I awoke to find two boots next to my nose. One of them shifted to poke me in the ribs.
“Wake up!”
I could have sworn I had stayed awake the whole night, but just when I should have been watching, I must have fallen asleep. Isn’t that always the way of it in the movies? Thomas still slept, cradled against my side. His weight prevented me from shifting so I could see the speaker. Instead, the owner of the boots crouched in front of me and I found myself looking into blue eyes and the stern face of a man of an age with me—middle thirties, maybe even younger.
“Allard.” Blue-eyed man threw the words to the man behind him whose face I couldn’t see. “You and Francis lift the boy and bring him to my horse. I will carry him home myself.”
“Yes, Sir John.”
Sir John kept his gaze steady on me as Allard and Francis raised Thomas up.
“He’s not injured,” I said.
Thomas yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Uncle!”
Sir John relented some of his sternness and grabbed Thomas up in a bear hug. For my part, I struggled to my feet, very conscious of my twenty-first century clothing. I clutched my short jacket closed and folded my arms across my chest. Sir John looked at me over the top of his nephew’s head. “And you are?”
Thomas released his uncle enough to twist towards me. “This is Margaret, Uncle. She and I walked from the Roman fort together.”
Sir John’s eyes narrowed. “Which Roman fort?”
“Your nephew found himself alone and on the run from some Scots,” I said. “He ended up at a fort along the wall.”
“I might ask what you were doing there, dressed as you are.” His eyes inspected me up and down. “But for now, we best be getting home.” And just like that, he turned away from me and towards his horse, which he mounted in a single, fluid motion.
Thomas scampered after him. Sir John gave the boy his arm so that he could clamber on the back of the horse. I had followed Thomas from the woods, but now backed away, thinking that continuing the journey by myself wasn’t a bad idea. Sir John had a different notion, however.
“Francis!” Sir John jerked his head, directing Francis’s attention towards me. Francis nodded. A moment later, I found myself grasped by the arm and urged towards Francis’s horse. “Can you ride?”
I stared up at the beast and sighed. “Yes.”
Sir John laughed. “Look after her, Francis. I have many questions.” He spurred his horse away.
I hadn’t ridden more than a few times since my year with Llywelyn, but I knew what to do. I grasped the horse’s mane, and Francis threw me up onto him. I swung my leg over the horse’s back and tried to get comfortable. I closed my eyes. Where will this end? A second later, Francis mounted behind me. Perhaps he feared that I would slip off the back and run away if he didn’t contain me.
I’d been fortunate so far that neither Thomas nor Sir John had pressed me about what I was doing at the wall. Sir John would corner me eventually, and if I couldn’t get myself free first, I was going to have to come up with a satisfactory story with which to explain myself. I hated to lie and couldn’t trust myself to lie convincingly anyway. My hope lay in finding a truth palatable enough for John, that was also true for me. Hopeless.
We set off at trot, which quickened to a ground eating canter. The sun had fully risen now and it promised to be a beautiful summer day.
It took us almost two hours to reach Carlisle Castle, Sir John’s home, located within the city of Carlisle. As the castellan for Edward I, Sir John would be one of the men spearheading Edward’s invasion of Scotland in another few years. Another bit of history that I would change if I could. I decided not to mention that to Sir John.
* * * * *
Once at the castle, Sir John arranged for a servant to lead me to the bathing room, located just off the kitchen. Discarded clothes that needed washing sat in baskets near a back exit that led to the large troughs where laundry was done. A fire, which was needed even though it was summer, warmed the room. It was England after all. The water for the bath was warm too and I made the most of it. Afterwards, the woman presented me with a linen shift and a dress of deep blue that matched my eyes perfectly.
I had no mirror but I could see something of my reflection in the basin. The servant rebraided my hair in two plaits (tying each with a leather thong), making me look far younger than my thirty-seven years. I shrugged. It would have to do. As my final preparation, I stacked my old clothes in a neat pile in a corner, along with all my goodies but the two rings, awaiting the moment I could collect them again.
I edged open the door to see if anyone was in the passage. It was empty. Now it begins, and I am such a lousy liar.
When I entered the great hall, it was full of people eating. I gulped. It had been a long time since I’d faced this kind of audience—in fact, it was the day after I fell into the past the first time, sixteen years ago. And that time, I had baby Anna on my hip.
Sir John sat at the head table, in the primary position, as was usually the case with lords in their own hall. Thinking of Llywelyn again, I squared my shoulders. I would find courage in his memory. Best get on with it.
