“Enough to know it is best to stay out of reach of those long-legged rascals.”
“He says he is searching for our Bran,” put in Siarles. Impatient, he did not care to wait for the pleasant talk to come round to its destination as is the way with the Cymry. “He says he wants to offer his services.”
“Does he now?” said Angharad. “Well, then, summon our lord and let us see how this cast falls out.”
Siarles hurried away to one of the larger huts in the centre of the holding. By this time, the children had been spreading the word that a stranger had come, and folk were starting to gather. They were not, I observed, an altogether comely group: thin, frayed and worn, smudged around the edges as might be expected of people eking out a precarious life in deep forest. Few had shoes, and none had clothes that were not patched and patched again. At least two fellas in the crowd had lost a hand to Norman justice; one had lost his eyes.
A more hungry, haunted lot I never saw, nor hope to see—like the beggars that clot the doorways of the churches in the towns. But where beggars are hopeless in their desperation, these folk exuded the grim defiance of a people who exist on determination alone. And all of them had the look I’d already noticed on the young ones: an aspect of wary, almost skittish curiosity, as if, drawn to the sight of the stranger in their midst, they nevertheless were ready to flee at a word. One quick move on my part, and they’d bolt like deer, or take wing like a flock of sparrows.
“If your search be true,” the old woman told me, “you have naught to fear.”
I thanked her for her reassurance and stood to my fate. Presently, Siarles returned from the house accompanied by a young man, tall and slender as a rod, but with a fair span of shoulders and good strong arms. He wore a simple tunic of dark cloth, trousers of the same stuff, and long black riding boots. His hair was so black the sun glinted blue in his wayward locks. A cruel scar puckered the skin on the left side of his face, lifting his lip in what first appeared to be a haughty sneer—an impression only, belied by the ready wit that darted from eyes black as the bottom of a well on a moonless night.
There was no doubt that he was their leader, Bran—the man I had come to find. If the right and ready homage of the ragged forest folk failed to make that clear, you had only to take in the regal ease with which he surveyed all around him to know that here was a man well used to command. His very presence demanded attention, and he claimed mine without effort to the extent that at first I failed to see the young woman trailing behind him: a fine, dark-haired lady of such elegance and grace that, though she was dressed in the same humble drab as the starvelings around her, she held herself with such an imperious bearing that I took her to be the queen.
“I present Rhi Bran, Lord of Elfael,” said Iwan, speaking loud enough for all gathered round to hear.
“Pax vobiscum,” said the tall young man, looking me up and down with a sweep of a quick, intelligent eye.
“God’s peace, my lord,” I replied in Cymric, offering him the courtesy of a bow. “I am William Scatlocke, former forester to Thane Aelred of Nottingham.”
“He’s come to offer his services,” Siarles informed his lordship with a mocking tone to let his master know what he thought of the idea.
Bran looked me over once again and finding no fault, I think, replied, “What kind of services do you propose, William Scatlocke?”
“Anything you require,” I said. “From slaughtering hogs to thatching roofs, sawing timber to pollarding hazel, there’s not much I haven’t done.”
“You said you were a forester,” mused Bran, and I saw the glint of interest in his glance.
“Aye, I was—and a good one, if I say it myself.”
“Why did you quit?”
“Thane Aelred, God bless him, lost his lands in the succession dispute and was banished to Daneland. All his vassals were turned out by Red William to fend for themselves, most like to starve, it was that grim.”
The dark-haired young woman, who had been peering from behind Bran’s shoulder,