by Paul Lewis
Then she sat at the bench, elbows resting on the table, waiting in silence for Dodinal to finish. Was this how they spent their days when the weather was too bad to be outdoors? Sitting around, saying and doing nothing? Time must stretch on forever.
As he ate, the knight became aware that the boy, sitting cross-legged by the fire, was studying him intently. Dodinal met his eyes.
“Hello.”
He had not expected a response, and did not get one.
“We had a close call.” Dodinal kept his tone light and friendly, though he could do nothing about the rasp of his voice. He felt he should at least make an effort. “Just as well your people came along when they did, eh?”
Again, he might just as well have been talking to himself.
“Does his silence bother you?” Rhiannon asked, as if the child was deaf as well as dumb. Dodinal considered this possibility, then dismissed it when he recalled Owain hearing the wolves in the wood before he had. Or perhaps there had been another sense at work, one that Dodinal was familiar with. Intriguing.
“Not at all. But I should imagine he will get very bored very quickly, sitting there like that.”
“I won’t let him stay here long. I don’t think he believed you had made such a good recovery. Now he’s seen it with his own eyes, he can go back to his grandfather in the Great Hall. There are other children there. He will be better off with them than here, even if…”
She did not finish the sentence; there was no need. Dodinal could guess what the other children thought of the boy. It must be hard on him, he thought, feeling an unexpected flicker of pity as he remembered his own troubled childhood. Twice now, these strangers had invoked emotions he thought he was no longer capable of feeling.
Dodinal ate the meat and bread, but only picked at the rest of it. Berries and nuts were for birds and squirrels. He craved a platter of hot roast beef, bloody in the middle, dripping with fat, with bread to mop up the juices and a flagon of ale to slake his thirst. While he was forever restless in Camelot, constantly yearning for the wilderness, at least he had never gone hungry. He had wanted for nothing. Arthur had seen to that.
But Camelot was a long way from here and he was grateful for what he was given. Owain continued to study him while he ate, his eyes following Dodinal’s hand as it moved from the bowl to his mouth. While amused at first, he soon found it slightly disconcerting. There was plainly somethingoddabout the boy.
Rhiannon must have sensed this, for she suddenly announced she was taking Owain back to his grandfather. “Now you’ve seen for yourself your friend is on the mend, you can leave him in peace,” she told the boy as she wrapped his cloak around him and pulled on her own. “He still needs plenty of rest. Don’t worry, you’ll see him again.” She turned to Dodinal. “I’ll return soon.”
The knight picked a shard of nut from between his teeth. “Don’t feel as if you have to for my sake. Your place is with your son. You should spend your time with him, not with me.”
“I will, but later. First I want to clean the wound, perhaps apply another poultice. You look much better this morning; it’s obviously done you good. You might be up and about sooner than I thought.”
That prospect alone was worth any amount of foul-smelling muck smeared on his leg. Only a day had passed since the fever broke, and already he felt like tearing out his hair with boredom and frustration. He felt his spirits lift at the thought of moving on.
Rhiannon was likeable and caring and there was something about the son, his oddness notwithstanding, that Dodinal found strangely beguiling. Perhaps it was because they were both outsiders. But they were not a good enough reason to stay. He was not a part of their lives and had no interest in becoming one.
When Rhiannon returned she brought his clothes, folded and carried in a neat bundle in her arms, with his boots balanced on top. “All mended, as I promised,” she said as she stooped to place the pile at the end of the bed. That done, she took off her cloak and hung it up. “Not quite as good as new, but close.”
“You did this?” Dodinal said admiringly. The ripped leggings had been expertly stitched, likewise the tear in the front of his tunic where the wolf had leapt on him.
“Not me,” Rhiannon laughed. “There are women in the village who can work wonders with a needle and thread. Yes, I stitched your leg, that was straightforward enough. The rest I left to them.”
Dodinal frowned. “And my belongings?”
