of Deheubarth by the baron’s troops. The cutler finished, saying, “Neufmarché called council to square things away, y’see?”
The squat friar nodded, thanked them, and asked, “When did they leave? Do you know? When did the council begin?”
The clothier shrugged. “I couldn’t say, brother.”
“Why, if I be not mistaken,” said Michael, “it ent rightly begun as yet.”
“No?”
“Don’t see how it could.” Michael picked up a small kitchen knife and tried its blade with his thumb. “The baron and his people rode out but yesterday—morning, it was, very early. I reckon ’twill take them two days at least to reach the moot—them and the other lords. The council would seem to begin a day or two after that. So make that three days—four, to be safe. Five, maybe six, at most.”
“Too right,” agreed the clothier. “And all that means we lose custom next week—and maybe the week after as well.”
“Blessings upon you, friends!” called Aethelfrith, already darting away. He fled back across the bridge, his soft shoes slapping the worn timbers, and steamed up the hill to his oratory. He wasted not a moment, but threw a few provisions into a bag, saddled the horse, and rode out again.
He knew exactly when Baron de Braose’s money train would roll.
CHAPTER 40
As Baron Bernard de Neufmarché gazed out upon the upturned faces of his subject lords gathered at Talgarth in the south of Wales, the treasure train of his rival Baron de Braose was approaching the bridge below his castle back in Hereford: three wagons with an escort of seven knights and fifteen men-at-arms under the command of a marshal and a sergeant. All the soldiers were mounted, and their weapons gleamed hard in the bright summer sun.
Hidden beneath food supplies and furnishings for Abbot Hugo’s new church were three sealed strongboxes, iron-banded and bolted to the wagon beds. With ranks of soldiers leading the way and more riders guarding the rear, the train passed unhindered through Hereford. If any of Neufmarché’s soldiers saw the train passing beneath the castle walls, they made no move to prevent it.
Thus, in accordance with Baron de Braose’s plan, the wagon train rumbled across the bridge, through the town, and out into the bright, sunlit meadows of the wide Wye valley. It would take the slow ox train four days to pass through Neufmarché lands and the great forest of the March. But once past Hereford, there would be no stopping the wagons, and the knights could breathe a little easier knowing that nothing stood between them and the completion of their duty.
The leader of this party was a marshal named Guy, one of Baron de Braose’s youngest commanders, a man whose father stood on the battlefield with the Conqueror and had been rewarded with the lands of a deposed earl in the North Ridings: a sizeable estate that included the old Saxon market town of Ghigesburgh—or Gysburne, as the Normans preferred it.
Young Guy had grown up in the bleak moorlands of the north, and there he might have stayed, but thinking that life held more for him than overseeing the collection of rents on his father’s estate, he had come south to take service in the court of an ambitious baron who could provide him with the opportunities a young knight needed to secure wealth and fame. Inflamed with dreams of grandeur, he yearned for glory far beyond any that might be acquired grappling with dour English farmwives over rents paid in geese and sheep.
Guy’s energy and skill at arms had won him a place amongst the teeming swarm of knights employed by William de Braose; his solid, dependable, levelheaded northern practicality raised him above the ranks of the brash and impulsive fortune seekers who thronged the southern courts. Two years in the baron’s service, Guy had waited for a chance to prove himself, and it had finally come. Certainly, marshalling the guard for some money chests was not the same as leading a flying wing of cavalry into pitched battle, but it was a start.
This was the first significant task the baron had entrusted to him, and though it fell far short of taxing his considerable skills as a warrior, he was determined to acquit himself well.
Mounted on a fine grey destrier, he remained vigilant and pursued a steady, unhurried pace. To better safeguard the silver, no advance warning had been given; not even Count de Braose knew when the money would arrive.
Day’s end found them camped beside the road on a bend in the river.