Part 3

"They are all mightily drunken with the use and custom of sins!" he thundered. "If I reckoned without pause for ten years, the scandals concerning the high men of Britain would not be enumerated--and concerning also our monks and ordained priests (Have mercy, have mercy, on us miserable sinners!). Our princes are a host of devils--nay, worse than devils, for have they not received the sign and sacrament of baptism? Lust, and pillage, and oppression are such as were never before since the creation of the world. Stinking to heaven is Gomorrah--I should say Aberffraw! And there dwells the most heinous, the Satan of them all--and that is Maelgwn Gwenedd!"

David yawned, said a prayer for his kinsman Maelgwn, stretched himself, and fell asleep.

At the first glimmer of dawn, they were awakened by the clanging of Gildas's bell. Their prayer said, David went to bathe in the brook near by. When he returned to the camp-fire, Gildas, his countenance sallower than usual, twisting and biting his lips, had just bent down to the simmering pot that hung over the flames, with a loaf of bread in his hand, when the mongrel grey-hound darted up to him, made an ecstatic leap, and snatching the loaf in his teeth, rushed away with it down the hill-side.

David's laugh pealed loud and clear. The holy Gildas turned furiously upon a little boy, one of his pupils, who stood beside him rubbing sleepy eyes, and abused him for not giving his master warning of what he must have seen was likely to occur. The bishop of Mynyw ran as fast as he could after the thief. Some distance below, in the valley, he caught his dog, beat and scolded him, and possessed himself of the bread. In the village at the hill's foot, he admired a cottager's leeks, and was given a handful. He then re-ascended the hill.

"The sour-faced hawk!" thought he. "I am glad, very glad, he did not obtain the rule of Mynwy when he tried to supersede me, long ago!"

Gildas confronted him.

"Ill is thy laughter, Dewi mab Sandde!" he spluttered hoarsely. "For a holy man of God--such conduct is light...."

"Thou hast the black bile, brother," said David. "Laughter is surely given us for good--so are we different from the brute beasts. We must practise austerities for all needful purposes; but I counsel thee that thou endeavour to find joy in all things gay and innocent, and in thine own mishaps, that prove thee human, most of all: so shall such dust-specks not make the sunshine less sweet to thee!" In softer tones, "Lift up thy heart, brother; in a very little while, we shall break our fast. I and my companions will find food enough for us all and to spare."

Gildas, raging inarticulately, rushed into the cave where he had spent the night.

David turned to the contrite boy, whose cheeks showed traces of tears.

"Hast thou seen our Lady's Candle,[9] over yonder by the quarry-side?" said he. "Such altar-light saw I never made by the hand of man. Seek thou it out, for a lovely sight."

[9] The great mullein.

"Father David," answered the child, "how may that be? Do they not tell us that we must not gratify our senses, for that this world teems with sin most foul?"

"That is old nonsense!" cried David. "Has not the Lord made all the earth, and is not His Word indwelling? And, son, remember this--come storm, come drought, come frost, nothing can take our God from us."

"Is it true, O my father," asked the boy, wide-eyed, "that once on a time your own cook did try to poison you?"

"The poor mad fellow!" said the bishop shortly. "Luckily one of my guests suspected, and so were we one and all saved alive. Go thou draw water, little one, where the brook is deepest: I have need of more."

David stirred the broth in the pot, adding his leeks and some sage and pepper which he carried about him. The monks had gone their several ways, in search of wild fruits and pot-herbs. From within the biggest cave came the sound of restless fidgeting. David began to sing:

"Hast thou heard the saying of Calwaladr, King of all Britain? The best crooked thing is the crooked handle of a plough."

There was a hasty footfall behind and Gildas stood beside him.

"Thy pardon, David," he said, very humbly, hanging his head. "Indeed, indeed, I know not why--but I have always a dark humour before breakfast!"

"Oh, Gildas, Gildas," cried David, as he wrung both the other's hands. "I am too hot-mettled, I fear, in the early hours!"

When they were within an hour's walk of the town of Brefi, David left them and disappeared into the woods.

"There will be enough to talk and enough to listen," said he to Aidan. "I feel a great need to pray."

