Peredur
Owain was awake before dawn, and listened impatiently to the snores of his hosts for what seemed like hours before a cockerel crowed, at length, somewhere in the Dun, and people started to shuffle about, fold their blankets and make up the fire for breakfast.
Which was porridge, and pretty thin stuff, too.
Only then did Devorgilla Goch get a small party organised to head up to the mine, and this, too, took some time, with much discussion about ropes, and how to get an injured man back to the Dun. In the course of this, someone thought to bring Owain an old and much patched tunic to wear.
In the end, they harnessed a couple of elderly ponies to a small cart, loaded ropes, blankets, and Owain in the back, and set off along the narrow track. Devorgilla drove the cart. She had her rudimentary medical supplies in a big basket under the seat. The other would-be rescuers walked. Owain had found it hard just to hobble to the cart. He ached in every muscle, and his knee was still badly swollen.
The villagers seemed to be treating the journey as a day out. None of them seemed in any hurry, so Owain sat fretting in the back of the cart, looking round for any landmarks that would tell him they were getting close, and wishing he could yell at them to get a move on. Biting his tongue, he listened to them talking instead. Every man and woman there had worked as a miner, when the copper mine was open. That at least was hopeful. They'd know what they were doing when they got to the caves.
It was almost noon by the time they finally arrived at the mine, up the wide track that Owain and Gwalchmai had seen the morning before.
Owain looked out across the banks of scree with something like despair. It all looked the same. he couldn't possibly tell where the landslide had been.
Caradog Goch came to the side of the cart and stared at Owain. "Well?" he said at last.
"It all looks different from down here," Owain said helplessly. He pointed up the slope, at an angle from the buildings. "I think we came down that way."
"Best take him up there," Devorgilla suggested. "And take Ebisar and Crommen, too. They helped close the mine down, after all."
The one called Crommen, an older man almost as broad as he was tall, helped Owain down from the cart. "There are a lot of shafts on that hillside. I helped cover some of them to stop the sheep falling in. If the hole got covered, though...." He shrugged. "Maybe we'll find it, maybe not."
Owain limped up the hill, holding onto Crommen's arm. When they got close to the top, he spent some time walking backwards and forwards until the buildings below looked as close to his memory of them as possible. From above, some of the scree did look as if it had moved recently. It was too clean, somehow, and the edges were sharper and lighter than the rocks to either side. He pointed down the slope, and Crommen nodded in agreement.
"There was a fair-sized shaft just about there," he said. He took one end of the rope that Ebisar was carrying and knotted it round his waist. "Just hang on to that while I go and look," he said.
Ebisar paid out the rope steadily as Crommen made his way slowly down the slope. he went much more slowly than Gwalchmai and Owain had done, and at times on all fours, inspecting the ground. At length, he stopped. "Chuck us a pick, someone," he said. "I think I've got it."
One of the villagers passed a pick across to him, and sat beside him as he used it to probe at the loose rocks. A few of them tumbled down the slope, and Crommen looked up and waved at Caradog Goch and Owain. A hole had begun to open up close to his feet.
Owain slid down the slope on his backside, as carefully as he could, and at an angle to the newly opened hole. It wasn't wide enough yet for a person to get through, but it was wide enough to shout through.
He stopped on the edge. "Gwalchmai! Can you hear me? Gwalchmai?
"Still here." The voice was faint, but at least he was still answering.
Owain turned. Caradog Goch was ambling down the slope to one side of him, on firmer ground, with another skein of rope over his shoulder. "It's true, then?" he said. "Gwalchmai Morgan really is down there?"
"Of course it's true," Owain snapped. he clenched his teeth together. If he yelled at them now, it would take them twice as long to get Gwalchmai out of there. All he could do was to stay out of their way while they stood around the top of the shaft, scratching their heads.
Crommen and Ebisar were joined by two of the women, and together they set about widening the top of the shaft. They did the job so slowly that it took all Owain's willpower to stay silent, but at least there were no further landslides.
