by Jean Gill
It was true. She’d been trapped in his blind-man’s arms, condemned to be the next to wear the blindfold, when Halfpenny had called the game to a halt.
She was indignant. ‘Only because you cheated! You said you’d hurt yourself and I believed you!’
‘I was very convincing, wasn’t I.’ He grinned and limped a little, rubbing his poor thigh, then pulled her close, whispered, ‘I should have let the sport continue. I swear these Welshwomen are well-practised in tormenting a blind man.’
Estela was well aware of the liberties taken by courtiers of both sexes in touching and prodding their blindfolded victim. Old scores could be settled and new amours proposed, all in the guise of Christmas fun. Dragonetz could well have been really hurt from some of the buffets given him by husbands who resented their wives’ squeals at being nearly caught. It was all part of the game.
‘Sh,’ she told him, but she stayed in the circle of his arms.
Rhys was speaking, accepting the role he’d been given by Halfpenny. ‘Let it be as the Lord of the Season wills! We’ll all gather in the Great Hall this evening for a grand tournament, with prizes for the best musician, the best singer and the best bard!’
‘So, this is when we are allowed to sing in public,’ observed Estela with satisfaction.
‘Yes,’ he said, tightening his embrace. ‘What shall we sing?’
SO IT WAS THAT ESTELA held Rhys to his promise and sang for the Lords of Deheubarth, despite being a woman. Wyn introduced each song with a summary in Welsh but music has its own language and the court of Dinefwr was well-versed.
Estela began with an aubade, the dawnsong written by Dragonetz, easy for the audience to understand and with a hook to the melody that lingered in the memory.
She sang for the composer, her lover, who accompanied her on his lute and hummed a soft background. As if in preparation for part-singing, she thought, as she drew out the moment of parting to the last mournful note.
‘My sweet, my own, what shall we do?
Day is nigh and night is over.
We must be parted, my self missing
All the day away from you.’
She was experienced enough as a troubadour to know the moment her audience forgot their conversations and cares, the moment when they were carried away on the stream of music. The moment of silence when she finished the aubade told her they were with her, and she felt confident enough to let Wyn introduce her second song.
‘A new song, written for a Welshwoman of exceptional passion and the fair Prince of Deheubarth who inspired her.
Estela inclined her head to acknowledge Rhys and waited till the murmuring subsided. No doubt all were now familiar with the tale behind the song. Maybe if she sang well enough, the echo would reach Mair one day, let her know that all women could be heroines, were the heroines of the songs that they lived each day.
She sang the closing verse, in tribute and in mourning.
‘Red drops he spilled
For the land of his fathers
Red drops she spilled
For the man she would keep.’
Estela moved to the empty place at the High Table, laid out as a reminder of the poor, so that symbolic food could be placed there and show gratitude for the bounty enjoyed. The more visible poor massed in front of the castle gate each morning and were well-rewarded. If the courtiers ate well, their left-overs were rich pickings and Christmas-tide was a feast shared.
Estela picked up the goblet at the empty place, held it high, paused deliberately and sang the closing couplet.
Drain the red drops from the chalice of life
Without thought for those staining the blade of a knife.
She placed the cup upside down, for the absent friend. The Hall was still. Nobody was sure how to react. Rhys’ face was grim. He stood up and Estela’s heart beat fast. She could not have written or performed better but she did not know how the golden prince would respond.
He threw his arms wide. ‘Wonderful,’ he told the Hall. ‘You brought the symbolism of our Lord’s life to a story of one man and one woman, made it universal. No Welsh bard could have done better.’
For a moment, she waited for him to say more, thinking he might ask whether Dragonetz had written the lyrics but she chid herself for seeing insult when none was even contemplated.
For Mair, for the bara lafwr, for the work we shared, thought Estela as she took the applause and curtseyed. Was that hiraeth she felt? For Llansteffan and for Gwalia itself? A rush of affection for these people and their place. Home, she thought. Soon we’ll go home. Before we forget where home is.
