Hood Page 21

  Bran, like most every child who had grown up in the secluded valleys and rough hills of the west, had been taught the bowman’s art from the time he could stand on his own two unsteady legs. As a boy he had often gone to sleep with raw, throbbing fingers and aching arms. At seven years, he had earned a permanent scar on his left wrist from the lash of the bowstring all summer. At eight, he had brought down a young boar all by himself—a gift for his dying mother. Although hunting had ceased to interest him after that, he had continued to practise with the warband, and by his thirteenth year, he could pull a man’s bow and put a fowler’s arrow through the eye of a crow perched on a standing stone three hundred paces away.

  This was not a skill unique to himself; every warrior he knew could do the same—as well as any farmer worth his salt.

  The ability to direct an arrow with accuracy over implausible lengths was a common, but no less highly prized, facility, and one which made best use of another of the weapon’s considerable qualities: it allowed a combatant to strike from a distance, silently if need be—a virtue unequalled by any other weapon Bran knew.

  When Angharad shortly reappeared with an adz, a pumice stone, and several well-honed chisels and knives from her trove of unknown treasures somewhere deep in the cave, Bran set to work, tentatively at first, but with growing confidence as his hands remembered their craft. Soon he was toiling away happily, sitting on his rock in the warm sun, stripping the bark from the admittedly well-seasoned length of ash. As he worked, he listened to the birds in the greening trees round about and attuned his ears to the forest sounds. This became, as she had intended, his principal occupation. As the days passed, Angharad noticed that when he was working on the bow, Bran fretted less and was more content. On days when it rained, he sat in the cave entrance beneath the overhanging ledge and laboured there.

  Slowly, the slender length of ash took form beneath his hands. He worked with deliberate care; there was no hurry, after all. He knew he was not yet fit enough for the journey across the mountains. It would be high summer when that day came, and by then the bow would be finished and ready to use.

  Bran still planned on leaving. As soon as his wrinkled physician pronounced him hale and whole once more, he would wish her farewell and leave the forest and Elfael without looking back.

  But one day, as he thought about his plan, something awakened inside him—a vague uneasiness, almost like a grinding in the pit of his stomach. It was a mildly disagreeable feeling, and he quickly turned his attention to something else. From that moment, however, the discomfort returned whenever his thoughts happened to touch on the point of his leaving. At first, he considered it a form of discontent—a daylight manifestation of the same restlessness he often experienced at night. Even so, the subtle anxiety was growing, and all too soon Bran began experiencing a bitter, unpleasant taste in his mouth whenever he thought about any aspect of his future whatsoever.

  Unwilling to confront the pain fermenting inside him, Bran pushed down the disagreeable feeling and ignored it. But there, deep in the inner core of his hidden heart, it festered and grew as he worked the wood—shaping it, smoothing it, slowly creating just the right curve along the belly and back so that it would bend uniformly along its length—and he forgot the blight that was spreading in his soul.

  When at last he had the stave shaped just right, he brought it to Angharad, passing it to her with an absurdly inordinate sense of achievement. He could not stop grinning as she held the smooth ash-wood bow in her rough, square hands and tested the bend with her weight. “Well?” he asked, unable to contain himself any longer. “What do you think?”

  “I think I was right to call you Master Bran,” she replied.

  “You have a craftsman’s aptitude for the tools.”

  “It is good, is it not?” he said, reaching out to stroke the smooth, tight-grained wood. “The stave was excellent.”

  “You worked it well,” she told him, handing it back. “I cannot say when I’ve seen a finer bow.”

  “Ash is good,” he allowed, “although yew is better.”

  Glancing up, he caught Angharad’s eye and added, “I don’t blame you, mind. It is difficult to find a serviceable limb.”

  “Ah, well, just you finish this,” she told him. “I want to see if you can hunt with it.”

  He caught the challenge in her words. “You think I could not bring down a stag? Or a boar even?”

