To Carry the Horn

Chapter 19-2

“There’s an upland meadow and near the top, all by itself, is a great oak tree, hundreds of years old.” His hands sketched the scene and placement. “The oak is strong and its boughs are wide and solid, stretching out evenly in all directions. I can’t see them, but I know its branches shelter animals, and there are more on the ground as well.”

Angharad was silent behind him.

“Ever since my childhood I’ve seen visions of it, and more frequently lately. The weather and the seasons change—sometimes autumn leaves and sunlight, sometimes heavy storm, sometimes a snowy moonlit night—but always it stands strong with roots reaching deep.”

He cleared his throat. “It’s silly, I know, but I can’t help looking for it whenever the lay of the land feels right. Your landscapes have something of the feel of it.”

He risked a glance back over his shoulder, trying to make this all sound casual. Angharad looked at him soberly, not laughing or making light of it.

He moved past the moment and turned his attention back to the wall.

The oils were altogether different from the watercolors. There were landscapes, with a concentrated boskiness that revealed a deep fondness for forests, but most of the oils were portraits, both busts and full-length. George could see that the styles changed over time, judging age roughly from the form of the clothing, and that the artist moved from an admiration of surfaces and composition, to experimentation in dramatic shadowing and three-dimensionality, to a sophisticated suggestion of depth and expression, and then a return to surfaces and form. Each area of concentration was an entire school of art in its own right, with variations and elaborations on the core concepts.

Why, long life changes everything, he realized. And isolation. He didn’t see the influence of one artist on another, so obvious in an art gallery. These were her own schools, not someone else’s used as a foundation. “How did you learn? Do you have apprentices?” he asked her over his shoulder, not taking his eyes off the work.

“For all the work except painting, I’ve learned from skilled craftsmen all my life, and shared my findings with them as well. We have another potter in this village who makes most of the domestic ware, and we chat frequently and share firings.”

“But for the painting and drawing,” she said, “my childhood masters showed me how to make materials and prepare surfaces, and how to see, to really see. Then they had me work largely on my own for twenty years before they would discuss their own works with me. That was all a very long time ago.”

She looked at him. “Now and then I meet another painter, a few in my life, and occasionally one comes here for a few weeks or months. It’s been many years since my last apprentice, but if one comes with the requisite fierceness for making a version however inadequate, of what he sees, why, then I’ll have another one. I’m a master now, and that’s my duty. And pleasure—teaching apprentices always clarifies my own understanding. I was just thinking about that a few moments ago.”

This must be how Ceridwen operates, he thought. What a life for an artist or a scholar. All the time you need for your own studies, and an expectation that you will teach anyone serious who asks.

More than ever George was aware of the distance between them. He was drawn to her, to the mind which focused on the ever deeper understanding and realization of her vision. This was the dedication of a serious artist, but honed over centuries of existence. The work hadn’t gone stale for her. I’m just a child next to this, he thought, not just in years, but in my expectation of mortality before this level of achievement in any field, much less several.

Gwyn’s long life and vast powers didn’t affect him in the same way, though for all he knew perhaps he was just as disciplined. Angharad’s life was more vivid for him, and more impressive. Worse, he felt something resonate within him for the woman herself. She filled his eye, standing there, and her low voice soothed like velvet, but there was more than that to her, and it intimidated him. He assumed the feeling could only be one-sided and grieved unexpectedly over what he couldn’t have.

In the grip of that emotion, he spoke his thoughts candidly. “I don’t understand how you can bother wasting your time with me this way when you have so many better things to be doing.”

Angharad looked at him, genuinely puzzled. “But I’m not pressed for time. If the older ones among us spoke only to each other, we’d never speak to our descendants at all across the years, and then what would be the point of life?”

“Besides,” she continued, “you’ve nothing to be shy about. You came to a world you never knew existed, bearing our blood and maybe more. You’re kind to our young folk and take them in charge. You fight bravely with unfamiliar weapons in loyalty to a family you don’t know, defending them against their enemies. You take on a pack of hounds of fearsome reputation in pursuit of a goal you only partially understand, in front of strangers, not all of whom wish you well. And yet you seem to have no fear of failure and, indeed, have succeeded so far most wildly beyond Gwyn’s expectations, if I’m any judge.”

“All this in just a few days,” she said, shaking her head in wonderment. “If all humans were like this, who would mind a shorter life?”

George was taken aback. This was a point of view he hadn’t considered. He hadn’t suspected there was anything about him she might admire.

Embarrassed, he looked away back to the wall of paintings. His mind shifted from regarding them as specimens of mastery to looking at the people portrayed, and he realized he knew some of them. Here was Rhys as a young man coming into his maturity, and there in another was a face he recognized, though younger in form and in an older style of Angharad’s.

“Is that Gwyn?” he asked, standing in front of it.

“Yes, a great many years ago.”

Long life surprising me again, he thought. These weren’t miscellaneous Rembrandt subjects, to be appreciated just as art; these were also still-living breathing people, most of them. Many are family, no doubt. An ancient portrait gallery, but of the living.

He found a chair behind him with a view of the wall and sat down abruptly as his knees suddenly weakened. “I can see I’ll be needing some introductions to the family.”

