by John James
And then Evrog spoke again.
‘Too old I said I was to go. But if any man of my household wants to go, he may, and he can return to me when the campaign is over, and keep all his booty, and he may boast as he likes of what he did, and no man may contradict him, who did not go with him. And I will send Mynydog thirty suits of mail, and helmets for thirty men, and thirty swords’ – and here there was another taking of breath through the Hall, because this was a royal gift again, and would leave half the pillars bare – ‘and twenty billets of good iron to beat spearheads out of, and forty horses all broken with their harness and saddles and three sets of shoes apiece. And this so that my Cousin may grant arms to his Household.’
Never had anyone thought that Evrog and Mynydog could be on such terms of friendship. There must be peace for one to send such gifts to the other, at this moment when the Irish raged along the coasts. Cynon stood.
‘If Mynydog raises such a Household, what do I do here?’
This, I guessed, had already been arranged. Evrog told him, ‘You need not ask arms of Mynydog. I have given you a sword and mail to guard my gate. Take them, and bring them back again to me.’
Peredur Ironarms was on his feet.
‘So long as Precent is not leader of the war band,’ he said in that lazy insolent way that his nephew, I hear, has after him, ‘it will be no objection my friends will be having if I ride alongside this Pict to look after him.’
There was a roar of laughter at this, and Precent went a purple colour, but still he sat chewing the ends of his moustaches and answered mildly.
‘We will ride together then, and count the heads of the Savages we drive on to each others’ swords.’
Now it was this mildness of Precent’s, this willingness to accept provocation, that convinced the men of Strathclyde that there was something special about the expedition. Gelorwid, Evrog’s other nephew, stood up, and talked like a hermit preaching a sermon, but that was the fault of the way he had been brought up. ‘There is the evil that Morgan preached, that a man can choose his life, and take good or evil as he wishes. But every man does only what God has laid up for him. It may seem to him that he chooses. God in the beginning laid out the world and fixed for every man the way he should go, and how he should die. Maybe, I will be a priest and a hermit after all, maybe not. God has already chosen for me.’ His face and his voice brightened. ‘I have learnt a few prayers, and I will come and say those to you. Looking at the men who insist on going, I am sure that a little virtue and sound doctrine will be necessary. And I have not forgotten the swordplay I learnt at my father’s knee, when I was able to beat Peredur when I liked, and I am sure that I can now—’
With that there was a hubbub, but several of the rougher grooms bellowed from the back of the Hall, so as to cut down the opposition, ‘Quiet all of you, give the lad a chance, let him talk!’
They hoisted Aidan on to the table, and he cried out in his Irish-accented British tongue, his voice not long past breaking, ‘I am a King’s son, and I deserve a sword and a coat of mail, even if I have three elder brothers who are without arms. I will come with you and fight because I want a sword!’
There was a shout of applause, and now there were a whole crowd of men shouting to be heard. Among them, I could recognise Morien, shouting, ‘I shall burn them out, burn them out!’
Then the songs began, and the Harper tried to choose the tunes, but he was shouted down as they sang the old songs, songs of war made long before I ever sang of peace, ‘Heads on the Gate’, and ‘The Toad’s Ride’, ‘The Hunting of the Black Pig’, and ‘Blood on the Marshes’. Tomorrow would be the preparation, the saddling of the horses and the packing of soft bags, the farewells to mothers and the parting gifts from sweethearts, the choosing of clothes for riding and of clothes for feasting, and the giving away of things one would need after because they would be easy to loot and better for it. But tonight was the time for singing and drinking, and the old songs rolled in the rafters. Under the sound of the music and laughter, Precent and Evrog leant towards me.
‘Will you come too?’ Precent asked. ‘Foster-brother, dearer than a brother, will you ride into Mordei and the land of the Savages? Will you guard my back?’
‘In war,’ I asked bitterly, ‘what would I do? What place has the ox in the stampede?’
‘If you are a poet, come and sing for us and make our deeds immortal. If you are not a poet, come and kill Savages.’
‘I do not know,’ I said. It was true. I could not think what I would do, except that I would not ride to war against the Savages. ‘I will come to Eiddin, if I can.’
