Hood kr-1

by Stephen R. Lawhead

  Even so, never in her most resentful disposition did she conceive-much less wish-that any harm would come to him. That he had been caught and killed trying to escape filled her with morbid anguish. The news-reported by her father's steward and overheard by her as he related the latest marketplace gossip to the cook and scullery girls-hit her like a blow to the stomach. Unable to breathe, she sagged against the doorpost and stifled a cry with her fist.

  Sometime later, when summoned to her father's chamber, where she was informed, she was able to bear up without betraying the true depth of her feelings. Shocked, horrified, mournful, and leaden with sorrow, Merian moved through the first awful day feeling as if the ground she trod was no longer solid beneath her feet-as if the very earth was fragile, delicate, and thin as the shell of a robins egg, and as if any moment the crust on which she stood might shatter and she would instantly plunge from the world of light and air into the utter, perpetual, suffocating darkness of the tomb.

  Soon, everyone in King Cadwgan's court was talking of nothing else but Bran's sad, but really only-too-predictable, demise. That was harder still for Merian. She put on a brave face. She tried to appear as if the news of Bran and the misfortune that had befallen Elfael meant little to her, or rather that it meant merely as much as bad news from other places ever meant to anyone not directly concerned-as if, lamentable though it surely was, the fate of the wayward son of a neighbouring king ultimately was nothing to do with her.

  "Yes," she would agree, "isn't it awful? Those poor people-what will they do?"

  She told herself time and again that Bran had been an unreliable friend at best; that his apparent interest in her was nothing more than carnal, which was entirely true; and that his sad death had, at the very least, delivered her from a life of profound and perpetual unhappiness. These things and more she told herself-spoke them aloud, even. But no matter how often she rehearsed the reasons she should be relieved to be free of Bran ap Brychan, she could not make herself believe them. Nor, for all the truth of her assertions, could she make herself feel less wretched.

  She kept a tight rein on herself when others were nearby. She neither wept nor sobbed; not one sorrowing sigh escaped her lips. Her features remained composed, thoughtful perhaps, but not distraught, less yet grief-stricken. Anyone observing Merian might have thought her distracted or concerned. Knowing that nothing good could come of any overt display of emotion where Bran was concerned, she swallowed her grief and behaved as if the news of Bran's death was a thing of negligible significance amidst the more troubling news of the murder of Brychan ap Tewdwr and all his warband and the unwarranted Ffreinc advance into neighbouring Elfael. Here, if only here, she and her stern father agreed: the Ffreinc had no right to kill a sitting king and seize his cantre?

  "It is a bad business," King Cadwgan told her, shaking his grey head. "Very bad. It should not have happened, and William Rufus should answer. But Brychan had been warned more than once to make his peace. I urged him to go to Lundein long ago years ago! We all did! Would he listen? He was a hell-bent, bloody-minded fool-"

  "Father!" Merian objected. "It is beneath you to speak ill of the dead, and bad luck besides."

  "Beneath me?" wondered Cadwgan. "Daughter, it is kindness itself! I knew the man, and of times would have called him my friend. You know that. On Saint Becuma's knees, I swear that man could be so maddeningly pigheaded-and mean with it! If there was ever a man with a colder heart, I don't want to know him." He raised an admonishing finger to his daughter. "Mark my words, girl, now that Brychan and his reprobate son are gone, we will soon count it a blessing in disguise."

  "Father!" she protested once more, her voice quivering slightly. "You should not say such things."

  "If I speak my mind, it is not out of malice. You know me better than that, I hope. Though we may not like it, that is God's own truth. Brychan's son was a rogue, and his death saved a hangman's fee."

  "I will not stay and listen to this," declared Merian as she turned quickly and hurried away.

  "What did I say?" called her father after her. "If anyone has cause to mourn Bran ap Brychan's death, it is the hangman who was cheated out of his pay!"

