The Summer of the Danes (30 page)

It
was the morning of the second day, very early, when he set forth, and evening
when he reached the camp where he had left his hundred like-minded companions
living off the country about them, and by this little more popular with their
neighbours than such roving armies usually are, and themselves glad to be on
the move again.

It
seemed wise to wait until morning before marching. They lay in a sheltered
place in open woodland, aside from the roads. One more night spent here, and
they could be on their way with the first light, for from now on they could
move only at a fast foot pace, and even by forced marches foot soldiers cannot
outpace the horsemen. Cadwaladr’s drovers must rest their travelling herd
overnight, there was no fear of being overtaken by them. Gwion slept his few
hours with a mind content that he had done all a man could do. In the night, on
the highroad half a mile from their camp, Hywel and his mounted escort passed
by.

Chapter Thirteen

BROTHER
CADFAEL WALKED THE CREST OF THE DUNES in the early evening of the third day,
and saw the Danish cargo ships beached in the shallows below him, and the line
of men, stripped half-naked to wade from shore to ships, ferrying the barrels
of silver pence aboard, and stowing them under foredeck and afterdeck. Two
thousand marks within those small, heavy containers. No, somewhat less, for by
all accounts the sumpter horses and certain cattle were to go with them as part
of Otir’s fee. For Hywel was back from Llanbadarn before noon, and by all
accounts the drovers would not be far behind.

Tomorrow
it would all be over. The Danes would raise anchor and sail for home, Owain’s
force would see them off Welsh soil, and then return to Carnarvon, and from
there disperse to their homes. Heledd would be restored to her bridegroom,
Cadfael and Mark to their duties left behind and almost forgotten in England.
And Cadwaladr? By this time Cadfael was sure that Cadwaladr would be restored
to some degree of power and certain of his old lands, once this matter was put
by. Owain could not for ever hold out against his blood. Moreover, after every
dismay and exasperation his brother had cost him, always Owain hoped and
believed that there would be a change, a lesson learned, a folly or a crime
regretted. So there was, but briefly. Cadwaladr would never change.

Down
on the steel-grey shingle Hywel ab Owain stood to watch the loading of the
treasure he had brought from Llanbadarn. There was no haste, doubtful if they
could put the beasts aboard until the morrow, even if they reached here before
night. Down there on neutral ground Dane and Welshman brushed shoulders
amicably, content to part with debts paid and no blood shed. The affair had
almost become a matter of marketing. That would not suit the wildest of Owain’s
clansmen. It was to be hoped he had them all well in hand, or there might be
fighting yet. They did not like to see silver being bled away from Wales into
Dublin, even if it was silver pledged, a debt of honour. But steadily the small
barrels passed from man to man, the sunbrowned backs bending and swaying, the
muscular arms extending the chain from beach to hold. About their bared legs
the shallow water plashed in palest blues and greens over the gold of sand, and
the sky above them was blue almost to whiteness, with a scatter of whiter
clouds diaphanous as feathers. A radiant day in a fine, settled summer.

From
the stockade Cadwaladr was also watching the shipment of his ransom, with his
stolid shadow Torsten at his shoulder. Cadfael had observed them, withdrawn a
little to his right, Torsten placidly content, Cadwaladr stormy-browed and
grim, but resigned to his loss. Turcaill was down there aboard the nearest of
the ships, hoisting the barrels in under the after deck, and Otir stood with
Hywel, surveying the scene benignly.

Heledd
came over the crest, and made her way down through the scrub and the salt
grasses to stand at Cadfael’s side. She looked down at the activities
stretching out from beach to ship, and her face was calm and almost
indifferent. “There are still the cattle to get aboard,” she said. “A rough
voyage it will be for them. They tell me that crossing can be terrible.”

“In
such fine weather,” said Cadfael, matching her tone, “they’ll have an easy
passage.” No need to ask from which of them she had that information.

“By
tomorrow night,” she said, “they’ll be gone. A good deliverance for us all.”
And her voice was serene and even fervent, and her eyes followed the movements
of the last of the porters as he waded ashore, bright water flashing about his
ankles. Turcaill stood on the after-deck for some moments, surveying the result
of their labours, before he swung himself over the side and came surging
through the shallows, driving blue of water and white of spray before him, and
looking up, saw Heledd as blithely looking down from her high place, and flung
back his lofty flaxen head to smile at her with a dazzle of white teeth, and
wave a hand in salute.

Among
the men-at-arms who stood at Hywel’s back to see the money safely bestowed
Cadfael had observed one, thickset and powerful and darkly comely, who was also
looking up towards the ridge. His head was and remained tilted back, and his
eyes seemed to Cadfael to be fixed upon Heledd. True, one woman among a camp of
Danish invaders might well draw the eye and the interest of any man, but there
was something about the taut stillness and the intent and sustained pose that
made him wonder. He plucked at Heledd’s sleeve.

