Hood

  “Mind your tongue, priest, if you value it at all,” threatened de Braose, who promptly sneezed. “I am in no mood for your insolence.”

  Duly chastised, Asaph folded his hands and said, “I was told you required my assistance. How may I be of service?”

  Waving a long hand toward the empty chair on the other side of the fireplace, de Boase said, “Sit down and I will tell you.” When the churchman had taken his seat, the count declared, “It has been determined that Elfael needs a town.”

  “A town,” the bishop repeated. “As it happens, I have long advocated a similar plan.”

  “Have you indeed?” sniffed Falkes. “Well then. We agree.

  It is to be a market town.” He went on to explain what would be required and when.

  The cleric listened, misgiving mounting with every breath.

  When the count paused to sneeze once more, the bishop spoke up. “Pray, excuse me, my lord, but who do you expect to build this town?”

  “Your people, of course,” confirmed the count, stretching his hands toward the fire. “Who else?”

  “But this is impossible!” declared Asaph. “We cannot build you an entire town in a single summer.”

  The count’s eyes narrowed dangerously. “It will profit both of us.”

  “Be that as it may, it cannot be done,” objected the churchman. “Even if we possessed a ready supply of tools and material, who would do the building?”

  “Be at ease,” said the count. “You are growing distraught over nothing. Have I not already said that we will use as much existing building work as possible? We will begin with that and add only what is necessary. It does not have to be a city, mind— a small market village will do.”

  “What existing buildings do you mean?”

  “I mean,” replied the count with exaggerated patience, “those buildings already established—the church and outbuildings and whatnot.”

  “But . . . but . . . ,” cried the bishop in a strangled voice.

  “That is my monastery you are talking about!”

  “Oui,” agreed the count placidly. “We will begin there.

  Those structures can easily be converted to other uses. We need only raise a few houses, a grange hall, smithery, and such like. Your monastery serves . . . what? A paltry handful of monks? My town will become a centre of commerce and prosperity for the whole valley. Where is the difficulty?”

  “The difficulty, Count de Braose,” replied the bishop, fighting to keep his voice level, “is that I will no longer have a monastery.”

  “Your monastery is no longer required,” stated the count.

  “We need a market town, not a monkery.”

  “There has been a monastery in this valley for eleven generations,” Asaph pointed out. He raised his hands and shook his head vehemently. “No. I will not preside over its destruction. It is out of the question.”

  The churchman’s outright and obstinate refusal irritated de Braose; he felt the warmth of anger rising in him, and his voice grew hushed. “Au contraire, bishop,” he said, “it is the question. See here, we must have a town, and quickly. People are coming to settle in the valley; we need a town.”

  He paused, gathered his nerves, and then continued in a more conciliatory tone, “The labourers will be drawn from the residents of the valley, and the materials will be supplied from the woods and stone fields of Elfael. I have already undertaken the requisition of the necessary tools and equipment, as well as oxen and wagons for transport. Anything else that you require will be likewise supplied. All that remains,” he said in conclusion, “is for you to supply the men. They will be ready to work as soon as the last snow has melted. Is that clear?”

  “Which men do you imagine I command?” demanded the bishop in his anger at being thrown out of his beloved monastery. “There are no men,” he snapped, “only a paltry handful of monks.”

  “The Welsh,” said Falkes. “The people of Elfael, your countrymen—that is who I mean.”

  “The men of Elfael are gone,” scoffed the bishop. “The best were slaughtered on their way to Lundein,” he said pointedly, “and the rest fled. The only ones left are those who had nowhere else to go, and if they have any sense at all, they will stay far away from this valley.”

  The count glared from beneath his brows. “Courtesy, priest,” warned de Braose. “Sarcasm ill becomes you.”

  “Count de Braose,” appealed the bishop, “every able-bodied man gathered his family and his flocks and fled the valley the moment you and your soldiers arrived. There are no men.”

  “Then you must find some,” said Falkes, growing weary of the bishop’s unwillingness to see things from his point of view. “I do not care where you find them, but find them you will.”

