Second Round: A Return to the Ur-Bar Page 4

  The Wizard King

  Kari Sperring

  Every year, on the eve of the longest day, Father Elyas led his flock round the whole circuit of the parish. From the town gate to the waystone at the crossroads, where the two old roads met; down the line of the river to the furthest corner of Earl Thomas’s private wood; up the line of the hedge to the ivy-wrapped bole of the old thorn; from the thorn along the lesser brook to where the old ditch crossed in from the south; up the ditch, up and up the flank of Caer Ogyrfan and to the left, following the line of the lowest of the covy of ancient banks that wrapped about it; down from the hill back towards the river; along the narrow edge where water-meadow became marsh; back onto the old west road as far as the toll gate and the corner of the earl’s manor house; then again to the waystone; and finally back to the town gate. They sang as they walked, and Father Elyas blessed the land. Last of all, they came back to the church-gate. Then Wat Miller would begin to play his reed pipes and his son struck up a drum, so those who wished might dance, and the priest’s housekeeper handed round fresh bread and honey and Gil the brewer handed new ale and old cider through the door of his inn, and the children ran about shouting, and the young people danced while the older folks gathered to talk over times gone. It was one of the two greatest days of the year in Mared’s eyes, along with Harvest-tide, every year renewed in the spring and praised in the autumn.

  “And seeing our joy in his works, and hearing our praise and gratitude, the Lord helps our crops grow and our beasts thrive and blesses our hearths and families,” said Nain, lifting Mared, out of breath from games and laughter, into her lap as she sat outside the inn. “He likes to hear us happy.”

  “And the priest knows to the penny what tithes he can require from each of us,” said Da.

  But, “Hush,” said Mam. “Father Elyas is a good priest and a kind man who takes only what he needs.”

  Their village of Meresbury was bigger than most of the villages in the surrounding area, with its stout walls and an old stone church and a small market every Wednesday. It lay close by the border between England and Wales. It was, though, smaller than the towns of Penwern, to the east, where the bishop lived, or Rhiw Fabon, over the border to the west. Da sometimes took Mared with him when he went to one of them, and she stood open-mouthed watching a silver-smith at work, or gazed enviously at the bright pottery beads for sale. Meresbury had no cookshops and only the one inn, though Gil’s ale was famous all along the border and brought traders in by itself. According to Nain, acrobats and players sometimes performed in the towns at festival tide.

  At home, at the festivals, they had only Wat Miller and his pipe, and Alaw, whose father was a ploughman and who had a true voice, and Gil and his ale, and the sweet cakes given by the priest. And every year, Old Wyn came by at Midsummer and Harvest, and told stories that were even better than Nain’s, about dragons and magic cauldrons and talking beasts. As he talked, he whittled animals from scraps of wood, which he gave away to the children. He gave Mared a ferret scenting the air, no longer than her shortest finger, which she kept with her treasures—one length of rather grubby ribbon, a lock of Mam’s hair, and a strange-shaped stone which she’d found at the old fort. Old Wyn did not live in the village—indeed, as far as Mared could tell, he did not live anywhere in particular—but he was no beggar, for all that. Sometimes, when she rose early to carry eggs down to the village, she saw him slipping out of Father Elyas’ house, or, once, the inn.

  “A good man, and a wise one,” said Nain, though Mam and Da were impatient if Mared or her brothers repeated his tales. “Your Nain fills your head with enough nonsense,” said Da, but for all that, he spoke with courtesy to Old Wyn, and sometimes brought him ale or bread.

  Father Elyas spoke Latin to God and English or halting Welsh to his congregation, but within their house Mared and her family spoke only Welsh to each other. “Our tongue,” said Nain, “that we spoke before these Norman lords came, and before the English, and before the Romans, too. We were here first, Mared bach, and this land knows us. This land remembers.”

  To listen to Nain, every stream and stone in the borderlands had its own particular history. She told Mared and her brothers tales of the great days of the kings of the Britons—Bran who stood as tall as a tree, and his brother Manawyddan, who made shoes of gold; Vortigern who built a great castle and was the friend of St Garmon; Arddur, who married the daughter of King Gogyrfan, who lived in the fort above Meresbury itself. “Great kings, great days,” said Nain, “and not over yet. When you were no more than a babe, Mared bach, didn’t the wizard king himself come here, to Meresbury, in his triumph over the Norman lords? And he’ll come back, mark my words, like Arddur himself, one day.”

