The Minstrel Boy

by Sharon Stewart

  “Angel? Whatever’s that?” said a merry voice. David opened his eyes. A buxom woman with a great coil of greying braids piled on the top of her head was kneeling at his side, holding a bowl. When she saw his startled expression, she sat back on her heels, grinning. “I’m not the one you were expecting, I see,” she said. “Well, aren’t you the lad, then. Scarcely back from the gates of Annuvin, and already after the women!”

  David sat up, wincing as pain shot through his leg. Then he realized he was stark naked under the rough blanket and pulled it up to his shoulders, blushing. His head still hurt too, though not as much as before. “I . . . I . . . Excuse me, lady. I thought you were the other one.”

  She chuckled. “Lady me no ladies. My name is plain Branwyn to all. As to that other one, I think I’d better have the care of you from now on. Too much excitement isn’t good for a fever, my lad.”

  A shadow fell across them from the door-place. “So you’re back among us, David Baird! And keeping Branwyn amused too. What’s the joke?” It was Bear with Cabal behind him.

  David shot Branwyn an embarrassed glance.

  She winked. “Aye, and he seems a likely lad enough, now he’s back in his senses,” she said cheerfully. “Now I’ve others to tend to,” she said, turning back to David. “I want you to lie here and let my draught do you good. Don’t you dare try to get up yet!” She patted him on the shoulder, then got up and bustled out.

  “How long have I been sick?” asked David.

  “Nearly a week.”

  “You’re kidding!”

  “You mean . . . jesting? No.”

  David looked around at the hut, remembering how he came to be there. He shivered.

  “Don’t look so glum. You’re alive, after all!” said Bear.

  “Sorry,” said David. “It’s just . . .”

  “It’s just that nothing’s right, is it? And you hoped it would be.”

  “Something like that,” David admitted.

  “Take my advice. Get better before you brood overmuch on it.” Bear handed David a rough tunic and helped him pull it over his head, tucking the blanket round him again. “Now drink this broth Branwyn has left for you,” he added, holding out a bowl. “After you’ve sat up for a day, we’ll think of getting you on your feet. Rest now.”

  Left alone, David felt black panic rising in him. What had happened to him? His head throbbed. He took a deep breath, then let it go. Bear’s right, he told himself. If I think of it all now, I’ll go mad. So I won’t. Not yet.

  He settled back against the cushions and looked about him. The hut was built of rough planks, with a thatched roof and a floor of beaten earth. Embers smouldered in a stone-edged fire pit in the centre of the hut. Above it hung a large iron cauldron, which was suspended by chains from a cross-beam. Smoke from the fire eddied up lazily through a hole in the roof. The furniture was simple—a pair of wooden stools, and the carved chair Emrys had sat in. Two large wooden chests were pushed against the wall, and an odd-shaped object muffled in a heavy cloth stood beside the chair.

  Must be some kind of crazy back-to-nature commune, David decided. Home-made granola and bean curd. Weave your own clothes. Build your own hut. Though he’d never heard of such things in Wales. Still, back here in the hills . . .

  He tried to drift off to sleep again, but couldn’t. For a while he amused himself by trying to identify the sounds he could make out. Voices of people passing near the hut. The barking of dogs and the distant lowing of cattle. Shrieks of children at play. A rhythmic chink-clink that he couldn’t identify. Bird song from the forest round about. And woven through it all, the voice of the river running.

  The square of dusty sunlight in the door-place shifted across the floor. It must be hours since anyone had come. If only he could get up and look outside. But Branwyn had said not to. His restless glance kept returning to the object by Emrys’s chair. It was the only unusual thing in the room, and somehow it drew him. He pushed back the blanket and tried to get up, but his leg gave an agonizing twinge, and his head swam. Still determined to have a look, he rolled on his side. By reaching out and stretching, he managed to tug the cloth away.

  Underneath was a harp. Small, less than three feet tall, it was made of some golden-glowing wood. It was sweetly curved on one side, straight on the other. He simply had to hold it. Though his injured leg gave another warning twinge, he swung his good leg over the side of the bed-box and managed to reach the harp and drag it back to the bed-box. He sat holding it on his lap, his pains forgotten. The harp rested securely, as if it belonged there.

