by Wayne Grant
He let the poet lead him back inside the entrance to the hall.
“Is this to be another tale of Saint Daffyd?” Llywelyn asked wearily. He’d been raised on stories of Wales’ patron saint, most of which seemed rather trivial and boring to him as a young man. The ancient churchman had supposedly advised Welsh warriors to put leeks in their bonnets before battle. The Welsh had triumphed, but Llywelyn had always been sceptical as to how the ornamental vegetables had helped.
“I’ve found no leeks in Roderic’s larder,” he said.
“No, no, my lord,” the poet said, waving away the idea of Saint Daffyd as though shooing a fly. “I speak of Saint Dwynwen!”
Llywelyn screwed up his face.
“I can’t say as I’ve heard of that one.”
“She’s our patron saint of lovers, my lord.”
Llywelyn sighed.
“Perhaps we should stay with Saint Daffyd after all, lad. I’ll not have much use for lovers when your old lord attacks at dawn.”
Benfras shook his head vigorously.
“This has naught to do with lovers, my lord. It has to do with what Saint Dwynwen did when she lost hers. She became a hermit!”
“I know poets enjoy the sound of their own voices,” Llywelyn said testily, “but get to the point!”
“Of course, my lord, of course,” he answered hastily. “Dwynwen took up the hermit’s life on an island, where she lived out her days alone. The place is called Ynys Llanddwyn, after the saint, lord. It is a very unusual island, inasmuch as it is not always surrounded by the sea. There is a thin finger of land that connects it to the shore. At each high tide, the sea rushes in and covers it completely. At low tide it can be crossed for a few hours, but the sand is deep and the path narrow. It’s a hard place to approach, lord, and I think a better place to defend than this,” he said, casting a sceptical eye at the low wall of the Llys.
Llywelyn arched an eyebrow. He had only been half listening to the poet, but this last part intrigued him. If such a place existed, it would indeed be more defensible than the Llys.
“And where is this saint’s island, Benfras?” he asked, prepared to be disappointed.
The poet smiled broadly.
“It lies not three miles southeast along the coast. I’ve made a pilgrimage there myself.”
Llywelyn stepped back across the entrance to the hall and looked at the dark shapes of his men crouched against the low wall. Tomorrow, they would be in the fight of their lives and they would lose if they stayed where they were. Perhaps it was time to put his faith in a heartbroken saint—and a poet. He swung around and strode back into the hall. There he found Gruffydd asleep on the table.
“Up, cousin!” he ordered. “Prepare your men to march!”
***
The men who survived the coming days would long remember the march from Aberffraw to Ynys Llanddwyn—Saint Dwynwen’s Island. The night was dark as pitch and the rain swept over them in sheets. Shielded by the dark and the storm from the watchful eyes of Roderic’s horsemen, they’d marched quietly out of the enclosure of the royal court, and down to the Ffraw River. They followed the gravel river bed toward the sea and watched as the small stream in the centre began to swell.
Before the rising river drove them from its course, the column of six hundred reached the bay where they had landed three days before. The ships that had brought them here were long gone. In their place were waves, higher than a horse’s head and driven by a howling wind, that thundered as they crashed on the shore. The churning waters ran right up to the base of the dunes and, at times, men waded knee deep in the oncoming sea as they marched.
Llywelyn led the column with the spare little poet, Benfras, beside him to show the way. He wondered, as he looked at the heaving waters, whether Caradog Priddy had got his ships safe away. They’d covered a mile along the strand when the poet turned and called to Llywelyn over the wind.
“We must ford the River Cefni just ahead, my lord!” he shouted.
Llywelyn nodded. Whatever lay in their path, there could be no turning aside now. Ahead of him, he saw the dunes swing down toward the sea. He clambered up the wet shifting sand and looked down on a shallow river, frothed by the wind. Benfras struggled up beside him.
“It’s only a mile beyond this river!” he screamed into the wind. Llywelyn did not reply. He simply started down the backside of the dune as his men began to climb the forward side. He reached the edge of the stream and edged into it. There was little current as the oncoming waves fought the river’s flow to a standstill, but the river bottom was treacherous.
