Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom

And she smiled, mounted her little mule and rode off homeward surrounded by men who already admired her, and men who were more than willing to offer admiration. In the court or in the cloister, Avice of Thornbury would never pass by without turning men's heads to follow her.
    Chapter Two.
    Before nightfall Hugh was back with his prisoner, having prospected the western fringe of the Long Forest and encountered no more raiding Welshmen and no masterless men living wild. Brother Cadfael saw them pass by the abbey gatehouse on their way up through the town to the castle, where this possibly valuable Welsh youth could be held in safekeeping and, short of a credible parole, doubtless under lock and key in some sufficiently impenetrable cell. Hugh could not afford to lose him.
    Cadfael caught but a passing glimpse of him as they rode by in the early dusk. It seemed he had given some trouble on the way, for his hands were tied, his horse on a leading rein, his feet roped into the stirrups and an archer rode suggestively close at his rear. If these precautions were meant to secure him, they had succeeded, but if to intimidate, as the young man himself appeared to suppose, they had signally failed, for he went with a high, disdainful impudence, stretching up tall and whistling as he went, and casting over his shoulder at the archer occasional volleys of Welsh, which the man might not have endured so stolidly had he been able to understand their purport as well as Cadfael did. He was, in fact, a very forward and uppish young fellow, this prisoner, though it might have been partly bravado.
    He was also a very well-looking young man, middling tall for a Welshman, with the bold cheekbones and chin and the ruddy colouring of his kind, and a thick tangle of black curls that fell very becomingly about his brow and ears, blown by the south, west wind, for he wore no cap. Tethered hands and feet did not hamper him from sitting his horse like a centaur, and the voice that teased his guards in insolent Welsh was light and clear. Sister Magdalen had said truly that his gear was princely, and his manner proclaimed him certainly proud and probably, thought Cadfael, spoiled to the point of ruin. Not a particularly rare condition in a well made, personable and probably only son.
    They passed, and the prisoner's loud, melodious whistle of defiance died gradually along the Foregate and over the bridge. Cadfael went back to his workshop in the herbarium, and blew up his brazier to boil a fresh elixir of horehound for the winter coughs and colds.
    Hugh came down from the castle next morning with a request to borrow Brother Cadfael on his captive's behalf, for it seemed the boy had a raw gash in his thigh, ripped against a stone in the flood, and had gone to some pains to conceal it from the nuns.
    'Ask me,' said Hugh, grinning, 'he'd have died rather than bare his hams for the ladies to poultice. And give him his due, though the tear is none so grave, the few miles he rode yesterday must have cost him dear in pain, and he never gave a sign. And blushed like a girl when we did notice him favouring the raw cheek, and made him strip.'
    'And left his sore undressed overnight? Never tell me! So why do you need me?' asked Cadfael shrewdly.
    'Because you speak good Welsh, and Welsh of the north, and he's certainly from Gwynedd, one of Cadwaladr's boys, though you may as well make the lad comfortable while you're about it. We speak English to him, and he shakes his head and answers with nothing but Welsh, but for all that, there's a saucy look in his eye that tells me he understands very well, and is having a game with us. So come and speak English to him, and trip the bold young sprig headlong when he thinks his Welsh insults can pass for civilities.'
    'He'd have had short shrift from Sister Magdalen,' said Cadfael thoughtfully, 'if she'd known of his hurt. All his blushes wouldn't have saved him.' And he went off willingly enough to see Brother Oswin properly instructed as to what needed attention in the workshop, before setting out with Hugh to the castle. A fair share of curiosity, and a little over, measure, was one of the regular items in his confessions. And after all, he was a Welshman; somewhere in the tangled genealogies of his nation, this obdurate boy might be his distant kin.
    They had a healthy respect for their prisoner's strength, wit and ingenuity, and had him in a windowless cell, though decently provided. Cadfael went in to him alone,