Tales of Avalon
Page 21
As it turned out, they met no patrol on the road. Once, just before first light, they saw a campfire up in the hills to their left, but it was far off, at the west end of Bryniau’r Mendydd. Not long after, they saw the low rise of Bryn Gwaun, reaching out into the bay. The hill was actually a western outlier of the Mendydds, made of the same limestone and containing deposits of lead and, perhaps, silver. But its separation from the main body of hills by some four or five leagues put it in an isolated and exposed position. The Romans seemed not interested in it. As long as the local Dubh-bunadh remained peaceful, they were allowed to occupy the hillfort atop Bryn Gwaun. It no longer protected Llecychod on its southern slope, but it was at least a remnant of tribal autonomy. Circling Gwaun to the west, along the water, they came finally to Llecychod. “The place of boats,” it was called, for it lay at the confluence of the Hafren estuary and the great marshes. There larger boats and smaller were exchanged, depending upon the direction in which one was traveling. Cethin and Fianna had come on foot, but word had arrived before them and a flat bottomed marshboat was waiting for them at a small mooring hidden in the reeds at the edge of the village. No one was there to meet them, but the boat was where the guide at y Aberafon had said it would be. In the boat lay the prearranged sign, a small sack of apples, the fruit of Affalon. They found a thicket of brambles nearby, and hid themselves for the day, getting what sleep they could. ~
When darkness had fallen on the fourth night of their journey, they quietly pushed off from the mooring and turned eastward into the open waters of the wide marshland. It was a sight Cethin had never seen before, but it touched Fianna’s heart with awakened memories of home. The night was cold and clear, with a waxing crescent moon near to setting. A crisp wind blew out of the northwest, chilling the bone through layers of sleeping furs pressed into use as clothing. The tiny boat, made from the hollowed out trunk of an oak and flattened on the bottom, was difficult to handle at first. It was made for the shallow waters of the inner marshes. They carried a light load, so the boat sat high in the water. That, and the lack of a keel, made sails of their bodies, twisting and turning the boat with each gust of wind and passing wave. They sat as low as they could and still paddle, trying to stay out of the wind, to keep warm.
When the west end of Ynys Mawr loomed before them, they steered to the right, seeking the channel between the great island and Ynys Bryn Llyffaint. As the dark outline of a high hill rose against the stars on their right, Cethin broke their silence.
“Mother, is that Bryn Llyffaint?”
“It is,” Fianna answered. “It was from there Eosaidh of Cornualle set out in a boat like this one for Ynys y Niwl, sixteen summers ago.”
The open channel was narrow as they passed between reed ringed islands that were as myth to Cethin. He imagined the giant shovel of Offrwm, countless ages ago, hurling the great conical hill to where it rose in the water before him. And Hynafgwr, King of the Llyffaint for All the Ages, sitting in state upon its summit.
“At that time,” Fianna said, following her own thoughts and not Cethin’s, “the fort atop Bryn Llyffaint was held by the Dumnoni. I know not who, if anyone, is there now.” Though they saw no lights they kept close to the reeds for cover, and glided by in silence.
Beyond Bryn Llyffaint the water opened wider again, with the shores of Ynys Mawr still on their left. Above the great island, and beyond, rose the dark outline of Bryniau’r Mendydd. There were campfires at several points along the ridges. These, they knew, indeed were the fires of Roman outposts, for the tribes had lost the Mendydd mines. They still worked them, but the wealth now belonged to Rome.
The moon set behind them and the Hunter rose higher in the east. As night wore on the wind eased, bringing a new sort of heavy chill that hung in the air and sat upon the lungs. They passed through another narrow channel, between Ynys Mawr and an island they did not know, and the waters opened out again. But not as wide as earlier, for they were entering the inner marshes, near to the realm of Affalon. As they passed the southwest cape of Ynys Mawr, they reached the last stretch of open water before the true marshes began. Ahead of them lay the isles of Llefrich and Bragwair, and Ynys Calchfaen, yet unseen, where Gobaith once hunted marsh deer with little Dyfrgi, and Doeth learned the secret of living upon the tides. On their left the Mendydds retreated farther off. The deep darkness at their base, Cethin knew, was the supposed location of Cysgodion, still home to the Lady whose priestesses lived on Ynys y Niwl. He wanted to ask Fianna about that. But when he turned to her she was sitting sideways in the boat, paddle across her lap, staring into the darkness.
