high as the highest price judge ever set. What then?’ ‘I am not a priest,’ said Owain, ‘nor any man’s confessor. Penance and absolution are not within my writ. Justice is.’ ‘And mercy also,’ said Cadfael.
‘God forbid I should order any death wantonly. Deaths atoned for, whether by goods or grief, pilgrimage or prison, are better far than deaths prolonged and multiplied. I would keep alive all such as have value to this world and to those who rub shoulders with them here in this world. Beyond that it is God’s business.’ The prince leaned forward, and the morning light through the embrasure shone on his flaxen head. ‘Brother,’ he said gently, ‘had you not something we should have looked at again this morning by a better light? Last night we spoke of it.’ ‘That is of small importance now,’ said Brother Cadfael, ‘if you will consent to leave it in my hands some brief while. There shall be account rendered.’ ‘I will well!’ said Owain Gwynedd, and suddenly smiled, and the small chamber was filled with the charm of his presence. ‘Only, for my sake, and others, doubtless?, carry it carefully.’
CHAPTER THIRTEEN.
ELIS HAD MORE SENSE THAN TO GO RUSHING STRAIGHT TO the enclosure of the Benedictine sisters, all blown and mired as he was from his run, and with the dawn only just breaking. So few miles from Shrewsbury here, and yet so lonely and exposed! Why, he had wondered furiously as he ran, why had those women chosen to plant their little chapel and garden in so perilous a place? It was provocation! The abbess at Polesworth should be brought to realise her error and withdraw her threatened sisters. This present danger could be endlessly repeated, so near so turbulent a border.
He made rather for the mill on the brook, upstream, where he had been held prisoner, under guard by a muscular giant named John, during those few February days. He viewed the brook with dismay, it was so fallen and tamed, for all its gnarled and stony bed, no longer the flood he remembered. But if they came they would expect to wade across merrily where the bed opened out into a smooth passage, and would scarcely wet them above the knee. Those stretches, at least, could be pitted and sown with spikes or caltrops. And the wooded banks at least still offered good cover for archers.
John Miller, sharpening stakes in the mill, yard, dropped his hatchet and reached for his pitch, fork when the hasty, stumbling feet thudded on the boards. He whirled with astonishing speed and readiness for a big man, and gaped to see his sometime prisoner advancing upon him empty, handed and purposeful, and to be greeted in loud, demanding English by one who had professed total ignorance of that language only a few weeks previously.
‘The Welsh of Powys, a war, party not two hours away! Do the women know of it? We could still get them away towards the town, they’re surely mustering there, but late…’ ‘Easy, easy!’ said the miller, letting his weapon fall, and scooping up his pile of murderous, pointed poles. ‘You’ve found your tongue in a hurry, seemingly! And whose side may you be on this time, and who let you loose? Here, carry these, if you’re come to make yourself useful.’ ‘The women must be got away,’ persisted Elis feverishly. ‘It’s not too late, if they go at once… Get me leave to speak to them, surely they’ll listen. If they were safe, we could stand off even a war, band, I came to warn them…’ ‘Ah, but they know. We’ve kept good watch since the last time. And the women won’t budge, so you may spare your breath to make one man more, and welcome,’ said the miller, ‘if you’re so minded. Mother Mariana holds it would be want of faith to shift an ell, and Sister Magdalen reckons she can be more use where she is, and most of the folks hereabouts would say that’s no more than truth. Come on, let’s get these planted, the ford’s pitted already.’ Elis found himself running beside the big man, his arms full. The smoothest stretch of the brook flanked the chapel wall of the grange, and he realised as he fed out stakes at the miller’s command that there was a certain amount of activity among the bushes and coppice, woods on both sides of the water. The men of the forest were well aware of the threat, and had made their own preparations, and by her previous showing, Sister Magdalen must also be making ready for battle. To have Mother Mariana’s faith in divine protection is good, but even better if backed by the practical assistance heaven has a right to expect from sensible mortals. But a war, party of a hundred or more, and with one ignominious rout to avenge! Did they understand what they were facing?
‘I need a weapon,’ said Elis, standing aloft on the bank with feet solidly spread and black head reared towards the north, west, from which the menace must come. ‘I can use sword, lance, bow, whatever’s to spare… That hatchet of yours, on a long haft…’ He had another chance weapon of his own, he had just realised it. If only he could get wind in time, and be the first to face them when they came, he had a loud Welsh tongue where they would be looking only for terrified English, he had the fluency of bardic stock, all the barbs of surprise, vituperation and scarifying mockery, to loose in a flood against the cowardly paladins who came preying on holy women. A tongue like a whip, lash! Better still drunk, perhaps, to reach the true heights of scalding invective, but even in this state of desperate sobriety, it might still serve to unnerve and delay.
Elis waded into the water, and selected a place for one of his stakes, hidden among the water, weed with its point sharply inclined to impale anyone crossing in unwary haste. By the careful way John Miller was moving, the ford had been pitted well out in midstream. If the attackers were horsed, a step astray into one of those holes might at once lame the horse and toss the rider forward on to the pales. If they came afoot, at least some might fall foul of the pits, and bring down their fellows with them, in a tangle very vulnerable to archery.
The miller, knee, deep in midstream, stood to look on critically as Elis drove in his murderous stake, and bedded it firmly through the tenacious mattress of weed into the soil under the bank. ‘Good lad!’ he said with mild approval. ‘We’ll find you a pikel, or the foresters may have an axe to spare among them. You shan’t go weaponless if your will’s good.’ Sister Magdalen, like the rest of the household, had been up since dawn, marshalling all the linens, scissors, knives, lotions, ointments and stunning draughts that might be needed within a matter of hours, and speculating how many beds could be made available with decorum and where, if any of the men of her forest army should be too gravely hurt to be moved. Magdalen had given serious thought to sending away the two young postulants eastward to Beistan, but decided against it, convinced in the end that they were safer where they were. The attack might never come. If it did, at least here there was readiness, and enough stout, hearted forest folk to put up a good defence. But if the raiders moved instead towards Shrewsbury, and encountered a force they could not match, then they would double back and scatter to make their way home, and two girls hurrying through the woods eastward might fall foul of them at any moment on the way. No, better hold together here. In any case, one look at Melicent’s roused and indignant face had given her due warning that that one, at any rate, would not go even if she was ordered.
‘I am not afraid,’ said Melicent disdainfully.
‘The more fool you,’ said Sister Magdalen simply. ‘Unless you’re lying, of course. Which of us doesn’t, once challenged with being afraid! Yet it’s generations of being afraid, with good reason, that have caused us to think out these defences.’ She had already made all her dispositions within. She climbed the wooden steps into the tiny bell, turret and looked out over the exposed length of the brook and the rising bank beyond, thickly lined with bushes, and climbing into a slope once coppiced but now run to neglected growth. Countrymen who have to labour all the hours of daylight to get their living cannot, in addition, keep up a day, and, night vigil for long. Let them come today, if they’re coming at all, thought Sister Magdalen, now that we’re at the peak of resolution and readiness, can do no more, and can only grow stale if we must wait too long.
From the opposite bank she drew in her gaze to the brook itself, the deep, cut and rocky bed smoothing out under her walls to the broad stretch of the ford. And there John Miller was just wading warily ashore, the water turgid after his passage and someone else, a young fellow with a thatch of black curls, was bending over the last stake, vigorous arms and shoulders driving it home, low under the bank and screened by reeds. When he straightened up and showed a flushed face, she knew him.
She descended to the chapel very thoughtfully. Melicent was busy putting away, in a coffer clamped to the wall
