The Brothers of Gwynedd

  "He would not," I said, "even if he were free to do it. He would not, because it would be playing into Edward's hands. But it does not arise. He is not free. He set his seal to a treaty, he swore fealty to the king, saving his sovereign right in his own land. Whether Edward has broken treaty by his curious games with words, is for Edward's conscience to answer. But nothing that has happened yet serves to set Llewelyn free from his oath and the sanctity of his seal. Why ask me foolish questions? You know him as well as I do."

  "Yes," he owned with a sigh, "I know him." And he was silent for a long time, darkly regarding his own linked hands. Then he said softly and mildly: "Yet time may force his hand. What we do cannot always depend only on our own will. We find ourselves doing things we never meant to do, in spite of all our struggles, in spite of our own natures. I never thought I should return to my brother's grace, even if he opened his arms to me a third time, but when the hour came he called me, and I had no choice. No choice at all! And you—do you remember once, Samson, how I raged at you for bringing Cristin's husband back to her, when she could as well have gone on believing him dead, and been happy with you? Could you not, I said, have slipped your dagger into his ribs then, when you alone knew he lived, and left him unmourned in the south? And if you were too nice to do your own rough work, I said, there were those could do it for you. But you would neither go that way yourself nor let me. How long ago can it be? Dear God, it must be more than twenty years! Have you forgotten?"

  I had not forgotten then, I have not forgotten now. I said: "Cristin has been your friend as well as mine, you know her as I know her. Do you think I could ever have approached her over her husband's body?"

  He lifted his head and looked at me steadily, with his eyes the soft blue of summer distances, Snowdon's colour in clear, settled weather. "No," he said, "on the face of it, impossible. Impossible, since she is the woman she is, and you the man you are. No, I saw you would not thank me for it if I set you free, much less put your hand to the work yourself. Not for your life! And poor wretch, is it Godred's fault he stands in the way? He's been no bad servant to me. And yet," he said, "I foresee even your hand may be forced, some day. In the end you may have to kill him. And when you come red-handed from the deed, I think she may very well be waiting for you, and not turn away."

  But I would not answer him a word, for that way I refused to look, and in this mood I found in him nothing but dismay. And after a while he went away to drink himself below the level of remembrance, and I was left to my disordered thoughts.

  So passed that Christmas.

  The king's commission began their sessions at Chester early in the new year, and then their procedures became plain to see, and though we let them alone there, where they could manage things much as they liked, we had our own questions ready to present as a petition at their next sitting, which was at Rhuddlan. I think Master William's appearance there, as soon as the bench sat, came as a shock to the commissioners, but before a full hall and assembled witnesses they could not decline to receive the prince's petition and enroll its contents before any evidence was taken, and so they did. Master William took care to pronounce in court what was there set down: that the prince requested that his own interrogatories should be added to those drawn up by the royal officials, since the purpose of the enquiry was to determine the truth. In particular he asked the commission to enquire of witnesses whether in those disputed lands there were duly accredited Welsh judges, whose duty it was to administer Welsh law there, for clearly if Welsh law did not apply there would be no need for such judges to be appointed and sworn to serve. And in case any difficulty was experienced in getting answers to this question from other witnesses, the prince here provided the information himself. The sons of Kenyr ap Cadogan were duly appointed judges of Welsh law in Arwystli, and Iorwerth Fychan held the same office in the lands between Dovey and Dulas.

  Having ensured that this testimony was enrolled, the old man withdrew and left them to hear their witnesses, and then we had certainty that, whatever happened, the existence and the names of those judges could not be omitted from the rolls.

  It was not long after this small victory for Eleanor's scepticism was recorded, that her determined faith also had its reward. For though parliament's discussion of Amaury's case had concluded without any apparent change or decision, nonetheless the princess's appeal and the archbishop's intercessions must have had their effect, for early in that year twelve hundred and eighty-one the king suddenly released Amaury, not from all restrictions upon his liberty, but from close confinement, and removed him from his tower in Corfe castle to the safe-keeping of Archbishop Peckham, who lodged him comfortably at Sherbourne and greatly eased his conditions. That was blessing and relief enough, more than he had yet expected, and greatly enhanced by Peckham's personal kindness to him, in which we found it easy to believe. For nothing would so dispose that good prelate to further benevolence, as the sense of benefits already conferred, and the conscious glow of good deeds done.

  We began to credit that a better understanding all round was not an impossibility. To believe in it was to labour for it, and to look for every happening or utterance that could be regarded as evidence for its approach.

  In the January of this year Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn took up again that case of the thirteen vils in Cydewain which he had formerly claimed against the king, but this time he took out his writ for them against Roger Mortimer, to whom the king had granted that cantref, and therefore the disputed vils among the rest.

