Summer of the Danes bc-18 Read online

  The few sturdy tents that housed the leaders of the expedition had been pitched in the centre of the camp. Cadfael passed by them closely, and halted to mark the men who moved about them. Two in particular bore the unmistakable marks of authority, though curiously the pair of them together struck a discordant note, as if their twin authorities might somehow be at cross-purposes. The one was a man of fifty years or more, thickset, barrel-chested, built like the bole of a tree, and burned by the sun and the spray and the wind to a reddish brown darker than the two braids of straw-coloured hair that framed his broad countenance, and the long moustaches that hung lower than his jaw. He was bare-armed to the shoulder but for leather bands about his forearms and thick gold bracelets at his wrists.

  “Otir!” said Heledd’s voice softly in Cadfael’s ear. She had come up behind him unnoticed, her steps silent in the drifting sand, her tone wary and intent. She had more here to contend with than a goodhumoured youngster whose tolerant attitude might not always serve her turn. Turcaill was a mere subordinate here; this formidable man before them could overrule all other authorities. Or was it possible that even his power might suffer checks? Here was this second personage beside him, lofty of glance and imperious of gesture, by the look of him not a man to take orders tamely from any other being.

  “And the other?” asked Cadfael, without turning his head.

  “That is Cadwaladr. It was no lie, he has brought these long-haired barbarians into Wales to wrest back his rights from the Lord Owain. I know him, I have seen him before. The Dane I heard called by his name.”

  A handsome man, this Cadwaladr, Cadfael reflected, approving the comeliness of the shape, if doubtful of the mind within. This man was not so tall as his brother, but tall enough to carry his firm and graceful flesh well, and he moved with a beautiful ease and power beside the squat and muscular Dane. His colouring was darker than Owain’s, thick russet hair clustered in curls over a shapely head, and dark, haughty eyes well set beneath brows that almost met, and were a darker brown than his hair. He was shaven clean, but had acquired some of the clothing and adornments of his Dublin hosts during his stay with them, so that it would not have been immediately discernible that here was the Welsh prince who had brought this entire expedition across the sea to his own country’s hurt. He had the reputation of being hasty, rash, wildly generous to friends, irreconcilably bitter against enemies. His face bore out everything that was said of him.

  Nor was it hard to imagine how Owain could still love his troublesome brother, after many offences and repeated reconciliations.

  “A fine figure of a man,” said Cadfael, contemplating this perilous presence warily.

  “If he did as handsomely,” said Heledd.

  The chieftains had withdrawn eastward towards the strait, the circle of their captains surrounding them. Cadfael turned his steps, instead, still southward, to get a view of the land approach by which Owain must come if he intended to shut the invaders into their sandy beachhead. Heledd fell in beside him, not, he judged, because she was in need of the comfort of his or any other company, but because she, too, was curious about the circumstances of their captivity, and felt that two minds might make more sense of them than one alone.

  “How have you fared?” asked Cadfael, eyeing her closely as she walked beside him, and finding her composed, self-contained and resolute of lip and eye. “Have they used you well, here where there are no women?”

  She curled a tolerant lip and smiled. “I needed none. If there’s cause I can fend for myself, but as yet there’s no cause. I have a tent to shelter me, the boy brings me food, and what else I want they let me go abroad and get for myself. Only if I go too near the eastern shore they turn me back. I have tried. I think they know I can swim.”

  “You made no attempt when we were no more than a hundred yards offshore,” said Cadfael, with no implication of approval or disapproval.

  “No,” she agreed, with a small, dark smile, and added not a word more.

  “And even if we could steal back our horses,” he reflected philosophically, “we could not get out of this armed ring with them.”

  “And mine is lame,” she agreed again, smiling her private smile.

  He had had no opportunity, until now, to ask her how she had come by that horse in the first place, somehow stealing him away out of the prince’s stables while the feast was at its height, and before any word was brought from Bangor to alert Owain to the threat from Ireland. He asked her now. “How came it that you ever came into possession of this horse you call yours so briskly?”

