stay so far back he’d lose them. He realized as he went
along that he was out of practice.

As a result, as they neared Bangor, he fell
back, the Christmas Day traffic being thin to say the least, with
few lorries to hide behind. He was also focusing on the snow and
the slick roads, so when the van switched lanes at the last second
to exit before Y Felinheli, he was already past the exit before he
realized it had gone.

In a panic, he swore and slammed the butt of
his hand into the wheel. Then he pressed the pedal to the floor,
hoping no police were patrolling this particular stretch of road.
He sped all the way to the next exit, praying the whole time to a
god he didn’t believe in that he hadn’t lost them for good.

He decided the fact that no police stopped
him was a good sign, and he followed his gut where it led him,
circling the roundabout until he was heading the other way, west
towards the village.