by Mary Lide
“On the path at the cliff top the Celts slithered through the grass so close to the mounted men I thought they must be seen, although had we not known where they were, we would not have seen them. They made their move seem easy, having practiced it often enough, a stone thrown, a pebble to the landward side to cause those horsemen, three men of the Walran household, bored, no doubt, cold, almost asleep, to lean out and peer into the darkness. The Celts rose up, one by one, to unseat them, as simply as they had unseated the abbot’s men. But this was not an abbot’s entourage to jest about. This was war. Stripped of their armor, their throats cut, the Walran soldiers were dragged over the cliff. Quickly the Celts mounted, throwing on as much armor as they could so that they had some protection, so that at least they would be armed. Those three horsemen had been placed athwart the road, to guard it going west. Now that they were gone, the road lay deceptively clear, except for a last fourth man, a bow-shot farther on, who was stationed on the road itself. We rode openly up to him, hailing him. Perhaps he took us for friends, perhaps he expected someone to relieve him soon, he never raised a hand in self-defense. But he did not die as quietly or as quickly as the others had. ‘Curse you,’ he cried, ‘I know you. My master has sworn revenge, and revenge he’ll have.’ He died so, with a curse, more horrible than silence. Yet there was not even time to pray for him. We mounted up, Hue and Urien together for the last time, I in front of Taliesin. The road ahead of us lay straight, and we stole along it softly, in single file. Behind us was left all the evidence that we had no time to hide if we were to reach the pass before the dawn. And as the road rose up from the coast, on looking back I could see the little campfires of Henry’s men, glowing like watchful eyes.
“Against my ear I could hear the beating of Taliesin’s heart, steady and strong; beneath my shoulders feel the breadth of his; his bare skin was warm where he had not had time to lace the steel corselet close. Under my fingertips those ridges and scars I had longed to touch rippled and knotted about his ribs, along his arms. Each of those hid a wound that had caused pain; each one had been a vicious cut into bone and flesh; blood had flowed from them, living blood. And his hands about my waist pressing me to him, they were warm, alive hands, their fingers, hard and gentle, miracles of life. I thought, this is flesh joined to flesh, not in lust but in love, this is what life celebrates; Mother of God, do not let it be lost to us. But even prayers seemed useless, Odo of Walran’s vengeance allied with the king’s, both waiting for us. I think the most I could pray for was that they would not take us unless dead.
“Soon we were come to the familiar track that Urien and I had taken years ago when, for a child’s whim, I had schemed to ambush a prince. Did I know then what fate had in store; did I sense then what I wanted? Did Taliesin? No love lost between my house and a Norman one. Not love lost, but lost love, thrown away uselessly, for other men’s vengeance. What I wished as a child I cannot say. I only can tell you that the worst thing I could ever know was about to happen here today. The path had not changed; it had not changed in a thousand years; there stood the same ruined walls, the same old fort along the cliff crest, the same broken watchtower at the western end of the pass. Our horses picked their way along gingerly, Norman steeds these, bred for weight, not for speed; no hope of running far on them. Here was where we must make our stand, the western end, where the pass was narrowest, under the shadow of the watchtower where Taliesin had come charging down to outwit me. Here it would happen, that worst thing.
“The Celts knew the place instinctively. They backed their horses into the gap, turned them to face the way our enemies must come. Practical to the end, they shortened their stirrups, they being smaller than the Normans whose horses they rode; they tightened the girths, prepared to withhold a charge. They checked the arm straps of the Walran shields, with their wolf’s crests; they tested the spear points on the rocks and loosened their swords, working them back and forth in the scabbards so they would not catch. Then they leaned forward as I had seen them, expectantly. All this they did dispassionately, not one word of distress or regret, only two of them left; they would die together, side by side, never leaving their master until he, too, died. But they did not whistle today, no time left for whistling.
