Across Time Part 28

"If you are very powerful Druids, you should be able to escape ties such as those that bind you now. If not, then it appears your powers are waning even as we speak." The commander jerked his horse's reins away. "You are now the prisoners of the Governor. Your very lives, whether they be Druid ones or not, are in his hands, so you ought to pray to your cannibalistic G.o.ds for mercy."

Lachlan and Maeve looked at each other as they began walking behind the sentry on the white horse. "Maeve . . ."

"Shh, Lachlan."

"I . . . do not know how to get us out of this," he said in Gaelic.

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Maeve glanced over at him. His face was scratched from the rope, and his neck was already burned from it being too tight. "It is all right, Lachlan. You may not know what to do, but I do. Be patient. And for once in your life, let me do the talking."

"But-"

"Lachlan?"

"Yes, Maeve?"

"Be still. We shall not be harmed."

After reporting back to her parents that she had stayed for the entire session with Dr. Dunbar, Jessie asked them, once again, to trust her.

She wanted Daniel to be able to come home and be with them, but they waved this off. They felt she was just too volatile and unstable to be around him. It broke Jessie's heart to know she was the cause of her little brother being uprooted from their new home.

Exhausted, Jessie barely had time to say goodnight before falling into a deep sleep. Again, her dreams came to her strangely disjointed. She saw Ceara looking out the window of her boat as if searching for her, and the Roman soldiers were back, only this time Jessie watched seven or eight of them making their way through the forest on horseback.

Next, she saw herself as Cate, reaching into the portal and then stepping away, as if there was something scary in there. She did this over and over again, as if confused about whether to come or go. Then, a statue of Julius Caesar came to life and picked up a Merlin-esque creature, crus.h.i.+ng it in his hand. These were the dreams that poked at Jessie's subconscious, challenging her to choose the memories from the fictions. In her dream, she did not know what to do, until . . .

The next scene took her breath away. She saw Maeve standing defiantly before a large Roman soldier, a commander of some sort.

Suddenly, this dream took on a quality unlike any of the others. There was a texture to it, a nearly tangible feel to it that let her know this was not a dream, but a memory. She was sure of it, but she could not figure out how it could be a memory when Cate wasn't there. This was Maeve's memory, wasn't it? Was that possible? Could it be that this was *

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Cate's memory of a tale told her by Maeve?

"Oh, my G.o.d! Maeve!" Jessie could hear herself, but she couldn't be heard in the memory. Of course she couldn't. She didn't exist in this memory. She was just an onlooker now, watching the cataclysm of events unfold before her. What she saw chilled the marrow of her bones.

The soldier turned to Lachlan and asked him if Maeve was his woman. They stood in the middle of a large circle of soldiers next to a bonfire, and Lachlan's bare back was sweating from the heat. He looked at Maeve for an answer, for the right response, and he heard her answer in his head.

"She is not."

The commander walked toward Maeve, studying her like one might when purchasing a horse. "Would you like her to be?" His accent was thick and he struggled with their native tongue, but Lachlan knew exactly what was being said.

This time, Lachlan stared straight ahead. These were the "civilized"

people who pitted man against man for amus.e.m.e.nt in large arenas, who used little boys as one might a common prost.i.tute, and who allowed corrupt politicians to lead them around by the nose. Forcing Lachlan to rape Maeve for their evening entertainment was certainly not beneath the likes of them, and Lachlan knew it.

Lachlan chose his next words carefully. "We do not force our women to submit to us as you do, Commander. We prefer they come to us of their own accord."

"Oh, do you now? Is that why they are allowed to divorce you as well, dishonoring you and disgracing your family name?" The commander stood in front of Lachlan, inches away from his face, yet Lachlan did not flinch.

"There is no dishonor in divorce, Commander. Only the truth, and we are not afraid of the truth."

"Then isn't it true that you'd like to bed her? Look at her. She is a beautiful specimen for your kind." The soldier grabbed Lachlan's face and forced him to turn and look at her. "Look at her. Is she not becoming?"

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Lachlan ripped his face out of the soldier's grasp and glared hard into his eyes. "She is, indeed, but it is not true that I wish to be with her."

