‘Prosper, son of Gerontius, does not believe it will work?’ Conn said after a few moments, his thoughts clearly having followed the same path as my own.
I shrugged. ‘You know what they say of Aidan of the Dalriada. He’s a warlord more than a king; and his wars are glorified cattle-raids, whether he goes against the Saxon kind or his neighbours.’
‘Still, I suppose he - Mynyddog - has to try,’ Conn said thoughtfully.
‘Oh yes, he has to try.’
Someone was shouting for Conn from within the smithy, and he turned back through the firelit doorway, while I went on my way, taking Bryth down to the horse-lines.
Next day we made a great showing for the Lords of Dalriada who stood looking on, mantled in their magnificent furs in the squally rain. All together, for a good part of the shieldbearers had been drawn in after all to play the enemy, we showed off our horse-skills, wrestled and raced and fought mock battles. And all the while our Captain, standing among the strangers with something of the look of a man who has bitten on a sloe, clearly relished it as little as we did.
Towards day’s end we were all gathered once more in the King’s outer court thinking that the show was over. But it seemed that it was not. Not quite yet …
Mynyddog himself had come out to join us, walking unaided to his great chair that had been set for him in the fore-porch of his Hall, though God knows what the effort must have cost him. And Aneirin had settled on the bard stool at his feet. He looked at us and we looked back at him with the knowledge that we had done him credit. The day was fading, and ahead of us lay fire’s warmth and deer-meat stew and mead and harpsong that we felt was well earned.
Then Mynyddog looked up at the envoy standing beside him and said something. I could not catch the words, but it had the sound of courtesy. Something about hoping that the day’s display had pleased them, I suppose, for the tall man, his voice pitched to carry, made reply, ‘Today’s display has indeed been well worth the watching, so far as it goes. Indeed I have seldom seen it greatly bettered, save by the Teulu of my Lord Aidan.’
We bristled like a hound when it smells wolf.
The King began, ‘You find something lacking -’ his face was flushing but the red was tinged with grey, and his dry brittle cough cut him short.
The Fosterling stepped forward, saying quickly, ‘My Lord the King, let me. It was I who trained them and their honour is mine.’ And to the envoy, he said with cold courtesy, ‘You find something lacking in our childish games?’
‘Nothing in the world,’ said the Dalriada. ‘Yet what does it all prove - save training, and one may train a hound. There must be more -’
‘Let you tell me what more,’ the Fosterling said in a voice like wild honey.
‘So, I will tell. If my Lord Aidan were to call out any man from his Teulu and bid him leap from the Rock of Black Annis, he would do it without thought. Can you say the same for these men of yours?’
The Fosterling said, ‘I do not doubt it. But I will not be squandering the life of a man by putting it to the test. And if I were to do so, what would it prove beyond obedience? The blind unthinking berserk frenzy of the Saxon kind. Other things than that are needed for the forging of a fighting brotherhood.’ The two stood facing each other with their gaze locked together while a man might count to ten. Then the Fosterling said, ‘Here among the Companions there are warriors of every tribe of the north and west, some even who are ancient enemies. Yet if I were to call out three at random, one to run blindfold towards Epona’s Leap where the rock falls sheer a score of spears’ lengths to other rocks beneath, trusting to the other two to catch him back from dashing out his brains, and all three were to do without question the thing that I asked of them - that, I am thinking, might prove something worth the proving.’
‘Such as?’ said the envoy, with mockery deep in his throat.
‘Such as - that it is possible for men of different tribes to find or forge new loyalties among themselves.’
‘So, then let you put that to the test,’ said the Dalriada, and as the Fosterling stiffened as though to meet a spear under his own ribs, he added musingly, ‘Yet how shall I know that you are not choosing men of the same tribe, even close kin?’
‘Choose them for yourself,’ our Captain said between shut teeth.
