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and then swerved back
to avoid another horse.
    “We ride only twenty-five miles,” Llywelyn
said. “Was that my brother on the battlements with you?”
    I looked down at him, uncertain at the quick
change of subject. “Yes.”
    “What did you talk about?” He looked at me
very intently.
    “You,” I said, going for honesty.
    “Good.” He patted my knee before walking to
his horse which a groom held still a few yards away.
    “I will ride with you, Madam,” Goronwy said,
also mounting. He made it look so easy.
    “Meg,” I said. “Marged dw i .”
    “ Lady Marged, then, when
we speak in Welsh,” he said. And then he caught me off guard with
another question. “What language is it that Anna speaks? It’s
unknown to me, yet she has some Welsh.”
    I froze. There was so much
to remember with all this the other-worldly craziness of what was
happening to us. I was having a hard time keeping straight what I
should know and what I shouldn’t. In retrospect, I shouldn’t have
talked about Owain Glendower because he hadn’t been born yet, if
this was really the thirteenth century . Was I actually going to sit here and think that
I’d—what?—time-traveled to medieval Wales? And then I looked around and wondered what other explanation
there could be and how I could think anything else.
    Goronwy still waited for
my response.
    I stuttered while I
thought. “She speaks American,” I said, in an instant coming up
with an answer that wasn’t even a lie and would allow me to avoid
the dreaded word ‘ English .’
    “ That language is new to
me,” Goronwy said. “I’ve never heard of it.”
    “ No,” I said. “You
wouldn’t have.”
    Goronwy looked away.
“Huh.”
    Up ahead, Llywelyn had
also mounted. He sat with a straight back. He was naturally thick
through the chest and shoulders but armor had bulked him up too,
just like all the men. With a sinking feeling, I acknowledged that
they weren’t built that way as a result of playing football or
lifting weights. It was their work with swords and bows that had
caused it.
    “ Let’s move!” A man riding
next to Llywelyn raised his sword and twisted it in his wrist like
a baton.
    With a click of his tongue
on his teeth, Goronwy urged his horse forward. I shook my horse’s
reins and was startled when he obeyed, moving to match Goronwy’s
horse. Everyone paired up to ride underneath the gatehouse and onto
the road that led from the castle. As we rode under the final
tower, I looked back. Castell Criccieth soared above us. Two
soldiers stood on the battlements at the top of the two great
towers, still and silent. The wind whipped Llywelyn’s flag on its
pole.
    The road, comprised of
hard-packed dirt, led to a small village at the foot of the
promontory on which the castle rested. Admittedly, it looked just
as I thought a medieval village should, with a scattering of
thatched-roof huts around a central green space, on which a few
sheep grazed. We rode among the houses while men, women, and
children came out of them to wave, a few of the children running
beside the horses to keep up. As the village church came into view,
a priest appeared. He stepped forward to block the road and confer
with Llywelyn. They spoke, their voices low, and then the priest
made the sign of the cross, blessing all of us.
    Llywelyn bowed his head in
answer and the priest moved aside. As I rode past him, I ducked my
head and pulled my cloak over my face, not wanting to meet his
gaze.
    There it was. I couldn’t
turn aside from this no matter how I might want to deny it. Anna
and I were in the Middle Ages.
     
     

Chapter Six
    Llywelyn
     
    “ M ay I ask your thoughts, my lord?”
Goronwy asked. We’d stopped to water the horses at a stream and to
allow men to dismount and see to their needs. Goronwy had taken the
opportunity to tell me of his conversations with Marged.
    “ I am at sea with her,” I
said. “Too many things she says don’t add up.”
    “ Do you have second
thoughts