  “Oh, you beauty!” whispered David, drawing his fingers lightly across it. Just the quiver of the strings under his fingertips made him tremble with pleasure. The harp answered his touch with a few silvery notes, almost like a question.

  “No, I don’t know how to play you,” he said. There seemed to be no way to tune the harp. At first, he plucked the strings at random, just getting the feel. Then he began trying to pick out one of his own songs, a slow one. The melody was easy enough, but getting the harmony was harder. It was different from the guitar. But not impossibly different, he told himself. After a while, not noticing, he began to sing softly along with the notes.

  “Your voice is true. Though the song is strange to the ear.” Emrys stood in the door-place, leaning on a stout wooden staff.

  David stopped singing, but made no movement to give up the harp. “I hope you don’t mind,” he said. “Once I found what it was, I just had to.”

  Emrys sniffed. “You don’t play well. But not too badly.”

  “Harp’s not my instrument. I was just trying to figure it out.”

  Emrys’s bushy eyebrows rose. “You’ve never harped before?”

  David shook his head. “I play acoustic guitar, mostly. He shrugged. “It’s not hard to pick up more instruments, though. In the band I can play a set on just about anything. Percussion, bass, keyboard synthesizer. I sing lead, too.”

  “I know not these strange instruments.” Emrys sat down heavily in his chair and stared at David. “Are you claiming to be a bard?” he asked, frowning.

  “A . .? No, I don’t think so. What is it?”

  “A minstrel. A singer and a player of instruments. One who knows the music and traditions of his people, and acts as their memory. And their inspiration.”

  “Memory? Inspiration?” David was puzzled. “No, I’m nothing like that. I’m just a guy who makes music. I’m not much on tradition. I make up my own songs.”

  “A bard does that, too.” There was a long silence, then Emrys said, “That strange song you were singing. Is it yours?”

  David nodded.

  “Play it for me again. If it will not tire you.”

  David grinned. “Music always makes me feel better,” he said. He bent over the harp and began to play. This time, he stumbled less. He tried to weave more complex harmonies, as he would have done on the guitar, though only some of it worked. He ran through the tune twice, then swung into the vocal.

  There was a silence when he finished. At last, Emrys said, “Your music is not as ours is. But you are gifted. You must be, to get even this far so quickly.”

  “Your harp makes it easy. It’s a lovely thing. If it were mine, I’d call it . . . Beauty,” said David, half embarrassed.

  Emrys’s eyebrows shot up again. “As it happens, that is its name,” he said. “Though how you came to know it, I can’t guess. A harp’s true name is a secret known only to its master.”

  Feeling awkward, David said, “Would you play something for me? I’d like to hear what Beauty should really sound like.”

  Emrys reached over and took the harp. He settled it on his knee. Then he took from around his neck an object threaded on a cord. It looked something like an old-fashioned roller-skate key. He applied this to the tuning screws of the harp, pausing now and again to pluck the strings and listen. At last, satisfied with the tuning, he put the key away. After a moment’s thought, he struck a fierce chord
and began to sing in a rich, clear voice.

  Black flew the ravens in their fatal flight,

  Dark the woods, dark the night . . .

  A prickle of excitement ran down David’s spine. The music was like nothing he had ever heard before. Passionate, strange, its cadences wound around him and drew him in. And the words, too, pulled him in, made him live them. The wild ride of a doomed band of heroes. The desperate fight against impossible odds. The bloody battlefield where all but honour was lost.

  Cruel their fell fate, yet their courage a star.

  So perished the heroes of lost Trenovar.

  So rapt was David that for a moment he didn’t realize that the song had ended. He came to himself with a shiver, his eyes brimming. Embarrassed, he quickly blinked the tears back.

  He drew a deep breath and said, “That was, that was . . . I’ve never heard anything like it. It’s wonderful!”

  Emrys sat in the gathering dusk, the harp cradled on his lap. David had the uncomfortable feeling that the man knew quite well that he had been moved to tears.