“Taliesin had spurred his horse up the cliff path to the highest point. He needed a place for a lookout, so he could have warning of the numbers and time of attack. He was gone longer than I thought; by moments now the light was coming fast, and soon the sun would rise in its haze of red. But when he returned, he did not ride alone. Beside him, cantering over the grass with a springy stride that was recognizable, came a gray stallion, Taliesin’s own, the horse that he had been forced to leave behind. ‘Look,’ he said, his voice almost cheerful, his smile its most joyous. ‘I saw it running wild with a herd of Cambray grays. No hope of catching them, but it came to my call. It remembers me.’ He slid off the other horse, letting his own nuzzle his arm, pulling its ears as he used to, talking to it. It was a moment’s work to strip off a saddle and bridle and harness it, although it moved restlessly, used this past year to running free. ‘There,’ he said, almost triumphantly, ‘now all is well.’ He turned to us. We had dragged ourselves out of the way behind a pile of boulders and had been sitting, silently, against the stones. There was nowhere for us to go, nothing for us to do, useless. For Hue that waiting had been hardest of all. I saw tears steal down his wasted cheeks as he tried to force his hands to obey him.
Useless, aye so, a wounded soldier is worse than none at all. But he had managed to pull a dagger from its sheath and held it across his lap. He, too, must have prayed to his gods that he should not be taken alive. The sun had almost come up in its crimson round. Pitiless it would rise, pitiless would it set. ‘Come, Olwen,’ Taliesin said, and I knew already what he meant. ‘Come, my love. No Norman horse can catch mine.’ He almost laughed. ‘It will bear you safely away. So once, your mother rode,’ he cried. ‘Go north to Afron. Tell my father I wish him well; remember me.’
“I told you my tale would be soon done. Here was its end.
‘And you,’ I whispered, ‘what of you?’
“He tried to jest. ‘It is not a horse magical,’ he said. ‘It cannot carry all of us. We must wait our turn.’
“Well, I said this was the worst thing in my life, to bid my lover, brother, companions farewell, not even time for long adieus, no words to say them if there were. And they, my lover, companions, brother, to die that I might live. No choice for them, no choice for me. The fates willed it so. I had not thought,’ said Taliesin, ‘to have it end in such bitter wise.’ Bitter in truth that red day dawned.
‘Live or die,’ I said, ‘I live and die here with you. What would there be left without you?’
“The gray horse stood almost reluctantly, eager to be off, not exactly patient, not exactly mollified. The veins in its neck and legs stood out; it rolled its soft, intelligent eyes and snorted, laid back its ears. Taliesin soothed it, gentled it, as if he gentled me; a second time he held out his arms to help me mount. Beneath our feet, from the bracken where he had thrown himself, head locked in arms, Urien suddenly rose up. A bag of bones, a thing of skin, his black hair on end, his dark eyes lustrous. Up he rose as if he were a messenger from the gods. ‘No,’ he cried, and the wind took his words and blew them away, ‘no, stop. There is yet another way.’
“I told you my tale would soon be done; let Urien the Scribe, Urien the Bard, tell you the rest.”
Chapter 16
I, Urien, known also as the Serf, bondsman to the lords and ladies of Cambray, sworn to cherish them while breath lasts, I stood up from the bracken, right under the feet of that gray horse as I had startled its master in this same place. “No,” I cried, and the vast expanse of air took my words and flung them wide. I stretched out my arms and felt the wind surge through me, blowing off the moors as it does at dawn. In it were all the echoes of another time, long ago, when a woman of our race, immovable as stone, ice-cold for grief, bid her lord
, her lover, farewell and saw him ride out to battle and death. About me were the forms, the spirits, of those long-dead heroes and kings; red ran their spears, sad were their eyes, to have life snatched from them in their youth. How could my lady and her prince know what I saw, what felt? Those figures, who burned like flame to brand themselves upon my sight, a beauty about them such as never exists in the real world, seemed superimposed upon the present here to make it and the past as one, making the past repeat itself unless I forced my will to alter it. How could they know? But Hue sensed it. “Do as he bids,” he said.