She is with her even now, Cethin thought. She is with Sianed on the isle of shadows. And he remained quiet, respecting her silence.
The night’s darkness was dissolving into early morning light when they saw Ynys Calchfaen before them and turned to the left along its north shore. The sky above them was clear, but a morning mist hung above the waters making it hard to see. Fianna strained to peer through the mist, knowing the lake village of Pentreflyn to be near, somewhere ahead. They paddled slowly along the edge of the Calchfaen reeds, watching for signs of the Pentreflyn huts rising on a great platform out of the waters. By now, Fianna thought, there must be smoke from cooking fires, sounds of the day beginning.
Suddenly the reeds fell away on their right, and open water led up to the shore of Calchfaen.
“Cethin, look!” said Fianna, pointing to the deserted beach. “That is where they say Doeth watched her husband’s boat rise and fall, and learned the secret of building a lake village.” As Cethin stared, hoping to see Gobaith’s mythical mooring pole, Fianna’s heart fell at what she saw ahead.
The outlines of Pentreflyn emerged out of the low mist, black outlines at first then in more detail as they neared. But all was silent save for the cries of curlews overhead. No smoke rose above the huts, for there were no cooking fires. They tied up at one of the pilings of the little village. Where once a ladder would have been climbed, they stepped out onto the wooden platform into water that covered their ankles. No one challenged or greeted them. No one was there. A pair of crested ducks splashed noisily around the corner of a hut and, encountering human intruders, took flight out over the reeds. They walked through the village in silence, looking into huts as they went, finding no one On the island side, a walkway led into the marsh toward the Calchfaen shoreline. But a few paces out there were broken and missing planks. And a few paces beyond that the ruined end of the walkway dropped off into the water. It was so quiet they could hear the gentle hiss of the light breeze in the surrounding reeds, the gentle lapping of waves against the outer pilings.
“What happened here?” Cethin asked.
“I cannot say,” answered Fianna. “As in Doeth’s time, the waters have been rising. It may be the village was finally overwhelmed by tides. Or it may be the Romans took their grazing pastures on Crib Pwlborfa. What is certain is that no one has lived here for several summers.” An otter pulled herself up on the end of the walkway and began prying open the shell of a marsh clam. “No one, that is, except for the marsh folk who were here first.”
“Good morning,” she called to the otter. “Blessings of the day to you, Dyfrgi.” The otter looked up at her for a moment, then went back to her morning meal. Fianna turned to Cethin,
“Come,” she said, wading through the shallow water toward the east end of the village.
As they stood, looking eastward, the morning sun burned off the last of the marsh mist. There, perhaps three leagues away across the southeast point of Calchfaen, rose a green island out of the marsh. Three hills stood upon it, one long and low, one softly rounded, and, between them, one that rose like a tower into the sky. Across the marsh came the faint sound of a tolling bell. Cethin knew what he saw before she spoke. But Fianna took his hand and said,
“That is Ynys y Niwl, Cethin,” and there were tears in her eyes. “But what you see is Ynys Witrin, the isle of glass. And the bell you hear is from the temple of those who call themselves Chr
istians. There!” she said, and pointed. Just below the long low ridge of Bryn Fyrtwyddon a small whitewashed building sat in the sunlight.
“That must be their temple,” Fianna said. “It was there sat the round hut of Eosaidh when last I stood on the island. But by then he had already left this world, he and Vivian.”
“If that now is Witrin, how will you find Ynys y Niwl?” Cethin asked.
“I hope I know, Healer,” Fianna answered. “You saw me talking with Sianed last night in the boat as we passed the darkness of Cysgodion. She told me how to call the mists, how to summon the boat. But this I have never done before.”
