“He knows me by now well enough,” said Otir drily, “to know that I am not so foolish as to destroy what can and shall be profitable to me. But if you doubt it, very well, we will send him one he will trust, and the man shall take due orders from you in your very person, and bear witness to Owain that he has so taken them, and that he saw you whole and in your right mind. Owain will know truth by the bearer of it. I doubt he can take pleasure in the sight of you, not yet. But he’ll so far prove your brother as to put together your price in haste, once he knows you’ve chosen to honour your debts. He wants me gone, and go I will when I have what I came for, and he may have you back and welcome.”
“You have not such a man in your muster,” said Cadwaladr with a curling lip. “Why should he trust any man of yours?”
“Ah, but I have! No man of mine, nor of Owain’s, nor of yours, his service falls within quite another writ. One that offered himself freely as guarantor for your safe return when you left here to go and parley with your brother. Yes, and one that you left to his fate and my better sense when you tossed your defiance in my face and turned tail for your life back to a brother who despised you for it.” Otir watched the prince’s dark face flame into scarlet, and took dour satisfaction in having stung him.
“Hostage for you he was, out of goodwill, and now you are returned indeed, though in every manner of illwill, and I have no longer any claim to keep him here. And he’s the man shall go as your envoy to Owain, and in your name bid him plunder such means and valuables as you have left, and bring your ransom here.” He turned to Torsten, who had stood waiting in high and obvious content through these exchanges. “Go and find that young deacon from Lichfield, the bishop’s lad, Mark, and ask him to come here to me.”
Mark was with Brother Cadfael when the word reached him, gathering dry and fallen twigs for their fire from among the stunted trees along the ridge. He straightened up with his load gathered into the fold of a wide sleeve, and stared at the messenger in mild surprise, but without any trace of alarm. In these few days of nominal captivity he had never felt himself a captive, or in any danger or distress, but neither had he ever supposed that he was of any particular interest or consequence to his captors beyond what bargaining value his small body might have.
Like a curious child he asked, wide-eyed: “What can your captain want with me?”
“No harm,” said Cadfael. “For all I can see, these Irish Danes have more of the Irish than the Dane in them after all this time. Otir strikes me as Christian as most that habit in England or Wales, and a good deal more Christian than some.”
“He has a thing for you to do,” said Torsten, goodnaturedly grinning, “that comes as a benefit to us all. Come and hear it for yourself.”
Mark piled his gathered fuel close to the hearth they had made for themselves of stones in their sheltered hollow of sand, and followed Torsten curiously to Otir’s open tent. At the sight of Cadwaladr, rigidly erect in his chains and taut as a bowstring, Mark checked and drew breath, astonished. It was the first intimation he had had that the turbulent fugitive was back within the encampment, and to see him here fettered and at bay was baffling. He looked from captive to captor, and saw Otir grimly smiling and obviously in high content. Fortune was busy overturning all things for sport.
“You sent for me,” said Mark simply. “I am here.”
Otir surveyed with an indulgent eye and some surprisingly gentle amusement this slight youth, who spoke here for a Church that Welsh and Irish and the Danes of Dublin all alike acknowledged. Some day, when a few more years had passed, he might even have to call this boy ‘Father’! ‘Brother’ he might call him already.
“As you see,” said Otir, “the lord Cadwaladr, for whom you stood guarantor that he should go and come again without hindrance, has come back to us. His return sets you free to leave us. If you will do an errand for him to his brother Owain Gwynedd, you will be doing a good deed for him and for us all.”
“You must tell me what that is,” said Mark. “But I have not felt myself deprived of my freedom here. I have no complaint.”
“The lord Cadwaladr will tell you himself,” said Otir, and his satisfied smile broadened. “He has declared himself ready to pay the two thousand marks he promised to us for coming to Abermenai with him. He desires to send word to his brother how this is to be done. He will tell you.”
Mark regarded with some doubt Cadwaladr’s set face and darkly smouldering eyes. “Is this true?”
“It is.” The voice was strong and clear, if it grated a little. Since there was no help for it, Cadwaladr accepted necessity, if not with grace, at least with the recovered remnant of his dignity. “I am required to pay for my freedom. Very well, I choose to pay.”
“It is truly your own choice?” Mark wondered doubtfully.
“It is. Beyond what you see, I am not threatened. But I am not free until the ransom is paid, and the ships loaded for sea, and therefore I cannot go myself to see my cattle rounded up and driven, nor draw on my treasury for the balance. I want my brother to manage all for me, and as quickly as may be. I will send him my authority by you, and my seal by way of proof.”
“If it is what you wish,” said Mark, “yes, I will bear your message.”
“It is what I wish. If you tell him you had it from my own lips, he will believe you.” His lips at that moment were drawn thin with the hard-learned effort to keep the bitterness and fury caged within, but his mind was made up. There could be revenges later, there could be another repayment to be made in requital of this one, but now what he needed was his freedom. He slid out his private seal from a pocket in his sleeve, and held it out, not to Otir, who sat watching with a glittering grin, but to Mark. “Take my brother this, tell him you had it from my hand, and ask him to hasten what I need.”
“I will, faithfully,” said Mark.
“Then ask him for my sake to send to Llanbadarn, to Rhodri Fychan, who was my steward, and will be my steward again if ever I regain what is mine. What is left of my treasury he will know where to find, and at my orders, witnessed by my seal, he will deliver it over. If the sum is not enough, what is lacking must be made up in cattle. Rhodri knows where my stock are bestowed in safe charge. There are still herds kept for me, more than enough. Two thousand marks is the sum. Ask my brother to make haste.”
“I will,” said Mark simply, and began by himself making all haste. It was he who took an ambassador’s leave of them, rather than acknowledging his own dismissal from Otir’s presence. A brisk reverence and a brief farewell, and he was already on his way, and for some reason the space within the tent and about it looked curiously empty by the removal of his small, slight figure.
He went on foot; the distance was barely more than a mile. Within the halfhour he would be delivering his