By early evening on the third day Gwyndoc and his henchmen reached the neighbourhood of Evrauc. They had eaten little since they started out on their last quest, and the rough country and thick forests had tired them. So when they came within sight of the beehive huts clustering round the looming grey structure of Cartismandua’s house, they halted and lay at the edge of a wood, having tethered their horses in a clearing, and watched. For they were close enough to the settlement for them to see the smoke rising from the chimney-holes in the wattle roofs and even to see the Brigantes moving about in some of their more open streets.
At the wood-side they made a meal of oatcakes and the hard dry meat-strips which they had carried with them, for they did not dare light a fire. Arddog, looking round for nests of stray hens that might have provided eggs for them to suck, found a little stream, and they went back to it in turn, always leaving one man on watch. And since they had no cups with them they knelt down at the water’s edge and lapped like dogs.
Only once did anyone from the town approach their hiding-place. Just as the first cool evening winds began to blow, two children, a boy and a girl, ran through the gates and came zig-zagging towards them, playing some chasing-game. From the colour of their hair and the similarity of the tartan tunics they wore they must have been brother and sister. As the children, laughing and shouting, headed in the direction of the wood the three men were forced to creep back under cover of the trees and to crouch in the bracken. “Little fools!” muttered Gwyndoc. “They do not know the danger they run.”
“Danger for all of us,” said the broken-nosed Graig, his hard face belying his anxiety, for he once had had children of his own, yellow-haired and noisy like that. He reached for his strong bow and fitted an arrow to the string. The others looked at him silently, their eyes full of fear.
Then Gwyndoc smiled again and put his hand to the arrow head, as though holding it back. “They are going away,” he said. “They have not seen us.”
And Graig wiped the sweat from his forehead and said, “I owe the gods a sheaf of arrows for that!” and he gave Arddog a punch of relief that bowled him over into the fern.
When dusk fell, and few folk seemed to be stirring in the township, the three men left their spinney and made their way over the fields, slowly and cautiously, stopping at each sound of bird or beast that might be a signal from one watcher to another. As the night came down, black and moonless, they lay underneath the high wooden stockade at its nearest point to the Queen’s house.
At the far corner of the settlement there were lights from fires and torches, and many voices were now singing to the accompaniment of flutes and drums. It seemed as though a tribal dance might be in progress, a celebration of one thing or another—a boy-child or a litter of black pigs. The waiting three grinned at each other. “They will soon be drunk,” whispered Arddog. “Then it will be easier for us!”
Craig’s broken face wrinkled. “I’d rather be getting drunk with them there than lying here shivering,” he said humorously.
Arddog said, “Be quiet, you ox! You will not wish you were there when we start! Remember what you are about!” and half-seriously he took Graig by the throat and shook him, repaying him for the punch in the wood. So for a while Graig did not speak a word, but rubbed his throat carefully, where Arddog’s hard fingers had pressed the gorget into his neck. He vowed he would get his own back, all the same, when they had finished the work of the night. That Arddog ought to keep his horseman’s hands to himself!
Soon afterwards a villager passed within three yards of their hiding-place in the ditch. He was a tall lithe man, and from his round hide shield and long javelin he seemed to be on patrol duty round the stockade. But this night he did not seem to be very watchful. He stumbled and swayed from side to side, and once dropped his heavy shield with a clatter and had to make many attempts before he could pick it up again. As he passed the tribesmen he was laughing quietly and talking to himself in the flat nasal tone of his people. Then he stopped, slapped his thigh, shook his long spear at the sky and shambled off again.
“He has been too often to the mead-jar to be very dangerous,” whispered Gwyndoc grimly. “It will be long enough before he passes us again.” But as he spoke the guard whistled, a high piercing sound, and as they faced each other in alarm they heard an excited snuffling and the padding of a dog’s feet. Gwyndoc looked up and saw that a hound, a great wolf-hound, had been following the patrol round the stockade.
The dog came close to them and stopped, looking in their direction and sniffing. They could see it clearly now, not many yards away, a big grey creature whose eyes shone even in the darkness.
The guard whistled again, more distant now, and as the hound began to growl Graig took careful aim and shot it through the head. Then Arddog reached out and dragged the writhing body into the ditch beside them. After a while the whistling stopped and the hound’s legs ceased to thresh. The three men waited a moment longer, then they scaled the wooden wall, mounting Graig’s shoulders and dragging him up after them.
