Read Scarlet for Free Online

the stout timbers of oak and lime and ash and elm, Cél Craidd was not only protected, but well hidden. The circling arm of the ridge formed a wall of sorts on three sides which rose above the low huts. A fella would have to be standing on the ridgetop and looking down into the bowl of the glade to see it. But this concealment came at a price, and the people there were paying the toll with their lives.
    Our arrival was noticed by a few of the small fry, who ran to fetch a welcome party. They were—beneath the soot and dirt and ragged clothes—ordinary children, and not the offspring of a Greenwife. They skittered away with the swift grace of creatures birthed and brought up in the wildwood. Chirping and whooping, they flew to an antler-decked hut in the centre of the settlement, and pounded on the doorpost. In a few moments, there emerged what is possibly the ugliest old woman I ever set eyes to. Mother Mary, but she was a sight, with her skin wrinkled like a dried plum and blackened by years of sitting in the smoke of a cooking fire, and a wiry, wayward grizzled fringe of dark hair—dark where it should have been bleached white by age, she was that old. She hobbled up to look me over, and though her step might have been shambling there was nothing wrong with the eyes in her head. People talk of eyes that pierce flesh and bone for brightness, and I always thought it mere fancy. Not so! She looked me over, and I felt my skin flayed back and my soul laid bare before a gaze keen as a fresh-stropped razor.
    “This is Angharad, Banfáith of Britain,” Iwan declared, pride swelling his voice.
    At this the old woman bent her head. “I give thee good greeting, friend. Peace and joy be thine this day,” she said in a voice that creaked like a dry bellows. “May thy sojourn here well become thee.”
    She spoke in an old-fashioned way that, oddly enough, suited her so well I soon forgot to remark on it at all.
    “Peace, Banfáith,” I replied. I’d heard and seen my mother’s folk greeting the old ones from time to time, using a gesture of respect. This I did for her, touching the back of my hand to my forehead and hoping the sight of an ungainly half-Saxon offering this honour would not offend overmuch.
    I was rewarded with a broad and cheerful smile that creased her wrinkled face anew, albeit pleasantly enough. “You have the learning, I ween,” she said. “How came you by it?”
    “My blesséd mother taught her son the manners of the Cymry,” I replied. “Though it is seldom enough I’ve had the chance to employ them these last many years. I fear my plough has grown rusty from neglect.”
    She chuckled at this. “Then we will burnish it up bright as new soon enough,” she said. Turning to Iwan, she said, “How came you to find him?”
    “He dropped out of a tree not ten steps from us,” he answered. “Fell onto the road like an overgrown apple.”
    “Did he now?” she wondered. To me, she said, “Pray, why would you be hiding in the branches?”
    “I saw the sign of a wolf on the road the night before and thought better to sleep with the birds.”
    “Prudent,” she allowed. “Know you the wolves?”
    “Enough to know it is best to stay out of reach of those long-legged rascals.”
    “He says he is searching for our Bran,” put in Siarles. Impatient, he did not care to wait for the pleasant talk to come round to its destination as is the way with the Cymry. “He says he wants to offer his services.”
    “Does he now?” said Angharad. “Well, then, summon our lord and let us see how this cast falls out.”
    Siarles hurried away to one of the larger huts in the centre of the holding. By this time, the children had been spreading the word that a stranger had come, and folk were starting to gather. They were not, I observed, an altogether comely group: thin, frayed and worn, smudged around the edges as might be expected of people eking out a precarious life in deep forest. Few had shoes, and none had