This Present Past
Page 38
When the iron gate swung open Creirwy was horrified! She had forgotten to lock it! How could she overlook something so vital to her security? Pregnancy, that’s how – her brain had turned to complete mush.
One person entered – cloaked and hooded. The way he moved with such ease and authority, reminded her of her beloved. Was it him, come to see her through this difficult time? Her heart fluttered with excitement – she was compelled to fling open the door wide and call to him, but refrained.
As the intruder crossed the courtyard, he tossed back his hood, and called out to announce his arrival. ‘My Lady Tegid, it is I, Neiryn.’
Her heart sank in her chest, and yet she was so very glad it was friend and not foe. The King’s chief bard had not visited since early spring, when her condition had not been evident. Creirwy had informed him then of Chiglas’s departure from her house with Cadfer, and quite frankly she had never expected to see the bard again. ‘Neiryn—’ she called and was seized again by pain, which hastened his approach to her door.
‘My Lady, you are with child?’ He moved in to help support her and close the door.
‘I am having said child,’ she updated his observation.
‘Oh dear.’ He didn’t sound panicked, so much as unprepared. ‘Then we should get you back to bed and . . .’ Neiryn drew a blank.
‘Have you ever witnessed a birth?’ Creirwy wondered if he had the stomach for it.
He nodded to reassure her, but resolved to be honest. ‘No. But inexperienced as I am, I would not see you brave this alone, Lady.’
‘I am grateful,’ she replied. ‘You must forgive me if I do not seem so before this deed is done.’
‘Whatever happens, I’m not leaving.’ He deposited her back on her bed. ‘Just tell me what you need.’
By the same time the day following – after much screaming, sweat and blood – Creirwy’s perfect wee baby boy was delivered into Neiryn’s awaiting hands, and having clamped, cut and tied the umbilical, he swathed the babe in a blanket, and gently washed the afterbirth from the infant’s face.
‘Is he all right? Why isn’t he crying?’ Creirwy fretted.
‘He’s just in a good mood, I guess.’ Neiryn appeared smitten as he smiled reassuringly down at the newborn he’d aided to bring into the world. ‘Ten fingers, ten toes,’ he checked him over as he wiped him off. ‘Eyes as blue as a summer morning sky.’
Neiryn bundled him up and laid him in her arms, without one cry leaving the baby’s lips.
He was small, but content, and was the most perfect specimen of a boy child that Creirwy had ever laid eyes upon. In fact he was so beautiful, gentle and affectionate as he suckled from her breast that she wept for joy and relief that she did not have to raise another monster. Her mother would be completely besotted with their new family member.
‘Gwion and my mother were right to place their faith in you, Neiryn,’ she praised him as he returned inside with an empty washing basket.
‘I am just grateful we all came through it alive.’ He smiled broadly. ‘And I have another skill to add to my experience, and a godson, as it were.’
‘Oh yes, he is certainly that,’ she awarded the bard for his part.
‘Shall I play some harp for you both?’ he suggested.
‘We would love that.’ Creirwy smiled down at her babe, who’d finished feeding and was drifting towards sleep in a contented milk coma.
‘What will you call him?’ Neiryn got comfortable and took up his instrument to tune the strings.
‘I will call him my cariad,’ which simply meant ‘love’ or ‘darling’. ‘But I will never give him a name by which he can be sought.’ She had both Chiglas and the Night Hunter in mind as she resolved this. ‘When a man has no name, he is far less easily found.’
‘You do not wish him to carry his father’s name . . . Gwion.’
Creirwy looked to him so horrified that Neiryn dared not begin to play. ‘You were calling for him in your delirium.’
‘Did I say he was the father?’ she queried indignantly.
‘You don’t have to . . . you never loved anybody else.’ He appeared a little hurt by this – Creirwy had never considered that Neiryn might have any motive beyond the King’s orders to visit her.
‘Surely you realise what you suggest is impossible.’
‘For a man who raised the dead to life and helped the King bring about a decade of peace, I don’t think anything is impossible.’
‘You idolise him too much,’ she scoffed.
