Votan and Other Novels (FANTASY MASTERWORKS) (86 page)

‘But I want to be a hunter. I want to go hunting. Men go hunting. I’m a man.’ Satisfied with the logic of four years old, he turned and saw me. ‘Aneirin! Will you take me hunting?’

I couldn’t say no to him, not straight out. I couldn’t offend him, and no more could Precent. So I answered, ‘Go and ask Gwenllian if she’ll come, and if she will, then you ask her to take you. But don’t tell her I said so.’

Off he went, bubbling with it, and of course he told Gwenllian I said he could come hunting, which he had never been before, and that I said Gwenllian was to bring him. She hunted sometimes, but not as often as Bradwen who hunted almost every day, as skilled as any man at it, and strong enough to stay out with us all day. But deceived by the little boy’s joy, Gwenllian did come out, saying, ‘Just to please him, let me ride along behind the main party with him on my saddle-bow, so he can see.’

So we were, literally, saddled with him for the day. We rode out a good strong party, led by Bradwen and Owain. Precent did not come, staying behind to drill one half of the Household. Still, there were nearly forty of us, with dogs, and we were ready to take anything we could find for our supper. We cast round to the south of the Giant’s Seat, Gwenllian and I riding together at the rear of the party. As we went, I heard her singing to the little boy one hunting song after another, but the one he wanted to hear again and again, as children will, was one I had made for him myself, long ago, and I was surprised first that he, and then that Gwenllian, should remember it.

It was only doggerel, and I was ashamed of it, ashamed of having sung it first, ashamed that anyone else should remember it. I told Gwenllian so.

‘Why, what is the matter with you, Aneirin? It is a very nice little song, and I am grateful to you for making it, because I can rely on it to get him to sleep when nothing else will. And here we are, on a fine July morning, and I still can’t get a smile out of you, and I haven’t done since you came home in May. What is it, now, what is it?’

I rode still in silence. She waited a little, then again: ‘What is the matter, Aneirin? It is plain to me, but it will not be plain to you until you speak about it.’

I looked around in the clear air, down to the level land below us, for we sat our horses on the lower slopes of the hill and watched the rest of the hunt spread out across the plain, colourful and clear and sparkling. I watched Bradwen pass out of sight behind a thicket, and then my eye was dazzled by the stone in Gwenllian’s ring, the one out of the Savage ship, that I had given and that I hear she wears still at Arthur’s court, an emerald they say it is, set in gold. I said:

‘And you are no longer a poet?’ she asked me. ‘Is that why? Is it because of her that you no longer make concise sayings, that you no longer count the syllables and the feet, that you no longer balance opposites, compare white with black, contrast like with like?’

‘No, it is—’

‘Do not tell me. I know the laws, I know, I know, I know! But the laws never bade a man strain after what no one could reach.
Go on, tell me that peace is always beyond a poet’s reach. I think I understand it. You cannot sing unless you feel that you are badly treated. And now you have made yourself feel so badly treated that you dare not sing. What a song we shall have out of you in the end!’

‘There will be no more poems.’

‘And have you not just said me one? You must have been rankling over that one a long time, Aneirin, to have it out so perfect. It has spoiled you, being a poet, Aneirin, and such a great one. You have never known a failure till now. But do you think you are the only one to yearn after Bradwen? Why do you think that Cynon went away, so far away, first into the South, and then, after he brought me back, away again into Strathclyde, but because of her. If you had had to hear his lovesick yearning across the length of Britain as I had to, then you’d know that you weren’t the only man who loved Bradwen. And why do you think that Gelorwid wants to be a hermit? He was up here with me last week, trying to choose a spot for his cell. This place was too cold, and that too windy, and another too damp, and another too close to the llan where Mynydog’s own hermit lives already: but the main trouble with them all was that he wanted to have the best of both worlds, and to have a cell where he would see Bradwen. And Precent, why does he prefer to stay here and be Mynydog’s gatekeeper, when he could rule his own Kingdom among the Picts?’

‘But I had thought—’

‘That she would have chosen the Pre-eminent Bard of the Island before them? But she did not, Aneirin. She knew you all as brothers, she did not think of you as suitors. But when the pre-eminent soldier of the Island came into the North—’

‘Why, yes, then,’ I finished for her. ‘He did not come for the price, but he took the price eagerly, the price that Mynydog offered him, the price Bradwen was willing to pay, not the wide lands Eudav held by the Wall – what is that to a Prince of Cornwall? No, there was also Bradwen’s white body to wallow in, in his bed.’

‘And are there no other white bodies, Aneirin? And no other lands, no other homes? Will you waste yourself for ever because Bradwen loves, and not you?’

But before I could answer, we heard the horns close to us. The deer, flushed out, came past below. The little boy shouted in excitement, and waved the little spear Arthgi had made for him. Without a word spoken, Gwenllian and I set in our heels, and swept down on a buck on the edge of the herd. I whistled, and old Perro, baying, cast round to the other side of the buck, to head him into us, so that in a few strides we were running parallel with him, a few yards away. I held back till I heard Gwenllian give the word to her half-brother, and saw his toy spear flung – a miss, of course, but still he cast at a deer. I threw my own, straight to the heart – but there, I had had practice. The buck fell, and we pulled up our horses and dismounted.

Gwenllian caught Perro by the collar, and held him back, while I cut the buck’s throat. The little boy wandered off a little to pick flowers, not having much taste to see me rip up the stomach to clean the carcase, pushing the steaming tripes away for the dog.

The horses stood still some paces away, as they had been trained. I knelt among the blood and ordure, my arms stained to the elbow. Gwenllian stood over me, and asked again, as if we had not ridden half a mile, and killed, ‘And are there no other girls, Aneirin?’

