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enormous the
waves had become. As the boat went up one wave and down another it
seemed that a gulf opened at our feet.
    “ Madam! Have a care! And
you!” Captain Morgan appeared with a glare for Aaron. “What are you
thinking?”
    “ Sorry! Sorry!” Aaron held
up his hands, palms outward. “My mistake.”
    “ Get yourselves back
inside!” Captain Morgan grasped our arms and hauled us backwards
from the rail and towards the cabin door. As the deck of the boat
rose again, we fell into Aaron’s cabin and the Captain slammed the
door behind us.
    I found myself face down, my dress rucked up
around my thighs. Fortunately, since I’d been riding astride during
my journey, I wore leggings underneath.
    I pushed to my hands and knees. “I hate the
sea.”
    “ I can appreciate why,”
Aaron said.
    Laughter bubbled in my throat and then bile.
I forced it back down. Everything that had happened over the last
week threatened to overwhelm me all at once and I moaned. Aaron
hooked his hand around my arm and helped me into the hammock. I
rocked with the motion of the ship, listening to the rain pound on
the roof and praying that I—and this little boat—could keep it
together just a little longer.

Chapter Six
     
     
    The storm worsened in the night. Aaron hung
on to an iron ring in the floor, literally for dear life, while I
rocked in the hammock. He tried to make conversation, but I felt so
ill I could barely speak. He talked about his family, particularly
of his older brother Jacob, who had been a trouble-maker as a boy.
When I didn’t respond, even to his funnier stories, he began to
recite one of his medical books from memory. In Latin.
    At some point in the dark hours of the early
morning, Captain Morgan reappeared. As he opened the door, the wind
banged it back against the wall of the room so hard that it split
in two. “Mistress! You must leave the ship with the youngsters
among my crew. We are only a few miles from Wales but I can’t take
the ship in to shore. The storm hasn’t lessened as I’d hoped and
the wind is against us.”
    Terror filled me, though there was something
in Morgan’s eyes that made me think he was offering us the only
hope he had, and would save none for himself. Without waiting for
an answer, he half-dragged, half-carried me from the room, picking
up Aaron by his upper arm on his way out the door.
    “ We will launch the dinghy,”
Morgan said. “My crew will see you safe to Anglesey.”
    I didn’t ask him what he was going to do, or
if he honestly thought he would survive this. I’d lived in Wales
for long enough—and been back in the Middle Ages for long enough—to
understand that there were times when you didn’t question a man’s
decision to face death head on.
    “ What about my
books—?”
    Aaron broke off his question at Morgan’s
disbelieving look.
    “ We will find other books,
Aaron,” I said. “ As rare as yours may be, they are not the only
ones. Your life, however, is the only one you have.”
    “ Thank you, Madam,” Morgan
said. “I couldn’t have said it better myself.”
    Aaron acquiesced without
asking me why I was so confident I could acquire new books for him.
That would mean I’d have to tell him about Llywelyn, and not only
was I not ready to do that, it would expose my own
insecurities: What if Llywelyn didn’t want
to see me? What if this world he’d created had no room for me in
it?
    We staggered across the
deck, barely maintaining our feet on the rocking ship. The rain had
soaked us instantly. Wave after wave crashed over the bow and we
essentially fell over the rail of the ship when it was at its
lowest point and into the dingy that rose up on the next wave to
catch us. God, I hate boats. The four crewmen who would travel with us pushed
away from the ship. I clung to Aaron’s arm.
    “ We’ll make it!” he said,
but a moment later, the dingy met a driving wave exactly wrong and
capsized, dumping us into the sea.
    Amazingly, I bobbed up for air