Madoc

by Bernard Knight

  ‘Brother, let us give our magic ship the supreme test! Take her through the maelstrom of Ynys Enlli.’

  For once Einion’s bluff features failed to respond with a grin. He stared back at his brother.

  ‘That devil’s mill-race?Would you wreck our vessel and drown us all, just on a whim?’

  Madoc, beat his fist into his palm. ‘It will be the final trial, Einion! If she can weather that boiling water in this wind, it will be an omen that she is indestructible.’

  For half a day they argued back and forth, but the battle was lost from the beginning for Einion, for secretly he wanted to prove that the Gwennan Gorn could survive in that hellish channel where so many vessels had been pounded to pieces, including Svein’s Iduna. The channel was the narrow sound between Ynys Enlli, the sacred island where the saints were buried, that the Norsemen called Bardsey. Between there and the mainland of the Llyn peninsula, was the most fearsome stretch of water south of the Caledonian coasts.

  As the tide ebbed from the Irish Sea, it raced down the north coast of Llyn and was funnelled into the mile-wide gap between the lonely island and the headland of Braich-y-Pwyll. Here underwater crags and rocky bars caused the sea to boil and writhe into whirlpools and cataracts of white water that could spin a small vessel round like a top and either shake her planking apart or overwhelm her steering and smash her against the steepgrey cliffs. Anyone cast into the water was sucked down, never to be seen again in one piece. The wreckage of shattered ships was smashed into matchwood and the mangled remains vomited up on distant beaches.

  The twenty men who were the crew of the Gwennan Gorn had all had experience of the hell-race of Bardsey. Though most of them had passed through in carefully chosen circumstances – when the tide was slack on the turn and when there was no swell or wind to speak of – they all had a healthy respect for it even in those calmest of moments. None of them would have dreamed of attempting the passage as Madoc intended, in this stiff wind, deliberately picking the middle of the ebb tide.

  Einion, came to see this as the ultimate test of the ship –more than that, a portent of future infallibility, for if they survived it, what worse could the unknown world offer?

  The crew were soon infected with the same feelings. It was daring the devil, twisting the tail of fate, to win immunity for the future. As the little ship ploughed across the great bay which lay between Dyfed and Llyn, they began to feel a reckless fatalism which grew as the rounded hump of Ynys Enlli rose higher over the horizon.

  ‘We shall go around the island to seaward, then come down through the sound with the tide,’ decided Madoc. They were only a few dozen miles from Anglesey by now and it was only their perversity that made them attempt this horrific doubling back on their course to prove that Svein’s design, Madoc’s modifications and the stag-horn pegs could defeat the buffeting of Bardsey’s treacherous waters.

  They drew into position north of the island, far enough offshore to remain clear of the tide rip that was beginning to build up.

  ‘Every loose thing must be lashed down, every box and barrel,’ yelled Einion from the stern deck, where he stood next to the steersman, ready to throw his weight on the great oar that was lashed to a pole projecting from the ship’s side.

  Thankfully, they had no live sheep or other animals aboard and the crew had only themselves to look out for.

  ‘Bring her to the shore,’ commanded Madoc, who had placed himself right in the high blunt prow. He hung on to the great post that formed the stern, so that he could see the water directly ahead of the vessel.

  Gwilym, the steersman, twisted the shaft of oar and slowly the Gwennan Gorn came around towards the east, then the south. As Madoc had expected, the wind had changed with the time of day and now blew strongly down the coast with the tide, coming off the mountains. Yet the swell was hurling itself northward against the tide and the wind, due to the prevailing westerlies coming from the Great Ocean. Where the three elements met in conflict, the channel between the gaunt cliffs was alive with leaping wavelets and turbulent, churning waters.

  The ship turned right around and by the time it was two miles north of the narrowest part of the sound, the tide was racing its fastest, just as Madoc had calculated. They now had the worst possible conditions, short of waiting for a winter gale which would have wrecked any ship in the world, including their own.

  But this was bad enough and every fathom nearer the narrows made it worse.

