On our second day at Degannwy I came into the stables to look after the horses, and found Rhuawn and Medraut hanging over the door of a stall and discussing one of Maelgwn’s stock.
“These mountain horses are simply too small,” Rhuawn was saying. “And they’ve no withers—look at this one! Nothing to hold onto in a battle. The first time your spear hits anything, off you fall; and even if you do not, you’re too low to use a spear to any advantage. No, Maelgwn will never match any southern king for cavalry unless he buys some stock from Gaul.”
“On the other hand,” returned Medraut, smiling, “those southern horses of yours, those Gaulish warsteeds, fall over their own feet in hilly country. This little mare could take you clear up Yr Widdfa in the middle of winter, or carry a charge downhill in the mud. Show me a southern cavalry band that could do that!”
“We’ve done it, in the Family.” Rhuawn stroked his moustache. “It isn’t easy, but we did it once, in the north. Once, in fact, we carried a charge downhill, across a river, and up the opposite bank into a Saxon shield-wall. Of course, your brother led that charge…”
Medraut laughed. “Gwalchmai could saddle the North Wind, if he set his mind to it. He always could. He’s the one who first taught me to ride, actually, though I’ll never be as good as he is.”
“In cavalry charges there’s no one on earth that good.”
Medraut smiled again. “I am ready to believe you. Of course, when he…left…Dun Fionn, no one knew he was so much of a fighter, but I’ve heard the songs since. Strange, hearing that kind of song about a brother you haven’t seen in years. Why doesn’t Arthur let him command the cavalry?”
Rhuawn turned to lean against the stall, and noticed me. He interrupted the conversation to call, “Oh, Rhys, I’ve already seen to that miserable beast of yours—Lord Medraut, this is Gwalchmai’s servant, Rhys ap Sion, a good man.”
I bowed a little, and Medraut ap Lot straightened, smiled widely, and beckoned me over to join them. My dream flashed into my head for an instant, but dreams are ambiguous things, and usually mean nothing at all, so I came over and leaned against the stall.
“So,” Medraut began again, “why doesn’t the Pendragon give my brother command of his cavalry?”
Rhuawn yawned. “Because he is so wild a fighter. Gwalchmai goes mad in battle, and will cut through anyone in front of him. If he is ever killed in battle, it will be because someone strikes him with a throwing spear from behind. No one will ever beat him, face to face. No one. But as for directing others in a struggle—once he’s begun he doesn’t understand plain British and can’t recognize his best friends. Bedwyr, now, keeps his head in any circumstances. He is a philosopher, can hold the whole plan of battle in his mind, and see where everyone is and where everyone has to go. He can even direct Gwalchmai.”
Medraut looked thoughtful. “He really does go mad, then? That might explain…” he stopped.
“What?” asked Rhuawn.
The other smiled. “Oh, nothing. How does he go mad? I haven’t had a chance to talk to him, and I don’t know that I could ask him, anyway. It’s hard to ask an older brother questions like that.”
“Mm. I imagine. Well, he just…goes mad. He pulls out his sword and rides down whatever is in front of him. He doesn’t even feel it if he’s wounded, until afterwards. Then he usually collapses. But during the battle he has the strength of three men, and moves faster than you can think.”
Medraut looked very intent. He nodded. “Collapses afterwards. Yes…”
“He isn’t berserk,” I put in. Somehow, I thought Rhuawn was giving the wrong impression. “I wouldn’t even say that he was ‘mad,’ if that wasn’t the word he uses himself.” I hesitated, groping for some way to communicate the ecstasy I had seen in his face during this battle madness. But Medraut nodded and said, “Of course,” and began to talk about horses again. He was pleasant company, especially after the hostility of the rest of Degannwy, and I enjoyed listening.
Eventually the conversation turned to music, and he asked us to come to his house the next afternoon and listen to one of the Irish harpers, and both Rhuawn and I accepted willingly. I was flattered at being asked, and was glad that Rhuawn wasn’t the sort to take offense at Medraut’s asking me.
