Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (80 page)

But it was not strength alone that drew us to Owain. Handsome he was, more handsome than any man who has ever lived. I have never seen Arthur in his manhood, but I am sure he is never as handsome as Owain. Corn was the colour of his hair, corn with the touch of gold that gives it life, not the dull yellow tow of the Savages. And his eyes were of that ice-blue, cold and flaming by turns. Only to look into his eyes while he spoke, and it was no trouble to believe what he said, if he told you that black was white, and no danger to obey him though he told you to leap into a blazing fire. And it was that he had us do in the end, and worse: and gladly we did it. It was his beauty that struck me in that moment of meeting, and his strength, as he ran the last furlong of the way to us, uphill, and in his mail faster than many a man can run fresh and unladen on level ground.

He knew of me too. He had heard my verses often, and I had heard his praises sung. He looked me in the eye as he heard my name, and I knew what he thought. He asked himself if I were more than a witless minstrel who can string words together for a bed or a meal, but can no more understand the real meaning of the line he sings or guess what the sounds rouse in his hearers’ souls than the smith can swing the sword he forges or feel the terror that comes to the beaten warrior who sees the iron shear down at him for the last time.

‘Well?’ he asked. He made no ceremony of greeting. Kings in the South are different, I suppose, or at least their sons are. ‘Are you come to fight, or are you only going to sing about us who do?’

I refused to be riled, or drawn into a false move.

‘I have come here to decide how to spend a spoilt life.’

‘There is no better way to forget that than in spoiling other lives,’ he told me. It is easy to speak like that if you do not know the meaning of spoiling. In any case, I thought, I will soon see Bradwen. Then there will be no more talk of spoilt lives. Then my life will be complete again. The nearer I came to meeting her, the plainer it was for me to see, that all the strange thoughts I had in those days, of being a Judge in the North the rest of my days, or of going down south to my father’s people, or into Ireland to my mother’s family or farther still into Little Britain or Gaul, or into Africa, anywhere I was not known, or even, the maddest thought of all, going on this campaign, or any campaign – these were all empty air and froth. Bradwen would take me to her and comfort me, and make me whole again. With Bradwen nothing changed. I was so near her, she so near me, and yet I had for form’s sake to stand here and fence in words with this big foreign man.

‘There have been lives enough spoilt already,’ I said. ‘For most of them, there is no asking anybody now to repair the damage. Not all the wars that you can wage in a lifetime will put one head back again on its shoulders once levelled or make one maimed body fruitful. You may lead your army where you will, there will be no end to blood. Why don’t you live out your own life in peace on some cliff-top farm and be thankful that you yourself have not suffered.’

‘And that from you, Aneirin?’ He seemed genuinely surprised. ‘You’ve got more cause for vengeance than any man alive. I offer you the chance to shed blood for blood and chain men who chained you. How delightful it will be when we lead Bladulf through the gates of Eiddin with his hands tied behind his back! When we do that, he will be the last Savage left alive in the Isle of Britain. Then we can put all our strength against the real enemy – the Irish. But what shall we do with Bladulf when we catch him? Shall we blind him and set him to grind oat-flour for the rest of his days to spare women’s hands? Shall we set him loose on the sea in a boat to die of thirst? Shall we sink him to his neck in a manure heap to cook to death? You shall choose, Aneirin. It’s only fair, you have suffered more from the Savages
than any man alive. How they must have rejoiced to have the Pre-eminent Chief Bard of all the Island in their hands—’

‘It made no difference,’ I corrected him. ‘They had no Poets, and certainly would take no notice of them if they had. They aren’t like us. For us poetry is the whole reason why men live. Not for them. Besides, they don’t know one Briton from another. I was nothing more than another pair of arms and legs that might have their uses on the farm.’

What uses, I did not tell him. It would have been too shameful, there in the open gate. Besides, he knew it without my telling. I could see it in his eyes, so full of pity and of angry pride that such a poet should have lived in our nation.

