The Summer of the Danes (33 page)

Owain
dropped into the sand and leaned close. “Gwion… I am here. Spare to make many
words, there is no need.”

Gwion’s
black eyes, a little dazzled by the mounting sun, opened wide and knew him.
Cadfael moistened the lips that opened wryly, and laboured to articulate. “Yes,
there is need. I have a thing I must say.”

“For
peace between us two,” said Owain, “I say again, there is no need of words. But
if you must, I am listening.”

“Bledri
ap Rhys…” began Gwion, and paused to draw breath. “You require to know who
killed him. Do not hold it against any other. I killed him.”

He
waited, with resigned patience, for disbelief rather than outcry, but neither
came. Only a considering and accepting silence that seemed to last a long
while, and then Owain’s voice, level and composed as ever, saying: “Why? He was
of your own allegiance, my brother’s man.”

“So
he had been,” said Gwion, and was shaken by a laugh that contorted his mouth
and sent a thin trickle of blood running down his jaw. Cadfael leaned and wiped
it away. “I was glad when he came to Aber. I knew what my lord was about. I
longed to join him, and I could and would have told him all I knew of your
forces and movements. It was fair. I had told you I was wholly and for ever
your brother’s man, you knew my mind. But I could not go, I had given my word
not to leave.”

“And
had kept your word,” said Owain. “So far!”

“But
Bledri had given no such word. He could go, as I could not. So I told him all
that I had learned in Aber, what strength you could raise, how soon you could
be in Carnarvon, everything my lord Cadwaladr had to know for his defence. And
I took a horse from the stables before dark, while the gates were open, and
tethered it among the trees for him. And like a fool I never doubted but Bledri
would be true to his salt. And he listened to all, and never said word, letting
me believe he was of my mind!”

“How
did you hope to get him out of the llys, once the gates were closed?” asked
Owain, as mildly as if he questioned of some ordinary daily duty.

“There
are ways… I was in Aber a long time. Not everyone is always careful with keys.
But in the waiting time he was noting all things within your court, and he
could count as well as I, and weigh chances as sharply, while he so carried
himself as to put all suspicion of his intent out of mind. What I thought was
his intent!” Gwion said bitterly. His voice failed him for a moment, but he
gathered his strength and resumed doggedly: “When I went to tell him it was
time to go, and see him safely away, he was naked in his bed. Without shame he
told me he was going nowhere, he was no such fool, having seen for himself your
power and your numbers. He would lie safe in Aber and watch which way the wind
blew, and if it blew for Owain Gwynedd, then he was Owain’s man. I called to
mind his fealty, and he laughed at me. And I struck him down,” said Gwion
through bared teeth. “And then, since he would not, I knew if I was to keep
faith with Cadwaladr I must break faith with you, and go in Bledri’s place. And
since he had so turned his coat, I knew that I must kill him, for to make his
way with you he would certainly betray me. And before he had his wits again I
stabbed him to the heart.”

Some
quivering tension in his body relaxed, and he drew and breathed out a great
sigh. He had done already almost all that truth required of him. The rest was
very little burden.

“I
went to find the horse, and the horse was gone. And then the messenger came,
and there was no more I could do. Everything was in vain. I had done murder for
nothing! What it was entrusted to me to do for Bledri ap Rhys, whom I killed,
that I did, for penance. And what came of it you know already. But it is just!”
he said, rather to himself than to any other, but they heard it: “He died
unshriven, and so must I.”

“That
need not be,” said Owain with detached compassion.

“Bear
with this world a little while longer, and my priest will be here, for I sent
word for him to come.”

“He
will come late,” said Gwion, and closed his eyes.

