‘It is already made,’ said Aneirin. ‘This is the song for the One who came back.’
And he drew his hand across the harpstrings and sang again, for the last time that night.
‘In battle-fury like a lion, Cynan the noble and most fair;
His war shout on the farthest wing, a rallying point for men.
The Sea-wolves fell like rushes before his blade,
His spears were as the lightning-strike,
And when they landed, no need for second blow.
Whole war hosts he burst through, with lime-white shield hacked small,
Swift was his horse, leading in the charge.
His blade bit deep when he broke forth
Not lacking honour, with the dawn.’
The last flight of notes thrummed away and Aneirin stopped the faint humming of the strings with the flat of his hand.
And Cynan said, ‘That was a good singing, harper dear. Death denied me my place with the rest of our company, but the greatest of all bards has not denied me a place with them in the Song of the Gododdin.’
The King, who had sat listening without a move throughout, stirred inside his heavy mantle, and summoned in his harsh, broken voice, ‘Cynan, son of Clydno, come you here to me.’
And Cynan got up and made his way, stepping over the sprawling hounds, to stand before the King at the High Table.
For a long-drawn breath of time Mynyddog lay back in his great chair looking up at him as though he were a book that he was trying to read, then he said, ‘The Gododdin will have need of all its fighting men yet living. Your old place among my warriors waits for you.’
‘But it is no longer mine,’ Cynan said. ‘My place was with another company, and without them it is not in my heart to bide here in Dyn Eidin. My Lord the King, give me leave to go.’
‘You must give me better reasons than that.’
‘I have several. Three at least,’ Cynan said, and I thought for the moment that there was a flick of laughter in his tone, but I must have been wrong.
‘So. Tell me the first,’ said the King.
And Cynan said lightly, ‘Maybe the hunger is on me to carry my sword in distant places.’
Mynyddog bowed his head. ‘And the second?’
‘I am not minded to live out my life in a place where I see it in men’s eyes that I am the One who came back living from Catraeth.’
‘Even after Aneirin’s song?’ said the King.
‘Even after Aneirin’s song.’
‘And so you will run like a hunted deer?’
I saw Cynan’s shoulder jerk, and he answered as one flicked on the raw, ‘I would not have run for that alone.’
‘There was a third reason. Let you tell it to me.’
Cynan said a little breathlessly, ‘My Lord the King, do not ask me the third reason, for it is mine to me.’
There was a long, breath-caught silence between the two of them. The King lay back among his ram-skins, looking up into Cynan’s face, waiting. He did not ask again for the third reason, but I think the knowledge grew in him of what it was. Maybe he was remembering the first night of our return, and that terrible cry of Cynan’s when the truth pierced through to him. He could not know as I did, of Cynan in the women’s house, lying with his arm across his eyes as though to shut out something horrible, saying, ‘The King betrayed us.’
But I saw him begin to understand the accusation and I was afraid. Yet when he answered (for it was an answer, though the thing had not been spoken), it was without anger.
‘Do you think that it was an easy decision?’
‘No,’ said Cynan.
‘But still you wish to go from Dyn Eidin?’
Cynan said, ‘Yes,’ and the word stood like a rock.
‘So be it then. Go free of the Teulu, and the sun and the moon on your path. But be gone by the morn’s morning, and do not come back,’ said the King.
Cynan made him a kind of bow, then turned and strode away down the Mead Hall.
I got up from my place and went after him. Phanes of Syracuse sat on the guest bench near the door as he often did, there being more air there than at the upper end of the Hall, and Cynan checked for a moment in passing, setting a hand friendly wise on his shoulder. ‘Will you trust the dagger to me, to get it safely back to its master?’ he said, and we went out through the great foreporch into the night.
Outside in the dark and heading for our sleeping quarters I asked, ‘When do we start?’ I think I had some stupid idea that he might be about to walk out of Dyn Eidin there and then.
‘The morn’s morning, as the King said,’ he answered me, as though it was the simplest and most ordinary of matters. ‘I need a day to gather up what I can by way of journey gold, and see to the bestowal of my horses - and my brothers’ horses. The King knows that.’
I also had matters of my own to see to. And next noon, having whistled Conn out from the smithy and told him what there was to tell, I was leaning with him on the fence of the horse-paddock, feeding Shadow with the honey-cake that I had brought for her.
‘And you must go with him?’ Conn asked.
