33
The detectives went back to Ken’s little cottage, Home, and looked again at his notes about celtic disappearances and descriptions of ‘thin places’. They looked at the maps of ley lines that had been composed over the years, maps that had usually been considered pseudo-scientific rubbish. But most scientists had thought that the atomic theory was rubbish between the time of Democritus and John Dalton, and it was not until J. J. Thompson that they really began to be taken seriously. There were a lot of correspondences with places Ken had studied and the ley lines. One particularly ‘strong’ line was supposed to run northwest from Glastonbury towards Aberliefenni in Wales, where a band of Welsh warriors were supposed to be ‘sleeping’ in a slate mine. It seemed likely that this might be a good location for Kenneth’s route. If that were his route, however, tracking him would not be easy. There wasn’t any schedule of time travel departures on the net, and they didn’t expect to see any tracks.
Min thought that there might be tracks. If he had left from Glastonbury Tor on some sort of wave, there might have been, might still be, remnants of his wake. She thought her nano antennae might be able to detect it. It was not clear how they would know what it was, however,even if they saw.
So it was decided that the next part of their project would be to construct a wake detector. It would be a lot like the array printed on Kenneth’s Atilla, but it could probably be simpler. There was certainly no need for it to be attached to a vehicle. Marcus envisioned it as a sort of shield-shaped panel, light and stiff and looking like something that might have been carried at Camelot. He could work on it at Sheffield. Rafael would propose to his team at Panjiva that they would benefit from closer work with the Royce Institute at Sheffield. Min-seo probably needed to play her cards a little closer, since Kenstel expected that they would put her ideas into production somehow. So, it would be their last night in Pilton, at least for a while. Marcus went with Nora to the cottage, Home, and they looked at some of the photos on the Table before Marcus returned to the Apple Tree. Min-seo and Rafael opened the door between their rooms.
In the morning the Apple Tree’s Volvo deposited them at Platform 3 for the 07:27 train to Paddington. Rafael and Min-seo were a little disappointed that Marcus and Nora joined them in First Class for this trip, but they had decided the upgrade was worth it for breakfast, since it was such an early departure. Before the day was over, they would all be back at their own homes, with that strange feeling one sometimes has after a trip that one has never left at all.
34
‘You can come with me,’ Ken told Aiden, ‘but only if you trust me. I am no wizard, but the full story of how I came to be here will be hard for you to believe. But first I need to get into the town and see if what Ieuan said is true. Owain and his men probably won’t look for me there for a while, and if it is true, I can get us out of here without them finding us, I think.’
‘I trust you’.
It was as Kenneth had expected. Owain had looked for him to go back the way they had come. They quickly decided that the wizard had taken the young bard as some sort of hostage, so they spread out along the rock and steep way they had come, moving slowly and finding nothing.
‘I think I can find all the information I need at a church. We must try not to be noticed. If we are, let me speak. I will, if you don’t mind, say you are my servant.’
No one paid them much attention. It was a Sunday. There were not many people about doing business, and no one seemed to think it strange that they were heading towards church. What Owen was looking for wa indeed found on the wall of the porch of the church, where notices were placed. Much to Aidan’s surprise, St. John’s Priory was now the Brecon Parish Church. The announcements were in English, which Aidan couldn’t read, but they did tell Owen that it was indeed the year of our Lord 1704, the second year of the reign of Anne, Queen of England, Scotland and Ireland, There was, to Aidan’s delight, no mention of Wales. Was Wales independent once more?
‘We need to hide now,’ said Owen. I can get us back to where we met, but we need to travel at night. I have been here before, hiking as a boy.’
‘There’s not much moon. How can we see?’
Don’t worry. I have a light.’
And so Owen and Aiden headed into a bit of forest on a hill above the town until dark, when Owen showed Aiden a bit of the magic of the slab of glass he carried in his pocket.
Eventually, Owain and his company returned to the town, where they were generally thought to be mad. There were stories of a band of heroes led by an Owain Lawgoch who were supposed to be sleeping in a slate quarry further up the Dragon’s Back. who would awake to become King of the Britons. Now this madman claimed he was Owain. But the men were allowed to work, since they had no families to take them in, and gradually even they began to accept that their earlier lives had been a dream. Owain and Ieuan, however, continued to insist on their story, and spent the last years of their lives in prison for fighting. Ieuan was lucky he wasn’t hanged, because he had come close to killing a man who called him a lunatic.
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