“And did you like the action you saw?” asked Hugh drily.
Elis gnawed a considering lip. “The battle, that was fair fight, all in arms on both parts. You were there? Then you know yourself it was a great thing we did, crossing the river in flood, and standing to it in that frozen marsh as we were, sodden and shivering…” That exhilarating memory had suddenly recalled to him the second such crossing attempted, and its less heroic ending, the reverse of the dream of glory. Fished out like a drowning kitten, and hauled back to life face-down in muddy turf, hiccuping up the water he had swallowed, and being squeezed between the hands of a brawny forester. He caught Hugh’s eye, and saw his own recollection reflected there, and had the grace to grin. “Well, flood-water is on no man’s side, it gulps down Welsh as readily as English. But I was not sorry then, not at Lincoln. It was a good fight. Afterwards—no—the town turned my stomach. If I’d known before, I should not have been there. But I was there, and I couldn’t undo it.”
“You were sick at what was done to Lincoln,” Hugh pointed out reasonably, “yet you went with the raiders to sack Godric’s Ford.”
“What was I to do? Draw out against the lot of them, my own friends and comrades, stick my nose in the air and tell them what they intended was vile? I’m no such hero!” said Elis openly and heartily. “Still, you’ll allow I did no harm there to anyone, as it fell out. I was taken, and if it please you to say, serve me right, I’ll take no offence. The end of it is, here I am and at your disposal. And I’m kin to Owain and when he knows I’m living he’ll want me back.”
“Then you and I may very well come to a sensible agreement,” said Hugh, “for I think it very likely that my sheriff, whom I want back just as certainly, is prisoner in Wales as you are here, and if that proves true, an exchange should be no great problem. I’ve no wish to keep you under lock and key in a cell, if you’ll behave yourself seemly and wait the outcome.
“It’s your quickest way home. Give me your parole not to attempt escape, or to go outside the wards here, and you may have the run of the castle.”
“With all my heart!” said Elis eagerly. “I pledge you my word to attempt nothing, and set no foot outside your gates, until you have your man again, and give me leave to go.”
Cadfael paid a second visit next day, to make sure that his dressing had drawn the Welsh boy’s ragged scratch together with no festering; but that healthy young flesh sprang together like the matching of lovers, and the slash would vanish with barely a scar.
He was an engaging youth, this Elis ap Cynan, readable like a book, open like a daisy at noon. Cadfael lingered to draw him out, which was easy enough, and brought a lavish and guileless harvest. All the more with nothing now to lose, and no man listening but a tolerant elder of his own race, he unfolded his leaves in garrulous innocence.
“I fell out badly with Eliud over this caper,” he said ruefully. “He said it was poor policy for Wales, and whatever booty we might bring back with us, it would not be worth half the damage done. I should have known he’d be proved right, he always is. And yet no offence in it, that’s the marvel! A man can’t be angry with him—at least I can’t.”
“Kin by fostering can be as close as brothers by blood, I know,” said Cadfael.
“Closer far than most brothers. Like twins, as we almost could be. Eliud had half an hour’s start of me into the world, and has acted the elder ever since. He’ll be half out of his wits over me now, for all he’ll hear is that I was swept away in the brook. I wish we might make haste with this exchange, and let him know I’m still alive to plague him.”
“No doubt there’ll be others besides your friend and cousin,” said Cadfael, “fretting over your absence. No wife as yet?” Elis made an urchin’s grimace. “No more than threatened. My elders betrothed me long ago as a child, but I’m in no haste. The common lot, it’s what men do when they grow to maturity. There are lands and alliances to be considered.” He spoke of it as of the burden of the years, accepted but not welcomed. Quite certainly he was not in love with the lady. Probably he had known and played with her from infancy, and scarcely gave her a thought now, one way or the other.
“She may yet be a deal more troubled for you than you are for her,” said Cadfael.
“Ha!” said Elis on a sharp bark of laughter. “Not she! If I had drowned in the brook they’d have matched her with another of suitable birth, and he would have done just as well. She never chose me, nor I her. Mind, I don’t say she makes any objection, more than I do, we might both of us do very much worse.”
“Who is this fortunate lady?” Cadfael wondered drily.
“Now you grow prickly, because I am honest,” Elis reproved him airily. “Did I ever say I was any great bargain? The girl is very well, as a matter of fact, a small, sharp, dark creature, quite handsome in her way, and if I must, then she’ll do. Her father is Tudur ap Rhys, the lord of Tregeiriog in Cynllaith—a man of Powys, but close friend to Owain and thinks like him, and her mother was a woman of Gwynedd. Cristina, the girl is called. Her hand is regarded as a great prize,” said the proposed beneficiary without enthusiasm. “So it is, but one I could have done without for a while yet.” They were walking the outer ward to keep warm, for though the weather had turned fine it was also frosty, and the boy was loth to go indoors until he must. He went with his face turned up to the clear sky above the towers, and his step as light and springy as if he trod turf already.
“We could save you yet a while,” suggested Cadfael slyly, “by spinning out this quest for our sheriff, and keeping you here single and snug as long as you please.”
“Oh, no!” Elis loosed a shout of laughter. “Oh, no, not that! Better a wife in Wales than that fashion of freedom here. Though best of all Wales and no wife,” admitted the reluctant bridegroom, still laughing at himself. “Marry or avoid, I suppose it’s all one in the end. There’ll still be hunting and arms and friends.” A poor lookout, thought Cadfael, shaking his head, for that small, sharp, dark creature, Cristina daughter of Tudur, if she required more of her husband than a good-natured adolescent boy, willing to tolerate and accommodate her, but quite undisposed to love. Though many a decent marriage has started on no better ground, and burned into a glow later.
They had reached the archway into the inner ward in their circlings, and the slanting sunlight, chill and bright, shone through across their path. High in the corner tower within there, Gilbert Prestcote had made his family apartments, rather than maintain a house in the town. Between the merlons of the curtain wall the sun just reached the narrow doorway that led to the private rooms above, and the girl who emerged stepped full into the light. She was the very opposite of small, sharp and dark, being tall and slender like a silver birch, delicately oval of face, and dazzlingly fair. The sun in her uncovered, waving hair glittered as she hesitated an instant on the doorstone, and shivered lightly at the embrace of the frosty air.
Elis had seen her shimmering pallor take the light, and stood stock-still, gazing through the archway with eyes rounded and fixed, and mouth open. The girl hugged her cloak about her, closed the door at her back, and stepped out briskly across the ward towards the arch on her way out to the town. Cadfael had to pluck Elis by the sleeve to bring him out of his daze, and draw him onward out of her path, recalling him to the realisation that he was staring with embarrassing intensity, and might well give her offence if she noticed him. He moved obediently, but in a few more paces his chin went round on to his shoulder, and he checked again and stood, and could not be shifted further.