So Gwyndoc sat waiting by the side of the old druid stone. And a lark rose from the heather, almost at his feet, and soared up and up until his keen eyes lost it in the blue morning sky. And as he stared after it the bird’s mellow song cascaded down around his ears, like a stream of jewels that had suddenly been let flow from an upturned treasure-bag. The young Celt’s blood raced in him and he whistled back in happiness, as loud and as high as he could, trying to answer the lark.
A sudden wayward breeze started up from beyond the wood at his back and caught his long flaxen hair, whipping it about his face and bringing the red blood to his upturned cheeks. And he felt that he wanted to dance and sing and perhaps swing his new sword round his head, so that all the tribesmen could see what a joyous, reckless young chief they had!
Then, as his mood mounted, another bird rose out of the gorse bushes. It was a windhover, a gallant bird of prey, a warrior of a bird if ever there was one! Gwyndoc wished that he could speak its language, as the druids could, so that he might call out to it and tell it in which direction the pigeon lay or where the geese nested. But it was useless to try and talk to such a magnificent creature, such a prince among the birds.
So Gwyndoc lay on his back in the heather and watched the windhover. He studied it against the blue background of sky until even his sharp eyes ached; watched it rising, poising, fluttering—an impersonal destiny—death without malice in its strong eye, its curled claw and its silver beak.
The bird soared, catching a rising current, perfect in its mastery, and swung round then above the summer fields to settle for a kill. The broad pinions flickered, and the hawk stood almost still in the moving air. The young man lay tense as he watched, both hands shielding his eyes from the rising morning sun, his long legs stretched out across the turf of the downland. As the bird soared, his heart moved too; as it poised, his heart stayed in its galloping. He would have shouted or chanted a poem if he could have put sound or words to his joy at seeing the mastery of this hawk, its freedom and skill, its movement without let or hindrance through the upper air. All that had ever been chained or confined in his spirit leapt with the bird; he saw it as a perfect creature at liberty to go as it wished, unmoved by feeling and unhampered by defeat.
And, as he watched, a misselthrush rose from his side and mounted through the clear air until it swung out above the hovering kestrel. Then it came in to the attack, harassing the bigger bird. The windhover changed its position, but once again the misselthrush darted forward.
Suddenly the magnificent bird of prey wheeled, as though it did not desire to bicker with such an unworthy opponent, and fell away down from the hill, into the broad valley and over the fields of red corn, poising once more, at a lower level, above a dark spinney. It was hard now for Gwyndoc to follow the hawk. He held his hand low over his eyes and squinted hard, but as he found it again he saw a herdsman come out stealthily from among the trees with a sling in his hand. He watched the man stoop and select a pebble and fit it into the little leather bag at the end of the thongs. Gwyndoc would have shouted a warning to the bird had he been close enough for his voice to be heard. But it was hopeless. He saw the man bend back and swing his arm over.
“O lord of the two lights, the greater and the lesser, let the slave miss! Let him miss, master, and I swear I will sacrifice three black cocks to you this very night!” Gwyndoc’s hands tore at his cloak fringe in anxiety as he waited. Then he saw the windhover fall, a tattered rag of bloody feathers, vertically to the hard ground. He watched the excited herdsman rush out from the cover of the little wood, waving his arms and shouting to his fellows. And the young chief rolled over and thrust his face among the coarse grass. With his hands he tore at the clover and thrust his nails into the chalky soil. He could have wept or screamed out. His sandal-toes dug holes in the springy turf.
“My hawk, my friend, I will find the dog,” he sobbed. “I will find him before the sun goes down and have his sling-hand taken from him. The filthy dung-eater, the scab, the mud-viper! I will have him for you, I swear, hawk!”
His fingers found a stone, and he rolled over to fling it like a curse at the innocent herdsman and found Ygerne standing over him, her golden hair streaming out behind her and a plaid of her father’s clan wrapped close round her tall lithe body. She was smiling down at him, her big blue eyes half-closed in amusement. Gwyndoc stared at her, caught half-way between anger at the bird’s needless death and embarrassment at being seen acting like a headstrong child. As the girl smiled at him, his eyes fell away from hers and he tossed the stone a little way into the gorse, as though he had forgotten why he had ever picked it up.
