The Palatinate
In the morning, he did what he always did when he was upset or afraid - he went to the pigeon cote. He put aside the good suit of blue silk and dressed in his old cotton shirt and trousers, with the old red sash and only the most basic of turbans to bind up his hair. Working with the pigeons always calmed him down.
Today, though, early as he was, the old man was earlier. He was sitting on the grass outside the pigeon cote, cutting up half an onion with his eating knife, to go with bread and cheese. He seemed very much at ease.
Owain limped past him and opened the door to the pigeon cote. He stood back to let the pigeons out and, as they fluttered and strutted out of the squat round tower, the old man spoke: "Owain Brecca."
Owain stiffened, but did not turn round.
"Owain Brecca," the old man said again. "I am Gwalchmai Morgan, Harper to Morwenna of Ravenscar - who I have reason to believe is your grandmother."
It was no use. He wouldn't go away. Owain turned round slowly. "It's no use," he said. "You'll never get off this island alone. When they're ready to sail, they'll drug you and throw you in the hold of the Raha, and sell you South."
"I have no intention of leaving alone," Gwalchmai said. He seemed to have ignored everything else Owain had said. "I shall be leaving with you." He rummaged in a cloth bag by his side. "There is one thing I was asked to do - to confirm your identity," he said. he pulled a bundle of cloth out of the bag, and shook it out. It was a boy's Tiraeg tunic, made of good green wool, with embroidery round the neck. Owain swallowed hard, his throat so constricted he could hardly breath. He had seen it, yesterday, tangled up with Gwalchmai's dirty washing on the floor of the hall, and hadn't recognised it. Now, though - Gwalchmai held the tunic out to him, insistantly.
He couldn't take it. "It's mine," he whispered. "Mother made it herself for me - and - my sister -" He pointed at the wobbly chain stitch around the neck. "She did that."
"Sit down by me, lad," Gwalchmai said gently. "It's not so bad as all that."
Owain collapsed down onto the grass, wiping an angry hand across his eyes. "Yes, it is," he protested. "Didn't you hear me? They'll drug you and sell you South. And I'll still be here, working for them, and I'll never be free."
The old man almost sounded amused. "Do I really look so harmless?" he asked. "I thought I was laying it on a bit thick, but that's good - that's very good. They'll under-estimate me. I do have a trick or two up my sleeve, you know." He munched on his bread and cheese while Owain tried to get his feelings back into some sort of order.
Gwalchmai licked the last crumbs off his fingers and wiped his hand on the grass. He got to his feet and picked up his harp case and the cloth bag. Then he held one hand out to help Owain up. "I think I need to go for a little walk," he said, "and I think that it would be a very good idea if you came with me."
He led the way down towards the beach on the landward side of the island, scanning the bushes as if he was searching for something.
"Ah, this is what I was looking for," he said, half to himself.
Under the willow tree, a broad stake had been driven into the sandy ground. The top of it had been crudely carved into a leering face, and below that it was festooned with feathers and small bones. Lower down, the wood was dark with dried blood. Owain backed away from it. He could feel the power radiating from it, linking up with other stakes like it all round the island. This was how Kofi kept his protection spells strong and active, without having to constantly recharge them from his own strength. Most wizards did something similar, Owain knew - but not with the blood.
"How many of these things are there?" Gwalchmai asked casually.
Owain shrugged. "Not sure. They're all round the island."
"And Kofi must spend quite a lot of energy maintaining them," Gwalchmai murmured. "Please tell me this is chicken blood - or goat, at least?"
Owain shook his head, dumbly.
Gwalchmai sighed. "Human, then. Slave blood? This is real dark-of-the-moon stuff. I suppose this is where those poor souls I saw outside the hall last night end up, am I right?" Gwalchmai shook his head slowly. "The more I find out about Kofi, the less I like him. Still," he added, more cheerfully, "this will burn - and then we'll be going."
"Going? How?"
Gwalchmai grinned. "I have a little amulet." Then he sighed, serious again. "It grieves me to leave the horses behind. The Drake and I have been through a lot together, and that pony your mother loaned me is a pretty little thing."
"Khamees likes horses," Owain said. "They'll be all right." He looked back at the stake, doubtfully. "You want to burn it? But - Kofi will know, and he'll come...."
"And we'll be long gone, with any luck," Gwalchmai said firmly. He turned to the stake, and began to dig around its base. "Come and give me a hand," he said to Owain, "while I get the fire started."
