Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

offence."
    "Not to you, my lord, beyond his arrogance. But to me, the worst possible. He made one among the eight that set upon us from ambush, and killed my prince at my side. When Anarawd was murdered, and this hand was lopped, Bledri ap Rhys was there in arms. Until he came into the bishop's hall I did not know his name. His face I have never forgotten. Nor never could have forgotten, until I had got Anarawd's price out of him in blood. But someone else has done that for me. And I am free of him."
    "Say to me again," Owain commanded, when Cuhelyn had made an end of this declaration, "that you left the man living, and have no guilt in his death."
    "I did so leave him. I never touched him, his death is no guilt of mine. If you bid me, I will swear it on the altar."
    "For this while," said the prince gravely, "I am forced to leave this matter unresolved until I come back from Abermenai with a more urgent matter settled and done. But I still need to know who did the thing you did not do, for not all here have your true quarrel against Bledri ap Rhys. And as I for my part take your word, there may be many who still doubt you. If you give your word to return with me, and abide what further may be found out, till all are satisfied, then come with me. I need you as I may need every good man."
    "As God sees me," said Cuhelyn. "I will not leave you, for any reason, until you bid me go. And the happier, if you never do so bid me."
    The last and most unexpected word of a night of the unexpected lay with Owain's steward, who entered the council chamber just as the prince was rising to dismiss his officers, sufficiently briefed for the dawn departure. Provision was already made for the rites due to the dead. Gwion would remain at Aber, according to his oath, and had pledged his services to send word to Bledri's wife in Ceredigion, and conduct such necessary duties for the dead man as she demanded. A melancholy duty, but better from a man of the same allegiance. The morning muster was planned with precision, and order given for the proper provision due to the bishop of Lichfield's envoy on his way to Bangor, while the prince's force pursued the more direct road to Carnarvon, the old road that had linked the great forts by which an alien people had kept their footing in Wales, long ago. Latin names still clung to the places they had inhabited, though only priests and scholars used them now; the Welsh knew them by other names. It was all prepared, to the last detail. Except that somehow the missing horse had been lost yet again, slipping through the cracks between greater concerns into limbo. Until Goronwy ab Einion came in with the result of a long and devious enquiry into the total household within the llys.
    "My lord, the lord Hywel set me a puzzle, to find the one person who should be here, and is not. Our own household of retainers and servants I thought well to leave aside, why should any among them take to his heels? My lord, the princess's waiting woman knows the roll of her maids perfectly, and any guests who are women are her charge. There is one girl who came in your train yesterday, my lord, who is gone from the place allotted to her. She came here with her father, a canon of Saint Asaph, and a second canon of that diocese travelled with them. We have not disturbed the father as yet. I waited for your word. But there is no question, the young woman is gone. No one has seen her since the gates were closed."
    "God's wounds!" swore Owain, between laughter and exasperation. "It was true what they told me! The dark lass that would not be a nun in England, God keep her, why should she, a black Welshwoman as ever was!, and said yes to Ieuan ab Ifor as a blessed relief by comparison, do you tell me she has stolen a horse and made off into the night before the guard shut us in? The devil!" he said, snapping his fingers. "What is the child's name?"
    "Her name is Heledd," said Brother Cadfael.
    Chapter Six
    No question, Heledd was gone. No hostess here, with duties and status, but perhaps the least among the arriving guests, she had held herself aloof from the princess's waiting-woman, keeping her own counsel and, as it seemed, waiting her own chance. No more reconciled to the prospect of marriage with the unknown bridegroom from Anglesey than to a conventual cell among strangers in England, Heledd had slipped through the gates of Aber before they closed at night, and gone to look for some future of her own choosing. But how had