Ch. 2: Cerys in Love
Exiting the cantrev hall from the scullery door—as befit a wandering nobody of a bard—Cerys hitched her harp more securely on her shoulder. It was a beautiful fall day, perfect for breathing crisp outdoor air. Now that she was no longer burdened with skirts, Cerys found it exhilarating to stride along freely, her long slim limbs encased in man's leggings.
Cerys was glad no one had asked her what she intended to do after passing her bardic exams. She was too honest to lie, and the truth could well have scandalized her questioners. Having become a bard, though, Cerys was not about to be debarred from doing what most bards did—wandering the countryside, singing for their supper and enjoying the footloose life. True, not all bards lived thus, but, as far as Cerys was concerned, the the roving existence was one of the glories of the bardic calling. One could thus see Prydain from end to end (bypassing Annuvin, of course). And—most precious gift for one born female—one could expand one's horizons beyond a narrow sphere, an important task for a poet who wished to write about the variety of human experience. No, Cerys was not about to give up this opportunity because conventional types considered it hopelessly depraved for a woman to travel alone without escort.
So here she was, hair cut short, in male disguise. She had worried, of course, whether she could pull off the act. She was slim-hipped enough to pass muster, and being tall for a woman didn't hurt either. To be doubly sure, though, she had carefully gone over the details of her costume with her best friend Rhiangar, whose family lived near Cerys's ancient manor. Particularly after her parents died, Cerys cherished Rhiangar's friendship, for the girl would often invite her lonely neighbor to a lively house in which she was the sole daughter among five rough-and-tumble sons. Returning in triumph from her bardic exams, Cerys immediately conferred with Rhiangar, who had long been aware of her friend's plan to pose as a wandering bard. Given her daily experience with the male population, Rhiangar was well suited to act as coach on male mannerisms and to make sure Cerys looked the part. Tossing her long black hair back from her face, blue eyes shining with amusement, Rhiangar made Cerys stand in front of her dressed in her boy's outfit while she considered the fine points.
There were both deletions and additions. Binding Cerys's breasts tightly with linen strips—"good you're not big-bosomed"—Rhiangar also thought it prudent to add padding in other places.
"You need to look like you've got something between your legs," she explained matter-of-factly. She regarded her friend severely. "Really, Cerys, if you're going to blush at comments like that you'd better think twice about this whole venture."
"Speaking of what lies between men's legs," Rhiangar continued after providing the requisite padding for her red-faced friend, "I'm worried about what could happen to you if you're found out. Honestly, Cerys, this may be a lark for you, but have you really thought about what beasts men can be? I'm not just talking about the Huntsmen of Annuvin here. You've heard how there are warriors who rape women after battle. Any man who caught you out—be he groom or cantrev lord—would probably think you no better than you should be and count it nothing to force himself on you. What do you have in mind if that's about to happen? Don't tell me your sole plan is to run for dear life. It's a good idea, I admit, but not always practical."
In answer Cerys reached a hand to her belt and withdrew a small dagger. "How's this for a strategy?" she asked.
"Do you know how to use it?" Rhiangar countered.
"Of course I know how to use it," said Cerys. "You don't think my father would have given it to me and not taught me how to use it, do you? I'm not enthralled by the prospect of carving someone up, but if he came at me in the way you said I'm sure I'd manage." When her friend still looked troubled, she returned the knife to its sheath, smiling. "If it makes you feel better, I've got another weapon." She pointed downward.
"The floor?" asked Rhiangar, bewildered.
"No, silly," laughed Cerys, "my feet. When I reached womanhood my father took me out to the straw figure he used for archery practice. He showed me how to kick a man to ensure he couldn't run after me very fast. Come to think of it," she mused, "it should be a lot easier to kick without skirts."
Rhiangar hooted. "Well," she admitted, "you've set my mind somewhat at ease. But please be careful, Cerys."
They also experimented with fake beards. "You don't want people wondering why you don't have one," Rhiangar said. "I mean, you look very young and all, but you should be sprouting some stubble. I can't imagine that wandering bards have that many opportunities to shave. It's all right if your beard is straggly—that's part of being young—but you've got to have some facial hair."
They finally hit upon a plan of plucking coarse brown hairs from a horse hide in Rhiangar's house and fixing a few on Cerys's face with gum, including a sprinkling on her upper lip.
