Summer of the Danes bc-18 Read online

  The lone horseman came on without haste into the sparse veil of trees on a ridge at some distance from the rim of the camp. Cadwaladr was as good a judge of the range of arrow or lance as most other men, for there he halted, and sat his horse in silence for some minutes. The first ripple of mild surprise passed through the ranks of Otir’s warriors at this delay.

  “What ails him?” wondered Mark at Cadfael’s shoulder. “He has his freedom to come and go. Owain has made no move to hold him, his Danes want him back. Whatever he brings with him. But it seems to me his crest is high enough. He may as well come in and deliver his news, if he has no cause to be ashamed of it.”

  Instead, the distant rider sent a loud hail echoing over the folds of the dunes to those listening at the stockade. “Send for Otir! I have a message to him from Gwynedd.”

  “What can this be?” asked Heledd, puzzled. “So he might well have, why else did he go to parley? Why deliver it in a bull’s bellow from a hundred paces distance?”

  Otir came surging over the ridge of the camp with a dozen of his chiefs at his heels, Turcaill among them. From the mouth of the stockade he sent back an answering shout: “Here am I, Otir. Bring your message in with you, and welcome.” But if he was not by this time mulling over many misgivings and doubts in his own mind, Cadfael thought, he must be the only man present still sure of his grip on the expedition. And if he was, he chose for the moment to dissemble them, and wait for enlightenment.

  “This is the message I bring you from Gwynedd,” Cadwaladr called, his voice deliberate, high and clear, to be heard by every man within the Danish lines. “Be off back to Dublin, with all your host and all your ships! For Owain and Cadwaladr have made their peace, Cadwaladr will have his lands back, and has no more need of you. Take your dismissal, and go!”

  And on the instant he wheeled his horse, and spurred back into the hollows of the dunes at a gallop, back towards the Welsh camp. A great howl of rage pursued him, and two or three opportunist arrows, fitted on uneasy suspicion, fell harmlessly into the sand behind him. Further pursuit was impossible, he had the wings of any horse the Danes could provide, and he was off back to his brother in all haste, to make good what he had dared to cry aloud. They watched him vanish and reappear twice in his flight, dipping and rising with the waves of the dunes, until he was a mere speck in the far distance.

  “Is this possible?” marvelled Brother Mark, shocked and incredulous. “Can he have turned the trick so lightly and easily? Would Owain countenance it?”

  The clamour of anger and disbelief that had convulsed the Danish freebooters sank with ominous suddenness into the contained and far more formidable murmur of understanding and acceptance. Otir gathered his chiefs about him, turned his back on the act of treachery, and went striding solidly up the dunes to his tent, to take counsel what should follow. There was no wasting time on denunciation or threat, and there was nothing in his broad brown countenance to give away what was going on behind the copper forehead. Otir beheld things as they were, not as he would have wished them. He would never be hesitant in confronting realities.

  “If there’s one thing certain,” said Cadfael, watching him pass by, massive, self-contained and perilous, “it is that there goes one who keeps his own bargains, bad or good, and will demand as much from those who deal with him. With or without Owain, Cadwaladr had better watch his every step, for Otir will have his price out of him, in goods or in blood.”

  No such forebodings troubled Cadwaladr on his ride back to his brother’s camp. When he was challenged at the outer guard he drew rein long enough to reassure the watch blithely: “Let me by, for I am as Welsh as you, and this is where I belong. We have common cause now. I will be answerable to the prince for what I have done.”

  To the prince they admitted, and indeed escorted him, unsure of what lay behind this return, and resolute that he should indeed make good his purpose to Owain before he spoke with any other. There were enough of his old associates among the muster, and he had a way of retaining devotion long after it was proven he deserved none. If he had brought the Danes here to threaten Gwynedd, he might now have conspired with them in some new and subtle measure to get his way. And Cadwaladr stalked into the presence in their midst with a slight, disdainful smile for their implied distrust, as always convinced by the arguments of his own sanguine mind, and sure of his dominance.