Once they'd got the ropes set up to get Gwalchmai to the surface, though, it all went much faster. One of the women, Tegau, being lighter than the others, went down the shaft. Owain was too far back to see anything once her head disappeared down the hole (she was another of the Dun's redheads), but he could hear her sliding down the rockpile at the bottom. He could hear everything that was happening down in the mine much better than any of the others. Now he knew that Gwalchmai was still alive, he could concentrate on this small exercise of his Talent - he'd been too worried to settle to it before. So he could hear what Gwalchmai said to the young woman while the miners from the Dun only heard murmuring.
"There's something else down here that you must bring up," Gwalchmai was saying. "It's very, very important. Over there - can you see?"
"Have you got the rope round him?" Caradog shouted down, from the top.
"Just a minute -" They could all hear Tegau clambering over the loose rocks. They all heard the very beginnings of a scream before she stopped herself. "That lad never said there were three of them," she shouted up.
Everyone looked round at Owain. "Three?" he murmured. "What has she found?"
More movement from below, and this time Tegau made a disgusted sound. "Goddess - he must have been dead for weeks - the smell!"
"He didn't come with us," Owain said. "Gwalchmai! Who is it? What's going on?"
"Get us both out of here, and I might be able to tell you!"
It didn't take long, then, for Tegau to rig a blanket around Gwalchmai in a sort of hammock arrangement that he could sit in while he was hauled to safety. he was on the surface in minutes, and carried down to where Devorgilla could see to hisinjuries.
While they were doing that, they lowered the blanket down the shaft again to Tegau. "I don't want to touch him!" she protested.
"Well, I'm not sending anyone else down," Caradog said. "See if you can roll him onto the blanket, and get the ropes under him."
With much muttering and sounds of disgust, Tegau did her best. "Oh, Goddess, oh, Taranis - he's wearing a cold cloak pin! Oh, Esus! His face is black!"
Owain was torn between listening to Tegau and watching Gwalchmai down on the slope below him. They'd given the old man water, and now Devorgilla had a big pair of scissors in her hand, and she was hesitating over the top of his boot. "Such good boots," she said. "It seems such a waste."
"Damn the boots, woman," Gwalchmai growled. "Just get on with it!"
She tried, but couldn't get through the leather. One of the other women took over, and peeled the leather away from the Harper's leg, and pulled at the heel to get the whole boot off.
That was when Gwalchmai fainted.
Devorgilla got to work on his ankle with linen bandages soaked in some herbal concoction she'd brought with her.
And that was when the body came awkwardly through the narrow hole at the top of the shaft. "Goddess, what a stink!" None of them wanted to touch it, but they got it out and laid it to one side. Finally, they sent the rope back down for Tegau.
"Look at this." Ebisar had moved the dead man's cloak, which was bundled around his neck as if he had been feeling cold when he died. "Gold!" he said. "This is - he was from one of the Great Families!"
"Not just any Great Family," Caradog said quietly. "Look at the finials on the torc. This is one of the Raven clan."
Owain felt sick. "Peredur," he said. They all turn
ed to look at him. "Lord Ianto's cousin Peredur went to visit him, and hasn't been seen since. Gwalchmai told me."
"This is too great a thing for us," Caradog said quietly. "I don't know what we should do."
"We'll do what we can do, first, and worry about the rest later.," Devorgilla said. She'd finished bandaging up Gwalchmai's ankle and had come up the slope to see what was going on. "The Harper will advise us, when he wakes up - so we'd better get everybody in the cart and back home. Then we can start worrying."
It was a grim journey. Gwalchmai lay on one side of the cart, wedged in with the ropes so he didn't roll about. He groaned occasionally, but was never fully conscious. The body lay on the other side, and the smell of him made everyone walk as far away from the cart as they could. Owain was wedged in at Gwalchmai's head, and couldn't escape the stink. The ponies didn't like the smell either - but it did mean that they got back to the village much faster than they had got to the mine.
It was early evening when they got back. Gwalchmai was carried into the round hut, and put on the pallet that Owain had used the previous night. By now, Gwalchmai was conscious again. Devorgilla offered him some water, with another herbal concoction from one of her stoneware bottles, but he waved it away. "Later, madam - it's nearly sunset, and there's something important we must do then."