  “Maybe a small one,” she allowed, teasing, “if it was also slow of foot and weakhearted.”

  “I do not hunt anymore,” he told her. “But if I did, I’d bring back the biggest, swiftest, strongest stag you’ve ever seen—a genuine Lord of the Forest.”

  She regarded him with a curious, bird-bright eye. His use of the term tantalised. Could it be that her pupil was ready for the next step on his journey? “Finish the bow first, Master Bran,” she said, “and then we’ll see what we shall see.”

  Completing his work on the bow took longer than he expected. Obtaining the rawhide for the grip, slicing it thin, and braiding it so that it could be wound tightly around the centre of the stave was the work of several days. Making the bowstring proved an even more imposing task. Bran had never made a bowstring; those were always provided by one of the women of the caer.

  Faced with this chore, he was not entirely certain which material was best, or where it might be found. He consulted Angharad. “They used hemp,” he told her. “Also flax—I think. But I don’t know where they got it.”

  “Hemp is easy enough to find. Given a little time, I could get flax, too. Which would you prefer?”

  “Either,” he said. “Whichever can be got soonest.”

  “You shall have it.”

  Two days later, Angharad presented him with a bound bundle of dried hemp stalks. “You will have to strip it and beat it to get the threads,” she told him. “I can show you.”

  The next sunny day found them outside the cave, cutting off the leaves and small stems and then beating the long, fibrous stalks on a flat stone. Once the stalks began to break down, it was easy work to pull the loosened threads away. The long outer fibres were tough and hairy, but the inner ones were finer, and these Bran carefully collected into a tidy, coiled heap.

  “Now they must be twisted,” Bran told her. Selecting a few of the better strands, he tied them to a willow branch; while Angharad slowly, steadily turned the branch, Bran patiently wound the long threadlike fibres over one another, carefully adding in new ones as he went along to increase the length. The process was repeated until he had six long strings of twisted strands, which were then tightly and painstakingly braided together to make two bowstrings of three braided strands each.

  Determining the length of the bowstring took some time, too. Bran had to string and unstring the bow a dozen times before he was happy with the bend and suppleness of the draw.When he finished, he proclaimed himself satisfied with the result and declared, “Now for the arrows.”

  Making arrows was not a chore he had ever undertaken either; but, like the other tasks, he had watched it done often enough to know the process. “Willow is easiest to work, but difficult to find in suitable lengths,” he mused aloud before the fire while Angharad cooked their supper. “Beech and birch, also. Ash, alder, and hornbeam are sturdier. Oak is the most difficult to shape, but it is strongest of all. It is also heavier, so the arrows do not fly as far—good for hunting bigger animals, though,” he added, “and for battle, of course.”

  “Each of those trees abounds in the forest,” Angharad offered. “Tomorrow, we can go out together and find some branches.”

  “Very well,” agreed Bran. It would be the first time he had been allowed to walk into the forest since the winter ramble that had sent him back to his sickbed. Even so, he did not want to appear too excited lest Angharad change her mind.

  “If you think I’m ready.”

  “Bran,” she said gently, “you are not a prisoner here.”

  He nodded, adopting a diffident
air, but inwardly he was very much a prisoner yearning for release.

  The next day they walked a short distance into the wood to select suitable branches from various trees. “The arrow tips will be difficult to make,” Bran offered, swinging the axe as they walked along. “If I could get back into the caer, I’d soon have all the arrowheads I needed—arrows, too.”

  “What about flint?”

  The idea of a stone-tipped arrow was so old-fashioned, it made Bran chuckle. “I doubt if anyone alive in all of Britain still knows how to make an arrowhead of flint.”

  Now it was Angharad’s turn to laugh. “There is one in the Island of the Mighty who remembers.”

  Bran stopped walking and stared after her. “Who are you, Angharad?”

  When she did not answer, he hurried to catch her. “I mean it—who are you that you know all these things?”

  “And I have already told you.”

