Y Llyn Llwyd

by Michael Arram

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The feast of Martinmas in the year of grace 1137 broke cold and bright over the hills of Wentwood, the frost lying thick in the hollows and the air tinted and comforting with woodsmoke from every farmstead. Yet from before dawn there was movement on all the lanes converging upon Llantrisant, for Bishop Uthred had proclaimed three days of solemnity to mark the consecration of Urban's new church, now at last complete and shining white amongst the trees after more than a year's labour. Welsh uchelwyr and the Anglo-French lords of Gwent alike came riding with their households, their banners snapping in the morning breeze; and around them walked the country people in their hundreds, wrapped in rough cloaks against the autumn cold, carrying the parish banners that had been cleaned and embroidered anew for the great day.

The concelebration procession of two dozen clergy gathered first on the rising ground below the churchyard, next to Urban's new rectory hall and its chapel where the bishop had vested in cope and mitre. The procession headed by Leofric as subdeacon and crucifer wound up to the church and through its doors, to the sound of boys singing and trumpeters sounding, stationed high on the west front, to end before the stone altar, its empty cavity awaiting the holy things that would make it the heart of the new house of prayer. Archdeacon Urban himself, pale with fatigue yet radiant with accomplishment, knelt beside the altar, surrounded by the clergy of the diocese in their finest albs and stoles. A murmur of anticipation rolled across the assembled multitude as the great chest of relics was opened under a canopy, and the reliquaries—many small, some rich, a few ancient—were lifted out one by one.

Bishop Uthred called upon the patrons to step forward, and they did so in proud succession: English and French knights and Welsh arglwyddi, canons from Llandaff, and wealthy widows each offering the sacred fragments entrusted to their keeping. Into the altar cavity went the relics: a finger-bone of St Brigid; a fragment of the True Cross and soil from the grave of the Virgin Mary offered by Miles of Gloucester, treasures brought by his crusading father Durand from Antioch and Ephesus; the portable reliquary of St Tyfodwg; a strip of linen claimed to have been touched to the shrine of St James at Compostela, with a certificate in vernacular Gothic to that effect; a tiny phial of oil from the tomb of St David at Mynyw. Last of all came the most treasured new gift, the bones associated with the holy confessor Dyfrig, whose memory was again stirring like a tremor beneath his land.

When all had been placed within, the bishop wafted incense into the cavity, its smoke rising like pale blue sighs in the brittle air, and sealed the stone slab with mortar mixed with salt and wine. As the priests and boys chanted the Litany of the Saints and the procession circled the altar thrice – thrice to bless with holy water consecrated from the grey lake of Llangorse, whose waters had been held sacred long before the coming of the Gospel, thrice to claim, thrice to dedicate with oil – Bishop Uthred's voice rose above the chant and declared the church hallowed for all generations of worshippers yet unborn.

That same afternoon the bishop consecrated a side-shrine to receive the revered skull of Dyfrig, newly translated by Urban to Llantrisant and set in a reliquary of silver gilt. The shrine, placed to the south of the high altar, shone with candles and newly worked iron lamps, the walls hung with bright silk sent from the church treasuries of Brycheiniog and Glamorgan. As the veil was drawn aside and the reliquary elevated for the people to see, a rumble of awe passed through the crowd, and many dropped to their knees. Thereafter Bishop Uthred proclaimed a plenary indulgence of forty days for all who, with contrite hearts, visited the shrine and supported the church's work. Word spread quickly among the gathered folk, and by the evening the crowds before the shrine had grown so thick that stewards had to manage the flow of pilgrims.

The second day of the festival dawned with a solemnity that touched every corner of the town, for Bishop Uthred was to raise their beloved pastor Urban of Worcester to the priesthood. The young deacon, exhausted from months of labour overseeing the building, and from the emotional weight of bringing his vision at last to fruition, could scarcely speak as he lay prostrate upon the cold flags of the new sanctuary during the singing of the Litany. Yet when the bishop laid hands upon him, and the choir burst into the Veni Creator, a kind of tremor seemed to pass through him; and those who witnessed it swore later that the sunlight through the eastern window brightened at that exact moment, falling in a golden band like a celestial stole across Urban's shoulders as though affirming the grace bestowed.

