Gathering his mantle into his fists, he pulled mightily and the garment ripped. “Ahhhgh!” he cried loudly, his voice rising above the others. “Behold, my people!” He extended his hands over Taliesin’s body. “The son of our delight lies cold in death’s strong grip! Weep and cry out loudly! Wail, Cymry! Let Lieu of the Long Hand hear our lament! Let the Good God know our grief! Our bard, our son, our Golden One has been struck down! Let all men bow their heads low and weep! Weep a river of tears to bear his soul away! Weep, my people, for his like will not be seen among us again… never again…”
The Cymry wept and cried out, their voices rising and falling like the wash of a sorrowful sea. When one voice faded, another would take up the cry so that the grief chant was spun like a thread from a spindle, blended, strong, and unbroken.
In her high room Charis awakened to the wailing and crept down to the hall. She saw Rhonwyn kneeling at her son’s side, clasping his cold hand to her cheek, rocking back and forth in her misery. Charis felt the urge to go to her and join her. She moved a pace toward the bier, hesitated, and turned away uncertainly, unable to make herself take the steps.
In turning, she caught a glimpse of Hafgan from the corner of her eye. The druid had seen her and was holding out a hand to her. Charis stopped, confused. Hafgan, hand still extended, walked to her and stood before her. She stood hesitant, torn, looking at the grieving Cymry. When he did not withdraw the hand, she lifted her hand to his and he led her to the bier.
Charis felt a burning sensation in her throat and chest and the bitter taste of bile in her mouth. Hafgan pulled her into the circle surrounding the bier and the Cymry made way for her.
Rhonwyn glanced up as Charis came to stand over her. Charis saw Rhonwyn’s tear-streaked face and sank to her knees beside Taliesin’s mother. Rhonwyn put her head against Charis’ breast and wept, and Charis wept too, at last, feeling the stone-hard walls of her heart crumble and melt in the sudden surge of grief.
She clung to Rhonwyn, sharing the deep and nameless torment of mourning women. Charis gave herself to her tears and felt her sorrow flow from her wounded heart like a flood across the parched, barren landscape of her soul. She wept for the hardness of life, for the cruelty of death, for loss and pity, for empty, aching loneliness and heartbreaking care, for Briseis alone in her lost tomb and for herself- for all the times she had denied her tears, hardening herself and despising the hardness that would not let her feel the pain. She wept for the child who would never know the sound of his father’s voice soaring in song or the sure touch of his strong hand. She wept for her dead brothers and for all Atlantis’ fair children now sleeping beneath Oceanus’ restless waves. And it seemed that she would weep forever.
The Cymry pressed around her, their voices mingling like the tears that streamed from their eyes, their faces beautiful in sorrow. And Charis loved them all – loved them for the fervent intensity of their emotion, for the simple honesty of their souls. Generous in grief as in joy, selfless in the outpouring of their hearts, the Cymry, exalted in their lamentation by the prideless nobility of their spirits, gathered around Charis and their tears fell down upon her in a gentle, healing rain.
At dawn the death song ceased. The torches were extinguished and while the Cymry rolled themselves in their cloaks for a few hours sleep, Hafgan, Elphin, Rhonwyn, and Charis stood together beside the bier. “He must be buried today,” said Hafgan, hoarse from mourning. “It is the third day since his death and his body must begin its journey back from where it came.”
“Wherever that may be,” added Elphin quietly. He gazed with red-rimmed eyes upon the one he had called his son. “I have thought about it many times.”
Charis looked at him in shocked surprise. “Why do you speak this way?” She turned to Rhonwyn. “Was he not your son?”
“I raised him as my son,” Rhonwyn told her. “Elphin found him in the weir”
“Found him?” Charis shook her head slowly. “I do not understand. He told me everything and yet told me nothing of this.”
“He would not have spoken of it,” replied Hafgan.
“I was his wife!”
“Yes, yes,” Hafgan soothed. “But it was the deepest mystery of his life and it troubled him. Taliesin knew he was not like other men: his gifts were greater, the demands of his skill higher, his knowledge more complete. In an older time we would have said that, like Gwion Bach, he had tasted of Ceridwen’s caldron and become a god.”
“Gwyddno had given me the take of the weir,” Elphin offered, “and I rode out on the eve of Beltane to find my fortune.” He smiled, remembering. “Not one salmon did I get that day, though Lieu himself knows never did a man need a fish more. It had snowed the day before and the salmon were late and there was neither fin nor scale to be seen.
“Though I knew I would get nothing, I looked in all the nets and from the last one fetched a sealskin bag-which I carried to the shore and opened. Inside was a child, a beautiful child.”
Never had Charis heard such a tale. “A sealskin bag?”
“We thought him dead,” replied Elphin with a nod to Rhonwyn, “but he lived and I soon had need of a wet nurse.”
“Elphin found me in my mother’s house in Diganhwy. My own babe was stillborn days before, and I was disgraced. Elphin took me to wife. I nursed Taliesin as my own, looked upon him as my own, raised him as my own, loved him as my own.” She nodded to Elphin. “We both did. But he was not ours.”
They told her many other things about Taliesin then, and when they had finished Charis turned to the body of her husband. “He was born of the sea,” she said, gazing at the man she knew but now seemed not to know at all, “and he must return to the sea.”
Hafgan raised his hands, palms outward, and proclaimed, “So it is said, so it must be done.”
The funeral procession reached the Briw estuary at sunset. Led by Dafyd and Hafgan walking side by side, the small boat was lashed to poles and borne on the shoulders of the Cymry. Inside the boat lay Taliesin’s body, having been washed and prepared for its final journey, his clothing changed and hair combed and bound. Charis, Avallach, Elphin and Rhonwyn, Rhuna and Merlin rode behind, with Maelwys and Salach and the rest of the Cymry following. The scattered gray clouds were gilt-edged in the red-gold light and larksong filled the sky.
Upon reaching the river mouth the boat was lowered into shallow water, and one by one Taliesin’s Belongings and grave gifts were placed in the boat around him: across his chest Rhonwyn lay the sealskin bag in which he had been found; at his feet Elphin placed Taliesin’s saddle, in memory of the boy who had longed to ride the Wall with his father; Hafgan took the bard’s staff of oak and placed it under his left hand; Dafyd brought out a carven wooden cross which he and Col-len placed under Taliesin’s right hand; Maelwys and Salach put the prince’s silver tore around his neck; Avallach spread Taliesin’s cloak over him and then covered it with a blanket of fine fur; producing a new-made spear with a head of bright iron and a shaft of ash, Cuall stepped to the boat and lashed the spear to the bow.
Lastly, Charis placed Taliesin’s harp beside him so that the wind might play upon its strings. She bent to kiss him farewell, and then the boat was turned toward Mor Hafren. Four Cymry on each side pushed the vessel further out into the estuary where it could be taken by the outgoing tide. Charis called for Rhuna, who brought Merlin and placed him in his mother’s arms.
Standing in the water, bright with the blood-red fire of the setting sun, Charis held the child Merlin before her so he could see the boat ride the current out of the river mouth and into the deep channel beyond. The boat turned around once, found the seatide’s pull, and was drawn out into deeper water. The tideflow pulled the boat along the hillside cliffs and mudflats toward the western sea where it would be carried along by the waves to its unknown destination.