Storyteller:
Being the Wanderings of Gwernin Kyuarwyd
By G R Grove
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 by G R Grove
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Cover image by permission of http://www.urweg.com
For further information about the Storyteller series, see http://tregwernin.blogspot.com/
Dedicated to the Society for Creative Anachronism, and especially to the people of the Barony of Earngyld, who saw the beginning and liked it.
CONTENTS
Chapter 3 - The Power of Names
Chapter 6 - The Tale of Arthur the Soldier
Chapter 7 - The Birds of Rhiannon
Chapter 12 - The Reciter’s Tale
Chapter 17 - The Tale of Tristfardd
Chapter 18 - Encounters on Berwyn
Chapter 19 - A Harp to Practice On
Chapter 21 - The Gifts at Arthur’s Crowning
Chapter 23 - King Arthur’s Raid on Hell
Chapter 26 - The Making of Arthur’s Crown
Gwernin’s Wanderings
A CIRCUIT ROUND WALES
“ynteu Wydyon goreu kyuarwyd yn y byt oed”
“And he, Gwydion, was the best teller of tales in the world…”
Pedair Kainc y Mabinogi
Chapter 1 - Ghosts
Blood and fire, gold and steel and poetry, a river’s voice in the silence of the night, and the shining strings of a harp—all these and more I have known in my time. Steep mountains, dark forests, and the endless song of the rain; music and laughter and feasting in the fire-bright halls of kings; a dusty road, and a fast horse, and a good friend beside me; and the sweet taste of the mead of Dun Eidyn, with its bitter aftermath: a dragon’s hoard of memories I have gathered, bright-colored as a long summer’s day. Now they are all gone, the men and women I knew when I was young, gone like words on the wind, and I am left here in the twilight to tell you their tale. Sit, then, and listen if you will to the words of Gwernin Kyuarwyd, called Storyteller.
The place which men name Caerllion, the City of the Legions, lies on the low banks of the river Wysg not far from the sea in south Wales. Even when I first came there it lay in ruins, and that was a long lifetime ago. But many men’s lifetimes had already passed since the Eagles who built it flew south from Britain and left us on our own, to sink or swim as we could against the Saxon tide. Arthur held them for a while, checked their advance and forced them back into their beachheads of the south and east, and gave us time to breathe. But Arthur died at Camlann three years before I was born, and how long now we can hold the crumbling sea wall he built is anyone’s guess. Many a kingdom has gone under already; many a fair fortress lies now beneath that wave. I wonder if I shall not, before I die, see my fair Pengwern herself laid waste, and Cynan’s halls home to the wolf and the raven…
But I was speaking of Caerllion, and the wonder that lies there. I saw it first on a mild evening in late spring, when my friend Ieuan and I came humping our packs over the last hill-crest to the east, and saw the hearth-smoke rising from amongst the gray stone ruins at either end of the bridge. Time had not treated Caerllion kindly; the villagers’ huts for the most part were reed-thatched shells of houses that had once been crowned in red tile, with wattle and daub filling gaps here and there in their crumbling walls. Only a few buildings near the river gate were still in use; the rest of that stone-walled enclosure was full of broken rubble half grown up in alder and oak scrub, a tangled wilderness where once were only the straight lines that the Romans so loved. In the midst of it all crouched a great brown block like a small hill, its top green with grasses and willow-herb, a silent presence brooding over all the rest. Tumble-down walls and fortresses I had seen before—indeed, I was born in one, though I remember little enough of it, before the Black Year came to sweep away that life and send me to my aunt’s house in Pengwern—but this was something new, beyond my previous experience, and as always I hungered to know more.
First, however, there was the question of lodgings for the night. The inn at the east end of the bridge was still open and doing business, and there Ieuan and I made our way. It seemed strange to me, new to the road as I was, to be paying for the food and lodging which my people would have given freely to any passing traveler, but as Ieuan had explained to me, such a small place, home to no great lord, and yet located on one of the main trackways used by the merchant-kind, could not be affording unpaid hospitality to all comers. Besides, the excellence of the landlord’s ale was legendary, and well worth the small coins we exchanged for it and our supper, with the promise of more to come if my tales pleased an audience that night.
After we had struck our bargain, and eaten our supper of stew and barley bread, washed down by some of that famous ale, I left my friend chatting amiably in the tap-room and wandered out again, heading for the great ruinous hulk that had earlier caught my eye. Baths, the landlord had called them, built like everything else here by the Romans. Palaces, I thought, as I stood staring up at them from the edge of a patch of waste ground, might have been a better term. Fully two-score paces in length and perhaps half as wide, and tall as the lordliest ash tree that graces the slopes of Powys, the Baths dwarfed any king’s house that I had yet seen. Their towering walls gazed back at me out of the twilight, pieced with dark window-openings that gaped like empty eyes. I returned their stare thoughtfully, but curiosity still won out.
Crossing the waste ground where the soldiers had raced and wrestled, I picked my way forward over broken stone, clogged with blown dirt and white with bird droppings, until I stood within the gloomy vault itself. Around me the red-brick walls rose up, towering into owl-haunted cliffs and caverns, while beneath them the scummy pools of the baths themselves lay gleaming here and there like tarnished mirrors. There was a strong smell of must and decay, and a sense of ghosts watching from behind one’s shoulder. Almost it might have been the mouth of a fairy mound, a gateway to Annwn itself, and the wonders that lay there—or so I thought at the time.