The thing was of no great matter, and without even much danger to it. But it was a thing that we had not been trained to, and at the end of a hard day, when we were tired and hungry …
The envoy picked out his men at random, the runner and one of the catchers from among the shieldbearers. None of them were closely known to me, and so the choice did not set my heart jumping. We all pressed back, leaving an empty space straight across the outer court, a road ending in the nothingness of Epona’s Leap; and the chosen three walked out into it. There was a pause while something was found to bind the runner’s eyes. In the end Geraint of Dumnonia pulled off the striped silken scarf which he always wore knotted round his waist under his sword belt, and passed it through the crowd, shouting after it, ‘Have a care now. A girl gave me that, and I don’t want it fouled with blood and brains!’
It was a grim jest, but it was something to laugh at, and we laughed accordingly.
Against the weapon-stone the runner stood to be blindfolded with the vivid silk. When its knot was tied, he put his hands up to each side of his head as though to settle the folds and test how firmly they were in position, and took up the stance that runners take at the start of a race, bearing forward on to the ball of his left foot. The other two moved onto the lip of emptiness which was Epona’s Leap; I could see them speaking with their heads together a moment, then they crouched down facing each other, with only the sky and the distance of lowland hills behind them. For the first time it dawned on me that what danger there was was for them almost as much as for the runner. Then somebody gave the starting shout, and the runner sprang forward on a line for the Leap and the tensed catchers. It was the merest sprint, not enough for a runner to find his stride; but I suppose it had slipped all our minds that a man running blind tends to pull to the right. He began to veer almost from the first step, and at the last instant the other two flinging themselves sideways, just caught him from going headlong into the right-hand fang of rock.
They disentangled themselves and he pulled off the blindfold and looked about him, slightly bemused by the clamour rising on all sides, then flushed crimson as he realized what had happened.
The envoy flung up his head and laughed on a mocking note. And the runner looked from him to the Fosterling and asked levelly, ‘Would you have me try again? If the catchers call, it will give me the direction.’
The envoy nodded, ‘Again, yes, but with another three, I think.’ A happy thought seemed to strike him. ‘And one more after that; three casts of the dice for luck!’
‘I suppose we shall get supper sometime,’ Dara muttered in my ear.
The runner handed the silken scarf back to its owner who had come thrusting through to reclaim it, and dropped back into the crowd, his catchers also, rubbing their knees and laughing. And the envoy picked another three. The runner was Cynri, the brother of Cynan.
He stepped out to have his eyes bound with the reborrowed scarf, and took his forward-leaning stance for the run.
This time the catchers called to him, ‘Cum, cum! Sweff! Sweff!’ as men call to their hounds, and he headed straight towards their calling. And they braced themselves, arms out for the catch. For a heartbeat of time, I thought they must all three go over, but when the shock and chaos of arms and legs sorted itself out, all of them were still there. Cynri pulled off the scarf, and bowed with a flourish to the envoy, to the King, to the Captain of the Companions, and strolled off in the direction of the gate and the road that led to supper.
‘Sa, sa, that was better,’ said the envoy. ‘This is a sport that I have not witnessed before. Now the third cast of the dice.’
He hitched his great furred mantle about him, and with a glance of
shared amusement with his two fellows, came strolling out yet again into our midst, looking about him like a man at a horse fair where nothing really takes his fancy. Almost, I expected to see him slap someone aside as a man may slap aside the woolly rump of a colt that is across his way.
He passed closely by where I stood, and as he did so, the wind gusting up from the south, whipped my hair into my eyes. I put up my hand to thrust it back, and the sudden movement must have caught at his awareness, he glanced round in passing, then checked and looked full at me, down from his height. ‘You will serve well enough for the runner,’ he said. ‘Out with you,’ and moved on.
For the moment I did not quite believe it, almost I glanced back, thinking that he was speaking to someone behind me, but friendly hands were on my shoulders, pushing me forward into the cleared space, and I walked out to the weapon-stone, and stood there, my heart beginning to thump in the base of my throat. The man holding the scarf came up beside me, standing ready, and I did not see who the envoy had chosen for my catchers until they came to join me.
