March 24

"We'll have to work inside," he said. "The silver'll cool too fast in this cold air." And we went inside to rouse our visitors and get them to clear a spot large enough for his workbench.

Years later, someone who learned who I was said to my face that Father was a cheat and traitor and craft whore. Yet Father wasn't doing anything that I wouldn't do right now to keep the English out of Wales, and it is 25 years later. I wish it were so easy today that I could just mint coins to keep them out. They just don't belong here, any more than they belong in France, and I know that too from experience.

Everyone was soon awake. Father sent me and Gryffyd sent Tail-Beard to bring in his bench. Father has worked before only in summer, and only outside at the covered fireplace in the yard. The move inside to the fire in the hovel was cramping, and the fire had to be kept hot to soften the silver. It was going to be warm in there.

Father brought out his scale and weights. He told Gryffyd that he wanted each of the chests opened and wanted five random planchets taken from each for him to weigh. The Franks opened the chests and Father chose 20 blank coins from among them. Then he sat at his bench, set a weight on one pan of his small scale, and in the other pan measured each planchet, one after the other, against it. The tilt of the scale was the same for every planchet, and I could tell that Father was impressed with the consistency, if not their weight. He admired good craftsmanship.

"They're light," Father said.

Gryffyd shrugged.

"I'm taking my fee by weight," Father said. "Not in pennies."

Gryffyd nodded at the Franks. "Take it up with them," he said.

"You take it up with them," Father replied. "They're in your charge." There was a moment of rebalancing between them, then Gryffyd went and talked with the two knights. Despite the difference in language, it took only a short time for the Franks to understand what Father was demanding, to consider it, and to agree.

Father turned to me. "Go get the dies," he said.

The dies are how coins are made. There are two of them, one for each face of the coin. They are like the split molds potters use to shape fancy clay vases, but they are small and carved with small, fine detail, and of hard metal, harder than iron.

The dies were hidden but not in the vault where I'd hidden our meat. They were hidden each time in a different place, and this time, because it was winter and we were not expecting to use the dies and wanted to keep them at all times far away from anyone who might visit and search for them, we had hidden them in a place a hundred or more paces up the creek.

I put on my cloak and went out to get them.

March 23

Father was glad for the ale, and the more he drank of it the gladder he was for the company of Gryffyd, and after enough of it Tail-Beard was talking and even the two Franks starting telling stories, gesturing and using what I guess were the few words of English they knew, which Gryffyd tried often and without luck to translate. It was all good-natured. A lot of laughing. I remember listening to the strange sound of the Franks' language and thinking how amazing it was that they understood each other. And I remember Gryffyd and my Father. They were still wary of each other but not in the way they'd been when Gryffyd's had come in the summer or even when they'd greeted each other that afternoon. Somehow, and I don't know how, they'd settled between them that they were equals and could trust each other at arm's length.

The cask lasted until well past dark, and I got my share.

The visitors sprawled on hides on the floor, the dogs among them, and father, my sister and I took to our bed. The hovel was noisy with snoring but it was warm and exciting in a way that kept me awake much of the night. I lay watching the fire glow in the middle of the room and listening to all the breathing in the shadows and thinking how important Father was to have knights of the King of France come to him far out in the Welsh woods and the great Lord Llewellyn sending him silver to coin. Father had an important role in pushing the English out of Welsh lands. I didn't at that time know what "Welsh lands" meant, having lived my entire eight or so years in that one place, but I knew they were important to Father. And Gryffyd. And all the men who brought us silver.

I settled into a deep sleep just before daybreak, and just after daybreak Father woke me. "Three thousand of the King's pennies to strike," he said, shaking me, and we got up and together we fed the fire and then went outside to piss. There was no wind. The winter sun was shining through the trees and on the snow filling the woods. Father stared at the clear path in the snow, leading out of the far woods and straight to our door. He cursed. Then we turned to me.

"We'll have to work inside," he said. "The silver'll cool too fast in this cold air." And we went inside to rouse our visitors and get them to clear a spot large enough for his workbench.

finally moving ahead again

I finished hiding the food and returned with two rabbits as Father told me to. Clearly the visitors had demanded a big bright fire, and they sat close around it, warming themselves and filling the cramped space with their bulk and the smells of sweat and wet wool. My sister moved from one to the next, like a faerie, passing out chunks of cheese and bread, while Father spouted one of the casks of ale.

Gryffyd was talking. "You'll make a good profit this time, moneyer," he said to Father.

"You say that every time," Father said.

"This time it's twice your fee -- two parts of each hundred."

Father set the cask on its side and reached first to Gryffyd and then to each of the others in turn, taking their cups and filling them. "And what do I have to do to earn this windfall?" he said.

"Do what you always do. Make coins. Maybe a little faster this time, that's all."