  Owain swung about from the section of the stockade that his engineers were reinforcing, to stare and frown at sight of his brother, so unexpectedly returned. A frown as yet only of surprise and wonder, even concern that something unforeseen might have prevented Cadwaladr’s freedom of movement.

  “You back again? What new thing is this?”

  “I am come to myself,” said Cadwaladr with assurance, “and have returned where I belong. I am as Welsh as you, and as royal.”

  “It is high time you remembered it,” said Owain shortly. “And now you are here, what is it you intend?”

  “I intend to see this land freed of Irishman and Dane, as I am instructed is your wish also. I am your brother. Your forces and mine are one force, must be one force. We have the same interests, the same needs, the same aims…”

  Owain’s frown had gathered and darkened on his brow into a thundercloud, as yet mute, but threatening. “Speak plainly,” he said, “I am in no mood to go roundabout. What have you done?”

  “I have flung defiance at Otir and all his Danes!” Cadwaladr was proud of his act, and assured he could make it acceptable, and fuse into one the powers that would enforce it. “I have bidden them board and up sail and be off home to Dublin, for you and I together are resolute to drive them from our soil, and they had best accept their dismissal and spare themselves a bloody encounter. I was at fault ever to bring them here. If you will, yes, I repent of it. Between you and me there is no need of such harsh argument. Now I have dismissed and spurned their bought services. We will rid ourselves of every last man of them. If we are at one, they will not dare stand against us…”

  He had progressed thus far in an ever-hastening torrent of words, as if desperate to convince rather himself than Owain. Misgivings had made their stealthy way into his mind almost without his knowledge, by reason of the chill stillness of his brother’s face, and the grimly silent set of his mouth below the unrelenting frown. Now the flow of eloquence flagged and faltered, and though Cadwaladr drew deep breath and took up the thread again, he could no longer recover the former conviction. “I have still a following, I will do my part. We cannot fail, they have no firm foothold, they will be caged in their own defences, and swept into the sea that brought them here.”

  This time he let fall the very effort of speech. There was even a silence, very eloquent to the several of Owain’s men who had ceased their work on the defences to listen with a free tribesman’s interest, and without any dissembling. There was never born a Welshman who would not speak his mind bluntly even to his prince.

  “What is there,” Owain wondered aloud, to the sky above him and the soil below, “persuades this man still that my words do not mean what they seem to mean in sane men’s ears? Did I not say you get no more from me? Not a coin spent, not a man put at risk! This devilment of your own making, my brother, it was for you to unmake. So I said, so I meant and mean.”

  “And I have gone far to do it!” Cadwaladr flared, flushing red to the brows. “If you will do your part as heartily we are done with them. And who is put at risk? They dare not put it to the test of battle. They will withdraw while there’s time.”

  “And you believe I would have any part in such a betrayal? You made an agreement with these freebooters, now you break it as lightly as blown thistledown, and look to me to praise you for it? If your word and troth is so light, at least let me weight it with my black displeasure. If it were for that alone,” said Owain, abruptly blazing, “I would not lift a finger to save you from your folly. But there is worse. Who is put at risk, indeed! Have you forgotten, or did you never condescend to understand,
that your Danes hold two men of the Benedictine habit, one of them willing hostage for your good faith, which now all men see was not worth a bean, let alone a good man’s liberty and life. Yet more, they also hold a girl, one who was in my retinue and in my care, even if she chose to venture to leave it and make shift alone. For all these three I stand responsible. And all these three you have abandoned to whatever fate your Otir may determine for his hostages, now that you have spited, cheated and imperilled him at the cost of your own honour. This is what you have done! Now I will undo such part of it as I can, and you may make such terms as you can with the allies you have cheated and discarded.”

  And without pause for any rejoinder, even had his brother retained breath enough to speak, Owain flung away from him to call to the nearest of his men: “Send and saddle me my horse! Now, and hasten!”

  Cadwaladr came to his senses with a violent convulsion, and sprang after him to catch him by the arm. “What will you do? Are you mad? There’s no choice now, you are committed as deep as I. You cannot let me fall!”