The silence was eerie, with a faint echo in it as of the wind, or the sea in a shell, or distant music, so that when a bit of stone dislodged by who-knows-what dropped from somewhere above and plopped into one of the pools near me, I jumped, and stumbling on the uneven footing, found myself almost over the edge before I knew it. As I teetered on the brink, I dimly saw a leering face with snakes for hair peering out at me from among the broken tiles at my feet, and in the roof above me I heard a rustle of wings.
Then the owl came gliding down, silent as a ghost. Like a pale shadow she came, and passed so close I could feel the chill breath of her wings as they stroked the air, and see her golden eyes, bright in the white mask of her face. She sailed through one of the empty window-vaults and was gone, and the huge cold room seemed the darker and more threatening for her leaving. Yet I stood my ground for a moment more, waiting for I knew not what. And at last it came, one white feather floating slowly down to land at my feet. I bent and picked it up. It lay light in my hand, soft and weightless as a scrap of silk, real as a memory. I put it in my belt-pouch for safety, and came away; I had seen enough to slake my curiosity for that night. Behind me in the darkness I could feel the ghosts of the soldiers still watching as I went, but they were silent.
Outside the twilight seemed bright as day by comparison, the air incredibly fresh and sweet—heavy though it was with the evening scents of wood-smoke and cow byres. I looked back once from the bridge at the towering ruin, looming against the last of the sunset like a young hill. Already those who should know better are beginning to say that the Baths are really the ruins of Arthur’s Palace, built for him in the space of a night by magic. Built, so they say, by the King’s Bard himself, using nothing but harp-song and moonlight, and a strong spider’s-web of spells to bind it all in place. Traveler’s tales, or stories for children, but still… On that quiet evening it almost seemed possible. And who should know better than I what feats music may encompass? That night I earned my ale in the tap-room with the tale of Gwydion the Magician and Blodeuwedd, the woman—if she was a woman—who became an owl. And later, in my sleep, I could swear I heard the beat of ghostly wings.
All of this seems a small story to relate, a small thing to remember after so many years. And yet it sticks in my mind for many reasons, not least because of what came after, when I came to know in truth, in bone and blood and spirit, the real cost and meaning of the Gates of Annwn.
But that, O my children, is a story for another day.
Chapter 2 - The Cloak-Clasp
Nowadays I often find, looking back, that the years and journeys blend together, so I can no longer be sure as to which time or place many of my memories belong. One day on the road is much like many another, within the usual gamut of heat and cold, dust and mud, sun and rain and snow; one rough lodging much like the next. Even the faces blend together over the years, various and individual though they all are: bright with interest in my performance, or dull with boredom; young or old, sober or drunken, ill or well. But at the time of which I speak, I was still new to the road and to my trade, and every day was an adventure, every night a fresh excitement as I stretched my growing abilities. So it was with Caer Dydd, my first big festival. Every detail of it is still clear in my mind, bright as a fresh-opened flower, not only for its own sake, but also for what came after.
We arrived there on a fine spring day, not long after our stop at Caerllion. Indeed, it was for Caer Dydd we had been making all the while, and the great Beltane fair that was held there every spring, when the roads and the seas first opened to travelers and traders. Many of them came, as we did, to set up their booths by the strand, and there I first stared open-mouthed at two things I had never seen before: the sea, and the ships that lived and traveled on her back.
It was the sea that caught me first: the sea of which I had heard so often in the tales. On the sea the Romans had come to Britain, and over it they had sailed away. On the sea Maxen Wledig had come to us, and over it he had gone when he left, taking many of our warriors with him to settle Less Britain. Yes, and older still: Brân the Blesséd had crossed the sea to rescue his sister from Ireland, and into the sea had gone Dylan ail Ton after his birth, to bide there with his great seal father, and rule over it in his turn. And over the sea, more prosaically, had come the foreign traders with their bright wares to the Beltane fair at Caer Dydd.
That afternoon the sea near the mouth of the Severn stretched broad and blue away from me, wind-ruffled into short sharp waves, hiding infinite possibilities. The tide was out, and the smell of mud and fish and seaweed, and who knows what besides, was strong on the warm spring air, and the sky above loud with the crying of gulls. Three or four small boats were lying beached on the mud, while other larger ships swung at anchor some way out. Above the tide-line fishermen and traders alike had set up booths and tents, and a busy market was already in progress.
I followed Ieuan as he worked his way through the crowd—a thin crowd as yet, for it was early in the fair—looking for a place to set out his wares. This early in the year his stock consisted mostly of small, light items of bone and horn and wood—double-sided combs, elaborately carved and decorated; pins for the cloak or the hair, painted or wound with wire; cases for bronze needles; and small trinket boxes for a lady’s treasures. Rings, too, he had, and a few bracelets, fashioned of twisted copper or silver wire. Ieuan himself had made most of them during the winter, working steadily through the short days and long nights by the fire. Now he would trade them, if he could, for other small, light things of greater value, brought by the traders from overseas, to carry with us on our travels and sell or trade again along the way. Not until autumn would we go home to Pengwern.