  “I found him,” said Heledd simply. “Saddled, bridled, tethered among the trees not far from the gatehouse. Better than ever I expected, I took it for a good omen and was thankful I had not to go wandering through the night afoot. But I would have done it. I had no thought of it when I went out to refill the pitcher, but out in the courtyard I thought, why go back? There was nothing left in Llanelwy I could keep, and nothing in Bangor or Anglesey that I wanted. But there must be something for me, somewhere in the world. Why should I not go and find it, if no one else would get it for me? And while I was standing there in shadow by the wall, the guards on the gate were not marking me, and I slipped out behind their backs. I had nothing, I took nothing, I would have walked away so, and never complained. It was my choice. But in the trees I found this horse, saddled and bridled and ready for me, a gift from God that I could not refuse. If I have lost him now,” she said very solemnly, “it may be he has brought me where I was meant to be.”

  “A stage on your journey, it may be,” said Cadfael, concerned, “but surely not the end. For here are you and I, hostages in a very questionable situation, and you I take to be a lass who values her freedom highly. We have yet to get ourselves out of captivity, or wait here for Owain to do it for us.” He was revolving in some wonder what she had told him, and harking back to all that had happened in Aber. “So there was this beast, made ready for riding and hidden away outside the enclave. And if heaven meant him for you, there was someone else who intended a very different outcome when he saddled him and led him out into the woods. Now it seems to me that Bledri ap Rhys did indeed mean to escape to his lord with word of all the prince’s muster and strength. The means of flight was ready outside the gate for him. And yet he was found naked in his bedchamber, no way prepared for riding. You have set us a riddle. Did he go to his bed to wait until the llys was well asleep? And was killed before the favourable hour? And how did he purpose to leave the maenol, when every gate was guarded?”

  Heledd was studying him intently along her shoulder, brows knitted together, only partially understanding, but hazarding very alert and intelligent guesses at what was still obscure to her. “Do you tell me Bledri ap Rhys is dead? Killed, you said. That same night? The night I left the llys?”

  “You did not know? It was after you were gone, so was the news that came from Bangor. No one has told you since?”

  “I heard of the coming of the Danes, yes, that news was everywhere from the next morning. But I heard nothing of any death, never a word.”

  No, it would not be news of crucial importance, like the invasion from Ireland, tref would not spread it to tref and maenol to maenol as Owain’s couriers had spread word of the muster to Carnarvon. Heledd was frowning over the belated news, saddened by any man’s death, especially one she had known briefly, even made use of, in her own fashion, to plague a father who wronged her affection.

  “I am sorry,” she said. “He had such life in him. A waste! Killed, you think, to prevent his going? One more warrior for Cadwaladr, and with knowledge of the prince’s plans to make him even more welcome? Then who? Who could have found out, and made such dreadful shift to stop him?”

  “That there’s no knowing, nor will I hazard guesses where they serve no purpose. But soon or late, the prince will find him out. The man was in a sense his guest, he will not let the death go unavenged.”

  “You foretell another death,” said Heledd, with forceful b
itterness. “What does that amend?”

  And to that there was no answer that would not raise yet further questions, probing all the obscure corners of right and wrong. They walked on together, to a higher point near the southern rim of the armed camp, unhindered, though they were observed with brief, curious interest by many of the Danish warriors through whose lines they passed. On the hillock, clear of the sparse trees, they halted to survey the ground all about them.

