by Ellis Peters
He went on foot; the distance was barely more than a mile. Within the halfhour he would be delivering his message to Owain Gwynedd, and setting in motion the events which were to restore Cadwaladr his freedom, if not his lands, and remove from Gwynedd the threat of war, and the oppressive presence of an alien army.
The only pause he made before leaving was to impart to Cadfael the errand on which he was sent.
Brother Cadfael came very thoughtfully to where Heledd was stirring the sleeping fire in the stone hearth, to prepare food for the evening meal. His mind was full of what he had just learned, but he could not help remarking how well this vagrant life in a military camp suited her. She had taken the sun graciously, her skin was a golden bronze, with an olive bloom upon it, suave and infinitely becoming to her dark hair and eyes, and the rich red of her mouth. She had never in her life been so free as she was now in her captivity. The gloss of it was about her like cloth of gold, and it mattered not at all that her sleeve was torn, and the hem of her gown soiled and frayed.
There’s news that could be good for us all,” said Cadfael, watching her neat movements with pleasure. “Not only did Turcaill come back safely from his midnight foray, it seems he brought back Cadwaladr with him.”
“I know,” said Heledd, and stilled her busy hands for a moment, and stared into the fire and smiled. “I saw them come back, before dawn.”
“And you never said word?” But no, she would not, not yet, not to anyone. That would be to reveal more than she was yet ready to reveal. How could she say that she had risen before the sun, to watch for the little ship’s safe return? “I’ve scarcely seen you today. No harm had come of whatever they were up to, that was all that mattered. Why, what follows? How is it so good for us all?”
“Why, the man has come to his senses, and agreed to pay these Danes what he promised them. Mark has just been sent off to commission Owain, in his brother’s name, and with his brother’s seal for surety, to collect and pay his ransom. Otir will take it and go, and leave Gwynedd in peace.”
Now she had indeed turned to pay due attention to what he was saying, with raised brows and sharply arrested hands. “He has given in? Already? He will pay?”
“I have it from Mark, and Mark is already on his way. Nothing could be surer.”
“And they will go!” she said, a mere murmur within her still lips. She drew up her knees and folded her arms about them, and sat gazing before her, neither smiling nor frowning, only coolly and resolutely assessing these changed prospects for good and evil. “How long, do you think, Cadfael, it will take to bring cattle up here by the drove roads from Ceredigion?”
“Three days at the least,” said Cadfael, and watched her put away that factor in the methodical recesses of her mind, to be kept in the reckoning.
“Three days at the most, then,” she said, “for Owain will make all haste to be rid of them.”
“And you will be glad to be free,” said Cadfael, probing gently into regions where truth had at least two faces, and he could not be sure which one was turned towards him, and which was turned away.
“Yes,” she said, “I shall be glad!” And she looked beyond him into the grey-blue, shifting surface of the sea, and smiled.
Gwion had reached the guardpost, the same by which his lord had been abducted, without hindrance, and was in the very act of stepping over the threshold when the guard barred his way with a braced lance, and challenged him sharply: “Are not you Gwion, Cadwaladr’s liegeman?”
Gwion owned to it, bewildered rather than alarmed. No doubt they were keeping a closer watch on this gate, after last night’s incursion, and this sentry did not know Owain’s mind, and had no intention of incurring blame by allowing either entry or exit unquestioned. “I am. The prince has given me leave to stay or go, as I choose. Ask Cuhelyn. He will tell you so.”
“I have later news for you,” said the guard, unmoving. “For the prince has only a short while since asked that you be sought, if you were still within the pale, and sent back to him.”
“I never knew him change his mind in such a fashion,” protested Gwion distrustfully. “He made it plain he set no store on me, and did not care a pin whether I stayed or departed. Nor whether I lived or died, for that matter.”
“Nevertheless, it seems he has a use for you yet. No harm, if he never threatened any. Go and see. He wants you. I know no more than that.”
