The Princess Niamh was there. She made a tiny whimpering sound, bending over him as we laid him down, and touched the broken side of his face as women do these things, very gently.
‘That will not help,’ said the Queen, and bade one of her women fetch hot water and clean linen, and certain herbs from her still-room, called for a brazier, and ordered the warriors who had come to help carry him, away back to their own place. I think the order was for me too, but I did not go with them. I could not help it that I was in the women’s part of the palace. I belonged where Cynan was, and I think the Queen must have understood that, for she did not repeat the order.
For a moment, when the Princess touched him, his eyelids had begun to flicker, and I had thought that he was coming back to himself, but the flickering ceased, and he drifted from us again. By morning, despite the strange brews that the Queen trickled into him drop by drop, and the pungent smoke of the herbs burning on the charcoal brazier, he was in some kind of fever.
The King’s own physician came up from the monastery and pronounced the wound clean, but shook his head and talked of bruising to the brains, also of possession by demons brought away from the battlefield. He shook his head at the Queen’s remedies too, and ordered different ones of his own, their infusing to be timed with Paternosters. The Queen listened to him with courtesy, and when he was gone, threw out his remedies, and returned to her own, applied with older healing spells.
For three days the fever raged through him like a fire despite all the infusions of yarrow and black willow bark. The women of the Queen’s household tended him through the days, while I caught a few hours sleep in the corner of the chamber; and at night I took over, watching through the dark. I do not easily forget those nights in the women’s house; the longfingered light and shadows of the small night-lamp on the wall and the heady smoke of herbs burning in the brazier, the faint scratch and rustle of birds nesting in the thatch, and from time to time, the sound of women’s voices or a bubble of laughter. And always the low muttering of Cynan on the bed. For with the fever, maybe from that moment in the King’s Hall, speech had come back to him, though so low and broken that at times there was no making sense of it. But at others, squatting close beside him, I knew that he was living again and again through the days of the siege, through the last charge of the Shining Company, through the deaths of his brothers.
In the midst of the fourth night, I must have drifted into a doze, my head propped on my updrawn knees. I woke with a start to an unusual quietness in the room. For a moment I wondered what sound was lacking, and then I realized that Cynan’s low mutterings had ceased. I came to my knees and was leaning over him on the instant, fear knotting in my belly. He was breathing slowly and quietly, and the constant restless movement of his head on the pillow had ceased. I got up and took the lamp from its wall niche and brought it to the bed, shielding it with my hand so that the light should not fall into his eyes. The little flame flickered for a moment, then steadied, and I saw the sweat on his face and pooled in the creases of his neck, and when I put my hand on his forehead it was cool and wet.
The fever had broken, and he was lying in a pool of sweat.
Trying not to wake him I eased out the sodden bedding and flung it into a corner, replacing it with soft dry skins that lay ready and wiped him down with a linen cloth. I was just pulling up the coverlid when his eyes opened, and he lay frowning up at me, the first time in many days that I had seen him look at someone as though actually knowing that they were there. As though actually knowing who they were.
‘Prosper. What in the name of the Black One do you think you’re doing?’ he said, and his voice was weak, but clear-cut as a whiplash.
‘Nothing that need concern you,’ I told him. ‘Let you go back to sleep.’
When he woke again it was near sunrise, the first grey promise of daylight dimming the light of the lamp, and the sky beyond the high window barred with saffron.
He tried to sit up, then fell back, and lay looking at me, the frown deepening between his brows. ‘Great Mother of Foals! My head’s swimming -1 feel like a half-drowned kitten. What’s amiss with me?’
‘You were wounded, and you have been ill,’ I said. ‘Lie still, and you’ll mend.’
He fumbled up one hand and found the puckered scar and the changed and gouged-out shape of his cheek-bone. ‘There were studs in that club. I saw them in the moonlight.’
‘So did I,’ I said.
