THE HAWK AND THE WOLF

by Mark Adderley

            That evening always stood out in Emrys’ memory, because that was the night his grandfather’s guest turned into a serpent.
            Rhydderch, king of Cambria, sat with his youthful guest, the orange light from the hearth suffusing their faces as they talked politics.  Politics bored Emrys.  Even in his later, and remarkable days, when he had been the advisor to many kings, politics would always bore him.  They were a distraction from his real interests—the ways of birds and trees, history, tradition, poetry, the living ghosts that the bards sang about on long winter evenings.  But Rhydderch was talking politics with his guest, because his guest was Coroticos, son of the High King of Britain.
            Chief Dragon of the Island of Britain.  That was the ancient title of the High Kings, since the time of Brutus the Trojan.  Perhaps it was his reflection upon the High King’s title that caused what happened next.  For it was as Emrys pondered the grandeur of such a title that the transformation began.
            First of all, Coroticos’ nose and chin merged and stretched into an elongated snout.  The hue of his skin darkened to a deep crimson, like a fierce sunset or heart’s blood.  It shone, like a serpent’s scales.  Great bat-like wings unfurled, catching and hurling back at it the hearth’s light, and casting huge and menacing shadows on the wall behind him.  The dragon raised one terrible claw, and Emrys saw clutched in it a sword of great beauty—the sword, Excalibur.  Emrys gaped.  He looked about the hall.  Only the son of the High King was affected, and everyone else was behaving normally, as if they had not noticed their prince’s metamorphosis.  Emrys rubbed his eyes.
            Coroticos was himself again.  A remarkable man, but a man.
            The hall swam about Emrys, and he put out a hand to the table to steady himself.  Gradually, the world returned to normal, and Emrys sagged, panting over the picked-at food before him.
            “How fares my lord the prince?” came a voice.  Emrys looked up.  There was an expression of concern on the face of Cathbhad, bard to his grandfather.
            “Thank you, Cathbhad,” he replied.  “I was giddy for a moment, that’s all.”
            “No more but even so?”
            “No more.”
            Cathbhad peered at him closely.  He seemed to be staring not at Emrys, not into his eyes, but at his forehead.  Then, as if covering up a blunder, he reached up and with a self-conscious motion swept aside a stray few strands of Emrys’ hair.
            Emrys and the bard turned again to look at the king of Cambria and the prince of Britain, sitting together at their repast.  But Emrys was wondering at the strange vision that had shaken him so; and he wondered if it would visit him again.
            But all thoughts of dragons and visions were soon swept from Emrys’ mind, for it was at that moment that he saw Boudi approach: Boudi, who wore her beauty like a mystery about her, and now lowered herself onto the trestle beside Emrys, saying to Cathbhad, “Will you not sing, my lord Cathbhad?”
            “For you, my lady Boudicea,” replied Cathbhad, “I shall sing anything.”
            “Sing of the sword of power,” said Boudi.  “Sing of Excalibur.”
            Cathbhad sighed deeply.  “That is a tale of sadness, lady,” he said, “but, since I have promised, I may not say you nay.”
            Cathbhad stepped forward, taking his harp reverently from its case.  Emrys leaned forward.  This was always his favourite part of the festivities.  Beside him, he was aware of Boudi, regarding him out of the corner of her eye.  Her eyes, he knew, never left him, and his eye delighted in nothing so much as her.  But he wanted to hear the tale.
            Cathbhad began to speak.  At first, no one paid him any mind, and continued their own conversations; but after a while, one by one, they fell silent.  Cathbhad’s words became alive, and walked up and down in their minds and hearts.
            Then they saw Brutus, dead to the world for over a thousand years, standing in the prow of his ship as he crossed the sea from Benwick.  He did not look behind him, and he never had.  He had been driven from the land of his birth, and had sought a new home throughout the southern seas; and the gods had brought him at last here, to a northern land called Albion.  At his side was Excalibur, the sword of kings, handed to him by Argante, the Lady of the Lake.  With Excalibur, Brutus would bring low all enemies, and would subdue Albion to him, changing even its name until it resembled his own: Britain, the Island of the Mighty.
