Pabo, the Priest: A Novel

by S. Baring-Gould

The delay was not due to pitiful forbearance, to Christian forgiveness; it boded preparation for dealing an overwhelming blow. The Welsh Prince or King was a fugitive. From him no help could be expected. His castle of Dynevor was in the hands of the enemy. To the south, the Normans blocked the exit of the Cothy from its contracted mouth; to east, the Towy valley was in the hands of the oppressor, planted in impregnable fortresses; to the west, Teify valley was in like manner occupied. Only to the north among the wild, tumbled, barren mountains, was there no contracting, strangling, steel hand.

The autumn was closing in. The cattle that had summered in the hafod (the mountain byre) were returning to the hendre (the winter home). Usually the descent from the uplands was attended with song and laugh and dancing. It was not so now. And the very cattle seemed to perceive that they did not receive their wonted welcome.

Pabo went about as usual, but graver, paler than formerly—for his mind was ill at ease. It was he who had shed the first blood. A trifling spill, indeed, but one likely to entail serious results. The situation had been aggravated by his act. He who should have done his utmost to ward off evil from his flock had perpetrated an act certain to provoke deadly resentment against them. He bitterly regretted his passionate outbreak; he who should have set an example of self-control had failed. Yet when he looked on his wife, her gentle, patient face, the tenderness with which she watched and cared for the dying hermit, again his cheek flushed, the veins in his brow swelled, and the blood surged in his heart. To hear her insulted, he could never bear; should such an outrage be repeated, he would strike again.

Pabo sat by his fire. In Welsh houses even so late as the twelfth century there were no structural chimneys—these were first introduced by the Flemish settlers—consequently the smoke from the wood fire curled and hung in the roof and stole out, when tired of circling there, through a hole in the thatch.

On a bier lay the dead man, with candles at his head—his white face illumined by the light that descended from the gap in the roof. At the feet crouched a woman, a professional wailer, singing and swaying herself, as she improvised verses in honor of the dead, promised him the glories of Paradise, and a place at the right hand of David, and then fell to musical moans.

Morwen sat by the side, looking at the deceased—she was awaiting her turn to kneel, sing, and lament—and beside her was a rude bench on which were placed cakes and ale wherewith to regale such as came in to wake the dead.

And as Pabo looked at his wife he thought of the peaceful useful life they had led together.

She had been the daughter of a widow, a harsh and exacting woman, who had long been bedridden, and with whose querulousness she had borne meekly. He had not been always destined to the Archpriesthood. His uncle had been the ecclesiastical as well as political head of the tribe; but on his death his son, Goronwy, had been passed over, as deformed, and therefore incapable of taking his father's place, and the chiefship had been conferred on Pabo, who had already been for some years ordained in anticipation of this selection.

Pabo continued to look at his wife, and he questioned whether he could have understood the hearts of his people had he not himself known what love was.

"Husband," said Morwen, "there is a little roll under his hand."