Cadwaladr might have had his frolics on his way back to his castle at Aberystwyth with his booty and his prisoners, but to the north of his passage Owain Gwynedd had kept a fist clamped down hard upon disorder. Cadfael and his escort had had one or two brushes with trouble, after leaving Oswestry on their right and plunging into Wales, but on the first occasion the three masterless men who had put an arrow across their path thought better of it when they saw what numbers they had challenged, and took themselves off at speed into the brush; and on the second, an unruly patrol of excitable Welsh warmed into affability at Cadfael’s unruffled Welsh greeting, and ended giving them news of the prince’s movements. Cadfael’s numerous kinsfolk, first and second cousins and shared forebears, were warranty enough over much of Clwyd and part of Gwynedd.
Owain, they said, had come east out of his eyrie to keep a weather eye upon Ranulf of Chester, who might be so blown up with his success as to mistake the mettle of the prince of Gwynedd. He was patrolling the fringes of Chester territory, and had reached Corwen on the Dee. So said the first informants. The second, encountered near Rhiwlas, were positive that he had crossed the Berwyns and come down into Glyn Ceiriog, and might at that moment be encamped near Llanarmon, or else with his ally and friend, Tudur ap Rhys, at his maenol at Tregeiriog. Seeing it was winter, however merciful at this moment, and seeing that Owain Gwynedd was considerably saner than most Welshmen, Cadfael chose to make for Tregeiriog. Why camp, when there was a close ally at hand, with a sound roof and a well-stocked larder, in a comparatively snug valley among these bleak central hills?
Tudur ap Rhys’s maenol lay in a cleft where a mountain brook came down into the river Ceiriog, and his boundaries were well but unobtrusively guarded in these shaken days, for a two-man patrol came out on the path, one on either side, before Cadfael’s party were out of the scrub forest above the valley. Shrewd eyes weighed up this sedate company, and the mind behind the eyes decided that they were harmless even before Cadfael got out his Welsh greeting. That and his habit were enough warranty. The young man bade his companion run ahead and acquaint Tudur that he had visitors, and himself conducted them at leisure the rest of the way. Beyond the river, with its fringes of forest and the few stony fields and huddle of wooden cots about the maenol, the hills rose again brown and bleak below, white and bleak above, to a round snow, summit against a leaden sky.
Tudur ap Rhys came out to welcome them and exchange the civilities; a short, square man, very powerfully built, with a thick thatch of brown hair barely touched with grey, and a loud, melodious voice that ranged happily up and down the cadences of song rather than speech. A Welsh Benedictine was a novelty to him; a Welsh Benedictine sent as negotiator from England to a Welsh prince even more so, but he suppressed his curiosity courteously, and had his guest conducted to a chamber in his own house, where presently a girl came to him bearing the customary water for his feet, by the acceptance or rejection of which he would signify whether or not he intended to spend the night there.
It had not occurred to Cadfael, until she entered, that this same lord of Tregeiriog was the man of whom Elis had talked, when he poured out the tale of his boyhood betrothal to a little, sharp, dark creature who was handsome enough in her way, and who, if he must marry at all, would do. Now there she stood, with the gently steaming bowl in her hands, demure before her father’s guest, by her dress and her bearing manifestly Tudur’s daughter. Little she certainly was, but trimly made and carried herself proudly. Sharp? Her manner was brisk and confident, and though her approach was deferent and proper, there was an assured spark in her eyes. Dark, assuredly. Both eyes and hair fell just short of raven black by the faint, warm tint of red in them. And handsome? Not remarkably so in repose, her face was irregular in feature, tapering from wide, set eyes to pointed chin, but as soon as she spoke or moved there was such flashing life in her that she needed no beauty.
“I take your service very kindly,” said Cadfael, “and thank you for it. And you, I think, must be Cristina, Tudur’s daughter. And if you are, then I have word for you and for Owain Gwynedd that should be heartily welcome to you both.”
“I am Cristina,” she said, burning into bright animation, “but how did a brother of Shrewsbury learn my name?”
“From a young man by the name of Elis ap Cynan, whom you may have been mourning for lost, but who is safe and well in Shrewsbury castle this moment. What may you have heard of him, since the prince’s brother brought his muster and his booty home again from Lincoln?”
Her alert composure did not quiver, but her eyes widened and glowed. They told my father he was left behind with some that drowned near the border,” she said, “but none of them knew how he had fared. Is it true? He is alive? And prisoner?”
“You may be easy,” said Cadfael, “for so he is, none the worse for the battle or the brook, and can be bought free very simply, to come back to you and make you, I hope, a good husband.”
