Madoc

by Bernard Knight

  ‘I hate this bickering and ill-feeling between us,’ said Madoc sadly. ‘I think he is right, I will regret coming back here. I could have stayed at your court of Clochran and built my ships there on the Liffey.’

  ‘And never met Annesta and never been father to Gwenllian?’ asked Einion.

  ‘That is true,’ sighed Madoc, ‘but I am very happy to be leaving Aberffraw tomorrow, to get away from Dafydd and his vile tongue.’

  ‘He is sorely afraid that you will be granted some of the princedom when Owain dies. He is already plotting against Hywel’s chances and I would not trust his intentions with brother Rhodri, for all they seem so friendly.’

  As they left the hall, Riryd put his arm around Madoc’s shoulders. ‘Tread carefully, Madoc. I know that you are not interested in power in Gwynedd, but until Dafydd and Rhodri get that message through their jealous heads, you might well be in some danger.’

  Madoc smiled in the darkness. ‘I know,Riryd, and thanks for your caring for me. But in a few hours, just after dawn, Einion and I will be down the river and safely away from all this turmoil.’

  ‘Let’s hope that Dafydd’s blood will have cooled by the time you return,’ murmured the Lord of Clochran, as they parted to go to their separate huts in the compound.

  As Madoc walked through the starlit night, he thought ofleaving Annesta and the child, of the delights of sailing the Gwennan Gorn through the bluer seas to the south and the excitement of rediscovering islands that were still mysterious to all but a few intrepid shipmasters. He was taking Einion this time, a brother of whom he had become as fond as he was of the old and reliable Riryd. Only the thought of two or three months’ separation from his family marred the anticipation of next morning’s departure.

  On an impulse, he turned off the path to his lodging and walked towards the gate that led to the river. He wanted to look at his vessel once again, as she lay at anchor in the creek.

  Passing through the quiet compound, he took his fill of land sounds and smells, which he would not get in any quantity until he returned in the summer. He listened to the noises from the various huts as he passed:the snores;the talk;the occasional shouts;the child’s cries; and the giggles. He smelled the wood smoke as it drifted from the eaves and through the holes in the thatch, the cruder smells of humanity, and as he neared the gate, the smell of wet mud from the marshes and river.

  There was a night porter on duty at the gate, leaning drowsily against the lodgehut. As Madoc passed the last dwelling on the path to the gate, he heard a sudden rustle and a menacing swish of feet in damp grass.

  He turned swiftly, but not fast enough. A dark figure, arm upraised, materialised before him and he felt – momentarily – a frightful pain in his head.

  Lights flashed in his eyes, all the colours of the rainbow. The world swirled around him as he crumpled to the ground.

  Three figures stood on the grassy bank above the beach, gazing out to sea. Far to the south-west, the sun glinted on the sail of the Gwennan Gorn as she vanished over the horizon.

  ‘He’ll be back by midsummer’s day, Annesta,’ said Riryd comfortingly, as he gently led her back towards the palace.

  ‘Safer there than in this hot-bed of passions,’ muttered Llywarch. ‘I pray that these intrigues and jealousies have died down before Madoc returns.’

  ‘Thank God he was able to go at all,’ said Riryd feelingly, as they trod slowly up the river path. ‘That blow on the head would have laid a lesser man in his bed for a week.’

  Annesta coloured and her voice quaked with anger. ‘It was Dafydd – I know it was Dafydd!’

  ‘You can’t say that without proof, girl,’ pleaded Llywarch earnestly. ‘It could have been any common thief or some mistaken identity in the gloom.’

  ‘Ha! Some mistake!’ snapped Madoc’s wife heatedly. ‘Not half an hour before, that Dafydd and his foul friends had been baiting and threatening Madoc in the hall itself. A strange coincidence that so soon afterwards he is laid low by some assassin. But for Einion happening to have followed him, no doubt my man would have been beaten to death or found floating in the river next day.’

  The three of them walked silently on as the Gwennan Gorn disappeared over the edge of the world behind them.

  The bard gave a deep sigh. ‘I don’t see what’s to happen to Gwynedd when Owain goes to his rest – and he looks older and weaker every day. These sons of his will tear the land apart like dogs snarling over a bone.’

