The Summer of the Danes (21 page)

It
occurred to him afterwards that he was breaking his own rule, and wagering on
an issue that was still in doubt.

Chapter Nine

IN
THE ABANDONED FARMSTEAD WHERE OWAIN HAD SET UP HIS HEADQUARTERS, a mile from
the edge of Otir’s camp, Cadwaladr set forth the full tale of his grievances,
with some discretion because he spoke in the presence not only of his brother,
but of Hywel, against whom he felt perhaps the greatest and most bitter
animosity, and of half a dozen of Owain’s captains besides, men he did not want
to alienate if he could keep their sympathy. But he was incapable of damping
down his indignation throughout the lengthy tale, and the very reserve and
tolerance with which they listened to him aggravated his burning resentment. By
the end of it he was afire with his wrongs, and ready to proceed to what had
been implied in every word, the threat of open warfare if his lands were not
restored to him.

Owain
sat for some minutes silent, contemplating his brother with a countenance
Cadwaladr could not read. At length he stirred, without haste, and said calmly:
“You are under some misapprehension concerning the state of the case, and you
have conveniently forgotten a small matter of a man’s death, for which a price
was exacted. You have brought here these Danes of Dublin as a means of forcing
my hand. Not even by a brother is my hand so easily forced. Now let me show you
the reality. The boot is on the other foot now. It is no longer a matter of you
saying to me: give me back all my lands, or I will let loose these barbarians
on Gwynedd until you do. Now hear me saying to you: You brought this host here,
now you get rid of them, and then you may—I say may! be given back what was
formerly yours.”

It
was by no means what Cadwaladr had hoped for, but he was so sure of his fortune
with such allies that he could not refrain from putting the best construction
upon it. Owain meant more and better than he was yet prepared to say. Often
before he had proved pliant towards his younger brother’s offences, so he would
again. In his own way he was already declaring an alliance to defy and expel
the foreign invaders. It could not be otherwise.

“If
you are ready to receive and join with me…” he had begun, for his high temper
mildly and civilly, but Owain cut him off without mercy.

“I
have declared no such intent. I tell you again, get rid of them, and only then
shall I consider restoring you to your right in Ceredigion. Have I even said
that I promise you anything? It rests with you, and not solely upon this present
ground, whether you ever rule in Wales again. I promise you nothing, no help in
sending these Danes back across the sea, no payment of any kind, no truce
unless or until I choose to make truce with them. They are your problem, not
mine. I may have, and reserve, my own quarrel with them for daring to invade my
realm. But now any such consideration is in abeyance. Your quarrel with them,
if you dismiss their help now, is your problem.”

Cadwaladr
had flushed into angry crimson, his eyes hot with incredulous rage. “What is
this you are demanding of me? How do you expect me to deal with such a force?
Unaided? What do you want me to do?”

“There
is nothing simpler,” said Owain imperturbably. “Keep the bargain you made with
them. Pay them the fee you promised, or take the consequences.”

“And
that is all you have to say to me?”

“That
is all I have to say. But you may have time to think what further may be said
between us if you show sense. Stay here overnight by all means,” said Owain,
“or return when you will. But you will get no more from me. While there’s a
Dane uninvited on Welsh ground.”

It
was so plainly a dismissal, and Owain so unremittingly the prince rather than
the brother, that Cadwaladr rose tamely and went out from the presence shocked
and silent. But it was not in his nature to accept the possibility that his
endeavours had all come to nothing. Within his brother’s compact and
well-planned camp he was received and acknowledged as both guest and kin,
sacred and entitled to the ultimate in courtesy on the one ground, treated with
easy familiarity on the other. Such usage only confirmed his native optimism
and reassured his arrogant self-confidence. What he had heard was the surface
that covered a very different reality. There were many among Owain’s chiefs who
kept a certain affection for this troublesome prince, however sorely that
affection had been tried in the past, and however forthrightly they condemned
the excesses to which his lofty temper drove him. How much greater, he
reflected, at Owain’s campaign table and in Owain’s tent overnight, was the
love his brother bore him. Time and again he had flouted it, and been
chastened, even cast out of all grace, but only for a while. Time and again
Owain had softened towards him, and taken him back brotherly into the former
inescapable affection. So he would again. Why should this time be different?

