Madoc

by Bernard Knight

Genres: Action & Adventure; Historical Fiction; Medieval

Synopsis

The epic story of Prince Madoc, son of the ruler of North Wales, who after the death of his wife leaves behind the battles for power and prestige in his homeland and journeys into the unknown, sailing with a small group of companions across the Western Ocean. In this novel, acclaimed author Knight skilfully blends historical fact and the histories of medieval Britain and France with the story of a Welsh prince who, legend says, discovered the continent of North America.

Release date: April 19, 2016

Publisher: Accent Press

Print pages: 301

Sample

CHAPTER ONE

May 1160

The youth reined his horse at the top of the rise and waited for the old man to come plodding up behind him. Though Idwal’s impatience was tempered by his respect for the other’s reputation, he found it hard to conceal his impatience with the ungainly way the older man was draped side-saddle over the docile mare.

For his part, Gwalchmai, court bard to Owain Gwynedd, Prince of North Wales, heartily wished that he had made the journey on his own two feet. He was discovering that Irish horses were no more comfortable than the Welsh variety.

Gripping the long-suffering mare’s mane tightly with one hand, Gwalchmai lumbered up to his guide, who sat across his own steed with an easy assurance.

Below, the wide curve of grey-blue sea that formed Dublin Bay, funnelled into the tidal channel of the River Liffey. The huts of Dublin itself were way up-river, but immediately below them were shipyards that straggled untidily along the northern bank.

Rising smoke from a dozen fires showed where the midday meals were being prepared. The youth pointed down the slope to the river bank.

‘He could be anywhere along there, sire. We shall have to ask for him.’

The old bard suffered the jolts of the mare as she picked her way through the rough grass and rabbit-holes of the scrub-covered land, long since robbed of trees to supply the boat-builders down below. There were no sizeable trees for as far as the eye could reach.

For several hundred years now, ever since the Northmen had erupted from their Scandinavian homes, these shores had provided the timbers for generations of the dragon-prowed ships and the less terrifying trading vessels that had succeeded them. Now timber had to be brought from Caledonia, Wales and the lush woodlands around the Severn Sea.

As they neared the Liffey, the sound of axe and adze on this vital wood came drifting up to them. Soon Gwalchmai could see ships in various stages of completion along the bank of the river. All flat-bottomed, their keels were laid on rollers well above the high-water mark. When finished, they were hauled to the water’s edge and slid into the calmness of the Liffey, then towed to staithes nearby. Here the single stubby mast was fitted and the square leather-banded sail rigged.

The two Welshmen soon reached the edge of the yards, where the grass gave way to beaten mud and wood shavings. A confusion of piled timber and waste wood stood around a few ramshackle huts, where tools were kept and meals eaten in bad weather. Further along were some larger, though equally wretched buildings, where women cooked and children played in the muddy squalor.

Idwal, the old man’s guide, called out to a slatternly woman who was throwing corn to some dishevelled chickens, using words which Gwalchmai recognised as a curious mixture of Irish and Norse.

The woman shrugged and waved her hand vaguely towards the nearest boat being built. The Welsh boy moved on.

‘Where might Madoc the minstrel be, friend?’ Idwal asked several men passing by and each pointed towards the inland end of the boatyards.

Here a noticeably larger ship was under construction. Gwalchmai could see a dozen men busy on the last stages of planking the sides, driving both iron nails and wooden pegs through into the oak ribs. Further up the bank, some women and even children were feeding scrap wood onto several fires that kept large cauldrons belching forth steam. Two figures were holding the end of a long plank in the vapour, warping it so that it could be forced into position along the curve of the bow. One of the figures was a tall, fair-haired young man, whom Idwal recognised.

‘Hey, Madoc! I’ve brought a visitor for you,’ he yelled.

The fair youth waved back in recognition. Apparently the plank must have had enough steam, for the other man began hurrying towards the ship with it, leaving Madoc free to greet his visitors. In a moment he was standing expectantly at the side of Gwalchmai’s horse. He recognised the old man as a bard by his flowing robes dyed in multi-coloured stripes and by the round cap above the pigtail of grey hair. The youth made a quick small bow and looked enquiringly at Idwal.

‘This is a bard from your father’s court, Madoc. He arrived at Clochran yesterday.’

The guide shifted his eyes to Gwalchmai.

