Hood

  Justice. For, as his old abbot had often said, “When iniquity sits in the judgement seat, good men must take their appeals to a higher court.”

  Aethelfrith did not know how that appeal to justice might come about, but trusted that his information would give Bran all the inspiration he required to at least set the wheels in motion.

  The shadows lengthened over the valley, and the road was not shrinking; with grudging reluctance, Aethelfrith stepped from the water, dried his feet on the hem of his robe, and continued on his way. The merchants’ van was well ahead of him now, but he dismissed the rude company from his thoughts. His destination was almost within sight. The Vale of Elfael stretched before him, its green fields spotted with slow-shifting cloud shadows. He doubted a more peaceful and serene dale could be found anywhere.

  Buoyed by the beauty of the place, Brother Aethelfrith opened his mouth wide and began to sing aloud, letting his voice resound and echo out across the valley as he made his way down the long slope that would eventually bring him to Llanelli.

  He was sweating again, long before reaching the valley floor.

  In the near distance he saw the old fortress, Caer Cadarn, rising on its hump of rock overlooking the road. “May your walls keep you safe as Jericho,” Aethelfrith muttered, then crossed himself and hurried by.

  The sun was touching the far western hills when he reached Llanelli—or what was left of it. The low wall of the enclosure had been taken down and most of the interior buildings either destroyed or converted to other uses. The yard had been enlarged to make a market square, and new structures—unfinished, their bare timbers rising from the builders’ rubble— stood at each corner. All that remained of the original monastery was a single row of monks’ cells and the chapel, which was only slightly larger than his own oratory. There seemed to be no one around, so he strode to the door of the chapel and walked in.

  Two priests knelt before the altar, on which burned a single thick tallow candle that sent a black, oily thread of smoke into the close air. He stood in the doorway for a moment, then cleared his throat to announce his presence and said, “Forgive me, friends. I see I am interrupting your prayers.”

  The nearer of the two priests looked around and then nudged the other, who quickly finished his prayer, crossed himself, and rose to greet the newcomer. “God be good to you, brother,” said the priest, taking in his visitor’s robe and tonsure. “I am Bishop Asaph. How can I be of service?”

  “Greetings in Christ and all his glorious saints!” declared the mendicant. “Brother Aethelfrith, I am, come on an errand of some . . . ah”—he hesitated, not wishing to say too much about his illicit chore—“delicacy and importance.”

  “Peace and welcome, brother,” the bishop said. “As you can see, we have little left to call our own, but we will help you in any way we can.”

  “It is easily done and will cost you nothing,” the friar assured him. “I am looking for Bran ap Brychan—I have a message for him. I was hoping someone here could tell me where to find him.”

  At this, a shadow passed over the bishop’s face. His smile of welcome wilted, and his eyes grew sad. “Ah,” he sighed. “I would that you had asked anything but that. Alas, you will not find the man you seek amongst the living.” He shook his head with weary regret. “Our young Prince Bran is dead.”

  “Dead! Oh, dear God, how?” Aethelfrith gasped. “When did this happen?”

  “Last autumn, it was,” replied the bishop. “As to how it happened—there was a fight, and he was cruelly cut down when trying to escape Count de Braose’s knights.” The English monk staggered backward and collapsed on a bench against the wall. “Here; rest a moment,” said Asaph. “Brother Clyro, fetch our guest some water.”

  Clyro hobbled away, and the bishop sat down beside his guest. “I am sorry, my friend,” he said. “Your question caught me off guard, or I might have softened the blow for you.”

  “Where is he buried? I will go and offer a prayer for his soul.”

  “You knew our Bran?”

  “Met him once. He stayed the night with me—he and that tall tree of a fellow—what was his name? John! They had a priest with them. Good man, I think. One of yours?”

  “Iwan, yes. And Ffreol, perhaps?”

  “The very fellows!” Aethelfrith nodded. “They were on their way to Lundein to see the king. I went with them in the end. Sorely disappointed they were. But I could have told them. The Ffreinc are bastards.”

