them.”
“No,” she said vehemently, “I do not like them! There could be battle and slaughter if by some foul chance he kills a man of Owain’s. It needs no more to start such a blaze.”
“And what makes you think he is going anywhere near Owain’s men, to risk such a chance?”
“How should I know what the fool has in mind?” she said impatiently. “What troubles me is what he may bring down on the rest of us.”
“I would not so readily score him down as a fool,” said Cadfael mildly. “I would have reckoned him as shrewd in the wits as he is an able man of his hands. Whatever he’s about, judge it when he returns, for it’s my belief he’ll come back successful.” He was careful not to add: “So leave fretting over him!” She would have denied any such concern, though now with less ferocity than once she would have attempted. Best leave well alone. However she might hope to deceive others, Heledd was not the girl to be able to deceive herself.
And away there to the south in Owain’s camp was the man she had never yet seen, Ieuan ab Ifor, not much past thirty, which is not all that old, well thought of by his prince, holder of good lands, and personable to the beholder’s eye, possessed of every asset but one, and invisible and negligible without it. He was not the man she had chosen.
“Tomorrow will show,” said Heledd, with relentless practicality. “We had best go get our sleep, and be ready for it.”
They had rounded the tip of the shingle bar, and kept well out in the main channel as they turned southward into the bay. Once well within, they could draw inshore and keep a watch on the coastline for the first outlying pickets of Owain’s camp. Turcaill’s boy Leif kneeled on the tiny foredeck, narrowing his eyes attentively upon the shore. He was fifteen years old, and spoke the Welsh of Gwynedd, for his mother had been snatched from this same north-western coast at twelve years old, on a passing Danish raid, and had married a Dane of the Dublin kingdom. But she had never forgotten her language, and had spoken it always with her son, from the time that he learned to speak at all. A half-naked boy in the high summer, Leif could go among the Welsh trefs and the fishing villages here and pass for one of their own, and his talent for acquiring information had brought in beforehand a useful harvest.
“Cadwaladr has kept touch always with those who hold by him,” Leif had reported cheerfully, “and there are some among his brother’s muster now would go with him if he attempted some act of his own. And I hear them say he has sent word south from Owain’s camp to his men in Ceredigion. What word nobody knows, whether to come and join him in arms, or whether to be ready to put together money and cattle if he is forced to pay what he promised us. But if a messenger comes asking for him he’ll think it no harm, rather to his gain.”
And there was more to be told, the fruit of much attentive listening. “Owain will not have him close to him. He keeps a few of his own about him now, and has made his base at the southern edge of the camp, in the corner nearest the bay. There if news comes for him from his old lands, he can let the messenger in and Owain need not know. For he’ll play one hand against the other however his vantage lies,” said Leif knowingly.
There was no arguing with that. Everyone who knew Cadwaladr knew it for truth. If the Danes had been slow to realise it, they knew it now. And Leif could be the messenger as well as any other. At fourteen a Welsh boy becomes a man, and is acknowledged as a man.
The ship drew in cautiously closer to shore. Outlines of dune and shingle and scattered bushes showed as denser or paler bulks in the dark, slipping by on their right hand. And presently the outer fringe of the Welsh camp became perceptible rather by the lingering intimations of humanity, the smoke of fires, the resinous odours of newly split wood in the lengths of stockade, even the mingled, murmurous sounds of such activity as persisted into the night, than by anything seen or clearly heard. The steersman brought his barque still closer, wary of the undulations of marsh grass beneath the placid surface of the shallows, until they should have passed the main body of the camp, and drawn alongside that southern corner where Cadwaladr was reputed to have set up his camp within the camp, drawing about him men of his old following, whose adherence to his brother remained less reliable than to their former prince. More than one fashion of messenger could make contact with him there, and other tidings reach him besides the gratifying news that his lavish generosity was still remembered by some, and himself still held in respect as lord and prince, to whom old fealty was due. He could still be reminded, not only of privileges, but of responsibilities owing, and debts unpaid.
The line of the shore receded from them, dipping westward, and closed with them again gradually as they slid past. The faint warmth and stir that was not quite sound, but only some primitive sensitivity to the presence of other human creatures, unseen, unheard, watchful and potentially hostile, fell behind then into the empty silence of the night.
“We are past,” said Turcaill softly into the steersman’s ear. “Lay us inshore.”
The oars dipped softly. The lithe little ship slid smoothly in among the tufted grasses, and touched bottom as gently as a feather lighting. Leif swung his legs over the side, and dropped into the shallows. There was firm sand under his bare feet, and the water reached barely halfway to his knee. He looked back along the line of the shore where they had passed, and even over the darkened camp there still hung a faint glow left over from the day.
“We’re close. Wait till I bring word.”
He was gone, winding his way in through the salt grasses and the straggle of scrub to the lift of the dunes beyond, narrow here, and soon rising into rough pasture, and then into good fields. His slight shape melted into the soft, dense darkness.
He was back within a quarter of an hour, sliding out of the night as silently as a wisp of mist before they were prepared for his return, though they had waited without impatience, with ears pricked for any alien sound. Leif waded through the salt bush and the shallow water cold round his legs, and reached to hold by the ship’s side and whisper in an excited hiss: “I have found him! And close! He has a man of his own on the guardpost. Nothing simpler than to come to him in secret from this side. Here they expect no attack by land, he can go and come as he pleases, and so can some who would liefer do his bidding than Owain’s.”
“You have not been within?” demanded Turcaill. “Past the guard?”
“No need! Someone else found the way there not a moment ahead of me, coming from the south. I was in the bushes, close enough to hear him challenged. He had but to open his mouth, whoever he is, and he was welcome within. And I saw where he was led. He’s fast within Cadwaladr’s tent with him now, and even the guard sent back to his watch. There’s none inside there now but Cadwaladr and his visitor, and only one guard between us and the pair of them.”
“Are you sure Cadwaladr is there?” demanded Torsten, low-voiced. “You cannot have seen him.”
“I heard his voice. I waited on the man from the time we left Dublin,” said the boy firmly. “Do you think I do not know the sound of him by now?”
