The Summer of the Danes (27 page)

The
distant prospect afforded him no enlightenment, and no glimmer of a way forward
towards the liberation of his lord. It grieved him that Cadwaladr, who had
already lost so much, should be forced to pay out what remained to him in
treasury and stock to buy his liberty, without even the certainty that he might
recover his lost lands, for which the sum demanded of him had been promised in
the first place. Even if Owain was right, and the Danes intended him no harm
provided the debt was paid, the humiliation of captivity and submission would
gnaw like an ulcer in that proud spirit. Gwion grudged Otir and his men every
mark of their fee. It might be said that Cadwaladr should never have invoked
alien aid against a brother, but such impetuous and flawed impulses had always
threatened Cadwaladr’s wisdom, and men who loved him had borne with them as
with the perilous cantrips of a valiant and foolhardy child, and made the best
of the resultant chaos. It was not kind or just to withdraw now, when most it
was needed, the indulgence which had never before failed him.

Gwion
moved on along the ridge, still straining his eyes towards the north. A fringe
of trees crowned the crest, squat and warped by the salt air, and leaning
inland from the prevailing wind. And there beyond their uneven line, still and
sturdy and himself rooted as a tree, a man stood and stared towards the unseen
Danish force as Gwion was staring. A man perhaps in his middle thirties,
square-built and muscular, the first fine salting of grey in his brown hair,
his eyes, over-shadowed beneath thick black brows, fixed darkly upon the
sand-moulded curves of the naked horizon. He went unarmed, and bare of breast
and arms in the sunlight of the morning, a powerful body formidably still in
his concentration on distance. Though he heard Gwion’s step in the dry grass
beneath the trees, and it was plain that he must have heard it, he did not turn
his head or stir from his fixed surveillance for some moments, until Gwion
stood within touch of him. Even then he stirred and turned about only slowly
and indifferently.

“I
know,” he said, as though they had been aware of each other for a long time.
“Gazing will bring it no nearer.”

It
was Gwion’s own thought, worded very aptly, and it took the breath out of him
for a moment. Warily he asked: “You, too? What stake have you over there among
the Danes?”

“A
wife,” said the other man, with a brief, dry force that needed no more words to
express the enormity of his deprivation.

“A
wife!” echoed Gwion uncomprehendingly. “By what strange chance…” What was it Cuhelyn
had said, of three hostages left in peril after Cadwaladr’s defection and
defiance, two monks and a girl taken by the Danes? Two monks and a girl had set
out from Aber in Owain’s retinue. To fall victim in the first place to
Cadwaladr’s mercenaries, and then to be left to pay the price of Cadwaladr’s
betrayal, if the minds of the Danes ran to vengeance? Oh, the account was
growing long, and Owain’s obduracy became ever easier to understand. But
Cadwaladr had not thought, he never thought before, he acted first and
regretted afterwards, as by now he must be regretting everything he had done
since he made the first fatal mistake of fleeing to the kingdom of Dublin for
redress.

Yes,
the girl—Gwion remembered the girl. A black-browed beauty, tall, slender, and
mute, serving wine and mead about the prince’s table without a smile, except
occasionally the malicious and grieving smile with which she plagued the cleric
they said was her father, reminding him on what thin ice he walked, and how she
could shatter it under him if she so pleased. That story had been whispered
around the llys from ostler to maid to armourer to page, and come early to the
ears of the last hostage from Ceredigion, who alone could observe all these
goings-on with an indifferent eye, since Gwynedd was not home to him, and Owain
was not his lord, nor Gilbert of Saint Asaph his bishop. The same girl? She had
been on her way, he recalled, to match with a man of Anglesey in Owain’s
service.

“You
are that Ieuan ab Ifor,” he said, “who was to marry the canon’s daughter.”

“I
am that same,” said Ieuan, bending thick black brows at him. “And who are you,
who know my name and what I’m doing here? I have not seen you among the
prince’s liegemen until now.”

