Summer of the Danes bc-18 Page 13

  They sprang to obey him, as light of heart, it seemed, as their leader, and all in high content with their foraging. When they emerged with their captives into the open ride, the two horses led along behind them, it was easy to see what reason they had for being in high feather. There were four more of them waiting there, all afoot, and burdened with two long poles loaded down with slaughtered carcases and slung sacks, the plunder of scattered folds, stray corners of grazing, and even the forest itself, for there was venison among the booty. A fifth man had improvised a wooden yoke for his shoulders, to carry two balanced wineskins. This must be one of at least two shore parties, Cadfael judged, for the little ship carried twelve pairs of oars aside from other crew. It was guesswork how many the Danish force would muster in full, but they would not go short for a day or so.

  He went where he was propelled, not entirely out of the sensible realisation that he was no match at all for one of the brawny warriors who held him, let alone two, not even because, though he might break away himself, he could do nothing to take Heledd with him. Wherever they were bound, useful hostages, he might still be able to afford her some protection and companionship. He had already given up any idea that she was likely to come to any great harm. He had done no more than confirm something already understood when he urged that she was valuable; and this was not total war, but a commercial expedition, to achieve the highest profit at the least expenditure.

  There was some redistribution of the booty they had amassed, Heledd’s lame horse being called into service to carry a part of the load. They were notably brisk and neat in their movements, balancing the weight and halting short of overburdening a valuable beast. Among themselves they fell back into their own Norse tongue, though the likelihood was that all these young, vigorous warriors had been born in the kingdom of Dublin, and their fathers before them, and had a broad understanding of the Celtic languages that surrounded their enclave, and dealt freely with them in war and peace. At the end of this day of raiding they had an eye to the sun, and but for this foray after the alarm the horses had sounded, they were losing no time.

  Cadfael had wondered how their leader would dispose of the one sound horse, and fully expected he would claim the privilege of riding for himself. Instead, the young man ordered the boy into the saddle, the lightest weight among them, and swung Heledd up before him and into arms even at fifteen years brawny enough to make her struggles ineffective once her hands were securely bound by her own girdle. But she had understood by this time that resistance would be both useless and undignified, and suffered herself to be settled against the boy’s broad chest without deigning to struggle. By the set of her face she would be waiting for the first chance of escape, and keeping all her wits and strength in reserve until the moment offered. She had fallen silent, shutting lips and teeth upon anger or fear, and keeping a taut, brooding dignity, but what was brewing behind that still face there was no knowing.

  “Brother,” said the young man, turning briskly upon Cadfael, still pinned between his guards, “if you value the lass, you may walk beside her without a hand on you. But I warn you, Torsten will be close behind, and he can throw a lance to split a sapling at fifty paces, so best keep station.” He was grinning as he issued the warning, already assured that Cadfael had no intention of making off and leaving the girl in captivity. “Forward now, and fast,” he said cheerfully, and set the pace, and the entire party fell into file down the ride, and so did Cadfael, close alongside his own roan horse, with a hand at the rider’s stirrup-leather. If Heledd needed the fragile reassurance of his presence, she had it; but Cadfael doubted the need. She had made no move since she was hoisted aloft, except to stir and settle more comfortably on her perch, and the very tension of her face had softened into a thoughtful stillness. Every time Cadfael raised his eyes to take a fresh look at her he found her more at ease in this unforeseen situation. And every time, her eyes were dwelling in speculation upon the fair head that topped all the rest, stalking before them with erected crest and long blond locks stirring in the light breeze.

  Downhill at a brisk pace, through woodland and pasture, until the first silvery glints of water winked at them through the last belt of trees. The sun was dipping gently towards the west, gilding the ripples drawn by the breeze along the surface, when they emerged upon the shore of the strait, and the crewmen left on guard launched a shout of welcome, and brought the dragon-ship inshore to take them aboard.

  Brother Mark, returning empty-handed from his foray westward to keep the rendezvous at the crossroads before sunset, heard the passing of a company of men, swift and quiet though they were, crossing his track some little way ahead, going downhill towards the shore. He halted in cover until they had passed, and then followed cautiously in the same direction, intending only to make sure they were safely out of sight and earshot before he pushed on to the meeting place. It so happened that the line he followed downhill among the trees inclined towards the course of their open ride, and brought him rapidly closer, so that he drew back and halted again, this time catching glimpses of them between the branches of bushes now almost in full summer leaf. A tall youth, flaxen fair, his head floating past like a blown primrose but high as a three-year spruce, a led horse, loaded, two men with a pole slung on their shoulders, and animal carcases swinging to their stride. Then, unmistakably, he saw Heledd and the boy pass by, a pair entwined and afloat six feet from the ground, the horse beneath them only implied by the rhythm of their passing, for the branches swung impenetrable between at that moment, leaving to view only a trudging tonsure beside them, russet brown almost wholly salted with grey. A very small clue to the man who wore it, but all Mark needed to know Brother Cadfael.

