Summer of the Danes bc-18 Read online

  Otir let loose a great bellow of laughter, and struck his palms together. “As good an answer as I need. Stay, then, Brother, and be welcome! You have a brother here already. Be free of my camp, as he is, but I warn you, never venture too near the rim. My guards have their orders What I have taken I keep, until it is fairly redeemed. When the lord Cadwaladr returns, you have due leave to go back to Owain, and give him such answer as we two here see fit.”

  It was, Cadfael thought, a deliberate warning to Cadwaladr, as well as to Mark. There was no great trust between these two. If Otir required a surety that Cadwaladr would come back unmolested, it was certainly not simply out of concern for Cadwaladr’s safety, but rather taking care of Otir’s own bargain. The man was his investment, to be guarded with care, but never, never, to be wholly trusted. Once out of sight, who knew what use so rash a princeling would make of whatever advantage circumstances offered him?

  Cadwaladr rose and stretched his admirable body with sleek, pleasurable assurance. Whatever reservations others might have, he had interpreted his brother’s approach as wholly encouraging. The threat to the peace of Gwynedd had been shrewdly assessed, and Owain was ready to give ground, by mere inches it might be, but sufficient to buy off chaos. And now all he, Cadwaladr, had to do was go to the meeting, behave himself seemly before other eyes, as he knew well how to do with grace, and in private surrender not one whit of his demands, and he would regain all, every yardland that had been taken from him, every man of his former following. There could be no other ending, when Owain spoke so softly and reasonably at the first advance.

  “I go to my brother,” he said, grimly smiling, “and what I bring back with me shall be to your gain as well as mine.”

  Brother Mark sat with Cadfael in a hollow of the sand dunes overlooking the open sea, in the clear, almost shadowless light of afternoon. Before them the swathes of saud, sculptured by sea winds, went rolling down in waves of barren gold and coarse, tenacious grass to the water’s edge. At a safe depth offshore seven of Otir’s ships rode at anchor, four of them cargo hulls, squat and sturdy, capacious enough to accommodate a wealth of plunder if it came to wresting their price out of Gwynedd by force, the other three the largest of his longships. The smaller and faster vessels all lay within the mouth of the bay, where there was safe anchorage at need, and comfortable beaching inshore. Beyond the ships to westward the open, silvery water extended, mirroring a pallid, featureless blue sky, but dappled in several places by the veiled gold of shoals.

  “I knew,” said Mark, “that I should find you here. But I would have come, even without that inducement. I was on my way back to the meeting-place when they passed by. I saw you prisoners, you and the girl. The best I could do was make for Carnarvon, and carry that tale to Owain. He has your case well in mind. But what else he has in his mind, with this meeting he has sought, I do not know. It seems you have not fared so badly with these Danes. I find you in very good heart. I confess I feared for Heledd.”

  “There was no need,” Cadfael said. “It was plain we had our value for the prince, and he would not suffer us to go unransomed, one way or another. They do not waste their hostages. They have a reward promised, they are bent on earning it as cheaply as possible, they’ll do nothing to bring out the whole of Gwynedd angry and in arms, not unless the whole venture turns sour on them. Heledd has been offered no affront.”

  “And has she told you what possessed her to run from us at Aber, and how she contrived to leave the llys? And the horse she rode, for I saw it led along with the raiders, and that was good harness and gear from the prince’s stable, how did she come by her horse?”

  “She found it,” said Cadfael simply, “saddled and bridled and tethered among the trees outside the walls, when she slipped out at the gate behind the backs of the guards. She says she would have fled afoot, if need had been, but there was the beast ready and waiting for her. And what do you make of that? For I am sure she speaks truth.”

  Mark gave his mind to the question very gravely for some minutes. “Bledri ap Rhys?” he hazarded dubiously. “Did he indeed intend flight, and make certain of a mount while the gates were open, during the day? And some other, suspicious of his stubborn adherence to his lord, prevented the departure? But there was nothing to show that he ever thought of leaving. It seemed to me that the man was well content to be Owain’s guest, and have Owain’s hand cover him from harm.”

