Summer of the Danes bc-18 Read online

  The long meal was almost at its end, only the wine and mead still circling, and the hum of voices had mellowed into a low, contented buzzing like a hive of bees drunken and happy among summer meadows. In the centre of the high table Bishop Gilbert had taken up the fine scroll of his letter and broken the seal, and was on his feet with the vellum leaf unrolled in his hands. Roger de Clinton’s salutation was meant to be declaimed in public for its full effect, and had been carefully worded to impress the laity no less than the Celtic clergy, who might be most in need of a cautionary word. Gilbert’s sonorous voice made the most of it. Cadfael, listening, thought that Archbishop Theobald would be highly content with the result of his embassage.

  “And now, my lord Owain,” Gilbert pursued, seizing the mellowed moment for which he must have been waiting throughout the feast, “I ask your leave to introduce a petitioner, who comes asking your indulgence for a plea on behalf of another. My appointment here gives me some right, by virtue of my office, to speak for peace, between individual men as between peoples. It is not good that there should be anger between brothers. Just cause there may have been at the outset, but there should be a term to every outlawry, every quarrel. I ask an audience for an ambassador who speaks on behalf of your brother Cadwaladr, that you may be reconciled with him as is fitting, and restore him to his lost place in your favour. May I admit Bledri ap Rhys?”

  There was a brief, sharp silence, in which every eye turned upon the prince’s face. Cadfael felt the young man beside him stiffen and quiver in bitter resentment of such a breach of hospitality, for clearly this had been planned deliberately without a word of warning to the prince, without any prior consultation, taking an unfair advantage of the courtesy such a man would undoubtedly show towards the host at whose table he was seated. Even had this audience been sought in private, Cuhelyn would have found it deeply offensive. To precipitate it thus publicly, in hall before the entire household, was a breach of courtesy only possible to an insensitive Norman set up in authority among a people of whom he had no understanding. But if the liberty was as displeasing to Owain as it was to Cuhelyn, he did not allow it to appear. He let the silence lie just long enough to leave the issue in doubt, and perhaps shake Gilbert’s valiant self-assurance, and then he said clearly: “At your wish, my lord bishop, I will certainly hear Bledri ap Rhys. Every man has the right to ask and to be heard. Without prejudice to the outcome!”

  It was plain, as soon as the bishop’s steward brought the petitioner into the hall, that he had not come straight from travel to ask for this audience. Somewhere about the bishop’s enclave he had been waiting at ease for his entry here, and had prepared himself carefully, very fine and impressive in his dress and in his person, every grain of dust from the roads polished away. A tall, broad-shouldered, powerful man, black-haired and black-moustached, with an arrogant beak of a nose, and a bearing truculent rather than conciliatory. He swept with long strides into the centre of the open space fronting the dais, and made an elaborate obeisance in the general direction of prince and bishop. The gesture seemed to Cadfael to tend rather to the performer’s own aggrandisement than to any particular reverence for those saluted. He had everyone’s attention, and meant to retain it.

  “My lord prince, my lord bishop, your devout servant! I come as a petitioner here before you.” He did not look the part, nor was his full, confident voice expressive of any such role.

  “So I have heard,” said Owain. “You have something to ask of us. Ask it freely.”

  “My lord, I was and am in fealty to your brother Cadwaladr, and I dare venture to speak for his right, in that he goes deprived of his lands, and made a stranger and disinherited in his own country. Whatever you may hold him guilty of, I dare to plead that such a penalty is more than he has deserved, and such as brother should not visit upon brother. And I ask of you that measure of generosity and forgiveness that should restore him his own again. He has endured this despoiling a year already, let that be enough, and set him up again in his lands of Ceredigion. The lord bishop will add his voice to mine for reconciliation.”

  “The lord bishop has been before you,” said Owain drily, “and equally eloquent. I am not, and never have been, adamant against my brother, whatever follies he has committed, but murder is worse than folly, and requires a measure of penitence before forgiveness is due. The two, separated, are of no value, and where the one is not, I will not waste the other. Did Cadwaladr send you on this errand?”

