certainly hear Bledri ap Rhys. Every man has the right to ask and to be heard. Without prejudice to the outcome!”
It was plain, as soon as the bishop’s steward brought the petitioner into the hall, that he had not come straight from travel to ask for this audience. Somewhere about the bishop’s enclave he had been waiting at ease for his entry here, and had prepared himself carefully, very fine and impressive in his dress and in his person, every grain of dust from the roads polished away. A tall, broad-shouldered, powerful man, black-haired and black-moustached, with an arrogant beak of a nose, and a bearing truculent rather than conciliatory. He swept with long strides into the centre of the open space fronting the dais, and made an elaborate obeisance in the general direction of prince and bishop. The gesture seemed to Cadfael to tend rather to the performer’s own aggrandisement than to any particular reverence for those saluted. He had everyone’s attention, and meant to retain it.
“My lord prince, my lord bishop, your devout servant! I come as a petitioner here before you.” He did not look the part, nor was his full, confident voice expressive of any such role.
“So I have heard,” said Owain. “You have something to ask of us. Ask it freely.”
“My lord, I was and am in fealty to your brother Cadwaladr, and I dare venture to speak for his right, in that he goes deprived of his lands, and made a stranger and disinherited in his own country. Whatever you may hold him guilty of, I dare to plead that such a penalty is more than he has deserved, and such as brother should not visit upon brother. And I ask of you that measure of generosity and forgiveness that should restore him his own again. He has endured this despoiling a year already, let that be enough, and set him up again in his lands of Ceredigion. The lord bishop will add his voice to mine for reconciliation.”
“The lord bishop has been before you,” said Owain drily, “and equally eloquent. I am not, and never have been, adamant against my brother, whatever follies he has committed, but murder is worse than folly, and requires a measure of penitence before forgiveness is due. The two, separated, are of no value, and where the one is not, I will not waste the other. Did Cadwaladr send you on this errand?”
“No, my lord, and knows nothing of my coming. It is he who suffers deprivation, and I who appeal for his right to be restored. If he has done ill in the past, is that good reason for shutting him out from the possibility of doing well in the future? And what has been done to him is extreme, for he has been made an exile in his own country, without a toehold on his own soil. Is that fair dealing?”
“It is less extreme,” said Owain coldly, “than what was done to Anarawd. Lands can be restored, if restoration is deserved. Life once lost is past restoration.”
“True, my lord, but even homicide may be compounded for a blood-price. To be stripped of all, and for life, is another kind of death.”
“We are not concerned with mere homicide, but with murder,” said Owain, “as well you know.”
At Cadfael’s left hand Cuhelyn sat stiff and motionless in his place, his eyes fixed upon Bledri, their glance lengthened to pierce through him and beyond. His face was white, and his single hand clenched tightly upon the edge of the board, the knuckles sharp and pale as ice. He said no word and made no sound, but his bleak stare never wavered.
“Too harsh a name,” said Bledri fiercely, “for a deed done in heat. Nor did your lordship wait to hear my prince’s side of the quarrel.”
“For a deed done in heat,” said Owain with immovable composure, “this was well planned. Eight men do not lie in wait in cover for four travellers unsuspecting and unarmed, in hot blood. You do your lord’s cause no favour by defending his crime. You said you came to plead. My mind is not closed against reconciliation, civilly sought. It is proof against threats.”
“Yet, Owain,” cried Bledri, flaring like a resinous torch, “it behoves even you to weigh what consequences may follow if you are obdurate. A wise man would know when to unbend, before his own brand burns back into his face.”
Cuhelyn started out of his stillness, quivering, and was half rising to his feet when he regained control, and sank back in his place, again mute and motionless. Hywel had not moved, nor had his face changed. He had his father’s formidable composure. And Owain’s unshaken and unshakable calm subdued in a moment the uneasy stir and murmur that had passed round the high table and started louder echoes down in the floor of the hall.
“Am I to take that as threat, or promise, or a forecast of a doom from heaven?” asked Owain, in the most amiable of voices, but none the less with a razor edge to the tone that gave it piercing sweetness, and caused Bledri to draw back his head a little as if from a possible blow, and for a moment veil the smouldering fire of his black eyes, and abate the savage tightness of his lips. Somewhat more cautiously he responded at last: “I meant only that enmity and hatred between brothers is unseemly among men, and cannot but be displeasing to God. It cannot bear any but disastrous fruit. I beg you, restore your brother his rights.”
“That,” said Owain thoughtfully, and eyeing the petitioner with a stare that measured and probed beyond the words offered, “I am not yet ready to concede. But perhaps we should consider of this matter at more leisure. Tomorrow morning I and my people set out for Aber and Bangor, together with some of the lord bishop’s household and these visitors from Lichfield. It is in my mind, Bledri ap Rhys, that you should ride with us and be our guest at Aber, and on the way, and there at home in my llys, you may better develop your argument, and I better consider on those consequences of which you make mention. I should not like,” said Owain in tones of honey, “to invite disaster for want of forethought. Say yes to my hospitality, and sit down with us at our host’s table.”
It was entirely plain to Cadfael, as to many another within the hall, that by this time Bledri had small choice in the matter. Owain’s men of the guard had fully understood the nature of the invitation. By his tight smile, so had Bledri, though he accepted it with every evidence of pleasure and satisfaction. No doubt it suited him to continue in the prince’s company, whether as guest or prisoner, and to keep his eyes and ears open on the ride to Aber. All the more if his hint of dire consequences meant more than the foreshadowing of divine disapproval of enmity between brothers. He had said a little too much to be taken at his face value. And as a guest, free or under guard, his own safety was assured. He took the place that was cleared for him at the bishop’s table, and drank to the prince with a discreet countenance and easy smile.
The bishop visibly drew deep breath, relieved that his well-meaning effort at peace-making had at least survived the first skirmish. Whether he had understood the vibrating undertones of what had passed was doubtful. The subtleties of the Welsh were probably wasted on a forthright and devout Norman, Cadfael reflected. The better for him, he could speed his departing guests, thus augmented by one, and console himself that he had done all a man could do to bring about reconciliation. What followed, whatever it might be, was no responsibility of his.
The mead went round amicably, and the prince’s harper sang the greatness and virtues of Owain’s line and the beauty of Gwynedd. And after him, to Cadfael’s respectful surprise, Hywel ab Owain rose and took the harp, and improvised mellifluously on the women of the north. Poet and bard as well as warrior, this was undoubtedly an admirable shoot from that admirable stem. He knew what he was doing with his music. All the tensions of the evening dissolved into amity and song. Or if they survived, at least the bishop, comforted and relaxed, lost all