He
rose in the morning certain that he could manipulate his brother as surely as
he had always done before. The blood that held them together could not be
washed away by however monstrous a misdeed. For the sake of that blood, once
the die was cast, Owain would do better than he had said, and stand by his
brother to the hilt, against whatever odds.

All
Cadwaladr had to do was cast the die that would force Owain’s hand. The result
was never in doubt. Once deeply embroiled, his brother would not desert him. A
less sanguine man might have seen these calculations as providing only a
somewhat suspect wager. Cadwaladr saw the end result as certainty.

There
were some in the camp who had been his men before Hywel drove him out of
Ceredigion. He reckoned their numbers, and felt a phalanx at his back. He would
not be without advocates. But he used none of them at this juncture. In the
middle of the morning he had his horse saddled, and rode out of Owain’s
encampment without taking any formal leave, as though to return to the Danes,
and take up his bargaining with them with as little loss of cattle or gold or
face as possible. Many saw him go with some half-reluctant sympathy. So,
probably, did Owain himself, watching the solitary horseman withdraw across
open country, until he vanished into one of the rolling hollows, to reappear on
the further slope already shrunken to a tiny, anonymous figure alone in the
encroaching waste of blown sand. It was something new in Cadwaladr to accept
reproof, shoulder the burden laid on him, and go back without complaint to do
the best he could with it. If he maintained this unexpected grace, it would be
well worth a brother’s while to salvage him, even now.

The
reappearance of Cadwaladr, sighted before noon from the guard-lines covering
Otir’s landward approach, excited no surprise. He had been promised freedom to
go and to return. The watch, captained by the man Torsten, he who was reputed
to be able to split a sapling at fifty paces, sent word inward to Otir that his
ally was returning, alone and unmolested, as he had been promised. No one had
expected any other development; they waited only to hear what reception he had
had, and what terms he was bringing back from the prince of Gwynedd. Cadfael
had been keeping a watchful eye on the approaches since morning, from a higher
spot well within the lines, and at the news that Cadwaladr had been sighted
across the dunes Heledd came curiously to see for herself, and Brother Mark
with her.

“If
his crest is high,” Cadfael said judicially, “when he gets near enough for us
to take note, then Owain has in some degree given way to him. Or else he
believes he can prevail on him to give way with a little more persuasion. If
there is one deadly sin this Cadwaladr will never fall by, it is surely
despair.”

The
lone horseman came on without haste into the sparse veil of trees on a ridge at
some distance from the rim of the camp. Cadwaladr was as good a judge of the
range of arrow or lance as most other men, for there he halted, and sat his
horse in silence for some minutes. The first ripple of mild surprise passed
through the ranks of Otir’s warriors at this delay.

“What
ails him?” wondered Mark at Cadfael’s shoulder. “He has his freedom to come and
go. Owain has made no move to hold him, his Danes want him back. Whatever he
brings with him. But it seems to me his crest is high enough. He may as well
come in and deliver his news, if he has no cause to be ashamed of it.” Instead,
the distant rider sent a loud hail echoing over the folds of the dunes to those
listening at the stockade. “Send for Otir! I have a message to him from
Gwynedd.”

“What
can this be?” asked Heledd, puzzled. “So he might well have, why else did he go
to parley? Why deliver it in a bull’s bellow from a hundred paces distance?”

Otir
came surging over the ridge of the camp with a dozen of his chiefs at his
heels, Turcaill among them. From the mouth of the stockade he sent back an
answering shout: “Here am I, Otir. Bring your message in with you, and
welcome.” But if he was not by this time mulling over many misgivings and
doubts in his own mind, Cadfael thought, he must be the only man present still
sure of his grip on the expedition. And if he was, he chose for the moment to
dissemble them, and wait for enlightenment.

