The Summer of the Danes (26 page)

Owain
looked from the one grim face to the other, and asked neutrally of both: “What
does this mean?”

“It
means,” said Cuhelyn, unlocking his set teeth, “that this man’s word is worth
no more than his master’s. I found him trussed up and gagged in Cadwaladr’s
tent. The why and how he must tell you, for I know nothing more. But Cadwaladr
is gone, and this man left, and the guard who kept the lines there says that
Danes came up from the bay in the night, and left him, too, bound among the
bushes to open a way within. If all this to-do has a meaning, he must deliver
it, not I. But I know, and so do you, my lord, better than any, that he gave
his oath not to attempt flight from Aber, and he has broken his oath and
befouled his bond.”

“Scarcely
to his own gain,” said Owain, and forbore to smile, eyeing Gwion’s face marked
by the harsh folds of the brychan, his black hair tangled and erected, and the
swollen lips bruised by the gag. And to the young man so grimly silent and
defiantly braced he said mildly: “And how do you say, Gwion? Are you forsworn?
Dishonoured, with your oath in the mire?”

The
misshapen lips parted, and shook for a moment with the recoil from tension. So
low as to be barely audible, Gwion said remorselessly: “Yes.”

It
was Cuhelyn who twisted a little aside, and averted his eyes. Gwion fixed his
black gaze on Owain’s face, and drew deeper breath, having freely owned to the
worst.

“And
why did you so, Gwion? I have known you some while now. Read me your riddle.
Truly I left you work to do in Aber, in the matter of Bledri ap Rhys dead.
Truly I had your parole. So much we all know. Now tell me how it came that you
so belied yourself as to abandon your troth.”

“Let
it lie!” said Gwion, quivering. “I did it! Let me pay for it.”

“Nevertheless,
tell it!” said Owain with formidable quietness. “For I will know!”

“You
think I will use excuses in my own defence,” said Gwion. His voice had steadied
and firmed into a calm of utter detachment, indifferent to whatever might
happen to him. He began gropingly, as if he himself had never until now probed
the complexities of his own behaviour, and was afraid of what he might find.
“No, what I have done I have done, I do not excuse it, it is shameful. But I
saw shame every way, and no choice but to accept and bear the lesser shame. No,
wait. This is not for me to say. Let me tell it as I did it. You left it to me
to send back Bledri’s body to his wife for burial, and to convey to her the
news of how he died. I thought I might without offence do her the grace of
facing her, and bringing him to her myself, intending a return to my captivity—if
I can so call that easy condition I had with you, my lord. So I went to her in
Ceredigion, and there we buried Bledri. And there we talked of what Cadwaladr
your brother had done, bringing a Danish fleet to enforce his right, and I came
to see that both for you and for him, and for all Gwynedd and Wales, the best
that could be was that you two should be brought together, and together send
the Danes empty-handed back to Dublin. The thought did not come from me,” he
said meticulously. “It came from the old, wise men who have outlived wars and
come to reason. I was, I am, Cadwaladr’s man, I can be no other. But when they
had shown me that for his very sake there must be peace made between you two
brothers, then I saw as they saw. And I made cause with such of his old
captains as I could in such haste, and gathered a force loyal to him, but
intent on the reconciliation I also desired to see. And I broke my oath,” said
Gwion with brutal vehemence. “Whether our fine plans had succeeded or failed, I
tell you openly, I would have fought for him. Against the Danes, joyfully. What
business had they making such a bargain? Against you, my lord Owain, with a
very heavy heart, but if it came to it, I would have done it. For he is my
lord, and I serve no other. So I did not go back to Aber. I brought a hundred
good fighting men of my own mind to deliver to Cadwaladr, whatever use it might
be his intent to make of them.”

“And
you found him in my camp,” said Owain, and smiled. “And half of your design
seemed to be already done for you, and our peace made.”

“So
I thought and hoped.”

“And
did you find it so? For you have talked with him, have you not, Gwion? Before
the Danes came up from the bay, and took him with them a prisoner, and left you
behind? Was he of your mind?

