Morgana Come on, father – please –

Cai The old stories, the old lies.

Plagues. Dragons. One-eyed giants eating girls.

Corda Look!

Just look at what’s wandered into your field!

Turning away.

My poor old, stumbling, brutal father.

Cai Damage to crops? Wild boar, chasing field mice.

Bah! When wild animals come out and fool in your fields, what is that? When there’s nothing to keep ’em down, what is that?

The ruin of Britain.

The Saxon groans and shifts in the sheaf. They all see the movement. They are still.

Then Cai strides to the Saxon, takes his sword and kills him.

Morgana prays, weeping.

Morgana Oh love of Christ our Lord. Oh love of the Mother of Christ our Lord, gentle Mary.

Corda Now we know there is a war.

Now we know there is a war.

Now we’ve got to run away.

Cai Shut your mouth, girl.

Corda Don’t you even see what you’ve just killed? Are you that far gone? Gaga old fool.

Cai Give you a beating girl!

Morgana (to Corda) Please, don’t –

Corda A Saxon Soldier.

Look.

That dead thing. Pagan thing.

Morgana The Priest said the Saxons believe God is a giant. Who smashes children’s heads with a hammer.

Corda Don’t be stupid, Morgana.

Morgana Oh and you’re so clever, just ’cos you want to go to a townhouse. And a steward gave you a town dress which father made you burn –

Corda Shut up!

Cai Peace!

Cai clenches the sword.

Corda We must go!

Cai Peace!

Corda There’ll be more of them!

A silence.

Father!

Cai Twenty-one years of peace. And the killing when I was a boy, forgotten. The Saxons from the South, the Irish from the West, only stories and lies, told by monks on the road out for alms. Poets in winter, out for a good meal. And powerful men, only rumours. Bandits calling themselves ‘Emperors’, ‘New Romans’.

Twenty-one years. A kind of peace, on the same fields, under the same skies.

He gestures at the Saxon.

We’ll bury that. Harvest our fields.

Corda We’ll die.

Cai That one was alone. Legs torn to bits. Been stumbling about in the forest. Lost his troop.

Dunno. What’s it to me?

He begins to dig with the sword at the edge of the field.

Corda I’ll go with Morgana.

Cai Do that and my curse goes with you.

Corda Better cursed than dead.

Cai You’ll be a leper, girl.

He digs again.

Like all the others. On the roads, in the ditches.

He stops digging.

I remember it. Families on the roads. Following my mother’s skirt. Her feet clay and blood.

He digs again, angrily.

Running from the Saxons. Huh!

Morgana We’ll be all right, Corda! I’ll put up a little shrine by the field. To the cross of our Mother of Christ –

Corda kneels.

Corda I kneel in front of you like a daughter asking for your blessing, to be married.

Cai Out of my way.

Morgana What are you digging?