After Mass, feasting and hospitality filled the churchyard and the village streets, for Bishop Uthred had ordered that the poor be fed for the three days entire, and that every pilgrim should find bread and ale enough for the journey home. Musicians played Welsh airs on pipes and tabors; lithe pubescent French and Welsh pages ran races on the slopes above the river to the chirping accompaniment of mutually incomprehensible insults; women sang lullabies to hush children overtired by the splendour. Yet beneath it all ran the hum of expectation, for the feast of Dyfrig approached, and with it the final honours of the festival.

On the third morning – the feast itself, a Sunday – the bells began before dawn, their clamour echoing across the valley as the clergy assembled once more before the high altar. The church was packed from nave to porch, the transepts filled with magnates in furs and bright cloaks, all waiting to witness the ordination of Leofric MaelDyfrig, the youth whose witness was attested by the saint himself and whose learning had already marked him as a future ornament of the diocese.

Leofric knelt alone upon the sanctuary steps, candle in hand, his face grave but lit with inner conviction. As the bishop questioned him on his vocation, the boy answered with steady, resonant clarity; and when Uthred laid hands upon him and vested him in the stole and precious dalmatic, a gift from the river boys of Brechenneu who had begged the honour as an expression of their own devotion to St Dyfrig, the choir launched into a jubilant Te Deum, its soaring notes carrying out through the open doors into the bright, bitter morning. And before the concluding anthem, Leofric read out to the congregation the Latin vita of St Dyfrig, written by Faustus his priest, in a Gwent where the warlord Arthur of the Britons dux bellorum still lingered in living men's memories.

Thus ended the festival: with the hallowing of a new church, the exaltation of a new priest, and the setting apart of a new deacon truly sanctified by the hand of the saint himself. And as the crowds dispersed slowly across the hills, leaving behind the clang of bronze bells ringing over the Wentwood along with the scent of incense drifting out into the frost-crisped air, many said they felt they had taken part in something that would be spoken of in Glamorgan for generations—an anchoring of faith in troubled times, and a sign that even amidst the clashing of Welsh and English powers and the gloom of civil war, there yet rose houses of prayer where grace and reconciliation might settle like dew upon the cracked dry fields of a world in conflict.

The day after Leofric's ordination, he and Urban returned elated to the rectory hall after having celebrated their first morning mass together as a team. Dewi and Grono had assisted in theory, though in practice they had giggled uncontrollably through the rite until Leofric clipped the pair round their ears, reminding them that the holy Dyfrig had a good view of their behaviour at the high altar from his shrine.

It so happened that their morning mass had been witnessed by several pilgrims to Llantrisant's shrine of Dyfrig, which made Dewi and Grono's high spirits all the less tolerable. Dewi, being properly literate, was the official custodian of the shrine, maintaining the candles, collecting offerings, dispensing indulgences and noting down any miraculous occurrences that could be linked to the saint's intervention. 'He's good with dysentery and piles is our Dyfrig,' Grono had said once, which led to quite a serious scuffle between the two brothers and Dewi's revelation that Grono had a profitable sideline selling leaden stamped pilgrim's medals of Dyfrig to visitors.

Grono had an arrangement with a craftsman trading out of Brechenneu market, and was attempting to get Urban to authorise the images as official. 'I can't,' Urban said to Leofric. 'There's no official image of Dyfrig as such. Grono's dealer just knocks off standard images of a bishop in the act of blessing.'

Leofric shrugged. 'There's your clue, love. Sprinkle a batch of medals with holy water and bless them. You're a priest and archdeacon, it's got to be worth something.'

King Morgan declared that he would hold an 1137 Christmas court at his palace of Caerleon and expected his loyal people, and particularly his princes, barons and clergy to attend. A royal writ from Morgan's chancery informed Urban that the king expected him to offer mass on the occasion in the new palace chapel of St Dyfrig and asked him to bring the increasingly famous boys' choir of his church to support the dignity of the occasion.

On Thursday 23 December Archdeacon Urban's rather impressive entourage headed down from the village under the trees to the river road. A wagon carried their bags, driven by Urban's new stablemaster. Urban, Iago and Leofric rode their palfreys alongside the wagon, and the rear of the entourage was brought up by a procession in pairs of the dozen most competent members of the choir dressed in their albs ornamented with white and gold apparels with warm woollen cloaks over these. Dewi was at their head carrying a banner of St Dyfrig. Grono sat grinning back at his brother from the back of the baggage wagon.

Iago looked at the line of barges moored along the new stone quays of Brechenneu waiting for the tide to turn and asked. 'Why are we going by road, Urban? We usually take the boat down the Usk.'