  “And if I decline to aid you in this?”

  “Then,” replied Falkes, his voice falling to a whisper, “you will quickly learn how I repay disloyalty. I assure you it can be extremely unpleasant.”

  Bishop Asaph stared in disbelief. “You would threaten a priest of Christ?”

  The young count shrugged.

  “And this . . . after I delivered the king’s treasury to you?

  This is how I am to be repaid? We agreed that the church would not be harmed. You gave me your word.”

  “Your church will be in a town,” said the count. “Where is the harm?”

  “We are under the authority of Rome,” Asaph pointed out. “You hold no power over us.”

  “I hold a royal grant for this commot. Any interference in the establishment of my rule will be reckoned treason, which is punishable by death.” He spread his hands as if to indicate that the matter was beyond his immediate control. “But we need not dwell on such unhappy things. You have plenty of time to make the right decision.”

  “You cannot do this,” blurted the bishop. “In the name of God, you cannot.”

  “Oh, I think you will find that I can,” replied Falkes. “One way or another there will be a town in this valley. You can help me, or you and your precious monks will perish. The choice, my dear bishop, is yours.”

  CHAPTER 20

  Winter laid siege to the forest and set up encampment on the hilltops and valleys throughout Elfael.

  The tiny, branch-framed patch of sky that could be seen from the mouth of the cave was often obscured, cast over with heavy, snow-laden clouds. Bran, warm beneath layered furs and skins, would sometimes wake in the night and listen to the gale as it shrieked through the naked trees outside, beating the bare branches together and sending the snow drifting high and deep over the forest trails and trackways.

  The cave, however fierce the storm outside, remained dry and surprisingly comfortable. Bran spent his days dozing and planning his eventual departure; when he grew strong enough to leave this place, he would resume his flight to the north. Having no other plan, that was as good as any. For now, however, he remained content to sleep and eat and recover his strength. Sometimes he would wake to find himself alone, but Angharad always returned by day’s end—often with a fat hare or two slung over her shoulder, and once with half a small deer, which she hung from an iron hook set in the rock at the entrance to the cave. In the evenings, she cooked their simple meals and tended his wounds while the pot bubbled on the fire.

  And at night, each night of that long winter, the cave was transformed. No longer a rock-bound hole in a cliff face, it became a shining gateway into another world. For each night after they had eaten, Angharad sang.

  The first time it took Bran by surprise.Without any hint or warning of what was to come, the old woman disappeared into the dark interior of the cave and returned bearing a harp. Finely made of walnut and elm wood, with pegs of oak, the curve of its shapely prow was polished smooth by years of handling.

  Bran watched as she carefully brushed away the dust with the hem of her mantle, tightened the strings, and tuned the instrument. Then, settled on her stool, her head bent near as if in close communion with an old friend, a frown of concentration o
n her puckered face, Angharad had begun to play—and Bran’s bemusement turned to astonished delight.

  The music those gnarled old fingers coaxed from the harp strings that night was pure enchantment, woven tapestries of melody, wonder made audible. And when she opened her mouth to sing, Bran felt himself lifted out of himself and transported to places he never knew existed.

  Like the ancient harp cradled in her lap, Angharad’s voice took on a beauty and quality far surpassing the rude instrument. At once agile and sure and gentle, the old woman’s singing voice possessed a fluid, supple strength—now soaring like the wind over the far-off mountains, now a bird in flight, now a cresting wave rolling upon the shore.

  And was it not strange that when Angharad sang, she herself was subtly changed? No longer the gray hag in a tattered robe, she assumed a more noble, almost regal aspect, a dignity her shabby surroundings ordinarily denied, or at least obscured from view. Well accustomed to her presence now, Bran was no longer repulsed by her appearance; in the same way, he no longer noticed her odd, archaic way of speaking with her thee and thou and wouldst and goest, and all the rest. Neither her aspect nor her speech seemed remarkable; he accepted both the same way he recognized her healing skill: they seemed natural to her, and most naturally her.