  ‘Here we go!’ screamed Einion, scared and exhilarated. Every man aboard felt the tide grip the hull and she seemed to lurch forward as if grasped by a giant hand. Most of the crew were either clinging on to the bulwarks or braced in the hold, ready to bale with the leather buckets. Only those tailing on to the running rigging had to stand free on the deck.

  Madoc was not trying to avoid the worst areas, but rather to deliberately seek them out. He had little difficulty in finding trouble. As the straits narrowed, the surface of the sea turned into a maelstrom of whitecaps and writhing currents. Right before him he saw a huge patch where water was bubbling upwards, as if from some subterranean spring, leaping in great streams from the bottom and spreading out in fluid snakes that flattened even the cresting waves in the vicinity.

  ‘To the leeside, leeside!’ he yelled, motioning with his hand so that the bow was made to point directly at this cauldron of boiling coldness.

  Gwilym, now being juddered about by the vibrations of his oar, turned the ship’s head to the left and, with a jerk, the forty feet of cockleshell was simultaneously twisted, heeled and battered. There was a wail from one of the crew, as the lurch threw him off balance into the hold, then the ship lurched through a quarter of a circle until the opposite rail was touching the water.

  ‘To steerboard, for Jesus’ sake,’ screamed Madoc, suddenly aware that they were in trouble enough, without actively looking for more.

  The Gwennan’s head suddenly dipped and she took a sea full over the prow, soaking Madoc and almost sweeping him aft to join the injured man in the hold. Then she spun around and lay broach-to while parallel lines of white waves battered her sides like ranks of soldiers charging in battle. The hull shuddered and the empty sail flapped as the wind hit it on the wrong side.

  Einion, leaping onto the steering oar to help Gwilym, yelled at the men on the sheet ropes to pull the yard around to catch the wind and get them under way again, rather than be wallowing helpless across the current. Then a sudden blast of spray on his neck made him look aft and nearly faint with fright and despair.

  A sudden blackness and rough water was sweeping down on them from the north, in the shape of a squall from Snowdonia.

  Half a moment later it hit them.

  The vessel, already jumping about like a cow in a fit, was hit abeam by the wind, just when the sail had been dragged around into the worst possible position.

  With a crack like thunder, the mast snapped off halfway up and the sail fell over the side, held only by the lower yard and the sheet ropes. One man was knocked clean overboard by the mast, his last scream drowned by the wind.

  Out of control, the Gwennan Gorn spun around madly, rotating in great circles and being jolted from one whirlpool to another.

  The white horses of the tiderip splashed one after the other onto the deck and into the hold. The rolling and the pitching threw all the crew into a bruised heap, some of them falling over the rim of the deck into the flooded hold.

  ‘Bale!For God’s sake, bale,’ yelled Madoc, crawling hand over hand along the bulwarks, drenched, cold and shivering.

  There was nothing else to do but bale. Gwilym’s steering oar had been torn from his grasp and it, and the post to which it was secured, had vanished into the hell over the side.

  With no sail, no mast and no steering, they were moving at the speed of a galloping horse.

  ‘Bale … bale!’ sobbed Einion, crawling to the edge of the hold and grabbing a leather bucket that a man – up to his waist in water – shakily handed up to him.
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br />   ‘We are losing fast,’ shouted Rhys, a black-bearded senior crewman. With every roll of the ship, Rhys was alternately up to his ankles, then up to his chest in water as he heroically scooped bucket after bucket of water from the hold and handed it up to men above. But with every roll, more water poured over the side of the ship and cascaded into the central well.

  ‘We’re done for,’ yelled Gwilym. ‘We must swim for it.’

  Madoc grabbed him by the neck and shook him like a dog, an action so unlike him that it emphasised the extraordinary situation.

  ‘Fool – can you swim in that?’ howled the shipmaster. ‘And only four of us can swim at all.’

  But Einion interrupted with fresh worries.

  ‘The cliffs, we are getting under the cliffs!’

  The current, which so far had taken them rapidly into the neck of the channel, now seemed to curve away towards the mainland. There, not four hundred yards away, was a wall of sea-swept rock climbing from the spray to the grey sky above. At its foot, the water made the rest of the channel look like the palace fishpond on a calm day. From the pitching deck, the surface looked like the teeth of a great saw, with jagged serrations jumping up and down, the tops being blown white by the wind that still howled down the coastline.