You may cast your bait, he told himself watching her face, which was at once eloquent and unreadable, as though she even thought in a strange language, but you’ll catch no fish here. This one has her own secrets, and her own way of taking events into her hands. What she wills to keep to herself you’re never like to get out of her. And she looked him full in the eyes and said: “Eliud will be glad. Did he speak of him, too?” But she knew the answer.
A certain Eliud was mentioned,” Cadfael admitted cautiously, feeling shaky ground under them. A cousin, I gathered, but brought up like brothers.”
“Closer than brothers,” said the girl. Am I permitted to tell him this news? Or should it wait until you have supped with my father and told him your errand?”
“Eliud is here?”
“Not here at this moment, but with the prince, somewhere north along the border. They’ll come with the evening. They are lodged here, and Owain’s companies are encamped close by.”
“Good, for my errand is to the prince, and it concerns the exchange of Elis ap Cynan for one of comparable value to us, taken, as we believe, by Prince Cadwaladr at Lincoln. If that is as good news to Eliud as it is to you, it would be a Christian act to set his mind at rest for his cousin as soon as may be.”
She kept her face bright, mute and still as she said: “I will tell him as soon as he alights. It would be great pity to see such a comradely love blighted a moment longer than it need be.” But there was acid in the sweet, and her eyes burned. She made her courteous obeisance, and left him to his ablutions before the evening meal. He watched her go, and her head was high and her step fierce but soundless, like a hunting cat.
So that was how it went, here in this corner of Wales! A girl betrothed, and with a girl’s sharp eye on her rights and privileges, while the boy went about whistling and obtuse, child to her woman, and had his arm about another youth’s neck, sworn pair from infancy, oftener than he even paid a compliment to his affianced wife. And she resented with all her considerable powers of mind and heart the love that made her only a third, and barely half-welcome.
Nothing here for her to mourn, if she could but know it. A maid is a woman far before a boy is a man, leaving aside the simple maturity of arms. All she need do was wait a little, and use her own arts, and she would no longer be the neglected third. But she was proud and fierce and not minded to wait.
Cadfael made himself presentable, and went to the lavish but simple table of Tudur ap Rhys. In the dusk torches flared at the hall door and up the valley from the north, from the direction of Llansantffraid, came a brisk bustle of horsemen back from their patrol. Within the hall the tables were spread and the central fire burned bright, sending up fragrant wood, smoke into the blackened roof, as Owain Gwynedd, lord of North Wales and much country beside, came content and hungry to his place at the high table.
Cadfael had seen him once before, a few years past, and he was not a man to be easily forgotten, for all he made very little ado about state and ceremony, barring the obvious royalty he bore about in his own person. He was barely thirty-seven years old, in his vigorous prime; very tall for a Welshman, and fair, after his grandmother Ragnhild of the Danish kingdom of Dublin, and his mother Angharad, known for her flaxen hair among the dark women of the south. His young men, reflecting his solid self, confidence, did it with a swagger of which their prince had no need. Cadfael wondered which of all these boisterous boys was Eliud ap Griffith, and whether Cristina had yet told him of his cousin’s survival, and in what terms, and with what jealous bitterness at being still a barely regarded hanger-on in this sworn union.
“And here is Brother Cadfael of the Shrewsbury Benedictines,” said Tudur heartily, placing Cadfael close at the high table, “with an embassage to you, my lord, from that town and shire.”
Owain weighed and measured the stocky figure and weathered countenance with a shrewd blue gaze, and stroked his close, trimmed golden beard. “Brother Cadfael is welcome, and so is any motion of amity from that quarter, where I can do with an assured peace.”
“Some of your countrymen and mine,” said Cadfael bluntly, “paid a visit recently to Shropshire’s borders with very little amity in mind, and left our peace a good deal less assured, even, than it could be said to be after Lincoln. You may have heard of it. Your princely brother did not come raiding himself, it may even be that he never sanctioned the frolic. But he left a few drowned men in one of our brooks in flood whom we have buried decently. And one,” he said, “whom the good sisters took out of the water living, and whom your lordship may wish to redeem, for by his own tale he’s of your kinship.”
“Do you tell me!” The blue eyes had widened and brightened. “I have not been so busy about fencing out the earl of Chester that I have failed to go into matters with my brother. There was more than one such frolic on the way home from Lincoln, and every one a folly that will cost me some pains to repair. Give your prisoner a name.”
“His name,” said Cadfael, “is Elis ap Cynan.”