'Now the new bridge is open here at Brechenneu we can cross over with the wagon and travel down the right bank of the Usk,' Urban said, 'there's a good road direct to Caerleon which ignores the meandering of the Usk and I reckon it halves the distance we'd travel if we used the river.'

It was darkening towards dusk as they approached Caerleon, since Urban had not pushed the pace. Only a few of the choirboys had taken the option of hitching a lift on the wagon to ease their tired legs while Grono had generously, and unasked, taken turns with his Dewi in carrying the banner along the road.

The Llantrisant group set up camp in the river meadows set aside for the expected surge of visitors to the Christmas court. They had brought tents for the purpose in the wagon. The Llantrisant boys were soon happily milling around building a fire for cooking a meal and making friends with their neighbours. The three clergymen headed into town, Leofric in particular wanted to find his brother Godwin, whom Morgan Ddu had taken on as his arfporthwr, or household squire, after their pilgrimage.

The houses in the high street were hung with the banners of the lords lodging in each. 'There's the banner of Glamorgan,' said Iago. 'It can only be Morgan Ddu of Llefnydd, the only others who can display it are up in the castle, the king and his brother. How odd, no English barons' banners are hung in Caerleon.'

The gold lion standard hung heavy in the damp air. At the door stood not two guards but four, and their shields bore not the device of Glamorgan but the smaller badge of Morgan Ddu's devoted teulu, a silver knotwork cross worked into the leather.

Leofric noticed that detail first. 'He travels with his own men,' he said quietly. 'Not merely those lent him by the king. He's getting rich enough to pay his own retainers.' Urban made no reply, but his eyes had already moved to the doorway. It opened.

Morgan Ddu stepped out, looking duly prosperous, and not alone. At his right hand, slightly behind but within easy speaking distance, walked a very beautiful young man elegantly dressed in a short riding cloak of dark green embroidered with silver. His hair, lighter than Morgan's and touched with auburn, caught the last glint of the winter sun. He carried no weapon, only a folded parchment, and he was speaking — not deferentially, but in the easy cadence of one accustomed to being heard as an intimate by the prince.

Leofric stopped dead in the street. 'Godwin,' he breathed. Godwin turned at the sound of Morgan's name spoken by one of the guards, and his face — which had been animated in discussion — altered at once into something warmer, less guarded. He no longer looked diminished and tormented, nor did he look owned. He looked… settled and at ease in his new life. Morgan glanced sideways at Godwin, half-smiling at whatever had just been said. Godwin met his lord's look openly, without flinching or lowering his eyes.

Urban saw the exchange and said nothing. Morgan spoke his instructions, his voice carrying clearly. 'The ground must be levelled just south of the town, in front of the stands,' he was saying. 'If we are to invite the English to break bones properly in a mass charge, we must at least provide them firm earth to fall upon.'

Godwin smiled — openly amused. 'They will say the mud favours the Welsh, lord.'

'They always say the ground favours someone,' Morgan replied. 'That is why it must lie between.'

He turned then, seeing the three clerics in the street, and recognition dawned. 'Archdeacon Urban,' he said, inclining his head — this time without irony and with the formal courtesy due to a senior churchman.

Godwin followed his gaze. For a heartbeat he looked startled — then delighted.

'Leofric! My brother!'

Protocol fractured. Godwin crossed the cobbles without waiting for permission, and though he checked himself before embracing his brother outright in the street, his hand caught Leofric's forearm in a grip that was neither formal nor restrained. 'You came,' he said. 'I had word, but I did not know when.'

Leofric searched his brother's face with almost indecent scrutiny. There were no longer any shadows there, no bruised pride.

Morgan watched the brothers' exchange with open interest — not impatience. 'I'm glad your kin are here for you at Christmas, Godwin my boy,' he said. 'And good friends and fellow-pilgrims too.'

Urban bowed. 'We are honoured to be summoned for the king's feast.'

Morgan nodded. 'You will lend it dignity.' He grinned his old grin. 'We shall lend it … spectacle.' His gaze sharpened slightly. 'This Christmas Eve the king has agreed to my proposal.'

Godwin stepped back into place at Morgan's side — not as ornament, but as aide.

Morgan continued: 'A tournament shall be held upon the fields between Caerleon and Newport - in campis inter Castrum Legionis et Novum Burgum as the proclamation states - upon ground that belongs fully to no lordship, but on a border, as is the French custom at such events.'

Iago's brows rose. 'A mêlée?' he asked.