  “From what we have been able to learn,” Asaph said, “our Bran was captured on his way home. He was killed a few days later trying to escape.” He regarded his visitor with soft-eyed sadness. “It pains me the more,” he continued, “but Iwan and Brother Ffreol also fell afoul of Count de Braose.”

  “Dead, too? All of them?” asked Aethelfrith.

  Bishop Asaph bent his head in sorrowful assent.

  “Filthy Norman scum,” growled the friar. “Kill first and repent later. That is all they know. Worse than Danes!”

  “There was nothing to be done,” Asaph said. “We said a Mass for him, of course. But”—he lifted his hands helplessly —“there it is.”

  “So now you have no king,” observed Aethelfrith.

  “Bran was the last of his line,” affirmed the bishop. “We must be content now to simply survive and endure this unjust reign as best we can. And now”—his voice quivered slightly— “another blow has been dealt us. The monastery has been taken over for a market town.”

  “Scabby thieves, the lot of ’em!” muttered Aethelfrith.

  “Nay, worse than that. Even the lowest thief wouldn’t rob God of his home.”

  “Baron de Braose has determined to install his own churchmen in this place. They are to arrive any day—indeed, when you came to the door, we thought it might be the new abbot come to drive us from our chapel.”

  “Where will you go?”

  “We are not without friends. The monastery of Saint Dyfrig in the north is sister to Llanelli, or once was. We will go to them . . . and from there?” The bishop offered a forlorn smile. “It is in God’s hands.”

  “Then I am doubly sorry,” said Aethelfrith. “This world is full of trouble, God knows, and he spares not his own servants.” Brother Clyro returned with a bowl of water, which he offered to their guest. Aethelfrith accepted the bowl and drank deeply.

  “Why did you want to see our Bran?” asked the bishop when he had finished.

  “I had a notion to help him,” replied the friar. “But now that I see how events have fallen out, I warrant it a poor idea.

  In any event, it is of no consequence now.”

  “I see,” replied the bishop. He did not press the matter.

  “Have you travelled far?”

  “From Hereford. I keep an oratory there—Saint Ennion’s.

  Have you heard of it?”

  “Of course, yes,” replied the bishop. “One of our own dear saints from long ago.”

  “To be sure,” conceded Aethelfrith. “But it is home to me now.”

  “Then it is too far to come and return all at once. You must stay with us a few days”—the bishop lifted a hand in a gesture of helplessness—“or until the Ffreinc come to drive us all away.”

  Friar Aethelfrith spent the next day helping Asaph and Clyro pack their belongings. They wrapped the bound parchment copies of the Psalms and the book of Saint Matthew, as well as the small golden bowl used for the Eucharist on high holy days. These things had to be disguised and secreted amongst the other bundles of clerical implements and utensils, for fear that the Ffreinc would confiscate them if their value was known.

  They finished their work and enjoyed a simple supper of stewed beans with a little sliced leek and burdock. The next morning, Brother Aethelfrith bade his friends farewell and started back to his oratory. The merchants he had followed to Elfael had also concluded their business, and as he passed Castle Truan—what the Normans were now calling Caer Cadarn—he saw five mule-drawn carts turn out onto
the road and thought, now that the wagons were empty of goods, he might beg bold and ask for a ride.

  So he quickened his pace and by midmorning had caught up with the wagon van when it paused to water the animals at the valley stream before starting up the long slope of the forested ridge. He came within hailing distance and gave a shout, which was not returned. “I see they still have some manners to learn,” he muttered. “But no matter. They will have to be hard-hearted indeed to refuse my request.”

  As he neared the fording place, he saw that the traders were standing together in a clump, motionless, with their backs to him; they seemed to be staring at something on the far side of the stream.

  He hurried to join them, calling, “Pax vobiscum!”

  One of the traders turned on him. “Keep your voice down!” he whispered savagely.

