Star of Mercia Part 4

"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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sembled. 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 superst.i.tious 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, impa.s.sioned 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 G.o.d 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 a.s.sembly 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! G.o.d 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 G.o.d, 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 s.p.a.ce 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 G.o.d 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 Cor 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 h.o.r.n.y 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 gra.s.s, 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 G.o.d 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 G.o.d 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, s.n.a.t.c.hing 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!"