"I'm going to give you a lot of these things in a pouch along with more gum," said Rhiangar. "If you run out, sneak into a paddock at night and replenish your stock. Of course, a real live horse wouldn't like that, would it? You'd probably get kicked. Maybe you'd just better come home at that point."
Despite Rhiangar's worries, things went more smoothly than even Cerys at her most optimistic could have hoped. Since she generally only stayed overnight when she played at a residence, and moreover her performances took place in torch-lit Great Halls or on the shadowy hearths of humbler dwellings, there was less chance of someone getting a closer look than might otherwise have been the case. Cerys was most concerned about the servants in the great houses, particularly as she ate with them in the kitchen and shared their quarters when she wasn't camped in the stables. She had to be very careful about getting dressed or undressed, or about anything relating to calls of nature. Still, she passed for bashful, and again the brevity of her stays was a help.
She had another strategy, too, that proved quite useful: singing bawdy songs. She didn't, of course, know enough really obscene ones, and she never would have sung anything that portrayed women as meat for male appetites. Yet she'd learned just enough mildly off-color ballads to do the trick. Rhiangar had been right to distrust men's impulses where women were concerned. But, Cerys thought, her friend hadn't taken into account the extent to which men, even rough ones, placed women on a pedestal of ignorant purity. Burly cantrev lords apparently thought no woman would possibly know about—or at least talk about—the seamier side of fleshly experience. To them, Cerys's few nudge-and-a-wink lyrics were indisputable proof that she was, in fact, one of the boys.
And so Cerys experienced unimaginable freedoms for a woman, especially a gently-born one. No cumbersome skirts to trip over. No long tresses to detangle. (How lightly her cropped head sat on her shoulders!) And, most gloriously of all, no one to stop her from going wherever she pleased. And so she saw sights that, normally, she would never have seen. She saw spring fields at dawn, the rising sun gilding the already-golden hue of just-sprouting crops. She saw hills coming to meet her as she walked to their summits and recede as she descended again. On nights she was not staying in human habitation, she watched the rising moon transfigure the greensward to silver. She heard birds singing as she strode along forest paths, and if she stood still could catch glimpses of woodland creatures venturing shyly from their tree-shaded abodes.
And she sang. Not only for others, but for herself as she walked along. She had carefully stowed a small ink bottle, quill, and parchment in her pack, and, writing in the tiniest letters to make her supplies last as long as possible, she recorded an efflorescence of new compositions, working and reworking them whenever she had a chance and trying them out on her audiences.
True, there were hard times as well. It wasn't always pleasant to sleep outdoors, which she often had to do between houses to perform in. When it rained she was soaked to the bone. Indoors the accommodations were not always the best, either—hard pallets or smelly clumps of straw in ill-kept stables. Not all of those who requested her services rewarded her generously, and she had her share of stale crusts for supper. Still, Cerys felt the benefits of her position far outweighed the difficulties, and her youthful love of adventure enabled her to see the wry side of the challenges she encountered.
But, she reflected on this bracing fall day as she stopped to eat a midday meal beneath a tree, winter was coming, and the barding and wandering season would soon be over. Biting into a crisp apple, she reflected that it was time to go home. Of course, "home" was a difficult term to define just now. She had to visit Rhiangar and regale her friend with her adventures, but after that she had little desire to stay on at the empty, dreary family seat. No, increasingly "home" meant Caer Dathyl. She had, after all, been offered a place there by that kindly old bard following her examinations., and a community of like-minded intellectuals was surely enticing. Yet, to be perfectly honest—she winced ruefully—it was not only these things that drew her irresistibly to the castle in the north.
It was Taliesin.
At first, Cerys had dismissed as a girlish crush the thoughts of the Chief Bard that intruded upon her consciousness once she embarked on the wandering life. It was, after all, not surprising for her to feel this way. Even before she had met him Taliesin had been her hero, and she had memorized much of his poetry, a model for her own as it included not only traditional battle lays but utterances in an innovative personal voice. And when she finally met Taliesin, he treated her first and foremost as a bard rather than as a woman, encouraging and supporting her in her efforts to break into the male intellectual enclave. Especially given he was younger and handsomer than she'd expected, surely it was not strange that she should moon over memories of his gray eyes? Surely it was not astonishing she'd started having unmaidenly dreams about him, dreams from which she awoke blushing furiously or tried desperately to reenter by going back to sleep?