Fianna turned to Cethin and surprised him by taking him in her arms and drawing him close to her breast. He noticed for the first time that he was much taller than she, and it was rather her head that lay upon his chest.
“You have done well by me, Healer. You have saved me from death, and brought me home. And you have learned the Marsh Tales, the ancient wisdom of Affalon. Now I must leave this world, and where I am going, through the mists, you cannot come. Through you, alone, will Affalon continue to live in the wide world.”
“Are you to be the Lady, at the passing of Sianed?” Cethin asked.
“That I do not know,” Fianna answered. “Nor do I know aught of what lies ahead for Affalon. But Sianed has called me, and it is time for me to go.” She drew his head down and kissed him on his forehead, then turned away toward the isle in the east.
Cethin stood quietly behind her as she moved to the edge of the platform. For long minutes she stood still, silent, seeing with her eyes things he could not see. Then she raised her arms upward from her sides, holding them spread above her head. For long moments nothing happened, but Fianna did not move, nor did she speak. A white egret landed on the roof of a hut behind them, and perched there, watching. Then, from around both sides of Ynys y Niwl there appeared white banks of mist hanging over the marshes. Slowly they came together and met, so the shores of the isle were no longer visible. Slowly they rose into the sky, engulfing the high tor of Bryn Ddraig. Slowly they flowed toward Pentreflyn across the marsh, until they hung silently before Fianna, not many paces away. Still without speaking Fianna lowered her arms and stepped forward, as it seemed, on the waters. And out of the mists before her came a small boat, and a young priestess was at the paddle. The boat came up beside Fianna and she stepped in, standing in the middle.
“Tell the tales, Cethin,” she said softly. “Tell them the Marsh Tales.”
Then slowly and silently the boat turned, and vanished into the mists. Cethin stood alone on the submerged platform of Pentreflyn. Behind him his small boat, tethered to a piling, rocked gently upon the waters of the marsh.
Chapter Twenty-One The Changing of the World
Ides Junius IX Imperator Domitianus
It is the ninth year of Emperor Titus Flavius Domitianus, son of Vespasian who conquered the tribes. Often, now, I come here to this bluff below the Prydde mines in the Bryniau’r Mendydd, overlooking the wide marshes where thirty summers ago I watched Fianna disappear into the mists. Much has happened in that lifetime. Ynys Witrin, once called Ynys y Niwl, lies below, lit by the high summer sun. There are fewer mists about the isle now that Roman engineers have begun a vast project of water drainage. There now lay broad areas of raised bog where once there was marshland. And new marshes that were once open water. The bogs are crisscrossed with canals and ditches which year by year have produced many hectares of new farmland. I have been to Ynys Witrin a few times, but it pains me to go there. In the field below Wearyall Hill there is a stone church, which is what Christians call their temples. Beside it hang three bronze bells that toll throughout the day, marking times of prayer. Many Christians live on Witrin now, in a community nearly the size of a small village. Glaston, I think they call it. From there they send men out to every corner of the land, seeking converts to the new god they call Christus. Only the old folk remember this Christus to be the nephew of Eosaidh of Cornualle, who once lived where the church now stands.
After I was parted from Fianna I returned to Llan y gelli of the Silures where, for a time under Cadael, we held out against the Roman conquest. Under Cadael the Silures finally began attacking Roman settlements, taking Roman prisoners. But in the end they, too, fell like all the tribes. When the Silures won a victory over the famed II Augusta legion it was too much for the old commander Vespasian, who had become Emperor. He decided to tolerate the holdouts no longer. In the thirtieth year of the occupation, Sextus Julius Frontinus overran Llan y gelli, removing its people to the Roman settlement of Venta Silurum. With the defeat of the Silures the Brythonic lands became known as Britannia, and were no longer free. The II Augusta valued my skill as an herbalist, so they brought me here to the Mendydds, where they had taken control of the mines long before. Ever since have I cared for those Brythonic prisoners who have labored in these mines, and I have buried their dead. Now the soldiers, too, are gone. The IInd has moved north to Glevum and civilian officers control the mines. Indeed, Rome is so confident of its conquest it has already removed two legions from these shores. Men of the tribes still work the mines, but the wealth, as the silver and lead, all goes to Rome. Many Brythons have welcomed the new way of life, and it seems we are all Romans of a sort now.