Nevertheless,
he was still living when Owain’s chaplain came in obedient haste to take a
dying man’s last confession and guide his failing tongue through his last act
of contrition. Cadfael, in attendance to the end, doubted if the penitent heard
the words of the absolution, for after it was spoken there was no response, no
quiver of the drained face or the arched lids that veiled the black, intense
eyes. Gwion had said his last word to the world, and of what might come to pass
in the world he was entering he had no great fear. He had lived long enough to
rest assured of the absolution he most needed, Owain’s forbearance and
forgiveness, never formally spoken, but freely given. “Tomorrow,” said Brother
Mark, “we must be on our way home. We have outstayed our time.”

They
were standing together at the edge of the fields outside Owain’s camp, looking
out over the open sea. Here the dunes were only a narrow fringe of gold above
the descent to the shore, and in subdued afternoon sunlight the sea stretched
in cloudy blues, deepening far out into a clear green, and the long, drowned
peninsula of shoals shone pale through the water. In the deep channels between,
the Danish cargo ships were gradually dwindling into toy boats, dark upon the
brightness, bearing out on a steady breeze under sail, for their own Dublin
shore. And beyond, the lighter longships, smaller still, drove eagerly for
home.

The
peril was past, Gwynedd delivered, debts paid, brothers brought together again,
if not yet reconciled. The affair might have turned out hugely bloodier and
more destructive. Nevertheless, men had died.

Tomorrow,
too, the camp at their backs would be dismantled of its improvised defences,
the husbandman would come back to his farmhouse, bringing his beasts with him,
and return imperturbably to the care of his land and his stock, as his
forebears had done time after time, giving ground pliably for a while to marauding
enemies they knew they could out-wait, outrun and outlast. The Welsh, who left
their expendable homesteads for the hills at the approach of an enemy, left
them only to return and rebuild.

The
prince would take his muster back to Carnarvon, and thence dismiss those whose
lands lay here in Arfon and Anglesey, before going on to Aber. Rumour said he
would suffer Cadwaladr to return with him, and those who knew them best added
that Cadwaladr would soon be restored to possession of some part, at least, of his
lands. For in spite of all, Owain loved his younger brother, and could not shut
him out of his grace much longer.

“And
Otir has his fee,” said Mark, pondering gains and losses.

“It
was promised.”

“I
don’t grudge it. It might have cost far more.”

And
so it might, though two thousand marks could not buy back the lives of Otir’s
three young men, now being borne back to Dublin for burial, nor those few of
Gwion’s following picked up dead from the surf, nor Bledri ap Rhys in his
chill, calculating faithlessness, nor Gwion himself in his stark, destructive
loyalty, the one as fatal as the other. Nor could all these lost this year call
into life again Anarawd, dead last year in the south, at Cadwaladr’s
instigation, if not at his hands.

 “Owain
has sent a courier to Canon Meirion in Aber,” said Mark, “to put his mind at
rest for his daughter. By this he knows she is here safe enough, with her
bridegroom. The prince sent as soon as Ieuan brought her into camp last night.”
His tone, Cadfael thought, was carefully neutral, as though he stood aside and
withheld judgement, viewing with equal detach ment two sides of a complex
problem, and one that was not his to solve.

“And
how has she conducted herself here in these few hours?” asked Cadfael. Mark
might study to absent himself from all participation in these events, but he
could not choose but observe.

“She
is altogether dutiful and quiet. She pleases Ieuan. She pleases the prince, for
she is as a bride should be, submissive and obedient. She was in terror, says
Ieuan, when he snatched her away out of the Danish camp. She is in no fear
now.”

“I
wonder,” said Cadfael, “if submissive and obedient is as Heledd should be. Have
we ever known her to be so, since she came from Saint Asaph with us?”

“Much
has happened since then,” said Mark, thoughtfully smiling. “It may be she has
had enough of venturing, and is not sorry to be settling down to a sensible
marriage with a decent man. You have seen her. Have you seen any cause to doubt
that she is content?”

