Summer of the Danes bc-18 Page 12

  “But he is not free,” said Mark, putting a finger regretfully on the centre of the convoluted core of pain in this seemingly simple relationship of sire and daughter. “He is aware of her now in absence as he never was when she waited on him dutifully every day, present and visible. He will have no peace until he knows she is safe.”

  “So,” said Cadfael, “we had better set about finding her.”

  Out on the ride, Cadfael looked back through the screen of trees towards the sparks of quivering water beyond which lay the Anglesey shore. A slight breeze had arisen, and fluttered the bright green leaves into a scintillating curtain, but still the fleeting reflections of water flashed brighter still through the folds. And something else, something that appeared and vanished as the branches revealed and hid it again, but remained constant in the same place, only seeming to rock up and down as if afloat and undulating with a tide. A fragment of bright colour, vermilion, changing shape with the movement of its frame of leaves.

  “Wait!” said Cadfael, halting. “What is that?” Not a red that was to be found in nature, certainly not in the late Spring, when the earth indulges itself only with delicate tones of pale gold and faint purple and white against the virgin green. This red had a hard, impenetrable solidity about it. Cadfael dismounted, and turned back towards it, threading the trees in cover until he came to a raised spot where he could lie warily invisible himself, but see clear through the edge of the woodland three hundred paces or more down to the strait. A green level of pasture and a few fields, one dwelling, no doubt forsaken now, and then the silver-blue glitter of the water, here almost at its narrowest, but still half a mile wide. And beyond, the rich, fertile plain of Anglesey, the cornfield of Wales. The tide was flowing, the stretch of shingle and sand under the opposite coast half exposed. And riding to anchor, close inshore below the bank of trees in which Cadfael stood, a long, lean boat, dragon-headed fore and aft, dipped and rose gently on the tide, central sail lowered, oars shipped, a cluster of vermilion shields draped along its low flank. A lithe serpent of a ship, its mast lowered aft from its steppings, clearing the gaunt body for action, while it swayed gently to its mooring like a sleeping lizard, graceful and harmless. Two of its crew, big, fair-headed, one with plaited braids either side his neck, idled on its narrow rear deck, above the oarsmen’s benches. One, naked, swam lazily in mid-strait. But Cadfael counted what he took to be oar-ports in the third strake of the hull, twelve of them in this steerboard side. Twelve pairs of oars, twenty-four rowers, and more crew beside these three left on guard. The rest could not be far.

  Brother Mark had tethered the horses, and made his way down to Cadfael’s shoulder. He saw what Cadfael had seen, and asked no questions.

  “That,” said Cadfael, low-voiced, “is a Danish keel from Dublin!”

  Chapter Seven.

  ” THERE WAS NOT a word more said between them. By consent they turned and made their way back in haste to the horses, and led them away inland by the woodland track, until they were far enough from the shore to mount and ride. If Heledd, after her night in the hermitage, had seen the coming of this foraging boat with its formidable complement of warriors, small wonder she had made haste to remove herself from their vicinity. And small doubt but she would withdraw inland as quickly and as far as she could, and once at a sufficient distance she would make for the shelter of a town. That, at least, was what any girl in her right senses would do. Here she was midway between Bangor and Carnarvon. Which way would she take?

  “One ship alone,” said Mark at last, where the path widened and made it possible for two to ride abreast. “Is that good sense? Might they not be opposed, even captured?”

  “So they might at this moment,” Cadfael agreed, “but there’s no one here to attempt it. They came by night past Carnarvon, be sure, and by night they’ll slip out again. This will be one of the smallest and the fastest in their fleet; with more than twenty armed rowers aboard there’s nothing we have could keep them in sight. You saw the building of her, she can be rowed either way, and turn in a flash. The only risk they take is while the most of the company are ashore, foraging, and that they’ll do by rushes, fast ashore and fast afloat again.”

  “But why send one small ship out alone? As I have heard tell,” said Mark, “they raid in force, and take slaves as well as plunder. That they cannot do by risking a single vessel.”