Owain shivered. "You want to talk to the body," he said.
"Only way to be sure," Gwalchmai said. "Where's your shrine, madam? Lay him out towards the west, before the Mother, and we'll see what happens."
The shrine was on the other side of the hall, at the west end of the inner courtyard, slotted in between the bread oven and a tool shed. Under the canopy, the stone statue was very old, and worn, but obviously well cared for. A jar of daffodils had been placed on the shelf in front of the Mother, and there were other small gifts - a goose feather, a leather thong plaited around a stone, a twist of wool. Down on the lower shelf, before the thunderbolt symbol of Toutates, was a fist-sized lump of rock veined with something glittering, and an old mining pick. The body was laid out in front of the shrine, in the open. The sun was already low over the hill behind the Dun.
The whole village waited, quietly, in the open space, leaving plenty of room around the body, until the lower rim of the sun's disc touched the hilltop beyond the defensive bank that surrounded the Dun.
"Tell us your name," Gwalchmai said. He was lying on the pallet close to the body's head, with Devorgilla standing to one side of him, and Owain sitting on the ground on the other. "By Taranis and Toutates and Esus, and the Goddess over them all, speak to us."
"Thirsty - so very thirsty." A small grey cloud, like thin woodsmoke, hovered over the body's head. "I can hear the water, but I can't find it...."
"Tell us your name," Gwalchmai repeated. The sun was sliding slowly under the horizon. They didn't have much time.
"I am Peredur Generys Morwenna," he said.
"Tell us how you died," Gwalchmai said.
"So thirsty...and it's dripping, dripping, all the time, out of reach...."
"Tell us how you came to be there, in the mine," Gwalchmai said.
"Justice! I accuse my uncle Ianto Morwenna of my death and I want justice! he sealed me in...Dark...tricked me...."
"I promise you justice," Gwalchmai said. "I am Gwalchmai Morgan, and i swear it on my honour as a Harper."
With a gentle sigh, the grey cloud thinned and disappeared - and the sun slid down behind the hill.
Gwalchmai looked up at Devorgilla from the pallet he was lying on.
"This is a bad thing," she said, shakily. "We need to talk."
The body was moved into the toolshed beside the shrine, until they decided what to do. Everyone else moved into the hall, quietly. Owain stayed with Gwalchmai as he was carried inside and laid close to the fire. Across the room, he could see Devorgilla Goch talking to a man and a woman who had stayed behind. Whatever news they were giving her looked serious.
Even so, the evening meal came first. It was the same thin mixture of kale and barley and peas, and there wasn't much of it, but despite the horrors of the day, Owain scraped his bowl clean.
Then the children were taken away, and only the adult members of the Dun were left around the hearth. Devorgilla enthroned herself on the one stool the Dun possessed.
"Gwalchmai Morgan, honoured Harper," Devorgilla began formally, "we have many problems because of your coming."
Gwalchmai propped himself up on one elbow. His face looked almost as white as his hair, and there were dark circles under his eyes, but he answered, equally formally: "Speak your problems, madam."
"I have offered you both the hospitality of the Dun. That is a sacred duty. But you bring with you danger to me and mine, and much trouble. We have heard the words of the Lord Peredur, but before we consider them, there is another matter. While we were away, a messenger came here, warning this Dun against you. Lord Ianto is looking for you and your nephew, who is not your nephew, but his." She turned a steely glare on Owain. "You brought a lie under my roof tree," she said, "when you told us your name."
"Only half a lie," Owain said, carefully, "and I hope you will forgive me for it. My name is Owain Brecca Morwenna by my mother's right, but my father's name was Eryl, so I can call myself Owain Eryl in truth. And you are Lord Ianto's people - and we are trying to escape Lord Ianto."
"That's not how he put it," Devorgilla said. "He claimed the Harper here has kidnapped you!"
Gwalchmai snorted. "Just the sort of rubbish he would come up with," he said.
"But he has said also that he will burn this Dun to the ground if he discovers that we have helped you," Devorgilla said.
