* * * * *
We were half-way through May when King Henry of England responded to Llywelyn's letter in which he requested that either King Henry intervene in the dispute with Clare, or he allow Llywelyn to go in himself. Henry's response was one of placation and equivocation. Llywelyn read me the letter, and then mocked it.
"Oh me, oh my! What's to be done with that Clare fellow? The man writes as if he didn't rule the most powerful kingdom on earth!" Llywelyn said. "It's his fault this is happening in the first place, since he was the one who told Clare during the Baron's War that he could keep whatever lands he took from me. It set a bad precedent."
Llywelyn swung around to me as I sat on a cushion on the window seat in his office. I set down the guitar I'd been playing, trying to work out the melody for one of the Welsh ballads, and paid attention.
"The King has always been weak. Such was the complaint of the barons in the first place," said Tudur, who'd brought Llywelyn the letter.
"And Clare's letter?" I said.
"Now there's a piece of subtlety," Tudur said. With my pregnancy, he'd softened towards me somewhat, but didn't trust me.
Llywelyn picked up Clare's letter and waved it at me.
"I don't understand," I said, peering at the paper. Clare hadn't written anything on it.
"It is of the finest parchment," Llywelyn said, "but it says that he doesn't care about diplomacy; he's not even going to bother with appeasement or carefully crafted lies. The page is blank."
"He's saying," Goronwy said, "that he doesn't care to talk to us. He's going to continue with his building project and the devil take us, damn that whoreson to hell."
"Goronwy," Llywelyn said.
"It's okay," I said. "I've heard it before."
"When do we move?" Goronwy said.
"I'd like to be in Senghennydd by mid-June," Llywelyn said. "No foot soldier is going to want to leave his planted fields or herd animals, but I can't allow the work at Caerphilly to continue without a show of force."
"I'll send out the word," Goronwy said. "It's going to be a long summer."