The Ash Spear
The Third Book in the Storyteller Series
By G R Grove
Copyright 2010 by G R Grove
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For further information about the Storyteller series, see http://tregwernin.blogspot.com/
To all those gone before.
Chapter 12: The Man From The Sea
Chapter 17: The Land of Eagles
Chapter 20: A Long Summer’s Day
Chapter 26: The Singer of Tales
Chapter 29: The Halls of Annwn
Pren onn ydyw fy awen gwen.
My ash spear is my holy awen.
-Taliesin
Chapter 1: The Storyteller
Elidyr Mwynfawr, King of Aeron, was a weak, greedy fool, and like many another such fool, he died of his folly. But because he was a king, in his dying he cost many better men their lives as well, and this was the way of it: for I, Gwernin Kyuarwyd, was there, and saw much of it myself, and the tale that I tell you is true.
I was in my seventeenth year when it happened, and in the second year of my apprenticeship to Talhaearn Tad Awen, who was pencerdd and harper-bard to Cyndrwyn, Prince of western Powys in mid-Wales. All that winter my master had been working me hard, teaching me my trade as bard and harper and storyteller: kyuarwyd, we call that last, a reciter of lore and legends and the descent of Kings. Dry work I found some of it, but it was all a needful part of my craft. Triads and lists had to be memorized, patterns of poetry got off by heart, tales for the dark and the light halves of the year practiced and performed—for the libraries of the bards, like those of our predecessors the Druids, are in our heads, not written on monkish parchment. Even now, as an old man, I remember most of those lessons still, and glad I am to keep them; but in those days I was sometimes gladder to snatch a free hour when I could, and spend it on other pursuits. And chiefest of these was my girl Rhiannedd, the dark-haired delight of my heart.
I had come back the previous Samhain from a summer away in the North, on adventures of which I have spoken elsewhere, to find her patiently waiting for me still. All through that winter we had spent stolen hours together, as and where we could—in the hayloft of the byre wrapped together in my cloak, with the steamy breath of the beasts rising from below to warm us; pillowed in the thick-drifted leaves of the oak woods above the llys on a mild afternoon, the bare branches of the trees cutting dark-edged patterns from the sky; now and again in the stables, lying in the straw by my black pony’s feet, and giggling like children when he lowered his head to snuffle at us, his mane tickling our faces; and once or twice, with ears a-prick, on my pallet in Talhaearn’s quarters when I knew he would be busy elsewhere—for the Prince’s wife Angharad had a new boy-child, and summoned the old bard sometimes to play the babe to sleep. And on days when I was free and Rhiannedd was not, I would sit on the bench in her mother’s hut and watch as she ground herbs or mixed a draught: for her mother Gwawr was herbalist and sometimes leech to the court, and Rhiannedd also had her own trade to learn.
So it happened, late one rainy afternoon in the spring, that I sat lazily watching Rhiannedd’s movements by the flickering firelight of the brazier, as she fetched first one herb and then another from the drying-racks on the wall and added them to the pungent concoction growing in her mortar. The sweet shape of her as she moved warmed my imagination, and after a while I stood up and came behind her, putting my arms around her slender waist, and bending to kiss the back of her neck below the soft dark hair which she had pinned up out of her way while she worked. She suffered my embrace for a moment, then twisted away from me impatiently. “Not now, Gwernin,” she said. “Mother will be back soon, and I should have this ointment ready for her when she comes.”
“Is it so urgent,” I asked, “that we cannot steal a few moments for ourselves first? Talhaearn will have me telling tales tonight until bedtime, and who knows when we will have another such chance? It has been too long already!” And reaching out, I took her by her slender shoulders and turned her toward me, pulling her close to kiss her; but she held me off with her two small hands flat against my chest.
“Na, na,” she said, frowning up at me. “This is not the time. I need—I want—we must talk, Gwernin.”
“Why, so we shall,” I said, puzzled and frowning in my turn. “But cannot it wait?” And I tried again to kiss her, but she pushed me away more strongly, and after a moment I let her go. “What is wrong, cariad?” I asked then. “What troubles you?”
“I think—I am not sure…” She paused, biting her lip and not meeting my eyes, her hands busy straightening the front of her blue woolen kirtle. Without thinking I reached out again to hold her, and this time she let me, but turned her head away when I tried to kiss her mouth. “Will you be gone again traveling this summer?” she asked, her voice muffled against the shoulder of my brown tunic.
“Why—I do not know,” I said. “It is early days yet to tell. Talhaearn may go with the Prince when he makes a circuit, and of course I would go along. Or perhaps…” I paused in my turn. I had spent the previous summer at the bidding of Taliesin Ben Beirdd, the most famous bard in Britain, traveling most of the time in company with his student Neirin, and before I left them Taliesin had promised that we would all meet again in the spring. But for some reason—I am not sure why—I had not mentioned this to Rhiannedd when I recounted the tale of my adventures to her. Instinct told me now that this was not the time to remedy my omission. Instead I held her closer, and tried again to kiss her. It was not a success, but still I persisted. Her dark hair against my cheek smelled faintly of violets, the sweet early violets that would soon be blooming on the hill above us, and the feel of her, warm and soft in my arms, was driving me to distraction. Closing my eyes, I kissed her again more urgently, and felt her begin to respond, her arms coming up to clasp me in her turn.
Then there was the sound of a voice outside the door and a hand on the latch; and as we fell apart, Rhiannedd’s mother Gwawr came into the room, bringing with her a gust of cold air and the scent of rain. “Oh, Gwernin,” she said, throwing back the wet shawl which covered her still-dark hair, “I thought I might find you here. Talhaearn wants you in the courtyard: we have guests.”
