Y Llyn Llwyd

by Michael Arram

IX

Leofric and Urban paused as the track crested a ridge and a breathtaking panorama opened up, a vast bowl of woods, heath and fields reaching down to the shining Severn Sea with the hills of Exmoor dark and gloomy beyond. Morgan Ddu, naked and barefoot apart from a filthy blanket that would embarrass most beggars, leaned on his staff, looked back and smiled. 'Down there is the rich land and forest of royal Cibbwr where the sons of Morgan Hen ruled until the French came and stole it. But one day …' He caught Leofric's frown. 'I am still a prince even if a prince in pilgrim's rags, MaelDyfrig. Humour me. There! You can see the white tower of Earl Robert's castle of Cardiff. One day, it will belong to the king of Glamorgan. You understand, don't you my Godwin?'

The romance between Morgan and Godwin was almost inevitable. Two lost boys had found each other and made something new. Urban was surprised and touched by how much love and care Morgan bestowed on the boy, even kissing and bathing Godwin's scuffed feet. The English boy would agree with anything his princely lover said, needless to say.

'And there's Llandaff, I do believe,' said Urban, pointing out distant white towers beside the glittering waters of a river. 'I haven't been there since I was a little lad, being fostered before I was sent on to Worcester.'

'The pack route will take us down to that heathland you see, and there is a ford over the Taff next to the cathedral,' Morgan declared. 'Let's go. We'll be at Dyfrig's tomb by mid-afternoon. Then I want a bath. I stink of Godwin.'

Leofric laughed. 'That's the smell of virtue then, your highness.'

'No, it's my dried cum,' said Godwin, choosing to be literal.

The descent through the gorse grown slopes took the better part of an hour, the track narrowing between banks and patches of birch that whispered in the wind. As they reached the levels, the sound of water reached them—broad, slow, and full of light. The River Taff spread in a long, shallow shimmer, braiding through pebble shoals where cattle stood knee-deep, flicking flies with their tufted tails.

Across the river, on its gentle eastward rise, the low bulk of the church of Llandaff unveiled itself. What struck Leofric first was the great eastern apse of the cathedral looming over the ford, a pale Romanesque half-dome in fine limestone work. The cathedral's transeptal towers, narrow, tall and new, flanked the ridge of the tiled roof. The west end could not obscure the half-hidden jumble of canons' houses, timber-framed and whitewashed, climbing up the slope. Along the ridge to their left, standing sternly apart, rose the episcopal hall, a long stone range with narrow windows and a belfry gable, as if keeping watch over its lesser brethren below.

'There she is,' Urban murmured, his voice softer than any had yet heard it. 'The church of blessed Dyfrig. Larger than I remembered—and more proud. My dear good father must have begged every Norman lord in his diocese for stone and funds for that apse.'

Morgan wrinkled his nose. 'Too many towers. Spend a night in a forest and you will learn that a single tree speaks more of God than twenty piles of stone.'

'Is that so?' Godwin glanced up at him with the easy adoration of the newly claimed.

'Yes, pretty boy,' Morgan said cheerfully. 'And trees don't argue about tithes.'

They reached the ford where the river widened into a bright, cold sheet no higher than a man's ankles. A pair of washerwomen pounding linen on flat stones with blue pebbles paused to stare at the odd procession: ragged prince, pilgrim, scholar, barefoot English boy—and whispered behind their hands.

Halfway across, Urban stopped. 'Do you hear that?'

A voice floated over the rippling water—ringing, declamatory, thick with self-importance.

On the far bank just below the great apse stood a tall figure draped in a patched woollen blanket dyed a lurid saffron, his beard wild, his hair in a fan like a seeding dandelion. He held aloft a staff topped with a dead raven.

'REPENT, O CITY ON THE TAFF!' he thundered at a passing cart-horse. 'For the day of cleansing draws near! Behold, the sin of simony shall be purged, and the bishop shall tremble like a maid before the wedding!'

Leofric groaned. 'Is that—'

'No less than Alfwine, your father,' Urban confirmed, shading his eyes. 'Alfwine of Castle Goodrich. Last seen leaving Llantrisant with penitential stone strapped to his naked back, on his way to repent his sins at the tomb of St Teilo in this church. Looks like he found a new vocation instead. Prophet.'