The girl spoke first, teasing and still smiling. “So the great warrior chief is going to torture a poor ragged cow-watcher for doing something he has done himself many times in sport!”
Gwyndoc’s anger flared up again. “He is a slave,” he said. “He is born to filth and pain. He is not a gentleman, to kill when he pleases, as we are. Such cattle are born only to be killed. Who is he to slay a bird like the windhover? He cannot fight; he is not handsome; he cannot fly!”
The girl kneeled down in the heather beside the young man. “And can you fly, then, Gwyndoc?” she said.
The young chief went sullen. “That man is a barbarian. He has no right to act like a lord and kill as the mood takes him.”
Ygerne laughed out loud and pointed her finger at the boy. “Oh, hark at you,” she said. “Barbarian, indeed! And I suppose you think you are not a barbarian!”
This was too much for Gwyndoc. He jumped to his feet and began to wave his arms about, as he always did when he got excited. “I am not a barbarian,” he said. “Do I not wear fine clothes? Look at this tunic—it is fine linen. Look at my gorget—it is fine gold. Look at my sandals—they are Spanish leather. Look at my sword, and my belt, and my cloak.” And as he spoke he held out his cloak and his sword for the girl to examine. But she still laughed. “That only means that your father bought those things for you. A black African could buy those things if he had enough sheep, or tin, or corn. So you see, it is only the sheep that have bought you your sword and your cloak and your gold necklace. The sheep cannot teach you not to be a barbarian!”
The young man was now almost beside himself with her teasing. “I speak Latin,” he shouted. “I know my Grecian history! I have been to Sicily.”
But Ygerne was going to plague him to the last. “Yes,” she went on, “but you don’t speak very good Latin, even I know that. I have heard little Gallic boys speaking it better than you do. And I don’t suppose you know your Greek history as well as you know your tribal history! And although you have spent a short trading holiday in Sicily, you have spent longer at your uncle’s school for druids on Mona! You are no more a Roman than I am. Not so much, if it comes to that, because I did have a Roman grandmother, although the clan never recognised her.”
Gwyndoc hopped about in rage. “You are a woman,” he said, “and you cannot be expected to know the meaning of things. You are only fit to have babies and feed the doves! You cannot wield a sword, or wrestle, or swim over the broad rivers! You cannot even——” But before he could finish his last insult the girl took the edge of his long cloak and, catching him off his balance, pulled him over suddenly onto his back. Then, before he could resist, she dragged his cloak over his head and, as he began to shout, stuffed the end of it into his mouth. Then she ran as fast as she could down the hillside towards the stream, laughing.
She did not get very far before Gwyndoc came bounding after her, his hair and great cloak streaming out behind him as he ran. As Ygerne looked quickly over her shoulder she saw that his face was not so serious or angry as it had been. In fact, she thought that he looked really rather handsome, and she liked the way he leapt over any rocks that stood in the way. Although she was just a little frightened that he might hurt her, she began to slow down so that he would not be too long before he caught her.
She heard his feet come thudding up behind her and braced herself in case he swept her off her feet as he passed. But Gwyndoc disappointed her. For a moment or two he ran alongside her, his face set, almost without looking at her; then he pulled away in front of her, racing at top speed down the slope. The girl pulled up, breathless and wanting to cry out to the young man to stop and come back to her, but by the time she felt able to call his name he had gone too far down the hill.
Ygerne sat down on a stone and almost wept that she should have spoiled this first love-meeting. She could have cried with rage, when suddenly she saw Gwyndoc’s purpose: he was trying to impress her with his speed and skill. Before him, a flock of sheep were cropping the short grass, a shaggy sheepdog following them up slowly, his tongue lolling from his open jaws. Gwyndoc leapt on, in a frenzy of energy, over the dog’s back and right into the midst of the flock! The startled sheep scattered in all directions, and the young man, now laughing like a drunken madman, ran on to the head of the flock, outstripping the frightened animals and sweeping up the flock-leader in his arms with a single movement. For a few moments the chief continued in his headlong course, until his momentum was spent. Then, with the sheep struggling frantically in his cloak and the dog barking angrily at his heels, he turned and began to run up the hill again towards Ygerne, still laughing.