‘Yes, you were there.’ The fumbling hand was across his eyes. ‘I remember - but there’s great holes in it - like a dream - there was a moon - and mist - blood everywhere - the horses -’ his voice, which had begun to blur, cleared again with quick anxiety. ‘Is it well with my horse?’
‘All is well with your horse. He’s in the stable here. ’
‘Here.’
‘You are in Dyn Eidin: in the Women’s House Trust you! And the Queen and her women tending you.’
He let out a crack of what would have been laughter if it had not been so weak and had such a broken sound to it. But his mind had gone on to other things. ‘So we got back to Dyn Eidin. All those empty benches in the Mead Hall last night - the King said - was it true? Not an evil dream?’
‘Truth,’ I said. ‘But it was not last night. You have lain sick for four days.’
His arm was still across his face, as though for a shield. ‘The King betrayed us,’ he said through shut teeth.
‘I think he was caught in a kind of web. It was the only thing he could do.’
‘He could have broken the web.’
‘How? He is not Artos.’
‘He is not Artos, that is a true word.’ He remained for a little, his arm shielding his face. Then he let it fall away, and reached out towards me, ‘You brought me off.’
‘I am your shieldbearer,’ I said. ‘I brought you off.’
‘Why in Epona’s name didn’t you leave me to die with the rest?’
‘Bringing you off seemed like a good idea at the time.’
‘Maybe one day it will seem like that to me, too. Maybe one day I’ll thank you for it.’
(‘Not you,’ I thought. ‘You are not one to thank anybody for anything.’)
I do not think he knew that he was clinging to my hand like a drowning man, as he drifted off to sleep again.
21
The Flower of an Emperor’s Bodyguard
Cynan was indeed as weak as a half-drowned kitten, and lay for many days while the slow strength crept back into him, and for the most part the Princess Niamh and I nursed him between us under the direction of her mother the Queen. It seems an unlikely arrangement, looking back on it, but I had the strength and the Princess already had much of the skill, so there was good sense in it, after all.
In the chamber in the women’s house high in the heart of Dyn Eidin, with its window looking out westward over the huddled roofs of the fortress to the distant hills, the long days of summer went by with an odd peacefulness like the spent quiet of weather after a tempest. Even Cynan felt a kind of breathing space; a time to be gathering himself together.
In a while he began to be able to leave his bed and waver across the room with my shoulder to steady him, and sit huddled in his cloak beside the brazier - even at midsummer the evenings have a chill to them so far north, and he seemed always cold just then. The brazier no longer gave out the pungent scents of medicine herbs but the fresh sweetness of burning pine or apple wood. The Princess Niamh still came often, usually with the little dog, Cannaid, pattering at her heels, and sat playing draughts with him, or trying to make him laugh with the gossip of the women’s house. And when she was there I could leave him for a while and go about my own affairs, exercise the horses, talk with Conn who had gone back to Fercos’s smithy as though he and his mates had never ridden south with the rest of us - the weapon-smiths were hard at work once more, in Dyn Eidin - even ride hunting with the men of the Teulu, though only once or twice for it meant being away from Cynan longer than I liked.
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Others began to come, beside the Lady Niamh; men of the Teulu who would lounge down on the bed-place or beside the brazier, and talk of the things that are common to all men bound together in a sword-brotherhood - the Companions had shared much the same talk in the year that was past and I remembered with something of surprise, that this had been his brotherhood before ever the Companions came together. I got the feeling that he also was remembering it with the same surprise, maybe even trying to find his way back among them but not quite succeeding, because of the things that had happened since, and the things that must remain unspoken.
Aneirin came too, but not often, and then only to stand by the window looking out for a while, and then go away again, scarcely speaking. We knew the signs. A poet when his Arwel comes upon him is not as other men, he was lost in the making of his Great Song, and all living men were shadows to him just then.
One night Phanes the merchant came.
