Chapter Eight
Meg
Anna had taken a shower first, but Meg was ready before she was. While Meg was waiting for her daughter to come out of the bathroom, Callum pulled her aside. “Do you trust me?”
“Of course,” Meg said. “Why do you ask?”
“There may come a moment when I will need you to do what I say, when I say it, without asking questions,” he said.
Meg raised her eyebrows. “You forget who you’re talking to. Llywelyn has asked that of me more than once.” She looked down at herself, arms spread. “The modern clothes are just a cover for the medieval me.”
He coughed and laughed at the same time. “Are you saying you’re a submissive medieval woman now?”
“It hasn’t been my experience that medieval women are all that submissive,” Meg said dryly. “Uneducated and without rights, yes.” She paused. “What I meant was that taking orders won’t offend me—you know more about what’s going on than I do. I don’t have a problem with that.”
He nodded.
Meg looked at him carefully. “Don’t think for a second that Anna and I aren’t aware what you’re risking for us.”
Callum didn’t try to deny it. “It’s my job.”
“Your job is not to smuggle us out of the United States. You could lose everything if you do.”
“Not everything,” he said. “I went down on one knee before your son and swore my allegiance to him. If smuggling you out of the United States is the best way to serve him and keep you safe, then that’s what I’m going to do.”
He was sincere and serious, and Meg fumbled for a reply. David was her son, and she adored him, but because he was her son, the fact that he was the King of England too usually passed her by. “I’ve watched him grow into the leader he’s become, but it’s so strange to me how he manages to turn everyone around him into loyal followers.”
Callum’s brow furrowed. “Is that what you think I am? Some sycophant?”
“No-no!” Meg put out a hand. “I didn’t mean to insult you at all. We all follow him.”
But Callum was still shaking his head. “You really don’t understand, do you?”
Meg eyed him. “Understand what?”
“Who David is.” When Meg didn’t answer, he added, “His rule isn’t about accruing followers.”
Meg looked away, a little ashamed. “I know.” She lifted one shoulder, trying to explain. “I look at him sometimes, and I don’t even know him anymore. He makes a decision and it affects three million people. How can such a person be my son?”
“I’m sorry I haven’t been there to help him carry the burden for the last two years,” Callum said.
Meg let out a dry laugh. “I remember when he was in middle school—those boys with their machismo and their fears—they mocked him for all those qualities that have turned him into a king—honesty, integrity, and righteousness. How David hated it.”
“And now we rise—or we fall—on his decisions. It’s his shoulders that carry us. His qualities that determine our future.”
“Anna isn’t ready to return home because she’s figured that out about him too,” Meg said. “She sees him the same way you do.”
“You’re his mother,” Callum said. “You see his flaws. The rest of us can’t afford to.”
Meg bit her lip and looked away. Callum wasn’t entirely right. She cherished her son. She’d known how special he was before he was two years old. She’d forced herself to see his flaws because if she didn’t, who would?
“By the way,” Callum said when she didn’t answer him, “I’ve spoken with your brother-in-law several times over the last two years and hopefully patched things up a bit between you.”
Meg was glad for the change of subject. “I have worried about what happened to him after Llywelyn and I left, but since I had no way to find out, I tried to put it out of my mind.”
“Aye,” Callum said, reverting to his Scottish roots. “I worried about him too.” He gave a rueful smile. “I didn’t fear for his life, but Lady Jane could be a bit merciless when she chose. She could have thrown him into a cell, whether or not he was an American citizen. But after Chepstow, Lady Jane let him go. Cassie and I stopped in to see them on our way home from Oregon two years ago, and I gave him and your sister your best wishes.”
“Thank you,” Meg said, and then her breath caught in her throat. “If Homeland Security or this military contractor know that we’ve arrived, even if way out here in Oregon, is Elisa going to find men in black beating down her door at 3 am?”
Callum made an ‘ach’ sound at the back of his throat. “To say, ‘I hope not’ isn’t adequate, I know. If someone from your government discovers you’re here and cares that you’re here, he might contact them. It is something to be concerned about.”
“I should warn them,” Meg said.
Callum shook his head. “You can’t. Not yet. It could be the red flag that starts the ball rolling. Besides, Elisa and Ted know what to do.”