            Cathbhad plucked the strings of his harp, and the quality of his voice changed.  He chanted, and the word-magic deepened.  Men saw the bright blade in their minds, light pouring down it like an amorous liquid, fire flashing from its point.  The hilt was bound with leather, the quillions were gold, red the stone set in the pommel.  Cathbhad sang, and the fingers of the men of the warband twitched, for they felt the perfect balance of the sword, felt the joy of a perfect swing.  The blade seemed to carry itself forward, to be eager to cut and slash, to drive back the enemies of the Island of the Mighty.  The giants who lived in Albion threw themselves at the first Britons, but they drove them back, and Gogmagog, their chief, plunged from the cliff and dashed himself to pieces on the rocks; a wave crashed, and there was nothing left.  Brutus and Excalibur had prevailed, and for a thousand years, no one would challenge the supremacy of the Britons.
            Cathbhad drove his fingers over the harp strings in one last chord, and suddenly they were all back in Rhydderch’s hall in Caermyrddin.  Servants moved between the tables, conversation resumed, knife fell into meat.  Emrys drew a deep breath.
            Boudi leaned closer.  Her proximity to Emrys was like a piquant aroma, and it stirred him deeply, even more deeply than the tale.  She said, in her deep voice, smooth as samite, “Emrys, I have a dream.”
            “What dream is that?” he asked.  Emrys had dreams too—strange dreams he could not fathom.  But he kept them close in his heart, as he did many things, and not even Boudi knew of them.
            “I have a dream,” said Boudi, and indeed her voice sounded as if it came from another world, “that one day the Island of the Mighty will be mighty in more than just name.”
            “What do you mean?”
            She looked at him with a little crease between her brows.  “Don’t be stupid,” she said.  “I hate it when you’re stupid.  It makes me think that everyone else is right about you, and I’m wrong.  And I know I’m never wrong.”
            “Boudi,” smiled Emrys.  “I will never be stupid, because I don’t want you to hate me.”
            “Very well,” replied Boudi.  “I promise I shan’t hate you.”
            “But what do you mean?  Britain is mighty.  How could you make Britain mighty when it’s already mighty?”
            Boudi didn’t answer at once.  There was a knife on the table in front of her and, very carefully, she picked it up and wiped the grease from it so that it flashed like a mirror.  And there was her face, as beautiful and wild as a wolf’s, but sliced in half by the edge of the knife.  She said, “The Romans rule the world, but one day, it will be the Britons who are greatest.”
            “The Romans couldn’t conquer us,” argued Emrys, but he spoke softly.  He was fascinated by Boudi’s face, by the curve of her lip and the flare of her nostril, by the perfect smoothness and whiteness of her cheek; by the fire that was in her eyes.
            “Since they failed to conquer us,” said Boudi quietly, “they have conquered many other realms.  And they will be back.  My father says so.”
            Emrys was silent for a while.  He felt a prickling on the back of his scalp, and the slightest twitch in the shoulder, as if some invisible hand were impelling him . . . where?  “It must be Excalibur,” he said at length.  “Only a High King wielding Excalibur can do as you wish.”
            “But Excalibur is lost,” remarked Boudi.  “The High King will have to succeed on his own merits.”  She turned to look at him.  There was fire in her countenance, and her lips burned as they formed words.  “Or perhaps not the High King.  If the High King cannot rise to greatness, maybe others can.  The greatness is in our blood, not in the metal of a sword.”
            Emrys shrugged.  “But what can we do?”
            Boudi looked down.  “Nothing now,” she said.  “Nothing now.”  Again, she gazed intently at the knife, as if it were a mighty weapon and she a great warrior.  “But soon,” she murmured.
            And Emrys knew that she would be the great love of his life.

* * *

            The next day, Coroticos left, and Boudi returned home with her father, Cydwelli.  It was a morning of mist and croaking ravens in spiny winter trees, and Emrys passed with fearful glances the yew tree that stood in the courtyard of his grandfather’s castle and climbed to the top of the palisade to look down at the departing household.  There were a few warriors, and a closed cart for the women.  Boudi watched him silently from among the women.  She did not smile, nor wave, but from her heart, she bade him farewell for the moment; and his heart understood.
            For a moment, and quite suddenly, the mist seemed to rise up all about him.  Not a dark mist, but one suffused with light.  Emrys clutched at his heart.  He bowed his head, and his other hand groped for the branch.  There were shapes in the mist, shapes all around him, but there, where Boudi had been a moment before, stood a wolf, its jaws slimed with gore.  The wolf lifted its head and opened those bloody jaws, and emitted a mournful sound, a howl of piercing agony.  Something stirred near Emrys, and he saw a hawk, its wings spread, glide down to stand in the shadow of the wolf.
