Guardians of Time (8 page)

Geoffrey de Geneville paced impatiently
before the fire, while the heavily pregnant Queen of England tried
to appease him.

Though Bridget had seen Geoffrey de
Geneville only once, she’d heard about him in great detail from
some of the other twenty-firsters. Tall, thin, and white-haired,
with fine clothes and a haughty manner, he was everything a
medieval lord should be. He’d lost his heir not long ago, however,
and Bridget’s impression of him was that he wore his grief around
him all the time like a cloak.

“My lady, I must see the king!” Geoffrey was
saying at the very moment Ieuan pushed open the door.

“He’s gone to Avalon, Geneville.” Ieaun
didn’t even look at Geoffrey as he spoke but strode towards his
sister. He caught her hand and kissed the back of it. Then he
glanced at his wife, Bronwen, who sat a few paces away from Lili’s
chair, her hands folded in her lap. She’d been looking at the floor
while Geoffrey had been speaking, but she looked up at Ieuan’s
approach, her eyes flashing. He gave her a nod, which Bridget
interpreted to mean
all is well.
And Bridget supposed it
was—from a certain point of view.

Meanwhile, Geoffrey’s face had transformed
into a look of stunned surprise, and he took a hesitant step
forward. “What did you say?”

Ieuan smiled grimly and didn’t repeat
himself. He’d spoken loudly such that Geoffrey had to have heard
him. “It was an urgent matter, which the king could not put off any
longer. I can’t say when he will return, but it will be as soon as
he can.” He made a dismissive gesture. “It should make no
difference. We should treat whatever is the matter here the same as
if a crisis occurred in Windsor while he was at Canterbury.”

“He chose to leave at the Christmas feast in
hopes that it was during these few days that he would be the least
missed,” Lili said. “I suppose we can’t be surprised that something
like this would happen the moment he turns his back.”

Geoffrey barked a laugh that held no trace
of amusement. “King David left for the same reason King Philip
chose to send Jacques and me on this journey this week of all
weeks—out of the hope that we’d be less conspicuous.”

Lili added, for the newcomers’ benefit, “The
emissary’s name was Jacques de Molier. Geoffrey reports that he is
dead.”

Bridget started at that. Up until now, she’d
been on the receiving end of news and information, but she hadn’t
ever encountered a situation as earth-shattering as this. She knew,
as did everyone else in the room, that the death of the emissary of
France on English soil was only a step or two from open war.

Then Lili gestured to her brother. “Please
tell Ieuan what you remember of the attack.” Lili might be female
and pregnant, but her right to be heard in this conference was
undisputed. Goronwy, too, had moved to stand near her chair as an
indication of his support. David might be gone, but his
authority—and thus hers—remained intact.

Geoffrey threw out a hand in a sign of
impatience. “Not enough! At Molier’s insistence, we rode in his
carriage, which I despised, mind you. With only some five miles to
go, we were looking forward to food and warmth, but then one of the
men at the head of the company shouted a warning. I stuck my head
out of the window to see what was the matter. Upwards of a dozen
men had emerged from a nearby wood. They wore black masks and no
lord’s colors.

“I tried to hear what my guards were
shouting to each other, but Molier was babbling away about barbaric
English roads and how he’d warned King Philip not to trust King
David. Not to speak ill of the dead, but his hands were fluttering!
At the very instant I turned to tell him to be quiet, the
carriage’s horses reared and bolted. As they did, one of the rear
wheels came off entirely, which I know only because I saw the scene
afterwards. Then the carriage overturned, and I hit my head. That’s
all I remember.”

Geoffrey raised his hands and dropped them
in a gesture of helplessness. “I awoke alone in the wreckage of the
carriage. I dragged myself from it only to find the carnage on the
road. All of my men were dead, along with Molier himself and the
three Frenchmen he’d brought with him. A surviving horse cropped
the grass in an adjacent field, still with saddle and bridle. I
mounted him and rode in haste here.”

Ieuan had listened to Geoffrey’s story with
a finger to his lips, and now he dropped his hand. “A very bad
business. Did you check all the bodies? There were no other
survivors?”

“That’s sort of where this gets worse,” Lili
said, with a rueful smile.

“Worse?” Ieuan said.