There was no help for it. Gwion turned back towards the squat roof of the farmstead, his mind a turmoil of unprofitable speculations. Owain could not possibly have got wind of what was still at best only a vague intent, hardly a plan at all, though he had spent a long time with Ieuan ab Ifor over the detail of numbers and means, and all that Ieuan had gathered concerning the layout of the Danish camp. Too long a time, as it now appeared. He should have left at once, before there could be any question of detaining him. By this time he could have despatched his groom south to bring up the promised force, and been back within the stockade here before ever he was missed. Planning could have waited. Now it was too late, he was trapped. Yet nothing was quite lost. Owain could not know. No one knew but Gwion himself and Ieuan, and Ieuan had not yet spoken a word to any of those stalwarts he knew of who would welcome a venture. That recruitment was still to come. Then what Owain wanted of him could have nothing to do with their half-formed enterprise.
He was still feverishly recording and discarding possibilities when he entered the low-beamed hall of the farm, and made his stiff and wary reverence to the prince across the rough trestle table.
Hywel was there, close at his father’s shoulder, and two more of the prince’s trusted captains stood a little apart, witnesses in some business which remained inexplicable to Gwion. For the only other person in the room was the meagre little deacon from Lichfield, in his rusty black habit, his spiky ring of straw-coloured hair growing stubbornly every way, his grey eyes as always wide, direct and tranquil. They looked at Gwion, and Gwion turned his head away, as though he feared they might see too deeply into his mind if he met them fully. He found even the benevolent regard of such eyes unnerving. But what could this little cleric have to do with any matter between Owain and Cadwaladr and the Danish interlopers? Yet if the business in hand here was something entirely different, what could it have to do with him, and what need to recall him?
“It’s well that you have not left us, Gwion,” said Owain, “for after all there is a thing you can do for me, and therewith also for your lord.”
“That I would certainly do, and gladly,” said Gwion, but as yet withholding belief.
“Deacon Mark here is newly come from Otir the Dane,” said the prince, “who holds my brother and your lord prisoner. He has brought word from Cadwaladr that he has agreed to pay the sum he promised, and buy himself out of debt and out of bondage.”
“I cannot believe it!” said Gwion, blanched to the lips with shock. “I will not believe it, unless I hear him say so, freely and openly.”
“Then you and I are of one mind,” said Owain drily, “for I also had hardly expected him to see sense so soon. You have good cause to know my mind in this matter. I would rather my brother should be a man of his word, and pay what he promises. But neither would I accept from another mouth the instruction that will beggar him. Otir deals fairly. From my brother’s mouth you cannot hear his will made plain, he will not be free until his debt is paid. But you may hear it from Brother Mark, who received it in trust from him, and will testify that he spoke it firmly and with intent, being whole of his body and in his right mind.”
“I do so testify,” said Mark. “He has been prisoner only this one day. He is fettered, but further than that no hand has been laid on him, and no threat made against his body or his life. He says so, and I believe it, as no violence has ever been offered to me or to those others hostage with the Danes. He told me what was to be done. And he delivered to me with his own hand his seal, as authority for the deed, and I have delivered it to the prince, according to Cadwalad
r’s orders.”
“And the purport of his message? Be kind enough to repeat it,” the prince requested courteously. “I would not have Gwion fear that I have in any degree prompted you, or put twisted words into your mouth.”
“Cadwaladr entreats the lord Owain, his brother,” said Mark, fixing his dauntingly clear eyes upon Gwion’s face, “to send with all haste into Llanbadarn, to Rhodri Fychan, who was his steward, and who knows where his remaining treasury is bestowed, and to tell him that his lord requires the despatch to Abermenai of money and stock to the value of two thousand marks, to be delivered to the Danish force under Otir, as promised to them at the agreement in Dublin. And to that end he has sent his seal for guarantee.”