  “There is but one man who knows the truth,” said Cadfael, “and he has good reason to keep his mouth shut. But for all that, truth will out, or the prince will never let it rest. So I said to Heledd, and the girl says in reply: “You foretell another death. How does that amend anything?””

  “She says well,” agreed Mark sombrely. “She has better sense than most princes and many priests. I have not yet seen her, here within the camp. Is she free to move as she pleases, within limits, like you?”

  “You may see her this moment,” said Cadfael, “if you please to turn your head, and look down to the right there, where the spit of sand juts out into the shallows yonder.”

  Brother Mark turned his head obediently to follow where Cadfael pointed. The tongue of sand, tipped with a ridge of coarse blond grass to show that it was not quite submerged even at a normal high tide, thrust out into the shallows on their right like a thin wrist and hand, straining towards the longer arm that reached southward from the shores of Anglesey. There was soil enough on its highest point to support a few scrub bushes, and there a minute outcrop of rock stood up through the soft sand. Heledd was walking without haste along the stretched wrist towards this stony knuckle, at one point plashing ankle-deep through shallow water to reach it; and there she sat down on the rock, gazing out to sea, towards the invisible and unknown coast of Ireland. At this distance she appeared very fragile, very vulnerable, a small, slender, solitary figure. It might have been thought that she was withdrawing herself as far as possible from her captors, in a hapless defence against a fate she had no means of escaping in the body. Alone by the sea, with empty sky above her, and empty ocean before her, at least her mind sought a kind of freedom. Brother Cadfael found the picture deceptively appealing. Heledd was shrewdly aware of the strength, as well as the weakness, of her situation, and knew very well that she had little to fear, even had she been inclined to fear, which decidedly she was not. She knew, also, how far she could go in asserting her freedom of movement. She could not have approached the shores of the enclosed bay without being intercepted long before this. They knew she could swim. But this outer beach offered her no possibility of escape. Here she could wade through the shallows, and no one would lift a finger to prevent. She was hardly likely to strike out for Ireland, even if there had not been a flotilla of Danish ships offshore. She sat very still, her bare arms wreathed about her knees, gazing westward, but with head so alertly erect that even at this distance she seemed to be listening intently. Gulls wheeled and cried above her. The sea lay placid, sunlit, for the moment complacent as a cat. And Heledd waited and listened.

  “Did ever creature seem more forlorn!” Brother Mark wondered, half aloud. “Cadfael, I must speak with her as soon as may be. In Carnarvon I have seen her bridegroom. He came hotfoot from the island to join Owain, she should know that she is not forsaken. This Ieuan is a decent, stalwart man, and will put up a good fight for his bride. Even if Owain could be tempted to leave the girl to her fate here, and that is impossible!, Ieuan would never suffer it. If he had to venture for her with no forces but his own small following, I am sure he would never give up. Church and prince have offered her to him, and he is afire for her.”

  “I do believe,” Cadfael said, “that they have found her a good man, with all the advantages but one. A fatal lack! He is not of her choosing.”

  “She might do very much worse. When she meets him, she may be wholly glad of him. And in this world,” Mark reflected ruefully, “women, like men, must make the best of what they can get.”

  “With thirty years and more behin
d her,” said Cadfael, “she might be willing to settle for that. At eighteen, I doubt it!”

  “If he comes in arms to carry her away, at eighteen that might weigh with her,” Mark observed, but not with entire conviction in his tone.

  Cadfael had turned his head and was looking back towards the crest of the dunes, where a man’s figure had just breasted the rise and was descending towards the beach. The long, generous stride, the exuberant thrust of the broad shoulders, the joyous carriage of the flaxen head, bright in the sun, would have given him a name even at a greater distance.

  “I would not wager on the issue,” said Cadfael cautiously. “And even so, he comes a little late, for someone else has already come in arms and carried her away. That issue, too, is still in doubt.”