She returned to Dragonetz, took the stool beside him and picked up her oud.
‘Bravo,’ he said, ‘Nicely done.’ The praise that mattered most to her.
She looked to Dragonetz and he nodded. She took a stool beside him, picked up her oud and it was his turn to start the duet that had become their hallmark.
‘Can vei la lauzeta mover
de joi sas alas contra.l rai.’
‘When I see the lark beat its wings
With such joy against the sunbeam.’
The song was known, even here, and Estela saw some smiles of appreciation at the twist they gave to the well-known lines. Such a song could be interpreted differently each time.
Changing their usual allocation of lines, Estela claimed the ending, made an ironic bow to Rhys as she sang
‘De chanter me gic e.m recre,
E de joi e d’amor m’escon.’
‘From singing I will refrain
As I shun all joy, all love, all.’
There followed instrumentalists and singers, poets and declaimers. Estela bet on a fiddler to win, Dragonetz on a flautist until a harper thin as his strings placed the instrument to his left shoulder and plucked the strings. The faerie music rippled through the air and the small hairs on Estela’s arm shivered to attention.
‘The harper,’ they agreed in unison as the last beautiful notes faded. Never had they heard a harp played with such a combination of technique and art. With an instrument so difficult too! Truly, this was the land of music.
Of the singers, they could be more critical, but there were two whose phrasing impressed them, a red-haired foxy-faced youth and a rotund baritone who drew on his deep voice with ease. The others struck them as melodramatic, especially a stocky, bearded tenor – who won.
For the Welsh, the most important performers were the bards. Not only were they melodramatic but their poetry was beyond the level of the troubadours’ Welsh although they understood some phrases and could appreciate the music of the verses.
Some bards recited the old poets, Taliesin and Aneurin. Some recited their own compositions, spinning magic tales of ravens and thick-maned horses, sons who did not flee, fair Enid and lying mirrors. Truly, the reputation of Welsh bards was well-deserved.
‘Don’t get your hopes up,’ Dragonetz whispered. ‘The prizes will go to the Welshman with the deep voice, who told of the king who does not cower and does not hoard. He deserves them too.’
‘And I was so looking forward to a longbow and arrows.’ Estela remembered other tourneys, other prizes and she felt the runes on her Viking brooch.
John Halfpenny stood up, jangled the bells on his fool’s staff and announced, ‘Let the prize-giving begin! I award the special prize for music that nobody here understands to...’ He gestured to the drummer and was given a drum roll for suspense.
‘...to Dragonetz los Pros!’
Polite applause changed to laughter as people realized exactly what was being presented to the foreign guest by the Lord of Misrule.
‘May your next haircut be truly Welsh!’ declared Halfpenny, presenting Dragonetz with a pudding basin. The knight had no option but to bow low and accept the honour.
Then Rhys took over the ceremony, presenting rather more valuable rewards. A Pembroke herding dog was presented to the bearded tenor.
‘I’d have liked his prize,’ murmured Estela wistful
ly, wondering how Nici would have liked a short-legged friend.
There was a jeweled belt for the harper; and a Book of Hours for the grey-cloaked bard. Then, Rhys asked the bard, Ivor, to sit in the carved oak chair he himself had just vacated. He placed a laurel wreath on the Bard’s head, proclaimed Ivor victor of the games. Rhys gave the tournament winner food and drink, with his own hands and instated Ivor as a counterpart of the light to Halfpenny’s dark misrule. There were four days left until Twelfth Night. Until Halfpenny’s reign was ended and they would be allowed to go home.
‘No,’ said Dragonetz that night in bed.
‘I never asked for anything,’ replied Estela.
‘You can’t take a Pembroke puppy home with you. Their legs are too short.’
Estela made no reply. But she had indeed thought about it.
Chapter 25
Dragonetz had learned all he could from the Plygain singers and, with so little time left in this country, he thought of all he had discovered that would be useful to Aliénor. Had he missed anything important? Something nagged at him, made the frenzy of eating, drinking and games seem an irritation.
