Y Llyn Llwyd
by Michael Arram
VIII
Leofric's progress in literacy in Latin and Welsh was extraordinary to Urban. The contrast with his younger brother Godwin in that respect was marked. Godwin began attending the school but he either dozed or covertly masturbated himself and his friends until he was banished by an irate Master Iago to the village washhouse as an odd-job boy. Since this paid a few pence a week Godwin did not much complain. 'The main thing is to keep the horny little fucker away from Brechenneu,' said Kneithir, who steadfastly refused to beat some sense into the boy, as Iago suggested. 'I fuck him at least three times a day,' Kneithir grumped. 'that's the only thing you can be sure takes the edge off his appetite. Otherwise I leave satisfying him to Dewi and Grono, who are at least clean.'
'Should have left him on the river,' growled Urban to Kneithir, as they were inspecting the work on the new nave of Llantrisant church.
Kneithir raised an eyebrow. 'That's a bit uncharitable for you, sir.'
'I'm beginning to realise that some boys are more trouble than they are worth. Get Master Iago on the subject of your boyfriend.'
'He'll grow out of it, sir. Your Leofric would take any Welsh boy cock on offer even before his father began whoring him on the river.'
Urban shook his head. 'And yet he's now the most ardent scholar of his age I have ever encountered. Somehow I do not think that is the route in life Godwin will take, however.'
Kneithir clearly found the subject uncomfortable. They had just ascended the spiral stair turret in the half-completed central tower of the new church to gauge progress. Work had been swift because of the availability of good stone and skilled labour, and a gift of fine seasoned oak from his forest of Dean by the Lord Miles. The two men looked down into the church. The walls of the choir had been completed first, and building was proceeding westward. The roof had just been raised over the sanctuary and new stalls fitted, so the daily office had been resumed there, even though the church had yet to be consecrated.
'Might be reasonably finished in time for your ordination as priest, sir,' mused Kneithir. 'The bishop can consecrate the new church and ordain you in it on the same day.'
'That would be convenient. I'll be seeing him at Michaelmas on my installation as canon at Llandaff. I'll suggest 14 November, the feast of St Dyfrig.'
Kneithir nodded. 'Things are peaceful in Gwent in these days of good King Morgan, and Earl Robert has disappeared to Normandy. It's helped our construction here and trade and farming generally. Money is just pouring into our coffers as a result. Brechenneu is booming. The market bailiffs are planning a new stone bridge across the Usk and stone quays, since there are masons and carpenters in the neighbourhood. Talking of which, there is going to be a run of infant baptisms in the parish in the new year. Not all the workmen are satisfied with our boys' bums, sir.'
'Oh dear. I'll leave Master Iago to prosecute the offenders, or not. He has enough trouble creating, or recreating, the archdeaconry of Gwent.'
Kneithir paused and shot a sideways glance at his lord, before resuming. 'News from Deheubarth, sir. One of King Morgan's teulu passed through the village yesterday. He said the Lord Miles's army scored a victory at Cardigan castle over the kings of Gwynedd. He relieved the garrison and saved the lady castellan who had been holding it. Thought you'd like to know that, sir, as Morgan Ddu was fighting with Lord Miles's army. Story is that Morgan lured the Gwynedd commanders into a meeting they did not survive, while Lord Miles descended on their siege camp and destroyed King Gruffudd's army.'
'So his career of treachery and violence continues,' Urban sighed.
'What they say he did to the Gogleddwyr commanders does not bear repeating, my lord. I didn't dare tell our Leofric, as he saw the mess that monster made of the chaplain at Grwyne Fawr and it still troubles his dreams.'
Urban shook his head. He felt a sudden need to be in the arms of his boy. He headed down to the rectory but found it empty of Leofric. 'Went out earlier, my lord,' said Megan. 'I think he said he had business up in the church.' But Urban hadn't seen him there. So instead he inspected the assembling grammar school, presided over that morning by Master Iago's assistant, the song school tutor. A random test of declensions amongst the bench of younger boys was encouraging as to their level of progress. Urban looked round the class of bright young faces. His school was these days attracting boys from surrounding villages, including the offspring of gentry families and of merchants from Usk and Abergavenny, who boarded in the village. Yet another sign of Llantrisant's rising prosperity.
