The ship that I had procured was to carry woolens, copper and tin to Old Iberia, specifically to Portugal, and was owned and captained by the brother of my lieutenant, Dewi ap Gwynno. A comes, Dewi had responded to my message of white birds with customary swiftness. His brother, Iago ap Gwynno, was no less Welsh but a bit less inclined toward loyalty. Years of pirating the Irish Coast had done nothing for preserving genteel manners.
     But Iago could be trusted thus far: he could take me and my family to Iberia. For a price. He had half the price up front -- the other half only to be given if safe harbor found.
     A bigger concern was how I would make the week's journey and avoid the sun. That it was autumn was only partially consoling; for though the sun may wane early, it made for rocky Channel waters and more treacherous seas.
     There were not quarters so much as there were holes, the holds loaded with the spoils of trade. We would have to weather the Channel, avoid the Irish and stay out of the way of the Normans. No small feat for a Welsh ship heavy with gear and bearing the illegal cargo of a Welsh king and his stow-away family.
     My oldest child, my son Rhodri, was eight, my daughters Catrin and Isabela six and three respectively, and the youngest, my Gwilym, named for my adopted brother -- a brother by an ill-fated marriage -- then dead just shy of two years, was barely six months from the womb. My wife had been sixteen when we wed some ten years ago, hard to believe. What a pill she was, what a delight, how her presence goaded King Henry, making her all the more delightful to me. My Anaia, the countess of Cordoba. Beautiful, hardy, and as I discovered during this journey, as brave as Pallas Athena or any amazon.
     We were unlikely stow-aways, unlikely fugitives. And I unknowing of just how long I would live.
     We were stowed securely in a hidden and barracaded portion of a hole, typically used for hiding the best treasure when being beseiged, or most often for illegal smuggling. Weapons, nobility. Everything could be traded somewhere.
     I held my Gwilym to me when he did not need to be on the breast. In fact, I held them all, a pile of Owains and me. And I, still in my bloody and muddy gear that showed the evidence of my fight with the devil.
     I buried my sword in his chest, and then I buried him in stone. And then I buried the stone in a three-fold spell. He would remain where I put him. Forever.
     Or at least I hoped it would be forever.
     I slept for much of the journey. I could feel my wife placing cool rags on my forehead. During the day, it must have been the day, I could feel these things, my children crawling on me, sleeping around me, but I could not move. Not until the sun sank beneath the invisible waves, unseen from this vantage, secreted beneath the deck. I slept and I dreamed.
     I dreamed of the devil. Sometimes he would turn his face to me and his face would be William's. Sometimes his face would be my own. Prophetic dreams of darkness and blood. Of a beautiful countryside, it must be my Gwenydd, with rivers of clear water, pure. Crystalline. But sometimes the rivers ran with blood.
     I would wake every evening to the worry and the tears of my wife, my children. I saw the understanding in her eyes, her eyes the color of earth. When we land, her eyes said to me, I will not see you again.
     My lady was a better prophet than I...
     We landed in Portugal, and I sent word to her cousin, the current lord of Cordoba, that she had landed, safe from civil wars, back to the bosom of her native land. I begged for, and received promises of sanctuary. Her safety was to be assured. Perhaps, I thought, one day one of my sons, perhaps even one of my daughters, could return to their country and return to their birthright, a land of proud rulers (sometimes too proud, by Christ), green mountains and pure, flowing streams.
     I would make that happen, if I could...