I was still feeling winded by the speed with which a new and unthought of future had opened at my feet; but it was the first time that the question had come to me. It had seemed to me last night in the darkness outside the torchlight of the Mead Hall that my going was as a natural part of Cynan’s going. It still did. I said, thinking the thing out as I went along, ‘He is not fit yet to be setting off for the other end of the world alone; and he is my responsibility because I was the one who brought him off from Catraeth. And he barely notices I am there anyway, so he will not mind as he would if somebody else tried to go with him.’
‘Not that anybody else has,’ Conn said dryly.
‘Not so far as I know.’
‘You’re a good friend, Prosper, I should know that,’ he said, and there was a kind of ache in his tone that made something tighten in my own throat, so that I made a great thing of fondling Shadow’s forelock for a moment.
‘As I should know it of you,’ I said. ‘Therefore will you take Shadow for me?’
He looked round at me quickly. ‘You are not taking her with you?’
I shook my head. ‘I cannot be taking her to Constantinople, and I would not be selling her to strangers in Caerluil. Ride her back to the valley when the time comes.’
‘You are still harping on that tune?’
‘When you feel that you are enough of a sword- smith to satisfy Loban - and my father, if you want Luned.’
I felt him startle and then grow still beside me. ‘If I want Luned?’
‘You do, don’t you?’ I said.
‘Luned is yours.’
‘No.’ I was sorting it out as I went along. ‘Luned is nobody’s until she chooses. There is love between Luned and me - once I thought… But it is more like brother and sister. There is love between Luned and you, and that, I am thinking, is of another kind.’
‘Even if you speak truly as to that,’ Conn said slowly, ‘the chieftain your father would never give her to me. I have been a bondservant in his house.’
‘We have had this conversation before,’ I told him. ‘You are not a bondservant now. Make him a serviceable blade or a set of shoes for his favourite horse, and I think he might. She has no dowry to make her easy to marry off, and a smith is worth having in any family.’
‘Aye, still the great one for ordering other men’s lives, you are,’ Conn said, and I heard a certain wry amusement in his tone.
I pushed Shadow’s muzzle aside and turned on him. ‘Only when they need it. Take the mare and ride beyond the sunset with her for all I care. But, Conn, along the way, go back to the valley and see that all is well with Luned and rub Gelert behind the ears in my name, before you ride on. Will you do that for me?’
‘I will do that for you,’ Conn said. ‘And if Luned will have me but your father will not, then I will take her up before me and Gelert shall run at our heels. It shou
ld not be so hard to take a horse - and a hound - and a woman - across the western water, and there would be room for another swordsmith in Eriu - even if there is none in the valley.’
Next morning Cynan and I rode down from Eidin Ridge and away westward through soft late-summer rain not heavy enough to havoc the harvest. We both rode good serviceable mounts to be sold off before we took ship; and I led a pack beast with all our goods and gear and food for the journey baled on its back. Cynan had the archangel dagger thrust into his belt beneath his worn wolfskin cloak, and some writing on tablets which Phanes had given us for showing to certain merchant houses and ship masters along the way. And we both had our swords, and light wicker bucklers slung behind our saddles.
We rode down from the town ridge and out past the Royal Farm, and nobody came to watch us go. Only a farm dog ran a little way snapping at the horses’ heels.
Where the road lifted, I looked back once, seeing the Dyn on its great boss of rock, upreared dark against a sky that was brightening over beyond the Giant’s Seat where a bar of daffodil light broke the clouds. Then I turned face-forward again, and settled into the saddle.
There was another gleam of daffodil colour in the grey morning, where Cynan had let his cloak fall loose, and I saw that he wore a wisp of yellow silk round his neck, finely worked with coloured flowers in a foreign fashion. I knew it well, for the Princess Niamh had often worn it to bind up her hair when she wished to keep the braids out of the way.
It was not the first time that I had seen him wearing a girl’s favour, and I guessed that it would not be the last; but I was as glad as a sentimental old hen-wife that he should wear the Princess’s favour as he rode away. Glad for her sake, and also, I think, for his …
So we settled down to ride. Behind us Catraeth and all the life that we had known; and ahead Caer Luil and some merchant ship that did not yet know she was waiting for us, and unknown roads and strange lands and whatever of good or ill was written on our foreheads. The faint road lifted over a ridge and there was heather round our horses’ feet. The west wind blew my hair across my face and the taste of it seemed already salt on my lips.