The snow had melted as quickly as it had come and the roads were all passable. Dragonetz had once asked the Lords what changes they made to their plans if rain fell.
They’d looked at him bemused. ‘None,’ they told him. ‘Or we’d never do anything. If it rains, we get wet.’
He looked at the rain and decided he’d get wet. He needed to get away, ride out on his own. He suddenly felt cooped up, after months of being watched, fitting into strangers’ ways. He needed to be alone.
He asked no permission as his place was assured now within the Welsh court, after so long riding with Rhys and Maredudd. He had a pony saddled, barely thinking of the difference between the sturdy mare and his own Sadeek, so accustomed had he become to what was normal here.
Instinct made him head towards the village of Caio and as he rode, letting his mind wander freely, enjoying the absence of chit-chat, he suddenly remembered what he wanted to discover. Why had Rhys been touchy when Maredudd talked of the mines? That was the mystery which had been nagging him.
Dragonetz had been curious, had asked Halfpenny what sort of mines they were. The thought of a silver mine had brightened Halfpenny’s eyes but nobody thought it likely. Dragonetz even asked Wyn but the answer had been slippery as the man himself.
‘There has been no mining there for hundreds of years,’ Wyn told him. ‘Nobody there but ghosts to say what happened. Best forget the place.’
And Dragonetz had forgotten the place. Until now. He had some idea of the location, which was not far, and he set a relaxed pace through the woods. Hoofbeats, heartbeats, and the rain a light percussion in the background. Creatures with any sense hid or sheltered in their winter dens. Some trees bowed as he passed, their branches sweeping low; others opened their leafy fists in the breeze and showered him. No wonder the Welsh stories were full of mysterious woods.
His long leather jerkin, boots and gloves kept the moisture out well and he was glad he’d acquired a Welsh-style leather hood too, that laced up at his throat and covered his shoulders like a small cape. Only when the wind lashed a wicked branch did the chill rain, flung aslant, slice his face.
Accustomed to the climate, his mare picked her route steadily, her ears flicking to show she noticed the sudden movements in the wind, but she neither skittered nor mis-stepped. Instead, it was Dragonetz who jumped when a five-headed giant loomed out of the mist, in the few seconds before he recognized the standing stone by the mine. What had Maredudd called it? The ‘Pumpsaint’, ‘Five Saints.’
Dragonetz could see the four faces in the rock now, the four saints who’d found shelter while the fifth joined King Arthur, who was asleep in the cave, waiting on his country’s need. Would the hero of legend take Henri’s side? From all he’d heard, Dragonetz suspected that the future king of England would rather be a legendary hero himself than be helped by one.
The mist hung heavy over the River Cothi – dragon’s breath again, thought Dragonetz, protecting Arthur and his cave. Dragonetz retraced the route they’d taken when he rode here with the brothers, until he found the red rock, the one that had looked man-made. In the silver shimmer of rain, it was man-like, shifting and restless like its surroundings. A place where rocks had names.
Silver, thought Dragonetz again. Maybe it was a silver mine after all, although surely John Halfpenny would have known if there were one in this region. The mere mention of the word ‘silver’ made the moneyer’s eyes shine as if made of his favourite metal. If not silver, then what? And why would the brothers not want to discuss what the ancients had been doing here? Were they just afraid of the ghosts? The ones who roamed, like Gweno, coming out of her stone and driving men insane; or the ones who lay with King Arthur, biding their time.
Dragonetz tied his mount to a tree and set off upstream, studying the ground, where the rain had channeled rivulets, washing gravel aside and exposing the bedrock. He looked closely at the rock, shining wet. Shining in the smooth way that water does on a dull day, not glittering with silver. A foolish thought.
He walked across the hillside, drawn to a shape that looked odd in the tufted grass, and he found an old stone slab, like those covering antique drains in Zaragoza. The slope would certainly carry water away towards the river but a drain, here in the wilds?