The rest of the party proceeded without him. Now upon and around the hill of Brefi vast numbers of people were assembled. Certain questions disquieted the land of Cymru. Some hundred and fifty years before, Morgan the Briton, who is also called Pelagius, being at Rome, where he lived ascetically and reasoned unceasingly, hatched from his brain a subtle heresy. Adam's sin was his alone, and brought no curse upon his children; the will of a man to do good was enough to secure him from sin; Christ died only that His example might prompt and incite the well-disposed to greater efforts, and that those baptized in His Name might enter after death into a heaven superior to that of unbelievers. Now, of all the races of the earth, the race which set most store by the sayings of Morgan was his own nation of the Briton, who love discussion before all things, and especially discussion of the properties of the soul. Even so late as this, the Pelagians in Britain were many, and tampered with the faith of many, exhorting their fellow-Christians to forego the aid of the sacraments, as tending to superstitious bondage. And that some even of the clergy led gross and scandalous lives, we have Saint Gildas to witness.

The day of the synod was hot to oppression. From early morning until past noon, one after another, bishop and priest addressed the gathering. There was as much embroidered rhetoric, impassioned argument, and brilliant, aimless quotation as always abound wherever the Cymry are met together; but to no one came the trenchant words that would sever the knots of their problems. As for the greatest among them, Dyfrig, and Deiniol, and Gildas, they seemed tongue-tied by the heavy weather, and hopelessly dreary.

Then said Dyfrig the aged saint:

"One who was made bishop by the Patriarch of Caer Salem is not present amongst us, a man who is eloquent, full of grace, and approved in religion, who has spread the Gospel far and wide in the desert regions of Britain, and has thoroughly purged the pagan land of Dyfed: David the son of Sandde, of Mynyw in Pebidiog. Let us send for him."

Gildas, Dyfrig, and Deiniol, and the young Aidan, sought and found David, and to Brefi hill they led him. Now the sides of the hill were white as a flowering orchard with the bleached garments of the priests and bishops who crowded thereon, and for a mile or more on every hand stretched the great throng of the people. When David came among them, the holy men made a pile of their cloaks, satchels, and books that he might mount upon it, for he was a short man (they say three cubits in height). So he stood up before them in all his greatness, and he seemed to tower high above them all.

He spoke to them in his voice of silver; he smote at error with strong strokes, which called forth both tears and laughter; he pleaded sweetly with the recalcitrant; his arguments were sound, his metaphors lively and concise. How can it be supposed, said he, that the nature of man can of itself engender righteousness to salvation? He told of his own laborious days: of his long discipleship with Illtyd; his missionary journeys throughout the west of Britain; his struggle, scarcely ended, with hostile princes and heedless people in his native province; his temptations, contests, watchings, and privations; his experiences as a ruler of religious and a trainer of youth. "If a man glorify his will, there follows pride; and pride drops dead in the presence of God mocked and crucified!"

Then he talked of discipline, of the need of it in human life, and of how it must be loving and carefully contrived, that the heart of the delinquent be not hardened.

Of those who listened, not one moved from his place until the end of David's discourse, and scarcely one stirred hand or foot. And some there were who saw a spirit near the saint, like to a dove, with gleaming bill, who sometimes perched upon his shoulder and whispered in his ear. And to many in that assembly his words brought comfort entire and ease from mental strife, and left in their hearts a pathway of peace and light.

They acclaimed him with rapturous tongues; far and wide they noised it that David of Mynyw was the treasure of the Cymry, the prince of all the saints of Britain. Gildas muttered congratulations, and hurried away to his interminable writing. His heart was not free from envy for a little while.

As David was leaving the synod, he heard the sound of heartbroken sobs from a little gathering upon the banks of the Teify. It was a poor woman lamenting by the body of her son.

"Dewi, Dewi!" she cried, "have pity upon my affliction! He was my only little weakly child, and I have striven so sorely to rear him! God cannot reave him from me. Entreat Him for me, Dewi Sant!"

The tears rose to David's eyes as these sorrowful words were uttered; he knelt down by the body, and began to rub the hands and the feet, and to pray aloud in this wise.

"O Lord, my God, who didst descend to this world from the bosom of the Father for us sinners, that Thou mightest redeem us from the jaws of the old enemy, have pity on this widow, and give life to her only son, that Thy Name may be magnified in all the earth!"

