Footsteps in Time (12 page)

Unfortunately, he had a
point. Anna knew many of the women, but all the men with whom David
and she had ridden from Cilmeri were with the prince at
Dolwyddelan. As a matter of fact, Hywel was the only male at
Castell y Bere with whom she had any acquaintance at
all.

“
Then we must get her
away,” Anna said, trembling more from anxiety than cold. “We have
no choice. And we’ll have to do it tonight because we don’t know
exactly when they’ll come. It’s likely they’ll move quickly, rather
than risk detection so close to the castle.”

Hywel rubbed his face with both hands.
“By the saints, how can we?”

“
If I find a way to take
Gwenllian out of the castle, will you come with me?” Anna said.
“Will you help me?”

Hywel took his hands from
his face. “Of course, my lady. I don’t see any other choice either.
If you misunderstood their intentions, Prince Llywelyn will have my
head, but if you heard correctly, and we do nothing, I may die
anyway. I would rather die on the road with you, than cowering in
the stables having turned Prince Llywelyn’s daughters over to the
English.”

“
Good,” Anna said,
relieved. “Now we must return to the castle. Tonight, when all is
quiet, I’ll bring the baby and, hopefully, her wet nurse, to the
stables. We can leave by the postern gate. Perhaps with so few men
available and treachery on his mind, Rhys won’t have as many guards
posted.”

“
I would rather not trust
to hope!” Hywel said. “But I’ll find provisions for the journey to
Dolwyddelan. That’s where we’re going, right?”

“
Where else?” Anna said.
“Do you know the way?”

“
I know it,” Hywel said.
“I was born in the forest just south of Dolgellau. If we can get
there, we can hide ourselves off the main road in the remains of
the shepherd’s hut where I was born.”

“
How far is that from
here?”

“
More than ten miles. It’s
nearly forty miles to Dolwyddelan. If we had fast horses ...”
Hywel’s words trailed off.

“
But we have only Madoc,”
Anna said, “and we shouldn’t take the main road.”

“
No.” Hywel sighed, and
then straightened his shoulders. “We should go in. I will meet you
near midnight. Say your prayers before you come.”

“
I’ll do that, friend.”
Anna placed a hand on his shoulder. “Thank you for helping me.
Thank you for trusting me.”

Hywel bowed, as gracefully as any
courtier, and led the way through the still-open gate into the
courtyard of the castle.

Chapter Eight

David

T
here was something about sleeping on the road again, this time
in a tent David shared with Math, that kept him in a constant state
of anticipation. It was cold, it was snowy, and he loved it. Before
noon on the third day out from Castell y Bere, the keep of
Dolwyddelan appeared above them. It guarded the pass into the Conwy
Valley. In the old world, it was here that Dafydd ap Gruffydd,
Llywelyn’s brother, had retreated after Llywelyn died at Cilmeri.
Uncle Dafydd had escaped before the English took it, but it only
delayed the inevitable.

An hour later, they clattered through
the gateway. Dolwyddelan was smaller than Castell y Bere, with only
two towers (instead of Castell y Bere’s three). Regardless, the
courtyard seethed with men and horses, a fraction of the thousands
of men camped in the valley just to the north of the castle.
Llywelyn ap Gruffydd had an army.

“
Come, son.” Father stood
at David’s stirrup, his hand on Taranis’ neck. “You must meet your
uncle before he marches.”

Father’s fifty men wouldn’t strain the
provisions of the castle because at least two hundred cavalry and a
third of the foot soldiers were preparing to move out at that
moment, heading north and then east to the Clwyd River. Father
believed (and Anna concurred) that Edward would head west from
Rhuddlan Castle along the north shore of Wales, before advancing
south towards Dolwyddelan through the Vale of Conwy. He had
thousands of foot soldiers and hundreds of knights and men-at-arms
and the Welsh would meet him somewhere between Dolwyddelan and the
coast.

