The Wind From Hastings by Morgan Llywelyn

face. Madog leaped agilely from his mount and stood beside it in a formal salute, knuckling his forelock and unsmiling.
    I just sat there. Only when he reached my pony’s head did I lower my eyes and bow to him, murmuring, “Your servant, Sire,” and wondering if he could understand the Saxon tongue.
    â€œWell come, Aldith,” replied a resonant voice. I looked up then and saw his face clear in the moonlight. The dark auburn hair lying thick-locked about
his temples, the high-bridged nose with nostrils flared like a nervous horse, the tender, smiling mouth and jutting fighter’s chin. I looked right into the eyes of Griffith ad Llywelyn and saw the other half of my own soul.

GRIFFITH

    W E ENTERED THE Great Hall together. He did not touch me, nor I him, but I felt his presence at my side like a dark fire. The members of the Welsh court were assembled there to see the Saxon woman Griffith had bought with his men-at-arms, and their acceptance of me was not given like that of the peasants on the beach. I looked straight ahead, my head held high, but I could feel their eyes probing and measuring me from all sides.
    He took me to the head of the main feasting table, where a high padded stool with a back ornamented with gilded leather marked the King’s place. (I was to learn that he was, in truth, considered King in Wales, though he was known as the Ruler of All Wales and always referred to as Prince Griffith.) There he turned and repeated the herald’s introduction of me by my Saxon name and then in his own language. The courtiers bowed and we sat down to the feast.
    Tired in my bones I was, though I did not realize it until that time. The table piled high with food did not
tempt me, and I felt my eyes stinging with weariness and the effluvia from the torches. I sipped mead or ale, I knew not which, from a goblet of some dark wood, and I tried to get the feeling of my surroundings. But I could not. I was only aware of the man who sat beside me.
    â€œEat some of this bird, Aldith,” he urged me. “It is roasted with honey and herbs; it will restore your strength.” He spoke to me as a father might to his child, caringly, and in truth, he was almost of an age to have been my father. The lines of wind and laughter were deeply etched about his brown eyes, so that the heavy lashes seemed to pull his eyelids down of their own weight. He spoke the Saxon nearly as well as Owain, and with the same lilting accent.
    Griffith was not overtall, being of a height with me, but among the Welsh he was tall. Broad of shoulder and deep of chest, the upper part of his body was built as a warrior’s should be. But his hands fascinated me as I watched him cut portions of the meat for me. His fingers were long and slim—they moved with the grace of a girl’s—and his every gesture was beautiful.
    He saw me looking at his hands and smiled at me. It was as if he heard my inmost thoughts. “I play the harp, Aldith. When it is time, I shall play the songs of the Cymry for you and teach you to sing them.”
    I was embarrassed. “I cannot sing, my lord. Everyone says I have the voice of a raven.”
    He threw up his head and laughed. The courtiers did not join self-consciously in his laughter, as they would have among the Saxons. In Wales a man’s conversation was private and not to be entered into without invitation. “You are of the Cymry now, Aldith, and therefore you must sing. We will do what we can to make it sweet.”
    I tried a small smile. “You set yourself an impossible task, my lord.”
    â€œI often do,” Prince Griffith replied easily.
    All through our supper he told me the names of this
or that person at table, together with a history of their deeds or a short description of their virtues. Sometimes he invited them to speak directly to me, but not often, as only a few knew the Saxon language.
    â€œTell the Lady Aldith of the marriage rite we