by Ellis Peters
They passed through the hall and entered the council chamber. Every eye turned upon them as they came in. Mark and Gwion had waited with the rest. They stood close together, silent, as though the very fact of discovering a death together had linked them in a continuing fellowship that set them apart from the captains round the council table. Hywel was back before his father, and had brought with him one of the kitchen servants, a shaggy dark boy a little puffy with sleep, but bright-eyed again with reviving wakefulness now that he knew of a sudden death, and had something, however small, to impart concerning it.
“My lord,” said Hywel, “Meurig here is the latest I could find to pass by the lodgings where Bledri ap Rhys was housed. He will tell you what he saw. He has not yet told it, we waited for you.”
The boy spoke up boldly enough. It seemed to Cadfael that he was not altogether convinced of the importance of what he had to say, though it pleased him well enough to be here declaring it. Its significance he was content to leave to the Princes.
“My lord, it was past midnight before I finished my work, and went through the passage there to my bed. There was no one about then, I was among the last. I did not see a soul until I came by the third door in that range, where they tell me now this Bledri ap Rhys was lodged. There was a man standing in the doorway, looking into the room, with the latch in his hand. When he heard me coming he closed the door, and went away along the alley.”
“In haste?” asked Owain sharply. “Furtively? In the dark he could well slip away unrecognised.”
“No, my lord, no such matter. Simply, he drew the door to, and walked away. I thought nothing of it. And he took no care not to be seen. He said a goodnight to me as he went. As though he had been seeing a guest safe to his bed—one none too steady on his feet, or too sure of his way, it might be.”
“And you answered him?”
“Surely, my lord.”
“Now name him,” said Owain, “for I think you knew him well enough to call him by name then.”
“My lord, I did. Every man in your court of Aber has got to know him and value him by now, though he came as a stranger when first the lord Hywel brought him from Deheubarth. It was Cuhelyn.”
*
A sharp, indrawn breath hissed round the table. All heads turned, and all eyes fixed upon Cuhelyn, who sat apparently unmoved at finding himself suddenly the centre of marked and loaded attention. His thick dark brows had risen in mild surprise, even a trace of amusement.
“That is true,” he said simply. “That I could have told you, but for all I knew or know now there could have been others there after me. As certainly there was one. The last to see him, living, no question. But that was not I.”
“Yet you offered us no word of this,” the prince pointed out quietly. “Why not?”
“True, I did none too well there. It came a little too close home for comfort,” said Cuhelyn. “I opened my mouth once to say it, and shut it again with nothing said. For sober truth is that I did have the man’s death in mind, and for all I never touched him nor went in to him, when Brother Cadfael told us he lay dead, I felt the finger of guilt cold on my neck. But for solitude, and chance, and this lad coming along when most he was needed, yes, I might have been Bledri’s murderer. But I am not, thanks be to God!”
“Why did you go there, and at that hour?” asked Owain, giving no sign whether he believed or disbelieved.
“I went there to confront him. To kill him in single combat. Why at that hour? Because the hatred had taken hours to come to the boil within me, and only then had I reached the length of killing. Also, I think, because I wished to make it clear past doubt that no other man was drawn into my quarrel, and no other could be accused even of knowing what I did.” Cuhelyn’s level voice remained quiet and composed still, but his face had tightened until pale lines stood clear over the cheekbones and round the lean, strong angle of his jaw.
Hywel said softly, filling and easing the pause: “A one-armed man against a seasoned warrior with two?”
Cuhelyn looked down indifferently at the silver circlet that secured the linen cover over the stump of his left arm. “One arm or two, the end would have been the same. But when I opened his door, there he lay fast asleep. I heard his breathing, long and placid. Is it fair dealing to startle a man out of his sleep and challenge him to the death? And while I stood there in the doorway, Meurig here came along. And I drew the door closed again, and went away, and left Bledri sleeping.