  So he had found her, and these much less welcome strangers had found them both, before they could slip away thankfully into some safe refuge. And there was nothing Mark could do about it but follow them, far enough at least to see where they were taken, and how they were handled, and then make sure that the news was carried where there were those who could take their loss into account, and make plans for their recovery.

  He dismounted and left his horse tethered, the better to move swiftly and silently among the trees. But the shout that presently came echoing up from the ship caused him to discard caution and emerge into the open, hurrying downhill to find a spot from which he could see the waters of the strait, and the steersman bringing his craft close in beneath the grassy bank, at a spot where it was child’s play to leap aboard over the low rim into the rowers’ benches in the waist of the vessel. Mark saw the tide of fierce, fair men flow inboard, coaxing the loaded packhorse after them, and stowing their booty under the tiny foredeck and in the well between the benches. In with them went Cadfael, perforce, and yet it seemed to Mark that he went blithely where he was persuaded. Small chance to avoid, but another man would have been a shade less apt and adroit about it.

  The boy on horseback had kept his firm hold of Heledd until the flaxen-haired young giant, having seen his men embarked, reached up and hoisted her in his arms, as lightly as if she had been a child, and leaped down with her between the rowers’ benches, and setting her down there on her feet, stretched up again to the bridle of Cadfael’s horse, and coaxed him aboard with a soft-spoken cajolery that came up strangely to Mark’s ears. The boy followed, and instantly the steersman pushed off strongly from the bank, the knot of men busy bestowing their plunder dissolved into expert order at the oars, and the lean little dragon-ship surged out into midstream. She was in lunging motion before Mark had recovered his wits, sliding like a snake southwestward towards Carnarvon and Abermenai, where doubtless her companions were now in harbour or moored in the roads outside the dunes. She did not have to turn, even, being double-ended. Her speed could get her out of trouble in any direction; even if she was sighted off the town Owain had nothing that could catch her. The rapidity with which she dwindled silently into a thin, dark fleck upon the water left Mark breathless and amazed.

  He turned to make his way
back to where his horse was tethered, and set out in resolute haste westward towards Carnarvon.

  Plumped aboard into the narrow well between the benches, and there as briskly abandoned, Cadfael took a moment to lean back against the boards of the narrow afterdeck and consider their situation. Relations between captors and captives seemed already to have found a viable level, at surprisingly little cost in time or passion. Resistance was impracticable. Discretion recommended acceptance to the prisoners, and made it possible for their keepers to be about the more immediate business of getting their booty safely back to camp, without any stricter enforcement than a rapidly moving vessel and a mile or so of water on either side provided. No one laid hand on Cadfael once they were embarked. No one paid any further attention to Heledd, braced back defensively into the stern-post, where the young Dane had hoisted her, with knees drawn up and skirts hugged about her in embracing arms. No one feared that she would leap overboard and strike out for Anglesey; the Welsh were not known as notable swimmers. No one had any interest in doing either of them affront or injury; they were simple assets to be retained intact for future use.

  To test it further, Cadfael made his way the length of the well amidships, between the stowed loot of flesh and provisions, paying curious attention to the details of the lithe, long craft, and not one oarsman checked in the steady heave and stretch of his stroke, or turned a glance to note the movement at his shoulder. A vessel shaped for speed, lean as a greyhound, perhaps eighteen paces long and no more than three or four wide. Cadfael reckoned ten strakes a side, six feet deep amidships, the single mast lowered aft. He noted the clenched rivets that held the strakes together. Clincher-built, shallow of draught, light of weight for its strength and speed, the two ends identical for instant manoeuvring, an ideal craft for beaching close inshore in the dunes of Abermenai. No use for shipping more bulky freight; they would have brought cargo hulls for that, slower, more dependent on sail, and shipping only a few rowers to get them out of trouble in a calm. Square-rigged, as all craft still were in these northern waters. The two-masted, lateen-rigged ships of the unforgotten midland sea were still unknown to these Norse seafarers.

  He had been too deeply absorbed in these observations to realise that he himself was being observed just as shrewdly and curiously by a pair of brilliant ice-blue eyes, from under thick golden brows quizzically cocked. The young captain of this raiding party had missed nothing, and clearly knew how to read this appraisal of his craft. He dropped suddenly from the steersman’s side to meet Cadfael in the well.

  “You know ships?” he demanded, interested and surprised at so unlikely a preoccupation in a Benedictine brother.

  “I did once. It’s a long time now since I ventured on water.”

  “You know the sea?” the young man pursued, shining with pleased curiosity.

  “Not this sea. Time was when I knew the middle sea and the eastern shores well enough. I came late to the cloister,” he explained, beholding the blue eyes dilate and glitter in delighted astonishment, a deeper spark of pleasure and recognition warming within them.

  “Brother, you put up your own price,” said the young Dane heartily. “I would keep you to know better. Seafaring monks are rare beasts, I never came by one before. How do they call you?”

  “My name is Cadfael, a Welsh-born brother of the abbey of Shrewsbury.”

  “A name for a name is fair dealing. I am Turcaill, son of Turcaill, kinsman to Otir, who leads this venture.”