“What do you mean?”
Callum let out a whuf of air. “This was all theoretical before two hours ago.” He looked up at the ceiling for a second, marshalling his thoughts. “Cassie and I have been working on this problem—your problem—nonstop for two years. We knew one of you could come through at any time, and we wanted to be ready. It was an impossible task, I know, but we tried to think of every contingency, every possibility. It meant that Cassie and I spoke at length with Ted and Elisa, trying to impress upon them the extent of the threat against you if the government came knocking. We concluded, with their consent, that it was better for them not to know anything. That way, they wouldn’t have to lie.”
“That means I can’t talk to my sister.” Meg looked down at her shoes.
“That’s what it means.”
Meg brought up her head to find him looking at her thoughtfully.
“I admit I didn’t expect you to arrive on Thanksgiving night in the wilds of Oregon.” Callum gave a bark of laughter. “When the best-laid plan comes face to face with reality, guess which loses every time.”
Twenty minutes later, the four of them piled into Art’s truck, Cassie at the wheel. Callum was an equal-opportunity kind of guy, but still, having her drive didn’t strike Meg as his natural tendency any more than it had been Llywelyn’s when she had driven across Wales in the dead of night, pregnant with twins. But driving on the right side of the road would have been even less natural for Callum. Also, it had started snowing again, and Meg was willing to bet he hadn’t had a ton of experience driving in snow either.
“Back way or highway?” Cassie said to Callum, starting the truck and shifting into drive.
“I’d like to avoid metropolitan areas if possible.” Callum glanced at Anna and Meg sitting in the back seat. The space between Meg’s knees and his seat wasn’t a lot, but the seat was comfortable, and the heater blasted warm air into her face. “At least nobody is following us out of this driveway, and with no mobile phones and an ancient truck—” He put out a hand to Cassie, “—no offense to your grandfather, Cassie.”
“None taken,” she said.
“—nobody, whether MI-5, Homeland Security, or anybody else, can track us.”
“I looked up the Oregon DMV online before we got in the truck,” Cassie said. “There’s a pair of highway cameras at Arlington and another at Biggs, before the turnoff south to Bend. Then it gets worse. Highway 97 through Bend has a ton of cameras.”
“That’s not ideal,” Callum said. “And those are only the ones we know about. What are our other choices?”
“We could head south out of Pendleton on 395. There are only three traffic cameras between here and the California border,” Cassie said. “There’s a lot less traffic, too, and it’ll take longer, so those are two drawbacks.”
“Less traffic is bad?” Anna said.
“You can’t get lost in the crowd if you’re the only car on the road,” Cassie said.
“It’s still Thanksgiving night,” Meg said. “If we can get farther faster, would that be better?”
Callum spread a map across his lap. He nodded as he looked at it.
Meg sat back in her seat. “I can drive too, Cassie.”
Anna poked her mother in the arm. “You haven’t driven a car in three years.”
“It’s like riding a bike,” Meg said. “You never forget.”
“I thought you needed glasses?” Anna said.
Meg grimaced. She’d forgotten that her night vision was particularly awful.
“We can get you glasses at Wal-Mart,” Cassie said. “Maybe in Klamath Falls.”
“How are we going to do that?” Meg swallowed down an accompanying snort of disbelief.
“You wouldn’t believe what they’ve got kiosks for these days,” Cassie said. “They craft the lenses right then and there. You stick your head in this machine, it evaluates your eyes, and once you choose the frames, it makes the lenses to fit.” She glanced up to the mirror again to look at Meg. “You probably ought to choose simple metal frames so they don’t cause comment at home.”
“I’d like that.” Meg swallowed back the emotion that had formed in her throat, not only over the idea of being able to see again, but at Cassie’s use of the word home. Meg had been inadvertently responsible for Cassie spending five years alone in the Middle Ages. Cassie had never faulted Meg for it or complained about it when she thought Meg wasn’t listening. And now it seemed that Cassie was taking for granted not only that it was home for Meg but that it was home for her too.
Nobody else seemed to have noticed Cassie’s use of the word, or at least they didn’t comment on it.