“You mean your sword? Don’t worry, it’s safe with Idris. I would have brought it with me, but I already had enough to carry and the ground is icy underfoot. It could have been dangerous.”
Dodinal nodded, placated for now. The sword was not just another weapon. “Very well. And my shield and pack?”
“I have not seen them and they have not been mentioned. You must have dropped them before Idris found you.”
“Damn,” he said softly. The shield he could live without, but losing the pack was a blow. It had contained the last of his store of dried meat, a hand axe to cut wood for shelter, some knives, and a flint and steel together with kindling to make fire, along with other oddments that had been of use. Without it, surviving the weather and wilderness would be an even greater struggle.
“I’m sorry,” Rhiannon said. “But there’s no chance of finding them, not now. The snow will have covered them and the tracks the men made bringing you here.” She hesitated. “For a wandering wild man, your clothes are well made.”
Her raised eyebrows asked a silent question that Dodinal did not answer. “You should turn around while I dress,” he said instead.
She crossed her arms and tilted her head to one side. “You can wait until after I’ve left, or better yet, when you have fully recovered. Now keep still while I see how that leg is coming along.”
Dodinal did as he was told. This time he felt no embarrassment as she uncovered the stitches and prodded the flesh around the wound. There was very little pain. “Very good,” she said. “I don’t see the need for another poultice. The swelling has almost entirely gone.” Her voice turned serious. “Do you always heal this quickly?”
“Hard to say. I have never been mauled by a wolf before.”
She ignored his attempt at levity. “There is something strange about you, Dodinal. You’re not like any man I know.”
“In what sense?”
“In every sense.”
When Dodinal made no reply, she did not question him further. Instead she busied herself retying the cloth, brought him a beaker of water and made sure there was enough wood on the fire. “I’ll leave you to rest. Sleep if you can. The shadows under your eyes tell me you are not yet fully recovered.”
He felt a sudden need to talk. “Stay a while.”
“That isn’t possible,” she said, with no hint of apology. “It was different when you were sick. Now you are awake, it wouldn’t be right for me to be here alone with you.”
So that was it. “Fair enough. The questions can wait.”
“I will bring food later. Owain wants to see you again.”
As she reached for her cloak Dodinal impulsively asked, “Where is the boy’s father?”
The question stopped her in her tracks. In the charged moment of silence that followed, Dodinal regretted blurting it out; he hadn’t wanted to cause offence. To his relief she smiled, a small, sad smile. “He died four years ago, when Owain was little.”
“I’m sorry.” It was the best he could manage.
“He was taken sick,” Rhiannon continued unprompted, looking at Dodinal with eyes that saw only the past. “It was nothing at first: he complained of feeling tired, and we thought nothing of it. Then he lost his appetite. If you knew Elwyn like I did, you would have known then that something was wrong.”
She sat on the bench and ran a hand through her hair. “The weight began to fall off him. So I gathered healing plants in the forest and persuaded him to eat them, which was no easy task. He was as big a baby as you.”
Again came that
fleeting smile, and in it, Dodinal saw the great love that husband and wife had shared.
“But it made no difference. As the weeks passed he became weaker and weaker until he could not stand on his feet unaided. Owain was four then. Old enough to know that his father was ill, but too young to understand his father was dying.
“He lay in his bed for weeks. He was the toughest of men, my Elwyn, but night after night, he would cry out with the pain of it. When the end came, the tears I wept were as much of gratitude as loss. I could not bear to see him suffer. Does that sound selfish to you?”
“Not at all,” he said softly. “No man deserves to die that way, let alone a brave man like your husband.”
“Thank you,” she said, getting up from the bench. “Now perhaps you can understand why I will always be in your debt for saving Owain. Without him, I would have no reason to live. And I suspect it’s also why he is so desperate to be around you all the time.”
“Because I remind him of his father?” To his surprise, Dodinal found the idea did not sit uneasily. After all these years, he still could not think of his own father without an aching sadness.
“Because he needs someone to look up to.”
