Gruffydd’s dark eyes swept the room. When he saw Owen, he lifted his chin and eyebrows in a mute greeting and moved towards him through the crowd. As he drew near, Gruffydd grew sombre. Owen guessed he had been wrong about the man he had thought to be his brother Morgan.
‘You are looking well this evening,’ Owen said.
‘God has ever blessed my line with good health, Captain.’ Stepping closer, Gruffydd bowed his head slightly and said in a quieter voice, ‘I have spoken with your brother.’
Owen’s heart gladdened. ‘I had thought, when you arrived alone. .’
A shake of the head. ‘He would not come to the castle.’
‘Why not?’
‘He did not explain. But he invites you, indeed, implores you to come to him.’
‘He is unwell? He cannot travel?’
‘You will find him well. I shall tell you how to find him.’
Owen could not bring himself to ask about the others.
Dafydd ap Gwilym watched the sunrise, remembering how a spring sunrise long ago caught his love’s hair and warmed it slowly from a pale yellow to red-gold, each strand burnished anew as the sun climbed the heavens. She, too, had warmed with the morning, as if kindled by the sun.
Not by his ardour, though he had foolishly thought she loved him. They never loved him well enough to defy their kin and run away with him. A woman loves a poet’s praises, the promise of fame and immortality in his songs. But she lusts for a soldier and marries a man of property.
He blinked at the melancholy thoughts. Whence came such shadows on this exquisite morning? Perhaps it was his imminent departure from this beloved place that darkened his mood and his memories. He must shrug off this gloom else he would be no good at convincing the men from Cydweli — whose return was inevitable — that the house had been as empty when last they came as it was now, and that Dafydd had no other goal in the world than his work.
Brother Samson and the pilgrim had departed yesterday for Strata Florida. A good three days’ journey on horseback, perhaps four, considering how Samson worried over the young man. Was Samson so old in spirit he had forgotten the resilience of youth? How quickly bones knit, wounds closed, scars faded, muscles eased? Ah, to be young again. It had been nothing for Dafydd to walk over mountains to revisit a lake noted in passing, to refresh his memory as he strove to describe a tree under which he had napped, a glade he had enjoyed with a sweetheart. He would give anything to trade places with the pilgrim.
Enough of that. He would soon prove his mettle when he followed on their trail. But first he would have some sport with the Cydweli men. He awaited their return. Had he gone with Samson and the pilgrim, the men would have found a house empty and would seek the pilgrim’s trail. But if they returned to see everything as it had been before — as far as they knew — they might be less diligent about seeking that trail.
Dafydd looked forward to another round with the men. He had precious few diversions beyond his poetry these days. Each one was to be savoured.
Stretching to his full height, Dafydd took one last look at the sunlit Irish sea and turned towards the house, whistling for his dogs. Nest and Cadwy abandoned their explorations in the gorse and followed. Dafydd walked slowly, making note of the crocuses, the birdsong, the budding trees. When he returned from Strata Florida, where he intended to spend some time in prayer, summer would be full blown — or worse, he might be delayed until the autumn. Who knew what adventures lie ahead?
For he knew not the truth of the pilgrim’s story. He knew not whether the armed bullies from Cydweli were right to claim him. He knew not how safe Brother Samson was, travelling with only a young lay brother and the pilgrim.
And it was just that uncertainty that made it worth a temporary absence from this beloved spot. He felt alive, and younger than before he had encountered the pilgrim on Whitesands.
God be praised.
Ten
Morgan ap Rhodri’s house stood on a slope at the narrow end of a valley that rose just beyond to a mountain striped with rushing streams. This was not the homestead of Owen’s latter youth; indeed, the setting put him more in mind of LlŶn. How quickly the land changed in just a few hours’ ride from Cydweli. The house was long and low, a modest farmhouse, whitewashed and neatly thatched. Chickens pecked in the yard and a nanny goat and her kids gave him a slit-eyed examination from a paddock next to the house.
A woman sat in the doorway mixing something in a large bowl and rocking a cradle with her bare foot. She rose to greet Owen, but as she ceased her rocking the baby cried out in protest. The woman quickly set down the bowl and retrieved the wailing child. By now Owen was close enough to see a pleasant, very young face peering out from the intricately folded wimple. She was quick and compact in movement.
‘Owain ap Rhodri?’ she asked.
He was glad he had not come here before his ear had readjusted to the language, for her accent was strong. ‘Forgive me for coming unannounced,’ he said in Welsh, ‘I did not wish to wait until a messenger might arrange a meeting.’
‘And so you should not, being kin!’ She touched her left eye with her free hand. ‘So the tales about your eye are true. By a woman’s hand, they say. Was it for looking at her?’ Her eyes teased.
‘She was not a beauty. I had no joy in the struggle.’
‘I am sorry for that.’ A dimpled smile.
Owen found her charming. ‘I do not know your name.’
‘I am Elen.’
‘When did you hear of my scarred eye?’
‘Your arrival at Cydweli has been the talk of the valley for days.’
‘Has it indeed! That is a wonder, for I swear I have never set foot in this valley before.’
‘We have several youths who hope to be chosen archers for the Duke.’
‘Ah. I hope they do not regret their eagerness.’
Elen looked puzzled by his words.
‘It is no matter. Why would Morgan not come to see me at Cydweli?’
Elen ducked her head. ‘I leave that to my husband to explain. Come. He is near, mending a fallen wall.’
As they began to walk, Owen peered down at the baby, who was preparing to make a fresh clamour. ‘And who is this, with a shock of red fuzz to rival my brother Dafydd’s?’
‘Your youngest nephew, Luc.’
The baby clasped the forefinger Owen offered and held firm, inspiring both adults to laughter.
‘He is a strong one,’ Owen said.
‘Stubborn, is more like.’ Elen’s giggle was merry and disarming.
They had skirted the paddock and now turned towards the mountain. A low wall encircled an orchard that held perhaps threescore trees of varying age.
‘The orchard was wild when Morgan came here,’ Elen said. ‘My father thought an orchard a gentleman’s endeavour, not worth a farmer’s time. But Morgan loves the trees and the fruit.’
He took after their mother in that. ‘So this is your family’s farm?’
‘Aye.’
‘It is beautiful.’
‘It was not always so.’ Elen stopped, pointed to a figure in the distance, at the far end of the orchard, crouching by the wall. ‘There he is. Go, then. He will be glad to see you.’
A breeze with a touch of ice in it swept down from the mountain, making the orchard cool even in the sunlight. Owen’s boots made sucking noises in the grass. Boggy for an orchard. But it looked healthy. Owen’s mother had once told him that no matter how experienced and hard-working the farmer, if he did not believe in the earth he tilled he would reap poor harvests.
In his infancy Morgan had suffered from a stomach flux and recurrent rashes. It had stunted his growth, his mother believed. She had coaxed Rhodri into allowing her to take the boy to St David’s and the holy wells surrounding it, hoping that the healing waters might cure him. Owen, thirteen years old, had accompanied her to the far west. Morgan had suffered much of the way with a terrible rash. He would wake in the morning bloody from scratching in his sleep. At one point Owen’s mother hesitated, wondering whether it was safe to take the boy farther, but a dream convinced her that her son would be cured by the waters. At St Non’s Well, they dipped bandages into the water and wrapped Morgan’s raw forearms, one thigh that was seeping. Then they continued on to the cathedral city, where Owen’s mother prostrated herself in the central aisle of the nave after praying before the shrine of her eldest son’s patron saint.