light of a flickering candle.”
Eluned sat down on the floor with the book on her lap. She turned to the back of it and tore out a blank page. “You have a pencil, my lady?”
I reached into the little niche where I kept my scant belongings and handed her a small pencil.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I will write your letters another time. Bigger. Perhaps clearer. Please be patient, my lady.”
I watched, reluctantly interested, as she folded the loose sheet, placed it beneath the words I had written and slowly started to copy them, enlarging each letter by about a half as she did so. It took her a while. Occasionally she held up the book, her finger pointing out a particular letter, with a quizzical look on her face. Each time I shrugged. I knew some of the letters were wrong. Some were mere guesswork. Eventually, she reached the end. Closing my book, she held up the page with her writing for me to see.
This is what I read:
yg koet ymas ?ym ?bro ym bryn canhwyll yn tywyll a ?gerd genhyn ?kynan yn racwan ym ?pop discyn.
Where a letter or a word had been doubtful in my version, she had written a question mark. At first I could make nothing of it. Until Eluned pointed at the phrase almost in the centre – ‘canhwyll yn tywyll’. I read the words aloud. I repeated them.
“It is Welsh,” I said, at last. “‘Canhwyll yn tywyll’. Those words are Welsh. Wait. I think I know what they mean.”
I grabbed Taid’s notebook and my copy of The Gododdin from the niche. Flicking back and forth between both, I eventually wrote down ‘candle’ and ‘darkness’ beneath the first and third word. The second word I knew was ‘in’ – ‘candle in darkness’.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s it. A candle in the darkness. That’s why these words are written on the wall of the tunnel. We use a candle to see in the darkness of the tunnel, just as whoever carved these words must have done. There has to be a meaning to the rest of the words.”
Eluned nodded, taking Taid’s notebook and The Gododdin from me, gently.
“Stop. Sleep, my lady. Tomorrow we see.”
I unrolled my blanket and promptly fell asleep.
Chapter 17
As usual, the cold awoke me the next morning. The thin light that came into the Room was just enough to show what little it contained. Eluned was sleeping beside the now extinguished fire, ready to set it as soon as she was up. Nefyn slept on the far side on a ramshackle old truckle bed. Between us was the low table with its two chairs, and I could just make out Nefyn’s pile of old books beside the tunnel entrance.
There was never any more natural light than this, no matter what time of the day it was, which was why I ventured outside as often as I could, despite Nefyn’s and Eluned’s misgivings. She had not ventured out of the Room since we first entered it, now nearly three weeks ago. A thin curtain across one corner of the room hid another smaller room that contained what Nefyn called ‘the latrine’ which was where we had to wash. And do the other things. I hated it, and tried to hold myself until I was outside, but it was difficult and I frequently had to submit. It did at least have running water, in the form of a stream that came out of the wall, ran through a small wooden trough and poured into an earth cess pit.
The Room, the latrine, and the tunnel had all been constructed by the old Romans, according to Nefyn, and were originally a basement beneath a massive building he called a ‘bath house’. He claimed that one of his books described one of these, suggesting that it had a complicated system in which the heat from several fires was directed beneath the floor and through the walls of the building. The tunnel we entered the Room through was the remains of one part of this system, which was why the walls were blackened. The whole thing sounded far-fetched to me. If those old Romans had managed to build such a thing, why were there only ruins
Eluned sat down on the floor with the book on her lap. She turned to the back of it and tore out a blank page. “You have a pencil, my lady?”
I reached into the little niche where I kept my scant belongings and handed her a small pencil.
“What are you going to do?” I asked.
“I will write your letters another time. Bigger. Perhaps clearer. Please be patient, my lady.”
I watched, reluctantly interested, as she folded the loose sheet, placed it beneath the words I had written and slowly started to copy them, enlarging each letter by about a half as she did so. It took her a while. Occasionally she held up the book, her finger pointing out a particular letter, with a quizzical look on her face. Each time I shrugged. I knew some of the letters were wrong. Some were mere guesswork. Eventually, she reached the end. Closing my book, she held up the page with her writing for me to see.
This is what I read:
yg koet ymas ?ym ?bro ym bryn canhwyll yn tywyll a ?gerd genhyn ?kynan yn racwan ym ?pop discyn.
Where a letter or a word had been doubtful in my version, she had written a question mark. At first I could make nothing of it. Until Eluned pointed at the phrase almost in the centre – ‘canhwyll yn tywyll’. I read the words aloud. I repeated them.
“It is Welsh,” I said, at last. “‘Canhwyll yn tywyll’. Those words are Welsh. Wait. I think I know what they mean.”
I grabbed Taid’s notebook and my copy of The Gododdin from the niche. Flicking back and forth between both, I eventually wrote down ‘candle’ and ‘darkness’ beneath the first and third word. The second word I knew was ‘in’ – ‘candle in darkness’.
“That’s it,” I said. “That’s it. A candle in the darkness. That’s why these words are written on the wall of the tunnel. We use a candle to see in the darkness of the tunnel, just as whoever carved these words must have done. There has to be a meaning to the rest of the words.”
Eluned nodded, taking Taid’s notebook and The Gododdin from me, gently.
“Stop. Sleep, my lady. Tomorrow we see.”
I unrolled my blanket and promptly fell asleep.
Chapter 17
As usual, the cold awoke me the next morning. The thin light that came into the Room was just enough to show what little it contained. Eluned was sleeping beside the now extinguished fire, ready to set it as soon as she was up. Nefyn slept on the far side on a ramshackle old truckle bed. Between us was the low table with its two chairs, and I could just make out Nefyn’s pile of old books beside the tunnel entrance.
There was never any more natural light than this, no matter what time of the day it was, which was why I ventured outside as often as I could, despite Nefyn’s and Eluned’s misgivings. She had not ventured out of the Room since we first entered it, now nearly three weeks ago. A thin curtain across one corner of the room hid another smaller room that contained what Nefyn called ‘the latrine’ which was where we had to wash. And do the other things. I hated it, and tried to hold myself until I was outside, but it was difficult and I frequently had to submit. It did at least have running water, in the form of a stream that came out of the wall, ran through a small wooden trough and poured into an earth cess pit.
The Room, the latrine, and the tunnel had all been constructed by the old Romans, according to Nefyn, and were originally a basement beneath a massive building he called a ‘bath house’. He claimed that one of his books described one of these, suggesting that it had a complicated system in which the heat from several fires was directed beneath the floor and through the walls of the building. The tunnel we entered the Room through was the remains of one part of this system, which was why the walls were blackened. The whole thing sounded far-fetched to me. If those old Romans had managed to build such a thing, why were there only ruins
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