by M. K. Hume
Spring had fled and summer had begun, but if Caradoc had hoped for sunny days and clear skies, then he discovered that Cymru had an unpredictable climate. Storms came unseasonably and split the sky with jagged lightning, lashing winds and, after the thunder had ceased to shake the straining earth, rain poured out of the heavens in huge, splattering drops.
All too often, the Dumnonii party was delayed or forced to scurry for shelter in a cave, huddled against the side of a cliff, or in the decrepit barns of local farmers. After Pennal, which had revealed nothing of any importance to their search, except the decaying hall of a drunken Ordovice chieftain, the party had been forced to turn inland again, heading towards Segontium by way of Caer Gai, a long-abandoned Roman fortress.
Caradoc occasionally flayed himself for bringing his daughter on this mare’s nest of a journey although she never complained, even when she was soaked to the skin and forced to sleep under the wagon or beneath an inadequate roof of tree branches. Her natural strength and ebullience served her well, so she sang with gusto, regardless of the weather.
The mountains rose beyond the beaches in peaks that raised their heads higher than anything the Dumnonii people had ever experienced in the south. Mists surrounded the grim valleys where narrow, swift-flowing rivers wound sinuously over pebbled beds. Here, the earth was bare and the soil was barren, so the small farms clutched at mountainsides and valleys with desperate fingers and sheep with long coats and black faces clung to the slopes with unnatural skill.
The winding track took the column along the valley floors, splashing through the shallows where fords gave them easy crossings, and weaving their way along goat tracks that had never known the tread of Roman boots. On several of the steeper inclines, Caradoc was forced to pray that the wagons would not have to be lightened, so the horses could drag them to the tops of hills. The weight and strength of the guardsmen became an essential element in their successful progress through this horrendous terrain.
Caer Gai was spectacular. The Roman fortress was little more than a ruin, having been abandoned by its garrison years earlier. A tarn of a most unusual colour, as if the moon had been captured in its depths, filled a large hollow between the hills, while the local peasants lived much as they had done for a thousand years or more. Their round flint and thatch huts clustered like limpets at the bottom of the Caer. When Caradoc tried to speak to these small, dark people, they looked at him blankly, as if they understood nothing he said.
Endellion thought Caer Gai was a wondrous place, but her fits came closer and closer together to haunt her, awake and asleep. That night, as the members of the column were drowsing in their tents on the hard earth, Endellion had another frightening dream from which she awoke screaming.
‘What’s happening?’ Caradoc panted. Woken from a sound sleep, he threw himself out of his tent with his sword in his hand to find himself surrounded by his guardsmen. They were dishevelled and half-awake, but were armed and ready for what could have been a surprise nocturnal attack.
Endellion sat on her rumpled blankets, her pupils dilated.
‘I saw . . . I saw . . .’
Caradoc pushed his way into his daughter’s small tent after ordering his guard to stand down.
‘What did you see, Endellion?’
‘I saw a woman with hair down her back like white ice. She was standing over there, beside the tarn.’ Endellion waved her hand towards the lake with a hint of panic in the gesture. ‘She was holding a huge sword . . . so big that she could barely lift it.
‘The blade was bloody in the light as she handed the sword to a man standing beside her. The sword was beautiful. It was adorned with gems and gold, Father, but I could smell the blood on it. I was glad when the warrior swung it around his head several times before casting it into the water. The blade seemed to sing as it sliced through the air. Then the man released it and the weapon sailed upwards for some distance before it fell, point first, into the depths of the lake.’
‘Could you hear their voices?’ Caradoc asked, wide-eyed, as he waited for her response.
‘I could, Father. There were names mentioned, but I didn’t recognise them.’
‘Tell me what your heard. Perhaps the names might mean something to me.’
‘I thought the woman was called Nimue. Such a strange name! And she wept for a man called Myrddion, who was dead. As for the sword, she said it was far too dangerous to fall into the hands of strangers, so they sent it to the lightless depths of the lake. Do those names mean anything to you?’
