The Summer of the Danes

by Ellis Peters

  The distant prospect afforded him no enlightenment, and no glimmer of a way forward towards the liberation of his lord. It grieved him that Cadwaladr, who had already lost so much, should be forced to pay out what remained to him in treasury and stock to buy his liberty, without even the certainty that he might recover his lost lands, for which the sum demanded of him had been promised in the first place. Even if Owain was right, and the Danes intended him no harm provided the debt was paid, the humiliation of captivity and submission would gnaw like an ulcer in that proud spirit. Gwion grudged Otir and his men every mark of their fee. It might be said that Cadwaladr should never have invoked alien aid against a brother, but such impetuous and flawed impulses had always threatened Cadwaladr’s wisdom, and men who loved him had borne with them as with the perilous cantrips of a valiant and foolhardy child, and made the best of the resultant chaos. It was not kind or just to withdraw now, when most it was needed, the indulgence which had never before failed him.

  Gwion moved on along the ridge, still straining his eyes towards the north. A fringe of trees crowned the crest, squat and warped by the salt air, and leaning inland from the prevailing wind. And there beyond their uneven line, still and sturdy and himself rooted as a tree, a man stood and stared towards the unseen Danish force as Gwion was staring. A man perhaps in his middle thirties, square-built and muscular, the first fine salting of grey in his brown hair, his eyes, over-shadowed beneath thick black brows, fixed darkly upon the sand-moulded curves of the naked horizon. He went unarmed, and bare of breast and arms in the sunlight of the morning, a powerful body formidably still in his concentration on distance. Though he heard Gwion’s step in the dry grass beneath the trees, and it was plain that he must have heard it, he did not turn his head or stir from his fixed surveillance for some moments, until Gwion stood within touch of him. Even then he stirred and turned about only slowly and indifferently.

  “I know,” he said, as though they had been aware of each other for a long time. “Gazing will bring it no nearer.”

  It was Gwion’s own thought, worded very aptly, and it took the breath out of him for a moment. Warily he asked: “You, too? What stake have you over there among the Danes?”

  “A wife,” said the other man, with a brief, dry force that needed no more words to express the enormity of his deprivation.

  “A wife!” echoed Gwion uncomprehendingly. “By what strange chance…” What was it Cuhelyn had said, of three hostages left in peril after Cadwaladr’s defection and defiance, two monks and a girl taken by the Danes? Two monks and a girl had set out from Aber in Owain’s retinue. To fall victim in the first place to Cadwaladr’s mercenaries, and then to be left to pay the price of Cadwaladr’s betrayal, if the minds of the Danes ran to vengeance? Oh, the account was growing long, and Owain’s obduracy became ever easier to understand. But Cadwaladr had not thought, he never thought before, he acted first and regretted afterwards, as by now he must be regretting everything he had done since he made the first fatal mistake of fleeing to the kingdom of Dublin for redress.

  Yes, the girl—Gwion remembered the girl. A black-browed beauty, tall, slender, and mute, serving wine and mead about the prince’s table without a smile, except occasionally the malicious and grieving smile with which she plagued the cleric they said was her father, reminding him on what thin ice he walked, and how she could shatter it under him if she so pleased. That story had been whispered around the llys from ostler to maid to armourer to page, and come early to the ears of the last hostage from Ceredigion, who alone could observe all these goings-on with an indifferent eye, since Gwynedd was not home to him, and Owain was not his lord, nor Gilbert of Saint Asaph his bishop. The same girl? She had been on her way, he recalled, to match with a man of Anglesey in Owain’s service.

  “You are that Ieuan ab Ifor,” he said, “who was to marry the canon’s daughter.”

  “I am that same,” said Ieuan, bending thick black brows at him. “And who are you, who know my name and what I’m doing here? I have not seen you among the prince’s liegemen until now.”