And again, there was interruption. Perro growled, a horn sounded urgently from far away. I looked up. Running towards us flushed by the hunt from his sleep in the wood, was a boar. Head down, slavering, grunting and wheezing horribly, it was a horrid sight. Dangerous always, the more dangerous now not being clouded by pain or unusual anger, it was a threat I had to face.

‘The child!’ I shouted. He was well away from us. I seized my spear, and ran towards him. I whistled to Perro, and the old dog, well trained, went straight for the boar like a stone rolling down a mountain. I reached the little boy, and snatched him up, struggling because he saw no reason why he should be taken from his contemplation of a grasshopper. Almost as soon as I had him, Gwenllian galloped to me. I passed her brother to her.

‘Ride!’ I called. She went like the wind. I looked again at the boar. The dog’s blood red on his tusks, he was coming at me, roaring. I couched the spear and went down towards him, at the
run, because there is no waiting for this beast. I picked my spot – and suddenly, between me and my prey, between the boar and his prey, there came a horse, and Bradwen, splendid in her haste and rage, shouting the hunting cries like trumpets sounding, came charging to save me from no danger, no danger at all. She rode between me and my adversary, and I saw her arm strike, the spear flash down. The boar changed his line, turning away, and, as Bradwen pulled up her horse, I watched it go, fast, the spear trailing from its haunch. That stroke had done little damage, except perhaps to us, because the boar, hunted before, wise to what we could, would, do, was now above all enraged.

‘Cut it off! After it! Cut it off!’ I shouted to Bradwen, but she hesitated, waited to lean over me and ask, ‘Are you hurt at all?’

‘No, no. But the boar, after it – do not let it get into the thicket!’

But it was too late, the beast was already out of sight in a clump of thorn-bushes. And then, because things happen as fast in the hunt as they do in battle, and fortunes change as suddenly and as senselessly, there were a host of horsemen around us, Gelorwid and Owain, and Mynydog’s Chief Huntsman, Caradog.

‘We’ll have to go in there on foot,’ Caradog warned me.

‘I’ll go in,’ said Owain at once.

‘If you wish,’ I told him. It was my beast, but it was beyond my pride to say so in front of Bradwen. ‘I shall back up.’

‘I don’t need anyone else,’ said Owain. ‘I have hunted enough boars in my time, and there is no need for more than one man.’

‘Let me come with you,’ Bradwen put in. But I was saved argument by Caradog, who only observed, ‘Two in, on foot, and the rest mounted around the thicket. That is the rule here. Bradwen, take anything that comes out beyond that withered tree.’

Owain said no more. He went in front of me into the thicket. The thorn-branches tore at our clothes, at our faces. The grass in the spaces between the trees was rank and thick. The trees were in full leaf now in late July. We could see little, we could only listen and smell for him, snuffle like a dog for the scent of pig sweat and ordure. It is better to do this without dogs: they only confuse the hunter, and harm the boar little. With a bear, however, I would take dogs.

We moved silently, Owain well in front, along the path, picking here and there a spot of blood, smears only. This one was not badly hurt, not bleeding badly at all. Dangerous, then.

It was very silent. The thing was somewhere, waiting for us, waiting to charge. Owain was out of my sight around the corner of the path when it happened. I heard it come, a horrible snarling shriek, and the shout from Owain, the trampling of the feet and the breaking of branches. I had the moment of space to lean back into the thorns, out of its track, and as the boar passed me, I leaned over and struck down, into the spine, the way we do here in the North. And it rolled, dead and still, with no further ado. There was no danger, no difficulty, as Owain had said. But Owain? He came down the path, from where the boar had come, still shaken from the wind of the beast as it had charged him, and missed. It was his luck to be taken by surprise, so that he had had no time to strike, and little to dodge: it was my luck that his shout had warned me, given me time to strike.

We carried the boar back to Eiddin, with the deer, for that night’s feast. I sat with Gwenllian, and the little boy hid under the table between us and sucked at a marrow bone, with plenty of meat on it, that I slipped down to him. We three ate venison. But in the place of honour, Owain ate the hero’s portion, the thigh, of the boar: and shared it with Bradwen.

That was how we rode out to Cattraeth, as to a hunt. We thought the Savage no more dangerous than a boar, and to our leader we gave all the honour and the praise for all that we did.

The Household of the Virgin rode out of Eiddin on the Feast of the Holy Virgin. The oat harvest was gathered, the barley was in, the sheep-shearing was over. Early in that morning we had heard the bell from the wood, where Mynydog’s hermit offered his sacrifice.

Before we rode out, Clydno numbered us. We who rode that day from Eiddin were three hundred men and one. Each of us rode a horse, and led one, or sometimes two. Each of us was armed. Never in the whole history of war, never in all the tale of the Island of Britain, had such wealth been spent to send so great a host into the field. Not even an army of the wealthy Kings of Strathclyde had cost so much.

Each of us wore a red cloak. Red is a wide word, a general colour. Some were red as the russet autumn leaves. Others were red as the flower of the campion shy against the grass in spring. Owain’s cloak was as red as the holly berry, a crimson we could see easily in any press of men, and the plume of his helmet was of the same colour.

My cloak was old and faded by the rain and the wind, till it looked like a bank of foxgloves, blowing in the hedges of the wet
and clement west from which I had come. This was a cloak the Warden of Carlisle had given me, for singing a marriage song for his daughter, before the Savages had swept into his city, in a great raid, and killed him and his son-in-law, and carried off his daughter into slavery. For years I had kept this cloak in a chest in Mynydog’s palace, against my own wedding-day. Now I wore this western colour to ride to war in the East.