As he approached, Ygerne called out to him, relieved that he was coming back to her and that she had not spoiled the meeting after all. “Gwyndoc, you fool! What do you think you are doing!” “Bringing a present to a sharp-tongued young woman who had a Roman grandmother,” he said, panting hard now.
“Put the creature down, this minute,” called the girl. “You will hurt it, and then what will the gods say?” But before the boy could answer, a ragged figure, swathed in sheepskin and wearing a dirty sun-hat of straw, appeared from behind a gorse clump, lower down the slope. For a second or two this apparition watched Gwyndoc’s efforts to drag the sheep up towards Ygerne, then, waving a stout crook in the air to emphasise his words, he shouted, “Young Lord Gwyndoc, put that animal down this minute! Do you hear? You’ll ruin it! What do you think I spend my time doing, if you please? Tending sheep so that you can throw them about the place like bags of hay?”
Gwyndoc turned in surprise and embarrassment. “Why, it’s Dwyggon, my father’s old shepherd! I did not know it was his flock!” Then he shouted down to the old herdsman, “Quiet, slave. I’ll have your hide taken from you if you dare to address me like that!”
As Gwyndoc spoke these words the old man jumped in the air and began to shamble up the slope, waving his crook menacingly, his face red with anger and exertion. “What?” he roared. “What? Why, I’ll turn your breeches down and beat some sense into you with my stick. I’ve done it before, in your good father’s time, and I’ll do it again.”
The young warrior looked half-ashamed towards Ygerne and grinned. Then he dropped the kicking animal to the ground, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. “By Belcader, and he has done, too,” he said, “many a time! I bear the marks yet!” He turned round to face the old man. “Go home, you old dotard,” he shouted, “or I’ll have the hairs of your beard plucked out one by one!” He made a derisive noise and laughed to see the shepherd’s angry expression as he increased his panting efforts to come up the steep slope.
Then Gwyndoc turned to the girl. “Come on,” he said, “or the old fool will try to thrash me! He’s soft in the head and forgets that times change! I would not like to have the alternative of bending down while he beat me or of cutting his head from his shoulders!”
Ygerne smiled at his words, for she sensed the young man’s natural kindness and softness of heart, and wondered at the effort it must cost him to appear hard and callous, aggressive and imperious, when he was with the other young tribesmen. Like other pastoral peoples, Gwyndoc was by nature a lover of all animals and of the folk who tended them. It was only that tragic Celtic tradition that made him play the warrior’s part; that inordinate love of coloured finery and beautiful weapons, an almost feminine delight in textures and decorations, of war-songs and death dances. We are simple folk, the girl thought; we fight only to keep the land and to give ourselves an excuse for feasting and tales. If the Romans were to come and rule us, we should be quite happy after we had got used to the idea. In fifty years’ time we should be content to let them do our fighting for us, while we lived like lazy children in the country. She might even have spoken these words to Gwyndoc, but he interrupted her with more violence than she had looked for; and when she realised what was happening, she was over his shoulder and he was clambering as fast as he could back to the flat summit of the hill. At first she struggled a little, then she lay as still as she could, listening to his feet thudding on the turf and his breath coming fast.
In a little while the old shepherd was out of sight. “You can put me down now,” she said. “He cannot catch us now.” But Gwyndoc kept on, across the flat stretch of heather, then down the slope to where the river started, on the other side of the hill. “Put me down, Gwyndoc,” she said again. “I am quite able to walk.”
At first the young man ignored her. Then he spoke. “On one condition, lady,” he said. “Either apologise for laughing at me or say a prayer to the ghost of Caesar in Latin!” And he chuckled at his joke. The girl’s answer was to kick at his chest as hard as she could. “Apologise to a boy!” she said. “A boy who runs away from an old shepherd because he is afraid of having his behind smacked? Never! We Romans are made of harder stuff than that!” And she kicked again.