“I will go, then,” I said, and with a glance and a smile at Rhiannedd I headed for the door. She did not smile back. Her expression was strange, and somehow made me uneasy; but I had no time to ponder it just then, and in the ensuing excitement I forgot it.
In the early twilight the muddy courtyard was bright with the ragged golden flames of the torches, blown sideways by the wind, and full of people and horses. Talhaearn’s lean height and mane of white hair were easy to spot in the crowd, and I made my way toward him. He was speaking with two shorter men, both cloaked and hooded against the rain: presumably the visitors. As I came up the taller of the two pushed back his wet leather hood, showing a familiar head of hair as red as autumn bracken. “Neirin!” I called, and he looked around grinning, his eyes shining amber as a hawk’s in the torchlight. “I did not think to see you here so soon!”
“Did you not, Gwernin?” said the second man, turning with a smile. “But I told you that you would see us in the spring. Surely you cannot have forgotten?” With delight I recognized the dark-bearded face of Taliesin Ben Beirdd, whose coming always meant excitement.
Before I could answer him, however, Talhaearn interrupted. “So, Gwernin, here you are at last. Is the Prince on his way?”
“He is in the doorway of the hall behind you, Master,” I said: for Talhaearn was blind, or nearly so, and used me often as his eyes.
“Then let us go in, out of this wind and rain,” said Talhaearn, taking the arm I offered him. “These two will be glad of a fire and a cup of wine: it is a long ride from Pengwern.”
“I will see to the baggage first,” said Neirin, “and bring our harps in out of the weather.” And with that he turned briskly away, leaving the three of us to climb the steps to the hall.
Cyndrwyn mab Ermid, Prince of western Powys, was a tall, well-built young man not long in his lordship, easy-going and good to look upon, but well able to control his domain. His wedding at Deganwy two years before had been the occasion of my first meeting with Taliesin, who had sent me here to study under his own old master Talhaearn. The Prince was waiting for us now by the central fire-pit in his feast-hall, warming his hands at the flames which set bright highlights in his chestnut hair and beard and glittered on the enameled silver brooch that fastened his red woolen cloak. Beside him, his golden-haired young wife Angharad stood ready to offer the great carved guest cup full of mead to Taliesin, who took it with a word of thanks and a smile.
“Welcome you are always in my hall, Taliesin,” said the Prince, when Taliesin had drunk and handed back the cup, “welcome whenever you may come. Well do I remember the songs you made for us at Deganwy, and the speech we had here together last spring. What can I do for you or give you this time? Do your travels take you far?”
“As far as the Island of Môn, Lord,” said Taliesin, still smiling. “I go to lose an apprentice and find a Master Bard. My student Neirin won his crown in competition last summer at Dun Eidyn: it is time to let him fly free.”
“Ah, I remember him: an excellent young lad,” said Cyndrwyn, not many years Neirin’s senior. “Is he with you?”
“Indeed he is: he is seeing to our baggage now,” said Taliesin, throwing back the heavy damp folds of his leather rain cape and holding out his hands to the fire in his turn. Beneath it he wore the usual short woolen tunic and trews of a horseman, and his boots were liberally splattered with the mud of the spring roads. “But since you offer, Lord,” he continued, “I have a thing I would ask of you—though maybe I should have begged his permission first.”
“Speak, and you shall have it,” said Cyndrwyn, smiling.
“I ask, then, the company of your pencerdd Talhaearn on my journey,” said Taliesin, his blue eyes twinkling. “Sorry I am to leave you without bard or harper, but it will only be for a month: if all goes well, you shall have them back by Beltane.”
“Them?” said Cyndrwyn, raising his eyebrows. “You mentioned only one.”
“My apologies,” said Taliesin lightly. “I had assumed Talhaearn would bring his apprentice Gwernin, to carry wood and water and see to the horses, if for nothing else.”
Talhaearn gave a snort of amusement. “He will be good for that at least,” he said with a grudging smile, and stroked his gray beard.
“I take it, then, they will go, whatever I say,” said Cyndrwyn a little ruefully. “Be welcome to them, Chief of Bards—only bring them back soon, and whole, when you are done!” And he laughed, and the talk became general. For myself, I felt a bubbling excitement not unmixed with apprehension: Rhiannedd, I suspected, would not be pleased to see me leaving again so soon.
“Why Ynys Môn?” I asked Neirin later that evening, as we sat at meat in the smoky babble of the feast-hall. “Cannot Taliesin set you free without traveling the length and breadth of Wales to do it?”
“He can, but there is more to it than that, more than my merely getting my loosing from him,” said Neirin, stuffing his mouth with roast boar-meat and grinning. “Much more. He will let me walk the Dark Path there, if—if I can do it. And I want to try.”
“The Dark Path,” I said slowly, tasting the words. “I have heard of that, a little, but I was thinking it was a Druid thing, from the very-long-ago. And Taliesin knows how to do it, does he?”
“He has done it,” said Neirin, and he was not grinning now. “There are not five men now alive who have.”
“And you want to—wah!” I said, and shivered. “What happens if you fail?”
“I will not fail,” said Neirin, and for a moment a little, dangerous smile that I knew well played about his mouth and narrowed his amber hawk’s eyes. “But I may not—succeed.” And suddenly he laughed and clapped me on the shoulder, so that I almost spilled my ale. “But that is enough of such talk, for now. How are you and your girl—Rhiannedd, was it not?—getting on nowadays? Will we be seeing a hand-fasting soon?”