She smiled at him sympathetically. “I suppose this isn’t what you expected?”

“You have no idea. The paintings we admire are memorials of the dead, by and large. Yours are more like snapshots of the living. Nothing here is what it seems.”

Culture shock, he thought, dimly. It’s finally hit me. He roused himself, under her gaze. “Tell me who’s who, and I’ll try to remember as much as I can.”

“The oldest in your lineage here would be Beli Mawr, Beli the Great. He’s Gwyn’s grandfather. I’ve only met him once, when I was Rhys’s age, and painted this many years later.”

She pointed at a stern dark face, long and lean. His hair was entirely white, but the strength of his will was evident in his tense features.

“He was ancient and ageless then, and by all accounts he hasn’t changed. He holds himself aloof from the doings of his descendants and isn’t often seen. Ceridwen can tell you more about him, if she will.”

She moved along to a ceremonial portrait, two strong men who resembled each other seated in adjacent throne-like chairs surrounded by a well-dressed crowd. Despite the formal tone, the two were individualized by different postures, the one on the left leaning forward to speak with the man bending his knee before him. Angharad had made of this painting a study of color and gorgeous materials, focused on the kneeling man who was dressed more soberly in dark greens. Two of the great shaggy Cwn Annwn hounds, a dog and a b***h, were standing prominently, one on either side of him.

“These are two of his sons, Lludd Llaw Eraint, ruler in Britain, and Llefelys, ruler in Gaul. Pledging fealty before them is Gwyn ap Nudd, as Prince of Annwn. ‘Nudd’ is the older name for his father.”

“Were you there, in the crowd?”

She smiled. “Better—I was court painter at the time. I’m not in the crowd because I’m in front of it, sketching furiously. I’ve made three versions of this scene: the large one requested by my patron, a later one for Gwyn, and finally this one, for myself.”

She walked over to an informal painting of Gwyn in a recent style. “I’ve done many portraits of Gwyn since I came to live here. This is my current favorite.” Gwyn was seated in the foreground on a rocky ledge, leaning forward with a hand on one of his hounds, gazing off across a valley to the Blue Ridge.

Angharad then pointed up to a group portrait of Gwyn and another dark-haired man with a strong resemblance to him, standing together behind what could only be Rhys and Rhian, the latter a very young but determined child standing next to her more relaxed teenage brother.

“The fostering of Rhys and Rhian. That’s Edern, Gwyn’s brother and their grandfather. It’s his room you currently occupy at the manor.” Gwyn’s expression was suitably paternal. Edern’s was closed. Perhaps he was remembering his dead son, their father, George thought.

She moved now to a much older portrait of a young dark-haired woman, her lovely features subtly marred by discontent. She was walking alone across the picture, with her body leaning forward in one direction, but her head looking back the other way. The painting was full of tension, of influences from offstage.

George asked, “Is that Creiddylad?”

“Yes, the youngest of Gwyn’s siblings, and my contemporary. She was never a happy woman, and hasn’t changed.”

“You promised to tell me this tale. Come, sit down.” He patted the chair next to him.

She joined him, sitting in front of the wall of paintings but looking off into the distance of memory to compose her thoughts.

“As I said, Creiddylad’s the youngest of Gwyn’s siblings. Unlike his brother Edern, between them, he never knew her as a child and so, when at last they met, he saw her as a beautiful young woman, not a sister. Gwyn wasn’t yet Prince of Annwn, but he was no longer young himself, and just coming into his mature powers. It isn’t unknown for siblings separated by so many years to consort together or even bear children, though it isn’t common.” She looked at George to see if he understood.

“Their father didn’t exactly approve, but neither did he concern himself about it. Then, in a rare intervention, their grandfather Beli Mawr decreed a betrothal between Creiddylad and Gwythyr ap Greidawl, as a more suitable relationship for his granddaughter. Gwythyr was a powerful lord, older than Gwyn, with many strong allies, and it wasn’t a bad match.”

She continued. “Creiddylad, still very young, was flattered to be the center of so much attention. She’s always cared too much for the opinions of others, and she spoke to me about it once at the time, to boast about the disturbance caused by this betrothal. It was unseemly in her to glory in the ill-will between rivals with herself as the cause.

“Gwythyr was acceptable to her, and she did marry him. He was a proud man and thought her the jewel of his possessions. It might all have ended there, but Creiddylad was discontented that calm should follow all the excitement of her betrothal. She wrote to Gwyn frequently, taunting him alternately with her new happiness or with the latest outrage she claimed against her, at random. I don’t know if she really meant him to act, or if she just enjoyed the power to torment, but she proved powerless to stop the events that followed.”

George was paying rapt attention, sneaking a sideways look at her face from time to time. “Gwyn assembled his band of warriors, and stole Creiddylad back from Gwythyr. She went willingly enough, for the thrill of it. I was told by one who was there that she left on her own horse, with her favorite possessions, and took her time gathering them.

“Gwythyr pursued them, whether to recover what was his or out of love I cannot say. His own nobles and some of his guests accompanied him, and the two groups engaged in a running series of skirmishes. Gwythyr’s group was divided, in the dark, and Gwyn captured many of his retinue, taking them all back to his lands under his father, planning to go on as before, with hostages.”