“For
reason enough. I am not his liegeman. I am Gwion, the last of the hostages he
brought from Ceredigion. My allegiance was and is to Cadwaladr,” said Gwion
starkly, and watched the slow fire kindle and glow in the sharp eyes that
watched him. “For good or ill, I am his man, but I would far rather it should
be for good.”

“It
is his doing,” said Ieuan, smouldering, “that Meirion’s daughter is left
captive among these sea-pirates. Such good as ever came from him you may
measure within the cup of an acorn, and like an acorn feed it to the pigs. He
brings barbarian raiders into Gwynedd, and then goes back on his bargain, and
takes to his heels into safety, leaving innocent hostages to bear the brunt of
Otir’s rage. He has been as dire a curse to his own best kin as he was to
Anarawd, whom he had done to death.”

“Take
heed not to go too far in his dispraise,” said Gwion, but in weariness and
grief rather than indignation, “for I may not hear him miscalled.”

“Oh,
be easy! God knows I cannot hold it against any man that he stands by his
prince, but God send you a better prince to stand by. You may forgive him all,
no matter how he shames you, but do not ask me to forgive him for abandoning my
bride to whatever fate the Danes keep for her.”

“The
prince has declared her in his protection,” said Gwion, “as I have heard only
an hour ago. He has offered fair ransom for her and for the two monks who came
from England, and warned to the value he sets on her safe-keeping.”

“The
prince is here,” said Ieuan grimly, “and she is there, and they have lost their
grip on the one they would liefer have in hold. Other captives may find
themselves serving in his place.”

“No,”
said Gwion, “you mistake. Whatever rancour you may have against him, be
content! This past night they have sent a ship into the bay, and put men ashore
to break their way into the camp to his tent. They have taken Cadwaladr
prisoner back with them, to pay his own ransom or suffer his own fate. No need
for another victim, they have the chosen one fast in their hands.”

Ieuan’s
rough brows, the most expressive thing about him, knotted abruptly into a ruled
line of suspicion and disbelief, and then, confronted by Gwion’s unwavering
gaze, released their black tension into open bewilderment and wonder. “You are
deceived, that cannot be…”

“It
is truth.”

“How
do you know it? Who has told you?”

“There
was no need for any man to tell me,” said Gwion. “I was there with him when
they came. I saw it. Four of Otir’s Danes burst in by night. Him they took, me they
left bound and muted, as they had left the guard who kept the gate. Here I have
still the grazes of the cords with which they tied me. See!”

They
had scored his wrist deep in his efforts to break free; there was no mistaking
rope-burns. Ieuan beheld them with a long, silent stare, assessing and
accepting.

“So
that is why you said to me: “You, too?” Now I know without asking what stake
you have over there among the Danes. Hold me excused if I say plainly that your
grief is no grief to me. What may fall upon him he has brought down on his own
head. But what has my girl done to deserve the peril in which he left her? If
his capture delivers her, I am right glad of it.”

Since
there was no arguing with that, Gwion was silent.

“If
I had but a dozen of my own mind,” Ieuan pursued, rather to himself than to any
other, “I would bring her off myself, against every Dane Dublin can ship over
into Gwynedd. She is mine, and I will have her.”

“And
you have not even seen her yet,” said Gwion, shaken by the sudden convulsion of
passion in a man so contained and still.

“Ah,
but I have seen her. I have been within a stone-throw of their stockade
undetected, and can do as much again. I saw her within there, on a crest of the
dunes, looking south, looking for the deliverance no one sends her. She is more
than they told me. As lissome and bright as steel, and moves like a fawn. I
would venture for her alone, but that I dread to be her death before ever I
could break through to her.”

“I
would as much for my lord,” said Gwion, grown quiet and intent, for this bold
and fervent lover had started a vein of hope within him. “If Cadwaladr is
nothing to you, and your Heledd hardly more to me, yet if we put our heads and
our forces together we may both benefit. Two is better than one alone.”

“But
still no more than two,” said Ieuan. But he was listening.

