More than a year had gone by since his flight from Damnonia when Cormac found himself once more in Britain. Following the advice of S. Columba, he landed in Northern Wales; and, leaving the body of his warriors to follow, made haste to the great Fair on the banks of the Conway, in connection with the ancient assembly—the Gorsedd, from which arose, a little later, the Eisteddfod.
He was almost unattended. He wished to mix, as a stranger, with the crowd at the Fair, believing in this manner he would more easily become acquainted with the people from whom he wished to gather warriors.
Long before he arrived at the scene of the Fair he found the country scattered with the mares and stallions of the visitors, who had journeyed there before him. As he rode down a rich glade the clang and clash of barbaric music came to his ears, a quaint city rose in sight, backed by wild and glorious hills. The walls of the city were shaped into a triangle; they bristled with spear and pike-point, standard and pennon. The one and twenty towers, rising from the walls, were hung with quaint scrolls written with the weird characters of the Ogham language, bidding all the world make merry in the assembly that Aedd the Great had founded centuries before Julius Cæsar had landed in Britain.
The scent of mead came to Cormac’s nostrils as he entered the crowded labyrinths of the Fair. Great vats of it were piled just near the entrance; some of the vats had been broken open, the mead spilt upon the ground, its pungent sweetness filling the air—the famous Pictish mead brewed from heath honey, and so fragrant that Boetius believed it was brewed from flowers themselves. Beside the spilt mead some drunken Caledonian Picts were sleeping in the sunshine; their wares lay around them—brooms, brushes, and beds of heather, and soft bales of yellow heath-dyed wool, bound together by hempen ropes.
Passing through a place of barter Cormac found himself amongst booths and work-shops. On every side was a continuous crush of musicians, merchants, snake-charmers, bards, and law-givers. Spinners, potters, carpenters, workers in gold and silver cried their wares. Everything was offered to the passer-by, from an ingot of gold to roasted cow-flesh on spits. Now came a blinding flash from sun-lit metal, and a sword was thrust in Cormac’s face. Gold and silver-smiths were proclaiming their work. “An Excalibur! An Excalibur!” they chanted. “Without trouble of crossing the lake and suing unto Morgan le Fay! Young men and warriors! An Excalibur!”
Other marvels of their work they showed; delicate thread of pure gold as fine as hair, and sword handles of such miraculous workmanship that a square inch of mosaic held on its surface more than two thousand points of gold.
Cormac made his way, with care, through mazes of pottery—art brought from Rome. There was precious Samian ware; red, satin-glazed and wrought with fairy-like ornament—fit for daintiest lady, and so highly prized that when broken it was delicately mended with rivets of bronzed lead; plain biscuit ware, shaped into lamps, and other common vessels of black Roman pottery. He stopped and watched the play of the potter’s wheel—as hundreds have done before and after him—to see the clay, rising birdlike, to the potter’s hand; receiving there, as it were, his life and thought—created, not made. Poets sang of its dance of joy upon the wheel; bards symbolised its play in their music. Homer had compared the rhythm of its rise and fall under the potter’s hand to a dance.
Then he lingered, fascinated, before the work of the Gaulish bell-casters. Fair and noble ladies knelt before the furnace and cast therein their ornaments of gold and silver; a joy and penance—both—that they should add to the golden tongues that called the folk to prayer; some of the little four-sided bells bore upon them that mystic form of the cross—the Fylfot.
Sheltered by hempen awnings lay the book-stalls, with a large display of plain, waxed tablets, made of birch, elm, and the inner bark of ash; scribes were busy among them with reed and stylus. Towering above were some ancient papyrus rolls, fifteen cubits in length—reed-written with ink of gum-water and soot, and there were many plain boc-fell folios such as Cormac’s countrymen wrote on by day and night in tower and monastery, with red cinnabar and cuttle-fish ink. There were a few Hibernian bindings, splendid and massive, with clasps, hinges, and bosses upon them, that might have been used upon an abbey-door. But it was a poor collection after former days of Roman splendour—when bejewelled diptycha of gold and silver had been common—now people contented themselves with coarse birch, joined by common wire.
Leaving the book-stalls behind him, Cormac made his way through many cubics’ length of earth covered with basket work of every shape and size—the famous wicker-work of ancient Britain. Marvels, too, he saw of British wool—which the Romans had taught them to spin so finely it was likened to spiders’-webs.
At every point he was assailed by eager vendors. At length he sat down, tired, upon some felled trees where a group of diviners, with their dice and knuckle-bones were lounging; close to a booth where a fluttering pennon announced that a two-headed cow was on show within.
From his position on the fallen tree, Cormac caught glimpses of the stone chair of the Brehon or Judge, which was placed on the great burial mound around which the Fair centred. On his right-hand stretched the race-course and wrestling rings; on his left the sea gleamed in the distance.
It was not long before Cormac became aware that a woman formed one in the group of people around him. Although half-hidden by the foliage of the tree, she was quite close to him—so close that her flowing lenn almost brushed his knee, and the saffron fragrance of her robes was quite distinct to him.
It was a strange thing to see a fair and delicately-dressed woman amongst these rude jugglers. Cormac was full of wonder. He wished he could see the girl’s face. Every moment his wonder increased; was she some high-born Druidess, mated by caprice with one of these low serpent-charmers? No, the ring on her hand would never be worn by a Druidess; he could see her hand, plainly with the ring upon it—bearing the monogram of Our Lord, the bezel ornamented with a dove within an olive branch.
