Footsteps in Time (4 page)

A man lying on the
ground to David’s right grunted, scratching his chest in his sleep,
and another thought occurred to David—one that nearly made him
choke: if this was the Middle Ages, then he was responsible for
Anna. It was his job to protect her, maybe even from men such as
these. In this world, a woman had no rights or status without a
man, whether father, husband, or brother.
How can that man be me?

David hardly ever
talked to her, really. She was three and a half years older and
three years ahead of him in school. Their lives almost never
intersected in or out of the classroom, not with homework, sports,
and totally different friends getting in the way. They took karate
together, but that was it.
When was the
last time we had a real conversation before today?
David couldn’t remember.

More scared than he’d been
since Anna drove the van into the clearing, David hugged his sister
to him. The stars were fully out now. They were beautiful beyond
reckoning, and yet unfamiliar. In the end, there were more than
David could count, but he tried.

Chapter Three

Anna

A
nna
drifted off to sleep with David’s
arm wrapped around her and found herself back in a nightmare,
though this time as her mother.

I enter my hotel room just
as my cell phone rings. I think it’s Anna and clear my mind,
putting away the talk I’ve just heard on medieval trade. It’s not
Anna, though, but Elisa whose voice I hear.

“
Meg!” She sobs into the
phone.

“
What is it?” I ask,
imagining the worst, as mothers do. And the worst it is.

“
Anna and David have
disappeared! I sent them to pick up Christopher but they never
arrived, and nobody has seen them.”

“
I’m coming now,” I say,
glancing at my watch. 8 o’clock. “Have you called the
police?”

“
Right before I called
you,” she says.

I put down the phone and
lean forward over the bed, my hands supporting my weight. My breath
quickens, and I swallow hard, trying to hold down the panic and the
tears. Where are they? What could they be doing? I dial Anna’s cell
phone number, but her phone doesn’t ring, immediately switching to
her messaging. I try David’s number with the same result. I snap
the phone shut, my eyes closed.

It takes me an hour to get
to Bryn Mawr from my hotel. The train is late and packed with
commuters. I find myself hiding my face from the other passengers
in case I disturb them with my tears. I call Elisa every ten
minutes, my hands shaking as I dial the phone, but each time Elisa
answers with ‘I’m sorry’.

Elisa meets me at the
station and drives me back to her house. A police car sits in the
driveway where Elisa usually parks the van and an officer stands
near the front stoop, talking with Elisa’s husband, Ted. I get out
of the car and the policeman turns to me, eyes narrowed.

“
I’ll need a description of
your children,” he says. “Have they run away before?”

I put a hand to my mouth,
trying to hold in a cry—

“
Anna!”

She opened her eyes.

David’s concerned face hovered above
her. “Dreaming of swords again?”

Anna shook her head. “Mom.”
She massaged her temples with her fingers, still lost in the dream,
while at the same time trying to push it away. This kind of dream
was always the worst: so tangible and terrible that she always woke
up relieved it hadn’t happened in real life.

Anna sat up. The stars were
gone, and the sky was growing paler with the coming dawn. Someone
had stoked the fire and men ate near it. Others checked the horses
and prepared their saddlebags, but there seemed fewer men than the
night before. Anna swallowed, her throat dry, and wondered about a
bathroom.

Suddenly resolute, she stood up,
studied the surrounding forest, bracing herself for the inevitable,
and strode off into the woods.

“
Where are you going?”
David said.

Anna waved a hand at him
without turning around. “I have to pee!”

Behind her, David laughed,
but Anna surely wasn’t laughing. Wherever they were going had to be
better than this, right? Didn’t castles have outhouses? And cloth
instead of frozen leaves?

David had acquired food by the time
Anna returned. He handed her a length of dried meat. She nibbled at
it but her stomach had that nauseous feeling that too little sleep
can leave. David had no compunctions at all. He laid into his meal
with all the enthusiasm of a starving fourteen-year-old boy.
Watching him eat, Anna recalled with horror another tidbit about
Welsh culture: David was fourteen and therefore considered a man by
Welsh law. Appalling thought.

“
Sorry about
earlier.”

“
About what?” Anna
said.

“
Laughing at you, I
mean.”

“
Oh,” she said.

“
We’re going to have to
stick together. This is going to be—” He paused, searching for the
words, “—really, really difficult.”

Anna turned her head to see his face,
but he was looking past her. He bowed slightly, and Anna followed
his gaze.

Sure enough, Llywelyn himself limped
towards them. He held out his hand to David who stood to greet him.
David gripped his forearm as Anna had seen other men do. When
Llywelyn released him, he turned to Anna and unfolded an expanse of
fabric he’d tucked under his arm. He swung the cloak around her
shoulders, enveloping her from head to foot. Anna hugged it to her,
warm for the first time since they’d arrived.

The men prepared to depart,
and this time David and Anna got to stay together, with him in the
saddle and her riding pillion behind him. They trotted out of the
clearing and onto the same the path the company had traveled up the
day before. When the sun rose, so low in the sky it was barely
there, it became clear they were headed north, which made sense if
their destination was Llywelyn’s home.

“
It’s beautiful here,”
David said, after a while.

Although Anna was having a hard time
seeing past her own misery, she had to admit that the snow-covered
mountains were spectacular.

“
No cars, no machines,
power lines, houses, or garbage.” For once, she agreed with him.
“But why can’t we understand better what they’re
saying?”

