Summer of the Danes bc-18

by Ellis Peters

  Owain looked down at the pool of blackening blood in the shingle at his feet, and up into Otir’s intent face.

  “He is Cadwaladr’s man, sworn and loyal. Nevertheless, he did wrong. If he has cost you men, you have paid him.” There were two of those who had followed Gwion lying in the edge of the tide, lightly rocked by the advancing waves.

  A third had got to his knees, and those beside him helped him to his feet. He trailed blood from a gashed shoulder and arm, but he was in no danger of death. Nor did Otir trouble to add to the toll the three he had already put on board ship, to sail home for burial. Why waste breath in complaint to this prince who acknowledged and deserved no blame for an act of folly?

  “I hold you to terms,” he said, “such as we understood between us. No more, and no less. This is none of your doing, nor any choice of mine. They chose it, and what came of it has been between them and me.”

  “So be it!” said Owain. “And now, put up your weapons and load your cattle, and go, more freely than you came, for you came without my knowledge or leave. And to your face I tell you that if ever you touch here on my land again uninvited I will sweep you back into the sea. As for this time, take your fee and go in peace.”

  “Then here I deliver your brother Cadwaladr,” said Otir as coldly. “Into his own hands, not yours, for that was not in any bargain between you and me. He may go where he will, or stay, and make his own terms with you, my lord.” He turned about, to those of his men who still held Cadwaladi sick with gall between them. He had been made nothing, a useless stock, in a matter conducted all between other men, though he was at the heart and core of the whole conflict. He had been silent while other men disposed of his person, his means and his honour, and that with manifest distaste. He had no word to say now, but bit back the bitterness and anger that rose in his throat and seared his tongue, as his captors loosed him and stood well aside, opening the way clear for him to depart. Stiffly he walked forward on to the shore, towards where his brother waited.

  “Load your ships!” said Owain. “You have this one day to leave my land.”

  And he wheeled his horse and turned his back, pacing at a deliberate walk back towards his own camp. The ranks of his men closed in orderly march and followed him, and the bruised and draggled survivors of Gwion’s unblessed army took up their dead and straggled after, leaving the trampled and bloodied beach clear of all but the drovers and their cattle, and Cadwaladr alone, aloof from all men, stalking in a black, forbidding cloud of disgust and humiliation after his brother.

  In the nest of thick grass where they had laid him, Gwion opened his eyes, and said in a fine thread of a voice, but quite clearly: “There is something I must tell Owain Gwynedd. I must go to him.”

  Cadfael was on his knees beside him, staunching with what linen he had to hand, padded beneath thick folds of brychans, the blood that flowed irresistibly from a great wound in the young man’s side, under the heart. Cuhelyn, kneeling with Gwion’s head in his lap, had wiped away the foam of blood from the open mouth and the sweat from the forehead already chill and livid with the unhurried approach of death. He looked up at Cadfael, and said almost silently: “We must carry him back to the camp. He is in earnest. He must go.”

  “He is going nowhere in this world,” said Cadfael as quietly. “If we lift him, he will die between our hands.”

  Something resembling the palest and briefest of smiles, yet unquestionably a smile, touched Gwion’s parted lips. He said, in the muted tones they had used over him: “Then Owain must come to me. He has more time to spare than I have. He will come. It is a thing he will wish to know, and no one else can tell him.”

  Cuhelyn drew back the tangle of black hair that lay damp on Gwion’s brow, for fear it should discomfort him now, when all comfort was being rapt away all too quickly. His hand was steady and gentle. There was no hostility left. There was room for none. And in their opposed fashion they had been friends. The likeness was still there, each of them peered into a mirror, a darkening mirror and a marred image.

  “I’ll ride after him. Be patient. He will come.”

  “Ride fast!” said Gwion, and shut his mouth upon the distortion of the smile.

  On his feet already, and with a hand stretched to his horse’s bridle, Cuhelyn hesitated. “Not Cadwaladr? Should he come?”

  “No,” said Gwion, and turned his face away in a sharp convulsion of pain. Otir’s last defensive parry, never meant to kill, had struck out just as Owain thundered his displeasure and split the ranks apart, and Gwion had dropped his levelled sword and his guard, and opened his flank to the steel. No help for it now, it was done and could not be undone.

