Part Two: Chapter One
Eighteen months later …
David pushed open the door to the great hall and stood on the threshold. Beyond the entranceway, rain poured down in sheets and made muddy puddles in the courtyard. The water in the air and on the ground reflected the flickering light of the torches that lit the gatehouse of Rhuddlan Castle. “Hey, David,” Anna said. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” he said. “Why are you up?” He pulled off his cloak and shook it out, soaking the rush mats spread around him on the floor. He checked for his sword on his left hip. Ever since Papa had knighted him last year, he was never without it, not even in his own hall in the middle of the night.
“I couldn’t sleep and didn’t want to wake Math,” Anna said. “What are you doing out in this?”
“Taranis spooks during thunderstorms,” David said. “I wanted to make sure he was all right.”
“How was Dyfi?” Anna said.
“Asleep,” David said. “That horse is so placid, sometimes I wonder if she doesn’t sleep even when you ride her.”
Anna laughed and turned from him, glad to see him well. She was tired enough now to return to her room. Lately, her sleep had been troubled and perhaps the storm was affecting her too, because within moments of laying her head on her pillow, Anna dreamt as her mother for the first time in many months:
I wrap my arms around my waist and lean forward, trying to control my nausea as the plane shudders and jerks. The pilot puts out a hand as if to steady me, and then quickly moves it back to the controls.
“My God, Meg!” he exclaims. “What happened? We should be dead on that mountain! Now, there’s nothing but static on the radio and I’m flying by the seat of my pants here. The electronics are good, but what I can see of the terrain looks totally wrong. I don’t understand it!”
“Just put her down if you can, Marty,” I say. “We can figure out what’s going on when we land.”
“Put her down!” Marty shouts. “Where!” And then he screeches. The sound echoes throughout the small cabin. The trees we’ve been flying over give way to a heavy sea, rolling beneath us.
“Jesus Christ!” Marty says as he circles the plane back toward land.
I say nothing, just look out the window at the country below, my chin in my hand. The fog isn’t as thick now, but it limits visibility to a quarter-mile. No houses or towns are in sight and the land is rocky all the way down to the shoreline.
“Where in the hell are we?” Marty demands.
As we are supposed to be flying from Pasco, Washington to Boise, Idaho, I can understand his bewilderment. The land looks familiar to me, however. I suspect this fact will not comfort Marty in the slightest.
“Fly south, Marty,” I say, after he circles the plane for a third time.
We can just make out the sun, trying to shine through the fog. It’s very high in the sky. It makes me think that, temporally, we are in the same late-summer we left in Washington. Wild-eyed, Marty does as I ask. We fly on, unspeaking. The land rolls away beneath us. The rocky coastline gives way to a hilly, grass-covered terrain, interspersed with stands of trees. Everything is green. The patches of ground we can see don’t include a city.
“We’re going to run out of fuel soon,” Marty says softly. “What do you suggest we do?”
I sigh. “Just put her down. Find a field. Hopefully people live among these trees, though I don’t see any smoke.”
“Smoke,” Marty retorts. “I gather I’m not looking to follow the power lines?”
“I’m afraid there won’t be any power lines.”
“You know where we are?” Marty says. He glances at me. “What’s going on here!”
I turn to look at him. Watching his face, I say as clearly as I can, “This has happened to me before. I can’t explain it, but I’m afraid we’ve been displaced in space and time, to a world not our own.”
“You’re kidding me!” Marty snorts. He looks out the windscreen. “Aren’t you kidding me?”
I shake my head and sit on my hands so he can’t see them trembling. I’ve prayed for this to happen since Anna and David disappeared. I’d given up hope. “Sixteen years ago, I lived in thirteenth century Wales for close to a year,” I say. I look out the window again, trying to get my bearings. “But I can’t tell from up here what century this is.”
