It was seven days since Gwyndoc and the herdsmen had left the farm. In the bower of Hall i’ the Forest, Gaius looked seriously across the table at Ygerne. “We shall have to go through some form of trial,” he said. “The Queen was murdered and Gwyndoc was identified with the others as he came from the room.”
And Gylfa said, “But don’t be so solemn, Gaius; you know that you can arrange these things. After all, you are the commander here.”
“This is something different,” said Gaius. “The murder was committed outside my territory and cannot be hushed up. It is a queen this time, and one who was at least theoretically on the side of Rome. This is not a simple matter of a slave-master, killed in a fit of anger. The Senate will have heard by now, and since Gwyndoc was under my immediate care I shall be asked why I allowed him to go.”
Gylfa smiled. “But how silly you are,” she said. “He is a grown man. How could you have stopped him!”
In spite of himself, Gaius had to laugh too. “Really, Gylfa,” he said, “you don’t seem to understand that I am a Roman soldier, under immediate orders from Rome, many hundred of miles away. And you, all of you—yes, even you my dear—are the conquered peoples who must obey Rome, through me! Had I been a little older, a little less foolish, I should have placed Gwyndoc under arrest, or at least have set guards on his door and forbidden him to leave the farm.”
“But that would have been, most unreasonable,” said Gylfa. “Sometimes I think you Romans have got stones where your hearts should be!”
“Do you?” said Gaius, taking her by the arm.
“No,” she said. “But it is all so stupid. What has he done? Killed an old queen who had betrayed his overlord. Yes, an old woman whose people wanted her out of the way. And Rome, too!”
Gaius nodded. “The position is actually more fantastic than you make it out to be. You see, the Senate decided weeks ago that if the unrest in Brigantia did not die down soon they would take her away and—well, dispose of her, unless natural death saved them the trouble of getting a headsman!”
“Well, can’t that be argued on Gwyndoc’s behalf?” said Ygerne.
Gaius shook his head. “No,” he said. “That is a military secret, and when you go out of this room, you must forget it.”
“How can she do that, you silly boy,” said Gylfa. “Come on, now, and begin to make a plan for Gwyndoc. Ygerne and I will be extremely cross with you and your foolish garrison if you can’t do something about it. Go and search for him, or something, then bring him back here and let him lie low till the fuss has died down.” She saw the refusal in the Roman’s face. “All right,” she went on, “let him come home and we’ll disguise him and give him a fresh name, and he can pretend to be a groom at Hall i’ the Forest, and go home to sleep at nights.”
“But I would know that he was not a groom,” said Gaius. “We must find him, yes, but then I must arrest him, and he must take his chance. I will get him good advocates, and perhaps he may escape with a comparatively slight punishment. But I am afraid the best we can hope for is five years in the galleys.”
Ygerne began to sob. “I could not bear him to be away as long as that. It would be terrible; he has already been away so long and suffered so much. The children would almost be grown up by the time he got back.”
Gaius came across to her and put his hand on her shoulder. “You must be quite logical about this, Ygerne,” he said. “Gwyndoc has done something very serious. By rights he should himself be killed for it. But I believe we can save him from that—although I am not sure whether I shall be left to see him through his troubles; it is likely that I may myself be punished for letting him go. They may even put me in the galleys. One never knows with the Senate these days. But we must be logical and, above all, brave. I pledge my word to do the best for both of us in this matter. I cannot say more.”
And Gylfa said, “Stay the night here. You are in an overwrought state. We could give each other comfort if you stayed.”
But Ygerne said, “No, I cannot stay. The children will be waiting for me. And I want to be in my own home to think about this thing tonight. I must leave you. Perhaps I shall come back in the morning to see if Gaius has anything more to say.”
Then Gaius buckled on his cloak and escorted her to the edge of the wood and kissed her tenderly before she left him. “Have courage,” he said. “I feel that there is a special god who looks over Gwyndoc. I feel sure that you will see him again before very long, and somehow I think that he will stay with you this time.”
And his words comforted Ygerne by their strange power, and she went indoors, unreasonably hopeful in view of all that had been said.
In the kitchen the serving-woman met her and said, “We have guests tonight, lady. Two of them; an old man and a young boy. They are singers, I think, on their way to Ireland and the halls of the chieftains.”
Ygerne heard little Caradoc crying out in his sleep from the other room and knew that she must go to him. She hardly heard what the woman had said. “I must go to the boy,” she said. Then a thought struck her. “Is the old man—Roddhu?” she asked. The woman looked back at her in fear. “May the gods protect us, lady! But I do not think so. This one is quieter, almost gentle, and walks with his head down, nearly helpless.”
Ygerne asked, “What is the boy like?” And the woman answered, “A foolish dark-haired young thing—more like a girl than a lad! Not one to rob the nests in the night, I feel sure.”
So Ygerne went into the sleeping-room to quieten Caradoc, but the child seemed strangely feverish and troubled in his mind. It was hard for Ygerne herself to sleep that night. As she lay on her tumbled bed of heather and sheepskins, the moon seemed to shine directly on to her face. She tried to bury her head under the coverlet, but the night was so warm that she gasped for want of breath before long and had to throw back the covers. And all the time her brain echoed and re-echoed with the words, “Caradoc is avenged, but Gwyndoc must go to the galleys! The Badger is free, but the Otter is a prisoner!” Try as she might, she could not control this insane message as it rolled back and forth in her mind, like a log of rotting wood caught in the swirling backwaters of a stream.