“Umm,” I said, reminded of my own problems. “I do not know. She has been—strange—of late. And then there is the matter of a bride-price. I should maybe not have spent so much of last summer’s silver at the Lughnasadh Fair.”
“But she liked the beads, did she not?” asked Neirin, taking a bite of barley bread and brushing crumbs from his checkered woolen tunic and out of his young red beard. “I remember you showing them to me—jewel-bright colors they were, blue and red and amber, fit for the daughter of a king.”
“Yes,” I said, and sighed. “She likes them very much, or so she says. But she does not wear them often, only on feast days. And even if I had the silver for the bride-price, I have no land, no home to take her to. I am no better a match than I was last spring, for all the goods and gear I won on our travels.”
“That,” said Neirin, frowning, “is why bards should never marry. For us there is always the road in summer, and a snug hall somewhere to winter in—perhaps a lord to serve all year round in old age, if the fates be kind, as they have been to Talhaearn. But it is no life for the women, or the little ones. Better to take love lightly where you can, and move on.”
“As you do,” I said, and sighed again.
“Sa, as I do,” said Neirin, still frowning. He drained his ale-cup, and looked around for a woman to refill it. “Hai mai! And yet I do not know. It was a long ride from Pengwern today, and the rain cold in my face. How will that be, I wonder, when I am old? Maybe you have the right of it after all, brother.”
“Maybe,” I said, emptying my own cup, “but I can see Talhaearn looking for me now, to tell a tale for the company. I will speak more with you later.”
“Will he give you the back of his hand, if you are slow?” asked Neirin, once more grinning.
“If I am lucky, he will,” I said with a laugh, and went to do my master’s bidding.
I did not speak with Rhiannedd again that night. I saw her once or twice across the hall, pouring ale for the men of the war-band, and it struck me that she was looking paler than usual. I hoped she was not ill. But the tale I was telling required some concentration, and I lost sight of her; and when I looked for her again, she was gone. Then it was time for me to see Talhaearn back to his quarters, and to seek my own blankets. Tomorrow, I thought, would be soon enough to talk; and in some ways I was right.
In fact, it was two more days before we left Llys-tyn-wynnan, and they were not happy days for me. There was the packing, of course, which took some little time—clothes and gear for traveling and for courts, for fine weather and for foul, with Talhaearn changing his mind three times in an hour as to how I should pack them, and including some fairly biting comments on my ability to pack anything at all. There was the rounding up of the pack-ponies from the upper hill-pasture where they had been let out to graze with the horse-herd, and their bringing in and checking over and grooming before they were let loose temporarily in the home paddock. There were my daily chores and lessons with Talhaearn, from which I was not let off. And then there was my parting with Rhiannedd.
She had heard the gossip already, of course, before I had a chance to speak with her: Talhaearn and Gwernin were leaving with Taliesin, for who knew how long. They were going to the King of Gwynedd’s court in Deganwy—in Caer Seint—in Aberffraw. They were going to Ireland—to Alt Clut—to the Western Isles that lay beyond the sunset, in search of King Arthur. They would be gone for a month—for the whole summer—for a year and a day. Such is rumor when it has two days to work.
“Na,” I said, “it is not true—the most of it is not!” We were sitting on a mossy rock in the woods above the court, the only place I could think of where we would not be interrupted. It was an afternoon of mixed sun and rain, changing quickly without warning—a fox of a day, the old men call it—and Rhiannedd’s moods seemed at one with the weather. “We are only going with Taliesin and Neirin to Ynys Môn,” I said, “and we will be back before Beltane. That is all.”
“But why Ynys Môn, and why now?” Rhiannedd asked. “It is early in the year to be traveling, and so far.”
“There is something there which Taliesin wants to show Neirin, I think,” I said slowly. “As to the timing, I am thinking it is something to do with the moon and her waning—or so Neirin said.” It sounded unconvincing, even to me, and Rhiannedd was not impressed. When I had tried to put my arm around her earlier, she had twisted away; now she was sitting huddled in her brown cloak with her arms crossed, looking cold and unhappy.
“That does not sound like much of a reason,” she said after a moment. “And why should Talhaearn go, too? He is an old man; he should stay here safe by the fire until summer, not go riding about in the mud and the rain!”
I shrugged. “They have not told me, and I have not heard all their talk, to know their minds. But for my part, I should like to see Ynys Môn again. I spent a few days there once, with my friend Ieuan—did I not tell you of it?”
“Na, I am not sure,” said Rhiannedd, frowning. “But I have heard tales of that place—and not good ones!” She shivered. “What is it like?”
“It is—just a place,” I said, edging closer to her on our rock. “A low, flat land it is, compared with most of Wales, but good for growing grain. It lies across a narrow strait from Arfon, in the northwest part of Gwynedd. Ieuan and I went there for a while when we had to leave Caer Seint in a hurry, after—after some trouble he got into.” This, I thought, was an understatement, but I did not elaborate.
“You will not be getting into trouble in this time, will you?” asked Rhiannedd, still frowning. “You almost got your killing last summer, remember—I have seen the scars!”
“Na, nothing like that will happen,” I said easily. “Are you not cold? You look it.”
“A little—it is no matter. And will you really be back by Beltane? Promise?” Her dark blue eyes were wide and solemn in her winter-pale face, but she was no longer frowning.
“Of course I will,” I said, getting my arm around her again. She sighed, and rested her head on my shoulder, and after a while I kissed her. This time she did not push me away. And when at last we went back down the hill, hand in hand, she seemed much as always, and I thought nothing was wrong between us, after all: and this was a mistake.
But that, O my children, is a story for another day.