  Owain plucked himself away from the unwelcome hold, thrusting his brother to arm’s length in brief and bitter detestation. “Leave me! Go or stay, do as you please, but keep out of my sight until I can bear the very look and touch of you. You have not spoken for me. If you have so represented the matter, you lied. If a hair of the young deacon’s head has been harmed, you shall answer for it. If the girl has suffered any insult or hurt, you shall pay the price of it. Go, hide yourself, think on your own hard case, for you are no brother nor ally of mine; you must carry your own follies to their deserved ending.”

  It was not more than two hours past noon when another solitary horseman was sighted from the camp on the dunes, riding fast and heading directly for the Danish perimeter. One man alone, coming with manifest purpose, and making no cautious halt out of range of weapons, but posting vehemently towards the guards, who stood watching his approach with eyes narrowed to weigh up his bearing and accoutrements, and guess at his intent. He wore no mail, and bore no visible arms.

  “No harm in him,” said Torsten. “What he wants he’ll tell us, by the cut of him. Go tell Otir we have yet another visitor coming.”

  It was Turcaill who carried the message, and delivered it as he interpreted it. “A man of note by his beast and his harness. Fairer-headed then I am, he could be a man of our own, and big enough. My match, if I’m a judge. He might even top me. By this he’s close. Shall we bring him in?”

  Otir gave no more than a moment to considering it. “Yes, let him come. A man who spurs straight in to me man to man is worth hearing.”

  Turcaill went back jauntily to the guardpost, in time to see the horseman rein in at the gate, and light down empty-handed to speak for himself. “Go tell Otir and his peers that Owain ap Griffith ap Cynan, prince of Gwynedd, asks admittance to speech with them.”

  There had been very serious and very composed and deliberate consultation in Otir’s inner circle of chieftains since Cadwaladr’s defiance. They were not men of a temper to accept such treachery, and make the best of their way tamely out of the trap in which it had left them. But whatever they had discussed and contemplated in retaliation suddenly hung in abeyance when Turcaill, grinning and glowing with his astonishing embassage, walked in upon their counsels to announce: “My lords, here on the threshold is Owain Gwynedd in his own royal person, asking speech with you.”

  Otir had a sense of occasion that needed no prompting. The astonishment of this arrival he put by in an instant, and rose to stride to the open flap of his tent and bring in the guest with his own hand to the trestle table round which his captains were gathered.

  “My lord prince, whatever your word, your self is welcome. Your line and your reputation are known to us, your forebears on your grandmother’s side are close kin to kin of ours. If we have our dissensions, and have fought on opposing sides before now, and may again, that is no bar but we may meet in fair and open parley.”

  “I expect no less,” said Owain. “You I have no cause otherwise to love, since you are here upon my ground uninvited, and for no good purpose towards me. I am not come to exchange compliments with you, nor to complain of you, but to set right what may be misunderstood between us.”

  “Is there such misunderstanding?” asked Otir with dry good humour. “I had thought our situation must be clear enough, for here I am, and here are you acknowledging freely that here I have no right to be.”

  “That, as at this moment,” said Owain, “we may leave to be resolved at another time. What may have misled you is the visit my brother Cadwaladr paid you this morning.”

  “Ah, that!” said Otir, and smiled. “He is back in your encampment, then?”

  “He is back. He is back, and I am here, to tell you, I could even say, to warn you, that he did not speak for me. I knew nothing of his intent. I thought he had come back to you just as he left you, still your ally, still hostile to me, still a man of his word and bound to you. It was not with my will or leave that he discarded you, and with you the sacred worth of his word. I have not made peace with him, nor will I make war with him against you. He has not won back the lands I took from him, for good reason. The bargain he made with you he must abide as best he may.”

  They were steadily gazing at him, and from him to one another, about the table, waiting to be enlightened, and withholding judgement until the mists cleared.

  “I am slow to see, then, the purpose of this visit,” said Otir civilly, “however much pleasure the company of Owain Gwynedd gives me.”

