The Summer of the Danes by Ellis Peters Page A

the sands, you can ford the river
there, but with the tide boats can ply some way beyond.”
    “And
after the river crossing?” asked Mark, attentive and glowing.
    “Then
we climb. To look westward from there, you’d think no track could possibly
pass, but pass it does, up and over the mountains, and down at last to the sea.
Have you ever seen the sea?”
    “No.
How could I? Until I joined the bishop’s household I had never been out of the
shire, not even ten miles from where I was born.” He was straining his eyes
ahead as he rode now, with longing and delight, thirsty for all that he had
never seen. “The sea must be a great wonder,” he said on a hushed breath.
    “A
good friend and a bad enemy,” said Cadfael, beckoned back into old memories.
    “Respect
it, and it will do well by you, but never take liberties.”
    The
prince had set a steady, easy pace that could be maintained mile by mile in
this undulating countryside, green and lush, patterned with hamlets in the
valleys, cottages and church snugly huddled together, the fringe of cultivable
fields a woven tapestry round them, and here and there solitary, scattered
throughout the tref, the households of the free landowners, and no less solitary,
somewhere among them, their parish church.
    “These
men live lonely,” said Mark, taking in the distinction with some wonder. “These
are the freeborn men of the tribe. They own their land, but not to do as they
please with it, it descends by strict law of inheritance within the family. The
villein villages till the soil among them, and pay their communal dues
together, though every man has his dwelling and his cattle and his fair share
of the land. We make sure of that by overseeing the distribution every so
often. As soon as sons grow to be men they have their portion at the next
accounting.”
    “So
no one there can inherit,” Mark deduced reasonably.
    “None
but the youngest son, the last to grow into a portion of his own. He inherits
his father’s portion and dwelling. His elder brothers by then will have taken
wives and built houses of their own.” It seemed to Cadfael, and apparently to
Mark also, a fair, if rough and ready, means of assuring every man a living and
a place in which to live, a fair share of the work and a fair share of the
profit of the land.
    “And
you?” asked Mark. “Was this where you belonged?”
    “Belonged
and could not belong,” Cadfael acknowledged, looking back with some surprise at
his own origins. “Yes, I was born in just such a villein tref, and coming up to
my fourteenth birthday and a slip of land of my own. And would you believe it
now?—I did not want it! Good Welsh earth, and I felt nothing for it. When the
wool merchant from Shrewsbury took a liking to me, and offered me work that
would give me licence to see at least a few more miles of the world, I jumped
at that open door as I’ve jumped at most others that ever came my way. I had a
younger brother, better content to sit on one strip of earth lifelong. I was
for off, as far as the road would take me, and it took me half across the world
before I understood. Life goes not in a straight line, lad, but in a circle.
The first half we spend venturing as far as the world’s end from home and kin
and stillness, and the latter half brings us back by roundabout ways but
surely, to that state from which we set out. So I end bound by vow to one
narrow place, but for the rare chance of going forth on the business of my
house, and labouring at a small patch of earth, and in the company of my
closest kin. And content,” said Cadfael, drawing satisfied breath.
     
    They
came over the crest of a high ridge before noon, and there below them the
valley of the Conwy opened, and beyond, the ground rose at first gently and
suavely, but above these green levels there towered in the distance the
enormous bastions of Eryri, soaring to polished steel peaks against the pale