As the summer matured, Gwyndoc slowly came back to health in his mind and in his body. Now the dreams from which he had wakened screaming in the night came less and less frequently, and he began to walk quietly, alone, without looking back over his shoulder at every step he took.
At first Ygerne would not let him out of her sight, but gradually she became confident of him once more and would let him go to watch his cattle grazing and turn back into the house where the children would be needing her attention.
The Roman administration at Viroconium had given them permission to live in the small farmhouse that lay beyond the orchards of Hall i’ the Forest, on the twin conditions that Gwyndoc renounced all claims to succession as chieftain over any tribe or any body of men, and that he gave his solemn oath always to go unarmed, save during hunting, when he might carry a skinning-knife and a small deer-bow. As the adjutant had put it, when Gwyndoc reported to the garrison to take the oath, “Now you are no longer a tribesman. You are a dependent of a great military power, which reaches over half the world. You do not need weapons, my dear sir; we are your weapons!” And Gwyndoc had bowed his head gravely and had knelt to take the oath before the small bronze statuettes of the Roman gods, but translating them, as he spoke after the adjutant, into gods of his own. Then they had drunk a glass or two of a thin tart wine—from grapes grown in the adjutant’s own vineyards, he had proudly said. And after that Gwyndoc went back to the farm, pleased that the guards at the garrison gate had given him the royal salute, although they knew they were not supposed to! It was at least some comfort to know that one’s story had got round, even among the ordinary soldiers! It gave one a little background and helped to make one feel a real person still!
The little farmhouse lay, one-storeyed and thatched, within a circle of trees, almost in a forest glade. One path from the house turned to the left, through the trees, to the long low cattle-byre. And beyond that a little way lay the guest-house, a wooden hut set out with beds and a table and stools where travellers might rest—wanderers who might not appropriately lie in the house itself.
The other path, leading right from the house, descended steeply to the fields and the river, and it was this path which the family took when they went riding. Then Gwyndoc and Ygerne would go first, both riding white horses, followed by the two boys on small shaggy ponies. Bryn was quite a big boy for seven, and could already sit his pony well, his woollen cloak swinging behind him—a little chieftain. But Caradoc was only four and had to be strapped in his saddle with broad deer-hide thongs to keep him from jolting out of it when the ground was rough. Usually the boys rode happily together, but sometimes Bryn could hardly resist pointing out to his brother that when he was a big boy, too, he would be allowed to ride without the straps! And then little Caradoc would fly into a temper and ride at him, trying to get close enough to bite him. And sometimes, in the middle of an exciting run, the party had to halt while such a situation was straightened out. Once Gwyndoc would have flown into a violent rage at such an interruption, but now he would sit back on his horse and just laugh at the children and tease them into forgiving each other again!
And once, when Ygerne commented on this change in him, he said, “Dear one, life has been harsh enough to us all. But at last we have been given the chance of peace and love; and I will not be the first to break down the walls of such a heaven. Let the boys kiss each other again and ride on as friends! The deer can wait. There will be other, fatter deer for us to hunt before the day is out. And if there are not—why, there’s always tomorrow!”
He seldom spoke crossly to the children now; in fact, Ygerne became rather concerned by his manner towards them. “Why don’t you put your foot down, Gwyndoc?” she often said. “They must grow up to respect their father. You respected yours and I respected mine. We aren’t any the worse for it. Besides, it throws all the work onto me! I have to slap them or send them to bed, and they think I am a cruel mother to them. Only yesterday Bryn said that he was sure I was a cruel witch and not his proper mother at all! Then for the rest of the morning he and Caradoc ran round the yard calling ‘witch!’ after me whenever they saw me!”
And Gwyndoc laughed and said, “Well, you are a witch, aren’t you?” And she laughed too in the end, and said that he was as bad as his brats!
Usually when the household went riding, Graig and Arddog left their work as herdsmen and rode too, at the tail of the party. On them fell the work of skinning the deer after Gwyndoc had given the coup and of carrying back the tenderest parts of the creature on their saddle-bows. The children spent much of their time with the two herdsmen, and Bryn especially loved Graig and often asked him about his funny broken nose and said he wished he had one like it because it looked so fierce and warlike. But it took little Caradoc some time to get used to Graig’s face, and for a while Ygerne thought they would have to send the man away, the baby screamed so much when he came to the house. But Gwyndoc said that Caradoc must learn to love him; there would be harder things for the boy to do in life than that later on. And, anyway, Graig was almost a member of the family now, and it would be very wrong to send him away. Then at last, seeing Bryn so much attached to Graig, Caradoc became more daring, and in the end spent much of his time riding pick-a-back on the man’s broad shoulders as he went about his work in the fields.