“Ah!” said Owain on a long, satisfied breath, and set down his cup ringing on the board. “So the fool boy’s alive yet to tell the tale, is he? I’m glad indeed to hear it, and thank God for the deliverance and you, brother, for the news. There was not a man of my brother’s company could swear to how he was lost or what befell him.”
“They were running too fast to look over their shoulders,” said Cadfael mildly.
“From a man of our own blood,” said Owain grinning, “I’ll take that as it’s meant. So Elis is live and prisoner! Has he come to much harm?”
“Barely a scratch. And he may have come by a measure of sense into the bargain. Sound as a well-cast bell, I promise you, and my mission is to offer an exchange with you, if by any chance your brother has taken among his prisoners one as valuable to us as Elis is to you. I am sent,” said Cadfael, “by Hugh Beringar of Maesbury, speaking for Shropshire, to ask of you the return of his chief and sheriff, Gilbert Prestcote. With all proper greetings and compliments to your lordship, and full assurance of our intent to maintain the peace with you as hitherto.”
“The time’s ripe for it,” acknowledged Owain drily, “and it’s to the vantage of both of us, things being as they are. Where is Elis now?”
“In Shrewsbury castle, and has the run of the wards on his parole.”
“And you want him off your hands?”
“No haste for that,” said Cadfael. “We think well enough of him to keep him yet a while. But we do want the sheriff, if he lives, and if you have him. For Hugh looked for him after the battle, and found no trace, and it was your brother’s Welsh who overran the place where he fought.”
“Bide here a night or two,” said the prince, “and I will send to Cadwaladr, and find out if he holds your man. And if so, you shall have him.”
*
There was harping after supper, and singing, and drinking of good wine long after the prince’s messenger had ridden out on the first stage of his long journey to Aberystwyth. There was also a certain amount of good-natured wrestling and horseplay between Owain’s young cockerels and the men of Cadfael’s escort, though Hugh had taken care to choose some who had Welsh kin to recommend them, no very hard task in Shrewsbury at any time.
“Which of all these,” asked Cadfael, surveying the hall, smoky now from the fire and the torches, and loud with voices, “is Eliud ap Griffith?”
“I see Elis has chattered to you as freely as ever,” said Owain smiling, “prisoner or no. His cousin and foster-brother is hovering this moment at the end of the near table, and eyeing you hard, waiting his chance to have speech with you as soon as I withdraw. The long lad in the blue coat.”
No mistaking him, once noticed, though he could not have been more different from his cousin: such a pair of eyes fixed upon Cadfael’s face in implacable determination and eagerness and such a still, braced body waiting for the least encouragement to fly to respond. Owain, humouring him, lifted a beckoning finger, and he came like a lance launched, quivering. A long lad he was, and thin and intense, with bright hazel eyes in a grave oval face, featured finely enough for a woman, but with good lean bones in it, too. There was a quality of devotional anxiety about him that must be for Elis ap Cynan at this moment, but at another might be for Wales, for his prince, some day, no doubt, for a woman, but whatever its object it would always be there. This one would never be quite at rest.
He bent the knee eagerly to Owain, and Owain clouted him amiably on the shoulder and said: “Sit down here with Brother Cadfael, and have out of him everything you want to know. Though the best you know already, your other self is alive and can be bought back you at a price.” And with that he left them together and went to confer with Tudur.
Eliud sat down willingly and spread his elbows on the board to lean ardently close. “Brother, it is true, what Cristina told me? You have Elis safe in Shrewsbury? They came back without him... I sent to know, but there was no one could tell me where he went astray or how. I have been hunting and asking everywhere and so has the prince, for all he makes a light thing of it. He is my father’s fostering—you’re Welsh yourself, so you know. We grew up together from babes, and there are no more brothers, either side...”
“I do know,” agreed Cadfael, “and I say again, as Cristina said to you, he is safe enough, man alive and as good as new.”
“You’ve seen him? Talked to him? You’re sure it’s Elis and no other? A well, looking man of his company,” explained Eliud apologetically, “if he found himself prisoner, might award himself a name that would stead him better than his own...”
Cadfael patiently described his man, and told over the whole tale of the rescue from the flooded brook and Elis’s obstinate withdrawal into the Welsh tongue until a Welshman challenged him. Eliud listened, his lips parted and his eyes intent, and was visibly eased into conviction.
“And was he so uncivil to those ladies who saved him? Oh, now I do know him for Elis, he’d be so shamed, to come back to life in such hands—like a babe being thumped into breathing!” No mistake, the solemn youth could laugh, and laughter lit up his grave face and made his eyes sparkle. It was no blind love he had for his twin who was no twin, he knew him through and through, scolded, criticised, fought with him, and loved him none the less. The girl Cristina had a hard fight on her hands. “And so you got him from the nuns. And had he no hurts at all, once he was wrung dry?”
