Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

mentioned,' Cadfael admitted cautiously, feeling shaky ground under them. A cousin, I gathered, but brought up like brothers.'
    'Closer than brothers,' said the girl. Am I permitted to tell him this news? Or should it wait until you have supped with my father and told him your errand?'
    'Eliud is here?'
    'Not here at this moment, but with the prince, somewhere north along the border. They'll come with the evening. They are lodged here, and Owain's companies are encamped close by.'
    'Good, for my errand is to the prince, and it concerns the exchange of Elis ap Cynan for one of comparable value to us, taken, as we believe, by Prince Cadwaladr at Lincoln. If that is as good news to Eliud as it is to you, it would be a Christian act to set his mind at rest for his cousin as soon as may be.'
    She kept her face bright, mute and still as she said: 'I will tell him as soon as he alights. It would be great pity to see such a comradely love blighted a moment longer than it need be.' But there was acid in the sweet, and her eyes burned. She made her courteous obeisance, and left him to his ablutions before the evening meal. He watched her go, and her head was high and her step fierce but soundless, like a hunting cat.
    So that was how it went, here in this corner of Wales! A girl betrothed, and with a girl's sharp eye on her rights and privileges, while the boy went about whistling and obtuse, child to her woman, and had his arm about another youth's neck, sworn pair from infancy, oftener than he even paid a compliment to his affianced wife. And she resented with all her considerable powers of mind and heart the love that made her only a third, and barely half, welcome.
    Nothing here for her to mourn, if she could but know it. A maid is a woman far before a boy is a man, leaving aside the simple maturity of arms. All she need do was wait a little, and use her own arts, and she would no longer be the neglected third. But she was proud and fierce and not minded to wait.
    Cadfael made himself presentable, and went to the lavish but simple table of Tudur ap Rhys. In the dusk torches flared at the hall door and up the valley from the north, from the direction of Llansantffraid, came a brisk bustle of horsemen back from their patrol. Within the hall the tables were spread and the central fire burned bright, sending up fragrant wood, smoke into the blackened roof, as Owain Gwynedd, lord of North Wales and much country beside, came content and hungry to his place at the high table.
    Cadfael had seen him once before, a few years past, and he was not a man to be easily forgotten, for all he made very little ado about state and ceremony, barring the obvious royalty he bore about in his own person. He was barely thirty, seven years old, in his vigorous prime; very tall for a Welshman, and fair, after his grandmother Ragnhild of the Danish kingdom of Dublin, and his mother Angharad, known for her flaxen hair among the dark women of the south. His young men, reflecting his solid self, confidence, did it with a swagger of which their prince had no need. Cadfael wondered which of all these boisterous boys was Eliud ap Griffith, and whether Cristina had yet told him of his cousin's survival, and in what terms, and with what jealous bitterness at being still a barely regarded hanger, on in this sworn union.
    'And here is Brother Cadfael of the Shrewsbury Benedictines,' said Tudur heartily, placing Cadfael close at the high table, 'with an embassage to you, my lord, from that town and shire.'
    Owain weighed and measured the stocky figure and weathered countenance with a shrewd blue gaze, and stroked his close, trimmed golden beard. 'Brother Cadfael is welcome, and so is any motion of amity from that quarter, where I can do with an assured peace.'
    'Some of your countrymen and mine,' said Cadfael bluntly, 'paid a visit recently to Shropshire's borders with very little amity in mind, and left our peace a good deal less assured, even, than it could be said to be after Lincoln. You may have heard of it. Your princely brother did not come raiding himself, it may even be that he never sanctioned the frolic. But he left a few drowned men in one of our brooks in flood whom we have buried decently. And one,' he said, 'whom the good sisters took out of the water living, and whom your lordship may wish to redeem, for by his own tale he's of your kinship.'
    'Do you tell me!' The blue eyes had widened and brightened. 'I have not been so busy about fencing out