Summer of the Danes bc-18 Page 17

  They were standing among the thin screen of trees on the ridge when Cadfael found them. They had seen Owain arrive, and they had climbed up here to watch him depart. Heledd was still staring wide-eyed and silent after the last glimpse of the prince’s bright head, lost now in distance. Mark stood always a little apart from her, avoiding touch. She might treat him sisterly, but Cadfael wondered at times whether Mark felt himself in danger, and kept always a space between them. Who could ensure that his own feelings should always remain brotherly? The very concern he felt for her, thus suspended between an uncertain past and a still more questionable future, was a perilous pitfall.

  “Owain will have none of it,” Cadfael announced practically. “Cadwaladr lied, Owain has set the matter straight. His brother must work out his own salvation or damnation unaided.”

  “How do you know so much?” asked Mark mildly.

  “I took care to be close. Do you think a good Welshman would neglect his interests where the contrivances of his betters are concerned?”

  “I had thought a good Welshman never acknowledged any betters,” said Mark, and smiled. “You had your ear to the leather of the tent?”

  “For your benefit no less. Owain has offered to buy us all three out of Otir’s hold. And Otir, if he has held back from coming to terms at once, has promised us life and limb and this degree of freedom until he comes to a decision. We have nothing worse to fear.”

  “I was not in any fear,” said Heledd, still gazing thoughtfully southward. “Then what comes next, if Owain has left his brother to his fate?”

  “Why, we sit back and wait, here where we are, until either Otir decides to accept his price for us, or Cadwaladr somehow scrapes together whatever fool sum in money and stock he promised his Danes.”

  “And if Otir cannot wait, and decides to cut his fee by force out of Gwynedd?” Mark wondered.

  “That he will not do, unless some fool starts the killing and forces his hand. I exact my dues, he said, from the debtor who owes them. And he means it, not now simply out of self-interest, but out of a very deep grudge against Cadwaladr, who has cheated him. He will not bring Owain and all his power into combat if by any means he can avoid it and still get his profit. And he is as able to make his own dispositions,” said Cadfael shrewdly, “as any other man, and for all I can see, better than most. Not only Owain and his brother are calling the shots here, Otir may well have a trick or two of his own up his sleeve.”

  “I want no killing,” said Heledd peremptorily, as though she gave orders by right to all men presently in arms. “Not for us, not for them. I would rather continue here prisoner than have any man brought to his death. And yet,” she said grieving, “I know it cannot go on thus deadlocked, it must end somehow.”

  It would end, Cadfael reflected, unless some unforeseen disaster intervened, in Otir’s acceptance of Owain’s ransom for his captives, most probably after Otir had dealt, in whatever fashion he saw fit, with Cadwaladr. That score would rank first in his mind, and be tackled first. He had no obligation now to his sometime ally, that compact had been broken once for all. Cadwaladr might go into exile, once he had paid his dues, or go on his knees to his brother and beg back his lands. Otir owed him nothing. And since he had all his following to pay, he would not refuse the additional profit of Owain’s ransom. Heledd would go free, back to Owain’s charge. And there was a man now in Owain’s muster who was waiting to claim her on her return. A good man, so Mark said, presentable to the eye, well-thought of, a man of respectable lands, in good odour with the prince. She might do very much worse.

  “There is no cause in the world,” said Mark, “why it should not end for you in a life well worth the cherishing. This Ieuan whom you have never seen is wholly disposed to receive and love you, and he is worth your acceptance.”

  “I do believe you,” she said, for her almost submissively. But her eyes were steady upon a far distance over the sea, where the light of air and the light of water melted into a shimmering mist, indissoluble and mysterious, everything beyond hidden in radiance. And Cadfael wondered suddenly if he was not, after all, imagining the conviction in Brother Mark’s voice, and the womanly grace of resignation in Heledd’s.

  Chapter Ten.