Marty grips the yoke so hard his knuckles turn white. Another minute and the fog thins enough to reveal a small lake with a clearing next to it that looks like a possible landing site. Unspeaking still, Marty circles the little plane, lowering it with every revolution. He lands and brings the plane to a halt. With a twist of his wrist, he turns off the engine, and we’re quiet.
“I think I saw power lines to the north, just as we landed,” he says.
“No, Marty. You didn’t.”
“I did. I know it.”
I decide not to wait for further recriminations or questions I’m not ready to answer, and wrench the door handle. Pushing it open, I hop out, hauling my backpack from the seat behind me. The lake is a few yards to my right and is as clear as any I’ve ever seen. Grasses grow almost to the water’s edge and wildflowers cover the hills around us. I take a deep breath and gaze up at the sky, now as clear as the air I breathe. The fog is gone. And what does that fog represent? The fog of confusion? The mists of time? I have no answers for Marty.
Before we landed, I too noticed something in the distance that looked man-made, though it wasn’t power lines. Hoping to spot it again, I shoulder my pack and take off at a brisk walk, following the south side of the lake. After fifty yards or so, I angle away from the lake and head up a small hill that forms the south side of the little valley. Another ten minutes of hard walking brings me to the top. I stop and turn to look back at the plane. Marty’s still seated inside. Then I gaze in the opposite direction and my heart skips a beat.
A long wall stretches before me. Dear God, it’s Hadrian’s wall. I sink to my knees. This is just too much. I’ll have to cross miles of open country to reach Llywelyn, if he still lives in this world. Is time here following the same trajectory as at home? Is it 1284 or a different era altogether? Even if he changed the future as I urged, Llywelyn still may not have survived. The thought is terrifying and hysterical laughter bubbles up in my throat. I try hard never to think of him. Can I really return to him again?
I look down at the plane and am astonished to see it rolling steadily across the grass. I watch dumbly. Surely, he’s not going to take off and leave me here? Where exactly does he think he’s going to go? To find his mythical power lines?
I shout, though I know he can’t hear me over the engine of the plane, and take off at a run down the hill. I’ve walked too far, however, and I’m only half-way down the slope when his front wheels lift off the ground. Five seconds later, he’s fifteen feet above the ground—then thirty—then one hundred. He circles the little white plane around the lake and even has the gall to tilt his wings to wave at me, before heading north to heaven knows where. I watch until he disappears...
Anna jerked awake, startled out of sleep by the sudden ending to the dream. She reached out under the covers, looking for comfort, but felt instead an empty space beside her.
“Math?” she said. Anna pushed up on one elbow to survey the room, which was beginning to lighten with the rising sun.
He was at the door, already dressed, but turned back to Anna when she called to him. “I hoped not to wake you.”
“Why are you up?” Anna said.
“Last night’s storm is spent, but the Irish Sea is unforgiving. The results are driving towards shore, including many dead. Your brother is hoping that we’ll find some people alive and he asked that I come with him to survey the damage.”
“I’ll come too.” Anna swung her legs out of bed.
“Anna,” Math said, “there’s no need.”
Anna walked to him and reached up to clasp her hands around his neck. He wrapped his arms around her waist and pulled her close. “We’ve talked about this before,” she said. “I’m not a glass doll. I’m not broken.”
“You tell me this, Anna,” Math said, “and I know it’s true. But I don’t feel it.”
“There will be another baby,” Anna said. “I was only nineteen last week. I realize that many girls here have three children by my age, but I’m not worried. It’s only the old busybodies in the solar who look at my belly and wonder why I haven’t yet given you a son.”
“Part of me would choose for you to never give me one, rather than lose another in the same fashion. I can handle anything but your tears, Anna.”
It was Math, in fact, who’d kept better track of the days and had known Anna was pregnant before she did. Even though she’d assumed a child was inevitable, the responsibility for it had brought her to her knees at first. But then as the weeks progressed, she’d accepted it, and then embraced the growing life inside her as a natural result of the love between her and Math. When the pregnancy, which had lasted all of fourteen weeks, had ended three weeks ago, Anna had sobbed through many days, desolated, while Math had stood by, helpless.