One was Ywain of the Companions, a thick set, steady looking man who often led his troop. He gave me a quick reassuring grin. I grinned back and looked at the other, and my heart fell over itself and began to race. The second of my catchers was Faelinn. Faelinn with the blue glass drop in his right ear catching the light of the sodden sunset. It was the first time we had looked at each other directly since the night in the ruins of Castellum, and the moment was not a comfortable one. His pale eyes, his whole face, had a kind of careful blankness, as though he were taking pains that I should not be able to see what lay beyond the skin, but it did not quite hide a shimmer of triumph, perhaps he did not mean it to; and I was cold scared. Oh, I did not think he really meant to let me go over Epona’s Leap, but it would be very easily done, very easy to fumble his half of the catch and make it look like an accident.
Someone was binding the scarf over my eyes, shutting out the dazzle of the sunset barring the west with gold, and I was alone in the darkness, with fear. All too clearly in the darkness I saw the edge of Epona’s Leap and the emptiness beyond, and the black rocks below… I crouched forward on the ball of my left foot, the starting shout was in my ears, and I was off, heading for the guiding calls of my catchers, ‘Cum, cum! Sweff, sweff!’ My memory of that run is partly that it went on for a great while, partly that it was over in the time it takes to blink. ‘Cum, cum, cum! Sweff, sweff!’ The shouts ran out into a sort of grunt and I was tackled and brought down and heaved over backwards between stride and stride, with most of the wind knocked out of my body.
Somebody pulled off the blindfold and I scrambled to my feet, and the brightness of the wet and windy sunset was dazzling into my eyes again. It seemed odd that I had not been in the dark long enough for the world to change at all, that even the raven which had been planing up against the gusts when the blindfold went on was not yet out of sight beyond the roof ridge of the King’s Hall. ‘Come away back a bit, I don’t like it here on the edge if you do,’ someone said, and, blinking against the brightness, I saw that it was Faelinn. And we looked at each other, face to face a second time, with the unease between us all gone. Suddenly we laughed, sharing the laughter, and I knew that Faelinn had never had the remotest idea of letting me go over the edge. He had known that in the moment of seeing him there as one of my catchers, I had been afraid. And that moment had been all he needed to even the score. Ywain joined in the laughter, not knowing what it was all about. And laughing still, though somewhat breathlessly, the three of us pulled back from Epona’s Leap.
But whether it all made a feather-weight of difference to the King’s hopes of a confederate warhost from the kingdoms of the north was more than anyone could guess.
13
The Rider from the South
The promise of spring had turned into spring itself; a harsh spring of squally rain and a wind that seemed stuck in the east, but in the cleared crop-lands ploughing had begun, and the Long Moss was alive with the crying and calling of marsh birds above their nesting places. There was a day when I found a clump of wash-faced primroses among the roots of an alder tree, and foolishly, wished that I could share them with Luned. And so the homing-hunger came upon me, as it did from time to time; as it still does even now …
That evening a group of us on our way back from the horse-runs and with nothing much to do until the horns sounded for supper, were sprawling at ease in the faint sun-warmth on the turf slopes below the Dyn. Tydfwlch the Tall, Cynan and his brothers together as usual, little dark Morien, Prince Gorthyn and a few more, with the usual fringe of shieldbearers, and the hounds who always tagged along with us.
Someone came through the greening broom bushes into our midst, and I sat up - I had been lying on my back and watching the first swallows hawking among the midges overhead - and saw the short strong shape and strange yellow eyes of the King’s bard. The rest of us were rolling over, sitting up, the hounds thumping their tails in welcome.
He was carrying his harp in his hand, out of its bag and readied for playing; the little black bog-oak crot that we knew had been his since he was a boy, and that no man but he might lay hands on.
