LITMIR.BIZ

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was thinking, Well, at least he didn’t starve my mother! But why is he so stiff and stern? Why doesn’t he smile at all? I’m sure my mother used to ask herself the same things several times a day. I was sorrier for her than ever.

      “I know this is an awkward question,” I said, “but what should we call you?”

      He looked at me in stern surprise. “My name is Gwyn,” he said.

      “Should I call you Grandfather Gwyn then?” I asked.

      “If you wish,” he said, not seeming to care.

      “Might I call you that too, please?” Grundo asked.

      He looked at Grundo long and thoughtfully, almost as if he was asking himself what Grundo’s heredity was. “I suppose you have a right to,” he said at last. “Now tell me, what do either of you know of Wales?”

      The truthful answer, as far as I was concerned, was Not a lot. But I could hardly say that. Grundo came to my rescue – I was extremely glad he was there. Because Grundo has such trouble reading, he listens in lessons far more than I ever do. So he knows things. “It’s divided into cantrevs,” he said, “each with its lesser kings, and the Pendragon is High King over them all. The Pendragon rules the Laws. I know you have a different system of laws here, but I don’t know how they work.”

      My grandfather looked almost approving. “And the meaning of the High King’s title?” he asked.

      It felt just like having a test during lessons, but I thought I knew the answer to that. “Son of the dragon,” I said. “Because there is said to be a dragon roosting in the heart of Wales.”

      This didn’t seem to be right. My grandfather said frigidly, “After a fashion. Pendragon is a title given to him by the English. By rights, it should be the title of the English King, but the English have forgotten about their dragons.”

      “There aren’t any dragons in England!” I said.

      He turned a face full of stern disapproval on me. “That is not true. Have you never heard of the red dragon and the white? There were times in the past when there were great battles between the two, in the days before the Islands of Blest were at peace.”

      I couldn’t seem to stop saying the wrong thing, somehow. I protested, “But that’s just a way of saying the Welsh and the English fought one another.”

      His black eyebrows rose slightly in his marble face. I had never known so much scorn expressed with so little effort. He turned away from me and back to Grundo. “There are several dragons in England,” he said to him. “The white is only the greatest. There are said to be more in Scotland, both in the waters and in the mountains, but I have no personal knowledge of these.”

      Grundo looked utterly fascinated. “What about Ireland?” he asked.

      “Ireland,” said my grandfather, “is in most places low and green and unsuitable for dragons. If there were any, Saint Patrick expelled them. But to go back to the Laws of Wales. We do not have Judges, as you do. Courts are called when necessary…”

      He went into a long explanation. Grundo was still fascinated. I sat and watched their two profiles as they talked, Grundo’s all pale, long nose and freckles, and my grandfather’s like a statue from classical antiquity. My grandfather had quite a long nose too, but his face was so perfectly proportioned that you hardly noticed. They both had great, deep voices, though where Grundo’s grated and grunted, my grandfather’s voice rolled and boomed.

      Soulmates! I thought. I was glad I’d brought Grundo.

      At the same time, I began to see some more of my mother’s problem. If my grandfather had been simply cold and strict and distant, it would have been easy to hate him and stop there. But the trouble was that he was also one of those people you wanted to please. There was a sort of grandness to him that made you ache to have him think well of you. Before long, I was quite desperate for him to stop talking just to Grundo and notice me – or at least not disapprove of me so much. Mam must have felt exactly the same. But I could see that, no matter how hard she tried, Mam was too soft-hearted and emotional for her father, and so he treated her with utter scorn. He scorned me for different reasons. I sat at the tall table almost in pain, because I knew I was a courtier born and bred, and that I was smart and good-mannered and used to summing people up so that I could take advantage of their faults, and I could see that my grandfather had nothing but contempt for people like me. It really hurt. Grundo may have been peculiar, but he was not like that and my grandfather liked him.

      It was an enormous relief to me when we were allowed to get up from the table and leave the tall cold room. My grandfather took us outside, through the front door, into a blast of sunlight and cold, clean air. While I stood blinking, he said to us, “Now, where would you say the red dragon lies?”

      Grundo and I looked at one another. Then we pointed, hesitating a bit, to the most distant brown mountains, lying against the horizon in a misty, jagged row.

      “Correct,” said my grandfather. “That is a part of his back. He is asleep for now. He will only arouse in extreme need, to those who know how to call him, and he does not like to be roused. The consequences are usually grave. The same is true of the white dragon of England. You call him too at your peril.” The way he said this made us shiver. Then he said, in a much more normal way, “You will want to explore now. Go anywhere you like, but don’t try to ride the mare and be back at six. We have tea then, not the dinner you are used to. I’ll see you at tea. I have work to do before then.”

      He went back into the house. He had a study at the back of the hall, as we learnt later, though we never saw inside it. It was a bit puzzling really. We never saw him do any religious duties or see parishioners – there were no other houses for miles anyway – but as Grundo said, dubiously, we were not there on a Sunday or any other holy day, so how could we know?

      We did find the chapel. It was downhill to the left of the house, very tiny and grey, with a little arch of stone on its roof with a bell hanging in it. It was surrounded in green, and there was a hump of green turf beside it like a big beehive, that had water trickling inside it. The whole place gave us an awed, uncertain feeling, so we went uphill again and round to the back of the house, where we came upon a stone shed with the car inside it. Beyond that, things were normal.

      We found a kitchen garden there, fringed with those orange flowers that grow in sprays, and a yard behind the house with a well in it. The water had to be pumped from the well by a handle in the kitchen. Olwen, the fat housekeeper, showed us how to do that. It was hard work. Then we went out beyond the yard to a couple of hidden meadows. One meadow had a pair of cows and a calf in it, and the other had a placid, chunky grey horse.

      By this time, our feelings of strangeness had worn off. We were used to being in new, unknown places and we began to feel almost at home. We leant on the gate and looked at the placid mare, who raised her chalky-white face to look back at us and then went calmly on with grazing.

      I think her lack of interest irritated Grundo. He went into one of his impish moods. “I’m going to try riding her,” he said, grinning at me.

      “Your funeral,” I said. To confess the truth, I almost looked forward to seeing Grundo in trouble with my grandfather. I was feeling mean, and depressed about my personality.

      Grundo looks soft, but he is surprisingly wiry and this makes him a much better rider than I am. I have never got much beyond the basics. In a soft-hearted way that is annoyingly like Mam’s, I am sorry for the horse for having me sit on its back making it do things. Grundo says this is silly. It’s what horses are bred for. He can make most horses do what he wants.

      He nipped over the gate and went calmly across to the mare. She took a quick glance at him and lost interest again. She took no notice at all when Grundo put his hands on her. She was not very tall. Grundo had no difficulty hoisting himself on to her back, where he sat and clicked his tongue at her to make her go. She swung her head round then and looked at him in astonishment. Then… I have no idea what

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