A
brief contortion shook Gwion’s dark face. “They came, and they have taken him.
I know no more than that. Now I have told you, and I am in your hands. He is my
lord, and if you will have me to fight under you I will yet be of service to
him, but if you deny me that, you have the right. I thought on him beleaguered,
and my heart could not stand it. Nevertheless, as I have given him my fealty,
so now I have given for him even my honour, and I know all too well I am
utterly the worse by its loss. Do as you see fit.”

“Do
you tell me,” said Owain, studying him narrowly, “that he had no time to tell
you how things stand between us two? If I will have you to fight under me, you
say! Why, so I might, and not the worst man ever I had under my banner, if I
had fighting in mind, but while I can get what I aim at without fighting, I
have no such matter in mind. What makes you think I may be about to sound the
onset?”

“The
Danes have taken your brother!” protested Gwion, stammering and suddenly at a
loss. “Surely you mean to rescue him?”

“I
have no such intent,” said Owain bluntly. “I will not lift a finger to pluck
him out of their hands.”

“What,
when they have snatched him hostage because he has made his peace with you?”

“They
have snatched him hostage,” said Owain, “for the two thousand marks he promised
them if they would come and hammer me into giving him back the lands he
forfeited.”

“No
matter, no matter what it is they hold against him, though that cannot be the
whole! He is your brother, and in enemy hands, he is in peril of his life! You
cannot leave him so!”

“He
is in no peril at all of the least harm,” said Owain, “if he pays what he owes.
As he will. They will keep him as tenderly as their own babes, and turn him
loose without a scratch on him when they have loaded his cattle and goods and
gear to the worth he promised them. They do not want outright war any more than
I do, provided they get their dues. And they know that if they maim or kill my
brother, then they will have to deal with me. We understand each other, the
Danes and I. But put my men into the field to pull him out of the mire he chose
for himself? No! Not a man, not a blade, not a bow!”

“This
I cannot believe!” said Gwion, staring wide-eyed.

“Tell
him, Cuhelyn, how this contention stands,” said Owain, leaning back with a sigh
from such irreconcilable and innocent loyalty.

“My
lord Owain offered his brother parley, without prejudice,” said Cuhelyn
shortly, “and told him he must get rid of his Danes before there could be any
question of his lands being given back to him. And there was but one way to
send them home, and that was to pay what he had promised. The quarrel was his,
and he must resolve it. But Cadwaladr believed he knew better, and if he forced
my lord’s hand, my lord would have to join with him, to drive the Danes out by
battle. And he would have to pay nothing! So he delivered defiance to Otir, and
bade him be off back to Dublin, for that Owain and Cadwaladr had made their
peace, and would drive them into the sea if they did not up anchor and go. In
which,” said Cuhelyn through his teeth, and with his eyes fierce and steady and
defiant upon Owain, who after all was brother to this devious man, and might
recoil from too plain speaking, “he lied. There was no such peace, and no such
alliance. He lied, and he broke a solemn compact, and looked to be praised and
approved for it! Worse, by such a cheat he left in peril three hostages, two
monks and a girl taken by the Danes. Over them my lord has spread his hand,
offering a fair price for their ransom. But for Cadwaladr he will not lift a
finger. And now you know,” he said fiercely, “why the Danes have sent by night
to fetch him away, and why they have dealt fairly by you, who have committed no
offence against them. They have shed no blood, harmed no man of my lord’s
following. From Cadwaladr they have a debt to collect. For even to Danes a
prince of the Welsh people should keep his word.”

All
this he delivered in a steady, deliberate voice, and yet at a white heat of
outrage that kept Gwion silent to the end.

“All
that Cuhelyn tells you is truth,” said Owain.

Gwion
opened stiff lips to say hollowly: “I do believe it. Nevertheless, he is still
your brother and my lord. I know him rash and impulsive. He acts without
thought. I cannot therefore abjure my fealty, if you can renounce your blood.”

“That,”
said Owain with princely patience, “I have not done. Let him keep his word to
those he brought in to recover his right for him, and deliver my Welsh soil
from an unwanted invader, and he is my brother as before. But I would have him
clean of malice and false dealing, and I will not put my seal to those things
he has done which dishonour him.”