Slowly, reluctantly, Owain started to scrape away at the sand with his hands. He glanced over his shoulder often, in the direction of Kofi's house, expecting the wizard to notice what they were doing at any moment. The wooden stake was buried deep, but the sand was loose, and soon Owain could rock the stake from side to side with one hand. Beside him, Gwalchmai had started a fire that seemed pathetically small alongside the thick lump of knotted wood.
Owain gave one more heave, and the stake came loose so fast he staggered backwards. Bones and feathers jangled against his hands, and he shuddered at their touch.
Gwalchmai looked up. "Good, very good," he said. He fed a dry willow branch into the fire he'd built. It was starting to look like a reasonable campfire now. Owain held the stake out, trying to touch it as little as possible. he could feel the pain of the last victim whose blood had fed its power, a man from the islands who had been there such a short time that Owain had never learned his name.
"On the fire with it," Gwalchmai said.
For what seemed a very long time, nothing happened. Then, without warning, the top of the stake exploded into white flame, making both of them throw up their hands to protect themselves from the sudden heat. Owain could feel the protection spells unravelling around them as it burned.
"Time to go," Gwalchmai said, "quickly, before he realises where we are."
He fished a small pouch out of his belt pouch and quickly unwound a scrap of dark green silk from a stone that hung from a leather thong. he grabbed Owain's sand-covered hands in his and they stood linked for a moment as he concentrated on where he wanted to go.
By the time Kofi came over the sand dunes, they were long gone.
They appeared, hands clasped together around the amulet, at the bottom of a sand dune covered with marram grass. The wind tugged at Gwalchmai's cloak. Owain could see the marshes just a little way off, and the open sea beyond the expanse of reeds.
Three men-at-arms, in the silver and blue livery of some Palatine lord, appeared over the top of the sand dunes. One of them waved to Gwalchmai. Owain stiffened with shock. He stared, wide-eyed at Gwalchmai, and wrenched his hand away. "Traitor!" he gasped. "From one captivity straight into another! Did they offer you a share of the ransom?" He staggered, the end of his crutch digging into the soft sand and throwing him off balance. Gwalchmai kept hold of his other hand with a grip that seemed far too strong for such an old man.
"Owain - listen to me, quick, before they get too near. You're my nephew. You're nobody important. Nobody is going to hold you for ransom if you just keep quiet! And don't use your Talent, or they might work out who you really are."
The leader of the men-at-arms slithered the last few feet down the sand dune behind them. "You're a little off target," the man said, by way of greeting. "We were waiting for you back there."
Gwalchmai smiled ruefully. "It's the first time I've tried this," he said, in Occitan. "Doubtless it will get better with practice. Where's Sir Bernard?"
The man-at-arms jerked a thumb over the sandbank. "Lucky we brought some spare horses," he said
. "Can the lad get that far? You didn't tell us he was a cripple."
"I didn't know until I saw him," Gwalchmai said. He switched to Tiraeg for Owain's benefit. "Can you get over the dune, nephew?" he asked. "Our good friend Sir Bernard d'Envigne is waiting for us with some horses."
Owain grunted sulkily. He hadn't known what he was expecting, but it wasn't this - catapulted straight into the middle of enemy territory. There may not have been a war going on at this precise moment, but the Palatinate and Ytir would never be 'good friends'. He stumped up the side of the sand dune, reluctantly allowing Gwalchmai to take him by the arm to steady him, and slid inelegantly down the other side to where the horses were waiting.
That was another problem for him. He wasn't sure how he was going to mount up, and he hadn't ridden at all since the day the corsairs captured him. Which was something else he didn't want to have to remember.
Two of the men-at-arms man-handled him up into the saddle, and passed up his crutch for him. They turned the horses inland, and Gwalchmai moved in close to Owain. "I'm sorry for the shock, lad," he said.
Owain shrugged. "I didn't know where the island was," he said. "I never thought it was on the edge of Moissac."
"That's why your grandmother only sent me," Gwalchmai said. "I know how to avoid being noticed. But I knew we needed help to get back out of here. Horses, for one thing - damn, but I shall miss the Drake. So, first of all we're going to Lansargues Castle, to tell them everything we can about the nest of pirates on their doorstep, and then they will escort us to the ferry. That's the deal."
"It would have been better," Owain said, "if you had told me all that beforehand."
"Yes, well, I wasn't sure how long it would be before they noticed I was missing." Gwalchmai was smiling again. "You don't think your Bey was about to let me wander all over the island unescorted, did you? I climbed out of the window."