  “Tell me again.”

  Angharad stopped, turned, and faced him. “Will you listen this time? And listening, will you believe?”

  “I will try.”

  She shook her head. “No. You are not ready.” She resumed her pace.

  “Angharad!” bawled Bran in frustration. “Please! Anyway, what difference does it make whether I believe or not?

  Just tell me.”

  Angharad stopped again. “It makes a world of difference,” she declared solemnly. “It matters so much that sometimes it takes my breath away. Greater than life or death; greater than this world and the world to come. There is no end to the amount of difference it can make.”

  She moved on, but Bran did not follow. “You speak in riddles! How am I to understand you when you talk like that?”

  Angharad turned on him with a sudden fury that forced him back a step. “What did you do with your life, Master Bran?” she demanded accusingly. “More to the point, what will you do with your life now that you have it back?”

  Bran started to protest but shut his mouth even as he drew breath to speak. It was futile to challenge her—better to keep quiet.

  “Answer me that,” she told him, “and then I will answer you.”

  Bran glared back at her. What reply could he make that she would not revile?

  “Nothing to say?” inquired Angharad with sweet insincerity. “I thought not. Think long before you speak again.”

  Her words stung him like a slap, and they did more. They ripped open the hole into which he had pushed all the festering blackness in his soul—soon to come welling up with a vengeance.

  CHAPTER 24

  Although spies had long ago confirmed his suspicions—three castles were being erected on the borders of Elfael—Baron Neufmarché wished to see the de Braose bastion-building venture for himself.

  Now that warmer weather had come to the valleys, he thought it time to pay another visit to the count. Along the way, he could visit his British minions and see how the spring planting progressed. As overlord of a subject people, it never hurt to make an unannounced appearance now and then to better judge the mood and temper of those beneath his rule. Lord Cadwgan had given him little trouble during his reign, and for that the baron was shrewd enough to be grateful. But with the long-awaited expansion into Welsh territory begun, Neufmarché thought it would be best to see how things stood on the ground, reward loyalty and industry, and snuff out any sparks of discontent before they could catch fire.

  With this in mind, the baron struck out one bright morning with a small entourage for Caer Rhodl, the stronghold of King Cadwgan. Upon his arrival two days later, the Welsh king received him with polite, if subdued, courtesy. “My Lord Neufmarché,” said Cadwgan, emerging from his hall. “I wonder that you did not send your steward ahead so I would know to expect you. Then you would have received a proper welcome.”

  “My thanks all the same, but I did not know I was coming here myself,” lied the baron with a genial smile. “I was already on the road when I decided to make this stop. I expect no ceremony. Here, ride with me—I have it in mind to inspect the fields.”

  The king called for horses to be saddled so that he and his steward and a few warriors of his retinue could accompany the baron. Together, they rode out from the stronghold into the countryside. “Winter was hard hereabouts?” asked the baron amiably.

  “Hard enough,” replied the king. “Harder for those in the next cantref.” He indicated Elfael to the north with a slight lift of his chin. “Aye,” he continued, as if just considering it for the first time. “They lost the harvest, and that was bad enough, but now they have been prevented from planting.”

  “Truly?” wondered Baron Neufmarché with genuine curiosity. Any word of others’ difficulties interested him. “Why is that, do you know?”

  “It’s that new count—that kinsman of de Braose! First, he runs them all off, and now that he has them back, he’s herded them together and he’s making them work on his accursed fortresses.”

  “He is building fortresses?” wondered the baron. He gazed at the king with an innocent expression.

  “Aye, three of them,” replied the king grimly. “That’s what I hear,” he concluded, “and I have no reason to believe otherwise.”

  “Very ambitious,” granted Baron Neufmarché. “I would not think he needed such fortification to govern little Elfael.”

  “Nay, it’s his uncle, the baron, who has eyes on the can-trefs to the north and west. He means to take as much as he can grab.”

  “So it would seem.”

