Brother Myrddin tells his strange tale

The summons had gone out from the great hall and rippled up to all the inhabitants of the castle who were there assembled on that evening. As was often the case, Malcolm arrived first, and as he always tried to do, he hung back in the shadows. His pretense was that he did not wish to go before the King, but the truth was that he wanted to observe while remaining unobserved.

The visitors were the King’s own closest cousin, Father Aelfden, and a very old man who wore a shabby monk’s habit and had a long mane and beard that Malcolm found incongruously snowy-​white. He was also dressed more for summer than for early March, with its frequent fits of bitter cold, but Malcolm did not dare place limits on what follies religious men might commit and call penance or self-​mortification.

Finally, Malcolm thought the monk insufficiently impressed with the King’s hall: his expression was awed enough, but he did not cast his gaze around the room, so Malcolm thought his awe must have come from some internal source. Again Malcolm could not exclude the possibility that it came from some spiritual thing he did not understand.

Father Aelfden, meanwhile, was inscrutable, as he could be whenever he was not greatly moved. Malcolm was not certain that Aelfden did not know he was being watched. It was not uncommon for the priest to turn to him suddenly with such a look in his sharp eyes that Malcolm would feel that all the while the priest had been observing his very thoughts, while Malcolm had only been watching the man’s actions.

If it were now so, the priest would have had learned far more from Malcolm’s busy mind than Malcolm from the priest’s lordly immobility.

Malcolm’s thoughts were interrupted when the heavy door opened at the far end of the new hall. He heard the sound of little, hard-​soled shoes tapping furiously across the floor, and most especially a drawn out “Ohhhhhhhhhh!” that rose in pitch and volume as it approached the great hall. It was, of course, Sigefrith’s youngest son.

“Who is this little herald?” the old monk cried with grandfatherly delight as the little boy ran into the room.

“Prince Dragon!” the boy exclaimed.

“Drage!” the Queen gasped an instant later as she appeared behind him, followed by the elder Princess.

“Prince Dragon?” the old man repeated in wonder.

And then Sigefrith’s booming laugh sounded directly in Malcolm’s ear, and the King strode into the hall. “That does it, runt! I’m keeping you on a leash! The only way I can make myself sound sufficiently impressive now is to announce myself as King Dragon!”

“You are King Dragon!” the Queen laughed.

“And Mama is Queen Dragon!” Drage cried as his father scooped him up and held him, flailing helplessly, far above the floor.

“Mama is Queen Damsel in Distress,” Sigefrith corrected him, “and your sister is Princess Fair Maiden, and you are nothing but a runty little baby dragon still wet from the egg, who is just barely tall enough to nip at the big dragon’s heels.”

“Who are you?” Drage asked the monk.

“I am only Brother Myrddin, Your Highness,” the old man murmured.

“Welcome, Brother!” Sigefrith cried. “We were just about to dine, and I hope the two of you will join us. Have you found your first monk, Father?” he asked his cousin.

“Brother Myrddin has a story to tell that will interest you, I think.”

“But… is it true that Your Majesty is called King Dragon?” the old man asked with a expression of deepening wonder.

“The only one of us telling the truth is this baby dragon here,” Sigefrith said. “His name truly is Drage, which makes him a Danish dragon. The stinkiest sort! My name is Sigefrith, and my wife Queen Eadgith, and my eldest daughter here is Britamund. And that is Sir Malcolm behind you there, hoping no one notices him, lest anyone ask him what his real name is and he be obliged to admit it to be Sir Potlicker.”

“I told the truth, Sigefrith,” the Queen smiled. “He is King Dragon to me.”

“She wants me to replace the lion on my shield with a dragon, but I have told her I shall not until she can convince King Harold’s son Magnus to draw one for me. Only he can draw dragons of sufficient beauty to represent My Majesty.”

“Oh, Sigefrith!” she laughed.

“You are the one who is always telling me I’m not ugly,” Sigefrith protested.

“But you are old!” Britamund cried.

“I knew one of you would not fail to make that observation,” he sighed.

“It is perhaps another sign,” the monk said dazedly. Malcolm noticed that this got Aelfden’s attention immediately.

Sigefrith handed Drage to Britamund so that she might take him up to his nurse. “Of my increasing age?” he asked as he sat himself on his throne beside the Queen.

“Your Majesty would like to see the Normans expelled from England, I have been told.”

“There is nothing I should like better to see before I die.”

“There is a prophecy in my country which says that the invaders will be driven out of the isle by the Pendraeg, or Chief Dragon.”

Sigefrith laughed. “I like that prophecy. I should like to believe it applies to me, but you must have seen the size of my little kingdom, Brother, and moreover I am, as my daughter kindly pointed out, growing old. But I should like to think that my little baby Drageling will grow up to be your Pendraeg someday.”