Morgan grinned. 'A rival prophet, MaelDyfrig? Perhaps he can smell that you are almost holy.'

'I am no prophet,' Leofric muttered, annoyed, 'and he is no threat. Oh dear. He's seen us.'

Alfwine's eyes widened; he froze in mid-harangue. Then, with a swooping gesture worthy of a mumming play, he pointed straight at them. 'BEHOLD THE THREE WHO COME!' he announced to an audience consisting of a bored mule and its keeper, a small girl child currently picking daisies. 'The Child of the Woods, the Learned Stranger, and …' His gaze caught Morgan's skimpy rags but unmistakeable face. '—the Royal One in Disguise! I SAW THIS IN A DREAM!'

'No he didn't,' Urban said through gritted teeth. 'He makes it up as he goes.'

'So do most prophets,' Morgan agreed mildly.

Godwin tugged at Morgan's blanket. 'Shall I hit him?'

'Not yet, beloved. Let us hear the fool's prophecy. It may amuse us on the road.'

Alfwine swept forward with outstretched arms, stopping far too close to Urban. 'Brother Urban! I knew you would come when the omens ripened! The stars have bent low to whisper your name!'

Urban sighed heavily. 'What have you done now, Alfwine?'

'Only God's work,' Alfwine said, which from his mouth undoubtedly meant considerable mischief. 'And, perhaps, a small misunderstanding with the canons over the precise definition of "blasphemy."'

Leofric rubbed his brow. 'We are going to be arrested before we even wash our feet.'

Morgan laughed aloud, kicking drops of river-water from his toes. 'Then let them arrest us. The house of Dyfrig will not turn away pilgrims—and certainly not a prince.'

'Or a prophet,' Alfwine added proudly.

'Or a nuisance,' Urban corrected. Together they trudged up the river path, the cathedral above them in sunlit splendour. And somewhere under its roof timbers, Dyfrig's resting place awaited.

Morgan Ddu proved to have decided architectural prejudices, which he began to advertise as they walked along the north face of the cathedral towards its west end.

'Not a great site for displaying a church of any distinction,' he commented. 'No offence to the memory of your dad, Urban boy.'

'Why do you say that?' an unoffended Urban asked.

'It's masked by the river bluffs to the north. Its bells can't be heard clearly, because its existing towers can't reach high enough. They'll need to raise a free-standing campanile on top of the bluffs to advertise its presence and ring the office hours so they can be heard.'

Urban shrugged. 'I remember someone telling me that Teilo's monks chose the hidden site because of the fear of Irish pirates and slavers back in their day. Iago agreed when we discussed it. He said that the site of St David's monastery at Mynwy was much the same.'

Urban in fact admired the way his father had found the space to raise a great Romanesque church on such a limited site, which eliminated the wretched monastic cells and small stone chapel that had preceded his efforts. He remembered someone telling him as a child that his father had turned down a major donation Earl Robert of Gloucester had offered, if only he would build his new cathedral in the earl's port-borough of Cardiff, further down the Taff. His father had snarled that he was Teilo's bishop and no French bastard's Offeirad y tŷ (a salaried house-priest).

As the pilgrims entered the great west door and into the pillared clean space within, it saddened Urban that he would not find there his father's tomb, for his body lay in the decayed limestone desert of Rome, where the bishop's litigious life had come to its close in the city of popes and caesars. He pondered the thought of using his prosperity to follow his father's footsteps and recover his body for a more appropriate tomb in his own city, where perpetual masses could be said for his soul.

The pilgrim party halted at the head of the nave, to view and make reverence to the shrine of Teilo, raised in the presbytery to the south of the high altar, which was framed by the giant round arch into the bright space of the apse beyond. The air was scented with incense from the morning's mass. But where was the shrine of St Dyfrig?

The four boys passed beneath the giant round arch into the bright half-dome of the apse, where the light fell soft and honey-coloured upon polished stone. The shrine of Teilo glowed in its accustomed place, candles guttering faintly in the morning draught. But of Dyfrig's resting-place there was no sign—no gleam of brass, no carved canopy, no reliquary.

