"Garmon--yes--yes--that's he. Father of the king of devils! Well, Garmon--he's here. He's sent me a message." ... Gwrtheyrn seized his cousin's arm. "I'll tell thee a secret. Knowest thou my first wife's niece? Knowest her? A most sweet lass! She came to me, two years ago, being widowed and very young, and having no protector. I have her now, in the little summer dwelling of Rhaiadr Gwy. None know--the Queen knows not. Well.... It has leaked out somehow.... Holy Garmon sends to tell me that we are a scandal far and wide, and bids me mend my way of life. The old fool! Calls her my daughter! Understand, she's not my daughter. Not my daughter! Wife's niece!" "Thou must send her away!" cried Mogneid. "Don't want to send her away. 'Tis a pretty chuck--she pleases me.... Besides"--he beamed--"we have a son." "All this is nought!" Mogneid insisted harshly. "Will you risk all we have schemed for, my lord, for one girl? Put her from you, I say!" He had used too rough a tone. A look of distress crept across the stupor of the King's countenance. "This priesthood! 'tis a cursed powerful thing," he said, with the stirrings of cunning apparent. "Old Garmon--he has the ear of Ambrosius. And these Christians show forth miracles in plenty." "My lord, they are not the only wonder-workers. Can it be that the wise men of old, who raised the giant stones for the temples, and forged the swords and shields that none now can fashion, were weaker than these unlettered saints? And their lore abides in me, and in some few instructed ones in the west country. Now, Gwrtheyrn, my king, what can a man's will do not, if he foster and train it by supernatural discipline? And what is the first work of the will but to sink our enemies?" "What is the end of man, Mogneid?" said Gwrtheyrn. "Shall he be born again, Mogneid? Perhaps from the crop of a hen? Shall he? From the crop of a hen!"[5] [5] Gwrtheyrn had Taliesin's mystical account of his incarnations in mind. "There is no end to the soul," Mogneid replied. "And every soul returns to a body when he may find one. Come, O King, take heart. We shall trample upon the necks of Ambrosius and Garmon." "Kinsman, do what you can," said the King. "I rely on you." Mogneid left him then, and sought the Queen's apartment. He despised the King's wife, but as a tool she might be useful. Gwrtheyrn, sobered now, beat his brow in turmoil of another sort. "Beast or bird"--he cried--"man or woman--or wandering, bodiless spirit! Or purgation by fire--or to roast in flames for ever! I believe--I believe in hell! God--if Thou beest God ... O Christ, Christ! I am lost--I cannot repent!" Germanus of Auxerre and his colleague Lupus came to Caer Gwrtheyrn, aflame with zeal for God and for the Church. In his palace hall they upbraided King Gwrtheyrn, calling him the shame and scandal of all Britain. As for the royal culprit, he would not hear them patiently. Furious words were bandied between them.