Chapter 2: The Third Man
The Conwy is a big river, and broad near its mouth, though not so wide as the Severn by which I grew up. The east bank is low and marshy at first, though it rises soon to hills as you go south; but the west bank is steep from the beginning, and climbs toward Eryri, the Land of Eagles. The river is tidal as far inland as Caerhun, where the old Roman road crosses on its ford, and it was there that we crossed it, avoiding the tides and the quicksands nearer the sea. Avoiding, too, a side-trip to Caer Deganwy, one of King Rhun’s chief strongholds: for Taliesin had got word that the King was currently on Ynys Môn, at his court of Aberffraw, and it was there we would be visiting him by and by. First, though, there was the question of the third man.
Among the native peoples of Britain, as among our cousins the Irish, things of significance tend to come in triads—in groups of three. In the lore and language of the bards, in the case-books of the lawyers, in the prayers and invocations of the priests—Druids and Christians alike—three is the magic number. Our ancient oaths bind us by earth and air and water, by land and sky and sea: nothing else is as perfect, nothing else is as strong. And so it was that for Neirin’s walking of the Dark Path, he needed three sponsors, three bards who had walked that path before him and could guide him on his way. Taliesin and Talhaearn were two such men; now we went to find the third man, and that was Ugnach of Caer Sëon.
“Na, I was not knowing he was an initiate,” said Neirin, as our ponies plodded up the climbing track toward Sychnant in the thin spring sunshine. “Not when we met him last summer, at any rate. But many things we saw then have become clearer to me since.” He had dropped back to ride beside me where I led the pack string in the rear of our little group, leaving Taliesin and Talhaearn to converse more privately ahead of us.
“Such as?” I asked, looking sideways at him. The sea breeze was getting up and bringing us the sour smells of the saltings to mix with the earth scents of last year’s bracken and heather; the gulls were crying over the river and the larks singing on the hill; and with my black pony moving easily beneath me, and the sun warm on my shoulders, I was feeling uncommonly peaceful. After the stress of preparations and farewells, it was good to be on the road again.
“Oh, some of the—magical things, I suppose you would call them,” said Neirin, grinning. Fine in his dress as always, he was wearing that day a short checkered tunic as variably green as the spring hills around us, and against it his hair and beard shone a dark foxy-red. “I had many questions for Taliesin this winter, after you left us.”
“And did he answer them all?” I asked, grinning back at him.
“Some of them.” Neirin grimaced comically. “Sometimes his answers do not make things clearer. You will be finding that out for yourself soon enough, I am thinking.”
“How do you mean?” I asked, puzzled.
“Na, he had better tell you that himself,” said Neirin, and grinned again. “Hai mai! I wonder how much farther we have to go? It is been long and long since breakfast, and my belly is empty.”
Even as he spoke we reached Pen-Sychnant, the level valley at the top of the Sychnant pass where three ways join—our track coming up from the south; the eastern road which leads past the crumbling fortress of Caer Sëon on its rocky hilltop, before descending to Aber Conwy; and the western road which drops steeply through the Sychnant valley itself toward the sea. To the east we had a wide view over the gray-brown waters of the Conwy and the low green country beyond, although Deganwy on its north-reaching peninsula was hidden from us by the Caer Sëon hill. To the north and northwest, between two lower hills, we got glimpses of the far-off sea, silver-shining as a salmon in the sunlight; but Pen-Sychnant itself was protected from the worst of the western gales by its encircling hills, which rose up green and brown with heather and bracken, crowned with outcrops of rough gray stone, and dotted here and there with grazing sheep.
Ugnach’s homestead—a cluster of wooden and dry-stone buildings encircled by pastures and new-ploughed fields—lay not in the old fortress of Caer Sëon itself, but in the small sheltered valley at its foot. This place, as I learned later, was his family inheritance, not a gift from the King, and the people of Pen-Sychnant were all of his kinship: cousins in one degree or another; aunts and uncles; brothers and sisters; his five children and his old wife as well. However far he traveled, here he had his roots, his belonging-place, his home. Thinking of it, I felt a twinge of envy.
He met us at the door of his reed-thatched wooden hall, a tall grey-haired man with a fine bushy beard, plainly dressed in russet woolen like my own. His smile widened when he saw Neirin, whom he had helped to crown at the Lughnasadh competition last summer. “Why, what a fine company have we here,” he said in his strong Gwynedd accent. “Rhys! Llew!”—this to two boys who stood in the courtyard staring at us—“take their horses to the stables—and do you all come in, my friends! It is too long since you have been under my roof!”
“Too long indeed,” said Taliesin, following Ugnach into the smoky dimness of the hall, with a hand on Talhaearn’s elbow to guide him. “I had no leisure to visit you last summer, old friend.”
“And I,” said Talhaearn, “have been fixed in Cyndrwyn’s Powys these last two years, as you will have heard.”
“Well do I know it,” said Ugnach, still smiling. “Come you to the fire, do—it is a chill wind we have blowing today, for all that the sunlight is warm. Ah, Mairi, here you are with the guest cup! Drink, friends, and be welcome.”
“Ah!” said Talhaearn, drinking and passing the carved wooden cup to Taliesin. “Always a fine hand with the mead, your wife has, son of Mydno.”
“Indeed and she has—you will find few better,” said Ugnach proudly. “But this batch is my daughter’s—is it not, Mairi Fach? Run, now, fetch your mother—in the dairy she is, I am thinking, with your sister Nefydd.”
“Fine mead and fine daughters,” said Taliesin, smiling as the pretty black-haired girl went out. “Three of them, as I remember—or has the eldest married?”