He toiled once more up to the church, where the masons were back at work on the tower's upper stage. It occurred to Urban he had not checked the old north porticus, and there was a reason Leofric might be there, though it had been forbidden him: the ancient archive box. And there he was, naked and beautiful as ever, squatting on the flagstones next to the open iron box. He looked up, guilty. 'Oh! My lord. I'm sorry. But I thought I should check the box in case the masons moved or damaged it.'
Urban laughed. Leofric had not just checked the box, he had emptied it in his search for reading material. But typical of the boy he had been categorising and listing the contents as he browsed. It was a job that Urban had long been contemplating before his new responsibilities had overwhelmed him. But why not let loose this talented young man he loved. He grinned down at the boy and cuddled next to him. 'What've you found, precious?'
'You don't mind, love?'
'No, baby mine. It's a job you're perfectly capable of. Let's move this box and its contents down to the rectory and get some serious work done on it.'
Leofric giggled and kissed Urban. 'After we've fucked, yes? I need you. Dewi's been hanging round in hopes, the insatiable little whore, but I want you. Dewi only takes it anyway, apart from using his pidyn in Grono's ass, or my brother's I suppose. It's their special thing. But I want your special thing inside me.'
So they hauled the heavy box down to the rectory, its papers and parchments safely back inside. On the way back to the rectory Leofric amused Urban with a financial rundown of the state of the rectory treasury, his other fascination. 'Even after this last quarter's bills we have still got £160 15s. 6d. cash in hand. But there is a problem. Some of the new payments are being made in irregular issues: pennies not struck in licenced royal mints but in mints set up by lords. Earl Robert is coining his own pennies in his own mints in Bristol, Cranborne and Cardiff. And we can't be completely confident in their silver content, unlike King Stephen's royal pennies coined with licenced dies in Gloucester and Worcester.'
'So what do you suggest my own pretty thesaurarius? An assay office in Llantrisant?'
'Well no, love. But it might be a good idea to impose a premium if they want us to accept their privately-coined pennies.'
'You need to talk it over with Kneithir. He's our enforcer.'
Leofric nodded and retreated back into his handsome head. They took the archive box into their bedchamber and after some bodily amusement, they lay out naked on the floor across which Leofric laid out the contents in small piles, arranged by category: parchment deeds, papyrus deeds, liturgical books, inscribed metal plaques and finally, with a blazing grin of triumph, the boy announced a new discovery. He had found it in a sealed pocket in the side of the box. He handed Urban a single parchment sheet, folded over into quarters, and cracked along the folds, but otherwise legible. The opened sheet was headed VITA SANCTI DVBRICII EPISCOPI ISCANENSIS : Ego Faustus presbyter eius haec scripsit. (The Life of St Dyfrig bishop of Isca [Legionis]. I, Faustus, his priest, wrote this)
Leofric lay on his stomach, still naked, chin propped on his wrists as Urban scanned the parchment. The boy's eyes were bright with curiosity, but after a few moments he frowned, pushed himself upright and took the sheet back with surprising firmness.
'Love… this isn't Faustus's own handwriting.'
Urban blinked. 'What are you talking about, lamb?'
Leofric spread the sheet flat on the floor and tapped the first line with a careful finger.
'I've seen this style of hand before. In the litany-book we had from St Gwynllyw. And in the dated parchment charters concerning Caerwent. This is that same rounded hand, my lord. The tall Ns with their leaning backs, the round-bellied D, the S like a serpent.' His brow furrowed, lips pursed in concentration. 'It's beautiful, but it's too late. Faustus lived in the age of St Dyfrig himself, didn't he? That's what, 500 years ago? But those hands belong to only 200 years back'
Urban sat back on his heels, the warmth of pride in Leofric flooding him. God help me, but the boy is so very right.
'Yes, sweetheart. Dyfrig's age was the fifth or sixth century. Not long before the great historian Bede of Jarrow, whom you admire so much. Their script then was still half-Latin rustic, half late Roman cursive. This—' He leaned over, tracing the lettering with an appreciative finger. 'This more mannered hand is a book hand of the eighth or ninth century.'