  Mystified, the friar shut his mouth with a click of his teeth. Taking his place beside the men, he stared across the fording place and into the wood. The mules, impassive creatures ordinarily, seemed restless and uneasy; they jigged in their traces and tossed their heads. And yet the wood beyond the stream seemed quiet enough. Brother Aethelfrith could see no one on the road; all seemed calm and tranquil.

  “Forgive my curiosity, friend,” he whispered to the man next to him, “but what is everyone looking at?”

  “Gerald thought he saw the thing—the creature,” the merchant whispered back, his voice tense in the unnatural silence.

  The only sound to be heard was the lazy, liquid gurgle of the water as it slipped around and over the stones.

  “What creature?” wondered the priest. Nothing moved amongst the lush green foliage of the trees and lower brushwood. “The phantom,” the man explained. He turned his face to the bowlegged friar. “Do you not know?”

  “I know nothing of any phantom,” replied Aethelfrith.

  “What sort of phantom is it presumed to be?”

  “Why,” replied the merchant, “it takes the form of a great giant of a bird. Men hereabouts call it King Raven.”

  “Do they indeed?” wondered the friar, much intrigued.

  “What does it look like—this giant bird?”

  The merchant stared at him in disbelief. “By the rood, man! Are you dim? It looks like a thumping great raven.”

  “Shut up!” hissed one of the others just then. “You will have the demon down on us!”

  Before anyone could reply to this, one of the other traders threw out his hand and shouted, “There it is!”

  Friar Aethelfrith glimpsed a flash of blue-black feathers glinting in the sun and the suggestion of a massive black wing as the creature emerged from the brushwood on the opposite bank a few score paces downstream. Two of the merchants gave out shouts of terrified surprise, and two others fell to their knees, clasping their hands and crying aloud to God and Saint Michael to save them. The rest fled back down the road to the safety of Castle Truan, leaving their carts behind.

  “Christ have mercy!” gasped one of the remaining merchants as the creature’s head came into view. Its face was an oval of smooth black bone, devoid of feathers, with two round pits where its eyes should have been. Save for the wickedly long pointed beak, its head most resembled a charred human skull.

  Lifting its swordlike beak, the thing uttered a piercing shriek that resounded in the deathly silence of the wood.

  Even as the cry hung in the air, the phantom turned and simply melted back into the shadow of the wood.

  The terror-stricken merchants leapt to their feet and ran for their wagons, lashed their mules to motion, and fled back into the valley. Of all those at the stream, only Aethelfrith was left to give chase—which he promptly did.

  CHAPTER 35

  Gathering up his robe, Aethelfrith strode boldly across the stream and started after the phantom. Upon reaching the far side of the stream, he paused and, finding nothing, proceeded into the brushwood, where the thing had vanished. There was no sign of the creature, and after a few paces he stopped to reconsider. He could hear the traders clattering away into the distance as their wagons bumped over the rutted road. Then, even as he was wondering whether to continue the chase or resume his journey, he saw the faint glimmer of glistening black feathers—just a quick flash before it disappeared into a hedge bank a few hundred paces down the trail. He hurried on.

  The ground rose toward the ridge, and he eventually reached the top. Sweating and out of breath, he stumbled upon a game trail that led along the ridgetop. It was old and well established, overarched by the huge limbs of plane trees, elms, and oaks that formed a vault overhead and allowed only intermittent shafts of sunlight to strike down through the leaf canopy and illuminate the path. It was dark as a cellar, but since it was easier than pushing his way through the heavy underbrush, he decided to follow the run and soon realised just how quickly it allowed a man on foot to move about the forest.

  The heat had been mounting steadily as the sun arced toward midday, and Aethelfrith was glad for the shade beneath the hanging boughs. He walked along, listening to the thrushes singing in the upper branches and, lower down, the click and chirrup of insects working the dead leaf matter that rotted along the trail. At any moment, he told himself, he would turn back—but the path was soft underfoot, so he continued.

  After a time, the trail branched off; the left-hand side continued along the ridgetop, and the right-hand side descended the slope to a rocky hollow. Here the priest stopped to consider which path, if either, to take. The day was speeding from him, and he decided to resume his homeward journey. He turned around and started back, but he had not gone far when he heard voices: murmured only, light as thistledown on the dead-still air, there and gone again, and so faint as to be easily dismissed as the invention of his own imagining.

