steadily in a still air, and higher towards the crest glowed the fires of an established camp.
Turcaill’s rowers leaned to their last long stroke and shipped their oars, as the steersman brought the ship round in a smooth sweep to beach in the shallows. Over the side went the Danes, hoisting their plunder clear, and plashing up from the water to solid ground, to be met by their fellows on guard at the rim of the tide. And over the side went Heledd, plucked up lightly in Turcaill’s arms, and this time making no resistance, since it would in any case have been unavailing, and she was chiefly concerned with preserving her dignity at this pass.
As for Cadfael himself, he had small choice but to follow, even if two of the rowers had not urged him over the side between them, and waded ashore with a firm grip on his shoulders. Whatever chances opened before him, there was no way he could break loose from this captivity until he could take Heledd with him. He plodded philosophically up the dunes and into the guarded perimeter of the camp, and went where he was led, well assured that the guardian circle had closed snugly behind him.
Chapter Eight.
” CADFAEL AWOKE TO the pearl-grey light of earliest dawn, the immense sweep of open sky above him, still sprinkled at the zenith with paling stars, and the instant recollection of his present situation. Everything that had passed had confirmed that they had little to fear from their captors, at least while they retained their bargaining value, and nothing to hope for in the way of escape, since the Danes were clearly sure of the efficiency of their precautions. The shore was well watched, the rim of the camp securely guarded. There was no need, within that pale, to keep a constant surveillance on a young girl and an elderly monastic. Let them wander at will, it would not get them out of the circle, and within it they could do no harm.
Cadfael recalled clearly that he had been fed, as generously as the young men of the guard who moved about him, and he was certain that Heledd, however casually housed here, had also been fed, and once left to her own devices, unobserved, would have had the good sense to eat what was provided. She was no such fool as to throw away her assets for spite when she had a fight on her hands.
He was lying, snugly enough, in the lee of a windbreak of hurdles, in a hollow of thick grass, his own cloak wrapped about him. He remembered Turcaill tossing it to him as it was unrolled from his small belongings as the horse was unloaded. Round him a dozen of the young Danish seamen snored at ease. Cadfael arose and stretched, and shook the sand from his habit. No one made any move to intercept him as he made for the higher ground to look about him. The camp was alive, the fires already lit, and the few horses, including his own, watered and turned on to the greener sheltered levels to landward, where there was better pasture. Cadfael looked in that direction, towards the familiar solidity of Wales, and made his way unhindered through the midst of the camp to find a high spot from which he could see beyond the perimeter of Otir’s base. From the south, and after a lengthy march round the tidal bay that bit deep to southward, Owain must come if he was ever to attack this strongpoint by land. By sea he would be at a disadvantage, having nothing to match the Norse longships. And Carnarvon seemed a long, long way from this armed camp.
The few sturdy tents that housed the leaders of the expedition had been pitched in the centre of the camp. Cadfael passed by them closely, and halted to mark the men who moved about them. Two in particular bore the unmistakable marks of authority, though curiously the pair of them together struck a discordant note, as if their twin authorities might somehow be at cross-purposes. The one was a man of fifty years or more, thickset, barrel- chested, built like the bole of a tree, and burned by the sun and the spray and the wind to a reddish brown darker than the two braids of straw-coloured hair that framed his broad countenance, and the long moustaches that hung lower than his jaw. He was bare-armed to the shoulder but for leather bands about his forearms and thick gold bracelets at his wrists.
“Otir!” said Heledd’s voice softly in Cadfael’s ear. She had come up behind him unnoticed, her steps silent in the drifting sand, her tone wary and intent. She had more here to contend with than a goodhumoured youngster whose tolerant attitude might not always serve her turn. Turcaill was a mere subordinate here; this formidable man before them could overrule all other authorities. Or was it possible that even his power might suffer checks? Here was this second personage beside him, lofty of glance and imperious of gesture, by the look of him not a man to take orders tamely from any other being.
“And the other?” asked Cadfael, without turning his head.
“That is Cadwaladr. It was no lie, he has brought these long-haired barbarians into Wales to wrest back his rights from the Lord Owain. I know him, I have seen him before. The Dane I heard called by his name.”
A handsome man, this Cadwaladr, Cadfael reflected, approving the comeliness of the shape, if doubtful of the mind within. This man was not so tall as his brother, but tall enough to carry his firm and graceful flesh well, and he moved with a beautiful ease and power beside the squat and muscular Dane. His colouring was darker than Owain’s, thick russet hair clustered in curls over a shapely head, and dark, haughty eyes well set beneath brows that almost met, and were a darker brown than his hair. He was shaven clean, but had acquired some of the clothing and adornments of his Dublin hosts during his stay with them, so that it would not have been immediately discernible that here was the Welsh prince who had brought this entire expedition across the sea to his own country’s hurt. He had the reputation of being hasty, rash, wildly generous to friends, irreconcilably bitter against enemies. His face bore out everything that was said of him.
Nor was it hard to imagine how Owain could still love his troublesome brother, after many offences and repeated reconciliations.
“A fine figure of a man,” said Cadfael, contemplating this perilous presence warily.
“If he did as handsomely,” said Heledd.
The chieftains had withdrawn eastward towards the strait, the circle of their captains surrounding them. Cadfael turned his steps, instead, still southward, to get a view of the land approach by which Owain must come if he intended to shut the invaders into their sandy beachhead. Heledd fell in beside him, not, he judged, because she was in need of the comfort of his or any other company, but because she, too, was curious about the circumstances of their captivity, and felt that two minds might make more sense of them than one alone.
“How have you fared?” asked Cadfael, eyeing her closely as she walked beside him, and finding her composed, self-contained and resolute of lip and eye. “Have they used you well, here where there are no women?”
She curled a tolerant lip and smiled. “I needed none. If there’s cause I can fend for myself, but as yet there’s no cause. I have a tent to shelter me, the boy brings me food, and what else I want they let me go abroad and get for myself. Only if I go too near the eastern shore they turn me back. I have tried. I think they know I can swim.”
“You made no attempt when we were no more than a hundred yards offshore,” said Cadfael, with no implication of approval or disapproval.
“No,” she agreed, with a small, dark smile, and added not a word more.
“And even if we could steal back our horses,” he reflected philosophically, “we could not get out of this armed ring with them.”
