A King's Comrade: A Story of Old HerefordWhistler, Charles W. (Charles Watts)
History
A King's Comrade: A Story of Old Hereford
Whistler, Charles W. (Charles Watts)
Ethelbert, Saint, -794 -- Fiction; Historical fiction; Offa, King of the Mercians, -796 -- Fiction
Alone, unmarked Gymbert lies, out of sight of the warriors against
whom he came. The Mercians dared not touch him, and the Welsh would
not. But Jefan bade that man who had shot at him see to him, and
that was the punishment for his deed. Men say that when a storm
breaks round Dynedor hill fort it is ill to be there, for then he
wanders round the gate unquiet and wailing; and so he also is not
forgotten, nor the evil which he wrought.
That evening we were in some Welsh thane's house, far in the folds
of the Black Mountains, and there not even Offa could reach us. The
people had come with litters and hill ponies, and slowly and
somewhat painfully we had gone our way from the hill, gathering the
cattle, and leaving men to bring them after us still more slowly.
"Hurry no man's cattle," quoth Kynan, "except when they are by way
of becoming yours by right of haste homeward to the hills."
In this homestead, whose name I cannot write, we rested for a
fortnight or so, while Sighard gathered his strength again and
Jefan's ankle knit itself together. For me there was the best of
hunting in the hills and rich forests with Kynan, who was a master
of all woodcraft, and with our host. Wonderfully plentiful was game
of all sorts, whether red deer or fallow, boar, or wolf, or badger
in the forests, and here and there beaver as well as otter in the
swift trout streams. There were the white wild cattle also; and
there were tales of a bear somewhere in the hills, but we never
came on his tracks, though I knew them well from having seen them
often enough on the Basque frontier lands. That one chance of
having slain the bear there was the only matter of hunting in which
I was ahead of my hosts.
At the end of the fortnight we went from this village to the
ancient city of Caerleon, travelling slowly, though Jefan made
shift to mount a horse, and so ride with us. Pleasant were the June
days that passed among the hilly ways, under the great green
mountains, and through the forest lands, with good friends and
pleasant halts by the way. And I was going homeward now in all
truth.
Jefan had a wonderful palace in Caerleon, which his forbears had
held since the days when they took the place of the Roman governor
by whom it had been built. I think that it had been but little
altered, and on its walls were still the pictures the artists
brought from far-off Rome had painted, and its floors were laid
with the wondrous patterned pavement of the old days, so beautiful
that it almost seemed a shame to tread on them. The old Roman walls
stood round the town, and there were more houses, less but
well-nigh as good, in the place, and the great tower the Romans
made.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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