THE GODODDIN

 

 

 

 

 A play by Peter Oswald

 

Note. A long time ago I had this image of the worst thing imaginable being to be a sacrificial King - in the Golden Bough sense - prevented from being sacrificed, held in limbo. It was an image of depression. So I wrote the first version of this play -all of it set in dark age northern Britain. A few years after that Michael Murwitzer of THE KOSH asked me to write a play - aiming for Welcome Trust funding - about a new kind of medical intervention. We talked alot about Living Wills, where a patient has to decide before a major operation if they want to be resuscitated or not, with the likelihood of being in a vegetative state. This project never took off, but a few years later when I was asked by Mike Chase for a follow-up play to THE TEMPLE, my play for Ruskin Mill Educational Trust (see link) I had the idea of combining the Living Will issue with The Gododdin issue. So that is this. It was performed - brilliantly - by students and staff, around the UK.

The Gododdin is a dark age poem in Welsh, that contains the first ever mention of Arthur. It is a list of all those lost in the battle of Catraeth. I know about them from the poem by David Jones, IN PARENTHESIS, where he views his experiences in the First World War through the lens of The Gododdin, or visa versa.

The Gododdin were fighting King Ethelfrith, who is also the offstage villain of my play AUGUSTINE’S OAK, the first new play at the new Globe (1999.) I’ve rewritten this as SIF (see link.)

 

Gododdin is pronounced GodDOTHin, with th as in the.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Characters

 

Robert Brandon/ King Eidyn

Elizabeth Brandon/Olwen

Oliver Brandon/ Bishop Aidan

Marva Brandon (Indian) /Queen Miraveh

Doctor Solomon Unwin/ King Ethelfrith

Aneirin – nurse/poet

 

 

Chorus

 

Jones the Pike

Mrs Jones

Little Jones

Old Jones

Gwefrfawr

Mary

Martha

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

                                        THE GODODDIN.

 

 

ONE. CHORUS, TATTERED AND BLOODY, RUNNING, JONES THE PIKE DRAGGING A LONG PIKE. HE STOPS, EXHAUSTED. THE OTHERS STOP. MARTHA COUGHS AND SNEEZES THROUGHOUT.

 

JONES: Run, run, Gododdin! Keep going!

 

MRS JONES: Leave your pike, throw it down man, leave it behind!

 

JONES: I can’t leave it behind! It is myself!

 

MRS JONES: It’s too blasted big for running! It’s too blasted big for anything!

 

MARY: We have been defeated!

 

MRS JONES: Well done Mary! They don’t call you a wise woman for nothing!

 

MARY: Dead, everybody dead.

 

JONES: Run, run, Gododdin, keep going! Leave me!

 

MRS JONES: Shut up!

 

LITTLE JONES: Where are the enemy?

 

OLD JONES: When they are done stripping the dead they will come after us!

 

MRS JONES: Will someone tell him to sling his blasted caber?

 

OLD JONES: He is married to it.

 

MRS JONES: Come on, help him with it if he won’t ungrip! We’ll all carry it!

 

JONES: Hands off! Hands off!

 

MRS JONES: We are burdened enough with our bones! We have got to fly light! And you, what are you doing with that?

 

LITTLE JONES IS WEARING A HELMET MUCH TOO BIG FOR HIM.

 

LITTLE JONES: I found it!

 

MRS JONES: On a Saxon?

 

LITTLE JONES: No – one of us!

 

MARY: We are all dead. We are all dead. All of the heroes, all of the horsemen are dead.

 

ENTER GWEFRFAWR, WOUNDED. HE COLLAPSES. HE IS WEARING THE ARMOUR OF A HORSEMAN AND HAS A BIG SWORD.

 

MRS JONES: Not quite.

 

JONES: It’s Gwefrfawr! The champion!

 

MRS JONES: Christ, look at the state of him.

 

GWEFRFAWR: Help! Help! Gododdin!

 

MRS JONES: Grab hold of him! Everyone! Come on!

 

 

TWO. HOSPITAL. ROBERT  BRANDON IN BED ASLEEP. ANEIRIN, AS A NURSE.

 

 

ANEIRIN: Gododdin, in this company,

                    I stake my claim to speak for you.

Ywain, Madog, Cadfannan, Hyfeidd, Erthgi, Blaen, Cyrnri, Cynon, Cynrain, Isag, Gwefrfawr, Ceredig, Caradog, Gwyn, Ieuan, and all the rest of them.

I am a poet and it’s my purpose to keep alive the names of certain fighters who died along time ago. What’s my name? Aneirin. I keep that alive too. How long ago did they die? I can’t say, it depends on the date of the present, which is a permanent flux. Anyway I don’t know if you maybe have heard of – has anybody ever heard of Ywain, the son of Marro? Christ, he was a wonderful man! A really good friend of mine! I say a man – he was nineteen. But he died like a man! Christ, yes! Bright blue swords, gold worked into the edges. I said Ywain, I’m not going to argue with you, no way, man! I’m going to praise you forever in a poem. Because let’s face it you’re not going to live long! I didn’t say that bit. I’ll tell you one thing about him. Give him a choice between a fight and a wedding and he’d choose the wedding every time! Only joking! He’d go for the fight, for the fight, for the fight, every time, Ywain! Well you know, he was only nineteen! Had a lot of glory to get, and he’s got it, hasn’t he! But it isn’t right, in my opinion, that he’s under a pile of stones. It isn’t proper, to my mind, that he is totally forgotten.

 

HE SPEAKS TO ROBERT.

 

ANEIRIN: Have you heard of him? Have you heard of Ywain?

 

ROBERT: Yes.

 

ANEIRIN: What? What? What? You’ve heard of him?!

 

ENTER DOCTOR UNWIN.

 

UNWIN: Thanks, Aneirin.

 

EXIT ANEIRIN.

 

UNWIN: The risk is very hard to quantify because it’s never been tried.

 

ROBERT: Doctor, when I set up in business my father told me I was an idiot and I had no chance.

 

UNWIN: No chance!

 

ROBERT: In my first ten years I made a hundred and fifty million. No chance is great odds for me.

 

UNWIN: Not for me, Robert.

 

ROBERT: No. Sorry about that. I’m supposed to be shaking like a leaf and you’re supposed to be granite. Bedside.

 

UNWIN: It’s hardly ever like that.

 

ROBERT: No?

 

UNWIN: No. Other way round. After the initial shock.

 

ROBERT: It’s not bravado. I don’t do bravado.

 

UNWIN: No. No pretending, Robert. Never seen a patient pretend. Not past a certain stage. So what do you want to do?

 

ROBERT: Go for it, definitely. Fuck it. Totally. Here I am, Solomon, do what you want with me. I donate my  body to medical science. Give it back to me alive, if you can. Otherwise – put it down to experience.

 

UNWIN: What about the halfway stage?

 

ROBERT: Eh?

 

UNWIN: Neither one thing nor the other, neither dead nor alive. There is a document that you can sign.

 

ROBERT: Oh I see. Saying whether or not I should be kept alive.

 

UNWIN: That’s right.

 

ROBERT: As a cabbage.

 

UNWIN: Oh I wouldn’t put it like that. More of an onion. It’s amazing what we can do these days.

 

ROBERT: Hm.

 

UNWIN: Elizabeth has it. Here she is.

 

ROBERT: She’s up to speed.

 

UNWIN: She’s up to speed.

 

ENTER ELIZABETH. SHE HAS AN ORNAMENTAL DAGGER ON A CHAIN AROUND HER NECK.

 

UNWIN: Hello Elizabeth.

 

ELIZABETH: Hello, Solomon!

 

EXIT UNWIN.

 

ELIZABETH: Oliver’s here. And Marva.

 

ROBERT: Christ.

 

ELIZABETH: Him too. They’ve got him in a little bag

 

ROBERT: You haven’t by any chance brought Dionysos? In a little box? Or Aphrodite,  as an antidote?

 

ELIZABETH: They can be sent away. Solomon will send them away.

 

ROBERT: He is a mighty King. Only problem – too many wives. Each from a different religion. Chaos  – seventy different types of chanting. Seven hundred. The poor man was, well you know his domestic life was a heap of theological dog’s breakfast. Israel’s never recovered.

 

ELIZABETH: Do you want him to send them away, my darling?

 

ROBERT: If they could be kept at bay for a little moment.

 

ELIZABETH: Of course.

 

EXIT.

 

ROBERT: Make it the Bay of Biscay. The blasting hound of the – keep the – the murdering doe, the sweet gentle Friar with the longbow, his cutthroat cruxifix, keep it out!

 

RE-ENTER ELIZABETH.

 

ELIZABETH: At bay, love.

 

ROBERT: No end of strength.

 

ELIZABETH: What, love?

 

ROBERT: No end of strength required, and provided. Total Wall of China.

 

ELIZABETH: You are.

 

ROBERT: Too much love. Too much bloody love.

 

ELIZABETH: Oh, oceans.

 

ROBERT: The more, the more distantly related. You bring just a little, just enough. Oliver, being my brother, brings twice as much, much too much, and Marva, merely an In-Law, Christ on a bike, she brings enough to fill the dry wells of Arabia! Terrific strength, though!

 

ELIZABETH: Yes!

 

ROBERT: No match. On my two feet, love, I was a reed compared to this! They think I’m flat laid out, I’m not. You know that, you see the castle rock! Bloody marvellous! Unscaleable! I have seen them clump in here with crampons and picks, all the latest belaying tactics – one glimpse and they turn round and walk out, shaking their heads. K2’s a mere tumulus! A swelling. You know that. I am the mountain.

 

ELIZABETH: You are enormous, my darling! You are growing bigger and bigger!

 

ROBERT: Tiny little planet you live on. Got to be going. Bye bye Legoland!

 

ELIZABETH: Have you, love?

 

ROBERT: I reckon. Is it alright? Is it alright, darling?

 

ELIZABETH: Yes it’s alright. More or less.

 

ROBERT: Best thing you’ve ever said. Thanks. Thankyou, my love. Of course, I could be wrong

 

ELIZABETH: Yes.

 

ROBERT: Could be fine.

 

ELIZABETH: Quite.

 

ROBERT: Or –

 

ELIZABETH: Yes?

 

ROBERT: Could be lettuce.

 

ELIZABETH: Yes.

 

ROBERT: Beef tomato.

 

ELIZABETH: Yes.

 

ROBERT: In which case, switch off.

 

ELIZABETH: Yes.

 

ROBERT: Alright? There is this document.

 

SHE HAS A COPY.

 

ELIZABETH: This is it here.

 

ROBERT: This here is it. I and you and Doctor Solomon Unwin have got to sign it.Then that’s that.

 

ELIZABETH: Easy.

 

ROBERT: Shake.

 

THEY SHAKE HANDS.

 

ROBERT: Kiss.

 

THEY KISS.

 

ROBERT: Now let in the beasts.

 

ELIZABETH: Robert, Oliver is terrified. Watch out. If you go, it all rests on him. He doesn’t want it. Nor to hand it over to anyone else.

 

ROBERT: I don’t know that you’re right. He’s good. An idiot, but good, pretty good.

 

ELIZABETH: He’s terrified.

 

ROBERT: I don’t know that you are right about that.

 

ELIZABETH: Marva is fanatical. Listen to me, Robert.

 

ROBERT: She is very strong, very persuaded.

 

ELIZABETH: She is a Fundamentalist. Which is to say, just as scared as him but better equipped with phrases. They will try to stop you, my darling.

 

ROBERT: From dying? The bastards!

 

ELIZABETH: They will keep you whatever! Whatever’s left!

 

ROBERT: I don’t know that you are –

 

ELIZABETH: I know that I am! You wait!

 

ROBERT: But you and I have made up our minds. We will sign.

 

ELIZABETH: Yes!

 

ROBERT: Kiss.

 

THEY KISS.

 

ROBERT: Shake.

 

THEY SHAKE.

 

ROBERT: They try to keep me lettuce, I am standing beside you, inside you, alright, saying no. And Solomon, and all his wives – seven hundred fucking Fundamentalists! And three wopping great signatures like Yalta! I am not going to let that filthy little bishop sneak me over to the King!

 

ELIZABETH: King Solomon? What bishop?

 

ROBERT: Aidan! Ethelfrith, my darling! Not to mention our daughter!

 

ELIZABETH: Our daughter?

 

ROBERT: She will say no prayers for the Gododdin!

 

ELIZABETH: What is the Gododdin, my darling?

 

 

THREE. CHORUS, CARRYING GWEFRFAWR, WHO IS DELIRIOUS.

 

GWEFRFAWR: We charged, Gododdin! Chased them back over the sea! Did you see how they ran? Did you see? Catraeth is ours! Now for the south!

 

LITTLE JONES: Isn’t he dead yet?

 

MRS JONES: Why don’t you ask him?

 

LITTLE JONES: Are you dead, Gwefrfawr, are you?

 

GWEFRFAWR: Arthur has come again!

 

LITTLE JONES: Yes I think he is.

 

MARTHA: I’m hot, Mrs Jones. Are we nearly home?

 

MRS JONES: Well you know how near the moon is?

 

MARTHA: Terribly far!

 

MRS JONES: Home is much closer than that.

 

MARTHA: Thankyou, Mrs Jones.

 

OLD JONES: Ah Gwefrfawr, Gwefrfawr, you were our champion!

 

MRS JONES: Never mind that, there will be an official poem.

 

JONES: He is the last of the heroes, the last of them!

 

MARY: He is going to die soon.

 

GWEFRFAWR: Merlin!

 

MRS JONES: An astonishing prophecy, Mary.

 

OLD JONES: He was – he was –

 

MRS JONES: Don’t strain yourself. Get up, everyone. The Saxons are not far behind.

 

LITTLE JONES: Gwefrfawr is dead!

 

MRS JONES: Good. We don’t have to carry him.

 

 

FOUR.  DUN EIDYN. (EIDYN’S FORT.)A SAD AND DISCONSOLATE GATHERING OF IMPORTANT PEOPLE WAITING TO BE SLAUGHTERED. EIDYN (BRANDON,) MARVA (MIRAVEH,) OLWEN (ELIZABETH,) BISHOP AIDAN (OLIVER,) ANEIRIN (AS POET.) A FEAST. MANY PLACES EMPTY. THOSE PRESENT HOWEVER DRINK TO MAKE UP FOR THEM.

