Tuck, “and that an I followed by E and U.” He paused to string together what he’d found. “Dee-a-oo,” he said.
“God!” exclaimed Mérian. “Dieu means God.” She put her finger on a letter. “What is that?”
Tuck peered hard at the script. “I think it might be an S ,” he said. “With an A . . . F . . . ah, no that might be an L . . . U . . . T . . .” He continued picking out letters one by one and uttered the word as he did so. I followed some of this, but my small store of Ffreinc was of the more rough and ready sort spoken in the market, not the court or church, and it soon left me trailing far behind.
“Salutations!” said Mérian before he finished. “‘Greetings!’” She beamed happily. “Salutations dans Dieu,” she said. “‘Greetings in God’—that must be it.”
Tuck agreed. “I think so.”
“That would be expected,” said Iwan. “What else?”
The two continued, trying to scry out the letters and make words of them that Mérian knew. And though they succeeded in guessing several more, they fell far short of the mark and were forced to give up in the end, leaving us little the wiser for the effort. “We know it is Ffreinc, at least,” said Bran. “That is something.”
“Well, whatever is in that letter,” said Tuck, tapping the sheepskin with his finger, “you can be sure the baron will be missing it. I think de Braose wants his treasures back.”
“Oh, aye,” affirmed Iwan, “and he’s willing to risk good men to get them.”
Tuck nodded thoughtfully. “Mark me, there is a dread mystery here. You would be wise to return these things as soon as possible,” he concluded, “before any more blood is shed.”
“That I will not do,” declared Bran. “At least, not until I know what it is we have found. If de Braose considers it worth an army to recover”—he smiled suddenly—“perhaps it is worth more.”
“A castle!” suggested Siarles.
“Perhaps,” allowed Bran. “Maybe even a kingdom.”
And, no, Odo,” I say with a sigh, “I cannot read. Not even my own name when it is writ. Then again, Thane Aelred couldn’t read a whit, either, nor any of his vassals, saving the monks at the abbey, and he was a towering oak of a man, bless him.”
“Oh,” smirks he, “but there is nothing to it once you have the learning. I could teach you,” he says, hopeful as a puppy.
“Well then, Odo, me lad,” I tell him, “one day when I have the leisure of a cleric, as you most certainly do, I shall let you teach me to read. Now, where was I?”
“Bran considered the ring of great value,” replies Odo. I lick my lips and rumble on . . .
The next day, when Angharad learned what Tuck had revealed about the parchment, she thanked Bran for telling her, gave him a few words of advice, and took her leave. Pulling on her cloak, she bunged a few leftovers from our truncated feast into a leather bag slung on her back, took up her staff, and departed Cél Craidd then and there.
Some of us saw her leave. “Is she angry?” Tomas asked. “She seems fair put out with the world.”
“I don’t know,” I replied. “Maybe.”
“Where is she going?”
“She has a cave somewhere in the greenwood,” said Huw, one of the elder Grellon. “She goes there of a time to think.”
Well, the sheriff ’s attack had cast a shadow of gloom over our none-too-happy home, I can tell you. As soon as Angharad left, Bran hived himself in his hut with Iwan and Tuck to decide what to do next.
“God with you, Will,” said Mérian, coming to stand beside me.
“And with you, my lady,” I answered.
She rubbed her hands to warm them. “I wonder what they will decide.”
“Difficult to say. Weighty decisions require patience and pondering aplenty.”
“Do you think it dangerous, this ring?”
“I think it valuable, and that is usually danger enough.” I nodded towards the hut. “I think Tuck is right when he says there is a dread mystery in the thing.”
As we were talking, I caught sight of someone out of the corner of my eye. I looked across the clearing to see Nóinina disappearing between two huts; she cast a last look over her shoulder as she moved from view. Something about her expression as she passed out of sight gave me to think she had been watching Mérian and me and did not approve,