            Then, in a twinkling, the vision had gone.  The mist retreated into the ground, and Emrys sat among the labyrinthine branches of the old yew, looking down on Boudi as she sat in the cart among the other women.  She was frowning, as if she had seen something of what Emrys had seen.  But now the farewells had been concluded, and Cydwelli had mounted his horse.  A horn sounded, and the cavalcade began to move off through the gates.
            Emrys clambered down the bole.  He still felt weak in the knees after his odd waking dream, but he dashed across the courtyard, and climbed to the top of the wooden stockade.  He was in time to see the last of the cavalcade as it rolled along the narrow road.  Soon, the mists had swallowed it, and left Emrys alone.
            Alone.  Emrys looked to the left and right.  The sentries were not near him.  He seemed to spend a lot of his time alone.  The other children of the fortress avoided him when they could.  He did not think they disliked him; but they thought him different, somehow.
            But there was one person who would listen to him, other than Boudi.
            Stirred into action, Emrys dashed down the ladder that was set up against the battlements.  The courtyard was a busy place at mid-morning, crisscrossed by various people on errands from one place to another.  The aroma of wood smoke mingled with that of pigs that rose from the nearby sty.  Emrys turned to the left and passed out through the gates into the road that Boudi and her father’s household had so recently taken.  But he did not stay on the path.  Instead, after a few paces, he plunged into the forest.
            Presently, he heard the merry chatter of a stream, and followed it against the current.  It was narrow and brown, and he could have stepped across it, but the banks were muddy from the recent rains, and the ground slick with wet autumnal leaves.  Emrys’ breath steamed as he plodded along, the wind in the branches above him, and the rattle of magpies coming to him from all around.
            When he had followed the stream for perhaps ten minutes, he came to a place where the ground rose steeply, and hazels stood about a moss-grown rock.  It was out of this rock that the stream issued, spouting from a fissure with joyous abandon.  A small bronze plaque had been fixed above it, into which was etched a picture of Tylweth, with waters churning all around her.  It was said that the spring had originally been harmful, but that the goddess had hurled her magical powers against it.  The spring had risen and overwhelmed her, but thereafter the river was sweet and healthful.  Emrys cupped his hand in the icy water and raised it to his lips, breathing a quick word to the goddess of poetry.
            Beside the spring was a small bothie made of wattle-and-daub leaning against the face of the rock.  A bull’s hide stretched across the doorway, and Cathbhad sat outside, strumming upon his harp in an apparently absent-minded fashion.  On seeing Emrys, however, he ceased at once, and narrowed his eyes, as if he saw something that puzzled him deeply.
            “Good health and long days attend you, Cathbhad,” said Emrys.
            “And you, Prince Emrys,” returned the bard.  His brow was still dark, but with an effort he cleared it.
            “What are you doing?” asked Emrys.
            Cathbhad set aside his harp.  “I was composing a eulogy in praise of your grandfather,” he said, “but now I am talking to you.   But you, my prince,” he added, peering closely at Emrys, “what brings you so far from the fortress of your grandfather?”
            “I want to know things,” said Emrys.
            “What, exactly?”
            “Everything,” replied Emrys.  “Everything you can tell me.”
            “That would take many moons,” answered the bard.  “It took me all my life to learn what I know, and I have traveled to many lands, to Eirin and Gaul and Benwick, and even beyond.  And I was young when I started.”  He looked piercingly at Emrys as he said this.  “Why don’t you sit down?”
            Emrys sat beside him, on a rock.  His hands were between his knees, fidgeting as if he were nervous.  “Then tell me about Excalibur,” he said.
            Cathbhad smiled.  “Would you wield it in battle, for the love of the beauteous Boudicea?” he said.  Emrys squirmed and looked at the ground between his feet.  “A perilous desire, that.  It is the sword of kings, and only a High King may wield it.”
            “How was it lost?”
            Cathbhad sighed.  “No two storytellers agree on that,” he said.  “Some say that Belinos, bosom-companion of King Cassivelaunos, took it with him in the ship Prydwen.  No man can say whither he went, but the legends speak of a hidden place, protected by strong magic, where the Prydwen is said to rest.  Others claim that Morgana, great enemy of the Britons, knowing Excalibur to be separated from the High King, attacked and murdered Belinos and took the sword to her realm of Annwn.  Still others attest that the sword sank with the ship.”