“Two
is but the beginning. Two now may be more in a few days. Even if they break my
lord into paying his ransom, it will take some days to bring in and load his
cattle, and put together what remains in silver coin.” He drew closer, his
voice lowered to be heard only by Ieuan, if any other should pass by. “I did
not come here alone. From Ceredigion I have collected and led some hundred men
who still hold by Cadwaladr. Oh, not for the purpose we have in mind at this
moment. I was certain that there would be peace made between brothers, and they
would combine to drive out the Danes, and I brought my lord at least a fair
following to fight for him side by side with those who fight for Owain. I would
not have him go free and living only by his brother’s grace, but at the head of
a company of his own men. I came ahead of them to carry him the news, only to
find that Owain has abandoned him. And now the Danes have taken him.”

Ieuan’s
face had resumed its impassive calm, but behind the wide brow and distant gaze
a sharp mind was busy with the calculation of chances hitherto unforeseen. “How
far distant are your hundred men?”

“Two
days’ march. I left my horse, and a groom who rode with me, a mile south and
came alone to find Cadwaladr. Now Owain has cast me free of him into the world
to stay or go, I can return within the hour to where I left my man, and send
him to bring the company as fast as men afoot can march.”

“There
are some within here,” said Ieuan, “would welcome a venture. A few I can
persuade, some will need no persuasion.” He rubbed large, powerful hands
together softly, and shut the fingers hard on an invisible weapon. “You and I,
Gwion, will talk further of this. And before this day is out, should you not be
on your way?”

Chapter Twelve

IT
WAS WELL PAST NOON when Torsten again produced his prisoner, chained and
humbled and choked with spleen, before Otir. Cadwaladr’s handsome lips were
grimly set, and his black eyes burning with rage all the more bitter for being
under iron control. For all his protestations, he knew as well as any that
Owain would not now relent from the position he had taken up. The time for
empty hopes was past, and reality had engulfed him and brought him to bay.
There was no point in holding out, since eventual submission was inevitable.

“He
has a word for you,” said Torsten, grinning. “He has no appetite for living in
chains.”

“Let
him speak for himself,” said Otir. “I will pay you your two thousand marks,”
said Cadwaladr. His voice came thinly through gritted teeth, but he had himself
well in hand. “You leave me no choice, since my brother uses me unbrotherly.”
And he added, testing such shallows as were left to him in this flood of
misfortune: “You will have to allow me a few days at liberty to have such a
mass of goods and gear collected together, for it cannot all be in silver.”

That
brought a gust of throaty laughter from Torsten, and an emphatic jerk of the
head from Otir. “Oh, no, my friend! I am not such a fool as to trust you yet
again. You do not stir one step out of here, nor shed your fetters, until my
ships are loading and ready for sea.”

“How,
then, do you propose I should effect this matter of ransom?” demanded Cadwaladr
with a savage snarl. “Do you expect my stewards to render up my cattle to you, and
my purse, simply at your orders?”

“I
will use an agent I can trust,” said Otir, unperturbed now by any flash of
anger or defiance from a man so completely in his power. “If, that is, he will
act for you even in this affair. That he approves it we already know, you
better than any of us. What you will do, before I let you loose even within my
guard, is to render up your small seal—I know you have it about you, you would
not stir without it—and give me a message so worded that your brother will know
it could come only from you. I will deal with a man I can trust, no matter how
things stand between us, friend or enemy. Owain Gwynedd, if he will not buy you
out of bondage, will not stint to welcome the news that you intend to pay your
debts honourably, nor refuse you his aid to see due reparation made. Owain
Gwynedd shall do the accounting between you and me.”

“He
will not do it!” flared Cadwaladr, stung. “Why should he believe that I have
given you my seal of my own will, when you could as well have stripped me and
taken it from me? No matter what message I might send, how can he trust, how
can he be sure that I send it of my own free will, and not wrung from me with
your dagger at my throat, under the threat of death?”