And, as though sensing her uneasiness, the children began to mutter in their sleep, tossing and turning in their bed at the other side of the room. Then suddenly Bryn whimpered and cried out in fear, “Mother, oh, Mother, the wolves have red eyes!” Ygerne left her bed and went to the child, soothing him and tucking him again under the sheepskins. “Lie still,” she said. “Lie quiet, little Bryn, or you will waken Caradoc now!” And when the child had fallen back into sleep, she left him and clambered wearily back into her own bed. And after an eternity she almost relaxed into sleep, for the moon’s mad light was overcast now by a cloud of strange beast-like shape—the shape of a black dog or a wolf. . . .
Then all at once Ygerne was startled back into a full awareness by a dog’s howling. It started somewhere among the huts, by the riverside, and then moved slowly up the wooded paths until it seemed right outside the door of the house. Then it was silent for a while and Ygerne almost settled down to sleep again, until the howl started again. And then it did not seem to leave the house.
The clouds had moved from the moon now; and the bright silver light flooded the room. When Ygerne could bear the howling no longer, she rose and looked out of the little window, to see whether she could drive the creature away. The stockyard was as clear as day, every stick and stone stood out brightly. Even the bee-hives at the far end of the meadow were visible through a break in the trees, white in the white light. But there was no dog.
And, as the noise continued, the girl went back to her bed, the skin at the nape of her neck prickling with fear. Then the howling stopped again, and soon there was an urgent snuffling at the door. But this time Ygerne was afraid to stir from her bed, and when she heard the claws scraping at the doorposts she pulled the clothes over her head again and lay shuddering.
Then, half-stifled, she fell into a troubled sleep of sorts, dreaming painfully of Gwyndoc and the wolves and the bright moonlight. From time to time she came back to consciousness and listened, almost exhausted now with anxiety. And every time she heard the sound she expected to hear; nor did the whining and the scratching cease until the dawn broke over the grey hills. Then Ygerne fell off into a deep sleep, and although the children woke and cried for her, she did not hear them.
When she woke at last, the sun was standing high in the blue sky, and Bryn had carried his little brother out into the garden to play among the flowers. Ygerne fed them quickly, hardly noticing whether they ate or not. Then she went out, towards the guest house, fearful but curious, wondering whether the two wanderers of last night might still be there, wondering whether either of them had any news of Gwyndoc.
But as she approached she saw with misgiving that the door of the wooden hut was swinging wide open. At first she told herself that the guests had tired of waiting for her to greet them and had perhaps gone walking among the farm-buildings until she came. But when she entered the hut she saw that her guess had been a mistaken one. The room was empty and the table left almost as it had been the night before. The beds were unruffled, as though they had not been slept in after all.
For a moment Ygerne wondered whether she had dreamed it all, whether she had spoken to the serving-woman in her nightmare, and not in reality, when she came back from Hall i’ the Forest. But, as she looked round, something on the table caught her eye, and she knew then that she had not been dreaming.
It was a bundle, a bag of some sort, made of a rough, homespun tartan, and it was a Belgic tartan. It lay in the middle of the great wooden meat-dish, as though the travellers had been anxious that she should not miss it. Ygerne went to the table and took up the bundle. It was quite heavy, a present, perhaps, for her hospitality. The girl felt all round it, but could not make up her mind what it was; yet, as her hands explored it through the thick cloth, there was something familiar in its shape that seemed to strike a nameless chord in her memory. Something she almost knew by instinct but which she dared not give a name to.
Then, with the strange fear on her, she carried the bundle to the door and sat down on a stone to open it. And when her trembling fingers had stripped off the cloth and the wrappings of sheepskin she saw that the bundle contained only a head, severed just below the jaw-bone. The hair was filthy with mud and blood and was quite white; many of the teeth had gone from the grinning mouth, and the eyelids were black.
It was many minutes before Ygerne could make herself say that this was Gwyndoc’s head, for there was hardly anything about it that she had known, except the long shallow cut across the cheek where she had struck him, many centuries ago, with a stone she had plucked from the stream.
So she sat, wordless, her eyes dry of tears; and her cold fingers stroked the furrowed cheek again and again, and she swayed gently beside the swinging door. And she heard nothing until the sun had become red again and was sinking once more behind the hills at the back of the house. Then Bryn came, hobbling along the stony path in his bare feet towards her, staring like a bright-eyed bird, his head on one side, at what she held in her lap.
And when he could speak, he said falteringly, “Mother, it has been a terrible day! All the bees have been swarming!” And he had to say his words many times before his mother seemed to hear him. And when she looked up at him he could hardly recognise her face. But her voice was calm again now, and she even smiled at him when she spoke. “Yes, little Bryn,” she said. “Yes. They always do. That is because no one told them that the master of the house was dead.”
And as the little boy backed away from her, she said the same words over and over and over again, smiling all the time.