Gwyndoc didn’t answer. Instead he took a firmer hold on her and scrambled on even faster towards the stream. His strong hands were hurting now, and Ygerne was beginning to feel rather sick as she dangled over his broad back, her head above his heels.
The sound of the stream was quite loud now. “Please put me down, Gwyndoc,” wailed the girl. But he did not reply. “I will apologise,” she said. Gwyndoc only chuckled. “I will say a prayer in Latin for you,” she went on. “But please put me down. I am going to be sick.” The young man laughed aloud. “What, in Latin?” he said. “Don’t worry, cold water is a sovereign remedy for sickness,” he said laconically.
Ygerne pretended to cry. “Oh, do put me down, I feel so ill—and the water will spoil my new dress. I put it on specially for you.” Gwyndoc jolted her on his shoulder even harder. “Have no fear, lady, you shall have another dress twice as beautiful as this one, I promise it.”
Ygerne began to punch and kick again, and was about to scream in annoyance when she felt Gwyndoc’s feet totter and slip, and then they were both rolling in the cold water. Ygerne scrambled to her feet, gasping and groping for some bush or weed to hold on to. When she opened her eyes, she saw that Gwyndoc was standing up in the water, the ripples up to his chest. She held out her hands, and he laughed again and pushed her over, into a shallow part of the stream. By now she was weeping with vexation and fear. As her hand touched the bed of the stream her fingers closed on a sharp pebble, and when Gwyndoc bent over her to raise her to her feet she struck upwards at his face. Then she shrank back as he still came towards her, blood trickling from his cheek.
For a moment his face was dark with a surprised anger. Then he laughed and whisked the girl up in his arms and carried her up the bank towards the shelter of the gorse bushes. She put up a hand and wiped the blood away with her fingers, and then Gwyndoc kissed her, very hard. The blood ran from his cheek on to her own, and she put both her arms round his neck and hung on to him.
As they lay down in the heather the sun came out stronger than before, and steam began to rise from their wet clothes. “Your teeth are chattering, Gwyndoc,” said the girl at last, “and I feel that I am going to sneeze at any minute. We must take off our things and let them dry in the sun. We must not go back to the town with a cold. That would spoil everything.” She smiled at him, showing her even white teeth, and he grinned back and nodded. Then he crawled round to the other side of the bush and dragged off his tunic and breeches. When he saw the girl’s long shift spread out on the heather, he called, “Ygerne, let me know when your things are dry. I’ll wait here till you call.” And to pass the time away he began to practise bird-calls and wolf-cries.
The sun was sinking when they left their little sheltered valley and made their way towards the edge of the hill. And as they walked together, hand in hand, Ygerne whispered, “Oh, if life could always be like this—the sun, the sound of the stream, the blue sky, the heather, the bees, and the first flowers.” She looked up at Gwyndoc’s face and saw the cut that stretched across his cheek. I have put my mark on him, she thought. He is my man now by the magic of a wound. Wherever he went that scar would bring me back to his mind, and he would remember this day. Now I have marked his face, he is always mine!
Gwyndoc looked down at her. “What are you smiling to yourself about, you sorceress?” Ygerne smirked and said, “I am thinking what a fierce lover you are, making me love you against my will, as you have done.” Then she looked away, her eyes cast to the ground in modesty. Gwyndoc felt his heart beat frantically again, and he wanted to shout and run down the steepest slope of the hill holding tight to the girl, but she seemed to divine his reckless intentions and said, “Look below. Isn’t it a splendid view from here? And all ours to enjoy together.”
At the hill’s foot the broad cornlands stretched almost to the limits of the city, the full ears tossing in the late afternoon breezes, making the plain like a rolling red sea, touched to fire here and there by the last rays of the sun. Little green spinneys, left when the forests were cleared away, for shelter or to house the charcoal-burners, broke the monotony of the landscapes; and far away, almost on the skyline, was the sea itself. The sea from which they had all come in their movement westwards; the sea that separated them from their relatives and blood-brothers in Belgium. As they stared away into the distance, they could even imagine that they saw tall ships putting into port—ships with red hide sails, ships from Gaul, coming for grain or hunting dogs, and bringing gold mirrors, or gorgets, or finely-woven clothes. They even thought they could pick out the breakers lashing whitely against the sides of these ships and the small coracles going out to take off the visitors.