  In fact, as Bran soon came to appreciate, with a harp in her weathered hands, Angharad became more herself.

  Extraordinary as it was to Bran, that first night’s performance was merely the seeding of a disused well, or the clearing of a brush-filled spring to let fresh new waters flow. Thereafter, as night after night she took her place on the stool and cradled the harp to her bosom, Angharad’s voice, like fine gold, began to take on added luster through use. A voice so rare, Bran mused, must come from somewhere else, from some other time or place, from some other world—perhaps from the very world Angharad’s songs described.

  The world Angharad sang into being was the Elder World, the realm of princely warriors and their noble lovers. She sang of long-forgotten heroes, kings, and conquerors; of warrior queens and ladies of such beauty that nations rose and fell at the fleeting glance of a limpid eye; of dangerous deeds and queer enchantments; of men and women of ancient renown at whose names the heart rose and the blood raced faster.

  She sang of Arianrhod, Pryderi, Llew, Danu, and Carridwen, and all their glorious adventures; of Pwyll and Rhiannon, and their impossible love; of Taliesin, Arthur Pendragon, and wise Myrddin Embries, whose fame made Britain the Island of the Mighty. She sang of the Cauldron of Rebirth, the Isle of the Everliving, and the making of many-splendoured Albion.

  One night, Bran realised that he had not heard such tales since he was a child. This, he thought, was why the songs touched him so deeply. Not since the death of his mother had anyone sung to him. This is why he listened to them all with the same awed attention. Caught up in the stories, he lived them as they took life within him; he became Bladudd, the blighted prince who sojourned seven years in unjust servitude; he became the lowly swineherd Tucmal, who challenged the giant champion Ogygia to mortal combat; he flew with doomed Yspilladan on his beautiful wings of swan feathers and wax; he spent a lonely lifetime in hopeless pining for the love of beautiful, inconstant Blodeuwedd; he was a warrior standing shoulder to shoulder with brave Meldryn Mawr to fight against dread Lord Nudd and his demon horde in a land of ice and snow . . . All these and many more did Bran become.

  After each night’s song, Angharad laid aside the harp and sat for a time, gazing into the fire as if into a window through which she could see the very things she sang about. After a time, her body would give a little shake, and she would come to herself again, like one emerging from a spell. Sometimes the sense of what he had heard eluded him—she could tell by the frown that knitted his brow and tugged at the corner of his mouth that he had not understood. So, wrapping her arms around her knees as she sat on her three-legged stool, she would gaze into the fire and talk about the story and its inner meaning—the spirit of the song, Angharad called it.

  As Bran’s knowledge grew, so did his appreciation of the stories themselves. He began to behold possibilities and portents, glimmerings of distant hope, flashes of miracle. The things he heard in Angharad’s songs were more than mere fancy—the stuff itinerant minstrels plied—they were tokens of knowledge in another, deeper, rarer form. Perhaps they were even a form of power, but one long dormant. At the very least, these songs were markers along a sacred and ancient pathway that led deep into the heart of the land and its people—his land, his people—a spirit and life that would be crushed out of existence beneath the heavy, unfeeling rule of the coldhearted Ffreinc.

  It snowed the day Bran finally regained his feet. Leaning heavily on the old woman, he shuffled with agonizing slowness to the mouth of the cave to stand and watch silent white flakes drift down from the close grey sky to cover the forest in a fine seamless garment of glistening white. He felt the cold air on his face and hands and drew it deep into his lungs, shivering with the icy tingle. The sensation made him cough; it still hurt, but the coughing no longer made him gasp with pain. He braved it for the chance to simply stand and watch the swirling flakes spin and dance as they floated to earth.

  After being so long abed, with nothing to look at but the dull grey rock walls of the cave, Bran considered that he had rarely seen anything so beautiful. The dizzying sweep and curl and gyre of the falling flakes made him smile as he turned his light-dazzled eyes to the sky. The old woman seemed to approve of the pleasure he took in the sight; she bore him up with her sturdy peasant strength, watching the enjoyment flit across Bran’s thin, haggard features.

