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Authors: Morgan Llywelyn

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Like my lady mother, he took his own time and would not be hurried. “A great disaster occurred in Rome, a mighty nation very far away, and the Roman soldiers went home. Then the Cymry came down from
their mountains, only to meet the first Saxons coming to settle here from Germany and the Low Countries. The Celts and Saxons fought mightily for many years. In the monasteries there are still parchments written in those times by one Gildas, a historian. He tells of the Celtic hero Arthur, who drove the Saxons from England at the Battle of Badon.
“When Arthur died, however, the Saxons returned, and at last conquered through their great numbers. The Cymry returned to their mountains.”
“I'm sure I'm very sorry for them,” I said dutifully, as he seemed to expect. “But that explains nothing!”
My father gave me the kind of look men reserve for ignorant women—when they have kept them ignorant and are annoyed by it. “Of course it does, Edyth! The Cymry—the Welsh—still feel that England is rightfully theirs! They may well be persuaded to join in an overthrow of Edward and the Godwines, in hopes that they will be able to snatch the throne themselves.”
“Oh,” I said. Standing on a storm-tossed ship, looking at a cold black sea and rushing forward into the unknown, I could not be very sympathetic with all these people who plotted to control England. All I could imagine desiring was a bed that stayed still, and a drink of water that did not smell of fish.
I
N CRAMPED AND smelly quarters we sailed along the Saxon Shore, around the southern coast of England and westward to that desolate point the sailors call Land's End.
With good reason, I thought. I stood on the tossing deck, my feet braced against the roll of the ship, and listened to the sailors' cries and the endless creaking of the sails. For once I was most glad to be a female. The sea life was not for me; I could find nothing about it that I liked except the occasional exhilaration of a spanking salt wind in my face. But everything was so splintery—decks, walls, tables—and the noises of the living ship went on and on.
How do men rest in a world where nothing ever rests?
“Do you like the sea?” I asked Owain once, catching him as he emptied the Earl's slop jar over the side.
“In Wales we live between the mountains and the sea; if you don't like one you must learn to care for the other. But I prefer the mountains.” He flipped the
slops over the rail with an expert twist of his wrist, stepping aside to avoid the backward spray as the wind caught it.
“Are the mountains quiet, Owain?”
“Tomorrow we'll turn northward, I think, and soon you'll see them for yourself, my lady. They are quiet, I suppose, but it is the silence of sleeping giants. Not like this rowdy bitch, the ocean!” He waved his free hand at the dark and tossing water.
I did see Wales, rising out of the sea in a glory of lifted stone. The gentle swells of the marshes had left me unprepared for such sudden, savage beauty. Wales seemed to climb right out of the sea and reach for the heavens, holding up the sky on emerald-topped shoulders.
“It's beautiful!” I breathed, enraptured, to my lady mother. “Do come and see!”
“It's a barbarous place,” she moaned, “and we are going to another one. Bring me a cloth for my head!”
We put in and exchanged much cargo at a place called Aberystwyth, on the Bay of Cardigan. Owain tried without success to teach me how to pronounce Aberystwyth, and at last gave up with laughter. “The Cymry do not speak the language so much as they sing it, my lady, and your song is a squawk. I think one must be born in this land to master the tongue.”
“But it sounds so lovely when you say it!”
“Only to some, my lady,” he shook his head sadly. “Only to some.”
The last and most dangerous part of our voyage was straight across the Irish Sea. We were assaulted by huge waves that smashed against our ship in solid walls, until Morkere screamed with fear and even the Earl looked pale. Buffeted hour after hour by water and wind, I thought never to reach Ireland alive.
When even Emma had begun to despair, of a once the water sweetened, and one of the sailors came to tell us we were putting in at the mouth of the River
Liffey. Edwin, my father and I went up on deck for our first look at Ireland.
The River Liffey flows past Dublin town, and the harbor is an exotic place. Voyagers from all over the world must put in there—we saw ships and flags of every description. Edwin was most excited by the tall dragonships of the Vikings, needing only the elaborately carved heads which the warriors fastened to the prow before battle to turn them into monsters from a nurse's bed-tale.
