Ellis Peters - The Summer of The Danes

“We came for one, and we’re taking back one. All we wanted and needed,” said Turcaill.

The crew left aboard reached to hoist Cadwaladr over into the well between the benches, and help their fellows after. The steersman leaned upon his heavy steer board, the inshore rowers thrust off with their oars, poling the little ship quite lightly and smoothly back along the furrow she had ploughed in the sand, until she rode clear and lifted joyously into the ebb of the tide.

Before dawn they delivered their prize, with some pride, to an Otir who had just roused from sleep, but came bright-eyed and content to the encounter. Cadwaladr emerged from his stifling wrappings flushed and tousled and viciously enraged, but containing his bitter fury within an embattled silence.

“Had you trouble by the way?” asked Otir, eyeing his prisoner with shrewd satisfaction. Unmarked, unblooded, extracted from among his followers without trampling his formidable brother’s toes, or harming any other soul. A mission very neatly accomplished, and one that should be made to show a profit.

“None,” said Turcaill. “The man had prepared his own fall, withdrawing himself so to the very rim, and planting a man of his own on guard. Not for nothing! I fancy he has been looking for word from his old lands, and made shift to keep a door open. For I doubt he’ll get any sympathy from Owain, or expects any.”

At that Cadwaladr did open his mouth, unlocking his set teeth with an effort, for it was doubtful if he himself quite believed what he was about to say. “You misread the strength of the Welsh blood-tie. Brother will hold by brother. You have brought Owain down on you with all his host, and so you will discover.”

“As brother held by brother when you came hiring Dublin men to threaten your brother with warfare,” said Otir, and laughed briefly and harshly.

“You will see,” said Cadwaladr hotly, “what Owain will venture for my sake.”

“So we shall, and so will you. I doubt you’ll find less comfort in it than we shall. He has given both you and me fair notice that your quarrel is not his quarrel, and you must pay your own score. And so you shall,” said Otir with glossy satisfaction, “before you set foot again outside this camp. I have you, and I’ll keep you until you pay me what you promised. Every coin, every calf, or the equal in goods we will have out of you. That done, you may go free, back to your lands or beggarly into the world again, as Owain pleases. And I warn you, never again look to Dublin for help, we know now the worth of your word. And that being so,” he said, thoughtfully plying his massive jowls in a muscular fist, “we’ll make sure of you, now that we have you!” He turned upon Turcaill, who stood by watching this encounter with detached interest, his own part already done. “Give him in charge to Torsten to keep, but see him tethered. We know all too well his word and oath are no bond to him, so we may rightly use other means. Put chains on him, and see him watched and kept close.”

“You dare not!” Cadwaladr spat on a hissing breath, and made a convulsive movement to launch himself against his judge, but ready hands plucked him back with insulting ease, and held him writhing and sweating between his grinning guards. In the face of such casual and indifferent usage his boiling rage seemed hardly more than a turbulent child’s tantrum, and burned itself out inevitably into the cold realisation that he was helpless, and must resign himself to the reversion of his fortunes, for he could do nothing to change it.

“Pay what you owe us, and go,” said Otir with bleak simplicity. And to Torsten: “Take him away!”

TWO MEN OF Cuhelyn’s company, making the complete rounds of the southern rim of the encampment, found the remotest gate unguarded in the early hours of the morning, and reported as much to their captain. If he had been any other than Cuhelyn this early check upon the defences would not have been ordered in the first place. To him the presence within Owain’s camp of Cadwaladr, tolerated if not accepted, was deep offence, not only for the sake of Anarawd dead, but also for the sake of Owain living. Nor had Cadwaladr’s proceedings within the camp been any alleviation of the suspicion and detestation in which Cuhelyn bore him. Retirement into this remote corner might have been interpreted by others as showing a certain sensitivity to the vexation the sight of him must cause his brother. Cuhelyn knew him better, an arrogant creature blind to other men’s needs and feelings. And never to be trusted, since all his acts were reckless and unpredictable. So Cuhelyn had made it his business, with nothing said to any other, to keep a close eye upon Cadwaladr’s movements, and the behaviour of those who gathered about him. Where they mustered, there was need of vigilance. The defection of a guard brought Cuhelyn to the gate in haste, before the lines were astir. They found the missing man lying unhurt but wound up like a roll of woollen cloth among the bushes not far from the fence. He had contrived to loosen the cord that bound his hands, though not yet enough to free them, and had worked the folds of cloth partly loose from his mouth. The muffled grunts that were all he could utter were enough to locate him as soon as the searchers reached the trees. Released, he came stiffly to his feet, and reported from swollen lips what had befallen him in the night.

“Danes, five at least, They came up from the bay. There was a boy could be Welsh showed them the way…”

“Danes!” Cuhelyn echoed, between wonder and enlightenment. He had expected devilment of some kind from Cadwaladr, was it now possible that this meant devilment aimed against Cadwaladr, instead? The thought gave him some sour amusement, but he did not yet quite believe in it. This could still be mischief of another kind, Dane and Welshman regretting their severance and compounding their differences secretly to act together in Owain’s despite.

He set off in haste to Cadwaladr’s tent, and walked in without ceremony. A rising breeze blew in his face, flapping the severed skins behind the brychan. The swaddled figure on the bed heaved and strained, uttering small animal sounds. This second bound victim confounded all possible notions that might account for the first. Why should a party of Danes, having made its way clandestinely here to Cadwaladr, next proceed to bind and silence him, and then leave him here to be found and set free as inevitably as the sun rises? If they came to enter into renewed conspiracy with him, if they came to secure him hostage for what he owed them, either way it made no sense. So Cuhelyn was reflecting bewilderedly as he untied the ropes that pinioned arms and legs, plucking the knots loose with grim patience with his single hand, and unwound the twisted rugs from about the heaving body. A hand scored by the rope came up gropingly as it was freed, and plucked back the last folds from a shock head of disordered dark hair, and a face Cuhelyn knew well.

Not Cadwaladr’s imperious countenance, but the younger, thinner, more intense and sensitive face of Cuhelyn’s mirror twin, Gwion, the last hostage from Ceredigion.

They came to Owain’s headquarters together, the one not so much shepherding the other as deigning to walk behind him, the other stalking ahead to make it plain to all viewers that he was not being driven, but going in vehement earnest where he wished to go. The air between them vibrated with the animosity that had never existed between them until this moment, and by its very intensity and pain could not endure long. Owain saw it in the stiff set of their bodies and the arduous blankness of their faces when they entered his presence and stood side by side before him, awaiting his judgement.