Brother Cadfael 18: The Summer of the Danes

ships were gradually dwindling into toy boats, dark upon the brightness, bearing out on a steady breeze under sail, for their own Dublin shore. And beyond, the lighter longships, smaller still, drove eagerly for home.
    The peril was past, Gwynedd delivered, debts paid, brothers brought together again, if not yet reconciled. The affair might have turned out hugely bloodier and more destructive. Nevertheless, men had died.
    Tomorrow, too, the camp at their backs would be dismantled of its improvised defences, the husbandman would come back to his farmhouse, bringing his beasts with him, and return imperturbably to the care of his land and his stock, as his forebears had done time after time, giving ground pliably for a while to marauding enemies they knew they could out-wait, outrun and outlast. The Welsh, who left their expendable homesteads for the hills at the approach of an enemy, left them only to return and rebuild.
    The prince would take his muster back to Carnarvon, and thence dismiss those whose lands lay here in Arfon and Anglesey, before going on to Aber. Rumour said he would suffer Cadwaladr to return with him, and those who knew them best added that Cadwaladr would soon be restored to possession of some part, at least, of his lands. For in spite of all, Owain loved his younger brother, and could not shut him out of his grace much longer.
    "And Otir has his fee," said Mark, pondering gains and losses.
    "It was promised."
    "I don't grudge it. It might have cost far more."
    And so it might, though two thousand marks could not buy back the lives of Otir's three young men, now being borne back to Dublin for burial, nor those few of Gwion's following picked up dead from the surf, nor Bledri ap Rhys in his chill, calculating faithlessness, nor Gwion himself in his stark, destructive loyalty, the one as fatal as the other. Nor could all these lost this year call into life again Anarawd, dead last year in the south, at Cadwaladr's instigation, if not at his hands.
    "Owain has sent a courier to Canon Meirion in Aber," said Mark, "to put his mind at rest for his daughter. By this he knows she is here safe enough, with her bridegroom. The prince sent as soon as Ieuan brought her into camp last night."
    His tone, Cadfael thought, was carefully neutral, as though he stood aside and withheld judgement, viewing with equal detachment two sides of a complex problem, and one that was not his to solve.
    "And how has she conducted herself here in these few hours?" asked Cadfael. Mark might study to absent himself from all participation in these events, but he could not choose but observe.
    "She is altogether dutiful and quiet. She pleases Ieuan. She pleases the prince, for she is as a bride should be, submissive and obedient. She was in terror, says Ieuan, when he snatched her away out of the Danish camp. She is in no fear now."
    "I wonder," said Cadfael, "if submissive and obedient is as Heledd should be. Have we ever known her to be so, since she came from Saint Asaph with us?"
    "Much has happened since then," said Mark, thoughtfully smiling. "It may be she has had enough of venturing, and is not sorry to be settling down to a sensible marriage with a decent man. You have seen her. Have you seen any cause to doubt that she is content?"
    And in truth Cadfael could not say that he had observed in her bearing any trace of discontent. Indeed, she went smilingly about the work she found for herself, waited upon Ieuan serenely and deftly, and continued to distil about her a kind of lustre that could not come from an unhappy woman. Whatever was in her mind, and held in reserve there with deep and glossy satisfaction, it certainly did not disquiet or distress her. Heledd viewed the path opening before her with unmistakable pleasure.
    "Have you spoken with her?" asked Mark.
    "There has been no occasion yet."
    "You may essay now, if you wish. She is coming this way."
    Cadfael turned his head, and saw Heledd coming striding lightly along the crest of the ridge towards them, with purpose in her step, and her face towards the north. Even when she halted beside them, it was only for a moment, checked in flight like a bird hovering.
    "Brother Cadfael, I'm glad to see you safe. The last I knew of you was when they swept us apart, by the breach in the stockade." She looked out across the sea, where the ships had shrunk into black splinters upon scintillating water. All along the line of them her glance followed. She might have been counting