“Dublin is called ‘Ath Cliath na cloc'—Dublin of the Bells,” the Earl told us, “and it is through the good offices of the Earl Leofric that we have sanctuary here. See that you behave yourselves, both of you, as the children of a noble Saxon house, and always treat our hosts with the utmost courtesy!”
I had no intention of doing otherwise, although with Edwin no one could be too sure. In East Anglia I had begun to be a woman, but in this strange and frightening new place I was glad to go back to being an obedient child again, thankful I had elders to tell me how to behave.
Some sort of official personage came to greet us, and with much bowing to the Earl and excessive reverence all around, he got mother and me into a rather primitively fashioned litter. The rest of our party were mounted on shaggy Norse ponies with very rough gaits; Morkere could be heard whining all the way.
We went through narrow streets, past houses of clay and rude circular huts of wickerwork. The better buildings had windows with shut-doors, but all had roofs of thatch. Some of the houses were washed with white lime; some were painted in shades of blue and yellow and ocher. People along the streets stared at us with open curiosity, as we did them, for there was a great difference in the apparel of a Saxon earl and that of Irish commonfolk.
The women wore a simple dress of wool or linen; the men, short tunics and an odd little skirt. Strangest
of all was their hair. Both sexes dressed their hair in thick plaits with metal balls at the ends. I could not help remembering my brief infatuation with the idea of braided hair and a gorgeous plume.
“I'll leave you with the Lady Maeve, cousin to Dermot Mac Mael-nambo, King of Dublin and Leinster,” the Earl had told us. “The Irish have kings all over their land and are much divided. This same Dermot once gave shelter to our enemy, young Harold Godwine, but it seems he's ready enough to give us welcome now.”
Irish hospitality is a thing of such legend that even in East Anglia we had heard of it. Doubtless Dermot was amused to offer sanctuary to both sides of warring factions. Irish humor can be hard to fathom.
The Lady Maeve greeted us graciously in her cousin's name. Her house was of timber, neither as large nor as fine as our hall, but I saw straightway that she had many beautiful things. Her table was set with goblets of glass, the first I ever saw, and Morkere broke his on the first night. He threw it from the table because he did not like the strange taste of the food. The Earl looked at my mother, my mother looked at Owain, and Morkere was taken outside somewhere.
There were cups and plates of silver, knives of staghorn and squares of fine linen just for wiping our mouths! That was what Edwin liked best; he minced about and dabbed his at his lips until I wanted to hit him. “Can't you behave yourself, Edwin?” I demanded of him after that first supper.
“I am behaving myself, sister dear! I am learning to adjust to the customs of the country just as quickly as I can and I would urge you to do the same.”
“You're not adjusting, you're just making fun of them!”
“Perhaps they don't know that,” he tossed off, and I saw that the cruel streak in my brother was strengthening with age.
Our first Irish meal was unlike the roasts and boiled
meat we were accustomed to at home. It was also much better than the vile stuff given us aboard ship, though we had not eaten overmuch of that! Cooks in white caps and aprons of linen served us trays heaped with wheat cakes, bowls of oatmeal and boiled eggs. There was warm milk still a-foam from the cow, and honey scented with clover and thyme. Maeve and her retinue were delighted with a joint of some stringy, herbed meat, but I could not stomach it. Only my father ate a goodly portion, as the laws of hospitality required.
When we could eat no more we were sent to bed, with Emma and the boys' bodyservants to tend our needs. The Earl and his Lady remained talking before the fire with the Lady Maeve.
This fire was not on a raised hearth in the center of the hall, as is our custom, but set against the wall. The smoke of the burning peat which the Irish use for fuel was left to find its own way out through the thatch of the roof. As a result, the walls were sooted black, and everything was permeated with that pungent odor. To this day I have only to close my eyes and summon the smell of peatfire, and all of Ireland comes back to me.
That night we slept between linen sheets, with embroidered coverlets in heathen patterns. Not yet accustomed to sleeping in unfamiliar beds, I had Emma lie with me and hold me.
“Emma … ?”
“Sssshhhh, childie. Go to sleep.”
“But I want to know! Emma, is my father not disgraced here? We are being treated so honorably I do not know if the Irish think my father good or bad!”