  “This time,” said Cadfael, considering, “it’s no such matter. If Cadwaladr has brought them over, then he’s promised them a fat fee for their services. They’re here to persuade Owain he would be wise to restore his brother to his lands, and they expect to get well paid for doing it, and if it can be done cheaply by the threat of their presence, without the loss of a man in battle, that’s what they’ll prefer, and Cadwaladr will have no objection, provided the result is the same. Say he gets his way and returns to his lands, he has still to live beside his brother for the future, why make relations between them blacker than they need be? No, there’ll be no random burning and killing, and no call to take bondmen, not unless the bargain turns sour.” “Then why this foray by a single ship so far along the strait?” Mark demanded reasonably.

  “The Danes have to feed their force, and it’s not their way to carry their own provisions when they’re heading for a land they can just as well live off at no cost. They know the Welsh well enough by now to know we live light and travel light, and can shift our families and our stock into the mountains at a few hours’ notice. Yonder little ship has wasted no time in making inland from Abermenai as soon as it touched shore, to reach such hamlets as were late in hearing the news, or slow in rounding up their cattle. They’ll be off back to their fellows tonight with a load of good carcases amidships, and whatever store of flour and grain they’ve been able to lay their hands on. And somewhere along these woods and fields they’re about that very business this moment.”

  “And if they meet with a solitary girl?” Mark challenged. “Would they refrain from doing unnecessary offence even then?”

  “I would not speak for any man, Dane or Welsh or Norman, in such a case,” Cadfael admitted. “If she were a princess of Gwynedd, why, she’d be worth far more intact and well treated than violated or misused. And if Heledd was not born royal, yet she has a tongue of her own, and can very well make it plain that she is under Owain’s protection, and they’ll be answerable to him if they do her offence. But even so…”

  They had reached a place where the woodland track divided, one branch bearing still inland but inclining to the west, the other bearing more directly east.

  “We are nearer Carnarvon than Bangor,” Cadfael reckoned, halting where the roads divided. “But would she know it? What now, Mark? East or west?”

  “We had best separate,” Mark said, frowning over so blind a decision. “She cannot be very far. She would have to keep in cover. If the ship must return this night, she might find a place to hide safely until they are gone. Do you take one way, and I the other.”

  “We cannot afford to lose touch,” Cadfael warned seriously. “If we part here it must be only for some hours, and here we must meet again. We are not free to do altogether as we choose. Go towards Carnarvon, and if you find her, see her safely there. But if not, make your way back here by dusk, and so will I. And if I find her by this lefthand way, I’ll get her into shelter wherever I may, if it means turning back to Bangor. And at Bangor I’ll wait for you, if you fail of meeting me here by sunset. And if I fail you, follow and find me there.” A makeshift affair, but the best they could do, with so limited a time, and an inescapable duty waiting. She had left the cell by the shore only that morning, she would have had to observe caution and keep within the woodland ways, where a horse must go slowly. No, she could not be far. And at this distance from the strait, surely she would keep to a used path, and not wind a laborious way deep in cover. They might yet find and bring her here by nightfall, or conduct her into safety somewhere, rendezvous here free of her, and be off thankfully back to England.r />
  Mark looked at the light and the slight decline of the sun from the zenith. “We have four hours or more,” he said, and turned his horse westward briskly, and was off.

  Cadfael’s track turned east on a level traverse for perhaps half a mile, occasionally emerging from woodland into open pasture, and affording glimpses of the strait through the scattered trees below. Then it turned inland and began to climb, though the gradient here was not great, for this belt of land on the mainland side partook to some extent of the rich fertility of the island before it reared aloft into the mountains. He went softly, listening, and halting now and again to listen more intently, but there was no sign of life but for the birds, very busy about their spring occupations and undisturbed by the turmoil among men. The cattle and sheep had been driven up higher into the hills, into guarded folds; the raiders would find only the few stragglers here, and perhaps would venture no further along the strait. The news must be ahead of them now wherever they touched, they would have made their most profitable captures already. If Heledd had turned this way, she might be safe enough from any further danger.