In the meantime, here at Caer Dydd, there was the Beltane fair to enjoy, and the competitions to look forward to. Christian though these lands were then, at least in name, yet most of us held also by the old festivals, which are the rhythm of the land and the seasons. And Beltane has always been one of the Great Festivals, the spring festival that follows the first plowing. There would be days and days of celebration, and meat and drink in plenty; plenty of employment, too, for storytellers and minstrels such as we.
Whether because of its position on the coast of south Wales, a popular landfall for traders on their way to Ireland, or because there had already been a settlement there when the Romans came, Caer Dydd had fared better than her sister Caerllion, having been taken over by the local chief as a strong point rather than being left to fall to ruin. Some of the buildings in the fort had been maintained, and it was in one of these, on the last night before Beltane, that a storytelling competition took place: for as you know, many tales—Winter-tales—should only to be told in the dark half of the year, between Samhain and Beltane. There it was that I first stood up to speak in contest, to be judged against my peers.
Well I remember the flickering firelight on the roughly plastered walls and blackened roof-beams of that hall, and on the watching faces of my audience, glinting on here a fine shoulder-brooch, and there a gilded bracelet, as the owners moved. I remember the patter of rain on the roof-tiles, and the barking of dogs outside the hall, and the smell of the blue wood-smoke from the central hearth-fire that eddied now and then into my face and stung my eyes. I remember the listening silence of that crowd of men and women and children, broken from time to time by a cough or the scrape of a bench, and the beating excitement in me, half fear and half exaltation, as I first told my tale before so many, weaving with all my skill a net of words to catch and hold their interest.
I wish I could say that I won that contest, but I am sworn to keep to truth in these tales, so far as the truth may be known—for often it seems to me to change with the ob-server. No, I did not win, but my performance was well received, and toasted afterwards by one of the local lords, who gave me a ring-brooch from his own shoulder in token of his approval. A simple thing it was, but pleasant, made of good bronze, with a red enamel design covering the two terminals of the ring and the base of the pin. It had been fashioned at his own court of Dinas Powys, a short journey to the south and west from Caer Dydd. I wonder now, looking back, if it was not my choice of a tale told often in his home country that commended me to him as much as my expertise. However that may be, it was my first such moment of recognition, and shines the brighter in my memory because of it. Though I have since had many finer jewels, I still keep that brooch as a talisman. Worth is not always measured in weight of gold.
It was the same Lord Dafydd of Dinas Powys who that night issued a general invitation to all the bards and storytellers there to join him at his court for a few days after the fair ended. “For,” he said, “it is seldom I have the enjoyment of such an array of riches as you have spread before me here, and I would fain keep it for a little longer. Moreover, I currently have no bard in my hall, and must needs chose one soon,” and he grinned, “least my word-fame be lost, and my name vanish with me.”
So it happened that on the day after the fair Ieuan and I and several others were making our way up the steep track which led to Dinas Powys, a track deep-rutted from the wagon-loads of wine-barrels and oil-jars that had come up from the harbor earlier in the week to gladden the hearts of the merchant-kind. Ieuan was in a good mood for a change, for his trading had gone well, and our packs rode the lighter on our shoulders for it. He was a quiet man as a rule, given to gloomy silences, but that day he spoke more than usual, asking the others with us about their travels, and about the temper of the country that spring.
“Quiet enough so far,” said Kyan Goch, a red-headed man from Dumnonia in southwest Britain. “The Saxons will likely be stirring again before long, though. Still, I suppose we should be grateful for such peace as we have.”
“Ah, but where is the glory in peace?” asked another. “No warfare, no glory; no glory, no need for bards to sing it; no need for bards, and we are on the road again!” And he laughed.
“Na, there will always be need for bards,” said Kyan. “If not to sing the warriors’ deeds now, then to remember those who fought before, and teach those who will fight afterwards the way of it. There is always need for songs of Arthur, and Maxen Wledig, and those who went before. One way and another, there must always be bards, as long as the earth stands, and the stars shine above, and the gray sea surrounds us. We are like the pin in the cloak-clasp,” and he touched the great brooch on his shoulder, “the smallest, plainest part, and yet without it the brooch falls away and is lost, and the cloak with it, and the man perishes from the cold. So is it with us. If the bards should ever take the druids’ road west, it would be a black day for the Cymry, for what is there to hold a people together who do not remember their past?”
No one answered him, for we had reached the top, and the hospitality of Dinas Powys awaited us.
But that, O my children, is a story for another day.
Chapter 3 - The Power of Names
What power lies in a name? Gwernin Kyuarwyd am I, Gwernin Storyteller. So have I said before. And yet I practice all the bardic arts, so far as I am able—poetry and song and harping, as well as storytelling and the recitation of lore. So why do I call myself Gwernin Kyuarwyd, Gwernin Storyteller, and not Gwernin Fardd, Gwernin the Bard?
Modesty, perhaps. Or a stronger regard for the truth than some display. But mostly for another reason, of which I intend to tell you now.
The feasting at Dinas Powys was behind us, and we were on the road again. Fine indeed had it been while it lasted, for though the Lord Dafydd’s hall was smaller than some I have since seen, his table was bountiful—roast meat in plenty, both cow’s and pig’s flesh; made dishes in the old Roman style; flat wheaten loaves from the bake-stones; barrels of red Gallic wine; and great pitchers of the clear honey-sweet mead with its faintly bitter aftertaste, which seems to light all the world like a golden lantern while it lasts.