'As true a one as ever Compiègne saw,' Morgan laughed, quite full of himself. 'Not the toy tilting of summer fairs. Our uchelwyr mustered here in Caerleon. English knights lodged at Newport. They will meet on the fields between and show off their skills. I fully expect the French and English knights will be humiliated. The arrogant fools will as usual forget that British warriors have excelled on horseback since the days when King Arthur ruled Britain from this citadel. The idiots have seen how our teuloedd have terrified the battlefields of Normandy of late, and yet still demean the "milites Walenses" as they call us in mockery.'

Urban's voice remained mild.

'Some might call this military exercise a little unwise, my lord.'

'Some clerics,' Morgan agreed. 'The good lord pope anathematises the tournament as a distraction from holy crusade, forgetting that the great expedition to Outremer of 1096 that freed the Holy Land arose out of a vow made on the tourney fields of Flanders.' He looked down the street, toward the direction of his father's castle. 'My royal father's wisdom is that we and the English have shared soil long enough. Let us see whether we can share sport in honour of Morgan ab Owain, the king of this reclaimed ancient land.'

Godwin added, lightly but deliberately, 'The king wishes the peace of Christmastide to be proven, not presumed.'

Leofric caught the phrasing. It was carefully chosen. Morgan glanced at Godwin, and this time there was a flicker of something like approval. He grinned and winked at Urban 'You see, my lord archdeacon,' he said, 'my household contains men who think as well as ride.'

Urban inclined his head. 'I am glad to see it.'

And in that small exchange the clergy of Llantrisant saw what they had come to discover:

Godwin stood not as a kept pretty favourite or a convenient and willing home for a princely pidyn, nor as a novelty, but as confidant and instrument — heard, visible, unashamed. Morgan Ddu did not torment or abuse Godwin. For the prince loved and respected the boy as a partner in life, as his brother Leofric loved and was loved by Urban. And both the brothers' marriages had been in wonderful fashion sanctified by the holy Dyfrig himself. In the cause of peace between peoples as it now seemed.

'Come,' Morgan said with an unfamiliar happy and uncomplicated smile. 'You will dine with us. And tomorrow you will see how my British knights do not disgrace themselves before English eyes.'

Godwin laughed softly. 'And see how the English fall with grace.' Morgan's same happy smile answered that sally.

From the fields between Caerleon and Newport, came the hammering of workmen setting up stands for the spectators of quality in the winter fields, and raising lists to demarcate the opening estor, or grand charge.

Urban spread pennies amongst his choirboys soon after dawn the next morning as they marched off excited and singing to the lists. 'Get yourself pies and cakes from the tradesmen by the stands, boys. No telling how long today's fun will go on for,' Leofric cautioned.

The two clerics joined the congregation of the town church for the morning mass, finding the church full of armed but unhelmeted Welsh cavalry preparing in their own way for the day's sport.

Neither Urban nor Leofric had attended a tournament before, though Leofric said he'd watched the knights and squires of the Gloucester garrison mount an informal contest against their counterparts of Bristol, an event the French called a bohort, which he did not really think bore much of a comparison. 'The riders used scaffolding poles not lances,' he commented. In tournaments I hear they use unblunted real weapons.'

Urban sniggered. 'That'll appeal to Morgan Ddu then.' They found the lists, a barrier of timber posts revetted in earth, 200 yards south of the Roman gateway into King Morgan's palace. A long row of raised benches like bleachers, sheltered by canvas canopies, was set behind the lists high enough for the levelled space for the estor to be easily seen across them. Women and clergy made up the majority of the occupants; the commoners crowded around the gates through the lists, and some perched up on the lists themselves. French or English heralds prowled the tops of the lists, proclaiming the virtues of the knights who employed or had tipped them lavishly.

Urban and Leofric managed to squeeze on to a bench quite near the list gates, to be welcomed by a group of lady sports enthusiasts who had come up from the towns of Newport, Chepstow and Abergavenny, there were even a few from Cardiff and Hereford. 'We never miss a chance of a tourney, reverend fathers,' said one aficionada from Herefordshire, a French lady whose experience included meetings on the Breton frontier. 'Of course it'll be a smaller affair than the big French or Rhineland meets,' she confided, 'but probably not as crooked.'

'Crooked?' queried Leofric.

'Oh yes, love,' she said. 'There are tourneyers who are in it for the money, and the money is earned by ransoms. The plumpest targets are the keen but inexperienced young counts and barons taking their first field. Cop one of those and you can name your price for ransom.'

