Ellis Peters: The Summer of The Danes

Delivered of the baggage and the womenfolk, they rode on at a brisker pace the few miles to Whittington, where they halted under the walls of the small timber keep. Oswestry itself lay to their left, on Hugh’s route homeward. Mark and Cadfael must go on northward still, but here they were on the very borderland, country which had been alternately Welsh and English for centuries before ever the Normans came, where the names of hamlets and of men were more likely to be Welsh than English. Hugh lived between the two great dykes the princes of Mercia had constructed long ago, to mark where their holding and writ began, so that no force should easily encroach, and no man who crossed from one side to the other should be in any doubt under which law he stood. The lower barrier lay just to the east of the manor, much battered and levelled now; the greater one had been raised to the west, when Mercian power had been able to thrust further into Wales.

“Here I must leave you,” said Hugh, looking back along the way they had come, and westward towards the town and the castle. “A pity! I could gladly have ridden as far as Saint Asaph with you in such weather, but the king’s officers had best stay out of Church business and avoid the crossfire. I should be loth to tread on Owain’s toes.”

“You have brought us as far as Bishop Gilbert’s writ, at any rate,” said Brother Mark, smiling. “Both this church and yours of Saint Oswald are now in the see of Saint Asaph. Did you realise that? Lichfield has lost a great swathe of parishes here in the northwest. I think it must be Canterbury policy to spread the diocese both sides the border, so that the line between Welsh and English can count for nothing.”

“Owain will have something to say to that, too.” Hugh saluted them with a raised hand, and began to wheel his horse towards the road home. “Go with God, and a good journey! We’ll look to see you again in ten days or so.” And he was some yards distant when he looked back over his shoulder and called after them: “Keep him out of mischief! If you can!” But there was no indication to which of them the plea was addressed, or to which of them the misgiving applied. They could share it between them.

”I AM TOO OLD,” Brother Cadfael observed complacently, “to embark on such adventures as this.”

“I notice,” said Mark, eyeing him sidelong, “you say nothing of the kind until we’re well clear of Shrewsbury, and there’s no one to take you at your word, poor aged soul, and bid you stay at home.”

“What a fool I should have been!” Cadfael willingly agreed.

“Whenever you begin pleading your age, I know what I have to deal with. A horse full of oats, just let out of his stall, and with the bit between his teeth. We have to do with bishops and canons,” said Mark severely, “and they can be trouble enough. Pray to be spared any worse encounters.” But he did not sound too convinced. The ride had brought colour to his thin, pale face and a sparkle to his eyes. Mark had been raised with farm horses, slaving for the uncle who grudged him house-room and food, and he still rode farm fashion, inelegant but durable, now that the bishop’s stable had provided him a fine tall gelding in place of a plodding farm drudge. The beast was nutbrown, with a lustrous copper sheen to his coat, and buoyantly lively under such a light weight.

They had halted at the crest of the ridge overlooking the lush green valley of the Dee. The sun was westering, and had mellowed from the noon gold into a softer amber light, gleaming down the stream, where the coils of the river alternately glimmered and vanished among its fringes of woodland. Still an upland river here, dancing over a rocky bed and conjuring rainbows out of its sunlit spray. Somewhere down there they would find a night’s lodging.

They set off companionably side by side, down the grassy track wide enough for two. “For all that,” said Cadfael, “I never expected, at my age, to be recruited into such an expedition as this. I owe you more than you know. Shrewsbury is home, and I would not leave it for any place on earth, beyond a visit, but every now and then my feet itch. It’s a fine thing to be heading home, but it’s a fine thing also to be setting out from home, with both the going and the return to look forward to. Well for me that Theobald took thought to recruit allies for his new bishop. And what is it Roger de Clinton’s sending him, apart from his ceremonial letter?” He had not had time to feel curiosity on that score until now. Mark’s saddle-roll was too modest to contain anything of bulk.

“A pectoral cross, blessed at the shrine of Saint Chad. One of the canons made it, he’s a good silversmith.”

“And the same to Meurig at Bangor, with his brotherly prayers and compliments?”

“No, Meurig gets a breviary, a very handsome one. Our best illuminator had as good as finished it when the archbishop issued his orders, so he added a special leaf for a picture of Saint Deiniol, Meurig’s founder and patron. I would rather have the book,” said Mark, winding his way down a steep woodland ride and out into the declining sun towards the valley. “But the cross is meant as the more formal tribute. After all, we had our orders. But it shows, do you not think, that Theobald knows that he’s given Gilbert a very awkward place to fill?”

“I should not relish being in his shoes,” Cadfael admitted. “But who knows, he may delight in the struggle. There are those who thrive on contention. If he meddles too much with Welsh custom he’ll get more than enough of that.”

They emerged into the green, undulating meadows and bushy coverts along the riverside, the Dee beside them reflecting back orange gleams from the west. Beyond the water a great grassy hill soared, crowned with the man-made contours of earthworks raised ages ago, and under the narrow wooden bridge the Dee dashed and danced over a stony bed. Here at the church of Saint Collen they asked and found a lodging for the night with the parish priest.

On the following day they crossed the river, and climbed over the treeless uplands from the valley of the Dee to the valley of the Clwyd, and there followed the stream at ease the length of a bright morning and into an afternoon of soft showers and wilful gleams of sun. Through Ruthin, under the outcrop of red sandstone crowned with its squat timber fortress, and into the vale proper, broad, beautiful, and the fresh green of young foliage everywhere. Before the sun had stooped towards setting they came down into the narrowing tongue of land between the Clwyd and the Elwy, before the two rivers met above Rhuddlan, to move on together into tidal water. And there between lay the town of Llanelwy and cathedral of Saint Asaph, comfortably nestled in a green, sheltered valley.

Hardly a town at all, it was so small and compact. The low wooden houses clustered close, the single track led into the heart of them, and disclosed the unmistakable long roof and timber bell-turret of the cathedral at the centre of the village. Modest though it was, it was the largest building to be seen, and the only one walled in stone. A range of other low roofs crowded the precinct, and on most of them some hasty repairs had been done, and on others men were still busily working, for though the church had been in use, the diocese had been dormant for seventy years, and if there were still canons attached to this centre their numbers must have dwindled and their houses fallen into disrepair long ago. It had been founded, many centuries past, by Saint Kentigern, on the monastic principle of the old Celtic clas, a college of canons under a priest-abbot, and with one other priest or more among the members. The Normans despised the clas, and were busy disposing all things religious in Wales to be subject to the Roman rite of Canterbury. Uphill work, but the Normans were persistent people.