Guardians of Time (6 page)

David laughed.

Jane stood, Shane cradled in her arms. “He
needs the loo. We’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” David said.

They left the bus, heading for the Tesco,
just as Rachel and Darren re-entered and sat opposite Meg.

“Everything’s okay,” Rachel said. “Dad will
meet us within the hour at his clinic.”

“I’m grateful that your father will see me
on Christmas Eve.” Meg leaned across the aisle. “But what happens
after that? What if it really is cancer?” She could hardly believe
she’d only thought to discuss this now, after they’d already come
to Avalon.

Rachel had been sitting sideways in her
seat, but she turned to face Meg. “That’s what I came along for,
among other things. Between my father and me, we can perform tests
and navigate around any hospital. The rest we’ll have to figure out
once we have the test results in hand.”

“And if I need treatment?” Meg said. “David
can’t stay more than a few days. England needs him.”

“I know,” David said, proving he was
listening, though he’d been staring out the window at the falling
snow as if he wasn’t paying attention.

“But I can and will,” Llywelyn said, “and
Rachel too, for as long as you need her.”

Meg slowly nodded. “Oh, I get it. When the
treatment is over, I can take everyone back myself.” She hesitated.
“Unless I can’t. Unless I’m dead.” She stared stolidly ahead,
across the aisle and out the window, though there wasn’t much to
see since the breath of so many people had steamed up the glass.
While Meg watched, Cassie reached out a finger and drew a
heart.

“That’s only one of many reasons I’m here
too, Mom,” Anna said.

“And Lili stayed behind at Dinas Bran to
take care of all the kids,” David said, “though she’s plenty mad at
me about that fact.”

Llywelyn pulled Meg to him and kissed her
temple. “I know this isn’t easy,
cariad
. I also know that
you’re far more afraid of losing Anna or Dafydd than you are of
dying yourself. But we’re
here
, against all odds, and now
isn’t the time for worry. If there is one time I agree with Dafydd
even when he’s being obstinate and righteous, it’s now. Shane had
to come to Avalon. You did too. We accept the fate we are
given.”

As had most of the time travelers, Llywelyn
had taken to calling the modern world by its medieval name, Avalon,
and Meg had become resigned to the fact that, while in medieval
Wales, it was best not to refer to the twenty-first century as
anything other than the realm of Arthurian legend. Time
traveling—or rather, universe hopping, which was a more accurate
description of what they did—wasn’t something the medieval mind
could accept. It wasn’t something the modern mind could accept
either, but at least in Avalon, people from novelists to physicists
had played around with the idea for centuries.

In addition, because what they were doing
was shifting universes rather than actual time traveling, they
didn’t have to worry about changing the future in the place they
were going. David could scatter as much medieval gold around the
modern world as he wanted to, or take as much of whatever he wanted
from Avalon back to the Middle Ages. Each future had its own
trajectory, and what happened in one world had no effect on the
other.

As far as they knew, anyway.

Of course, they still didn’t know why the
traveling
happened, or how. Meg had learned to live with the
uncertainty. Refusing to believe in magic, David shrugged off all
questions, saying he didn’t know the mechanism and, until he did,
he wasn’t going to make any declarations at all. It was what it
was, and words like magic, science, or God’s Will were merely
filler until they knew the truth.

Which they probably never would.

Even Anna, despite fighting tooth and nail
against it at first, had come to accept that Avalon was as good a
name as any for the twenty-first century. Since many people in the
Middle Ages thought David was the return of King Arthur anyway, it
was one of the few ways of talking about who they were and what
they did that made sense and wouldn’t get them labeled as heretics
or witches.

Meg put her chin in her hand, watching the
falling snow being flicked away by the wipers, which Jane had left
on low while she was gone. Anna and Math got up to stretch their
legs, so David took Anna’s vacant seat beside her, his clipboard
back in his hand and sucking on the end of his pen—one clearly
borrowed from a bus passenger since it was a standard blue ball
point.