  "Roger claimed Welsh law last time, when he appeared on Edward's behalf," said Llewelyn, interested. "Now let's see how he will proceed on his own. We have need of good precedents." And he sent a clerk to observe how the pleading went at Montgomery when the case came up. Griffith pleaded that Mortimer had formerly defaulted of putting in an appearance and claimed judgment against him, but Roger by his attorneys at once replied that by his attendance he had now amended any default, for by Welsh law, which applied to the disputed land, a defendant could make up to three defaults, but could not therefore have judgment pronounced against him and lose his seisin of the land unless he defaulted a fourth time. Naturally Griffith hotly contested Mortimer's right to demand Welsh law, upon the old plea that both were barons of the king and ought to plead by common law, while Mortimer stood firm on the fact that Cydewain was Welsh, and only Welsh law could apply to it.

  It was so like his own first encounter with Griffith that Llewelyn could not but hang eagerly on the outcome, for the sake of the unsettled fate of Arwystli. The justices, as before, considered the two pleas so strong and so contradictory that they needed further guidance to decide between them, and postponed the case until April, and then once more into June. This brought us to the time when Edward's inquisition must already have made its report, due in May, and we were all waiting in anxious expectation for the king to make public what it had to say.

  Llewelyn was then in frequent correspondence with his cousin Mortimer, chiefly by reason of their shared resentment against Griffith, for Mortimer was as enraged by the legal war waged against him as was the prince, and bore it with much less patience, being a hot-blooded and forthright man. He had strong feelings about the folly of forcing English law upon Welshmen, and was uneasy about what he could not but hold to be infringements of the treaty. His loyalty to the king was far past question, but he was wise in the special marcher wisdom, and knew how to deal sensibly with Welsh tenants no less than with English, and certainly was not without sympathy for them. He, too, had been forced to gouge out new roads through his forests, which displeased him as if he had been wholly Welsh himself, instead of but the half. Those two cousins, though they had often fought on opposing sides, and even in peace had contended many a time over other issues, never in life bore any malice or dislike each to the other, but always a hearty respect, and a degree of wary affection, and now, stung over and over by the same gadfly, they exchanged rueful and angry sympathy, and ended closer than for many years.

/>   It so happened that at the end of May one of the brothers of Llanfaes, who had been to London on Brother William de Merton's business to the Franciscans there, came back bearing a message which he said was for me. In his dealings with a small matter involving the chancellery he had encountered Robert Burnell's clerk, Cynan, and had been charged to give me word, he said, of the colour of a certain healing herb, shy of growth and hard to find out, of which that same Cynan had spoken with me when last I was in Westminster. I knew then what this embassage meant, and my heart leaped, and I waited for Cynan's verdict with held breath.

  "He bade me tell you," said the friar, "that this rare herb bears a flower as white as snow." And he folded his hands and smiled, incurious about what this mystery could mean, but aware that it filled me with joy, and therefore himself pleased.

  I took the word to Llewelyn at once, and he seized on it as gladly as I. "Well, now we know, and the knowing is all. Grey and Hamilton got true answers, and reported that Welsh land is, always has been, and always ought to be, subject only to Welsh law. We can never say that we already know what they found, for Cynan's sake. But if it come to the worst we can recall that this inquisition was held, and ask to know its findings. Now let's wait for what Grey and his fellows will answer this time. Edward must declare himself soon."

  And some days into the month of June, so he did, if what he wrote to the prince could be called a declaration, for it was as mysterious as Cynan's white-blossomed herb, and even harder to interpret. The tone of his letter was serene, friendly and gracious, all encouragement, but its meaning was as cloudy as the summit of Snowdon in rainy weather. Somewhat thus it went:

  The king desired to inform the prince of Wales that he now had before him the findings of the inquisition on the laws and customs which had been followed in Wales and the marches of Wales in the time of the king's father and his predecessors, and also the result of the search into the official rolls, and that the findings in both cases agreed. The king had therefore caused it to be proclaimed that those same approved laws and customs should be observed now as before, and by this letter he signified to the prince that he might proceed with his cause, for the king had instructed his justices of the courts concerned to respect and observe the findings of inquisition and inspection, and to show Llewelyn speedy justice in accordance with them.

  "So much talk of findings," said Llewelyn in blazing exasperation, "and not a word of what those findings are! All I am told is that I may proceed, and I shall have justice—speedy! he dare use the word, after four years—in accordance with what he has discovered. But what that is, I am not to know. Only one thing is made almost clear, that if I pursue my claim it must be before the king's justices, in the place they choose. Well, I conceded so much before, I may do so again. It is the only thing I will concede." And he delivered me the parchment, and asked me: "What do you make of it? See if you can read between the lines better than I. Need he be so guarded if he had found, or brought, or made evidence for denying me Welsh law?"

  I read it over, recalling how absolute had been the result of the first such enquiry, and it did seem to me that the king was taking care to sound reasonable and conciliatory, as though making ready to yield a step or two with the appearance of grace. Just so he would certainly have written if, in spite of all his precautions, the evidence ran all against him, too clearly for him to manipulate it further, and he found himself faced with the necessity for allowing the case to proceed by Welsh law, and still keeping his own countenance. His way, when he could no longer resist an event, was to take it over and direct it, as though it had been his own conception from the beginning. Not that I did not realise that he might have many other delays to deploy, but it did seem to me that he was on the point of surrendering this one.

