Read Brother Cadfael 09: Dead Man's Ransom for Free Online

right, he always is. And yet no offence in it, that's the marvel! A man can't be angry with him, at least I can't.'
    'Kin by fostering can be as close as brothers by blood, I know,' said Cadfael.
    'Closer far than most brothers. Like twins, as we almost could be. Eliud had half an hour's start of me into the world, and has acted the elder ever since. He'll be half out of his wits over me now, for all he'll hear is that I was swept away in the brook. I wish we might make haste with this exchange, and let him know I'm still alive to plague him.'
    'No doubt there'll be others besides your friend and cousin,' said Cadfael, 'fretting over your absence. No wife as yet?'
    Elis made an urchin's grimace. 'No more than threatened. My elders betrothed me long ago as a child, but I'm in no haste. The common lot, it's what men do when they grow to maturity. There are lands and alliances to be considered.' He spoke of it as of the burden of the years, accepted but not welcomed. Quite certainly he was not in love with the lady. Probably he had known and played with her from infancy, and scarcely gave her a thought now, one way or the other.
    'She may yet be a deal more troubled for you than you are for her,' said Cadfael.
    'Ha!' said Elis on a sharp bark of laughter. 'Not she! If I had drowned in the brook they'd have matched her with another of suitable birth, and he would have done just as well. She never chose me, nor I her. Mind, I don't say she makes any objection, more than I do, we might both of us do very much worse.'
    'Who is this fortunate lady?' Cadfael wondered dryly.
    'Now you grow prickly, because I am honest,' Elis reproved him airily. 'Did I ever say I was any great bargain? The girl is very well, as a matter of fact, a small, sharp, dark creature, quite handsome in her way, and if I must, then she'll do. Her father is Tudur ap Rhys, the lord of Tregeiriog in Cynllaith, a man of Powys, but close friend to Owain and thinks like him, and her mother was a woman of Gwynedd. Cristina, the girl is called. Her hand is regarded as a great prize,' said the proposed beneficiary without enthusiasm. 'So it is, but one I could have done without for a while yet.'
    They were walking the outer ward to keep warm, for though the weather had turned fine it was also frosty, and the boy was loathe to go indoors until he must. He went with his face turned up to the clear sky above the towers, and his step as light and springy as if he trod turf already.
    'We could save you yet a while,' suggested Cadfael slyly, 'by spinning out this quest for our sheriff, and keeping you here single and snug as long as you please.'
    'Oh, no!' Elis loosed a shout of laughter. 'Oh, no, not that! Better a wife in Wales than that fashion of freedom here. Though best of all Wales and no wife,' admitted the reluctant bridegroom, still laughing at himself. 'Marry or avoid, I suppose it's all one in the end. There'll still be hunting and arms and friends.'
    A poor lookout, thought Cadfael, shaking his head, for that small, sharp, dark creature, Cristina daughter of Tudur, if she required more of her husband than a goodnatured adolescent boy, willing to tolerate and accommodate her, but quite undisposed to love. Though many a decent marriage has started on no better ground, and burned into a glow later.
    They had reached the archway into the inner ward in their circlings, and the slanting sunlight, chill and bright, shone through across their path. High in the corner tower within there, Gilbert Prestcote had made his family apartments, rather than maintain a house in the town. Between the merlons of the curtain wall the sun just reached the narrow doorway that led to the private rooms above, and the girl who emerged stepped full into the light. She was the very opposite of small, sharp and dark, being tall and slender like a silver birch, delicately oval of face, and dazzlingly fair. The sun in her uncovered, waving hair glittered as she hesitated an instant on the