  ” TURCAILL CAME DOWN from conference in Otir’s tent towards the shore of the sheltered bay, where his lithe little dragon-ship lay close inshore, its low sides mirrored in the still water of the shallows. The anchorage at the mouth of the Menai was separated from the broad sandy reaches of the bay to southward by a long spit of shingle, beyond which the water of two rivers and their tributaries wound its way to the strait and the open sea, in a winding course through the waste of sands. Turcaill stood to view the whole sweep of land and water, the long stretch of the bay extending more than two miles to the south, pale gold shoals and sinuous silver water, the green shore of Arfon beyond, rolling back into the distant hills. The tide was flowing, but it would be two hours or more yet before it reached its highest, and covered all but a narrow belt of salt marsh fringing the shore of the bay. By midnight it would be on the turn again, but full enough to float the little ship with its shallow draught close inshore. Inland of the saltings there would, if luck held, be scrub growth that would give cover to a few skilled and silent men moving inland. Nor would they have far to go. Owain’s encampment must span the waist of the peninsula. Even at its narrowest point it might be as much as a mile across, but he would have pickets on either shore. Fewer and less watchful, perhaps, on the bay shore, since attack by ship was unlikely that way. Otir’s larger vessels would not attempt to thread the shoals. The Welsh would be concentrating their watch on the sea to westward.

  Turcaill was whistling to himself, very softly and contentedly, as he scanned a sky just deepening into dusk. Two hours yet before they could set out, and with the evening clouds had gathered lightly over the heavens, a grey veil, not threatening rain, but promising cover against too bright a night. From his outer anchorage he would have to make a detour round the bar of shingle to the mouth of the river to reach the clear channel, but that would add only some quarter of an hour to the journey. Well before midnight, he decided blithely, we can embark.

  He was still happily whistling when he turned back to return to the heart of the camp and consider on the details of his expedition. And there confronting him was Heledd, coming down from the ridge with her long, springy stride, the dark mane of her hair swaying about her shoulders in the breeze that had quickened with evening, bringing the covering of cloud. Every encounter between them was in some sense a confrontation, bringing with it a racing of the blood on both sides, curiously pleasurable.

  “What are you doing here?” he asked, the whistle breaking off short. “Were you thinking of escaping across the sands?” He was mocking her, as always.

  “I followed you,” she said simply. “Straight from Otir’s tent, and off with you this way, and eyeing the sky and the tide and that snake-ship of yours. I was curious.”

  “The first time ever you were curious about me or anything I did,” he said cheerfully. “Why now?”

  “Because suddenly I see you head-down on a hunt, and I cannot but wonder what mischief you’re about this time.”

  “No mischief,” said Turcaill. “Why should there be?” He was regarding her, as they walked back slowly together, with somewhat narrower attention than he gave to their usual easy skirmishing, for it seemed to him that she was at least half serious in her probing, even in some way anxious. Here in her captivity, between two armed camps, a solitary woman might well scent mischief, the killing kind, in every move, and fear for her own people.

  “I am not a fool,” said Heledd impatiently. “I know as well as you do that Otir is not going to let Cadwaladr’s treason go unavenged, nor let his fee slip through his fingers. He’s no such man! All this day he and all his chiefs have had their heads together over the next move, and now suddenly you come bursting out shining with the awful delight you fool men feel in plunging headfirst into
a fight, and you try to tell me there’s nothing in the wind. No mischief!”

  “None that need trouble you,” he assured her. “Otir has no quarrel with Owain or any of Owain’s host, they have cast off Cadwaladr to untie his own knots and pay his own debts, why should we want to provoke worse? If the promised price is paid, we shall be off to sea and trouble you no more.”

  “A good riddance that will be,” said Heledd sharply. “But why should I trust you and your fellows to manage things so well? It needs only one chance wounding or killing, and there’ll be blazing warfare, and a great slaughter.”

  “And since you are so sure I’m deep in this mischief you foresee…”

  “The very instrument of it,” she said vehemently.

  “Then can you not trust me to bring it to a good end?” He was laughing at her again, but with a degree of almost apprehensive delicacy.

  “You least of all,” she said with vicious certainty. “I know you, you have a lust after danger, there’s nothing so foolhardy but you would dare it, and bring down everything in a bloody battle on all of us.”