  The young man Turcaill erupted into Brother Mark’s view only as he drew towards the spit of sand, and scorning to go the whole way to walk it dryshod, waded cheerfully through the shallows directly to where Heledd sat. Her back remained turned towards him, but doubtless her ears were pricked.

  “Who is that?” demanded Mark, stiffening at the sight.

  “That is one Turcaill, son of Turcaill, and if you saw us marched away to his ship, you must have seen that lofty head go by. It can hardly be missed, he tops the rest of us by the length of it.”

  “That is the man who made her prisoner?” Mark was frowning down at Heledd’s minute island, where still she maintained her pretence at being unaware of any intruder into her solitude.

  “It was you said it. He came in arms and carried her away.”

  “What does he want with her now?” Mark wondered, staring.

  “No harm. He’s subject to authority here, but even aside from that, no harm.” The young man had emerged in a brief flurry of spray beside Heledd’s rock, and dropped with large, easy grace into the sand at her feet. She gave him no acknowledgement, unless it could be considered an acknowledgement that she turned a little away from him. Whatever they may have said to each other could not be heard at such a distance, and it was strange that Cadfael should suddenly feel certain that this was not the first time Heledd had sat there, nor the first time that Turcaill had coiled his long legs comfortably into the sand beside her.

  “They have a small private war going on,” he said placidly. “They both take pleasure in it. He loves to make her spit fire, and she delights in flouting him.”

  A children’s game, he thought, a lively battle that passes the time pleasantly for both of them, all the more pleasantly because neither of them need take it seriously. By the same token, neither need we take it seriously.

  It occurred to him afterwards that he was breaking his own rule, and wagering on an issue that was still in doubt.

  Chapter Nine.

  ” IN THE ABANDONED farmstead where Owain had set up his headquarters, a mile from the edge of Otir’s camp, Cadwaladr set forth the full tale of his grievances, with some discretion because he spoke in the presence not only of his brother, but of Hywel, against whom he felt perhaps the greatest and most bitter animosity, and of half a dozen of Owain’s captains besides, men he did not want to alienate if he could keep their sympathy. But he was incapable of damping down his indignation throughout the lengthy tale, and the very reserve and tolerance with which they listened to him aggravated his burning resentment. By the end of it he was afire with his wrongs, and ready to proceed to what had been implied in every word, the threat of open warfare if his lands were not restored to him.

  Owain sat for some minutes silent, contemplating his brother with a countenance Cadwaladr could not read. At length he stirred, without haste, and said calmly: “You are under some misapprehension concerning the state of the case, and you have conveniently forgotten a small matter of a man’s death, for which a price was exacted. You have brought here these Danes of Dublin as a means of forcing my hand. Not even by a brother is my hand so easily forced. Now let me show you the reality. The boot is on the other foot now. It is no longer a matter of you saying to me: give me back all my lands, or I will let loose these barbarians on Gwynedd until you do. Now hear me saying to you: You brought this host here, now you get rid of them, and then you may, I say may! be given back what was formerly yours.”

  It was by no means what Cadwaladr had hoped for, but he was so sure of his fortune with such allies that he could not refrain from putting the best construction upon it. Owain meant more and better than he was yet prepared to say. Often before he had proved pliant towards his younger brother’s offences, so he would again. In his own way he was already declaring an alliance to defy and expel the foreign invaders. It could not be otherwise.

  “If you are ready to receive and join with me…” he had begun, for his high temper mildly and civilly, but Owain cut him off without mercy.

  “I have declared no such intent. I tell you again, get rid of them, and only then shall I consider restoring you to your right in Ceredigion. Have I even said that I promise you anything? It rests with you, and not solely upon this present ground, whether you ever rule in Wales again. I promise you nothing, no help in sending these Danes back across the sea, no payment of any kind, no truce unless or until I choose to make truce with them. They are your problem, not mine. I may have, and reserve, my own quarrel with them for daring to invade my realm. But now any such consideration is in abeyance. Your quarrel with them, if you dismiss their help now, is your problem.”