Leofric looked up, startled. 'So someone copied it out. From an older exemplar.'
Urban nodded slowly, feeling the hair prickle at the nape of his neck. 'Exactly that.'
But the boy wasn't finished. He reached over to the pile of other documents he had sorted, plucked up an ancient fragmentary papyrus deed concerning the home-born slaves of the church of Caerwent, and held it beside the Vita.
'See here. The phrasing in the incipit clause—ego Faustus presbyter eius haec scripsit—it matches the formula in the explicit clauses of these older papyrus deeds almost word for word. But the script is newer. So the scribe of this version of the Vita must have copied the words faithfully from something already old, and perhaps decaying, in his own day, an original written by Faustus, a priest in Dyfrig's own clerical household, a man he would likely have ordained with his own hands.'
Urban breathed out. 'So what we have here, Leofric… is not the Vita itself, but the bridge between Faustus's lost original and all the later hagiographers.'
Leofric's face broke into a grin, luminous and reverent at once. 'It survived, love. Even if in a newer hand—it survived.'
Urban felt a rush of wonder that nearly unsteadied him. He took the boy's shoulders gently, turning him so their foreheads met.
'My darling, do you understand what we hold? This is a Vita made when Dyfrig was still alive in the memory of living men. Before traditions had swollen into legend. If the text is genuine—and the formulae, the Latinity, they feel genuine—we may be looking at the earliest written Life of any British saint.'
Leofric laughed, breathless with the joy of discovery. 'Urban, this could change everything Llandaff thinks it knows!'
'Yes.' Urban pressed a fierce kiss to his cheek. 'And my clever, beautiful boy saw it first.'
Leofric flushed, delighted. 'You saw the dating, love. I only know the script.'
'You saw the hand and I saw the age.' Urban cupped his face. 'Together… we have the whole.'
And for a suspended instant—naked, sprawled amid parchments and papyrus, the lamplight throwing soft gold over their bodies—both felt the world shift beneath them. Not because of sex, or affection, or power, but because two young and acute minds had met on a summit and realised they were holding a treasure that had slept for centuries waiting for them.
Iago was absolutely delighted with Leofric's discovery. Not so much for the historical significance, but because it appealed to his passion for ecclesiastical politics. 'God, you pair of dimwits. Don't you get it? King Morgan and Geoffrey of Monmouth will be dancing with delight. This treasure trove Leofric found proves that the Gwentian church was older than Llandaff as the centre of the Church in the British kingdom of Glamorgan, and that Dyfrig was a saint and bishop of Caerleon, not (as I'm afraid your father pretended, Urban) the first bishop of Llandaff. So King Morgan will now be fully empowered to go ahead with simply nominating you as bishop of Caerleon, young Urban, just as he wanted. And Bishop Uthred, and probably Bishop Bernard too, will have your guts, you poor fool.'
'What?' said a now worried Urban, 'It surely won't come to that?'
'Such an innocent you are,' Iago shook his head. 'Uthred bribed you with the archdeaconry of Gwent exactly so this would not happen.'
Leofric was troubled, though not so much because the threat his discovery posed to his happy life with his beloved Urban and his adopted community of Llantrisant. 'But you can't just hide this discovery! Faustus wrote so we would all know today of the goodness of Dyfrig, his master and friend. It's important.'
Urban had never been prouder of his Leofric than when he came out unprompted with that principled statement. The boy had grown so much. He smiled. 'The truth. And let the heavens fall!'
Leofric looked uncertain. 'Well … yeah,' he muttered.
Urban looked meaningfully at Iago. 'I agree with my Leofric. We cannot know the purposes of God but we can imagine that Leofric's discovery answers his purposes, and that he intends Dyfrig's sanctity to be better understood by the jealous and worldly prelates who in these latter days exert power over men's souls in Dyfrig's name.'
Iago rolled his eyes at their stubborn intransigence. 'You know the risks. I've said my say.'
Leofric's handsome face was set and determined. 'I'm going to make a pilgrimage for Dyfrig. I'm going to pray at the places his Vita mentions. The churches at Caerwent and Caerleon, and especially at the clear lake in the woods where God spoke to him out of a great light. Then I'll go to his tomb at Llandaff and ask his help.'