  He had crossed an open meadow and entered a higher belt of woodland, bushy and dappled with sunbeams on his left hand, deepening into forest on his right, when a grass snake, like a small flash of silver-green lightning, shot across the path almost under his horse’s hooves to vanish in deeper grass on the other side, and the beast shied for an instant, and let out a muted bellow of alarm. Somewhere off to the right, among the trees, and at no great distance, another horse replied, raising an excited whinny of recognition. Cadfael halted to listen intently, hoping for another call to allow him to take a more precise reading of the direction, but the sound was not repeated. Probably whoever was in refuge there, well aside from the path, had rushed to soothe and cajole his beast into silence. A horse’s neighing could carry all too far along this rising hillside.

  Cadfael dismounted, and led his beast in among the trees, taking a winding line towards where he thought the other voyager must be, and halting at every turn to listen again, and presently, when he was already deep among thick growth, he caught the sudden rustling of shaken boughs ahead, quickly stilled. His own movements, however cautious, had certainly been heard. Someone there in close concealment was waiting for him in ambush.

  “Heledd!” said Cadfael clearly.

  Silence seemed to become even more silent.

  “Heledd? Here am I, Brother Cadfael. You can be easy, here are no Dublin Danes. Come forth and show yourself.”

  And forth she came, thrusting through the bushes to meet him, Heledd indeed, with a naked dagger ready in her hand, though for the moment she might well have forgotten that she held it. Her gown was creased and soiled a little with the debris of bushes, one cheek was lightly smeared with green from bedding down in moss and grasses, and the mane of her hair was loose round her shoulders, here in shadow quite black, a midnight cloud. But her clear oval face was fiercely composed, just easing from its roused readiness to do battle, and her eyes, enormous in shade, were purple-black. Behind her among the trees he heard her horse shift and stamp, uneasy here in these unknown solitudes.

  “It is you,” she said, and let the hand that held the knife slip down to her side with a great, gusty sigh. “How did you find me? And where is Deacon Mark? I thought you would be off home before now.”

  “So we would,” agreed Cadfael, highly relieved to find her in such positive possession of herself, “but for you running off into the night. Mark is a mile or more from us on the road to Carnarvon, looking for you. We parted where the roads forked. It was guesswork which way you would take. We came seeking you at Nonna’s cell. The priest told us he’d directed you there.”

  “Then you’ve seen the ship,” said Heledd, and hoisted her shoulders in resignation at the unavoidable. “I should have been well aloft into the hills by now to look for my mother’s cousins up among the sheep-huts, the ones I hoped to find still in their lowland homestead, if my horse had not fallen a little lame. I thought best to get into cover and rest him until nightfall. And now we are two,” she said, and her smile flashed in shadow with recovering confidence, “three if we can find your little deacon. And now which way should we make? Come with me over the hills, and you can find a safe way back to the Dee. For I am not going back to my father,” she warned, with a formidable flash of her dark eyes. “He’s rid of me, as he wanted. I mean him no ill, but I have not escaped them all only to go back and be married off to some man I have never seen, nor to dwindle away in a nunnery. You may tell him, or leave word with someone else to let him know, that I am safe with my mother’s kinsmen, and he can be content.”

  “You are going into the first safe shelter we can find,” said Cadfael firmly, moved to a degree of indignation he could not have felt if he had found her distressed and in fear. “Afterwards, once this trouble is over, you may have your life and do what you will with it.” It seemed to him, even as he said it, that she was capable of doing with it something original and even admirable, and if it had to be in the world’s despite, that would not stop her. “Can your beast go?”

  “I can lead him, and we shall see.”

  Cadfael took thought for a moment. They were midway between Bangor and Carnarvon here, but once returned to the westward track by which Mark had set out, the road was more direct to Carnarvon, and by taking it they would eventually rejoin Mark. Whether he had gone on into the town, or turned back to return to the crossroads meeting place by dusk, along that pathway they would meet him. And in a city filled with Owain’s fighting men there would be no danger. A force hired to threaten would not be so mad as to provoke the entire armies of Gwynedd. A little looting, perhaps, pleasant sport carrying off a few stray cattle and a few stray villagers, but they were not such fools as to bring out Owain’s total strength against them in anger.

  “Bring him out to the path,” said Cadfael. “You may ride mine, and I’ll walk yours.”