He felt the limbs growing gradually warmer beneath his touch, and he continued to pray, and to call upon the boy in tender, soothing tones. By and by the eyelids flickered; then the boy opened his eyes, raised himself for the space of a second, and looked full into the eyes of David. They gave him wine, and life was secured to him.

When they had escaped from the grateful outpourings of the mother, David said to Teilo:

"Brother, an awful thing is death! For after death, we come no more; and judgment follows. It has been given to me once or twice to behold the Angel drawing near to those who themselves were unaware; and power has even then come upon me that I might put them in mind of their latter end. I pray often, Teilo, that neither thou, nor I, nor any of the brethren, nor any of all my beloved people, may be cut off without timely warning."

Wherefore, say the ancients, is the Corpse Candle foretelling dissolution oftenest seen in the diocese of Mynyw.

The next day, before they had travelled many miles, earth and sky took on a mysterious aspect. A heavy blight hung in the air; and a strange, watery column, with its head in the clouds, trailed over the earth, discharging raindrops which were hot to the touch and yet struck chill. A few men and women fell sick by the roadside; their bodies shrivelled and turned yellow, and in a few hours they died. David remained among the sufferers, nursing and consoling. The Yellow Plague hourly increased its ravages. Some recounted that the advance of the pest could be seen in the form of a female spirit--a frightful hag, hairless, with flavescent features and long pointed teeth, who clutched at her prey. Ere many days, the land was choked with unburied corpses.

"Maelgwn the King is dead!" they told David.

"Then is Gildas content!" said he. "Hasten we to Mynyw."

In Dyfed, for all his loving zeal, he could not dwell long, because of the Plague which followed him there. So David and all his surviving brethren and all the inhabitants of Pebidiog whom he could gather together set sail for Lesser Britain. There he laboured greatly for five years and more at Leon, Saint Ivy, and Loquivy, preaching the word of God and founding churches and houses of religion.

In the last year but one of the fifth century after Christ, when David was a very old man, Cynyr son of Cyngen, a scholar in Teilo's Côr upon the Taff, being unable to bear the stern rule of Teilo, fled from the college and wandered until he came upon Llywel the hermit of Selyf in Brycheiniog, who entertained him and kept him under his protection. And a little after Llywel died, and Cynyr dwelt still in the former cell of Llywel. That year was cold and frosty, and the fruits of the earth were nipped in the ear and in the bud. At the autumn equinox great storms of wind and rain arose, followed early by snow, and the flocks of the men of Brycheiniog were lost and starved for the most part. As soon as the thaw set in at the beginning of the next year, Llyr Merini, lord of Talgarth, laid claim to a cantref in the lordship of Rhaint son of Brychan, his wife's brother, as belonging to his own tribe, and publicly reproached King Rhaint with being the cause of the late disastrous weather through his harbourage of an apostate religious. The men of Llyr fell upon the lands of Rhaint, seized his men, broke their ploughs, and carried off the little grain they had ready to sow. Some of the seed-corn with which they could not escape they cast into the stony bed of the brook Cilieni. Rhaint and his people proceeded to fitting reprisals. And so things continued until the spring had come indeed. It was then that David of Mynyw, as he journeyed through Brycheiniog, declared his will to judge between the warring princes.

On the morning of the first of May, a white-robed monk, with horny hands, and a tanned face whose pointed nose and patient brown eyes made it resemble the face of a dog, stood in the dingle through which the Clydach flows. Upon a gradually-sloping bank, where primroses and small blue violets bloomed in the damp and mossy grass, he had just spread three sheep-skins, and was regarding their position with doubtful look. He appeared oblivious of two other persons who occupied the little glen at the same moment, though these were no less than Llyr Merini, lord of Talgarth, and his wife Gwen, daughter of King Brychan. At a seemly distance were their household attendants.

"O Lily, servant of David," said Llyr, "I have heard that he thy master holds the keys that do lock and unlock the portals of heaven!"

"Very righteous saint is David," replied Lily. He did no more than glance at the lord and lady.

"Surely he does consider that the perjury of one tonsured to God is of all things the most abominable?"