Then they looked again, and all they saw was an evening mist rising after the hot day, and they knew that they could not see the sea, or the ships, or the tiny waves lapping on the wooden planks. They turned their eyes to the city, Cunobelin’s capital, where it lay, stretching over the gently undulating countryside, surrounded by crops and herds. Camulodun, straggling without pattern within its broad low walls; the blue wood-smoke rising alike from beehive hut and Roman villa; a shambling, unformed, pioneer city, with its dark alleyways and midden-heaps set cheek by jowl with its pillared baths. A city in process of developing a spirit, where the Royal Mint and the adder-pit were institutions of an equal eminence; a city that housed a proud people, a new people, full of the energies and ambitions that must prompt any pioneer. A city that was being built by a people without fear of any man of the outside world. A city on whom the gods smiled.
Gwyndoc looked thoughtful for a moment. “By all the gods, but if the Romans tried to take this from us we would cut their hearts out and eat them before their eyes!”
Ygerne looked at him archly. “Don’t forget my Roman grandmother,” she said, and Gwyndoc took her roughly by the shoulders and kissed her so fiercely that his cheek began to bleed again.
And as they clung together, their cloaks wrapped about them now against the evening winds, a low, mournful sound of horns came up from the houses. At first they could not be sure what the sound was, for the breeze took it and whipped it away from their ears before its message could be interpreted. But at last they understood, as the long blasts echoed and re-echoed about them, and for an instant they shrank back from each other and looked almost with horror towards the city.
“The King,” they both said together. “Yes,” said Gwyndoc, “we are listening to the horns of death. His spirit is rising from the city now.”
“What will happen now, Gwyndoc,” whispered the girl. “Will Caradoc . . . ?” But the young man interrupted her. “Get down,” he said, “on your face, girl. The King’s spirit is passing.” And he almost pulled her to the ground with him.
The melancholy horns still sounded as they crouched, and suddenly a light rain came in from the sea and passed over the city. The two lovers heard its swishing sound and looked up to see it approaching them across the fields of rich corn, bowing down the laden ears as it came. Then it moved up the hill and passed over them, leaving their cloaks wet and their faces glistening. Their eyes followed it over the brow of the hill, and as they watched a little rainbow showed briefly for a second above them, and then disappeared as the sun went down.
“He is gone now,” said the young man. “We can rise again.” And they made their way to the foot of the slope without speaking a word to each other. But as they approached the walls Gwyndoc turned to the girl. “Why is your face so grave?” he said. “We have each other, even though the Father is gone. We are betrothed now, so why do you frown?” For a moment Ygerne did not answer, and when she did her voice was almost inaudible with foreboding. “Caradoc may be king,” she said. Gwyndoc laughed at her, perhaps a little consciously. “But Caradoc is our friend, is he not?” he said. The girl shuddered. “He was,” she answered, “but yesterday he offered me marriage—and I refused him. Now, if he is the Father, he may repeat his offer, with the fire or the adder-pit as the alternative.” She shuddered again as she spoke. “It is his right,” she said.
Gwyndoc laughed again, but the gaiety had gone from his voice. “Adder-pit, nonsense! Caradoc will give his consent without any barbaric foolery like that! He is my friend, you must not forget. We belong to a new generation. We are enlightened people, the Catuvellauni, these days. We do not sacrifice human life like that now, remember.”
They passed within the walls. “Enlightened people,” repeated the girl. “Then what is happening to these wretches now?” and she pointed to a line of stakes set along the roadside, on the common land where no houses had been built. Tied fast to each oaken post, a man hung head downwards, his breast bared for the knife. Gwyndoc put his arm round the girl’s shoulders and turned her face towards him. “Do not look at them,” he whispered. “That always happens when a King dies. That is not our doing, it is the druids who order it. And, besides, they are not of us. They are of other tribes—political prisoners, hostages from the Iceni and Brigantes. You must not think of them. They are less than men.”
