Dan could sense the anxiety, fear and excitement of the men sleeping fitfully in their barracks, or lying alongside their horses in the makeshift stables that all but filled the parade ground. He managed to distract himself from the fragments of other people’s nightmares and odd dreams that trickled into his mind. He could learn to ignore them, he was sure he could, given time and resolve and some of Brother Frontalis’s faith.
He found Bryn curled up in a grubby blanket near the lantern of the watch. Dan wondered if maybe he was afraid of the dark. Bryn’s arms were wrapped around Braveheart’s neck and his small body was snuggled into his flank. Braveheart had been Bryn’s father’s war dog. It was possible he’d slept like that in his own home. Bryn looked small and vulnerable in sleep, his fierce eyes closed, just like any small boy in need of a good wash. A louse crawled across Bryn’s forehead and Dan fought the urge to pick it up and crush it. He was surprised at the wave of tenderness he felt towards the boy, and was reminded painfully of his own little sister, Lizzie. He ought to be ashamed of his neglecting Bryn. He was ashamed. Nodding at the officer of the watch, who recognised him and sketched a salute, Dan gently touched Bryn’s shoulder. Braveheart opened his eyes at the sound of Dan’s approach, but refrained from leaping up in a greeting. Even the great war dog was respectful of Bryn’s vulnerability and stayed quite still, only thumping his tail and raising his huge head to gaze adoringly at his master. Dan stroked the rough wolfish coat of the huge hound and tickled him behind the ears. There was no rebuke in the dog’s dark eyes but there should have been. Dan had not even checked that he’d been properly fed.
‘Bryn!’ Dan whispered.
Bryn was instantly awake, his hand at once on his belt knife.
‘Bryn, it’s Dan.’
Bryn’s eyes creased into a smile of pleasure. ‘My Lord! Do you need me?’
With something of a lump in his throat, Dan nodded. ‘I believe you’ve been hiding your talent from me.’
Bryn frowned, puzzled. He rubbed his eyes with a dirty hand and scratched his hair.
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘You can play the harp.’
‘Oh, I never thought to tell you, sir. I was only at the beginning of my training.’
Dan could feel Bryn’s growing anxiety that he might have displeased Dan. ‘It’s fine, Bryn, but I need you to do it now.’
‘Of course.’ Bryn disentangled his cloak from under Braveheart’s side and was on his feet without further questions.
‘Braveheart, stay here until Ursula comes. You understand?’
The dog whimpered and looked questioningly at Dan.
‘You must fight alongside Ursula. Good dog.’ Dan made a picture in his mind of Braveheart running alongside Ursula’s horse. He did not know for sure what Braveheart understood, but with a small whine of protest he lay back in the straw of the stable floor, only following Dan with his eyes.
‘You’re not going to fight?’ Bryn looked bemused. He was trying to hide his disappointment and his shame on Dan’s behalf.
‘It’s hard to explain, Bryn, but I’m sure there is another way to help the High King Arturus achieve his victory.’
Bryn nodded without conviction but said nothing. They waited until they had left the stable behind for the cool darkness of the training ground. Still speaking in a low voice, Dan asked, ‘Do you know how to play Taliesin’s harp?’
‘It is a very great instrument. He let me touch it once.’ Bryn sounded awestruck.
‘Yes, but in an emergency could you play it?’
Bryn must have wondered what kind of bardic emergency was likely to arise in a world where the songs of Bryn’s world had almost been forgotten.
‘I can play a simple accompaniment to a couple of the great song cycles – but I don’t know all the words. At home, I would have been an apprentice for five years before I would be allowed to sing them in public. I have only studied and practised for maybe half a year at home before Da died and then for some days here. I am not really worthy.’
Bryn’s doubt was contagious. Maybe Dan’s plan would not work.
‘Bryn, I think you are my only hope.’
Even in the darkness, Dan could see Bryn square his shoulders.
‘I will try, Dan – whatever you want.’
‘Taliesin is in a trance – I thought his music might bring him back like it once did for Ursula.’
‘But Taliesin is a great bard, Dan, the most skilled our world had known for generations. He was famous – more famous even than Prince Macsen, before the Prince fought the Ravens. I don’t know any of the secret knowledge, I was too young. I was good, mind, for my age,’ said Bryn quickly, so that Dan might not think too ill of him. Dan could not find the words needed to reassure Bryn. He patted him awkwardly on the shoulder and said the first thing that came to his mind.