  “And you, being a good Welshwoman,” said Turcaill, wryly smiling, “fear for your Gwynedd, and all those men of Owain’s host camped there barely a mile from us.”

  “I have a bridegroom among them,” she reminded him smartly, and set her teeth with a snap.

  “So you have. I will not forget your bridegroom,” Turcaill promised, grinning. “At every step I take, I will think on your Ieuan ab Ifor, and draw in my hand from any stroke that may bring him into peril of battle. There’s no other consideration could so surely curb any rashness of mine as the need to see you married to a good, solid uchelwr from Anglesey. Will that content you?”

  She had turned to look at him intently, her great eyes purple-black and unwaveringly earnest. “So you are indeed bound on some mad foray for Otir! You have as good as said so.” And as he did not make any protest or attempt to deny it further: “Make good what you have promised me, then. Take good care! Come back without hurt to any. I would not have even you come to harm.” And meeting the somewhat too bright intelligence of the blue eyes, she added with a toss of her head, but with a little too much haste for the disdainful dignity at which she aimed: “Let alone my own countrymen.”

  “And foremost of all your countrymen, Ieuan ab Ifor,” Turcaill agreed with a solemn face: but she had already turned her back on him and set off with erected head and vehement stride towards the sheltered hollow where her own small tent was placed.

  Cadfael arose from his chosen nest in the lee of the squat salt bushes wakeful and restless for no good reason, left Mark already sleeping, and dropped his cloak beside his friend, for the night was warm. It was at Mark’s insistence that they lay always within call of Heledd’s tent, though not so close as to offend her independent spirit. Cadfael had small doubt by this time of her safety within the Danish enclave. Otir had given his orders, and no man of his following was likely to take them lightly, even if their minds had not been firmly fixed upon more profitable plunder than one Welsh girl, however tempting. Adventurers, Cadfael had noted throughout his own early life of adventure, were eminently practical people, and knew the value of gold and possessions. Women came much lower down in the scale of desirable loot.

  He looked towards where her low windbreak lay, and all was dark and silent there. She must be asleep. For no comprehensible reason, sleep eluded him. The sky bore a light covering of cloud, through which only a star here and there showed faintly. There was no wind, and tonight there would be no moon. The cloud might well thicken by morning, even bring rain. At this midnight hour the stillness was profound, even oppressive, the darkness over the dunes shading away both east and west into a very faint impression of lambent light from the sea, now almost at its fullest tide. Cadfael turned eastward, where the line of guards was more lightly manned, and he was less likely to excite any challenge by being up and about in the dead of night. There were no fires, except those turfed down in the heart of the camp to burn slowly till morning, and no torches to prick through the darkness. Otir’s watchmen relied on their night eyes. So did Brother Cadfael. Shapes grew out of shapelessness gradually, even the curves and slopes of the dunes were dimly perceptible. It was strange how a man could be so solitary in the midst of thousands, as if solitude could be achieved at will, and how one to all intents and purposes a prisoner could feel himself freer than his captors, who went hampered by their numbers and chained by their discipline.

  He had reached the crest of the ridge above the anchorage, where the lighter and faster Danish ships lay snugly between the open sea and the strait. A wavering line of elusive light, appearing and vanishing as he watched, lipped the shore, and there within its curve they lay, so many lean, long fishes just perceptible as darker flecks briefly outlined by the stroking of the tide. They quivered, but did not stir from their places. Except for one, the leanest and smallest. He saw it creep out from its anchorage so softly that for a moment he thought he was imagining the forward surge. Then he caught the dip of the oars, pinpricks of fire, gone almost before he could realise what they were. No sound came up to him from the distance, even in this nocturnal stillness and silence. The least and probably fastest of the dragon-ships was snaking out into the mouth of the Menai, heading eastward into the channel.