Urban frowned. 'He should be over there, north of the altar. My father would have placed him where the choir steps rise. Unless the canons have—'

A great shout from outside cut him off. Alfwine's shout. 'HEAR ME, O PEOPLE OF LLANDAFF! The saint whose bones you guard is weary of your simony and your hypocrite bishops! The relics of Dyfrig are …'

Urban groaned. 'Father God, for Christ's sake …'

'… POWERLESS!' Alfwine bellowed, his voice not much muffled by the church walls and windows, like a stone hurled at heaven.

Godwin snarled. 'Shall I go out and hit the embarrassing old cunt now?'

But the blow came from another quarter.

At the very moment Alfwine spat out the word powerless, the cathedral air changed. It thickened—like the moment before thunder breaks on a sultry afternoon—and the candles along Teilo's shrine suddenly bent inward, their flames drawn unnaturally toward the empty space where Dyfrig's relics should have stood.

A low metallic note rang out—the sound of bronze struck by a hidden mallet. The floor shivered under their feet. Morgan's filthy blanket lifted as though brushed by an unseen hand.

'Leofric…' Urban whispered. 'What is—'

The light dimmed. And from the apse's far wall, behind the altar, there came a coldness so sharp and clean it felt like breath blown from a far northern sea. Godwin gasped and clutched Morgan's arm.

Then the voice. Not loud. Not shouted. Not indeed heard by all. But heard by the three whom Dyfrig had summoned. A man's voice, ancient and young together, shaped by gorse-gilded hills, by river-mist and apple orchards, by the tongue spoken before the Normans ever heard of these lands. 'Mab.' My Son.

The word struck Morgan first. He staggered. For in the space of a heartbeat he saw Glamorgan whole—not the patchwork of conquest and rebellion of his own day, but the kingdom of his ancestors, green and unbroken. Behind him rose the kings of the line of Morgan Hen, their faces grave, their hands resting on his shoulders. But Dyfrig's hand on his shoulder: firm, sure—pressing him forward, not back. A prince, yes. But not meant for a throne. Meant for something greater, smaller, and infinitely harder. Morgan's breath hitched. He bowed his head and wept without knowing why he wept.

'Cyfod, mab.' Rise, son. Godwin fell to his knees. A wave of warmth rushed through him, sweeping away years of small cruelties, shame, and the unspoken horrors of a desecrated childhood. He smelled apples—sweet, sharp, impossible in a stone cathedral. A scent from the hills of Dyfrig's youth, pouring over him like fresh water into one of Llantrisant's washing vats. He rose. And for the first time since boyhood he did not hate himself.

'Nid wyt ti ar dy lwyth dy hun, fab i'm fab, Mael Dyfrig.' Said the voice. You do not bear your burden alone, son of my son, Devotee of Dyfrig. Leofric had no time to speak. His knees buckled as the walls around him thinned and became transparent as water. Through them he glimpsed a wooden llys-church, monks with bare feet chanting, and a tall, handsome man walking amongst them with a bishop's staff in hand, his solemn face recalling that of his own Urban. Dyfrig turned as if Leofric had called his name across six centuries. Their eyes met. And something inside Leofric—some knot of fear, reluctance, and unworthiness untied at last. For Dyfrig had handed him his bishop's staff and for a moment the English peasant boy felt the wood and ivory warm in his hand, as if it belonged there.

The revelation ended as abruptly as it had begun. The candles straightened. The chill dispersed. The light brightened again, warm and ordinary.

Outside, Alfwine was flung backwards as if slapped by an invisible hand. He landed in the mud of the churchyard with a grunt, mouth open, but no sound emerged. He clutched his throat in terror. The washerwomen crossed themselves. The mule fled across the ford in a spray of hoof-displaced water. The child who had been picking daisies burst into tears.

Inside the cathedral, silence hung like a benediction. Urban stared at his companions—three boys changed in ways he could not yet name. 'Dyfrig,' he whispered. 'Good Lord… Dyfrig has answered.'

Morgan lifted his tear-streaked face, but laughed. 'He is not powerless.'

Leofric bowed his head. Godwin stood straighter than he ever had.

Urban swallowed hard. He was aware that something deep and strange had just happened in his friends' heads, though he had not heard what they had. 'Come. The canons will be here in a moment. And we must find where they have put our saint's bones.'