At a signal from Sir John, I walked to him and came to a halt a pace away, on the other side of the table. I folded my hands and looked at him, aiming for an innocent and expectant expression. Now that I wore appropriate clothing, chances were better that I could pass for the medieval woman I was not.
“If it doesn’t trouble you greatly,” he said, “please break your fast in my receiving room. I have questions for you.”
“Of course, my lord,” I said.
He rose, and I followed him from the room, through a doorway, up a small stairway to another room on the upper floor. The room was spacious and well lit with candles on the table and the window shutters thrown wide. Sunlight poured into the room from a west-facing window. Contrary to his promise, no food appeared, and Sir John moved to stand before the fireplace. He prodded the lit logs with a poker.
“So, Mistress Margaret,” he said to the flames, “you appear to be a most unusual woman. It is time to tell me of yourself.”
I swallowed hard. “Myself?”
Sir John rested a forearm on the mantle and turned to look back at me. “Yes, Mistress. Yourself.” Dry amusement filled his voice. “I await with great interest your explanation of what brought you to the Roman fort in time to help my nephew.”
I had known that he would ask me this. I’d labored on a viable story during the ride to Carlisle and then in the bath, discarding tale after tale as ludicrous and unbelievable.
“Well then,” he said after a long pause which I didn’t fill. “We will start with your place of birth, Margaret. Who is your father and where does he live?”
I swallowed hard. A softball question, sort of, if one had a mind to tell the truth.
In the silence that followed, he seated himself in a throne-like chair that had been set before the fire. He rested his elbows on the arms of the chair, folded his hands together, and pressed the tips of his forefingers to his lips. He studied me for a while longer and then gestured that I should post myself in front of him, three paces away. It was like being sent to the principal in grade school.
I decided I couldn’t postpone this conversation any longer. “My father is Bran ap Morgan, my lord, of Gwynedd.”
“Of Gwynedd!” Sir John straightened and dropped his hands so that he gripped the arms of the chair. “Thus, the reason for your strange accent and your outrageous manner. It is said that the Welsh allow their women too much freedom, and I believe it. And your grandfather?”
This was it, the first plunge into deep water. “On my mother’s side, my grandfather was Goronwy ap Ednyfed Fychan, the former seneschal to Prince Llywelyn, and the father of one of his current advisors, Tudur.”
“Ah yes.” Sir John sat back, looking satisfied. “You have explained much in only a few words, particularly your royal bearing and gait.”
Stunned relief rushed through me, though not because of Sir John’s satisfaction with my story. Rather, it was his acceptance of my use of the word current. Llywelyn had a current advisor! He is alive! My Llywelyn is alive! The knowledge left me so weak at the knees I almost collapsed to the floor.
I wished I could run from the room and shout my joy to the sky, but instead I had to stand there and calmly answer Sir John questions. Anything else wasn’t going to get me back to Wales.
Sir John gestured towards me with one hand. “Pray continue. It is a long way from Gwynedd to Carlisle, is it not?”
“Yes, my lord.” I paused, marshalling my thoughts, but more confident now that I had hope for the future. “I spent the first fifteen years of my life at the court of Prince Llywelyn, under the guidance of my grandfather. But with Dafydd’s betrayal of the prince, my life changed. My father was killed in the fighting, and my mother chose to leave Wales and return to her mother’s house, taking me with her. My grandfather was not married to my grandmother, you see, who was from Shrewsbury, on the Welsh border.”
“Yes, I know it,” Sir John replied. “I have accepted the hospitality of the Benedictine monks there.”
“At the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul?” I asked, silently thanking Ellis Peters and her Brother Cadfael mysteries.
“Indeed,” replied Sir John. “Pray continue.”
“I had not lived in Shrewsbury long before I was married to an Englishman at my mother’s insistence. She feared for my future were I to return to Wales, even though Llywelyn was crowned Prince of Wales around this time.”
“He was crowned nearly twenty years ago,” Sir John said.
“Yes, my lord,” I said, wondering why he thought to comment on it. “I had a daughter and then a son. Shortly after our son’s birth, my husband began to change.”
Sir John leaned forward. “Change in what way, Margaret?”
“He … he began to turn away from the Church, my lord,” I said, in a rush. “He began to leave the house at all hours and not return until dawn. It only happened a few times a year at first, and then every month, until—” I stopped. I eyed Sir John carefully, but he seemed riveted.