‘Lady,’ he hesitated to be frank. ‘Anything you tell me in confidence will go with me to my grave, but if something should happen to you and I am to be the child’s godfather . . .’
She held up a hand, to prevent him from saying more. ‘It is as you suspect.’
Neiryn left his harp to come sit on the end of her bed. ‘Did Gwion escape the Otherworld?’
That was one way of explaining it, she supposed. ‘No one must find out about this. I confide in you only because Gwion named you as someone he trusted as a confidant and adviser in the future.’
‘Me advising Gwion Bach . . .’ Neiryn was amused by that suggestion, ‘in the future?’ He clearly couldn’t quite process that part. ‘Is that a prophecy, Lady?’
‘For him, it is a memory.’ She was honest, although it only confused the issue.
‘I fear you’ve lost me.’
Creirwy wasn’t sure she completely grasped all of it either. ‘He is coming back to Cymru, Neiryn, but he will not be as you remember – he will be . . . younger.’
‘He has grown younger?’ Neiryn was puzzled only a moment. ‘Well, if his legend is correct, it isn’t the first time Gwion has aged and then returned to youth.’
‘After the battle of Baddon,’ she cited his reference – that seemed an age ago now.
‘Indeed. But if what you say is true, Lady, then how will I know him?’
She smiled as she considered the unfamiliar sight of him, forehead to forehead with Moonlight in the snow beyond her gate. Even before he’d changed form into the one she remembered, she had sensed his calming presence that was ever so much more potent these days. ‘His spirit is so beautiful it shines through any persona he might be wearing; you will know him, I assure you.’
‘Godfather to the son of a legend.’ Neiryn couldn’t wipe the smile from his face. ‘A true honour, that I shall take very seriously.’
‘He shall need a man to look up to, Neiryn, and you are the best of them.’ She turned her blissful smile from her babe to her company. ‘Gwion would be most pleased by this turn of events.’
‘As am I, Lady.’ Neiryn retuned to his harp to compose a lullaby for his new ward, and Creirwy, exhausted, lay back her head and closed her eyes to listen to the sweet music – content in the knowledge she had delivered her beloved’s saviour.
Neiryn insisted on staying all through the winter months, and so found the occasion to meet with his patron goddess, Keridwen. His assistance in the safe delivery of her grandchild, with whom she was completely besotted, only further substantiated why she had chosen him to be the guardian of one of her sacred treasures and adviser to the King.
When Neiryn failed to return to Viroco as expected, King Owain sent soldiers out looking for his bard. They left the cottage at Llyn Tegid with a report informing the King that Creirwy had taken ill and he was staying throughout the cold time to assist. When that winter ended, Neiryn returned to court for shorter and shorter periods, never mentioning the boy, but citing Creirwy’s diminishing health as the reason. Still, the King was not happy losing his spymaster, and proffered to send other help to aid the Lady Tegid. When Neiryn strongly opposed that suggestion, the King was compelled to ask in confidence if he and the Lady were in love? And although Neiryn had utterly refuted the assumption, he suspected the King thought otherwise and allowed him more leave.
Creirwy’s babe was his older sibling’s polar opposite in every way. ‘Sweet boy’ was what she called him most often, as did her
mother. Neiryn just called him ‘my lad’. He was gentle and sensitive to the needs and feelings of all living things. He was most fascinated by Neiryn’s harp, and on his third birthday was given his own miniature instrument, which he began to learn to play. He proved a very quick study, as having listened to the instrument well played since birth, he had an ear for tune, rhythm and composition.
The little cottage at Llyn Tegid that had so long felt like a prison of darkness and despair, had transformed into a sanctuary of joy and contentment for Creirwy, who could not have imagined she would ever know such happiness as filled her days now.
Cadfer had been keeping a very low profile the last few years, and Chiglas had not surfaced at all. But there were reports of a beast roaming the western region of the Eryri. Many people – women in the main – had been found horribly mutilated. As Cadfer seemed to be doing nothing about the issue, Caswallon sent out men to hunt for the creature – but it didn’t matter how many bears, wolves or big cats they killed, the disappearances and murders continued.
