The Summer of the Danes (13 page)

It
was a point that Cadfael, in his preoccupation with Bledri’s death, had not
even considered. Somewhere at the back of his mind he had felt the nagging and
elusive misgiving that something else would have to be investigated before the
night was over, but in the brief instants when he ventured to turn and attempt
to see it clearly, it had vanished from the corner of his eye. Suddenly
confronted with the puzzle that had eluded him, he foresaw a lengthy and
careful numbering of every soul in the maenol to find the one, the only one,
lost without trace. Someone else would have to undertake that, for there could
be no delay in the prince’s dawn departure.

“It
is in your hands, my lord,” he said, “as are we all.”

Owain
flattened a large and shapely hand upon the table before him. “My course is set,
and cannot be changed until Cadwaladr’s Dublin Danes are sent back to their own
land with clipped ears, if it comes to that. And you, Brothers, have your own
way to go, in less haste than my way, but not to be delayed, either. Your
bishop is entitled to as strict service as princes expect. Let us by all means
consider, in what time we have left, which among us may have done murder. Then,
if it must be left behind for another time, yet it shall not be forgotten.
Come, I’ll see for myself how this ill matter looks, and then we’ll have the
dead cared for, and see due reparation made to his kin. He was no man of mine,
but he did me no wrong, and such right as I may I’ll do to him.”

They
rejoined the gathering in the council chamber the better part of an hour later.
By then the body of Bledri ap Rhys was decently bestowed in the chapel, in the
charge of the prince’s chaplain, and there was no more to be learned from the
sparse furnishings of the room where he had died. No weapon remained to speak,
even the flow of his blood was meagre, and left small trace behind, the stab
wound being neat, narrow and precise. It is not difficult to make a clean and
exact job of stabbing to the heart a man already laid senseless to your hand.
Bledri could scarcely have felt death remove him from the world. “He was not a
man to be greatly loved, I fancy,” Owain said as they crossed once more to the
hall. “Many here must have resented him, for he came arrogantly enough. It
might take no more than a quarrelsome encounter, after that, to make a man lash
out on impulse. But to kill? Would any man of mine take it so far, when I had
made him my guest?”

“It
would need a very angry man,” Cadfael owned, “to go so far in your despite. But
it takes only an instant to strike, and less than an instant to forget all
caution. He had made himself a number of enemies, even in the short time we all
rode together.” Names were to be suppressed at all cost, but he was thinking of
the blackly murderous glare of Canon Meirion, beholding Bledri’s familiarity
with his daughter, and the consequent threat to a career the good canon had no
intention of risking.

“An
open quarrel would be no mystery,” said Owain. “That I could have resolved.
Even if it came to a death, a blood price would have paid it, the blame would
not have been all one way. He did provoke hatred. But to follow him to his
bedchamber and hale him out of his bed? It is a very different matter.” They
passed through the hall and entered the council chamber. Every eye turned upon
them as they came in. Mark and Gwion had waited with the rest. They stood close
together, silent, as though the very fact of discovering a death together had
linked them in a continuing fellowship that set them apart from the captains
round the council table. Hywel was back before his father, and had brought with
him one of the kitchen servants, a shaggy dark boy a little puffy with sleep,
but bright-eyed again with reviving wakefulness now that he knew of a sudden
death, and had something, however small, to impart concerning it. “My lord,”
said Hywel, “Meurig here is the latest I could find to pass by the lodgings
where Bledri ap Rhys was housed. He will tell you what he saw. He has not yet
told it, we waited for you.”

The
boy spoke up boldly enough. It seemed to Cadfael that he was not altogether
convinced of the importance of what he had to say, though it pleased him well
enough to be here declaring it. Its significance he was content to leave to the
Princes.

“My
lord, it was past midnight before I finished my work, and went through the
passage there to my bed. There was no one about then, I was among the last. I
did not see a soul until I came by the third door in that range, where they
tell me now this Bledri ap Rhys was lodged. There was a man standing in the
doorway, looking into the room, with the latch in his hand. When he heard me
coming he closed the door, and went away along the alley.”