‘Oh flower of all harpers, have you come to sing to us?’ Cynan asked.
And ‘Sing for us - sit here and sing for us!’ others joined in, while a couple of the hounds yawned, stretched themselves to their feet, and came to thrust their muzzles into the hollow of his hand.
Harpers of Aneirin’s rank, bards and praise-singers to Kings, keepers of their people’s history, seldom wake their own harps in Hall save on the most high and splendid occasions; they make the great hero-songs, but it is lesser men who sing them. But from time to time Aneirin would bring forth his harp and set himself down with it among a knot of us taking our ease as we were doing now.
He sat himself down, his harp on his knee, and we all drew a little closer. ‘Oh my children, what then shall I sing?’
‘Sing something easy,’ said Cynan, chewing on a stalk of winter-lean grass; and there was a murmur of contented agreement from the rest. The trouble with Aneirin’s songs was that often they made one think; and after a long day’s schooling in the horse-runs, none of us wanted to have to think.
A smile flickered at the long corners of Aneirin’s bearded lips, and settling the harp into the hollow of his shoulder, he set free a small shining flight of notes and began to sing, very quietly, a song that most of us knew by heart, for whatever tribe we came from, we heard it from our mothers or our nurses in the beginning of time.
Dinogad’s coat is of many colours, many colours,
I made it of the skins of martins. Phew! Phew! A Whistling!
Let us sing to him, the eight slaves sing to him,
When your father would go hunting
With his spear shaft on his shoulder and his club in his hand.
He called to the swift hounds
‘Giff giff. Seize, seize. Fetch, fetch -’
I found myself thinking again of the primrose clump among the alder roots, and Luned, and Gelert’s muzzle in my hand, and the smell of water mint in the pool above the ford at home; and I think that I was not the only one.
When the song of Dinogad was over, we called for another, and Aneirin sang again.
The fort opposite the oak wood,
Once it was Bruidge’s, it was Cathal’s,
It was Aed’s, it was Arbell’s.
It was Conairy’s, it was Cushling’s,
It was Madduin’s -
The fort remains after each in turn.
And the kings sleep in the ground.
And the homing-hunger that the first song had woken in us deepened to sadness of another kind. And I mind Aneirin looked about him with raised brows, and said, ‘Hai Mai, what sorry faces!’ And sang again - a fool’s song about seven men riding on a pig that had us all dissolved in laughter.
‘Harper most dear, you are playing with us,’ Gorthyn said.
‘Does it see
m so indeed? Nay, but upon you, maybe. Every harper plays upon his hearers as he does upon the strings of his harp. It is so that the music comes, between the harp and the hearts of men … If you would have me sing again, choose you what I shall sing.’
And for a while he played to our call like some strolling horse-fair minstrel, snatches of every song and every tale we called for. There is a glow to that hour in my memory even now.
In a while one of the brown-robed brothers from the monastery came by, heading up through the broom bushes towards the Dyn. Brother Felim the fat little Infirmarer, I saw it was, as he drew nearer. He would not go out of his way to avoid the harp notes, but he pulled his hood forward and walked a little faster, his head turned away, his hand, to judge by its position, holding the crucifix about his neck. And there was something about the very whisk of his skirts above his sandalled feet that told us his feelings.
Aneirin sent a mocking flight of notes like a dance of butterflies after him.
‘I do not think that he loves you greatly, nor us because we sit here listening to you,’ said Tydfwlch the Tall.
Aneirin shook his head. ‘Few of his kind have much love to spare for mine. Also he does not like it that I, who have only the slight healing knowledge of most of my kind and maybe a little more learned from the Queen, shall ride with you when the time comes. He thinks that it is his right to go with the bandage linen.’
‘But does he want to ride with us?’ Morien said. ‘He is not the right shape.’
‘Hardly. But he feels that he and his God are both slighted. He thinks that your immortal souls would be safer in his keeping than in mine, and forgets certain skills and advantages which I possess and he does not.’