Father and daughter looked at each other, their faces blank and uncomprehending.
‘No, petal, they mean nothing to me. Perhaps, one day . . .’ Caradoc began.
‘Yes! One day,’ Endellion agreed, as another memory returned.
‘I also saw piles of bodies . . . so many, and the crows, the ravens and the shrikes were feeding on them. They were Britons, Father! Thousands of them.’
Caradoc stroked her head, thrusting down his alarm at the sudden return of her fits.
‘Why are these dreams coming to me, Father? What have I done that I should see these things? They make no sense! Is God trying to punish me?’
‘No, darling girl,’ Caradoc soothed. ‘I don’t know why you’ve been chosen, but your mother had the Sight and I’ve no doubt that she passed it on to you. I’m more worried that the guardsmen might talk among themselves about what they’ve seen, and then pass their gossip on to others. There are so many people in this world who fear what they can’t understand.’
Endellion curled up on her blanket and turned her face away from her father. Caradoc felt more impotent than he had ever been in his life. He loved his daughter with an old man’s last passion, so he suffered from every blow that struck at her and he wished with every bone in his body that he could cleanse her mother’s poisoned birth-gifts from her blood.
But if wishes were horses, then beggars would ride.
The camp gradually settled back into a semblance of peace and quiet, but Endellion remained awake. She could hear the sounds of men sleeping around her by their snores and the small noises from restless bodies. A small slice of her leather tent remained open, so she could see a tiny triangle of white stars from her travelling pallet.
With little effort, the faces of strangers came to her. Three in particular remained in her memory. The woman with white hair; a thin ascetic scholar of a man with long black hair streaked with a swathe of silver on his right temple; and another woman with blonde curls and cruel eyes. All three came into her tent to gaze at her, smile and then turn into smoke. Endellion bit her lip in awed terror.
Like the little boy who called wolf, she was fearful of screaming and waking the whole camp. She had no intention of allowing vulgar gossip to mark her as a crazed-woman.
Dawn finally arrived. Tired and fretful, Endellion was grateful for the clean, empty light and vowed to sleep lightly in the future.
The track from Caer Gai to Segontium and Caernarfon was the least-navigable of all the roads traversed during their journey. Caradoc frequently cursed Maximus who had laid this pointless task upon a friend. Was Tintagel suffering in his absence? Disastrously, Endellion’s mental fits had returned during their passage through this strange, wild country that was still a stronghold of Celtic magic. Disconsolate and miserable, Caradoc blamed himself for the length of their journey and its failure to achieve anything important.
With the exception of her night horrors, Endellion’s health had flourished from her exposure to sunshine and fresh air. Pale freckles criss-crossed her nose and lent additional charm to her features, while the rays of the noontide sun had kissed her shoulders and cheekbones with the sheen of warm gold. She had become thinner with exercise and her emergent womanhood, but her budding breasts, narrow waist and long legs gave her strength and athleticism. Her beauty had grown, but she was earthier and warmer no
w than the elfin creature that had left Tintagel a season earlier.
The northern path taking them through the landscape was so wild and empty that an occasional shepherd’s hut was the only sign of human habitation. The path ran beside narrow streams that became fast-running torrents in minutes after short bursts of heavy rain. In the waters, leaves and flowers that Endellion had dropped were quickly carried away, while every step taken by their horses must be carefully chosen in case a traitorous stone should tilt under their weight. Any slip could break bones or kill. Above the column, a series of peaks were crowned with melting snow and grey with thunderheads.
Caradoc craned his neck to look up at the terrifying mountains and hungered for his own wild shores. The winds that howled, the peaks that beetled over them and the dislodged boulders that rattled and roared down the mountain slopes threatened to put their foolish journey into perspective. The earth of Cymru had no love for the temerity of ant-like humans who tried to exist on its flanks. As his cynical nature won over his excitement at seeing Maximus again, Caradoc wondered at how easily he had been dragged into another man’s dreams. Cadal had been right. Why had he brought Endellion into this alien landscape? Caradoc had planned this journey as a jaunt for his personal pleasure, but the gods of Cymru had decided to remind him how ineffective he really was.