Geoffrey grunted. “We were traveling with
James Stewart, who was among the riders. I heard his voice above
the initial fray, but neither he nor his horse were in evidence
when I awoke.”

Bridget took a step forward. “James Stewart,
the High Steward of Scotland?”

Up until now, she hadn’t said anything. It
wasn’t her place, but the words had burst from her. Her ancestry
was Scottish, and she knew more about Scottish history than
English—or Welsh for that matter. Both in Avalon and here, James
Stewart had managed to retain his title, even though he’d supported
Robert Bruce’s claim to the Scottish throne over its current
occupant, John Balliol.

“The same,” Lili said, with a nod in
Bridget’s direction, hopefully indicating that she hadn’t been too
out of line in speaking, “not to mention the fact that he’s Earl
Callum’s friend. The hope, of course, is that James got away, but I
would have thought he would have made his way here by now if he
had.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “It strikes me as
more likely that he was captured. If he were injured, these bandits
would have chased him down and murdered him too. They had no
compunction about killing all of my men! And Molier’s!”

“Why was James Stewart riding with you?”
Goronwy asked Geoffrey.

“Under other circumstances, it would not be
my place to say.” Geoffrey grimaced. “England and Scotland have
been allied recently, and I would hate to undermine that
hard-earned trust, but—” He broke off.

“Now is not the time to equivocate,” Lili
said. “Tell them what you told me.”

“James Stewart heard a rumor that John
Balliol had sent an embassage to Pope Boniface regarding the
current conflagration between England and France. Balliol desires
to underscore that Scotland does not support King David’s more
rebellious tendencies and to assure the pope that Scotland remains
steadfastly obedient to the Church.”

Goronwy’s eyes narrowed. “King Dafydd has
heard nothing of this from his own ambassador, Archbishop
Romeyn.”

Geoffrey spread his hands wide. “I
understand that Stewart’s knowledge of this ploy came from the
Scottish end, not the Italian.”

Ieuan scoffed a laugh. “Is Balliol hoping to
take Carlisle while Dafydd is on Crusade? He prostrates himself
before the pope now in the hope that Boniface turns a blind eye to
war on England later?”

“It sounds absurd on the face of it,”
Geoffrey said, “but we already know that Balliol is allied with
certain interests in France—men who are unhappy with the way King
Philip himself has encroached on his vassals’ lands.”

Goronwy gave a growl of disgust, deep in his
throat. “And now Stewart is missing, and Molier is dead.” He was
speaking French with Geoffrey, a language they both spoke
perfectly.

“As we speak, Cadwallon and Samuel are
leading companies in pursuit of the bandits,” Lili said. “More men,
led by Hywel, stand guard over the ambush site and the bodies of
the dead.”

Peter stirred beside Bridget. Samuel, as the
Sheriff of Shrewsbury, was his direct boss. Callum had promoted the
former English soldier to oversee his lands in his absence. But
since Samuel’s responsibilities were far broader than police work,
more often than not, investigations fell to Peter. Back in Avalon,
Peter had been a member of the peacekeeping forces in Afghanistan
and the Sudan, where roadside ambushes had been common. This attack
had occurred on the high road from Shrewsbury in medieval England
but, despite the transposition in time and place, perhaps wasn’t so
different as all that.

Of the other men Lili had mentioned,
Cadwallon was King Llywelyn’s captain, another medieval man not
included in the adventure to Avalon, and Hywel was one of Math’s
liege men at Dinas Bran. Bridget had heard what she was sure was
only part of his story: born a shepherd, he’d been a stable boy at
Castell y Bere ten years ago when he’d saved Anna’s life before the
English had burned the castle to the ground. He’d been in the right
place at the right time, and he’d risen to the occasion. He’d
proved his worth since then, and his rise, by medieval standards,
had been meteoric—though not unheard of these days. In their quest
to find able men, David and Callum looked far more to a man’s
capacity than to his birth.

David had been right to be wary of depriving
his kingdom of too many men who had authority, Peter among them.
Bridget found herself a little irritated at his foresight. He
hadn’t been right to make her go back to Avalon with him, but it
looked like he’d been right about everything else.