  “Aye, and I know it. Greedy bastards,” swore Cadwgan, “they cannot even rule the commot they’ve been given! What do they want with more land?” The king spat again and shook his head slowly—as if contemplating a ruin that could easily be avoided. “Mark my words, nothing good will come of this.”

  The baron sighed. “I fear you could be right.”

  Upon reaching the holding, the baron made a thorough inspection, asked many questions of the farmers—about the last harvest, the new planting, the adequacy of the spring rains—and walked out into one of the fields, where he bent down and rubbed dirt between his hands, as if testing the worth of the soil. At the end of his survey, he professed himself well pleased with the farmers’ efforts and called to his seneschal to send the head of the settlement two casks of good dark ale as a token of his thanks and good wishes.

  The baron and the king rode on to the next holding, where the herdsmen were grazing cattle. The baron asked how the cattle had fared during the winter and how it was going with the spring calving and whether they would see a good increase this year. He received a favourable reply in each case, and after concluding his enquiry, ordered two more casks of ale to be sent to the settlement.

  Then, turning their horses, the party rode back to the caer, where King Cadwgan commanded his cooks to prepare a festive supper in honour of his overlord’s unexpected, though not altogether unwelcome, visit. The baron had made Cadwgan feel like a knowledgeable confidant, a trusted advisor, and for that he ordered the best of what he had to offer: beeswax candles for the board, fine woven cloths to dress the table, silver plates on which to eat and silver cups for the wine he had been saving for such an occasion, and choice slices from the haunch of venison aging in the larder. Fresh straw was to be spread on the floor and a fragrant fire of apple wood and heather lit in the hearth.

  “You will put your feet beneath my board tonight,”

  Cadwgan told him, “and allow me to show you true Cymry hospitality.”

  “I would like nothing better,” replied the baron, pleased with how well his scheme was coming together.

  The king ordered his steward to conduct the baron to a chamber for his use and to prepare water for washing.

  “When you are ready, come join me in the hall. I will have a jar waiting.”

  The baron dutifully obeyed his host and, after refreshing himself in his room, returned a little while later to the hall, where he was delighted to see that two beautiful young women had joined them. They were stan
ding on each side of the hearth, where a fire brightly burned.

  “Baron Neufmarché,” announced the king, “I present my daughter, Mérian, and her cousin Essylt.”

  Mérian, slightly older of the two, tall and willowy with long, dark hair, was wearing a simple gown of pale green linen; her cousin Essylt, fair with a pleasant, plump face and a delicate mouth, was dressed in a gown the colour of fresh butter.

  Both possessed an air of demure yet guileless confidence.

  Mérian regarded him with frank appraisal as she extended a small wooden trencher with pieces of bread torn from a loaf.

  “Be welcome here, Baron Neufmarché,” she said in a voice so soft and low that it sent a pang of longing through the baron’s tough heart.

  “May you want for nothing while you are here,” said Essylt, stepping forward with a small dish of salt in her cupped hands.

  “I am charmed, my ladies,” professed the baron, speaking the complete truth for the first time that day. Taking a piece of bread from the offered board, he dipped it in the salt and ate it. “Peace to this house tonight,” he said, offering his hand.

  “Your servant, Baron Neufmarché,” replied the king’s daughter. She accepted the baron’s hand, performed a graceful curtsy, and bowed her head; her long, dark curls parted, slightly exposing the nape of a slender neck and the curve of a shapely shoulder.

  “As I am yours,” said the baron, delighted by the splendid young woman. Although he also accepted the courtesy of the young woman called Essylt, his eyes never left the dark-haired beauty before him.

  “Father tells me you approve of the fieldwork,” said Mérian, not waiting to be addressed.

  “Indeed,” replied the baron. “It is good work and well done.”

  “And the herds—they were also to your liking?”

  “I have rarely seen better,” answered the baron politely.

  “Your people know their cattle—as I have always said. I am pleased.”