The Song of Heledd

by Judith Arnopp

  I gave a short humourless laugh. ‘Of course you can.’

  Her eyes did not meet mine, her mouth worked for a while, the whiskers on her chin, glinting. ‘I can only try, the child is askew. I can try to straighten it and if the gods will it, she will live. If they don’t, then there is nothing I can do.’

  I sat back on my heels, uncomprehending of her words and, for a few fleeting seconds, imagined life without Ffreur, an idea so unbearable that I thrust it quickly away. I would rather die myself.

  I stood up and Ffreur groaned, groped for my hand. I leaned over her. ‘I am not leaving, I will be back.’

  Dragging Ceri by the shawl, I thrust her against the wall, looked deep into her eyes. ‘You must save her, Ceri, there is no other alternative. I believe in you, I know you can do it and I have gold, treasures. I will reward you well. I will make you rich.’

  She nodded uncertainly and moved away. On her way to the bed she whispered something to Hild who slipped from the room. I dabbed my sister’s forehead with a damp rag.

  ‘Oh, Heledd,’ she whispered. ‘It hurts so much. However did you bear it?’

  My throat closed and I struggled to find my voice. ‘We are fashioned to bear it, Ffreur. Be at peace, all will be well.’

  I thought of my new-born daughter lying cosy in her cradle, and of her brothers tumbled like puppies in their bed. I recalled the ease with which I had borne them. I had carried them high and delivered them promptly. Why was it not like that for Ffreur?

  Ceri leaned over the bed, her face close to my sister’s. ‘I am going to try to shift the child. It will hurt so I want you to drink this for the pain.’

  She struggled to sit up. I supported her, held the cup to her lips, felt the feverish heat from her body. And after a while, as I stoked her hand, she slipped into sleep and Ceri lifted her dormant knees and spread her legs wide.

  Ffreur jumped at the first touch and when Ceri reached in to locate the baby’s head, her eyes flew open. She opened her mouth, emitting an unworldly noise the like of which I had never heard outside the farmyard. I hoped Cadafael kept Iestyn far from the bower and safely out of earshot.

  My tears fell, on our hands, on her face and I could not stop them. It was worse than death to sit by and witness her torture, to try to quiet her writhing body, to still her flaying arms. If I could have, I would have absorbed all of her pain.

  Ceri worked for an hour, massaging the distorted bulge of Ffreur’s belly, forcing the baby to turn, hurting her, making her scream. There was blood on my lips where I had bitten them and my hands shook as if I had ague. Every so often Ffreur slipped from consciousness, lying prone upon the scarlet sheets, her limbs contorted until the pain returned to drag her horribly back to reality.

  ‘The child is straighter but I fear the after birth is blocking the birth canal, we must see how she goes.’ Ceri stood up and wiped her brow, leaving a streak of scarlet. ‘It is up to her now but I don’t know if she has the strength.’

  We gave her an infusion of herbs to rouse her, fortify her.

  I leaned over her. ‘You must push now, my love, and your babe will be here soon.’

  ‘If he lives,’ Ceri murmured, and I shot her a killing glance.

  Ffreur strained and pushed for a further hour or more but the child did not budge. In between spasms she begged me to look after Iestyn and her babe, should it live and her features were so marred with agony that she no longer bore any resemblance to my pretty sister.

  Sweat glistened on her face, her eyes were hollow. ‘Heledd,’ she croaked at last. ‘Send for the priest.’

  I did not want to. To send for a priest was to admit defeat, but, for Ffreur’s easement, I nodded to Ceri to send a messenger. Then I gave a tight little smile and tried to make my voice light.

  ‘You always make so much fuss, Ffreur. You will not die, for God loves you too well.’

  Her clammy hand rested on my arm, a claw of a hand, daubed with blood and mucus. ‘I am not afraid to die, Heledd. Although I have sinned, God will forgive me and all will be well.’

  I bit down upon a sob, tossed back my hair, my voice issuing harsher than I intended. ‘You have not sinned, Ffreur, and you will live. Your child will live and thrive and we will all be happy. You and I, Cadafael and Iestyn, together with our children. Just as we planned.’