Ieuan knew it too, which was why he turned
to Peter now and gestured him forward. “My lord Geneville, this is
Peter Cobb, Samuel’s lieutenant. He has more experience than anyone
here with investigating crimes like this one.”

It had never occurred to Bridget before
Ieuan used the word that, speaking in French,
lieutenant
made perfect sense. It meant, quite literally,
one who stands in
the place of
another
, and thus made sense to everyone in
the room. Regardless of what role they were playing, they were all
standing in the place of another.

“Peter, please tell me whatever you need to
proceed,” Lili said.

“First I need a little more information.”
Peter bowed in Geoffrey’s direction. “My lord, do you know how long
you were unconscious?”

Geoffrey made another expressive motion with
his hands. “A quarter of an hour, perhaps? It didn’t feel like
long—certainly what light there was hadn’t changed. The attack
happened less than two hours ago.”

“Then we can’t be far behind them,” Peter
said. “The fact that you awoke and came here immediately may in the
end save James Stewart’s life.”

Geoffrey shook his head. “I could do nothing
else.”

“Was your purse stolen?” Peter said.

“Yes,” Geoffrey said.

“What about the emissary’s?” Peter said.

“Yes to that as well. The bandits took all
our gold, along with the letter from King Philip to King David,”
Geoffrey said. “And, of course, they took James Stewart.”

“That is where they made their mistake,”
Goronwy said.

Geoffrey turned to him. “In what way?”

“We see before us, on one hand, basic
theft,” Goronwy said. “On the other, diplomatic intrigue.”

“I hadn’t thought of that,” Geoffrey said.
He didn’t sound offended, merely curious that another man could
have had an idea that hadn’t yet occurred to him.

“You were left for dead,” Peter said. “It
could be that we were meant to assume the men who attacked you were
simple brigands. We might still be thinking it if not for the
abduction of Lord Stewart.”

“It was foolish of them to murder Molier
too,” Lili said, with a bit of tartness in her voice. “Any time a
man of his stature is killed, one has to assume it wasn’t an
accident.”

Geoffrey’s chin bobbed in Lili’s direction
in a mini-bow. “They are criminals, and thus fools by
definition.”

“My lord,” Peter said to regain Geoffrey’s
attention, “perhaps it isn’t my place to ask, but knowing the
answer could move us towards understanding the reason for the
ambush, if it wasn’t, in fact, theft. Can you tell me what was in
the letter from King Philip to King David?”

Bridget smiled to herself at Peter’s
eloquence and tact. It was one of those mysteries about him that he
could be so talkative when he was involved in an investigation and
nearly silent the rest of the time.

Lili nodded her assent. “Tell him,
Geoffrey.”

Geoffrey pressed his lips together for a
second, thinking, and then said, “As I hope you are aware, King
Philip was less than pleased with the outcome of this autumn’s
events. He regrets the ill-fated invasion at Hythe and what it has
done to his relations with England, as well as the subsequent
falling-out with Pope Boniface. Now that David has been installed
as Duke of Aquitaine, Philip suggests a meeting on neutral
ground.”

“Thank you for that, my lord.” Peter bowed
again. “One wonders who gains most by preventing such a
conference.”

“It is, in the main, too early to say,”
Geoffrey said.

Goronwy turned to Lili. “While Scotland
isn’t that far away, I’m inclined to look closer to home for the
one causing this mischief. We shouldn’t place blame without
evidence or rule anyone out just yet.”

Geoffrey gave a snort that from him came out
dignified. “It’s more than mischief, Goronwy.”

Lili canted her head. “I can’t imagine
Balliol has condoned an attempt on his own High Steward’s life. As
both of you say, we should make no judgements as yet.”

Geoffrey and Goronwy bowed. Bridget didn’t
get the sense that the two men had been really disagreeing, but
rather that they enjoyed their back and forth as an intellectual
challenge. David encouraged this type of interplay among his
advisors, so that all sides of an issue could be examined without
hard feelings on any side.

Then Lili gave a low moan and shifted in her
chair, a spasm of pain crossing her face.

Bronwen saw it too and was at her side in an
instant. “Are you okay?” she said in Welsh.

Bridget’s Welsh was poor, but the ‘okay’ was
unmistakable so she could guess the rest.