  Otir had chosen to make his landfall not on the sands to the north of the strait, where the coast of Anglesey extended into a broad expanse of dune and warren, none too safe in high tides, and terminating in a long bar of shifting sand and shingle, but to the south, where the enclosing peninsula of land stood higher and dryer, sheltered a deeper anchorage, and afforded a more defensible campsite, as well as more rapid access to the open sea in case of need. That it fronted more directly the strong base of Carnarvon, where Owain’s forces were mustered in strength, had not deterred the invader. The shores of his chosen encampment were well manned, the landward approach compact enough to afford a formidable defence under assault, and a broad bay of tidal water separated it from the town. Several rivers drained into this bight, Cadfael recalled, but at low tide they would be mere meandering streaks of silver in a treacherous waste of sand, not lightly to be braved by an army. Owain would have to bring his forces far round to the south to approach his enemy on safe ground. With some six or seven miles of marching between himself and Owain, and with a secure ground base already gained, no doubt Cadwaladr felt himself almost invulnerable.

  Except that the six or seven miles seemed to have shrunk to a single mile during the night. For when Cadfael topped the ridge of bushes, and emerged with a clear view well beyond the rim of the camp to southward, the open sea just glimmering with morning light on his right hand, the pallid shallow waters and naked sands of the bay to his left, he caught in the distance, spaced across the expanse of dune and field and scrubland, an unmistakable shimmer of arms and faint sparkle of coloured tents, a wall ensconced overnight. The early light picked out traces of movement like the quiver of a passing wind rippling a cornfield, as men passed purposefully to and fro about their unhurried business of fortifying their chosen position. Out of range of lance or bow, Owain had brought up his army under cover of darkness to seal off the top of this peninsula, and pen the Danish force within it. There was to be no time wasted. Thus forehead to forehead, like two rival rams measuring each other, one party or the other must open the business in hand without delay.

  It was Owain who opened dealings, and before the morning was out, while the Danish chiefs were still debating the appearance of his host so close to their boundaries, and what action he might have in mind now that he was there. It was unlikely that they had any qualms about their own security, having swift access to the open sea at need, and ships the Welsh could not match, and doubtless, thought Cadfael, discreetly, drawn back from the knot of armed men gathered now on the knoll, they were also speculating as to how strong a garrison he had left to hold Carnarvon, and whether it would be worth staging a raid by water upon the town if the prince attempted any direct assault here. As yet they were not persuaded that he would risk any such costly action. They stood watching the distant lines narrowly, and waited. Let him speak first. If he was already minded to receive his brother into favour again, as he had done several times before, why make any move to frustrate so desirable a resolution?

  It was mid-morning, and a pale sun high, when two horsemen were seen emerging from a slight dip in the sandy levels between the two hosts. Mere moving specks as yet, sometimes lost in hollows, then breasting the next rise, making steadily for the Danish lines. There were barely half a dozen dwellings in all that stretch of dune and warren, since there was little usable pasture and no good ploughland, and doubtless those few settlements had been evacuated in the night. Those two solitary figures were the sole inhabitants of a no-man’s-land between armies, and as it appeared, charged with opening negotiations to prevent a pointless and costly collision. Otir waited for their nearer approach with a face wary but content, Cadwaladr with braced body and tense countenance, but foreseeing a victory. It was in the arrogant spread of his feet bestriding Welsh ground, and the lofty lift of his head and narrowing of his eyes to view the prince’s envoys.

  Still at the limit of the range of lance or arrow, the second rider halted and waited, screened by a thin belt of trees. The other rode forward to within hailing distance, and there sat his horse, looking up at the watchful group on the hillock above him.

  “My lords,” the hail came up to them clearly, “Owain Gwynedd sends his envoy to deal with you on his behalf. A man of peace, unarmed, accredited by the prince. Will you receive him?”

  “Let him come in,” said Otir. “He shall be honourably received.”

  The herald withdrew to a respectful distance. The second rider spurred forward towards the rim of the camp. As he drew near it became apparent that he was a small man, slender and young, and rode with more purpose than grace, as if he had dealt rather with farm horses than elegant mounts for princes and their ambassadors. Nearer still, and Cadfael, watching as ardently as any from the crest of the dunes, drew deep breath and let it out again in a great sigh. The rider wore the rusty black habit of the Benedictines, and showed the composed and intent young face of Brother Mark. A man of peace indeed, messenger of bishops and now of princes. No doubt in the world but he had begged this office for himself, none that he had urged upon the prince the practicality of making use of one whose motives could hardly be suspected, who had nothing to gain or lose but his own freedom, life and peace of mind, no axe to grind, no profit to make, no lord to placate in this world, Welsh, Danish, Irish or any other. A man whose humility could move like a charmed barrier between the excesses of other men’s pride.

