Madoc

by Bernard Knight

  ‘How do we keep to any sort of course?’ asked Einion, clinging to the bulwark alongside Madoc, as the Gwennan Gorn charged along, bucking like some mad horse.

  ‘We have to go where the wind takes us for the moment,’ he yelled back. ‘When it quietens after dark, we will see what Guiot de Provins’ magic will tell us.’

  It was well after dark before the wind dropped appreciably, as it had done the two previous nights. When the ship was sailing more evenly, the crew began really energetic baling, to get rid of the water that now lapped a foot deep over the bottom boards. While they were doing this, the three navigators crouched on the foredeck, trying to keep some water in the big pottery vessel that they used to float their sun-board.

  This time, they had a long iron needle that was used for mending sails. This was housed ina piece of straw taken from the sheep pen, which Einion had slit lengthways with his knife. They carefully floated the straw and needle in the pot, then Madoc carefully unwrapped the piece of lodestone that he had been given in Paris, years before.

  One end was marked with paint and this he pointed at the floating needle. ‘I’ll try this method first. It’s a new needle, so it has no power in it from past usage,’ he muttered. Going as close as he could to the straw without letting the steel jump up to the piece of rock, he slowly rotated the lodestone around and around in a circle, the needle faithfully turning after it.

  Einion, who never ceased to be fascinated by this magic, gazed in breath-holding wonder at the moving steel.

  ‘It’s still impossible,’ he hissed, above the wind and the ship noises.

  ‘The damned water is slopping about so much that I can’t do it properly!’ complained Madoc. He persevered for forty circles of the needle, then wrapped up the stone and placed it safely in a bag which he left on the deck a number of paces away.

  The three of them stared intently at the needle jerking about on the miniature waves in the jar.

  ‘I can’t see it pointing any particular way,’ objected Svein, who was reluctant to believe in this new-fangled method.

  Madoc had to admit that the straw seemed to be veering around in a quite haphazard manner. ‘Perhaps it’s the wind,’ he muttered, shielding the jar with the edge of his cloak. But even then, the needle refused to settle into any definite direction. ‘Guiot warned me of this and I have proved it before, with other needles … I will use the touch of the lodestone this time.’

  He retrieved his magic rock and this time pinned the needle to the deck with a forefinger and gave it twenty strokes with the painted end of the stone, always drawing it towards the sharp tip of the needle, away from the eye.

  Perhaps a sudden lull in the wind helped, for the water in the jar was less turbulent this time. The needle in its little straw boat seemed to prefer pointing to the steerboard side of the Gwennan Gorn.

  ‘It directs itself always that way,’ said Madoc triumphantly. ‘When I poke it with my finger, so that it is forced the other way … so, it comes back! See that!’

  True enough, after half a dozen tries, they agreed that the needle always pointed slightly in front of the line that crossedthe vessel from side to side.

  ‘That means we are moving west, with a little north in it, if your devil’s toy here always seeks the lodestar,’ observed Svein. He stood up and his great figure towered over the sternof the vessel, heedless of the spray that soaked him.

  ‘I feel a difference,’ he announced eventually. ‘Not definitely land, perhaps, but I feel that there is something ahead. I smell it,’ he muttered defiantly, as if challenging anyone to deny him his sailor’s sixth sense.

  ‘Then God grant it is something good, Svein,’answered Madoc fervently, ‘or Alun Crookeye will nag us to the bottom of the ocean.’

  The wind and the heavy cloud persisted another two days and nights, but the sea remained the same, uncomfortable for the tiny ship, but not dangerous. Twice more they checked with their lodestone that the course was roughly the same. On the fourth morning, before dawn, the clouds began splitting and the twinkling heavens peered through. A great red dawn followed and with the appearance of the sun, the wind dropped. During the day the sea subsided into a long swell with no broken waves at all. There was still a fresh breeze and when they checked their direction, they found that they had shifted their position to about a day’s sailing north of their furthest southerly point.

  Later in the day, they were sailing steadily on into the void, the current now being dead before the south-easterly wind.