‘This is the one you seek, sire. This is Madoc of the Ships.’ He grinned as he spoke and Madoc smiled with him, his blue eyes twinkling as he playfully grabbed at Idwal’s leg. Gwalchmai again sighed inwardly at the full realisation of the generation gap between him and these young lads, the inheritors of his present world.

‘I am Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, Madoc,’ he said gravely, ‘one of the Royal Bards of Prince Owain of Gwynedd. I have come especially to seek you, from your father’s lands.’

‘The prince has sent me a message, sir?’

Gwalchmai shook his head, a little sadly.

‘No, Madoc ab Owain, not your father. I come secretly from your mother.’

The young man’s face paled, then reddened in a blotchy livid pattern, so great was his confusion. ‘My mother, sir … but I never knew her name … nor even if she still lived.’

Gwalchmai looked away from the boy, to the bustle, noise and squalor of the shipyard. ‘This is no place to talk of such things. We must go back to Clochran and I will give you my news in more tranquil surroundings.’

Madoc, bewildered, bowed his head to the bard. ‘I will go and borrow a horse … I have been living here these past few days, helping with the big ship.’

He dashed away towards the crude buildings and Idwal kicked his horse across to Gwalchmai’s side.

‘We will start back, sir. The sooner we are out of this stinking place, the better.’

Gwalchmai pondered on the lad he had just met, a royal son of the Prince of North Wales. ‘Does he really live in that pigsty of a place for days on end?’

Idwal nodded vigorously. ‘For weeks, sometimes. He is in love with ships and all manner of things to do with the sea. Though our cousin Merfyn of Clochran is always generous with hospitality, Madoc spends more and more of his time away from there. Sometimes, he actually goes to sea with the shipmasters. Last year, he was away for three months, when he went to Brittanyand France on a trading vessel. And this year, he went in a Viking knarr up to some islands in the far north of Caledonia.’

Gwalchmai shook his head. ‘Vikings! Yes, of course Madoc has Norse blood in his veins, as well as Welsh. His great-grandmother was a Viking princess, who married his great-grandfather, Cynan ap Iago, when he was also in exile in Dublin. Strange how history repeats itself.’

The thud of hooves on the turf came up behind them.

‘Here he comes now,’ said Idwal, ‘in a great haste to learn more. I know that, for years, the thought of his mother has plagued him.’

The bard risked a backward glance as he hung onto his horse’s neck.

‘A fine lad. I wonder what he will make of my news.’

After the evening meal was over, Merfyn, Lord of Clochran, led his guest to a small chamber off the wooden hall.

‘Much as we would like to have the honour of your songs this night, Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, I think the fatigues of your journey and your need to talk privately with our beloved Madoc must come first.’

Diplomatically, Merfyn withdrew and Gwalchmai beckoned Madoc near.

He saw the young man’s open face gazing at him expectantly. Madoc was indeed a handsome youth, with a high brow, a longish face, but most of all an expression of calmness, almost innocence that rarely left it. Anger, greed and hatred would be strangers on a face like that – it was more the countenance that he had seen on hermits and saints, living apart from the troubles and temptations of civilisation.

‘You have always known that you were a bastard son of Owain ap Gruffydd, the prince they call Owain Gwynedd?’ he began.

Madoc nodded, his blue Nordic eyes fixed on the bard’s face.

‘I have lived here in Clochran ever since I can remember. Always, people have called me Madoc ab Owain Gwynedd and given me some respect for being the son of a great prince.’

Gwalchmai smiled, almost cynically.

‘Yet exiled kin of princes, be they bastard or not, can be had by the sackful in Ireland. Royal blood does not place gold in the purse!’

Madoc shook his head, puzzled. ‘No, but I care not about that. I have been happy with my friends and my ships, though sometimes I feel the call to live in the land of my birth.’

‘Your birth … what have they told you about that?’

‘Nothing … some have said that my mother died in labour, others that she was but some servant or concubine of my father’s, unknown by name. I feel somehow that they were wrong, but maybe that was wishful thinking.’

Gwalchmai sighed. This boy had been deprived of his mother, denied by his father and exiled from his homeland, all in his short lifetime. Yet Madoc had fallen on better times than many royal by-blows, having been fortunate in being adopted into the household of Merfyn who ran a little island of Welshness in the Dublin countryside.

‘I know who your mother is, Madoc. I was in her company less than five days ago when she pleaded that I came to you with her message.’