The evening meal was over in the Mead Hall, and Cynan should have been in his bed, but he was still sitting huddled in his cloak by the brazier. The Princess and I were both with him, trying to keep him amused, for he was like most sick men on the mend, thinking that he had more strength than he really had, and becoming bored and restless as a falcon kept too long mewed.
Phanes came in, still stooping over the wound, and settled himself on the stool I drew forward for him, sitting hunched, just as I remembered him in the Hall, that first evening of our return. His skin, that had been nut-brown, showed yellowish and oddly transparent in the light of the lamp. He asked after Cynan’s wound, then fell to talking of this and that - I think the trade in wolfhounds from Eriu came into it somewhere. It was a driech and cheerless evening, the small mean wind billowing the leather curtain over the doorway, and outside, the hush of summer rain, and by and by he leaned forward, holding his hands to the warmth of the burning apple logs, and as he did so his cloak fell back from one shoulder, and the lamplight touched the dagger in his belt.
A silver hilted dagger, the hilt shaped like an archangel with folded wings.
Cynan flicked a finger at it. ‘That is a strange dagger, friend.’
The merchant slipped it from the sheath, and held it out to him; and he took it, leaning sideways to catch the light on its curious workmanship.
‘Strange, and beautiful. Is it a new treasure? I am thinking I have not seen you wear it before.’
‘I seldom wear it.’
‘I think if this were mine, I would not choose to wear any other,’ Cynan said, turning the deadly toy between his fingers.
‘But it is not mine. And not wishing to risk another man’s treasure in the kind of life that I have been living of late years, I have left it until now with my Lord Mynyddog for safe keeping.’
Cynan handed the dagger back. ‘Do I scent a story? A story for telling by firelight?’
‘Nay, no story,’ Phanes said, returning it to his belt. ‘It is work of Constantinople. I bought it from a friend in the Emperor’s bodyguard who was somewhat desperately short of cash at the time. It has always been in my mind to hold it safe and sell it back to him one day. That is all.’
And for the moment I was back five years, in the doorway of the smithy at home and Conn with me, watching old Loban at work in the dappled shade of alder trees.
‘One day, when you go back to Constantinople and he has the gold to spare?’
The merchant shook his head. ‘That was the general idea, once. Not now. I am old and sick beyond far-travelling. I shall not see the Golden Horn again. The King has given me guest-space for what length of life is left to me, and here I shall bide, seeking some other of my kind to carry Alexion’s dagger back to him, as my gift.’
There was a rather painful silence which it seemed to me needed breaking.
I said, ‘I have seen that dagger before; at the smithy of Loban my father’s smith. It had a broken wire to be mended. You showed it to Conn and me, and the blade bewitched Conn so that he wanted nothing after, but to be a swordsmith and forge blades for heroes.’
‘And he is on the way to gaining his wish,’ Phanes said; and then, ‘For you, I think, it was the hilt that held the magic.’
‘For me, the hilt told of far countries. A world beyond my own hills. You told us of the wonders of the Golden City.’
‘Travellers’ tales. Travellers’ tales, my children. As much a part of a merchant’s stock in trade as the silk and sandalwood he carries in his bales.’
‘Tell again,’ Cynan said, slipping into an easier position and leaning his head on the striped cushion behind him. ‘Good stories will always stand retelling.’
So I put more apple wood on the brazier, and leaning forward, gazing into the new flames as they sprung up, as though he was seeing there the things he told of, Phanes began to spin his traveller’s tale. He told of the Emperor’s garden that had little trees in it whose leaves were all of beaten gold; of the great horse races, blue faction against green, on the racetrack overlooked by four bronze horses half as large again as life; of sailors’ fights down in the docks, and evil doings in back alleys; of the rose-flavoured jelly that could be bought in the street of the Golden Grasshopper; of hunting with leopards instead of hounds, and the deeds and misdeeds of the Emperor’s bodyguard.