All four boys were in the courtyard of the Bishop Uthred's llys, being eyed suspiciously by two of his mercenary guards. Alfwine however was on his knees in shackles, his face red with frustration. Bishop Uthred was apparently hunting in his park in the woods beyond the River Ely, and Urban's claim that he was the archdeacon of Gwent was contingent on the bishop's confirmation of that as fact, The bishop's distain certainly would not accept that the wild-eyed barefoot youth in a ragged blanket was the son of King Morgan. Urban's suspicion that Morgan Ddu had somehow been transformed by an encounter with the numinous in the cathedral was more or less confirmed by the fact that the prince had not taken a knife or a stick to the pompous oaf, but just sat on the ground looking around, smiling satirically.

Morgan grinned up at Urban. 'A travelling archdeacon needs to be in a mounted company with clerks, servants and guards, not hiking the lanes of Glamorgan with three scruffy barefoot lads. Humility is all very well in a cleric, Gwrgan bach, but it doesn't open the doors of halls and castles.'

'To be lectured on humility by Morgan Ddu ap Morgan y brenin, lord of Llefnydd, how can my life get stranger?' Morgan just leaned back on his elbows and giggled.

A sudden burst of dispute came from the gate where the two guards were being verbally assailed by a tall, white-haired man in a monastic robe. He brushed past them and stalked straight towards Urban. He smiled. 'It's been some years since we met, young man. Maybe you don't remember me, but I am your godfather, Lifris of Llancarfan.'

'Lifris? It's you? Of course I remember you. I lived in your house before I was sent to Worcester. You taught me my letters.'

'Who's this, lord?' Leofric whispered in Urban's ear.

'My godfather, the son of old Bishop Herwald. My kinsman and my father's uncle.'

Lifris smiled and ushered the youths out of the Llys Esgob and across the green to a stone hall. 'Come in boys. Here is hot water in the offices and some of you need a wash badly. You, young sir, I recognise as the Lord Morgan, the king's son. I will place some more respectable garb you can assume after washing, outside the offices. I can't answer for the fit, but the clothes will be clean and otherwise uninhabited, unlike that blanket.' The old man laughed. 'Then you can eat and tell me about the wonders that just occurred in the cathedral that the whole town is talking about.'

Lifris settled on a bench in his parlour and Urban sat next to him, Leofric squatting at his feet. 'Now,' said the old man, 'I am so glad we have met at last. I have been out at Llancarfan for most of the last year. I too am an archdeacon, of Glamorgan as it happens, and I was appointed in succession to your father. The church of Llancarfan belongs to the office. It was in fact I who motivated Bishop Uthred (who is my nephew you know) to make you archdeacon of Gwent. And the reason was more to do with family than church politics.'

'I wondered how it had come about,' said Urban. 'More cynical minds than mine thought it was a bribe, to remove a potential competitor for the episcopal office in Gwent.'

Lifris laughed. 'No my dear, and in any case that would be your brother.'

Urban was stunned. 'I have a brother?'

'So much you don't know, boy. His name is Nicholas, he's four years older than you and you'll never have met him in the ordinary course of events. He was sent as a novice to the Benedictines of Gloucester when you were born; your common mother dying in childbirth with you. He's subprior of the abbey now, a priest and his abbey's proctor in Glamorgan, so he's emerging into public life. He wants to meet you. He is very like you, modest and learned, but strangely worldly for a monk.' The old man sighed. 'Your father's testament asked that you be provided for out of the chapter endowment and had you been older you would have had Llancarfan and the archdeaconry. I would have stood down in your favour. Best I could do in the end was to split the office and revive the archdeaconry of Gwent for your benefit. Now, there's one other matter arising from your father's testament.'

'Yes, sir?'

'His books. He left them to you, and I have kept them in a chest here in the Llys Archddiacon, which was once, as it happens, your father's favoured residence.'

It was at that point that Leofric asserted himself. 'Sir, we are here on pilgrimage to the tomb of St Dyfrig, and though he has been with us on the road, we cannot find him in his cathedral. We come bearing a great gift, a Vita composed by his priest Faustus of Caerwent, which has been kept forgotten all these years in the treasury of Llantrisant.

Lifris nodded, as if a puzzle had been suddenly made clear to him. 'That is a great treasure you bear, young Leofric. Now, the name of Faustus is not unknown to me. Your father was the author of the Vita of Dyfrig we have in our cathedral library and when he presented it to the chapter, he acknowledged a certain Faustus as an earlier author on the saint, though I think it unlikely he had read your manuscript. But it is not unlikely he had found a digest of its matter in our library here, or in the libraries of one of the clasau of our diocese, which he toured and catalogued when he was archdeacon in the time of Bishop Herwald, your great-grandfather.'