Madoc’s expression almost glowed up at him.

‘Who is my mother, sir … please?’

Gwalchmai looked down at him gravely. ‘She is Brenda, daughter of Hywel, Lord of Carno. Brenda – your father’s favourite mistress these many years.’

Amazement, then sheer elation chased themselves across Madoc’s face. Suddenly he grasped Gwalchmai’s hand in an impulsive gesture of gratitude.

‘Brenda … then I am a full brother to Riryd. Oh, God, Riryd, my real brother … my full, real brother.’

Gwalchmai shrugged to himself. He had crossed the choppy Irish Sea and sat on a blasted horse for league after league to bring the news of a mother to Madoc and now the boy had gone into raptures because he had discovered that one of his nineteen half-brothers was also his full brother!

‘Sit down, boy,’ he snapped, rather testily. ‘What is so important about Riryd?’

‘He is my closest friend, as well as being a blood relative, sir. We share a love of ships and the sea … though he is seven years my senior, we are almost as twins. I knew that we must be especially close,’ he said fiercely, with a return of some of his excitement.

‘Where is Riryd now?’

‘Gone with a Cornish trading ship to Brittany. I could have gone too, but this big vessel is near completion and I wanted to be at the launching.’ He brushed a hand across his face.

‘But my mother, please … what of her? What is she like … is she well … what message did she send me?’

‘Wait … wait! Firstly, she wants to see you; that is the main reason for my visit. Secondly, no one is to know of this matter for the time being until she can sound out your father’s reaction to news of your return to Gwynedd.’

Madoc’s smooth brow creased.

‘Why should that be, sire? Why have I always needed to remain here in Ireland, banished and unrecognised? Riryd, son of the same parents, has been to Prince Owain’s court and acknowledges our mother openly.’

Gwalchmai sighed. ‘It’s a long story, Madoc … a long story.’

CHAPTER TWO

June 1160

Madoc crouched alongside Gwalchmai as the little boat clawed its way along the last stage of their voyage.

The old bard was almost as bad a sailor as he was a horseman, for he groaned for most of the three days’ journey from Dublin to North Wales.

It was not a planked ship, but an Irish currach, made of tarred skins stretched over a flimsy framework. As the three scrawny Irishmen who made up the crew fought the little boat across the ebbing tide towards Deganwy, it lifted and slapped sickeningly on the choppy waters.

They were painfully edging across the broad stretch of shallow sea between the island of Mon – or Anglesey, as it was becoming known since the Norsemen’s arrival – and the great hook of the Orme peninsula – another recent Viking name. The waters here funnelled down into the narrow northern entry of the Menai Straits and, on their right, the great mountains of Eryri1 loomed in the summer mists.

Madoc stared thoughtfully at the massive bulwarks of Gwynedd towering into the clouds. It was behind that central core of Eryri that they were bound there that Madoc had been born – in the little castle of Dolwyddelan, one of the strongholds of the Princes of Gwynedd.

‘Gwalchmai, where does my father spend most of his time now – in Dolwyddelan or Aberffraw?’

The bard painfully swallowed the welling saliva that accompanied his nausea. ‘Uh … mainly in Mon, my son … though he comes quite often to Dolwyddelan … oh, Christ, will this journey last for ever?’

Yet two hours later, when they had their feet on the solid ground at the port of Deganwy, Gwalchmai rapidly came back to life. They lodged for the night at an inn looking across the estuary of the Conwy river. Though Gwalchmai, as a royal bard, could have claimed lodging in the castle of Dinas Conwy, he preferred to keep clear of any establishments belonging to Owain Gwynedd until the reaction of that fiery prince to the reappearance of yet another of his bastards could be gauged.

Next morning, they set out early on two hired horses. Noon saw them sixteen miles up the broad vale of Conwy, to the point where the little Lledr river came down a side valley from the southern peaks of Eryri.

By late afternoon, they were at Dolwyddelan. Madoc had been getting more and more restless as he neared his birthplace, which he had left long before he could remember any events of his childhood. In fact, he had no idea how old he had been when he left the castle. He asked Gwalchmai, just before they turned the last bend into the pleasantly wooded valley.

‘How old, boy? About three weeks. It would have been three hours if the prince had got to know the truth earlier.’ He refused to be drawn further and they rode in silence up the quiet vale towards the castle of Dolwyddelan.

