GORONWY
The Blessed Valley, which for nearly five hundred years had enjoyed the
"Peace of Dewi," which had remained untroubled in the midst of the most
violent commotions, was now a prey to the spoiler.
Throughout the whole basin all was trouble. The armed men, servants of
the bishop, for the most part Normans or Englishmen, but some Welshmen
who had taken service under the oppressors of their countrymen, were
dispersed through the district.
Ostensibly they were engaged in numbering the hearths, for the exaction
of the fine, but with this they did not content themselves. They entered
every house, and conducted themselves therein as masters, aware that
they were not likely to be called to order for the grossest outrages by
either Rogier or by the bishop.
They demanded food and drink, they ransacked the habitations and
plundered them. They wasted what they could not consume, and destroyed
what they did not take. The men they treated with contumely and the
women with insult.
A farmer who had a _hafod_, a summer byre, as well as a _hendre_, a
winter residence, must pay for both. The poorest squatter would be
forced to contribute as well as the wealthiest proprietor. "A mark of
silver for a house," said Rogier; "settle it among you how the money is
to be extracted. The rich will pay for the poor. In a fortnight we shall
have every hearth registered."
One wretched man, whose hovel had been broken into, set fire to it.
"This," said he, "shall not be counted. I have no house now, no roof, no
hearth. Therefore it shall not be reckoned in."
"It was recorded before you set it in flames," was the answer. "It pays
all the same."
A father attempting to defend his daughter against one of the dissolute
soldiers received a blow on his head which cut it open and cast him
senseless on the ground. He lay in a precarious condition; and the girl
had been carried off.
A lone woman, aged, and a widow dependent on the charity of the
neighbors, through their dispersion, or through forgetfulness, had died
in solitude, by starvation.
Several well to-do men, landowners, in attempting to resist the
plunderers had been unmercifully beaten.
It was an open secret that Rogier was seeking in all directions for the
beautiful Morwen; but Tall Howel had the cunning to evade his search, by
moving her about from house to house.
On Sunday, with the exception of some of the soldiers, hardly any
natives appeared in the church. The few who did show were some old
women. It transpired that the inhabitants of the Caio district had gone
for their religious duties to some of the chapels, of which there were
at least six, scattered over the territory of the tribe, where they had
been ministered to by the assistant clergy.
When this came to Cadell's ears, he had his horse saddled, and attended
by some of the men-at-arms, rode to the residences of these vicars,
dismissed them from their offices, and had them removed by the bishop's
retainers and thrust over the borders, with a threat of imprisonment
should they return.
On the following Sunday the church of Cynwyl was as deserted as before.
"He has deprived us of our pastors," said the people. "He cannot rob us
of our God."
Then as Cadell learned that they had assembled in the chapels, and had
united in prayer under the conduct of one of the elders, he rode round
again, and had the roofs of these chapels removed.
"This is better," said the people. "There is naught now betwixt us and
God. He will hear us the readier."
The day arrived for the benediction of the waters of the Annell. Then it
transpired that the rod of Cynwyl had been abstracted from the church.
In a rage, Cadell sent for the hereditary custodian.
Morgan appeared with imperturbable face. "Ah!" said he, "this comes of
having here such godless rascals as you have, foreigners who respect
nothing human and divine. You brought forth the staff to lay it on the
body--and this before all eyes. These rapacious men saw that there was
gold on the case, and that stones of price were encrusted therein. Had
they stolen the case and left the wooden staff, it would not have
mattered greatly. But what to them are the merits of one of our great
saints? They regard them not."
Rogier now considered that it were well to hasten matters to a
conclusion. He accordingly sent round messengers to every principal
farmhouse to summon a meeting of the elders in the council-house, that
he might know whether they were ready with the fine, and what measures
they had taken to raise it.
Cadell was dissatisfied and uneasy. He sat ruminating over the fire. The
hall that had escaped being burnt had been accommodated for his
occupation without much difficulty, as such articles as were needed to
furnish it were requisitioned without scruple from the householders of
Caio.
But Cadell was discontented. In a few days the bishop's servants, who
had brought him to the place and had seen him there installed, would be
withdrawn. Then he would be left alone in the midst of a hostile and
incensed population. Although they might not overtly resist him, they
would be able in a thousand ways to make his residence among them
unendurable. He might wring from them their ecclesiastical dues, but
would be unable to compel those many services, small in themselves,
which go to make life tolerable. He had already encountered reluctance
to furnish him with fuel, to supply him with meal and with milk, to
fetch and to carry, to cook and to scour. To get nothing done save by
the exercise of threats was unpleasant when he was able to call to his
aid the military force placed at his disposal; when, however, that force
was withdrawn, the situation would be unendurable.
If there had been a party, however small, in the place that favored the
English, he would have been content; but to be the sole representative
of the foreign tyranny, political as well as ecclesiastical, under which
the people writhed, was beyond his strength. And the situation was
aggravated by the fact that he was himself a Welshman, and was therefore
regarded with double measure of animosity as a renegade.
He was uneasy, as well, on another head. Rogier had let drop a hint that
his brother intended to reduce the Archpriesthood of Caio to a mere
vicariate on small tithe, and to appropriate to himself the great tithe
with the object of eventually endowing therewith a monastery in the
basin of the Cothi, probably by the tarns at the southern end. "We shall
never crush the spirit out of this people," said Rogier, "unless we
plant a castle on Pen-y-ddinas, or squat an abbey by those natural
fishponds at Talley."