And sometimes Graig and Arddog would make the children little toys. Graig was a good smith, and while he was beating out a small sword for Bryn, Arddog would be carving a wooden horse and chariot for the younger boy.
Arddog was obsessed by chariots, and when Graig was teaching Bryn to use a bow he would insist on the boy standing on a log which he would sway from side to side. “You cannot call yourself a bowman until you can shoot from a moving chariot,” said Arddog.
“Give the lad a chance,” said Graig, “you old warhorse! There are foot-soldiers as well as charioteers!”
But Arddog shook his head. “It is only right that a chief’s son should think in terms of chariots,” he said.
And Graig answered, “But as things are, how do we know he will ever be a chieftain himself?”
And the other said, “We know nothing, Graig. But we have to prepare for the future we desire, nevertheless.”
Sometimes the children would get very dirty or would tear their clothes when they were learning to be archers and charioteers, and then when Ygerne called them in to supper she would box their ears, and Graig and Arddog would come up too to have their ears boxed while the children watched. “It’s only right,” said Graig, when Arddog drew back proudly once. “She is the woman of the house, and we must submit to her. It sets a good example to the lads.” So Arddog came forward and Ygerne gave him an extra hard one, but smiling as she did it. And Bryn jumped for joy to see the leather-faced charioteer wince and clap his hand to his head, as he did.
Only once was there a break in the happiness at the farm, and that was when the children, following a stray cow, had wandered over the old battlefield on the hill. They came back that evening with the hilt of a broken sword; a hilt studded with small bosses of ivory and jet. Bryn took it to Gwyndoc, and then shrank back at the look which came over his father’s face, for he thought that Gwyndoc was about to strike him with the thing. But Ygerne went forward and took the hilt and flung it far among the trees outside, so that it was lost in the grass and small bushes.
“That sword belonged to Morag,” her husband said.
She took his arm. “It is broken, like Morag, like the Badger, like the past. It is no more. You must forget it now. This is a new world we live in, and the past has gone for ever.”
After that the children were forbidden to go to the old battlefield. And even Graig and Arddog got cross when Bryn tried to wheedle round them to take them there.
From time to time Ygerne and Gwyndoc went up to Hall i’ the Forest, leaving the men or the serving-woman to look after the children. And sometimes Gaius would call with military news at the farm. The Brigantes, he said, were in a state of unrest. It seemed that they were no longer content to serve two masters—Cartismandua and Rome. Two lots of taxes a year were too much, they argued; and besides, Rome did more for them than the old queen, who only took and took without giving back in return, as a good chief should do. It looked as though there might be trouble later in the year, as the Brigantian harvests had been none too good and supplies in Gaul had been pretty well absorbed by the Roman army there. “We’re lucky to be living quietly over on this side of the country, Gwyndoc,” he concluded as he rode away. And Gwyndoc smiled and said that he agreed with all his heart.
But that day he found Graig and Arddog and spent much time talking to them, urgently and almost fiercely. Ygerne came upon them, sitting on an upturned wagon in the barn, and she saw Gwyndoc’s hands raised again and again as he presented his argument, and she noted the intensity of their faces as they nodded at each point he made. But when they saw her they stopped talking, abruptly, and then began to look round and say that the roof needed mending before the winter rains came on. And Gwyndoc’s hands stopped waving, and he called her over to them and asked her opinion about keeping goats next year.
That night she said, “What are you up to, husband?” But he only smiled at her and said, “What mischief could I be concerned in? You know I have given my word never to carry a sword again.”
She was not satisfied with his answer, but she knew that it would be all she would get until he chose to tell her himself.
For a few days Ygerne’s peace of mind was clouded by the secret that was being kept from her. Then she laughed at herself, thinking that she was making mountains out of molehills and that the men were probably just reliving some story again, a story in which they had perhaps been actors, a story of their dark months of slavery in the old queen’s house. . . . Then other things came to take her mind from the incident. Bryn would fall and cut his knees, climbing among the boughs of the pear trees; or Arddog would run a splinter into his hand and need her attention; or Gylfa would come to the farm, with all the news from the garrison. . . .
One bright morning, they were all in the kitchen drinking the fresh milk from Gwyndoc’s dairy-herd when Gylfa rode up and came indoors, her deep yellow cloak flung back from her tight-fitting long green dress. Gwyndoc noticed the gold braid in her hair and the gay flush of her cheeks. But Ygerne noticed something else.