 

EIDYN: Not many at the feast! A skeleton

Of what we were, sad crowd of ghosts around us,

Spirits extremely willing to extinguish

The wrecking enemy, but now unable

To lift a sword of straw. It is an issue

Of flesh and blood. The dead who died to save us

Cannot assist us, and we must discount

Those thousands in the ground, when reckoning

Our numbers. What we have to face is this,

Even while feasting – that the earth has got

Not just the best of us, but most of us.

We called together, from the British Kingdoms,

From everywhere the English have not conquered,

From north and west and south, a choice of champions,

All our most famous fighters in a flock,

And this unlikely gathering of falcons,

These hawklike horsemen, having drunk with us

For twelve months, with a swarm of footsoldiers,

Passed through our southgate, aiming for Catraeth,

To get it back, and to drive out the English.

Then we heard nothing for a little time,

Dreaming of glory, the return of Arthur,

That kind of thing. Then just one man returned,

Raving in broken poetry his half-rhymes

Of the disastrous charge, the champions fallen,

All our strength vanished. Now the enemy

Is crashing through the fords towards Dun Eidyn,

This, our last fortress. They are bellowing,

As cattle do, released at winter’s end

From the dark barns, they kick their legs and canter,

Stung by the whooping drovers, and the waters

Are tortured for a long time by their passing

To the spring pastures!

 

HE DRINKS.

 

                                          But so what, Gododdin?

Each one of us is worth ten Englishmen!

The fewer of us that are left, I reckon,

The bigger each will be!

 

ANEIRIN: Then the last one on his feet will be a giant the size of Canterbury Cathedral!

 

EIDYN:                                 Stand up, Aneirin,

And drink with me, let’s multiply our numbers

By each man getting down enough for ten men!

Even you, Bishop Aidan! Even you,

Miraveh, all the royal family –

You as well, Olwen! Flood the underworld!

 

ANEIRIN DRINKS LARGE AMOUNTS, AIDAN SIPS A LITTLE. OLWEN ALOT, MIRAVEH ALOT.

 

OLWEN: What’s a Cathedral?

 

MIRAVEH:                         Since he lost his mind,
The poet mostly speaks about the future.

 

EIDYN: Tell us Aneirin, do we beat the English?

 

ANEIRIN: King Eidyn, you are reborn after a long time, into a Christian family.

 

EIDYN: I should think so!

 

AIDAN:                                Amen. But not Amen.

One life is all we have, one chance of heaven.

 

MIRAVEH: That is not very generous of Jesus.

 

ANEIRIN: It is quite rare in those days, for a whole family to be Christian.

 

EIDYN: It sounds as though the English win, and then

Turn Christian Britain into pagan England.

 

ANEIRIN: Maybe they do, I don’t know, King Eidyn. But you are very rich!

 

AIDAN: That is the just reward of faith – or would be.

 

ANEIRIN: But then your wife, who is a pagan, wins you away from Christ!

 

EIDYN: Ah! Do you hear that, bishop? Miraveh

Becomes a second Eve, and pulls me sideways

Into the pit. Or are we not repeated

In the same patterns, poet, do I marry

Somebody else? Perhaps an Englishwoman?

 

ANEIRIN: It could be somebody else but not anybody else, King. You could be reborn as a woman, or a bishop. And Olwen as a man. And you could marry your daughter.

 

AIDAN: Horrible nonsense and demonic madness.

 

ANEIRIN: It was the ancient teaching of the druids.

 

OLWEN: How do you know?

 

AIDAN:                                   They told him in a dream!

The dreams of madmen are the antechambers

Of hell, and all the spirits in that prison

Can climb by means of smoking tunnels upwards

Into the dreams of lunatics to teach them

Satan’s philosophy, the demon’s wisdom.

Hell is a kind of Alexandria,

A library of burning books, lost errors

Mingling their smoke, the noxious atmosphere

Aneirin breathes, and every other madman.

 

EIDYN: But we must treat him with respect. His madness

Is the result of lying under corpses

After Catraeth, after all our heroes

Fell in the fight. The English did not spare him,

He is alive because they did not find him!

 

ANEIRIN: (SINGS.)

In a house made of earth

With a chain round my legs,

Not a King of proud birth.

Laughing at the hairy slugs.

 

OLWEN: Nevertheless – he is a heretic!

 

AIDAN: All heretics are lunatics.

 

EIDYN:                                            Yes, but

Is lunacy a heresy? I think

A heresy, though misguided, is a faith,

Or else the Church would not be fussed with it.

But lunacy is not a faith, I think.

 

OLWEN: Yet who can shake a lunatic’s belief

In his own lunacy? You will find no

Stronger believer than a lunatic!

EIDYN: Insanity is not a doctrine, Olwen.

 

OLWEN: Insanity is a unique religion –

Only one follower, clinging to his teaching.

Pope, bishop, cardinal and congregation

All in one person, burning to convert

The entire world, though the world’s mind is dead

To the new language of his revelation!

 

AIDAN: Sanity is agreement, and the Church

Is a great big agreement based on Truth.

Outside it, everything is raging madness.

It is a castle standing in an ocean

Whose fighting waves are millions of opinions!

 

ANEIRIN: Did I ever tell you about Madog?

 

EIDYN: Gododdin, silence! Listen to Aneirin!

 

ANEIRIN: A very shy man, with women.

 

EIDYN: Yes he was!

 

ANEIRIN: Couldn’t get a word out, gasping like a goldmine!

 

EIDYN: Poor Madog!

 

ANEIRIN: Red cloak over his breastplate, brooch at the shoulder, very neat.

 

EIDYN: I remember!

 

ANEIRIN: Paid for the drink you gave him.

 

EIDYN: Of course he did – with his life!

 

ANEIRIN: Right at the moment when the Charge! went up, his shield burst into splinters, smashed by a shaft through the boss. He never took prisoners.

 

EIDYN: Never!

 

ANEIRIN: He would not retreat till their was blood on his blade.

 

EIDYN: Ha!

 

ANEIRIN: Whatever the odds.

 

EIDYN: Madog!

 

ANEIRIN: Terrified of women but.

 

EIDYN: A passionate lover of combat!

 

ANEIRIN: King! When you come to your next death, listen –

 

AIDAN: We cannot have this heresy, King Eidyn!

We are outnumbered by the enemy

As sheep by flies, and they are swarming windblown

Through our last villages, black smoke towers rising

North, south, east, west. Here we are in Mount Zion,

Pleading with God to spare us by sheer grace,

And he will not, if we protect this heresy!

 

EIDYN: Bishop, drink up! This man was at Catraeth,

And you were not.

 

OLWEN:                    He must be rooted out!

 

EIDYN: The last survivor?

 

OLWEN:                           None of us will live!

 

EIDYN: Drink is the only wisdom in this case!

Miraveh, sweetheart, tell me what you think!

 

MIRAVEH: That you should listen to this man. His head

Has been smashed open by gravedigging death,

As if he was the sleeping earth itself,

Or an old chamber flooded by the light.

He can remember teachings never written,

Lost to the living, the dear land’s own wisdom.

What does the bishop know? He has not slept

Under a corpse-heap, all his Roman truth

Is lifted out of books, his God has given

Nothing to us, though we have drunk his blood –

Which is a starving kind of mother’s milk.

 

AIDAN: Great God will crush you if you fail this test!

If you stand by him to the very last

Then he will save you!

 

MIRAVEH:                   We are past that post.

 

OLWEN: Mother!

 

MIRAVEH:        Aneirin has been lifted up

From poetry to prophecy, a gift

To the Gododdin at the gates of death.

And we should follow him.

 

EIDYN:                         Another drink,

Bishop?

 

AIDAN: Do not step back into the dark!

 

ANEIRIN: I’d like to tell you about Gwefrfrawr.

 

MIRAVEH: Tell us about the future, not the past!

 

EIDYN: What shall I do?

 

OLWEN:                     If you abandon Christ,

Then I will leave you, father!

 

EIDYN:                                      Little one,

Where will you go?

 

OLWEN:            The truth has room enough!

Error is dark and narrow!

 

EIDYN: (EXTREMELY DRUNK.) I do not

Believe in Jesus.

 

AIDAN:                     Then your cause is lost!

 

EXEUNT AIDAN AND OLWEN.

 

 

FIVE. CHORUS CROSSES THE STAGE, ALL EXCEPT MARTHA, AND EXEUNT. ENTER MARTHA, COUGHING AND SNIVELLING.

 

MARTHA: Wait! Wait!

 

SHE SITS DOWN, SNIVELLING. ENTER GWEFRFAWR (GHOST), WHO LOOKS AT HER AND THEN EXITS.

 

MARTHA: Gwefrfawr!

 

RE-ENTER OTHERS.

 

MRS JONES: Come on, Martha!

 

MARTHA: Gwefrfawr! I saw Gwefrfawr!

 

OLD JONES: He has returned!

 

MRS JONES: Only his bloody ghost.

 

MARTHA: We did not bury him! We did not say any prayers!

 

MRS JONES: Well say some now then!

 

MARTHA: God bless you Gwefrfawr. Go to heaven and stop following us. We’re not going anywhere.

 

LITTLE JONES: We are! We’re going home!

 

MRS JONES: Come on then.

 

LITTLE JONES: Mrs Jones –

 

MRS JONES: Yes, Little Jones?

 

LITTLE JONES: Why did God let us lose? We had so many heroes.

 

MRS JONES: Plenty of heroism, no plan of action. Total morale, zero discipline. Huge enthusiasm. But no plan. No plan. Also they were drunk.

 

LITTLE JONES: If they died drunk, will they still go to heaven?

 

MRS JONES: They were pissed in the name of Christ. Come on.

 

 

SIX. HOSPITAL. ROOM OUTSIDE ROBERT’S ROOM. ANEIRIN, CHANGING INTO NURSE’S UNIFORM.

 

ANEIRIN: I’d like to ask you to focus for a moment on a man called Cadfannan. Very impressive in combat. Like an eagle swooping on its living food. What he said he would do, he did. They scrammed, they scarpered. You couldn’t stand up to him if you had not breakfasted on eggs and bacon. Weird, to see a pack of dogs ripping the meat off him.

 

ENTER MARVA.

 

MARVA: You look after Robert, don’t you?

 

ANEIRIN: I try. Aneirin.

 

MARVA: Marva. I am his brother’s wife. It must be hard to keep cheerful here!

 

ANEIRIN: Oh Robert doesn’t seem too down.

 

MARVA: No I mean you!

 

ANEIRIN: Well it doesn’t matter about me!

 

MARVA: Why not? I think it does!

 

ANEIRIN: As long as I can function.

 

MARVA: I will pray for you.

 

ANEIRIN: Thankyou.

 

MARVA: I am a Christian.

 

ANEIRIN: Oh. Nice.

 

MARVA: I’d like to think I had a friend here. I find it very difficult indeed.

 

ANEIRIN: I’ll be your friend!

 

MARVA: Thankyou, thankyou, Aneirin! What worries me most is what happens if – the operation on his brain – if it goes wrong and he is left in a coma. Well to me it is important never to give up!

 

ANEIRIN: You mean it might be not so much a coma as a commer?

 

MARVA: Yes! A brief pause. Not a full stop. What do you think he thinks?

 

ANEIRIN: I think he wants to live.

 

MARVA: I want him to live! But it’s his wife I’m worried about. She has a different attitude.

 

ANEIRIN: Oh.

 

MARVA: Aneirin, when you and he are alone – encourage him not to – to    sign –

 

ANEIRIN: I know what you mean.

 

MARVA: Will you?

 

ANEIRIN: I’ll do what I can. I always do what I can.

 

MARVA: Thankyou!

 

EXIT ANEIRIN. ENTER OLIVER.

 

MARVA: I dread to think what she’s saying to him!

OLIVER: Marva, does it matter? She loves him.

MARVA: In her own way! Not in Christ. Her love is possession.

OLIVER: Well that’s good then, let her keep him, if she can keep him alive.

MARVA: That’s  not her way of keeping him! She’ll put him in some little cupboard in hell till she comes for him.

OLIVER: Marva!

MARVA: Oliver, I don’t blame her! She has no one else! No God!

OLIVER: She has hundreds of them!

MARVA: More than one is less than none. She is alone, totally alone. Her man, this shape of flesh she thinks is her husband, is dying. She has no Promise, she has no platform of Salvation. So she’s desperate – insane! She’ll do anything, deal, bargain with any ridiculous demon, and they are thronging, of course they are, millions of them, like flies swarming, sniffing for any scrap of spirit! They’re everywhere in hospitals, you can’t swab them, can’t drive them out with disinfectant! You can’t clean the darkness out of a room with anything else but light. They are here, and she has no protection, no gloves, face-mask, nothing. They are flying like germs into her lungs, abseiling into her heart through the holes in it made by a Christless lifetime. And so, she is, to all intents and purposes, a madwoman, a woman possessed.

OLIVER: Elizabeth?

MARVA: Don’t be fooled by the calm exterior, the perfect marriage, the beautiful home. She is devoted, yes, but to the wrong thing!

OLIVER: Robert?

MARVA: To what is not lasting! Now more than ever unlasting! I don’t know what she will do, but she will do the wrong thing, and make him do the wrong thing, right now at the very edge, at the critical moment, to which we are rushed by diminishing hearbeats, each breath weaker than the last but more important. She has no guide! She is hollow!

OLIVER: She is not hollow!

MARVA: Where are the children? Why has her house not been blessed with any children?

OLIVER: Perhaps –

MARVA: Rubbish! She has wrecked a family that has been Christian and wealthy for four centuries! A part of the history of England! The Church itself is shaken!

OLIVER: We have always had eccentrics – if Robert wants to die a pagan, God bless him!

MARVA: God will not bless him! It makes me so frantic – it’s different for you, Oliver, if you had been born like me with a thousand gods around you, dancing on the dead and dribbling blood on their strings of skulls, you would not be so blasé about Jesus Christ! You would not take God for granted!

OLIVER: Well whatever we think, whatever we most fervently believe, we have got to respect the fact that she is his wife. We are not. You are not and I am  not. We are here at one remove, we can’t fret overmuch, we musn’t make things worse for Elizabeth. That would not be very compassionate, would it! We can only pray, and that is what I propose that we do – not anguish, not convulse, pray only.

MARVA: You want him dead!  

OLIVER: What? Marva, please, please, control yourself. You didn’t say that, you didn’t say that, you didn’t say that.

MARVA: Will you fight her or not?

OLIVER: I don’t see what the issue is.

ENTER SOLOMON FROM ROBERT’S ROOM.

OLIVER: Doctor Unwin?

UNWIN: They’re glancing through the Living Will. Want to see you in a minute.

OLIVER: Alright. Thanks.

EXIT UNWIN.