“Last summer,” said Ugnach, “before I took the road north, to her cousin Gwyn mab Padarn over the hill—and a son in her room already, blessings be on him!”
“Fast work,” said Talhaearn, raising his thorny white eyebrows. “These impatient children!”
Ugnach winked at Neirin, who was drinking now from the guest-cup. “Ah, I like to see a lad with juice in him, like your boy here. I told you, Taliesin, how he took the prize from me at Dun Eidyn—and me thinking I had it safe in hand, certain sure.”
“An honor it was to contend with you, Master,” said Neirin, grinning and passing the almost-empty cup to me. The mead—such of it as was left—was indeed excellent.
“Well, and you deserved your crown, gwas,” said Ugnach generously. “But what fortune brings you all here together? Not only a desire for the pleasure of my company, I feel.”
“Ah,” said Taliesin, his blue eyes twinkling, “but the pleasure of your company, Ugnach, is exactly what we desire.”
“Is it now, indeed?” said Ugnach, opening his brown eyes wider. “Well, well, you shall tell me the way of it soon enough; but for now, follow me to the guesthouse, and make yourselves at home.”
The guesthouse was a small, new-looking wooden hut which backed against the dry-stone wall surrounding the compound, conveniently close to the feast hall. There were only two beds—allotted naturally enough to Talhaearn and Taliesin—but plenty of floor space for pallets, and Neirin and I had slept in many worse places. The two of us set off to the stables to get our gear, only to meet Ugnach’s two lads carrying the most of it on their shoulders. In a little while it was all stowed safely in the guesthouse, and we joined our masters in Ugnach’s hall for the midday meal.
We found the two of them seated with Ugnach at a trestle table near the fire, with a good spread of cold meat, bread, and relishes set before them, and a generous pitcher of ale to wash it all down. “Of course I will come,” Ugnach was saying to Taliesin as we approached. “How not? And I know your judgment on this is better than my own. But he seems full young to me…” He broke off abruptly as he saw us, and smiled. “Ah, and here they are now. Sit, friends, and eat. Is all well?”
“Thank you, Master, it is,” said Neirin, as we took the places laid for us. “Do you know my friend Gwernin?”
“Na, I am not sure,” said Ugnach, frowning a little. “Was he not with you last summer in the North?”
“He was, and supported me mightily. He is Talhaearn’s pupil,” said Neirin, “as no doubt you have already heard, and a good storyteller.”
Talhaearn gave a sort of snort, and Ugnach smiled. “He is well enough,” said Talhaearn grudgingly, “when he stays with me and applies himself. But Gwion here”—he meant Taliesin, who was grinning at him—“will keep borrowing him, and then I have all to do over.”
“Na, na, Father of Awen,” said Taliesin, laughing, “acquit me of that—this time it is yourself I have borrowed, from your own kind patron, and Gwernin comes along only to serve you. How then am I at fault?”
“Have it your own way,” said Talhaearn, smiling despite himself. “You always do. And Ugnach, do you pass me more of that good bread and butter, if it please you.”
“Gladly,” said Ugnach, buttering a thick chunk of bread lavishly and handing it to Talhaearn. “Neirin, Gwernin, help yourselves: I know the appetite of a growing lad. Two sons do I have, and a need for food on each of them as bottomless as Manawydan’s crane-bag! They may yet see me beggared and walking the roads for my keep!” And he laughed, knowing there was no such likelihood: a very good living he got from his farmstead, did Ugnach, not to mention what he won with his awen at the courts of Kings. Neirin and I fell on our food with a will, and gladly filled our bellies while our elders talked idly of this and that.
“Have you heard any more news from the North, Taliesin?” asked Ugnach after a while. “I had a sniff of something there last summer which I did not like, but trying to learn more about it was like trying to grasp mist: nothing solid at all, strive as you might. Rheged, Aeron, Strathclyde, Eidyn: all of those Kings are restless, and yet none dares attack his neighbor for fear another will fall on his own back while it is turned. You saw it, did you not, Neirin?”
“Sa, I did,” said Neirin, hastily swallowing his mouthful of cold pig-meat. “Clydno Eidyn, as you know, is my half-brother, and I will not speak against him; but yes, all the North is working like a loaf with too much yeast, for all that they seem to get along on the surface.”
“Rhydderch of Alt Clut got himself a good ally when he married Urien Rheged’s daughter last summer,” said Taliesin thoughtfully, stroking his short, clipped black beard. “If I were Gwenddolau of Goddeu, or Aliffr Gosgorddfawr, or even Elidyr Mwynfawr, I think I would be looking to my defenses, not planning trouble of my own: they are all of them living in the nutcracker’s jaws now, and Urien is the man to squeeze.”
“True that is, from all that I hear,” said Ugnach, and sighed. “And how is Cynan Garwyn these days?”
Taliesin grimaced. “As ever he was: a generous patron to his friends, and a deadly threat to his neighbors. I do what I can with my songs to sweeten him, but he will be out for plunder every summer, for all my efforts. Cynewald of Mercia is growing stronger to the southeast, and may eat him up one day, but he will not see it: he had rather go raiding among his cousins in Gwent.”
“Is that why you are out so early in the year on this quest, then?” asked Ugnach.
“One reason, yes,” said Taliesin, and draining his cup, set it down firmly on the table. “For the rest…” He shrugged. “I go where the awen sends me.”
“And carry us along,” muttered Talhaearn.
“To where?” asked Ugnach, smiling. “You have not yet said, Taliesin.”
“To Ynys Môn,” said Taliesin, “and Bryn Celli Ddu.”
“Mmm,” said Ugnach frowning. “Is that wise?”