If this were done, then he, Cadell, would have been inadequately repaid
for the vexations and discomforts he would be forced to endure.
The troop sent with him, Cadell could not but see, had done their utmost
to roughen his path. They had exasperated the people beyond endurance.
As he sat thus musing a young man entered cautiously, looked around, and
sidled towards him. He was deformed.
The chaplain looked up and asked what he required.
"I have come for a talk," said the visitor. "May I sit? I know this hall
well; it belonged to my father. I am Goronwy, son of the former
Archpriest Ewan or John, as you please to call him."
Cadell signed to a seat. He was not ill-pleased at a distraction from
his unpleasant thoughts, and he was not a little gratified to find a man
of the place ready to approach him without apparent animosity or
suspicion.
"You do not appear to me to have a pleasant place," pursued Goronwy. "I
saw a beetle once enter a hive. The bees fell on him, and in spite of
his hardness, stung him to death, and after that built a cairn of wax
over him. There he lay all the summer, and every bee that entered or
left the hive trampled on the mound of wax that covered their enemy."
"Their stings shall be plucked out," said Cadell.
"Aye, but you cannot force them to furnish you with honey, nor prevent
them from entombing you in wax. They will do it--imperceptibly, and
tread you underfoot at the last."
Cadell said nothing to this; he muttered angrily and contemptuously, and
drew back from the fire to look at his visitor.
A lad with a long face, keen, beady eyes, restless and cunning, long
arms, and large white hands. His body was misshapen and short, but his
limbs disproportionately long.
"I should have been Archpriest here," pursued he; "but because I am not
straight as a wand, they rejected me. In your Latin Church, are they as
particular on this point?"
"We can dispense with most rules--if there be good reason for it."
"Do you think, in the event of your getting tired of being here, among
those who do not love you, that you could make room for me?"
"For you!" Cadell stared.
"Aye! I ought to have been chief here, only they passed me over for
Pabo. I have a hereditary right to be both chief and priest in Caio."
Then Cadell laughed.
"You are a misshapen fool," he said; "dost think that Bishop Bernard
would give thee such a place as this--to foment rebellion against him?"
"He might give it to me, if I undertook to do him a great service, and
to bring the place under his feet."
"What service could such as you render?"
"Would not that be a service to bring all Caio into subjection. See! I
doubt not that a good fat prebend would be more to your liking than this
lost valley among the mountains, traversed by the Sarn Helen alone,
which was a road frequented once when the Romans were here, and the
gold-mines were worked, and Loventum was a city. But now--it is naught.
Few use it."
Cadell mused on this astonishing proposal.
It was quite true. He would rather far be a canon at St. David's, with
nothing to do, than be stationed here in this lonely nook surrounded by
enemies. Caio, however, with Llansawel and Pumpsaint, its daughter
benefices, was a rich holding, and not to be sacrificed except for
something better. Yet he feared the intentions of Bernard with regard
to it.
"You see," continued Goronwy, "that the people are so maddened at what
has been done and so bitterly opposed to you that were I appointed in
your room----"
"But you are not a priest."
"Was not Bernard pitchforked into the priesthood and episcopate in one
day? Could not something of the sort be done with me?"
Again Cadell was silent.
Goronwy suffered him to brood over the proposal.
"If you were to leave for something better they would hail me as one of
themselves, and their rightful chief. And I would repay the bishop and
you for doing it."
Still Cadell did not speak.
Then Goronwy drew nearer to him. His small eyes contracted and his thin
lips became pointed as he said, "Pabo is not dead."
Cadell started.
"Dead! I know he is dead! I saw his body!"
Goronwy broke into a mocking laugh.
"I saw him--charred; and I had him buried under a dungheap outside the
church garth, as befitted one struck down by the judgment of Heaven."
"Pabo is not dead," repeated Goronwy jeeringly.
"He is dead. It was a manifest miracle. I have told the bishop of it. It
would spoil everything if, after I had announced it, he were found not
to be dead."
"Yes," said the young man, rubbing his large hands together, "it would
spoil everything."
Then, seized by a sudden terror, Cadell exclaimed, "It was
threatened--the staff of Cynwyl would raise the dead. It has done it
before."
"Oh! the staff of Cynwyl had naught to do with it."
"Merciful heavens, angels and saints protect me! If that burned lump is
raised, and walks, and were to come here, and--come to me when in
bed----!" In the horror of the thought, Cadell was unable to conclude
the sentence. But he broke forth: "It is not so. If he be alive, he is
no longer under the dungheap where he was laid. I will go see."
"Go, by all means," said Goronwy, and laughed immoderately.
"Tell me more. You know more."
"Nay, go and see. I will tell nothing further till I have a written and
sealed promise from the bishop that he will appoint me Archpriest of
Caio."
Cadell ran from the hall. Filled with terror, he got together some of
the men of the bishop, and they searched where the burnt body had been
laid. It was not there.
Back to the hall came the chaplain. Goronwy still sat over the fire
warming and then folding and unfolding his hands.
"He is gone. He is not where we buried him," gasped Cadell.
"Oh, he is gone! I told you Pabo was alive. He is walking to and
fro--when the moon shines you may see him. When it is dark he will come
on you unawares, from behind, and seize you."
Cadell cowered in alarm. "I would to Heaven I were out of this place!"
he gasped.
"Now, mark you," said Goronwy. "Get the promise of this Archpriesthood
for me, and I will deliver Pabo, risen from the dead, into your hands,
and, if he desire it also, Morwen into the arms of Rogier."