“
Yes, sir,” David said. His
heart beat a little faster at the thought. He and his traitorous
uncle would be fighting together; fighting against the English.
David decided that the latter fact alone was enough to make his
heart pound, and that he shouldn’t worry about meeting a man who’d
proved false far too many times (he’d even once tried to
assassinate Prince Llywelyn), even if he was on Father’s side
now.

They entered the great hall, with its
massive fireplace set against one wall. Many men must have slept
there the night before, but now it was nearly deserted, except for
a small group of men gathered around a table at the far
end.

They all looked up as David and
Llywelyn entered and Father lifted his hand to greet them. One man,
dark like Father, broader in the shoulders but not as tall,
separated himself from the group.

“
So, you’ve come,” he
said.

“
Yes,” Father said. “It’s
time to face what King Edward has in store for us.”

“
The King left Rhuddlan
last night with seven thousand men.” The man reached Father and
they clasped forearms. Then they both turned to David. “Your son,”
the man said.

David held out his hand. “Uncle
Dafydd,” he said. “I’m glad to finally meet you, sir.”

“
You share my name, I
believe,” Uncle Dafydd said.

“
Yes, sir,” David
said.

Uncle Dafydd nodded, pleased it
seemed. He probably didn’t know that David had been named for the
other Prince Dafydd, David’s great uncle, who’d ruled Wales from
1240 to 1246.

“
The weather remains cold,
even on the coast?” Father said.

“
Yes, for now,” Uncle
Dafydd said. His expression was so fierce, David had to stop
himself from taking a step back but then he realized that the
emotion was not directed at Father, but at Edward.

“
You have reason to
believe a change is coming?” Father said.

Uncle Dafydd nodded. “Another week,
maybe less, and we’ll see a thaw. The fishermen assure me of
it.”

“
Well, they would know,”
Father said. “When do you leave for Denbigh?”

David realized that was his
father’s third question in a row. David couldn’t think of another
time his father had asked anyone so many questions. Even if the
conversation seemed unnatural and stilted to David, he could see
how it could be a deliberate strategy on Father’s part to show his
confidence in his brother.

It better not be misplaced,
Uncle Dafydd. You’re the one who fought beside Edward all these
years.

“
Within the hour,” Uncle
Dafydd said. “As we agreed, my men and I will ride north and east
to take Denbigh from Lacy. In anticipation of a thaw, we will then
cross the Clwyd and besiege Rhuddlan until it falls. You must
prevent Edward from returning north with his full force, or this
entire endeavor will fail.”

“
We
will,” David said, surprising himself. The words had just popped
out. Uncle Dafydd’s tone had bothered him—as if somehow he supposed
that Father didn’t know what he was doing. Of course, David
had
no
idea what he
was doing, but Uncle Dafydd didn’t know that and David sure wasn’t
going to tell him.

Father put a hand on David’s shoulder
and nodded at Uncle Dafydd. “We are agreed then,” he said. “Leave
Edward to me.”

On the road, Father had confessed to
David that he’d joined Uncle Dafydd’s rebellion initially out of a
sense of despair. In June of last year, Father had lost his wife
and with her, at well-past fifty, any hope of a son to carry on his
rule. He loved Gwynedd, loved Wales, felt a kinship with the land
itself. He spoke of this love with a passion, not too different
from patriots in America, hundreds of years later.

“
Did Mom ever talk to you
about the American Revolution?” David asked him later, once they
were alone in his chamber which, unusually, they were sharing
because the castle was so full.

“
She explained to me that
your country has no kings and had won the right to govern itself
from England at the point of a sword. She didn’t discuss the
details,” he said. He sat in a chair and stuck out his foot. David
obliged as his squire.

“
Well,” David said,
grunting with the effort of removing the boot, “our circumstances
here are much the same as the Americans of that time. We were
taxed, subject to unfair laws, and forced to suffer indignities
imposed upon us by the King of England and his
soldiers.”

“
And they were still doing
this five hundred years from now?” Father said. “Sadly, I’m not
surprised.”