Taliesin shrugged again. “It is the place I found in my dreaming.”
“I will need a day or two to be ready,” said Ugnach, and sighed. “You can endure my hospitality for that long, I hope?”
“Gladly,” said Taliesin, and even Talhaearn smiled.
For two days and three nights, then, we stayed at Ugnach’s farmstead while he made ready for our journey. All of this time was good—Ugnach’s table was bountiful and his two pretty daughters friendly, and I had light work—Taliesin and Ugnach keeping Talhaearn occupied—and Neirin’s company; but for me the evenings were best, because a company of bards can no more keep from friendly competition with each other than they can keep from breathing. Each of us had his turn with song or story, while Ugnach’s wife and children, women and farmhands sat around us and listened; and neighbors and cousins gathered from over or under the hill as well, when the news of our presence went round. I had heard all the others perform at one time or another, but not to this extent, and I was proud—and a little nervous—to spin my tales before such an audience, though I had spoken without fear before kings and princes. Neirin’s repertoire I knew well from traveling with him, but he had of course been composing new material and polishing old during the winter. Talhaearn surprised me with several pieces I had not heard before; Ugnach displayed an unexpected gift for humorous verse; and Taliesin… Taliesin told a story.
He told it, at Talhaearn’s request, toward the end of our last evening at Caer Sëon. Most of the guests had left by then, and the rest of us were thinking of our beds. Neirin had been playing his harp for us, a dark, slow, dreamy piece, intricate as the interlacing designs of the Pictish lands where he learned it. Ugnach was talking softly with his wife in the background, I was trying not to yawn, and Taliesin was staring into the fire as if all our futures were written in its flames, when Talhaearn, who had seemed asleep, looked up and said, “Gwion, tell us your tale of Camlann. I have not heard it in a long time; and these children have never heard it at all, and should. You tell it better than I do, for you were still young then, and saw it with a young man’s eyes, while my heart was already old in disappointment.”
Taliesin looked up from the fire, and blinked as if to clear his vision. “Do you mean the tale of the battle only, Iron Brow? If I were to tell the whole long story which led up to it, we should be here until Samhain.”
“The battle will do,” said Talhaearn. “Start with the night before, and go on.”
Taliesin took a deep breath, and for a moment looked uncertain—the first time I had ever seen him do so. Without a word spoken, Ugnach’s gray-haired wife came with a fresh cup of mead and put it into his hands, and he drank and thanked her with a smile. Then, looking again into the fire, he began.
“Arthur son of Uthur Pendragon, High King of the Britons, was a strong man, and a good general, and for much of his life he was lucky. I did not see his early battles; I was still a child; but I served him as his bard for seven years, from my coming of age until his death. They were years bright and shining and terrible as this fire, and they ended at Camlann in ashes.
“A High King is made by the consent of other Kings, and can be so unmade. Subjugation, even by their own consent, is not a natural state for the Cymry. Arthur united them for a while, partly by his own great strength of will, and partly by their desperate need to stand together against a common foe—to stand against the Saxons. But once that need became less urgent, their underlying nature came again to the surface, and they began to raid and war against each other, even as we see them do today. A little raiding, a little warring at first, put down by Arthur with what means he had to hand: harsher and harsher means as time passed, which brought temporary success, but left a growing resentment.
“As Talhaearn says, I was still young in those days, and saw things with a young man’s eyes, still new and full of hope. But to be young is not always to be foolish; and I had walked the Dark Path with Talhaearn and with Emrys, and won my ash spear in the Undying Land, and hope did not blind me to the shadows that move in the darkness. So I saw more clearly than most the perils that surrounded Arthur, and did what I could to aid and to advise him. But it was not enough.
“Medraut was a young king from the southwest, from the lands that lie beyond Dumnonia: a little king from a little kingdom, but not thereby a small man. The whispers had it that he was of Arthur’s bloodline, and it may well have been so, for they were much alike in face and build and coloring; much alike, also, in their strength of will, and in their desire for power. This is a desire which grows in some men like a thirst for strong wine, and it is not always base. Arthur wanted power as a general, to best order Britain’s forces against her enemies, but Medraut—or so I believe—wanted it for glory, and to be free of all restraints. And he gathered about him allies of a like mind for that end. What sort of High King he might have made, if he could have displaced Arthur, I do not know, for both their paths led them to Camlann fight, and ended there.”
Taliesin paused, and drank from his mead cup, and Ugnach’s wife came quietly as before to refill it. He gave her a sweet, abstracted smile, like a young boy’s, then turned his eyes again to the flames. Their leaping light shone red on his face as blood, and sparkled in his eyes. And he spoke on.
“The river Cam runs through the Summer Country, between Caer Camel and the High Tor. Arthur and his men lay at Caer Camel to the south, and Medraut and his war-bands across the river to the north. There were parleys and discussions, offers and counter-offers. Neither of the Kings had compromise in his nature, yet something held them both back from this last mad expedient, this clash of Cymry against Cymry, of cousins against each other in arms. Maybe they somehow knew that it would be the breaking of Britain; maybe they both remembered the story of Branwen. I know that Arthur did: I had made sure of that. I sang it for him again, that last night in his chamber, and at the end I saw him weep… He had a great heart, had Arthur, and I loved him.” Taliesin paused again, and for a moment I saw his mouth set hard as if in pain; in the silence, the crackling of the fire on the hearth sounded loud. Then he went on.
“At last a fragile agreement—how frail, how temporary!—was hammered out, and the two Kings met on a mound between their two armies to conclude it. The day was hot and sultry, there were storm-clouds gathering in the west, and everyone was on edge. The Kings were clasping hands; we were almost into safe harbor; and yet I knew that we were not safe. The feeling was like fire in my head, and in my belly; I looked around, seeking danger, and I saw it. But I was just too late.