‘I will give you a horse,’ offered Evrog. ‘You may have it whether you go to war or not, whether you go to Eiddin or not. It is yours for all the pleasure you have given me over the years.’
‘Then I will come to Eiddin,’ I agreed. I meant that I would ride to Bradwen. I did not know that I was riding to Cattraeth. Gelorwid was right. It was our fate.
2
Gredyf gwr oed gwas
Gwrhyt am dias
Meirch mwth myngvras
A dan vordwyt megyrwas
Ysgwyt ysgauyn lledan
Ar bedrein mein vuan
Kledyuawr glas glan
Ethy eur aphan
He was a man in mind, in years a youth,
And gallant in the din of war:
Fleet, thick-maned chargers
Were ridden by the illustrious hero.
A shield, light and broad,
On the flank of his swift slender steed.
His sword was blue and gleaming,
His spurs were of gold.
It was three days riding from Dumbarton to Eiddin, across the lowlands. It was the first riding I had done for more than a year. I rode the brown gelding that Evrog had given me, a good enough horse, not perhaps the best in his stable, but a steady beast under me as if he had sympathy with me. It did not hurt as much to sit astride him as I feared.
There were nine young men, beside Precent and myself. We did not ride, only, because we led the rest of the forty horses Evrog sent. Three horses to a man is not too great an allowance for a campaign. There would be none to steal from the Savages, because they find it hard enough to manage oxen – even oxen can escape them. Even Arthur could not have defeated them had they been mounted, because they came about him as lice about a hairy dog.
The horses carried the iron rods and bars, ready for the smith to hammer out into spear-points. Axes and swords with their edges sharp to cut a wisp of lamb’s wool, they are different. You have to get a real smith to beat out those, who has served his seven years of apprenticeship and has learned to make the edge straight and beat in the charcoal to the spongy iron they bring us from the bogs of Shetland.
Swords are work for craftsmen, as are songs. They are not made by brawn and the hard striking of the great hammer, any more than by a sweet voice or the oft repeating of rhymes. In each the skill is knowing what to say, where to strike. Any man could beat out here the strips of iron that make the rim of a helmet and the arches to frame the hard leather cap. But sending iron for swords would be no use if Mynydog had no swordsmiths, and the likelihood was he had too few workers even to use the iron Evrog had sent him. So swords Evrog sent too, long horsemen’s swords of blue smooth iron, to give reach to a man who leans forward to strike at an enemy below.
Lighter than the swords and the iron bars were the shields. A shield-frame is not difficult to make, but it takes time to weave the great oval basket, lightly dished, and time Mynydog did not have. The frames were covered with leather, but unpainted. A man must decide for himself what he wants painted on his shield, and if he can get the iron, whether he wants it rimmed or not; most of us did not want iron on our shields, to tire our arms.
Swords take skill to make, and shields take time. Mail takes both. A mail shirt is not made in a hurry for one campaign. More jeweller’s work it is than smith’s. You hammer out the iron bars into long wires, a little thicker
than oatstraws. Each ring has four more rings linked through it, and each of these into four more. A thousand rings are so linked and you have a little sheet like knitted wool, large enough to shield a man’s breast from the flight of an arrow. So weeks and weeks of work will make at last a strip of fabric in iron, and if you fold it you have a sleeve. A shirt has two sleeves, and the body will take as much work as a dozen sleeves. Then after a year, a smith, working small and quiet, ring after monotonous ring, may have enough mail to clothe a man for war. And all that time, the smith must be fed.
A mailed shirt is a precious thing, not easily or cheaply bought, and I did not think that all the Kingdoms of the North could muster five hundred. Yet Evrog had been better than his promise, and had sent forty of them, each worth the purchase of a man’s life. I knew, we all knew, how bare he left his own armoury, with the Scots at his gate. These shirts he sent to Mynydog. He did not give them to his own young men. If they were to be Mynydog’s men for this campaign, then Mynydog must give them their arms. To Mynydog of Eiddin they went: I went to Bradwen in Eiddin.