Half a dozen bards had performed, all eager to fill the empty chair of the household bard at this wealthy court, and all the other performers got a turn as well, and a gift of silver afterwards for their pains, myself included. Mine was a bracelet in the Saxon style, and not the least by any means of the presents given. I got, too, a word of praise and encouragement from Kyan Goch, which I valued above the silver; he it was who won the bards’ contention, and stayed on as the new household bard to the Lord Dafydd. I was glad for his good luck, but sorry to lose the chance of his company on the road, for he seemed more friendly and less full of self-pride than some of the bards there—more friendly, at least, to me…
All and all, then, I was thinking very well of myself by the time Ieuan and I set out on our travels again. Westward the two of us were going, toward Dyfed, following the Ro-mans’ old paved road which runs straight as a arrow from Caer Dydd to Maridunum, or Caer Myrddin as it is some-times called nowadays. As one often does, we fell in with a number of other folk who were also following that road on their way home from the festival. What with the bright spring morning, and my recent moments of triumph, I was in high spirits, and kept the company entertained as we went with jokes and riddles and tales. I mind there was one little fair-haired girl in particular who seemed very taken with me, or at least with my stories. She walked close beside me to hear them, and I was not sorry, for her bright eyes made me feel taller and stronger and wiser, maybe, than I was, or was ever like to be. Ah, well, we were young, and it did no one any harm.
As the day went on, most of the folk dropped away from us, turning off to north or south toward their homes, until at last, when afternoon was fading into evening, there was none left but myself, and Ieuan, and one gray old man. I had not talked much with him earlier, being taken up with my own brilliance, but now I turned my attention to him for lack of any other audience (Ieuan being a silent type on the road, and not likely to be impressed with me anyway).
“And where are you bound, sir?” I asked him as we drew near to the village of Y Bont Faen, where the Roman’s stone bridge spans the little river Thaw, and where we were hoping to get lodging for the night.
“To Maridunum, near which I live.” His speech was that of an educated man, despite his shabby tunic and faded brown cloak, and I looked at him with more interest.
“We also are bound that way,” I said, and smiled. “Per-haps we can travel together and keep each other company on the road.”
“Perhaps.” I thought he looked a little amused. “What is your name, lad?”
“Gwernin Fardd am I,” said I, feeling very splendid, “and I come from fair Pengwern in Powys, where Cynan Garwyn has his court on the banks of Severn River.”
“Oh,” he said, “it is a bard you are, is it? You look full young for such distinction.”
“Why—why, perhaps I am.” I was rather taken aback by this challenge, which I had not expected. “But I will grow older.”
“And wiser?” The glint of amusement in his dark eyes was very marked now. “Discourse to me, then, O bard, of your wisdom. Why is stone hard, and why is a thorn sharp? What is as hard as a stone, and as salty as salt?”
“Why—I do not know,” I had to admit, for the riddles were unfamiliar to me. “That is–”
“Yes?” Then, when I made no further reply, “What is as sweet as honey? What rides on the gale? Why is the nose ridged? Why is a wheel round?”
Deeply troubled, I said, “I do not know.”
His smile had reached his mouth, and glinted through his gray beard—and yet I think it was of triumph without malice. “Until you know the names of the verse-forms,” he said very softly, “the name of rimiad, the name of ramiad, until you can name the nine elements by the aid of your seven senses, then I think, Gwernin, that you should keep silent, for whatever else you may be, you are not a bard.”
“No, master, you are right,” I sighed. “I am plain Gwernin Storyteller, and nothing more.”
“That is honestly said, at any rate.” Then, when I continued down-cast and silent, he added, “Do not be so discouraged, youngster. By admitting what you do not know, you have made a first step toward wisdom.”
I smiled despite myself. “A first step on a very long road! Master, if we should travel together, might you be so generous as to share a little, a very little of your knowledge with me?”
“So. A second step already. Yes, Gwernin, I will.” I thanked him earnestly, and he nodded. “But I think that must wait until tomorrow, for look, here we are at the bridge, and the sun is setting.” And it was so.
Several days we traveled together, and I learned much from the stranger, who called himself Emrys. We parted at last by the bridge outside Maridunum, we going on into the town to seek our fortune, and he off up the valley toward his homestead. I never saw him again, but I heard tales, long afterwards, and guessed who he was. I will not say his name now, for naming calls, and I would not trouble his rest; it was well-earned, and in times and places which have now passed away. But I remembered his lessons, and began, as I walked, to make and polish—with such clumsy labor and pain, but such pride!—my first songs. This is a craft which cannot be learned too young—or rather, cannot be learned at all. No true bard that I have known ever feels he has got to the end of it, however far he has gone—no, not the greatest of us all. And his name I will say: for he was called Taliesin, which means Shining Brow; and his rest I cannot disturb, for he is with me still.
But that, O my children, is a story for another day.
Chapter 4 - A Fall of Mist
Whoever sits down on the mound at Arberth, or so the story runs, may not leave it until he has either suffered blows or wounds, or has seen a wonder. Well, I sat myself down there one spring day like Pwyll, out of pure mischief, and though I presently left—as I thought—untouched by either fate, yet in a manner of speaking I afterwards suffered both, as you shall shortly hear.