  “No, my lord, and knows nothing of my coming. It is he who suffers deprivation, and I who appeal for his right to be restored. If he has done ill in the past, is that good reason for shutting him out from the possibility of doing well in the future? And what has been done to him is extreme, for he has been made an exile in his own country, without a toehold on his own soil. Is that fair dealing?”

  “It is less extreme,” said Owain coldly, “than what was done to Anarawd. Lands can be restored, if restoration is deserved. Life once lost is past restoration.”

  “True, my lord, but even homicide may be compounded for a blood-price. To be stripped of all, and for life, is another kind of death.”

  “We are not concerned with mere homicide, but with murder,” said Owain, “as well you know.”

  At Cadfael’s left hand Cuhelyn sat stiff and motionless in his place, his eyes fixed upon Bledri, their glance lengthened to pierce through him and beyond. His face was white, and his single hand clenched tightly upon the edge of the board, the knuckles sharp and pale as ice. He said no word and made no sound, but his bleak stare never wavered.

  “Too harsh a name,” said Bledri fiercely, “for a deed done in heat. Nor did your lordship wait to hear my prince’s side of the quarrel.”

  “For a deed done in heat,” said Owain with immovable composure, “this was well planned. Eight men do not lie in wait in cover for four travellers unsuspecting and unarmed, in hot blood. You do your lord’s cause no favour by defending his crime. You said you came to plead. My mind is not closed against reconciliation, civilly sought. It is proof against threats.”

  “Yet, Owain,” cried Bledri, flaring like a resinous torch, “it behoves even you to weigh what consequences may follow if you are obdurate. A wise man would know when to unbend, before his own brand burns back into his face.”

  Cuhelyn started out of his stillness, quivering, and was half rising to his feet when he regained control, and sank back in his place, again mute and motionless. Hywel had not moved, nor had his face changed. He had his father’s formidable composure. And Owain’s unshaken and unshakable calm subdued in a moment the uneasy stir and murmur that had passed round the high table and started louder echoes down in the floor of the hall.

  “Am I to take that as threat, or promise, or a forecast of a doom from heaven?” asked Owain, in the most amiable of voices, but none the less with a razor edge to the tone that gave it piercing sweetness, and caused Bledri to draw back his head a little as if from a possible blow, and for a moment veil the smouldering fire of his black eyes, and abate the savage tightness of his lips. Somewhat more cautiously he responded at last: “I meant only that enmity and hatred between brothers is unseemly among men, and cannot but be displeasing to God. It cannot bear any but disastrous fruit. I beg you, restore your brother his rights.”

  “That,” said Owain thoughtfully, and eyeing the petitioner with a stare that measured and probed beyond the words offered, “I am not yet ready to concede. But perhaps we should consider of this matter at more leisure. Tomorrow morning I and my people set out for Aber and Bangor, together with some of the lord bishop’s household and these visitors from Lichfield. It is in my mind, Bledri ap Rhys, that you should ride with us and be our guest at Aber, and on the way, and there at home in my llys, you may better develop your argument, and I better consider on those consequences of which you make mention. I should not like,” said Owain in tones of honey, “to invite disaster for want of forethought. Say yes to my hospitality, and sit down with us at our hos
t’s table.”

  It was entirely plain to Cadfael, as to many another within the hall, that by this time Bledri had small choice in the matter. Owain’s men of the guard had fully understood the nature of the invitation. By his tight smile, so had Bledri, though he accepted it with every evidence of pleasure and satisfaction. No doubt it suited him to continue in the prince’s company, whether as guest or prisoner, and to keep his eyes and ears open on the ride to Aber. All the more if his hint of dire consequences meant more than the foreshadowing of divine disapproval of enmity between brothers. He had said a little too much to be taken at his face value. And as a guest, free or under guard, his own safety was assured. He took the place that was cleared for him at the bishop’s table, and drank to the prince with a discreet countenance and easy smile.

  The bishop visibly drew deep breath, relieved that his well-meaning effort at peace-making had at least survived the first skirmish. Whether he had understood the vibrating undertones of what had passed was doubtful. The subtleties of the Welsh were probably wasted on a forthright and devout Norman, Cadfael reflected. The better for him, he could speed his departing guests, thus augmented by one, and console himself that he had done all a man could do to bring about reconciliation. What followed, whatever it might be, was no responsibility of his.