MARVA: Now do you get it?

OLIVER: No I don’t.

MARVA: She is making him sign a contract.

OLIVER: He knows all about those.

MARVA: Who knows all about this moment? Who knows? Where are the experts on death, those who have come back to tell us about it, what to do, how to be, step by step patiently explained! Where are the seminars?

OLIVER: He has got good sense. Best I’ve ever known!

MARVA: She is the expert on death!

OLIVER: What do you mean?

MARVA: Don’t even try to imagine what I mean! She knows what she should not know, more than we are supposed to know, more than we can cope with knowing!

OLIVER: You have strange ideas about her, very strange – just because she isn’t a Christian!

MARVA: There are many kinds of non-Christian. There are the atheists – we are not concerned about them, except in the abstract – there are the poor old Don’t Knows, and then there are the Expert Occultists, our enemies, and she is one of those.

OLIVER: A little bit, yes. But to be honest, Marva, if she’s a witch I don’t think she’s a fantastically powerful and wicked one. I totally and utterly do not approve and am appalled, but – I don’t think it’s such an enormous problem.

MARVA: She is about to kill your brother.

OLIVER: No she isn’t.

MARVA: Watch closely.

ENTER ELIZABETH.

ELIZABETH: Oliver, Marva, won’t  you come in and see him?

 

 

SEVEN. CHORUS, EXCEPT MARTHA, GWEFRFAWR.

 

LITTLE JONES: Where is Martha

MRS JONES: If she doesn’t catch us up she’s dead. God bless her. Maybe the Saxons have got her.

 

JONES: I will skewer them!

 

HE FALLS OVER HIS PIKE.

 

MRS JONES: This is the end of the bread.

 

SHE SHARES BREAD OUT.

 

OLD JONES: Don’t give any to me, I am just an old man.

 

MRS JONES: Have a little bit, like in church.

 

LITTLE JONES: This was Neirthiad’s helmet! He was the greatest of them all, Neirthiad!

 

HE PUTS IT DOWN ON THE GROUND.

 

JONES: Let them come, let them come! This is where I take my stand!

 

HE STANDS HOLDING HIS PIKE OUT IN THE DIRECTION OF THE SAXONS.

 

MRS JONES: Leave it behind, leave it behind!

 

JONES: I will hold them off!

 

MRS JONES: No you won’t!

 

JONES: I will not leave it!

 

MRS JONES: But you can’t carry it!

 

MARY: You will die soon, Mr Jones.

 

MRS JONES: And how about you, Mary?!

 

JONES: Leave me, leave me, carry on!

 

MRS JONES: Idiot!

 

EXEUNT, LEAVING JONES, AND HELMET.

 

JONES: I will stand my ground, in the helmet of Neirthiad!

 

HE PUTS ON THE HELMET. ENTER MARTHA, STRUGGLING ALONG.

 

MARTHA: Hello, Mr Jones!

 

JONES: Sit down here, Martha! When they come, I will skewer them!

 

 

EIGHT.  DUN EIDYN. EIDYN, ANEIRIN. ENTER MIRAVEH CRYING.

 

MIRAVEH: I have seen Olwen with the English King!

I saw them from the tower. To the east

Where the road splits the hills I saw them riding.

I did not see his army. She had brought him

To view our walls, to show him where to break them!

 

EIDYN: How could she want us dead?

 

MIRAVEH:                          She is a Christian.

 

EIDYN: The English King is not!

 

MIRAVEH:                             The once-believer

Has the worst stench. She took the shock of God

Into her blood. When you cut free of Jesus,

A roar of outrage from the white-winged choir

Flashed from the clouds into the earth through her.

Didn’t you see her gasping like a trout?

You are an Apostate, a once-believer –

King Ethelfrith is not. To be a pagan

Is very bad, but to have been a Christian

Is the worst sin of all. Compared to you,

Ethelfrith is a rock.

 

EIDYN:                 Well then, Aneirin,

What shall we do? What is the future saying?

 

ANEIRIN: They are going to cut open your head, King Eidyn.

 

EIDYN: To let the devil out? To see what I am thinking?

 

ANEIRIN: A woman is concerned.

 

MIRAVEH: Well that is something!

 

ANEIRIN: That you might be caught, King Eidyn, your body alive but your spirit flitting.

 

MIRAVEH: Who is this woman?

 

ANEIRIN: (TO EIDYN.) She wants to keep your heart beating.

 

EIDYN: That’s good.

 

ANEIRIN: Even if your spirit is wandering.

 

MIRAVEH: It might come back again!

 

ANEIRIN: Another woman – and you agree with this – she wants to let you die.

 

EIDYN: To set my ghost free?

 

ANEIRIN: If necessary.

 

EIDYN: I do agree

MIRAVEH: But what about the English? Sink, Aneirin,

Into the shallow grave of the Gododdin,

And lead them back alive! Is there no knowledge,

Warm from your cauldron of remembering,

To bring back our dead army? Why did Caesar

Murder the druids? Wasn’t he afraid

That they would raise a dance of ghosts, a muster

Of those who wish to fight but lack the fabric,

And breath’s enchantment? Even in the Bible,

Dry bones are dancers. If you can go forward,

Can you not also take the dark road down

Into the powers that are past, to help us?

 

EIDYN: Even one fighter out of all the fallen -

Cynon, Neirthiad, Erthgi, Blaen, Aeron –

 

ANEIRIN: I don’t know, there seems to be everything missing!

 

MIRAVEH: A sacrifice?

 

EIDYN:                     I will give everything!

 

MIRAVEH: I think it is a sacrifice. The heroes

Did not die willingly. The earth demands

A willing death. I feel it in my bones,

That would rise too, if someone died for them!

 

EIDYN: Another kind of Christianity!

Older and stronger! And it must be me.

The King must die to set the people free!

 

MIRAVEH: At easter!

 

EIDYN: That is tomorrow!

 

ANEIRIN: What did I say? What did I say?

 

 

NINE. CHORUS. MRS JONES, OLD JONES, LITTLE JONES, MARY.

 

MARY: We are lost.

 

MRS JONES: Not at all. Little Jones, can you climb that tree? You’ll see Dun Eidyn.

 

LITTLE JONES: I will try.

 

EXIT LITTLE JONES.

 

OLD JONES: I am an old man. A very old man. Incredibly old. But when I set my eyes on Dun Eidyn, I will jump up and down and I will gurgle like a baby.

 

RE-ENTER LITTLE JONES.

 

LITTLE JONES: Well I can’t see it.

 

MRS JONES: What did you see?

 

LITTLE JONES: I saw the sea.

 

MRS JONES: The sea? Then we have gone the wrong way.

 

OLD JONES FALLS DEAD.

 

MRS JONES: You didn’t foresee that, did you, Mary?

 

MARY: Didn’t need to.

 

LITTLE JONES: So which way should we?

 

MRS JONES: This way!

 

EXEUNT THE WAY THEY CAME IN.

 

 

TEN. BY ROBERT’S BED. ROBERT ASLEEP. ANEIRIN.

ANEIRIN: Let me work this out then. Brandon is Eidyn, no problem. Marva is Miraveh, that’s pretty easy, they’re similar names. And she’s not his wife this time, though she’s still in love with him. She’s up to something else now, not sacrifice, desperate to keep him alive this time. Olwen’s Elizabeth. Tired of being his daughter she’s decided to marry him. To rule him better? To make up for betraying him? But she’s not fixed on keeping him breathing, like Marva is, who planned the sacrifice. That’s a wound she still feels, though she doesn’t know what it is that she feels. Ethelfrith’s Unwin, trying to save life now instead of slaughtering. But it’s complicated, something of the murk is dogging him, shallow graves behind his eyes. Still he’s working it out as best he can, putting it right with a scalpel. Oliver is Aidan, that’s straightforward. He was too strong before, made a bit of a dogmess with his dogma, so he’s opted for weakness in this life. A risky stratagem. So the pack shuffles itself. But Aneirin is Aneirin. 

ROBERT WAKES UP.

ROBERT: What?

ANEIRIN: Did I ever tell you about Breichiawl?

ROBERT: Ah, Breichiawl!

ANEIRIN: And Gwefrfawr!

ROBERT: Yes, Gwefrfawr!

ANEIRIN: Great connoisseur of red wine!

ROBERT: He was!

ANEIRIN: Massive consumer of claret!

ROBERT: Out of my cellar!

ANEIRIN: But he paid for it when they counter-attacked! Incredible. Blood running out of his mouth. Had an amber necklace. You are going to be sacrificed.

ROBERT: Whose idea was that?

ANEIRIN: Yours. To raise the dead warriors.

ROBERT: Alright.

ANEIRIN: The foreign woman wants to keep you alive.

ROBERT: Why?

ANEIRIN: She regrets what’s going to happen.

ROBERT: Thankyou, Aneirin.

ANEIRIN: It’s just a question of doing it in time, before the English break in.

ROBERT: Is there no way to delay them?

ANEIRIN: Actually I think there might be.

EXIT ANEIRIN. ENTER ELIZABETH, MARVA, OLIVER.

ROBERT: Strong possibility of complete weakness. And therefore. Decision to pull out the plug. Let all the filthy and tepid bathwater run out, the scum. Let it out. Decision if such is the analysis, rests with Elizabeth.

MARVA: Analysis?

OLIVER: If the doctor decides.

ELIZABETH: If the doctor says that Robert has entered into a permanently vegetative state.

MARVA: Permanent? What is permanent? Was the British Empire permanent? They tend to be premature, these declarations of permanence.

ROBERT: Two pillars! Two towers!

MARVA: They were not permanent!

OLIVER: He means two authorities.

ROBERT: Solomon and Eliza!

MARVA: Don’t you have to have the agreement of several doctors? Like a college of them? A Royal Society?

ROBERT: This is your Eliza, ok? Get it? This is Bess, you don’t argue with her, Harry was her dad – or she’ll cut off your head! Alright? This is Virginia, this is the Fairy Queen – watch it! What she decides, that is. And you and your Armadas, you with all your brave sails up, in all the winds, you just tack into the lee of obedience. See? This is Gloriana. Ok?

MARVA: Ok, Robert. It just makes me uneasy, my dear, to have you so absolute. And we will be here, and anything could happen. It would be better if we had some small freedom of action.

ROBERT: See this paper? This will? It is nothing. Air. Who cares if I’ve signed? It means nothing. It can be interpreted.

MARVA: Good!

ROBERT: But only by her!

MARVA: Oh.

OLIVER: Of course.

ROBERT: I don’t want my fate decided by committee!

OLIVER: Anyway I’ve got a strong feeling you’re going to be fine, all this is academic. Robert – you are strength itself, dear God in heaven, I have never known anyone, there has never been anyone so strong! What you have built, what you have done – it’s incredible! I have just stood by with my mouth open! Strength, self-control, authority!

MARVA: So if he has decided to die - !

OLIVER: Why would he?

MARVA: Have you?

ROBERT: Ha! From now on Elizabeth makes all my decisions! Ha!

MARVA: As I said!

OLIVER: What?

MARVA: If I were you I would say goodbye to my brother!

ROBERT: Go on then, Oliver, say goodbye to me!

OLIVER: Well I can say goodbye. Goodbye! But I can’t say a very emotional goodbye because I don’t believe that you are going to die.

MARVA: Do you, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH: He may.

MARVA: He has your permission?

OLIVER: What?

ELIZABETH: Marva, my darling –

MARVA: Tell me Elizabeth, tell me plainly. I will put Christ aside, you Artemis, just between you and me – what is this? Is this some kind of sacrifice? Some rite I don’t understand? Something is not right, God, something is not right! I am standing here watching the best man on earth being taken away and I don’t understand!

OLIVER: It is true, it is true, he is better than me. If I could put myself in his place –

MARVA: Shut up!

ELIZABETH: Marva, here, take my hand. Look, there is nothing strange happening. Robert is about to have a dangerous operation on his brain and if it goes wrong he may be left in a state he does not want to be left in. This document promises that in the event of that happening he will not be kept alive unnaturally.

MARVA: You will switch him off? You will switch off this man?

ELIZABETH: It will not be him.

MARVA: Please, Elizabeth, I beg you, don’t take him!

 

ELEVEN. CHORUS. MRS JONES, LITTLE JONES, MARY.

 

LITTLE JONES: Which one of us will die next, Mary?

 

MARY: I don’t know, Little Jones, I’m too tired to have prophecies

LITTLE JONES: Bet you do know.

 

THEY COME TO A PARTING OF WAYS.

 

MRS JONES: Two ways. This way or that way?

 

LITTLE JONES: This way!

 

MRS JONES: That way!

 

LITTLE JONES: You were wrong before!

 

MRS JONES: But I’m right now.

 

LITTLE JONES: Mary?

 

MARY: All looks the same to me.

 

LITTLE JONES: Well I’m going this way!

 

EXIT.

 

MRS JONES: Well I’m going that way.

 

MARY: He’ll be the next to die.

 

 

TWELVE. ETHELFRITH ON HIS THRONE, AIDAN, OLWEN.

 

AIDAN: King Ethelfrith, we serve the King of heaven!

We were obedient servants of King Eidyn

Till he rebelled!

 

OLWEN:     Allying the Gododdin

With death, as if to swim across the ocean,

A man should swallow rocks!

 

AIDAN:                           He has abandoned

The narrow track and plunged with his whole people

Over the cliff edge!

 

ETHELFRITH:            This is interesting.

 

OLWEN: King Ethelfrith, we give you the Gododdin!

 

ETHELFRITH: I love the way you British hate yourselves.

It saves us blood. Dun Eidyn would have fallen

Anyway, but your help is very welcome.

I am extremely interested in Jesus,

Who can force love into such jagged patterns.

I am not sure that I would like to serve him.

 

OLWEN: It is enough for us to hear you name him,

King Ethelfrith. The rest is up to heaven.

 

ETHELFRITH: I do not think that victory is Christian.

Often enough it comes to us mere pagans.

What you have told me, raises the Gododdin

Almost to equals in my estimation.

Your news is not good.

 

ENTER ANEIRIN.

 

ANEIRIN: I have better! King! Look out! There’s an angel behind you!

 

ETHELFRITH: Who is this man?

 

OLWEN: This is our poet, Aneirin!

 

AIDAN: King, this man fought against you at Catraeth!

 

ETHELFRITH: Well he was not alone in that. Aneirin,

How many of you got away?

 

ANEIRIN:                                 Three, King.

Me and two dogs, belonging to the warriors

Aeron and Cynon, who could not control them,

Since their blue lips had lost the trick of whistling.