  Cuhelyn was gone, in faithful haste, sending the sand spraying from his horse’s hooves until he reached the upland meadow grass and left the dunes behind. There was no one more likely to make passionate haste to do Gwion’s errand than Cuhelyn, who for a brief time had lost the ability to see in his opposite his own face. That also was past.

  Gwion lay with closed eyes, containing whatever pain he felt. Cadfael did not think it was great, he had already almost slipped out of its reach. Together they waited. Gwion lay very still, for stillness seemed to slow the bleeding and conserve the life in him, and life he needed for a while yet. Cadfael had water beside him in Cuhelyn’s helmet, and bathed away the beads of sweat that gathered on his patient’s forehead and lip, cold as dew.

  From the shore there was no more clamour, only the brisk exchanges of voices, and the stir of men moving about their business unhindered now and intent, and the lowing and occasional bellowing of cattle as they were urged through the shallows and up the ramps into the ships. A rough, uncomfortable voyage for them in the deep wells amidships, but a few hours and they would be on green turf again, good grazing and sweet water.

  “Will he come?” wondered Gwion, suddenly anxious.

  “He will come.”

  He was coming already, in a moment more they heard the soft thudding of hooves, and in from the shore came Owain Gwynedd, with Cuhelyn at his back. They dismounted in silence, and Owain came to look down at the young, spoiled body, not too closely yet, for fear even dulling ears should be sharp enough to overhear what was not meant to be overheard.

  “Can he live?”

  Cadfael shook his head and made no other reply.

  Owain dropped into the sand and leaned close. “Gwion… I am here. Spare to make many words, there is no need.”

  Gwion’s black eyes, a little dazzled by the mounting sun, opened wide and knew him. Cadfael moistened the lips that opened wryly, and laboured to articulate. “Yes, there is need. I have a thing I must say.”

  “For peace between us two,” said Owain, “I say again, there is no need of words. But if you must, I am listening.”

  “Bledri ap Rhys…’ began Gwion, and paused to draw breath. “You require to know who killed him. Do not hold it against any other. I killed him.”

  He waited, with resigned patience, for disbelief rather than outcry, but neither came. Only a considering and accepting silence that seemed to last a long while, and then Owain’s voice, level and composed as ever, saying: “Why? He was of your own allegiance, my brother’s man.”

  “So he had been,” said Gwion, and was shaken by a laugh that contorted his mouth and sent a thin trickle of blood running down his jaw. Cadfael leaned and wiped it away. “I was glad when he came to Aber. I knew what my lord was about. I longed to join him, and I could and would have told him all I knew of your forces and movements. It was fair. I had told you I was wholly and for ever your brother’s man, you knew my mind. But I could not go, I had given my word not to leave.”

  “And had kept your word,” said Owain. “So far!”

  “But Bledri had given no such word. He could go, as I could not. So I told him all that I had learned in Aber, what strength you could raise, how soon you could be in Carnarvon, everything my lord Cadwaladr had to know for his defence. And I took a horse from the stables before dark, while the gat
es were open, and tethered it among the trees for him. And like a fool I never doubted but Bledri would be true to his salt. And he listened to all, and never said word, letting me believe he was of my mind!”

  “How did you hope to get him out of the llys, once the gates were closed?” asked Owain, as mildly as if he questioned of some ordinary daily duty.

  “There are ways… I was in Aber a long time. Not everyone is always careful with keys. But in the waiting time he was noting all things within your court, and he could count as well as I, and weigh chances as sharply, while he so carried himself as to put all suspicion of his intent out of mind. What I thought was his intent!” Gwion said bitterly. His voice failed him for a moment, but he gathered his strength and resumed doggedly: “When I went to tell him it was time to go, and see him safely away, he was naked in his bed. Without shame he told me he was going nowhere, he was no such fool, having seen for himself your power and your numbers. He would lie safe in Aber and watch which way the wind blew, and if it blew for Owain Gwynedd, then he was Owain’s man. I called to mind his fealty, and he laughed at me. And I struck him down,” said Gwion through bared teeth. “And then, since he would not, I knew if I was to keep faith with Cadwaladr I must break faith with you, and go in Bledri’s place. And since he had so turned his coat, I knew that I must kill him, for to make his way with you he would certainly betray me. And before he had his wits again I stabbed him to the heart.”