Because of that, Meg decided she’d better bring it up. She wasn’t a big fan of elephants in the living room, even if they were of her own making. “Are we all on the same page here about going back? Anna and I have already talked, and I’ve gathered from brief conversations with both of you that you’re on board, but maybe we should just say it. Or say we don’t want to.”
Cassie and Callum exchanged a quick glance and neither answered, prompting Anna to lean forward. “Mom and I have husbands and children there—a whole family, in fact. You two are part of our family, but you have each other and are under no obligation to return to the Middle Ages with us. David would understand, Callum.”
Something was going on, because still neither answered. Then Callum said, “Say what you’re thinking, Cass.” They were on the highway now, heading west.
Cassie took in a breath. “Okay. Here’s the truth, which is what we all need to put out there: I’ve thought about it a lot. So much that sometimes I think I’m going crazy thinking about it.” She glanced in the rearview mirror and caught Meg’s eye. “Two A.M. is not my friend.”
“I hear you,” Meg said.
“I’ve known for a while, though, that I don’t belong here as much as I belong there. Those five years in Scotland changed me. It isn’t just that I found Callum, but that I found myself.”
“Your grandfather told me that he liked who you became there,” Callum said.
Cassie smiled, but her eyes were very bright, and when she spoke next Meg could hear the tears in the back of her throat. “The last thing my grandfather said to me when he hugged me goodbye just now was that we needed to go if we could. He believes that everything happens for a reason, and I would be wrong to turn off the path laid before my feet.”
Meg gave that admission the moment of silent respect it deserved. It was exactly what she herself thought. Then she looked at Callum. “What about you?”
Callum turned in his seat so he could see Meg and Anna better. “Does David want me back?”
Meg choked on a laugh. “Want you back? Are you kidding me?”
“That’s a ‘yes’, then?” Callum said.
“Definitely a ‘yes’,” Anna said. “He trusts you and sometimes feels like he’s running Britain by the seat of his pants. He has plans, but a lot of the time I don’t think he trusts himself completely.”
“What do you mean?” Cassie said. “Is this a power corrupts thing?”
“Power, adulation,” Anna said, making Meg think about the conversation she’d just had with Callum. “But more than those two, David worries that he’ll take short-cuts and compromise his beliefs. That he’ll come to think that the end justifies the means. He knows he needs all of us to keep him sane and on the right track. It would be easy to get off it.”
“I’ve tried to put all my responsibilities back there out of my mind since I couldn’t do anything about them,” Callum said, “but I have to ask: am I still the Earl of Shrewsbury?”
“You are,” Anna said. “David has taken personal responsibility for your people while you’ve been absent; Samuel continues to oversee the day-to-day stuff; and Math has been checking in from time to time too. You have a very capable sheriff, which is good, and everyone knows that you are in Avalon and will return when you can.”
Cassie laughed. “Did you say ‘Avalon’?”
“She did,” Meg said, “and you might want to laugh, but it’s the only explanation that anyone can accept. If David has to put up with it, we all do. And honestly, thank God for it because otherwise we’d all be branded as witches.”
“Which we want to avoid,” Cassie said. “I’m good with that.”
“What happened when David returned to you?” Callum said. “We haven’t asked.”
Now it was Meg’s turn to laugh. “A war, that’s what!” And between her and Anna, they spent the next hour as Cassie drove west down I-84, telling them about William de Valence’s rise and fall, along with the continued development of reforms David and Llywelyn were working on in England and Wales. They concluded with David’s vision for the future he’d just told them about.
When they’d finished, Callum folded his hands at the back of his head and stared up at the ceiling of the truck. “I wish Lady Jane could have been here to hear this.”
“It’s just as well she isn’t,” Cassie said. “The time travel initiative can die an unmourned death, and we won’t be here to answer anyone’s questions. If we can get out of our current situation in one piece, that is.”
“I hope we don’t have a military contractor on our tail.” Meg patted Callum’s arm. “I thought MI-5 was bad, but they sound much worse.”
“I’m about to be sacked,” he said, “so I can hardly complain if you point out how poorly you were treated.”
“David was treated worse,” Cassie said, “and it was the military contractor that drugged him. I’d take Homeland Security any day over them.”
Callum glanced at his wife. “They aren’t the buffoons the media makes them out to be. They have resources, and the full power of the American government should they choose to wield it.”
