Brutus reigned for twenty-four years, and this was Britain’s first golden age as all things flourished under his aegis. Upon his death, the island was divided between his three sons, and this pattern continued for three hundred years until Llŷr, Lord of the West, made the triple crown one again.
Llŷr was succeeded by his son, Brân, a thirty-foot giant, with no house big enough in the world to hold him. Brân prized unity above all things, and that was why he offered his sister Branwen as wife to Matholwych, King of Ireland, hoping to forge a link which would lead in time to a unified British Isles. Matholwych gratefully accepted, for Branwen was a woman of high beauty and grace. But Brân’s counsellors, especially his half-brother Efnysien, protested that she should have married a British prince instead. At the wedding feast, Efnysien’s anger boiled over, and he maimed the King of Ireland’s horses, slashing their lips, ears, and eyes.
Matholwych threatened to withdraw from the marriage, but Brân placated him with the gift of a magic cauldron which restored the dead to life. Matholwych relented and sailed back to Ireland with Branwen as his bride. She bore him a son – Gwern of the Running Waters – and was greatly loved by everyone. But the King’s foster brothers poisoned the wellsprings of his love, chastising him for forgetting Efnysien’s insult. They insisted Branwen be stripped of her status and reduced to the ranks of a serving girl, with the added punishment of a blow around the ears every morning.
Branwen, in her desolation, taught a starling to comprehend speech, then told it where to find Brân. She wrote a message urging him to rescue her from bondage. The bird flew across the sea — the parchment looped around its neck – and found Brân at his residence at Harlech. The King read his sister’s words and straightaway made war on Ireland, crossing the water with a fleet of 100,000 ships and ten times as many men. He himself went on foot, wading through the waves, and when the Irish saw him they withdrew from the coast and burned the bridge at the River Linon. But Brân simply said, ‘Let he who is chief serve as the bridge’, and laid himself out from one bank to the other as his men strode across his legs, back and head to the further side.
So Matholwych concocted a strategy, ordering his men to construct the largest house in the world, the only one capable of hosting Brân. He promised the British that he would surrender his throne to Gwern and that Gwern should rule a united British Isles once Matholwych and Brân had died. He invited Brân and his followers to a conciliatory feast in the new house, and Brân – a man of peace at heart – gladly accepted.
But Efnysien sensed trickery, and at the height of the festivities he found that the sacks of flour hung around the wall were actually sacks of concealed warriors. Efnysien killed the hidden soldiers. then took hold of Gwern and flung him into the fire. War erupted, and at first the Irish had the advantage as they had the cauldron of rebirth so that when an Irishman was killed, his comrades picked up his body and threw him in the pot, immediately restoring him to life. Then Efnysien, repenting of his fury, hid among the Irish dead until he too was thrown into the cauldron. Once inside, he stretched out and pushed hard on the iron until his body broke apart and the cauldron was shattered and its magic dissolved.
After this, the British gained the upper hand, but it was a self-defeating struggle and a phantom victory. Ireland was burnt beyond recognition and only five pregnant women survived out of all the people. These retreated into caves and from these in time the island was repeopled and bit by bit began to bloom again.
Out of an army of over a million men only seven British champions survived – Manawyddan the brother of Brân, Pryderi the Prince, Taliesin the Bard, Grudyen the son of Muryel, Ynawc the Strong, and Heilyn the son of Gwynn Hen. Brân had shielded Branwen throughout the war and she also lived, but not for long. She died of a broken heart as soon as the Company set foot on British soil and she saw the ruin which she felt she had caused, for Britain too was now a wasteland. Brân himself was mortally wounded and as his body was too big to ferry back, he instructed his followers to cut off his head and bring it with them to Britain where he would continue to speak and lead.
The King’s Head guided them to a golden castle at the South West tip of Wales and declared that it would sing there for ever and that none of them would age or change so long as they refrained from opening the door that looked onto Cornwall. For eighty years Brân sung, until one morning Taliesin awoke with an invincible curiosity. ‘What would it be like,’ he wondered, ‘to look onto Cornwall? What poems might the sight inspire in me?’ And he opened the door and saw a man walking on the hills, and a boy with him, and the boy was dancing and playing and a light shone around him. But the light was extinguished, the world turned black, and the castle collapsed around the Seven as the weight of four-score years and the memories of war crashed down upon them. Then they were alone on a blasted heath and the Royal Head spoke for the last time. ‘Bury me beneath the White Tower in London,’ it commanded, ‘I will guard the land just as the sacred images do that Brutus buried long ago in the shoreline cave.’
So the Seven carried out his order, then embraced and went their separate ways, to meet again at the appointed hour in this world or the next.