"You do not find her stunning? Are you not that kind of man?" the commander glanced over at his men, who laughed too loudly. "We have plenty of men like you back in Rome. Perhaps you prefer the company of someone-younger."

"I prefer no man's company to that."

"No man, yes, but what of a woman?" Before Lachlan could answer, the commander wheeled around and ripped off her dress down to her waist.

"Maeve!" Jessie sat up in bed, trembling and sweating. Frantically looking around, she was surprised she wasn't in Wales staring at Roman soldiers who were humiliating Maeve and Lachlan. Jessie's heart was racing so fast, she had to take a few deep breaths to calm herself. How could everything feel so real? Jessie shuddered as she recalled the dream that wasn't a dream. She knew that from its distinctive character, its rhythm and pace. It had the feel of Cate's other memories, but how could that be? Cate hadn't been there.

Or had she?

Jessie lay back down and pulled the covers up to her neck. She felt vulnerable and afraid for her friends. Occasional goose b.u.mps popped out on her arms as she recalled her dream. Was Cate trying to tell her something? What in the world was going on?

Closing her eyes once again, Jessie inhaled deeply and willed the dreams to come.

And come they did.

The next dream was definitely not a memory, and Jessie was sure of it. She was back in the forest when she called out to a befuddled Cate who was quickly making her way across the grove. Cate did not pause, but kept moving rapidly through the undergrowth.

"Cate!" Jessie yelled, sprinting through the grove. She knew where she was going this time; she was running for the stones she and Cate had sat on. How she knew where they were, she did not stop to question.

She just knew. And she hoped to find Cate sitting there waiting for her.

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Maybe there was even a fire still burning, and-"Cate!" Jessie called louder, pus.h.i.+ng herself harder. When, at last, she came to the sitting stones, no one was there.

"But I'm here," Jessie said aloud. "And the last time I was here, Cate was asleep and I had come through the portal and entered her dream."

She sat down and shook her head. This was her dream and maybe Cate would appear in it.

"Cate!" Jessie yelled. "Cate McEwen!" She stood, yelled once more and then sat again, not even pausing to wonder how she knew Cate's last name. She knew things. It was enough now to know she knew them. And she knew that if she waited long enough, Cate would show.

She didn't have to wait long. Out of the mist hurried Cate, head covered by her robe, staff in hand, light blue mist whirling about her.

The air crackled with energy all about her.

She had changed.

"Oh, Cate," Jessie was on her feet in an instant, her arms encircling the smaller woman. She did not have time to think about the fact that she was hugging herself. "Maeve's in trouble, Cate. Awful, horrible trouble."

Cate lowered her hood, revealing a perplexed expression. "Trouble?

Why she and Lachlan left just this-"

"They have been captured by Romans-and they-"

"They what?" Cate's voice was thin and tense.

Jessie felt tears roll down her cheeks. "They're trying to force Lachlan to-to-"

Cate stepped away from Jessie as if Jessie were diseased. "How can this be? Moreover, how is it you would know this? They left this morning, and there were no sentries near the highlands, no one has seen any Roman soldiers."

Jessie wiped her eyes and shrugged. "I don't know. It-it couldn't have just been a dream, could it?"

Cate stepped forward and took Jessie's hand. "Did it feel like a dream?"

She shook her head. "It felt like a memory, but if you weren't there, *

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how can that be? Oh, G.o.d, this is all so confusing."

Cate studied Jessie a second before asking, "What was Maeve wearing in your dream?"

"Wearing? Well-it was the first time I saw her not in her robe. She was wearing a green dress with a creme-colored bl-"

Cate's eyes widened and she dropped her staff to take Jessie by the shoulders. "Lachlan! What was he wearing?"

"A blue peasant s.h.i.+rt with-"

"It is a memory, Jessie. That's precisely what they were both wearing when they left. Where are they? Think! Where did you see them?"

Jessie swallowed hard and tried to focus on the contents of her dream-memory. Her heart pounded so hard, she could feel it in her temples. "They were in the woods just south of the swampy mist area.

Maeve and Lachlan had taken a path outside of the forest in order to avoid the marshes." Jessie paused, blinked twice, and inhaled. It was a freaky thing to know the terminology of a place she had never visited or even known about. "The sentries came from the east. There were seven, no eight of them. They took them back to their camp."