The occasion was some days after my parting at Maridunum with the stranger called Emrys. From there, Ieuan and I had wandered on westward, intending to follow the coast more or less closely, thus continuing our sun-wise circuit around Wales. As luck would have it, however, while entertaining at Arberth we heard rumor of a great feast to be held in a few days’ time at Aberteifi, to the north of us. Following the coast as we had planned, we would come there far too late, but by cutting across the peninsula through the Preseli Mountains we reckoned to arrive within two days, three at the most. It seemed an opportunity not to be missed.
So there I sat on Pwyll’s mound, looking down at the little village of Arberth, basking like me in the warm spring sunshine as it straggled up the hill from its ford. The mound rises on the bluff above the village, overlooking the spot where the story says Pwyll’s palace stood, though no sign of that now remains. Wood rots, stone crumbles, and all our works decay: only poetry stands immortal, so long as memory lasts. But the mound itself, Gorsedd Arberth as it is called, seemed solid and permanent enough that day, crowned with green grasses and pale yellow primroses and little blue violets whose scent hung heavy on the cool morning air. It was also still wet with dew, as I had found to my cost, so that when I saw Ieuan humping his pack up the winding track toward me I was pleased, and more than ready to stand up and set off with him, brushing the clinging damp from my clothes as I went. I never gave a second thought to the geas imposed by the mound. Why should I? In truth, I thought such a fair spring morning wonder enough!
The way we went that day was no stone-paved Roman road, such as had sped some of our earlier journeying, but a rough country track barely better than a sheep path. Clearly, though, it knew its way across country, being one of the old ridge-ways that men have followed time out of mind. One ford it dropped to, some three miles north of Arberth, and thereafter kept to the high ground, running straight and clear—if sometimes rather muddy!—toward the eastern end of Mynydd Preseli, which lay long and blue and peaceful ahead of us in the morning sun. The day was fair and warm, the warmest we had had yet that spring. Larks rose singing from the grass ahead of us, mounting into a cloudless blue sky, and cuckoos answered them from the green valleys on either side. We soon saw we would have no trouble reaching our first destination by nightfall, a small village on the eastern shoulder of Mynydd Preseli which would give us shelter, and from which the land drops clear to Aberteifi and the sea beyond. So after we had paused for our nooning, eating the food given us by our host of the night before, we lay down in the lee of a clump of gorse bushes to rest for a bit. We had had some hard traveling lately, and I for one was glad of the pause. The sun was warm, and the air drowsy with the buzzing of bees busy pillaging the golden blossoms of the gorse, and sweet with the honey scent of the flowers themselves. I stretched myself out lazily in the soft new grass and closed my eyes, seeing the sunlight blood-red through my eyelids and feeling it warm on my face. I smiled, and slept, and woke to disaster.
Disaster, that is, in the shape of fog, a cold wet clinging mist that cut off vision a pace or two away, so that the very gorse bushes that had sheltered us seemed dissolving at their edges into shapeless masses of darkness. It was impossible to tell how long we had slept, for the sun was invisible, and the light so gray and dim that direction was likewise uncertain. I started up abruptly, stretching out an arm to shake Ieuan awake where he lay peacefully snoring beside me. “Ieuan,” I said, “We are in trouble.”
He opened his eyes slowly and lay blinking up at the grayness for a moment, then sat up, reaching for his pack. “Sa,” he said, “I think we are. Best we should be moving; we will have to go slow in this.”
And slow indeed we went. What had been a clear track before us, if not an overly well marked one, had become while we slept a maze of sheep-trods and branching side-paths through marsh and heather and gorse. Again and again we stopped, sweating despite the cold, to consult on the way forward. More than once we lost our straight line, and only knew it when the path we were following disappeared in a bog, or dropped suddenly at our feet into a brushy coomb, leaving us to retrace our steps as best we could and start again. At last, with the light fading, we lost our way, as it seemed, finally and forever, when what we had been sure was the main track led us to a sheep-trampled ford instead of a village.
Ieuan stood for a moment staring at the latest ruin of our hopes, then scratched his head. “What now?”
“I do not know,” I said wearily, feeling muddy water seeping yet again into my boots. As I spoke my breath steamed into more mist before my face. Somewhere in the distance I could hear sheep bleating. “Find the shepherd?”
Ieuan nodded, easing his bulky pack on his shoulders, and splashed wordlessly into the stream.
We stumbled about in the heather until it was almost too dark to see which bog we were falling into next. We could hear the sheep, and once or twice we saw them, pale patches in the gloom which trotted briskly away at our lumbering approach. The loom of some larger mass ahead of us gave us hope for a moment, especially when it resolved itself into the sort of dry-stone hut that the shepherds often build for shelter on the moors, but we knew before we reached it that it was cold and empty. And so, by that time, were we.
I dropped my pack by the door-post of the hut. “Let us stop here. At least it is shelter, and a dry place to lie down. I am done.”