These stories weighed heavily on Creirwy, for she knew Chiglas was responsible – his bloodlust had finally been unleashed – and Cadfer was giving him safe haven in the Eryri he knew better than any. Rufus’s threat must have rattled them, for the pair had kept their distance from Llyn Tegid and Cadfer hadn’t mentioned Owain’s bastard to anyone. Clearly, they were biding their time, but civil war was inevitable; it was merely a question of when. Neiryn kept insisting that Creirwy not judge herself so harshly as the growing friction between Cadfer and his brothers would plunge them into war with or without Chiglas. ‘It is you who was the victim in all of this,’ he would say, but then Neiryn glorified her and did not know the whole truth.
In the warmer seasons, Creirwy’s son loved to practise his harp out in nature, down by the stream mostly. It had become something of a routine this spring, and Creirwy began to wonder what the attraction was. ‘Off to the stream again this morning?’ She paused from hanging out the linens, as her sweet boy passed by, arms full of harp.
‘Yes, Mama,’ he replied without breaking stride.
‘Stay and play for me,’ she suggested.
‘When I come back . . . I have to play for the pretty ladies,’ he called back, already halfway down the track.
The pretty ladies? Creirwy’s puzzlement snowballed into fear as an image of the Night Hunter’s sirens sprang to mind. ‘Amabel . . .’ was the name of their leader; it was she who always delivered the Night Hunter’s summons. Heart beating in her throat, Creirwy rushed down the track to investigate.
Not wishing to alarm her boy, she hid a wee distance away and watched him play. Creirwy had lost all her Fey powers and so could no longer plainly see the denizens of the Otherworld, but even a human could sense their glamorous presence.
A shaft of sunlight pierced through the tree branches to shine upon the tiny harpist. Small animals stopped what they were doing and directed their attention towards his enchanting tune, and butterflies fluttered around him as if dancing at a great ball. When the playing was done, flowers appeared out of nowhere to shower over him, and her boy giggled with glee, placing aside his instrument to dance among the flowers that twirled around him and yet never hit the ground.
‘Stay away from my babe!’ Crierwy stormed into the scene, having seen enough to be convinced that Otherworldly beings were present.
The flowers dropped to the ground, the animals all fled and the sunlight withdrew behind a cloud.
‘No, Mama, stop! You’re scaring them away!’ her boy pleaded.
‘They are not your friends, my cariad.’ She crouched down to hug him tight. ‘They are the Night Hunter’s spies come to lure you into the Otherworld.’
The lad gasped, his eyes welling with tears. ‘They wouldn’t take me away from you, Mama.’
‘They would if the Night Hunter bid it.’ Creirwy looked him square in the eye. ‘Best you just play for me and Grandma from now on. Promise me.’
Lip quivering with sadness, he nodded. ‘If you say so, Mama.’
‘I do.’ She kissed his cheek and turned him around. ‘Back to the house, and wash up for supper.’ He collected his harp and wandered back up the track. Creirwy waited until he was out of earshot. ‘You are not welcome here, Amabel . . . take your siren sisters and leave! You are not getting your claws on my son!’
A angry wind whipped through the vale and out over the lake, and with it went all the Otherworldly glamour, to leave the area feeling perfectly ordinary.
That was too close for comfort. Clearly, she must be far more vigilant when it came to protecting her miracle child.
By the lad’s fifth birthday, peace had reigned supreme at Llyn Tegid and in the rest of Cyrmu for so long that the promise of civil war had faded from the minds of all – even the mysterious disappearances in the Eryri had ebbed.
That winter seemed like one long ode to the joy of music by a fire with good food, mead and conversation. Creirwy had not felt such a true sense of family since the demise of the castell. Of course she wished Gwion could have been there to experience this, and see his fine boy, and feel the pride swell in his chest like she did every time she looked at his divine little person. Chiglas may have been a curse on this world, but her cariad bach was – as they would say in Latin – a benedictò.
Late one night, early in the spring that followed, during one of Neiryn’s absences, Creirwy woke abruptly as her dragon whistle was ripped from about her neck. A hand clamped hard over her mouth as her babe was wrenched from the bed beside her, and her whistle was cast across the room.