"Which is where?" Cate gripped Jessie's shoulders tighter.

"I'm not sure."

"Be sure!"

Jessie closed her eyes, allowing her mind to paint the whole picture.

Her grandmother had always said it was hard to see the picture if you're standing in the frame, and she had been in the frame in her dream trying to see all that which she hadn't really looked at was difficult.

"By-wait a minute-it's coming." Jessie frowned, her eyes still closed.

"By Finnegan's Farm. They're in the foothills behind the stables of a place called Finnegan's."

Cate hugged Jessie. "Good girl! I knew you could do it." Cate bent down and picked up her staff and quickly started back toward the mist.

"If I hurry, I can prevent the worst from happening." Cate stopped just before the mist and turned back around. "Did you see an ending to this memory?"

Jessie shook her head. "I did not."

"Good. Then perhaps it ends well. Thank you, Jessie. Thank you *

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for possibly saving our soul mate." With that, Cate vanished into the mist.

Cate and a dozen other Druids rode all through the night, pus.h.i.+ng their steeds harder than a soldier might because of their particular relations.h.i.+p with the animals and the animal world. They would cover twice as much distance with less superior horses than any Roman could, and Cate was determined to do so. None of the others questioned Cate's drive of the horses, and each one, to a man, stood solidly behind her decision to leave the safety of the woods in order to save their friends.

The fingers of fear kept curling around Cate's neck, but she refused to feel them or to even acknowledge their existence. Instead, she thought about Jessie's words and what she had said the soldiers would attempt to do to Lachlan and Maeve.

She knew how far it was to Finnegan's, and, unless the soldiers had hoisted Maeve and Lachlan upon a horse, they were walking to the farm and not riding. This would give Cate the extra time she needed; time to formulate some kind of plan that would enable all of them to leave without harm. Now, she needed to think like her brother had taught her to-like a warrior. She needed her fighter's mind now, and though Maeve had done her best to tame the beast in Cate, what Maeve had not known, what she might never know, was that Cate had seen a part of herself in the past, and she had been a true hunter, a man who was capable of staring a lion in the face and not be afraid.

She was staring at a den of lions now, and she was determined not to be afraid.

As the day broke, Cate could see Finnegan's Farm in the distance.

Through the morning's mist, the smoking chimney could barely be seen.

It was at that very moment that Cate knew what she was going to do.

When she went to get the keys to the numberless room, they were gone. So were her parents, and though Jessie tore all through the house *

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looking for the keys, she couldn't find them.

"d.a.m.n them!" she cursed, pounding her fist on the wall. "They'll ruin everything!" She needed to get to the seam as soon as possible. She had to know if Maeve was all right. She had even taken a nap, hoping Cate would come through, but there was nothing. The answer about Maeve's safety would only come when Jessie stepped through the portal and back into Cate's world.

Cate's world.

Since being restricted, all Jessie had wanted to do was return to Cate's world and learn more about her life. She hungered for knowledge about the Celts, the Roman invasion of England, a life and time she knew so very little about except in the deepest recesses of her soul memory. Yes, she had had flashes here and there of swords, of thatched-roof houses, of peasants in fields, but those were like the single bright burst of a camera flash that blinded you for a mere second and then was gone. She understood that the more she knew, the more help she would be, but that knowledge just ate at her now, since she had no way of accessing it.

After searching again and again for the keys, Jessie closed her eyes before dinner, falling asleep almost instantly. Her first few dreams were mere snapshots-stills as it were, of a battlefield filled with corpses and wounded horses. On and on the pictures continued until a huge red- haired woman rode a chariot over the peak of a mountain to survey the death and destruction before her. Her green eyes narrowed suddenly as she glared at Jessie from her chariot. Raising her spear, the woman yelled one single word that echoed throughout Jessie's soul.

"Boudicca!"

Lachlan stared deeply into Maeve's eyes as if willing her to hear his thoughts. He could hardly believe how calm and unafraid she was. The fate glaring harshly at her was every woman's greatest nightmare, and yet, here stood Maeve, poised, self-confident, proud. He should have been prepared for her next words, but he wasn't, and when she spoke them to him in her soft, yet cutting voice, he nearly recoiled.