  Mam hushed her, when she spoke like that, and cast anxious looks towards where the neighbors lived; Da muttered behind his beard and suggested Nain would do better to remember trampled crops and slaughtered livestock and burnt homes. But of all Nain’s stories, Mared loved those of the wizard king the most. He had come here, not only to Meresbury, but to this very house. “He came under our roof,” Nain said, “and stood right there, by the fire, tall and bold. You were no more than two weeks old, Mared bach, and your brothers not even born. He wanted a shoe for his horse, you see, and your Da is the best blacksmith for miles around. He came in here while he waited and saw you in your Mam’s arms. He blessed you, cariad, the wizard king himself, and said you were pretty.” He had ridden away again within the hour, his horse new shod, to the next of his battles. (“Leaving trouble behind him,” said Da, but Mared paid him no heed.) “He defeated them all, the great Norman border lords,” Nain said, “and all the Welsh flocked to his standard and proclaimed him king. Even the French king sought his friendship.” But that same French king had proved fickle, and stage by stage, the lords took back what had been theirs, and drove the wizard king back and back, until he had vanished somewhere into the hills of central Wales. “He’s gone for now,” said Nain, “but he’ll be back. You’ll see, you’ll see.”

  He was Mared’s king, her wizard king who had blessed her, though her brothers preferred Bran and Cadwallon. “Did he have a daughter?” she asked Nain.

  “He did, more than one. They were great ladies, too, and married lords.”

  “Perhaps he missed them and so he liked me.”

  “They were women grown,” said Da.

  But, “Perhaps he did,” said Nain. “And perhaps he missed more than that. His wife was named Mared, too.”

  “That has nothing to do with it,” said Mam, but her eyes did not meet Nain’s. And Nain whispered—and Mared believed her with all her heart—that the wizard king had given her the name along with his blessing.

  “She was strong,” Nain said. “Almost as much a warrior as her husband, and his men all called her Yr Arglwyddes, the Lady. Your name is a blessing in itself.”

  And she was blessed: Mared Latimer, daughter of the best smith in the border, and a member of one of the few families locally who held their land free and clear of both lord and church and might do with it as they pleased. Most of the villagers owned nothing, lived and worked in homes and fields that belonged to Earl Thomas, and must plough and sow and reap, build and mend, at his pleasure and for his profit. “And that,” said Nain, “is why the wizard king chose this house to shelter in, and why your Da’s forge was spared when the village burned.”

  “He wanted his horse shod,” said Da. “And he paid me nothing for the work. And cost me more, too.” For the lord’s steward, who lived in the manor and looked after the earl’s property, had ordered the villagers to take their business to the smith six miles away after that, and for a year or two Da must take his axe blades and nails and spits to sell at the markets in Penwern or Rhiw Fabon.

  That lasted no more than two years. The earl remained absent and the steward was indifferent and the neighbor smith charged more for worse work. And then, to the villagers, Da was one of their own. (“And so is the wizard king,” said Nain, thou
gh never where Da might hear her.) Most of the villagers spoke the same Welsh as Mared and her family, and looked west, not east, for the bulk of their ways. But the Norman lord and the Norman king and even the bishop over to Penwern labelled the wizard king rebel and traitor and viewed anyone who spoke well of him with distrust.

  Mared had no memory of him herself. But as she grew, Nain seemed, year by year, to shrink, and her memory grew faded and jumbled. It seemed that as she faded, so did the wizard king. The year Mared was nine, some of his men came over the border into her county, but were driven back, and their leader was not with them. Later that year, Yr Arglwyddes, his wife Lady Mared, fell into the hands of the Norman king and was sent to his great Tower prison. The few tales that made their way to the village were somber, now, and spoke of losses. No one, it seemed, saw or met the wizard king any more. “He’s gone under the hill,” said Nain, in a rare flicker of clarity. “He’s gone to join Arddur and his warriors till they’re called again. Under the hill.”

