“What is your name?” asked Dafyd. “Do we know you?” Elphin and the others arrived, and as they gathered around Taliesin began to exclaim:’
“I was with my Lord in the heavens
When Lucifer fell
into the depths of Hell;
I carried a banner
before Alexander in Egypt;
I call the stars by name
from the North to the South;
I was head architect
Of Nimrod’s tower;
I was in Babylon
in the Tetragrammaton;
I was patriarch
to Elijah and Enoch;
1 was atop the cross
of the merciful Son of God;
I was three times
in the prison of Ananrhod;
I was in the Ark
with Noah and Alpha;
I witnessed the destruction
of Sodom and Gomorrah;
I upheld Moses
through the sea;
I was in the court of Don
before the birth of Gwydion;
And I was with my Lord
in the manger of oxen and asses.
I was moved through the entire universe
by the hand of the Most High;
I received my awen
from Ceridwen’s Caldron;
People call me poet and bard;
henceforth I shall be known as Prophet!
Taliesin I am,
and my name shall remain until doomsday.”
Never had any of them heard such a speech as this. Dafyd raised his hands to Taliesin and said, “How is it that you know the Lord and revere him?”
Taliesin answered, “I have seen him! The Lord has revealed himself to me so that I may worship him and proclaim his name to my people.”
Elphin and Hafgan could understand little of what Taliesin was saying, but they knew they had indeed seen something extraordinary.
Elphin then told Dafyd about the defeat at Caer Dyvi and the wandering of his people. He ended by saying, “We have come here to meet this Fisher King and to see whether he can help us.”
“Then I will gladly take you to him and allow you to prove his generosity for yourselves. I know he will want to see you, for he has recently become a follower of the Christ himself.”
So Elphin and his people were conducted to Avallach’s palace where they were received courteously. And it was there that Taliesin first saw Avallach’s golden-haired daughter, Charis.
CHAPTER FIVE
“Is something wrong?” asked llle. she had come upon Charis as she sat in the orchard among the pink-blossomed apple trees. “I have been watching, and you have not entered the hall or courtyard since the strangers came.”
Charis shrugged nonchalantly. “I have no wish to interfere in my father’s affairs.”
“Avallach’s affairs? He speaks of inviting the aliens to settle on our lands, of joining the destiny of our races, of adapting to their ways, of abandoning all to follow this new god, the Christ-and you say these are affairs for the king alone?”
Lile sniffed and tossed her head. “Does none of this worry you?”
“Should it?” Charis answered absently.
“Talking to you is like talking to a cloud. What is wrong?”
“Nothing is wrong. I just want to be alone with my thoughts.”
“I saw the way you looked at him,” said Lile. “It is true he is less repulsive than any of the others, but I cannot Believe you would waste a moment’s thought on him.”
Charis stirred and turned to Lile. “Who?” she asked, genuinely puzzled.
“Why, the singer! You have not heard a word I said.”
“The singer,” said Charis, turning away again.
“We do not know these people. They call themselves kings-where is their kingdom? They come seeking audience with Avallach, but where are their gifts? They expect us to take them seriously and yet they dress in the most bizarre manner; they sleep on the floor and eat with their fingers.”
“Their lands were overrun, I think,” offered Charis.
“So they say. Avallach is altogether too gullible. Let that bright-eyed weasel Dafyd whisper a word in his ear and he gives away half his holdings!”
“Did you hear him?” asked Charis unexpectedly.
“Dafyd?”
“The singer,” said Charis with exasperation. “So simple, so pure…”
“With that out-of-time lyre?”
“So beautiful.”
“And that gibberish speech of theirs. Call it a song? It sounded like a wounded beast yowling to be put out of its misery.” Lile tossed her head contemptuously. “Perhaps you have been sitting in the sun too long.”
The day was bright and hot; the sun poured itself out upon the land and the heat haze shimmered on the horizon. Lile rose and took a nearby bough in her hand, examining the exquisite flowers, each of which would in its season bear a fine, golden apple. She noticed one shriveled bloom and, frowning, plucked it and threw it aside. “Are you certain there is nothing wrong?”
“I feel like riding.”
“You should lie down. The sun is too hot for you.”
“I do not feel like lying down. I feel like riding.” With that, Charis rose and hurried from the orchard, leaving Lile staring after her, shaking her head and muttering.
Charis spent the afternoon riding among the hills, visiting the secret places she had neglected since the pilgrim priests arrived. She wound her way through greenwood tracks and hill trails, beside noisy brooks and silent meres. And as she rode, she thought about the unexpected turn her life had taken.
With the coming of all these strangers-first Dafyd and Collen, and now the Cymry-she felt as if a plan or a design had been set in motion and was now working itself out. She was part of it, although she could not see how. But she sensed the strings of the thing tightening around her like the silken threads of a tatter’s web being looped and knotted into place.
The pattern, however, was not complete enough to be discerned.
Still, she felt certain that her life of restless melancholy was at an end. Something new was happening. There was a ferment around her, perhaps within her as well, in the very atmosphere itself-there to be tasted with every breath. Certainly it was a fact that she had never been so encircled by gods and men-not even as a dancer in the bullring. She could hardly turn around for stepping on one or the other of them.
It was not at all a disagreeable feeling. Rather, there was a security about it that appealed to her. Irrationally, perhaps, for she had long ago learned that nothing in life was secure.
She jogged along, letting these thoughts circle idly around in her head-like birds wheeling above the trees without alighting. She came to green-shaded glade in the wood. In the center of the glade lay a pool fed by a clear-water stream. Charis reined up and allowed the horse to amble to the mossy bank where she sat in the saddle and gazed across the cloud-mirrored surface of the pool.
The water was fringed around with cattails and long, plumed reeds. She had visited the pond once or twice before, as it was not far from the palace, and remembered thinking it a good place to bathe. Looking at the pool now, the notion occurred to her once again and she climbed from the saddle, tethered her mount, and walked to the edge of the pool where she slipped off her boots, loosed her hair from its thong, and waded in.
A skylark winging high above sent down a song that fell upon the glade like a rain of liquid gold. The sun shone bright and the clouds drifted over the surface of the pool, as Charis, drifting with them now, stepped into deeper water. When the water had risen to her waist, she bent her knees and lay back, feeling the cold wetness seep into all the dry places.
She swam, enjoying the slow, calm swirling motions of her hair and clothing in the water and the sparkling diamond drops that glittered on her skin and scattered from her fingers when she raised her hands and plunged them in again. She closed her eyes and floated, letting the water steal away all thought, all care. Giving in to the dreaminess of the day, she began to sing softly to herself the melody she had heard the night before in her father’s hall.
Taliesin had seen the gray horse canter from the courtyard. He watched the animal and its golden-haired rider wind down the pathway from the Tor and over the causeway across the marsh. He watched and then he followed; he had no conscious plan in mind, no desire to apprehend her, no thought at all but to keep the woman in sight. He was intrigued by her, enchanted. So regal and aloof, beautiful and distant and alluring, she was like one of the denizens of the Otherworld, a being whose look or touch might heal or slay according to purpose or whim.