Sharon Penman - Dragon's lair

Chester nodded, asked Justin if he were kin to Saer de Quincy, who was wed to the daughter of the Earl of Leicester, and getting a denial, lost interest. Justin's words seemed to echo in his own ears, though, for there had been a bitter, bedrock honesty in his answer. The good bishop had indeed said nay.

"Two more ales, sweeting." Only then did Thomas de Caldecott interrupt his flirting with the serving maid to give Justin his attention, "Admit it, Justin. This is a better meeting place than the great hall under the eagle eye of my lord earl," he insisted with an airy wave of the hand toward their smoky, noisy, and dim surroundings. "Of course here we have to buy our own ales, but the next round is on you, so who cares?"

"I may," Justin said, "if you keep swilling down these tankards faster than the girl can get them to us. I do not fancy having to drag you back to the castle like a sack of flour after you get stewed to the gills.''

Thomas threw back his head and laughed loudly. "If you think you can drink me under the table, lad, you're in for a rude awakening. When it comes to carousing, I ought to be giving lessons. But then, you do not know me very well yet, so your ignorance can be excused."

"How kind of you." Justin lifted his own tankard in a playful salute. "To Sir Thomas de Caldecott, king of the carousers," he said, and Thomas laughed again, patting the serving maid on the rump as she sashayed by.

Justin slid his stool back so that he could lean against the wall and watched with wary amusement. Thomas was right. He did not know the other man well at all, and he was not sure what to make of the knight's easy affability. Justin had learned at an early age to keep his defenses up against a world that was indifferent at best and hostile at worst to a foundling without family, resources, or rank. He could not imagine lowering the drawbridges, opening the gates, and inviting people into the castle inner bailey as freely and confidently as Thomas was doing.

It had been a relief to find that the knight was not haughty and overweening as so many of his peers were. Unlike his lord, the Earl of Chester, Thomas seemed comfortable taking a secondary role in the ransom investigation. Justin had quickly realized that he'd found a valuable partner in Thomas. But he was bemused to be treated as an instant friend, for he was much slower to give his own trust. He was concluding that Thomas was that rarity, a man utterly at home in his own skin, with nothing to prove and nothing at risk, for failure would injure the earl, not his vassals and retainers.

The serving maids that Justin had known were far too jaded to blush, but Thomas managed it, whispering something that sent color flooding into the girl's face. As she withdrew in a gale of giggles, Thomas finally focused upon the matter at hand. "I suppose we ought to at least mention the robbery since we'll soon be on the road into Wales. The earl, God love him, will boot us out of bed at cockcrow. How good is your Welsh? Mine is more than good, if I may brag a bit. But the earl has a Welsh lad, Padrig, in his service, and I thought we'd take him along with us in case we run into anyone who cannot understand my elegant French accent. We'll need a goodly escort, too."

"Is North Wales that dangerous?" Justin asked, and Thomas grinned.

"I've heard that even the Welsh outlaws have their own bodyguards. But if we keep to the coast road, we ought to reach Rhuddlan without spilling any blood. I imagine Llewelyn is too busy counting his ill-gotten gains to be harassing innocent English travelers."

"Are you so sure that Llewelyn is the culprit?" Justin asked, intrigued by the other man's matter-of-fact manner. Thomas's indictment was more convincing than the Earl of Chester's fiery denunciation because of its very lack of passion or choler.

"If you're asking if Llewelyn is the one who stole the ransom, there is no doubt of that. But there is blame enough to go around and I'd not want to cheat Davydd of his fair share."

"The earl also talked of Davydd's 'blunders.' What were they?"

"Ah… where to begin? I suppose you want me to confine myself to those specific blunders relating to the ransom. A pity, for I have heard tales about Davydd's misspent youth that would have you rolling on the floor with laugher. Ah, well…"

Thomas heaved a comic sigh. "The trouble began with Davydd's bright idea to lure outlaws and bandits and Llewelyn away with a second convoy. He insisted upon sending a large escort with heavily loaded wagons by an inland road, whilst the real ransom was taken along the coast. But that was only part of his grand scheme. He loaded the ransom onto two ancient wains, piled hay on top, and to make it look even more convincing, he only dispatched four men with the hay-wains."

"That was lunacy," Justin blurted out. "How could he be sure they would not steal the ransom? The fewer the men, the greater the risk that they could reach an understanding amongst themselves.''

"You'll get no argument from me, lad, But Davydd said he deliberately picked men without the ballocks or the brains to do more than follow orders. He chose a tough nut named Selwyn to give those orders. He'd been a member of the royal household for years, and Davydd swore he could be trusted. The others were downright pitiful: the lame, the halt, and the blind. A green lad of sixteen; he's the one left to die in the road. An aged grandfather, and a good-natured fool. Davydd thought that way no one would ever suspect these rickety hay-wains could be carrying anything but hay."

Justin shook his head slowly. "And did it never occur to Davydd that if his 'grand scheme' went wrong, these guards would have trouble fending off a dozen drunken monks?"

"Monks? You're too kind, Justin, my boy. That crew could have been overrun by nuns! But no, Davydd is not one for contingency planning. The Welsh rarely are."

"Llewelyn ab Iorwerth might disagree with you."

Thomas considered that and then conceded cheerfully, "I daresay he might. For certes, his plan went down as smoothly as the best-brewed ale. He pounced upon the hay-wains like a hawk upon a rabbit, took what he wanted, and left naught but bodies and the charred remains of the burned wains."

"He burned the wains? Why?"

Thomas gave Justin an approving smile, "A good question. He burned the hay-wains because he also burned the woolsacks."

Justin sat upright, nearly spilling his ale. "Christ Jesus, he burned the wool? Davydd said nary a word about that to the queen!"

"Naturally not, for he'd have to admit then that the bulk of the ransom was beyond recovery. Those hay-wains also held silver plate and jewelry and some fine pelts, but it was the Cistercian wool that was the real treasure. But woolsacks are heavier than lead, and Llewelyn apparently realized that he'd not be able to get the wool safely away in those decrepit carts without risking capture. So he took what he could carry off and burned the wool to deny it to Davydd and the English Crown."

Justin was still coming to terms with the realization that his mission had been doomed from the moment that those woolsacks went up in flames. "If he was clever enough to find out that the ransom was hidden in those hay-wains, I'd think he'd be clever enough to have some sturdy wagons on hand to haul the wool away."

"Ah, but it would have been no easy task to unload the sacks and reload them in the new wagons. The woolsacks are deliberately made so heavy for that very reason, to thwart theft. And even if he could have gotten them away, what then? They'd have to be smuggled into England and then sold to traders on the alert for that very stolen wool. No, Llewelyn made a pragmatic decision to settle for what he could safely steal and took his vengeance upon Davydd with flint and tinder."

Justin saw the logic in Thomas's argument. He just did not want to admit that much of the ransom had gone up in a cloud of smoke, knowing what a blow that would be to his queen. The total ransom demanded was so huge that those sacks of fine Cistercian wool were needed, each and every one. He understood now why Chester was so critical of Davydd's part in this calamity. Thomas de Caldecott was right; there was more than enough blame to go around.