  But years of living alone in his oratory with no company save his own inner musings had made his hearing keen. He held his breath and listened for the sound to come again. His vigilance was rewarded with another feather-soft murmur, followed by the unmistakable sound of laughter.

  Frail as a wisp of cobweb adrift on the breeze, it nonetheless gave him a direction to follow. He took the right-hand trail leading down the back of the ridge. The path fell away steeply as it entered the hollow below, and Aethelfrith, his short legs unable to keep up with his bulk, plunged down the hill.

  He entered the hollow in a rush, tripped over a root, and fell, landing with a mighty grunt at the feet of the great black phantom raven. He slowly raised his fearful gaze to see the ominous black head regarding him with malevolent curiosity.

  The fantastic wings spread wide, and the thing swooped.

  The priest rolled on his belly and tried to avoid the assault, but he was too slow, and he felt his arm seized in a steely grip as he squirmed on the ground. “God save me!” he cried.

  “Shout louder,” hissed the creature. “God may hear you yet.”

  “Let be!” he cried in English, wriggling like an eel to get free. “Let me go!”

  “Do you want to kill him, or should I?”

  Aethelfrith twisted his head around and saw a tall, brawny man step forward. He wore a long, hooded cloak into which were woven a multitude of small tatters of green cloth; twigs and branches and leaves of all kinds had also been attached to the curious garment. Regarding the priest with a frown, he drew a knife from his belt. “I’ll do it.”

  “Wait a little,” spoke the raven with a human voice. “We’ll not kill him yet. Time enough for that later.” To the friar, he said, “You were at the ford. Did anyone else follow?”

  Struggling in the creature’s unforgiving clutch, it took the priest a moment to realise that the thing had spoken to him.

  Turning his eyes to his captor once more, he saw not the bone-thin shanks of a bird, but the well-booted feet and legs of a man: a man wearing a long cloak covered entirely with black feathers. The face staring down at him was an expressionless death’s head, but deep in the empty eye sockets, Aethelfrith caught the glimmer of a living eye.

&
nbsp; “I ask for the last time,” the black-cloaked man said. “Did anyone follow you?”

  “No, sire,” replied the priest. “I came alone. God have mercy, can we not talk this out? I am a priest, am I not?”

  “That you are, Aethelfrith!” said the creature, releasing him at once.

  “Pax vobiscum!” cried the priest, scrambling to his feet. “I mean no harm. I only thought to—”

  “Tuck!” exclaimed the man in the leafy cloak.

  Reaching up a black-gloved hand, the creature took hold of the sharp raven beak and lifted it to reveal a man’s face beneath.

  “Blesséd Jesus,” gasped the astonished friar. “Is it Bran?”

  “Greetings, Tuck,” laughed Bran. “What brings you to our wood?”

  “You are dead!”

  “Not as dead as some might wish,” he said, removing the high-crested hood from his head. “Tell us quickly now—how did you come to be here?”

  “A hood!” cried the friar, relief bubbling over into exultation. “It is just a hood!”

  “A hood, nothing more,” admitted Bran. “Why are you here?”

  “I came to find you, did I not?” The friar stared at the strangely costumed man in amazement. “And here you are.

  Sweet Peter’s beard, but you do not half frighten a body!”

  “Friar Tuck!” called Iwan, stepping close. He gave the priest a thump on the back. “You held your life in your hands just then. What of the others—the men at the ford—did they see you?”

  “Nay, John. They all ran away clutching their bowels.” He smiled at the memory. “You put the fear of the devil in them, no mistake.”

  Bran smiled. “Good.” To Iwan he said, “Bring the horses.

  We will meet Siarles as planned.”

  “Tuck, too?” wondered Iwan.

  “Of course.” Bran turned and started away.

  “Wait,” called the cleric. “I came to Elfael to find you. I have something important to say.”