'His help?' Iago queried.
'I'll need a miracle. I'm taking my brother Godwin with me; his addiction to boys' cocks needs some intervention. Nothing else will cure it.'
'I'm with you, darling boy,' said Urban.
The morning they set out from Llantrisant dawned blue and mild, the June air soft as fleece upon their cheeks. Urban had insisted they walk lightly provisioned—three packs between the four of them, for each a loaf and a cheese, and a small flask of sour ale that Godwin complained about from the moment they left the town palisade. Leofric walked barefoot and bore his pilgrim's staff with a solemnity that would have been endearing if it had not been so entirely earned; he walked as one who knew he was shepherding something larger than himself.
Urban, for his part, watched his Leofric with the quiet astonishment of a man who has woken beside a boy and finds instead a young scholar, bright and grave, whose mind holds a flame not of this world. He tightened the strap on his satchel as they crossed the Usk at a quiet early morning Brechenneu and thought: Whatever happens now, this child is becoming a beautiful man before my eyes.
Godwin trudged behind, his lithe, brown compact frame restless, his eyes too quick and too hungry for any safe company, especially at Brechenneu where naked boys were washing in the river after a night of sweaty commercial activity. He kept glancing at Leofric as though worried his brother might see through the posturing and into the shame that gnawed at him and had led him to agree to join this pilgrimage. Urban had not missed that either.
They reached Caerleon by noon on the second day. The Roman walls gave back the sunlight in golden courses, and the summer heat gathered in the stones as though remembering a warmer, distant empire. The great amphitheatre yawned before them—half-collapsed, but still sombre with old power. Leofric shivered. He had read somewhere that such places were where the pagan Romans had massacred Christians.
'It feels wrong,' Godwin said suddenly. 'As if we're being watched.'
Urban smiled faintly. 'Roman places often do. They were built with the eyes of emperors in mind.'
But Leofric did not answer. His gaze had fixed on the river bend to the south, where the Usk widened into marshland. He swallowed, and Urban felt the subtle change in him like a shift in the air before a storm.
'Urban love,' he said quietly, 'do you remember Llangorse Lake?'
Urban blinked. 'Of course. The waterfowl, the crannog… the stillness.'
Leofric nodded once, sharply. 'Dyfrig heard God there.'
'You can't know that, sweeting …'
'But I feel it.' Leofric's voice was taut with that rare, inner certainty that increasingly moved through him like a tide. 'This place'—he gestured around at Caerleon's broken stones—'is wrong for him now. It's stone and pride and old Roman ghosts. Dyfrig belonged to the wild places. To clear water and wind and the cries of birds.'
Urban met his eyes and saw something luminous and troubling there. Godwin shifted impatiently, but for once said nothing.
Leofric took Urban's wrist gently. 'We must go to Llangorse. There's something waiting there. Something—someone—who needs us.'
Urban hesitated. Caerleon had been intended as the pilgrimage's second station after Caerwent. The Vita described Dyfrig preaching here, teaching here, reconciling tribes. But Leofric had changed the course of their journey before by instinct alone—and every time, something greater had been revealed.
'Very well,' Urban said softly. 'Lead us, MaelDyfrig.'
And so in that moment of benediction and recognition, they left Caerleon's Roman bones behind and took the track north and east along the Usk that wound through meadows and wooded ridges toward the great grey lake at the foot of the Bannau Brycheiniog.
The further they went, the quieter Godwin grew. At first Leofric tried to draw him out with gentle questions—had he slept well? Did his foot still ache from the blister?—but each answer dwindled. His shoulders hunched as though he carried a pack heavier than any of theirs.
Urban fell back to walk beside him. 'You're very silent, lad.'
Godwin shrugged, but the movement was stiff. 'Just thinking.'
'About what?'
'Nothing good.'
Under Iago's tuition Urban was getting more practiced with the process of confession, sacramental and otherwise. He waited. Finally Godwin gave a sharp exhale. 'Leofric's too good for all this. He believes in saints and miracles and goodness. And I …' He cut himself off.
'You think you have no place on a pilgrimage?'