 

ETHELFRITH: Good that the poet lived, to make the slaughter

A notable defeat, to be recited.

 

ANEIRIN:

Half a league, half a league, half a league onward,

Into the valley of death rode the three hundred!

 

AIDAN: King, you must kill this man!

 

ANEIRIN: I have got news, King! You must not attack Dun Eidyn!

 

ETHELFRITH: It will take more than that to stop me, poet!

 

ANEIRIN: If you delay just for an hour, King Eidyn will be dead!

 

ETHELFRITH: Is he sick?

 

ANEIRIN: King Ethelfrith! Eidyn has decided to make a sacrifice!

 

ETHELFRITH: Of what?

 

ANEIRIN: Himself!

 

ETHELFRITH: The King. That is a very ancient rite.

 

ANEIRIN: Not even I, a pagan, could stomach it! So I have fled to you for safety.

 

ETHELFRITH: That is a terrible and dark decision.

Certainly he believes no help will come

From anyone on earth. So then we have him.

But there is genius in this, the black

Of absolute despair is like an oven

Containing flames. If you can open it,

Light that is brighter than God’s eyes leaps out.

Yes. But it will be easier for us

If he is dead. The Dun will then be ripe,

Fall of its own accord into our grip,

Almost. The few defenders, cloudy-eyed,

Will not put up a very famous fight,

Shedding their floods beside the stretched-out shape

Of their last hope. Aneirin, I will wait

Till Eidyn has achieved his sacrifice.

Go back to him at once and tell him that.

 

ANEIRIN: I will, wise King!

 

ETHELFRITH:                            And tell him and tell them

What you have seen. The hills all round Dun Eidyn

Wooded with my oak warriors, leaf-eyes bright,

Under iron caps. Go and recite that fact.

 

EXIT ANEIRIN.   

 

AIDAN: Eidyn has pushed out Christ – but to replace him,

To fill infinity, what has he chosen?

 

OLWEN: Himself!

 

AIDAN:                  The man is doubly, triply doomed!

 

OLWEN: Clowning the Christ, he makes a leap at heaven!

 

AIDAN: And his gashed body crashes to the ground!

And he steps down into the pantheon

Of old crow gods and old cow gods, not heaven

But heaven’s old broken dung-floored byre, the owl’s home!

 

OLWEN: King, you are right to wait and let them kill him!

 

ETHELFRITH: I will not wait. That was a lie to trick them.

I will attack at once and capture Eidyn

Before he can descend among the old ones,

Sleeping in earth, whom he intends to muster

After his sacrifice. I must prevent him,

Or Death will be the King of the Gododdin,

And I cannot fight Death. Dogged in his den,

Eidyn has found the only road left open,

And I must block it.

 

AIDAN:                      No, King Ethelfrith –

His sacrifice is meaningless! Lord Jesus

Laughs at its echo of his own!

 

ETHELFRITH:                    A soft,

Creeping approach, the grass brushing our stomachs.

 

 

THIRTEEN. CHORUS. MRS JONES, MARY.

MARY: We are not going to make it, Mrs J.

 

MRS JONES: Is that a prophecy or just a moan, Mary?

 

MARY: Both.

 

MRS JONES: The Saxons are not hunting us anymore, Mary.

 

MARY: Because we are lost in an enormous forest.

 

MRS JONES: Keep going.

 

MARY: Why?

 

MRS JONES: You never know.

 

MARY: We are not going anywhere except heaven. And it’s too far to walk.

 

MRS JONES: Alright, goodbye. Say hello to God for me.

 

EXIT MRS JONES. MARY SINKS TO THE GROUND.

 

 

FOURTEEN. WAITING ROOM. MARVA, ANEIRIN.

ANEIRIN: Have you ever heard of a man called Neirthiad?

MARVA: No, Aneirin.

ANEIRIN: Born killer. Walked around like a wave of funerals. Gunshots echoing in the heads of mothers. He wasn’t what you would call a pacifist. Wonderful patriot. What he said he would do, he did. Neirthiad. A specialist. Among the dead I would say he is especially dead.

MARVA: Aneirin, do you think she is mad?

ANEIRIN: Most likely.

MARVA: Will you help me? Will you testify to that effect to Doctor Unwin? You have heard her saying strange things by his bedside?

ANEIRIN: I will testify, definitely.

EXIT. ENTER OLIVER.

MARVA: So you are happy then.

OLIVER: Not in the slightest, Marva.

MARVA: You will be nothing!

OLIVER: I know!

MARVA: What he built will not survive him! That is what she wants! She always hated it! She was always secretly against him! She will give it all away – throw it to the winds –

OLIVER: She will not have the authority.

MARVA: Will you stop her?

OLIVER: I will do my best!

MARVA: No good! She’ll outwit you easily, you’ll be glad to creep away into the shadows with one or two million.

OLIVER: Pretty glad.

MARVA: That is why she will win! But it is not what he wants! And there is no one to fight for him!

OLIVER: Except you!

MARVA: Why won’t you help me?

OLIVER: Well Marva, if it comes to it –

MARVA: It will come to it.

OLIVER: How do you know?

MARVA: It is just what would happen. He enters into the air, fixed there between his body and heaven, and she has him! He has signed! You can’t say you will help me when, you will fight when, come to life when, it happens, it has happened. When he signed, then it was written. He has no other choice. He will not die, he will not live. He will enter into that land where she has him.

OLIVER: What do you want me to do, my darling?

MARVA: It is not him dying that I fear. It’s her switching off the machine. I fear for him then.

OLIVER: I fear for her!

MARVA: Well then, that is something! A little fear at last, even if totally misplaced, that is something, that is something. Will you help me speak to the Doctor?

OLIVER: And say what to him?

ENTER DOCTOR UNWIN, TIRED.

UNWIN: Pretty much ready to go ahead.

MARVA: Doctor, we are not happy with what has been signed.

UNWIN: Nor me, nor me, nor me, I live to save lives, if I possibly can. But I have to accept that there are limitations. The dear old body will die, it just will, you can fight but it fights back and wins by losing. Nothing you can say to it, nothing, it just turns a dead ear.

MARVA: Doctor Unwin! We do not believe that Mrs Brandon has made a responsible decision.

UNWIN: No. I agree. But it is a decision. In this situation responsibility goes off the scale, tips all other considerations, becomes an enormous dull bludgeon that knocks out the emotions. And to make a decision without emotion is frankly irresponsible, but what can you do when responsibility itself is irresponsible? No possible response but to make a decision.

MARVA: You are talking nonsense, Doctor Unwin!

UNWIN: What are the grounds of your objection?

MARVA: How can she not want to keep him alive?

UNWIN: It is a joint decision.

MARVA: Is he in his right mind?

UNWIN: Are you?

MARVA: I have almost gone mad but I believe that I am sane not to want him to die.

UNWIN: You are sane, Mrs Brandon, but you are pushing against an irresistible stream. Come with me on a tour of the hospital and I will show you two thousand ways of dying, some of them quite healthy.

MARVA: You don’t understand me. I think that she does not want the best for him!

UNWIN: Do you agree, Mr Brandon?

OLIVER: It is possible.

UNWIN: Ah. Right. Bloody hell. Ok. So shall I stop the operation?

MARVA: Maybe!

UNWIN: Do you have evidence?

OLIVER: No.

UNWIN: Delay is extremely risky.

MARVA: Delay!

OLIVER: No!

MARVA: Is there anything we can do to change what has been signed?

UNWIN: Prove that she is insane.

RE-ENTER ANEIRIN.

MARVA: Aneirin – tell Doctor Unwin!

ANEIRIN: Doctor, she is dangerously mad.

UNWIN: Really, Aneirin?

MARVA: She has a dagger hanging round her neck!

UNWIN: It’s an ornament.

MARVA: She prays up on the roof!

UNWIN: Nice view.

ANEIRIN: I have heard her saying strange things.

UNWIN: Like what?

ANEIRIN: She believes that when we die we get born again.

UNWIN: Half the world believes that, Aneirin.

ANEIRIN: It may be sane in Leicester, but it’s stark raving mad in Leamington Spa.

UNWIN: Religious beliefs are not sufficient grounds.

MARVA: Doctor, don’t you understand? It means she doesn’t care if he lives or dies! With us it is different! One life! Only one life, ever!

ANEIRIN: Now that’s what I call sanity, Doctor! Listen to the woman! She speaks with the authority of all the saints! Saint Jerome, Saint Augustine of Hippo, Saint Denis, Saint Simon, that pillar of the establishment, Saint Giles, Saint Guthlac –

UNWIN: Quiet, Aneirin!

OLIVER: What would be sufficient proof?

UNWIN: Inchoherence.

MARVA: She is completely incoherent!

UNWIN: Violence towards others or self. Self-harm. Excuse me.

EXIT.

ANEIRIN: I did what I could.

EXIT.

MARVA: Violence?

OLIVER: We can only hope.

 

FIFTEEN. CHORUS. MRS JONES.

MRS JONES: I would like to know this, God. If you don’t mind me asking. Suppose I die now, as seems incredibly likely, or soon, very soon, alot sooner than later, since it is the fashion, everybody’s doing it, everyone has done it, except me, so far, it seems. Supposing. As I am a believer, I am a Christian, psalm-warbler, wafer-nibbler, incense-sniffer – I’ve got all the right habits – but a lot besides. I am greedy, furious, stupid, ignorant, foul-mouthed and filthy-minded. What the hell are you going to do with me in heaven? I’ll wreck the place, I’ll traumatise your angels and puke all over the golden pavements. You can’t keep out a Christian. But I don’t feel as though I’ve done anything or learnt anything. What can I remember? A battle and an old man clutching his pike to the bitter end. A short sweet fart of a life. Ridiculous. What the hell are you going to do with me in heaven?

 

SHE DIES.

 

SIXTEEN. DUN EIDYN. EIDYN, MIRAVEH.

 

 

EIDYN: It must be done at once, before the English

Splinter the gates. We might hold out for days,

Or we might not. Our ship is still afloat,

But a big sea is building under us,

And we have got to calm the storm with blood.

 

MARVA: We must assemble all the people first.

Gather them in the courtyard.

 

EIDYN:                             That will not

Take very long. There are not many left.

 

MARVA: Eidyn! I am not ready for this rite!

 

ENTER ANEIRIN.

 

ANEIRIN: King! Queen!

 

EIDYN: Aneirin! Call together all the people!

 

ANEIRIN: I will. But let the sun rise to its height, don’t worry. I have been over to the English. I have seen your daughter and the bishop. I told the King about my friends his friends killed. My friends would have killed his friends if his friends hadn’t killed my friends. But still, I thought I’d tell him some of their names. Cydwal, Llifiau.

 

MIRAVEH: Why are you still alive, Aneirin?

 

ANEIRIN: He wanted me to tell you, Ethelfrith, the King dog, that his troops are numerous.

 

EIDYN: We know that.

 

ANEIRIN: And that he will not attack until after your sacrifice. He wants you dead. So, King, don’t oblige him!

 

EIDYN: The words you said when you were mad are true.

There is no death, if we are born again.

 

MARVA: And we have time! No need to hurry now.

 

EIDYN: Or to delay. Aneirin, call the people,

But do not frighten them, no need to rush them.

 

EXIT ANEIRIN.

 

MIRAVEH: We ought to drink.

 

EIDYN:                                 Of course we must, as always!

 

THEY DRINK.

 

MIRAVEH: And you must wear this shirt, with bees and flowers.

Take off your crown, take off your shoes, my darling.

You only need the shirt now, and the garland.

 

EIDYN: There is just time left, nothing left but time,

Which is cheap stuff.

 

MIRAVEH:       A broken bed to lie on.

 

THEY MAKE LOVE. 

 

 

SEVENTEEN. CHORUS. ENTER JONES THE PIKE, WITH PIKE AND HELMET.

 

JONES: Hey, Mary! Mary! Over here!

 

ENTER MARY.

 

MARY: Is it you, Jones? It must be – you with the pike! Oh I’m glad to see you!

 

JONES: What happened to you, Mary?

 

MARY: I came to a bad end, Mr Jones. Just like my mama said – ‘If you don’t stop telling lies, the wolves will eat you up!’ She was right. They did.

 

ENTER LITTLE JONES.

 

MARY: Little Jones! What happened to you, Little Jones?

 

LITTLE JONES: Oh bloody hell, I fell off a cliff in the dark! Broken into bits. Didn’t think I’d get out of that.

 

JONES: I have it, Little Jones! Look! Neirthiad’s helmet! You can have it back!

 

LITTLE JONES: Thanks! I’ll keep it on, in case I fall on my head again. Oh look it’s Martha!

 

ENTER MARTHA, COUGHING.

 

MARTHA: Coughed myself to death and I’m still coughing! Jones the Pike!

 

JONES: I held them off, Martha, after you stopped breathing. For awhile.

 

MARTHA: Well done, Jones!

 

ENTER OLD JONES.

 

OLD JONES: Died old and I’m still old. Even older.

 

ENTER GWEFRFAWR, WITH SWORD AND ARMOUR.

 

GWEFRFAWR: Gododdin!

 

CHORUS: Gwefrfawr!

 

GWEFRFAWR: God bless you, Gododdin! You are the ones who carried me! Well, you see, after all, we were not defeated! So, let our courage be double! This is the mead of battle! We have passed through death! What can touch us? Look over there, see, there are the Saxons. We are going to fight them. This is an empty place, treeless and riverless and without mountains. Nevertheless we will drive them out of it! Gododdin!

 

HE LEADS THEM OFF.

 

 

EIGHTEEN. ROBERT’S ROOM. ROBERT, ELIZABETH.

 

ELIZABETH: They are coming in one minute.

ROBERT: Alright.

ELIZABETH: The bed has wheels, they will just push you on the bed, along the corridor, very smooth.

ROBERT: Good.

ELIZABETH: They have put you in a special kind of shift for the operation. They will shave your head, they will draw lines on it.

ROBERT: Excellent.

ELIZABETH: But you won’t be there, the lights will be very bright and clear and clean, and the uniforms clean and the air clean, but you will not be there.

ROBERT: Where will I be?

ELIZABETH: Well you will be out. You will up or you will be down, I don’t know for certain. Maybe you will go into an animal, like a moth for instance, or a mouse, just for that little while.

ROBERT: Better not get eaten!

ELIZABETH: It won’t matter. Wherever you are you’ll come back again, when they have finished. Then you’ll be here, right here, again, just where you are now, but fixed. And then, after a little while, we will go home.

ROBERT: No need to say goodbye then.

ELIZABETH: No need.