David laughed and dropped
the boot to the floor. “The first president of our country was a
man named George Washington. He was hard pressed through a long
winter, with little support and fewer men. Many were dying from
infectious diseases and dysentery. He feared that many of the men
wouldn’t re-enlist at the New Year unless he had a victory to show
them, so he concocted a bold and unexpected plan.”

“
Ha,” Father said. “I like
the man already.”

“
On Christmas night, he
rowed his men across the Delaware River and force-marched them to a
town called Trenton, where the English mercenaries were sleeping
off their meal. Washington’s men attacked shortly after dawn and
completely routed the enemy. Nobody suspected that they would
attack on Christmas night—and in such bitterly cold
weather.”

Father stretched out his legs towards
the fire and put his hands behind his head, leaning back in his
chair. “Your Uncle Dafydd tried something like this, with great
success, on Palm Sunday last year,” Father said. “Unfortunately,
Christmas is past.”

“
It is bitterly cold,
though,” David said. “I understand that five years ago, during King
Edward’s march through Wales, he cleared the land of trees and
settlements so that we couldn’t ambush him—so we couldn’t use what
in the modern world we call ‘guerilla warfare’.”

“
Yes,” Father said. “I
assume he will do so again, yet I’m loath to meet him on the open
field. He has more cavalry than we do, more soldiers in general,
and more experience with moving armies great distances.”

“
Yet, the English are far
from home,” David said. “They’ll be marching with their supply
lines stretched out behind them. They expect to besiege us and
force us to sue for peace. What if we were to divide our men into
small groups and attack them at night? They may have cleared the
trees around their camps, but they still have to sleep, and we know
the terrain.”

“
My castles are my
strength,” Father said. “I am loath to abandon
Dolwyddelan.”

“
I didn’t mean that you
should,” David said. “But we can maximize their weaknesses. How
many rivers does Edward have to cross to reach us here?”

“
About eight.”

“
How far can our archers
shoot? I’ve heard many times that they are the best in the world.
I’m suggesting that we use them; that we plan a systematic,
guerilla-like attack to whittle down the English numbers and
demoralize them at the same time. We can blow through the English
at their most vulnerable moments—when they ford rivers and at
night. Yes, we need Uncle Dafydd to take Rhuddlan, but even more we
need to drive the English away.”

Father sat up straight, his
hands gripping his knees. “I like it. I’ll like it even more if it
starts to rain as promised.”

“
Why?” David
said.

“
Because the rivers will
rise, the ground will become as soggy as a bog, and his men will be
camping in the rain without a fire or succor.”

“
Of course, then, so will
we,” David said.

“
Yes. But we like it.”
Father was looking at the fire as he said these words but then
glanced over at David. He was only half-joking. “Our men will know
that the weather is our ally.”

Pause.

“
How worried are you?”
David said.

“
It may be a near thing.
This isn’t a comfortable world you’ve fallen into, my son.” He
hesitated. “We may not live through this.”

“
I know,” David said,
though he’d not spent a single moment thinking about it. He
couldn’t.

“
Don’t think on it,”
Father said. “We’ve still several days and many miles between us
and Edward. We’ll prepare as best we can, and pray, and wish for
the kind of luck that we’ve rarely had in the past but which seems
to have found us here at last.”

* * * * *

Uncle Dafydd and his men
vanished into the east. David had a moment’s pang of fear that he
was gone forever, defecting again to Edward. Uncle Dafydd had
already done that twice. It was the kind of thing none of those
loyal to Llywelyn could forget or forgive, no matter how sincere
Uncle Dafydd seemed now.

Father introduced David to more of his
men, many of whom had walked or ridden to Dolwyddelan from every
corner of Wales. David stayed at his side, and when he wasn’t with
him, he was with Math or Bevyn. Father had decreed that David was
to captain a company of men: foot, archer, and horse. It wasn’t
that David felt ready, but as Prince of Wales, it was expected, and
anything less from him would have invited comment and implied a
lack of trust in his son on Prince Llywelyn’s part.