            “How can one be certain?”
            “There is no certainty beneath the moon,” replied Cathbhad.  “The finding of Excalibur will be the task of many lifetimes of men, if it can be found at all.”
            “What do you think?”
            Cathbhad considered the question for a moment.  At length, he took up his harp, struck a chord, and sang softly:
“Bright was the blade   of Brutus the brave
Loyallest of lords,   beloved of men,
Forged by fäerie  in the freshness   of the first day
Sundered from men   the sword of kings
Through stone,   over sea,   under sod,
Unseen by eyes,   Excalibur of old,
Fear-maker in foes,   ancient heirloom.
The brand abides   the best of all Britain
To raise from the rock   and reign over all.”
The chanting ceased, and Cathbhad said to Emrys, “I believe it is in Annwn.  But that place is wrapped around with Morgana’s art.  It is no place you could just saunter into.”
            “How can I get there?”
            Cathbhad smiled indulgently, and patted Emrys on the shoulder.  “It is the wise men of Ynys Mon that would know.  Seek this knowledge in Ynys Mon.  But go not unless you first say farewell to your mother.  It would break her heart that you had gone without seeing her first.”
            “I will do it,” said Emrys, standing.  “I will say farewell to my mother first, and then I shall go to Ynys Mon, and I shall find Excalibur for the High King, and Britain shall be mighty once more, as it was in the days of Brutus.”
            “It is a noble aim, Emrys of the high mind,” replied Cathbhad.  “But stay awhile.  Is there nothing else you wish to tell me?”
            “I can think of nothing,” replied Emrys.
            Cathbhad was peering intently into his face.  “Then nothing unusual has happened?  You have seen nothing out of the ordinary?”
            Emrys thought of the wolf and the hawk, but he spoke not of it.  That was a thing he felt disinclined to share, at the moment.  “Nothing,” he repeated.
            “Go then,” said Cathbhad, “and good fortune attend your journey.  But remember to say farewell to your mother first.”
            “I shall remember,” said Emrys, starting off back down the course of the stream.

* * *

            Emrys found his mother in the women’s quarters.  This building stood apart from the hall, in the shelter of the fortress’ outer wall.  It was spacious and airy within, but Viviane, a member of the royal family, possessed her own chamber.  Emrys strode directly up to the door to her chamber and pushed it open.  It was light within.  The windows were open, so that a breeze flowed through the chamber, but coals glowed in a brazier in the centre of the room.  Curtains had been drawn across the enclosure where Viviane’s bed stood, and she herself sat upon a small seat with bronze armrests in front of one of the open windows.
            Emrys thought that she was the most beautiful woman in the world, save for Boudi, of course.  Her dress was of deep blue, like the sky on a summer evening, and she wore a plaid shawl over her shoulders.  Her hair was black, so black it was almost blue, and she wore it braided and tied behind her head.  Her cheekbones were high, her eyes dark and deep, and she looked inquisitively at her son as he entered.  She held up one hand regally, and returned her attention to the report that the steward was making.  He finished, and bowed before her, then she dismissed him and, at last, turned to Emrys.
            Emrys did not speak at first.  He put a knuckle to his mouth, and paced up and down a few times, as was his wont when on the brink of doing something difficult.  At last, he spoke.  “I have come to say farewell, mother,” he said.
            “Where are you going, my son?” she asked.
            “I have a long journey,” he replied.  “It’s to Ynys Mon that I must go.”
            “And why is it you must undertake such a journey?”
            Emrys paused again.  “It is the beginning of my quest, madam,” he said.  “I must find the sword of kings, Excalibur, and restore the High King of the Island of the Mighty to his former greatness.  Will you not give me your blessing ere I depart?”
            “My blessing goes with you wherever you go,” answered Viviane.  “But will you not stay with me a little while longer yet?”
            “My business cries haste upon me,” replied Emrys.  “This is no light matter.”
            “No,” agreed Viviane, “but it is a matter of many years, and a little delay at the outset will not greatly disadvantage you.  Will you not abide here a while longer?”
            “Madam,” insisted Emrys, “how long would you have me stay here and gather moss?”
            “Well,” said Viviane, “at least until you are nine, though I think that you should perhaps gain the strength to carry the sword that is your quest’s object.”
            Emrys had nothing to say to this and, in some frustration, beat a hasty retreat from his mother’s chamber.