  “For reason enough. I am not his liegeman. I am Gwion, the last of the hostages he brought from Ceredigion. My allegiance was and is to Cadwaladr,” said Gwion starkly, and watched the slow fire kindle and glow in the sharp eyes that watched him. “For good or ill, I am his man, but I would far rather it should be for good.”

  “It is his doing,” said Ieuan, smouldering, “that Meirion’s daughter is left captive among these sea-pirates. Such good as ever came from him you may measure within the cup of an acorn, and like an acorn feed it to the pigs. He brings barbarian raiders into Gwynedd, and then goes back on his bargain, and takes to his heels into safety, leaving innocent hostages to bear the brunt of Otir’s rage. He has been as dire a curse to his own best kin as he was to Anarawd, whom he had done to death.”

  “Take heed not to go too far in his dispraise,” said Gwion, but in weariness and grief rather than indignation, “for I may not hear him miscalled.”

  “Oh, be easy! God knows I cannot hold it against any man that he stands by his prince, but God send you a better prince to stand by. You may forgive him all, no matter how he shames you, but do not ask me to forgive him for abandoning my bride to whatever fate the Danes keep for her.”

  “The prince has declared her in his protection,” said Gwion, “as I have heard only an hour ago. He has offered fair ransom for her and for the two monks who came from England, and warned to the value he sets on her safe-keeping.”

  “The prince is here,” said Ieuan grimly, “and she is there, and they have lost their grip on the one they would liefer have in hold. Other captives may find themselves serving in his place.”

  “No,” said Gwion, “you mistake. Whatever rancour you may have against him, be content! This past night they have sent a ship into the bay, and put men ashore to break their way into the camp to his tent. They have taken Cadwaladr prisoner back with them, to pay his own ransom or suffer his own fate. No need for another victim, they have the chosen one fast in their hands.”

  Ieuan’s rough brows, the most expressive thing about him, knotted abruptly into a ruled line of suspicion and disbelief, and then, confronted by Gwion’s unwavering gaze, released their black tension into open bewilderment and wonder.

  “You are deceived, that cannot be…”

  “It is truth.”

  “How do you know it? Who has told you?”

  “There was no need for any man to tell me,” said Gwion. “I was there with him when they came. I saw it. Four of Otir’s Danes burst in by night. Him they took, me they left bound and muted, as they had left the guard who kept the gate. Here I have still the grazes of the cords with which they tied me. See!”

  They had scored his wrist deep in his efforts to break free; there was no mistaking rope-burns. Ieuan beheld them with a long, silent stare, assessing and accepting.

  “So that is why you said to me: “You, too?” Now I know without asking what stake you have over there among the Danes. Hold me excused if I say plainly that your grief is no grief to me. What may fall upon him he has brought down on his own head. But what has my girl done to deserve the peril in which he left her? If his capture delivers her, I am right glad of it.”

  Since there was no arguing with that, Gwion was silent.

  “If I had but a dozen of my own mind,” Ieuan pursued, rather to himself than to any other, “I would bring her off myself, against every Dane Dublin can ship over into Gwynedd. She is mine, and I will have her.”

  “And you have not even seen her yet,” said Gwion, shaken by the sudden convulsion of passion in a man so contained and still.

  “Ah, but I have seen her. I have been within a stone-throw of their stockade undetected, and can do as much again. I saw her within there, on a crest of the dunes, looking south, looking for the deliverance no one sends her. She is more than they told me. As lissome and bright as steel, and moves like a fawn. I would venture for her alone, but that I dread t
o be her death before ever I could break through to her.”

  “I would as much for my lord,” said Gwion, grown quiet and intent, for this bold and fervent lover had started a vein of hope within him. “If Cadwaladr is nothing to you, and your Heledd hardly more to me, yet if we put our heads and our forces together we may both benefit. Two is better than one alone.”

  “But still no more than two,” said Ieuan. But he was listening.