  ‘God knows where we are or where we are going,’ growled Svein, looking over the side.

  ‘Do you see any signs of change in the waters, with your eagle eyes?’ asked Einion, half bantering, half hopeful.

  Svein pointed out across the green water, a ship’s length from the Gwennan Gorn.

  They followed with their eyes and Madoc gave a shout.

  ‘Men, look … look out there!’

  A score of heads turned and a few ran to the bulwarks. ‘What do you see?’ someone called.

  ‘A branch … a tree-log floating,’ yelled Svein.

  True enough, they were passing a brownish black tree trunk, wallowing along in the same ocean current as themselves.

  ‘It has a green shoot … it has not been in the water morethan a week or two,’ yelled the Norseman, alert to every detail and meaning of the flotsam. ‘There must be land within a few days’ sailing.’

  There was a ragged cheer from the throat of every man. The feeling had been growing in every mind that perhaps they had left the realms of men for ever.

  In the long nights, as each man lay curled on his blanket, these thoughts of being condemned for ever to sail the empty sea, perhaps skeletons in a tattered hulk, came upon the crew. Only the calm confidence of their leader, Prince Madoc ab Owain, gave them the will to face another day of staring at the ever-empty ocean. Alun Crookeye would be the catalyst to set their fears alight, for though he was a good man and so far faithful to his masters, he was the weakest link in the chain aboard the Gwennan Gorn.

  But now this tiny sign sent their spirits soaring and their fears receded. No longer were they afraid of being in a watery waste that stretched untold leagues back to the familiar coasts of Britain. Where there was a branch, there was a tree, and where there was a tree, there was land … land with water and fertility, animals and who knows, maybe even men.

  Einion, Madoc and the Viking watched the log until it vanished beyond their stern.

  ‘It puts me in mind of the story in the sacred testament,’ said a voice from further down the ship’s side. It was Padraig, the monk, now dressed in a jerkin and short breeches, like the rest of the crew.

  ‘What story, Irish priest?’ bellowed Svein, who concealed his liking for this cleric with a patently false ferocity.

  ‘The story of Noah … who when in the ark, knew of the subsidence of the flood by the olive branch brought back by his bird.’

  Madoc and Einion looked at each other and grinned happily.

  ‘Then God grant it has the same significance for the Gwennan Gorn as it did for Noah’s ark,’ said Madoc. ‘For we could do with a landfall before many days are out. How are the stores lasting, Einion?’

  His brother was the quartermaster, responsible for the supply of food and water. He shrugged non-committally.

  ‘We have enough water for at least another two weeks, thanks to the rain caught in the ox-hides. The food situation is not too good. Both sheep have gone, as you know, and I think the men slaughteredthe last chicken yesterday. We have enough flour and oatmeal for a week or so. Otherwise, the fish we catch remains our main diet.’

  ‘Anything else left?’

  ‘Some dried fish from Gwynedd – it is as hard as the very rocks of that fair land!’ replied Einion dryly. ‘Also some dried meat, which would do well to replace our anchor stone, should it be lost!’

  ‘We need a landfall soon, then, or we shall be eating each other inside a couple of weeks,’ murmured Madoc.
‘Svein, keep all your senses at full pitch. We need land, my friend, both for sustenance and for the sake of our souls, lest we go mad with looking at this empty sea.’

  Einion looked around the full circle of the horizon, as he did a hundred times a day. ‘Nothing … not even a cloud now. What if the world is circular, like a shield or dinner platter?Maybe we have come round in a great arc and are now bearing down on our own lands.’

  Madoc shook his head. ‘Impossible … the sun tells us that we are far from our climate in Wales. It is so warm here and the nights are almost as long as the days. We cannot be anywhere near Christian lands.’

  ‘That tree we passed,’ said Svein. ‘It was one of the type that grows in southern Spain and in the Fortunate Isles … I could see the feathery remnant of the twig and the rough scales of the bark. Wherever we are, it is a hot, southern climate.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Those Norse settlers that went out from Gronland, many years ago. They came back with tales of lush meadows and places where wild vines grow. Maybe we are approaching the same region by another route, far to the south.’