"If I'd stayed with my uncle, I'd have probably ended up like my cousin Peredur," Owain said. "I'm sorry he's threatened you, but what else could I have done?"
Gwalchmai shifted on his elbow, and spoke over the beginning babble of voices. "I am Gwalchmai Morgan the Harper, and I have a story to tell you. You all know that the Lady Morwenna is very old, and that one day she will die. When that happens, who from her Family will inherit Ravenscar? She has many children and grandchildren who all have some claim - but Lord Ianto wants Ravenscar for himself. There will be a vote, as there always is on these occasions. If I'm spared, I hope to be one of the Harpers who witnesses that vote to make sure everything is done fairly. Owain - tell these people the offer that Lord Ianto made to you."
Owain was not a practiced public speaker like Gwalchmai, but he did have the adavantage of being able to make his ordinary voice reach to the farthest corners of the hall. "He wants me as a hostage," Owain said. "When the time comes that my grandmother should die, he wants me to vote in his favour - and if I am his hostage, he hopes for my mother also to vote in his favour, and my sister if she is old enough. His threat was quite plain - if I didn't do as he wanted, he would kill me. He didn't say it right out, but he mentioned Peredur's name as a warning to me of what would happen if I didn't go along with his plans."
There were murmurings now, all around the fire. "What you're talking about is kin-murder!" Crommen said.
Caradog stood up then. "And what the Lord Peredur said - he accused his uncle, our Lord Ianto, and we all know that the spirits of the dead cannot lie. We all know what sort of Lord we have. We all know what he can do when he's angry. I've been thinking about this ever since we found the body. Kin-murder is the most terrible crime - the crime of a man without honour, but what can we do against our Lord?"
"Get us to the Lady Morwenna, and she will protect your Dun." Gwalchmai sat up as tall as he could to look at them. he looked like death, but his voice was steady enough. "I can speak for her in this much - she will reward you for saving my life, and she will not allow Lord Ianto to destroy your Dun. Do you believe she can do this?"
Caradog shrugged helplessly. "She is a great lady, but she is far away, and Lord Ianto is near - and we know what he is like when he is angry."
/> "These are not the words of free men," Gwalchmai said. "These are the words of serfs from the Palatinate. Lord Ianto has a responsibility, as your patron, to protect you. He does not have the right to override the rules of hospitality - and I swear he will not get away with kin-murder, while there is breath in my body to sing a satire against him. Do you have no druid to speak for you? No brehon? No Harper?"
Caradog shook his head. "This is a wild and lonely place. We last saw a druid at Samhain, and then we were sharing the celebrations with Siobhan of Dun Ffald Uchaf. And how can we pay a lawyer, or a Harper, when all we have is taken in tribute to our patron?"
Owain had never seen Gwalchmai look so angry. "Is this true of all the Duns on the moors here?" he asked.
"Of course." Caradog spread his hands in a gesture of helplessness. "When Ianto became our lord, there was the copper mine, and our tribute was high, but fair. This was a good place to live then. When the mine closed down, he demanded the same tribute, even though we had nothing to give. All we have up here are the sheep, and a few fields to feed ourselves. And now we have nothing left to sell."
"It's true," Owain put in. "You've seen what they've got to eat here. Soon the children will start to starve."
"This will change," Gwalchmai growled. "Get us to Lady Morwenna, and I swear to you, by Taranis and Toutates and Esus, and the Goddess above them all, that this will change. We will not have a Tiraeg of gold torced rank behaving like a Palatine baron. Get us to Ravenscar and I will compose a satire that will flay the hide off him and rub salt in the wounds after. He'll never be able to lift his had up in Ytir again." He sank back on the narrow pillow, breathing hard. His clenched hands on the blanket were quivering with fury.
"Tomorrow, Lord Gwalchmai," Caradog said. "Tomorrow we will take you to Ravenscar. And tonight -" he wrenched the copper torc from round his neck and held it in his hand. "You said a true thing when you said that free men do not talk as I have been talking. We have been living like this for so long that I think we had forgotten. No longer. I am not Lord Ianto's serf. I am a free man. We are all of us free Tiraeg, and I would rather live free and torcless than another night under Ianto's rule." He flung the torc down before Devorgilla. "What do you say, Aunt?"