  At last Emrys said, “Would you like me to teach you something of our music?”

  To have a chance to learn to play Beauty as it should be played?

  “Would I!” said David. Though to himself he added, But I won’t be staying here all that long!

  FOUR

  The next day, Branwyn said David could get up. “But go no farther than the bench outside the door, mind,” she scolded. “Help him get dressed, Bear. There are clean trews and tunic laid ready for him.”

  “What am I, a nursemaid?” growled Bear. But he obeyed, handing David his crutch once he was dressed.

  Outside, David was glad enough to sink down on the bench. Though his head felt much better, his leg still hurt fiercely.

  Wincing at the brightness, he shaded his eyes and looked around. The village was larger than he had thought. But there was still something utterly wrong about it. His heart sank.

  Bear watched him narrowly. “Feeling strange? Sit you here awhile. I must go to arms training. Old Rufus will flay me if I’m late again!” Bear seized a handful of broad-bladed spears and an oval shield that stood leaning against the side of the hut, and bounded off down the path, Cabal loping easily at his heels.

  David sat a long time, gazing numbly at the river. One of the village girls glanced at him shyly as she swung by on her way to get water. She was wearing a long belted tunic down to the ground, with a cloak pinned at the shoulder with a brooch, as Bear’s was. Her russet hair, braided in three long plaits, was trimmed with gleaming golden balls.

  She made a pretty picture as she stooped to dip her water jug into the river. Yet the sight of her suddenly focussed his fear as a lens focusses light. The way these people dressed, lived. Swords. Shields. Spears. Talk of battles. Though the sun was still warm upon him, he felt deadly cold.

  “You’re troubled.” Emrys was standing behind him in the door-place.

  “I’m scared to death,” said David shakily. “I look around me and my eyes don’t believe what they see.”

  Emrys sat down beside him, folding his gnarled hands on his staff. “It’s time you told me what happened before you met Bear.” As David opened his mouth to begin, Emrys added sternly, “And be sure you speak the truth. Hide nothing, or it will be the worse for you.”

  “Yessir.” Haltingly, David told it all, Emrys interrupting him with sharp questions from time to time.

  “You saw the owl first, before anything unusual happened?”

  David nodded. “It swooped at me a couple of times. Then it lit on a bush and watched me.”

  “And after that you saw the lights? They were mounting the valley toward the ruins?”

  “Yes.”

  “The canyll-y-corf!” muttered Emrys. “And you rode right at them?” His voice hardened. “Why would you do such a thing?”

  “I don’t know! The idea just popped into my head, I guess,” David said. “I was still mad at my dad . . . oh, at the whole world, I guess. I thought I’d give them a scare. Pretty stupid of me.”

  “Stupid? It was madness!” snapped the bard. “To challenge the Dark Ones among the hollow hills!”

  “I . . . I don’t understand.”

  Emrys snorted. “The canyll-y-corf is a procession of the spirits of the Dark Ones, a mourning for their great dead back to the dawn of time. It’s a wonder they didn’t just destroy you outright, instead of throwing you . . . away.” He sighed, then added, half to himself, “I suppose that’s her doing. She used their power . . .”

  “But where am I? Nothing in your world looks like what I remember!” said David. “It . . . it all looks like some crazy movie set!”

  “You’re in southwest Prydein, not too far north of the great river Hafren,” said Emrys. “This river is the Usk, which flows into Hafren. Beyond those hills behind us is the old Roman road from Isca to Deva.”

  “I don’t know any of those places. Only . . . yes! Something about Isca!” He’d heard that name before. But where? “Have you any maps, Emrys?” he asked. “I mean . . . pictures of the land drawn on paper?”

  Emrys snorted. “We aren’t savages, boy, whatever you may think of us. Of course we know of maps. But we have none here. The High King and his war leaders in the Land of Summer have many, of course.”

  David flushed. “Sorry. Could . . . could you sketch me a rough map to show where Isca is?” he asked.

  “I could,” returned Emrys. “But better yet, here’s Bear. Let him try. We’ll soon see if he remembers my teaching as well as he does Rufus’ cutting and thrusting.”