  “Two is but the beginning. Two now may be more in a few days. Even if they break my lord into paying his ransom, it will take some days to bring in and load his cattle, and put together what remains in silver coin.” He drew closer, his voice lowered to be heard only by Ieuan, if any other should pass by. “I did not come here alone. From Ceredigion I have collected and led some hundred men who still hold by Cadwaladr. Oh, not for the purpose we have in mind at this moment. I was certain that there would be peace made between brothers, and they would combine to drive out the Danes, and I brought my lord at least a fair following to fight for him side by side with those who fight for Owain. I would not have him go free and living only by his brother’s grace, but at the head of a company of his own men. I came ahead of them to carry him the news, only to find that Owain has abandoned him. And now the Danes have taken him.”

  Ieuan’s face had resumed its impassive calm, but behind the wide brow and distant gaze a sharp mind was busy with the calculation of chances hitherto unforeseen. “How far distant are your hundred men?”

  “Two days’ march. I left my horse, and a groom who rode with me, a mile south and came alone to find Cadwaladr. Now Owain has cast me free of him into the world to stay or go, I can return within the hour to where I left my man, and send him to bring the company as fast as men afoot can march.”

  “There are some within here,” said Ieuan, “would welcome a venture. A few I can persuade, some will need no persuasion.” He rubbed large, powerful hands together softly, and shut the fingers hard on an invisible weapon. “You and I, Gwion, will talk further of this. And before this day is out, should you not be on your way?”

  Chapter 12

  IT WAS WELL PAST NOON when Torsten again produced his prisoner, chained and humbled and choked with spleen, before Otir. Cadwaladr’s handsome lips were grimly set, and his black eyes burning with rage all the more bitter for being under iron control. For all his protestations, he knew as well as any that Owain would not now relent from the position he had taken up. The time for empty hopes was past, and reality had engulfed him and brought him to bay. There was no point in holding out, since eventual submission was inevitable.

  “He has a word for you,” said Torsten, grinning. “He has no appetite for living in chains.”

  “Let him speak for himself,” said Otir.

  “I will pay you your two thousand marks,” said Cadwaladr. His voice came thinly through gritted teeth, but he had himself well in hand. “You leave me no choice, since my brother uses me unbrotherly.” And he added, testing such shallows as were left to him in this flood of misfortune: “You will have to allow me a few days at liberty to have such a mass of goods and gear collected together, for it cannot all be in silver.”

  That brought a gust of throaty laughter from Torsten, and an emphatic jerk of the head from Otir. “Oh, no, my friend! I am not such a fool as to trust you yet again. You do not stir one step out of here, nor shed your fetters, until my ships are loading and ready for sea.”

  “How, then, do you propose I should effect this matter of ransom?” demanded Cadwaladr with a savage snarl. “Do you expect my stewards to render up my cattle to you, and my purse, simply at your orders?”

  “I will use an agent I can trust,” said Otir, unperturbed now by any flash of anger or defiance from a man so completely in his power. “If, that is, he will act for you even in this affair. That he approves it we already know, you better than any of us. What you will do, before I let you loose even within my guard, is to render up your small seal—I know you have it about you, you would not stir without it—and give me a message so worded that your brother will know it could come only from you. I will deal with a man I can trust, no matter how things stand between us, friend or enemy. Owain Gwynedd, if he will not buy you out of bondage, will not stint to welcome the news that you intend to pay your debts honourably, nor refuse you his aid to see due reparation made. Owain Gwynedd shall do the accounting between you and me.”

  “He will not do it!” flared Cadwaladr, stung. “Why should he believe that I have given you my seal of my own will, when you could as well have stripped me and taken it from me? No matter what message I might send, how can he trust, how can he be sure that I send it of my own free will, and not wrung from me with your dagger at my throat, under the threat of death?”

  “He knows me by now well enough,” said Otir drily, “to know that I am not so foolish as to destroy what can and shall be profitable to me. But if you doubt it, very well, we will send him one he will trust, and the man shall take due orders from you in your very person, and bear witness to Owain that he has so taken them, and that he saw you whole and in your right mind. Owain will know truth by the bearer of it. I doubt he can take pleasure in the sight of you, not yet. But he’ll so far prove your brother as to put together your price in haste, once he knows you’ve chosen to honour your debts. He wants me gone, and go I will when I have what I came for, and he may have you back and welcome.”