"David has a key to all of heaven that is in the world," David's servant continued. "Where he scattereth, there does the good corn spring. When the Yellow Plague had run its course, and we returned from Llydaw, a crushing labour was before him, for men were lax and weary, and religion wellnigh forgotten. But this task he fulfilled, for the blessing of God was upon him, and he and his disciples journeyed far afield, hither to Brycheiniog, and into Gwent, Ewyas, and Erging, and sowed the seed of the Gospel in plenty. Every holy thing does David foster and honour. And he reads plainly the hearts of men, and traces the springs of their actions. A fountain of justice is the heart of David."

"Many fair churches owns David. Loves he not gifts of gold, and silver, and polished jewels," said Gwen eagerly, "for the adornment of his foundations? They say that the praise of beauty is ever upon his lips."

"This will not do for my master!" cried Lily, snatching one of the fleeces from the ground. "How can he, whose years are ninety and more, huddle upon the moss like a lithe-limbed stripling? He must have a seat conformable to his dignity, myn Duw!"

"See, see!" Gwen cried. "A heap of logs for the great May fire! We will fetch one of them, husband, for the use of the powerful saint."

They carried a log between them to the foot of the bank. Lily approved it, after scrutiny, and spread one of his cherished sheepskins upon it. Then David came slowly into the glen towards them, leaning upon the arm of King Rhaint of the Red Eyes. With a quick gesture of greeting to all there assembled, he seated himself in the tribunal prepared for him. He seemed smaller than ever now, for his form was bowed and his skin was abundantly wrinkled, and all his life and energy centred in his gleaming dark-hazel eyes.

Teilo, abbot-bishop of Llandaff, and Ismael, one of David's own bishops, were with him, and some of their attendant monks; and the courtiers and fighting-men of Rhaint followed. A few of the villagers had made their way to the place of meeting.

"Speak you now your causes, my children," said David, in his clarion tones, which the years had scarcely weakened.

"This one has attacked my lands," cried Rhaint, "and has broken the ploughs of my men, and destroyed their valuable corn-seed!"

"This one," cried Llyr, "keeps from me a cantref which was my father's and the father of my father's; and Brycheiniog brings forth no sustenance, for Rhaint mab Brychan protects the renegade Cynyr!"

Two armed men, shouting and threatening, dragged a youth in monastic garb, tonsured, his countenance pallid and his eyes dim with watching and fasting, to the feet of the bishops.

"Here is Cynyr, between my men," said Rhaint. "Examine him, father, upon his matter."

"O stinging viper!" exclaimed Teilo. "Obedience didst thou vow to me in my college upon the Taff! And thou didst manifest such notable dispositions in the early days of thy pupilage!"

"May the penalty be heavy and bitter, we pray you, holy bishops," said Gwen, "that the curse be lifted from us. Always very ill fortune dogs the breach of a vow!"

"Lady, I would have silence about me," said David, "that I may pray Our Lord for grace to discern rightly between Teilo my son and my brother and Llywel who is in Paradise." ... After a brief pause: "What pleadest thou, Cynyr? By whose permission hast thou betaken thyself to the life of a solitary? Wilt thou confess thy sins, and return to the faithful congregation?"

"Dewi mab Sandde, with you will I go," the young man replied.

"With me? but not with Teilo? Speak out thy mind, and fear not."

"Not with Teilo. His rule is too harsh: I cannot bow myself to such authority."

"Thou must go with my brother Teilo, being his pupil and servant."

"I will abide here in Llywel's cell, and gather about me my own Côr, and rule it. Or I will live beneath the ordinance of David. Let him[10] not cast me away; for of all saints he is the most efficacious! I would be a holy man, even as he is. But, look you, the legions of Satan do compass me about, and make hideous my nights and my days. There is also an evil, fair woman, Indeg daughter of Maenarch, who plagues me whenever I do meet with her; and her spirit is with me continually, to trouble me, when she herself is absent! Pray for me, for the love of the Lord!"

[10] David. Cynyr uses the third person singular of courtesy.

"O Cynyr," said David meditatively, "hast thou the gift of obedience, I wonder?... Thou hast taken thy final vows before the Holy Sacrament?" he added suddenly.

Cynyr hung his head, and grew even paler than he had been before.

"No, no. My consecration should have been at the Paschal Feast of last year. I fled Llandaff the week before. This I told to blessed Llywel before he took me in."