  Mared and her friend Siwsan, daughter of the miller, hunted all over the old ring fort looking for the entrance, for a way inside to see the sleeping king and his men, but they found nothing more than rabbit warrens and fox burrows and the narrow tracks made by goats and sheep. On the way back, too, Mared caught her foot in a rabbit hole and took a tumble into a bank of thorns. Mam smeared one of Nain’s soothing ointments over her scratches, then made her sit quiet and mend the rip in one sleeve of her shift.

  Two years later, Nain died. Mared, at eleven, was old enough by then to understand in full what that meant, though the littlest of her brothers went on asking for months when Nain would come home. She was old enough, too, to cook and spin and mind her brothers. Mam made Nain’s potions and poultices, now, and gave them to her neighbors, but they did not smell as good nor did they work as well. Father Elyas had died the year before, and for a year there was no priest at all. His funeral was conducted by the neighboring priest, and the whole village turned out for it, save only those too young or too infirm to attend. Several of the travelling traders were there, too, and Old Wyn, standing at the back in the shadow of the yew tree. When Father Elyas’ replacement, Father Dominic, did arrive, he proved to be a watchful man whose round girth and rosy cheeks belied a nature given to spite and vinegar. He begrudged every service he must do for the villagers and took as little time as possible over them, often delegating them to the overworked priest from Witham, the next village over. “A wicked woman, who gossiped and did not know her place,” said Father Dominic, when Da went to him about Nain’s burial. Then he turned his back and stalked away. So Nain was buried at sunset in the furthest corner of the churchyard, with only the sexton to murmur prayers, and no more than Mared and her family gathered by. But some of the villagers came, over the next days, on this apparent errand or that, and offered condolences and kind words. Not that the priest refused the burial fee, of course, though he skimped on the prayers for Nain’s soul the following Sunday. He knew his rights inside and out, for all he avoided as many as he could of his responsibilities. He was Earl Thomas’ man, and high in favor with the bishop. He knew full well how little store he needed to set by his lowly charges.

  The summer after Nain died was short and wet, hurrying shabbily into a dank chill autumn. Great skeins of geese swept in from the north and west to feed on the marshes that spread to the west of the village. Eadric’s warriors, Nain used to call them, after the mad English lord who had resisted the Normans and who had married a woman who could change into a swan or a goose. “She taught him her secret,” Nain whispered, “and he and his men flew away before King William could find them, and still fly around the world. They bring winter and war.” There was no midsummer celebration that year, nor yet the next. Father Dominic preferred to dine with the earl’s steward. “And that is why we’ve had two summers in a row that were so poor,” said Mam, when Da was out in his forge. “These things matter. Your Nain knew that, and so did Father Elyas. Your Da should remember it, too.” Then she shook her head and turned back to her spinning. “And I’m talking almost as much nonsense as she did. Don’t you go repeating it, mind, not here or outside.”

  “But he will celebrate the harvest, won’t he?” Mared said. “He takes his tithes then, surely?”

  “He takes his tithes anyway,” said Mam, “but we’ll see.”

  “The harvest isn’t worth celebrating,” said Da, later that night, when Mared asked him. “Nothing but rain and cold all year.” But others in the village muttered about the lack of a Midsummer blessing and cast dark looks at Father Dominic’s back. They would all be on tight rations, once winter came, and, unlike Father Elyas, Father Dominic was unlikely to stint his demands for their sakes. The next Sunday, the atmosphere in the church was sullen and the responses slow to come. A priest who disdained his flock made a poor intercessor with God: there were those in the village, Mared knew, who preferred to make their real prayers in private. Gil the brewer never came to church, but then he was a foreigner, for all the villagers liked him. Now, others started to stay home on Sundays, too. The steward did nothing; the earl had sent him no directions. And, come harvest-tide, Father Dominic glared at the congregation and spoke of God’s punishment via want for those who sinned.

  The next morning, as Mared made her round with the eggs, Gil called out to her from the door of the inn. “The blessings must be given. Mind you tell your Da that.”