  Some quivering tension in his body relaxed, and he drew and breathed out a great sigh. He had done already almost all that truth required of him. The rest was very little burden.

  “I went to find the horse, and the horse was gone. And then the messenger came, and there was no more I could do. Everything was in vain. I had done murder for nothing! What it was entrusted to me to do for Bledri ap Rhys, whom I killed, that I did, for penance. And what came of it you know already. But it is just!” he said, rather to himself than to any other, but they heard it: “He died unshriven, and so must I.”

  “That need not be,” said Owain with detached compassion.

  “Bear with this world a little while longer, and my priest will be here, for I sent word for him to come.”

  “He will come late,” said Gwion, and closed his eyes.

  Nevertheless, he was still living when Owain’s chaplain came in obedient haste to take a dying man’s last confession and guide his failing tongue through his last act of contrition. Cadfael, in attendance to the end, doubted if the penitent heard the words of the absolution, for after it was spoken there was no response, no quiver of the drained face or the arched lids that veiled the black, intense eyes. Gwion had said his last word to the world, and of what might come to pass in the world he was entering he had no great fear. He had lived long enough to rest assured of the absolution he most needed, Owain’s forbearance and forgiveness, never formally spoken, but freely given.

  “Tomorrow,” said Brother Mark, “we must be on our way home. We have outstayed our time.”

  They were standing together at the edge of the fields outside Owain’s camp, looking out over the open sea. Here the dunes were only a narrow fringe of gold above the descent to the shore, and in subdued afternoon sunlight the sea stretched in cloudy blues, deepening far out into a clear green, and the long, drowned peninsula of shoals shone pale through the water. In the deep channels between, the Danish cargo ships were gradually dwindling into toy boats, dark upon the brightness, bearing out on a steady breeze under sail, for their own Dublin shore. And beyond, the lighter longships, smaller still, drove eagerly for home.

  The peril was past, Gwynedd delivered, debts paid, brothers brought together again, if not yet reconciled. The affair might have turned out hugely bloodier and more destructive. Nevertheless, men had died.

  Tomorrow, too, the camp at their backs would be dismantled of its improvised defences, the husbandman would come back to his farmhouse, bringing his beasts with him, and return imperturbably to the care of his land and his stock, as his forebears had done time after time, giving ground pliably for a while to marauding enemies they knew they could out-wait, outrun and outlast. The Welsh, who left their expendable homesteads for the hills at the approach of an enemy, left them only to return and rebuild.

  The prince would take his muster back to Carnarvon, and thence dismiss those whose lands lay here in Arfon and Anglesey, before going on to Aber. Rumour said he would suffer Cadwaladr to return with him, and those who knew them best added that Cadwaladr would soon be restored to possession of some part, at least, of his lands. For in spite of all, Owain loved his younger brother, and could not shut him out of his grace much longer.

  “And Otir has his fee,” said Mark, pondering gains and losses.

  “It was promised.”

  “I don’t grudge it. It might have cost far more.”

  And so it might, though two thousand marks could not buy back the lives of Otir’s three young men, now being borne back to Dublin for burial, nor those few of Gwion’s following picked up dead from the surf, nor Bledri ap Rhys in his chill, calculating faithlessness, nor Gwion himself in his stark, destructive loyalty, the one as fatal as the other. Nor could all these lost this year call into life again Anarawd, dead last year in the south, at Cadwaladr’s instigation, if not at his hands.

  “Owain has sent a courier to Canon Meirion in Aber,” said Mark, “to put his mind at rest for his daughter. By this he knows she is here safe enough, with her bridegroom. The prince sent as soon as Ieuan brought her into camp last night.”

  His tone, Cadfael thought, was carefully neutral, as though he stood aside and withheld judgement, viewing with equal detachment two sides of a complex problem, and one that was not his to solve.

  “And how has she conducted herself here in these few hours?” asked Cadfael. Mark might study to absent himself from all participation in these events, but he could not choose but observe.