Emma shifted her bulk in the bed. Sheets were a novelty, and I do not think she liked them. “Quit fretting what folk think of your father, my lady. Haven't you been raised as a noble? That means you are proud of your many great ancestors who did noble deeds; your strength must come from them.”
My lady mother was a noble, too, and her strength
seemed to have deserted her completely the day her husband was named an outlaw.
“Where does your strength come from, Emma?”
There was a long silence. Then, “Myself, I suppose. That's all folk like me have.”
I would give a lot of thought to that later. But it did not answer my question that night. “What about me Emma? Can I be proud here, as I was proud at home?”
Her voice scolded me. “You can be proud anywhere, my lady! You are Edyth of the line of Alfred; no one can take that away from you!”
Satisfied, I slept.
The Earl Aelfgar sailed for Wales within the week, feeling certain that he had acquired some Irish allies. The rest of us, save only Owain, who went with my father, remained in Ireland all that year. We were not shamed in that green and rainy land, but treated as honored guests and made very comfortable. In some ways, the noble Irish live with more luxury than we Saxons. Yet in other ways they are surprisingly coarse.
The Lady Maeve could not dress her own hair, never having done so in her life. Each morning she sat before a fine mirror of polished metal while her maidservant combed her hair with a jeweled comb taken from a special comb bag of soft leather embossed with gold. She put red powder on her cheeks, blue upon her eyelids, and rubbed her teeth with a hazel twig dipped in salt. When her toilet was completed to her satisfaction, she went out to the stinking cow byre to milk the cow.
I thought the Lady Maeve very old, for she was at least as old as my mother. In truth, she must have been about five and thirty, which age does not seem so great to me now. She was very tall and deep-bosomed, her greatest beauty being a mane of heavy hair the color of dark red oak leaves. She had surpassing strength for a woman; I saw her move a huge chest across the room when her own steward could not. In the evening, when we were ofttimes entertained
by a storyteller, I came to recognize her for the heroine of many an Irish tale.
The Celts have a special attitude about their women. In Irish tales the heroines are always beautiful and courageous warrior queens. In Scot Land, I have heard, the fashion is for women to be beautiful and mightily proud. In Wales, women besung by the bards must be beautiful and delicately tender. (I, the Saxon, am none of these things; yet when my Griffith loved me I was all of them!)
Those months in Ireland were a learning time for me. In my ignorance I had thought all people other than my own uncivilized, barbaric. My lady mother thought that and never changed her opinion. Yet in Ireland I found a civilization so ancient, even the bards could not say when it began. When nothing but birds and fishes owned East Anglia, the Irish already made gold jewelry so fine it was carried to every distant land. Laws they had, and the old Druidic religion, and a land so rich no man need go hungry.
I had been taught those things deemed all a lady need know: sewing, weaving, the use of herbs and spices and the brewing of mead, how to tend the sick and do honor to guests. But Maeve's children could read! I swear it is true; not only her four strapping sons, but even her two daughters could look at a written thing and name every word! Even her steward, a savage-looking fellow with black hair and shoulders like a porter—that man could read! It was a thing so widely accepted that no one ever asked me if I could or not. Fortunately.
One bluelit afternoon, with rain pattering on the thatch, Maeve's son Brian and I sat before the fire with the chessboard balanced on our knees. Chess is a game that has all of Ireland in thrall, from the noblest household to the poorest hovel. Where they learned it I know not, but it is a constant occupation, and many cattle and sheep are wagered on the outcome of the battle between the courts of Black and White.
Brian was a forward fellow, letting his leg press against mine every chance I gave him. And I gave him a few. I was doing so well with the game that I became suspicious, for the thing was uncommon complicated, and I knew I had not learned it well enough to beat him.
“Brian, are you letting me win?”
He gave me a wide-eyed stare with big blue eyes like his mother's. “Why would I do that, lady?”
“Courtesy to a guest … ?”
He laughed, but with a false sound to it. “Never would I do that, Lady Edyth! It is not courteous, but rude, to allow your opponent to win. That would insult him.”
For some reason my temper flared. “You lie! You are letting me win, so by your own words you are insulting me!”
He raised a hand in protest, but I was a-shake with excitement and would not give him a chance. “You insult me in other ways as well, you knave! You stare at me too boldly when you think I'm not looking, you find too many excuses for laying hands on me … !”

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