  Another foraging expedition? If that was the intent, it would make good sense to take to the strait by night, and lie up somewhere well past Carnarvon to begin their forays ashore before dawn. The town would certainly have been left well garrisoned, but the shores beyond were still open to raiding, even if most of the inhabitants had removed their stock and all their portable goods into the hills. And what was there among the belongings of a good Welshman that was not portable? With ease they could abandon their homesteads if need arose, and rear them again when the danger was over. They had been doing it for centuries, and were good at it. Yet these nearest fields and settlements had already been looted once, and could not be expected to go on providing food for a small army. Cadfael would have expected rather that they would prefer combing the soft coast southward from the open sea, Owain’s muster notwithstanding. Yet this small hunter set off silently into the strait. In that direction lay only the long passage of the Menai, or, alternatively, she could be meaning to round the bar of shingle and turn south into the bay by favour of this high tide. Unlikely, on the face of it, though so small a fish could find ample draught for some hours yet, until the tide was again well on the ebb towards its lowest. A larger craft, Cadfael reflected thoughtfully, would never venture there. Could that in itself be the reason why this one was chosen, and despatched alone? Then for what nocturnal purpose?”

  “So they’re gone,” said Heledd’s voice behind him, very softly and sombrely.

  She had come up at his shoulder soundlessly, barefoot in the sand still warm from the day’s sunlight. She was looking down to the shore as he was, and her gaze followed the faintly luminous single stroke of the longship’s wake, withdrawing rapidly eastward. Cadfael turned to look at her, where she stood composed and still, the cloud of her long hair about her.

  “So they’re gone! Had you wind of it beforehand? It does not surprise you!”

  “No,” she said, “it does not surprise me. Not that I know anything of what is in their minds, but there has been something brewing all day since Cadwaladr so spited them as he did. What they are planning for him I do not know, and what it may well mean for all the rest of us I dare not guess, but surely nothing good.”

  “That is Turcaill’s ship,” said Cadfael. It was already so far lost in the darkness that they could follow it now only with the mind’s eye. But it would not yet have reached the end of the shingle bar.

  “So it would be,” she said. “If there’s mischief afoot, he must be in it. There’s nothing Otir could demand of him, however mad, but he would plunge into it headfirst, joyfully, with never a thought for the consequences.”

  “And you have thought of the poss
ible consequences,” Cadfael deduced reasonably, “and do not like them.”

  “No,” she said vehemently, “I do not like them! There could be battle and slaughter if by some foul chance he kills a man of Owain’s. It needs no more to start such a blaze.”

  “And what makes you think he is going anywhere near Owain’s men, to risk such a chance?”

  “How should I know what the fool has in mind?” she said impatiently. “What troubles me is what he may bring down on the rest of us.”

  “I would not so readily score him down as a fool,” said Cadfael mildly. “I would have reckoned him as shrewd in the wits as he is an able man of his hands. Whatever he’s about, judge it when he returns, for it’s my belief he’ll come back successful.” He was careful not to add: “So leave fretting over him!” She would have denied any such concern, though now with less ferocity than once she would have attempted. Best leave well alone. However she might hope to deceive others, Heledd was not the girl to be able to deceive herself.

  And away there to the south in Owain’s camp was the man she had never yet seen, Ieuan ab Ifor, not much past thirty, which is not all that old, well thought of by his prince, holder of good lands, and personable to the beholder’s eye, possessed of every asset but one, and invisible and negligible without it. He was not the man she had chosen.

  “Tomorrow will show,” said Heledd, with relentless practicality. “We had best go get our sleep, and be ready for it.”

  They had rounded the tip of the shingle bar, and kept well out in the main channel as they turned southward into the bay. Once well within, they could draw inshore and keep a watch on the coastline for the first outlying pickets of Owain’s camp. Turcaill’s boy Leif kneeled on the tiny foredeck, narrowing his eyes attentively upon the shore. He was fifteen years old, and spoke the Welsh of Gwynedd, for his mother had been snatched from this same north-western coast at twelve years old, on a passing Danish raid, and had married a Dane of the Dublin kingdom. But she had never forgotten her language, and had spoken it always with her son, from the time that he learned to speak at all. A half-naked boy in the high summer, Leif could go among the Welsh trefs and the fishing villages here and pass for one of their own, and his talent for acquiring information had brought in beforehand a useful harvest.