The lord Medraut was staying with a few other of the warriors from the Ynysoedd Erch, in a house a deal larger and finer than ours (though no less crowded), which adjoined another house where the Queen was staying, alone. Her husband did not share her room, which surprised me, but Medraut made no comment on the situation.
When we arrived, however, none of the other warriors were there, and Medraut explained that they were in Maelgwn’s hall playing dice. “And, alas, the harper is there too, playing songs to the rhythm of knucklebones clicking. But we have a harp here, if you can play it. I can, a little.”
Rhuawn also could, a bit (though I couldn’t, not at all), and we settled by the fire. I sat off to the side, feeling awkward. Medraut rapped against the wall and, after a moment, the door to the adjoining house opened and the Irish serving girl from the kitchens appeared.
“Ah, there you are, Eivlin,” said Medraut. “Does my mother still have any of that Gaulish wine lying about in there?”
“My lady does, but…”
“Then fetch it, like a good girl. Come, these are guests.”
She shrugged a little and turned to go, but, as she did, she lifted her eyebrows at me, plainly commenting, “What are you doing as a warrior’s guest?” But she came back with a jar of wine and three goblets, and poured for all of us. I was still not much of a judge of such things, but I thought it good wine. Eivlin apparently did too, for she didn’t give me much of it, and left the jar with Medraut only very reluctantly.
Medraut took one swallow of his wine then set the goblet aside and began to tune the harp.
As members of noble clans, both Medraut and Rhuawn had of course learned harping, and both were good. Medraut sang a few songs about some highly favored Irish hero named CuChulainn (“But Gwalchmai used to sing them better,” he commented); and Rhuawn responded with a song about Macsen Wledig, and an older song about Pryderi ap Pwyll. They began passing the harp back and forth, sipping the wine while they listened, and the damp afternoon was forgotten.
After a while, Medraut called Eivlin back, and asked her to fetch some bread and cheese from the kitchen. This brought a worried look, and I wondered if she had some work of her own we were distracting her from. I offered to go with her—I needed to clear my head a little by then, anyway—and she accepted the help with a surprised air.
We had a job to find the cheese. Someone had stolen the great round that morning, and Saidi ap Sugyn, who was up and about, did not want to cut a new one. I threatened him with Medraut, Rhuawn, Gwalchmai, the Queen of Orcade, and my fists, and he finally yielded. We exited triumphantly. Eivlin laughed.
“I am glad you came, Rhys ap Sean,” she said. “Indeed, I would have threatened him with my lady and the lord Medraut, but that withered ram cares no more for them than he does for his own lord. You argue like a farmer.”
“I am one,” I said.
She raised her eyebrows again. “Indeed? Lost your land?”
I snorted. “It would take a fine army indeed to take land from my clan. No, I’m here because…” I didn’t think I could tell her my tangle of reasons. “Because I support the Pendragon, and because I’m fond of my lord Gwalchmai.”
She looked very startled at this declaration of free choice, so I asked her whether she had been born a servant.
She tossed her head. “In a manner. My father was kin-wrecked, and fled from Erin for his life, and took me with him. He’s no kin in the Orcades, so there he went, and found service with King Lot.”
“What was he kin-wrecked for?” I asked, before I could think better.
“He killed his brot
her,” she said shortly. She took the cheese from me and opened the door of Medraut’s house, before I could understand what she had said.
Medraut and Rhuawn had stopped singing and were talking. Eivlin set the bread and cheese down firmly and swept into the next room. I sat down, thinking about fratricide. They say that there is a curse on those who do such things, on them and on their descendants. Poor Eivlin. I wondered how old she had been.
Rhuawn absently cut himself a slice of bread and some cheese, and ate it, listening to Medraut, who was talking about harping.
“…twenty-three major songs, one has to learn, and the genealogies, which are worse…” Rhuawn snorted and nodded vigorously. “All to be told in the bardic style, which is tedious as a summer afternoon and far less relaxing. Gwalchmai liked it, but he never sang in it. He used to sing me the stories straight, which was wonderful.”