In truth, Anna had needed her mother, but as always, she was in another world and too far away to help. The dream of her was fading now. If Anna focused, she could recall the black abyss and the sense of despair, both of which were very familiar, though she thought she’d conquered her fear of them in the past year. But she couldn’t control her dreams and perhaps the miscarriage had brought those feelings bubbling to the surface again.
Math’s request to court her had caught Anna completely by surprise. She and David had discussed Papa ‘marrying her off’ when they’d first arrived in Wales, but Anna hadn’t seriously considered it again. She’d thought it ridiculous, really, not only because she was only seventeen, but because she wasn’t Welsh, because she was from the future, and because telling Math about who they were and where they were from meant she’d have to commit to this life as the only one she was going to get.
As the months passed, Math was persistent in his attentions, and heaven help her, Anna grew to like him—more than like him. She began to miss him when he was off somewhere with David, patrolling the border or fighting the English, and found herself atop the battlements, waiting for a sign of his return. Math was upright and straightforward, honest and trustworthy, a knight in the truest sense of the word. And whenever he looked at Anna, it was with a thoughtful expression, intense and gentle at the same time—as if he saw something in her that was special, and perhaps special only to him.
Finally, it was David who’d intervened, understanding what was going on as only he could. So they’d sat Math down and told him the truth, and he’d shaken his head at Anna, not because he didn’t believe that she was from the future, but because she’d been silly to think something like that would make him change his mind about her. Anna had long since changed her mind about him.
“If you help me get dressed, I won’t have to wake Nell,” Anna said. Her maid slept on the floor in the women’s chamber. Nobody there would want to be awakened at five in the morning. Anna didn’t like needing a maid at all, but she couldn’t do all of the laces up the back of her dress by herself. Anna pushed open the shutter to see what the day looked like. After the heavy rain of the night before, the sky was clear, though more clouds hovered on the western horizon.
With Math’s help, Anna got into her clothes, twisted her hair onto the top of her head, and pinned it. Not exactly a ‘lady of the manor’ look, but they were going to the beach and she could clean up better when they returned.
David was waiting for them in the courtyard, Taranis already saddled. Math boosted Anna onto Dyfi, and then mounted Mael. As always when traveling with David, a dozen other men-at-arms came with them. Even a morning stroll on the beach could turn into something malevolent if English were about and Papa insisted David not take unnecessary chances.
“Hey, Anna,” David said. “What’s up?”
Anna smiled back at him, loving the familiar greeting, though it didn’t quite have the same ring to it in Welsh.
“Why should you have all the fun?” she said. “I need to get out and move around.”
“Okay,” he said. “But I don’t think this is going to be fun.”
“Yes,” Anna said. “I do realize that, but perhaps I can be of help.”
In the nine months that Math and she had been married, they’d made a full circuit of the half dozen estates which he controlled, plus the two he held for Papa. Because many of the lands were in Deheubarth, they’d been lost in the years since 1277 and had only recently been regained.
In each estate, Math had near total power, sitting as judge and jury in all disputes, overseeing the management of the land, and all-in-all acting as an almost-king. Anna, in turn, was a combination hostess, housekeeper, and substitute mother to the people who worked the land or served in the castle or manor. In the process, she found that everyone expected her to act as doctor when the herbalist wasn’t available. Anna had brought her satchel with clean bandages and a water sack. People on the beach this morning might need them.
Rhuddlan Castle, which Papa had gladly made his main power base in north Wales, was a monstrosity, but at this point, one Anna could really get behind. Edward had built it after destroying the old castle—the one in which Papa had made his obeisance in 1277 to his humiliation. Now, if one were to use Mom’s terminology, the castle resembled ‘the finest example of Edwardian castle architecture ever constructed.’ They rode out of the main entrance at the northwest corner of the castle, above which flew both Papa’s banner and David’s.
