I could not remain sullen in that fair land. We journeyed for days through the most beautiful landscape imaginable: every panorama breathtaking, each vista enchanting. I felt like stopping to admire the view every hundred yards or so. Had Tegid allowed it, we would still be on the road to Ynys Sci.
We traveled light; I carried nothing but the clothes on my back, and Tegid only his oaken staff and a large leather bag behind his saddle which contained a few provisions. Nevertheless, my guide assumed a slow, yet steady pace. For that, I was grateful. I had not ridden a horse since I was a small boy at the county fair, and then it had been a Shetland pony. Tegid allowed me time to marshal what rudimentary riding skills I possessed and master a few I lacked. He showed me how to lead the horse with the gentle pressure of my knees, leaving my hands free for holding a shield and sword or spear. And several times each day he urged the horses to gallop, so that I quickly learned how to stay upright on the broad, rolling back of the heaving beast beneath me.
The days were soft and bright, the nights cool and crisp as the land warmed to full spring. We traveled north and west through the wide lowlands above the Synchant River, following an old hill track which some Llwyddi king had made in an effort to link his further-flung holdings together: Sarn Meldraen, Tegid called it. According to him, the name commemorated one of Meldryn Mawr’s celebrated ancestors. Tegid told me countless things, few of which I understood at first. But he was a tireless teacher, jabbering away at me from dawn’s early light to well past the time when my eyelids closed for the night. By dint of Tegid’s constant repetition and unflagging zeal, I began to gain a rough rapport with the proto-Gaelic the inhabitants of Albion spoke.
I recognized many of the individual words, of course; I had encountered scores of the older word-forms in my Celtic studies, and they were little changed. And why not? The bards of ancient Britain always maintained that their language emanated from an Otherworldly source. Most academics totally discount such stories, believing them to be nonsensical boasts on the part of a shabby tribe attempting to further itself by professed descent from an illustrious forebear. But hearing the language on Tegid’s agile tongue, I entertained no such doubts. The native speech of Albion was strong and subtle, infinitely expressive, and rich with a wealth of color, sound, and movement. I could easily discern the root of modern Gaelic.
Since Tegid and I were alone on the trail, I tried my best to match my tutor syllable for tongue-knotting syllable, and vowel for elusive vowel. To his credit, he never laughed at my faltering, feeble efforts. He patiently corrected every gross mistake and lauded every small success. He made word games for us to play and pretended deafness whenever, in exhaustion or frustration, I lapsed into English. He seemed genuinely keen to have me master the brain-boggling intricacies of his speech, not merely salt away the odd word or phrase. And as soon as I gained a tentative foothold on a lower rung, Tegid was there, poking and prodding me to higher, more complex and sophisticated achievement.
Under such intense and imaginative instruction, I came to a flirting familiarity with what the bards called Moddion-o-Gair—the Ways of Words. And, as I learned, I began to see the world around me more clearly. A queer thing to say, I know. For the more words I had for things, the better I could frame my thoughts, the more vivid my thoughts became. Awareness deepened, consciousness sharpened.
I think this had to do with the language itself: there were no dead words. No words that had suffered the ignorant predation of a semiliterate media, or had their substance leached away through gross misuse; no words rendered meaningless through overuse, or cheapened through bureaucratic doublespeak. Consequently, the speech of Albion was a valued currency, a language alive with meaning: poetic, imagaic, bursting with rhythm and sound. When the words were spoken aloud they possessed the power to touch the heart as well as the head: they spoke to the soul. On the lips of a bard, a story became an astonishing revelation, a song became a marvel of almost paralyzing beauty.
Tegid and I spent three weeks on the trail—I call them weeks, although the bards did not reckon the passage of days that way— three weeks, living and breathing the language of Albion: by the fire at night when we camped, in the saddle when we rode, by the cold-water streams and hilltop bowers when we stopped to eat or rest. By the time we reached Ffim Ffaller I was speaking like a Celt—albeit a somewhat laconic Celt.
I learned much about the new world around me. Albion was an island—which I had surmised on my own—occupying roughly the same place and shape in its world as the island of Great Britain occupied in the real world. Tegid drew a map in the dirt to show me where we were going. Though the similarities were many and striking, the major difference was in size: Albion was many times larger in every way than the tidily compacted Britain I had left behind. Judging from the distances traveled, Albion was immense; both the land and the world that contained it were far more expansive than anything I could have dreamed.