He was almost as good a storyteller in his way as Aneirin. He had me tasting the strange fruits and smelling the gutters of the Golden City; as to the others, I could not tell. Cynan was gazing into the heart of the brazier, but there was no knowing whether he saw the things of which the merchant told, or other things of his own, or only the darkness within himself.
The Princess sat very still, and I think that she was listening, but her eyes kept going from the storyteller to Cynan’s face, drawn and scar-pitted in the lamplight, as though she too was wondering what he saw, what was going on within him. She had grown much older in the year and more since I had first seen her, and I knew that he would only have to whistle and she would follow - as Dara had once said - to Constantinople, or the apple islands beyond the sunset. But I also knew that he would not whistle. Something in him was hurt beyond that. It might mend one day, but not yet, not for a long time. And my heart was sore within me for the Lady Niamh, and behind the coloured skylines of the Golden City, I heard the chilly hush and whisper of summer rain across the thatched roofs of Dyn Eidin.
A day came when Cynan flung on his good cloak that I got out for him from the kist in the chamber of the King’s house where he had been moved as soon as he was well enough, and came out to share the feasting in the Mead Hall. It was Lammas, the start of harvest time, and the first sickle cut of barley had been brought into the Hall and set up on the great tie beam in the crown of the roof; and the Lammas torches had been lit and carried round the crop-lands; and when the feasting was done and the stories and the songs of lesser harpers fell silent (there had begun to be songs sung and stories told again in the King’s Hall), the men of the Teulu began to call to Aneirin for a new song; for though as a king’s bard he was, as I have said, above the rank of those who wake their harp after supper, yet on the great feast nights of the year he would sometimes take harp in hand himself; so now they begged for a song - a new song to speed the harvest.
‘My song is not yet made perfect,’ Aneirin told them.
But we all knew what song it would be, and voices called out that he had had three moons for the making of it, and that surely there must be something of it ready to be brought forth, for they - we - had been long waiting. And in the end he sent for his harp and his singing-robe, and when they were brought, rose and pulled the mantle over his shoulders and stood with the kingfisher folds hanging to his feet and the little bog-oak harp cradled in his arms. ‘So be it. At least you shall be able to tell your grandsons that you heard, when it was still rough-hewn, some part of the Song of the Gododdin at Catraeth, and that Aneirin sang it for you.’ We knew what that meant, for when the song was made whole, and polished and perfect, the poet’s part in it would be ov
er, and it would be for other men to sing. And Aneirin sat down on the singing stool, settling the harp between his knee and the curve of his shoulder.
So that night, sitting at the King’s feet, Aneirin sang for us, and maybe for the ghosts of those others, too. And listening, I remembered the ruined fort on the night before we rode out for the last time, and looking at Cynan in his place on the warrior benches, I saw that he was remembering, too. Aneirin tuned his harp and began to play, striking out flights of notes like sparks from a windy fire; and against their bright background he flung up his head and in the half singing, half declaiming voice of his kind, began his song.
I have wondered since what they were like, those songs when their final burnish was upon them. They were rough-edged when we heard them, but already they shone.
‘The men rode to Catraeth, jesting by the way
After the feasting, clad now in mail,
Strongly they went from us into the morning.
Deadly their spears, before death come to them,
Death before their hair could be touched with grey.
Of three hundred horsemen, Ochone! Ochone!
Only one rider returned from that fray.’
The harp rhythm changed as he sang of this man and that - of Gwenabwy, how he had killed a wolf with his bare hands. Of Morien and Madog and Llif from beyond Bannog, of Tydfwlch the Tall and Cynri and Peredur, and Gorthyn of the Battlecry. A score or more; the men whose fame he sang for us that night. And when he had done, and harp fell silent, there was a stillness in the King’s Hall.
And in the stillness, Cynan lifted his head and looked across the fire with eyes that were at once weary and over-bright, and asked, ‘And what of the One?’
‘The One?’ Aneirin said.
‘The one of all the three hundred, who came back. What honour song will you make for him?’
There was a stirring in the Hall like a little wind through standing barley.