He leaned forward and started across. He was wearing mail and, if he lost his footing and went under, he would drown. But the water never rose more than chest high as he stumbled onto the far bank. He turned and saw Benfras and a long line of men, obediently following in his steps. He leaned down and extended a hand to the young poet and hauled him up on the bank.
“I don’t know if we will survive this, poet,” he shouted at the young man, “but if you do, you have the makings of an epic poem.”
Benfras looked back on the line of men dutifully marching down the far dune and into the water.
“If I live, my lord, I will try to do it justice!”
***
For another hour, the cold and miserable men trudged along a narrow strip of white sand with high dunes to their left and a raging sea to their right. The wind slacked a little but the rain did not. As they neared a low headland where the dunes seemed to fall away to the east, Benfras cried out and pointed.
“Ynys Llanddwyn!”
Llywelyn peered through the pelting rain and saw a low hump of land just off shore. Huge breakers crashed on the rocky flanks sending up clouds of white spray. It was an island, indeed, as its near shore was separated from the mainland by a hundred yards of churning sea. He looked at Benfras.
“High tide, my lord,” the man shouted, seeing the look of concern on his new patron’s face. He stepped forward to observe the depth and the movement of the water. “It will turn soon. In a few hours, we can wade across.”
Llywelyn nodded and sent word back along the column for men to take what shelter they could while they waited for the sea to subside. They collapsed in bunches on the sand, huddling together for warmth. The Prince stared across at the rocky knob of land rising out of the sea and wondered if this would be where his cause died.
“Have faith, lord.” Benfras said. “You will be like Moses at the Red Sea. The waters will part!”
The Prince gave the eager young poet a weary smile, but said nothing. As he stared at the raging sea he had one thought.
Moses never reached the promised land.
***
Lord Roderic’s best scout spit sand from his mouth and wiped the rain from his eyes as he stared across the Ffraw River at the royal Llys. He had crawled on his belly across the low dunes for two hours until he had reached this spot. He had come to count the men defending the walls, but had seen no one, not even a lookout. He waited for an hour and, seeing no activity across the river, he slid down the bank and ran in a crouch across the streambed, leaping the narrow river, barely wetting his feet.
He fetched up below the west bank and stayed still for a while. No alarm was raised, so he scrambled up the bank and ran to the wall itself. Still no sign of the rebel forces. Finally, he edged along the east wall and slid around the corner. The south gate to the court hung open. He cautiously peered inside. The place was empty!
He set off at a run back toward his own lines a mile away. He was still covered in grit when he was ushered into Roderic’s campaign tent.
“They’ve gone, my lord!” he reported. “Not a soul can be found in the Llys. I could see where they marched down to the river bed, but the storm has washed away the trail there.”
Roderic cursed. From the first, he had known that Llywelyn must have reached Anglesey by sea. A march through his domains, past Caenarfon and across the Menai Strait would not have gone unseen and un
reported. Now it looked as though he might have escaped the same way, and if so, the chance to finally put an end to his nephew’s pretensions had been lost.
But outside his tent, the wind still howled and the rain still roared, as it had since nightfall. That gave him hope. His scouts had confirmed that the rebels still held the Llys as darkness fell and the storm hit. No vessel he knew of could have taken off an army in Aberffraw Bay in such a gale. If they had, all would be at the bottom of the sea and his troubles would be over. But if they had not, then where was Llywelyn? He called for his courier.
“Order the scouts out at first light. I want every inch of this coast searched!”
***
Caradog Priddy had sailed due west out of Aberffraw Bay to gain distance from the coast before turning his little fleet to the northwest to catch the strengthening wind coming up from the south. It had taken all his skill at the steering oar to claw his way toward the deep water that separated Anglesey from Ireland. Two of his boats lost the battle with the rising gale and foundered on the rocks of Holyhead. Another was lost on an unseen reef in the dark of night as they made the turn to the northeast around the headland of Trwyn y Gadair.
