“That, as at this moment,” said Owain, “we may leave to be resolved at another time. What may have misled you is the visit my brother Cadwaladr paid you this morning.”
“Ah, that!” said Otir, and smiled. “He is back in your encampment, then?”
“He is back. He is back, and I am here, to tell you, I could even say, to warn you, that he did not speak for me. I knew nothing of his intent. I thought he had come back to you just as he left you, still your ally, still hostile to me, still a man of his word and bound to you. It was not with my will or leave that he discarded you, and with you the sacred worth of his word. I have not made peace with him, nor will I make war with him against you. He has not won back the lands I took from him, for good reason. The bargain he made with you he must abide as best he may.”
They were steadily gazing at him, and from him to one another, about the table, waiting to be enlightened, and withholding judgement until the mists cleared.
“I am slow to see, then, the purpose of this visit,” said Otir civilly, “however much pleasure the company of Owain Gwynedd gives me.”
“It is very simple,” said Owain. “I am here to lay claim to three hostages you hold in your camp. One of them, the young deacon Mark, willingly remained to ensure the safe return of my brother, who has now made that return impossible, and left the boy to answer for it. The other two, the girl Heledd, a daughter of a canon of Saint Asaph, and the Benedictine Brother Cadfael of the abbey of Shrewsbury, were captured by this young warrior who conducted me in to you, when he raided for provisions far up the Menai. I came to ensure that no harm should come to any of these, by reason of Cadwaladr’s abandonment of his agreement. They are no concern of his. They are all three under my protection. I am here to offer a fair ransom for them, no matter what may follow between your people and mine. My own responsibilities I will discharge honourably. Cadwaladr’s are nothing to do with me. Exact from him what he owes you, not from any of these three innocent people.”
Otir did not openly say: “So I intend!” but he smiled a tight and relishing smile that spoke just as clearly for him. “You may well interest me,” he said, “and I make no doubt we could agree upon a fair ransom, between us. But for this while you must hold me excused if I reserve all my assets. When I have given consideration to all things, then you shall know whether, and at what price, I am willing to sell your guests back to you.”
“At least, then,” said Owain, “give me your pledge that they shall come back to me unharmed when I do recover them, whether by purchase or by capture.”
“I do not spoil what I may wish to sell,” agreed Otir. “And when I collect what is due to me, it will be from the debtor. That I promise you.”
“And I take your word,” said Owain. “Send to me when you will.”
“And there is no more to be said between us two?”
“As yet,” said Owain, “there is nothing more. All your choices you have reserved. So do I reserve mine.”
Cadfael left the place where he had stood motionless and quiet, in the lee of the tent, and followed down through the mute ranks of the Danes as they drew aside to give the prince of Gwynedd clear passage back to his waiting horse. Owain mounted and rode, without haste now, more certain of his enemy than ever he had been since boyhood of his brother. When the fair head, uncovered to the sun, had twice dipped from sight and reappeared again, and was dwindling into a distant speck of pale gold in the distance, Cadfael turned back along the fold of the dunes, and went to look for Heledd and Mark. They would be together. Mark had taken upon himself, somewhat diffidently, the duty of keeping a guardian eye upon the girl’s privacy. She might shake him off at will when she did not want him; when if ever she did want him, he would be within call. Cadfael had found it oddly touching how Heledd bore with this shy but resolute attendance, for she used Mark as an elder sister might, considerate of his dignity and careful never to open upon him the perilous weaponry she had at her disposal in dealing with other men, and sometimes had been known to indulge for her own pleasure no less than in hurt retaliation against her father. For there was no question but this Heledd, with her gown frayed at the sleeve and crumpled by sleeping in a scooped hollow of sand lined with grass, and her hair unbraided and loose about her shoulders in a mane of darkness burnished into blue highlights by the sun, and her feet as often as not bare in the warm sand and the cool shallows along the seaward shore, was perceptibly closer to pure beauty than she had ever been before, and could have wreaked havoc in most young men’s lives here had she been so minded. Nor was it wholly in her own defence that she went about the camp so discreetly, suppressing her radiance, and avoided contact with her captors but for the young boy who waited on her needs and Turcaill, to whose teasing company she had become accustomed, and whose shafts she took passing pleasure in returning.
There was a bloom upon Heledd in these days of captivity, a summer gloss that was more than the sheen of the sun on her face. It seemed that now that she was a prisoner, however easy was her captivity within its strict limits, and had accepted her own helplessness, now that all action and all decisions were denied her she had abandoned all anxiety with them, and was content to live in the passing day and look no further. More content than she had been, Cadfael thought, since Bishop Gilbert came to Llanelwy, and set about reforming his clergy while her mother was on her deathbed. She might even have suffered the extreme bitterness of wondering whether her father was not looking forward to the death that would secure him his tenure. There was no such cloud upon her now, she radiated a warmth that seemed to have no cares left in the world. What she could not influence she had settled down to experience and survive, even to enjoy.
They were standing among the thin screen of trees on the ridge when Cadfael found them. They had seen Owain arrive, and they had climbed up here to watch him depart. Heledd was still staring wide-eyed and silent after the last glimpse of the prince’s bright head, lost now in distance. Mark stood always a little apart from her, avoiding touch. She might treat him sisterly, but Cadfael wondered at times whether Mark felt himself in danger, and kept always a space between them. Who could ensure that his own feelings should always remain brotherly? The very concern he felt for her, thus suspended between an uncertain past and a still more questionable future, was a perilous pitfall.
“Owain will have none of it,” Cadfael announced practically. “Cadwaladr lied, Owain has set the matter straight. His brother must work out his own salvation or damnation unaided.”
“How do you know so much?” asked Mark mildly.
“I took care to be close. Do you think a good Welshman would neglect his interests where the contrivances of his betters are concerned?”
“I had thought a good Welshman never acknowledged any betters,” said Mark, and smiled. “You had your ear to the leather of the tent?”
“For your benefit no less. Owain has offered to buy us all three out of Otir’s hold. And Otir, if he has held back from coming to terms at once, has promised us life and limb and this degree of freedom until he comes to a decision. We have nothing worse to fear.”
“I was not in any fear,” said Heledd, still gazing thoughtfully southward. “Then what comes next, if Owain has left his brother to his fate?”
“Why, we sit back and wait, here where we are, until either Otir decides to accept his price for us, or Cadwaladr somehow scrapes together whatever fool sum in money and stock he promised his Danes.”
“And if Otir cannot wait, and decides to cut his fee by force out of Gwynedd?” Mark wondered.