themselves in their cloaks and fell asleep in the quiet grove.
Rising again at dawn, the travellers shook the leaves and dew from their cloaks, watered the horses, and continued on. The day passed much like the one before, except that the settlements became more numerous and the English presence in the land became more marked, until Bran was convinced that they had left Britain far behind and entered an alien country, where the houses were small and dark and crabbed, where grim-faced people dressed in curious garb made up of coarse dun-coloured cloth stood and stared at passing travellers with suspicion in their dull peasant eyes. Despite the sunlight streaming down from a clear blue sky, the land seemed dismal and unhappy. Even the animals, in their woven willow enclosures, appeared bedraggled and morose.
Nor was the aspect to improve. The farther south they went, the more abject the countryside appeared. Settlements of all kinds became more numerous—how the English loved their villages—but these were not wholesome places. Clustered together in what Bran considered suffocating proximity anywhere the earth offered a flat space and a little running water, the close-set hovels sprouted like noxious mushrooms on earth stripped of all trees and greenery—which the mud-dwellers used to make humpbacked houses, barns, and byres for their livestock, which they kept in muck-filled pens beside their low, smoky dwellings.
Thus, a traveller could always smell an English town long before he reached it, and Bran could only shake his head in wonder at the thought of abiding in perpetual fug and stench. In his opinion, the people lived no better than the pigs they slopped, slaughtered, and fed upon.
As the sun began to lower, the three riders crested the top of a broad hill and looked down into the Vale of Hafren and the gleaming arc of the Hafren River. A smudgy brown haze in the valley betrayed their destination for the night: the town of Gleawancaester, which began life in ancient times as a simple outpost of the Roman Legio Augusta XX. Owing to its pride of place by the river and the proximity of iron mines, the town begun by legionary veterans had grown slowly over the centuries until the arrival of the English, who transformed it into a market centre for the region.
The road into the vale widened as it neared the city, which to Bran’s eyes was worse than any he had seen so far—if only because it was larger than any other they had yet passed. Squatting hard by the river, with twisting, narrow streets of crowded hovels clustered around a huge central market square of beaten earth, Gleawancaester—Caer Gloiu of the Britons —had long ago outgrown the stout stone walls of the Roman garrison, which could still be seen in the lower courses of the city’s recently refurbished fortress.
Like the town’s other defences—a wall and gate, still unfinished—a new bridge of timber and stone bore testimony to Ffreinc occupation. Norman bridges were wide and strong, built to withstand heavy traffic and ensure that the steady stream of horses, cattle, and merchant wagons flowed unimpeded into and out of the markets.
Bran noticed the increase in activity as they approached the bridge. Here and there, tall, clean-shaven Ffreinc moved amongst the shorter, swarthier English residents. The sight of these horse-faced foreigners with their long, straight-cut hair and pale, sun-starved flesh walking about with such toplofty arrogance made the gorge rise in his throat. He forcibly turned his face away to keep from being sick.
Before crossing the bridge, they dismounted to stretch their legs and water the horses at a wooden trough set up next to a riverside well. As they were waiting, Bran noticed two barefoot, ragged little girls walking together, carrying a basket of eggs between them—no doubt bound for the market. They fell in with the traffic moving across the bridge. Two men in short cloaks and tunics loitered at the rail, and as
Rising again at dawn, the travellers shook the leaves and dew from their cloaks, watered the horses, and continued on. The day passed much like the one before, except that the settlements became more numerous and the English presence in the land became more marked, until Bran was convinced that they had left Britain far behind and entered an alien country, where the houses were small and dark and crabbed, where grim-faced people dressed in curious garb made up of coarse dun-coloured cloth stood and stared at passing travellers with suspicion in their dull peasant eyes. Despite the sunlight streaming down from a clear blue sky, the land seemed dismal and unhappy. Even the animals, in their woven willow enclosures, appeared bedraggled and morose.
Nor was the aspect to improve. The farther south they went, the more abject the countryside appeared. Settlements of all kinds became more numerous—how the English loved their villages—but these were not wholesome places. Clustered together in what Bran considered suffocating proximity anywhere the earth offered a flat space and a little running water, the close-set hovels sprouted like noxious mushrooms on earth stripped of all trees and greenery—which the mud-dwellers used to make humpbacked houses, barns, and byres for their livestock, which they kept in muck-filled pens beside their low, smoky dwellings.
Thus, a traveller could always smell an English town long before he reached it, and Bran could only shake his head in wonder at the thought of abiding in perpetual fug and stench. In his opinion, the people lived no better than the pigs they slopped, slaughtered, and fed upon.
As the sun began to lower, the three riders crested the top of a broad hill and looked down into the Vale of Hafren and the gleaming arc of the Hafren River. A smudgy brown haze in the valley betrayed their destination for the night: the town of Gleawancaester, which began life in ancient times as a simple outpost of the Roman Legio Augusta XX. Owing to its pride of place by the river and the proximity of iron mines, the town begun by legionary veterans had grown slowly over the centuries until the arrival of the English, who transformed it into a market centre for the region.
The road into the vale widened as it neared the city, which to Bran’s eyes was worse than any he had seen so far—if only because it was larger than any other they had yet passed. Squatting hard by the river, with twisting, narrow streets of crowded hovels clustered around a huge central market square of beaten earth, Gleawancaester—Caer Gloiu of the Britons —had long ago outgrown the stout stone walls of the Roman garrison, which could still be seen in the lower courses of the city’s recently refurbished fortress.
Like the town’s other defences—a wall and gate, still unfinished—a new bridge of timber and stone bore testimony to Ffreinc occupation. Norman bridges were wide and strong, built to withstand heavy traffic and ensure that the steady stream of horses, cattle, and merchant wagons flowed unimpeded into and out of the markets.
Bran noticed the increase in activity as they approached the bridge. Here and there, tall, clean-shaven Ffreinc moved amongst the shorter, swarthier English residents. The sight of these horse-faced foreigners with their long, straight-cut hair and pale, sun-starved flesh walking about with such toplofty arrogance made the gorge rise in his throat. He forcibly turned his face away to keep from being sick.
Before crossing the bridge, they dismounted to stretch their legs and water the horses at a wooden trough set up next to a riverside well. As they were waiting, Bran noticed two barefoot, ragged little girls walking together, carrying a basket of eggs between them—no doubt bound for the market. They fell in with the traffic moving across the bridge. Two men in short cloaks and tunics loitered at the rail, and as
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