'I think I'll foul it up,' he muttered, startlingly honest. 'I think I'll drag him down.'
Urban placed a warm hand on the boy's bare shoulder. 'Godwin. Pilgrimages are made of three sorts of travellers: the innocent, the wise, and the guilty. The last are always the most in need.'
Godwin's throat worked. 'I want to be good. I just… don't know how.'
Urban's voice softened. 'Then let the lake teach you. It taught Dyfrig. It may have something to teach us all.' Godwin said nothing more, but he walked with a new steadiness.
The pilgrims reached Llangorse in the late afternoon, when the light hung low and soft over the rushes. The lake lay vast and still, a mirror of silvery grey glass. As usual, not a ripple stirred its limpid surface.
Leofric inhaled sharply. 'This is it.'
Urban felt the hair rise on his arms. The boys had grown quiet behind him; even Godwin was hushed by the place's haunted beauty. The reedbeds whispered faintly in a wind that did not touch their faces.
And then Leofric stopped. 'There,' he breathed. A shape huddled on the far edge of a small island of reeds—not the crannog, but a smaller spit of land, one the local fishermen avoided for reasons lost to living memory. It was a lean-to, scarcely worthy of the name: a hermit's cell made of woven reeds and driftwood, half-collapsed against a hawthorn bush. And someone was inside it.
Urban and Leofric exchanged a glance. Godwin swallowed hard, his face pale. They approached slowly, reeds brushing their thighs, mud sucking at their boots. A faint scent of ash drifted from the shelter. Urban pushed aside the bent reeds … and Morgan Ddu looked up.
He was shockingly thin. His fine-boned face was sunken, his hair tangled, his beautiful eyes as huge and black as a trapped animal's. He had nothing with him but a blanket of coarse wool and a wooden bowl with the crust of some meal still clinging to its rim. When Urban stepped near, Morgan recoiled so sharply he struck the back of his skull against the cell's wicker frame.
'Easy,' Urban murmured.
'Go away.' Morgan's voice was raw, cracked by weeping or thirst. 'Leave me.'
Leofric crouched beside Urban. 'Morgan. You're safe.'
Morgan laughed—a sharp, wild little sound. 'Safe? I am the king's whore's bastard, the twisted black creature he trained to be his executioner, the knife of flesh in his hand. The reminder and the repository of the evil a king must do. There is no safety in the end for someone like me.'
Urban exhaled slowly. The pain in the boy's voice was bottomless. 'Morgan,' he said quietly, 'why are you here?'
Morgan's eyes darted to the lake. 'I came to think. To see if God hates me as much as I fear He does.'
Leofric's expression softened with something like grief. 'No one is hated here.'
Morgan hesitated… then something in him twisted, broke, surrendered.
'I thought,' he whispered, voice shaking, 'if I killed Iorwerth and his sons, my cousins – three little boys, Urban, three – then the crown might fall to me. Blood is the only language the world of power speaks. My father spoke it. My uncle speaks it. Why should I be any different?'
Godwin gasped.
Morgan's voice cracked. 'But I couldn't. I couldn't do it. I came here instead. To drown myself if I had the courage. But I don't even have that. I am a coward, a wretched—'
'You're a boy,' Urban said. 'A frightened, wounded boy who's had no one to show him mercy.' Morgan looked away sharply, ashamed.
Leofric whispered, 'The king acknowledges you for his son, Morgan. He raised you high and made you a lord of men.'
Morgan nodded once. 'Of course. But it is Iorwerth who is named heir. And now I have thought of kin-murder.' He laughed, his hoarse voice brittle, small and lost. 'The lake should swallow me.'
But Godwin stepped forward, trembling, and took his hand. 'Morgan,' he said, and his voice sounded unlike anything Urban had heard from him—stripped of bravado, stripped of lust, stripped of shame. 'You're not the only one who's broken.'
Morgan stared at him blankly.
Godwin swallowed. 'I came here because… there's something in me I can't control. Something that makes me wrong inside. I thought a miracle might fix it. I thought maybe Dyfrig would pity me. But seeing you…' His breath hitched. 'You're hurting more than I ever knew a person could hurt. And you aren't so much bad, you're just … lost.'