  Merians mother was more sympathetic but no more comforting. "I know it is hard to accept," said Queen Anora, threading her embroidery needle, "when someone you know has died. He was such a handsome boy-if only he had been better brought up, he might have made a good king. Alas, his mother died so young. Rhian was a beauty, and kindness itself-if a little flighty, so they say. Still, it's a pity she was not there to raise him." She sighed, then went back to her needle. "You can thank God you were not allowed to receive him in company."

  "I know, Mother," said Merian glumly, turning her face away. "How well I know."

  "Soon you will forget all about him." She offered her daughter a hopeful smile. "Time will heal, and the hurt will pass. Mark my words, the pain will pass."

  Merian knew her parents were right, though she would not have expressed her opinions quite so harshly. Even so, she could not make her heart believe the things they said: it went on aching, and nothing anyone said soothed the pain. In the end, Merian determined to keep her thoughts, like her grief, to herself.

  Each day, she went about her chores as if the raw wound of sorrow was already skinning over. She attended her weaving with care and patience. She helped the women prepare the animal skins that would become furs to adorn winter cloaks and tunics. She stood barefoot in the warm sun and raked the newly harvested beans over the drying floor. She twirled the spindle between her deft fingers to spin new-carded wool into thread, watching the skein grow as she wound it round and round. Though she laboured with diligence, she did not feel the thread pass through her fingertips, nor the rake in her hands; she did not smell the strong curing salts she rubbed into the skins; her fingers gathered the wool of their own accord without her guidance.

  Each day, she completed her duties with her usual care-as if the thought of Bran hunted down and speared to death like some poor, fearcrazed animal was not the sole occupation of her thoughts, as if the anguish at his passing was not continually churning in her gentle heart.

  And if, each night, she cried silently in her bed, each morning she rose fresh faced and resolved not to allow any of these secret feelings to manifest themselves in word or deed. In this she made good.

  As the weeks passed, she thought less about Bran and his miserable death and more about the fate of his leaderless people. Of course, they were not as Garran, her elder brother, so helpfully pointed outleaderless. "They have a new king now-William Rufus," he told her. "And his subject lord, Count de Braose, is their ruler."

  "De Braose is a vile murderer," Merian snapped.

  "That may be," Garran granted with irritating magnanimity, "but he has been given the conimot by the king. And," he delighted in pointing out, "the crown is divinely appointed by God. The king is justice, and his word is law."

  "The king is himself a usurper," she countered.

  "As were most of those before him," replied her brother, smug in his argument. "Facts are facts, dear sister. The Saxon stole the land from us, and now the Ffreinc have stolen it from them. We possess what we hold by King William's sufferance. He is our sovereign lord now, and it is no good wishing otherwise, so you had best make peace with how things are."

  "You make peace with how things are," she answered haughtily. "I will remain true to our own kind."

  "Then you will continue to live in the past," Garran scoffed. "The old ways are over for us. Times are changing, Merian. The Ffreinc are showing us the way to peace and prosperity."

  "They are showing us the way to hell!" she shouted, storming from his presence.

  That young Prince Bran had died needlessly was bad enough. That he had been killed trying to flee was shameful, yes, but anyone might have done the same in his place. What she found impossible to comprehend or accept was her brother's implied assertion that their Norman overlords were somehow justified in their crime
by the innate superiority of their customs or character, or whatever it was her brother found so enamouring.

  The Ffreinc are brutes and they are wrong, she insisted to herself. And that King William of theirs is the biggest brute of all!

  After that last exchange, she refused to talk to anyone further regarding the tragedy that had befallen Bran and Elfael. She kept her thoughts to herself and buried her feelings deep in the fastness of her heart.

  CHAPTER

  is

  )Baron de Neufmarche, along with twenty men-atarms, accompanied his wife to the ship waiting at Hamtun docks. Although he had used the ship Le Cygne in the past and knew both the captain and pilot by name, he nevertheless inspected the vessel bow to stern before allowing his wife to board. He supervised the loading of men, horses, provisions, and weapons-his wife would travel with Ormand, his seneschal, and a guard of seven men. Inside a small casket made of elm wood, Lady Agnes carried the letter he had written to his father and the gift of a gold buckle received from the Conqueror himself in recognition of the baron's loyalty during the season of northern discontent in the years following the invasion.