What power in the loosely-lying hand and arm! White and delicate, but of a strength to wield a battle-axe. And the wide sloping shoulders and snow-white column of her throat, gleaming like marble through the meshes of her yellow hair—such women, surely, stood before the southern sculptors when they chose their images to bear the weight of temple and palace!
Where had he seen such women? Not amid the nervous fiery creatures of his own race, not among the beautiful fragile ladies of Roman-Britain. A faint dislike, a sudden shuddering sense of disaster came upon him—he knew now where he had seen such great, fair, goddess-like women! But they had not been thus clothed in delicate raiment, glossy-haired, perfumed, and dainty—but dishevelled and gory with hair streaming in the fore-ranks of the Saxons.
Every moment his wish to see her face grew stronger.
He could see she made her replies unwillingly to the man at her side; and evidently wished to remain silent and unnoticed. Indeed, there were strong reasons why she should desire to escape notice, for at these great fairs men and women were kept apart under fear of death.
Cormac looked with rage at the girl’s persecutor. Every minute he was attracting attention to her; others besides Cormac had turned their eyes on the pair.
Cormac was powerless; to interfere was to attract more notice to the woman. Her persecutor was one of his own countrymen; of a low, juggling order with a Pictish accent of the coarsest kind—a snake-charmer with gold rings in his ears and a speckled cloak such as the Druids wore. He had ringed himself round with hissing serpents—on arm and ankle, round neck and trunk.
Cormac could see that the girl looked on the serpents with horror. The snake-charmer thrust his hands, out-spread, towards her and contemptuously cracked every finger-joint in her face. With a brutal movement he came a step nearer, so that the vipers thrust their tongues almost in her face—and then, with a dexterous movement slipped one of the serpents from his arm to hers. The girl had stood her ground bravely and uttered no sound; but at this outrage she sprang backward and came with some force against Cormac, who threw one arm around her; and, with the other, cast the serpent in the charmer’s face.
“Fool and meddler!” cried the snake-charmer, angrily. “Leave my business alone. You shall pay for this!”
He recovered the viper; and folding it together with its fellows, slipped them into his breast. There was an angry glitter in his eye, and he withdrew from the spot, muttering ominously.
Cormac feared for the girl’s safety. He looked around for some place of safety for her—there was none. All that could be done was to draw her into the shadow of the felled trees. He turned towards her, and for the first time saw her face.
It was Elgiva, the Saxon!
They stood gazing at each other. They must have remained in this position for some moments when they were startled by screams of wrath—that which Cormac had dreaded now happened.
An angry mob, headed by the snake-charmer, surrounded them—a murderous, screaming crowd which grew larger every moment; serfs drew their whittles and joined in—stragglers and rude horse-boys, armed with clubs and yew-staves, came at the call.
“A woman—a woman!” The angry cry spread like lightning “a woman—a woman in the Men’s Airecht! Deliver her to justice!”
Cormac planted himself in front of his companion; he had thrown his cloak around her, to hide her dress. Now he forced her into the leaves and twigs of the fallen tree.
“Ay, and a Saxon woman, too!” screamed the snake-charmer, “a Saxon, a Saxon!”
There was a further howl of wrath from the crowd; and Cormac’s body would have been hewn down instantly, but that the slaying of a man at a Fair meant not only death, but a curse after death on the spirit of the slayer.
Cormac was parrying blow after blow; men were climbing towards the woman along the trunk of the hewn tree, and some were trying to set on fire the dried leaves and twigs.
“A Saxon! a Saxon!” they yelled. “If a man do but enter the airecht of the women he must die—let her die also! Let her die the death!”
Their enemies pressed closer upon them—still kept at bay by Cormac’s sword. Some of the wildest in the mob took up stones and began to stone them. Cormac and the girl retreated more and more under the thick foliage. Suddenly their retreat was cut off—they touched upon a great rock against which the felled trees had been massed.
For a minute they were left in peace.
Then Cormac saw a flame of fire run along a withered branch towards them. A stone struck him on the shoulder.
“Cravens!” he said, “they will stone or burn us!”
Elgiva was examining the surface of the rock against which they stood; drawing her hand over it through its veil of thick leaves. She gave a little cry of joy as she entered a crevice in the stone, and drew Cormac after her. The passage was so narrow he was forced to leave his shield behind him. They pressed onward for a few feet, hand in hand, until they felt they were in the heart of the rock.
“On!” cried Cormac, “on!” and slipping his arm around the girl forced her forward—till the light behind them had disappeared and the rock on either side had given place to damp earth.
“This path leads to the cliffs!” exclaimed Elgiva. And then she gave a sudden cry.
“I slip! I fall!”
Their path descended with terrible rapidity, but she did not fall, for Cormac’s arm prevented her.
“On!” he cried, “on! Though escape lead us to a second death!”
They were almost running now; pitch-dark around them; a slippery and treacherous foothold beneath; thick about them a sudden swarm of startled bats.
Day seemed, in a strange manner, to be dawning from beneath them.
The quick movement, the strange flight, and weird surroundings brought cries and laughter both from Elgiva’s lips—the first sign of weakness she had shown.
“Ah me!” she cried, “we have flown from the pikes and knives of men to the awful dwellings of gnomes and mermen. I can stay my feet no longer—I faint, I fall!”
Full daylight flashed upon them; a rush of earth and stones accompanied them, as they slid, suddenly, into a shell-strewn cave.
They found themselves in the heart of a grotto; a ledge in the steep cliff-side with the wild sea below; inaccessible, save by the subterranean passage through which they had entered.