We rode under the rock of Eiddin, beneath the steep North Face that rises sheer from the meadows and the marshes, a mile from the Forth. The watchers on the walls of the Dun, at the western end of Eiddin, turned their eyes from the fishing boats to watch us come and try to count us and guess who we were and where we came from. When they recognized the squat figure of Precent, never graceful on a horse, they began to wave and to shout at us, and we waved back.
By the time we had reached the eastern end of Eiddin, and turned south between it and the Giant’s Throne, as we called it then, to ride up the long slope to the village beneath the rampart, they were all out, women and children, shouting to Precent, throwing flowers at him, and beneath his horse’s hooves. The children fed the tired beast with handfuls of grass, and the smallest ones pulled at his stirrups and at his heels, and called him to look at them; and when he did, they were overcome with shyness and hid their faces or turned away.
They were all glad to see Precent. Nobody looked at the rest of us. It was plain that young men on horses came in every day, always fresh men, every draft like the last. There was no novelty in that, in men they had never seen before. But Precent coming home, Precent himself, oh, that was different, even if he had been gone only a week from Eiddin. Precent coming home, now, that was something to sing about. So they sang, and our young men sang with them. I did not sing. I did nothing. I did not even hide my face. No one looked at me.
We turned in between the two rows of little houses that edge the last mile of the path to the Dun, the King’s mile from his Hall to his farm. We heard a horn blow, Gwanar’s horn, I knew, who had succeeded Precent at the gate. It was noon, Mynydog would be sitting on his Mound of Judgement, before the gate of the Dun. Now any of his people, any free man of the Isle of Britain, could come to him where he sat with Clydno his Judge by his side to tell him what was true law and what was not. Every day he sat, like every King, to hear complaints of one man against another, or against the King, and do justice, in the Roman manner.
Precent led the file of men and horses up the slope. I dismounted, and let a small boy hold the reins of my brown gelding. This entrance had nothing to do with me. I would not ride up the slope behind Precent. I would not be his gift to Mynydog. I had as much right in Eiddin as any man, as much right as Mynydog himself. I was a freeman of the Isle of Britain, and I would give myself where I wished. I would give myself to Bradwen, and what she told me I would do. I let Precent ride on.
I looked about Eiddin from under my hood. It had altered little in the winter I had been away. But it had altered. The houses were the same. The people were the same, the women as talkative, the children as shrill, the men as silent, as they had been a year ago; only all a year older. A year makes a great difference to a child. You do not recognise a child you knew a year ago, he has changed; and he will not recognise you – he has more important things to fill his mind than the comings of grown-ups. But apart from the people, Eiddin had changed. Every other house was now a smithy, with men beating out spear- and arrowheads, and strips of iron for helmet-brims and shield-rims and for bits and stirrups. You cannot expect a smith who works on his farm and only lights his forge once a week, if that, and then only to straighten a bent ploughshare or edge a wooden spade – you cannot expect him to think of welding mail rings or beating the edge of a sword.
But busy they all were. They were men from the South, from the border of Mordei, from Mordei itself and even from Bernicia. Their own smithies the Savages had burnt, and they had fled north to Eiddin, to the only King who seemed strong and determined enough to promise that one day they would return to the lost lands. These smiths from the South sweated the bitterness of defeat into their weapons: their fires smelt of revenge. I watched their work. I had no feeling whatsoever. It was one thing to think of war by the candle-light of Evrog’s Hall. It was different here, in the clear light of day, in a place so well known. It was different here, where Bradwen lived.
At the bottom of the hill was Mynydog’s farm. It was a cluster of barns and stables and pigsties, and a fold for the lambing. There was another smithy there, with men who could have made mail, because they were skilful enough, but they had enough work of their own. There was also a wheelwright’s shop and a waggoner’s yard. All the carts of the Kingdom were made there. Mynydog lived well on his carts. And between the farm and the slopes and steeps of the Giant’s Throne and the river, stretched the fields where Mynydog ran his horses as my father did in the pastures of Cae’r Ebolion before Aber-Arth.
Now, though, there were more barns than I could remember, many more, great longhouses. Some of them were well thatched and all the cracks in their walls sealed, and they had stood the winds of winter as I could see from their colour. Others were new, their timbers still showing white from the axe, and their roofs hardly thatched, but covered hurriedly with leafy boughs, not enough to keep out the summer showers, let alone the drenching rains of autumn. These would not last. They were no more substantial than the booths we used to build when we were young, to sleep in through the summer nights when we were herding the sheep out on the high moors.