The windshield wipers started sweeping faster, and Meg put up a hand to wipe away the steam on her window. The snow was falling harder. “We probably should go all the way to I-5 in Portland,” she said. “The road to Bend is often closed with blowing snow in winter.”
“I know.” Cassie ground her teeth. “It isn’t even December! Why is it snowing?”
“You’ve lived in Britain for too long,” Meg said.
“We’ll all be back in Britain a bit sooner than we intended if the snow keeps up,” Anna said, looking out her window. “We won’t have to worry about finding a tower to jump off.”
In theory, that would have been just fine with Meg, but David would be disappointed that they hadn’t managed to gather anything on his list except for Cassie and Callum. Though even he would have to admit that finding them was a pretty amazing thing for Meg and Anna to have accomplished within two hours of their arrival.
But for better or for worse, they didn’t crash. Cassie safely navigated the highway interchanges in Portland. As they passed the city, Meg thought about her life and friends there and then put them from her mind. They couldn’t help her.
As the hour approached midnight, they passed the sign marking the city limits of Eugene, Oregon. Cassie pulled off the highway to get gas for the second time, and after Callum paid the attendant, drove to the twenty-four hour Wal-Mart.
Never mind that it was midnight on Thanksgiving when all sane people should be sleeping off their turkey and pumpkin pie, the parking lot was packed with Black Friday shoppers. It seemed they’d just missed the midnight crush to get inside the doors. Last Meg had heard, ‘Black Friday’ had been pushed to as early as four A.M. That appeared to have changed since she lived here. Pretty soon the stores would open on Thanksgiving Day, and everyone could skip the turkey entirely.
Callum slung his backpack over his shoulder and handed a second backpack to Cassie. He saw Meg looking at him and said, “I know it’s paranoid of me, but I don’t want to leave anything in the truck that will identify us. What’s in here—” he raised the backpack, “—is too precious to lose to a sneak thief.”
“Or Homeland Security,” Cassie said, shrugging her pack onto her shoulders.
“Is that all you brought?” Meg said. She and Anna owned only what they stood up in, but Meg had thought she’d seen a suitcase in the hallway before they left. Cassie had taken their medieval clothes, and Meg’s stomach sank to think they’d left them behind.
“We left our bigger bag at Cassie’s aunt’s house, so we wouldn’t be burdened with it,” Callum said. “It just contained clothes, and we can buy new if we need them.”
Cassie saw Meg’s crestfallen face and made a sad face of her own, “I’m sorry, Meg.”
“They’re just things,” Meg said. “They aren’t worth our lives. I suppose if we had them with us and were caught, they would be a huge giveaway.”
“Which we wouldn’t want. We want to keep you under wraps.” Cassie touched Meg’s shoulder sympathetically.
But Anna leaned close to her mother. “My belt knife is in my boot. How about yours?”
Meg had left that behind too. She shook her head.
“I should have said something.” Anna frowned. “Does Wal-Mart have metal detectors?”
“I guess we’ll find out,” Meg said.
“Are these people mad?” Callum said as he bulldozed his way through the crowded entryway, the three women in his wake.
The companions popped out to the left of the entrance, in front of the endless row of cash registers. A wave of heat blew over Meg, so she pulled off her hat and unbuttoned the black wool coat she’d borrowed from Cassie’s aunt’s house. Anna shrugged out of her bright purple parka and hung it over her arm. The store was lit up as if it were already Christmas—which Wal-Mart clearly hoped it was—and Meg averted her eyes from the blinding fluorescent lights.
The colors and variety of items for sale were almost too much to take in. People like to have choices, but they were actually happier with fewer choices than more, which might explain the intent and grim expressions on everybody’s faces. Shopping was definitely a serious business in Eugene, Oregon on Black Friday. Meg had been hoping it would be merrier—like a party.
“Over here, Mom.” Anna hauled her mother to where Cassie was standing in front of the eyeglasses machine.
“It says it takes forty minutes, all told. Thirty if you choose one of the eight standard frames,” Cassie said.
“That I can do.” Without hesitating, Meg put her face up to a rubber sleeve, which strongly resembled a diving mask, and did everything the machine told her to do. Beside her, Cassie punched numbers into a keypad, and then Meg heard the distinct sound of a card being inserted. The lights that flashed in Meg’s eyes had momentarily ceased, so she pulled out her head. “I can’t let you pay for this.”