'So how does this affect Dyfrig's place in the cathedral, sir?' asked Leofric.

Lifris chuckled. 'You could say that Bishop Urban tried too hard. He was determined to tie Dyfrig into the history of his own diocese, but he went further than the evidence could prove. Now it may be that Teilo and Dyfrig lived in an age of saints in South Wales at much the same time. But in the oldest documents we have Teilo is associated with the church of Glamorgan, and Dyfrig with the church of Gwent, and none of them claim Teilo was Dyfrig's student, or his successor at Llandaff.'

'So my father fabricated Dyfrig's involvement with Llandaff and connection to Teilo so as to have an archbishop in Glamorgan's church history?' Urban asked, looking unhappy.

'To put it crudely, child. But judge not lest you be yourself judged. Remember how desperate were the affairs of the diocese when he was elected bishop, laid waste by war and theft, his cathedral little more distinguished than an oversized sheepfold. He died a friend of kings, scholars and popes, and the bishop of a regular and respected Latin diocese.'

Leofric grumbled. 'But where is our Dyfrig, sir?'

'His bones?' the old man chuckled. 'You'll know the story that in his last years Dyfrig made a pilgrimage to the Isle of Saints, and there died and was laid under a cairn and a standing stone proclaiming his lineage and sanctity. One of your father's greatest diplomatic triumphs was to persuade King Gruffudd and his bishop to freely gift the bones of Dyfrig to Llandaff. And when the cortege bearing them came to the cathedral a deluge broke over the city ending a spring drought and saving the endangered harvest: the saint's thanks for his return. It happened. I was there that day.'

'So the bones came to Llandaff, godfather,' said Urban, 'but where are they now?'

'Let me go get your father's legacy, my boy.'

Leofric took Urban's hand and looked earnestly in his eyes. 'Love, we're at the quest's end, I can feel it.'

Lifris returned bearing a heavy wooden casket whose weight was causing him some difficulty. Leofric rose to assist the old man place the box on a table. It was locked but Lifris produced a key. The lid creaked back to reveal that the weight was mostly to do with a dozen bound books, but to one side was tucked in tightly a smaller, brass-bound box.

'What's that, sir?' Urban asked his godfather.

The old man smiled. 'The answer to your question, son.' He slipped the catch and opened the lid, and staring back at Urban from a silken nest was a satirical-looking human skull.

Leofric gasped. 'It's the head of St Dyfrig.'

Archdeacon Lifris nodded. 'It was your father's special devise in his testament that you be the inheritor of this most precious relic, I quote … quia dictum caput ei reliqua potentissima et signum erit pro regno Brithonnum in manibus suis. There's my sealed copy of your father's testament in the box for your reference and safeguard.'

Leofric was momentarily rivetted at the sight of the relic. He bent his head reverently to kiss the skull's mouth. Then he looked back up at Lifris. 'But where's the rest of the body, sir?'

'Ah … that was the wisdom of Bishop Urban. He might have interred the holy body of Dyfrig in the new presbyterium of the cathedral opposite that of Teilo and doubled its sanctity. Not so however. He dismembered the skeleton and dispersed it in reliquaries across his diocese, to be a blessing for the whole kingdom of Glamorgan. So one hand is inside the altar of St Gwynllyw, and the other within the altar of the church of Caerleon. The smaller bones and ribs are in the treasuries of two dozen parish churches, clasau and monasteries. Your brother Nicholas received the saint's pelvis and he bestowed it on St Peter's abbey, but the head was to be yours, my boy.'

Leofric nodded solemnly. 'He was a wise man, your father,' he said to Urban.

Lifris reached across and ruffled the blonde hair of the English boy. 'So they call you Mael Dyfrig, Master Leofric, Dyfrig's favoured devotee. I think I see why. I also see that such a vocation must be honoured. I will add you to the list of ordinands for this coming year. Your title will be deacon-chaplain of Llantrisant, and it might be appropriate to have Bishop Uthred ordain you deacon in the same service as he ordains Urban priest. Thus will the cult of Dyfrig be further honoured in the land.'

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Y Llyn Llwyd

by Michael Arram

IX