I also learned something of wood and wildlife lore; Tegid proved a veritable fountain of information. Nothing escaped his notice—in the sky above or the earth below. No single detail was too minute, no occurrence so trivial it could not become a lesson. The man was indefatigable.
Yet, able teacher though he was, Tegid showed no interest in where I came from, or how I had come to be in Meldryn Mawr’s court. I was asked nothing about my own world. At first, I thought Tegid’s notable lack of curiosity strange. But, as the journey wore on, I became grateful for his indifference. I grew more and more reluctant to think about the real world. In fact, I forgot about it for whole days at a time, and found the forgetting liberating.
I gave myself wholly to Tegid’s tutelage, and I learned a great deal about Albion—more than I would have discovered in years on my own. In the process, I learned much, too, about my guide and companion.
Tegid Tathal ap Talaryant was a bard and the son of a bard. Darkly good-looking, with eyes the color of mountain slate, a deep-clefted chin and a wide, expressive mouth, he looked like an artist’s idea of the Brooding Poet. Tegid was of noble blood—and it showed in every line of his well-knit frame—born of a southern tribe which had produced bards for the kings of Llwydd for ten generations or more. In his company, I was conscious of my own undistinguished appearance: I must have seemed very ugly to such a handsome people—with my lumpen mug and weedy frame.
Although still a young man, by Albion standards at least, he was already a Brehon, only three notches lower than Penderwydd, or Chief Bard. Brehon was that phase of a bard’s training in which he was expected to master the intricacies of tribal life—everything from the rules governing the choosing of a king and the orders of precedence in court, to the latest land squabble among farmers and how many cows should be paid for usurping a man’s place in his bed. When he had become an authority on all matters public and private, the bard would become a Gwyddon, and then a Derwydd.
The degrees of bardship were elaborate and formal, their roles well defined through eons, apparently, of unaltered tradition. The candidate progressed from Mabinog—which had two distinct subdivisions, Cawganog and Cupanog—and proceeded up through the various degrees: Filidh, Brehon, Gwyddon, Derwydd, and finally Penderwydd, sometimes called the Chief of Song. There was also a Penderwydd over the whole, the Chief of Chiefs, so to speak. He was called the Phantarch, and was chosen by acclamation of his peers to rule over the bardship of Albion.
According to Tegid, the Island of the Mighty was protected by the Phantarch in some obscure way. The way he described it made it sound as if the Phantarch literally stood underneath the realm, supporting it on his shoulders. A quaint poetic image, I assumed.
All that first week I was saddle-sore and exhausted from the rigors of our journey. By the end of the second week, I was speaking to my horse again and optimistic about my chances of a full recovery. When the time came to exchange the horses for a berth aboard ship, I was sincerely sorry to see them go.
One afternoon toward the end of the third week, we halted atop a rocky headland on the western coast, and Tegid pointed out a settlement far down in the misty vale below. The sea inlet formed the valley floor between two towering headlands, creating a deep folded pocket which made for a nicely protected bay. The small settlement served the harbor there. “That is Ffim Ffaller,” he told me. “There we will meet the ship which will take us to Ynys Sci.”
“Will we have long to wait?”
“Not long. A day or two, perhaps a little longer. But I think not.” He turned in the saddle to face me and put his hand on my shoulder. “You have done well, brother. The king will be pleased.”
“And you have been a good teacher, Tegid. I am grateful for all you have done. You have given me eyes to see, ears to hear, and a tongue to speak. For that, I thank you.”
He shrugged off the compliment, saying, “You would have learned it all sooner or later. If I have helped you, I am happy.”
We started down the steep hill track to the settlement then, and said no more. The harbor at Ffim Ffaller was little more than a wooden jetty and a boatyard on the pebbled shingle. The jetty was large enough for three or four ships, with space in the bay for only half a dozen more. In short, the place appeared only what it was: a midway stopping place for ships bound further north and south.
The settlement consisted of an assortment of round wattled houses, a livestock pen, and a few outbuildings. Add to these the four brown huts on the shingle which formed the boatyard and that was all of Ffim Ffaller, home to perhaps thirty folk.