“Not that I gave up my purpose,” he said, rearing his head fiercely. “Had he been living when the morning came, my lord, I meant to challenge him openly of his mortal offence, and call him to battle for his life. And if you gave me countenance, to kill him.”
Owain was staring upon him steadily, and visibly probing the mind that fashioned this bitter speech and gave it such passionate force. With unshaken calm he said: “So far as is known to me, the man had done me no grave offence.”
“Not to you, my lord, beyond his arrogance. But to me, the worst possible. He made one among the eight that set upon us from ambush, and killed my prince at my side. When Anarawd was murdered, and this hand was lopped, Bledri ap Rhys was there in arms. Until he came into the bishop’s hall I did not know his name. His face I have never forgotten. Nor never could have forgotten, until I had got Anarawd’s price out of him in blood. But someone else has done that for me. And I am free of him.”
“Say to me again,” Owain commanded, when Cuhelyn had made an end of this declaration, “that you left the man living, and have no guilt in his death.”
“I did so leave him. I never touched him, his death is no guilt of mine. If you bid me, I will swear it on the altar.”
“For this while,” said the prince gravely, “I am forced to leave this matter unresolved until I come back from Abermenai with a more urgent matter settled and done. But I still need to know who did the thing you did not do, for not all here have your true quarrel against Bledri ap Rhys. And as I for my part take your word, there may be many who still doubt you. If you give your word to return with me, and abide what further may be found out, till all are satisfied, then come with me. I need you as I may need every good man.”
“As God sees me,” said Cuhelyn. “I will not leave you, for any reason, until you bid me go. And the happier, if you never do so bid me.”
*
The last and most unexpected word of a night of the unexpected lay with Owain’s steward, who entered the council chamber just as the prince was rising to dismiss his officers, sufficiently briefed for the dawn departure. Provision was already made for the rites due to the dead. Gwion would remain at Aber, according to his oath, and had pledged his services to send word to Bledri’s wife in Ceredigion, and conduct such necessary duties for the dead man as she demanded. A melancholy duty, but better from a man of the same allegiance. The morning muster was planned with precision, and order given for the proper provision due to the bishop of Lichfield’s envoy on his way to Bangor, while the prince’s force pursued the more direct road to Carnarvon, the old road that had linked the great forts by which an alien people had kept their footing in Wales, long ago. Latin names still clung to the places they had inhabited, though only priests and scholars used them now; the Welsh knew them by other names. It was all prepared, to the last detail. Except that somehow the missing horse had been lost yet again, slipping through the cracks between greater concerns into limbo. Until Goronwy ab Einion came in with the result of a long and devious enquiry into the total household within the llys.
“My lord, the lord Hywel set me a puzzle, to find the one person who should be here, and is not. Our own household of retainers and servants I thought well to leave aside, why should any among them take to his heels? My lord, the princess’s waiting woman knows the roll of her maids perfectly, and any guests who are women are her charge. There is one girl who came in your train yesterday, my lord, who is gone from the place allotted to her. She came here with her father, a canon of Saint Asaph, and a second
canon of that diocese travelled with them. We have not disturbed the father as yet. I waited for your word. But there is no question, the young woman is gone. No one has seen her since the gates were closed.”
“God’s wounds!” swore Owain, between laughter and exasperation. “It was true what they told me! The dark lass that would not be a nun in England—God keep her, why should she, a black Welshwoman as ever was!—and said yes to Ieuan ab Ifor as a blessed relief by comparison—do you tell me she has stolen a horse and made off into the night before the guard shut us in? The devil!” he said, snapping his fingers. “What is the child’s name?”
“Her name is Heledd,” said Brother Cadfael.
Chapter 6
NO QUESTION, Heledd was gone. No hostess here, with duties and status, but perhaps the least among the arriving guests, she had held herself aloof from the princess’s waiting-woman, keeping her own counsel and, as it seemed, waiting her own chance. No more reconciled to the prospect of marriage with the unknown bridegroom from Anglesey than to a conventual cell among strangers in England, Heledd had slipped through the gates of Aber before they closed at night, and gone to look for some future of her own choosing. But how had she abstracted also a horse, saddled and bridled, and a choice and fleet horse into the bargain?