Father's eyes narrowed. "What could possibly make Lord Llewelyn so generous?"

"It's not Llewelyyn" Gryffd laughed. "It's these Franks. They're paying all of us twice our price."
I looked across the two strangers. They were across the fire, stripped of their armor, talking between themselves in a low tone, in a strange language. A thrill shot through me. So these were Franks. I had never seen a Frank before. I didn't know if Father had, but he looked at them carefully. My sister was staring at them, too.

The two stopped talking, aware of our attention, and looked back at us. They were dark-haired, clean shaven and had hard, dark eyes. They had the look of knights. I had only seen Norman and English knights before, and those at great distance, but these men seemed to me, a boy, there in the firelight that they certainly could have had warrior ancestors going back to Charlemagne.

They nodded to Father and each said a few words that I couldn't understand but which I'm sure included their names, and Father said something to welcome them and told them our names, and we drank, and then all went back to our own conversations.

"Strange bastards," Gryffyd said.

Father took the frozen rabbits from me. "I gathered in the wood," I said.
He nodded to tell me he understood. "Good," he said, and began hacking the rabbits into quarters with the ax. "Go sit by the fire and dry out."

My sister was already settled on the bench beside Gryffyd. She liked Gryffyd and was always curious about him and we he first came that past summer had followed him about for hours at a time. Gryffyd liked her, too, and called her llinos--finch--and in fact there beside him on the bench she looked like a finch perched beside a tree trunk.

I sidle past the reticent Tail-Beard to take the narrow place between him and the Franks, and when I did I saw piled in against the wall the four small chests and the rest of their baggage, on which they'd laid out their cloaks and armor. And there were the knight's hauberks. They weren't at all like Gwyffyd's or Tail-Beard's mail. These had long sleeves and caps and were crafted of such small rings and were so brightly polished that they looked like silver cloth. I reached out to touch them.

"What do the Franks want with us?" Father said, and with his mention of the Franks my hand shot back to me and I dropped down into the bench.

"The Franks like Llewellyn slaughtering the English and burning down their castles," Gryffyd said. "It keeps the whoreson English king's eyes on Wales instead of on crossing the channel and attacking them. And they're eager to keep things that way." He nodded toward the Franks. "I was told these two are King Philippe's men--though I have no way to ask them--and the silver is from Philippe Augustus himself."

"I'll be impressed when I'm paid," Father said.

"Amen," Gryffyd said, and they drained their cups. We'd had no ale since Gryffyd had come in the summer, and I was hoping myself to have a small share before Father and the visitors finished the cask.

Gryffyd looked into the cooking pot. "Tomorrow while you're making coins, Cynwrig, I'll get us plenty to eat." I remembered Gryffyd's bow. It was almost as tall as he was, and his arrows were like small javelins and could fly to a target two hundred paces away. I looked around and saw what must be the unstrung bow but could just as easily have been a tall curved staff, leaning against the wall, still wrapped in the leather that had protected it in the storm.
"No--better," he said, smirking, "I'll send the Franks out. Let's see what kind of hunters they are in a Welsh snow."

Silver Pennies of King John 

The Cellar

...and after a defiant pause Father led him inside and together they ducked through the low doorway into the warmth.

I walked Gryffyd's horse to the stable and the other three men followed me with their horses and the two pack horses. The stable wasn't much more than a windbreak, two plank walls joined at a right angle, covered with a thin, triangle-shaped roof of thatch, but it was something. Our own two horses complained of the invasion but remembered from the last time Gryffyd's massive gelding came to visit that they had little choice but to be hospitable. These guests got their own way.

I wrestled the saddled off Gryffyd's gelding while Tail-Beard and his companions unsaddled theirs, then I helped them with the pack horses. Tail Beard did not acknowledge me or speak at all to the other two men, who seemed perfectly content talking between themselves in a language I had never heard before, a language full of strange sounds. They were very different from Gryffyd and Tail Beard in the way they looked and the way they acted. They were clean-shaven and I saw mail hauberks under their cloaks, and caught a glimpse of a very fine sword hilt.

True to Father's suspicions, except for four casks of ale, they had not brought much -- blankets, three sacks of flour, a single cask of smoked meat -- certainly not enough for four men for a week. But they had brought the small chests, four of them this time, which I knew must be filled with silver bars. They would not let me touch the chests, so I carried in the food and blankets, and when everything was safe inside and Tail-Beard and his companions were settled with Gryffyd and Father and my sister around the fire, I slipped away to conceal our food..
Knowing the snows would come soon, Father and I had been out hunting for three days before the storm and had nine rabbits and the hind quarter of a deer hanging behind the hovel. It was enough to last the three of us for weeks, if need be, but wouldn't last more than a few days with these men around. The rack was mounted high on the wall, out of the reach of wolves, and to reach it myself I had to climb the ladder we used for thatching. The deer hind and the rabbits were as solid as rocks from the cold, and one by one I dropped them onto the snowy ground. Then I climbed down and carried the first armload of carcasses to the cellar in the woods.