  ‘They can do what they like – Madoc and I want no part of it. We have agreed to leave Aberffraw when he returns and set up our dwelling elsewhere. Maybe down on the Llyn peninsula – or even back across the sea in Ireland. Perhaps you’ll have us in Clochran, brother Riryd?’

  The elder brother nodded gravely. ‘You are ever welcome, sister. But I think that while Owain has need of Madoc, he will stay. He feels that having had so many years without a father, he must make the most of the time whilst Owain lives.’

  ‘There lies the danger,’ murmured Llywarch. ‘It is this very trust that the prince puts in Madoc that brings the fear and hate of his other brothers upon him.’

  Riryd looked at the ‘Poet of the Pigs’ as some of his more unkind critics called him. ‘Can you not use your influence with Owain to tactfully show him the danger to Madoc?’

  Llywarch shrugged. ‘I have my position to think of,’ he said evasively. ‘I do not have Owain’s ear as well as I would wish.’ His face darkened. ‘There is that damned Gwilym Ryfel, who calls himself a bard, also trying to ingratiate himself with the prince … and of course, that senile old fool Gwalchmai, who still flaunts himself as the grand old man of the Court, sage and adviser to kings … and I can run circles around him when itcomes to devising an elegy or an ode.’

  Riryd and Annesta made faces at each other behind Llywelyn ap Llywarch’s back. The jealousies and professional rivalries between the court bards werealmost as bad as the in-fighting of the king’s sons.

  ‘Madoc is safe now, out on the sea that he loves so much,’ said Riryd.

  ‘Until he returns,’ added Annesta, sadly. ‘I hope that I can persuade him to leave this place straight away. Anywhere would be preferable after that attack last night. Brittany, Ireland, the south of Wales, anywhere.’

  She turned round and looked back at the sea. There was now nothing visible of the dot on the horizon.

  ‘Farewell, husband,’ she breathed, pulling Gwenllian close against her skirts. ‘Find your Isles of the Blessed, then come home to me, safely.’

  It was ninety-four days before the Gwennan Gorn climbed back up that same horizon and saw the blue peaks of Snowdonia lowering over Anglesey. In that time, Madoc’s vessel had done everything that he had expected of it and more. The few summer storms had been ridden through with no damage. The stag-horned hull had hardly leaked a bucketful of water in each day. Svein, who had given the ship its basic Norse design, had grinned almost continually between each landfall, so pleased was he with her performance. The oars had hardly been used, so favourable were the currents and the winds.

  ‘She sails at a quarter angle to the breezes,’ he exulted one day. ‘Impossible in theory for a wind to blow one way and the vessel to move straight across it, but our Gwennan Gorn does it!’

  Madoc was equallydelighted. ‘One day, my Norse friend, some genius will get a vessel to sail nearer the wind than a square angle, but it’ll not be in our time!’

  ‘By magic, maybe … but magic we already have in that little bowl.’

  Svein nodded at a wooden broth bowl which now lay empty on the planks of the stern deck. It was the one in which Madoc floated his enchanted lodestone needle, when the sun was hidden and no land was in sight.

  ‘With that and the birds and the waves we could sail round the edge of the world if we so wished,’ he yelled.

  He had cause for celebration as the voyage had achieved all that Madoc had hoped. After their duty visit to Spain, they had sailed down the coast and sold all of their small car
go of woollen cloth and a few unhappy sheep to the inhabitants of the small ports.

  In return they had collected a little gold and silver and some curious goods brought round from the Mediterranean … fine earthenware from Italy, strange spices from somewhere further east and some flasks of wine.

  But these were but fringe activities – this was no trading trip, but a voyage of discovery. Twenty days out from Aberffraw, Madoc turned the ship’s prow away from the Iberian coast and travelled on a slow but strong current southwards, so that every day at noon, the shadows of the sun grew shorter.

  On the twenty-ninth day they sighted the Fortunate Islands, warm and basking in the heat blown off the great deserts of Africa, said to lie not far to the east.