“I
can make no such stipulation,” said Gwion with a wry and painful smile, “nor
set any such limit to my allegiance. I am forsworn myself, even in this his
fellow. I go with him wherever he goes, even into hell.”

“You
are in my mercy,” said Owain, “and I have not hell in mind for you or him.”

“Yet
you will not help him now! Oh, my lord,” pleaded Gwion hotly, “consider what
men will say of you, if you leave a brother in the hands of his enemies.”

“Barely
a week ago,” said Owain with arduous patience, “these Danes were his friends
and comrades in arms. If he had not mistaken me and cheated them out of their
price they would be so still. If I pass over his treachery to them, I will not
pass over his gross and foolish misreading of me. I do not like being taken for
a man who will look kindly on oath-breakers, and men who go back shamefully on
bargains freely made.”

“You
condemn me no less than him,” said Gwion, writhing.

“You
at least I understand. Your treason comes of too immovable a loyalty. It does
you no credit,” said Owain, wearying of forbearance, “but it will not turn away
your friends from you.”

“I
am in your mercy, then. What will you do with me?”

“Nothing,”
said the prince. “Stay or go, as you please. We will feed and house you as we
did at Aber, if you want to stay, and wait out his fortune. If not, go when and
where you please. You are his man, not mine. No one will hinder you.”

“And
you no longer ask for my submission?”

“I
no longer value it,” said Owain, and rose with a motion of his hand to dismiss
them both from his presence.

They
went out together, as they had entered, but once out of the farmstead Cuhelyn turned
away, and would have departed brusquely and without a word, if Gwion had not
caught him by the arm.

“He
damns me with his mercy! He could have had my life, or loaded me with the
chains I have earned. Do you, too, avert your eyes from me? Had it been
otherwise, had it been Owain himself, or Hywel, beleaguered among enemies,
would not you have set your fealty to him above even your word, and gone to him
forsworn if need were?”

Cuhelyn
had pulled up as abruptly as he had turned away. His face was set. “No. I have
never given my fealty but to lords absolute in honour themselves, and demanding
as much of those who serve them. Had I done as you have done, and brought the
dishonour as a gift to Hywel, he would have struck me down and cast me out.
Cadwaladr, I make no doubt, welcomed and was glad of you.”

“It
was a hard thing to do,” said Gwion with the solemnity of despair. “Harder than
dying.”

But
Cuhelyn had already plucked himself free, with fastidious care, and was
striding away through the camp just stirring into life with the morning light.

Among
Owain’s men Gwion felt himself an exile and an outcast, even though they
accepted his presence in their midst without demur, and took no pains to avoid
or exclude him. Here he had no function. His hands and skills did not belong to
this lord, and to his own lord he could not come. He passed through the lines
withdrawn and mute, and from a hillock within the northern perimeter of the
encampment he stood for a long time peering towards the distant dunes where Cadwaladr
was a prisoner, a hostage for two thousand marks’ worth in stock and money and
goods, the hire of a Danish fleet.

Within
his vision the fields in the distance gave way to the first undulations of
sand, and the scattered trees dwindled into clusters of bushes and scrub.
Somewhere beyond, perhaps even in chains after his recapture, Cadwaladr brooded
and waited for help which his brother coldly withheld. No matter what the
offence, not the breaking of his pledged word, not even the murder of Anarawd,
if indeed such guilt touched him, nothing could justify for Gwion Owain’s
abandonment of his brother. His own breach of faith in leaving Aber Gwion saw
as unforgivable, and had no blame for those who condemned it, but there was
nothing Cadwaladr had done or could do that would have turned his devout vassal
from revering and following him. Once given and accepted, fealty was for life.
And he could do nothing! True, he had leave to depart if he so wished, and also
true, he had a company of a hundred good fighting men bivouacked not many miles
away, but what was that against the numbers the Danes must have, and the
defences they had secured? An ill-considered attempt to storm their camp and
free Cadwaladr might only cost him his life, or, more likely, cause the Danes
to up anchor and put to sea, where they could not be matched, and take their
prisoner away with them, back to Ireland, out of reach of any rescue.