“Lady,” I said, “take your brother; hide in that cave where we used to go; you remember where, buried beneath the bracken where the foxes den. You, my lord prince.” I turned to Taliesin. “Station yourself up there along the crest, in the fort where long ago we set an ambush for you. I will lead the enemy to you. ”
They might have argued, protested, but the words were not mine. Fickle and cruel are the Celtic gods, but some other, kinder ones put the thoughts into my mind, for pity or for recompense. “Leave me your skirts, Lady Olwen,” I said. “Mount me on the gray horse, tie me on. I shall be your decoy.”
We clasped each other’s hands, a little band of brothers, one last gamble of the dice, one last throw. My lady, never taking her eyes from me, stripped off her ragged gown and her shift. She gave me the golden bracelets she had worn since Carnac.
I had never seen her naked before, the sun coming up fast through the haze to outline her white shoulders, the pink-tipped breasts, the pearl-lustered hips and loins, the long, slender legs.
I threw her my dirty tunic, almost too short for her, a belt, a pair of worn-out boots, but my little sword, half knife, half sword, I gave to Taliesin, and he put it in his belt. No one had seen me naked before, a boy’s body, child’s body, not fitted to a man’s age, never to know a man’s size or the weight of a man, or man’s parts; never to sow man’s seed.
They tied the skirts about me, gathering them up decorously at the waist in a bundle of cloth, and with my sharp knife cut off the tresses of my lady’s hair to pin inside the hood of a cloak. They heaved me up on that horse and strapped me on, binding my knees with leather thongs; no way to fall off unless the horse fell. With clever knots they tied short the reins so that when the time was come, I could jerk them free, my hands too weak to hold on in any other way. The lady and her brother, arms entwined, crept out into the morning mist, she supporting him, he comforting her. She knew the way, the hare’s track, the secret threads that wind between the gorse bushes, through the gullies and crevices. Safe underground she would wait for us, safer there than above. Together with Taliesin and his men I went up to the top of the hill. I remembered it well, stone by stone; how should I forget where my lady and the prince met? My horse can outrun the world. Now it must. By this time the mist was rising; straight up it poured in columns, like incense smoke. The wind that blows at daybreak had died down into a whisper, a warning. Far below, the dark blue of the horizon rimmed our world; before us, all the purple moor. “Not yet,” I said, “they have not come together yet. When they are all there, let me go.”
From this high vantage point we could see the gathering of Walran men, like small clusters of blue and gray, blending into the morning mist, but as daylight brightened, they burst out clearly, as if their very accoutrements had caught on fire. The household guard they were, Norman knights, born and reared, proud of their Walran arms and their Walran crests. They were grouped around a thing, a heap, that lay sprawled on its back upon the road, and as we watched, another cry went up, the shout of discovery; a second body, perhaps, or our beached boat (its timbers more like, where the incoming tide had dashed them apart upon the rocks). But “Wait,” I said.
Farther beyond, from where the Walran watch had spent the night, the siege fires we had seen were doused. Coming in gusts, sometimes faint, sometimes loud, the stir reached us from Henry’s camp, where his soldiers, his most highly paid mercenaries this time, kept close watch themselves. We could hear the trumpets and drums, the bustle of men waking up; their Angevin colors, silver and blue, made a large circle around the castle walls. The camp watched at a safe distance, though, Henry’s new siege tactics in force, borrowed from the Celts, who had used them with such success against him. As at Sieux his men had not been ordered to attack, but (keeping within the letter of his oath to Earl Raoul) merely to hold the castle firm, no way in or out. Cambray itself was not visible, hidden behind the folds of hills at the water’s edge, but I could well imagine how it looked on this summer day, small itself, stout-built, made from these very stones where we stood, dragged there in ones and twos. And like the man who had built it, dour and resolute. And as was Henry’s camp at this early hour, so was Cambray, already ahum with gossip and suspense. But “Wait,” I said.