  She did not believe me but her eyes were calm. ‘Look after my baby, Heledd. Raise him to be strong, like you. Promise me.’

  My eyes were blind. My will screamed against the gods, all of them. They would not do this to me. They would not have Ffreur. I would dance with the very devil to stop it.

  Wrenching open the door, I yelled for Hild who arrived, panting, a short time later. I told her to fetch me a knife from the kitchens and Ceri stood up slowly, reading my mind, foreseeing my plan.

  Shaking her head, she began to back away. ‘I cannot,’ she said, her hands atremble and I saw then that she was afraid.

  Ffreur whimpered, her voice increasing until she growled and screamed like an animal. I held her, my tears spouting afresh.

  ‘I am here, Ffreur. Just keep breathing. Remember the song we sang at my childbed.’ I began to hum, desperately trying to recall the chant we had used. ‘Ceri, come here, now.’ I yelled at her, losing control, dragging her to the floor beside me. ‘Fix it, Ceri. Fix it, like you always do.’

  My body shook. I was on the brink of insanity when suddenly Hild appeared, a beastly looking blade in her hand. Her eyes were wild, her mouth squared at the unfolding horror. Ffreur had passed out again, given a few moments release.

  I grabbed Hild’s arm. ‘Where were you?’

  ‘I was in the chapel,’ she replied, ‘Ceri told me to pray, and so I did. ’

  I think that is the moment that I finally knew we were lost.

  There was not much time, Ffreur’s lapse of consciousness lasting only moments. I backed Ceri into a corner. ‘You must do it. Cut the child from her. There is no other choice.’

  She shook her head mutely. ‘I cannot, they would curse me as a witch should she die.’

  Ffreur stirred on the bed, another assault imminent. She could not last much longer. Her strength was failing and the relief between contractions was growing so short it was giving her no respite. She must either give birth now, or die. At that moment I hated Ceri and, poking her hard on the shoulder, I spoke through gritted teeth.

  ‘Instruct me then.’

  Ceri and Hild held torches aloft over the bed, the light flickered and sweat dripped onto my hands. Hild whimpered, the farmyard odour of her fright pervading the room but Ceri was calm, her face tense and watchful. Ffreur lay, half dead on the bed, her grotesque belly taut, her thighs smeared with scarlet. With each fresh pain she strained afresh but imperceptibly, the potion Ceri had brewed worked its way to her brain. Her limbs became less agitated and her breathing slowed. Soon, it was impossible to tell if her breast rose and fell at all.

  Ceri swore that the afterbirth was blocking the path that the babe was supposed to take, that was why there was so much blood. There was no other way. I had heard of children being cut alive from the womb but had no idea of how to go about it. I knew no one who had survived it but I steeled myself and looked at the girl on the bed.

  This was my sister, whom I had loved since I was two years old and my mother had first let me peek into her basket. I would not let her die.

  With a sopping rag I washed the blood from her belly. Ceri leaned over my shoulder. ‘It’s best to go in low, where the babe’s head should be, I think.’ I hoped I did not slit its throat. Ffreur would never forgive me.

  I pressed the knife tip against her belly, made a slight indentation, my hand shaking. Then I hesitated, looked up at Ffreur’s stringy, wet hair, her alabaster face beaded with sweat and knew I had no choice, I must act now or lose her.

  I had thought her flesh would slice like pork but I had to push down as hard as I could to cut through the skin and tissue. Ffreur barely stirred and I prayed I was
not too late, maybe the potion had been lethal. I glanced up to Ceri and Hild who, with their breath suspended in their throats, watched my every move.

  Blood spurted, marring my view, and I signalled for Ceri to pour water to cleanse the yawning wound and saw, through the film of Ffreur’s womb, the curled limbs of a child.

  Hild grizzled aloud, a drip of snot hanging from her nose, her face glazed with sweat, the torch waving erratically. I took a breath, looked from one to the other. Ceri moved her mouth in silent encouragement and, feeling her camaraderie, I drew my knife firmly across the membrane. It split asunder, like silk.

  A gush of water and the sweet, familiar smell of birth fluid. I delved into my sister’s womb and grasped the pulsing body of her child. It was hot, slippery, and I struggled for a firm grip. Knotting my fingers about its ankles, I ripped the child from its mother and severed the cord.