Below, the hills of Witrin are surrounded on three sides by fields golden with barley and summer wheat. To the west there is marshland still, and open water not far beyond that. But Witrin is an island now for only a few months in the midst of winter, when the rains come and flood the fields. So it is deep winter I love the most, for it is that view of the surrounding marshes that reminds me of Ynys y Niwl. Fianna, I suppose has by now left this world. I never heard whether she became Lady, or took the name of Vivian. But I feel it in my being that Ynys y Niwl is there yet, unseen by our eyes, and that a Lady of Affalon still lives.
What difference does it make, that the ancient world still exists, somehow, in the midst of a new age?
Arius, a healer’s apprentice, struggles down to the bluff and sits by my side, wiping the sweat of exertion from his brow. He is the son of a Roman administrator and a Dubh-bunadh woman, bearing in his flesh and heritage a sign of these times. He holds a leather gathering bag filled, I hope, with herbs for identification. If the gods had given me children, Arius would be the age of my grandson. Perhaps unfairly I sometimes treat him as such, but I do not think he minds. For a long while we sit in silence, his own eyes following mine as I search the levels below.
On the western edge of Ynys Witrin, no longer separated from it by marsh, is the gentle rise of Bol Forla, where the first of the Marsh Tales took place. Women go there still to seek the blessing of the goddess, whom they now call Bride. Though more and more often they also seek prayers of the male priests at Glaston. Still farther west I can see Bryn Calchfaen, no longer an island but a low rise surrounded by bog. I have not been there, but I am told that scattered ruins of Pentreflyn can still be seen at its edge, lying about. And out at the horizon stands Bryn Llyffaint, always my favorite. There is open water near it still, but it is mostly surrounded by marsh. If frogs live there yet, they must find it a habitable place.
My eyes drop to the levels just below, between the hill of Bryn Mawr and the old wells at Llw Fynnon where once the tribes gathered. Somewhere in those fens was Ynys y Cysgodion, home of the Lady who was mother of all living, home of the Lady still in the days of Fianna. Is it there yet, I wonder, hidden like the heart of Ynys y Niwl? At the memory of that name, my gaze completes its circuit, as always, by turning to the deep valley where y Fynnon Goch lies between Bryn yr Affalau and Bryn Ddraig. All this while, and for some time longer, Arius understands and respects my silence. He has no memory of Fianna, and knows the levels only as they appear now. Yet he knows them also through the Tales, and imagines them as once they were.
“It matters, Cethin,” he says, surely reading my thoughts, or at least feeling the emotion that floods my heart. Again we sit in silence.
I try to change the subject by asking Arius what he has found, so he empties the contents of his bag onto the limestone. Birdsfoot, mouse ear, red clover, sunwort, lady’s mantle. I ask him what each is for and he tells me, his lessons well learned. But he sees by the mist in my eyes that my heart is not in this lesson, so neither is his. He is learning herb lore, it is supposed, so that I may give up my duties in the Prydde mines and do more teaching, traveling the marshes and hills and spreading the Marsh Tales among people who have all but forgotten the old ways. And he will make a good herbalist, but he would rather learn the Tales and travel with me. Though my mind wanders he is still speaking, and gently raises his voice to call me back.
“Cethin, it does matter,” he says.
“What?” I ask him. “The scarcity of mouse ear this summer?”
“You know well what I mean, old man,” he answers, with a playful laugh that does not mask his concern. He lowers his voice. “It matters that the old is out there yet,” his eyes turning to Bryn Ddraig where it rises on Witrin. “Whether we see it or not, it matters that the ancient places yet live under the surface, and that the old knowledge is, somewhere, taught still.”