The Hare and the Lamb
Lives of the Wild Saints #11
St Melangell
Wales. Seventh/eighth centuries
She said she met Christ in a thicket of thorns.
She looked up towards the sun and there she saw His face, framed by leaves, dappled green, and it was a face like no other and that was why she stayed.
Nobody knew where she came from. Nobody knew she was there. Not for years. Nobody went near that thicket of thorns. It was tangled with briars and blackthorn, hidden deep in a wood at the head of a mountain valley. Not even the sheep would venture in.
That changed when Brochwel Ysgithrog rode through one day. He did not know where he was. His blood was up, and that of his dogs. Brochwel, Earl of Chester, was riding to hounds, as princes do. His dogs had caught the scent of a hare: a young female, out in the fields one morning. They gave pursuit, and the prince followed, his horse straining to keep up, across ditches, over fields, through hedges. The mist was still on the meadows. The hare kept running.
The hare ran into the thicket.
The dogs followed, and Brochwel. He was yards behind. The dogs were too fast.
Crashing into the thorns, he expected to see the hare already torn apart, a creature of bloody rags, the hounds snuffling through its innards, their snouts dripping. But he saw something else.
