So we ate a hearty supper and took a little nap, resting ourselves as well as our horses. We were awake again at midnight and lit out under a cold winter moon for Cél Craidd. The Twelfth Night observance was six days away. We had only that much time and no more before the hangings began.
CHAPTER 23
The sun was already down and a freezing mist was rising with the moon in the east by the time we reached our forest hideaway at Cél Craidd. We had pushed the horses hard all the way, and they were almost spent. Yet the Welsh breed a hardy little beast, as everyone knows, and they lifted their dragging feet once we came in sight of the greenwood, because they knew they were almost home.
The Grellon greeted our return with keen interest, assembling before the Council Oak as we rode into the glade. I swung down from the saddle, searching for the face I suddenly wanted to see above all others and, before I could find it, was taken by the shoulder and spun around.
“Nóin, I—” was all I got out before I was immediately folded into a sweetly robust embrace.
She kissed me once, very hard, and then again. “I have missed you, Will Scarlet.” She put her cheek against mine as she held me close. I could feel her shivering beneath her cloak, and thought it was not merely from the cold. “I was afraid something might happen to you.”
“Ah, now, nothing that a good night’s sleep won’t cure,” I replied lightly, clutching her tight to me.
“Siarles! Will!” Bran cried, striding across the clearing to greet us. Tuck, Iwan, and Mérian followed, slipping in the well-trodden snow. “What news?”
Without wasting a breath, Siarles told Bran and all the others about the hangings. “Fifty or sixty stand to forfeit their lives if we do not act quickly. It is for us to save them.”
This caused an outcry among the Grellon, who raised a clamour to be allowed to march on Castle Truan and free the prisoners. “That we will not do,” Bran said, raising his voice above the shouting. He called his council to attend him and for food and drink to be brought to help revive the travellers, and we all trooped off to join him in his hut.
This began a lengthy session of rumination about what we had learned, what it might mean, and what might be done about it. “Asaph refused to accept the ring and gloves for safekeeping,” Siarles explained, returning the leather-wrapped bundle to Bran. “Nor could he read the letter.”
“But we prevailed upon him to take the parchment to the abbey to see if someone there might help us,” I offered. “We would have taken it ourselves, but seeing as the abbot means to start hanging half of Elfael, we thought best to hightail it home.”
“You did well,” Bran said. “It is, no doubt, what I would have done.”
Iwan and the others agreed, and they began to discuss the hangings and what could be done to prevent them. I endured as long as I could, but soon the warmth of the hearth and the food combined to club me over the head and pull me down. Bran noticed my yawning and, thanking me for my diligence in bringing the news so quickly, ordered me to go and get some rest.
Creeping from Bran’s hearth, I went to Nóin and found her waiting at her own small fire in her hut. Little Nia was asleep on her mat in the corner, and Nóin was idly feeding twigs into the flames. She turned and smiled as I entered. “They kept you long,” she said.
“They did, but I am here now.” I settled on the roebuck hide beside her. “Ah,” I sighed, “there is nothing like a warm fire and a roof over your head at the end of the day.”
“And you a brave forester,” she chided lightly, lifting a warm hand to my face. “Well, rest yourself, Will Scarlet.” She paused and smiled. “You need not stir until tomorrow’s light if that is what you wish.”
We kissed then and she nestled in my arms. We talked a little then—but, try as I might, I could not keep my eyes open. I fell asleep with Nóin in my embrace.
I awoke the next morning wrapped in her cloak. When I sat up who should be watching me but little Nia, her pixie face shining with some sort of happiness known