“And Otir has his fee,” said Mark, pondering gains and losses.
“It was promised.”
“I don’t grudge it. It might have cost far more.”
And so it might, though two thousand marks could not buy back the lives of Otir’s three young men, now being borne back to Dublin for burial, nor those few of Gwion’s following picked up dead from the surf, nor Bledri ap Rhys in his chill, calculating faithlessness, nor Gwion himself in his stark, destructive loyalty, the one as fatal as the other. Nor could all these lost this year call into life again Anarawd, dead last year in the south, at Cadwaladr’s instigation, if not at his hands.
“Owain has sent a courier to Canon Meirion in Aber,” said Mark, “to put his mind at rest for his daughter. By this he knows she is here safe enough, with her bridegroom. The prince sent as soon as Ieuan brought her into camp last night.”
His tone, Cadfael thought, was carefully neutral, as though he stood aside and withheld judgement, viewing with equal detachment two sides of a complex problem, and one that was not his to solve.
“And how has she conducted herself here in these few hours?” asked Cadfael. Mark might study to absent himself from all participation in these events, but he could not choose but observe.
“She is altogether dutiful and quiet. She pleases Ieuan. She pleases the prince, for she is as a bride should be, submissive and obedient. She was in terror, says Ieuan, when he snatched her away out of the Danish camp. She is in no fear now.”
“I wonder,” said Cadfael, “if submissive and obedient is as Heledd should be. Have we ever known her to be so, since she came from Saint Asaph with us?”
“Much has happened since then,” said Mark, thoughtfully smiling. “It may be she has had enough of venturing, and is not sorry to be settling down to a sensible marriage with a decent man. You have seen her. Have you seen any cause to doubt that she is content?”
And in truth Cadfael could not say that he had observed in her bearing any trace of discontent. Indeed, she went smilingly about the work she found for herself, waited upon Ieuan serenely and deftly, and continued to distil about her a kind of lustre that could not come from an unhappy woman. Whatever was in her mind, and held in reserve there with deep and glossy satisfaction, it certainly did not disquiet or distress her. Heledd viewed the path opening before her with unmistakable pleasure.
“Have you spoken with her?” asked Mark.
“There has been no occasion yet.”
“You may essay now, if you wish. She is coming this way.”
Cadfael turned his head, and saw Heledd coming striding lightly along the crest of the ridge towards them, with purpose in her step, and her face towards the north. Even when she halted beside them, it was only for a moment, checked in flight like a bird hovering.
“Brother Cadfael, I’m glad to see you safe. The last I knew of you was when they swept us apart, by the breach in the stockade.” She looked out across the sea, where the ships had shrunk into black splinters upon scintillating water. All along the line of them her glance followed. She might have been counting them. “They got off unhindered, then, with their silver and their cattle. Were you there to see?”
“I was,” said Cadfael.
They never did me offence,” she said, looking after their departing fleet with a slight, remembering smile. “I would have waved them away home, but Ieuan did not think it safe for me.”
“As well,” said Cadfael seriously, “for it was not entirely a peaceful departure. And where are you going now?”
She turned and looked at them full, and her eyes were wide and innocent and the deep purple of irises. “I left something of mine up there in the Danish camp,” she said. “I am going to find it.”
“And Ieuan lets you go?”
“I have leave,” she said. “They are all gone now.”
They were all gone, and it was safe now to let his hard-won bride return to the deserted dunes where she had been a prisoner for a while, but never felt herself in bondage. They watched her resume her purposeful passage along the edge of the fields. There was barely a mile to go.
“You did not offer to go with her,” said Mark with a solemn face.
“I would not be so crass. But give her a fair start,” said Cadfael reflectively, “and I think you and I might very well go after her.”
“You think,” said Mark, “we might be more welcome company on the way back?”
“I doubt,” Cadfael admitted, “whether she is coming back.”
Mark nodded his head by way of acknowledgement, unsurprised. “I had been wondering myself,” he said.
The tide was on the ebb, but not yet so low as to expose the long, slender tongue of sand that stretched out like a reaching hand and wrist towards the coast of Anglesey. It showed pale gold beneath the shallows, here and there a tuft of tenacious grass and soil breaking the surface. At the end of it, where the knuckles of the hand jutted in an outcrop of rock, the stunted salt bushes stood up like rough, crisp hair, their roots fringed with the yellow of sand. Cadfael and Mark stood on the ridge above, and looked down as they had looked once before, and upon the same revelation. Repeated, it made clear all the times, all the evenings, when it had been repeated without witnesses. They even drew back a little, so that the shape of them might be less obtrusive on the skyline, if she should look up. But she did not look up. She looked down into the clear water, palest green in the evening light, that reached almost to her knees, as she trod the narrow golden path towards the seagirt throne of rock. She had her skirts, still frayed and soiled from travel and from living wild, gathered up in her hands, and she leaned to watch the cold, sweet water quivering about her legs, and breaking their lissome outlines into a disembodied tremor, as though she floated rather than waded. She had pulled all the pins from her hair; it hung in a black, undulating cloud about her shoulders, hiding the oval face stooped to watch her steps. She moved like a dancer, slowly, with languorous grace. For whatever tryst she had here she came early, and she knew it. But because there was no uncertainty, time was a grace, even waiting would be pleasure anticipated.