Because the ocean tended to throw its refuse on the beach east of the Clwyd estuary, they didn’t cross the river, but headed north along the river’s eastern bank until they reached the shore of the sea two and half miles downstream. When they arrived at the beach, even though it couldn’t have been more than six in the morning, a dozen people combed the shoreline for whatever the sea had thrown up.
Anna dismounted where the cheat grass turned into beach, which, now that the tide was out, was a hundred feet deep. She let Dyfi’s reins trail and left her cropping the short grass on the landward side of a dune. As Anna faced the sea, the sun shone from behind her. Logs, broken pottery, and planks that perhaps had once been part of a ship littered the beach, but no bodies that she could see. Anna breathed in the sea air, and Math took her hand.
“Let’s walk this way,” he said, pointing northeast.
Anna lifted her skirt rather than let it trail in the wet sand and wished for sandals she could easily remove. They crunched along anyway, away from the other people, though behind her Anna could hear David making disposition of his men. It was nice to be alone with Math, with just the seagulls calling and the sound of the surf crashing on the shore. It was hard to believe that a storm had raged here in the night, driving men and boats into the deep. The beach narrowed as they went north, and they followed the shore around a mini-headland that bulged into the sea. Further on, the beach projected northeast again, and it was here that they finally saw the bodies.
Five people lay in the sand, each contorted awkwardly. Anna and Math moved from man to man but all were beyond their help except for the one farthest down the beach whose arm moved as Anna reached him. He had brown hair and beard and wore a long robe. She dropped to her knees beside him and as her shadow loomed over him, he opened his eyes. Crow’s feet showed in the corners of his eyes as he smiled up at Anna.
“It’s you,” he said, in English, and then blinked. Anna sat back on her heels, surprised, and he pushed himself up on his elbows.
“How do you feel?” Anna said in the same language, uncertain of who he was or what he’d meant.
He blinked again, tipping his head to one side as he studied her. “I apologize, my lady. I mistook you for someone else.” He turned his head from left to right, surveying the beach, but nobody moved along it. The man pushed to his knees, and then stood, swaying, so that Math reached out and caught his elbow to hold him steady.
“I’m Math ap Rhys Fychan,” Math said carefully, also in English, “the prince’s nephew, and this is my wife, Anna.”
“Aaron ben Simon, a physician, at your service,” the man said.
Math nodded, but continued in Welsh while Anna translated for Aaron. “Can you walk with us down the beach? Our horses are near and we can provide you with lodging at Rhuddlan Castle until you’re well enough to make your way elsewhere.”
“Rhuddlan, is it?” Aaron looked away, his brow furrowed, focusing first on the water and then again on the beach around him.
“Is something wrong?” Anna said. “Beyond the obvious, that is?”
“I had a companion, a friend who journeyed on the ship with me. We were thrown into the water together, but the sea pulled us apart as we neared shore. I’d hoped that she too reached land safely, but I don’t see her.”
“I’m sorry,” Anna said, not knowing what else to say.
He nodded and bowed his head, obviously troubled. Math took his arm and the trio walked back around the headland to where David was waiting with the horses.
“Four dead men lie further up the beach,” Math said. “This is Aaron, a Jewish physician. I’ve offered him refuge in the castle.”
“Good,” David said.
Aaron had bowed when he heard his name spoken, but Anna didn’t think he understood the rest of the Welsh, so she reverted to English.
“Please meet my brother, David, Prince Llywelyn’s son.”
“My lord!” Aaron bowed deeply. “Thank you for your hospitality.”
“I’m sorry it’s necessary, but you are welcome to stay as long as you need,” David said. “Was Wales your original destination, or Ireland?”
“Wales,” Aaron said, “though I’d not intended to arrive as destitute as the storm has left me.”
“Do you have family here, or someone who is awaiting word of your arrival?” Anna said.
Aaron shook his head. “My wife and daughter died some years ago. I have a son, Samuel, who remains in England.”
“Then why Wales?” David said.