Beyond that rocky promontory, the wind drove them north through whitecapping waves. Masts groaned and sails ripped. Priddy, slacked his sails, then reefed them before they were torn to tatters. He heaved heavy lines off the stern to slow his boat and keep it from driving its bow into a trough and pitchpoling. Occasional flashes of lightning revealed that others in the battered fleet were doing the same.
It was dawn before the fishing boats turned east and reached relative calm off the north shore of Anglesey. It had taken over half a day. The rain still fell in brief squalls, but the low island now shielded them from the brunt of the wind and waves. Priddy tossed out an anchor and let the surviving ships gather near. Looking at his own boat, he could see water sloshing knee-deep in his hold. He knew every one of his boat masters had leaks and frayed lines that needed attention after the battering they had taken.
He snapped off orders to his crew and handed off the steering oar to his youngest son. He could barely unclench his fingers after twelve hours, fighting to keep his boat off the rocks. He longed to sink down on a bench and rest, but made his way forward to where Lord Maredudd stood in the bow, drenched and exhausted.
The nobleman turned as he approached.
“Master Priddy,” he said, his voice husky, “I swore ten times we would founder on the rocks, but each time you guided us safely past. You have my thanks.”
Priddy just nodded. He was bone tired, but knew there was no time yet to rest.
“Your orders, my lord?”
Maredudd looked up at the sky.
“Can we sail back to Aberffraw Bay, sir?”
Priddy looked back to the west. Across that channel lay Dublin, but the waters in between still roiled, as deep swells rolled up from the south in the wake of the storm. He could see that the wind still blew strongly from the south.
He shook his head.
“No, my lord,” he said, pointing back to the west. “These craft cannot sail against a wind such as that. We’ll have to wait for it to shift.”
Maredudd didn’t speak, but turned back to the east.
“Then set a course for the mouth of the Conwy. If we can’t sail back south to save my cousin, we shall see how his cause fares at Deganwy.”
Priddy thought to protest. It was another three hours sailing time to the Conwy estuary. Once there, any chance of getting back to the stranded Prince at Aberffraw might be gone. But Maredudd was ruler of Meirionnydd and he let his protest die unspoken.
“Won’t matter,” he muttered to himself as he made his way aft to take up the steering oar once more. By his reckoning, it was likely too late to save Prince Llywelyn. He and his men would be long dead before they returned to Aberffraw Bay.
The Fifth Day
“Up, up, you shit stompers!” the sergeant shouted, as he rousted the men out of their blankets. They had reached the ford at the Conwy River after dark the day before and the tide had been high. There’d been no choice but to wait for dawn and low tide to cross. Then, to add to their misery, a sudden storm had burst upon them in the early evening with fierce wind and sheets of rain that soaked the men and doused their fires.
Their discomfiture only seemed to cheer the sergeant, who met the dawn with blustery good humour. Men grumbled and groaned, but moved with long-practiced habit to gather their kit and fall into ranks. Above them, the morning sky was blue and cloudless as they marched down to the ford and into the icy water of the Conwy.
Lord Daffyd had not waited for his foot to move, but had led four score of his mounted men across the ford as soon as the tide ebbed and set off for Deganwy. He rode into camp with his eldest son Owain beside him just as the sun came over the low hills to the east. In the morning light, his eyes were drawn upwards to the fortress on the two hills. He could see scores of bodies strewn beneath the south wall and above the gate flew the black banner his messenger had described. The sight made his stomach clinch, but no more so than the one that greeted him when he dropped his gaze to the camp.
The place had a sodden and dispirited look to it. A makeshift ram stood above the camp, its wood covered with longbow shafts. His Welsh troops stood about looking sullen and defeated, with a score of walking wounded among them. A few others, who looked beyond saving, were being tended to by a priest.
Daffyd turned to his son.
“See to this…mess,” he ordered with a snarl and jerked his horse’s head toward the river.
The scene on the gravel bar below the camp was very different. There were a few wounded among Haakon’s men, but the Dub Gaill looked anything but defeated. Driftwood had been gathered and a dozen fires blazed along the banks of the Conwy. Some men were having breakfast and others were sharpening weapons or inspecting their recovered longships.