There was a long silence after the clear, mild voice ended this recital, while Gwion stood motionless and mute, struggling with the fury of denial and despair and anger within him. It was not possible that so proud and intolerant a soul as Cadwaladr should have submitted, and so quickly. And yet men, even the most arrogant and hot-headed of men, do value their lives and liberty high, and will buy them back even with humiliation and shame when the threat comes close, and congeals from imagination into reality. But first to dare defy and discard his Danes, and then to grovel to them and scrape together their price in undignified haste, that was unworthy. Had he but waited a few days, there should have been another ending. His own men were so near, and would not have let him lie in chains for long, even if brother and all had deserted him. God, let me have two days yet, prayed Gwion behind his dark, closed face, and I will fetch him off by force, and he shall call off his bailiffs and take back his property, and be Cadwaladr again, erect as he always was.
“This charge,” Owain was saying, somewhere at the extreme edge of Gwion’s consciousness, a voice from the distance, or from deep within, “I intend to fulfil with all haste, as he asks, the quicker to redeem his person together with his good name. My son Hywel rides south at once. But since you are here, Gwion, and all your heart’s concern is his service, you shall ride with Hywel’s escort, and your presence will be a further guarantee to Rhodri Fychan that this is indeed Cadwaladr’s voice speaking, and those who serve him are bound to obey. Will you go?”
“I will go.”
What else could he say? It was already decreed. It was another way of discarding him, but with a sop to his implacable loyalty. In the name of that loyalty he must now assist in stripping his lord of a great part of what possessions remained to him, when only a short while ago he had been in high heart, setting out to bring an army to Cadwaladr’s rescue, without this ignominy and loss. But: “I will go,” said Gwion, swallowing necessity whole. There might still be an opportunity to make contact with his waiting muster, before ever the Danish ships loaded and raised anchor with their booty, and sailed in triumph for Dublin.
They set out within the hour, Hywel ab Owain, Gwion, and an escort of ten men-at-arms, well-mounted, and with authority to commandeer fresh remounts along the way. Whatever Owain’s feelings now towards his brother, he did not intend him to remain long a prisoner, or, perhaps a defaulting debtor. There was no knowing which of the two mattered more.
The three days predicted by Cadfael passed in brisk activity elsewhere, but in the two opposed camps they dragged and were drawn out long, like a held breath. Even the watch kept upon the stockades grew a shade lax, expecting no attack now that the issue was near its resolution without the need of fighting. Only Ieuan ab Ifor still fretted at the waiting, and bore in mind always that such negotiations might collapse in failure, prisoners remain prisoners, debts unpaid, marriages delayed beyond bearing. And as the hours passed he spoke privately to this one and that one among his younger and more headstrong friends, rehearsed for them the safe passage he had made twice by night at low tide along the shingle and sand to spy out the Danish defences, and how there was a place where approach from the sea was possible in reasonable cover of scrub and trees. Cadwaladr might have submitted, but these young hot-heads of Wales had not. Bitterly they resented it that invaders from Ireland should not only sail home without losses, but even with a very substantial profit to show for their incursion. But was it not already too late, now that it was known Hywel had gone south with orders to bring back and pay over the sum Otir demanded and Cadwaladr had conceded?
By no means, said Ieuan. For Gwion was gone with them, and somewhere between here and Ceredigion Gwion had brought up a hundred men who would fight for Cadwaladr. None of these had consented to let his lord be plundered of two thousand marks, or be made to grovel before the Dane. They would not stomach it, even if Cadwaladr had been brought so low as to submit to it. Ieuan had spoken with Gwion before he left in Hywel’s party. On the way south, if chance offered, he would break away from his companions and go to join his waiting warriors. On the way north again, if he was watched too suspiciously on the way south, even Hywel would be content with him for his part in dealing with Rhodri Fychan at Llanbadarn, and no one would be paying too much heed to what he did. Somewhere along the drove roads he could break away and ride ahead. One dark night was all they would need, with the tide out and their numbers thus reinforced, and Heledd and Cadwaladr would be snatched out of bondage, and Otir could take to the seas for his life, and go back empty-handed to Dublin.