I did not tell him that they had shackled me to the ploughbeam with the ox, and whipped me to break up the stubborn land – our land. With the ox I had pulled the heavy cart of stones picked from the cornfield. With the ox, loaded and goaded, I had walked the weary round to tread the wheat from the ear. And if Precent had not come, then I would have ended up like the old ox, they would have killed me at the end of the summer, and on the night of the Holy Souls they would have fed my worn-out body to the dogs. Was there anyone here who knew the whole truth of it, the truth I would not be even able to tell Bradwen?

There was nobody who could know, and yet, I felt, Owain did know. That was how he led us. He could always make it plain that he knew how you suffered and how you felt, whoever you were, whatever you had been. A man like that you can follow and feel no shame, even if you are as noble as he is, and though you know that you can surpass him in a dozen ways. And there was no way in which any of us could surpass Owain.

‘That is all I ask of you,’ he answered. ‘All I need is another pair of arms and legs to ride with me into the South. Another pair of thighs to grip a horse, and another right arm to cast a spear, and another head to wear a helm. Look, I have had all our helmets set with red feathers, as great generals did in the days of the Legions.’

He was like any soldier, he thought that things of this kind, red feathers and shining helmets were important. And yet, though I knew this was all nonsense, for a moment I wavered, I was on the point of saying yes. I almost answered, ‘Yes, I will
come with you as a soldier against the Savages, I will add another head of red plumes for the Savages to count. I will do this even though I know that I will be cutting myself off for ever from the company of the Bards of the Island, that by delivering the stroke of Justice I disqualify myself for ever from Judgement.’

I was on the very point of saying all that, and of a sudden I thought of Bradwen, and I knew I could not go. She would never have me go, she would never let me leave her, now I had come back to Eiddin. She would know what to think of all this talk of glory and revenge. Bradwen the Wise Maiden men called her; cool and clear-thinking she was. She would have made a good poet, if it were lawful for a woman to make verses. It is only emotion that stands between a woman and the Muse. Any man who can look at life clear and cold and bleak, as it is, and not be deceived by his own desires and fears, can be a poet. The rest is a mere matter of words and metres: the rest is only a game of sounds. So I replied to Owain instead. ‘There are plenty of heads in the lowlands, and in the mountains too, who would be glad to wear your pretty feathers. For every man Precent brought from Dumbarton, he turned back nine, because this one was too old, or this one too young, here a married man and here an only son, and there a man who limped but not enough to stop him doing a hard day’s work behind the plough or in a boat. Take them, Owain, hard men used to war, and they will help you more than a hundred poets.’

I expected to hear him tell me they would not do because they were too valuable, but that my useless arm would stop a blow as well as any. In any army, there are only two or three men who kill the enemy, the rest cluster around to shield the champion from the blows of the enemy champions. But what Owain said now was, ‘Empty heads, Aneirin, empty heads. In such a campaign, as we go on, there is too much work for me to do myself. In a host like this, I will need a Judge, Aneirin, to tell the law and judge our disputes. You know all the laws of the Island, of every part of the land, and you can help me make this Household of Mynydog’s into one army.’

‘But Cynon is going with you, and he knows enough law for your purpose. He has learnt it from his father.’

‘If that were all the law I needed, I would not worry. I have
Cynrig of Aeron with me, too, but I need more law than he knows.’

This was something to hear. Cynrig was a prince of Aeron, but not heir to the Kingdom, because he was a second son. Now, to be thought superior as a Judge to this Cardi man was something. Owain added, ‘But he cannot be my Judge, because when he came, first his elder brother Cynddelig followed, out of jealousy. And then the younger brother came, Cynrain, to keep the peace between them, and they do not thank him for it. And that, Aneirin, is why I need a wiser Judge than Cynon, and one whose reputation is wider.’

That I could understand. But still I told him, ‘I do not think myself wise enough yet for that.’

Owain did not try to rebut this argument, or any I ever used. He neither quarrelled with men, nor set up counter-arguments. Instead, he would always find another way to put his case. If only he had acted in war as he did in peace, and shown the same maturity in the face of steel!

‘These Savages you have up here in the East, they are a funny people. I’ve never met them before. I’ve had enough to do, fighting the Irish.’

