Nest ferch Ifor
Chronicle Entry
Recorded by Brother Wyn of Caermynach, Anno Domini 912
Known As: The Shadow Trader (borderlands only)
Date of Events: c. 587 BC
Location: Borderlands between Powys and Brycheiniog
Status: Last recorded near Abergwesyn, 587 BC
Nest ferch Ifor was a healer who worked in the borderlands between Powys and Brycheiniog, c. 587 BC. She bore a scar from a childhood wolf attack.
The Record
Nest ferch Ifor was daughter to Ifor, a trapper who worked the high country east of present Abergwesyn. Her mother Mili died during a wolf attack when Nest was approximately four years of age. The attack left Nest with a permanent scar across her left cheek where a thorn had torn the flesh during her concealment in a gorse thicket. Her father taught her the preparation of medicinal plants and the treatment of wounds, skills which later defined her work in the borderlands.
She maintained a shelter in neutral territory between the lands claimed by Powys and the Silures of Brycheiniog. Her practice involved the treatment of warriors from both chiefdoms, a arrangement which violated no explicit law but troubled both ruling families. She possessed knowledge of a maintained peace arrangement known as y rhew, which governed relations between the two powers during this period.
Physical descriptions from later accounts indicate she was of average height for women of that time, with dark hair worn in practical fashion and hands marked by the stains common to those who work with healing herbs. She traveled with a hound named Griff, a working dog of local breeding. Her shelter was described as sufficient but not permanent, constructed in the manner of those who expect to move when circumstances require it.
History
Nest established her healing practice in the borderlands sometime before 590 BC. The exact date of her arrival in that territory remains unrecorded, though local memory suggests she had worked there for several years before the events which ended her time in that location.
In 587 BC, warriors from both Powys and Brycheiniog discovered she had been treating injured men from opposing sides. Both chiefdoms perceived this as dangerous to their interests, particularly given her knowledge of strategic arrangements between them. She departed her shelter ahead of those sent to locate her.
Contemporary accounts place her in the high country near sacred springs east of Abergwesyn during the winter of 587 BC. She was encountered there by warriors of the Bauthiad, a group which maintained settlements in that region. The circumstances of this encounter involved her attempted approach to protected water sources. She was prevented from drinking directly from these springs by natural means, a fact which influenced the decision of those who found her.
The Bauthiad took her to Caer y Bathau, their primary settlement in that territory. What occurred thereafter falls outside the scope of records available to this chronicler.
Last Record
Nest ferch Ifor was last recorded in the company of Bauthiad warriors near Abergwesyn in 587 BC. She was conveyed to Caer y Bathau in the high country east of that location. Her fate thereafter remains unrecorded in sources available to ecclesiastical archives. Local memory in those mountains preserves some mention of her name, though the reliability of such accounts diminishes with each generation that passes.