There were not wanting a number of wild young men in Owain’s following whose instincts leaned rather to fighting out every issue to a bloody conclusion than to manipulating a way out of impasse without loss of life. There were a few who said openly that Owain was wrong to abandon his brother to pay his dues alone. Oaths were meant to be kept, yes, but the tensions of blood and kinship could put even oaths out of mind. So they listened, and the thought of bursting in through the Danish fences, sweeping Otir and his men into their ships at the edge of the sword and driving them out to sea began to have a powerful appeal. They were weary of sitting here inactive day after day. Where was the glory in bargaining a way out of danger with money and compromise?
The image of Heledd burned in Ieuan’s memory, the dark girl poised against the sky on a hillock of the dunes. Twice he had seen her there, watched the long, lissome stride and the proudly carried head. She had a fiery grace even in stillness. And he could not believe, he could not convince himself, that such a woman, one alone in a camp full of men, could continue to the end unviolated, uncoveted. It was against mortal nature. Whatever Otir’s authority, someone would defy it. And now his most haunting fear was that when they had loaded their plunder, so tamely surrendered , and were raising anchor to sail for home, they would carry Heledd away with them, as they had carried many a Welsh woman in the past, to be slave to some Dublin Dane for the rest of her life.
He would not have bestirred himself as he did for Cadwaladr, to whom he owed nothing but ill. But for sheer hostility to the invaders, and for the recovery of Heledd, he would have dared the assault with only his own small band of like-minded heroes, if need arose. But better far if Gwion could return in time with his hundred. So for the first day, and the second, Ieuan waited with arduous patience, and kept watch southward for any sign.
In Otir’s camp the days of waiting passed slowly but confidently, perhaps too confidently, for there was certainly some relaxation of the strict watch they had kept. The square-rigged cargo ships, with their central wells ready for loading, were brought inshore, to be easily beached when the time came, and only the small, fast dragon-boats remained within the enclosed harbourage. Otir had no reason to doubt Owain’s good faith, and as an earnest of his own had removed Cadwaladr’s chains, though Torsten stayed attentive at the prisoner’s elbow, ready for any rash move. Cadwaladr they did not trust, they knew him now too well.
Cadfael watched the passing of the hours and kept an open mind. There was still room for things to go wrong, though there seemed no particular reason why they should do so. It was simply that when two armed bands were brought together so closely in confrontation, it needed only a spark to set light to the otherwise dormant hostility between them. Wait
ing could make even the stillness seem ominous, and he missed Mark’s serene company. What engaged his attention most during this interlude was the behaviour of Heledd. She went about the simple routine she had devised here for her living without apparent impatience or anticipation, as if everything was predetermined, and already accepted, and there was nothing for her to do about any part of it, and nothing in it either to delight or trouble her. She was, perhaps, more silent than usual, but with no implication of tension or distress, rather as if words would be wasted on matters already assured. It might have suggested nothing better than resignation to a fate she could not influence, but there was no change in the summer gloss that had turned her comeliness into beauty, or the deep, burnished lustre of her iris eyes as they surveyed the ribbon of the shingle beach, and the swaying of the ships offshore under the urging of the changing tides. Cadfael did not follow her too assiduously, nor watch her too closely. If she had secrets, he did not want to know them. If she wanted to confide, she would. If there was anything she needed from him, she would demand it. And of her safety here he was assured. All these restless young men wanted now was to load their ships and take their profits home to Dublin, well out of an engagement that might have ended in disaster, given so doubled-edged a partner. Thus in either camp the second day drew to a close.
Faced with the authority of Hywel ab Owain, the grudging and stiff-necked testimony, of Gwion, who so clearly hated having to admit his lord’s capitulation, and holding Cadwaladr’s seal in his hand, Rhodri Fychan on his own lands in Ceredigion found no reason to question further the instructions he was given. He accepted with a shrug the necessity, and delivered to Hywel the greater part of the two thousand marks in coin. It made some heavy loads for a number of sumpter horses which were likewise contributed as part of the ransom price. And the rest, he said resignedly, could be rounded up from grazing land close to the northern border of Ceredigion, near the crossing into Gwynedd, in Cadwaladr’s swart, sturdy cattle, moved there when this same Hywel drove him out of his castle and fired it after him, more than a year ago. His own herdsmen had grazed them there on his behalf ever since he had been driven out.