  Cadwaladr had flushed into angry crimson, his eyes hot with incredulous rage. “What is this you are demanding of me? How do you expect me to deal with such a force? Unaided? What do you want me to do?”

  “There is nothing simpler,” said Owain imperturbably. “Keep the bargain you made with them. Pay them the fee you promised, or take the consequences.”

  “And that is all you have to say to me?”

  “That is all I have to say. But you may have time to think what further may be said between us if you show sense. Stay here overnight by all means,” said Owain, “or return when you will. But you will get no more from me. While there’s a Dane uninvited on Welsh ground.”

  It was so plainly a dismissal, and Owain so unremittingly the prince rather than the brother, that Cadwaladr rose tamely and went out from the presence shocked and silent. But it was not in his nature to accept the possibility that his endeavours had all come to nothing. Within his brother’s compact and well-planned camp he was received and acknowledged as both guest and kin, sacred and entitled to the ultimate in courtesy on the one ground, treated with easy familiarity on the other. Such usage only confirmed his native optimism and reassured his arrogant self-confidence. What he had heard was the surface that covered a very different reality. There were many among Owain’s chiefs who kept a certain affection for this troublesome prince, however sorely that affection had been tried in the past, and however forthrightly they condemned the excesses to which his lofty temper drove him. How much greater, he reflected, at Owain’s campaign table and in Owain’s tent overnight, was the love his brother bore him. Time and again he had flouted it, and been chastened, even cast out of all grace, but only for a while. Time and again Owain had softened towards him, and taken him back brotherly into the former inescapable affection. So he would again. Why should this time be different?

  He rose in the morning certain that he could manipulate his brother as surely as he had always done before. The blood that held them together could not be washed away by however monstrous a misdeed. For the sake of that blood, once the die was cast, Owain would do better than he had said, and stand by his brother to the hilt, against whatever odds.

  All Cadwaladr had to do was cast the die that would force Owain’s hand. The result was never in doubt. Once deeply embroiled, his brother would not desert him. A less sanguine man might have seen these calculations as providing only a somewhat suspect wager. Cadwaladr saw the end result as certainty.

  There were some in the camp who had been his men before Hywel drove him out of Ceredigion. He reckoned their numbers, and felt
a phalanx at his back. He would not be without advocates. But he used none of them at this juncture. In the middle of the morning he had his horse saddled, and rode out of Owain’s encampment without taking any formal leave, as though to return to the Danes, and take up his bargaining with them with as little loss of cattle or gold or face as possible. Many saw him go with some half-reluctant sympathy. So, probably, did Owain himself, watching the solitary horseman withdraw across open country, until he vanished into one of the rolling hollows, to reappear on the further slope already shrunken to a tiny, anonymous figure alone in the encroaching waste of blown sand. It was something new in Cadwaladr to accept reproof, shoulder the burden laid on him, and go back without complaint to do the best he could with it. If he maintained this unexpected grace, it would be well worth a brother’s while to salvage him, even now.

  The reappearance of Cadwaladr, sighted before noon from the guard-lines covering Otir’s landward approach, excited no surprise. He had been promised freedom to go and to return. The watch, captained by the man Torsten, he who was reputed to be able to split a sapling at fifty paces, sent word inward to Otir that his ally was returning, alone and unmolested, as he had been promised. No one had expected any other development; they waited only to hear what reception he had had, and what terms he was bringing back from the prince of Gwynedd.

  Cadfael had been keeping a watchful eye on the approaches since morning, from a higher spot well within the lines, and at the news that Cadwaladr had been sighted across the dunes Heledd came curiously to see for herself, and Brother Mark with her.

  “If his crest is high,” Cadfael said judicially, “when he gets near enough for us to take note, then Owain has in some degree given way to him. Or else he believes he can prevail on him to give way with a little more persuasion. If there is one deadly sin this Cadwaladr will never fall by, it is surely despair.”