We ambled into the settlement and received a warm welcome, being the first visitors of the season. The headman of the holding confirmed that the ship was expected tomorrow or the next day, and gave us the use of the guesthouse and a woman to cook for us. Tegid gave him a bit of gold, broken off from one of the thin sticks he carried in a leather pouch beneath his belt. The headman accepted this payment, protesting that it was not at all necessary: they were only too glad for word of the realm.
I understood then how lonely such isolated places could be for a gregarious people. Word of events in the outside world was a precious commodity, and travelers were merchants of no mean status.
Indeed, we paid for our lodging many times over before our stay was out, telling and retelling the tidings we brought with us.
That Tegid was a bard further heightened our popularity. The settlement had not so much as a filidh, or master of song, among its members. There had been no songs or stories all the long, cold winter—save those the people had told or sung themselves. This may not sound like much of a hardship, but winter nights are long and winter days dark. And the songs of a bard can transform life lived before the hearthfire into a sparkling enchantment.
It was in Ffim Ffaller that I first heard the true genius of a bard. Tegid sang for the settlement, and it is a wonder I will treasure forever.
We had all gathered in the headman’s house, around the central firepit. It was after the evening meal, and everyone had come to hear Tegid sing. To my surprise, he had earlier produced a harp from his leather bag and taken it down to the jetty to tune its strings. The moment he entered the hut, a palpable thrill stirred the people.
He made his way to the far side of the firepit, where he took his place, standing straight and tall before us, his cloak falling in graceful folds from his shoulders, harp nestled against his chest, his handsome features illuminated by the flickering firelight. He bent his dark head and drew his fingers over the harpstrings, sending a shimmering cascade of sound spilling like a shower of silver coins over those huddled round about.
Then, drawing a long breath, he began to sing—simply, expressively. I followed the song as best I could, but lost much in the tight-woven tapestry of his words. What did that matter? What I gained far outweighed the loss. It was magic.
Tegid’s story—a tale about a lonely fisherman who woos a woman from the waves, only to lose her to the sea—was sung in such an eloquent and compelling voice, and with such a poignant melody, that tears spilled from my eyes to hear it. I could comprehend but a fragment of all he sang, and none of the sublety, yet the intensity of the song struck me with a power undiminished for all that. The haunting melody filled my soul with longing.
When he finished, the people sat in rapt silence. And, after a moment, Tegid began another song. But, like a poor man who has feasted on food far too rich for his humble appetite, I was glutted. More might have killed me. So I silently crept away and took myself off, alone, to walk along the water’s edge.
There, in the deep-hearted darkness of the night, I strolled the pebbled beach, gazing up at the brilliant stars and listening to the play of the water on the shore. I was astonished. Never in all my life had I been so moved—and by a simple song about a mermaid. I could neither believe nor understand what had happened to me. For it seemed that something inside me had been awakened, some long-sleeping part of me had been roused to life. And now I could no longer be who I was before. But if I was no longer to be who I was, who was I to be?
Oh, this was a fearful paradise—full of fantastic raptures and alarms. Terror and beauty, undiluted, cheek-by-jowl—and me as defenseless against one as against the other. How could I ever go back to the world I had known before? Truth to tell, I no longer considered going back a possibility. Here I was, by some miracle, and here I would stay.
I walked for a long time along the strand, and I did not sleep that night. The thing in me that had been wakened to life would not let me rest. How could I sleep when my spirit was on fire? I wrapped myself in my cloak and walked again along the water’s edge, as restless as the tide flow in the bay, my mind ablaze and dancing, my heart racing in an agitation of delight and dread.
Daybreak found me huddled on the jetty, watching the silver mist avalanching down the steep hillsides to spread across the cold blue black water of the bay. The early-morning sky was dull and hard as slate, but the clouds angling along the coast blushed pink with dawn. Out in the bay, a fish leaped. And the place where it splashed became a rippling ring.
The sight of that silver ring spreading on the peaceful water pierced me to the marrow. For it seemed to me an omen, a portent pregnant with meaning, a symbol of my life: a once disturbed surface stirred into a glimmering, ever-widening circle. The circle would expand until it was swallowed in the vastness of the bay—and then there would be nothing left, nothing to show that it had ever existed.