  The mead went round amicably, and the prince’s harper sang the greatness and virtues of Owain’s line and the beauty of Gwynedd. And after him, to Cadfael’s respectful surprise, Hywel ab Owain rose and took the harp, and improvised mellifluously on the women of the north. Poet and bard as well as warrior, this was undoubtedly an admirable shoot from that admirable stem. He knew what he was doing with his music. All the tensions of the evening dissolved into amity and song. Or if they survived, at least the bishop, comforted and relaxed, lost all awareness of them.

  In the privacy of their own lodging, with the night still drowsily astir outside the half-open door, Brother Mark sat mute and thoughtful on the edge of his bed for some moments, pondering all that had passed, until at last he said, with the conviction of one who has reviewed all circumstances and come to a firm conclusion: “He meant nothing but good. He is a good man.”

  “But not a wise one,” said Cadfael from the doorway. The night without was dark, without a moon, but the stars filled it with a distant, blue glimmer that showed where occasional shadows crossed from building to building, making for their rest. The babel of the day was now an almost-silence, now and then quivering to the murmur of low voices tranquilly exchanging goodnights. Rather a tremor on the air than an audible sound. There was no wind. Even the softest of movements vibrated along the cords of the senses, making silence eloquent.

  “He trusts too easily,” Mark agreed with a sigh. “Integrity expects integrity.”

  “And you find it missing in Bledri ap Rhys?” Cadfael asked respectfully. Brother Mark could still surprise him now and then.

  “I doubt him. He comes too brazenly, knowing once received he is safe from any harm or affront. And he feels secure enough in Welsh hospitality to threaten.”

  “So he did,” said Cadfael thoughtfully. “And passed it off as a reminder of heaven’s displeasure. And what did you make of that?”

  “He drew in his horns,” said Mark positively, “knowing he had gone a step too far. But there was more in that than a pastoral warning. And truly I wonder where this Cadwaladr is now, and what he is up to. For I think that was a plain threat of trouble here and now if Owain refused his brother’s demands. Something is in the planning, and this Bledri knows of it.”

  “I fancy,” said Cadfael placidly, “that the prince is of your opinion also, or at least has the possibility well in mind. You heard him. He has given due notice to all his men that Bledri ap Rhys is to remain in the royal retinue here, in Aber, and on the road between. If there’s mischief planned, Bledri, if he can’t be made to betray it, can be prevented from playing any part in it, or letting his master know the prince has taken the warning, and is on his guard. Now I wonder did Bledri read as much into it, and whether he’ll go to the trouble to put it to the test?”

  “He did not seem to me to be put out of his stride,” said Mark doubtfully. “If he did understand it so, it did not disquiet him. Can he have provoked it purposely?”

  “Who knows? It may suit him to go along with us to Aber, and keep his eyes and ears open along the way and within the llys, if he’s spying out the prince’s dispositions for his master. Or for himself!” Cadfael conceded thoughtfully, “Though what’s the advantage to him, unless it’s to put him safely out of the struggle, I confess I don’t see.” For a prisoner who enjoys officially the status of a guest can come to no harm, whatever the issue. If his own lord wins, he is delivered without reproach, and if his captor is the victor he is immune just as surely, safe from injury in the battle or reprisals after it. “But he did not strike me as a cautious man,” Cadfael owned, rejecting the option, though with some lingering reluctance.

  A few threads of shadow still crossed the gathering darkness of the precinct, ripples on a nocturnal lake. The open door of the bishop’s great hall made a rectangle of faint light, most of the torches within already quenched, the fire turfed down but still glowing, distant murmurs of movement and voices a slight quiver on the silence, as the servants cleared away the remnants of the feast and the tables that had borne it.

  A tall, dark figure, wide-shouldered and erect against the pale light, appeared in the doorway of the hall, paused for a long moment as though breathing in the cool of the night, and then moved leisurely down the steps, and began to pace the beaten earth of the court, slowly and sinuously, like a man flexing his muscles after being seated a while too long. Cadfael opened the door a little wider, to have the shadowy movements in view.