“Girl,
there’s one below there, among the lads who brought the silver—you see him? On
Hywel’s left!—who is staring upon you very particularly. Do you know him? By
the cut of him he knows you.”

She
turned to look where he indicated, gave a moment to considering the face so
assiduously raised to her, and shook her head indifferently. “I never saw him
before. How can he know me?” And she turned back to watch Turcaill cross the
beach and pause to exchange civilities with Hywel ab Owain and his escort,
before marshalling his own men back up the slope of the dunes towards the
stockade. He passed before Ieuan ab Ifor without a glance, and Ieuan merely
shifted his stance a little to recover the sight of Heledd on the dunes above
him, as Turcaill’s fair head cut her off from him in passing. During those
vital night watches, Ieuan ab Ifor had taken care to be captain of the guard on
the westward gate of Owain’s camp, and to have a man of his own on watch
through the night hours. Towards midnight of that third night Gwion had brought
his muster by forced marches to within sight of Owain’s stockade, and there
diverted them to the narrow belt of shingle exposed by the low tide, to pass by
undetected. He himself made his way silently to the guard-post, and from its
shadow Ieuan slid out to meet him.

“We
are come,” said Gwion in a whisper. “They are down on the shore.”

“You
come late,” hissed Ieuan. “Hywel is here before you. The silver is already
loaded aboard their ships, they are waiting only for the cattle.”

“How
can that be?” demanded Gwion, dismayed. “I rode ahead from Llanbadarn. The only
halt I made was the few hours of sleep we took last night. We marched before
dawn this morning.”

“And
in those few hours of the night Hywel overtook and passed you by, for he was
here by mid-morning. And come tomorrow morning the herd will be here and
loading. Late to save anything but a beggarly life for Cadwaladr as Owain’s
almsman instead of Otir’s prisoner.” For Cadwaladr he did not grieve overmuch,
except as his plight had strengthened the case for a rescue which could at the
same time deliver Heledd.

“Not
too late,” said Gwion, burning up like a stirred fire. “Bring your few, and
make haste! The tide is low and still ebbing. We have time enough!” They had
been ready every night for the signal, and they came singly, silently and
eagerly, evading notice and question. Glissading down the suave slopes of the
dunes, and across the belt of shingle to the moist, firm sand beyond, where
their feet made no sound. More than a mile to go between the camps, but an hour
left before the tide would be at its lowest, and ample time to return. There
was a lambent light from the water, a shifting but gentle light that was enough
for their purposes, the white edges of every ripple showing the extent of the
uncovered sand. Ieuan led, and they followed him in a long line, silent and
furtive under the dykes of Owain’s defences, and on into the no-man’s-land
beyond. Before them, anchored offshore after their loading, the Danish cargo
ships rode darkly swaying against the faint luminosity of the waves, and the
comparative pallor of the sky. Gwion checked at sight of them.

“These
have the silver already stored? We could reclaim it,” he said in a whisper.
“They’ll have only holding crews aboard overnight.”

“Tomorrow!”
said Ieuan with brusque authority. “A long swim, they lie in deep water. They
could pick us off one by one before ever we touched. Tomorrow they’ll lay them
inshore again to load the beasts. There are enough among Owain’s muster who
grudge so much as a penny to the pirates; if we start the onset they’ll follow,
the prince will have no choice but to fight. Tonight we take back my woman and
your lord. Tomorrow the silver!”

In
the small hours of the morning Cadfael awoke to a sudden clamour of voices
bellowing and lurs blaring, and started up from his nest in the sand still dazed
between reality and dreaming, old battles jerked back into mind with startling
vividness, so that he reached blindly for a sword before ever he was steady on
his feet, and aware of the starry night above and the cool rippling of the sand
under his bare feet. He groped about him to pluck Mark awake before he recalled
that Mark was no longer beside him, but back in Owain’s retinue, out of reach
of whatever this sudden threat might be. Over to his right, from the side where
the open sea stretched away westward to Ireland, the acid clashing of steel
added a thin, ferocious note to the baying of fighting men. Confused movements
of struggle and alarm shook the still air in convulsive turmoil between sand
and sky, as though a great storm-wind had risen to sweep away men without so
much as stirring the grasses they trod. The earth lay still, cool and
indifferent, the sky hung silent and calm, but force and violence had come up
from the sea to put an end to humanity’s precarious peace. Cadfael ran in the
direction from which the uproar drifted fitfully to his ears. Others, starting
out of their beds on the landward side of the encampment, were running with
him, drawing steel as they ran, all converging on the seaward fences, where the
clamour of battle had moved inward upon them, as though the stockade had been
breached. In the thick of the tangle of sounds rose Otir’s thunderous voice,
marshalling his men. And I am no man of his, thought Cadfael, astounded but
still running headlong towards the cry, why should I go looking for trouble? He
could have been holding off at a safe distance, waiting to see who had staged
what was plainly a determined attack, and how it prospered for Dane or
Welshman, before assessing its import for his own wellbeing, but instead he was
making for the heart of the battle as fast as he could, and cursing whoever had
chosen to tear apart what could have been an orderly resolution of a dangerous
business.