“Until what?”
“Until he confessed to me his worship of Mithras.” As I spoke, I inadvertently looked down at my feet. If Sir John had studied psychology, he would have known that this indicated I was lying through my teeth.
“Ah, now we reach the heart of it. What then?”
“With Prince Llywelyn’s recent victories—” I paused to see how I was doing and found Sir John nodding. Before he noticed my clenched fists, I hurried to continue my story.
“My daughter and son are grown now, and I could leave them. I sent them to the Prince’s court. I, in turn, accompanied my husband to Newcastle-on-Tyne, where he insisted we could lodge with his great-aunt, whom he hadn’t seen in some time. When we arrived we found that she had died the previous year. We had no place to stay and little money. My husband paid an innkeeper for a few nights of meals and lodging for me and disappeared with only the clothes on his back.
“I didn’t know what to do when he failed to return. At last, I became determined to find him and make a final attempt to draw him away from these evil doers. I cut down some of his clothes for myself and, dressed as a man, set out to find the location of their worship.
Over the years I had learned a little of their practices. I confess, I listened to his private conversations with his companions when he thought I was asleep. I had learned that a night which promised both a full moon and a clear dawn would bring them out. I knew that the wall built by the Romans was the center of Mithras worship in England. Several days ago, I set out from Newcastle along the wall.
“When I encountered a fort and its altar to Mithras—not where I found your nephew, but a location farther east—I realized I had reached the right place. I hid myself. This was two nights ago. I didn’t have to wait long before men came, dressed in long white cloaks and hoods. My husband—” I bent my head and bit my lip. I had really fallen down the rabbit hole here. “My husband was one of them. They were in the middle of the ritual when the Scots—perhaps the same ones who captured your nephew—rode out of the dark and killed them all.”
“I am sorry for your loss, Margaret,” Sir John said, not sounding sorry at all. “So you expect me to believe that you followed your husband to Newcastle, dressed yourself as a boy, walked along the wall for several days, hid yourself in the fort, witnessed a Scot raid, and then rescued my nephew.”
“Yes, my lord,” I said, my throat dry. “I do.”
“The surprising thing,” Sir John said, “is that I do believe you. I’ve known about the Mithras cult for some time and have tried to stamp it out in Carlisle. What makes me wonder, however, is why in all of this, you chose to lie about your age?”
I blinked. My age was the one thing—maybe the only thing—I absolutely had not lied about. “My age, my lord?”
“Yes.” Sir John rose to his feet. He stood in front of me, his hands on his hips, and leaned down to look directly in my face. “Your age!”
He straightened and walked in a full circle around me. I looked towards the fire, uncertain.
“I do not believe for one moment that you are, what? Thirty-six or seven?” Sir John continued. “Do you think your woman’s folly will be more easily excused if you mark your age as that of a grandmother, instead of the girl you are?”
Sir John stood in front of me once more. I averted my eyes, and he smiled as he took my chin in his hand and made me look at him.
“Do you care to revise how old your children are, my dear? Perhaps you would like to mention that you went to Shrewsbury with your mother at Prince David’s second defection, not his first. Even then, that would make you twenty-five.” He turned my face from side to side, inspecting me. “That might be possible.”
He released my chin, and I returned my eyes to the floor. He sat in his chair again. Silence descended on the room. Finally, I decided that I had lied about everything else, I could lie about this too if it made Sir John happy and distracted him from the rather extensive falsehoods in the rest of my story.
I sighed. “My children are six and eight, my lord.”
“Women’s foolishness knows no bounds, apparently,” Sir John said, a ring of satisfaction in his voice. “I do not know how you thought I would believe you had achieved such an age.”
“I did not think, my lord.” A fit of giggles threatened to overwhelm me. My shoulders began to shake from the effort of swallowing them.
“No need to cry, my dear,” Sir John said. “You have experienced much in the last few days. Thank you for your care of my nephew. You may go.”
Without another word, I turned from him and fled. I raced down the stairs and then down a second flight to the bathing room. I had a mind to leave Carlisle immediately. With all the comings and goings in the castle, I could hide among the general populace moving through the front gates and lose myself in the city.
I pulled up short as I entered the room. It had been completely cleaned, and my clothes—and everything I’d secreted inside them—were gone. I closed the door behind me and leaned back against it. Resting my head against the door, I began to laugh—so hard I couldn’t stop—until I really did begin to cry.