“That is not the sign of which we came to tell,” Father Aelfden reminded the monk.

“Forgive me, Father,” the monk said and humbly bowed his head. “These stories were as familiar to me as a child in my country as are the Gospels to this old man.”

“Do tell us your tale, Brother,” the Queen said with a reverent eagerness.

Malcolm knew that she was telling herself that the story must have been spiritual if Father Aelfden had brought the old man to tell it. Queen Eadgith was very much interested in spiritual matters in the past months, and he knew that it was beginning to distress Sigefrith.

“I am only a wandering monk,” the old man bowed to her. “I have wandered many years, as I told the good Father, but I have always despaired that I have been going nowhere, and have never been any closer to my goal—spiritual or earthly—than I was when I started. Weeks ago I was greatly distressed at this thought, and cold and hungry and weary in my bones, and I walked until the stars shone because I could not find a place to lay my head. At last I found a barn and could sleep in the hay, though I had not eaten since the night before. And that night, in my spiritual and earthly hunger, I had a remarkable dream. I dreamt of a great, shining wheel that rolled over the fields, away from me. It rolled too fast for me to follow, though I so longed to follow it to see what it might mean. It rolled and rolled, out of my sight, over the hills and far away.”

In voice and gesture and word, the monk had the storytelling gift of a Celtic bard, and even Father Aelfden seemed spellbound. Of course, Malcolm told himself, Father Aelfden seemed already to know how the story ended. But one way or another, the sober priest had been captivated.

“When I awoke in the morning, I grieved more than ever. I felt that the wheel had been a call to me, and I was too old and too weary to follow. But when I stepped out of the barn and saw the landscape not by starshine but by sunlight, I realized that I was seeing the very fields and hills and misty distances of my dream, and I could see in which direction the great wheel had rolled. And so I followed. The following night, to my great wonder, I dreamt of the wheel again, and it showed me the path to take through the countryside I had reached that day. And night after night I dreamed, and day after day I followed. Two nights ago the wheel rolled up a steep hill and came to rest, and in my dream I was able to watch it for many hours. In the morning I began walking up that hill and came to a place which is called Thorhold. I thought that this was the place I sought, and I went to see the abbot there, but he would not see me, and so I went away in despair.”

Sigefrith snorted at the mention of the abbot, and even Aelfden lifted his head still higher, like a horse disdainful of his bit.

“But that night I had another dream, more remarkable still. I saw the wheel roll down the hill again, all along a stream that became a river in the valley, and it rolled a while until it came to a low hill just above the river, and there it stopped. Again I hoped, ‘This must be the place I seek,’ but I feared that I would again be turned away. This night, though, instead of standing there for hours, the wheel broke in two, and I knew it would roll no farther.”

“Could it be Saint Catherine’s wheel?” the Queen murmured. Her face was brightly flushed, and Malcolm could imagine how her heart must have been beating then.

“I did not dare think so then,” the old man said, “but when I came into the valley and spoke to the people, and I learned that there was a relic of Saint Catherine in the valley, I thought it might be so. And Father Aelfden says it must be so, because there has been a miracle here.”

“There have been two miracles here!” the Queen said softly.

“Honey…” Sigefrith warned.

“Two?” Aelfden asked.

“On Saint Catherine’s Day,” she said, “I prayed that I might conceive another child, which I had wanted for so long. And then you called me to see the blessed relic of her hand, and I was allowed to kiss it, and that night she gave me a child, who will be born at harvest time.”

Sigefrith sighed wearily. Malcolm would have liked to have teased him about it later, for it was the first he had heard of this, and it was a funny thing to think of a female saint getting a child on the Queen by way of her finger, when Sigefrith himself had for so long been incapable of it despite repeated applications of a different member. However, Malcolm knew well why the King might be grieved over the growing religious devotion of his second wife.

“That is a happy occurrence indeed,” the monk smiled, “and a miracle perhaps.”

“And I shall name her Catherine if she is a girl,” she added with a girlish smile of her own.

“And I shall name him either Chicken or Duck if he’s a boy,” Sigefrith said quickly, “once I have seen whether he has a beak or a bill. Which reminds me, O my Queen, that we are having a couple of stuffed ducks for our supper, to which I did invite the ugly Father and the old Brother. And if the bustle I hear behind that door is any indication, they are only waiting for Our Gracious Majesties to arrive.”

“Of course!” the Queen said and rose from her throne. The demands of great-​ladyship trumped any private hopes or dreams or thoughts of miracles; this Malcolm knew, and this Sigefrith knew as well. “We can continue our conversation at table,” she said. “I should like to hear more about your dream, Brother Myrddin.”

Sigefrith turned his face away and sighed, too honestly grieved even to send Malcolm a winking look of long-​suffering.