  “Where are you going?” asked Mark at his back, anticipating with alert intelligence.

  “Not far,” said Cadfael. “Just far enough to see what rises to our friend Bledri’s bait. And how he takes it!”

  He stood motionless outside the door for a long moment, drawing the door to behind him, to accustom his eyes to the night, as doubtless Bledri ap Rhys was also doing as he trailed his coat to and fro, nearer and nearer to the open gate of the precinct. The earth was firm enough to make his crisp, deliberate steps audible, as plainly he meant them to be. But nothing stirred and no one took note of him, not even the few servants drifting away to their beds, until he turned deliberately and walked straight towards the open gate. Cadfael had advanced at leisure along the line of modest canonical houses and guest lodgings, to keep the event in view.

  With admirable aplomb two brisk figures heaved up into the gateway from the fields without, amiably wreathed together, collided with Bledri in midpassage, and untwined themselves to embrace him between them.

  “What, my lord Bledri!” boomed one blithe Welsh voice. “Is it you? Taking a breath of air before sleeping? And a fine night for it!”

  “We’ll bear you company, willingly,” the second voice offered heartily. “It’s early to go to bed yet. And we’ll see you safe to your own brychan, if you lose your way in the dark.”

  “I’m none so drunk as to go astray,” Bledri acknowledged without surprise or concern. “And for all the good company there is to be had in Saint Asaph tonight, I think I’ll get to my bed. You gentlemen will be needing your sleep, too, if we’re off with the morn tomorrow.” The smile in his voice was clear to be sensed. He had the answer he had looked for, and it caused him no dismay, rather a measure of amusement, perhaps even satisfaction. “Goodnight to you!” he said, and turned to saunter back towards the hall door, still dimly lighted from within.

  Silence hung outside the precinct wall, though the nearest tents of Owain’s camp were not far away. The wall was not so high that it could not be climbed, though wherever a man mounted, there would be someone waiting below on the other side. But in any case Bledri ap Rhys had no intention of removing himself, he had merely been confirming his expectation that any attempt to d
o so would very simply and neatly be frustrated. Owain’s orders were readily understood even when obliquely stated, and would be efficiently carried out. If Bledri had been in any doubt of that, he knew better now. And as for the two convivial guards, they withdrew again into the night with an absence of pretence which was almost insulting.

  And that, on the face of it, was the end of the incident. Yet Cadfael continued immobile and detachedly interested, invisible against the dark bulk of the timber buildings, as if he expected some kind of epilogue to round off the night’s entertainment.

  Into the oblong of dim light at the head of the steps came the girl Heledd, unmistakable even in silhouette by the impetuous grace of her carriage and her tall slenderness. Even at the end of an evening of serving the bishop’s guests and the retainers of his household she moved like a fawn. And if Cadfael observed her appearance with impersonal pleasure, so did Bledri ap Rhys, from where he stood just aside from the foot of the steps, with a startled appreciation somewhat less impersonal, having no monastic restraints to hold it in check. He had just confirmed that he was now, willing or otherwise, a member of the prince’s retinue at least as far as Aber, and in all probability he already knew, since he was lodged in the bishop’s own house, that this promising girl was the one who would be riding with the party at dawn. The prospect offered a hope of mild pleasure along the way, to pass the time agreeably. At the very least, here was this moment, to round off an eventful and enjoyable evening. She was descending, with one of the embroidered drapings of the high table rolled up in her arms, on her way to the canonical dwellings across the precinct. Perhaps wine had been spilled on the cloth, or some of the gilt threads been snagged by a belt buckle or the rough setting of a dagger hilt or a bracelet, and she was charged with its repair. He had been about to ascend, but waited aside instead, for the pleasure of watching her at ever closer view as she came down, eyes lowered to be sure of stepping securely. He was so still and she so preoccupied that she had not observed him. And when she had reached the third step from the ground he suddenly reached out and took her by the waist between his hands, very neatly, and swung her round in a half-circle, and so held her suspended, face to face with him and close, for a long moment before he set her quite gently on her feet. He did not, however, relinquish his hold of her.