Uneasy, Dodinal cleared his throat. “Then he would be better off looking up to others. I am hardly a shining example.”
“Oh, I think you are. You just haven’t realised it yet.”
She turned abruptly and took her cloak from the peg, a clear indication there was nothing further to be said on the matter. “Now, remember what I told you. Try to sleep if you can. I’ll bring whatever food can be spared, when it is ready.”
Time passed maddeningly slowly once she had left. Dodinal tried to sleep, but the tumbling thoughts in his head kept him awake. Finally he could tolerate it no longer; despite Rhiannon’s admonitions, he pushed the furs away and set about getting to his feet.
He did so slowly and carefully, using the wall for support, not wanting to risk tearing the stitches that bound the wound shut. Even then it was not easy. When he was finally standing, dizziness overcame him and he had to wait for it to pass.
Once his head was clear, he tested his right leg, putting as much weight on it as he dared. Satisfied it would not collapse under him, he took a few tentative steps past the fire. A pot of simmering water was suspended from an iron tripod over it, and a smaller pot stood in the ashes at the edge, containing what looked like the muddy remnants of the poultice. He shuffled across to the door, overwhelmed by an impulsive desire to see, feel and smell the outside world.
The wind threatened to tear the door from his grasp. It buffeted him, making his hair and beard dance. Cold cut through the light clothes he wore, and which he now suspected had belonged to poor doomed Elwyn. Snow blew into his eyes, concealing much of what lay beyond the doorway. Through the swirling haze he could see the Great Hall, directly ahead of him across a square. Tiers of smaller huts stood to his left and right. Behind them, tall shapes that could have been trees, but whose lives he couldn’t sense, rose into the sky. The rest of the world was lost in a tumult of white.
He leaned against the door frame and stared out, seeing not this village but another, or what remained of it. The smoke rising from the roofs of these huts became the smoke that had risen from the smouldering remnants of the village of his childhood.
With nothing to distract him, the memories of that dreadful night flooded back, as unstoppable as they were unwanted.
Dodinal did not sleep, that first night alone in the forest. Through the long hours he sat inside the hollow tree, wrapped in his cloak, shivering from cold and grief and fear, tears leaving frozen trails down his cheeks. He could not get his mother’s face out of his mind. He could still hear her groans of pain. He desperately needed to believe she was alive, his father too, but there was an unbearable heaviness in his heart because he knew they must be dead.
Eventually the sky lightened. As much as he wanted to stay here, where he was safe, he knew that to do so meant he would soon die from the cold. He felt sick, yet if he did not eat he would not have the strength to move. So he left the sanctuary of the oak and retraced his steps through the forest, moving slowly and quietly.
All he could hear was the sigh of a breeze through bare branches, the rustle of small creatures in the undergrowth, the harsh calling of crows overhead that sounded like the cries of restless spirits. He was alone.
Shivering, Dodinal pulled the cloak tighter and continued towards the village. He remained tense and alert as he ghosted through the trees, fearful his mother’s attacker might have guessed he would return and was hiding in wait for him, as doubtful as it was that a mere boy was worth his time and trouble.
The trees thinned out. He smelled burning, yet there was no smoke to be seen. The fires must have burned themselves out.
Dodinal’s mouth was dry, his hands were slick with sweat despite the cold morning air and his stomach was twisted into knots. He did not want to go any further; his mind screamed at him to turn and run until he had left the village far behind. But he could not. There was nowhere to run to and no point in living if that meant spending the rest of his life alone. Slowly, braced to flee at the slightest sound, he emerged from the forest and stared in wide-eyed, open-mouthed horror at the devastation that confronted him.
The village had gone. What had once been huts were now smouldering, shapeless heaps of blackened wood. Dodinal staggered towards them as if in a daze. Bodies lay everywhere, not all of them intact: as he drew closer, what he had taken for fallen branches were revealed as severed limbs. He wanted to look away, yet found his eyes taking in every detail.