  Bear and Cabal had appeared among a group of boys at the end of the village street. Taking leave of them, Bear came slowly on alone. As he got closer, David could see that his tunic was wet with sweat and powdered over with dust.

  Emrys looked Bear up and down. “Rufus works you hard, I see. Well, I’m as stern a taskmaster.”

  “That I’ve never doubted,” said Bear shortly. “I’ve had as many welts from that staff of yours as from Rufus’s cudgel.”

  “Then show me that you’ve learned from them,” snapped Emrys. “Draw David a map of west Prydein, showing our location here.”

  Bear groaned. “Born to take orders, I.” He stacked his weapons against the hut. Then he unsheathed his sword. With the tip, he drew in the dirt a ragged coastline inset with a great tapering wedge-shape.

  “West Prydein,” he said. “This V-shape is where the river Hafren becomes one with the sea.” Toward the point of the V and a little above it he drew a small X. “Isca. Once a fort of the Romans. There are many ruins, and a few folk dwell near there still,” he added. Then he moved the point of the sword and drew a line down to join the Hafren. Beside it he drew another X. “The river Usk. The village. About two days’ journey afoot from Isca. Much less by river.” He looked quizzically at David, who was staring down at the crude map.

  For a moment, David couldn’t figure it out. Then suddenly it made sense. “The river you call Hafren—it must be the Severn!” he said, with growing excitement. “The wide part opening to the sea is the Bristol Channel. And Isca. North of the river, but not far away . . . Isca could be Caerleon! The place I came from that night.”

  He stared at the map, his excitement growing. “It would fit,” he went on. “The road I followed on the bike went north, roughly. Then there was a crossroads, and I turned west a bit, and climbed up into the hills. I must have been quite far north and west when the . . . accident happened. And then Bear brought me here. That’s back to the east, isn’t it? Two days’ journey.”

  Bear nodded.

  “Isca is the same place as Caerleon,” David said. “It has to be. But why do you call it by a different name? And why are things so different from what I’m used to? Places, clothes—everything! Is it just here, in these woods and this village that it’s so?”

  Emrys shook his head. “Branwyn and I have never seen anything like the clothing you wore. And the strange machine you
told me about, the one you rode upon—these things are not part of our world. Not anywhere that I have ever heard of, in Prydein or across the seas.”

  “But what does it all mean?” cried David. “I’m not far from where I’m supposed to be. But everything is wrong! Or have I gone crazy?” His head began to throb, and he hid his face in his hands. Cabal whined, and laid his head beside David’s knee.

  There was a long silence. At last David raised his head, and looked from one to the other of them. “What date is it? I mean, what year?” His mouth felt dry as he asked the question.

  “I don’t know what reckoning you use,” said Emrys. “We British reckon it as the twentieth year of the reign of our High King. “The Romans had a different reckoning, however. As do the Saxons now.”

  “That’s no help, then,” said David impatiently. After a moment he added, “Then it all comes back to Isca and Caerleon. That’s the only thing I’m sure of. You say Isca belonged to the Romans. But that was ages ago!”

  “Nay, they left Prydein only in my great-grandsire’s time,” said Emrys. “They were an army from across the sea. Their emperors conquered Prydein, destroying many of our tribes. They built Isca and other cities. And a network of roads to move their armies.”

  He paused, reflecting. “Many of our folk came to believe Roman ways were better than our own. They lived in Roman towns, learned the Latin language. Only a few, our clan among them, kept to the wild hills and lived in the old ways. Then, after hundreds of years, enemies besieged Rome. The Romans sailed away and left those who had trusted them to the mercy of the Saxons.” He spat in the dust.

  David’s mind raced. Romans had crucified Jesus, hadn’t they? That was hundreds and hundreds of years ago. Thousands! But Emrys had said the Romans were in Prydein in his great-grandfather’s time!

  “The answer has been staring me in the face all along,” he said at last. “Except I won’t believe it. Can’t. My problem isn’t where I am, it’s when I am!”

  “What?” asked Bear, puzzled.