But they were not shepherds who slept in these huts. With the older barns, there would be room for two hundred, or more. A young man on campaign does not look for comfort in space. The nearer he sleeps to his comrades, the warmer he lies and the safer he feels. And there were more than two hundred. I could see them out on the meadows, forming into three lines, fifty yards apart, in the true Roman way. Far away they were, too far to see any one man clearly, to make out more than that they were horsemen, drilling.
Someone, then, was drilling the King’s Household like a regiment of cavalry, real cavalry like they have in the Empire, mail-clad from head to foot, fit to face the Goths. Yes, you could see the sheen of their helmets, and above them a long shimmer of red, a glowing streak across the top of each line.
I had been standing long enough. By now Precent would have spoken to Mynydog. What he said did not matter. Aneirin did not depend on any man’s words. Somewhere past the Judgement Mound, Bradwen would be waiting for me. I walked towards her, up the long gentle hill to the gate of the Dun.
Before the gate, long ago, earth was heaped up to form the Mound, and the grass was green on it. Mynydog’s throne was set on the mound, so that seated his shoulders were above the heads of standing men. He wore the scarlet robe of state, that his father had received from Vortigern the Good, who was King of all the Romans on the Isle of Britain, before the Savages came and Hengist struck him dead at his own board. Across Mynydog’s knees lay unsheathed the sword of the Kings of Eiddin, an old blade, made by magicians, the hilt of bronze stretched out in two wide horns above the pommel.
On his head, Mynydog wore the Crown of the House of Gododdin. Precious beyond belief, it was all of silver, and covered with a film of gold, so that it sparkled to strike awe into all who saw it. There is a cross of gold on the summit
, and the rim is set with precious stones of great value, garnets and amethysts and fine crystal won in battle from the Picts and the Irish Scots long before the Wall was made.
There were a great number of people about the King. Beside him stood Clydno the Judge, his ivory staff tipped and bound with silver, his robe bound with ermine like a King’s, and his head bare, to show that even a Judge goes in subjection to a King, though the King obeys the law.
Clydno’s face was still glowing with the pleasure of seeing his son again after three years. Cynon stood at the foot of the Mound, with Precent. As I went up the hill, and saw the Mound ahead, so Aidan came down, and Morien, Gelorwid and Peredur Ironarms. Mynydog, I saw, had not waited, nor had he been niggardly with Evrog’s gift. They came armed in mail, and helm and unpainted shield, and each had a sword. Only a King may grant arms, and only to his own followers. A young man I used to know, called Gwion Catseyes, led them down to the huts in the King’s farmyard. They did not notice me, or see me, not even Gwion. They were too happy, they were now men, and warriors.
I came nearer to the Judgement Mound. I had to push my way through the crowd. Nobody recognised me. They were not expecting me. Nobody, I thought, would know me unprompted. Nobody will be glad that I have returned, except Bradwen. Bradwen will be glad to see me, however old and weak I have come to look, however long I have been away, whether I make songs or not. Bradwen will know me, she will be glad to see me come home. For Eiddin is my home, now that Eudav’s Hall is burnt. I will not ride out, whatever Precent may think I meant at Evrog’s table. I said nothing there. I only said that I would return to Eiddin. I meant that I would return to Bradwen. I did not promise to go to Mynydog’s war, whoever is the Captain of the Household. I will sit here in Eiddin, and watch the armies ride out, and then I will have some peace, with Bradwen, and perhaps I may even learn to sing again.
I came to the front of the crowd, and all at once there was someone who knew me. Mynydog’s little nephew was there, four years old, or perhaps just turned five, I can’t remember, son of Mynydog’s sister Ygraine, though who his father was, whether her husband Gorlois or someone else, was more than anyone liked to guess at. He had been sent here to be fostered in the North as I had been, and for the same reasons, first that it was safe here, and second that nobody seemed to care what became of him. His half-sister Gwenllian had come with him, fourteen years old when she carried the baby into Eiddin in her arms.