  ‘We are lost!’ screamed one of the men, holding a bucket at the side. He dropped the bucket and scrambled onto the wooden rail. Einion managed to catch his leg, but the bare foot slipped in his grasp and the next second the man had leapt into the water.

  ‘Stay with the ship, you fools,’ screamed Madoc. ‘Another minute and we’ll be through.’

  It was now a gamble between the speed at which the ship was being pulled through the sound and the speed at which it was sliding towards the rocks. They hit the saw-toothed water and the vessel began shaking, as if a giant hammer was hitting the keel.As the ship shook unmercifully, the cliff seemed to race towards them.

  Madoc was thrown to the deck and found himself grasping someone. It was Einion. Together they looked up at the grey rocks almost overhead.Einion, even when staring death in the face, could not resista jest.

  ‘We are to end on Trwyn-y-Gwyddel, the Irishman’s Nose, brother. It’s appropriate for you, being raised there. At least, it’s better than dying on anEnglishman’s nose.’

  Just as they were about to strike and all aboard had passed into their own personal state of terror or resignation, the freak currents that had brought them there, just as suddenly took them away. The sea, rebounding from the cliffs, roared round the Irishman’s Nose in a cascading semicircle. This was the narrowest part of the channel and the most shallow. The bar of rock under water that had forced the riptide to rise from the bottom, dropped away and the increased depth could accommodate the volume in relative peace, as a deep millstream runs silently.

  In a matter of seconds, the Gwennan Gorn was back on an even keel, and slowed down almost to walking pace.Unbelieving, the men stared up from wherever they lay or crouched.

  Gradually, the reality of salvation dawned on them. Ragged cheers mixed with sobs and half-drowned coughing echoed across the suddenly quiet water. Once round the corner, they were drifting on a swell with not a white horse anywhere near them.

  ‘We live! We came through!’ Madoc’s voice held more surprise than joy at first. They all rose shakily to their feet and looked around them. Behind, a line of terrible broken water marked the sudden end of the maelstrom.

  ‘The bane of our life, Madoc. Gwennan’s bane,’ said Einion shakily.

  Madoc looked aback, still shivering with emotion and cold. ‘Let it be known as that for eternity, then … Ffrydiau Caswenann, the Currents of Gwennan’s Bane. But we did it, Einion, we did it.’

  ‘Unless we sink in the next hour,’ came a deep voice from somewhere near their feet. In the hold, the bearded Rhys was barely able to keep his black chin above water. By now the level was not far below the edge of the deck. Over the side of the ship, the freeboard was reduced to less than half that it was an hour before.

  ‘Bale or perish,’ yelled Einion, jumping in alongside Rhys and grabbing a floating bucket. They were able to reduce the flood to something approaching safety level in about an hour,though the vessel was still unfit to tackle any more rough water.

  ‘The oars, Rhys … can you unlash them?’

  The Gwennan Gorn was drifting uncomfortably near to the cliffs again and though there was none of the watery Hades like that further up the coast, the breakers were large enough to pound her to pieces should she drift ashore.

  ‘Around to Aberdaron – we’ll beach her there,’ ordered Madoc.

  There was a small inlet just past Trwyn-y-Gwyddel, called Porth Felen, but they had drifted too far to get into it. The cliffs that they were so uncomfortably close to now were the Great Wall of Parwyd, but around the corner was the placid bay with the village of Aberdaron.

  The long oars were taken from the lashings along the sides of the hold, after Rhys and two other men had groped for them under the remaining water. The little doors opened for them and they were pushed out over the side.

  The haul around to Aberdaron was long and laborious, as the waterlogged vessel was heavy and unmanoeuvrable, but danger was past and Madoc saw with pride that the water level inside did not rise at all, even with no further baling.

  ‘Not a single leak, not a single sprung plank in all that buffeting, Einion,’ he enthused. ‘Stag horn and Welsh oak is an unbeatable combination. Now we can sail across the world and be confident of survival.’