Aaron couldn’t mistake his tone, and hurried to explain. “People of my faith are no longer welcome in England, my lord. I’d heard that Wales might be more obliging.” He kept his head bowed, not looking at David.
David gazed down at him and then looked at Anna. “You heard right.”
Aaron’s head popped up. “I am relieved to hear it. Please allow me to be of service to you, or your father.”
“We can always use a physician,” David said.
“So my companion assured me,” Aaron said.
“Companion?” David said.
But Aaron was looking toward the sea again, and this time he appeared to find what he was looking for, because he took several steps away from David. A small figure—a woman—moved along the beach, coming from the river. Aaron hesitated, peering into the distance and squinting.
“Meg!” he said.
Aaron hiked up his robe and took off at a run towards the woman. She waved and veered toward him. They met half-way up the beach, each taking the other’s arms in a decorous hug. Aaron then turned her towards David and Anna. The closer they got, the more Anna’s eyes watered; tears poured down her cheeks and blurred her vision.
“Oh my God, it’s Mom.” David choked.
His words released Anna and she raced across the beach, her boots slipping in the sand. Sobbing, Anna threw herself at her mother and knocked her backwards. Mom held her, her cheek against Anna’s hair, rocking her as if she were a baby.
“Oh, my darling daughter,” she repeated over and over. Anna couldn’t stop crying, even when her mother took her face in her hands and kissed her eyes, trying to get Anna to stop. “It’s okay. It’s me. I’m here.” Mom looked past Anna to David, who’d come to a halt five paces away, as if he couldn’t believe what he was seeing. “And your brother too.” Mom held out one arm and he came into the circle of it.
“How did you get here?” Anna said.
Mom shook her head. “Same as always. I can’t believe you’re here too. I didn’t let myself believe it.” David’s shoulder muffled Mom’s voice.
They hugged and rocked until the tightness in Anna’s chest loosened and she was able to relax her hold enough to look into her mother’s face. “You must have been through a lot.”
“Me?” Mom laughed through her tears. “What about you? Have you been here all this time?”
“We have,” David said. “Let’s get you home.” He put his arm around his mother’s shoulder and looked at Anna over the top of her head. When they’d last seen their mother, she and David had been same height. Anna held tight to her mother’s hand as David herded them, along with a very bemused Aaron, back to where they’d left the horses.
“You mentioned that you had known the prince many years ago,” Aaron commented, “but I didn’t quite catch that you’d given him a son.”
“I couldn’t tell you,” Mom said.
A few steps further on, Math waited to be introduced. Anna took his hand and pulled him to her mother. “This is my husband, Mom. Mathonwy ap Rhys Fychan.”
“I’m pleased to meet you, Madam,” Math said, in his most formal Welsh.
Mom stuck out her hand, as if meeting Anna’s husband was a perfectly normal thing to do, but then ruined it. “You’re married?” Her hand went to her head before Math could take it. “How can you be married?”
Anna tightened her grip on Math’s other hand. “I’m sorry you missed it, Mom, but well ... you weren’t here.”
With that, Mom melted again. She started crying; then Anna started crying, and they fell into each other’s arms. Math kissed the top of Anna’s head and patted her on the shoulder. “We’ll leave you a moment.” He tipped his head to Aaron who moved past them towards the horses and out of earshot.
Once again, Anna struggled to regain her composure, wiping her cheeks with the backs of her hands.
“How long have you been back here?” David said. The control in his voice told Anna he was determined to remain on an even keel.
“Beginning of August,” Mom said.
“How did you get back here?” Anna said, finally able to calm down enough to marshal her thoughts.
“By plane,” Mom said.
Plane? Hadn’t I just dreamed of a plane?
“Near Hadrian’s Wall.”
“Hadrian’s Wall?” David said. “And you made it here all by yourself?”
“I had help,” Mom said, “most recently Aaron’s.”
“Hadrian’s Wall is a long way from here,” Anna said.
“It is,” David agreed. “Father is going to freak.”