“He’s a good harper,” Rhuawn agreed.
Medraut laughed. “I used to think he was good at everything. But then—well, do you have an older brother?”
Rhuawn shook his head. “No.” He grinned. “But I’ve a younger brother, so I can imagine.”
Medraut smiled, but the smile drooped suddenly with hurt. “But then, of course, Gwalchmai…left. We thought for years that he was dead: not a word about him. And then reports that he was alive in Britain and fighting for Arthur, fighting brilliantly. We didn’t believe them at first, but finally we had to. I don’t know why he left, unless he…my poor mother was very worried.”
Rhuawn and I sat very still, awkwardly. Medraut looked at us sharply. “Well, she was. Come, you don’t believe all that nonsense about her being a witch, do you? She’s simply a clever woman, and that makes men distrust her.”
I thought of her advancing on us that first night and shuddered. Rhuawn coughed and asked for the harp. After listening to the music for a while, Medraut cheered up.
When we returned to our own house it was growing dark, and Gwalchmai was sitting cross-legged on the floor, looking in the fire. He looked up and nodded to us when we came in, but that was all. Rhuawn seated himself on the bed.
“A very enjoyable afternoon. How was yours?”
Gwalchmai slowly traced designs on the ground before him with one long-fingered hand. “Maelgwn says nothing more. The mountains are beautiful, in the spring.”
“Indeed?” Gwalchmai did not reply. “We spent the afternoon with your brother, Rhys and I. You might join us next time, instead of riding about the mountains alone.”
Gwalchmai looked up sharply. “With Medraut? What were you doing with Medraut?”
“Playing the harp, mainly. He talked a deal about you.” Rhuawn paused, then went on, carefully, “Cousin, I do not think your brother knows much about the doings of the rest of your family, and he speaks as though you were once close. There is no reason to act as coldly towards him as you have done.”
“Medraut knows why I left Dun Fionn.”
“He said otherwise.”
“Did he? Then he was lying.”
“Cousin, he is not a bad man. I have found him very courteous, pleasant, and generous.”
Gwalchmai gave both of us a long, dark look, then shrugged. “When I left Dun Fionn he had…taken certain steps in my mother’s direction.”
“Couldn’t he have changed his mind?” I asked. “You say that you did.”
Gwalchmai rubbed his face with his hands, tiredly. “I don’t know,” he said, after a long while. “Perhaps. But he did know why I left…you think that I should talk to him?”
We told him he should.
“Then I will. Privately. But now I am going to see to my horse.” He rose and left us, vanishing into the cold twilight.
“He’s just finished seeing to his horse,” muttered Rhuawn. “He spends more time with that beast than with his friends and kinsmen.” He picked a straw from the mattress and tossed it angrily into the fire. It was true, and I too was annoyed, and said nothing.
The next few weeks proceeded in the same fashion. I saw a fair amount of Medraut ap Lot, and he and Rhuawn became friends and went hunting together. Gwalchmai, however, made no further mention of his brother until Rhuawn finally dragged the matter up again. Then he said, very coldly, “I did talk with him. You are much mistaken if you think he has any love left for me, and I think he is also intimate in my mother’s counsels.” And when Rhuawn shook his head and protested, Gwalchmai insisted: “He does not seek you out either because he loves you or because he cares for the Light. I urge you, cousin, not to speak with him. I do not trust his motives.”
But neither Rhuawn nor I could believe this of Medraut. I decided that when my lord spoke with his brother they must have quarreled, which was understandable after so much separation and reunion in such circumstances.
I had become somewhat busier than I had been. On another visit to Medraut’s, the serving girl Eivlin had again had to drop her own work to fetch things for us, so I again had offered to help. While we were walking back from the feast hall with the jar of wine Medraut had asked for, she turned to me and said fiercely, “And you are not afraid of the curse?”
“What curse?” I asked, though I was thinking about the curse on fratricides myself.