Ieuan pursed his lips and spat deliberately, then nodded. Wordlessly he doffed his own pack and bent under the low lintel. The hut was dirty and cramped, and dark enough inside to make the fog without look bright, but it was shelter of a sort, and the dried piles of last year’s bracken that my groping hands discovered by the wall would make for better sleeping than the bare ground. With flint and steel Ieuan kindled a stub of candle and by its light dug through his pack, emerging at last with a couple of strips of dried meat and a crumbling oat-cake that had lived there the gods knew how long. Pinching out the candle to save it for later, we split the food between us and settled back on the bracken to eat. The meat smelled odd and tasted worse, but I was young and hungry, and choked it down regardless, then wrapped my cloak around me and curled up to sleep.
It was some time in the night when I became aware that my supper was not agreeing with me. I fought the urge for as long as I could, but at last staggered up and out into the fog, leaving my friend snoring peacefully behind me. Stumbling clumsily over the rough ground in the dark, I went some way apart for privacy, and then gave way to nature.
I will draw a veil over the next hour or so. No doubt you can supply the details from your own experience. I will only say that it was a long time before I could face smoked meat again, and longer still before I trusted any food out of Ieuan’s pack.
By the time I could once again take an interest in my surroundings, the fog above me was growing perceptibly lighter. Not, as I first thought, with dawn, but with the rising of the moon, a waning crescent faintly visible through the murk, whose appearance meant that day could not be far behind. I lay for a while watching her as she climbed above the shoulder of the hill; then, feeling the cold begin to bite deep, hauled myself wearily to my feet and turned toward the hut. It was not there.
I think now that in my quest for privacy, I had merely gone a little farther afield than I intended, but at the time it seemed a supernatural vanishing. Still, shivering and light-headed as I was, I pushed off in the direction where I thought the hut should be. A few minutes’ stumble through the fog proved me wrong, but as I paused again, wondering what to do next, I saw a tall figure standing silent in the moon-silvered mist ahead of me. A few more steps, and I knew it for a standing stone, a massive dark-gray block like many another we had seen the afternoon before. In my confused state, it was a familiar friend, and I staggered forward to greet it, flinging an arm around it for support and gradually sliding down its moonward side to end sitting on the turf with my back against the stone. Wrapping my arms around myself for warmth, I sighed and closed my eyes, hoping that day would come soon.
Somewhere a hunting horn was blowing, and dogs were chasing a stag. I could hear them coming closer though the darkness, hear the horn and the hoof beats and the baying of the hounds, shining white hounds with red ears, chasing a pure white deer. I knew what the huntsman would look like following such a pack, knew his dapple-gray horse and his gray hunting garb, gray as the mist around him; and I knew, too, his name. His name was Arawn.
Not many miles from where I sat was Glyn Cuch, the Frowning Glen where Pwyll Prince of Dyfed (of Gorsedd Arberth fame) had once while hunting seen another pack of dogs, chasing and killing a stag on his lands. He had driven off that pack, unearthly though they were, their bodies all shining white and their ears all shining red, and fed his own dogs on their kill, only to be interrupted by the hunter himself, who proved to be none other than Arawn, King of Annwn—the Celtic Other-world. Arawn threatened to punish Pwyll for his discourtesy by satirizing him to the value of a hundred stags, unless Pwyll first won his friendship by performing a task for him—and that was a fearful threat, for satire is the weapon of the bards, and in the hands of a master it can kill. And if a human bard’s words can have such effect, how much more power might a verse composed by Arawn have over a mortal man?
Such, then, was the Hunter in the night, and such were my thoughts as I crouched at the base of the standing stone, and strained my eyes into the swirling mist around me. Distantly I saw the hunt come and pass, the wraith-like deer and the white hounds gleaming in the darkness. Dimly I saw the rider, gray-cloaked and gray-mounted, pass by, with his followers streaming behind him and the moon striking sparks of silver from their fittings and their horns. They came, and passed like thunder, and dwindled into silence, and I was alone with the moon, and the mist, and the coming dawn.
Or not quite alone. Out of the mist before me came the sound of footsteps, moving steadily over the turf toward me. Through the brightening mist a gray-cloaked figure was approaching, with the white shape of a hound trotting at his side. I stood up slowly, my back to the stone, to meet what was coming to me, my throat dry with more than the rigors of the night. My movement caught the dog’s attention, and he started in my direction. I could almost see the Huntsman’s face…
Then I was sitting at the foot of the standing stone, blinking up through the first light of morning at a puzzled shepherd who stood staring down at me while his dog licked my nose. “Man,” he said, “do you not know you can catch your death, sittin’ out like this o’night, in the fog and all?”
I grinned, and forced myself stiffly to my feet, feeling as if I had been beaten. Blows or wounds, or a wonder, was it? I had had full measure. “Never mind,” I said, “it was a good dawn, and I seem to have survived it. Do you help me find my friend, who I think is still sleeping soundly in your hut, and set us on our road, and I will bless you thrice over.”
With the mist thinning fast before the rising sun, it took little enough time for him to do so, and before long Ieuan and I were dropping down over the shoulder of a hill to the village where we should have spent the night. We got a warm welcome there, and warmer sympathy from the shepherd’s wife, who took us in and fed us. And of all the wonders I had seen that morning, the hot oat-cakes she baked for us on the hearth-stone were the most wonderful of all!
Afterwards as we walked I looked back often and often over my left shoulder at the slopes of Mynydd Preseli, as smooth and blue and serene as they had been the day before. They do say that stones from that peak were dragged by the men of old to Salisbury Plain, to build the Giant’s Dance. Dragged, or it might be, floated there by magic…
But that, O my children, is a story for another day.