  Once Agnes was established in her quarters beneath the ship's main deck, the baron bade his wife farewell. "The tide is on the rise. Godspeed, lady wife," he said. Raising her hand to his lips, he kissed her cold fingers and added, "I wish you a mild and pleasant winter, and a glad Christmas."

  "It may be that I can return before the snow," she ventured, hope lending a lightness to her voice. "We could observe Christmas together."

  "No"-Bernard shook his head firmly-"it is far too dangerous. Winter gales make the sea treacherous. If anything should happen to you, I could not forgive myself." He smiled. "Enjoy your sojourn at home-it is brief enough. Time will pass swiftly, and we will celebrate the success of your undertaking with the addition of a new estate.

  "Tres Bien," replied Lady Agnes. "Have a care for yourself, my husband." She leaned close and put her lips against his cheek. "Until we meet again, adieu, mon cheri."

  The pilot called down from the deck above that the tide was beginning to run. The baron kissed his wife once more and returned to the wharf. A short time later, the tide had risen sufficiently to put out to sea. The captain called for a crewman to cast off, the ropes were loosed, and the ship pushed on poles away from the dock. Once in the centre of the river, the vessel was caught by the current, turned, and headed out into the estuary and the unprotected sea beyond.

  Bernard watched all this from the wooden dock. Only when the ship raised sail and cleared the headland at the wide river mouth did he return to his waiting horse and give the order to start for home. The journey took two days, and by the time he reached his westernmost castle at Hereford, he had decided to make a sortie into Welsh territory, into the cantref of Brycheiniog, to see what he could learn of the land he meant to possess.

  )3ran no longer knew how long he had been dragging his wounded body through the underbrush. Whole days passed in blind ing flashes of pain and shuddering sickness. He could feel his strength departing, his lucid times growing fewer and further apart. He could no longer count on his senses to steer him aright; he heard the voices of people who were not there, and often what he saw before him was, on nearer examination, mere phantasm.

  Following his plunge into the pool, he had been swept downstream a fair distance. The current carried him along high-sided banks overhung with leafless branches and great moss-covered limbs, deeper and ever deeper into the forest until finally washing him into the shallows of a green pool surrounded by the wrecks of enormous trees, the boles of which had toppled and fallen over one another like the colossal pillars of a desolated temple.

  The warm, shallow water revived him, and he opened his eyes to find himself surrounded by half-sunk, waterlogged trunks and broken boughs. Green slime formed a thick sludge on the surface of the pool, and the air was rank with the stench of fetid stagnant water and decay, and black with shifting clouds of mayflies. Bran struggled upright and, on hands and knees, hauled himself over a sunken log and into the soft, soggy embrace of a peat bog, where he collapsed, a quivering, pain-wracked lump.

  Evening was fast upon him when he had finally roused himself that first day and, aching in every joint and muscle, gathered his feet beneath him and climbed up on unsteady legs. Following a deer trail, he lurched like a half-drowned creature from the swamp and staggered into the haven of the greenwood. His chief concern that first night was finding shelter where he could rest and bind his wounds.

  He did not know how badly he was injured-only that he was alive and grateful to be so. Once he found shelter, he would remove his tunic and see what he could do to bandage himself. After he had rested and regained his strength, he would make his way to the nearest habitation and secure the aid of his fellow Cymry to continue his flight to safe haven in the north.

  As twilight cast a purple gloom over the forest at the end of that first day, Bran found a great oak with a hollowed-out cavity down in the earth beneath the roots. The place had been used by a bear or badger; the earthy musk of the creature still lingered in the cavity. But the hole was dry and warm, and Bran fell asleep the moment he lay down his head.

  He woke with a burning thirst, and light-headed from hunger. His wounds throbbed, and his muscles were stiff. There was nothing for his hunger, but he could hear the soft burble of a brook nearby, and easing himself upright, he made his unsteady way to the moss-carpeted bank. He knelt and, with some difficulty because of the cut that ran along the side of his face, stretching from cheekbone to ear, cupped water to his mouth. The inside of his cheek was as raw as sliced meat, and his tongue traced an undulating line like a thick, blood-soaked string.