“Stars of the heavens! The curse that is on me from my father’s deed; what other curses do you think I carry about?”
“Oh, that curse. I do not believe in curses.”
She stared at me, stopping in her tracks, and, setting her hand on her hip, she put her head back and looked up at me. “A fool, is it? You do not believe in the magic of blood and iron?”
I put my head back, too, and declaimed, “I am a Christian man from a Christian kingdom, and if blood and iron can curse, blood and water atone. I’m afraid of no sorceries.”
“Not even my lady’s?” she asked, very quietly. I felt cold, and was silent a moment. “You believe, well enough.” She began walking again.
I hurried after her. “Your lady is able to terrify, but that doesn’t change what I believe, and no curse is stronger than Christ’s power. It wouldn’t trouble me if your father had killed all his brothers and his parents as well.”
She shivered. “Your Christian sorceries are so powerful? I had heard they were…and you are really a Christian?” I nodded, and she stopped again, looking at me with a closed face. “Is it true that you drink blood?”
I was shocked. I had known that the Ynysoedd Erch were a barbarian, pagan kingdom, but this idea passed belief. “Holy angels, no. Where did you hear that?”
“Why, everyone says that. You mean it isn’t true?”
“It is not. We Christians are not permitted any sorceries, let alone the drinking of blood or whatever.”
She shrugged. “Well. I had heard that Christians had a rite where they killed babies, and ate their flesh, and drank up their blood. All the servants at Dun Fionn say so. I had thought it a sorcery to match my lady’s; and indeed, it seemed likely enough, for she has been trying for years to kill the Pendragon, and failed. But if Christians have no sorceries, it must just be that she cannot kill him because of the distance, unless someone else is protecting Arthur. Are you certain that there are no such rituals, and that you had heard nothing of them?”
In a flash of insight, I knew where the idea had come from. “There is a mystery, a ritual I have taken part in,” I told her. “But we use bread and wine, not flesh and blood. At least, it looks like bread and wine; my mother has baked the bread for it, sometimes. But we say that after the mystery, it is really flesh and blood.”
“Oh,” said Eivlin. “And me thinking it was powerful. Well.”
“It is powerful,” I insisted. “It is a mystery…”
“And it is because of this little dinner,” she snapped her fingers in contempt, “because of this make-believe sorcery, that you sneer at curses? Indeed, yo
u are a fool.”
“I am not afraid of curses,” I said, setting my teeth, and I tried to explain about the sacraments, and about Christ, and his victory over death and Hell. This led me into insisting that he was God and Man both, and I became confused, and thrashed about in the creeds. Eivlin eyed me skeptically and made acid comments, and I finally gave up in disgust, and retreated to reaffirming that I was not afraid of any curse.
“So you say, so you say,” she said. “And yet you are afraid of my lady. Indeed, and you will be afraid of me, too, because I am accursed, and you will be certain to avoid me in the future.”
“I will not. Didn’t I offer to help you today? As for your lady—did you say you had to turn the bed today? Well, I will help you with the heavy work.”
She raised her eyebrows, but assented in a meek tone. I helped her then, and afterwards had to help her some more to prove my lack of fear for curses. I was angry at first, then pleased that I was proving myself. It was not until the end of the afternoon that I noticed her smug smile and began to suspect that I was being made a fool of.
Nonetheless, over the next few weeks I helped her whenever she asked me to, to prove that I was not avoiding her, not afraid of curses, and not afraid of Morgawse of Orcade. I intended to back out eventually, but Eivlin, for all her plump fairness, was as cunning a bargainer as any I’ve encountered, a woman to fear in a market place. She was as convincing as a dealer in sick cattle, and twice as witty. The only thing that ever seemed to bridle her was her lady. I had occasionally also to see Morgawse, and I liked her no more on second glance than on first. She paid no attention to me at all, beyond the first sharp question to Eivlin, but Eivlin was subdued when the Queen was about, and always quiet for a time even after her lady had left.
Kingdom of Summer Page 15