“Who among your people did you tell that you
were going to Avalon?” Meg said.

Only half listening, David flipped the paper
over, revealing a list thirty items long, which, when Meg looked
closer, proved to be items that David intended to look up on the
internet. Chief among them were the directions for making a gravity
cell battery.

“I told as few people as I could,” David
said. “I sent everyone I could home for Christmas, with the excuse
that I was going to be with my family so they should be with
theirs.”

“What about Bevyn? Why isn’t he here?” Meg
said.

“He’s keeping Anglesey safe for me,” David
said. “He can chew me out later for my dangerously reckless
behavior.”

“And William?”

William de Bohun was David’s squire, who
showed no signs of growing out of his hero-worship of David or his
absolute belief that David was King Arthur returned. William was
also one of the up and coming young nobles in England, among a
cohort of men and women in their late teens and early twenties who
would replace their fathers and mothers in the English House of
Lords one day. In fact, it really should have been called the House
of Lords and Ladies, but David wasn’t going to push the minor point
having won the major victory of including women in the first
place.

David smiled. “He protested the loudest when
I ordered him home, but even he gave way. He’s in Hereford with his
parents. If I hadn’t convinced him I’d be fine without him, he
would have been first in line to come with us. He, too, is going to
be ticked when he finds out where we went today.” David finally
looked up from his clipboard. “It isn’t as if I mentioned it to the
pope, if that’s what you’re really asking.”

“Have you heard anything more from him?” Meg
said, because yes, that was what she’d really been asking.

“Archbishop Romeyn remains—ha, ha—” David
broke off to laugh at the similar pronunciation of the two words,
“—in Italy waiting to learn the details of this crusade the pope
wants me to go on. I’m expecting an announcement after
Epiphany.”

“That would make sense,” Meg said. “The pope
often issues decrees about then.”

“That’s because it’s winter, and travel is
difficult, so if the people the decree affects don’t hear about it
until spring, it’s miles too late to do anything about it.” David
bit his lip. “I miss Peckham already.”

John Peckham, the Archbishop of Canterbury,
had died in early December. He’d been instrumental in putting David
on the throne of England, and his replacement was another headache
David would have to face after Christmas. David had his own
candidates, but the canons of Canterbury cathedral would want their
say, as would the pope.

Meg contemplated her son, who’d gone back to
his list. While on one hand, it was perfectly normal for him to be
worked up about
traveling
to the twenty-first century, she
read more than that overt concern in his face and posture. He was
agitated, and his intensity—never low to begin with—was roiling off
of him in waves.

She took a stab at what was bothering him.
“You’re the King of England, David, amazing as that seems. You
don’t have to do anything you don’t want to.”

“Don’t I?” David gave a little laugh.
“You’re right that this thing with the pope and the French king has
me pretty worked up. I don’t want to go on Crusade this year—next
year—ever. I don’t want to leave England at all, but I’m
particularly worried about being forced to leave out of an
obligation to the Church that I don’t personally feel, but which I
might have to fulfill anyway. I’m hoping that between Romeyn and
Geneville, they can figure out a way to get me out of it.”

“King Philip of France might not want to go
either, and he—more than you—will do what best serves his own
interests,” Meg said. “What Geoffrey needs to figure out is how
your mutual interests align and a way to present an alternative
plan to the pope—

one, in particular, that keeps the peace
between England and France.”

Geoffrey de Geneville had been a confidant
of King Edward, David’s predecessor, and David had considered him
an ally only since the bombing of Canterbury Castle by Lee earlier
that year. Geoffrey was currently in Paris, attempting to negotiate
with the King of France. Given that King Philip had attacked
England’s shores at Hythe with the explicit intent of undermining
David’s rule—or even overthrowing him—Philip had some apologizing
to do. So far, it hadn’t happened.

“You don’t have to solve all the world’s
problems today, you know,” Meg said. “It will go spinning on even
after we get off it, and whether or not you ever bring electricity
to the Middle Ages.”