“Nothing worse than a gash in his hinder end, got from a sharp rock in the brook, while he was drowning. And that’s salved and healed. His worst trouble was that you would be mourning him for dead, but my journey here eases him of that anxiety, as it does you of yours. No need to fret about Elis ap Cynan. Even in an English castle he is soon and easily at home.”
“So he would be,” agreed Eliud in the soft, musing voice of tolerant affection. “So he always was and always will be. He has the gift. But so free with it, sometimes I fret for him indeed!”
Always, rather than sometimes, thought Cadfael, after the young man had left him, and the hall was settling down for the night round the turfed and quiet fire. Even now, assured of his friend’s safety and well-being, and past question or measure glad of that, even now he goes with locked brows and inward-gazing eyes. He had a troubled vision of those three young creatures bound together in inescapable strife, the two boys linked together from childhood, locked even more securely by the one’s gravity and the other’s innocent rashness, and the girl betrothed in infancy to half of an inseparable pair. Of the three the prisoner in Shrewsbury seemed to him the happiest by far, since he lived in the day, warming in its sunlight, taking cover from its storms, in every case finding by instinct the pleasant corner and the gratifying entertainment. The other two burned like candles, eating their own substance and giving an angry and vulnerable light.
He said prayers for all three before he slept, and awoke in the night to the uneasy reflection that somewhere, shadowy as yet, there might be a fourth to be considered and prayed for.
*
The next day was clear and bright, with light frost that lost its powdery sparkle as soon as the sun came up; and it was pleasure to have a whole day to spend in his own Welsh countryside with a good conscience and in good company. Owain Gwynedd again rode out eastward upon another patrol with a half-dozen of his young men, and again came back in the evening well content. It seemed that Ranulf of Chester was lying low for the moment, digesting his gains.
As for Cadfael, since word could hardly be expected to come back from Aberystwyth until the following day, he gladly accepted the prince’s invitation to ride with them, and see for himself the state of readiness of the border villages that kept watch on England. They returned to the courtyard of Tudur’s maenol in the early dusk, and beyond the flurry and bustle of activity among the grooms and the servants, the hall door hung open, and sharp and dark against the glow of the fire and the torches within stood the small, erect figure of Cristina, looking out for the guests returning, in order to set all forward for the evening meal. She vanished within for a few moments only, and then came forth to watch them dismount, her father at her side.
It was not the prince Cristina watched. Cadfael passed close by her as he went within, and saw by the falling light of the torches how her face was set, her lips taut and unsmiling, and her eyes fixed insatiably upon Eliud as he alighted and handed over his mount to the waiting groom. The glint of dark red that burned in the blackness of hair and eyes seemed by this light to have brightened into a deep core of anger and resentment.
What was no less noticeable, when Cadfael looked back in sheer human curiosity, was the manner in which Eliud, approaching the doorway, passed by her with an unsmiling face and a brief word, and went on his way with averted eyes. For was not she as sharp a thorn in his side as he in hers?
The sooner the marriage, the less the mischief, and the better prospect of healing it again, thought Cadfael, departing to his Vesper office; and instantly began to wonder whether he was not making far too simple a matter of this turmoil between three people, of whom only one was simple at all.
*
The prince’s messenger came back late in the afternoon of the following day, and made report to his master, who called in Cadfael at once to hear the result of the quest.
“My man reports that Gilbert Prestcote is indeed in my brother’s hands, and can and shall be offered in exchange for Elis. There may be a little delay, for it seems he was badly wounded in the fighting at Lincoln, and is recovering only slowly. But if you will deal directly with me, I will secure him as soon as he is fit to be moved, and have him brought by easy stages to Shrewsbury. We’ll lodge him at Montford on the last night, where Welsh princes and English earls used to meet for parley, send Hugh Beringar word ahead, and bring him to the town. There your garrison may hand over Elis in exchange.”
“Content, indeed!” said Cadfael heartily, “And so will Hugh Beringar be.”
“I shall require safeguards,” said Owain, “and am willing to give them.”
“As for your good faith, nowhere in this land of Wales or my foster-land of England is it in question. But my lord you do not know, and he is content to leave with you a hostage, to be his guarantee until you have Elis safe in your hands again. From you he requires none. Send him Gilbert Prestcote, and you may have Elis ap Cynan, and send back the guarantor at your pleasure.”