The track branched into two on the banks of a widening river that cascaded from the tallest mountain, gaining volume and strength as it tumbled into the north and travelled onwards to the distant sea. When the party finally came across a shepherd’s hut that showed evidence of recent habitation, Trefor hunted out a laconic herder who told Caradoc that the left-hand path would lead them to Segontium, so the Dumnonii party headed along its rutted surface.
Eventually, the track reached the sea and then turned in a southerly direction along a wild coast where an island brooded across a grey and dreary strait. Something about this body of water made Endellion feel sick and dizzy, so she turned her face away from the sea towards a hill and a widening road that led to a Roman fortress. The road ran as straight as a sword blade and she noted that the palisade on the crest of the hill was the conventional four-sided, walled compound aligned in the direction of the rising and setting sun.
‘We’ll stop here for a short while, Endellion. I don’t suppose that this Roman fortress is our castell, but the commander may know where the local chieftain makes his home. Wait here with the wagons, and I’ll return shortly.’
Caradoc thrust both heels into the ribs of his stallion and trotted along the road leading up to the fortress. Trefor and Rowen rode off after him, while Huw stayed behind to supervise the guardsmen and the wagons.
As if by magic, several children appeared from a small group of peasant’s houses on the far side of the road.
Endellion waved at two of the smaller boys who were watching her with serious eyes. Surprisingly, the smallest one waved back after a short pause for reflection.
Despite Huw’s protests, Endellion dismounted and walked towards the peasant children.
‘You’re pretty!’ the older boy said with a slow, nervous smile. The younger boy wordlessly nodded his agreement.
‘Good morning, boys. What are your names?’
The two boys looked at each other for confirmation and, although no words were exchanged, some kind of communication seemed to have taken place.
‘I be Merfyn and he be Dalias,’ the older boy said carefully, so Endellion curtsied as if they were important men. Both urchins flushed under the grins on their faces.
‘Do you know where the local chieftain lives, boys?’ Endellion asked.
‘Yes!’ the eldest boy replied with a little hiss. ‘But we don’t goes there. No one goes there but the high ones.’
‘The high ones? Do you mean men and women like my father and me?’
‘Yairs!’ said the smallest boy, while staring defiantly at his brother. ‘Pretty ladies be there!’
‘How do we get there, boys?’ Endellion asked, her right palm itching when the older boy cuffed his brother for his presumption in speaking out of turn. She knew she’d get nowhere if she frightened or angered either of them.
The youngest boy stared at his brother malevolently and then pointed down the muddy track that led along the southern coast.
‘Thank you, boys,’ Endellion responded with a smile. ‘You’ve both been very helpful.’
Hurrying to the wagon, she found the wooden box in which the last four shells nestled forlornly. Because of the debacle at Aquae Sulis, the insults that had wounded Endellion and the strained relationship with the magistrate’s family, no further gifts had been given out, by Caradoc’s express orders. With a silent prayer that her father would forgive her, she took the two smallest ones and hurried back to the boys.
‘I want to thank you for your help, boys. You’ve been very nice to me, so I’ve selected two gifts for you. These baubles are very special. The shells come from a faraway place where the sea is wild and strong. I am Princess Endellion, and I live in that place.’ She placed a shell, wrapped in a small square of silk, into each boy’s dirty hand. Their eyes became saucer-wide and they would have given the gifts back, but Endellion waved their protests away.
‘Hush! You’ll make me cross if you refuse my gifts. You must run back to your mother and give her these valuable gifts for safe-keeping. You mustn’t tell anyone else but her, because they could be stolen from you. Run home now, because my father is coming. Run!’ The two boys scattered like startled rabbits, but Endellion still heard the last of their wondering chatter.
‘She be a fairy! She must be,’ Dalias shouted at his brother, who threw a quick glance back over his shoulder.
