“Lord Bran, bless me, it’s you,” he said, pulling Bran into the room and sitting him down on a three-legged stool at the table. “I heard what happened to you on the road—a sorry business, a full sorry business indeed, God’s truth. Brother Ffreol was one of our best, you know. He would have been bishop one day, he would—if not abbot also.”
“He was my confessor,” volunteered Bran. “He was a friend and a good man.”
“I don’t suppose it could have been helped?” asked the kitchener, placing a wooden trencher of roast meat and bread on the table before Bran.
“There was nothing to be done,” Bran said. “Even if he’d had a hundred warriors at his back, it would not have made the slightest difference.”
“Ah, so, well . . .” Bedo poured out a jar of thin ale into a small leather cup. “Bless him—and bless you, too, that you were there to comfort him at his dying breath.”
Bran accepted the monk’s words without comment. There had been precious little comforting in Ffreol’s last moments. The chaos of that terrible night rose before him once more, and Bran’s eyesight dimmed with tears. He finished his meal without further talk, then thanked the brother and went out, already planning the route he would take through the valley, away from the caer and Count de Braose’s ransom demand.
The moon had risen above the far hills when Bran slipped through the gate. He had walked only a few dozen paces when he heard someone calling after him. “Lord Bran! Wait!” He looked around to see three dusty, footsore monks leading a swaybacked plough horse.
“What is that?” asked Bran, regarding the animal doubtfully.
“My lord,” the monk said, “it is the best we could find.
Anyone with a seemly mount has sent it away, and the Ffreinc have already taken the rest.” The monk regarded the horse wearily. “It may not be much, but trust me, it is this or nothing.”
“Worse than nothing,” Bran grumbled. Snatching the halter rope from the monk’s hands, he clambered up onto the beast’s bony back. “Tell the bishop I have gone. I will send word from Gwynedd.” With that, he departed on his pathetic mount.
Bran had never ridden a beast as slow and stumble-footed as the one he now sat atop. The creature plodded along in the dying moonlight, head down, nose almost touching the ground. Despite Bran’s most ardent insistence, piteous begging, and harrowing threats, the animal refused to assume a pace swifter than a hoof-dragging amble.
Thus, night was all but spent by the time Bran came in sight of Caer Rhodl, the fortress of Mérian’s father, King Cadwgan, rising up out of the mists of the morning that would be. Tethering the plough horse to a rowan bush in a gully beside the track, Bran ran the rest of the way on foot. He scaled the low wall at his customary place and dropped into the empty yard. The caer was silent. The watchmen, as usual, were asleep.
Quick and silent as a shadow, Bran darted across the dark expanse of yard to the far corner of the house. Mérian’s room was at the back, its single small window opening onto the kitchen herb garden. He crept along the side of the house until he came to her window and then, pressing his ear to the rough wooden shutter, paused to listen. Hearing nothing, he pulled on the shutter; it swung open easily, and he paused again. When nothing stirred inside, he whispered, “Mérian, . . . ,” and waited, then whispered again, slightly louder, “Mérian! Be quick!”
This time his call was answered by the sound of a hushed footfall and the rustle of clothing. In a moment, Mérian’s face appeared in the window, pale in the dim light. “You should not have come,” she said. “I won’t let you in—not tonight.”
“There was a battle,” he told her. “My father has been killed—the entire warband with him. The Ffreinc have taken Elfael.”
“Oh, Bran!” she gasped. “How did it happen?”
“They have a grant from King William. They are taking everything.”
“But this is terrible,” she said. “Are you hurt?”
“I was not in the battle,” he said. “But they are searching for me.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I’m leaving for Gwynedd—now, at once. I have kinsmen there. But I need a horse.”
“You want me to give you a horse?” Mérian shook her head. “I cannot. I dare not. My father would scream the roof down.”