Chapter 5 - Gold
GOLD. It is a word that catches everyone’s attention, is it not? Certainly it caught mine that morning at Aberteifi, near the end of the feast which Ieuan and I had hastened so hard to attend, and which had proved so unprofitable to us after all.
Not because the lord of Aberteifi had been niggardly in his rewards, mind you, but because of Ieuan’s weakness for gaming. I woke on the last morning of the feast to find myself a beggar, who had been feeling rich enough the night before. And all because Ieuan—who had been holding my purse while I performed, and kept it while I slept—was unable to resist the lure of a game of dice. It was no comfort that he had beggared himself along with me. All I had left was the clothes I stood up in, and my red-enameled brooch from Caer Dydd. It was little enough profit for two months’ wandering.
So there I was, rather disconsolately eating bread and cheese in the lord’s hall, while Ieuan babbled on beside me, trying to excuse himself, when the word gold caught my attention. “What is that you say?” I asked. “Gold? We could certainly use some!”
“Have not I been telling you, then?” Ieuan sounded sullen, for which, in my opinion, there was no excuse. “It is a place where the old Romans used to mine, up in the hills to the east of here somewhere. Caradog knows where, he told me about it last night. He will let us go in with him for shares.”
“Was that before or after he won all our money at dice?” I asked sourly.
Ieuan brushed it off. “Never mind that, that was nothing. This is our big chance. It will make our fortunes for sure.”
“Something had better.” I crammed the last of the bread in my mouth and stood up, wiping my hands on my tunic. “Right then, let us go and talk to Caradog.”
Caradog turned out to be a foxy-looking fellow with a thin beard and a lot of pointed yellow teeth, which he ex-posed frequently in what was supposed to be a smile. I took an instant dislike to him which further acquaintance did nothing to amend, but beggars, as they say, cannot be choosers, and it was beggared that we were now. After a certain amount of secretive behavior, casting suspicious glances at all about us in a manner calculated, I would have thought, to arouse curiosity where none existed, he was persuaded to part with the details of his plan—or should I say, his generous offer?
We would all contribute equally, he said, to the venture. His contribution would be the specialized knowledge necessary to find the gold and recover it, using techniques he had learnt while mining tin in Dumnonia. Ours would be enough money or other valuables to feed us all for a month. We would all do equal amounts of the work, and share out the proceeds equally among us.
At this point I interrupted him to point out the obvious. “We have not got any money or other valuables. You won them all from Ieuan here last night.” With that I cast a look at Ieuan that should have withered him where he sat, but he remained defiantly unwithered. His mind was on gold.
“Ah!” said Caradog, scratching his scraggly beard. “Well, and it is because of that, see you, that I am for giving you this chance. Do you not worry about your stake, I will loan it to you, and you can pay me back out of your share of the gold.”
“Thereby wiping out all of our profits. I do not see the point.”
“Gwernin!” said Ieuan in distress, and at the same time Caradog said, “Na, na! Nowhere near that. I tell you, as rich as this thing is, you will get back ten times your stake, and that easy.”
“If it is a good as that,” I said, kicking Ieuan under the table before he could interrupt again, “why should you want to share it with us?”
“Ah!” said Caradog again, and paused, looking around suspiciously. No one, so far as I could see, was paying us any attention; they were all going about their morning business in the hall. Nevertheless, Caradog bent forward and continued in a hoarse whisper. “It is that I need someone I can trust, see you, and I like the look of you two. But if you do not fancy it, youngster, why, just you say so, and no hard feelings. There are plenty more would jump at the chance.”
“Gwernin!” said Ieuan in smothered anguish. I sighed and kicked him again. “All right,” I said. “We will join you. Why not?”
“Ah!” said Caradog. “You will not regret this, lad.” Reaching for a pitcher of left-over breakfast ale, he filled our cups and raised his in a toast. “To success!” Ieuan drank eagerly, and I reluctantly. I would have been happier if I could have been sure to whose success I was drinking.
Shortly after that the feasting party broke up, and we shouldered our severely lightened packs and started off with Caradog. The Romans, as he explained while we walked, when they first came into Britain, had cast about for the source of British gold, in order to take it over and mine it themselves for their own treasury. Some of it they had found in the North, and some in Gwynedd and Meirionydd, but the best gold mine in all of Britain, it seemed, had proved to be right here in the mountains of Ceredigion, at Dolaucothi.
The Romans, said Caradog, had conquered the Silures of south Wales just to get Dolaucothi, and once they got it, had set themselves up in business there with all their slaves and overseers and so forth, with a little fort stuffed full of soldiers as well, just to protect the mine. They had kept on mining for years and years, and then for some reason the soldiers had to leave—it might have been when Macsen Wledig marched on Rome. And then all the overseers and slaves and such had felt uneasy, and left as well, and never came back, leaving a great heap of ore behind them, rich as rich, and all ready to process, which nobody but himself knew anything about… That, at any rate, was Caradog’s story, or at least the gist of it. I found myself talking like him sometimes, after a while. It was catching.