Beside me I heard Cynan laugh. He was riding head up into the wind. He glanced at me over his wolfskin shoulder easily as a man looks at a comrade in arms. ‘We may not look like the flower of an emperor’s bodyguard,’ he said, ‘but Constantinople, make ready for our coming!’
Author’s Note
About the year 600 AD, Mynyddog, King of the Gododdin, gathered three hundred warriors together to his tribal capital of Dyn Eidin, where Edinburgh now stands. He housed them for a year, during which they were trained and hammered into a fighting brotherhood, and loosed them against the invading Saxons of what is now Yorkshire and Northumberland. One of the few survivors was the poet Aneirin, who rode with them and recorded the whole epic tragedy of the raid in The Gododdin, the earliest surviving North British poem.
I have based The Shining Company on this poem; but since Aneirin was really more interested in producing a string of elegies for young men killed in battle than in telling us what actually happened, I have had to invent a good deal of the story-line for myself. In doing this I have tried always to keep as close as possible to the way a raid of that kind might in truth have worked out.
Except for Prosper, who tells the story and is not one of the three hundred but a shieldbearer - something very like a squire - all my warriors are to be found in the original poem. But in three cases I have combined the exploits of two men under the name of one of them; therefore three of the brotherhood have been left nameless, and for this I ask their forgiveness.
About The Author
Rosemary Sutcliff was born in 1920 in West Clanden, Surrey.
With over 40 books to her credit, Rosemary Sutcliff is now universally considered one of the finest writers of historical novels for children. Her first novel, The Queen Elizabeth Story was published in 1950. In 1972 her book Tristan and Iseult was runner-up for the Carnegie Medal. In 1974 she was highly commended for the Hans Christian Andersen Award and in 1978 her book, Song for a Dark Queen was commended for the Other Award.
Rosemary lived for a long time in Arundel, Sussex with her dogs and in 1975, she was awarded the OBE for services to Children’s Literature. Unfortunately Rosemary passed away in July 1992 and will be much missed by her many fans.
Also by Rosemary Sutcliff
THE CHRONICLES OF ROBIN HOOD
THE QUEEN ELIZABETH STORY THE ARMOURER’S HOUSE
BROTHER DUSTY FEET SIMON THE EAGLE OF THE NINTH
OUTCAST THE SHIELD RING THE SILVER BRANCH
WARRIOR SCARLET THE LANTERN BEARERS
KNIGHT’S FEE DAWN WIND
THE MARK OF THE HORSE LORD THE WITCH’S BRAT
THE CAPRICORN BRACELET BLOOD FEUD
FRONTIER WOLF FLAME COLOURED TAFFETA
THE DRAGON SLAYER THE HOUND OF ULSTER
THE HIGH DEEDS OF FINN MACCOOL TRISTAN AND ISEULT
SUN HORSE, MOON HORSE THE LIGHT BEYOND THE FOREST
THE SWORD AND THE CIRCLE THE ROAD TO CAMLANN
BONNIE DUNDEE A CIRCLET OF OAK LEAVES
THE CHIEF’S DAUGHTER THE TRUCE OF THE GAMES
SHIFTING SANDS THE CHANGELING EAGLE’S EGG
“WE LIVED IN DRUMKEEN” (with Maggie Lyford-Pike)
SONG FOR A DARK QUEEN A LITTLE DOG LIKE YOU
THE ROUNDABOUT HORSE LITTLE HOUND FOUND
For Adult Readers
LADY IN WAITING THE RIDER OF THE WHITE HORSE
SWORD AT SUNSET THE FLOWERS OF ADONIS
BLOOD AND SAND
Non-Fiction
HEROES AND HISTORY HOUSES AND HISTORY
Biography
RUDYARD KIPLING: A BODLEY HEAD MONOGRAPH
Autobiography
BLUE REMEMBERED HILLS
THE SHINING COMPANY
AN RHCP DIGITAL EBOOK 978 1 44817 367 9
Published in Great Britain by RHCP Digital,
an imprint of Random House Children’s Publishers UK
A Random House Group Company
This ebook edition published 2013
Copyright © Rosemary Sutcliff, 1991
First Published in Great Britain
Red Fox 1991
The right of Rosemary Sutcliff to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorized distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.
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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
The Shining Company Page 23