  The islands had high mountains, especially one of them, which was shrouded in cloud most of the time. The people were a primitive race, dressed in goatskins, calling themselves Guanches. One Arab dhow was anchored off the islands and there was obviously regular trade with the Berbers of the mainland. The natives had few possessions to barter, but Madoc and his crew exchanged some woollen cloth for some rough pottery, decorated with fingernail marks and some quite attractive necklaces of bone, shell and carved wood.

  The Gwennan Gorn stayed only a few days, moving from island to island, taking on fresh water in her casks and some fresh fruit and a few goats as an addition to their stores.

  Then the tiny vessel hauled up her stone anchor and headed north and west from the Fortunate Isles, out into the almost unknown sea. They had tried asking the aborigines if they knew of other islands beyond their own, by signlanguage and attempts at drawing maps in the sand, but they got no response.

  Madoc’s only guide was the conversations several years earlier with Guiot of Provins and a few vague guesses of Breton and Irish shipmasters, who had heard of men who had heard of the Isles of Hawks.

  This time the wind was not so kind to them, as they had to set themselves across the breezes that came from Africa. The current also was against them, but the Gwennan Gorn made slowbut steady progress northwest. Every noon, the shadow of the mast crept longer across the deck, but they had no means of telling how far they had progressed in the direction of the setting sun.

  For twenty days, they ranged out into the Great Ocean –for two of these days and nights, a storm drove them south, losing them much of their previous progress.There were a few mutterings amongst the crew, not rebellious or fearful, but rather grumbling about wasting time searching for islands which might not even exist.

  The situation was saved by Svein, whose sea-sense verged on the uncanny. Suddenly one morning, he raised his head and slowly scanned the horizon to the steerboard side. ‘There is land somewhere, Madoc,’ he announced in a matter-of-fact way.

  The Welshman was content to believe him, though he could not sense anything different. He’d had experience of the Norseman’s near-magical powers on other occasions.

  Later that day, even Madoc was persuading himself that the edge of the world, now visible over the prow, looked a slightly different colour compared with other directions. Svein was hanging over the side, and an hour later he gave a grunt of satisfaction. ‘Seaweed, Madoc,’ was all he said.

  Next morning they awoke to find a large bird, resembling a fulmar, circling overhead, before it flew away with easy wing-beats to the north. Madoc ordered the steersman to go on the other tack and the Gwennan did its best to follow the bird, though until evening the wind was not very co-operative.On the third morning, there were several other birds, guillemots and a herring gull.

  At the next dawn, high mountain peaks were spread across the horizon and by evening they were anchored in the lee of great cliffs of volcanic rock.

  This time there were no aboriginal natives to deal with – the islands seemed deserted and almost barren, apart from birds and small vermin. There was fresh water and berries in abundance. The crew launched one of their coracles11 which were kept lashed upside down on the foredeck and in the next few days they made many trips to the beaches that crouched between the high precipices.

  The conical mountain peaks were often wreathed in cloud, but the climate was mild. There was no sign of any human visitation, apart from some trees felled with an axe, looking as if this had been done many years earlier.

  ‘The Arabians told the truth, then,’ murmured Einion, as they gazed for the last time at the islands.

  Madoc nodded. ‘Guiot was right in many things –about the Fortunate Isles, these Isles with many hawks and buzzards. And also about the lodestone, though so far we have had little need of it in this clear weather, with good sightings of the sun and stars.’

  Svein looked at the misted peaks as they clawed away towards the east.

  ‘These are not the Isles of the Blest or the Fountain of Eternal Youth that you Celts keep bleating about, then?’ he asked with good-natured sarcasm.

  ‘You Norsemen have your sacred places, your Valhalla and your Asgard. Let us have our fabled islands in return, Svein the Doubter.’

  The Viking grinned. ‘You can keep these barren rocks, Welshman – if you can find them again, without my help.’

  Madoc became serious at this. ‘We must take the exact point of the shadow of noon sun for this day of the year … then follow it exactly to the east until we meet the mainland. That way we will be able to find these isles again, as long as we come at the same month of the year. We sail southward from Brittany until the shadow is the same length and then turn westward.’

