Daughter of Time (Prequel to The After Cilmeri Series)

Daughter of Time (Chapter Eighteen)

Llywelyn

A lightness and joy filled me that even the troubles of the day couldn't suppress. The emotion augmented the sharpness of my vision; I couldn't explain it otherwise, either by the brightening day or the clearness of the air.

Meg carries my child!

With effort, I restrained myself from punching the air every time I thought about it and tried to focus on the task at hand.

While we were in the hut, the sky had lightened. Soon the sun would push over the horizon. Early spring flowers poked through the damp ground, and it reminded me again of my incredible luck. I am alive. And Meg carries my child.

I checked Meg beside me. She was caught up in the baby too, more so even than I, and I didn't think it had sunk in fully that someone had wanted to kill us. The anger that I'd been keeping in check for the last hour began rising in my throat again and I tamped it down. It would do me no good.

It was the kind of thing my grandfather had cautioned me against, on one of those rare instances when we were alone and he'd a moment to spare for one of his many grandsons: "It is not the actions of a man when he is sober and clear-eyed that are his measure, but when he is pressed hard, his back against a wall. At those times, fear and anger will be his undoing, and it is a rare man who can put aside those feelings and do what must be done. Be one of those men."

Meg trudged beside me through the woods, her hand clasped tightly in mine. "So who betrayed you this time?"

"Hard to say."

"Not Goronwy," she said.

"I trust him with my life," I said. "If he's betrayed me, I could never trust my own judgment again."

"He loves Anna."

"And love for your daughter is a proper test of a man's character?"

"It ought to be one," she said, "though many tyrants through the ages have loved their children and yet despoiled their country. It seems contradictory to me."

"Men are nothing if not contradictory," I said. "That's one of the first things you learn when you begin to lead them. Plenty of people are perfectly capable of holding two entirely opposite opinions at the same time, and arguing vehemently for each in turn."

Meg laughed. "So young, and yet so cynical."

We walked on, our silence drowned out by the rushing of the river. We gazed across it at the castle.

"Now what?" Meg said.

We'd come out of the woods to the south of the castle, but the Usk was still in full flood, so we had no way to cross, except over the bridge to the castle. I studied the battlements and the gate. I couldn't see the other gate from where we stood as it faced east, reached by a bridge across the Honddu. That's the one we'd gone under. This one was even larger and better fortified.

Except today.

The portcullis was up and the drawbridge down. "I don't like this," I said. "Where is everybody? The guards?"

"We look like peasants in these clothes," Meg said. "I can't wait any longer. I have to go in there. Anna's going to wake soon and if I'm not there, she'll cry." She glanced at me and I shrugged. Into the lion's den. We ran to the bridge across the Usk, our footsteps thudding across its length. At any second, I expected to hear a shout from within the gatehouse, but no one called to us.

Just past the portcullis, I tugged Meg through a left-hand door into the gatehouse. Then I stopped short, surprising Meg who bumped into me and caught my arm. The two guards who should have been protecting the entrance to the castle sprawled unconscious on the ground. I bent to check the breathing of one of the men while Meg felt for his pulse. She looked at me and nodded. "It's faint, but there."