ROBERT: Everything fixed, the whole deal signed in advance, a proper contract.

ELIZABETH: No loopholes at all.

ROBERT: Thankyou my love, you are incredibly strong, and you have managed everything and everyone amazingly well. I’m sorry, that’s so patronizing, and I oughtn’t to be surprised or to comment at all. I am very sorry if I have ever assumed that you would not be or were not capable. In actual fact I should have handed over everything , or much much more, to you a long time ago, you are much stronger than me, I am almost terrified by your strength, if it was me I would be down on my knees hanging on, begging you not to go, I wouldn’t let them wheel you away. We should have only women soldiers in the army, or women Generals anyway, we’ve got the whole bloody thing wrong, all our leaders should only be women, you have converted me to yourself. Hold me tight my darling with your magic, hold me. These people are just machines.

ELIZABETH: I am holding you.

ROBERT: It is magnificent. It is truly amazing. There is nothing on earth mightier than you. Nothing. The Egyptians are proud of their pyramids and in Nepal they have their enormous mountains, but here we have got you in England. An arch so vast the moon could pass through it.

ELIZABETH: Here they are.

ROBERT: You have weighed it up. You have added and subtracted and this is your plan and you are sticking to it.

ELIZABETH: It is our plan.

ROBERT: No, it is yours, is yours, was yours from the beginning.

ELIZABETH: I will be waiting here for you.

ROBERT: I will not return.

ELIZABETH: Here he is.

ENTER ANEIRIN.

ANEIRIN: Ethelfrith has delayed the attack!

ROBERT: Thankyou, Aneirin!

ELIZABETH: Thankyou, Aneirin!

ANEIRIN WHEELS ROBERT OUT. ELIZABETH STANDS. ENTER MARVA.

MARVA: Has he gone?

ELIZABETH: He has gone.

MARVA: And so?

ELIZABETH: So nothing.

EXIT ELIZABETH.

MARVA: Madwoman!

ENTER UNWIN, HURRYING.

MARVA: Stop, doctor!

UNWIN: Quite impossible!

MARVA: I have got evidence that she is insane!

UNWIN: Tell me later.

MARVA: You have got to blot out her signature, right now, it is impossible that she should have authority!

UNWIN: Let go of me please!

MARVA: At least delay!

UNWIN: No!

MARVA: Just so that I can present my evidence!

UNWIN: Oh! What is your evidence?

MARVA: Ah, doctor! Just now I came in here. I know I should not have done. He had just been taken, that second! She did not go with him!

UNWIN: Please!

MARVA: Doctor Unwin, you have got to understand, this is one of the greatest living men. And one so kind, and profound, a man who is adored, adored, madly adored, and she just stood there, her face did not quiver, never mind a tear! She was nowhere near tears! Standing there in satisfaction, job done, job done!

UNWIN: This is not sufficient evidence of madness.

MARVA: It is! In such circumstances not to go mad is insane!

UNWIN: Excuse me.

EXIT UNWIN.

MARVA: To let him die, even to be able to imagine him dying! To sign what she signed – that is insane, that is insane!

EXIT CRYING.

 

NINETEEN. CHORUS, LED BY GWEFRFAWR.

 

GWEFRFAWR: There they are!

 

OLD JONES: What is our plan?

 

GWEFRFAWR: To fight them! I will lead the charge! Gododdin, Gododdin! Charge!

 

ENTER MRS JONES.

 

MRS JONES: Stop! Stop it! Stop!

 

JONES: Mrs Jones!

 

GWEFRFAWR: Join the fight!

 

MRS JONES: No! There’s no point! Don’t be stupid! You’ve got to move on.

 

JONES: What do you mean?

 

MRS JONES: You can’t stay here, this is the moon.

 

LITTLE JONES: The moon?

 

MARY: The moon!

 

MARTHA: This is the moon!

 

MRS JONES: Mary and Martha understand!

 

MARTHA: Yes, we have got to keep going.

 

MRS JONES: See, the Saxons are moving! They are not attacking us. Look at them, off they go.

 

GWEFRFAWR: They are taking off their armour – letting go their horses – dropping their weapons –

 

MRS JONES: Someone has told them. See, that man? He told me. Did nobody tell you?

 

LITTLE JONES: Only you.

 

MRS JONES: You have got to take off your helmet. You have got to put down your pike. Finally. And everything else. You, Gwefrfawr, have got to disarm. Or stay stuck here.

 

GWEFRFAWR: We will do none of these things!

 

LITTLE JONES: I will.

 

TAKES OFF HELMET.

 

MRS JONES: Come with me, then.

 

MARTHA: I will go with you.

 

MRS JONES: See, you’ve stopped coughing! Are you coming, grandpa?

 

OLD JONES: Yes I am!

 

TAKES OFF GREY WIG AND THROWS AWAY STICK.

 

Now I’m not old anymore!

 

EXEUNT ALL BUT GWEFRFAWR AND JONES.

 

GWEFRFAWR: We will hold onto this plain, I with my sword, you with your pike, until the trumpet of doom!

 

JONES: And we won’t let go of it then!

 

 

TWENTY. DUN EIDYN. COURTYARD. EIDYN KNEELS. MIRAVEH WITH AXE, SINGS.

 

MIRAVEH:

Queen of my life, Queen Rose, Queen Bee,

Out of the light you sent to me

One of your servants, no, your King.

It is my thanks for that I sing.

As the bee dives into the flower,

And not to shelter from a shower,

But for a taste of her true heart,

And not with fear but like a dart

Entering boldly, piercingly,

Because it has the right, so he,

Wandering hero of the hive,

Entered the light that is alive,

And there is honey in the cup.

Like the sunrise I lift it up.

 

SHE DRINKS.

 

Rosmerta, Queen of Love, yours is the hive

To which we flit. The flowers of this world

Hold us awhile, but then we must return,

Carrying lightly what we have acquired,

To make the honey of eternity.

Give me the strength of Death, Queen of the Bees!

You know I love him as I love the sun,

You gave me to him and gave him to me,

The sweetest love this world has ever known.

Move my love over to the cooler moon,

Give me the silver of her resignation,

Because the price of love is sacrifice!

 

SHE LIFTS THE AXE.

 

 

TWENTY-ONE. CHORUS. GWEFRFAWR AND JONES, DEFENDING.

 

GWEFRFAWR: Did you hear a faint trumpet?

 

JONES: No, I didn’t hear anything.

 

GWEFRFAWR: We have sworn to stand.

 

JONES: We have sworn.

 

GWEFRFAWR: The rest of them are lost.

 

JONES: Lost, lost!

 

GWEFRFAWR: But we have proved true!

 

JONES: We have.                                                                                           

 

GWEFRFAWR: Unless – this is not the right place.

 

JONES: There is a very bright spot away there to the east.

 

GWEFRFAWR: Perhaps that is where the champions are gathered.

 

JONES: Let’s go and look.

 

GWEFRFAWR: I will have to put down my sword – take off my breastplate – there.

 

HE TAKES THEM OFF.

 

They will have better ones for us. The champions.

 

JONES: Yes!

 

EXEUNT RUNNING.

 

 

TWENTY-TWO. OPERATING TABLE. ROBERT, UNCONSCIOUS. UNWIN, OPERATING.

 

UNWIN: Once the land was a giant, they say, walking around on its two feet, shaggy woods hanging from its groin and pits, paps of mountains smoking, rockhead, rock fingers, sea flowing in and out of its arse. Then it got anaesthetized, like you Robert, lay down, a long time ago, not on the ground, it was the ground, but lay down and that is the ground, great knocked out stretched out person, in a Persistent Vegetative State, pushing up cabbages and daisies by the billions of billions. And that is what we operate on, just like I draw these lines on you, Robert, the surveyors stretch out their tapes, they triangulate, they find the precise point to put in a post, to take something out. We have got alot to thank unconsciousness for, dear God, if the earth wasn’t out for the count, if it hadn’t been anaesthetized like you Robert, we could not dig the coal and the gold out, or lay pipes, imagine the screams, the contortions! We would have to deafen ourselves, we would have to rope the earth down with steel hawsers! Yes we have got alot to thank unconsciousness for, it would be an even noisier world. Most of what we have learned we have learned from dreams, maybe everything. So, into battle.

 

 

TWENTY-THREE. HOSPITAL ROOF. ELIZABETH. ANEIRIN HIDING.

 

ELIZABETH: Quiet sky. Some planes but. Odd helicopter but. Still more or less the same sky. Bigger than history. Under my feet, Robert, three or four floors down. And everything else. Spleens, hearts, livers, arteries. Kitchens, toilets, playrooms. The Chapel. Are you here, Artemis? The mountains, you say, are yours, but what about a hospital roof? You are here, wise one, wild one. Lady of the Beasts. Look at me, look at me, please, with the eye of the whole sky look into me. Is there any shadow of wanting him to die? Is there any tiniest part or inch that is free of agony? If so the price that I pay is not enough. Look into me, Artemis, weigh me. I will stand very still, you will see. If I move at all – the slightest twitch, he is yours. Watch me.

 

SHE STANDS VERY STILL.

 

 

TWENTY-FOUR. HOSPITAL CHAPEL. OLIVER AND MARVA, SINGING.

 

OLIVER, MARVA:

Let all the world

In every corner sing

My God and King!

The Church with psalms must shout,

No door can keep them out,

But above all the heart

Must bear the longest part!

Let all the world

In every corner sing,

My God and King!

 

MARVA: I can’t stand it! I know she is praying to Artemis to take him! Up on the roof! I have got to stop her!

 

OLIVER: Leave her!

 

 

TWENTY-FIVE. CHORUS EXCEPT GWEFRFAWR AND JONES. AN OLD RUINED CHAPEL.

 

 

LITTLE JONES: What’s this place?

 

OLD JONES: An old chapel is it?

 

MARTHA: No tombstones.

 

MRS JONES: It’s a long time since we had a Sunday service.

 

MARY: We’ve got no priest.

 

MRS JONES: So what. We deserve a funeral. None of us has been decently buried. Who wants to be the priest?

 

OLD JONES: I will. I used to be old. And priests are old. Often.

 

MARTHA: What will you say?

 

OLD JONES: The usual things.

 

MARTHA: Yes but it’s all been disproved. What’s this place? It’s not hell, it’s not heaven . It’s the moon!

 

MARY: Never heard anything about this in church.

 

OLD JONES: Well we are on our way to heaven. Probably. Dearly beloved. We are gathered together in memory of ourselves. Dust to dust, ashes to ashes. However, we are not dead, or so it seems. Um.

 

MARTHA: It’s useless to us, that religion!

 

MRS JONES: Leave it here, dump it! That’s what this place is for! Learn a new one!

 

LITTLE JONES: Look – there’s two children chasing after us!

 

ENTER GWEFRFAWR AND JONES, PLAYING CHASE.

 

GWEFRFAWR: Got you, Saxon!

 

JONES: Death to the Gododdin!

 

THEY ROLL ON THE GROUND, PLAY FIGHTING.

 

MRS JONES: The war is won. By both sides. Move on, move on.

 

 

TWENTY-SIX. EIDYN KNEELING, MIRAVEH HOLDING UP THE AXE. ANEIRIN.

 

 

MIRAVEH: Now I must simply not be Miraveh.

She must get out and take her lonely road

Into the hills, while the vacated vessel

Gapes for the goddess.

 

EIDYN:                      Lovely Miraveh,

You must go now. Go now, my love, goodbye.

 

MIRAVEH: It is the goddess. Miraveh has vanished.

 

SHE IS ABOUT TO KILL HIM. NOISE OF SHOUTING AND FIGHTING.

 

MIRAVEH: The enemy is here! He fooled you, poet!

Ethelfrith!

 

EIDYN: Give me that!

 

TAKES THE SWORD. EXIT WITH ANEIRIN.

 

MIRAVEH:                       They are inside!

Shut eyes, keep out the death of the Gododdin!

While I hold up this axe they cannot kill him.

But I am only Miraveh again,

Goddess gone out of me, an empty woman!

 

SHE STANDS, EYES SHUT, HOLDING THE AXE ABOVE HER HEAD.

 

 

TWENTY-SEVEN. CHORUS. LITTLE JONES, DIZZY AND SPINNING.

 

LITTLE JONES: Mrs Jones, Mrs Jones! I’m so dizzy, I’m so dizzy!

 

ENTER MRS JONES, LIKEWISE.

 

MRS JONES: So am I, Little Jones, so is everybody!

 

ENTER MARY.

 

MARY: My life’s going backwards! It’s exhausting!

 

ENTER OLD JONES.

 

OLD JONES: We’re allowed a little rest –

 

ENTER THE REST, SPINNING.

 

MARTHA: My life’s going backwards!

 

JONES: So is mine!

 

MARY: Double speed! Two days every day!

 

GWEFRFAWR: What I did to others I suffer myself –

 

OLD JONES: The good and the bad!

 

GWEFRFAWR: If I’d known, if I’d known!

 

OLD JONES: We’re allowed to collapse –

 

LITTLE JONES: Just for a minute!

 

THEY ALL COLLAPSE INTO A HEAP.

 

 

TWENTY-EIGHT. HOSPITAL ROOF. ELIZABETH.

 

ELIZABETH: Strength flitting in and out of me. Full-empty, full-empty. Strong, weak. Is she ebbing out of me, finding fault in me, having searched out the deepest part of me, found it lacking in love? Must not move!

 

LOUD SOUND OF RADIO SONG, SENTIMENTAL ROCK-BALLAD. ENDS.

 

DJ: The A303 southbound is blocked due to a fire in a lorry that was carrying haybales. Two ambulances have collided on the B732 near Harmsworth, resulting in severe delays in both directions. Pretty much everything else is ok though, getting along very nicely indeed, thankyou very much! Everything flowing, yes everything speeding along! That’s why I’m feeling fine! Now Patricia, where’s that piece of pecan pie you promised me? Patricia promised me a piece of pecan pie. Peter gave it to her straight out of the pan. She said please please please Peter can I have a piece of pecan pie out of the pan for Patrick? Peter said, Patricia, if Patrick wants a piece of pecan pie straight out of the pan, please, put it on a plate –

 

ELIZABETH: Oh!

 

SHE CLAPS HER HANDS OVER HER EARS. REALISING WHAT SHE HAS DONE, SHE TAKES HER KNIFE AND CUTS HERSELF. SHE FAINTS. ENTER MARVA WITH RADIO, STILL PLAYING. TURNS IT OFF. GOES OVER TO ELIZABETH, LOOKS AT HER BLEEDING ARMS.

