“Lunch will be ready any moment,” my grandfather said, “and you will wish to wash and tidy yourselves first. But if you want a bath …” He opened the next door along and showed us a huge bathroom, where a bath stood on clawed animal feet in the middle of bare floorboards. “I hope you will give warning when you do,” he said. “Olwen has to bring up buckets from the copper.” Then he went away downstairs again.
“No taps,” said Grundo. “As bad as the bath tent.”
We washed and got ready quickly. When we met in the corridor again, we discovered that we had both put on the warmest clothes we had with us. We would have laughed about it, but it was not the kind of house you liked to laugh in. Instead we went demurely downstairs, to where my grandfather was waiting in a tall, chilly dining room, standing at the head of a tall black table.
He looked at us, pointed to two chairs, and said grace in Welsh. It was all rolling, thundering language. I was suddenly very ashamed not to understand a word of it. Grundo looked on calmly, almost as if he did understand, and sat quietly down when it was finished, still looking intently at my grandfather.
I was looking at the door, where a fat, stone-faced woman was coming in with a tureen. I was famished by then, and it smelled wonderful.
It was a very good lunch, though almost silent at first. There was the leek soup, enough for two helpings each, followed by pancakes rolled round meat in sauce. After that, there were heaps of little hot griddle cakes covered in sugar. Grundo ate so many of those that the woman had to keep making more. She seemed to like that. She almost had a smile when she brought in the third lot.
“Pancakes,” my grandfather said, deep and hollow, “are a traditional part of our diet in this country.”
I was thinking, Well, at least he didn’t starve my mother! But why is he so stiff and stern? Why doesn’t he smile at all? I’m sure my mother used to ask herself the same things several times a day. I was sorrier for her than ever.
“I know this is an awkward question,” I said, “but what should we call you?”
He looked at me in stern surprise. “My name is Gwyn,” he said.
“Should I call you Grandfather Gwyn then?” I asked.
“If you wish,” he said, not seeming to care.
“Might I call you that, too, please?” Grundo asked.
He looked at Grundo long and thoughtfully, almost as if he was asking himself what Grundo’s heredity was. “I suppose you have a right to,” he said at last. “Now tell me, what do either of you know of Wales?”
The truthful answer, as far as I was concerned, was, Not a lot. But I could hardly say that. Grundo came to my rescue—I was extremely glad he was there. Because Grundo has such trouble reading, he listens in lessons far more than I ever do. So he knows things. “It’s divided into cantrevs,” he said, “each with its lesser kings, and the Pendragon is High King over them all. The Pendragon rules the Laws. I know you have a different system of laws here, but I don’t know how they work.”
My grandfather looked almost approving. “And the meaning of the High King’s title?” he asked.
It felt just like having a test during lessons, but I thought I knew the answer to that. “Son of the dragon,” I said. “Because there is said to be a dragon roosting in the heart of Wales.”
This didn’t seem to be right. My grandfather said frigidly, “After a fashion. Pendragon is a title given to him by the English. By rights, it should be the title of the English King, but the English have forgotten about their dragons.”
“There aren’t any dragons in England!” I said.
He turned a face full of stern disapproval on me. “That is not true. Have you never heard of the red dragon and the white? There were times in the past when there were great battles between the two, in the days before the Islands of Blest were at peace.”
I couldn’t seem to stop saying the wrong thing somehow. I protested, “But that’s just a way of saying the Welsh and the English fought one another.”
His black eyebrows rose slightly in his marble face. I had never known so much scorn expressed with so little effort. He turned away from me and back to Grundo. “There are several dragons in England,