‘I trust you, Bryn, I know you will do all you can.’
Brother Frontalis knew where Taliesin kept his harp, a smaller instrument than its descendant in Dan’s world. Bryn carried it as though it were a holy relic to the room where the former bard lay, still and pale as a dead man. Bryn was nervous and afraid. Brother Frontalis knelt at the foot of the bed praying. He looked up only to acknowledge them with his eyes and carried on. He was so focused on his task that Dan could feel no emotion coming from him at all, his whole self had become like a light beam from a torch, intent on prayer.
Dan nodded at Bryn who washed his hands in the bowl of holy water Frontalis kept for his ministrations. Brother Frontalis either did not notice or did not think it inappropriate, because he said nothing.
Dan could not help but admire the self-control with which the young boy set about his task. He was trembling when he first took the harp from its case, but by the time he had carefully tuned the strings he had regained his composure.
‘What do you want me to do?’
Now that he was faced with the reality of the small boy, the harp and the unmoving figure of Taliesin, Dan was not at all sure. ‘Is there something special that Taliesin taught you?’
‘Everything Taliesin taught me was special – he is Taliesin.’
Fortunately, Bryn seemed to understand what Dan meant. Concentrating very hard, he began to play. The first two notes were tentative, the phrasing clumsy, but despite that the incredibly sweet tone of Taliesin’s harp triumphed. Bryn continued and as he grew in confidence Dan could feel himself enraptured by the sound of the harp as if it were itself magical. When Bryn started to sing, all the hairs on Dan’s neck rose at the unearthly purity of his soprano voice. His voice took a more complex melody than the simple accompaniment of the harp. It was a song Dan had not heard before, about hearth and home and longing, and the boy put all his experience of loss and loneliness into the melody which soared with such loveliness that Dan suddenly ached for home. He held the song in his mind, imagined he was broadcasting it through the night, calling out to the lost bard.
‘Come, Taliesin, come back! We need you!’
Dan kept repeating the thought like a homing beacon to bring Taliesin home. For a moment, Dan saw the barracks from another vantage point high above the city, flying by moonlight in an unfamiliar night. He could see the warm light of lanterns, bright in the blackness, and abruptly he was back in the room, listening to Bryn end his song. There was a fluttering of wings and for a fraction of an instant he thought he saw the image of a small bird hovering over the prone body of Taliesin.
Dan did not know what to say.
Luckily Brother Frontalis did. ‘God has blessed you, Bryn, with the voice an angel would sell his soul for. I have not heard you sing before. You have a gift that you should offer to God.’
‘It was a beacon of light in the darkness, and he didn’t do so badly on my harp.’ The voice that croaked so dryly was Taliesin’s own.
‘My thanks to all of you, for you have brought me home.’
Dan rushed to Taliesin’s side. ‘Are you all right?’
‘I will be. It was no more than an old man’s arrogance overestimating my strength. Did Arturus get the message?’
‘We are mobilising at dawn.’
‘Good. I will sleep now. Mind how you put the harp away, Bryn – you did it justice tonight.’
Bryn was stunned into silence by the compliment.
Dan patted him on the shoulder. ‘I wish I’d known you had such talent. Bryn, you should not be a warrior but a bard!’
‘I chose the way of the warrior when my father was killed, when you saved me and I laid my sword at your service. I don’t think I chose badly.’ Bryn spoke pointedly, reminding Dan of his own obligations to his sworn man.
‘Don’t you?’ Dan asked, sadly.
‘A song cannot destroy the Aengliscs and give us peace.’
‘No, but a voice like yours can be a torch of beauty and hope and the promise of joy in men’s darkest hours. It is part of what we fight for and hope to attain – a glimpse of heaven on Earth.’ Brother Frontalis stood and looked at Bryn with his frank gaze. ‘If I could sing like that I would never speak again!’
Bryn looked embarrassed.
‘It’s late, Bryn. Do you want to sleep in the stables or would you rather I arranged for you to have a bed at the inn again?’
‘Why – because I can sing?’
‘No, because I should have asked you that before. You are my squire and I have not treated you with enough respect.’
Bryn smiled. ‘Thank you. I would have liked that before, but now I think I’d rather stay with Braveheart. I help to keep him warm and make sure nobody bothers him in the night. He’d miss me.’
Dan’s smile of response was strained. ‘Come on, I’ll walk you back there. You have done good work tonight.’