And
in truth Cadfael could not say that he had observed in her bearing any trace of
discontent. Indeed, she went smilingly about the work she found for herself,
waited upon Ieuan serenely and deftly, and continued to distil about her a kind
of lustre that could not come from an unhappy woman. Whatever was in her mind,
and held in reserve there with deep and glossy satisfaction, it certainly did
not disquiet or distress her. Heledd viewed the path opening before her with
unmistakable pleasure.

“Have
you spoken with her?” asked Mark.

“There
has been no occasion yet.”

“You
may essay now, if you wish. She is coming this way.”

Cadfael
turned his head, and saw Heledd coming striding lightly along the crest of the ridge
towards them, with purpose in her step, and her face towards the north. Even
when she halted beside them, it was only for a moment, checked in flight like a
bird hovering.

“Brother
Cadfael, I’m glad to see you safe. The last I knew of you was when they swept
us apart, by the breach in the stockade.” She looked out across the sea, where
the ships had shrunk into black splinters upon scintillating water. All along
the line of them her glance followed. She might have been counting them. “They
got off unhindered, then, with their silver and their cattle. Were you there to
see?”

“I
was,” said Cadfael. They never did me offence,” she said, looking after their
departing fleet with a slight, remembering smile. “I would have waved them away
home, but Ieuan did not think it safe for me.”

“As
well,” said Cadfael seriously, “for it was not entirely a peaceful departure.
And where are you going now?”

She
turned and looked at them full, and her eyes were wide and innocent and the
deep purple of irises. “I left something of mine up there in the Danish camp,”
she said. “I am going to find it.”

“And
Ieuan lets you go?”

“I
have leave,” she said. “They are all gone now.”

They
were all gone, and it was safe now to let his hard-won bride return to the
deserted dunes where she had been a prisoner for a while, but never felt
herself in bondage. They watched her resume her purposeful passage along the
edge of the fields. There was barely a mile to go.

“You
did not offer to go with her,” said Mark with a solemn face.

“I
would not be so crass. But give her a fair start,” said Cadfael reflectively,
“and I think you and I might very well go after her.”

“You
think,” said Mark, “we might be more welcome company on the way back?”

“I
doubt,” Cadfael admitted, “whether she is coming back.”

Mark
nodded his head by way of acknowledgement, unsurprised. “I had been wondering
myself,” he said.

The
tide was on the ebb, but not yet so low as to expose the long, slender tongue
of sand that stretched out like a reaching hand and wrist towards the coast of
Anglesey. It showed pale gold beneath the shallows, here and there a tuft of
tenacious grass and soil breaking the surface. At the end of it, where the
knuckles of the hand jutted in an outcrop of rock, the stunted salt bushes
stood up like rough, crisp hair, their roots fringed with the yellow of sand.
Cadfael and Mark stood on the ridge above, and looked down as they had looked
once before, and upon the same revelation. Repeated, it made clear all the
times, all the evenings, when it had been repeated without witnesses. They even
drew back a little, so that the shape of them might be less obtrusive on the
skyline, if she should look up. But she did not look up. She looked down into
the clear water, palest green in the evening light, that reached almost to her
knees, as she trod the narrow golden path towards the seagirt throne of rock.
She had her skirts, still frayed and soiled from travel and from living wild,
gathered up in her hands, and she leaned to watch the cold, sweet water
quivering about her legs, and breaking their lissome outlines into a
disembodied tremor, as though she floated rather than waded. She had pulled all
the pins from her hair; it hung in a black, undulating cloud about her
shoulders, hiding the oval face stooped to watch her steps. She moved like a
dancer, slowly, with languorous grace. For whatever tryst she had here she came
early, and she knew it. But because there was no uncertainty, time was a grace,
even waiting would be pleasure anticipated.

Here
and there she halted, to be still, to let the water settle and be still around
her feet, and then she would lean to watch the tremulous ardour of her face
shimmering as each wave ebbed back into the sea. A very gentle tide, with
hardly any wind now. But Otir’s ships under sail were more than halfway to
Dublin by this hour.