"Why, Teilo," said the bishop of Mynyw, "I had heard that this Cynyr had deserted the furrow that he had undertaken to plough. Where is the truth in this?"

"My overseer of the disciples did speak of his consecration," was the other bishop's answer.

"Thou hast said that his vows were taken?"

"I did think that they were," said Teilo.

"Llandaff has done the youth great wrong!" cried David.

A dull red crept into the face of Teilo, but he did not utter a word.

"Come you here, Llyr and Rhaint," David said sternly. "This is my judgment, princes, upon you. It is written that cursed is he who oppresses the poor and helpless. Ye have brought contention and bloodshed to pass. Your people are slain, or wounded, or they pine in captivity; those that remain unhurt and free are starving, their fields being waste; and great is your guilt, for their livelihood is given into your charge! Ye have just heard the conclusion of your affair. Cynyr son of Cyngen is no vowed monk; how can heaven have sent a blight upon your lands for his sake? Greed it was that made Llyr to plunder the Lordships of Rhaint. And Rhaint has hated his brother, though I say not that his hatred had no cause. Ye two shall swear to be friends, and to keep peace, and maintain good government. And half of Selyf shall be thine, O Rhaint, for Brychan thy father did win it in fair fight; and half shall be Llyr's, for thy sister is his wife, and he is thy brother. So shall the lords of Gwent not spoil Brycheiniog when its chief men are divided."

The princes exclaimed together:

"Wondrous his judgment! There is content we are!"

"Gwen daughter of Brychan, wilt thou swear to this also?"

"Yes, yes!" the Lady Gwen replied. "No love of warfare have I!"

"In the name of God, ye do promise to hold to peace and fellowship?"

"In the name of God, we do promise to hold to peace and fellowship one with another!"

"Prosperity be upon you, and upon your children and your children's children, and upon all that is yours and theirs, while ye do observe this solemn compact!" said David then. "And if so be ye scorn and break it, may lightning and storm devastate your territories, may sickness and famine stalk throughout them, and may rottenness take hold upon your bodies! Amen, amen!"

Rhaint and Llyr held each other's hands and shook them up and down; they almost danced upon the springy sod in the exhilaration that their reactive emotion had quickened.

"I am old donkey, Llyr!" shouted Rhaint. "I forgive thee thy ravages. My people will have no bread this year; but doubtless thou wilt provide?"

"Donkey and cuckoo am I!" roared Llyr. "I will feed thy people. We will make a great feast to-night, and forget our differences."

And they two and Gwen sat down upon the bank, and laughed and gossipped together.

Cynyr flung himself at David's feet.

"Forsake me not!" he wailed. "I am as firmly resolved as ever to lead the life of a saint. Let the little holy one of Mynyw be aiding to me!"

The abstraction of age was upon David; he sat gazing at and through the kneeling youth.

Lily approached him, carrying something square wrapped in a cloth.

"What wouldst thou say, my servant?" the bishop murmured. "Well, well, indeed, what hast thou there?"

"My father's official," answered Lily. He removed the cloth, and disclosed a book, with cover worn and water-stained, and laid it upon his master's knees.

David turned the pages, caressing them with his numb old fingers.

"Once I was harsh with a boy,"[11] said he. "And my harshness was because of this blemished volume. I thank thee, Lily, for bringing that sin of anger to my mind. The child, whom I had permitted to read my office-book, left it out of doors upon a rainy day. For penance I sent him to lie at full length upon the sand of the shore at Porth Mawr; and in the press of business I forgot for many hours where I had bidden him bide. When at last I ran to find him, the waves were licking his body, and half-drowned was he.... My son," the saint continued, addressing Cynyr, "hast thou not told me that the direst of thy assailant demons is a living woman, and no bloodless spirit?"

[11] St. Aidan, bishop of Ferns.

"Indeg daughter of Maenarch pesters and torments me, so that the thought of her is an ever-present temptation. Great hate and scorn has she for me, and her strength she spends in striving for my downfall. She does come bringing bannuts,[12] for she knows I love to eat them!"

[12] Walnuts.

"My father," Lily interposed, "they say that the girl is here."

"Well, indeed, now," said David, "let her come forth."