So off we went, as I said, to Dolaucothi, and gods! If I thought I had seen hard marching before, I knew nothing about it! Two days up the Afon Teifi, falling in and out of swamps and fords and thickets, until even I was sick of the sight of alder, which is saying a lot! (For Gwernin, O my children, means Alder-Tree, as you should know.) Then east, on stretches of road that were sometimes straight enough to suggest the Romans’ handiwork, but naked of any suggestion of paving. These led us for three more days over what seemed the backbone of the world, seeing few people, living on cheese and stale oat cakes and cold spring water, and sleeping rough. I wondered more than once why Caradog had not recruited his workforce closer to the mine, but something held me back from asking. By the time we came dropping down into the valley of the little Afon Cothi on the evening of the fifth day, I was ready for a rest. I did not get it.
Under Caradog’s direction, we took up residence in the ruins of one of the Romans’ old buildings—a stable, I think it may have been—and started to work. Our first task was cleaning out the remains of one of the old aqueducts in order to get a trickle of water down to the mine. Then there were the water tanks to clean out and repair, and a sort of bedrock trench to muck out as well, with only the three of us to shift two hundred years’ accumulation of sand and silt and mud. I say three, but I noticed after a while that when the hardest work was being done, Caradog was nowhere around. He was always off organizing more materials, or down buying our food at the inn which had sprouted up like a gray stone mushroom in the ruins of the old fortress buildings, or up the hill checking the ditch for leaks or blockages—anywhere but on the end of a shovel.
Ieuan and I stuck it out, though, with hardly a grumble. We had the gold fever bad by then. Our clothes went to rags, and our hands to blisters and broken nails and calluses, until we looked like a couple of wild hairy savages from the back of the north wind, rather than two civilized strolling entertainers, but we made nothing of it. We were going to be rich.
The big day arrived when we were ready to run the sluice—that was the bedrock trench, you understand. After mucking it out, we had refilled it with load after weary load of broken ore from the Romans’ stockpile. Then we opened the gate to the tanks, and let all our hoarded water out in a rush. It plunged down the sluice in fine style, washing away all the lighter rock and leaving behind—we hoped!—the gold. At least, that was the theory.
It was not quite so neat in practice, partly because we did not have as much water as we would have liked. Still, it reduced the material in the bottom of the trench considerably. The next step, said Caradog enthusiastically, was hand-cobbing. This, I found, meant hand-sorting all the bigger rocks and pebbles out of the trench into buckets, and carting them away, leaving us finally with a few dozen bucket-loads of sandy mud in the bottom of the trench, which Caradog assured us contained the gold. This precious material we carried to the nearest water tank, where it had to be washed—by hand!—in flat wooden platters until only the gold was left, a back-breaking task in the hot afternoon sun. Of course, we had only two platters, but it did not matter, because Caradog disappeared again before we were through—I suspect to the inn.
That afternoon, though, I finally saw some gold. Only a couple of tiny flakes at the bottom of my first pan, but I told myself there would be more in the next one, or the next one after that. Sometimes there was, a whole clump of little gold spangles, or maybe a angular little golden blob. Sometimes there was nothing at all. Still, by the time the shadows of the mountains to the west came creeping over us and made it too dark to work, we each had a palm-full of gold dust for our trouble, with maybe three quarters of our clean-up still to go. Caradog, strolling back from the inn in the twilight, seemed discretely pleased. Tomorrow, he said, carefully scooping our gold into a little deerskin bag, would be even better.
And it was. We worked from when the sun first peeked over the ridge in the east, until the western mountains swallowed it up again. And what work it was! I could see why the Romans had used slaves. It was hard to imagine anyone in his right mind working that hard for a few flakes of metal. But then, we were mad—gold-mad!—not to mention beggared. We really had no choice. Or so I told myself, as the gold slowly—how slowly!—piled up.
One more day, said Caradog, scooping up our harvest that evening, and that would be the best day yet. Then we could go our separate ways, with a fat poke for each of us as reward for our month’s work. New clothes, horses to make our traveling easier—and for me, I thought secretly, a harp, and a chance of finally becoming a real bard. Though looking at my laborer’s hands, I knew it would be a while before I could start learning to play it.
The last day’s clean-up, scraped from the very bottom of the trench, surpassed all expectations. As the weary hours passed and the gold mounted up, I began to believe it was all true. Caradog was the best of good fellows, a worthy bearer of his noble name, and Ieuan’s passion for gambling became in retrospect a virtue. When Caradog poured all our gold together that evening into one of the wooden trays, and divided it into three carefully equal piles before transferring it to more of his deerskin bags, I felt an excitement that I had previously found only in performance. Tired as I was, I doubted I would be able to sleep that night.
“Well, lads,” said Caradog, hefting our spoils, “we have done ourselves proud! Let us drink now to our good fortune!” And with that he bent and hauled out from under his bench an actual skin of wine, real wine such as princes and nobles drank. “Brought up here special for us,” he said, breaking the wax on the end with his knife and twisting out the leather-wrapped stopper. “Nothing is too good for us now, lads. Drink up!” And he filled our wooden cups to the brim with the pungent blood-red stuff.
I choked on the first swallow, but the rest went down easier, and the next cup easier still. A sovereign remedy, I thought—my eyes crossing slightly—against all discomfort. Under its influence all my aches and pains melted away, until I had never felt so good in my life. Or, suddenly, so sleepy. I felt I could sleep for a week. But overnight, as it turned out, was long enough.