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We waited, both of us, as I think, to hear if any sound beyond the lessening footfalls came from the water course, but they died away upward, and there was still no word between us. Then I thought that I would try one more plan with him. "Morfed," I said, "take me to Owen, and I will pledge my word that Gerent shall seek no revenge for what has been done by you." "What I have done!" he broke out.
Now we rode across the nearer hills until we could see into the fair valley which men call Taunton Deane since those days, and we saw the answering fires which told us that all was well at Watchet, for we had saved the little town. Not until Gerent learned how few we were here would he dare to divide his forces.
"It is in my mind that if Oswald and I or some known lord of the British will go to that place and sit there quietly with rewards in our hands, we may learn much; for men fear Gerent the king in his wrath, and they fled from his coming." "So be it," said Ina. "Oswald shall go, and it seems to me that every day is precious, so that he shall go at once.
Gerent halted in his march when the flying men from the camp came in to him, telling him that we were in strong force on the hill, and so our men crossed the Parrett unhindered, and won to the long crest of the southward spurs of Quantocks, where the Welsh gathered against Kenwalch in the old days and stayed his farther conquest.
"He is a prize for whoever took him. Gerent sent word to several of those princes, and his men are somewhere in the country yet, I suppose. They came at Gerent's invitation." I went back to Ina, who had set the chief aside for the moment, and when some other man's captives had passed, bound to a long cord, my men brought him forward again.
"They call them 'black heathen' and us 'white heathen, though I don't know that they love us better than they do them. By grace of Gerent the king, to be politic, or by grace of axe play, to speak the truth, we have a little port of our own here on this side the water, at the end of the Quantocks, where we seek to bide peaceably with all men as traders." "Ay! I have heard of your town," said Ina.
He set the writing in my hand, and turned away while I read it. It was meant for my sight as well as his, for he had written to Owen concerning this post for me. And after I had read it all I could say no more, for Owen told how he would help me in all ways possible, and also that he knew how Gerent himself would be more content in knowing that no stranger was to be over the land he had lost.
But Owen drew me to the settle by him, and bade me hearken while the king told me the tale I had to learn. Then I heard how Owen, my foster father, was indeed a prince of the old Cornish line that came from Arthur, and how his cousins, Morgan and Dewi, had plotted to oust him from his place at the right hand of Gerent the king, and had succeeded only too well, so that he had had to fly.
There was none to take their place here, while the old king bided in Exeter or in Cornwall, and never came to Norton at all now. So there was pillage and raiding across the Parrett, and at last Ina had sent messages to Gerent concerning it.
And then we broke our fast, and my men were ready, and I parted from my foster father in the bright morning light that made the white walls of the old palace seem more wonderful to me than ever. "Farewell, then, for a while," he said to me; "come back as soon as Ina will spare you. There will be peace between him and Gerent now, as I think."
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