agreed. “Then do so,” he said, as if it had been his own idea all along. He put his nose in his cup once more. “Do so by all means, if it pleases you. One of my men will take you down to him.”
Tuck thanked him, begged his dinner companions to excuse his absence, and then departed. In the company of the earl’s seneschal, who was standing at the door, the friar made his way down and down into the low-vaulted under-castle, to the hostage pit, to see for the first time the man they had come to free. Leaving the hall and its uproar behind, they passed along a dark, narrow corridor to an even darker, more narrow passage through the castle inner wall to a round chamber below what must have been the guardhouse. “Attendre ici, s’il vous plaît,” said the seneschal, who disappeared up the steps to the room above, returning a few moments later with a dishevelled man who had very obviously been drug from his bed. Yawning, the guard applied a key to an iron grate that covered a hole in the floor, unlocked it, and pulled back the grate. He took up a torch from a basket on the floor, lit it from the candle in the seneschal’s hand, and beckoned Bishop Balthus to follow. A short flight of spiral steps led them to another passage, at the end of which stood another iron grate which formed the door of a cell. Upon reaching the door, the guard thrust his torch closer, and in the fitful light of it Tuck saw the prisoner slumped against the wall with his head down, legs splayed before him, hands limp at his sides, palms upward. With his thick and matted tangle of hair and beard, he looked more like a bear dressed up in filthy rags than a man.
Once again, the guard plied the key, and after a few moments huffing and puffing, the lock gave and the door swung open, squealing on its rusted hinges like a tortured rat. The prisoner started at the sound, then looked around slowly, hardly raising his head. But he made no other move or sound.
Stepping past the gaoler, Tuck pushed the door open farther and, relieving the porter of his torch, entered the cell. It was a small, square room of unfinished stone with a wooden stool, a three-legged table, and a pile of rancid rushes in one corner for a bed. Although it stank of the slop bucket standing open beside the door, and vermin crawled in the mildewed rushes, the room was dry enough. Two bars of solid iron covered a square window near the top of one wall, and an iron ring was set into the opposite wall. To this ring was attached a heavy chain which was, in turn, clamped to the prisoner’s leg.
“I will shrive him now,” Tuck said to the guard.
The fellow settled himself to wait, leaning against the corridor wall. He picked his teeth and waited for the bishop to begin.
“You are welcome to stay, of course,” said Tuck, speaking as the bishop. “Kneel down. I will shrive you too.”
Understanding came slowly to the guard, but when it did he opened his mouth to protest.
“Come!” insisted the smiling bishop. “We all need shriving from time to time. Kneel down,” he directed. “Or leave us in peace.”
The gaoler regarded the prisoner, shrugged, and departed, taking the key with him. Tuck waited, and when he could no longer hear the man’s footsteps on the stairs outside, he knelt down before the prisoner and declared in a loud voice, sure to be overheard, “Pax vobiscum”
The prisoner made no reply, nor gave any sign that he had heard.
“Lord Gruffydd, can you hear me? Are you well?” Tuck asked, his voice hushed.
At the sound of these words spoken in his own language by a priest, the king raised his head a little and, in a voice grown creaky from disuse, asked, “Who are you?”
“Friar Aethelfrith,” Tuck replied softly. “I am with some others, and we have come to free you.”
Gruffydd stared at him as if he could not make sense of what he had been told. “Free me?”
“Yes.”
The captive king pondered this a moment, then asked, “How many are with you?”
“Three,” Tuck said.
“It cannot be done,” Gruffydd replied. His head sank down again. “Not with three hundred, much less three.”
“Take heart,” Tuck told him. “Do as I say and you will soon gain your freedom. Rouse yourself, and