Not
Owain! Of that he was certain. Owain had brought about a just and sensible
ending, he would neither have originated nor countenanced a move calculated to
destroy his achievement. Some hot-blooded youngsters envenomed with hatred of
the Dane, or panting for the glory of warfare! Owain might reserve his quarrel
with the alien fleet that invaded his land uninvited, he might even choose to
exert himself to thrust them out when all other outstanding business was
settled, but he would never have thrown away his own patient work in procuring
the clearing of the ground. Owain’s battle, had it ever come to it, as it yet
might, would have been direct, neat and workmanlike, with no needless killing.
He was near to the heave and strain of close infighting now, he could see the
line of the stockade broken here and there by the heads and shoulders of struggling
men, and a great gap torn in the barrier where the attackers had forced their
way in unobserved, between guard-posts. They had not penetrated far, and Otir
already had a formidable ring of steel drawn about them, but on the fringes, in
the darkness and in such confusion, there was no knowing friend from enemy, and
a few of the first through the gap might well be loose within the camp.

He
was rubbing shoulders with the outer ring of Danes, who were thrusting hard to
shift the whole intruding mass back through the stockade and down to the sea,
when someone came running behind him, light and fast, and a hand clutched at
his arm, and there was Heledd, her face a pale, startled oval, starry in the
dark, lit by wide, blazing eyes.

“What
is it? Who are they? They are mad, mad… What can have set them on?”

Cadfael
halted abruptly, drawing her back out of the press and clear of random steel.
“Fool girl, get back out of here! Are you crazed? Get well away until this is
over. Do you want to be killed?”

She
clung to him, but held her ground sturdily, more excited than afraid. “But why?
Why should any of Owain’s do such mischief, when all was going so well?” The
struggling mass of men, too closely entangled to allow play to steel, reeled
their way, and some among them losing balance and footing, the mass broke
apart, several fell, and one at least was trampled, and let out breath in a
wheezing groan. Heledd was torn away from Cadfael’s grasp, and uttered a brief
and angry scream. It cut through the din on a piercing, clear note, and even in
the stress of battle turned heads in abrupt astonishment to stare in her
direction. She had been flung aside so sharply that she would have fallen, if
an arm had not taken her about the waist and dragged her clear as the shift of
fighting surged towards her. Cadfael was borne the opposite way for a moment,
and then Otir’s rallying cry drew the Danish circle taut, and their driving
weight bore the attackers backwards, and compressed them into the breach they
had made in the stockade, cramming them through it in disorder. A dozen lances
were hurled after them, and they broke and drew off down the slope of the dunes
towards the shore. A handful of the young Danes, roused and eager, would have
pursued the retreating attackers down the dunes, but Otir called them sharply
to order. There were wounded already, if none dead, why risk more? They came
reluctantly, but they came. There might be a time to take revenge for an act
virtually of treachery, when agreement, if not sworn and sealed, had amounted
almost to truce. But this was the time rather to salvage what was damaged, and
sharpen once again a watchfulness grown slack as the need seemed to diminish.
In the comparative stillness and quiet they set about picking up the fallen,
salving minor wounds, repairing the breach in the stockade, all in grim silence
but for the few words needed. Under the broken fence three men lay dead, the
foremost of the defenders overwhelmed by numbers before help could reach them.
A fourth they picked up bleeding from a lance-thrust meant for his heart, but
diverted through the shoulder. He would live, but he might lack the muscular
power of his left arm for the rest of his life. Of minor gashes and grazes
there were many, and the man who had been trampled spat blood from injuries
within. Cadfael put by all other considerations, and went to work with the rest
in the nearest shelter by torchlight, with whatever linen and medicines they
could provide. They had experience of wounds, and were knowledgeable in treating
them, if their treatment was rough and ready. The boy Leif fetched and carried,
awed and excited by this burst of violence by night. When all was done that
could be done Cadfael sat back with a sigh, and looked round at his nearest
neighbour. He was looking into the ice-blue eyes and unwontedly sombre face of
Turcaill. The young man had blood on his cheek from a graze, and blood on his
hands from the wounds of his friends.