Carrion birds fussed over the corpses, too busy feasting to make any sound other than a rustle of feathers and the wet ripping noise of beaks tearing at flesh. They did not react as Dodinal passed them by.
Onwards he crept, stepping over the bodies, peering at their clothes and faces, trying not to look into their sightless eyes. Some he recognised, others were strangers. The invaders had not been inclined to bear their fallen away for burial.
Dodinal found his father, lying on his back and opened up from throat to groin. His guts had spilled out and lay in a coiled heap alongside him. One arm was pinned beneath his body, the other was outstretched, hand still clutching his sword.
For a moment Dodinal was unable to move for the shock. This could not possibly be his father, not the big man whose fiery temper was leavened by a dry humour, who would always indulge his son whenever Dodinal begged to go hunting with him. No, it could not be.
Yet there was no mistaking him.
Dodinal’s eyes blurred with tears. His throat tightened until he was gasping for breath. The gasps became sobs and the strength left his legs, so he crumpled to his knees and stayed there, head down, tears falling from his eyes like rain until he could not cry any more. When he was done, he sat back on his heels and wiped his face dry with his cloak. His hand closed around his father’s. He prised the fingers open and pulled the sword free. The blade was heavy, but he was determined to take it with him. His face momentarily convulsed. No, there would be no more tears. No more sadness. Nothing but hatred and a thirst for vengeance.
He could not bury his father. He lacked the tools and the strength to break the hard ground. Yet somehow that did not feel important. It was fitting that this man, who had passed on his love of the forest and his huntsman’s skills to his son, should now provide food for the beasts of the wild. He would have liked that, Dodinal thought. It would have appealed to his sense of humour.
“Goodbye,” he said softly. Then, remembering the words that had been spoken when his father’s father had died, “Rest in peace.”
A sense of foreboding filled him as he searched the rest of the village. Now he had seen his father dead, it was surely only a matter of time before he found his mother’s body. But while he encountered the corpses of many women, and many children too, there was no sign of her.
Then, just when he was convinced there was no one left
alive anywhere, he heard a muted groaning. He stood still until he heard the noise again; it had come from one of the huts, which was charred here and there, its roof partly collapsed, but was otherwise intact. Heart thumping, arms trembling with the strain of holding the sword, he walked slowly towards it. The door was not quite closed, but Dodinal could see only darkness inside. Using the tip of the blade, he eased the door open. A soft patter made him look down. A pool of blood that had gathered in the doorway dripped steadily to the ground.
Dodinal was too scared to go inside, afraid of what he might find, until he heard the low groaning again. Someone was alive in there. He had to help them. Taking a few deep breaths to steady his nerves, he stepped cautiously through the doorway.
What he saw next would stay in his memory forever.
A woman was seated on the floor with her back against the wall. Her head lolled. Her clothes were soaked crimson, and blood had sprayed from the deep slash across her throat and splattered the wall. He thought he recognised her, but it was difficult to be sure. Dodinal had never spent much time with the villagers or their children, preferring to be out hunting with his father. He knew they considered him strange. It had never bothered him.
A baby was sprawled like a discarded toy on the ground by her feet. Dodinal could not bring himself to look at it too closely. The dark puddle around its body told him more than he wanted to know.
As his eyes adjusted to the gloom he saw the woman had a long knife in one hand, its blade stained. She must have died fighting off those who had threatened her and her baby. Dodinal swallowed heavily. If they were both dead, who had he heard groaning?
He spun around and let out a startled yell. A man was curled up on the floor, arms around his midriff. Dodinal’s first thought was that it was yet another corpse. Then the man shuddered and a low groan escaped his lips. Dodinal took a hesitant step towards him. Then he took a step back, unsure of what to do.
The man raised his head to look at him. His face was criss-crossed with bloody slashes and his right eye socket was a ragged, empty mess. He reached out with one hand. Two of the fingers had been lopped off at the middle joint. He must have been left for dead when his wife and child had been slaughtered. Despite his own loss, Dodinal could have wept for him.