Ellis Peters - The Summer of The Danes

“We cannot afford to lose touch,” Cadfael warned seriously. “If we part here it must be only for some hours, and here we must meet again. We are not free to do altogether as we choose. Go towards Carnarvon, and if you find her, see her safely there. But if not, make your way back here by dusk, and so will I. And if I find her by this lefthand way, I’ll get her into shelter wherever I may, if it means turning back to Bangor. And at Bangor I’ll wait for you, if you fail of meeting me here by sunset. And if I fail you, follow and find me there.” A makeshift affair, but the best they could do, with so limited a time, and an inescapable duty waiting. She had left the cell by the shore only that morning, she would have had to observe caution and keep within the woodland ways, where a horse must go slowly. No, she could not be far. And at this distance from the strait, surely she would keep to a used path, and not wind a laborious way deep in cover. They might yet find and bring her here by nightfall, or conduct her into safety somewhere, rendezvous here free of her, and be off thankfully back to England.

Mark looked at the light and the slight decline of the sun from the zenith. “We have four hours or more,” he said, and turned his horse westward briskly, and was off.

Cadfael’s track turned east on a level traverse for perhaps half a mile, occasionally emerging from woodland into open pasture, and affording glimpses of the strait through the scattered trees below. Then it turned inland and began to climb, though the gradient here was not great, for this belt of land on the mainland side partook to some extent of the rich fertility of the island before it reared aloft into the mountains. He went softly, listening, and halting now and again to listen more intently, but there was no sign of life but for the birds, very busy about their spring occupations and undisturbed by the turmoil among men. The cattle and sheep had been driven up higher into the hills, into guarded folds; the raiders would find only the few stragglers here, and perhaps would venture no further along the strait. The news must be ahead of them now wherever they touched, they would have made their most profitable captures already. If Heledd had turned this way, she might be safe enough from any further danger.

He had crossed an open meadow and entered a higher belt of woodland, bushy and dappled with sunbeams on his left hand, deepening into forest on his right, when a grass snake, like a small flash of silver-green lightning, shot across the path almost under his horse’s hooves to vanish in deeper grass on the other side, and the beast shied for an instant, and let out a muted bellow of alarm. Somewhere off to the right, among the trees, and at no great distance, another horse replied, raising an excited whinny of recognition. Cadfael halted to listen intently, hoping for another call to allow him to take a more precise reading of the direction, but the sound was not repeated. Probably whoever was in refuge there, well aside from the path, had rushed to soothe and cajole his beast into silence. A horse’s neighing could carry all too far along this rising hillside.

Cadfael dismounted, and led his beast in among the trees, taking a winding line towards where he thought the other voyager must be, and halting at every turn to listen again, and presently, when he was already deep among thick growth, he caught the sudden rustling of shaken boughs ahead, quickly stilled. His own movements, however cautious, had certainly been heard. Someone there in close concealment was waiting for him in ambush.

“Heledd!” said Cadfael clearly.

Silence seemed to become even more silent.

“Heledd? Here am I, Brother Cadfael. You can be easy, here are no Dublin Danes. Come forth and show yourself.”

And forth she came, thrusting through the bushes to meet him, Heledd indeed, with a naked dagger ready in her hand, though for the moment she might well have forgotten that she held it. Her gown was creased and soiled a little with the debris of bushes, one cheek was lightly smeared with green from bedding down in moss and grasses, and the mane of her hair was loose round her shoulders, here in shadow quite black, a midnight cloud. But her clear oval face was fiercely composed, just easing from its roused readiness to do battle, and her eyes, enormous in shade, were purple-black. Behind her among the trees he heard her horse shift and stamp, uneasy here in these unknown solitudes.

“It is you,” she said, and let the hand that held the knife slip down to her side with a great, gusty sigh. “How did you find me? And where is Deacon Mark? I thought you would be off home before now.”

“So we would,” agreed Cadfael, highly relieved to find her in such positive possession of herself, “but for you running off into the night. Mark is a mile or more from us on the road to Carnarvon, looking for you. We parted where the roads forked. It was guesswork which way you would take. We came seeking you at Nonna’s cell. The priest told us he’d directed you there.”

“Then you’ve seen the ship,” said Heledd, and hoisted her shoulders in resignation at the unavoidable. “I should have been well aloft into the hills by now to look for my mother’s cousins up among the sheep-huts, the ones I hoped to find still in their lowland homestead, if my horse had not fallen a little lame. I thought best to get into cover and rest him until nightfall. And now we are two,” she said, and her smile flashed in shadow with recovering confidence, “three if we can find your little deacon. And now which way should we make? Come with me over the hills, and you can find a safe way back to the Dee. For I am not going back to my father,” she warned, with a formidable flash of her dark eyes. “He’s rid of me, as he wanted. I mean him no ill, but I have not escaped them all only to go back and be married off to some man I have never seen, nor to dwindle away in a nunnery. You may tell him, or leave word with someone else to let him know, that I am safe with my mother’s kinsmen, and he can be content.”

“You are going into the first safe shelter we can find,” said Cadfael firmly, moved to a degree of indignation he could not have felt if he had found her distressed and in fear. “Afterwards, once this trouble is over, you may have your life and do what you will with it.” It seemed to him, even as he said it, that she was capable of doing with it something original and even admirable, and if it had to be in the world’s despite, that would not stop her. “Can your beast go?”

“I can lead him, and we shall see.”

Cadfael took thought for a moment. They were midway between Bangor and Carnarvon here, but once returned to the westward track by which Mark had set out, the road was more direct to Carnarvon, and by taking it they would eventually rejoin Mark. Whether he had gone on into the town, or turned back to return to the crossroads meeting place by dusk, along that pathway they would meet him. And in a city filled with Owain’s fighting men there would be no danger. A force hired to threaten would not be so mad as to provoke the entire armies of Gwynedd. A little looting, perhaps, pleasant sport carrying off a few stray cattle and a few stray villagers, but they were not such fools as to bring out Owain’s total strength against them in anger.

“Bring him out to the path,” said Cadfael. “You may ride mine, and I’ll walk yours.”

There was nothing in the glittering look she gave him to reassure him that she would do as he said, and nothing to disquiet him with doubts. She hesitated only an instant, in which the silence of the windless afternoon seemed phenomenally intense, then she turned and parted the branches behind her, and vanished, shattering the silence with the rustling and thrashing of her passage through deep cover. In a few moments he heard the horse whinny softly, and then the stirring of the bushes as girl and horse turned to thread a more open course back to him. And then, astonishingly high, wild and outraged, he heard her scream.