‘Now, where is that bloody dagger of yours.’ Even in the dark after so long, she recognised Cadfer’s voice; it made her skin crawl as he retrieved the Blade of Swiftness from her thigh and handed it to Chiglas, who placed it against his brother’s throat.
‘Mother!’ her babe cried out, terrified.
‘Shut up, little piglet.’ Cadfer pushed aside her covers and climbed on top of her. ‘Time I seeded this old sow.’
She was not about to allow that to happen in front of her sweet boy, and she struggled against him so vigorously that he was forced to remove his hand from her mouth to strike her.
‘Momma!’ The lad was screaming, which soon stopped as Chiglas pinched his nose shut, and the boy began to splutter.
I am Araqiel, she reminded herself as she recovered from the belting, and the mantra fortified her determination to the point where it felt like it might explode into pure madness. ‘I am Araqiel,’ she seethed out loud.
‘I don’t care, bitch.’ The bastard prince slapped her again, but as she repeated her mantra with more and more conviction, his stiff member went limp between her legs. ‘Stop saying that!’ He grabbed the blade back off Chiglas and aimed it at her, but she only laughed in his face. ‘Witch!’ He climbed off her and buckled up his pants – Chiglas grunted, sounding most disappointed.
‘Not my fault – she’s using magic.’
If Cadfer wanted to explain his failure thus, she would take advantage. ‘Every time you mount a woman, you will think of me, Araqiel, and fail equally,’ she hissed in spite. ‘Let the boy go, before I cast a hex that will make your jewels wither like an old man, good for nothing more than leaking piss.’
Chiglas loosened his grip on the lad, and as the boy made a move towards his mother, Chiglas picked him clear off the ground by his hair, and the scream pierced through her soul. ‘Leave him; I’ll do anything you ask.’
He dropped the boy and took a tight grip of him around the back of the neck.
An old familiar pain gripped Creirwy’s forehead, and her nose began to bleed. You both die today, said Chiglas.
His words made her weep, for she wanted to beg for the child’s life but knew it would make no difference – Chiglas had no compassion.
But I give you the choice, do you want him to die before or after you?
‘No.’ She couldn’t choose; hyperventilating from the shock, she couldn’t even breathe.
As Cadfer hauled her off the bed, Creirwy caught sight of her dragon whistle lying idle on the floor. When it suddenly disappeared, she had to prevent herself from gasping – the only explanation she could think of was that Neiryn and his ring were close by.
‘My child is more important than any treasure, more important than me,’ she stated, as if answering Chiglas’s unspoken query – her amulet would help prevent Chiglas from detecting what she suspected and she hoped to the Gods Neiryn would understand that she wanted him to save the boy. ‘Just let your brother go and I will grant you access without resistance.’
‘You’ll grant us access anyway!’ Cadfer shoved Creirwy towards the door.
She need only distract Cadfer and Chiglas long enough for Neiryn to grab hold of their boy, and he would be saved. If Neiryn attempted to save her too they would all surely perish – Chiglas would sense the ill intent and kill them all. ‘Please, this is my burden to bear, spare the child.’
‘Keep that trap of yours shut.’ Cadfer shook her, and pushed her outdoors.
The dragon whistle could not be heard by the human ear, and Neiryn must have blown it for, as they crossed the courtyard, fire shot across the night sky to announce the dragon’s arrival and it lit the world around them momentarily. Ropes hung down the cliff face into her courtyard and following them up to the bluff above she spied more men with a huge contraption that was loaded with a sharp metal bolt that was aimed at the night sky.
‘Amazing what you find lying around in old Roman forts.’ Cadfer had brought them to a standstill to watch the proceedings. ‘It’s a Ballistae. Easily disassembled for travelling overland . . . you have to hand it to the Romans for ingenuity.’
‘Rufus, no! Flee!’ she cried out, with no other means to warn him.
‘Track him!’ Cadfer yelled orders to his men. ‘You may only get one shot.’
‘You would kill the dragon that drove the winter folk from your land and freed you from their menace?’ Creirwy was appalled, for the raiders from the Winter Isle had not dared return since.