Below them all was still and deserted. They dropped down into the thick grass and lay still for a moment in the shadow of the Queen’s house. Then, when their breath came easily again, they rose and ran swiftly to a side-door, which they knew well enough, and so into the ante-room, without meeting anyone.
There, in the dark, the straw crackled beneath their feet and, as they moved, one of them knocked over a bench. They stood frozen for a while, hardly daring to breathe, their hearts hammering at their sides. Then, as their eyes became accustomed to the blackness, they saw a faint line of light before them, coming from below a door, and as they felt for each other before they went on, a peevish, high-pitched voice called out from the inner room, “Who is there? Is it Glanaff? Who is it? Come in; don’t stand there in the darkness like a fool! Come in, I say, and let me see you!”
The others heard Gwyndoc’s vicious chuckles and the sound his sword made as it came out of its hard leather sheath. They felt him begin to move, and they pulled out their own swords and moved with him towards the line of light. And when they reached the door they kicked it open, suddenly, and stood staring into the low, dimly-lit room.
Not one of them had ever seen Cartismandua like this before. In their minds was an impressive, almost monstrous effigy of power, a fierce woman whose word was law from the broad river in the south to the great hills in the north; someone infinitely strong, infinitely treacherous, infinitely deserving to die. . . . Yet, as their wild eyes searched the room, they saw no royal personage such as they had pictured in their dreams above Viroconium. The only being in the place was a hunched and shrivelled old woman who crouched on a heap of skins before the smouldering fire, a small creature, hardly bigger than a child, whose yellow lined face was turned towards them, framed by the folds of a dull-coloured cloak. And as the tribesmen looked at her, open-mouthed, the hag stretched out a quivering bony hand towards them. They saw the silver bracelets on her wrists and the gold threads woven into her tartan glittering in the firelight. This was their quarry, the old Queen Cartismandua.
The old creature’s eyes were hooded, and her voice was thin and snarling. “Well,” she said, “what is your business? I see that you are strangers. I even see that you are Caradoc’s people. That much is in your faces! Speak up, you dolts! Tell me your message!”
She chuckled to herself for a moment, poking about in the ashes with the toe of her little shoe. Then she looked up at them again, from under the shadow of her hood, and her eyes stayed on Gwyndoc. “I seem to know you, my friend. Are you not a scullion from Caradoc’s hall? And were you not in my own kitchens, on some business or other, once?”
For a while Gwyndoc smiled back at her, and his face began to work. But she went on, “Are you afraid to tell me why you are here, then? Well, shall I tell you? Yes, I will tell you, since I have long expected a visit from you. You are here to avenge the Badger and perhaps the wounds which my old friend Jagoth so rightly inflicted on you! Is it not so?” She grinned wickedly at them, and Gwyndoc stepped forward a pace and raised his sword to strike.
But the Queen held up her withered hand, and her voice was commanding. She said, “Stay! This is no occasion for haste. You have no need to fear that your mission will be interrupted. As you see, my guards have deserted me to drink in the village, or you would not be here now. They no longer obey me, but live in my house as my masters. My body-servants have left me. Even my slaves have been taken to other houses.”
Her face formed itself into a ghastly grimace of irony, and she slowly uncovered her arm to the shoulder. In the firelight the men saw that the limb was half-eaten away by disease. Even Graig shuddered.
“You see now, my lords,” she said, “why I do not fear your swords! Why, you are small things, tiny snapping field-mice, the wind-blown creatures of the moment. I, who move each second in death’s dark shadow, cannot even force myself to fear you. What does it matter? By next sowing-time, or at the latest by snowfall, I shall have passed into freedom from this outworn, stinking body!”
Craig’s eyes turned away from the grinning toothless mouth, and Arddog began to look towards Gwyndoc, appealingly, like a dog asking to be let outside.
“Seat yourselves, gentlemen,” she went on, “and warm your hands by this fire. Even I can see that you are cold—or why should you be shivering so?” She laughed slily as she spoke, and the men shuffled their feet where they stood.
Then Gwyndoc said simply, “Madam, we care not to sit by your fire. We are here to put an end to you.” And he walked to her, his sword in his hand, while the others took their positions, one on either side of the door.
The old woman smiled again, more than ever like a vulture as thin neck thrust forward from its wrappings. “Come here, my boy,” she said, tired and almost gentle. “Let me see your sword, that fine instrument which will set me free for ever from this foolish and perhaps cruel old body of mine. Do not be shy now; come and let me examine your sword!”