  “You have not such a man in your muster,” said Cadwaladr with a curling lip. “Why should he trust any man of yours?”

  “Ah, but I have! No man of mine, nor of Owain’s, nor of yours, his service falls within quite another writ. One that offered himself freely as guarantor for your safe return when you left here to go and parley with your brother. Yes, and one that you left to his fate and my better sense when you tossed your defiance in my face and turned tail for your life back to a brother who despised you for it.” Otir watched the prince’s dark face flame into scarlet, and took dour satisfaction in having stung him.

  “Hostage for you he was, out of goodwill, and now you are returned indeed, though in every manner of illwill, and I have no longer any claim to keep him here. And he’s the man shall go as your envoy to Owain, and in your name bid him plunder such means and valuables as you have left, and bring your ransom here.” He turned to Torsten, who had stood waiting in high and obvious content through these exchanges. “Go and find that young deacon from Lichfield, the bishop’s lad, Mark, and ask him to come here to me.”

  *

  Mark was with Brother Cadfael when the word reached him, gathering dry and fallen twigs for their fire from among the stunted trees along the ridge. He straightened up with his load gathered into the fold of a wide sleeve, and stared at the messenger in mild surprise, but without any trace of alarm. In these few days of nominal captivity he had never felt himself a captive, or in any danger or distress, but neither had he ever supposed that he was of any particular interest or consequence to his captors beyond what bargaining value his small body might have.

  Like a curious child he asked, wide-eyed: “What can your captain want with me?”

  “No harm,” said Cadfael. “For all I can see, these Irish Danes have more of the Irish than the Dane in them after all this time. Otir strikes me as Christian as most that habit in England or Wales, and a good deal more Christian than some.”

  “He has a thing for you to do,” said Torsten, goodnaturedly grinning, “that comes as a benefit to us all. Come and hear it for yourself.”

  Mark piled his gathered fuel close to the hearth they had made for themselves of stones in their sheltered hollow of sand, and followed Torsten curiously to Otir’s open tent. At the sight of Cadwaladr, rigidly erect in his chains and taut as a bowstring, Mark checked and drew breath, astonished. It was the first intimation he had had that the turbulent fugitive was back within the encampment, and to see him here fettered and at bay was baffling. He looked from captive to captor, and saw Otir grimly smiling and obviousl
y in high content. Fortune was busy overturning all things for sport.

  “You sent for me,” said Mark simply. “I am here.”

  Otir surveyed with an indulgent eye and some surprisingly gentle amusement this slight youth, who spoke here for a Church that Welsh and Irish and the Danes of Dublin all alike acknowledged. Some day, when a few more years had passed, he might even have to call this boy ‘Father’! ‘Brother’ he might call him already.

  “As you see,” said Otir, “the lord Cadwaladr, for whom you stood guarantor that he should go and come again without hindrance, has come back to us. His return sets you free to leave us. If you will do an errand for him to his brother Owain Gwynedd, you will be doing a good deed for him and for us all.”

  “You must tell me what that is,” said Mark. “But I have not felt myself deprived of my freedom here. I have no complaint.”

  “The lord Cadwaladr will tell you himself,” said Otir, and his satisfied smile broadened. “He has declared himself ready to pay the two thousand marks he promised to us for coming to Abermenai with him. He desires to send word to his brother how this is to be done. He will tell you.”

  Mark regarded with some doubt Cadwaladr’s set face and darkly smouldering eyes. “Is this true?”

  “It is.” The voice was strong and clear, if it grated a little. Since there was no help for it, Cadwaladr accepted necessity, if not with grace, at least with the recovered remnant of his dignity. “I am required to pay for my freedom. Very well, I choose to pay.”

  “It is truly your own choice?” Mark wondered doubtfully.