Edward Marston - The Dragons of Archenfield

Aelgar was so rarely angry that the girl knew she was in earnest.

The servant ran to bolt the door as instructed. She then cowered in a corner as the banging became louder and more insistent. The door was shaking.

“Come on out!” roared a man’s voice.

“Say nothing!” Aelgar hissed to the servant.

“I want to see you, Aelgar. Come on out.”

“Perhaps you should go in, my lord,” said another man.

There was crude laughter from outside the door.

Aelgar looked around desperately for a means of escape. She could run to the brewhouse, but they could find her just as easily in there.

Her only hope lay in remaining so still that she convinced them that the house was empty. She gestured to the frightened servant to keep silent. The girl put both hands over her mouth and crouched down even lower.

Aelgar’s strategy did not work. She herself backed slowly up against a wall and sat on the floor. There was a tapping on the shutter above her head. It was a gentle noise like the sound of a bird fluttering in a cage. Aelgar slowly rose to peer through the window and almost fainted with shock. The lean face of Maurice Damville was grinning at her.

“Come to me, my darling!” he coaxed.

“No!”

“I only wish to talk to you.”

“Go away!”

“Open the door.”

“Leave me alone.”

“I have brought a present for you, my pretty one.”

“I want no presents.”

“Here it is,” he said. “In my hand.”

But when his hand came up to the window it was only to grab at her through the narrow space. Aelgar jumped back in the nick of time and the sinewy fingers were left grasping thin air. She snatched up the broom that was lying against the wall. It was made of birch twigs lashed tightly together. Aelgar swung the broom at the hand and produced a howl of pain.

More crude laughter came from Damville’s soldiers.

“You’ll pay for that, you little vixen!”

Her courage deserted her. Terrified that she had now provoked him, Aelgar dropped the broom and ran to the ladder that was angled up into the roof. She scrambled up the rungs and tucked herself under the thatch so that she was not visible through the window.

Damville cursed and banged on the door again, but the timber held.

The jeers of his men finally made their master burst into laughter.

Here was no nubile milkmaid who could be taken on a whim. Aelgar had quality and spirit. She needed to be stalked by a more cunning hunter. He knew that the prize would be more than worth the effort.

“Good-bye, my darling!” he called. “I must go.”

“Thank God!” she sighed.

“But I’ll be back for you soon.”

The hooves clacked off down Castle Street and were soon swallowed up in the general hubbub of market day. Aelgar had survived the visit this time, but there would be another.

Maurice Damville would not endure refusal for long.

“No, no, no!” protested Canon Hubert with crimson jowls shaking. “I refuse to countenance this act of madness.”

“Your disapproval is noted,” said Ralph, cheerfully.

“You visit two of the plagues of Egypt upon us.”

“A woman and a Welshman?”

“Yes,” moaned Hubert. “The woman will lead you astray and the Welshman will talk the ears off my donkey.”

He was not happy with the travel arrangements. It was bad enough to be wrested away from the relative comfort of the shire hall and from his accommodation at the cathedral. Canon Hubert was now being forced to share the journey with an urgent widow and an eager archdeacon. It was Purgatory.

Brother Simon was at least prepared to compromise.

“The archdeacon is fit company,” he said, exhausting every last drop of Christian charity at his disposal, “but the woman is not. Let us take one without the other. I would sooner bear the pain of endless theological argument than the discomfort of a female presence.

Women terrify me!”

“Has lust never found its sly way into that celibate body of yours?”

mocked Ralph. “Embrace sin gladly, Brother Simon. Give yourself some pleasure to repent.”

“Heaven forbid!”

Gervase Bret did not even bother to offer an opinion on the subject.

When Ralph made a decision, he held firm to it regardless of opposi-tion. Golde would ride with them to Archenfield in the company of Idwal the Archdeacon. Gervase was the only man in Hereford willing to befriend the roving ambassador from Llandaff, who, hearing of their journey to Archenfield, was quick to attach himself to them.

Gervase alone foresaw Idwal’s value. In an area that was predomi-nantly Welsh, they would need a skilful interpreter.

When they finally set off, they were fourteen in number. Ralph led the way with Golde at his side on a palfrey. At the rear of the column were Gervase and Idwal, the latter riding a Welsh pony and still wearing his malodorous cloak. Canon Hubert and Brother Simon rode in the very middle of the cavalcade, thus occupying an intermediate station between sinful thought and sacerdotal torture. While Simon watched the woman up ahead through apprehensive eyes, Hubert cocked an ear to catch the latest ramblings of the man he privately referred to as the Celtic imbecile.

Gervase was intrigued by the garrulous Welshman.

“Do you always travel alone, Archdeacon?”

“No, Gervase. God is always at my side.”

“But you take no companions? No priests or deacons?”

“I prefer to seek friends along the way.”

“You are more likely to encounter foes.”

Idwal chuckled. “Not in Wales. I am too well-known and too well-respected. I can ride from Caerleon in the south to Caernavon in the north with not a hand raised against me. I need no protection from my own countrymen.”

“But you are not in Wales now, Archdeacon.”

“I am, Gervase. Spiritually.”

A snort from up ahead told them that Canon Hubert had caught the last remark. His donkey chose that moment to relieve itself without breaking its stride. It seemed to Hubert an apt comment on the lilting lunacy behind him.

Untroubled by harsh criticism from man and beast, Idwal was in full flow on the subject of the red dragon. His face was turned in the direction of his native country and his voice took on a declamatory note.

“Long centuries ago,” he chanted, “Merlin prophesied the future struggles of the Welsh people. He revealed to our great chieftain a stone chest hidden at the bottom of a lake.”

“Would that chieftain’s name be Vortigern?”

“Indeed, it would. Vortigern himself. Lord of the Britons, as the Welsh were once called. Vortigern commanded that the stone chest be opened and out of it came a white dragon and a red dragon. Immediately, they began a fierce battle. At first, the white dragon drove the red one to the middle of the pool, then the red one, provoked into fury, drove the white one hither and thither.”

“What did it signify?” asked Gervase.

“Merlin explained that. The red dragon signified the Britons, the white, the Saeson , as we call them.”

“The Saxons.”

“Red for Wales, white for England. ‘Woe to the red dragon,’ exclaimed Merlin, ‘for her calamity draws nigh, and the white dragon shall seize on her cells. Then shall the mountains be made plains, and the glens and rivers overflow with blood. The Saeson shall possess almost all the island from sea to sea, but afterward our nation shall arise and bravely drive the Saeson out of their country.’ Thus spoke Merlin and thus it came to pass.”

“There is no mention of the Normans in that prophesy.”

“They are just a more monstrous white dragon.”

“And will the red dragon arise and drive them out?”

“In time, my friend. In time.”