‘Nah! She be a princess,’ Merfyn retorted, as they disappeared into a field of long grass that was taller than they were. Only their voices marked their movements as they continued to squabble their way across the fallow land.
The boys had no sooner disappeared than Caradoc, Trefor and Rowen appeared and pulled their horses to an ostentatious halt. Caradoc tried to spring from the saddle, but he only succeeded in making an awkward dismount.
‘Damn my hips! Old age is a bugger,’ he snarled, before adding, ‘Sorry, Endellion! I sometimes forget that you’re here.’
She pointed down the track in the direction the boys had indicated. ‘I believe that’s the way to the fortress,’ she said knowingly. Am I correct?’
‘Aye! The officer in charge of the garrison wasn’t particularly forthcoming, even when I invoked the name of Maximus, but he grudgingly informed me that the British fortress is further down the southern coast. He assured me that it’s about half an hour from here by horse.’
He flashed a quick smile at Endellion. ‘I’m rather partial to thoughts of sleeping at the castell if we can reach it by nightfall. But perhaps you’d prefer to rest here for the night. We could then arrive at the castell in the morning, after we’ve enjoyed a good night’s rest.’
Endellion guessed that his swollen joints must be hurting a great deal.
‘Two young boys were kind enough give me directions to the fortress. I’d suggest that we ride on now, Father, so you can rest in a real bed for the night, if the lord of the castell offers us some hospitality. I yearn to sleep on a real pallet, with proper wool-filled pillows.’
Endellion felt guilty that she was pressing him onward when he was in pain, but she had been worried about Caradoc’s health for some time. Her father needed rest and she would ensure that he would get it at the castell. If the local chieftain was so unobliging as to send them on their way, then he would learn that the daughter of this king would not be gainsaid.
While she prattled, Endellion watched her father covertly. The old man was still wincing after his awkward leap from the saddle, but he was far more cheerful since learning that they were within easy riding distance of the elusive fortress.
‘Why was the Roman officer so uncooperative?’ Endellion was curious because, in her experience, Romans had always been polite to her father, not only because of his rank, but because of his evident gravitas, a quality Romans admired.
‘I can understand his bad temper. Every available Roman soldier has been sent into the north to fight the Picts and the Hibernians, but he’s been left here in command of a skeleton force. He feels resentful about the orders he’s been given, but someone must be delegated to protect the Roman fort during the absence of the legions.’
‘If I were a Hibernian raider, I would strike here,’ Endellion mused as she glanced to her right where the grey straits linked the island of Mona to the mainland.
‘Then it’s a lucky thing that you’re Endellion and not a raider, isn’t it? Don’t you like Segontium, petal? You keep staring at that island like it’s going to bite you. It’s only earth, sand and salt water, regardless of its foul history. The local population still despise the Romans because of their actions long ago when they slaughtered the druids.’
‘That explains why I can smell blood in the air,’ Endellion replied, as she firmly closed her mouth and refused to say another word. Caradoc was grateful for her restraint.
The column rode into the afternoon, jaunty despite the palpable measure of gloom that rose out of the straits like a very old curse. Caradoc passed the time away by telling Endellion the history of Mona Island and the murders of the druids who had sought refuge there.
The sun in this northern tip of Cymru sank slowly into the evening sky with a bloody cast that overcame any beauty in the day. Endellion refused to acknowledge the thoughts and images that tumbled into her head and was determined that she would enjoy this last part of their long journey. They would soon reach Deva and then, after a short visit, they would head for home. Caradoc had drawn a map in the dirt the night before, so she had seen by the light from the fire how a road ran from Deva to southern Britannia in an almost straight line. With a brisk effort on the part of the cavalcade, a journey that had taken many months to reach Deva along the coastal route would only require a few weeks of relatively comfortable travel for the column’s return to Tintagel. Endellion yearned for home, but Caradoc had assured her that if they were unsuccessful in their current search at Segontium, there was only one more location that could satisfy the strange and elusive task that Maximus had asked of them. Only Canovium remained, if this Ordovice fort was not the object of Maximus’s search.