 

MARVA: Not sufficient evidence.

 

TAKES ELIZABETH’S KNIFE.

 

MARVA: Oh! Sharp!

 

SHE CUTS ELIZABETH WORSE.

 

MARVA: To save a great life!

 

 

TWENTY-NINE. CHORUS. SING.

 

MRS JONES: We have heard and seen unimaginable things –

 

MARY: We’ve lived our lives right back to the beginning –

 

MARTHA: After the Moon, Venus -

 

OLD JONES: And from there to everything –

 

JONES: Our minds have been given wings –

 

GWEFRFAWR: And now we have to fall asleep again –

 

LITTLE JONES: And wake up as babies –

 

MRS JONES: And drag our wings along the ground –

 

MARY: But first we must choose who we will be –

 

MARTHA: After a thousand years or more –

 

OLD JONES: In the best of schools -

JONES: We have got to forget everything!

 

 

THIRTY. MIRAVEH HOLDING UP THE AXE.

 

MIRAVEH: Arms fire, bones glowing orange in the fire.

I am a mountain pierced by shoots of lava.

Fighting for Eidyn, oh my bones are burning.

 

ENTER AIDAN AND OLWEN.

 

AIDAN: What is she doing?

 

OLWEN:                      Holding up her husband.

 

AIDAN: Then it is up to us to make her drop him!

 

OLWEN: No! Do not touch her!

 

AIDAN:                           Superstitious, Olwen?

Christ cancels out all magic. Trust in him.

Only the willing can be tricked.

 

OLWEN:                                    To force her,

Bishop, will break him, maybe, but not her.

But if she drops it by herself, her failure

Will break her heart. We can discourage her

With hymns and curses, but we must not touch her!

 

AIDAN: Force is unchristian it is true. The refuge

Of faithlessness. The heart needs to be armoured

Outside, if God is not inside!

 

OLWEN:                                   Therefore,

If with our faith we undermine my mother,

Not with our fists, we will have served Christ better!

 

AIDAN: This is Christ’s magic. Miraveh’s is instinct

And animal, but Olwen yours is thoughtful

And sent from heaven, where intelligence

Has its deep root whose flower is the human.

 

OLWEN: Not all of us!

 

AIDAN:                              Hear me, Queen Miraveh!

Wrapped in a haze of passions and of starsigns,

You seal us out. Your mind that is a cave

Painted with dancing animals and stagmen,

Admits no entrypoint to us. Your thinking

Is clenched on ashes, lodged in the forgotten,

Which you have dragged out of its grave misshapen,

Unrecognisable! The sound of Latin

No doubt is birdsong now to you, and birdsong

Logical speech. But you have got to listen.

If any grain of your old self remains,

Listen with it to what I have to say,

Because it is the truth. The end has come,

The worst has happened. God has raised his hand,

And lifted up the English as the sword

With which to hack your head off. It has gone,

Miraveh, it has not yet hit the ground,

But it is falling wide-eyed through the air –

Useless for you to grab it by the hair!

 

OLWEN: Mother! This is the end of the Gododdin!

Abandon magic and return to Christ,

Before you die. We are all likely dying

Today – I do not think the English King

Will leave a single one of the Gododdin,

Not even us, after our use is finished.

Join us! The demons you have entertained

Lately, will drag you down out of your body

For endless entertainments if you do not

Cross back to Christ! The end is  not too late,

Forgiveness is his essence. Otherwise,

Death is a trapdoor and your spirit drops

Straight into darkness!

 

AIDAN:                         Arguments are useless!

It is not us, but Christ that is convincing!

So we must push ourselves aside, like screens

That hide the light! Replace our disputations

With prayers, our thoughts with emptiness, our words

With the good void, through which the good Lord enters!

 

OLWEN: Sing!

 

AIDAN:     We shall sing!

 

OLWEN:               What shall we sing?

 

AIDAN:                                          An anthem!

 

THEY CHANT A LATIN ANTHEM. ENTER EIDYN WITH SWORD, EXHAUSTED, WOUNDED.

 

EIDYN: It is no good to sacrifice myself,

Miraveh has to do it! Miraveh!

I have fought through the pack to you, my love.

Ethelfrith is the huntsman on my track.

Miraveh, shed my blood, save the Gododdin!

 

MIRAVEH: First kill these Christians!

 

EIDYN:                                                   Kill me, Miraveh!

 

SHE STEPS TOWARDS HIM.

 

AIDAN: Grab hold of her!

 

EIDYN:                      Keep back! To kill you, Aidan,

Would give me wings of joy! To kill my daughter

Would be like falling to my death. However,

I will do both, and suffer grief and rapture

At the same time, if you step any closer,

Either of you! Christ cannot stop midsummer!
Now, Miraveh!

 

ENTER ETHELFRITH, WEARY AND WOUNDED. LEAPS IN AND STOPS MIRAVEH, KNOCKS THE AXE OUT OF HER HAND. EIDYN PICKS IT UP.

 

EIDYN: If you kill me, the sun is at its height,

It is the right time! If I cut you down,

It is no loss! We will descend together

Into the dark. But only I will rise!

 

THEY FIGHT. ETHELFRITH WOUNDS EIDYN’S ARM SO THAT HE DROPS THE AXE.

 

EIDYN: Miraveh!

 

AIDAN: Now!

 

OLWEN AND AIDAN GRAB MIRAVEH. ETHELFRITH PUTS HIS FOOT ON EIDYN’S NECK.

 

ETHELFRITH: Be grateful. I have saved your life, King Eidyn.

 

 

THIRTY-ONE. CHORUS. A BIG BOX OF COSTUMES.

 

JONES: This is it! Ready to jump? We’re going! Gwefrfawr, champion, what are you going to be?

 

GWEFRFAWR: I’m going to be a woman. A strong woman. In a uniform.

 

HE PUTS ON A WIG, BRA, AND MATRON’S UNIFORM.

 

JONES: I’m going to be a doctor – instead of my pike, a needle!

 

MARY: I’m going to be born blind.

 

MARTHA: Why, Mary?

 

MARY: So I can still see things.

 

MARY TAKES A WHITE STICK AND DARK GLASSES.

 

JONES: Mrs Jones?

 

MRS JONES: I have got to follow you and you me, Mr Jones. I’ll be a man this time, you can be the wise one!

 

SHE CHANGES.

 

JONES: We will all end up in the same place. I’m going to do what you do, Gwefrfawr!

 

PUTS ON MATRON’S UNIFORM.

 

MARTHA: I am going to cure people of fevers.

 

OLD JONES: You are going to save me!

 

LITTLE JONES: I am going to be famous!

 

MARTHA: No you’re not, Little Jones!

 

LITTLE JONES: Well I am going to want to be.

 

JONES: Ready to jump? Three two one -

 

 

THIRTY-TWO. HOSPITAL. WAITING ROOM. OLIVER, MARVA. ENTER UNWIN.

MARVA: It has gone wrong, hasn’t it, doctor?

UNWIN: Please, I have got to talk to Mrs Brandon.

MARVA: I am Mrs Brandon!

UNWIN: The other Mrs Brandon!

MARVA: Surely his brother and me outweigh her!

UNWIN: No.

MARVA: Doctor, she is not in her right mind!

UNWIN: So you say.

MARVA: So his brother says! Don’t you, Oliver?

OLIVER: Certainly I find her difficult to understand –

MARVA: That is because she is totally insane!

UNWIN: I must ask you to wait outside.

MARVA: No!

UNWIN: Mr Brandon –

OLIVER: Marva, please –

MARVA: Alright! The sane outside, the insane inside!

EXEUNT OLIVER AND MARVA. ENTER ELIZABETH, BLEEDING.

ELIZABETH: Doctor.

UNWIN: Mrs Brandon! You have cut yourself, badly. Aneirin!

ENTER ANEIRIN. GETS BANDAGES. RE-ENTER MARVA AND OLIVER.

MARVA: Elizabeth! What happened?

ELIZABETH: Glass. On the roof.

UNWIN: Glass on the roof?

MARVA: Did you do this to yourself, Elizabeth?

ELIZABETH: Yes!

ANEIRIN: It’s not too bad.

MARVA: Where is the knife?

OLIVER: Oh, Elizabeth!

ELIZABETH: You can’t save him.

UNWIN: Well there is a faint possibility.

ELIZABETH: No there isn’t.

UNWIN: How can you be so certain?

ELIZABETH: How can you be so uncertain?

UNWIN: That’s my job! While there’s life there’s hope!

ELIZABETH: Persistent Vegetative Hope?

UNWIN: Mrs Brandon, you have signed what you have signed –

ELISABETH: Doctor, have you changed your mind?

UNWIN: I never had a mind! I am just saying – it is in your hands.

ELIZABETH: It always was in my hands.

UNWIN: The idea of it. But now the actual fact. I’m sorry.

ELIZABETH: Please don’t be sorry. It’s not your fault.

UNWIN: It is incumbent on me, of course, to ask you, now that the worst – the second worst, has happened, to ask you if you still stand by what you have signed.

ELIZABETH: I do.

UNWIN: Even though there is a faint chance.

ELIZABETH: There is not a faint chance.

UNWIN: How do you know?

ELIZABETH: I know you cannot say that there is not.

UNWIN: That is true.

ELIZABETH: So if you say there is, I know that there is not.

UNWIN: That doesn’t follow.

ELIZABETH: (SHOUTS.) Do you expect things to follow things? Things do not follow!

UNWIN: I’m sorry.

ELIZABETH: Don’t be sorry! It’s my fault!

UNWIN: What?

ELIZABETH: Anyway I stand by what I signed. I am not going to oppose that superior person!

UNWIN: What superior person?

ELIZABETH: Who signed! That was a person whose husband was alive!

UNWIN: He is still alive.

ELIZABETH: Why do I feel so different then?

MARVA: Let’s all go home, we’re all so tired. Sleep, go for a walk by the sea. It’s impossible to think, here.

ELIZABETH: It is not necessary. All the thinking has been done. Enough thinking.

MARVA: That’s right, Elizabeth!

ELIZABETH: So shut down and goodbye and never come here again till we die. As agreed. Nothing here now. Thankyou. Goodbye.

MARVA: But Elizabeth, be careful! Before, you signed something very silly. You must quickly unsign before you leave the hospital or we will all be very sorry.

ELIZABETH: I signed what my husband told me to sign.

MARVA: He was unwell.

ELIZABETH: Well, yes.

MARVA: And you were unwell, as we now see. Poor Elizabeth! Doctor Unwin?

UNWIN: I am not going to discuss this in front of Mrs Brandon.

ELIZABETH: Discuss what?

UNWIN: Responsibility!

ELIZABETH: What are you saying?

MARVA: If you were not well, then what you signed loses authority.

ELIZABETH: I see!

MARVA: Elizabeth, we have all tried our best to hold him up but we couldn’t do it.

ELIZABETH: That’s true.

MARVA: We tried! We prayed, in our own different ways, you and I. Something intervened.

ELIZABETH: That’s true.

MARVA: We couldn’t keep him well. Only the doctors can. There is a faint chance still, isn’t there, doctor?

UNWIN: There is a faint chance, yes.

MARVA: We have got to go home and lie down. We can’t do anything. Or walk by the sea. But first you must unsign.

ELIZABETH: I will not unsign.

UNWIN: Well anyway it doesn’t matter.

ELIZABETH: Why?

UNWIN: I have tried. I am sorry, Mrs Brandon. I can no longer accept that you are responsible. I am transferring responsibility to this man and this woman. I have got to remove this burden from you. You are now under my care, Mrs Brandon.

ELIZABETH COLLAPSES.

ELIZABETH: Doctor, help me! All of my strength has gone! I fought too hard!

MARVA: Of course you did, all of us did, we are all exhausted.

UNWIN: I can’t help you, Mrs Brandon.

ELIZABETH: I am not what I thought I was. I will unsign, I will unsign.

EXEUNT ALL BUT ANEIRIN.

ANEIRIN: This is because he’s been captured! And what about Aneirin? Lost in the fight, dead with the rest of the Gododdin, dead in Dun Eidyn. Oh no I’m not. I’ve been buried under a heap of corpses again. Still alive, Aneirin, still alive, poet, still raving!

ENTER CHORUS, GOING ABOUT THEIR DUTIES IN THE HOSPITAL, OR BEING CURED OR LOOKED AFTER.  

ANEIRIN: Don’t I know you people from somewhere?

 

THIRTY-THREE. EIDYN AND MIRAVEH’S BED CHAMBER. MIRAVEH, ETHELFRITH. HE HAS JUST RAPED HER.

 

ETHELFRITH: This is the bed where I will give you children.

And they will never hear of the Gododdin.

 

EXIT.

 

MIRAVEH: With her man dead, a woman can abandon

Her heart, allow it to be buried with him.

It falls in battle, dies of sickness with him,

Or of old age, grey withered heart that exits

Even a youthful body, if true love

Has tied it to a man who dies before her,

Older than her. And then her empty body,

Free of its wishful heart, can lie down under

Another husband, powerful provider,

Appointed Lord, or even murderer

Of her true love. She has that faculty,

To separate the spirit from the body.

But if she knows that he is still alive,

It is not easy, no, it is not easy.

 

 

THIRTY-FOUR. OLWEN, AIDAN.

 

OLWEN: Christ keep me free of grief for the Gododdin.

What I have done has cut me off forever

From my own people. I have handed over

The one who loved me best, I mean my father,

To a cruel enemy. Christ hold me closely,

And guard my heart. The devils of repentance

Want me to weep for him and not for you,

Hung on the cross by him. As for my mother –

I beg you not to let me think of her.

 

AIDAN: Olwen, you are the brightest saint in Britain!

Though I have been ordained, I am your shadow,

You are a princess in the eyes of God,

Not just of men. There will be shrines, and relics.

The proof is our impossible survival.

 

OLWEN: Kiss me.

 

AIDAN:                 How can I kiss you?

 

OLWEN:                                   I command you!

 

THEY KISS.

 

OLWEN: It is so lonely after the Gododdin.

 

ENTER ETHELFRITH.

 

ETHELFRITH: Dead by his own hand. That is how I want him.

A reverse sacrifice. Then all the power

That would have surged from him to the Gododdin,

Will be sucked out of them. The earth will drain them,

Those that are left, the anguished scattering

Hiding in hollows, under roofs of rowan,

Till anger heals their terror and they gather

To fight again. A priestly sacrifice,

Performed in hope and reverence, makes death sacred,

And there is strength in it to bind together

The living and the dead. But hang yourself

Or stab yourself, with ritual desolation

And emptiness – that is a backwards fountain,

Sucking the light out of the moon at midnight,

And it will break the heart of the Gododdin.

