Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

have given you my seal of my own will, when you could as well have stripped me and taken it from me? No matter what message I might send, how can he trust, how can he be sure that I send it of my own free will, and not wrung from me with your dagger at my throat, under the threat of death?"
    "He knows me by now well enough," said Otir dryly, "to know that I am not so foolish as to destroy what can and shall be profitable to me. But if you doubt it, very well, we will send him one he will trust, and the man shall take due orders from you in your very person, and bear witness to Owain that he has so taken them, and that he saw you whole and in your right mind. Owain will know truth by the bearer of it. I doubt he can take pleasure in the sight of you, not yet. But he'll so far prove your brother as to put together your price in haste, once he knows you've chosen to honour your debts. He wants me gone, and go I will when I have what I came for, and he may have you back and welcome."
    "You have not such a man in your muster," said Cadwaladr with a curling lip. "Why should he trust any man of yours?"
    "Ah, but I have! No man of mine, nor of Owain's, nor of yours, his service falls within quite another writ. One that offered himself freely as guarantor for your safe return when you left here to go and parley with your brother. Yes, and one that you left to his fate and my better sense when you tossed your defiance in my face and turned tail for your life back to a brother who despised you for it." Otir watched the prince's dark face flame into scarlet, and took dour satisfaction in having stung him.
    "Hostage for you he was, out of goodwill, and now you are returned indeed, though in every manner of illwill, and I have no longer any claim to keep him here. And he's the man shall go as your envoy to Owain, and in your name bid him plunder such means and valuables as you have left, and bring your ransom here." He turned to Torsten, who had stood waiting in high and obvious content through these exchanges. "Go and find that young deacon from Lichfield, the bishop's lad, Mark, and ask him to come here to me."
    Mark was with Brother Cadfael when the word reached him, gathering dry and fallen twigs for their fire from among the stunted trees along the ridge. He straightened up with his load gathered into the fold of a wide sleeve, and stared at the messenger in mild surprise, but without any trace of alarm. In these few days of nominal captivity he had never felt himself a captive, or in any danger or distress, but neither had he ever supposed that he was of any particular interest or consequence to his captors beyond what bargaining value his small body might have.
    Like a curious child he asked, wide-eyed: "What can your captain want with me?"
    "No harm," said Cadfael. "For all I can see, these Irish Danes have more of the Irish than the Dane in them after all this time. Otir strikes me as Christian as most that habit in England or Wales, and a good deal more Christian than some."
    "He has a thing for you to do," said Torsten, goodnaturedly grinning, "that comes as a benefit to us all. Come and hear it for yourself."
    Mark piled his gathered fuel close to the hearth they had made for themselves of stones in their sheltered hollow of sand, and followed Torsten curiously to Otir's open tent. At the sight of Cadwaladr, rigidly erect in his chains and taut as a bowstring, Mark checked and drew breath, astonished. It was the first intimation he had had that the turbulent fugitive was back within the encampment, and to see him here fettered and at bay was baffling. He looked from captive to captor, and saw Otir grimly smiling and obviously in high content. Fortune was busy overturning all things for sport.
    "You sent for me," said Mark simply. "I am here."
    Otir surveyed with an indulgent eye and some surprisingly gentle amusement this slight youth, who spoke here for a Church that Welsh and Irish and the Danes of Dublin all alike acknowledged. Some day, when a few more years had passed, he might even have to call this boy 'Father'! 'Brother' he might call him already.
    "As you see," said Otir, "the lord Cadwaladr, for whom you stood guarantor that he should go and come again without hindrance, has come back to us. His return sets you free to leave us. If you will do an errand for him to his brother Owain Gwynedd, you will be doing a good deed for him and for us all."
    "You must tell me what that is," said Mark. "But I have not felt