"I say you have said all that is needful," she said. She pulled the copper torc from her own neck and flung it down with his. "I say there will be no more tribute to Ianto. We will go to the Lady and ask for her protection - and if she will not give it, we still have our spears left to us, and our bows, and we will protect our own Dun ourselves if we die doing it."
More torcs joined the pile by Devorgilla's feet. Everyone in the hall was on their feet, pushing round the fire to add their torcs to the pile. And it was as if the air was clearing after a muggy, oppressive day. That damp feeling of depression that Owain had noticed when he first arrived had lifted, and the people of the Dun looked alive again.
The rain started in the night, and drummed on the thatched roof of the round hut.
Caradog peered out of the hall doorway into the still pouring rain, and shook his head slowly. "No sense in setting out in this weather," he said. "We'll wait an hour or so. It may have cleared up by then."
That suited Owain - he was glad to have the excuse to wrap himself up in the blanket and doze for another hour or so. His knee ached horribly, and he wasn't looking forward to being jolted about in the cart again. He imagined Gwalchmai would be glad of the respite, too. Glancing across the hall, he saw that the old man was still snoring.
Sure enough, by mid-morning, the sky had cleared, and a watery sunshine was filtering through the open door of the hall. And there was something else - the shepherd from up the hill was running down the track towards the Dun, his dog loping beside him. As he got to the gates of the Dun, he shouted: "Lord Ianto's coming - and all his warband with him! They can't be far behind me." Then he stopped, panting, and looked, aghast, at all his bare-necked kith and kin. "What's going on?"
"Well, shut the gates, you fools," Devorgilla shouted. "And get the spears out." She took the shepherd by the arm and pulled him further into the stockade. "We forgot about you, last night," she said. "Things have changed here." She looked very pale, and her voice was shaking just a little. "Ianto isn't our Lord any longer. It's time to stand and fight as free Tiraeg."
"What? Are you mad, auntie?" The shepherd stared round, uncomprehendingly, at the rest of the villagers, who were bringing out their spears and bows and giving every indication of defending their home from attack.
"Look, we've got the dead body of Lord Ianto's nephew in the shed over there, and another nephew of his in the hall, and the Lady Morwenna's Harper, and - it goes beyond taking too much in tribute. He murdered his own kin, and now he's threatened to burn the Dun down against the laws of hospitality."
She left the shepherd with his mouth hanging open, and scuttled back into the hall. "Where's that sack?" she asked, at random. "I never thought he'd come to collect it personally."
Owain leaned down close to Gwalchmai. "They're all going to die, aren't they?" he murmured. "They've got no chance, surely?"
Gwalchmai leaned up on his elbow. "How many in the warband?" he asked. Nobody was paying him any attention.
Owain grabbed a small girl who was standing near the fire. "Go and ask the shepherd - how many are coming? Would you? Good girl."
There was no time for her to return with the answer. A shout from a woman on the roof of the pigsty told everyone that the warband was in sight. Owain limped out to look. Then, grimly, he went in search of Devorgilla.
She and Caradog had the sack of torcs between them, and were heading for the gates. "Headwoman, madam - you can't do this," Owain said. "He want's me - all right, I'll go with him, as long as he leaves you in peace."
Devorgilla dumped down her side of the sack and looked at him as if he was an idiot. "And how long do you think that would last?" she asked scornfully. "As soon as you were away from here, he'd be back to burn us out for defying him - as an example to all the other Duns on the moor."
"Go back inside, Lord Owain," Caradog said. "We made our choice last night. We're not changing our minds now."
Owain limped back inside. The hall was almost empty now. Everyone was outside, around the walls of the stockade.
"They're not backing down, are they?" Gwalchmai asked. "I thought that Devorgilla was a tough old bird."