“No,” said Owain firmly. “If I ask warranty of a man, I also give it. Leave me your man here and now, if you will, and if he has his orders and is ready and willing, and when my men bring Gilbert Prestcote home I will send Eliud with him to remain with you as surety for his cousin’s honour and mine until we again exchange hostages halfway, on the border dyke by Oswestry, shall we say, if I am still in these parts?, and conclude the bargain. There is virtue, sometimes, in observing the forms. And besides, I should like to meet your Hugh Beringar, for he and I have a common need to be on our guard against others you wot of.”
“The same thought has been much in Hugh’s mind,” agreed Cadfael fervently, “and trust me, he will take pleasure in coming to meet you wherever may be most suited to the time. He shall bring you Eliud again, and you shall restore him a young man who is his cousin on his mother’s side, John Marchmain. You noted him this morning, the tallest among us. John came with me ready and willing to remain if things went well.”
“He shall be well entertained,” said Owain.
“Faith, he’s been looking forward to it, though his knowledge of Welsh is small. And since we are agreed,” said Cadfael, “I’ll see him instructed in his duty tonight, and make an early start back to Shrewsbury in the morning with the rest of my company.”
*
Before sleeping that night he went out from the smoke and warmth of the hall to take a look at the weather. The air was on the softer edge of frost, no wind stirring. The sky was clear and full of stars, but they had not the blaze and bite of extreme cold. A beautiful night, and even without his cloak he was tempted to go as far as the edge of the maenol, where a copse of bushes and trees sheltered the gate. He drew in deep, chill breaths, scented with timber, night and the mysterious sweetness of turf and leaf sleeping but not dead, and blew the smokiness of withindoors out of his nose.
He was about to turn back and compose his mind for the night prayers when the luminous darkness quickened around him, and two people came up from the shadowy buildings of the stables towards the hall, softly and swiftly, but with abrupt pauses that shook the air more than their motion. They were talking as they came, just above the betraying sibilance of whispers, and their conference had an edge and an urgency that made him freeze where he stood, covered by the bulk and darkness of the trees. By the time he was aware of them they were between him and his rest, and when they drew close enough he could not choose but hear. But man being what he is, it cannot be avowed that he would so have chosen, even if he could.
“—mean me no harm!” breathed the one, bitter and soft. “And do you not harm me, do you not rob me of what’s mine by right, with every breath you draw? And now you will be off to him, as soon as this English lord can be moved...”
“Have I a choice,” protested the other, “when the prince sends me? And he is my foster-brother, can you change that? Why can you not let well alone?”
“It is not well, it is very ill! Sent, indeed!” hissed the girl’s voice viciously. “Ha! And you would murder any who took the errand from you, and well you know it. And I to sit here! While you will be together again, his arm around your neck, and never a thought for me!”
The two shadows glared in the muted gleam from the dying fire within, black in the doorway. Eliud’s voice rose perilously. The taller shadow, head and shoulders taller, wrenched itself away.
“For God’s love, woman, will you not hush, and let me be!”
He was gone, casting her off roughly, and vanishing into the populous murmur and hush of the hall. Cristina plucked her skirts about her with angry hands, and followed slowly, withdrawing to her own retiring place.
And so did Cadfael, as soon as he was sure there was none to be discomposed by his going. There went two losers in this submerged battle. If there was a winner, he slept with a child’s abandon, as seemed to be his wont, in a stone cell that was no prison, in Shrewsbury castle. One that would always fall on his feet. Two that probably made a practice of falling over theirs, from too intense peering ahead, and too little watching where they trod.
Nevertheless, he did not pray for them that night. He lay long in thought instead, pondering how so complex a knot might be disentangled.
*
In the early morning he and his remaining force mounted and rode. It did not surprise him that the devoted cousin and foster-brother should be there to see him go, and send by him all manner of messages to his captive friend, to sustain him until his release. Most fitting that the one who was older and wiser should stand proxy to rescue the younger and more foolish. If folly can be measured so?
“I was not clever,” owned Eliud ruefully, holding Cadfael’s stirrup as he mounted, and leaning on his horse’s warm shoulder when he was up. “I made too much of it that he should not go with Cadwaladr. I doubt I drove him the more firmly into it. But I knew it was mad!”
“You must grant him one grand folly,” said Cadfael comfortably. “Now he’s lived through it, and knows it was folly as surely as you do. He’ll not be so hot after action again. And then,” he said, eyeing the grave oval countenance close, “I understand he’ll have other causes for growing into wisdom when he comes home. He’s to be married, is he not?”
Eliud faced him a moment with great hazel eyes shining like lanterns. Then: “Yes!” he said very shortly and forbiddingly, and turned his head away.