  “And you know what’s in dispute here? Between two Welsh princes? Why put your own breast between their blades?” Cadfael reasoned mildly.

  “For pay,” said Turcaill cheerfully. “But even unpaid I would not stay behind when Otir puts to sea. It grows dull ashore. I’m no landsman, to squat on a farm year after year, and be content to watch the crops grow.”

  No, that he certainly was not, nor of a temper to turn to cloister and cowl even when the adventures of his youth were over. Splendidly fleshed, glittering with animal energy, this was a man for marriage and sons, and the raising of yet more generations of adventurers, restless as the sea itself, and ready to cleave their way into any man’s quarrel for gain, at the fair cost of staking their own lives.

  He was away now, with a valedictory clap on Cadfael’s shoulder, steady of stride along the lunging keel, to swing himself up beside Heledd on the afterdeck. The light, beginning to fade into twilight now, still showed Cadfael the disdainful set of Heledd’s lips and the chill arching of her brows as she drew the hem of her skirt aside from the contamination even of an enemy touch, and turned her head away, refusing him the acknowledgement of a glance.

  Turcaill laughed, no way displeased, sat down beside her, and took out bread from a pouch at his belt. He broke it in his big, smooth young hands, and offered her the half, and she refused it. Unoffended, still laughing, he took her right hand by force, folded his offering into the palm, and shut her left hand hard over it. She could not prevent, and would not compromise her mute disdain by a vain struggle. But when he forthwith got up and left her so, without a glance behind, to do as she pleased with his gift, she neither hurled it into the darkening water of the strait nor bit into its crust by way of acceptance, but sat as he had left her, cradling it between her palms and gazing after his oblivious flaxen head with a narrow and calculating stare, the significance of which Cadfael could not read, but which at once intrigued and disquieted him.

  In the onset of night, in a dusk through which they slid silently and swiftly in midstream, only faint glimmers of phosphorescence gilding the dip of the oars, they passed by the shore-lights of Owain’s Carnarvon, and emerged into a broad basin shut off from the open sea only by twin rolling spits of sand-dunes, capped with a close growth of bushes and a scattering of trees. Along the water the shadowy shapes of ships loomed, some with stepped masts, some lean and low like Turcaill’s little serpent. Spaced along the shore, the torches of the Danish outposts burned steadily in a still air, and higher towards the crest glowed the fires of an established camp.

  Turcaill’s rowers leaned to their last long stroke and shipped their oars, as the steersman brought the ship round in a smooth sweep to beach in the shallows. Over the side went the Danes, hoisting their plunder clear, and plashing up from the water to solid ground, to be met by their fellows on guard at the rim of the tide. And over the side went Heledd, plucked up lightly in Turcaill’s arms, and this time making no resistance, since it would in any case have been unavailing, and she was chiefly concerned with preserving her dignity at this pass.

  As for Cadfael himself, he had small choice but to follow, even if two of the rowers had not urged him over the side between them, and waded ashore with a firm grip on his shoulders. Whatever chances opened before him, there was no way he could break loose from this captivity until he could take Heledd with him. He plodded philosophically up the dunes and into the guarded perimeter of the camp, and went where he was led, well assured that the guardian circle had closed snugly behind him.

  Chapter Eight.

  ” CADFAEL AWOKE TO the pearl-grey light of earliest dawn, the immense sweep of open sky above him, still sprinkled at the zenith with paling stars, and the instant recollection of his present situation. Everything that had passed had confirmed that they had little to fear from their captors, at least while they retained their bargaining value, and nothing to hope for in the way of escape, since the Danes were clearly sure of the efficiency of their precautions. The shore was well watched, the rim of the camp securely guarded. There was no need, within that pale, to keep a constant surveillance on a young girl and an elderly monastic. Let them wander at will, it would not get them out of the circle, and within it they could do no harm.

  Cadfael recalled clearly that he had been fed, as generously as the young men of the guard who moved about him, and he was certain that Heledd, however casually housed here, had also been fed, and once left to her own devices, unobserved, would have had the good sense to eat what was provided. She was
no such fool as to throw away her assets for spite when she had a fight on her hands.

  He was lying, snugly enough, in the lee of a windbreak of hurdles, in a hollow of thick grass, his own cloak wrapped about him. He remembered Turcaill tossing it to him as it was unrolled from his small belongings as the horse was unloaded. Round him a dozen of the young Danish seamen snored at ease. Cadfael arose and stretched, and shook the sand from his habit. No one made any move to intercept him as he made for the higher ground to look about him. The camp was alive, the fires already lit, and the few horses, including his own, watered and turned on to the greener sheltered levels to landward, where there was better pasture. Cadfael looked in that direction, towards the familiar solidity of Wales, and made his way unhindered through the midst of the camp to find a high spot from which he could see beyond the perimeter of Otir’s base. From the south, and after a lengthy march round the tidal bay that bit deep to southward, Owain must come if he was ever to attack this strongpoint by land. By sea he would be at a disadvantage, having nothing to match the Norse longships. And Carnarvon seemed a long, long way from this armed camp.