By the time they rode into the courtyard of the castle, Owain was aching in muscles he'd forgotten he had. Dismounting was slightly easier than mounting had been - they held the horse by a mounting block and he managed on his own. Once on the ground, he could move reasonably fast with the crutch. he kept quiet, as Gwalchmai had advised. Nobody had asked him if he could understand what was being said around him - Gwalchmai had assumed he didn't speak Occitan - and he wasn't about to volunteer the information just yet. Some of the slaves on the island spoke Occitan, and he'd always had a quick ear for languages.
It was mid-morning by this time, and Owain's stomach was starting to remember that it hadn't had any breakfast yet. They went up some steps into the main hall, and then beyond that into a more private room with its own fireplace. There was a map laid out on a table in the middle of the room, and some more men waiting there for them. One of them looked so like Sir Bernard that he could only be his son. Sir Bernard called him Miles; Owain didn't hear any of the other men being named. Another table, along a side wall, had a jug of beer, and mugs, and crusty white buns and a selection of cheeses laid out. Since everyone else seemed to be eating, Owain helped himself, and settled into a chair near the fire, out of the way. It was nice to be eating proper bread again, instead of the flat, unleavened stuff that the corsairs favoured.
"See how well defended they are from here," Gwalchmai was saying. "The ships are almost impossible to get to from the landward side. You'd need support from the sea as well, to stand any chance of trapping them there."
"Sea support that we won't get, Sir Bernard said. "At the moment, I'm supposed to be 'monitoring the situation'" he continued, in what was obviously a parody of the Duke's cultured tones. "As long as they don't attack the coast of Moissac, the Duke doesn't much care. The boy's a fool," he added, savagely, "and I just don't have the resources, or a wizard strong enough...."
They certainly weren't talking to Gwalchmai as if he were a hostage, Owain reflected, or Sir Bernard would never have spoken against his Duke like that, or revealed his lack of resources to them. It seemed to be true that Gwalchmai had not betrayed him after all, that it was all as he had said and, unlikely as it seemed, these men were their allies.
"That's all well and good," Sir Bernard said, in answer to one of the soldiers whose comment Owain had missed, "but the main problem is the causeway. If you could have found out how that was guarded...."
"I can tell you that," Owain said.
He hadn't intended to speak, and as soon as he had, he regretted it - but it was done now, and all the room knew he had been able to understand them all along. Now he might have to tell all these strangers something that he didn't want to tell anyone. Swallowing hard, he put down the plate of bread and cheese, and the mug of beer, and limped to the table. He looked down at the map. Maybe if he didn't look at anybody, it would be easier.
"They used to guard the causeway only at low tide," he said quietly. He tapped the map, just off the track up to the stockade. "Guard post," he said, "there in a little hollow. There are always three spearmen there now, with dogs, and a horn to summon the rest. They can see anyone coming from the mainland, and they can stop anyone from leaving the island."
"They blew the horn for me," said Gwalchmai, "and two of them came with me to the stockade."
"Maybe because you looked harmless," Owain said.
The harper grinned. He looked anything but harmless now.
"So you're saying that a full frontal attack across the causeway wouldn't work?" one of the soldiers said.
Owain nodded. "And the horn summons Kofi, too - their wizard. He can make a protection spell strong enough to keep anything out."
"But if they were distracted, by a sea attack for instance...." the soldier began.
"Or small boats further along the coast?" Miles suggested.
Owain shook his head. "There are - I don't know the word for them - Kofi would know as soon as anyone came past the...." he gestured helplessly with one hand.
"He's got stakes set up, linked together with the protection spells," Gwalchmai said, "and fed by blood magic - pleasant chap, this Kofi, altogether."
Miles and the younger soldier both crossed themselves rapidly.
"What about inside the stockade?" Sir Bernard asked.
Owain spent some time explaining where the men of each of the three ships slept, and which buildings were used for storage, and where the kitchens were. he pointed out the place outside the stockade where Kofi kept his little cottage, on one of the highest points of the low island. By the time they adjourned for the mid-day meal, Owain felt as if he'd talked more in that one morning than he had in the previous three years - and in his third foreign language. He felt exhausted.
"It's Friday," Gwalchmai said glumly, in Tiraeg, as they went into the main hall. "That means fish, here in the Palatinate. And it's Lent - that means fish, too. I once thought of converting to Christianity," he added, conversationally, "but the thought of eating all that fish put me off."
Owain grinned as he slid along the bench at the top table. The main dish, placed before Sir Bernard and his wife, was a large, white-fleshed fish on a bed of a dark green vegetable he didn't recognise.
There was beer, again. Owain thought it was only fairly weak stuff, but even so he wasn't used to it. The corsairs had drunk wine occasionally, and sometimes a strong spirit called raki, but on the whole they preferred coffee. There was no coffee on offer here, though - Owain would have been able to smell it - so he sipped at the beer sparingly. Even so, by the end of the meal he was feeling a bit woozy, and so tired he just wanted to collapse in a heap while he tried to make sense of the day so far.