  When he grew tired, Angharad fetched him a staff. She returned with a sturdy length of hawthorn; placing it in his hands, she indicated that Bran should go and relieve himself. He hobbled gingerly out into the little clearing; the snow fell on him, the fat, wet flakes stinging sweetly as they alighted on his exposed skin, stuck, and instantly melted.

  Although it felt odd standing in the snow within sight of the old woman at the mouth the cave, Bran was glad to be able to stand like a man on his own two feet once more and not have to squat on a pot like a child. He returned to the cave, shaking and sweating and tottering like an invalid no longer able to lift his feet, but beaming as if he had journeyed to the very edge of the earth and lived to tell the tale.

  The old woman did not rush out to help him but waited at the cave mouth for each stumbling step to bring him back. When he entered the cave, she took his face between her rough hands and blew her warm breath upon him. “You can speak,” she told him, “if you will.”

  Up until that moment, Bran did not feel he had anything to say, but now all the pent-up words came bubbling up in a confused and tangled rush, only to stick in his throat. He stood swaying on the staff, his tongue tingling with half-formed thoughts and questions, struggling to frame the words until she laid a sooty finger on his lips and said, “Time enough for all your questions anon, but sit down now and rest.”

  She did not lead him back to his bed as he expected, but sat him on her three-legged stool beside the fire ring. While he warmed himself, she made a meal for them—a stew with meat this time, a nice fat hare, along with some leeks and wild turnips and dried mushrooms gathered through the autumn and dried in the sun. When she had cut up everything and tossed it into the cauldron, she took a few handfuls of ground wheat, some salt, water, honey, dried berries, and dried herbs and began making up little cakes with dough left over from the last batches.

  Bran sat and watched her deft fingers prepare the food, and his thoughts slowed and clarified. “What is your name?” he asked at last, and was surprised to hear a voice that sounded much like the one he knew as his own.

  She smiled without glancing up and continued kneading the dough for a moment before answering. She shaped a small loaf and set it to warm and rise on a stone near the fire. Then, looking him full in the face, she replied, “I am Angharad.”

  “Are you a gwrach,” he asked, “a
sorceress?”

  She bent to her work once more, and Bran thought she would not answer. “Please, I mean no disrespect,” he said.

  “Only it seems to me that no one can do what you do without the aid of powerful magic.” He paused, watching her mix the flour, and then asked again, “Truly, are you a sorceress?”

  “I am as you see me,” she replied. She shaped another small loaf and put it beside the first. “Different people see different things. What do you see?”

  Embarrassed now to tell her what he really thought—that he saw a repulsive crone with bits of leaf and seeds in her hair; that he saw a grotesque hag with smoke-darkened skin in a filthy, grease-stained rag of a dress; that he saw a hunchbacked, shambling wreck of a human being—Bran swallowed his blunt observations and instead replied, “I see the woman who with great skill and wisdom has saved my life.”

  “I ask you now,” she replied, rolling the dough between her calloused palms, “was it a life worth the saving?”

  “I do hope you think so,” he replied.

  Angharad stopped her work. Her face grew still as she regarded him with an intensity like the lick of a naked flame over his skin. “It is my most fervent hope,” she said, her voice solemn as a pledge. “What is more, all of Elfael joins me in that hope.”

  Bran, feeling suddenly very unworthy of such esteem, lowered his gaze to the fire and said no more that night.

  Many more days passed, and Bran’s strength slowly increased. Restless and frustrated by his inability to move about as he would like, he sat and moped by the fire, idly feeding twigs and bark and branches to the flames. He knew he was not well enough to leave yet, and even if he could have limped more than a few paces without exhausting himself, winter, with its blizzards and blasts, still raged. That did not hinder him from wishing he could go and making plans to leave.

  Angharad, he knew, would not prevent him. She had said as much, and he had no reason to believe otherwise. Indeed, she seemed more than sympathetic to his plight, for she, too, nursed a low-smouldering hatred for the Ffreinc who had seized Elfael, killed the king, and wiped out the warband.