  Brother Mark reached the edge of the camp, and the guards stood aside to let him pass. It was the young man Turcaill, twice Mark’s modest size, who stepped forward hospitably to take his bridle, as he lighted down and set out briskly to climb the slight slope to where Otir and Cadwaladr waited to greet him.

  In Otir’s tent, crammed to the entrance with the chief among his forces, and every other man who could get a toehold close to the threshold, Brother Mark delivered himself of what he had come to say, partly on his own behalf, partly on behalf of Owain Gwynedd. Aware by instinct of the common assumption among these freebooters that they had rights in the counsels of their leaders, he let his voice ring out to reach the listeners crowding close outside the tent. Cadfael had made it his business to secure a foothold near enough to hear what passed, and no one had raised any objection to his presence. He was a hostage here, concerned after his own fashion as they were after theirs. Every man with a stake in the venture exercised his free right to guard his position.

  “My lords,” said Brother Mark, taking his time to find the right words and give them their due emphasis, “I have asked to undertake this embassage because I am not involved upon any part in this quarrel which brings you into Wales. I bear no arms, and I have nothing to gain, but you and I and every man here have much, all too much, to lose if this dispute ends in needless bloodshed. If I have heard many words of blame upon either side, here I use none. I say only that I deplore enmity and hatred between brothers as between peoples, and hold that all disputes should be resolved without the shedding of blood. And for the prince of Gwynedd, Owain ap Griffith ap Cynan, I say what he has instructed me to say. This quarrel holds good between two men only, and all others should hold back from a cause which is not theirs. Owain Gwynedd bids me say that if Cadwaladr his brother has a grievance, let him come and discuss it face to face, in guaranteed safety to come and to return.”

  “And I am to take his word for that, without security?” Cadwaladr demanded. But by the guarded gleam in his eyes he was not displeased with this approach.

  “As you know very well that you can,” said Mark simply.

  Yes, he knew it. Every
man there knew it. Ireland had had dealings with Owain Gwynedd many times before this, and not always by way of contention. He had kin over there who knew his value as well as it was known in Wales. Cadwaladr’s face had a glossy look of contained pleasure, as though he found this first exchange more than encouraging. Owain had taken warning, seeing the strength of the invading force, and was preparing to be conciliatory.

  “My brother is known for a man of his word,” he conceded graciously. “He must not think that I am afraid to meet him face to face. Certainly I will go.”

  “Wait a little, wait a little!” Otir shifted his formidable bulk on the bench where he sat listening. “Not so fast! This issue may well have arisen between two men, but there are more of us in it now, invited in upon terms to which I hold, and to which I will hold you, my friend. If you are content to let go your assets on any man’s word, without security, I am not willing to let go mine. If you leave here to enter Owain’s camp and submit yourself to Owain’s persuasion or Owain’s compulsion, then I require a hostage for your safe return, not a hollow promise.”

  “Keep me,” said Brother Mark simply. “I am willing to remain as surety that Cadwaladr shall go and come without hindrance.”

  “Were you so charged?” Otir demanded, with some suspicion of the efficacy of such an exchange.

  “No. But I offer it. It is your right, if you fear treachery. The prince would not deny you.”

  Otir eyed the slight figure before him with a cautious degree of approval, but remained sceptical. “And does the prince place on you, Brother, an equal value with his own kinsman and enemy? I think I might be tempted to secure the one bird in hand, and let the other fly or founder.”

  “I am in some sort Owain’s guest,” said Mark steadily, “and in some sort his courier. The value he sets on me is the value of his writ and his honour. I shall never be worth more than I am as you see me here.”