  There was nothing in the glittering look she gave him to reassure him that she would do as he said, and nothing to disquiet him with doubts. She hesitated only an instant, in which the silence of the windless afternoon seemed phenomenally intense, then she turned and parted the branches behind her, and vanished, shattering the silence with the rustling and thrashing of her passage through deep cover. In a few moments he heard the horse whinny softly, and then the stirring of the bushes as girl and horse turned to thread a more open course back to him. And then, astonishingly high, wild and outraged, he heard her scream.

  The instinctive leap forward he made to go to her never gained him so much as a couple of paces. From either side the bushes thrashed, and hands reached to clutch him by cowl and habit, pin his arms and bring him up erect but helpless, straining against a grip he could not break, but which, curiously, made no move to do him any harm beyond holding him prisoner. Suddenly the tiny open glade was boiling with large, bare-armed, fair-haired, leather-girt men, and out of the thicket facing him erupted an even larger man, a young giant, head and shoulders above Cadfael’s sturdy middle height, laughing so loudly that the hitherto silent woods rang and re-echoed with his mirth, and clutching in his arms a raging Heledd, kicking and struggling with all her might, but making small impression. The one hand she had free had already scored its nails down her captor’s cheek, and was tugging and tearing in his long flaxen hair, until he turned and stooped his head and took her wrist in his teeth and held it. Large, even, white teeth that had shone as he laughed, and now barely dented Heledd’s smooth skin. It was astonishment, neither fear nor pain, that caused her suddenly to lie still in his arms, crooked fingers gradually unfolding in bewilderment. But when he released her to laugh again, she recovered her rage, and struck out at him furiously, pounding her fist vainly against his broad breast.

  Behind him came a grinning boy about fifteen years old, leading Heledd’s horse, which went a little tenderly on one foreleg. At sight of a second such prize tethered and shifting uneasily in the fringe of
the trees, the boy let out a whoop of pleasure. Indeed, the entire mood of the marauding company seemed goodhumoured and ebullient rather than menacing. There were not so many of them as at first they had seemed, by reason of their size and their exuberantly animal presence. Two, barrel-chested and moustached, with hair in straw-coloured braids down either cheek, held Cadfael pinioned by the arms. A third had taken the roan’s bridle, and was fondling the long blazed brow and creamy mane. But somewhere out on the open ride there were others, Cadfael heard them moving and talking as they waited. The marvel was that men so massive could move so softly to close round their quarry. The horses, calling to each other, had alerted the returning foragers, and led them to this unexpected gain. A monastic, a girl, by her mount and dress a girl of quality, and two good horses.

  The young giant was surveying his gains very practically over Heledd’s unavailing struggles, and Cadfael noted that though he was casually rough with his captive, he was not brutal. And it seemed that Heledd had realised as much, and gradually abandoned her resistance, knowing it vain, and surprised into quietness by the fact that there was no retaliation.

  “Saeson? demanded the giant, eyeing Cadfael with curiosity. He already knew that Heledd was Welsh enough, she had been reviling him in the language until she ran out of breath.

  “Welsh!” said Cadfael. “Like the lady. She is daughter to a canon of Saint Asaph, and under the protection of Owain Gwynedd.”

  “He keeps wildcats?” said the young man, and laughed again, and set her down on her feet in one lithe movement, but kept a fast hold on the girdle of her gown, twisted in his large fist to tighten and secure it. “And he’ll want this one back without a hair missing? But the lady slipped her leash, seemingly, or what’s she doing here with no bodyguard but a monk of the Benedictines?” He spoke a loose mixture of Erse, Danish and Welsh, very well able to make himself understood in these parts. Not all the centuries of fitful contact between Dublin and Wales had been by way of invasion and rapine, a good many marriages had been made between the princedoms, and a fair measure of honest commerce been profitable to both parties. Probably this youth had a measure of Norman French in his tongue, no less. Even Latin, for very likely Irish monks had had him in school. He was plainly a young man of consequence. Also, happily, of a very open and cheerful humour, by no means inclined to waste what might turn out a valuable asset. “Bring the man,” said the young fellow, returning briskly to business, “and keep him fast. Owain has a respect for the black habit, even if the Celtic clas suits him best. If it comes to bargaining, holiness fetches a good price. I’ll see to the girl.”