David Pilling - The Red Death

Owain had a rather grander fate in mind for me. “He planned to raise you as a soldier in Clovis’s army,” she told me when I was old enough to understand, “and, when you were grown, to take you back to Britain with an army of Frankish mercenaries. You would fulfil the promise of Arthur’s return, and restore peace and order to our homeland.”

I remember the sadness in her voice as she described Owain’s absurd plan. “He also imagined you doing what Arthur never dared to do, and claiming the High Kingship. In his mind, you were Coel Hen reborn.”

Owain schemed and risked so much on my behalf. He loved me for my mother’s sake, and perhaps saw me as the son he never had. If I concentrate I can conjure up a vague image of the man, as though peering at him through an opaque screen. He was a powerful, thickset young warrior, with strong rather than handsome features, and a deep voice. He is one of those whose souls I pray for night and day.

We got safely into Frankia, though it was a near-run thing, and a band of King Rhiwal’s horse-soldiers insisted on interrogating us near the border. Eliffer, who was still a great beauty, managed to charm them into letting us go, though her remaining servants were sufficiently frightened by the experience to abandon her.

“You have nothing to pay us with, lady,” they told her, “and we are not prepared to share your dangers for nothing. God go with you.”

Owain cursed them for cowards and traitors, and threatened them with Caledfwlch, but Eliffer stayed his hand.

“They owe me nothing,” she said gently, “and I have no right to put them in danger. We must carry on alone.”

And so they did, though how Eliffer kept me alive in the years that followed is little short of a miracle. She and Owain made their way to Paris, where Clovis had established his court. They were ragged and half-starved by the time they finally reached the city, and to look at my mother none could have suspected she was royalty.

Owain immediately applied to join Clovis’s elite household guard, privileged troops that got the best gear, quarters and rations. He knew only a few words of Frankish, and had to speak to the soldiers on the palace gate via a British priest who had taken pity on us.

The tall, arrogant Franks took one look at Owain, wretched and beggarly as he was, and laughed him to scorn.

“I am a better man than any of you,” he cried, struggling to keep his temper in check, “and am ready to prove that on your bodies.”

His proud bearing, and the sword at his hip, persuaded them to give Owain a trial. Despite his weakened condition, he did well enough with sword and spear to persuade them that he could be of use, but not in the guard . Instead he was offered a lowly berth in the city garrison, which he accepted for our sake.

My mother and I lived with him in poor lodgings near the barracks, all three of us together in a single tiny room. She, a descendent of the illustrious line of British kings, was reduced to cooking and washing and living alongside the wives of common soldiers. My earliest clear memories of Eliffer are of a painfully thin, tired woman, old before her time, her hands red-raw from endless work: cleaning dishes, washing and darning clothes, toiling over a kitchen fire, and countless other menial tasks.

As one raised to privilege and soft living, Eliffer hated her new existence. In later years she freely admitted that, were it not for me, she would have put an end to it and herself with a knife. For Owain she seemed to care remarkably little, though we owed him our lives. He was the only person who treated Eliffer with the deference she had been raised to expect. Instead of responding with gratitude she treated him like an inferior to the end of his days.

This was not long in coming. When I was five years old Clovis made war on his neighbour Alaric, King of the Visigoths. In the spring of that year the Frankish army marched to meet the Visigoths in battle. Owain marched with it. Desperate to prove himself worthy of a place in Clovis’s personal guard, he had volunteered to join an auxiliary unit of infantry. Eliffer was too proud to try and dissuade him, and I have a memory of standing hand-in-hand with her on the parapet over the city gates, watching the long columns of horse and foot march away.

A few days later the casualties started to come in, carried on the backs of litters and covered wagons. Eliffer did not spare me from witnessing the procession of maimed and shattered men as they came through the gates.

I will never forget the sight and stench of so much pain and death, or the misery of families and loved ones as they searched through the human wreckage for what was left of their men. That was my first exposure to the reality and cost of war.

But it was victory. With his usual swiftness and aggression, Clovis had led his men across the Loire, in the northern marches of Visigoth territory, and destroyed Alaric’s army at a place called Vouille. Clovis personally slew Alaric, and many of his soldiers were made rich by the plunder and spoil that the fleeing Visigoths left behind.

Owain’s well of good fortune had run dry. We found him lying on a filthy stretcher just inside the gates. One of his comrades, a young Frankish auxiliary, was kneeling beside him and trying to force a few drops of water from a gourd through his lips.

I remember the Frank’s head was partially covered by a blood-soaked linen bandage, wrapped tight around where his left ear used to be. He glanced up at us, and his pale face turned paler still as he made the obvious mistake.

“Owain,” he said, patting Owain’s bloodless cheek, “your wife and son are here.”

The fallen man’s eyes opened a little. He was in terrible pain. The auxiliary units wore little armour, and a Visigoth spear had pierced Owain’s chest. The ash shaft of the spear had split and broken off, leaving the iron head lodged inside him. Much of his life’s blood had already pumped out of the mortal wound, though his comrades had done their best to stem it with a crude bandage made from his cloak.

Owain’s spirit was all but flown, and he was robbed of speech, but there was time and strength left inside him for a few more words. He did not look at my mother, but beckoned feebly at me.

Children can be terribly heartless, and I recall feeling no great emotion as I knelt beside his stretcher. Owain had been like a father to me, and risked his life many times over to protect mine, but I appreciate these things only in hindsight. Perhaps I did not fully understand what was happening, or the sight of so much blood and death had numbed my senses.

His fingers crawled to the hilt of the sword at his belt. “Yours,” he whispered.

The young Frank looked impressed. Only the richest and noblest warriors usually carried swords, and it must have been a wonder to him that Owain possessed such a fine one.

Owain tried to pull Caledfwlch from its sheath, but his strength failed. I placed my small hand over his and helped him to draw it out. The blade was smeared with blood, presumably belonging to Visigoth warriors he had slain in battle.

“He has struck his blow,” said Eliffer, “let him go to God.”

“Remember,” Owain repeated as he slipped away, his dying eyes fixed on mine, “remember.”

My mother had no desire to stay in Frankia after Owain’s death. There was nobody to protect us anymore, unless she married a Frankish soldier or civilian. The very idea of wedding a commoner revolted her, even though she was now one herself. Eliffer had no skill or trade, and no money or anything of value in her possession except Caledfwlch.

Even so, she never spoke of pawning or selling the sword. Caledfwlch was the sum total of my inheritance, and she could not bring herself to deprive me of it.