  “It is very simple,” said Owain. “I am here to lay claim to three hostages you hold in your camp. One of them, the young deacon Mark, willingly remained to ensure the safe return of my brother, who has now made that return impossible, and left the boy to answer for it. The other two, the girl Heledd, a daughter of a canon of Saint Asaph, and the Benedictine Brother Cadfael of the abbey of Shrewsbury, were captured by this young warrior who conducted me in to you, when he raided for provisions far up the Menai. I came to ensure that no harm should come to any of these, by reason of Cadwaladr’s abandonment of his agreement. They are no concern of his. They are all three under my protection. I am here to offer a fair ransom for them, no matter what may follow between your people and mine. My own responsibilities I will discharge honourably. Cadwaladr’s are nothing to do with me. Exact from him what he owes you, not from any of these three innocent people.”

  Otir did not openly say: “So I intend!” but he smiled a tight and relishing smile that spoke just as clearly for him. “You may well interest me,” he said, “and I make no doubt we could agree upon a fair ransom, between us. But for this while you must hold me excused if I reserve all my assets. When I have given consideration to all things, then you shall know whether, and at what price, I am willing to sell your guests back to you.”

  “At least, then,” said Owain, “give me your pledge that they shall come back to me unharmed when I do recover them, whether by purchase or by capture.”

  “I do not spoil what I may wish to sell,” agreed Otir. “And when I collect what is due to me, it will be from the debtor. That I promise you.”

  “And I take your word,” said Owain. “Send to me when you will.”

  “And there is no more to be said between us two?”

  “As yet,” said Owain, “there is nothing more. All your choices you have reserved. So do I reserve mine.”

  Cadfael left the place where he had stood motionless and quiet, in the lee of the tent, and followed down through the mute ranks of the Danes as they drew aside to give the prince of Gwynedd clear passage back to his waiting horse. Owain mounted and rode, without haste now, more certain of his enemy than ever he had been since boyhood of his brother. When the fair head, uncovered to the sun, had twice dipped from sight and reappeared again, and was dwindling into a distant speck of pale gold in the distance, Cadfael turned back along the fold of the dunes, and went to look for Heledd and Mark. They would be together. Mar
k had taken upon himself, somewhat diffidently, the duty of keeping a guardian eye upon the girl’s privacy. She might shake him off at will when she did not want him; when if ever she did want him, he would be within call. Cadfael had found it oddly touching how Heledd bore with this shy but resolute attendance, for she used Mark as an elder sister might, considerate of his dignity and careful never to open upon him the perilous weaponry she had at her disposal in dealing with other men, and sometimes had been known to indulge for her own pleasure no less than in hurt retaliation against her father. For there was no question but this Heledd, with her gown frayed at the sleeve and crumpled by sleeping in a scooped hollow of sand lined with grass, and her hair unbraided and loose about her shoulders in a mane of darkness burnished into blue highlights by the sun, and her feet as often as not bare in the warm sand and the cool shallows along the seaward shore, was perceptibly closer to pure beauty than she had ever been before, and could have wreaked havoc in most young men’s lives here had she been so minded. Nor was it wholly in her own defence that she went about the camp so discreetly, suppressing her radiance, and avoided contact with her captors but for the young boy who waited on her needs and Turcaill, to whose teasing company she had become accustomed, and whose shafts she took passing pleasure in returning.

  There was a bloom upon Heledd in these days of captivity, a summer gloss that was more than the sheen of the sun on her face. It seemed that now that she was a prisoner, however easy was her captivity within its strict limits, and had accepted her own helplessness, now that all action and all decisions were denied her she had abandoned all anxiety with them, and was content to live in the passing day and look no further. More content than she had been, Cadfael thought, since Bishop Gilbert came to Llanelwy, and set about reforming his clergy while her mother was on her deathbed. She might even have suffered the extreme bitterness of wondering whether her father was not looking forward to the death that would secure him his tenure. There was no such cloud upon her now, she radiated a warmth that seemed to have no cares left in the world. What she could not influence she had settled down to experience and survive, even to enjoy.