“One of the men in Arthur’s retinue, restless with waiting, had stepped back into some bushes, and trod unknowingly on an adder which was sheltering there. When the annoyed snake struck him in the leg, the man drew his sword to kill it, and the uplifted blade flashed in the midday sun. Someone in the assembled war-bands saw it; someone shouted ‘Treachery!’ The spider-thread of restraint which had held them all in check broke in an instant; one and then another group shouted and charged their enemies. Bravely the warriors battled that day, and fell in their scores and in their hundreds, until the River Cam itself ran red with their blood. Then the storm came down upon us with thunder and with rain, and brought an early night with it, but too late: too late for Britain, too late for Medraut and Arthur, too late for all too many of their men. And the little Kings took back their little kingdoms, and rule them still—such of them as are left. But our tide is running out, and the Saxons’ is running in. It is for the bards now to keep our language and the memories of our people alive, and to be an ash spear in the hand against our enemies.”
Taliesin sighed, and drank off his mead, and stood up. “I am for bed now, friends, and so should we all be—we have a long ride tomorrow over the hills to Aber.”
“Master,” said Neirin, more subdued than I had ever seen him, “you were on that battlefield—were you with Arthur at the end?”
“I was,” said Taliesin quietly, and for a moment I saw a deep sadness on him; then his mouth moved in an almost-smile, and he looked himself again. “But that, O my children,” he said, echoing the storyteller’s phrase, “is a story for another day.” And with that we had for the moment to be content.
Chapter 3: The Druids’ Island
Ynys Môn is known for many things: for its broad fertile fields, rich in wheat and barley, which have made it in times of need the granary of all Gwynedd; for its herds of wide-horned red and black cattle, with their abundant milk and butter and cheese; for the blue-gray, fish-swarming seas that lap around it; and for the King’s high wood-hewed hall at Aberffraw. But I remember it most for the tall gray standing stones, quartz-streaked and gold-lichened, which crown its low hills, and for the green slumbering mounds which lie in its ghost-thronged valleys. For Môn was the Island of the Druids, and their last great stronghold and sanctuary; and there the Romans came with sword and fire, in the year when Boudicca rebelled, and left behind them blood and ashes only, and silence.
I was saying as much to Neirin, while we waited on the shore for slack water and the ferry which would take us across to the island. Afon Menai, the strait between the mainland and Môn, is not wide, but its tides are fast-flowing and treacherous, and it takes a good pilot to know them well. I was watching the choppy gray-green waves with distrust—I am a river man, no salt-water sailor—and a little unease. It was raining again, a little cold mizzle rain that tasted salt on my lips, and our elders were sheltering from it in the boatman’s hut behind us, but we had come out to give them more room and to look after the ponies. With us we had Ugnach’s elder son Rhys, a skinny boy of thirteen and his father’s proud pupil, who had come along to act as horse-holder and helper. In the two days he had been with us he had hardly spoken a word from awe of our masters, and he eyed even me with respect.
“Sa, I have heard something of that myself,” said Neirin thoughtfully. “It was here at the south end of Menai that they crossed, or so Taliesin told me. The Romans were not brave at first, for the chanting of the Druids, and the wailing of the women, and the shouts and shield-clashing of the assembled warriors gave them pause. But finally they crossed, the foot-soldiers on their flat-bottomed boats and the riders swimming beside their horses. The first-comers gathered on the beach and linked their shields—they had big square-cornered shields, man-covering—and when they moved like that, like one great many-legged, many-headed monster, there was no stopping them. And more and more of them came ashore behind the first, endless as a river; and everywhere they went, they killed, to erase their shame and the memory of their fear, until all the streams of Môn ran red as Camlann ford, and the ravens gorged for a month on man-flesh. And the ghosts of the Druids and their people haunt the island still.”
“Hmm,” I said. “I did not see any ghosts when I was here before, but that was in high summer, and we kept well clear of the barrows. I would not be for walking abroad there on a winter evening—who knows what you might see!” As I spoke I looked sideway at Rhys, whose eyes were wide and dark in the shadow of his over-sized rain cape. I grinned.
“Na, nor I either, I am thinking,” said Neirin, his gaze on the misty shoreline across the water. “But we will not be keeping clear of the barrows this time, not all of them. They are the gateways to Annwn, and there the Dark Path leads. And where it leads, I must go.”
This was the most he had yet said about the thing that lay before him, and I would have liked to ask questions, but the boy’s presence held me back—that, and something in Neirin’s face. “Well,” I said after a moment, “I suppose Taliesin knows what he is doing in bringing you here.”
Neirin chuckled. “That I am sure of. It is only as to whether I myself know what I am doing, that my heart sometimes misgives me… Hai mai! In a few more days it will be over, and—and we will ride on to Aberffraw. It—it is only three days in the dark, after all… Rhys, I think the ferry-man is coming. Can you manage all those ponies by yourself, or is it help you will be needing?” And when the boy shook his head, Neirin took the lead-ropes of his own ponies and started down the path. I followed the two of them with a sort of sinking in my belly. Only three days in the dark, was it? On the road to the Otherworld, alone?
