"My writs go out within the hour," said Llewelyn. "I require from you an account of all your planned moves as they stand now, and the disposition of what forces you count on. But briefly!"
David dictated, and one of the clerks took down the list of those actions planned in secret, in various parts of Wales, to take place all in the same day, the eve of Palm Sunday. All these, he said, should now be under way. Also he told which princes and chiefs had committed their armies to the enterprise, and what numbers they represented.
"You did your work thoroughly," said Llewelyn, without any word of blame but without any warmth, either. "Very well!" he said. "In two days my first levies shall be with your men at Rhuddlan. In three I myself shall join you. If you move your main base within that time, send me word where I shall find you. One of us may need to go south. Also there should now be consultation. Only a national council can speak for a nation."
Thus he made it plain that the whole nobility of Wales ought at this crisis to stand as one, and utter with one authoritative voice its declaration of injury and its resort to the remedy of war. And David said at once, and submissively: "If it please you to call your magnates to a parliament, and if it can be done quickly enough, I offer Denbigh. If they come there they will see for themselves what is in train already, and that we are at one in setting about it. There can be no factions."
"As good a place as any," said Llewelyn. "They shall be called there. Six days from now? As much as possible must be done before Edward ever gets word of the rising."
"He cannot have heard yet," said David. "We should have two or three days of grace, but we cannot hope for more."
"Then you had best take what rest you need, and go back to your siege," said Llewelyn, and would have turned from him without a word more, to get straight to the business of sending out his writs, at which the clerks were penning away busily. But David, with a face suddenly blanched beneath its dust, started forward so sharply as to halt the movement, and clashed to his knees again before his brother.
"As the lord prince orders," he said, and lifted up his joined hands, palm to palm, towards Llewelyn, and so kept, unfaltering and unrelenting, though for what seemed a great while there was no move made to acknowledge or respond to his challenge. Deliberately he did it, before witnesses, remembering and reminding us how not an hour previously Llewelyn had told him that his hands were not worth any prince's while to enclose within his own, nor his oath of fealty worth recording. With those words still in his ears, and his sworn fealty to Edward but one day dead, nevertheless he kneeled and demanded, so motionless that it seemed he would grow into a praying stone monument there if he was refused.
There was a stillness and silence in the room, even the pens unmoving, while those two eyed each other long and hard, probing after a surer ground and a clearer understanding. So long it continued, and so remote and chill was the prince's face, that I thought he would end by turning away and leaving the petitioner to stay or go, live or die, as he saw fit. But the uplifted hands never quivered nor sank, but continued their silent clamour for admission to grace and subjection, and the fixed, passionate face implored and confided, and presently Llewelyn advanced his own hands slowly, and took his brother's between them, and held them hard. And David opened grey lips into which the red flowed back impetuously with the returning blood, and drew breath and began in a high, clear voice, like a priest exalted and translated by his office:
"I become your man from this time forth, and to you do homage, and shall be faithful and true during my life…"
Once before, very long ago after his first defection, he had offered this, and been plucked rashly from his knees and embraced with the words unspoken. This time he went on steadily to the end, and without pause or tremor passed over those phrases excepting the duty he owed and had promised to the king, for now at last he had but one sovereign lord, as the prince had none, but only God as overlord. And Llewelyn held him steadfastly to the end.
Thus David, who had pledged many fealties up to this time, and kept none, entered of his own will and at his own insistence into the last homage of his life, and having so entered, rose instantly from his knees and went out, taking no leave and no rest, chose himself a fresh horse from the stables, and rode out of Aber with a lighter heart than when he entered it, and went to begin the long labour of making good what he had sworn.
The prince's writs went out throughout the land that same day. With far happier hearts than their prince the men of Gwynedd rose. Only when the north was already ablaze, and all men could cry out their grievances and hatreds aloud, did I fully understand how bitterly deep went their sense of fellowship with their own kinsmen outside the principality, where no Llewelyn stood between Welshmen and their English bailiffs.
"There's nothing for bringing quarrelsome kin together," said Eleanor ruefully to me, the day before we rode from Aber, "like a common enemy whose arrows strike at them all. But it does not always last even through the battle. The longer I live, the more I see, Samson, that many men may have heroism in them, but few have constancy, and very few have it so at heart that when they feel it defaced, they may die of it. And for those very few, I think, this world has little use."
It was not like her to sound disheartened or despairing, nor did she then, she was but measuring the possibilities of the future, and finding them bleak, and assessing also her own endurance, which did not fall short.
"I do not know," she said, "but David may be justified, and Edward has breached the treaty time and time again. But even if we are forsworn and recreant, as he believes, and our cause dishonoured, still the cause of Wales is not, and if a man can die for that and be proud, perhaps he can also offer up for it what is dearer than life, and not be ashamed. If we venture it, he and I, we shall discover how God looks upon it, shall we not? If he knows Llewelyn as I know him, he will not undervalue the sacrifice."
In those days of preparation she took a full and active part. And when all was done that could be done before action, and we mustered to ride for Rhuddlan, she came out confident and serene, with her ladies at her back, and kissed her husband as if he were leaving for a day's hunting, and waved us away as long as we were in sight, in case he should look back at the last moment.
