"Our Lord God be aiding thee, kinsman Cadfan! May He preserve to thee thy good tenderness of heart!"
"And may He prosper thee, my David! Fare thee well, little kinsman."
Cadfan departed on his way, and David and his companions set their faces northwards. They were not a solitary party. The road swarmed with priests and monks, and was trodden also by many laymen and some few women whom devotion or curiosity drew to the synod of the bishops at Brefi in Ceredigion. As evening drew on, the abbot-bishop of Menevia led his tired followers up the slope of a wooded hill, where he knew were dry caverns to pass the night in, and a spring of water. When they neared their proposed resting-place, a tonsured figure ran out from under the trees, and stood in their path-way, waving his arms.
David whistled to the mongrel greyhound that padded by his side. Then, suddenly, he hastened his steps, his face aglow.
"Padarn! Dear, dear me! My Padarn! Are ye many? Or may we spend this night with thee and thine in this God-given spot?"
"Well met, well met, David!" cried Padarn, "And well met all, ye road-stained travellers! There is surely room for all." He hurried through the thicket to the clearing before the rocky bank which the aforesaid caves perforated, calling out: "Brethren! whom see ye here, whom see ye? Look you, this is David of Mynyw. Teilo, he, and I did journey together to the holy Jerusalem, one in soul, in joy, and in sorrow; and is it not a gladsome thing that he should be here amongst us this night?"
An enthusiastic welcome ensued, and before long David, Teilo, Aidan, Ismail and the rest had been seated by the fire and supplied with food and drink. This was the Age of the Saints. Besides the newcomers there were some dozen holy men, whose names are living yet, sitting about upon the ground, each one bound for the great synod of the Cymric priesthood. In the mouth of the largest cave squatted an elderly man, sallow and wrinkled, with a beak-like nose and weary eyes; he had vellum, pen, and inkhorn, and wrote sedulously, giving himself no respite, with a heavy frown between his brows the while. David knew him for Gildas of Strathclyde, the apostle of Ruys in Lesser Britain.
They yielded early to their fatigue, and lay down where they best might, most of them within the shelter of the caves. Gildas put aside his pen.
"They are all mightily drunken with the use and custom of sins!" he thundered. "If I reckoned without pause for ten years, the scandals concerning the high men of Britain would not be enumerated—and concerning also our monks and ordained priests (Have mercy, have mercy, on us miserable sinners!). Our princes are a host of devils—nay, worse than devils, for have they not received the sign and sacrament of baptism? Lust, and pillage, and oppression are such as were never before since the creation of the world. Stinking to heaven is Gomorrah—I should say Aberffraw! And there dwells the most heinous, the Satan of them all—and that is Maelgwn Gwenedd!"
David yawned, said a prayer for his kinsman Maelgwn, stretched himself, and fell asleep.