The farmstead at Caer Lêb had not changed much in the two years since I last saw it: a huddle of thatched buildings sitting within a fortified compound, surrounded by two walls with a ditch between, and a gate on the eastern side. The walls themselves were five-sided and ancient, and built perhaps as much for show as for defense, being overlooked by higher ground to the east; the buildings within were newer, though old enough in their own right, having mostly the right-angled shapes beloved of the Romans. The whole looked strong and prosperous as we came riding up the muddy track toward it, through the dark fields already plowed and planted and showing the first faint green shoots of the corn. In the misty twilight the lime-washed walls of the buildings seemed to glow with their own light, and the blue hearth-smoke that hung around the place smelled of warmth and roasting meat, and set my belly growling with hunger.
The old yellow dog chained in the gateway saw us first, and set up a barking which brought out a mixed pack of other hounds and children to greet us, followed by a few curious adults. Among them was a dark, wiry man who seemed familiar to me. It was only when he stood up from quieting the watchdog that I recognized my old friend Ieuan, whom I had last seen two summers ago at Deganwy. He had there been adjudged a thief in the King’s court, and would have spent the rest of his life as a slave in Ireland, had it not been for the generosity of the Lord Cadwaladr of Caer Lêb, who bought him free of the Irish and took him home. Now here he was still, clearly a member of the household. It seemed he had found his belonging-place at last.
Our recognition was not mutual; Ieuan’s eyes slid over me unseeingly and fixed on the Masters at the front of our party. I was not much surprised; I had changed greatly from the wandering lad I had been two years ago, earning my living with my tongue and carrying all I owned upon my back. I had grown and filled out; I was the proud owner now of a respectable moustache, even though my beard still grew in clumps and patches; and if I led the pack-string at the back of our company, I did so as a free man on my own black pony, and not as a muddy-footed servant. Moreover, I was now a bardic apprentice, and likely to be a master bard myself one day; in all ways my status had improved.
So I was thinking as we rode into the courtyard and dismounted. We were a big party now, five men and a boy and eleven ponies. The Lord and Lady of the place came out to greet our masters and hand round the guest cup, while Neirin and I and Rhys did our best to sort out the ponies and baggage, helped by the men and boys of the place. That was how I came to find myself presently face to face with Ieuan, who was trying to direct the stabling and the bestowal of our gear.
“There is space enough for all your mounts in the covered block,” he was saying. “The pack-ponies will have to go into the pasture outside the walls, once we have unloaded them, but they will be safe enough there. There is room in the guesthouse for most of you, though one or two may have to sleep in the hall—you, and you, perhaps”—indicating Rhys and myself. “Let us get your gear under cover, and then we will see.”
“Ieuan,” I said, and paused. He looked back at me, his black brows drawn together in a frown.
“Yes, that is my name. Do I know you, lad? Something about you…seems familiar.”
“It should be,” I said, grinning. “We walked enough miles together from Pengwern, and I got you out of trouble more than once.”
Ieuan’s eyes widened. “Gwernin? It cannot be! Why, boy, you have grown—and come up in the world! I wondered often what had happened to you after we parted. We must share a cup and a gossip presently—but first, the gear and the ponies!” And to the curious eyes around us, “He came here first with me two years ago, as my helper and packman on the road. A good lad he was, if a bit of a dreamer—I got him his start, and look at him now!”
I frowned a little at that, which did not match my memories, but it was no time for arguing. “Where do you want our gear?” I asked. “Better to get it out of the rain.”
“Of course, of course,” said Ieuan. “Take it over there”—he pointed at a building across the courtyard—“as we unload it.”
“The harps first, then,” I said. “And carefully, man, carefully!”
Ieuan raised his eyebrows, then stood back, grinning. “You had better unload them yourself, then, Lord!” he said. And looking around, “What a boy, eh?”
At this point Neirin stepped between us. “Na, friend, I shall do the unloading, and Gwernin and Rhys the carrying—if you will direct your lads where to take the ponies? The sooner then will you and Gwernin”—he winked at me—“come to that cup and that gossip of which you spoke, and the rest of us to our dinner!”
“At your will, then, Lord,” said Ieuan, knowing his match when he met it. “At your will.”
After that things went smoothly, and it was not long before we joined the others in the hall for the evening meal. As we walked across the courtyard I tried to say a few words to Neirin in explanation, but he cut me short. “Na, na,” he said, laying his arm across my shoulders for a moment and smiling, “you need not explain, brother: I know his type well. A plausible rogue; well for you that you got shot of him when you did.”
“Na, it is not that,” I said. “He was good to me often enough on the road, and before; it is only…”
“Sa, sa, I know,” said Neirin, squeezing my shoulder. “Let it be: there are too many ears here, and I want my dinner.” And with that we entered the hall.
In some ways it was like stepping back in time; I had spent several days here on my previous visit, and the people and place were familiar to me. I saw the Lord Cadwaladr, tall and lean and red-headed, seated at his high table with our three Masters; his lady Braint, calm and dark-haired and graceful beside him; girls and boys grown older but still recognizable; and other men and women whose faces I remembered from the long evenings when I had entertained them with my tales. The warmth and comfort of the hall and the good food and drink in plenty lulled me into a sense of contentment, so that I almost forgot our reason for being here. Presently, at our masters’ bidding, Neirin and I took it in turns to entertain the company, and got our due in applause: and this too was good.
As the feasting was breaking up one young woman sitting in the shadows at the far side of the room caught my eye, a dark-haired lass much my own age with a dark-haired infant at her breast. I had seen Ieuan seated beside her earlier, but he was now busy with the other men who were taking down and stacking the trestle tables, and banking the central hearth-fire in preparation for the night. As I stood there uncertain, the woman looked up and met my gaze and smiled, and I went over to join her. “Gwernin!” she said. “I am so glad to see you again—it has been a long time!”
“Indeed, and it has,” I said, sitting down on the bench beside her. “Anwen, is it not?”