“This
is the message I bring you from Gwynedd,” Cadwaladr called, his voice deliberate,
high and clear, to be heard by every man within the Danish lines. “Be off back
to Dublin, with all your host and all your ships! For Owain and Cadwaladr have
made their peace, Cadwaladr will have his lands back, and has no more need of
you. Take your dismissal, and go!”

And
on the instant he wheeled his horse, and spurred back into the hollows of the
dunes at a gallop, back towards the Welsh camp. A great howl of rage pursued
him, and two or three opportunist arrows, fitted on uneasy suspicion, fell
harmlessly into the sand behind him. Further pursuit was impossible, he had the
wings of any horse the Danes could provide, and he was off back to his brother
in all haste, to make good what he had dared to cry aloud. They watched him
vanish and reappear twice in his flight, dipping and rising with the waves of
the dunes, until he was a mere speck in the far distance.

“Is
this possible?” marvelled Brother Mark, shocked and incredulous. “Can he have
turned the trick so lightly and easily? Would Owain countenance it?” The
clamour of anger and disbelief that had convulsed the Danish freebooters sank
with ominous suddenness into the contained and far more formidable murmur of
understanding and acceptance. Otir gathered his chiefs about him, turned his
back on the act of treachery, and went striding solidly up the dunes to his
tent, to take counsel what should follow. There was no wasting time on
denunciation or threat, and there was nothing in his broad brown countenance to
give away what was going on behind the copper forehead. Otir beheld things as
they were, not as he would have wished them. He would never be hesitant in
confronting realities.

“If
there’s one thing certain,” said Cadfael, watching him pass by, massive,
self-contained and perilous, “it is that there goes one who keeps his own
bargains, bad or good, and will demand as much from those who deal with him.
With or without Owain, Cadwaladr had better watch his every step, for Otir will
have his price out of him, in goods or in blood.”

No
such forebodings troubled Cadwaladr on his ride back to his brother’s camp.
When he was challenged at the outer guard he drew rein long enough to reassure
the watch blithely: “Let me by, for I am as Welsh as you, and this is where I
belong. We have common cause now. I will be answerable to the prince for what I
have done.”

To
the prince they admitted, and indeed escorted him, unsure of what lay behind
this return, and resolute that he should indeed make good his purpose to Owain
before he spoke with any other. There were enough of his old associates among
the muster, and he had a way of retaining devotion long after it was proven he
deserved none. If he had brought the Danes here to threaten Gwynedd, he might
now have conspired with them in some new and subtle measure to get his way. And
Cadwaladr stalked into the presence in their midst with a slight, disdainful
smile for their implied distrust, as always convinced by the arguments of his
own sanguine mind, and sure of his dominance.

Owain
swung about from the section of the stockade that his engineers were
reinforcing, to stare and frown at sight of his brother, so unexpectedly
returned. A frown as yet only of surprise and wonder, even concern that
something unforeseen might have prevented Cadwaladr’s freedom of movement. “You
back again? What new thing is this?”

“I
am come to myself,” said Cadwaladr with assurance, “and have returned where I
belong. I am as Welsh as you, and as royal.”

“It
is high time you remembered it,” said Owain shortly. “And now you are here, what
is it you intend?”

“I
intend to see this land freed of Irishman and Dane, as I am instructed is your
wish also. I am your brother. Your forces and mine are one force, must be one
force. We have the same interests, the same needs, the same aims…”

Owain’s
frown had gathered and darkened on his brow into a thundercloud, as yet mute,
but threatening. “Speak plainly,” he said, “I am in no mood to go roundabout.
What have you done?”

“I
have flung defiance at Otir and all his Danes!” Cadwaladr was proud of his act,
and assured he could make it acceptable, and fuse into one the powers that
would enforce it. “I have bidden them board and up sail and be off home to
Dublin, for you and I together are resolute to drive them from our soil, and
they had best accept their dismissal and spare themselves a bloody encounter. I
was at fault ever to bring them here. If you will, yes, I repent of it. Between
you and me there is no need of such harsh argument. Now I have dismissed and
spurned their bought services. We will rid ourselves of every last man of them.
If we are at one, they will not dare stand against us…”