  The cold water made the inside of his mouth sting and brought tears to his eyes, but he quenched his thirst as best he could and then carefully removed his tunic and mantle to better assess his injuries. He could not see the cut in his upper back, but by reaching around cautiously, he was able to feel that it had stopped bleeding. The deep rent in his chest was easier to examine. Caked with dried blood that he gently washed away, the cut was ragged and ratty, the skin puckered along the edges. The wound ached with a persistent throb; the bones had been nicked when the blade forced his ribs apart, but he did not think any had been broken.

  Lastly, he examined the bite on his arm. The limb was tenderthe hound's teeth had broken the skin, nothing worse-the flesh swollen and sore, but the ragged half circle of raised red puncture wounds did not seem to be festering. He bathed his arm in the brook and washed the dried blood from his chest and stomach. He tried to bathe the spear cut on his upper back but succeeded only in dribbling water over his shoulders and making himself cold. He drew on his clothes and contemplated the choices before him.

  So far as he could see, he had but two courses: return to Elfael and try to find someone to take him in, or continue on to Gwynedd and hope to find help somewhere along the way before he reached the mountains.

  The land to the north was rough and inhospitable to a man alone. Even if he had the great good fortune of making it through the forest unaided, the chances of finding help were remote. Elfael, on the other hand, was very nearly deserted; most of his countrymen had fled, and the Ffreinc were seeking his blood. It came to him that he could do no better than try to take his own advice and go to Saint Dyfrig's to seek sanctuary with the monks.

  The decision was easily made, and he gathered what strength he could muster and set out. With any luck, he allowed himself to think, day's end would find him behind friendly walls, resting in the guest lodge.

  Bran's luck had so far proved as irksomely elusive as the trail. It served him no better now. The forest pathways crossed one another in bewildering profusion, each one leading on to others-over and under fallen trunks, down steep grades into rills and narrow defiles, up sharp-angled ridges and scrub-covered hillsides. Hunger had long since become a constant, gnawing pain in his stomach. He could drink from the streams and brooks he encountere
d, but nourishing food was scarce. There were mushrooms in extravagant overabundance, but most, he knew, were poisonous, and he did not trust himself to recognise the good ones. Finding nothing else, he chewed hazel twigs just to have something in his mouth.

  Hungry, pain-riddled, he allowed his mind to wander.

  He imagined himself received into the safety of the abbey and wel comed to a dinner of roast lamb, braised leeks, and oat bread and ale. This comforting dream awakened a ferocious appetite that refused to subside-even when he tried to appease it with sour blackberries gobbled by the purple handful from a bramble bush. In his haste, he bit the inside of his cheek, breaking open the wound afresh and driving him to his knees in agony. He lay for a long time on the ground, rocking back and forth in misery until he became aware that he was being watched.

  "What?" asked a voice somewhere above him. "What?"

  Raising his eyes, Bran saw a big black rook on a branch directly over his head. The bird regarded him with a shiny bead of an eye. "What?"

  He dimly remembered a story about a starving prophet fed by crows. "Bring me bread."

  "What?" asked the bird, stretching its wings.

  "Bread," Bran said, his voice a breathless groan. "Bring me some bread."

  The rook cocked its head to one side. "What?"

  "Stupid bird." Angered by the rook's refusal to aid in his revival, Bran dragged himself to his feet once more. The bird started at the movement; it flew off shrieking, its cry of "Die! Die!" echoing through the wood.

  Bran looked around and realised with a sinking heart that he had dreamed most of the day away. He moved on then, dejected and afraid to trust his increasingly unreliable judgement. The wounds to his chest and back throbbed with every step and were hot to the touch. As daylight deteriorated around him, his steps slowed to an exhausted shuffle; hunger burned like a flame in his gut, and it hurt his chest to breathe. The long day ended, leaving him worse off than when it had begun, and night closed over him like a fist. He closed his eyes beneath the limbs of a sheltering elm and spent an uncomfortable night on the ground.