  Da said nothing when Mared passed on the message, but looked thoughtful, and spent the whole day alone in his forge. But that evening, as the family ate their scanty meal, he said, slowly, “It’s a long way to Midsummer.”

  “That’s so,” Mam said.

  “The priest over to Witham has his own harvest and bounds to bless.”

  “A priest or a king, to bless the bounds; that’s what your mother would have said.”

  “Well, I’m neither,” and Da fell into another long silence that lasted until bedtime. But the following morning, he set off early for Rhiw Fabon and returned late. Mared heard him whispering to Mam in their bed but could not make out any words. And the next day, he seemed much as usual, and the day after that, and the day after, as the days counted down towards midwinter. Mam took to leaving a crust of bread and a splash of ale on the hearthstone each night, making the sign of the cross as she did so. Da, who had grumbled at Nain for such ways, said nothing.

  “No summer blessing and no autumn thanks,” Mam said. “We need as much help and fortune as we can come by.”

  Two weeks after that, Father Dominic demanded the best layers from Old Cati’s ducks in tithe, saying she’d shorted him over the summer. She denied it in her limited English and he pretended not to understand her. Her neighbor spoke up for her and was rewarded with a blow and heavy penance. The Father overheard Rhodri, the six-year-old son of Sion Ploughman, singing on the sabbath and ordered his mother to whip him. A week later, three of the steward’s servants came down into the village and took away three men, saying they had been heard in an inn in Penwern speaking ill of the earl. The wife of one of them, great with child, knelt outside the manor all through the cold night and took a chill of it, so that her babe was still-born. That evening, coming in from shutting the hens into the barn, Mared caught Mam standing on a stool to place half a raw onion on the roof beam. “To soak up the ill-luck,” she said.

  As a free man, Da owed no service to the earl. But in these days, that was no guarantee of safety. Father Dominic distrusted any low-born man who had, in his eyes, too much liberty. And then, “There’s a rumor the wizard king has been seen in the borderlands,” Da said, one evening. “So no telling tales of him where anyone you don’t know well and trust can hear you.” That latter was directed at Mared. “Both the priest and the steward have only suspicious eyes for anyone whose family is more Welsh than English.”

  “I won’t, Da,” Mared said. Since Nain had died, and without the feasts and the visits from Old Wyn, she had become the closest thing the village had to a stor
y-teller.

  There had been rumors before. But this time, it seemed the earl took them more seriously. He did not come in person—he had not done so in Mared’s lifetime—but in the first week of December soldiers in the earl’s livery arrived at the manor and the village, taking over the manning of the gate from Awstin the porter and requiring yet more renders in kind from those who lived there. “And what we’re to eat now, I don’t know,” said Mam’s friend Carlyn. “Dirt and twigs, I daresay. If there’s no blessing come next Midsummer, we’re all sure to starve. I wish the wizard king had burnt us with the village and that’s a fact.”

  That was treasonous talk. Mared threw an anxious look at the door. But Mam said, “He’d not treat his own people like that. It was only the earl’s property he burnt. He was good to the Welsh. Better than these Norman lords and their king.”

  Mared drew in a breath and Mam looked at her. Her brothers were in the forge helping Da; Mared was busy with her spindle. Mam nodded to her, as she might once have nodded to Nain, then turned the conversation away. Da rarely spent evenings at the inn, but late that afternoon he went down into the village with a spit he’d mended for Gil and did not return until just before curfew. The following day he was up early and away to Rhiw Fabon before Mared had finished milking the goat. He was gone for close on three days, returning so late the family were long abed. Mared woke to hear him conducting a rapid low-voiced conversation with Mam, before disappearing out to the forge with a covered bowl and a leather jug. Yet when Mared woke, all the utensils were in their familiar places and no food was gone, so she wondered if she had dreamt the whole thing. Da was already at work in his forge, whistling as he mended the rim of a cart-wheel, and full of stories about the market at Rhiw Fabon. The smith there had taken ill, he told her, and Phylip Ddistain, who stood for the lord there, had sent for him to shoe the lord’s horses. Da showed Mared the three fine silver pennies he’d been paid and promised she would go with him the next trip.