The last that anyone had seen of her was when she left the hall with an empty pitcher, barely halfway through the prince’s feast, leaving all the nobility busy at table, and her father still blackly scowling after her as she swung the screen curtain closed behind her. Perhaps she had truly intended to refill the pitcher and return to resume replenishing the Welsh drinking horns, if only to vex Canon Meirion. But no one had seen her since that moment. And when the first light came, and the prince’s force began to muster in the wards, and the bustle and clamour, however purposeful and moderate, would certainly bring out all the household, who was to tell the good canon that his daughter had taken flight in the darkness from the cloister, from marriage, and from her sire’s very imperfect love and care for her?
Such an unavoidable task Owain chose not to delegate. When the light from the east tipped the outer wall of the maenol, and the ward began to fill with horse and groom and man-at-arms and archer roused and ready, he sent to summon the two canons of Saint Asaph to the gatehouse, where he waited with one shrewd eye on the ranks mustering and mounting, and one on a sky and light that promised good weather for riding. No one had forestalled him with the bad news; so much was plain from Canon Meirion’s serene, assured face as he strode across the ward with a civil good-morning already forming on his lips, and a gracious benediction ready to follow it as soon as the prince should mount and ride. At his back, shorter-legged and more portly and self conscious of bearing, Canon Morgant hugged his ponderous dignity about him, and kept a noncommittal countenance.
It was not Owain’s way to beat about bushes. Time was short, business urgent, and what mattered was to make such provision as was now possible to repair what had gone awry, both with threats from an obdurate brother and peril to a lost daughter.
“There is news in the night,” said the prince briskly, as soon as the two clerics drew close, “that will not please your reverences, and does not please me.”
Cadfael, watching from beside the gate, could detect no disquiet in Canon Meirion’s face at this opening. No doubt he thought it referred only to the threat of the Danish fleet, and possibly the flight of Bledri ap Rhys, for the two clerics had gone to their beds before that supposed flight changed to a death. But either would come rather as a relief and satisfaction to him, seeing that Bledri and Heledd between them had given him cause to tremble for his future career, with Canon Morgant storing up behind his austere forehead every unbecoming look and wanton word to report back to his bishop. By his present bearing, Meirion knew of nothing worse, nothing in the world to disturb his complacency now, if Bledri was either fled or dead.
“My lord,” he began benignly, “we were present to hear of the threat to your coast. It will surely be put off without harm…”
“Not that!” said Owain bluntly. “This concerns yourself. Sir, your daughter has fled in the night. Sorry I am to say it, and to leave you to deal with the case in my absence, but there’s no help. I have given orders to the captain of my garrison here to give you every aid in searching for her. Stay as long as you need to stay, make use of my men and my stables as best serves. I and all who ride with me will be keeping a watch and asking news of her westward direct to Carnarvon. So, I trust, will Deacon Mark and Brother Cadfael on their ride to Bangor. Between us we should cover the country to westward. You ask and search round Aber and eastward, and south if need be, though I think she would not venture the mountains alone. I will return to the search as soon as I may.”
He had proceeded thus far uninterrupted only because Canon Meirion had been struck mute and amazed at the very first utterance, and stood staring with round eyes and parted lips, paling until the peaks of his sharp cheekbones stood out white under the straining skin. Utter consternation stopped the breath in his throat.
“My daughter!” he repeated slowly at last, the words shaped almost without sound. And then in a hoarse wheeze: “Gone? My daughter loose alone, and these sea-raiders abroad in the land?”
At least, thought brother Cadfael approvingly, if she could be here to hear it, she would know that he has some real care for her. His first outcry is for her safety, for once his own advancement is forgotten. If only for a moment!