Ygerne began to tremble violently. “They are men, like you and Caradoc. And what if they do not belong to the Catuvellauni—neither do I, do not forget that.”
As they passed, one of the wretches heard her voice and called out, thickly and piteously, his words only half-recognisable because of his suffering and different dialect. “Lady, Oh lady, save me! Save me, lady! I have a wife and three small children, lady! Let me go back to them, I have been here so long!”
Ygerne turned towards the creature, but Gwyndoc pulled her back to him. He shouted at the writhing figure, “Silence, you pig! It is a noblewoman you speak to. But for the law I would end your life now, you dog.”
The girl tried to pull away from Gwyndoc, almost horrified. “You brute,” she sobbed, “you are like the others.” But Gwyndoc hustled her quickly away from the stakes, and as they went the condemned man cried out again, “Yes, lord! Kill me! Kill me now if you will not release me! I cannot suffer any longer.” And then they were among the houses, and out of earshot.
When Ygerne looked at the young chief again she saw that his face too was wet with tears. His voice shook as he spoke. “Oh, Ygerne, I know it is terrible. It is dark and full of horror for us all. But what can a man do? It is the law, and the druids have eyes everywhere.”
Ygerne’s loathing twisted to compassion as she looked at his tortured face. “But, Gywndoc,” she said, “we could have loosed his ropes and left him to make his way out of the town. That would have been easy. We could not have been seen.”
The young man turned her round for a moment and pointed back towards the stakes. “Look there,” he said. And as she followed his pointing finger she saw that a white-clad priest stood beside each prisoner, and that each priest held a flaming torch in his hand. She looked back quickly. “But they were not there when we passed,” she said incredulously. Gwyndoc patted her arm. “Yes, they were,” he said slowly. “I saw them a long way off. And they saw us. They were hiding in the long grass, watching everything we did. If I had loosed your friend, how long do you think that I should have lived to enjoy your gratitude?”
They walked further into the town, among the haphazard huts and rude stone buildings, and everything was silent. The hand of gloom seemed to have closed over the settlement. No children rolled in the streets; no beggars stretched out shrunken hands from the doors of the sheds. Even the dogs had forsaken the middens and crouched in the darkness, wondering at the strange stillness that had overtaken men.
From the far end of the town, cattle lowed from some distant byre, but their mournful cries only seemed to emphasise the hanging quietude. As the lovers hurried now between the clustering houses they heard frightened whispers from the half-open rooms and saw eyes staring out from the darkness at them, afraid of any footsteps.
At the end of the alley-way that opened on to the newer part of the city an old cripple woman leaned against her broken door, too weak to move inside as the other tribesmen had done. She was wailing to herself, “The Father is gone now. Cunobelin is gone to the darkness and left us. Oh, the bright blood must flow in rivers for his spirit’s release! Only blood can make his passage easy, for the gods are greedy! Oh, Master, Cunobelin, why did you go and leave us now! What have we done to be punished, Father?” As she wailed, her twisted body rocked to and fro among the refuse at her door and her frail hands pulled at her hair in misery.
“I did not think that a man’s death could cause such fear,” said Gwyndoc. “In battle they die and are soon forgotten; but when they die in their beds all the world must know and suffer.”
“We have not seen a king die before,” answered the girl. “And they must go to their graves with many followers to keep them company.”
Gwyndoc looked grimly at the girl. “You speak truth,” he said. “By tomorrow at sundown there will not be a prisoner or a sick slave left alive in Camulodun. There will be sacrifices wherever the Catuvellauni live, both in this land and in the King’s lands over the sea.”
Ygerne shivered. “But surely it is wrong that one man’s death should bring such pain and suffering on the innocent ones,” she said. Gwyndoc nodded and shrugged his shoulders. “It is the law,” he answered, “and those who disobey it die themselves. I dream of a kingdom where the old ways are forgotten and men live in sunshine, without fear, to hunt and sing as they wish.”