  So I said, and Llewelyn considered it with me, and felt as I did. However cautiously, we should accept this proffer, and bring the claim for Arwystli once again before the Hopton bench.

  "And now I remember," he said, burning up eagerly, "that Roger has the fifteenth of this month appointed him to answer Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn over the vils in Cydewain. We shall see what comes of that. Arwystli is as Welsh as Cydewain, the situation is exactly the same. If Roger wins his plea for Welsh law, the message becomes clear."

  He therefore sent me to Montgomery to watch the process of his cousin's case, a pleasant enough jaunt in the June weather, with long days and fair skies, and a kind of hope in our hearts that all might yet be well, that Edward, when his stratagems were done, would not thwart justice to the end, that misunderstandings could be eased away from between two princes who still had, in spite of all, a high respect and regard for each other.

  I sat well back in the court at Montgomery, and watched Griffith, fierce and gaudy and loud as a turkey-cock among his rookery of black-gowned lawyers, come sweeping into the room armed for battle, and take his place centrally behind his spokesmen, ready to prod and prompt as always. The court was full, but Mortimer himself did not attend, being by no means so in love with litigation as his opponent.

  It was not a long hearing, since the bench sat mainly to deliver judgment held over from two previous sessions. But Griffith's lawyers stated in formal terms his claim to the lands, and to have them by common law, both parties being the king's barons. Roger's attorneys replied with his claim that the lands were undeniably Welsh, and entitled him to Welsh law, and by Welsh law he was not in default, as Griffith had previously claimed. Then it was for the bench to give judgment.

  There was no reluctance in the presiding judge this time to weigh claims equably and deliver a verdict he had withheld from Llewelyn. His face was placid and assured as he spoke out the considered view of his bench, undoubtedly approved in advance in higher quarters, or why those two adjournments? He found that the land claimed was Welsh, and should be impleaded by Welsh law, by which three defaults could be made without loss of seisin, therefore Mortimer was not in default, and Griffith's writ by common law brought him nothing. Mortimer was left without day, in possession of his lands, and Griffith was subjected to a fine and lost his claim.

  And this despite the undoubted fact that here was a plea between two parties both marcher barons of the crown. Welsh law was upheld, and judgment given by it. And past question, if Cydewain was Welsh, so was Arwystli, and so must be impleaded and judged. It was in all points the complete justification of the stand Llewelyn had taken from the beginning, and I was so elated, I hardly had time to enjoy the spectacle of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn glooming and storming out of court with lowered head and baleful brow, like an angry bull, all his train of lawyers scurrying after him with gowns flying, a thunder-cloud about a lightning-flash. Once, at least, that master-litigant met his match, though he did not therefore give up all hope, but clung by the edges of his claim, hungrily and vengefully, waiting for a new hold on his lost vils, such as might arise, for instance, if Roger, the immediate incumbent, died. Into the interstice between the lord's death and the heir's grant of seisin Griffith was willing and eager to crawl, like the worm that is drawn to the dead.

  But I rode home happier than I had been for many a day, because I could again believe there was justice to be found somewhere entangled in Edward's network of law. And I told my lord and my lady, we three privately together, all that had passed.

  "God be thanked!" said Llewelyn, heaving a great breath that eased him of a year of struggle and despondency. "At last we have Edward's cypher put into plain speech. Welsh land may have Welsh law, even where the dispute is between two barons of the King. Edward can hardly reverse his own decision now this is made public. The cases are exactly similar, and no less is due to a prince of Wales than to a baron of the king. Now I can go forward with my suit with a good heart. The way is open at last!"

  He resolved to prosecute his case at Montgomery in the October session of the Hopton bench, and at once wrote to Roger Mortimer and gave him joy of his victory, all the more heartily, as he freely owned, because it afforded the perfect precedent for w
hat we hoped would soon be ours. Mortimer replied with a cordial invitation to the prince to visit him at Radnor while the lawyers argued the case at Montgomery. Thus he might be close at hand to watch events, and also Mortimer had certain matters to put to him that might be to the advantage of both cousins.

  That was a happy and hopeful time with us, a family alliance shaping with the strongest baron in the middle march, and every prospect of winning Arwystli, and with it a better promise of a just relationship with England. The treaty, our one protection, began to appear safer than for some years.

  Late in September we set out for the marches, and Llewelyn had but one disappointment, that Eleanor thought best not to come with us. "You will be altogether occupied," she said, "with men's business, both at Radnor and Montgomery, and though I should be very glad to meet with your cousin Mortimer, for this time I think I would rather not ride so far. You will not be long away. I'll come slowly south as far as Bala, and wait for you there."

  He was concerned at once, for she had always been so constant at his side. And though she smiled at him with clear eyes and open face, he held her by the hands and looked at her earnestly, and was uneasy.

  "You are paler than usual. It is not like you to sit at home. You are not ill, love?"

  "No," she said, and laughed, and I thought her glow was even brighter than of old, pale though indeed she was. "No, I am very well. All is as it should be with me. But this once I will to stay behind, and when you come back as far as Bala you shall find me there to greet you."