After we were gone, it may be she wept. I doubt it, but I do not know, I never saw her weep. If ever she did, it was in solitude.
CHAPTER VI
We joined forces with David south of Rhuddlan, where he was encamped to wait for us, having ringed the castle from every landward approach, secured the town, and done what damage he could to the Clwyd frontage and the little port where sea vessels put in. Time was then the most precious and effective ally we had, to waste it on winning such a castle as Rhuddlan would have lost us weeks, if not months, that we could not afford. There were other strongholds more vulnerable, and of greater use to us, and Llewelyn had already marked them down.
"Ruthin is not so firmly held, and they never look to see us there, the coast roads being their best approach and our greatest weakness. Now the men of Maelor are up, we have allies there to help us. We should do well to move up the Clwyd, and send ahead to them to meet us, you at Ruthin, me at Dinas Bran. If we move fast enough we may get both, and have a line of castles down the march."
"Lestrange has newly garrisoned Dinas Bran," said David.
"So much the better, he'll be over-confident."
It proved as he said. The forces of both brothers, with the best-mounted levies of the Middle Country, swept south-east up the line of the Clwyd and while David surrounded Ruthin, the prince rushed onward to Dinas Bran, overhanging the valley of the Dee. A wild and rainy ride we had of it over the hills, with a gale blowing, but in such weather, even if he had yet heard of the rising, and considered his own situation, doubtless Lestrange thought us still far away, and unlikely to trouble him, so far south. We had scouts ahead, despatched before we set out, who brought us back word that the Welsh of Maelor to the east of us, and Edeyrnion and Cynllaith
to the south, had risen joyfully to the prince's call, turning their backs even on the plunder of Oswestry, twice raided, to join in the assault, for Lestrange, who held the castle for the crown, was kin by marriage to Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, and very well hated.
We closed in from three sides upon Dinas Bran, high on its great grassy ridge above the river valley. We from the north, approaching over the hills, had the best ground for attack, and came as the greatest shock to a garrison that thought us still busy with Rhuddlan and Flint. Moreover, I would not say the watch they kept was very competent, or we should not have got within striking distance of the main gatehouse before they gave the alarm. Speed, which had been our greatest asset in reaching them so soon, was also our strongest weapon in attack. They never had time to get the bars into their sockets before we stove in the doors, and were among them, and put our first parties up on to the walls to dispose of their archers, not only to have a commanding ring round the mêlée in the castle ward, but also to prevent them from shooting down upon our friends from Cynllaith as they stormed up the hill to join us. After that it was no great feat of arms, and cost us but a few men wounded, to get possession of the whole castle with most of the garrison, though Lestrange himself with a small, well-mounted party got out by a postern gate when he saw the castle was lost, and made clean away before we knew he was loose. But Dinas Bran was ours to garrison afresh for Wales, and the Welsh of those parts were eager and ready to man it in the prince's name.
Thus we held, within a few days, a strong line of castles running south-east from the sea almost to Oswestry, and guarding the whole of the northern march fronting Chester: from the north Denbigh, Ruthin and Dinas Bran, with Rhuddlan itself still in English hands but isolated at the northern extreme of the line, and Hope a somewhat vulnerable but as yet useful outpost, much nearer to Chester.
"They've tried hard enough to wrest it from me by law," said David grimly, when we conferred with him again in captured Ruthin. "Now let them come and try what they can do in arms." He foresaw already that the time might come when he would be forced to abandon a position so exposed to the danger of being outflanked from Chester. "As yet it's safe enough," he said, eyeing the chances the future held, "it takes time for Edward to get his lumbering muster into motion. But once he's launched, I may well have to relinquish Hope." He grimaced at the double sound of that, and laughed. "But it shall cost them dear and do them little service if I must abandon it."
"This time," warned Llewelyn, "we should be fools to think Edward will hold his hand until the feudal host is ready. He knows as well as we how cumbersome the old way can be. He prefers paid men."
At that time we had not and could not yet hope for any news from the court, and did not even know where Edward was at that moment, and whether he had yet heard of the sudden blaze of rebellion that was flaring through the west. For it was still no more than five days since David had stormed Hawarden, when we returned to Denbigh to prepare for the coming of the princes and the holding of the solemn parliament of Wales.
Denbigh was teeming with activity, armourers and fletchers hard at work, the first visitors riding in, and their grooms and men-at-arms loud and busy about stables and hall. The prince's couriers had reached every part of Wales that was open to us, and all the chiefs of the north came in person to the gathering, that it might have all possible authority. This time there was no question of dissent. There was barely a man who was not heart and soul committed to the struggle, for there was none whose own rights were not threatened.
From Cardigan, Griffith and Cynan, the sons and heirs of Meredith ap Owen, who had been a loyal ally of the prince lifelong, sent their seneschal, for they were still busy about securing the town of Llanbadarn and the country round, though their attempt upon the castle had been only partially and briefly successful. They could, nonetheless, prevent it from being relieved or receiving fresh supplies except by sea, and to send ships round to that western coast was by no means so quick and simple as to despatch food from Chester to Flint or Rhuddlan. Given a few weeks, they could starve out the royal garrison without cost to themselves.