“Half the width of Wales from here,” said Owain stoutly, “and I’ll see to it they come no nearer. She heard the messenger, she knows better than to ride into their arms. This girl you bred is no fool.”
“But headstrong!” Meirion lamented, his voice recovered and loud with anguish. “Who knows what risk she might not venture? And if she has fled me now, she will still hide from me. This I never foresaw, that she could feel so driven and so beset.”
“I say again,” said Owain firmly, “use my garrison, my stables, my men as you will, send out after news of her, for surely she cannot be far. As for the ways to westward, we will watch for her as we go. But go we must. You well know the need.”
Meirion drew himself back a little, erect at his tallest, and shook his broad shoulders.
“Go with God, my lord, you can do no other. My girl’s life is but one, and many depend upon you. She shall be my care. I dread I have not served her turn lately as well as I have served my own, or she would never have left me so.”
And he turned, with a hasty reverence, and strode away towards the hall, so precipitately that Cadfael could see him clambering fiercely into his boots and marching down to the stable to saddle his horse, and away to question everyone in the village outside the walls, in search of the dark daughter he had gone to some pains to despatch into distance, and now was all afire to recover. And after him, still silent, stonily expressionless, potentially disapproving, went Canon Morgant, a black recording angel.
*
They were more than a mile along the coastal track towards Bangor before Brother Mark broke his deep and thoughtful silence. They had parted from the prince’s force on leaving Aber, Owain bearing south-west to take the most direct road to Carnarvon, while Cadfael and Mark kept to the shore, with the shining, pallid plain of the shallows over Lavan Sands reflecting the morning light on their right hand, and the peaks of Fryri soaring one above another on their left, beyond the narrow green lowlands of the coast. Over the deep channel beyond the sands, the shores of Anglesey were bright in sunlight.
“Did he know,” Mark wondered aloud suddenly, “that the man was dead?”
“He? Meirion? Who can tell? He was there among the rest of us when the groom cried out that a horse was missing, and Bledri was held to have taken him and made off to his master. So much he knew. He was not with us when we looked for and found the man dead, nor present in the prince’s counsel. If the pair of them were safe in their beds they cannot have heard the news until this morning. Does it signify? Dea
d or fled, the man was out of Meirion’s way, and could scandalise Morgant no longer. Small wonder he took it so calmly.”
“That is not what I meant,” said Mark. “Did he know of his own knowledge? Before ever another soul knew it?” And as Cadfael was silent, he pursued hesitantly: “You had not considered it?”
“It had crossed my mind,” Cadfael admitted. “You think him capable of killing?”
“Not in cool blood, not by stealth. But his blood is not cool, but all too readily heated. There are some who bluster and bellow, and rid their bile that way. Not he! He contains it, and it boils within him. It is likelier far to burst forth in action than in noise. Yes, I think him capable of killing. And if he did confront Bledri ap Rhys, he would meet only with provocation and disdain there. Enough to make for a violent end.”
“And could he go from that ending straight to his bed, in such unnerving company, and keep his countenance? Even sleep?”
“Who says that he slept? He had only to be still and quiet. There was nothing to keep Canon Morgant wakeful.”
“I return you another question,” said Cadfael. “Would Cuhelyn lie? He was not ashamed of his purpose. Why, then, should he lie about it when it came to light?”
“The prince believes him,” said Mark, thoughtfully frowning.
“And you?”
“Any man may lie, not even for very grave reason. Even Cuhelyn may. But I do not think he would lie to Owain. Or to Hywel. He has given his second fealty, as absolute as the first. But there is another question to be asked concerning Cuhelyn. No, there are two. Had he told anyone what he knew about Bledri ap Rhys? And if he would not lie to Hywel, who had salved him and brought him to an honourable service, would he lie for him? For if he did tell anyone that he recognised Bledri as one among his prince’s murderers, it would be Hywel. Who had no better reason to love the perpetrators of that ambush than had Cuhelyn himself.”