“You can, and you will,” Cassie said. “That’s what we’re here for. Besides, Callum left a wad of cash with my grandfather. If we return to the Middle Ages, my grandfather will pay the bill. You’re not to worry about it.”
The machine was beeping at Meg, ready to start again. She didn’t feel so guilty that she didn’t put her face back into the headrest and let the machine continue its calculations. She needed glasses.
Anna said, “Are you using a fake ID?”
Cassie laughed. “Of course. Credit cards are the worst for sending up red flags. Nobody can buy anything without the government knowing because both the store you bought it from and the credit card company know. This machine won’t take cash, of course, so we have no choice but to use a card. Callum will use a different card to pay for what he’s getting.”
Callum had wandered off and came back just as the machine was finishing with Meg’s eyes. He’d lined his cart with an open duffle bag. “Let’s see the list again, Anna,” he said.
Meg pulled out her head. “You’re thinking we should get started?”
“We have half an hour until your glasses are done. We might as well use the time,” Cassie said.
Callum nodded. “Best to be prepared for every contingency.”
They left the glasses machine to do its thing and wandered the aisles of Wal-Mart with what seemed like half the population of Eugene. Meg kept getting distracted by the colors and the plastic, but Anna and Callum took to the project with a will. Within fifteen minutes, they had worked their way through the basics of David’s list, including the coveted potatoes (three different kinds) and tomato seeds. It was too bad that neither chocolate nor coffee beans (these were from originally from Africa, but they hadn’t been ‘discovered’ and cultivated by 1290) would grow in the British climate.
Meg knew, and had to restrain herself from explaining in a David-esque manner, that some historians had even suggested that the introduction of the potato as a staple of food production in Europe after 1492 was enough to account for the rise of Western Europe as a superpower. Meg wasn’t big on increasing the population too fast, but greater population meant more minds at work and could lead to more scientific advances and more hands to do the work that needed doing. So, potatoes it was.
Cassie took it upon herself to organize the items they were buying into categories. With a smile at Meg, she took an entire box of SPF 15 lip balm and tucked it into the duffel bag. “Bronwen specifically mentioned the blue kind.”
“I believe you,” Meg said.
“Anything you want, Mom?” Anna flourished the list in one hand.
Meg gazed around at the choices and—quite frankly—the excess, and shook her head. “I’m sure I’ll want to bring some things back, but I keep thinking about what it looks like for us to have modern luxuries—plastic in particular—and so I decide to do without. What I want most are the things that I can’t really have: a cell phone, a ball point pen, a car, and—” she picked up a novel with a picture of Stonehenge on the cover, “—something to read.” Then she smiled. “I could do with some thick cotton socks.”
Anna smiled back. “We’ll swing by and pick up a couple of pairs on the way to see if your glasses are done.”
While Callum paid for the pile of goodies, Anna, Cassie, and Meg trooped back to the vision center where a very helpful—and very tired—employee presented Meg with glasses in a bright red case. Meg had chosen simple pewter frames, more angular than round, which appeared to be the current style. She put them on and about fell over. Meg had forgotten what it was like to see. She spent a few minutes alternating between looking through the glasses and lowering them to look over the top of the frames.
“What do you think?” This time it was Cassie bouncing up and down, clearly pleased with the gift.
“I don’t know what to say,” Meg said. “Thank you just isn’t enough.”
“My pleasure,” Cassie said. “Truly.”
Callum had also bought four cell phones, and once he joined the women, they all stood in an out-of-the-way spot near the bathrooms and customer service, and he opened one of the packages. It was so loud in the store that nobody was going to overhear what they were discussing.
“You got four phones?” Cassie accepted hers. “Why?”
“One, the Black Friday sale had these marked two for the price of one, so why not get four?” Callum said. “And two, these mobiles work internationally. The odds of anyone tracing them before we get out of the country later today are very slim, and I want to be able to keep in contact in case we get separated.”
“They’re nice.” Anna turned hers over in her hands. “Last I saw, touchscreens were expensive.”
Meg squeezed her shoulder. “It’s the little things that trip you up.”
