The Summer of the Danes (18 page)

The
boy on horseback had kept his firm hold of Heledd until the flaxen-haired young
giant, having seen his men embarked, reached up and hoisted her in his arms, as
lightly as if she had been a child, and leaped down with her between the
rowers’ benches, and setting her down there on her feet, stretched up again to
the bridle of Cadfael’s horse, and coaxed him aboard with a soft-spoken
cajolery that came up strangely to Mark’s ears. The boy followed, and instantly
the steersman pushed off strongly from the bank, the knot of men busy bestowing
their plunder dissolved into expert order at the oars, and the lean little
dragon-ship surged out into midstream. She was in lunging motion before Mark
had recovered his wits, sliding like a snake southwestward towards Carnarvon
and Abermenai, where doubtless her companions were now in harbour or moored in
the roads outside the dunes. She did not have to turn, even, being
double-ended. Her speed could get her out of trouble in any direction; even if
she was sighted off the town Owain had nothing that could catch her. The
rapidity with which she dwindled silently into a thin, dark fleck upon the
water left Mark breathless and amazed.

He
turned to make his way back to where his horse was tethered, and set out in
resolute haste westward towards Carnarvon.

Plumped
aboard into the narrow well between the benches, and there as briskly
abandoned, Cadfael took a moment to lean back against the boards of the narrow
after-deck and consider their situation. Relations between captors and captives
seemed already to have found a viable level, at surprisingly little cost in
time or passion. Resistance was impracticable. Discretion recommended
acceptance to the prisoners, and made it possible for their keepers to be about
the more immediate business of getting their booty safely back to camp, without
any stricter enforcement than a rapidly moving vessel and a mile or so of water
on either side provided. No one laid hand on Cadfael once they were embarked.
No one paid any further attention to Heledd, braced back defensively into the
stern-post, where the young Dane had hoisted her, with knees drawn up and
skirts hugged about her in embracing arms. No one feared that she would leap
overboard and strike out for Anglesey; the Welsh were not known as notable
swimmers. No one had any interest in doing either of them affront or injury;
they were simple assets to be retained intact for future use.

To
test it further, Cadfael made his way the length of the well amidships, between
the stowed loot of flesh and provisions, paying curious attention to the
details of the lithe, long craft, and not one oarsman checked in the steady
heave and stretch of his stroke, or turned a glance to note the movement at his
shoulder. A vessel shaped for speed, lean as a greyhound, perhaps eighteen
paces long and no more than three or four wide. Cadfael reckoned ten strakes a
side, six feet deep amidships, the single mast lowered aft. He noted the
clenched rivets that held the strakes together. Clincher-built, shallow of
draught, light of weight for its strength and speed, the two ends identical for
instant manoeuvring, an ideal craft for beaching close inshore in the dunes of
Abermenai. No use for shipping more bulky freight; they would have brought
cargo hulls for that, slower, more dependent on sail, and shipping only a few
rowers to get them out of trouble in a calm. Square-rigged, as all craft still
were in these northern waters. The two-masted, lateen-rigged ships of the unforgotten
midland sea were still unknown to these Norse seafarers.

He
had been too deeply absorbed in these observations to realise that he himself
was being observed just as shrewdly and curiously by a pair of brilliant
ice-blue eyes, from under thick golden brows quizzically cocked. The young
captain of this raiding party had missed nothing, and clearly knew how to read
this appraisal of his craft. He dropped suddenly from the steersman’s side to
meet Cadfael in the well.

“You
know ships?” he demanded, interested and surprised at so unlikely a
preoccupation in a Benedictine brother.

“I
did once. It’s a long time now since I ventured on water.”

“You
know the sea?” the young man pursued, shining with pleased curiosity.

“Not
this sea. Time was when I knew the middle sea and the eastern shores well
enough. I came late to the cloister,” he explained, beholding the blue eyes
dilate and glitter in delighted astonishment, a deeper spark of pleasure and
recognition warming within them.

“Brother,
you put up your own price,” said the young Dane heartily. “I would keep you to
know better. Seafaring monks are rare beasts, I never came by one before. How
do they call you?”

“My
name is Cadfael, a Welsh-born brother of the abbey of Shrewsbury.”

“A
name for a name is fair dealing. I am Turcaill, son of Turcaill, kinsman to
Otir, who leads this venture.”

“And
you know what’s in dispute here? Between two Welsh princes? Why put your own
breast between their blades?” Cadfael reasoned mildly.

“For
pay,” said Turcaill cheerfully. “But even unpaid I would not stay behind when
Otir puts to sea. It grows dull ashore. I’m no landsman, to squat on a farm
year after year, and be content to watch the crops grow.”

