Chapter 76: Darbin

Though not as familiar with the village as Olyrrwd had been, Herrwn knew the way to the smith’s compound. He’d spent a sweltering day there watching Darbin’s father hammering out a plow shaft from a glowing iron ingot when he was seventeen. His own father had taken him there with the instructions to observe a real smith at his work, in order to instill more life into his recitation of a saga in which the god of metalworking forged a magical sword that played a critical part in both setting off and resolving a war between the king of Llanmeddelyderth and a race of mountain trolls.

The cluster of buildings encircled by a low stone wall was much as he remembered it. The smith’s cottage and an assortment of outbuildings were on one side of the yard that served as both a vegetable garden and a chicken run. The workshop, with its glowing forge, was on the other. Its door was open and Herrwn could see tools scattered on the workbench and a broken cartwheel lying on the ground as if dropped in the workman’s rush to leave. Beside the chickens, the one sign of life was a slender, dark-haired child who looked to be about seven or eight, sitting on the cottage stoop and hugging a doll Herrwn recognized as being from Gwenydd’s childhood collection. Perhaps it was just the doll, but there was something oddly familiar about the little girl, even though Herrwn was certain he had never seen her before.

As he opened the gate and crossed the yard, the chickens ran up to him, clucking for a handout, while the little girl edged back. Hopeful that the child’s presence meant he’d gotten there in time, Herrwn knelt down to be at her eye level before he spoke.

“I am looking for Priestess Gwenydd. Is she here?”

“I can’t tell,” she whispered. “It’s a secret.”

“It’s all right, I know the secret,” he whispered back. “And I have another secret to share with her, so I’ll just go in very quietly and tell her what it is.”

Taking the child’s timid nod as permission to proceed, he stood up, pressed down on the door latch, and eased it open just as Gwenydd was saying, “They can cast me out! I don’t care! We’ll take Mai and go somewhere …”

Still dressed in the finely woven and skillfully embroidered robes she’d worn to the morning’s High Council, Gwenydd looked out of place in the rustic room with its rough-cut furniture, shelves of plain clay bowls, and half-grown pig watching the goings-on from a far corner.

The man clearly belonged there. Of average height for a villager, he was shorter than Herrwn by two handbreadths. His clothes—a leather apron worn over a leather tunic and pants—were dotted with scorch marks. As was to be expected of a laborer who made his living working with heavy tools, his arms and shoulders were solidly muscled. His hair was sandy blond and his eyes blue, suggesting that beneath the soot from his forge he was fair-skinned. Guessing at his age, Herrwn would have put him in his early twenties, although if the child on the stoop outside was his, he’d have to be older than that.

Like the little girl, there was something familiar about him. It took Herrwn a moment, but then he realized it was that Darbin closely resembled his father.

He cleared his throat to let them know he was there and stepped forward. “Forgive my intrusion, but I have been asked by Priestess Rhonnon to speak with Gwenydd about a matter I believe concerns all three of us.”

They turned, startled.

Darbin, who’d been clasping Gwenydd’s hands, let go and stepped back, looking as guilty as a child caught taking a forbidden sweet. Gwenydd held her ground. She crossed her arms and started, “I already told her—”

Putting up his hand to stop what was certain to be an emotional tirade, Herrwn shifted his stance to face her lover. “Under the circumstances, I believe it would be proper that we be introduced. Might you be Darbin, the artisan of whom my beloved cousin Olyrrwd spoke so highly?”

The smith opened his mouth, closed it, and nodded.

Herrwn nodded in return. “I am Herrwn, chief priest of our shrine, to whom it has been given to find some way to resolve this difficulty that is best for all concerned—”

“I don’t care what Aolfe or Rhonnon or even Feywn says,” Gwenydd broke in, “I love Darbin and he loves me—”

“I know I’m just a smith—”

“Not ‘just’!” Gwenydd reached out, took hold of his rough, callused hand, and pressed it against her cheek as she declared, “He is the most wonderful smith in the world! He can make anything and fix anything.”

Having taken on the role of being a mother to her younger cousins when she was barely eight years old, Gwenydd had always been serious, even solemn, but now her face positively glowed with enthusiasm as Darbin gazed at her with a look that only a completely besotted man could achieve.

Herrwn set his staff aside and put up both his hands to interrupt their reverie. “Now then, as I was saying, I have told Rhonnon I would speak to you—”

“I already told her—”

Gwenydd, who had never, to Herrwn’s knowledge, been defiant in her life, seemed ready to start now. This, however, was not the time for it, and Herrwn gave her the stern look he’d so often needed to use with the twins and Arianna.

“I am aware of what you told her regarding her proposal. Now I expect that you will do me the courtesy of hearing mine—”

“I—” she started, but changed to saying, “We will,” with a stress on the word “we.”

Granting her assertion with a brief nod, Herrwn continued, “which is that you both conduct yourselves with dignity and decorum while I find a way to resolve this issue without dishonoring your love for each other or requiring you to leave our valley. Can you do that?”

It was Darbin who answered, “We can.”

Gwenydd nodded, still gripping her lover’s hand.

“Now then, I will ask that you, Gwenydd, accompany me back to the shrine and tell Aolfe and Rhonnon that you are giving my words your thoughtful consideration and that you, Darbin, remain here and comfort your daughter—”

“Sister,” they said together, sounding like the twins would have if one were a baritone.

“Sister,” Herrwn amended, “who sits outside, distressed by matters she is too young to understand.”

Leaving Darbin to tend to his sister, Herrwn set off up the path to the shrine with Gwenydd at his side. Once he’d seen the young priestess past the grim and glowering Belodden, he walked back to his own quarters and stood staring into the flickering embers in the hearth.