She reached out to take the sword, and Gwyndoc sprang back, his teeth bared, the hair of his face bristling. And Cartismandua laughed, this time as loud as her dying body would let her, the tears standing in her eyes from the effort. And when she could speak again, she said, “The gods bless you, man, but I never thought to see a grown warrior afraid of what I’d do if he let me hold his sword!” Then Gwyndoc’s muscles slackened, and at last he went forward sheepishly and gave his sword to the Queen, who examined it carefully and expertly. She looked first at the rough-cast bronze hilt, then ran her thumb along the notches in the scarred blade. And when she looked up again at Gwyndoc she was smiling ruefully and shaking her head. “Young man,” she said, “this is a poor thing, a mere hedging tool, a rough mouth to kiss a queen’s throat!” And she flung the sword at Gwyndoc’s feet. As he stooped to retrieve it, his face flushed with anger. “What is wrong with it, old woman?” he said. “It has killed vermin before. It is not a weapon I keep for warriors!”
For a second the old queen glared back at him, two sudden patches of colour coming into her wizened cheeks. Then her face relaxed once more, and she smiled cynically, her hands falling helplessly at her sides. “Forgive me, my lords,” she said. “Sometimes, even now, I forget that I am a woman, and an old woman. I always wanted to be born a warrior, you understand. But we will let that pass. . . . The talk is of swords, and I repeat that yours is a poor one for the present purpose. Go you to that chest in the corner and bring me what you find there.” And she turned painfully and pointed towards a great iron-bound box at the end of the room.
Gwyndoc looked at her in wonder, then he did as she said, and came back carrying a long bundle wrapped in calf-skin. “Unwrap it,” ordered Cartismandua, and Gwyndoc obeyed her. Then he gasped with wonder and envy at what he saw: the fine, slightly curved blade was almost as long as a man might span with his arms wide-apart, and from end to end it was delicately engraved with gold-inlaid figures of running animals and huntsmen and signs, most of which Gwyndoc did not understand. The long silver hilt was carved into the shape of an eagle, its wings outspread to form the guards. Its opal eyes flashed as Gwyndoc tried the balance of the weapon. It made his own sword feel like a piece of unshaped iron, and the old woman smiled a little ironically as she watched his face working.
“You like it,” she said. “You like it as a child likes a new toy! Men are like children, yes, all of them, however remote and austere they may seem on the surface! Well, you like the sword—then use it! Use it cleanly and then keep it as a gift from Cartismandua, until such time as she meets you again—and she will, never fear! And when we meet, I will claim it from you again.”
And the men looked at her in astonishment. But she went on, “I have long kept this sword for tonight’s purpose. It belonged to one whom I loved many, many years ago. . . . Ah, it seems many centuries ago, when the seas were as narrow as trout streams and the great oaks sheltered from the unkind summer breezes behind blades of meadow-grass. . . . He used it well, who came to me from the rising sun, and, I promise you, it did him no dishonour! He was a true warrior, one of the greatest of them!”
As she spoke those last words her eyes ran over the travel-worn figure of the man before her, taking in his wild eyes and strained face, his tattered cloak and torn breeches. And under her gaze Gwyndoc felt nettled, as though the Queen had spoken disparagingly of him in praising her long-dead Scythian lover, and he was about to protest, but the old woman waved his words aside, shaking her head. “This is no occasion for childish quarrelling,” she said. “You have work to do which is no doubt hardly to your taste. And you must return before dawn the way you came. As for me, I am a tired old woman who seldom has any company now. . . . You will remember Jagoth? He often used to come in here and sit by my fire and tell me what the slaves had been doing that day in the kitchens. . . . A kind-hearted man, he was, though a little over-zealous when it came to prosecuting my orders. . . . Ah, a madman killed him one night when he was drunk. . . . Poor Jagoth, I often told him that the mead would kill him. . . .” And she chuckled to herself in the firelight for a moment.
Then she said, “You have a long journey to make, so I will not keep you. I have an even longer one. Do not forget that, though you hate me, I am a queen.”
Almost against his will, Gwyndoc gave her the royal salute with the new sword in his hand. She acknowledged the gesture, inclining her head. Then she said, “Please help me to rise.” Gwyndoc nodded to Arddog, who came forward and took the Queen as gently as he could by the arms, and steadied her as she knelt before Gwyndoc.
