themselves,” Friar Tuck said, pouring coins from the fold of his gathered robe into the bowl on the floor before him. “Blesséd be the name of the Lord!”
“How much is there altogether?” wondered Bran, gazing at the treasure hoard.
“Several hundred marks at least,” suggested Siarles.
“It is more than enough to pay the workers,” observed Angharad from her stool. “Much more.” She rose and gathered a deerskin from her sleeping place. Spreading it on the floor beside the kneeling priest, she instructed, “Count it onto this.”
“And count it out loud so we can all hear,” added Siarles.
“Help me,” said the priest. “Put them into piles of twelve.”
The two fell to arranging the silver coins into little heaps to represent a shilling, and then Brother Tuck began telling out the number, shilling by shilling. Siarles, using a bit of charred wood, kept a running tally on a hearthstone, announcing the reckoning every fourth or fifth stack, and calling out the total at each mark: one hundred . . . one hundred seventy-five . . . two hundred . . .
The women of Cél Craidd brought food—a haunch of roast meat from one of the slaughtered oxen and some fresh barley cakes made from the supplies intended for Abbot Hugo. Bran and the others ate while the counting continued.
After a while, they heard voices outside the hut. “Your flock grows curious,” Angharad said. “They have been patient long enough. You should speak to them, Bran.”
Rising, Bran stepped to the door and pushed aside the ox-hide covering. Stepping out into the soft night air, he saw the entire population of the settlement—forty-three souls in all— ranged on the ground around the door of the hut.Wrapped in their cloaks, they were talking quietly amongst themselves. A fire had been lit and some of the children were running barefoot around it.
“We are still counting the money,” he told them simply. “I will bring word when we have finished.”
“It is taking a fair sweet time,” suggested one of the men.
“There is a lot to count.”
“God be praised,” said another. “How much?”
“More than we hoped,” replied Bran. “Your patience will be rewarded, never fear.”
He returned to Angharad’s hearth and the counting.
“Three hundred fifty . . . ,” droned Siarles, making another mark on the stone, “. . . four hundred . . .”
“Four hundred marks!” gasped Iwan. “Why were they carrying so much money?”
“Something is happening that we have neither heard nor foreseen,” Angharad replied, “and this is the proof.”
Tuck, still counting, gave a cough to silence them. And the total continued to grow.
When the last silver penny had been accounted, the total stood at four hundred and fifty marks. Then, turning his attention to the leather bags in the last casket, the friar began to count out the gold coins to the value of ten marks each.
The others looked on breathlessly as the friar arranged the golden byzants in neat little towers of ten.
When he finished, Tuck raised his head and, in a voice filled with quiet wonder, announced, “Seven hundred and fifty marks. That makes five hundred pounds sterling.”
“Do I believe what I am hearing?” breathed Iwan, overwhelmed by the enormity of the plunder. “Five hundred pounds . . .” He turned his eyes to Bran and then to Angharad.
“What have we done?”
“We have ransomed Elfael from the stinking Ffreinc,” declared Bran. “Using their own money, too. Rough justice, that.”
Turning on his heel, he moved to the door and stepped out to deliver the news to those waiting outside. Angharad went with him and, raising her hands, said, “Silence. Rhi Bran would speak.”
When the murmuring died down, Bran said, “Through our efforts we have won five hundred pounds—more than enough to pay the redemption price Red William has set. We have redeemed our land!”
The sudden outcry of acclamation took Bran by surprise.
Hearing the cheers and seeing the glad faces in the moonlight took him back to another place and time. For a moment, Bran was a child in the yard at Caer Cadarn, listening to the revelry of the warriors returning from a hunt. His mother was still alive, and as Queen of the Hunt, she led the women of the valley, singing and dancing in celebration of the hunters’ success, her long, dark hair streaming loose as she spun and turned in the rising glow of a full moon.
Nothing could ever bring her back or replace the warmth he had known in the presence of that loving soul. But this he could do: he could