Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

Dublin Danes. Come forth and show yourself."
    And forth she came, thrusting through the bushes to meet him, Heledd indeed, with a naked dagger ready in her hand, though for the moment she might well have forgotten that she held it. Her gown was creased and soiled a little with the debris of bushes, one cheek was lightly smeared with green from bedding down in moss and grasses, and the mane of her hair was loose round her shoulders, here in shadow quite black, a midnight cloud. But her clear oval face was fiercely composed, just easing from its roused readiness to do battle, and her eyes, enormous in shade, were purple-black. Behind her among the trees he heard her horse shift and stamp, uneasy here in these unknown solitudes.
    "It is you," she said, and let the hand that held the knife slip down to her side with a great, gusty sigh. "How did you find me? And where is Deacon Mark? I thought you would be off home before now."
    "So we would," agreed Cadfael, highly relieved to find her in such positive possession of herself, "but for you running off into the night. Mark is a mile or more from us on the road to Carnarvon, looking for you. We parted where the roads forked. It was guesswork which way you would take. We came seeking you at Nonna's cell. The priest told us he'd directed you there."
    "Then you've seen the ship," said Heledd, and hoisted her shoulders in resignation at the unavoidable. "I should have been well aloft into the hills by now to look for my mother's cousins up among the sheep-huts, the ones I hoped to find still in their lowland homestead, if my horse had not fallen a little lame. I thought best to get into cover and rest him until nightfall. And now we are two," she said, and her smile flashed in shadow with recovering confidence, "three if we can find your little deacon. And now which way should we make? Come with me over the hills, and you can find a safe way back to the Dee. For I am not going back to my father," she warned, with a formidable flash of her dark eyes. "He's rid of me, as he wanted. I mean him no ill, but I have not escaped them all only to go back and be married off to some man I have never seen, nor to dwindle away in a nunnery. You may tell him, or leave word with someone else to let him know, that I am safe with my mother's kinsmen, and he can be content."
    "You are going into the first safe shelter we can find," said Cadfael firmly, moved to a degree of indignation he could not have felt if he had found her distressed and in fear. "Afterwards, once this trouble is over, you may have your life and do what you will with it." It seemed to him, even as he said it, that she was capable of doing with it something original and even admirable, and if it had to be in the world's despite, that would not stop her. "Can your beast go?"
    "I can lead him, and we shall see."
    Cadfael took thought for a moment. They were midway between Bangor and Carnarvon here, but once returned to the westward track by which Mark had set out, the road was more direct to Carnarvon, and by taking it they would eventually rejoin Mark. Whether he had gone on into the town, or turned back to return to the crossroads meeting place by dusk, along that pathway they would meet him. And in a city filled with Owain's fighting men there would be no danger. A force hired to threaten would not be so mad as to provoke the entire armies of Gwynedd. A little looting, perhaps, pleasant sport carrying off a few stray cattle and a few stray villagers, but they were not such fools as to bring out Owain's total strength against them in anger.
    "Bring him out to the path," said Cadfael. "You may ride mine, and I'll walk yours."
    There was nothing in the glittering look she gave him to reassure him that she would do as he said, and nothing to disquiet him with doubts. She hesitated only an instant, in which the silence of the windless afternoon seemed phenomenally intense, then she turned and parted the branches behind her, and vanished, shattering the silence with the rustling and thrashing of her passage through deep cover. In a few moments he heard the horse whinny softly, and then the stirring of the bushes as girl and horse turned to thread a more open course back to him. And then, astonishingly high, wild and outraged, he heard her scream.
    The instinctive leap forward he made to go to her never gained him so much as a couple of paces. From either side the bushes thrashed, and hands reached to clutch him by cowl and habit,