The sail of one of the boats had been fashioned into a makeshift tent. Daffyd could see men in deep discussion there, clustered around a tall striking figure. Haakon was Roderic’s man and Daffyd had not met him, but there was no mistaking who was in command among the Danes. He guided his horse down the bank to the bar and rode over. Haakon saw him coming and stepped out of the tent to greet him.
“My lord, Daffyd,” he said mildly, “welcome home.”
Daffyd dismounted.
“My lord, Haakon, tell me what has happened here,” he said. “Who holds my castle and why has it not been taken back?”
Haakon shrugged.
“It’s a puzzle, my lord. My men claim they are Englishmen, but there is one Dane among them and at least a dozen or more Welsh longbowmen. Your men…” the mercenary leader hesitated, as though searching for words to describe the performance of Daffyd’s troops. “Your men were as worthless as teats on a bull, my lord. They as much as gave away your fort.” The big Dane gestured up the hill toward the palisade. “At least some tried to get it back and died for their trouble.”
Daffyd bristled at the insult, but he had seen the sorry state of the camp. This mercenary’s tone might be offensive, but his words rang true.
“What of your own men?” he countered.
Haakon shrugged.
“We attacked in the night. We gained the north wall, but could not hold it. Whoever sits up there,” he said, gesturing again toward the fort, “knows their business. You’ll have to take back your fort to solve this mystery, my lord.”
Daffyd eyed the man suspiciously.
“And you?”
Haakon gave him a broad smile.
“Oh, we can help, my lord. In fact, I doubt you can take the place without us—but for that, you must pay.”
Daffyd blinked.
“Pay? What do you mean?” he sputtered. “Roderic has paid you—and well!”
Haakon stepped closer to Daffyd and poked a finger in the man’s chest.
“Your brother paid me to attack your troublesome nephew, my lord, not to h
elp you get your fort back from a pack of brigands, whose loyalties, if any, are uncertain. I’m told you keep much of your silver in the fort. I will want a fourth part of whatever you have in your vaults up there.
Daffyd’s face grew crimson.
“You jest, sir!”
“I do not, my lord. I have tested the strength of the men who hold your fort. You will not take it back without me.”
Daffyd wanted to curse the man. He had ridden here at the head of eighty mounted men, with another two hundred foot soon to arrive. These troops would fight, but taking a well-defended fortress on a steep hill was no easy task, and he had seen the bodies sprawled beneath the southern wall and the beaten look of his men in the camp. With the Danes, he could muster near eight hundred swords to hurl at the castle. He might need them all.
Haakon stood there waiting, an indifferent look on his face. Finally, Daffyd gave him a grudging nod.
“One quarter—not one ounce more,” he said through gritted teeth.
Haakon beamed and slapped the fat nobleman on his thick arm.
“Good! Now, here is how we do it.”
***
In the fort on the hill, the weary defenders watched the arrival of Daffyd’s troops. They had kept vigil through the long night as a strange winter tempest came slashing up from the south powered by fierce winds that left them sodden and cold. There had been no renewed attack from the Welsh or the Danes during the storm, but with the dawn, scores of mounted men had ridden into the camp under the proud banner of the House of Aberffraw. With Lord Daffyd’s arrival, the lull in the battle would not last for long. By noon, a thick column of Welsh infantry had joined the mounted troops, as Jamie Finch once more kept count.
“Two hundred eighty in all,” he announced as the last of the foot soldiers slogged into view. “With Haakon’s men and what’s left of the Welshmen in the camp, there’ll be upwards of eight hundred men down there.”
For the next hour, they kept watch on the road that ran from the ford on the Conwy up to the camp, but no more troops were sighted. Roland said nothing, but felt a rush of relief. Their bold capture of Deganwy Castle had served its purpose. Daffyd’s arrival meant he had abandoned the effort to corner Llywelyn on Anglesey and had marched back alone to Deganwy. Roderic had not followed. The brother’s forces were split.