Out of their caves, out of their crofts they’ll come

Into their coffins, and their memory

Will leach out of the land, the stones forgetting,

The wind forgetting. So you two must go down

Into his cell. He is a dead man clinging

To a dead hope. You must take this from him

So that he kills himself. That is your function.

 

 

THIRTY-FIVE. EIDYN IN HIS CELL, CHAINED TO THE WALL.

 

EIDYN: If I could only break! If I were only

A bubble floating, or a butterfly.

Everything helps them when they want to die,

Pins prickling everywhere and blackbirds snapping.

No fear for them of being kept alive

As the sun inches out of solstice, slides

Over the summit, and the longest day

Is gone, the sacred opportunity

Is spent, the door into the living fire

Is closing, closing. Christ, you hung from nails

For three hours, I have hung down here for days.

They did not hurry you to death, I know,

But they did help you with the scourge, the wounds,

The thirst. I can do nothing to help mine,

Lure my death closer, cautious predator,

With crumbs of my own blood, or with starvation.

Cannot take poison or refuse food even,

That death would be the death of the Gododdin,

Forsaking sacrifice, whose time may come.

 

ENTER ANEIRIN OUTSIDE CELL.

 

ANEIRIN: Eidyn! Eidyn!

 

EIDYN: Who is that?

 

ANEIRIN: Aneirin!

 

EIDYN: How are you still alive, Aneirin?

 

ANEIRIN: I got away, disguised as a mad old poet.

 

EIDYN: How many of us are dead?

 

ANEIRIN: Do you remember Buddfan?

 

EIDYN: He died at Catraeth.

 

ANEIRIN: Nervy thoroughbred. In the fight, he was a kind of chaos, like a ball of spears rolling down a slope, on fire. A bright man, a shining man. What else but war could make a man blaze like an angel? Crashed to earth by the ford, crows all over him, fucked by his own plan, him and all his captains. His blood washed out over his armour. Buddfan.

 

EIDYN: We have had another massacre since then! Sing about the new one!

 

ANEIRIN: I must leave these times alone, they are too bloody sad, who could write about them? Is this to be my whole career, singing about the deaths of fighting men, trying to find some variety? ‘They dragged out his guts with a pitchfork.’ Neck wound, stomach wound. Each death makes my language less common. Massacres stamp me with antiquity.

 

EIDYN: We are not finished yet!

 

ANEIRIN: We are! I am not going to crawl out from under another heap of corpses. There are not enough of us left to make one. No, King Eidyn. I have a different vocation. To skip across the gulfs of history. To dance on spearpoints over the sea. Me and Taliesin.

 

EIDYN: What have you seen?

 

ANEIRIN: You have got to hold out, King Eidyn. That’s what all this was for, your sacrifice. Not to save the Gododdin – to save yourself. They’ve got you caught, just as she feared. Ghost loose, heart beating – just. How can the ghost go? Bloody agony that. They’re all there – Miraveh, Olwen, Aidan, Ethelfrith, yourself and myself. Playing different parts, trying to make up, not to do what they did. Difficult. You have got to cut through this horrible knot.

 

EIDYN: How can I do that?

 

ANEIRIN: Hold on is all I say. Must be a way. Oh, look out!

 

EXIT. ENTER OLWEN, AND AIDAN, WITH A KNIFE UNDER HIS CLOAK.

 

AIDAN: Eidyn!

 

EIDYN:                 Oh! What is this? A stoatskin hanging

Form a fencepost in winter hail and rain,

To warn itself against rebirth?

 

AIDAN:                                  No, Eidyn.

I am not hanging – I think you are hanging!

 

EIDYN: Hanging in pride, in fact, while you are hanging

Shamefully in my mind’s eye, Bishop Aidan!

I will not breathe a word against you, Olwen,

You are my daughter, and I can remember

Images stronger than the present one.

You loving, you a baby in my hands.

Your treason is devoured by my delight

In what you were. So I love you my daughter!

 

AIDAN: Eidynn, her love for you has been devoured

By Jesus!

 

EIDYN: Still that leaves my love unaltered.

I only hope it gives him indigestion.

 

OLWEN: Truly I think there never can have been

A man as hopeless as I see you, father.

 

EIDYN: Olwen, you cannot see what I can see:

A tiny little hope, perched on your shoulder.

 

AIDAN: Eidyn, I bring you Christ’s compassion. Listen.

Hope will not help you anymore. Imagined

And fragile hope, you cannot keep it floating,

It is a stone swan lying at the bottom

Of a still stream! There is no human mercy.

You cannot even hope for death, King Eidyn,

The selfish English will not give it to you.

They will just leave you hanging here forever,

As the years climb their shining pyramids,

And linger at the solstice for a moment,

Glorious in the sun’s height, till it passes,

Mocking the absence of your sacrifice,

Mocking your life, a cairn of hollow stones,

Of mutilated years, each one of them

Mummified, with the heart ripped out, dry bones

Heaped on your head. What will you do with them?

What will you do with all these years, King Eidyn?

Make them into a kind of wooden army,

Crowding around you, or a vast stone circle?

They are like herds of wounded animals,

Shuffling along, like whales that drag harpoons,

These years of yours. Your Queen is now the willing

Slave of the English King, she kisses him

In extasy, she cannot help it, Eidyn,

She has no power, he is everything,

Their mutual heat is at this moment growing

His heir in her. In whom you are forgotten.

Here is your daughter, once your morning star,

Now she has come to help your hope to die,

Servant of Christ and of the English King,

Enemy of yourself. As the Gododdin

Bleed on the scaffold in the noonday sun,

They cry to you for help. When no help comes,

They curse you and the life runs out of them.

But God rejects their curse. Death will not come

To Eidyn in his cell. No fire, no lion,

No blade or frost or plague or flood or famine!

 

EIDYN: Bishop, you think my life is pretty grim

Down in this dungeon. But there is one thing

That makes me smile still, one great compensation:

That I am not you. I am not the plaything

Of Ethelfrith or Christ, I am my own.

The more you rant, the happier I am.

Stay here, keep feeding me with confirmation

That I am not you, I am free in prison,

I can fly, hanging from the wall in chains.

Compared to you I am a happy man!

 

AIDAN: This is just smoke, a screen that hides the fire,

Which is despair. And it will burn your bluster,

After awhile it will be all you are,

All your disguises ashes! Pure despair,

Feeding itself forever and forever!

 

OLWEN: That is enough now.

 

AIDAN:                               I go everywhere

With Christ, Christ walks behind me and before,

Eidyn. It was with Christ I came down here

To bring you help. False hope is no salvation,

We must be rid of that, and so I ranted,

To strip that dead skin off. The living one

Is this: this blade that I have brought you hidden

Under my cloak. It is the only way,

Eidyn, all other paths are overgrown,

Through the thick wood. We know the Law of Moses

Strictly forbids this – but the Law of Jesus

Is mercy. He will not condemn this act,

Or force you to endure forever hopeless

Under the earth!

 

EIDYN:         A knife? You sweet, kind man!

You have defied the English King for me,

Bishop! He is courageous, isn’t he!

And Christ will smile and spread his warm arms wide

To welcome the unchristian suicide!

For me the Law is Error, False is True –

Bishop, that is so kind of Christ and you!

 

AIDAN: Mock me, but keep the knife. And when this cell

Tires you, then cut your throat and go to hell.

Olwen, before this chapel of despair

Chokes us, let us get back into Christ’s air!

 

EIDYN: Thank Ethelfrith for this! God bless you, daughter!

 

EXEUNT OLWEN AND AIDAN, LEAVING THE KNIFE NEAR EIDYN.

 

EIDYN: Miraveh! Help me! Help me, Miraveh!

 

 

THIRTY-SIX. WAITING ROOM. ANEIRIN.

ANEIRIN: Nothing I can say to them. Would try but. Lose job. And mind.

ENTER GWEFRFWR AS MATRON.

ANEIRIN: Aren’t you Gwefrfwr?

 

GWEFRFAWR: What?

 

ANEIRIN: Gwefrfawr!

 

GWEFRFAWR: You sound like a rabid dog. Excuse me.

 

ANEIRIN: They have got Eidyn! The King!

 

GWEFRFAWR: Never mind.

 

EXIT.

 

ANEIRIN: What’s the point of them being here?

 

RE-ENTER GWEFRFAWR WITH JONES, TALKING TOGETHER.

 

ANEIRIN: Jones the Pike!

 

ENTER MARY. LITTLE JONES IS LEADING HER BY THE HAND, TALKING SOFTLY TO HER.

 

ANEIRIN: Can’t you help me save the King?

 

MARY: We are doing the best we can.

 

ANEIRIN: What are you doing?

 

EXEUNT MARY AND LITTLE JONES.

 

ANEIRIN: They have got something going. They don’t want to talk about it, but they’re working on something.

 

ENTER OLD JONES, COUGHING, WITH MARTHA.

 

MARTHA: We’ll get there in the end, we’ll get there.

 

EXEUNT MARTHA AND OLD JONES.

 

ANEIRIN: I hope so! For the sake of the Gododdin!

 

ENTER MRS JONES, AS SENIOR DOCTOR.

 

MRS JONES: Now would you clear off and get on with your work, Aneirin. You are just getting in the way.

 

ANEIRIN: Alright, alright, I understand.

 

EXIT. ENTER UNWIN AND OLIVER.

UNWIN: Well then. The room. Pictures. Music? Visiting times.

OLIVER: The room.

UNWIN: The women will arrange the room.

OLIVER: Beautiful room! There will always be someone, I imagine.

UNWIN: I imagine. Right then. On.

OLIVER: Right then. Thankyou.

UNWIN: On.

EXIT UNWIN. ENTER ELIZABETH.

ELIZABETH: Better go.

OLIVER: Yes, better go. Come back soon. Do you want to come with us?

ELIZABETH: Yes! No.

OLIVER: Which?

ELIZABETH: No. Yes?

OLIVER: Or stay.

ELIZABETH: Yes, stay!

OLIVER: But maybe better to go. For a little. Then come back.

ELIZABETH: I don’t want to leave at all. I was born here.

 

OLIVER: Oh?

 

ELIZABETH: Half an hour ago. Wham!

 

OLIVER: Oh.

ELIZABETH: This has been my happiest home. Deepest love, here.

 

OLIVER: Yes I see. Well that is not gone.

 

ELIZABETH: No. But will it still be here if I go?

 

OLIVER: Yes! Even more so, each time you come! Like a favourite place.

Choose pictures. Music? What ever he likes best

 

ELIZABETH: The room.

 

OLIVER: The beautiful room. Come every day, get to know the nurses. Hello, Mrs Brandon! I think he had a good night!

ELIZABETH: Any sign?

OLIVER: What?

ELIZABETH: Any sign, I will say, any sign?

OLIVER: Oh. But that is a question of new medicine. New Science.

ELIZABETH: Oh yes. But you never know.

OLIVER: And prayer.

ELIZABETH: Yes, prayer!

OLIVER: My God and your – goddess.

ELIZABETH: She is not interested anymore.

OLIVER: Oh?

ELIZABETH: No, something broke. Up there.

OLIVER: Oh. Well, if you like –

ELIZABETH: Yes?

OLIVER: You can come with us, sometimes. On Sundays.

ELIZABETH: Thankyou.

OLIVER: Or just, not on Sundays, just come.

ELIZABETH: Yes?

OLIVER: And sit at home. Evenings sometimes prayers. Readings.

ELIZABETH: That would be very nice.

OLIVER: Like to see you now.

ELIZABETH: Oh well.

OLIVER: No, truly. Very devoted. Come here together sometimes. A bit frantic.

ELIZABETH: Yes!

OLIVER: Totally different you and I with him.

ELIZABETH: That’s true.

OLIVER: Totally different you and I.

ELIZABETH: Where is he? Where is he?

OLIVER: We will find him. You and I.

THEY EMBRACE. ENTER MARVA.

MARVA: Ok let’s go! I am absolutely certain that he is in the very best place, in the very best hands. Dear God, what wonderful, crystal decisions! Everything is so clear, everything is so calm, now, after the battle! So clinical! We must be just like that, if we can! Just so scientific, and balanced! Because now we are entirely in the hands of Science. Research! Sometimes God does that. Sometimes he works by miracles, sometimes by Science. Or a combination of the two! I imagine you would like to have your own times for visiting? Sometimes you can come with us, but sometimes, I imagine – I am certain, that you will want to see him on your own. So I was thinking maybe you should have Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Fridays – and Saturdays. And we would have Mondays and Thursdays and if it would be alright for us to have Sunday, because that is a very special day for us. I am not giving up on miracles completely. If you would allow us sometimes to have laying on of hands, and if it’s alright, he could even receive Communion, but really I was only thinking of singing one or two of his favourite hymns, and just a little prayer and reading, maybe with a Minister there if there is a very sensitive one. Or none of that at all, if you don’t want. It is absolutely and totally enough for us just to be silently with him.

ELIZABETH: No, all of that is fine with me, Marva! Sunday is fine. Have all the days, I will just pop in occasionally.

SHE FAINTS.

OLIVER: Elizabeth!

MARVA: An attack!

SHE COMES ROUND.

ELIZABETH: No darling I am fine I am fine.

OLIVER: You have got to lie down Elizabeth. You have got to lie down! Nurse!

EXIT OLIVER WITH ELIZABETH.

MARVA: Marva Brandon, you are a dancefloor for the waltzing Satan! When she fell your heart leapt up like a balloon! You love him, yes you love him. You want her dead. And what else do you want? You want your husband, and now she is taking him, now she has lost hers, fallen off her flying horse! Now she is taking yours, Marva Brandon! And how could he resist the mysterious, the too-beautiful almost-widow, how could he resist? What man is powerful enough to resist a woman’s weakness? Not this man! He will reckon himself better than his brother in restrospect. It’s horrible, all of it! Christ, Christ, Christ, erase these wrinkles in the soul, this uglification, clear these hell-tinted glasses! To the pure all things are pure. To the pure all things are pure. To the – aaaghhhh! Let her die, let her die, let her die, let them both die! And let the dead one rise and be mine! Mine!

ENTER EIDYN, ONE HAND TIED, KNIFE IN THE OTHER.

EIDYN: Miraveh!

MARVA:                 Who are you?

EIDYN:                                            I am your husband!

MARVA: I am not Miraveh, my name is Marva.

EIDYN: Help me.

MARVA:                  Are you a ghost? I am not frightened.