Owain sat down beside him. "I don't think I can do anything," he said. "This isn't like a sea battle, where I can take the wind out of their sails - and how long, really , will they be able to hold out against a trained warband?"
"We'll find out soon enough" Gwalchmai said. "But, when the end comes, and they do fail, our lives won't be worth a thing. I'm sorry, lad, to have brought you to this."
Owain shook his head - he was about to say that it wasn't Gwalchmai's fault - when he heard someone shouting outside. He patted Gwalchmai's shoulder instead, and went out to have a look.
Devorgilla and Caradog, and a crowd round them, had gathered close to the gates, on top of the bank that surrounded the Dun. At some point in the distant past, someone had started to build a drystone wall around the top of the bank. What was left of the wall was about waist high, and it didn't go all that far around. If Ianto's people really wanted to get in, there wasn't a lot to stop them. Owain hauled himself up the side of the bank until he could see over the wall, and got as close as he could to Devorgilla.
A horseman holding Lord Ianto's raven banner had ridden close to the gates, but far enough away to be out of spear throwing range. "My Lord says open the gates, and send out the Harper and the boy, and no harm will come to you."
"Does he really think we're that stupid?" Devorgilla said, quietly. "You tell him, nephew."
"We know what you have done, Ianto Morwenna, and you are no lord of ours any more," Caradog shouted. he held up the sack, and then delved inside it to hold up one
of the torcs. "We will not be sworn to a kin-murderer. We will not break the laws of hospitality - and we will not give you tribute any more."
The bannerman looked back at Ianto, and they all heard him quite clearly. "Then you have brought your own doom down on your heads," he said, conversationally, but clear enough for everyone to hear. "This Dun will burn, and every person in it."
Caradog threw the sack across the ditch. It landed in the mud, and spilled a few torcs out onto the grass.
Several of the riders had dismounted. Owain watched them from the walls as they moved about over the nearby moorland, searching for something. Devorgilla laughed. "They're trying to find fuel for a fire," she said, "after the rain we've had - and there's nothing worth burning out there anyway - we go down -"
"Hush - he'll be able to hear you," Owain said. "Let them search without your help."
But some of the riders were already moving away, widening the search for burnable wood. Devorgilla moved along the wall walk a little way, to where Tegau was standing, leaning on her spear. "Best pass the word along, grand-daughter, she said. "Tell everyone to keep their mouths shut - Lord Ianto can hear everything we say here, and we don't want to give him any help."
Owain found a flat stone on top of the wall and sat down. his knee was throbbing horribly, but he didn't want to go back in yet. He needed to see what Ianto would do next. So did the rest of them - that was why they were all clustered round the gates - even down to the smallest children and the most ancient old men who could still lean on a spear. They should be spaced out, all around the bank, Owain thought, but he couldn't see any way of getting them to do that.
The rain had started again by the time one of the horsemen had appeared, laden with branches. A sheet of canvas had been unloaded from one of the pack horses the war band had brought with them, and was being staked out to provide a small amount of shelter from the rain between a couple of wizened hawthorn bushes. Ianto was standing under it, and Rhianmelt was standing with him, in a more servicable cloak than she had been wearing (to impress him?) at the quayside.
Owain smiled. Here was something he could do.
The wood was slow to catch fire, and they didn' t seem to have any dry kindling with them. A few clouds of smoke appeared, but no flames yet.
Owain waited until most of the war band were watching the efforts of the fire starters - and concentrated. The canvas shelter flapped, buckled - and blew away over the hill. Owain could hear Ianto swearing. He grinned.
And his grin faded as another troop of horse appeared on the skyline.
"Looks like Ianto's got re-enforcements," he said quietly.
The appearance of the newcomers stirred Ianto's war band to action. Everyone remounted, and drew up in a half circle around Ianto and his banner.
Owain sent a small breath of wind towards the newcomer's banner, hanging soggily against its pole. The wet fabric lifted, briefly - long enough for everyone to see another green and black raven standard. This one, though, was instantly recognisable - and not Ianto's. "It's the Lady," Devorgilla said. She turned to Owain, her eyes bright. "The Lady has come to save us!"
*****