Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

goods into the hills. And what was there among the belongings of a good Welshman that was not portable? With ease they could abandon their homesteads if need arose, and rear them again when the danger was over. They had been doing it for centuries, and were good at it. Yet these nearest fields and settlements had already been looted once, and could not be expected to go on providing food for a small army. Cadfael would have expected rather that they would prefer combing the soft coast southward from the open sea, Owain's muster notwithstanding. Yet this small hunter set off silently into the strait. In that direction lay only the long passage of the Menai, or, alternatively, she could be meaning to round the bar of shingle and turn south into the bay by favour of this high tide. Unlikely, on the face of it, though so small a fish could find ample draught for some hours yet, until the tide was again well on the ebb towards its lowest. A larger craft, Cadfael reflected thoughtfully, would never venture there. Could that in itself be the reason why this one was chosen, and despatched alone? Then for what nocturnal purpose?"
    "So they're gone," said Heledd's voice behind him, very softly and sombrely.
    She had come up at his shoulder soundlessly, barefoot in the sand still warm from the day's sunlight. She was looking down to the shore as he was, and her gaze followed the faintly luminous single stroke of the longship's wake, withdrawing rapidly eastward. Cadfael turned to look at her, where she stood composed and still, the cloud of her long hair about her.
    "So they're gone! Had you wind of it beforehand? It does not surprise you!"
    "No," she said, "it does not surprise me. Not that I know anything of what is in their minds, but there has been something brewing all day since Cadwaladr so spited them as he did. What they are planning for him I do not know, and what it may well mean for all the rest of us I dare not guess, but surely nothing good."
    "That is Turcaill's ship," said Cadfael. It was already so far lost in the darkness that they could follow it now only with the mind's eye. But it would not yet have reached the end of the shingle bar.
    "So it would be," she said. "If there's mischief afoot, he must be in it. There's nothing Otir could demand of him, however mad, but he would plunge into it headfirst, joyfully, with never a thought for the consequences."
    "And you have thought of the possible consequences," Cadfael deduced reasonably, "and do not like them."
    "No," she said vehemently, "I do not like them! There could be battle and slaughter if by some foul chance he kills a man of Owain's. It needs no more to start such a blaze."
    "And what makes you think he is going anywhere near Owain's men, to risk such a chance?"
    "How should I know what the fool has in mind?" she said impatiently. "What troubles me is what he may bring down on the rest of us."
    "I would not so readily score him down as a fool," said Cadfael mildly. "I would have reckoned him as shrewd in the wits as he is an able man of his hands. Whatever he's about, judge it when he returns, for it's my belief he'll come back successful." He was careful not to add: "So leave fretting over him!" She would have denied any such concern, though now with less ferocity than once she would have attempted. Best leave well alone. However she might hope to deceive others, Heledd was not the girl to be able to deceive herself.
    And away there to the south in Owain's camp was the man she had never yet seen, Ieuan ab Ifor, not much past thirty, which is not all that old, well thought of by his prince, holder of good lands, and personable to the beholder's eye, possessed of every asset but one, and invisible and negligible without it. He was not the man she had chosen.
    "Tomorrow will show," said Heledd, with relentless practicality. "We had best go get our sleep, and be ready for it."
    They had rounded the tip of the shingle bar, and kept well out in the main channel as they turned southward into the bay. Once well within, they could draw inshore and keep a watch on the coastline for the first outlying pickets of Owain's camp. Turcaill's boy Leif kneeled on the tiny foredeck, narrowing his eyes attentively upon the shore. He was fifteen years old, and spoke the Welsh of Gwynedd, for his mother had been snatched from this same north-western coast at twelve years old, on a passing Danish raid, and had married a Dane of the Dublin kingdom. But she had never