“For any Welsh prisoner,” said Hugh, glowing. “Where have you stowed him?”
“John Miller has him under lock and key and guarded. I did not venture to try and bring him to you, for good reason. He’s sudden as a kingfisher and slippery as a fish, and short of tying him hand and foot I doubt if we could have held him.”
“We’ll undertake to bring him away safely,” said Hugh heartily. “What manner of man do you make of him? And has he given you a name?”
“He’ll say no word but in Welsh, and I have not the knowledge of that tongue, nor has any of us. But he’s young, princely provided, and lofty enough in his manner to be princely born, no common kern. He may prove valuable if it comes to an exchange.”
“I’ll come and fetch him away tomorrow,” promised Hugh, “and thank you for him heartily. By morning I’ll have a company ready to ride. As well I should look to all that border, and if you can bide overnight, sister, we can escort you home in safety.”
“Indeed it would be wise,” said the abbot. “Our guest hall and all we have is open to you, and your neighbours who have done you such good service are equally welcome. Far better return with the assurance of numbers and arms. Who knows if there may not be marauding parties still lurking in the forest, if they’re grown so bold?”
“I doubt it,” she said. “We saw no sign of it on the way here. It was the men themselves would not let me venture alone. But I will accept your hospitality, Father, with pleasure, and be as grateful for your company, my lord,” she said, smiling thoughtfully at Hugh, “on the way home.”
“Though, faith,” said Hugh to Cadfael, as they crossed the court together, leaving Sister Magdalen to dine as the abbot’s guest, “it would rather become me to give her the generalship of all the forest than offer her any protection of mine. We should have had her at Lincoln, where our enemies crossed the floods, as hers failed to do. Riding south with her tomorrow will certainly be pleasure, it might well be profit. I’ll bend a devout ear to any counsel that lady chooses to dispense.”
“You’ll be giving pleasure as well as receiving it,” said Cadfael frankly. “She may have taken vows of chastity, and what she swears she’ll keep. But she has not sworn never to take delight in the looks and converse and company of a proper man. I doubt they’ll ever bring her to consent to that, she’d think it a waste and a shame so to throw God’s good gifts in his teeth.”
The party mustered after Prime next morning, Sister Magdalen and her four henchmen, Hugh and his half dozen armed guards from the castle garrison. Brother Cadfael stood to watch them gather and mount, and took a warmly appreciative leave of the lady.
“I doubt I shall be hard put to it, though,” he admitted, “to learn to call you by your new name.” At that her dimple dipped and flashed, and again vanished. “Ah, that! You are thinking that I never yet repented of anything I did—and I confess I don’t recall such a thing myself. No, but it was such a comfort and satisfaction to the women. They took me to their hearts so joyfully, the sweet things, a fallen sister retrieved. I couldn’t forbear giving them what they wanted and thought fitting. I am their special pride, they boast of me.”
“Well they may,” said Cadfael, “seeing you just drove back pillage, ravishment and probable murder from their nest.”
“Ah, that they feel to be somewhat unwomanly, though glad enough of the result. The doves were all aflutter—but then, I was never a dove,” said Sister Magdalen, “and it’s only the men truly admire the hawk in me.”
And she smiled, mounted her little mule and rode off homeward surrounded by men who already admired her, and men who were more than willing to offer admiration. In the court or in the cloister, Avice of Thornbury would never pass by without turning men’s heads to follow her.
Chapter Two
BEFORE NIGHTFALL Hugh was back with his prisoner, having prospected the western fringe of the Long Forest and encountered no more raiding Welshmen and no masterless men living wild. Brother Cadfael saw them pass by the abbey gatehouse on their way up through the town to the castle, where this possibly valuable Welsh youth could be held in safekeeping and, short of a credible parole, doubtless under lock and key in some sufficiently impenetrable cell. Hugh could not afford to lose him.
Cadfael caught but a passing glimpse of him as they rode by in the early dusk. It seemed he had given some trouble on the way, for his hands were tied, his horse on a leading rein, his feet roped into the stirrups and an archer rode suggestively close at his rear. If these precautions were meant to secure him, they had succeeded, but if to intimidate, as the young man himself appeared to suppose, they had signally failed, for he went with a high, disdainful impudence, stretching up tall and whistling as he went, and casting over his shoulder at the archer occasional volleys of Welsh, which the man might not have endured so stolidly had he been able to understand their purport as well as Cadfael did. He was, in fact, a very forward and uppish young fellow, this prisoner, though it might have been partly bravado.
He was also a very well, looking young man, middling tall for a Welshman, with the bold cheekbones and chin and the ruddy colouring of his kind, and a thick tangle of black curls that fell very becomingly about his brow and ears, blown by the south-west wind, for he wore no cap. Tethered hands and feet did not hamper him from sitting his horse like a centaur, and the voice that teased his guards in insolent Welsh was light and clear. Sister Magdalen had said truly that his gear was princely, and his manner proclaimed him certainly proud and probably, thought Cadfael, spoiled to the point of ruin. Not a particularly rare condition in a well, made, personable and probably only son.
They passed, and the prisoner’s loud, melodious whistle of defiance died gradually along the Foregate and over the bridge. Cadfael went back to his workshop in the herbarium, and blew up his brazier to boil a fresh elixir of horehound for the winter coughs and colds.
Hugh came down from the castle next morning with a request to borrow Brother Cadfael on his captive’s behalf, for it seemed the boy had a raw gash in his thigh, ripped against a stone in the flood, and had gone to some pains to conceal it from the nuns.
“Ask me,” said Hugh, grinning, “he’d have died rather than bare his hams for the ladies to poultice. And give him his due, though the tear is none so grave, the few miles he rode yesterday must have cost him dear in pain, and he never gave a sign. And blushed like a girl when we did notice him favouring the raw cheek, and made him strip.”
“And left his sore undressed overnight? Never tell me! So why do you need me?” asked Cadfael shrewdly.
“Because you speak good Welsh, and Welsh of the north, and he’s certainly from Gwynedd, one of Cadwaladr’s boys—though you may as well make the lad comfortable while you’re about it. We speak English to him, and he shakes his head and answers with nothing but Welsh, but for all that, there’s a saucy look in his eye that tells me he understands very well, and is having a game with us. So come and speak English to him, and trip the bold young sprig headlong when he thinks his Welsh insults can pass for civilities.”
“He’d have had short shrift from Sister Magdalen,” said Cadfael thoughtfully, “if she’d known of his hurt. All his blushes wouldn’t have saved him.” And he went off willingly enough to see Brother Oswin properly instructed as to what needed attention in the workshop, before setting out with Hugh to the castle. A fair share of curiosity, and a little over-measure, was one of the regular items in his confessions. And after all, he was a Welshman; somewhere in the tangled genealogies of his nation, this obdurate boy might be his distant kin.