EIDYN: I have a knife. They have released one hand.

MARVA: Has the Lord sent you, or the Devil?

EIDYNN:                                                Neither.

I have propelled myself. But not for long.

Miraveh, help me. Help me, Miraveh!

EXIT EIDYN. MARVA COLLAPSES, SHAKING AND CRYING.

MARVA: That was you, Robert! You called yourself my husband. My husband! What were you saying to me, my darling, my darling! I will do anything, anything for you, when you send me your spirit with a knife in its hand – and one hand tied, or chained! They have let one hand go. Feeble of me not to be able to respond! To go to you in the same way, be with you there, in spirit, in truth, my darling! Too much bloody church, that’s the problem! Cobwebs all over my mind! You have come to me from a long time ago, and I was not ready, I was not ready, I was asleep, struck fast asleep in the wrong religion! Open the door, open the church door, let me out, let me get out to my sweetheart, who is faraway in another time! I could say nothing to him, did nothing to help him! What kind of love am I in?

ENTER OLIVER AND ELIZABETH.

OLIVER: Elizabeth is much better. Are you alright, Marva?

MARVA: No! He appeared to me!

OLIVER: Who?

MARVA: Robert! From ancient times!

ELIZABETH: Ah!

MARVA: We have imprisoned him! We have got to set him free!

ELIZABETH: Yes!

MARVA: He said he was my husband!

ELIZABETH: Oh Marva, perhaps you were, my darling! What did he look like?

MARVA: Not exactly like Robert, but I know it was him!

ELIZABETH: He asked you to set him free?

MARVA: Yes! He asked for help.

ELIZABETH: Why did he not appear to me?

MARVA: I’m sorry!

OLIVER: Come on everybody, let’s get out of here!

MARVA: No!

ELIZABETH: What you are saying, Marva, is that you think we should –

 

MARVA: Yes, that is what I am saying.

 

OLIVER: But you have violently raged against that from day one!

 

MARVA: Those who violently rage have the energy to change their minds!

 

ELIZABETH: Yes, Marva!

 

OLIVER: Well not today!

 

MARVA: Do not try to intervene between me and my husband!

 

OLIVER: I am your husband!

 

MARVA: The present is not everything.

ELIZABETH: Oh, Marva!

OLIVER: It’s completely unchristian!

MARVA: I don’t care! He has told me what he wants!

ELIZABETH: I believe you, Marva!

OLIVER: Alright then, do it! If you can! End the life of my brother, and of her husband, and your beloved brother-in-law, and the head of the family, and a famous man, a brilliant man, the employer of thousands! End his life if you can!

MARVA: I cannot refuse him!

ELIZABETH: Marva! Give me some of your crazy power!

MARVA: You have plenty! You are not a weakling! You are just smashed by this but I will help you! You will not stop us, Oliver!

OLIVER: No, I will not. You are right. Completely. Often there may be hope but I know damn well that in this case there is none.

ENTER UNWIN.

OLIVER: Doctor, they have changed their minds. And mine.

UNWIN: Alright. Come on.

MARVA: Christ forgive us.

 

 

THIRTY-SEVEN. MIRAVEH IN BED WITH ETHELFRITH. SHE GETS UP. HE IS ASLEEP.

 

MIRAVEH: Peach rotten on the branch, dead full moon putrid,

Sun rising rancid, sky a lake of poison.

But how to heal the moon? Is it by fighting?

All the Gododdin gone, this land now England,

Eidyn, forgotten god and King of Nothing,

Skull of a cave bear, lapsed out of religion,

And his Queen carrying the enemy.

Nothing to fight for, no cause left but breathing,

My people broken and my faith unravelled.

Only the memory of Miraveh,

Reflected in the waters of the mind,

Clearer than ever now the wind has died,

Patches me with a scrap of dignity.

Respecting what I was, not what I am –

At her command, since she is still the Queen!

 

SHE SEES THE AXE, PROPPED UP IN A CORNER.

 

Utter disdain. The edge that should have lifted

Eidyn to life. And I am just a reed

In the King’s bed, a mattress, not expected

To lift myself, no more a threat at midnight

Than the moongrass despairing and despairing.

Miraveh, reach your hand out of the mirror

And lift this up. I have collapsed like water

Out of a smashed jug, and I cannot do it!

Miraveh, come, out of what was, to fill me!

The English in their beds are sleeping well,

And they will wake, and smash me like a jar,

Then we will be together once again!

I do not ask for more than Miraveh,

No goddess, just myself to hack and hack and

 

SHE SEIZES THE AXE AND HACKS ETHELFRITH TO PIECES.

 

 

THIRTY-EIGHT. A CORRIDOR. OLWEN, CAUTIOUSLY MOVING IN THE DARKNESS. MIRAVEH.

 

OLWEN: Who is that moving in the dark? A ghost?

Less terrifying than a living person

To me the enemy of all of them!

 

MIRAVEH: Who is that?

 

OLWEN:                         Mother!

 

MIRAVEH:                                   Olwen! I will kill you

If you cry out! I have the axe!

 

OLWEN:                               All bloodstained!

Mother, what have you done?

 

MIRAVEH:                            The King is broken.

 

OLWEN: Have you gone mad?

 

MIRAVEH:                               No, I have killed the King.

That is not mad. He was my enemy.

And I will die for that, but I will die

In my right mind. He was your enemy,

But you befriended him, and the Gododdin

Are gone because of that.

 

OLWEN:                                What I have done

Could not be mended if I lived forever,

Trying to drag them back out of the ground,

And set them on their feet, a living nation!

To die and to be born a thousand times,

That would not do it! But the grief has broken

Through my belief! What I have heard and seen

Has changed me back to what I was!

 

MIRAVEH:                                      Poor Olwen!

 

OLWEN: Poor mother! But this axe has cleaned the stain

Of what its owner did to you! This murder

Drives out dishonour, and your fighting rage

Wipes out whatever helplessness you suffered!

I am not sad for you, but for my father

I am in agony!

 

MIRAVEH:     Then you must help me

To kill the English in their beds, to slaughter

All of them, one by one, this is our nightwork,

To separate them from their heads, in silence,

And let them wake up in the dead world, Olwen!

 

OLWEN: No, mother, we would murder some for certain,

Which would be good, but one or other of them

Would wake up in the act, and rouse the sleepers

With his death scream. There is no perfect murder.

Leave them alone. I want to free my father.

Will you help me?

 

MIRAVEH:      Yes, Olwen. Oh, my daughter!

 

 

THIRTY-NINE. EIDYN IN HIS CELL, TALKS TO HIS KNIFE.

 

EIDYN: Shining straight road to freedom, pointed eye

That sees the coffin locked inside of me,

And wants to prise it open. Death is present

Everywhere, always, but we do not feel it.

Now I can see it, hold it in my hand,

Press it against my neck, where the big vein

Carries the commerce of my inward kingdom,

Flourishing sorrow, wealthy misery.

It would be sweeter than a strawberry

To push this point in hard, and pour away.

But that delicious little feast for me

Would be the second death of the Gododdin.

 

ENTER ANEIRIN OUTSIDE CELL.

 

ANEIRIN: King Eidyn!

 

EIDYN: Aneirin!

 

ANEIRIN: Eidyn, good news! You have appeared! You have appeared to them!

 

EIDYN: How did I do that?

 

ANEIRIN: You have changed everything! Be happy, King! You will escape from this place! One way or another.

 

EIDYN: Not alive, I think. But thankyou, Aneirin!

 

ANEIRIN: (ASIDE.) No, not alive. That is the end of the Gododdin. I am going to escape to Wales, where, for a few hundred years at least, I will be able to carry on raving.

 

EXIT. ENTER AIDAN TO CELL.

 

EIDYN: Who is that? Bishop, is it you? Hooray!

I was just wishing for a sermon.

 

AIDAN:                                Eidyn,

Why are you still alive? When you have weakened

In years to come, you will look back and wonder

Why you did not plunge in the friendly dagger

When you were young and strong. As the desire

For death increases, the ability

To grasp it for yourself grows less, the fingers

Wither to sticks, the sap dries, the mind wanders,

And the thin trembling sack of agonies,

Half-way released, or more, cannot quite make it

All the way there, stuck at the edge for ages,

Ghastly to see. The best time for self-murder

Is not when you are old but when you are

Young, brave, and strong, and life still has the vigour

To end itself!

 

EIDYN:   Amen. So, Bishop Aidan,

How is it going with the English King?

Have you converted him with your digressions

On self-destruction?

 

AIDAN:                       We are in God’s hands.

 

EIDYN: And it will be a miracle to him

If Christ through you should win me to the doctrine

Of cutting my own heart out. So you stumble

At all hours down into the monkish dungeons,

Brimming with scriptures like a boiling cauldron,

Doing God’s work, hard work, to save the King

By my discreditable death. But Aidan –

Think of the power you have given me,

To fox you and your God by simply failing

To stab myself!

 

AIDAN:             You have no power, Eidyn!

Look at yourself!

 

EIDYN:        I am the King of something.

I have forgotten what. But you are nothing.

No, to be fair, you are the priest of Nothing.

 

AIDAN: And if I kill you, if I kill you, Eidyn,

How will he know it was not you? Be careful!

I could just kill you now myself and tell him

That victory is ours, despair convinced you

To botch your sacrifice. It does not matter

To me who does it! I am not a pagan!

Where is your royal power now?

 

EIDYN:                              Go on then!

 

EIDYN THROWS THE KNIFE TO AIDAN.

 

EIDYN: Go on then, bishop, carry out this action,

Murder to you, to me the sacrifice

That was prevented when you sold my people

And yours. It has no meaning to a Christian,

And so if Christ is God it has no meaning,

And I am dead, and Ethelfrith triumphant.

This is your faith’s trial. Do you understand

That I will never kill myself?

 

AIDAN:                             Yes, Eidyn.

 

EIDYN: Do it yourself then, if you are a Christian!

 

AIDAN STABS HIM. ENTER MIRAVEH AND OLWEN.

 

MIRAVEH: Eidyn!

OLWEN:                What are you doing, bishop?

 

AIDAN:                                                       Olwen!

Miraveh!

 

MIRAVEH: He has killed him!

 

AIDAN:                                        Help me, Olwen!

 

MIRAVEH KILLS HIM WITH THE AXE.

 

MIRAVEH: Eidyn! He is not dead! The jackdaw pecked him,

But he is still alive!

 

OLWEN FINDS A KEY ON AIDAN’S BELT.

 

OLWEN:                            The key!

 

MIRAVEH:                                     Now Olwen,

We must be stronger than a pair of lions

Ploughing a plain of ice, to carry him

Out of this place and find a way to Ireland!

 

 

 

FORTY. HOSPITAL. BRANDON’S ROOM. UNWIN, MARVA, OLIVER, ELIZABETH, ANEIRIN, STANDING AROUND THE BODY. CHORUS IN THE BACKGROUND.

 

ANEIRIN: (ASIDE.) Did I ever tell you about Merin? Stag with a sting in its  tail, galloping falcon, terrifying slippery bear. A lucky man, born lucky. Dancing on the dead like a march hare, by the moat, among the alders. Couldn’t get him down, they couldn’t get him down! But they did get him down. Merin.

 

 

FORTY-ONE. A BOAT AT SEA. MIRAVEH, OLWEN, EIDYN.

 

MIRAVEH: I see the coast! The holy land of Ireland!

Or is it just the mist?

 

OLWEN:                        No, it is Ireland!

Wind will not blow away that shape!

 

MIRAVEH:                                            See, Eidyn!

Ireland! They are a savage lot, but listen,

At least they are not English! Some of them,

Even, so I have heard, are not yet Christians!

We will be welcome there!

 

OLWEN:                              If he is dying,

Then that is good, the sacrifice has happened,

Even if it was done by Bishop Aidan!

And there is hope in hell for the Gododdin!

 

MIRAVEH: Olwen, perhaps it is the sight of Ireland

Changing my nature, or the sea beneath me,

Swaying my spirit – but I do not want him

To die!

 

OLWEN: Not even for the sacrifice?

No, mother, nor do I! I want to tell him

I helped him in the end!

 

MIRAVEH:                   He knows that, Olwen!

 

OLWEN: Let him at least not die at sea, where loose winds

Wander the spirit to and fro like seafoam!

Let him die peaceful on the soil of Ireland!

 

MIRAVEH: The wind is blowing from the coast!

 

OLWEN:                                                         Start rowing!

Pull down the sail! We have to get to Ireland!

 

MIRAVEH: Oh! He is cold! I think he has stopped breathing!

 

OLWEN: Oh let him live again and let me love him!

 

MIRAVEH: Oh let him live again – I promise then,

I will permit no sacrifice to have him!

 

OLWEN: Oh let him live again and let me love him!

 

MIRAVEH: Oh let him live again and let me love him!

 

WIND DROPS. THEY PUT UP THE SAIL AGAIN, AND START TO KEEN.  

 

 

FORTY-TWO. HOSPITAL. ROBERT’S ROOM. BED EMPTY. ANEIRIN.

 

ANEIRIN: Has anybody heard of King Eidyn, his town is called Edinburgh, an English word, but never mind. Born a Christian, died a pagan in a boat on the way to Ireland, looking for druids. Obsessed with self-sacrifice, in a kind of dark brilliance such as you will often see in besieged towns. And I, Aneirin, also suffered the siege, and out of my own madness made that song of the Gododdin.

 

ENTER CHORUS.

 

ANEIRIN: Thankyou, friends! Thankyou, Gododdin! I know what you did, you did something clever, just by being there, you made it so he could come, you guided him –

 

MRS JONES: Enough, Aneirin! Are you on drugs?

 

GWEFRFAWR: Is this a hospital or a lunatic asylum?

 

JONES: He needs a long rest. Maybe another job.

 

MARY: He’s sweet, don’t be hard on him!

 

LITTLE JONES: All the staff are sick to death of him.

 

MRS JONES: No, don’t speak, Aneirin! We don’t want to hear any more! Not one word! Go home, and have a good sleep, and if you feel alright come back in the morning. Otherwise take extended leave and we will think about your position. No – silence! We don’t want to hear anything!

 

EXIT ANEIRIN. CHORUS SING.

 

We’ve heard and seen unimaginable things

We’ve lived our lives right back to the beginning.

After the moon, we moved on to Venus,

And from there to everything.

Our minds have been given wings,

And now we have to fall asleep again,

And wake up as babies,

And drag our wings along the ground.

But first we’ll choose who we will be.

After a thousand years or more

In the best of schools

We will forget everything!