This was how he had got his reputation, at war with the Irish who came by sea all along the Western coasts. Down in Demetia, they had even begun to settle and till the soil and build villages, dispossessing the Romans they found living there, as the Savages had done in Bernicia and were trying to do in the debatable land of Mordei. It was the Irish who were the enemy in the land. Now Arthur has utterly destroyed the Savages, he must show his real quality by beating the Irish. If they are not stopped they will first conquer this land, and then cross the seas and bring all the Empire under their rule, as far as Byzantium.

‘Yet,’ Owain went on, ‘the Irish are not so different although they have their own uncouth language. They worship the Virgin, and obey laws like ours, and they know that the true aim of a kingdom is to nurture poets. And there is no shame in marrying them.’ He knew, and I knew, that each of us was born of the lawful union of a Royal House of the Roman Island of Britain with a Royal House of the Island of the Blessed. He could not speak scornfully about the Irish for his own sake, let alone for mine.

‘But these Savages. They are something quite outside the whole range of humanity. The Church has no doubt that they are not men but devils. It is forbidden to speak of holy things to them, and we all agree that they are no more capable of baptism than my dog. And I have had some very reasonable and cultured dogs in my time.’

He laughed, and I had to laugh with him. That was another thing about Owain, that helped men to obey him, against their inclinations. He could destroy the tension of an embarrassing moment, not to flee the judgement point, you understand, but to step back and approach in another way. Even his laugh was an argument. Nothing was wasted. Once he had taken on himself a task, then everything he did and said was part of that task. He went on, still smiling.

‘But these Savages, lack of Baptism is no penance to them. They do not know what God is, and they worship nothing.’

I could not understand how a man could be so wise and yet so ignorant. I corrected him.

‘They worship demons. They have a wind demon, called Odin, and they can sail to us only when he favours them. And they have a fire demon called Thor, and it is his magic which gives them those terrible swords which cut through three thicknesses of mail. And another demon called Baldur who makes their wheat grow. All these they worship. They make offerings to them under trees.’

‘Do they, indeed. You learned all this when you were a prisoner. All just by watching them?’

‘No, they told me about it, boasting of how the demons would overthrow and eat up the Virgin and the Saints.’

‘They spoke our language to you, then, did they?’

‘Oh, no they cannot speak the tongue of the Angels like us, not Latin, because their tongues are too short.’

‘Then how did you learn this?’

‘Oh, I had to learn their language, enough at least to speak a little to answer when they taunted me, and to obey the orders they gave me.’

‘So you speak their language. And you know their ways.’

I did not see the trap Owain had set, and I boasted, though the Virgin knows that all I said was the truth.

‘As well as any man. I know how they dress, and how they make that wheat bread, and how they sit to eat; all this by watching, because they fed me with the dogs.’

Owain sprung his trap. ‘Think, Aneirin, how few men there are in all the earth who know the Savages’ tongue. Can you name another? Even one other? Think of it, Aneirin. We have come together to fight these people, and we know no more about them than if they lived on the other side of the Ocean. Should we hunt them like deer, lying out on the high moors and crawling on our bellies till we can shoot them with the crossbow? Or ought we to wait till winter and then poke them out of their lairs like bears, with long poles and fire? As long as we don’t know anything about them, they’ll continue to settle and breed till they outnumber us. I don’t want you with us for the sake of your arms, Aneirin, not even for your skill with the crossbow, which we have all heard about. I want you to come because you only can tell us about our enemies and guess what they are going to do.’

I saw what he meant, and what he wanted. For another moment I was on the point of agreeing. Then I thought of Bradwen. I had not seen her yet, though a number of Mynydog’s people had come out of the houses in the Dun and stood about at a distance to watch the first meeting of Owain and Aneirin. I had not seen Bradwen among them, I had not even heard her voice. I only half listened to Owain, I had most of my attention on the sounds from the Hall, in the hopes of hearing at last the long-loved tones. I thought of Bradwen and of how she would welcome me, and I answered – and I was quite sincere in this, it was what I felt, it was not a mere excuse: