The Summer of the Danes (29 page)

“That
I would certainly do, and gladly,” said Gwion, but as yet withholding belief.

“Deacon
Mark here is newly come from Otir the Dane,” said the prince, “who holds my
brother and your lord prisoner. He has brought word from Cadwaladr that he has
agreed to pay the sum he promised, and buy himself out of debt and out of
bondage.”

“I
cannot believe it!” said Gwion, blanched to the lips with shock. “I will not
believe it, unless I hear him say so, freely and openly.”

“Then
you and I are of one mind,” said Owain drily, “for I also had hardly expected
him to see sense so soon. You have good cause to know my mind in this matter. I
would rather my brother should be a man of his word, and pay what he promises.
But neither would I accept from another mouth the instruction that will beggar
him. Otir deals fairly. From my brother’s mouth you cannot hear his will made
plain, he will not be free until his debt is paid. But you may hear it from
Brother Mark, who received it in trust from him, and will testify that he spoke
it firmly and with intent, being whole of his body and in his right mind.”

“I
do so testify,” said Mark. “He has been prisoner only this one day. He is
fettered, but further than that no hand has been laid on him, and no threat
made against his body or his life. He says so, and I believe it, as no violence
has ever been offered to me or to those others hostage with the Danes. He told
me what was to be done. And he delivered to me with his own hand his seal, as
authority for the deed, and I have delivered it to the prince, according to
Cadwaladr’s orders.”

“And
the purport of his message? Be kind enough to repeat it,” the prince requested
courteously. “I would not have Gwion fear that I have in any degree prompted
you, or put twisted words into your mouth.”

“Cadwaladr
entreats the lord Owain, his brother,” said Mark, fixing his dauntingly clear
eyes upon Gwion’s face, “to send with all haste into Llanbadarn, to Rhodri
Fychan, who was his steward, and who knows where his remaining treasury is
bestowed, and to tell him that his lord requires the despatch to Abermenai of
money and stock to the value of two thousand marks, to be delivered to the
Danish force under Otir, as promised to them at the agreement in Dublin. And to
that end he has sent his seal for guarantee.” There was a long silence after
the clear, mild voice ended this recital, while Gwion stood motionless and
mute, struggling with the fury of denial and despair and anger within him. It
was not possible that so proud and intolerant a soul as Cadwaladr should have
submitted, and so quickly. And yet men, even the most arrogant and hot-headed
of men, do value their lives and liberty high, and will buy them back even with
humiliation and shame when the threat comes close, and congeals from
imagination into reality. But first to dare defy and discard his Danes, and
then to grovel to them and scrape together their price in undignified
haste—that was unworthy. Had he but waited a few days, there should have been
another ending. His own men were so near, and would not have let him lie in
chains for long, even if brother and all had deserted him. God, let me have two
days yet, prayed Gwion behind his dark, closed face, and I will fetch him off
by force, and he shall call off his bailiffs and take back his property, and be
Cadwaladr again, erect as he always was.

“This
charge,” Owain was saying, somewhere at the extreme edge of Gwion’s
consciousness, a voice from the distance, or from deep within, “I intend to
fulfil with all haste, as he asks, the quicker to redeem his person together
with his good name. My son Hywel rides south at once. But since you are here,
Gwion, and all your heart’s concern is his service, you shall ride with Hywel’s
escort, and your presence will be a further guarantee to Rhodri Fychan that
this is indeed Cadwaladr’s voice speaking, and those who serve him are bound to
obey. Will you go?”

“I
will go.”

What
else could he say? It was already decreed. It was another way of discarding
him, but with a sop to his implacable loyalty. In the name of that loyalty he
must now assist in stripping his lord of a great part of what possessions
remained to him, when only a short while ago he had been in high heart, setting
out to bring an army to Cadwaladr’s rescue, without this ignominy and loss.
But: “I will go,” said Gwion, swallowing necessity whole. There might still be
an opportunity to make contact with his waiting muster, before ever the Danish
ships loaded and raised anchor with their booty, and sailed in triumph for
Dublin.

They
set out within the hour, Hywel ab Owain, Gwion, and an escort of ten
men-at-arms, well-mounted, and with authority to commandeer fresh remounts
along the way. Whatever Owain’s feelings now towards his brother, he did not
intend him to remain long a prisoner—or, perhaps a defaulting debtor. There was
no knowing which of the two mattered more.

The
three days predicted by Cadfael passed in brisk activity elsewhere, but in the two
opposed camps they dragged and were drawn out long, like a held breath. Even
the watch kept upon the stockades grew a shade lax, expecting no attack now
that the issue was near its resolution without the need of fighting. Only Ieuan
ab Ifor still fretted at the waiting, and bore in mind always that such
negotiations might collapse in failure, prisoners remain prisoners, debts
unpaid, marriages delayed beyond bearing. And as the hours passed he spoke
privately to this one and that one among his younger and more headstrong
friends, rehearsed for them the safe passage he had made twice by night at low
tide along the shingle and sand to spy out the Danish defences, and how there
was a place where approach from the sea was possible in reasonable cover of scrub
and trees. Cadwaladr might have submitted, but these young hot-heads of Wales
had not. Bitterly they resented it that invaders from Ireland should not only
sail home without losses, but even with a very substantial profit to show for
their incursion. But was it not already too late, now that it was known Hywel
had gone south with orders to bring back and pay over the sum Otir demanded and
Cadwaladr had conceded?

By
no means, said Ieuan. For Gwion was gone with them, and somewhere between here
and Ceredigion Gwion had brought up a hundred men who would fight for
Cadwaladr. None of these had consented to let his lord be plundered of two
thousand marks, or be made to grovel before the Dane. They would not stomach
it, even if Cadwaladr had been brought so low as to submit to it. Ieuan had
spoken with Gwion before he left in Hywel’s party. On the way south, if chance
offered, he would break away from his companions and go to join his waiting
warriors. On the way north again, if he was watched too suspiciously on the way
south, even Hywel would be content with him for his part in dealing with Rhodri
Fychan at Llanbadarn, and no one would be paying too much heed to what he did.
Somewhere along the drove roads he could break away and ride ahead. One dark
night was all they would need, with the tide out and their numbers thus
reinforced, and Heledd and Cadwaladr would be snatched out of bondage, and Otir
could take to the seas for his life, and go back empty-handed to Dublin.

There
were not wanting a number of wild young men in Owain’s following whose
instincts leaned rather to fighting out every issue to a bloody conclusion than
to manipulating a way out of impasse without loss of life. There were a few who
said openly that Owain was wrong to abandon his brother to pay his dues alone.
Oaths were meant to be kept, yes, but the tensions of blood and kinship could
put even oaths out of mind. So they listened, and the thought of bursting in
through the Danish fences, sweeping Otir and his men into their ships at the
edge of the sword and driving them out to sea began to have a powerful appeal.
They were weary of sitting here inactive day after day. Where was the glory in
bargaining a way out of danger with money and compromise?

The
image of Heledd burned in Ieuan’s memory, the dark girl poised against the sky
on a hillock of the dunes. Twice he had seen her there, watched the long,
lissome stride and the proudly carried head. She had a fiery grace even in
stillness. And he could not believe, he could not convince himself, that such a
woman, one alone in a camp full of men, could continue to the end unviolated,
uncoveted. It was against mortal nature. Whatever Otir’s authority, someone
would defy it. And now his most haunting fear was that when they had loaded
their plunder, so tamely surrendered , and were raising anchor to sail for
home, they would carry Heledd away with them, as they had carried many a Welsh
woman in the past, to be slave to some Dublin Dane for the rest of her life.