  “She is altogether dutiful and quiet. She pleases Ieuan. She pleases the prince, for she is as a bride should be, submissive and obedient. She was in terror, says Ieuan, when he snatched her away out of the Danish camp. She is in no fear now.”

  “I wonder,” said Cadfael, “if submissive and obedient is as Heledd should be. Have we ever known her to be so, since she came from Saint Asaph with us?”

  “Much has happened since then,” said Mark, thoughtfully smiling. “It may be she has had enough of venturing, and is not sorry to be settling down to a sensible marriage with a decent man. You have seen her. Have you seen any cause to doubt that she is content?”

  And in truth Cadfael could not say that he had observed in her bearing any trace of discontent. Indeed, she went smilingly about the work she found for herself, waited upon Ieuan serenely and deftly, and continued to distil about her a kind of lustre that could not come from an unhappy woman. Whatever was in her mind, and held in reserve there with deep and glossy satisfaction, it certainly did not disquiet or distress her. Heledd viewed the path opening before her with unmistakable pleasure.

  “Have you spoken with her?” asked Mark.

  “There has been no occasion yet.”

  “You may essay now, if you wish. She is coming this way.”

  Cadfael turned his head, and saw Heledd coming striding lightly along the crest of the ridge towards them, with purpose in her step, and her face towards the north. Even when she halted beside them, it was only for a moment, checked in flight like a bird hovering.

  “Brother Cadfael, I’m glad to see you safe. The last I knew of you was when they swept us apart, by the breach in the stockade.” She looked out across the sea, where the ships had shrunk into black splinters upon scintillating water. All along the line of them her glance followed. She might have been counting them. “They got off unhindered, then, with their silver and their cattle. Were you there to see?”

  “I was,” said Cadfael.

  They never did me offence,” she said, looking after their departing fleet with a slight, remembering smile. “I
would have waved them away home, but Ieuan did not think it safe for me.”

  “As well,” said Cadfael seriously, “for it was not entirely a peaceful departure. And where are you going now?”

  She turned and looked at them full, and her eyes were wide and innocent and the deep purple of irises. “I left something of mine up there in the Danish camp,” she said. “I am going to find it.”

  “And Ieuan lets you go?”

  “I have leave,” she said. “They are all gone now.”

  They were all gone, and it was safe now to let his hard-won bride return to the deserted dunes where she had been a prisoner for a while, but never felt herself in bondage. They watched her resume her purposeful passage along the edge of the fields. There was barely a mile to go.

  “You did not offer to go with her,” said Mark with a solemn face.

  “I would not be so crass. But give her a fair start,” said Cadfael reflectively, “and I think you and I might very well go after her.”

  “You think,” said Mark, “we might be more welcome company on the way back?”

  “I doubt,” Cadfael admitted, “whether she is coming back.”

  Mark nodded his head by way of acknowledgement, unsurprised. “I had been wondering myself,” he said.

  The tide was on the ebb, but not yet so low as to expose the long, slender tongue of sand that stretched out like a reaching hand and wrist towards the coast of Anglesey. It showed pale gold beneath the shallows, here and there a tuft of tenacious grass and soil breaking the surface. At the end of it, where the knuckles of the hand jutted in an outcrop of rock, the stunted salt bushes stood up like rough, crisp hair, their roots fringed with the yellow of sand. Cadfael and Mark stood on the ridge above, and looked down as they had looked once before, and upon the same revelation. Repeated, it made clear all the times, all the evenings, when it had been repeated without witnesses. They even drew back a little, so that the shape of them might be less obtrusive on the skyline, if she should look up. But she did not look up. She looked down into the clear water, palest green in the evening light, that reached almost to her knees, as she trod the narrow golden path towards the seagirt throne of rock. She had her skirts, still frayed and soiled from travel and from living wild, gathered up in her hands, and she leaned to watch the cold, sweet water quivering about her legs, and breaking their lissome outlines into a disembodied tremor, as though she floated rather than waded. She had pulled all the pins from her hair; it hung in a black, undulating cloud about her shoulders, hiding the oval face stooped to watch her steps. She moved like a dancer, slowly, with languorous grace. For whatever tryst she had here she came early, and she knew it. But because there was no uncertainty, time was a grace, even waiting would be pleasure anticipated.