“The Romans would give us that kingdom,” said the girl, and then fell silent at what she had dared to put words to. At first Gwyndoc’s face showed a momentary glimpse of hope; then his jaw set again, and he looked serious, even angry. “I am not a Gaul,” he said. “But we are young, Gwyndoc, and we love each other,” Ygerne whispered. The young chieftain placed his hand across her lips, so that she should say no more.
For a few moments they stood, half-afraid, before the doors of the great Council House, looking up at the long-dry heads that nodded on spikes above the roof. “They have been there since Cunobelin’s father died,” said Gwyndoc. “They were Pictish kings who were conducting a peace conference when he died. They waited too long.” As they looked up at the roof they saw carrion crows gathering over the city in a dark army. “They always know,” went on the young man. “They wait at the edge of battlefields and make their nests in burial grounds.”
The girl shuddered, and they went through the great wooden gates into the Council House. Inside, all was chill and dark. Only one torch glimmered in the long room, set in a bronze socket near the entrance to the King’s chamber. This door was closed, shutting the lovers away from all sound. But as they waited for a moment in the hall, it opened a little way and angry voices sounded. Many men were arguing, shouting each other down, and Caradoc’s voice seemed to be giving orders. It appeared that he was in charge of the meeting.
“He is King,” whispered Gwyndoc, “by the sound of his voice. They have elected him and not Reged, his brother. Now the Romans must look to themselves if they dare to meddle with the Belgae! What can have happened to Adminius, then? He stood strong in the King’s favour, and older men liked him because he kept peace with Rome.”
As he spoke these words the door swung open violently and a short black-haired young man strode out of the chamber, waving his hands about and shouting. Laughter followed him from the lighted room, and he paused for an instant before he went out into the street, turning and shaking his fist towards the maddening voices. “You shall soon know the answer, Belgic fools! You shall know that you have chosen wrong when the galleys come and your miserable hovels are burnt above your heads!” His outburst was followed by another roar of laughter, and he almost ran out into the courtyard.
“That was Adminius,” said Ygerne. “He is very angry. I have never seen him like that before. He means evil.” Gwyndoc smiled grimly. “Yes,” he said quietly, “he has always shown his smooth side while the King lived, but now he is disappointed. But we had better not laugh at his misfortunes; we may have something to curse about ourselves in a moment.” “Oh, Gwyndoc,” said the girl, “I am afraid of Caradoc, now that he is King. He is sure to refuse his consent to our marriage. He will remember that I slighted him, and he is not the man to forgive an injury.”
She looked at Gwyndoc and saw a face that she had not known before. His mouth worked, and his brown hand had crept to his throat-ring and was pulling at the shining metal. “I am a noble,” he said hoarsely, as though to himself. “My blood is as good as Caradoc’s. My sword-arm is as strong as his. You are my woman, should the Sun himself deny it.” She was half-horrified at his blasphemy, but proud of her power over him. He pushed a small knife into her hand. “Hide this in your gown,” he said. “I have its fellow. Should he deny me, not one of us three must leave this room again alive. Wait for his answer and see that you strike yourself surely if he refuses. I shall see that he follows quickly after his father; I know his weak spots. Then I shall come with you.”
He bent and picked her up with a sudden violent movement. She began to struggle at first with sheer surprise, but when Gwyndoc strode forward and kicked open the door of the King’s room she lay still with fright against her lover’s heaving chest.
First she heard Gwyndoc’s deep voice, respectful yet almost challenging. “Welcome and long life, my King,” he said. “Two of your most loving people come to greet you, and to ask you, as their first request, that they may marry and so come to bring you other subjects as loyal as themselves!”
There was silence in the room after these words, and then a great roar of good-humoured laughter. Then, before Ygerne fainted away from fear and excitement she heard the King say, “Blessings on you both, my dearest friends, and may you never love one another less than you do at this moment!”
And Ygerne heard that Caradoc’s voice was as gentle and as courteous as it had ever been. She began to cry softly, half from relief and half from disappointment that the King should so soon have forgotten that he had loved her himself.