As she bowed her head the rich cloth fell away from her, and the men saw that her hair had gone, leaving the skull as bare as that of an old man, and they shuddered at the wrinkled neck.
Then Gwyndoc breathed deeply, and, taking a grip on the sword with both hands, swung it high above his head. And, as he did so, Cartismandua spoke again, this time addressing Graig, who stared fascinated through the rising smoke. “You with the broken nose, entertain me! Set me off on this voyage with a merry tale! I would die smiling!”
And Graig tried to tell a story he only half-remembered, his tongue stumbling over the words, his voice pausing here and there in uncertainty. Then the Queen spoke sharply again. “Strike!” she said. “This fool wearies me! He has no manners!” And Graig looked down, ashamed of himself, as the blow fell.
Her neck was so thin that one stroke severed the head easily and Gwyndoc bent swiftly to prevent the kneeling body from falling into the fire. For a moment the three men bowed their heads, then Gwyndoc suddenly said, “Caradoc!” and they all smiled again.
As they walked to the door Gwyndoc turned back and laid the long sword by the dead queen’s side. “I am not allowed to wear one, madam,” he said. “Take it with you. I have no wish to meet you again where you might come to claim it!”
And as he spoke to her he felt so weary that it seemed to him she had suddenly become young and beautiful again. She lay with a quiet smile on her flushed face, long black hair tumbling, it seemed, about her white shoulders. . . . Then it seemed to Gwyndoc that a bird broke out of her slightly parted lips, a linnet which wheeled about the room for a moment and then flew up through the smoke to the chimney-hole and out into the night.
And when he had seen this, he turned, and the three went through the door, two of them carrying swords in their hands. And in the ante-room many guards stood, staring past them, through the open door, at the body of their queen. And as the three walked forward the warriors fell back, their eyes averted, and let them pass unmolested.
Then, as they untethered their horses in the wood outside the town, they looked back and saw the great flames rising from the Queen’s house and glowing in the sky. And from the clustered huts round about the palace there seemed to come the sound of joyful singing and cries of merriment. So they rode away to the west.
Then on the afternoon of the second day they came to more open country, where the rock struck through the soil and few trees grew, and as the sun sank before them Gwyndoc reined in his horse. “My friends,” he said, “this is where you must leave me. I can offer you no more than a herdsman’s life from now on. A cow’s life among the beasts of the byre. But you are men, young men still, and your swords are still your own. Go to the south, both of you, and take service with Rome. There lies your only hope, now that the tribes are broken.”
And the men began to argue, saying that they loved Gwyndoc’s children and were content to be herdsmen and have him as their overlord. But he replied, “Go and get children of your own again and watch them grow. As for me, I wish to be no man’s overlord again. I wish to think for no man, and to pay no man, and to love no man. Go, my friends, I say, and leave me in peace.”
Then they saw that his mind was made up, and they dismounted and kissed his hand and said that they would come at his call, wherever they might be, whoever they might be serving, while there was breath in their bodies. But he only smiled at them and waved again and again as he watched them riding south along the valley. And they looked back and saw him sitting there on his white horse, with his greying hair blown back in the evening breeze. And Graig said to his companion, “There is a man who should have been a king.”
And Arddog answered, “Yes, but he lacks one thing—resolution. He would have been a king for but a short while, then others would have dragged him down. Perhaps he is happier as a follower, not as a leader of men.”
And when they were out of sight Gwyndoc turned his horse towards the west again. And as he did so, a strange thing happened; it seemed that, out of the corner of his eye, a long shadow thrown by the setting sun had come to his side, and it was the shadow of a big dog or a wolf. But when he turned his head to see, there was nothing there, and he rode on into the sunlight.
Then as the darkness fell he came to a small inn set on a hillside, and pushing open the swinging door he went in. At the long table in the middle of the room, his eyes shaded from the light by his black hood, sat Morag. When Gwyndoc entered, the thin lips smiled in recognition, as though he had expected his enemy to come. For a moment Gwyndoc stood in the doorway. Then he spoke. “Are you alone, Morag?” he said. And the other nodded his head, and then indicated a place at the table so that, for very pride, Gwyndoc was forced to sit beside him. Then Morag called to the kitchens and a young girl brought them both drink in long bull’s horns. Gwyndoc noticed that she was pretty, but rather heavy in the jaw for beauty. “She must bring much trade to the place,” he said, trying to appear unconcerned. But Morag merely looked at him steadily and smiled. “Why do you not wear a sword?” he said.