It stood on a spur on their right hand, high above the meadows of the valley. The old road, originally Roman, came from Ardudwy in the west and climbed behind the castle on the barren southern slopes of Moel Siabod, one of the southern outliers of Eryri. This road cut away from them over the hills, to join the Vale of Conwy downstream from the confluence of the Lledr.

They came to a little stream that tumbled down through rocks and sodden turf from the castle to the meadows. A path led up towards the old road and the entrance to the fortress. Madoc looked with curiosity and some misgivings at the royal building now silhouetted against the reddening western sky. It was here that he had been delivered into the world – by all accounts, a world that had not been particularly excited about his arrival.

After nineteen years, he was to meet his mother again – and hope not to meet his father. Gwalchmai had made sure in Deganwy that Prince Owain ap Gwynedd was safely housed in Anglesey at his major court of Aberffraw. Though the bard hoped to engineer Madoc’s acceptance at the court of Gwynedd, the time was not yet ripe for such an abrupt disclosure.

So the bard’s consternation was acute when he heard Madoc exclaim as he pointed back along the old road across the hills.

‘A cavalcade, Gwalchmai … who can be coming?’

The older man picked up the hem of his robe and hurried to the youth’s side. Shielding his eyes, he squinted across the rough uplands towards the Vale of Conwy. The sun glittered off the pennants and spearheads of a procession winding its way along the road, still three miles distant.

Gwalchmai groaned. ‘It can be no one else but Owain Fawr!’

‘But you said he was safe in Mon!’ protested Madoc, a sudden feeling of terror gripping him.

‘Then they told me wrong!’ snapped the bard, anxiety fraying his temper. He whirled around and dragged his horse towards the castle, which loomed high over their heads. ‘Quickly, let us get you tucked away at once; it will be the better part of an hour before they reach the gates. We must see whether your mother feels that you can safely be hidden away.’

They hurried the last few hundred paces to the castle, which perched on a great rocky hump amidst marshy ground. A long pool acted as an incomplete moat on the side facing them. A rough wooden bridge, merely a few crude planks, stretched across it and on the other side, rough steps were hewn into the rock to climb to the narrow gateway.

‘I had imagined Dolwyddelan to be all in stone,’murmured Madoc, as he followed on the heels of Gwalchmai.

‘It will be soon, boy … the keep has been refashioned in masonry already … your father intends to do the same with the West Tower and the curtain walls before long … aping the Normans, I call it!’

It was more a fortified tower than a castle, only the new stone keep having any air of dignity about it. This was two storeys high and had a gabled roof. The rest of the castle was composed of a wooden stockade diverging from each side of the keep, which stood on the apex of the crag overlooking the Lledr valley. The palisade enclosed the whole rugged platform of rock and a lower, wider wooden tower formed the remainder of the structure at the opposite angle. The whole place was not more than forty paces across in any direction – its cramped quarters were emphasised by the straggling collection of huts and shacks that clustered around the foot of the crag and housed the more lowly members of the Dolwyddelan household.

These were times of peace, right in the heart of Owain Gwynedd’s kingdom and the security on the gate was a mere token. The castellan and his staff were too concerned with the distant sight of the prince approaching to bother with the familiar figure of Gwalchmai the bard and some young man he had picked up in his travels.

The pair passed unheeded among the busy folk in the small courtyard as they made their way towards the flight of steps that led up to the entrance of the keep. The only door was a dozen feet above the ground, to make defence easier, the basement being entered only through a trapdoor in the floor of the hall. Above this was a single large bedchamber, together with a few tiny closets cut in the thickness of the walls.

At the great studded door into the hall, Gwalchmai stopped an agitated maidservant and asked after the Lady Brenda.

‘In her chamber, pencerdd,’2 she said, ‘gettingherself ready for the lord’s appearance.’

Gwalchmai groaned. Turning back, he swung the bemused Madoc around and went back down to the courtyard. ‘Lady Brenda lives in the West Tower … I had thought to find her in the hall.’

Madoc looked at him in puzzlement. ‘Why does not my mother stay in the main bedchamber up there, then?’

Gwalchmai nudged him sharply with his elbow, as they passed through the thronged yard. ‘Keep your voice down, boy … no one is to know who you are until we see how the land lies. You are Merfyn, an apprentice bard from Aberd. . .