'So how is that cheating?' asked a puzzled Leofric.

The lady chuckled. 'If this was a big French tourney, the fields between Caerleon and Newport last night would have been criss-crossed by informants willing to spill their guts as to who the prime targets are on their side to business partners on the other side, how to identify them, and how well protected they are by bodyguards. The informants will expect a share of the resulting ransom, even though it's taken from a man on their own team.'

Leofric nodded. 'I see. Well that is corrupt, the sin of Judas Iscariot.'

Another French lady chipped in. 'Not very likely to happen in this tournament. The entire Welsh team (ces dedans) are outsiders to the sport, complete amateurs. Their ransoms will be swept up within a half hour of the estor.'

Urban did not like the sound of that, but he kept his opinion to himself. Trumpets sounded from the walls of Caerleon heralding the opening parade. A column of mounted Welsh warriors wound down the high street from the castle. The princes and chiefs were preceded by squires bearing their banners and spare ashwood spears. And in the lead marched Godwin in the livery of Morgan Ddu and holding high the banner of Glamorgan, and behind him rode Prince Morgan, helmetless for now, but fully armed with mail coat, coif and chausses, with iron greaves, as well equipped as any French count or duke. His horse, a magnificent black destrier, was armoured too, with boiled and moulded leather plates. Red- and yellow-dyed plumes were nodding from the horse's head. Urban thought a point was being made. Morgan's teulu rode after him, cheering their prince. The crowd erupted too, whipped up by a Welsh bard singing the prince's praises.

Ir was at that point that a new party of spectators jostled its way into seats next to Urban and Leofric. A richly-cloaked nobleman sat himself next to Urban. It was Miles of Gloucester carrying a beaker of heated wine. 'My dear archdeacon, so delightful to find you, this much adds to the day's pleasures.'

Urban courteously replied to the redoubtable warrior. 'My Lord Warden, and are you not riding out on to the field yourself?'

The old man laughed. 'I've had my last adventure in the field, dear fellow, at Cardigan. You might have heard of it.'

'The whole of Wales rings still with the fame of your noble expedition, my lord.'

'Well, well, Lord Urban, no more of that. My son Roger takes the field today, indeed he leads the team of ces dehors, and he will be riding up from Newport with his mesnie (military household) at this moment.'

'I wish you luck in today's adventure, sir, I really do. I was wondering what you made of King Morgan's decision to celebrate this Christmas with a tournament?'

'Ah … a good question, Urban my boy. It is a shopfront of a sort. He wishes to show potential buyers that he can offer for hire knights as good as those of any count of Flanders. I have seen the teuloedd of South Wales in battle and I could offer my own testimony to their quality. My good fortune at Cardigan was that the teuloedd of North Wales are not yet in that class of cavalry, the equal of any French mesnie.'

Urban raised an eyebrow. 'Myself, sir, I had the idea that he was copying your friend Geoffrey of Monmouth's imagined court of King Arthur at Caerleon, which included military games. So King Morgan is aligning his kingship with those of the rest of Christendom, the equal of a king of England, Aragon, France or for that matter, Jerusalem.'

Miles nodded. 'There's certainly something to that, Urban dear boy. But I've been observing Morgan ab Owain since he was an adolescent, and my conclusion is that you should never underestimate his subtlety. If he's copying anyone, I would say it isn't the sort of king that Henry Beauclerk was. He has another king very much in mind though.'

'Oh sir, who would that be?'

'It would be David of Alba, old King Henry's nephew. He arrived at Westminster as the king's ward and was schooled in the palace to be a perfect Anglo-French earl in the king's domains, He was indeed given an English earldom and a French county. In truth he proved an enthusiast for the knightly way of life, and tourneyed away his summers and autumns from Brittany to Cologne with a mesnie as formidable as any other lord. Then he followed his brother as king of Alba, or "Scotland" as they now call it. And he went about remaking it into a copy of King Henry's England, with exchequer, earls, barons, sheriffs, knightly fiefs, regular monasteries and dioceses and the French language. It will be David that our King Morgan has been studying, I would say.'

'He sees King David as an experiment in national kingship you think?'

'Hmm. It fits. And if it is a measure of his ambition, then King Stephen would do well to pay a lot more attention to Wales than he has done. Ahah! Hear those trumpets in the south! I do believe here comes the English team.'

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Y Llyn Llwyd

by Michael Arram

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