He
would not have bestirred himself as he did for Cadwaladr, to whom he owed
nothing but ill. But for sheer hostility to the invaders, and for the recovery
of Heledd, he would have dared the assault with only his own small band of
like-minded heroes, if need arose. But better far if Gwion could return in time
with his hundred. So for the first day, and the second, Ieuan waited with
arduous patience, and kept watch southward for any sign.

In
Otir’s camp the days of waiting passed slowly but confidently, perhaps too
confidently, for there was certainly some relaxation of the strict watch they
had kept. The square-rigged cargo ships, with their central wells ready for
loading, were brought inshore, to be easily beached when the time came, and
only the small, fast dragon-boats remained within the enclosed harbourage. Otir
had no reason to doubt Owain’s good faith, and as an earnest of his own had
removed Cadwaladr’s chains, though Torsten stayed attentive at the prisoner’s
elbow, ready for any rash move. Cadwaladr they did not trust, they knew him now
too well.

Cadfael
watched the passing of the hours and kept an open mind. There was still room
for things to go wrong, though there seemed no particular reason why they
should do so. It was simply that when two armed bands were brought together so closely
in confrontation, it needed only a spark to set light to the otherwise dormant
hostility between them. Waiting could make even the stillness seem ominous, and
he missed Mark’s serene company. What engaged his attention most during this
interlude was the behaviour of Heledd. She went about the simple routine she
had devised here for her living without apparent impatience or anticipation, as
if everything was predetermined, and already accepted, and there was nothing
for her to do about any part of it, and nothing in it either to delight or
trouble her. She was, perhaps, more silent than usual, but with no implication
of tension or distress, rather as if words would be wasted on matters already
assured. It might have suggested nothing better than resignation to a fate she
could not influence, but there was no change in the summer gloss that had
turned her comeliness into beauty, or the deep, burnished lustre of her iris
eyes as they surveyed the ribbon of the shingle beach, and the swaying of the
ships offshore under the urging of the changing tides. Cadfael did not follow
her too assiduously, nor watch her too closely. If she had secrets, he did not
want to know them. If she wanted to confide, she would. If there was anything
she needed from him, she would demand it. And of her safety here he was
assured. All these restless young men wanted now was to load their ships and
take their profits home to Dublin, well out of an engagement that might have
ended in disaster, given so doubled-edged a partner. Thus in either camp the
second day drew to a close.

Faced
with the authority of Hywel ab Owain, the grudging and stiff-necked testimony,
of Gwion, who so clearly hated having to admit his lord’s capitulation, and
holding Cadwaladr’s seal in his hand, Rhodri Fychan on his own lands in
Ceredigion found no reason to question further the instructions he was given.
He accepted with a shrug the necessity, and delivered to Hywel the greater part
of the two thousand marks in coin. It made some heavy loads for a number of
sumpter horses which were likewise contributed as part of the ransom price. And
the rest, he said resignedly, could be rounded up from grazing land close to
the northern border of Ceredigion, near the crossing into Gwynedd, in
Cadwaladr’s swart, sturdy cattle, moved there when this same Hywel drove him
out of his castle and fired it after him, more than a year ago. His own
herdsmen had grazed them there on his behalf ever since he had been driven out.

It
was at Gwion’s own suggestion that he was commissioned to ride northward again
ahead of his companions, and get this herd of cattle, slow-moving as they would
be, in motion towards Abermenai at once. The horsemen would easily overtake
them after they had loaded the silver, and no time would be wasted on the
return journey. A groom of Rhodri’s household rode with him, glad of the
outing, to bear witness that they had the authority of Cadwaladr himself,
through his steward, to cut out some three hundred head of cattle from his
herds and drive them northward.

It
was all and more than he could have hoped for. Travelling south he had had no
opportunity to withdraw himself or make any preparation for his escape. Now
with his face to the north again everything fell into his hand. Once he had set
out across the border of Gwynedd, with herd and drovers in brisk motion behind
him, nothing could have been easier than to detach himself and ride ahead, on
the pretext of giving due notice to Otir to prepare his ships to receive them,
and leave them to follow to Abermenai at the best speed they could make.