“I know,” David said, “but the fact that I
was coming here was why I was pushing so hard on some things I
might otherwise have left alone for a while longer.”

“What is your plan for getting back?” Meg
said. “That’s another question I can’t believe I never asked
you.”

David grunted what was almost a laugh. “I
really have no idea. But I can tell you one thing—it isn’t going to
be in this bus.”

Bridget

“D
id you see that?”
Goronwy said.

Bridget knew her mouth had fallen open, but
she couldn’t help it. One of her girlfriends back in Cardiff,
before the time traveling, used to gape theatrically at any
remotely surprising news. For a long while, Bridget had been
convinced she did it on purpose, because it wasn’t possible for
anyone to be shocked as often as she was. Eventually, however,
Bridget decided her friend really was as innocent and (quite
frankly) dim as she acted.

“I saw it,” Ieuan said, a little grimly.
“Now maybe my heart can settle back into my chest.”

“I don’t believe it.” Goronwy’s hand was on
the top of his head as he held the binoculars to his eyes with the
other. He was still staring at the place where the bus had driven
into the cliff wall.

“How can you not believe it?” Justin said.
“You have been to Avalon, my lord. Did you think God’s grace would
fail our king now?”

“No. No, of course not.” Goronwy dropped his
arm.

Peter stood stoically next to the others,
his arms folded across his chest. When he’d stepped off the bus,
Bridget had gaped at him too and asked what he was doing.

“Staying,” was all he’d said, which was
typical of him. Getting him to say anything at all, especially when
in the company of others, was like pulling teeth.

From the start, Peter had been her liaison
with Samuel, Callum’s sheriff. In the first few weeks after her
arrival in Shrewsbury, Peter had made himself indispensable,
building shelves and tables, helping her to carry and organize the
wool, and encouraging her plans for selling her wares. In return,
she’d fed him, and she’d thought they’d become friends.

Once she’d become an established
businesswoman, however, he started to disappear for days on end,
often at the behest of Samuel, Callum, or David. During the
disaster at Canterbury, he’d been with David, and he’d been gone
for nearly a month. When he returned, while he was as polite as
ever, he stopped spending any real time with her. She hadn’t been
able to figure out why, and it had taken her weeks of careful
coaxing this autumn to convince him not to leave her shop within
thirty seconds of walking into it.

Kissing him had been a mad impulse that if
she’d stopped to think about before she acted she wouldn’t have
done. At the very least, she’d assumed (had she stopped to think)
that it wouldn’t have had any consequences until Peter returned
from Avalon. They would both have had time to think about what the
kiss meant to them, and if they wanted to be more to each other
than friends.

But now he stood right beside her, as usual
telling her nothing about what he was thinking. She wanted to
assume that he’d stayed behind because the kiss meant something to
him, but she could be totally and completely wrong. She found
herself seriously annoyed with him, though that was unfair since it
was
she
who’d kissed
him.

Bridget had only done it in the first place
because she’d been angry. Back on the bus, she’d been having an
innocent conversation with Meg, who’d noticed her unhappiness and
thought it had to do with whether or not they were going to crash
into the cliff face and die.

“It’s going to be okay,” Meg had said.

“Do you think I’m worried about this not
working?” Bridget had shifted in her seat, tugging on the thighs of
her jeans to adjust them. Her clothes hung more loosely on her than
perhaps they had when she’d arrived in the Middle Ages, but she was
still far too curvy for fashion in the twenty-first century.
“That’s not it at all. I’m not looking forward to living there
again.”

Meg pulled up one leg, probably marveling
(in contrast to Bridget) at the freedom wearing pants gave her, and
twisted in the seat so she was looking directly down the bus at
Bridget. “Why not?”

“Why would I be?”

“Hot showers,” Meg said.

Bridget had managed a laugh at that. “You
can only take so many of those.”

“Every day, actually.” Meg gestured to her
clothing. “Getting to wear pants.”

“I look better in dresses.”