  Einion paused from wringing the water out of his sodden tunic.‘You mean row across the world, brother.’ He pointed to the tattered remnants of the sail and rigging and the shattered stump of the mast.

  CHAPTER NINE

  April 1170

  It took Madoc and his crew another week to get the Gwennan Gorn back to the coast of North Wales. At Aberdaron they rigged up a temporary mast and a day or two later, limped back along the coast, keeping well to seaward of the treacherous, but now defeated, Sound of Bardsey.

  Madoc left the vessel at Aberffraw, but Einion and his crew took the Gwennan Gorn on to the Gele river, where the experts who had masted her could carry out the best possible repairs.

  Madoc waded ashore through the shallow surf of Aberffraw beach. He was tornbetween a desire to go on with them to Abergele to make sure that a good job was made of stepping a new mast or the joy of seeing Annesta and Gwenllian again.

  In reality he had no choice, as he was obliged to report to his father on the results of the visit to Paris.

  The Porter, who knew and loved him well, gave him a cheerful greeting and walked with him across the compound towards his own hut, where the family waited for him.

  ‘What’s been happening while I was away, Idwal?’ he asked the gatekeeper.

  Idwal’s round face became serious. ‘The Lord Owain … he fails a little each day, though he still holds court and tries to keep these louts of his in order.’

  This was dangerous talk, but the Porter knew that his tongue was safe with Madoc.

  ‘They have been setting upon Hywel’s reputation lately, that Dafydd and Rhodri. He is not here to defend himself and they are out to destroy his character, as they have already done with Iorwerth.’

  Idwal looked furtively around and lowered his voice. ‘Madoc ab Owain, though it is no place for me to advise a man of royal blood, I would be careful where you walk in the dark.’

  Madoc laid a hand on the officer’s shoulder. ‘Thank you, good man. I shall watch for myself well enough.’

  Idwal turned a concerned face towards Madoc.

  ‘Watch outfor your family as well, Prince. It would be better for you to take them far away, for all we love your gentle ways here.’ With this cryptic remark, he walked back to his gatehouse, leaving Madoc standing thoughtfully outside his thatched home.

  The homecoming was as happy as Madoc could have expected, with quiet contentment from Annesta – who was pregnant again – and sheer exuber
ance from little Gwenllian.

  The quarters in Aberffraw were cramped, as even a royal son had to make do with a dwelling that an ordinary farmer would have used in the countryside.

  ‘We must leave here soon, my love, and find a permanent home,’ said Madoc, after their morning meal the next day.

  ‘You have been saying that for four years, husband,’ answered Annesta with a touch of the impatience that was in her nature. ‘Now that the prince never leaves Aberffraw, we are as cramped here as bees huddled in a hive.’

  ‘Ireland … we must go back to Clochran,’ decided Madoc. ‘Riryd says that he will be glad to have us on his lands. With the profit I have made from trading in the Gwennan Gorn over the past years, we could build a new winter dwelling within sight of the river. In the summer, we could come back to Wales for a few months.’

  ‘When you are not gadding about the world, Madoc,’ retorted his wife, this time with a smile. She was secretly proud of her husband’s reputation as ‘Madoc of the Ships.’

  For a few days, all was quiet, as the premier sons were away. Dafydd was skirmishing away to the east, where he was pushing back some Normans from the banks of the Clwyd. King Henry seemed indifferent to the fate of the Welsh border. The power of Gwynedd was such that local barons and knights were impotent to defy the sudden attacks of the Welsh as they descended out of the rain and mists of the hills.

  In the absence of Dafydd and Rhodri, the palace was peaceful. Madoc had long sessions with his father, explaining what had happened in France. This time, Hugh de Soissons had again confirmed the French alliance with Wales, but appeared cautious in making any plans to move against England. They had a military problem already in containing Henry’s pressure in Normandy and would not contemplate any more outright action for the moment.

  Owain seemed to take this philosophically and indeed seemed almost indifferent to expanding his outside influence. His mind seemed occupied completely with worrying about the succession and Madoc feared that he knew that his days were limited.