the deep small hours of that same night Elis awoke in the dark cell in the outer ward of Shrewsbury castle, and lay with stretched ears, struggling up from the dullness of sleep and wondering what had shaken him out of so profound a slumber. He had grown used to all the daytime sounds native to this place, and to the normal unbroken silence of the night. This night was different, or he would not have been heaved so rudely out of the only refuge he had from his daytime miseries. Something was not as it should have been, someone was astir at a time when there was always silence and stillness. The air quivered with soft movements and distant voices.
They were not locked in, their word had been accepted without question, bond enough to hold them. Elis raised himself cautiously on an elbow, and leaned to listen to Eliud’s breathing in the bed beside him. Deep asleep, if not altogether at peace. He twitched and turned without awaking, and the measure of his breathing changed uneasily, shortening and shallowing sometimes, then easing into a long rhythm that promised better rest. Elis did not want to disturb him. It was all due to him, to his pig, headed folly in joining Cadwaladr, that Eliud was here a prisoner beside him. He must not be drawn still deeper into question and danger, whatever happened to Elis.
There were certainly voices, at some small distance but muffled and made to sound infinitely more distant by the thick stone walls. And though at this remove there could not possibly be distinguishable words, yet there was an indefinable agitation about the exchanges, a quiver of panic on the air. Elis slid carefully from the bed, halted and held his breath a moment to make sure that Eliud had not stirred, and felt for his coat, thankful that he slept in shirt and hose, and need not fumble in the dark to dress. With all the grief and anxiety he carried about with him night and day, he must discover the reason of this added and unforeseen alarm. Every divergence from custom was a threat.
The door was heavy but well hung, and swung without a sound. Outside the night was moonless but clear, very faint starlight patterned the sky between the walls and towers that made a shell of total darkness. He drew the door closed after him, and eased the heavy latch into its socket gingerly. Now the murmur of voices had body and direction, it came from the guard, room within the gatehouse. And that crisp, brief clatter that struck a hidden spark on the ground was hooves on the cobbles. A rider at this hour?
He felt his way along the wall towards the sound, at every angle flattening himself against the stones to listen afresh. The horse shifted and blew. Shapes grew gradually out of the solid darkness, the twin turrets of the barbican showed their teeth against a faintly lighter sky, and the flat surface of the closed gate beneath had a tall, narrow slit of pallor carved through it, tall as a man on horseback, and wide enough for a horse to pass in haste. The rider’s wicket was open. Open because someone had entered by it with urgent news only minutes since, and no one had yet thought to close it.
Elis crept nearer. The door of the guard, room was ajar, a long sliver of light from torches within quivered across the dark cobbles. The voices emerged by fits and starts, as they were raised and again lowered, but he caught words clearly here and there.
‘… burned a farm west of Pontesbury,’ reported a messenger, still breathless from his haste, ‘and never withdrew… They’re camped overnight… and another party skirting Minsterley to join them.’ Another voice, sharp and clear, most likely one of the experienced sergeants: ‘What numbers?’ ‘In all… if they foregather… I was told it might be as many as a hundred and fifty…’ ‘Archers? Lancers? Foot or horse?’ That was not the sergeant, that was a young voice, a shade higher than it should have been with alarm and strain. They had got Alan Herbard out of bed. This was a grave matter.
‘My lord, far the greater part on foot. Lancers and archers both. They may try to encircle Pontesbury… they know Hugh Beringar is in the north…’ ‘Halfway to Shrewsbury!’ said Herbard’s voice, taut and jealous for his first command.
‘They’ll not dare that,’ said the sergeant. ‘Plunder’s the aim. Those valley farms… with new lambs…’ ‘Madog ap Meredith has a grudge to settle,’ ventured the messenger, still short of breath, ‘for that raid in February. They’re close… but the pickings are smaller, there in the forest… I doubt…”
Halfway to Shrewsbury was more than halfway to the ford in the forest where that grudge had come to birth. And the pickings… Elis turned his forehead into the chill of the stone against which he leaned and swallowed terror. A parcel of women! He was more than paid for that silly flaunt, who had a woman of his own there to sweat and bleed for, young, beautiful, fair as flax, tall like a willow. The square dark men of Powys would come to blows over her, kill one another for her, kill her when they were done.
He had started out of his shelter under the wall before he even knew what he intended. The patient, drooping horse might have given him away, but there was no groom holding it, and it stood its ground silently, unstartled, as he stole past, a hand raised to caress and beseech acceptance. He did not dare take it, the first clatter of hooves would have brought them out like hornets disturbed, but at least it let him pass unbetrayed. The big body steamed gently, he felt its heat. The tired head turned and nuzzled his hand. He drew his fingers away with stealthy gentleness, and slid past towards the elongated wicket that offered a way out into the night.
He was through, he had the descent to the castle Foregate on his right, and the way up into the town on his left. But he was out of the castle, he who had given his word not to pass the threshold, he who was forsworn from this moment, false to his word, outcast. Not even Eliud would speak for him when he knew.
The town gates would not open until dawn. Elis turned left, into the town, and groped his way by unknown lanes and passages to find some corner where he could hide until the morning. He was none too sure of his best way out, and did not stop to wonder if he would ever manage to pass unnoticed. All he knew was that he had to get to Godric’s Ford before his countrymen reached it. He got his bearings by instinct, blundering blindly round towards the eastward gates. In Saint Mary’s churchyard, though he did not know it for that, he shrank into the shelter of a porch from the chill of the wind. He had left his cloak behind in his dishonoured cell, he was half, naked to shame and the night, but he was free and on his way to deliver her. What was his honour, more than his life, compared with her safety?
The town woke early. Tradesmen and travellers rose and made their way down to the gates before full daylight, to be out and about their proper business betimes. So did Elis ap Cynan, going with them discreetly down the Wyle, cloakless, weaponless, desperate, heroic and absurd, to the rescue of his Melicent.
Eliud put out his hand, before he was fully awake, to feel for his cousin, and sat up in abrupt shock to find Elis’s side of the bed empty and cold. But the dark red cloak was still draped over the foot of the bed, and Eliud’s sense of loss was utterly irrational. Why should not Elis rise early and go out into the wards before his bedfellow was awake? Without his cloak he could not be far away. But for all that, and however brief the separation, it troubled Eliud like a physical pain. Here in their imprisonment they had hardly been a moment out of each other’s company, as if for each of them faith in a final happy delivery depended upon the presence of the other.
Eliud rose and dressed, and went out to the trough by the well, to wash himself fully awake in the shock of the cold water. There was an unusual stir about the stables and the armoury, but he saw no sign of Elis anywhere in either place, nor was he brooding on the walls with his face towards Wales. The want of him began to ache like an amputation.
They took their meals in hall among their English peers, but on this clear morning Elis did not come to break his fast. And by this time others had remarked his absence.