No,
that he certainly was not, nor of a temper to turn to cloister and cowl even
when the adventures of his youth were over. Splendidly fleshed, glittering with
animal energy, this was a man for marriage and sons, and the raising of yet
more generations of adventurers, restless as the sea itself, and ready to
cleave their way into any man’s quarrel for gain, at the fair cost of staking
their own lives.

He
was away now, with a valedictory clap on Cadfael’s shoulder, steady of stride
along the lunging keel, to swing himself up beside Heledd on the after-deck.
The light, beginning to fade into twilight now, still showed Cadfael the
disdainful set of Heledd’s lips and the chill arching of her brows as she drew
the hem of her skirt aside from the contamination even of an enemy touch, and
turned her head away, refusing him the acknowledgement of a glance.

Turcaill
laughed, no way displeased, sat down beside her, and took out bread from a
pouch at his belt. He broke it in his big, smooth young hands, and offered her
the half, and she refused it. Unoffended, still laughing, he took her right hand
by force, folded his offering into the palm, and shut her left hand hard over
it. She could not prevent, and would not compromise her mute disdain by a vain
struggle. But when he forthwith got up and left her so, without a glance
behind, to do as she pleased with his gift, she neither hurled it into the
darkening water of the strait nor bit into its crust by way of acceptance, but
sat as he had left her, cradling it between her palms and gazing after his
oblivious flaxen head with a narrow and calculating stare, the significance of
which Cadfael could not read, but which at once intrigued and disquieted him.

In
the onset of night, in a dusk through which they slid silently and swiftly in
midstream, only faint glimmers of phosphorescence gilding the dip of the oars,
they passed by the shore-lights of Owain’s Carnarvon, and emerged into a broad
basin shut off from the open sea only by twin rolling spits of sand-dunes,
capped with a close growth of bushes and a scattering of trees. Along the water
the shadowy shapes of ships loomed, some with stepped masts, some lean and low
like Turcaill’s little serpent. Spaced along the shore, the torches of the
Danish outposts burned steadily in a still air, and higher towards the crest
glowed the fires of an established camp.

Turcaill’s
rowers leaned to their last long stroke and shipped their oars, as the
steersman brought the ship round in a smooth sweep to beach in the shallows.
Over the side went the Danes, hoisting their plunder clear, and plashing up
from the water to solid ground, to be met by their fellows on guard at the rim
of the tide. And over the side went Heledd, plucked up lightly in Turcaill’s
arms, and this time making no resistance, since it would in any case have been
unavailing, and she was chiefly concerned with preserving her dignity at this
pass. As for Cadfael himself, he had small choice but to follow, even if two of
the rowers had not urged him over the side between them, and waded ashore with
a firm grip on his shoulders. Whatever chances opened before him, there was no
way he could break loose from this captivity until he could take Heledd with
him. He plodded philosophically up the dunes and into the guarded perimeter of
the camp, and went where he was led, well assured that the guardian circle had
closed snugly behind him.

Article
III.
           

Article
IV.
           

Chapter Eight

CADFAEL
AWOKE TO THE PEARL-GREY LIGHT OF EARLIEST DAWN, the immense sweep of open sky
above him, still sprinkled at the zenith with paling stars, and the instant
recollection of his present situation. Everything that had passed had confirmed
that they had little to fear from their captors, at least while they retained
their bargaining value, and nothing to hope for in the way of escape, since the
Danes were clearly sure of the efficiency of their precautions. The shore was
well watched, the rim of the camp securely guarded. There was no need, within
that pale, to keep a constant surveillance on a young girl and an elderly
monastic. Let them wander at will, it would not get them out of the circle, and
within it they could do no harm.

Cadfael
recalled clearly that he had been fed, as generously as the young men of the
guard who moved about him, and he was certain that Heledd, however casually
housed here, had also been fed, and once left to her own devices, unobserved,
would have had the good sense to eat what was provided. She was no such fool as
to throw away her assets for spite when she had a fight on her hands.

He
was lying, snugly enough, in the lee of a windbreak of hurdles, in a hollow of
thick grass, his own cloak wrapped about him. He remembered Turcaill tossing it
to him as it was unrolled from his small belongings as the horse was unloaded.
Round him a dozen of the young Danish seamen snored at ease. Cadfael arose and
stretched, and shook the sand from his habit. No one made any move to intercept
him as he made for the higher ground to look about him. The camp was alive, the
fires already lit, and the few horses, including his own, watered and turned on
to the greener sheltered levels to landward, where there was better pasture.
Cadfael looked in that direction, towards the familiar solidity of Wales, and
made his way unhindered through the midst of the camp to find a high spot from
which he could see beyond the perimeter of Otir’s base. From the south, and
after a lengthy march round the tidal bay that bit deep to southward, Owain must
come if he was ever to attack this strongpoint by land. By sea he would be at a
disadvantage, having nothing to match the Norse longships. And Carnarvon seemed
a long, long way from this armed camp.

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 good-humoured 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.