The cellar was a pit Father had dug about fifty paces from the clearing, just over a small ridge. It was just deep and wide and long enough for the three of us to hide in, huddled tight to each other, if we needed to. The walls and floor were lined with rock, and under two of the rocks in one corner was a pit no bigger than my two fists pressed together, where Father hid our earnings -- our own small stash of silver coins -- and a copper ring that was my mother's and a piece of amber, about as big as a fingertip, that Father had once received in payment from an English earl.

In three trips back and forth between the hovel and the woods, I half-filled the cellar with the deer and all but two of the frozen rabbits. I slid into place the heavy wooden cover with its camouflage of moss and half a hollow tree stump, spread snow over it, and then dragged across the spot and along my tracks to the hovel a tree bough to make it appear as though I'd been out gathering wood.

Prologue continued

I recognized two of the men. The one in the lead was a huge man, a head taller than Father and half again broader, and huge of belly as well. In his mail and his heavy cloak he seemed to me, a boy, like a [WELSH TERM] giant. His horse, too, was the biggest I'd ever seen -- bigger than all but a few I've seen since, even in the great English and Frankish cavalries. The giant's name was Gryffyd and he'd been bringing us silver bars and leaving with satchels and chests full of silver coins for as long as I could remember. The other man had come only once before and I didn't know his name, but I knew his beard. It was braided into two tails, and those tails, each with a brown glass bead at its end, had been a curiosity to me that past summer, as had the man's strange way of speaking. Now they were a full hand longer and caked with snow and the ice from his breath and seemed more strange still, like tusks.

"You chose the devil's own time to come, Gryffyd," Father said.

"You think I chose it?" the giant said. He tugged the reins and his great horse slumped to a stop and shook the snow from its mein.

"Chose it or not, you've left a clear track all the way here," Father said.

"We're not fools, Cynwrig," Gryffd shot back. "We covered our track where the path leaves the road. And with all the drifting--"

"You shouldn't have come."

The four men dismounted. Gryffd stomped his huge boots to get some warmth flowing in his legs. Even off his horse he towered over us. "Llywelyn burned the English castle on the Ystwyth two months ago," he said. "He's getting ready to move against the English in Powys in the spring. He needs the coins now."

"He won't have any coins at all if the English find this place."

Gryffd shoved his reins toward me with a hand as big as an ax head, and I took them, and he swept past Father and me like a passing storm. "If we're going to argue, Cynwrig," he said, "at least extend me the hospitality of doing it around a warm fire." He stopped outside the door of our hovel, waiting, and after a defiant pause Father led him inside and he ducked through the low doorway into the warmth.

Prologue

As soon as we heard the dogs barking, Father knew there would be trouble. He stopped mid-stitch, set down the boar bristle needle and the boot he was mending, and hobbled to the window on one booted and one bare foot. He lifted the wood bar and opened the shutter just enough to peek out.

"On [Welsh] God's beard!" he growled, "the fool's have come in the snow."

I knew who he meant. I was very young, a boy, maybe seven maybe eight. I had a sister, she was six, and we both knew who he meant. The men who came with the silver. There were sometimes three of them, sometimes a lot more. One day during the last summer, eight of them came, all heavily armed. They had brought a lot of silver, almost two weeks worth.

Father didn't like it when they came. It gave him work, and it paid him well, [hello] , but he didn't like them around. They camped across the clearing, at the edge of the wood, and spent all their time eating and gambling and drinking and ordering my sister around like a servant, while Father and I worked. We all hated it anddreaded their coming. Yet I didn't understand why Father was angry that they'd arrived during a snowstorm.

Father barred the shutter again and limped back to the table for his boot. "Feed the fire, girl," he said, pulling the boot on, and my sister turned from [what she was doing] to drop new kindling on the fire. He tucked the loop of gut down into the boot and jabbed the quill needle into the sheepskin lining.

"Cameron," he said to me, "bring in two rabbits, and leave the rest in the ground."

"How many are there?" I said, meaning how many men.

"Four," he said, "and they better've brought their own food this time, because two rabbits and bread are all they're getting." We took our sheepskin capes from the pegs by the door, wrapped them around us and went outside.

It had been snowing all night and the storm was tapering off. The wind that had gusted until midday was now as still as the snow, a light, dry snow about two hands deep. The four horsemen plodded across the clearing toward us. Our two dogs circled them, barking ominously, but neither men nor horses seemed to notice. They were numb from the cold.