“I have brought you a basket of apples,” Gylfa said. “We picked them only this morning. The children will like them.” And Bryn and Caradoc whooped out of the kitchen to the door, where the great basket stood. Bryn looked at the green and the red and the gold of the fruit and said to his brother, “Apples always remind me of Aunt Gylfa. They are her colours.” Then the boys sat down to eat what they could before their mother came and took away the basket.
In the kitchen Ygerne said, “We are so glad, my dear. Do you hope it’s a girl, this time?”
And Gylfa said, “Yes, but I expect it will be another little boy-brat—with black hair this time, though! A little Roman! Gaius wants a lad of his own—though he’s completely in love with Madoc’s children. I’m quite fond of the man, you know, Ygerne. I didn’t think I would be when he first took me. He was so different.”
She smiled pleasantly at Arddog and Graig, who were standing with their milk-beakers in their hands, sheepishly trying not to look as though they were listening.
Then, as though to shock them still further, she said, “Of course, we Celts are a little old-fashioned in these matters! The Romans have so many curiously interesting ideas on the subject! Really, Ygerne, you should get Gwyndoc to let you come up to the hall and learn about it when Gaius has his next leave! Then perhaps you would produce a little black-haired boy to grow up with Bryn and Caradoc!”
Then Ygerne pretended to be very angry, although they could see she was laughing all the time; and she took up a small chicken that was being dressed for the table and chased Gylfa out through the door, calling her “slut!” and “Roman strumpet!” and other things that amused the herdsmen.
The children, their mouths full of apple, joined in the chase, but Gylfa was too agile for them all and reined in her horse by the wood’s edge to call back, “All right, Ygerne, if that doesn’t suit you, what about sending Gwyndoc up some time, and I will teach him the game!”
Then Gwyndoc, smiling, flung a Roman penny after her and she galloped away laughing; and they went back into the kitchen to think of names for the child when it should come in the new year. . . .
But towards autumn the shadow came back to Ygerne’s mind, for the men began to leave the children behind and to go out together each day, riding side by side and talking in whispers. And then, at last, when Gwyndoc came to her as she was making bread one afternoon and told her that they were going to ride on a hunting trip for a few days, the men alone, she was not surprised, but more anxious than ever. She stood, with the corn-flour up her arms, wiping her hands on her smock.
“When you went before,” she said, “the ride came near to killing you. Have you forgotten Jagoth’s irons so soon?”
But Gwyndoc smiled and said, “This is another thing, a different thing; and Jagoth is dead. I killed him.”
And Ygerne said, “You are a madman. They broke your body before, and the gods have seen fit to mend it again. Next time the gods will neglect the fool who tries to destroy their handiwork. I know you are going where men will destroy you. I can read it in your face. It has been in your face since the day you were talking to the men in the barn and I came on you unawares.”
Then Gwyndoc put his arm round her waist. “Ygerne,” he said. “I have waited for this day since Gaius brought me from the kitchens of the old queen. I swore an oath then which I must carry out now, or I shall never be my own man again. Try to understand that this time it is different; that unless I go this time the dark places of my heart will never know light again. Try to believe that this time I leave you for a few days at the most, and that when I return I shall kneel before you and swear another oath which I shall keep as surely as I intend to keep this one—never again to leave you and the children, never again to go against whatever you wish for me, never again to call my body or my soul my own—but only Ygerne’s. Will you give me your permission to go now?”
Ygerne put her hand on his head and looked at his face. She saw the long scar her stone had made when they were very young together and struggling in the stream.
“My mark is on you, Gwyndoc, isn’t it?” she said. “I suppose that it might act as a charm if I prayed to the gods; charm to keep you safe from all other wounds. Yes, I will ask the gods to do that.”
Gwyndoc took her floury hand and held it to his cheek. “I would rather go with your permission and laughter than without it and you in tears. For this is a joyful errand I go on, that shall make us all the happier in the years to come.”
And Ygerne said nothing, but only wiped the flour from his cheek with the edge of her tunic. He rose and said, “I shall be away so short a time, I shall not wish the children goodbye, for that would trouble them. We shall ride tomorrow, early, before you are up. We have far to ride.”
Then Ygerne said, “Is there a message for—anyone?”
And Gwyndoc said, “Tell Gaius that I pursue the other quarry this time, but that now only I am responsible.”
The following morning she did not rise when he left the house but lay in her bed pretending to be still asleep. She heard the men outside making ready, as quietly as they could, and looked through the window as they rode away. It was a bright sunny morning, and she saw that Gwyndoc rode with his cloak open so that all men should see he did not carry a sword. But both Arddog and Graig rode with their cloaks wrapped round them as they descended the steep slope that led away to the old battleground and the rising sun.