“In
haste?” asked Owain sharply. “Furtively? In the dark he could well slip away
unrecognised.”

“No,
my lord, no such matter. Simply, he drew the door to, and walked away. I
thought nothing of it. And he took no care not to be seen. He said a goodnight
to me as he went. As though he had been seeing a guest safe to his bed—one none
too steady on his feet, or too sure of his way, it might be.”

“And
you answered him?”

“Surely,
my lord.”

“Now
name him,” said Owain, “for I think you knew him well enough to call him by
name then.”

“My
lord, I did. Every man in your court of Aber has got to know him and value him
by now, though he came as a stranger when first the lord Hywel brought him from
Deheubarth. It was Cuhelyn.”

A
sharp, indrawn breath hissed round the table. All heads turned, and all eyes
fixed upon Cuhelyn, who sat apparently unmoved at finding himself suddenly the
centre of marked and loaded attention. His thick dark brows had risen in mild
surprise, even a trace of amusement.

“That
is true,” he said simply. “That I could have told you, but for all I knew or know
now there could have been others there after me. As certainly there was one.
The last to see him, living, no question. But that was not I.”

“Yet
you offered us no word of this,” the prince pointed out quietly. “Why not?”

“True,
I did none too well there. It came a little too close home for comfort,” said
Cuhelyn. “I opened my mouth once to say it, and shut it again with nothing
said. For sober truth is that I did have the man’s death in mind, and for all I
never touched him nor went in to him, when Brother Cadfael told us he lay dead,
I felt the finger of guilt cold on my neck. But for solitude, and chance, and
this lad coming along when most he was needed, yes, I might have been Bledri’s
murderer. But I am not, thanks be to God!”

“Why
did you go there, and at that hour?” asked Owain, giving no sign whether he
believed or disbelieved.

“I
went there to confront him. To kill him in single combat. Why at that hour?
Because the hatred had taken hours to come to the boil within me, and only then
had I reached the length of killing. Also, I think, because I wished to make it
clear past doubt that no other man was drawn into my quarrel, and no other
could be accused even of knowing what I did.” Cuhelyn’s level voice remained
quiet and composed still, but his face had tightened until pale lines stood
clear over the cheekbones and round the lean, strong angle of his jaw.

Hywel
said softly, filling and easing the pause: “A one-armed man against a seasoned
warrior with two?”

Cuhelyn
looked down indifferently at the silver circlet that secured the linen cover
over the stump of his left arm. “One arm or two, the end would have been the
same. But when I opened his door, there he lay fast asleep. I heard his
breathing, long and placid. Is it fair dealing to startle a man out of his
sleep and challenge him to the death? And while I stood there in the doorway,
Meurig here came along. And I drew the door closed again, and went away, and
left Bledri sleeping.

“Not
that I gave up my purpose,” he said, rearing his head fiercely. “Had he been
living when the morning came, my lord, I meant to challenge him openly of his
mortal offence, and call him to battle for his life. And if you gave me
countenance, to kill him.”

Owain
was staring upon him steadily, and visibly probing the mind that fashioned this
bitter speech and gave it such passionate force. With unshaken calm he said:
“So far as is known to me, the man had done me no grave offence.”

“Not
to you, my lord, beyond his arrogance. But to me, the worst possible. He made
one among the eight that set upon us from ambush, and killed my prince at my
side. When Anarawd was murdered, and this hand was lopped, Bledri ap Rhys was
there in arms. Until he came into the bishop’s hall I did not know his name.
His face I have never forgotten. Nor never could have forgotten, until I had
got Anarawd’s price out of him in blood. But someone else has done that for me.
And I am free of him.”

“Say
to me again,” Owain commanded, when Cuhelyn had made an end of this
declaration, “that you left the man living, and have no guilt in his death.”

“I
did so leave him. I never touched him, his death is no guilt of mine. If you
bid me, I will swear it on the altar.”