Maybe there had been a settlement here in the past. But that did not sit easily with the fact there were mines, as Maredudd had let slip. The kind of people who had drains would not want to live by a smelly, noisy mine. Dragonetz looked over the rocks beside him, down into the river valley where the mist snaked thickly, and over to the other side where the hills rose from the mist like an island, floating. He walked down, towards the caves, the tunnels and the ghosts.
The patterns of the terrain, bumpy, with trenches, told of some form of quarrying. Gemstones? wondered Dragonetz, cursing his ignorance. The signs were all here, if only he could read them.
Maybe the river was important, as it had been to his papermaking, but there was no mill here, just water and, if the square coverstone was any sign, the movement of water. Dragonetz followed the workings in the land, towards the dark holes that led into the earth.
The rainwater lay in the trenches and trickled its way like a liquid tree in ever lengthening branches. While avoiding one such pool, Dragonetz was distracted by a small pile of gravel thrown up from the churning mud, held fast by something more solid. He crouched and saw something glinting through the gravel. Not that foolish notion again he chid himself, but he scraped the gravel aside all the same, to see what lodged beneath.
What he found took his breath away.
ESTELA WASN’T WORRIED. He’d been cooped up so long and a chance to get away on his own was just what Dragonetz needed, even in this incessant grey rain. She could escape into the kitchen, into tending the sick (when she was allowed), into writing her guide. Anything to distract her from the refrain shaking her whole being. Tomorrow we go home.
She still wasn’t worried as the light faded and she moved nearer the torchlight to read back over her description of Welsh Christmas customs.
She refused to worry when men crowded into the alcove where she was writing; when Rhys and Maredudd pushed through to her side. Dragonetz always came back. She dipped the quill in the inkwell and tried to finish her sentence.
Rhys knelt in front of her and his mouth moved. Words came from it.
Sorry. Dragonetz dead. Bloody clothes. His horse, Dragonetz, wolves.
The quill hovered over the page, mid-sentence, trembling a little. Everyone was waiting. Estela was supposed to say something, ask questions.
‘Which men found him?’ she asked politely. She nodded, hearing nothing of the answer. Bloody clothes, wolves. Just like the false trail she’d left when she’d run for her life. False trail.
‘Wolves are too scared to kill an armed man,’ she told them. She thought of Nici. H
e would never let wolves harm any of them. He was bred to protect them from wolves. He would give his life to keep them safe.
Rhys’ mouth was moving again. Then Wyn was beside him, kneeling too. The translator. Dragonetz says he always knows what’s going on. Watch his face as well as hear his words. His face was twisted. Why? Her curiosity let the words in.
‘Here, the wolves in winter are starving and will take any risk for food. There is no doubt, my Lady. We found...’ he swallowed but continued, his face twisting again, ‘the remains. Him and his horse, in the woods.’
Here. Nici was not here. Things were different here. Estela completed the sentence she had been writing and added a full stop. She put the quill in the stand.
‘I will get my medicine box,’ she said. ‘Take me to him. He might need surgery.’ She stood, testing the ground beneath her feet. It was still there but it rocked like a boat. Strange. She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, testing the ground. It steadied.
Still kneeling, Rhys took her hand. ‘My men buried him in the woods. They had no choice. There is nothing to see.’
‘Take me to him,’ Estela persisted. ‘He needs me.’
‘My Lady,’ Rhys still held her hand, ‘Lord Dragonetz no longer needs anybody or anything. I feel honoured to have known him.’ His face twisted too. ‘He was peerless.’
Was. One word that changed everything. She knew why their faces twisted. She turned her back on the men in the room, stared at the wall to hide her own loss of control. Grief. That’s what twisted faces.
She glanced down at her guide, at the last words she’d written.
Twelfth Night is a moment of joy, celebrated in Gwalia with song and wassail cup. To gain bounty from their lord, the wassailers sing carols that herald the bright year to come. They also carry the ‘grey mare’ on a stick, a horse’s skull with bead eyes, felt ears and ribbons for reins
There was a blot and then the end of the sentence.