  Without so much as glancing at it, I thrust the baby into Hild’s waiting arms and she began to rub it briskly with the hem of her apron. She still bawled like an infant but the child made no noise at all. I turned back to the bed.

  Ffreur was a mess. Her body mutilated by my knife. The sheets smothered in gore. Panic threatened to engulf me again. I could feel it rising and knew it would soon overspill.

  I turned to Ceri, my eyes wild, my throat knotted, my chin wobbling. ‘What now?’ She stumbled forward. ‘You have to sew her up, like a battle wound.’

  ‘What with?’

  I wanted it all to end. My body longed to collapse, my mind craved oblivion. Ceri rummaged in her bag, brought forth some twine but then, seeing my face, she hesitated, let out a breath.

  ‘Go and sit at her head, child. I will do it.’

  My legs shook, my hands trembled like an age-bitten woman’s. Gratefully, I stumbled to the stool. Unable to believe what I had done, I took a deep breath, filling my lungs with fresher air and blew out again hard, seeking to calm my raging blood.

  I sat at Ffreur’s head, held her hand, talked to her, sang her favourite songs, my voice catching and tremulous. Her breath was so slight that even when I held my hand in front of her mouth I could not feel it. In the opposite corner Hild fussed over the child. It had barely made a sound and I did not care. I had not asked if it were a boy or girl.

  I clung to my Ffreur, watching for her breathing to grow stronger, for her colour to return, longing for her eyes to flicker open, dying for her smile but, although I sat there until morning, her eyes never opened and that smile never came.

  Part Five

  Lament for Pengwern

  The Hall of Cyndylan is dark

  To-night, without fire, without candle!

  655 AD

  On the day we lay Ffreur beneath the earthen floor of the llys chapel, I thought I had reached the bottommost depth of grief. Although it was summer, a steady drenching drizzle fell, blanketing our spirits further. Poor Iestyn, his head lowered in the scudding rain, wept as we trailed back to the llys but I could not comfort him.

  I threw off the old gods who had forsaken me, ignored my most fervent prayers, and now I sought the comfort of the ancient priest that had been Ffreur’s confessor. I unburdened my soul to him, confessed my darkest deeds but his ears were so gummed up with other people’s sin that he could not hear my words.

  I needed to be scourged, whipped without mercy but he did not even castigate me verbally. All he did was wipe his own sorry tears and offer me shrift before sending me back to my children and the comforts of my nurse. I knew that I was not yet forgiven. I had meddled with God’s will and, should my death come unexpectedly, I would burn in the flames of hell.

  My two-month-old daughter, Ffreur, was dark haired with piercing black eyes, and as unlike my sister as could be, but she gave me some small comfort. We named Ffreur’s son Ianto but I could not bear to look upon him. Although he was small and sickly, his spine twisted and probably his mind too, he clung stubbornly to life. I reluctantly allowed him into my nursery but whenever I looked at him, God forgive me, I wished that he had died instead of his mother.

  Those early days are hard to think on. Ffreur’s death plunged us all into gloom. Everyone had loved her, for her sunny nature had brightened even the cloudiest day and, forgetting my part in her downfall, I hated Iestyn for wanting a child so much that she risked her life to give him one. And he, in turn, blamed me for my intervention.

  In the first hours of his grief he raged at me. ‘You should never have used the knife; you have killed her with your incompetence.’

  The sting of those words lacerate me yet and in the weeks that followed I grew thin, neither eating nor sleeping and, when my milk dried and Gwarw arranged a wet nurse for baby Ffreur, I grieved afresh at having to pass her into the care of another woman.

  But, in the night, when I leapt screaming from sleep, fresh from a dream in which my knife still dripped with my sister’s blood, Cadafael held me tight and I clung to him like a drowning woman to a rock.

  Two

  It was a subdued party that left the llys to attend Cynddylan’s wedding. We took horse to the coast where the royal ships of Gwynedd bobbed at their mooring. The sting of the salt wind bit some colour into my cheeks and my heart twisted painfully as I realised how much Ffreur would have loved to have been there. I imagined her clinging to the ships rail, the wind shredding her pretty hair and when Gwarw asked me why I wept, I blamed my streaming eyes upon the lively wind.