  Svein nodded. ‘I have heard that my fellow shipmasters in Norway now use a device for doing just that. One that can even be adjusted for different seasons of the year. When we return, I will ask amongst the knarr-masters that come into the Liffey, whether they have such a device or know how to make one.’

  Madoc thought about this during the long haul back across the current and the wind, trying to keep the masthead shadow on a marked point on the deck each noontide. It was ridiculous to be bound to a certain month of the year to make each similar journey. The sailing season was from May to September, but the sun’s shadow varied greatly during that time and he would be overjoyed to hear of Svein’s Viking sun-board which could compensate for this defect.

  It took another twenty-seven days to reach the Iberian coastline and after sailing north for a day, the crew of Gwennan Gorn recognised that they were approaching the mouth of the Tagus, land which had recently been won for the new Kingdom of Portugal.

  From then on, all was plain, if laborious sailing, until they reached the south-westerly winds beyond the tip of Spain, which sent them up the now almost familiar coastline to Brittany and then across to Cornwall and the Severn Sea.

  Now they came within sight of Ynys Mon and the palace of Gwynedd.Madoc stood with his brother Einion and Svein on the stern deck and looked at the low line of Anglesey ahead.

  ‘We have seen many marvellous things and many strange places, friends. But what stead will they be to us if we plunge back again into hatred and treachery in my father’s palace.’

  A cold wind suddenly seemed to ripple down Madoc’s spine.

  ‘Just as you sensed the Isles of Hawks, Svein, so do I sense great trouble ahead.’

  Silently the three stood watching as the little ship laboured its way home, their pleasure at the safe return being muted by a sense of foreboding.

  * * *

  10The Canary Islands

  11A tiny, bowl-shaped boat made of hides stretched over a wicker frame.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Easter 1170

  During the autumn of 1169 and on into the winter, Owain ap Gruffudd, Prince of Gwynedd, grew steadily more infirm. Though his mind was still keen and his strong will remained as sharp, he seemed to shrink and wither away. By the New Year, he needed either a stick or the arm of one of his family to help his steps. He ceased going to Dolwyddelan, finding it too hard to mount a horse and to deal with the steep slopes of that craggy place.

  Yet his political and diplomatic intrigues were as
active as they had ever been. He continued his jousting with both the See of Canterbury and the Pope, over his marriage to Cristin, mother of Dafydd and Rhodri, who were still incensed by their illegitimacy in the eyes of the official Church.

  Though Becket had been exiled to France by Henry of England, he had excommunicated Owain Gwynedd six years earlier, for his unlawful marriage to his second-cousin, which was outside the bonds of sanguinity recognised by Rome. With typical contempt for English ordinances, Owain ignored the terrible prospect of an eternity in hell and continued to receive communion from the hugelypleased Welsh bishops. He also continued to keep out any bishops nominated by Canterbury to his domains, which now covered all Wales except the south, which was held by his ally, the Lord Rhys.

  He also maintained his links with France and the court of Louis, both tactfully avoiding the subject of Thomas à Becket, who was fretting away in the Monastery of Pontigny.

  The campaign against Henry Plantagenet had not materialised, mainly because Henry had kept well clear of conflict with the Welsh. He had enough to do in his French possessions, where he was gradually eroding Louis’ territory north of Paris.

  In the spring of 1170, Owain again sent Madoc to France to keep up the contacts with Louis. Though it was early in the season for seafaring, the Gwennan Gorn had proved herself so well, that the short crossing could be risked.

  Svein had gone back to Dublin after the ‘Long Voyage’ to the Fortunate Isles, promising to return again in the spring for another adventure.Einion had become Madoc’s seafaring companion now. He had proved himself well on the Long Voyage, showing himself to be a natural sailor and a reliable navigator. Madoc grew as fond of him as he was of Riryd.

  On the return trip from France, good winds had sped them quickly northwards from Lundy, and they were several days in advance of their expected arrival at Aberffraw.

  The Gwennan Gorn was off the tip of West Wales, a mile from the cruel coast near the cathedral of St. David, when Madoc, who had been staring at the surf smashing against the rocks of Ramsey Island, suddenly called to Einion above the whistle of the wind and the creak of rigging and planks.