Fortunately for him, it was the custom in the south of the Palatinate to rest for a couple of hours after the mid-day meal, in what would be the hottest part of the day if it were summer. Owain and Gwalchmai were shown to a room together, and Owain sat down heavily on the bed, trying to work out how much effort he would need to take his shoes off before he lay down.
"Where did you learn to sp
eak Occitan?" Gwalchmai asked casually, sitting down on the other side of the bed.
Owain shrugged. "I knew a few words anyway." He bent down to push the heel of one shoe down, and slipped his bare foot out. "And then there were some slaves on the island from the Palatinate." He wriggled of the other shoe and lay down, with his back to Gwalchmai to deter further questions.
Gwalchmai did not take the hint.
"There's something I was wondering," he said, leaning back against the headboard with his hands behind his head. "When you were talking about the causeway, you said they used to guard it only at low tide. Any idea why they changed that?"
Owain stiffened. "Yes," he said shortly.
"Any chance that you'll tell me?"
There was a long silence.
"It was - my fault," Owain said at last. "All of it was my fault."
Gwalchmai waited.
"It was Ferdia's idea," Owain said, half muffled by the pillow. "He thought we could get away - they were going to keep me, because I'm an awynwch, but he was going to be on the next ship south. So - we sneaked out, in the night, and hid in the reeds. Ferdia helped me - I didn't have the crutch then. We waited until the tide turned, and the guards went away." He remembered the half light of early morning, the waves lapping through the reeds as the tide cut the island off from the shore. He remembered stumbling through the water, with Ferdia hanging on to him....
"They came back. They set the dogs on us."
Owain sat up abruptly, and rolled up his right sleeve. There was a puckered white scar right the way round his arm - it had been a big dog.
"I nearly drowned. I saw - I saw the spear go right through Ferdia. If I'd been able to run faster, we might have made it. It was my fault he died."
He squeezed his eyes closed, but he could still see it - the sudden gleam of low sunshine glinting off the blade of the spear, Ferdia's hair turned golden - and the blood on the water.
Gwalchmai put a hand out,and Owain shrugged it off his shoulder and turned away. The last thing he wanted was for Gwalchmai to be sympathetic.
"Are you going to be all right?" Gwalchmai asked, at last. "I need to go and see Lady Berenice, see if she'll lend us some clothes. We can't really go wandering round Moissac with you still looking like a corsair. People will notice."
"I'll be fine. I don't want to look like a corsair any more either - but I don't much want to look like some Palatine man either."
"It'll get us to the ferry. That's all we need it for," Gwalchmai said. "I won't be long."
When he returned, with an armful of tunic and hose, Owain was asleep, curled up on top of the blankets. As Gwalchmai dumped the clothes on the end of the bed and opened the shutters wide, he mumbled something in Turkic. Then he opened his eyes, saw Gwalchmai, and said, in Tiraeg: "Oh. I'd better change."
"She didn't have any shoes. You'll have to stick with those pointy toed things," Gwalchmai said.
Owain held up a dark blue tunic to the light. It had wider sleeves than he was used to, and a full skirt, but it looked long enough. He was standing now, with all his weight on his good leg. He could touch the ground with the ball of his other foot, but he couldn't stretch it far enough for his heel to touch the ground as well.
He dragged the turban off and threw it into a corner. Beneath it, his hair was shorter than a Tiraeg nobleman's, but neatly cut. He would pass very easily for a Palatine squire.
"They go for parti-coloured legs here," Gwalchmai said, holding up two separate legs of hose. "You tie them up there, on the braies. Stupid fashion - but I couldn't get any trousers."
Owain took one leg that was dark red, and another that seemed the same size in a similar blue to the tunic. The left leg, the red, went on easily, but he had to find something a bit more baggy to fit over his other leg. the scar was long and ragged, and the wound had left his leg drawn up and permanently bent at the knee.
When Owain had buckled the belt on, he sat for a moment with his hand on his bent knee. "This will change things at home, won't it?" he said. "I didn't think, before - all I wanted was to get off the island and go home - but I'll never be able to inherit anything now I'm crippled, will I?"
"You're still an awynwch," Gwalchmai said. "That counts for something. And you're still part of the Raven clan. And your mother wants you back."
"Will she though?" Owain asked. "When she sees me? And when she knows what happened?"
Gwalchmai thought back to the day he'd met Brecca in the tower. "Your mother wants you back," he said.
*****