A Walran messenger was riding full tilt back to the camp. We could mark his progress as he rose and dipped across the moors. We could guess the message and judge by the sudden flurry of activity what effect it caused. For Henry’s troops now began to run and crisscross back and forth, all orderly watch forgotten in the excitement of a chase. Some brought their horses out and saddled them; others let loose their hounds and ordered their huntsmen to track the game. A good number of Henry’s men, mounted and equipped, began to clatter off to join the Walran men. I shall hunt you down. Now we could see how the hunt began. But still, as the clamor and bustle spread, as Henry’s troops spilled out fast, two-thirds of them sweeping out from their camp, “Wait,” I said.
The noise, the racket, of their departure must spread to Cambray walls. We could not see the castle from where we stood, but Dylan could hear the noise. Night and day he would have been patrolling those walls, waiting for such a chance. The sight of that withdrawal, for whatever cause, was all he needed to make his break. “Mount,” he cried, taking the steps in his stride, running like a young man again. “Open the gates.” Down he swept from Cambray with the castle guard, who, like him, had been awaiting such an opportunity. They caught the remainder of the besiegers in the rear, rammed them down, cut them apart, all those left in the camp to guard, all who, forgetting their real purpose, had turned away from the castle side to watch. There were still too many Angevins left for Dylan’s troops to break right through their line, and he was too wise to risk such a foolishness. Besides, he did not know that we were there, merely that something had distracted Henry’s men. His charge demoralized the rest of the enemy force so that it returned to camp as quickly as it had left. So, although the Cambray guards were driven back inside their gates, and although the Angevins renewed their siege with such determination that we could not hope to force a passage through, Dylan’s attack prevented help coming to the Walran troops at a crucial time. That gave us a chance. But “Be patient,” I said to the waiting Celts, and smiled at them. “The time will come.”
The Walran soldiers were still grouped beside the cliff, milling back and forth, expecting reinforcements that never came. Back and forth they surged, Norman knights, ready for a hunt, the hounds baying long and insistent, blood lust running hot. Their huntsmen were binding their spears, testing the wind, pointing the way they must take, a special game today, and we were it. Into their midst rode Odo of Walran, bestriding his war-horse. He was armed with sword and shield, and even we could distinguish his broad frame and feel, from here, hate burning in him like a second sun. He raised his arm in its mail coat to give command. I took a great gulp of breath, gripped with my knees, twined my bound fingers into the horse’s mane. “Now,” I cried.
Taliesin had been standing by our side, speaking into his horse’s ears, telling it what to do; it seemed to listen, its large, liquid eyes wide with intelligence. He released it, stepped aside, and smote it on the flanks. “Run with God,” he cried, and his men lifted their spears in silent salute. Down from the old fort we floated, moving on air, along the moor, like a wave unfolding across a shore, like a wind rippling through the grass, barely touching the ground, tail spre
ad in a great arc, head high. So I rode, Urien the Serf, who had never ridden battle charger on his own, who cannot ride, a thing of reed and straw. And, of all men, most like to woman, to deceive an enemy.
They saw me come—I meant they should—for we followed the track openly, not riding fast, for the reins were tied, skimming the ruts, barely touching the turf. I needed to be seen, no concealment necessary for me, the decoy. I let the cloak fall back a little to reveal two copper-colored braids, pinned on either side, and let the sheen of the gold armlets be seen. And they were silent, those Walran men, struck dumb themselves. Whatever game runs toward the huntsmen to spoil their sport?
The reins had been knotted short in a clever way, so that by the slightest tug that great beast, which could have unseated me with one toss of its mighty head, would be forced to slow or veer aside as I wished, trotting now easily so that all gathered there could see who I was and recognize me for what I pretended to be: the Lady of Cambray, Olwen the Fair, come back from France to flaunt herself. We stopped in good time, in front of them, out of bow-shot but close enough so that I could see Lord Odo’s prominent eyes bulging with anger and surprise. When the rest of his men had looked their fill, chattering together like magpies, I shouted, my voice as high and reedy as a girl’s although muffled by the cloak, “Odo of Walran. I know you. I would speak with you.”