Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

Hugh's eye, and saw his own recollection reflected there, and had the grace to grin.
    'Well, floodwater is on no man's side, it gulps down Welsh as readily as English. But I was not sorry then, not at Lincoln. It was a good fight. Afterwards, no, the town turned my stomach. If I'd known before, I should not have been there. But I was there, and I couldn't undo it.'
    'You were sick at what was done to Lincoln,' Hugh pointed out reasonably, 'yet you went with the raiders to sack Godric's Ford.'
    'What was I to do? Draw out against the lot of them, my own friends and comrades, stick my nose in the air and tell them what they intended was vile? I'm no such hero!' said Elis openly and heartily. 'Still, you'll allow I did no harm there to anyone, as it fell out. I was taken, and if it please you to say, serve me right, I'll take no offence. The end of it is, here I am and at your disposal. And I'm kin to Owain and when he knows I'm living he'll want me back.'
    'Then you and I may very well come to a sensible agreement,' said Hugh, 'for I think it very likely that my sheriff, whom I want back just as certainly, is prisoner in Wales as you are here, and if that proves true, an exchange should be no great problem. I've no wish to keep you under lock and key in a cell, if you'll behave yourself seemly and wait the outcome. It's your quickest way home. Give me your parole not to attempt escape, or to go outside the wards here, and you may have the run of the castle.'
    'With all my heart!' said Elis eagerly. 'I pledge you my word to attempt nothing, and set no foot outside your gates, until you have your man again, and give me leave to go.'
    Cadfael paid a second visit next day, to make sure that his dressing had drawn the Welsh boy's ragged scratch together with no festering; but that healthy young flesh sprang together like the matching of lovers, and the slash would vanish with barely a scar.
    He was an engaging youth, this Elis ap Cynan, readable like a book, open like a daisy at noon. Cadfael lingered to draw him out, which was easy enough, and brought a lavish and guileless harvest. All the more with nothing now to lose, and no man listening but a tolerant elder of his own race, he unfolded his leaves in garrulous innocence.
    'I fell out badly with Eliud over this caper,' he said ruefully. 'He said it was poor policy for Wales, and whatever booty we might bring back with us, it would not be worth half the damage done. I should have known he'd be proved right, he always is. And yet no offence in it, that's the marvel! A man can't be angry with him, at least I can't.'
    'Kin by fostering can be as close as brothers by blood, I know,' said Cadfael.
    'Closer far than most brothers. Like twins, as we almost could be. Eliud had half an hour's start of me into the world, and has acted the elder ever since. He'll be half out of his wits over me now, for all he'll hear is that I was swept away in the brook. I wish we might make haste with this exchange, and let him know I'm still alive to plague him.'
    'No doubt there'll be others besides your friend and cousin,' said Cadfael, 'fretting over your absence. No wife as yet?'
    Elis made an urchin's grimace. 'No more than threatened. My elders betrothed me long ago as a child, but I'm in no haste. The common lot, it's what men do when they grow to maturity. There are lands and alliances to be considered.' He spoke of it as of the burden of the years, accepted but not welcomed. Quite certainly he was not in love with the lady. Probably he had known and played with her from infancy, and scarcely gave her a thought now, one way or the other.
    'She may yet be a deal more troubled for you than you are for her,' said Cadfael.
    'Ha!' said Elis on a sharp bark of laughter. 'Not she! If I had drowned in the brook they'd have matched her with another of suitable birth, and he would have done just as well. She never chose me, nor I her. Mind, I don't say she makes any objection, more than I do, we might both of us do very much worse.'
    'Who is this fortunate lady?' Cadfael wondered dryly.
    'Now you grow prickly, because I am honest,' Elis reproved him airily. 'Did I ever say I was any great bargain? The girl is very well, as a matter of fact, a small, sharp, dark creature, quite handsome in her way, and if I must, then she'll do. Her father is Tudur ap Rhys, the lord of Tregeiriog in Cynllaith, a man of Powys, but close friend to Owain and thinks like him, and her mother was a woman of Gwynedd.