to meddle impertinently, Dyfnwal and I, look you. But I have served you four and thirty years, and Dyfnwal thirty, day in and day out, in storm and shine, and we would not, for the love we bear you, that ye should now ride for a fall."

"We speak as your friends," Dyfnwal grunted.

"It is a dangerous reptile ye have sheltered," continued the other. "Dreaded is he throughout the land of Dyfed for his unfathomable deeds. He has all the art of the Druids; and he is the last of the brood, God be praised! The days of darkness are over, my king: men will no longer take succour from the wiles of devils, thanks be to the Lord Christ and to Mary the dear Lady of mankind!"

"Will ye hold your peace?" stormed the King. "Get you gone, both of you, or I will have your tongues slit for you! What next, what next, I ask you?"

"The tantrums of him!" said Eliseg, when they two were outside the door. "Dyfnwal, look you, I fear that this fellow will bring peril upon the King. He was never up to good from the hour wherein he first drew breath. He is up and down the country, about and about, each day, questioning every gaffer and goodwife, every lad, lass, and babe that will waste the precious hours talking with him. Already Lord Gwrtheyrn is never from the metheglin. We must let nothing escape us, lest our master be undone."

"I have eyes," said Dyfnwal. "I use them."

"Hist! I see him," exclaimed the huntsman. "Grows there gold in the villeins' hay-meadow, think you?"

Within the hall, Gwrtheyrn raged and muttered. When his wrath began to cool, he felt the want of the congenial society of Mogneid. This King's life was a lonely one. The Queen spent hours at spinning and carding, weaving and embroidery; and although she would listen, nodding and smiling, at any time to her husband's remarks, she seldom spoke, and her thoughts seemed always far away, at rest upon things serene and pleasant. So it came about that he seldom sought her company. Why must his kinsman tarry so long from him? wondered Gwrtheyrn. He gulped down a cupful of metheglin, and then another, and subsided into a chair, to wait.

Mogneid came up the hill, smiling to himself. He knew the lie of the country of Gwrtheyrnion well by now, and the disposition of its people. He entered the castle hall. To his surprise, early in the day though it was, Gwrtheyrn sat propping himself nicely in his chair of state: a gold cup, relic of the sack of some Romano-British villa, lay at his feet, and there were splashes of metheglin on the floor. The King's mood was benign and expansive.

"Want thee—tell me," he greeted him. "Old preaching devil! Alleluia! and they all ran away! Whatshisname?"

"Garmon, perhaps," answered Mogneid. Affecting indifference, he watched his kinsman narrowly.

"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]

"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.

"Things shall be as I will!" roared Gwrtheyrn. "Am I not lord in my own dominions? Presumptious shaveling! what thinkest thou I care for thy preachments?"

"O Gwrtheyrn, egregious sinner!" said Germanus. "Know that we have power behind us. Ambrosius, who is near at hand with his army, will soon be here, to punish or to break thee. Who will comfort thee with the rites of holy Church if we proclaim thee outcast? Fortunate art thou if thou escape so easily. Lupus and I will fast upon the Lord God until He grant our demands concerning thee. Ere many days, heaven will pour down fire upon thee, to shrivel up thee and thine and all thine ill-famed land!"

This curse carried such terror to all standing by that even Mogneid durst not suggest that the King should order the seizure of the holy men, and they two passed out and went their way. Said Mogneid to Gwrtheyrn:

"If Ambrosius come upon us, and Garmon and his monks from Llanharmon, we are undone, and they will surely do thee to death. I can think of only one resource. Thy Queen—has she not Saxon kindred about Pengwern, not forty miles away? I think she will be persuaded to send them messages. We will make allies of them; and should Ambrosius besiege this fortress, we can hold out within, until the Saxons come to deliver us."

"Do what thou wilt," answered Gwrtheyrn. "Speak thou to my wife. By now she must have heard some story of my pretty dear."

The Queen was not jealous; and very readily she dispatched a runic writing and another token to a kinsman of hers whom she knew to be commanding the Saxon outposts at Pengwern. These were entrusted to three huntsmen of the King's, who had by heart every path and by-track in the country. Gwrtheyrn and Mogneid made fast the defences, and provided arms for every man of the King's subjects near at hand who could be spared from gathering in the harvest in feverish haste.

But, on the morning of the next day, Eliseg brought dire tidings to Caer Gwrtheyrn. The monks of Cilfachau had taken all three messengers, and had carried them off to Germanus at Buallt. And the army of Ambrosius had been seen moving upon Gwrtheyrn's palace.