Callum looked up from his phone. “Can you keep driving, Cassie? I have work to do.”
“Get me some coffee, and I’ll be good to go,” she said.
Meg didn’t offer to drive again, even with her new glasses. When she looked over Callum’s shoulder at his phone, amazingly, she could read the small print on the screen, even though it wasn’t two inches from her nose. Twenty minutes earlier, she wouldn’t have been able even to see it. “What do you mean, ‘work’?”
“We’re on a blackout with MI-5 due to the bombing, so I’m not expected to make contact with anyone until I return to Cardiff. I need to talk to Jones, however. He and I established a procedure—not just for me but for any agent in distress or who’s been compromised—to fall back on pre-arranged email accounts and new mobiles. Give me a second.”
Callum worked furiously on his phone for five minutes while the three women unpacked their phones and turned them on. Then Callum looked up at Anna and Meg. “Jones sent a message to my account, giving me his new number. Before I ring him, I need your photos.”
“Our photos?” Anna said.
“ID, Anna,” Meg said. “I think we’re about to see what technology can do again.”
Callum lined up Anna and then Meg against a square of white wall in the lobby of Wal-Mart, taking photos of each of them in turn. He texted them to Mark and then switched to telephone mode and dialed Mark’s number that, as far as Meg could tell, he’d memorized in the two seconds he’d been looking at his email.
Mark picked up. Meg could hear his tinny voice, even from a few feet away. “I received the photos. Where are you?”
Callum brought the phone down, put it on speaker set to a low volume, and the four friends huddled around it. “About to start driving again. This is a big country and it’s going to take a while. Where are you?”
“Hang on.” There was a pause, a flurry of conversation in the background, and then the slamming of a door. “Good job I had a spare mobile ready to go because I wouldn’t have had a chance to slip away. I’m in the maintenance closet.”
Cassie and Callum exchanged a bemused look, which Meg didn’t understand, and then Callum said, “What’s the situation?”
“It’s chaos in here right now. We’ve been taken over by Signals.”
“What’s ‘Signals’ again?” Meg said.
“It’s the nickname for the agency that got bombed,” Cassie said.
“Has there been any mention of the Project?” Callum said.
“Not so far,” Mark said. “Earlier, I spent two hours orienting the techs who arrived. They’re rebuilding the system from the ground up. They assume Signals was compromised before it was bombed.”
“That’s what Smith said when he recalled me,” Callum said.
“You’re still seen as lily white, by the way. Incorruptible. Wish you were here to glare at these people, because they don’t trust me,” Mark said. “I’ve been twiddling my thumbs for the last half hour. They took over my whole system.”
“I can’t be sorry about that,” Callum said, “because I need you.” He gave Mark a brief rundown of the last few hours since he’d gone dark, and his concerns regarding his ability to arrive safely in San Francisco.
Meg looked sideways at the Black Friday shoppers around them. No one even seemed to notice them.
Mark said that he couldn’t use the usual channels because of the blackout on communication, but he could still monitor the situation and see what the chatter was like at other agencies. “My coffee shop has been open for two hours. I’ll go there with my own laptop. And I’ll see what I can do about getting Meg and Anna ID.”
“I’ll call you when we get closer to the airport in San Francisco,” Callum said.
“I should have a better grasp of the situation by then,” Mark said.
Callum ended the connection.
“I thought we were going to the consulate?” Anna said.
“Did I say that? I didn’t mean it. With communications down, neither MI-5 nor we can risk it,” Callum said, “though they don’t know why I agreed so readily since they don’t know about you two.” He smirked.
“Callum waves that badge around, and everybody obeys,” Cassie said. “It isn’t far off from being the Earl of Shrewsbury, come to think about it.”
Meg gazed out the store window at the parking lot, lit up with a million fluorescent lights. They were there to make the parking lot safer, but the harsh bright white was anything but comforting.
Anna reached out and took her hand. “I feel like this ought to be different, somehow. Like I ought to be feeling something more momentous, or doing something more momentous, than shopping at Wal-Mart.”
Meg squeezed Anna’s hand. “I don’t know about that. Shopping is the worst and the best of American living. Twenty-four kinds of toothbrushes and a pair of glasses that lets me see your face clearly from across the room for the first time in two years. I’ll take it.”