Well, Cerys had to admit it was hard to ascribe those dreams to girlish hero worship. And—to do justice to the complexity of her feelings—she realized too that her attraction to Taliesin was not just of the body but of the mind, a yearning for an intellectual kindred spirit. Moreover, she simply found herself drawn to him, to his distinctive wry and kindly personality. At the feast following her exams she had watched him from a distance in his place among members of the bardic council. It struck her how little he presumed upon his status, even though he sat near the High King himself. Taliesin's most characteristic expression was the gentlest of smiles, a faint light of laughter in his eyes. She got the distinct impression that, shrewdly as he spotted the foibles of those around him, he was affectionately tolerant of them and laughed at himself as much as anybody. And for that as much as anything she had come to love him.
Yes, love him. Now what was she going to do about it?
As she sat under the tree where she'd eaten her meal, gazing at the brilliant fall leaves, she came up with the answer. The round-faced bard had mentioned that Taliesin sometimes gave lessons in arcane languages to young scholars. Why shouldn't she ask him to tutor her? That way she could not only be near him but test out both his feelings and her own. If her feelings were him were a passing girlish phase, she would surely realize this. If he seemed unwilling to think of her in the way she thought of him, she could either steel herself to broach the subject or retreat. At least she'd have had the matchless opportunity to hone her skills with the greatest scholar of the age, and, if nothing else, that was worth taking advantage of.
And so, checking to make sure she knew in which direction she was headed, she packed away the remains of her meal, stood up, and started walking due north.
Notes: I hope no one is offended that this chapter is more risqué than anything I've written thus far. It seemed hard for me to believe, though, that Cerys would plan to pass as male and ignore the nitty-gritty details, not to mention the ever-present threat of sexual violence.
Of course, since the Prydain series targets a youthful audience (and originally a young audience of a sedater age) sexual violence is never explicitly mentioned. It is left for adults to intuit that the Huntsmen of Annuvin can't be any too scrupulous about women's honor, and, for that matter, not all warriors would be as chivalrous as Lord Gwydion. The exception to the silence about sexual violence is the scene in The High King in which the captive Eilonwy is threatened with gang rape by the outlaw Dorath and his obnoxious crew. Mind you, the word "rape" is never used, but it is painfully clear from the context what's at stake. I tend to be a pacifist, but I can't get too fussed (as the British would say) that wolves rip out the throats of Dorath and Co. before they do any harm.
Another note, this time on origins: As a scholar, I think a lot about literary influence—the impact of one text on another. Our imaginations are shaped by the imaginations of those before us, whose visions we assimilate into our own. Hence, I am always aware of the amalgam of sources that have helped me bring Cerys into being. As the title of both my fic and of this chapter suggests, an inspiration for my plot is the splendid film Shakespeare in Love, starring Gwyneth Paltrow and Joseph Fiennes. My representation of Cerys in male attire is influenced by Paltrow's character Viola de Lessups, who satisfies her desire to be an actor by posing as Thomas Kent. In the process of escaping the bounds of female convention, she falls in love with her favorite poet. Sound familiar?
And, for that matter, Cerys is a descendent not only from Viola/Thomas Kent but that character's predecessors, the enterprising cross-dressing girls of Shakespearean comedy and romance, Viola of Twelfth Night, Rosalind of As You Like It, and Imogen of Cymbeline. Let's also not forget our Prydainian cross-dresser, the Princess Eilonwy, who wears male garb for much of The High King. As for intellectual precursors, Cerys owes something to my favorite Brainy Female from a Fantasy Series, Hermione Granger of the Harry Potter series. (J. K. Rowling fans will hear in Cerys's concerns she's made an error in rune translation during her bardic exams echoes of Hermione's fretting over mistranslating the rune "ehwaz" when she takes O.W. L.s.) As far as Cerys's musical style is concerned, I've imagined her from the start as a Prydainian Loreena McKennitt. Coincidentally, just before I wrote chapter one I had the good fortune to hear a sampler CD that included "Penelope's Song" from McKennitt's forthcoming album An Ancient Muse. After that it was much easier to envision the heartmelting beauty of the song Cerys sings at the end of her bardic exams.