“Now what do we do?” Wayne asked quietly in English. “Are we going to have to leave now?”
“I don’t know,” said Jane. “Maybe we shouldn’t put too much burden on one family.”
“Should I ask?” Ishihara asked.
“We should be careful how we phrase the question,” said Jane. “We don’t want to insult them.”
“They probably assume we want to get on the road to our ultimate destination,” said Wayne. “They heard last night that we were shipwrecked and left with nothing, but we still must have been going somewhere.”
“Good point,” said Jane. “So where are we going? We’d better have our story straight.”
Ygema and Emrys listened curiously, watching them as they all ate.
“I only know the year and our location,” said Wayne. “I have no idea what’s going on in history now. Where could we have been going? Maybe London?”
“I can’t help,” said Jane. “This is why Hunter keeps hiring historians to take with him.”
“I have some rudimentary history of this time, but no more,” said Ishihara. “The Romans settled London several centuries ago under the name Londinium, but it’s a long way from here. We can’t actually go there if we’re going to find MC 6 in this area.”
“We better say we were coming to this area all along,” said Jane. “That will explain why we won’t go very far. But we don’t know where we are, do we?”
“On the modern map, yes,” said Ishihara. “But I know very little about significant locations in this time.”
“Ask Emrys,” said Jane.
“What’s that going to accomplish?” Wayne snickered. “He already knows we’re lost.”
“Exactly. And no matter what he says, we’ll tell him this is our destination.”
“Of course,” said Ishihara. He turned to Emrys and spoke briefly in a mixture of Latin and British. Then he switched back to English. “The village on top of the highest hill is Cadbury. The hill itself is called Cadbury Tor. This is the home of a man named Artorius Riothamus.”
“Cadbury what?” Wayne asked.
“Tor. It means a high hill in the local language.”
“Oh.”
“Is MC 6 going to show up there?” Jane asked.
“I believe so,” said Wayne. “These component robots have been continually drawn to people of power in the hope, I judge, of influencing them to do less harm to the humans within their power.”
“Then Cadbury Tor really is our destination,” said Wayne. “Tell him that.”
“And add that we cannot pay for lodging because of the shipwreck,” Jane added.
Ishihara spoke to Emrys again. The shepherd responded, nodding, and gestured outside. He grinned and gave Ishihara a friendly slap on the shoulder.
“He has complimented my ability to cut firewood,” said Ishihara.
Jane smiled, struggling to suppress a laugh.
“Emrys wants to go to Cadbury today to sell the rest of the sheep carcass and some of the extra firewood I have cut. He says he knows that this ‘humble hut,’ as he calls it, is not good enough for a lady such as Jane, but he has thanked me for the labor I have saved him.”
“Do you think we could stay here another night, if necessary?” Wayne asked.
“I think if we expressed interest, and I continue to cut wood for him or find other ways to help him, we would be welcome,” said Ishihara.
Jane was relieved to hear that, but said nothing.
“Good,” said Wayne. “Tell him we’ll be happy to go to Cadbury with him. If we can’t find a place to stay there, then we can talk to him about coming back.”
“Tell Ygerna that my leg is well, and thank her for the mud poultice,” said Jane. “Otherwise, I’ll have to fake a limp all day.”
Ishihara spoke again to Emrys and Ygerna. After breakfast, Emrys sent his eldest son out again with their dogs to take the flock for the day. Then, at Emrys’s direction, Ishihara helped him load firewood and the bagged sheep carcass into the donkey cart.
Jane looked around the countryside in the brisk morning air. Shepherds led their flocks out again in the distance. Smoke rose from the other huts. Life here, at least today, appeared calm and stable.
While Emrys hitched the donkey, Ygerna and the younger children came out to watch with Jane and Wayne. She pointed to the cart and spoke sharply to Emrys.
He nodded and spoke to Ishihara, who began rearranging the wood in the cart.
“What’s wrong?” Wayne asked quietly. “What does Ygerna want?”
“She told Emrys we must see that the lady can ride in the cart,” said Ishihara. “I will form a seat for her with the wood.”
When the cart was ready, Ishihara lifted Jane into the cart. She found her footing on the uneven firewood and sat down. Once she had settled into the seat he had made, she found that it was actually comfortable.
The sheep carcass lay in the front, near her feet. She was glad Emrys had put it in the cloth bag. From her high seat on the cart, she looked down at Wayne and Ishihara.
Ishihara turned to Wayne. “Emrys has room for one more next to him on the driver’s bench. I will walk, of course.”
Wayne nodded and climbed up next to Emrys.
As Emrys shook the reins to drive the donkey, Jane looked down at Ygerna and the children. The kids waved shyly. She waved back, smiling.
The donkey strained under the load but pulled it forward. The cart creaked slowly out to the road. Ishihara walked near the rear, next to Jane.
When they reached the road, Jane saw that it was soft and muddy from yesterday’s drizzle. However, she did not see any tracks in it; the mud had not been stirred up. The donkey’s hooves and the wheels of the cart sank into it somewhat, but did not get stuck.
Jane enjoyed the slow, quiet ride. Now that her immediate worries about shelter, food, and safety had been satisfied, she relaxed. She could not plan her escape from Wayne and Ishihara in any detail until she knew that Hunter’s team had arrived in this time, and where they were located. For now, she had nothing to do but observe whatever she could for future reference.
Emrys and Wayne could not make casual conversation, so they did not speak; Jane had no desire to talk to Wayne unless she had to. The cart swayed gently as the donkey plodded slowly along. Jane watched Cadbury village as they drew closer.
A wall ringed the village on the plateau. The fact that the village was protected this way, and lay on the flat top of a high tor surrounded by earthwork ramparts at the base of the tor, told her that this area was not always as peaceful as it was today. She remembered that MC 6’s specialty in Mojave Center had been social stability, and wondered what had drawn him here.
The journey to the base of the tor took over an hour. By that time, they had passed a couple of people walking along the road. Other people, some of them driving carts or riding horseback, came and went from the tor. As Jane saw the open gate in the earthworks clearly, she looked first at the donkey, then down at Ishihara.
“Is this little donkey going to make it home again? He must be worn out.”
“Emrys expects to sell the wood and the meat. The return load will be much lighter.”
Sentries at the gate glanced at the cart and waved them through without stopping them, though they stared in wonder at Jane in her Chinese robe. Emrys drove the cart up a steep slope to the top of the tor. Jane saw Wayne looking around with interest and did the same.
The defensive earthworks turned out to be more than a single wall. Four concentric walls ringed the base and the lower portion of the slope. Starting just inside the gate, cobblestones paved the road.
“It’s bigger than it looked from outside,” said Jane, as the donkey began pulling the cart up the steep angle. “Ishihara, how big is this place?”
Ishihara scanned the area briefly. “I cannot see the far side of the tor, but if the shape of its base as a whole is roughly a circle, I estimate that outer wall encloses approximately seven hectares.”
Up ahead, the road led through an open, nearly square gatehouse in the high wall that surrounded the summit and the village within it. Sentries held spears lazily on the top of the wall, talking among themselves. Jane thought the wall had been constructed of wood until the cart passed through it. Then she found that only a breastwork of wood faced the outside; the bulk of the wall was made of unmortared stone.