“We’ve met before, my boy,” said Hywel Hen, “though I don’t expect you to remember. You were but a bare-bottomed infant in your mother’s arms at the time. I well remember your mother, of course—and your father. Fares the king well, does he?”
“If it lay in my power to bring you greetings from Lord Brychan, trust that nothing would please me more,” replied Bran. “But such would come to you from beyond the grave.”
The others took this in silence.
“My father is dead,” Bran continued, “and all his war band with him. Killed by the Ffreinc who have invaded our lands in Elfael.”
“Then it is true,” said Meurig. “We heard that the Ffreinc are moving into the southlands.” He shook his head. “I am sorry to hear of King Brychan’s death.”
“As are we all,” said Trahaern, whose dark hair rippled across his head like the waves of a well-ordered sea. “As are we all. But tell us, young Bran, why did you put on the robes of a priest just now?”
“I cannot think it was for amusement,” offered Meurig. “But if it was, let me assure you that I am not amused.”
“Nor I,” said Cynwrig. “Your jest failed, my friend.”
“In truth, my lords, it was no jest,” replied Bran. “I wanted you to see how easily men defer to a priest’s robe and welcome him that wears it.”
“You said it was to convince us,” Llewelyn reminded him.
“Indeed.” Hands on the table, Bran leaned forward. “If I had come to you saying that I intended to fetch King Gruffydd from Earl Hugh’s prison, what would you have said?”
“That you were softheaded,” chuckled Trahaern. “Or howling mad.”
“Our king is held behind locked doors in a great rock of a fortress guarded by Wolf Hugh’s own war band,” declared Llygad, a thickset man with the ruddy face of one who likes his ale as much as it likes him. “It cannot be done.”
“Not by Bran ap Brychan, perhaps,” granted Bran amiably. “But Father Dominic—who you have just seen and welcomed at this very table—has been known to prise open doors barred to all others.”
He looked to Tuck for confirmation of this fact. “It is true,” the friar avowed with a solemn shaking of his round head. “I have seen it with my own eyes, have I not?”
“Why should you want to see our Rhi Gruffydd freed from prison?” asked Hywel, fingering the gold bishop’s cross upon his chest. “What is that to you?”
Despite the bluntness of the question, the others looked to Bran for an answer, and the success of King Raven’s northern venture seemed to balance on a knife edge.
“What is it to me?” repeated Bran, his tone half-mocking. “In truth, it is everything to me. I came here to ask your king to raise his war band and return with me to help lead them in the fight. Unless, of course, you would care to take the throne in his absence . . . ?” He regarded Hywel pointedly and then turned his gaze to the others around the board. No one volunteered to usurp the king’s authority, prisoner though he was.
“I thought not,” continued Bran. “It is true that I came here to ask your king to aid me in driving the Ffreinc from our homeland and freeing Elfael from the tyranny of their rule. But now that I know that my best hope lies rotting in a Ffreinc prison—for all he is my kinsman, too—I will not rest until I have freed him.”
Bran’s kinsmen stared at him in silence that was finally broken by Trahaern’s sudden bark of laughter.
“You dream big,” the dark Welshman laughed, slapping the table with the flat of his hand. “I like you.”
The tension eased at once, and Tuck realized he had been holding his breath—nor was he the only one. The two younger Cymry, silent but watchful, sighed with relief and relaxed in their elders’ pleasure.
“It will take more than a priest’s robe to fetch Gruffydd from Wolf Hugh’s prison,” Meurig observed. “God knows, if that was all it took he’d be a free man long since.”
The others nodded knowingly, and looked to Bran for his response.
“You have no idea,” replied Bran, that slow, dangerous smile sliding across his scarred lips, “how much more there is to me than that.”
CHAPTER 11
Caer Rhodl
The wedding was all Baroness Neufmarché hoped it would be, conducted in regal pomp and elegance by Father Gervais, who had performed the marriage ceremony