The owls were hooting and night-jars screaming as the cavalcade proceeded along the Sarn Helen towards the broad valley of the Towy by that of its tributary the Dulais. As they reached the main river, the dawn was lightening behind the Brecknock Mountains, and the water sliding down toward the sea shone cold as steel.
With daylight men were met upon the road, and occasionally a woman; the latter invariably, the former for the most part fled at the sight of the armed men. But some, less timorous remained, and recognizing the Archpriest, saluted him with respect and with exclamations of lamentation at seeing him in the hands of the common enemy. At Llandeilo the river was crossed, and Pabo was conveyed up a steep ascent into the tributary valley of the Cennen. But this stream makes a great loop, and the troopers thrust their horses over the spur of hill about which the torrent sweeps.
Presently the castle came in view, very new and white, constructed of limestone, on a crag of the same substance, that rises precipitously for five hundred feet sheer out the ravine and the brawling stream that laves the foot of the crag.
After a slight dip the track led up a bold stony rise to the castle gate.
The situation is of incomparable wildness and majesty. Beyond the ravine towers up the Mynydd Ddu, the Black Mountain, clothed in short heather, to cairn-topped ridges, two thousand feet above the sea, the flanks seamed with descending threads of water; while further south over its shoulder are seen purple hills in the distance. A solitary sycamore here and there alone stands against the wind on the ridge about which the Cennen whispers far below.
The bishop had already arrived at the castle. He had followed up his emissary pretty quickly, anxious that his own view of the case should be maintained in the event of the capture of Pabo.
He and Gerald of Windsor were on excellent terms. Between them they were to divide the land, so much to the crook and so much to the sword; and whom the latter did not consume were to be delivered over to feel the weight of the crozier. In the subjugation of Wales, in the breaking of the spirit of the people, church and castle must combine and play each other's game.
The staff of the bishop has a crook above and a spike below, to signify the double power that resides in his hands, that of drawing and that of goading. The time for the exercise of the curved head might come in the future, that for the driving of the sharp end was the present, thought Bernard.
No sooner did he learn of the arrival of Pabo than he bade that he should be brought into his presence, in the room given to him by his host on whom he had intruded himself—a room facing south, overhanging the precipice.
The weather was mild, and the sun shone in at the window. There was no fire.