“
It’s Middle Welsh. Didn’t
you—” David stopped himself as he remembered who’d been willing to
sit through another Welsh language class and who hadn’t.

“
No,” Anna said. “I took
German.”

“
Useful language, German,”
David said. “Especially about now.”

Crap.

That evening, they camped
beside the trail as before. This time, Anna needed no help getting
off the horse, but then she was left alone on the edge of the camp,
uncertain. Her rear hurt so badly she couldn’t bear the thought of
sitting, so she stood and tried to stretch without calling
attention to herself.

Once David had seen to the horse, he
found her again. “You okay?”

Anna stared at him
for a second, befuddled.
Okay? How could he
even ask such a question? Of course I’m not okay, and neither is
he.
She didn’t answer because she was so
irritated, but then realized he was trying to be understanding, in
his limited way, and relented.

“
I survived the day and am
still upright,” she said.

David nodded, and
awkwardly put his arm around her shoulder. He
was
trying
.
He didn’t stay beside her long,
though, because the grizzled man from the day before called him
over: “Dafydd!”

David blinked, but
did as he was bid. The man stood in the middle of a large open
space and held a long stick in his hand, which he tossed to David.
He shouted something, the Welsh equivalent of
en garde!
and David brought his stick
up as if it were a sword. Anna almost laughed, but stopped herself
because nobody else was laughing. A dozen men stood nearby,
watching intently. It was unbelievable and right out of a fantasy
film. Anna could think of at least three movies where such a scene
occurred and was willing to bet David knew them
too.

For an hour, David stabbed
and parried, twisted and lunged. He looked competent to her, but
Anna had nothing but movies to judge him by, and she doubted their
accuracy. Several men patted David on the shoulder afterwards,
however, so perhaps he had done well.

David sat beside her at
dinner, disheveled and hot from his exertions. “It was a lot harder
than I expected.”

“
Not quite like the
battles you have with your friends?” Anna tried to keep the mocking
out of her voice but suspected that she hadn’t
succeeded.

David glanced at her and
then smiled. Anna was glad to see it.

“
I think it’s going to be
okay,” he said. “I think I can do this.”

Again his words
startled Anna.
Do what? And what about
me?

Her primary concern was
what Prince Llywelyn thought about them. She desperately wanted to
talk to him because their continued survival depended on his good
will. Listening to her mother’s stories about the Middle Ages was a
far cry from living them.

Anna was particularly
concerned about David finding a place here. He was really smart,
but would anyone recognize it? The Welsh wouldn’t have any use for
his computer skills or his encyclopedic knowledge of dinosaurs. It
wasn’t as if he’d taken any engineering courses and could build
them a steam engine. And how was anyone to know how smart he was if
all they wanted him to do was learn how to handle a sword? He
wouldn’t even make a good clerk, since his writing was illegible
and when he did write it was in American English, not Latin,
French, or Welsh. As an alternative, what did he know about
farming? Or animal husbandry?

These problems nagged at
Anna constantly. She was too freaked out to worry about herself,
but as she lay on the ground beside David after the second day of
travel, unable to sleep, David revealed that he was worrying about
her.

“
They’re going to want to
marry you off to someone pretty quick, you know.”

Anna rolled over and punched him in
the side. “So, how’s your sword fighting coming?” 

At David’s second sword
fighting session earlier that evening, Prince Llywelyn had
graduated David to a real sword. He’d buckled it on immediately,
and Anna was pretty sure he had it tucked under the blanket with
him.

“
I’m serious!” David
rolled over to face her. “How are you going to handle that? You’re
only seventeen!”

“
I know, David. I remember
from things Mom said that women aren’t quite as oppressed in Wales
as elsewhere in this day and age, but I don’t remember exactly what
that means.”

“
I can
tell you what it means,” David said. “
If
Prince Llywelyn thinks you ought to marry someone, neither one of
us is going to have any say in the matter. You do what your lord
says and that’s that.”

“
Maybe when we get to
wherever we’re going—”

“
Castell y Bere,” David
said.

“
How do you know
that?”

“
I overheard the men
talking about it earlier.”

Anna glared at him,
disgusted. “I don’t know why I put up with you. You’re going to
have Middle Welsh completely mastered within the week!”

“
Well, maybe ... not quite
... and that isn’t going to help us tomorrow when we arrive,” David
said.

“
And I suppose you just
‘overheard’ that too, didn’t you?”

Even in the flickering firelight, Anna
could see that David was trying unsuccessfully to look
modest.

“
I guess so.”

“
Maybe,” Anna said, “if we
learn Welsh fast enough I can talk to Prince Llywelyn about what
happened with the van, and tell him what the future would have held
for Wales if we hadn’t killed those men.”

“
Maybe,” said David.
“Either that or he’ll think you’re a witch and burn you at the
stake.”

And with that helpful
thought, David wrapped his arms around Anna for warmth, and they
both went to sleep.

* * * * *

The company reached
Castell y Bere the next afternoon. The castle sat on a high
promontory with commanding views of the valley below and the
mountains in the distance. During the two hours between when they
spotted it and when they reached it, it acted as a beacon. Anna’s
thoughts focused on hot fires and warm food. New snow slowed their
pace, and it was a steep climb to the
impressive and elaborate main gate. They finally clattered
through it into a crowd of men, women, and children who waited to
greet the company.