Summer Of The Danes, by Ellis Peters

The eighteenth volume of the Brother Cadfael series, this novel finds Cadfael in a new position, at least as far as the series is concerned, and that is a prisoner of some Danish freebooters hired by an errant Welsh princeling seeking to recover his dispossessed lands by the threat of a body of Irish Dane raiders from Dublin. Properly speaking, even though this novel has a murder mystery at its heart, Cadfael is not really in the position to do any solving of it at all, as the murderer gives a deathbed confession at the end of the novel, which neatly and tidily ties up the various threads with Cadfael more of an observer than a participant in any of the various plots. In fact, the only thing Cadfael does is observe young love in action, observe a tense standoff on a Welsh beach, and do some translating for his erstwhile assistant, Brother Mark, who has been sent as an ambassador to two Bishops for his boss, an English bishop looking to increase the power of the Roman Church over the independent-minded Welsh one.

Indeed, it is politics that are at the heart of this particular novel. Some of the politics include a Norman bishop being named in charge of a renewed diocese that is mostly in Welsh territory but whose see is located on land controlled by the ruler of Chester. His underlings, seeking advancement in this new diocese, are forced into some dishonorable and embarrassing decisions, including sending their children away to be married so that the presence of those children does not hinder their reputations in a religious order suddenly and newly hostile to married priests. At the same time as this layer of politics is going on, the younger brother of the Welsh ruler of Gwynned seeks to recover lands lost when he was dispossessed for murdering a lord who was a close ally of his brother by hiring some Danes from Dublin as his mercenary muscle. As might easily be imagined, this ends badly. On the plus side (spoiler alert), the teen daughter of the widowed and ambitious Welsh priest finds herself a husband among those reckless Vikings and a new home far away from her homeland, spurning the chance to marry the noble Welsh lord in his early 30’s of her father’s choosing.

In general, the mood of this novel is one of expectant tension. Despite a murder and two armies camped next to each other on a Welsh beach, most of what happens are parlays and targeted kidnappings and hostage-taking, rather than a full-scaled assault. Owain, the Welsh ruler, is shown to be a wise man, and both disloyalty and obstinate loyalty to unworthy lords end badly. The novel has a sort of moralistic point, including a sly recognition of the headstrong tendencies of young people, and the fact that those who hire mercenary bands to provide the force for their threats generally reap what they sow. In the end, disaster is averted for most of the people involved, and Cadfael returns home to have his friend the sheriff gently chastise him for his wandering ways. Although Cadfael says he will finally be content to stay at the abbey, the wise reader knows better. For those long devoted to vagabondage do not settle for good unless they have good reasons to put their roots deep into the ground where they are planted.