Morgan blinked rapidly, as though stunned by the idea.
'I don't know who I am,' Godwin continued. 'I don't know why I want what I want. I only know it frightens me. And I see that same fear in you.'
Morgan's lips parted, but no words came.
Leofric placed a gentle hand on Godwin's shoulder. 'He sees you truly, Morgan. I think that's why we were all meant to come here.'
Morgan Ddu stared between them, something dawning in his expression—some fragile, painfully unfamiliar emotion. Recognition. Kinship. The first glimmer of mercy given to him, not demanded from him.
And then. A sudden rustling rose across the lake. Urban turned sharply. The surface of the water rippled as if stirred by a great underwater breath. Then—soft, wild cries echoed through the reeds. Waterfowl. Hundreds of them. Swan, goose, duck—circling in a slow, solemn arc over the lake. Their wings shone in the slanted gold of evening, their bodies casting long shadows on the water like a procession of spirits.
Morgan inhaled sharply, colour draining from his face. 'The royal birds …' he whispered
'No,' he whispered. 'They can't be.' But they were.
They dipped once—twice—in a figure-eight pattern, the ancient sign of royal obeisance in Glamorgan's lore. They circled Morgan Ddu. Low. Reverent. Unmistakable.
Morgan trembled so violently the reeds shook.
'No,' he whispered again. 'Not me. Not the bastard. Not the cast-off.'
Leofric spoke very softly. 'Not the heir. Not the lawful king. But the prince. Dyfrig sees you. God sees you. The birds know what men deny.'
Morgan's thin chest hitched. 'I am nothing.'
'You are seen,' Leofric said. 'That is everything.'
Morgan's knees buckled. He sank into the reeds, hands over his face, as the birds flew their looping coronation above him, and from swans and geese alike came a susurating acclamation in human speech from on high 'Morgan … true son of Arthur of Britain'
Godwin knelt beside him instinctively, not touching, only offering presence. Urban and Leofric stood behind them, silent witness to a miracle that was not flashy nor triumphal, but tender and aching—a revelation meant only for the wounded.
The birds circled one last time and settled on the far shore, scattering lightly among the sedges as if nothing unusual had happened. Morgan wiped his face with shaking hands. His eyes were red, but clearer—emptied of feverish ambition.
'I cannot be king,' he whispered. 'I should not be king. But I—' He hesitated. 'I do not want to die anymore.'
Godwin let out a shaky breath. 'Good.'
Morgan looked at him then—truly looked—and for the first time saw not prey, not danger, but a fellow sufferer.
'You're not cursed, you stupid, pretty kid,' Morgan said haltingly. 'Just confused. Like me.'
Godwin stared at him, stunned.
Urban felt something like awe swell in his chest. Two boys, both warps in the weave of the world, finding each other's humanity on the threshold of a lake that had seen saints, kings, and miracles.
Leofric knelt beside them. 'Morgan. Come back with us. Not to the court. Not to your father. In pilgrimage. You can walk with us and Dyfrig awhile. Think. Heal.'
Morgan looked conflicted—half-afraid, half-hopeful.
'Would I be safe?' he whispered.
'Yes,' Urban said simply. 'With us, yes.'
Morgan's mouth trembled. Then he nodded—once, small and decisive.
'All right. Where next then?'
They slept that night on the lakeshore beneath a sky thick with stars. Morgan curled close to the fire, Godwin beside him, the two boys breathing in a synchrony that moved Urban unexpectedly. Leofric lay with his head on Urban's chest, listening to his heartbeat.
'Urban,' he whispered, 'this was Dyfrig's work.'
Urban stroked his hair. 'I believe so.'
'Not the birds. Not even Morgan. But Godwin. I think God meant him to see himself today.'
Urban kissed the top of his head. 'My clever boy. You have a way of seeing into souls.'
Leofric smiled sleepily. 'Only theirs, love. Yours is… too bright to look at.'
Urban chuckled softly and held him closer.
The lake was still. The birds cried once in the distance, a gentle echo across the water.
And in the reeds, unseen, the hermit's cell sagged emptily—its purpose fulfilled, its guest reclaimed by human hands rather than an act of despair.
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