  Madoc gave a mock groan.

  ‘The saints forbid that we be met on the beach by a hairy band of Norsemen, all shouting welcome to our brother Svein!’

  They had no wine or beer, but even the stale water from the leather casks tasted better that day.

  And tomorrow was to be even better.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  As soon as dawn broke, it was obvious that something had changed.

  When the light streamed over the Gwennan Gorn from the eastern sky, the lookout in the bow saw the water round the ship was different in colour. It did not need the Viking’s expert eye to tell that a deeper blue, a vivid ultramarine was lapping the ship’s sides. At full light, everyone on board was crowding to the bulwarks and looking at the changed sea. The wind had dropped considerably.

  ‘We are near land,’ said Svein confidently. ‘I said that yesterday and though I have not seen a sea this colour before, I am sure it heralds a coastline not far away.’

  Pressed to explain, he stroked his tawny beard, always an indication of deep thought.

  ‘Off Norway, where the deep fjords come to the foot of the high mountains, there is a colour something like this … and I have seen it elsewhere. It seems that at the edge of land, there is often a great trench in the ocean, which gives this dark blueness.’

  ‘We seem to be moving less speedily today,’observed Einion. ‘Is that also due to deep water?’

  Svein shrugged. Picking up a piece of wood that had been part of the sheep pen, he threw it over the side, well away from the ship. The Gwennan Gorn soon left it behind, but noticeably slower than a few days earlier. ‘The current is less active here. Whether that is due to the deep water beneath us, I do not know. But I do know that things are changing rapidly and soon we shall see other signs.’

  He went forward to the deck below the sternpost and climbed up onto the stout timber that acted as a rail. Gripping the high post right in the eye of the ship, he shaded his eyes with the other hand and looked intently ahead. In a few moments, he came back.

  ‘There is nothing to see … no cloud, no land, but I still havethe feeling that there is something out there, not far away.’

  Madoc went about his business, getting the instruments ready for the noon sighting of the sun, which now blazed clearly in a pale blue sky. He too felt that this was to be a different day, fervently hoping that some landfall would be made soon, as he had checked the stores himself the previous evening and was not nearly so confident as Einion that they had enough to last for a few more weeks.

  Later in the morning, Svein, who had been prowling around like a caged bear, climbed for the fourth time to the crossing of the main spar and the mast. A few minutes later, he let out a great shout and stood erect on the spar, heedless of the twenty foot drop below him.

  ‘What is it, Norseman … do you see land?’yelled Madoc.

  ‘No … not land. Not yet, but there is a change in the water, away there to the port side of the ship.’

  He jabbed a great arm away to the left, the side of the ship that was always brought to port or the quayside, as the steering oar encumbered the other side.

  No one could see anything from deck level.

  ‘Shall we steer toward it, Svein?’ yelled Madoc to the man up the mast.

  The Norseman nodded vigorously and shouted back, ‘Yes, try it. It seems to be a great shallow, stretching away as far as I can see.’

  Madoc ran to the steersman and helped him twist the great oar so that the bow of the Gwennan Gorn slowly came across the horizon. The breeze came on to her opposite quarter, but was still well behind her as she sailed on at almost the same speed.

  Madoc joined the men on the foredeck. As he looked ahead, Einion came up from the hold and Svein slid back down the rigging to join him.

  Within half an hour, the change in the deep blue of the water became noticeable. It became a light greenish blue and more turbulent, almost milky in appearance, though the actual water was clear.

  ‘It has suddenly become shallow,’ muttered Svein. ‘Cast the line, Alun.’

  The crooked eyed seaman took up a long line of thin twine, with a heavy stone lashed to the end with leather thongs. He threw it over the side and let the line slide through his fingers,counting the knots spaced at regular intervals.

  ‘No bottom here,’ he announced.

  ‘It will come … let us follow this new avenue.’

  The line of pale water was only about a mile broad, but carried on north-eastwards as far as they could see. The Gwennan Gorn moved slightly back on to her old course to follow it.

