The Savage Knight

what Megan and I had done. I thought perhaps I should leave home, gather up what few possessions I had and make my way down to the lowlands, lose myself in the forest, search for a village where I could start a new life where no one would ever know of my disgrace. I would have done, too, except that I would be dead in a day, food for a bear or a pack of wolves. I was small and weedy.

Eventually my mother returned with my sister. I feigned sickness to explain my absence at the hall. Megan did not so much as glance my way. She had reached the age where they felt they needed to shield her from my eyes — and what a success that had been — so they had suspended a blanket from the ceiling above one end of the hut where she could dress and sleep without being seen.

Muttering that she was tired, she pushed past the blanket and disappeared.

That was a long night. My mother and I talked quietly for a while, then she yawned and said she, too, was going to bed. I lay on my back, staring up at the ceiling, as laughter and raised voices drifted across from the hall. It was always that way. Once the women and children had left for the night, out would come the ale and the men would drink themselves stupid, and then my father would stagger home and pass out. That night he collapsed on his bed, with a grunt that wafted beery fumes over me, and was snoring in seconds.

Minutes felt like hours, hours passed like days. I could not sleep. The heat did not help. I pulled the shirt over my head and dropped it to the floor beside the pallet. Still too hot, I took off my trousers and dropped them next to the shirt, leaving on my braies to preserve my dignity. An owl hooted. A sheep bawled. I closed my eyes and willed sleep to come.

It must have, for I was aware of nothing until I felt a weight on my mattress. Someone was climbing quietly into the pallet next to me, and warm, moist flesh brushed against mine. Megan, I thought, with a sick feeling in my belly. I sat up and tried to push her away but the hands that gripped my wrists were too strong, forcing me back to the mattress. A heavy body, much heavier than Megan’s, slid over mine, pressing me down so I could not move.

“Mother?” I gasped. There was no mistaking the smell of her. I tried to protest but her mouth smothered mine and my words were muffled and lost. Away in the hills above the village, I heard the barking of those hellish hounds, insinuating itself into my head like worms boring into the flesh of the dead. At once I was filled with a lust so strong it eclipsed all other thoughts. I was helpless to resist, it was as if it were happening to someone else, and I was a reluctant observer who could not turn away.

I heard Megan cry out, heard the deep rumble of my father’s voice. After that there was nothing save that relentless baying, the heat of my mother’s breath in my mouth and the slickness of skin against skin as she wrapped her legs around me and drew me in.

I will not speak of what happened after that. From the revulsion written in your faces I suspect you do not want to hear it either. Believe me, the disgust you feel for me is as nothing compared to my own self-loathing. Believe me also when I tell you what happened that night was the work of the devil himself. For in those long hours between midnight and dawn we were seized by a kind of madness. And by we I mean everyone, the entire village.

That became apparent the following morning. When the rising sun woke me, I was alone in my bed. Raising myself up on one elbow, I could see my parents were asleep in theirs. Had I dreamt it all? The soreness between my legs told me otherwise, but surely we could not have slept so soundly if it had truly happened.

A cockerel crowed, and slowly the village stirred into life. The atmosphere in our hut was muted; none of us would look the others in the eye. We knew we had done a terrible wrong, so terrible we dared not speak of it. How could we, when we couldn’t begin to understand why we had done it? My young mind could only suppose we had been possessed. Unable to bear it any longer, we made our way in gloomy silence to the hall to break fast with the villagers.

Although I was not hungry, I felt a desperate need to be with others, to be among those who had not shared my awful sin, but it was apparent on entering the hall that my family had not been alone.

No one spoke when we walked in. They were struggling with their own consciences and barely registered our presence. Gwyn, our brehyrion, looked as guilty as anyone in the room. His wife had died years ago and he had raised Arwel with the help of his mother, Bronwyn, a thin, harsh-voiced woman known to the children as Crow. She was a bad-tempered creature, too. I looked at her and then looked at Gwyn and had to swallow the bile in my throat.

Days passed. Whatever madness had overwhelmed us had passed, for there was no more wickedness. The dogs, or whatever they had been, were not heard again. A month went by and, as is often the way with such matters, the memories gradually grew less raw until village life returned to something like normal. But then the consequence of our accursed couplings became evident. One by one, eight of the women of the village, my mother and sister among them, discovered they were with child.

When I found out about Megan I ran from the hut and up the steep slope of the valley, not stopping until I reached the woods where she and I had… well. I stopped when I could run no further, and then I bent over and was violently sick. I collapsed to the ground and lay there, curled up in a ball of self-hatred and self-pity, until the sun set and the cooling air sent me home again.

I will spare you the mundane details. We endured a cold winter, but there was little joy when spring finally arrived, for we all knew the babies would arrive with it. Megan was the first to give birth, maybe because she was the youngest. Even now I can hear her screams from the midwife’s hut when the child was delivered. Later I was to learn it had been born with mismatched eyes and six fingers and six toes.

I never saw it. Immediately when it was born they took it somewhere away from inquisitive eyes, a shepherd’s hut away in the hills, fully expecting it to die. Against the odds it survived, as did the other seven born that spring. All were deformed in one way or another.

I was not privy to the fierce argument that raged in the hall when the time came to decide what to do with them. Word gets around, though. Some wanted to smother them. Others said they should not be made to pay for the sins of their parents. Agreement could not be reached. Then Bronwyn the Crow stepped forward and told the assembled villagers: “I will take them into the mountains and look after them. They will live or die as fate decrees.”

Whatever had passed between her and Gwyn on the night of the barking dogs, she had borne no children, and she had never been well-disposed towards them anyway. So coming from her of all people, her offer immediately silenced the room. To cut to the chase, it was agreed that this was what should happen, and that Arwel, who would not become brehyrion after his father because he was too dim in the head, should stay with them. He could hunt for their food and protect them from the predators that stalked the high places.

And so it was that an expedition set out, taking the eight babies and their unlikely guardians into the mountains, to a valley where they could be hidden from the eyes of the world. They took with them basic comforts such as bedding and clothing, and weapons and tools for Arwel, who was good with his hands, to provide them with food and shelter. When the men who went with them returned after several days, a great weight seemed to lift from the village. The fruits of our sins were gone.

Life went back to how it used to be. When Megan went to the summer gathering and found a suitor I was not at all upset. When she married and moved to her husband’s village, I was, quite frankly, relieved. Every time I saw her I was reminded of what we had done that August afternoon. After her wedding, I never saw her again. I suppose she’s more than likely dead now.

All was well. To the surprise of all who knew me, I grew tall and strong. One autumn I went to the gathering with my parents and there I met the girl who would later become my wife. When we married, she came to live with me in the village. Soon afterwards she was pregnant, and in the spring of the following year, we had the first of our children.

Our eldest, a boy, had just turned ten when a girl around the same age went missing. A search was carried out, but the poor child was never found. It was assumed she had defied her parents, who had warned her never to leave the village alone, and had been taken by a wild animal. We had heard of such tragedies elsewhere, but for our village it was the first in living memory. The pain cut deep.

Several years passed, I forget exactly how many. It happened again. A little boy. Once more a search party set out. It returned in a hurry after finding mysterious tracks in the soft earth by the lake, heading north into the mountains. The men equipped themselves with provisions and weapons and set off in pursuit, Gwyn giving them his blessing but by now too old to travel with them.