From the vale of Towey came Griffith, the second of the prince's three nephews, together with envoys from his two brothers, to report that the combined forces of all three had risen in an onslaught on the castles of Llandovery and Carreg Cennen, both of which had formerly belonged to their house, and had been retained by the crown after the last war. With an old and strong royal enclave at Carmarthen, and Pembroke almost more English than Welsh, Edward had hopes of extending his hold by founding such another centre of administration at Dynevor and had also garrisoned the other castles along the Towey by way of outposts of this new royal region. Now, said Griffith, he stood to lose them, for though Carreg Cennen had not yet fallen, its fall was as good as certain, and Llandovery was already breached, and John Giffard, who held it from the king, had been forced to abandon it and withdraw into England.
Strange indeed were the shifting alliances and enmities of the border families of England and Wales, after so long of inter-marrying for land and policy. This same John Giffard, once an ardent follower of Earl Simon de Montfort, and later one of those young men who turned most violently against him, was married to Maud Clifford as her second husband, and that lady was cousin to Llewelyn and David, her mother being Margaret, daughter of Llewelyn Fawr. Giffard had been installed by Edward in Llandovery to the deprivation of his wife's young kinsmen, and now they in their turn had driven him out and regained their own by force of arms.
One more piece of news we gained at that conclave, and that was brought by the lord of lal. "Did you know, my lord," he said, "that your brother, the Lord Owen, came to spend Easter on the lands King Edward gave him, near the Cheshire borders? We made no approaches to his tenants, for fear it should get to his ears, and be betrayed." Llewelyn looked at David, then, for that must have been by his orders. "But when we rose, and they heard of it, they were up after us in a moment, and had hoped to carry him with them. It was a vain hope. Last night they brought word he's fled into Chester, to join de Grey."
"It's no surprise," said David indifferently, "and he can do us no harm there now, Grey already knows only too well what we're up to, and by this time either he from Chester or Gilbert de Clare from Gloucester will surely have got word to Edward, wherever he may be. All Owen can offer them is his own single sword, and we have nothing to fear from that."
It was a true but a cruel word, from the youngest to the eldest of those four brothers. For Owen Goch, who for some years in their youth had shared the rule in Gwynedd equally with Llewelyn, until he made war against him in the hope of gaining all, and so lost all, was certainly of little consequence by that time in the affairs of either England or Wales. Edward had made his freedom and establishment in lands a condition of the treaty of Aberconway, and Llewelyn had given him the peninsula of Lleyn, and Edward added to his portion some manors bordering Cheshire, but I doubt if either of them had given a thought to him since that time, and all Owen had wanted, after so long of confinement, was to live comfortably and quietly on his own lands, and trouble no one. Now he was again cast, much against his will, into the turmoil of war, and found himself again landless, his eastern tenants having declared for Wales, and his western lands being just as surely lost to him, now that he had chosen to take refuge with his English protectors in Chester.
"I must send to his bailiff in Lleyn. At least his going solves one problem for us," said the prince with compunction. "I am glad he's safe out of our hands, for he never would have come in with us against the king, and as you say, he is no threat. He has taken no forces with him, and he can tell them nothing more than they already know."
There was never to be a time when all those four brothers of Gwynedd stood side by side as one. Their fragmented fortunes contained within them all the history of Wales. But for the rest, there was no one missing from the muster but Rhys ap Meredith of Dryslwyn, always enemy to Llewelyn like his father before him, and the rene
gades of Pool, when the prince rose and put to the assembled parliament of Wales the issue that had brought them together, and with one voice, and a loud and passionate voice at that, they declared that the treaty of Aberconway had been breached time after time by England, until it had no further validity, but was null and void, and left to Wales no remedy but in arms. And formally they denounced the treaty, and gave their assent to the solemn acceptance of war.
Then it remained only to plan the next moves. And young Griffith begged, and the envoys from Cardigan supported his plea, that either Llewelyn or David would come south with them, and use his authority to direct their campaigns there.
"I will go," said David, "if the prince wills it."
"It would be best," said Llewelyn. "While I complete the raising of Gwynedd. Take with you whatever part of your own forces you need, and I'll supply their place here as my levies come in."
A hundred lances David took south with him, and a score of mounted archers, and among the lances was Godred. I was in the bailey that morning to watch them go, along with all the rest of the household, maidservants, menservants, grooms, falconers, pages, shepherds, armourers, cooks and scullions, every soul who could drop his burden and down his tools for a few minutes to see a gallant show and wish a great venture well. And I saw then, and heard, and felt, in all the tremor of movement and quiver of voices about me, how we had not so much taken a brave leap forward into an enlarged future, but harked back into a noble, turbulent, fruitless past, the heroic past of a Wales torn and self-tearing. It was like the old days, they said! But I would have had it like new days, days never before known, the beginning of an unbreakable unity and a new grandeur. And how many of us were ready for it, even then? Yet there was ardour enough in the courtyards of Denbigh to make a nation, had a few more of us had any clear vision what a nation was.