  As dusk approached, Madoc began to feel a sense of anti-climax and disappointment when nothing further appeared, but, as the sun was touching the western rim of the ocean, one of the men on the steerboard side suddenly let out a great yell.‘A bird … look, a bird!’

  Men left their evening meal to jump up and stare wildly about them, craning their necks to scan the evening sky.

  Cries of ‘Where? Where?’ rang out over the quiet sea.

  ‘There … straight up!A great bird.’

  Sure enough, circling high overhead was a white seabird, something like a gull, but with a greater wing span. It soared in wide circles, obviously looking down on the Gwennan Gorn as intently as the crew stared back at the first living thing except fish that they had seen since leaving the Fortunate Isles.

  It stayed within sight for another few minutes, but as the quick sunset darkened the sky, it began flying with great slow wing-beats towards the west, its silhouette diminishing to a dot against the pink sky.

  ‘That way lies land,’ said Einion, as Svein felt it too obvious to mention.

  ‘Do we keep on our course or follow it?’mused Madoc.

  ‘The pale water has widened to several miles since the afternoon,’ replied the Viking. ‘I think we shall soon be at a landfall whichever path we choose, but we may as well take the sign the bird has given us.’

  Madoc ordered the steersman to head due west. Four men had to drag the sail around to catch the wind, as it was now almost coming at them from the beam. At this angle of sailing, theGwennan Gorn heeled over slightly with the wind, but after dark, the breeze became so slight that they made little distance.

  Madoc lay on the deck in the warm summer night. He could not sleep and let his thoughts range unchallenged through his head.

  It seemed a lifetime since he had left Wales, though it was little more than two months. The memory of Annesta was at once both vivid and distant. He found her face difficult to focus in his mind. His thoughts of her were of a tender, but painless nature, as if she were some familiar saint whom he had grown to adore, though never really known. He no longer loathed Dafydd, whom he was firmly convinced had plotted her death, even if his own hand had not itself carried the torch. Madoc knew that he had been intended to fuel that blazing hut himself, Annesta being the innocent victim of circumstanc
es.

  Not for the first time, his thoughts wandered to what in God’s name he was doing here, out in the unknown, risking his own life and that of thirty other men. If it was escapism from Gwynedd he wanted, he could have had that in France or at the Crusades or even in Ireland.

  Yet he found himself over the edge of the world, in places where eternal mists, waterfalls of the ocean and fearsome nothingness were supposed to hold reign.

  He recognised that this was something that had been sleeping dormant inside him for many years –perhaps even since he heard tales in Clochran of St. Brandon and the other Gaelic monks who had ventured out centuries ago onto the deep waters.

  Certainly since the Gwennan Gorn had been built and since the Long Voyage last year, this ultimate adventure had been inevitable. Escapism was the immediate excuse, but he recognised that it went deeper than that – a desire, a need to know the truth about what lay beyond the confines of the minds of cautious men.

  Maybe tomorrow he would find out, for all the signs now pointed to land near at hand. It had hardly needed the fine powers of Svein Olafsen to guide them here … the wind and the currents had done that for them. Yet much lay ahead and it might be that the mysteries of this strange sea would yet tax the ship as much as the currents of Gwennan’s Bane.

  Though sleep came late to Madoc, he suddenly found himself awakening with a start, the light of dawn on his face and the stars paling above him.

  All the memories of the previous evening poured back over him and he clambered stiffly to his feet. A quick look up at the heavens and at the lightening horizon told Madoc that they were still on a westerly course. With the dawn came the wind and gently theGwennan Gorn began heeling as the wind caught the sail, which was braced well forward by the tacking boom – a device which Svein had introduced from the Norsemen, who called it the beitas.

  It was still too dark to see any distance and Madoc lay down again, though other men were stirring to make their poor breakfasts from what was left of the flour and oatmeal. With the ship heeling in the wind, there would be no fire under the foredeck to cook anything. When the vessel was riding steadily, a dull fire was made with peat blocks and some kindling, on a thick slab of slate that acted as a hearth, but because of the ever-terrifying risk of fire, this could only be done in ideal conditions.