  The sky was like a bright blanket of lapis lazuli stretched high above us where gulls turned and dived, their regretful cries like the syllables of a lament. Cadafael and I stood at the prow, the spume in our faces, the wind tugging at our cloaks and penetrating the lacings and folds of our clothing. I rested my head on his shoulder, frail and exhausted after weeks of misery.

  ‘It will be good to visit your childhood home again, will it not?’

  I looked at his profile that stood out sharply against the backdrop of the sky. The sea breeze blew his hair from his face, accentuating the square line of his jaw, the sensuous curve of his mouth. In a flood of gratitude that I still had him, I sent up a little prayer of thanks.

  ‘There will be memories,’ I said, unwilling to mention Ffreur’s name. His chest rose and fell and when he lowered his eyes to mine I noticed the shadows of strain about his eyes and mouth and realised for the first time that it had been hard for him too. I cursed myself for a selfish, thoughtless woman. I would do better in the future and try to be as thoughtful a wife as my sister had been.

  ‘Memories are everywhere, my love, but one day, God willing, they will cease to be painful and you will remember only happy times.’

  I tucked my head onto his shoulder again, feeling safe. There was no other place I wanted to be. ‘There were lots of happy times,’ I whispered and he held me, without speaking, pretending not to see the drops that fell upon my breast.

  Three

  At less than fourteen summers Cynddylan’s affianced bride, Rhonwen was like a puppy, full of childlike warmth. Although she tried to adopt a funereal expression she failed miserably and greeted me instead lovingly, her dark eyes dancing, her step light with her own joy. She had a similar sunny nature to Ffreur and although I was just twenty-four she made me feel like an old woman.

  Because of Ffreur’s death her marriage celebrations would be muted but she allowed no resentment to show and, knowing I would come to genuinely love her, I forced myself to smile and express delight at Cynddylan’s choice. And when he came tripping down the hall steps, darkly handsome in his purple cloak, he embraced me before them all, his grief for our sister vibrating from deep within, so that only I knew of it.

  He pulled away, looked down at me. ‘Thank God I still have you, Heledd.’

  He hugged me again and at his shared sorrow, a sob broke free from my throat. Although we had many siblings, Cynddylan, Cynwraith, Ffreur and I shared the same mother and that drew us closer, our misery somehow intensified by shared blood.

  But life goes on and those about
us began to shake off sorrow to enjoy the celebration. Cadafael’s household teulu mingled with Cynddylan’s whose hospitality was famous and that night, while the harp was passed from hand to hand and the leaping flames reflected in the metalwork of the swinging lanterns and set the warrior’s gold gleaming, I sat in my old place at the high table and looked with sadness about the familiar hall.

  Beside me, where Ffreur should have been, was Rhonwen, full of enthusiasm for her new life, and while my throat ached for by-gone days, when our hearts had borne so much hope, she looked forward to a life of love and children. Too despondent to eat properly, I picked at the food that Rhonwen heaped upon my platter and I only pretended to drink. I was tired, from both grief and the exertion of the journey and I longed to retire to the chamber I would share with Cadafael. My bed called to me. I craved to be there with him, closeted away from the world, which was so cruel.

  Gwarw and Hild were elsewhere, tucking the children into strange beds, comforting their fears whilst here in the hall Angharad, her upright frame clothed in one of my discarded yellow tunics, wove in and out the company, refilling cups, the object of male appreciation.

  I watched her dully, no longer caring that she was fairer than I, and as I watched she leaned over Cadafael’s chair, filling not just his cup but his eye, silently challenging him to reach for her as he has so often done. I narrowed my eyes and saw his lips move, the smile he gave her stabbing me like a knife.

  I did not know if he still visited her and did not dare to enquire but I hated her. My heart full of jealous resentment I decided to make a bridal gift of her to Rhonwen before we left and be rid of her for good.

  I had made so many mistakes, so many wanton actions that could not now be undone and I suffered so many regrets. Rhonwen, noticing my despondency, nudged my elbow and lifted her cup, encouraging me to do the same.