The Mabinogion Tetralogy by Evangeline Walton

Author:Evangeline Walton [Walton, Evangeline]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Gerald Duckworth & Co. Ltd.
Published: 2012-08-15T23:00:00+00:00

10

The Gold Shoemakers

THEY CAME to another town, a town that the Mabinogi leaves unnamed. It says only that they came there.

“What craft shall we take here?” asked Pryderi. “Let it not be saddlemaking,” he begged. “I am sick of saddles. Who needs saddles? A man should sit on what the Gods gave him to sit on. That is well padded enough.”

“Let us make shields,” said Manawyddan.

“Can we?” Pryderi stroked his chin, for he suddenly remembered that it took time to learn how to do things. “Do we know anything about how to make shields?”

“We will try,” said Manawyddan.

They tried, and presently they succeeded. Pryderi never found it very interesting work, but he said that at least it was better than making saddles.

“Though it is a man’s work to carry a shield, not to make one,” he grumbled.

But it is true that to learn to do a thing well takes time, and the townspeople kept on buying from the local shieldmakers. From the men who knew their trade, the men they were used to. The newcomers could not make a living; they tried to undersell their competitors, but found that if they did so they would not have enough profit left to live.

There came a week when they ate lightly, and the next week they ate more lightly still.

“Maybe there is some good in saddles after all,” said Pryderi. “Leather is a little like meat.” He rubbed his flattened belly and said, “It is hollow I am. Hollow as the big tree that the birds used to nest in at home.”

Manawyddan said, “We need some new thing. Something to draw the customers’ eyes.”

That night he stayed up to make some more of the Calch Llassar. He painted all his shields blue, and then showed them, glowing like great jewels, in the marketplace.

After that it seemed to rain blue shields and to hail them and snow them. If a man did not have a blue shield, he himself was blue, and he made haste to get one, and so get back his own right color. And if by any chance he did still like his old shield and did not want to part with it, his woman was blue, and could not be comforted until he got himself a fine new blue shield, and looked as smart as the men of other women.

But the local shieldmakers were bluer than anybody else, for nobody bought anything of them any more.

Rhiannon said to Manawyddan, “Lord, what if that happens which happened before?”

“Let it,” said Pryderi comfortably. There was a large haunch of beef before him, and as he spoke he cut a large slice off it. “If the other shieldmakers want to kill us we can always kill them.”

“If we do, Caswallon and his men will hear of it,” Manawyddan looked troubled. “You are right to have fears, Lady; but it seemed that I had no choice.”

“Well, perhaps nothing will happen for awhile,” said Kigva. And she looked around the house at the new

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