“For
this while,” said the prince gravely, “I am forced to leave this matter
unresolved until I come back from Abermenai with a more urgent matter settled
and done. But I still need to know who did the thing you did not do, for not
all here have your true quarrel against Bledri ap Rhys. And as I for my part
take your word, there may be many who still doubt you. If you give your word to
return with me, and abide what further may be found out, till all are
satisfied, then come with me. I need you as I may need every good man.”

“As
God sees me,” said Cuhelyn. “I will not leave you, for any reason, until you
bid me go. And the happier, if you never do so bid me.”

The
last and most unexpected word of a night of the unexpected lay with Owain’s
steward, who entered the council chamber just as the prince was rising to
dismiss his officers, sufficiently briefed for the dawn departure. Provision
was already made for the rites due to the dead. Gwion would remain at Aber,
according to his oath, and had pledged his services to send word to Bledri’s
wife in Ceredigion, and conduct such necessary duties for the dead man as she
demanded. A melancholy duty, but better from a man of the same allegiance. The
morning muster was planned with precision, and order given for the proper
provision due to the bishop of Lichfield’s envoy on his way to Bangor, while
the prince’s force pursued the more direct road to Carnarvon, the old road that
had linked the great forts by which an alien people had kept their footing in
Wales, long ago. Latin names still clung to the places they had inhabited,
though only priests and scholars used them now; the Welsh knew them by other
names. It was all prepared, to the last detail. Except that somehow the missing
horse had been lost yet again, slipping through the cracks between greater
concerns into limbo. Until Goronwy ab Einion came in with the result of a long
and devious enquiry into the total household within the llys.

“My
lord, the lord Hywel set me a puzzle, to find the one person who should be
here, and is not. Our own household of retainers and servants I thought well to
leave aside, why should any among them take to his heels? My lord, the
princess’s waiting woman knows the roll of her maids perfectly, and any guests
who are women are her charge. There is one girl who came in your train
yesterday, my lord, who is gone from the place allotted to her. She came here
with her father, a canon of Saint Asaph, and a second canon of that diocese
travelled with them. We have not disturbed the father as yet. I waited for your
word. But there is no question, the young woman is gone. No one has seen her
since the gates were closed.”

“God’s
wounds!” swore Owain, between laughter and exasperation. “It was true what they
told me! The dark lass that would not be a nun in England—God keep her, why
should she, a black Welshwoman as ever was!—and said yes to Ieuan ab Ifor as a
blessed relief by comparison—do you tell me she has stolen a horse and made off
into the night before the guard shut us in? The devil!” he said, snapping his
fingers. “What is the child’s name?”

“Her
name is Heledd,” said Brother Cadfael.

Article I.
                 

Article
II.
              

Chapter Six

NO
QUESTION, HELEDD WAS GONE. No hostess here, with duties and status, but perhaps
the least among the arriving guests, she had held herself aloof from the
princess’s waiting-woman, keeping her own counsel and, as it seemed, waiting
her own chance. No more reconciled to the prospect of marriage with the unknown
bridegroom from Anglesey than to a conventual cell among strangers in England,
Heledd had slipped through the gates of Aber before they closed at night, and
gone to look for some future of her own choosing. But how had she abstracted
also a horse, saddled and bridled, and a choice and fleet horse into the
bargain?

The
last that anyone had seen of her was when she left the hall with an empty
pitcher, barely halfway through the prince’s feast, leaving all the nobility
busy at table, and her father still blackly scowling after her as she swung the
screen curtain closed behind her. Perhaps she had truly intended to refill the
pitcher and return to resume replenishing the Welsh drinking horns, if only to
vex Canon Meirion. But no one had seen her since that moment. And when the
first light came, and the prince’s force began to muster in the wards, and the
bustle and clamour, however purposeful and moderate, would certainly bring out
all the household, who was to tell the good canon that his daughter had taken
flight in the darkness from the cloister, from marriage, and from her sire’s
very imperfect love and care for her?