The Brothers of Gwynedd

  So by the eleventh day of November we had ready our letters to Archbishop Peckham, each party replying separately, though all had sat in conference several times together. And that day John of Wales departed for Rhuddlan with these documents, which I give here, David's letter in part, the rest complete.

  "This is the reply of David, brother of the prince.

  "That when he shall see fit to go to the Holy Land, he will do so of his own free will and in fulfilment of his own vow, for God, not for man. Not at any man's bidding will he go wandering into distant lands, for forced service is known to be displeasing to God. And should he chance indeed to go to the Holy Land of his own free will, out of devotion, it would hardly be fitting that on that account he and his heirs should incur perpetual disinheritance, on the contrary, they might rather look to be rewarded.

  "The war which the prince and his people have waged was not motivated by hatred for any creature, nor by lust of gain or conquest, invading the territories of others, but only by the desire to defend their own rightful heritage, laws and liberties, while the king and his people wage their war out of inveterate hatred, with the aim of conquering our lands. Therefore we believe ours to be the just war, and place our hope and trust in God."

  Then he also repeated the accusations made against the English soldiery concerning their usage of churchmen and sacred places, repudiated utterly the suggestion that any Welsh chief should leave his own lands and go into virtual exile among his enemies, saying that if we could not have peace in the land which was ours by right, how much less could we expect to live at peace in a foreign land. And lastly, he complained of the difference made between himself and other barons holding of the king, who had likewise at times offended against him, and been forced to make reparation, but never by total disinheritance, or perpetual banishment.

  And strange indeed did I find it that David should so fight for his own privilege to the last, as the old David, and in the same letter speak out so well for the Wales he had so often deserted, a new David borrowing his love and his light by reflection from Llewelyn, but freer far with words than ever was his brother.

  The reply from the council of Wales was drawn up chiefly by Tudor, Master William and Goronwy ap Heilyn, but agreed and approved by all. And thus it ran:

  "The reply of the council of Wales.

  "Though it may please the king to say that he will allow no discussion concerning the Middle Country, or Anglesey, or the other lands bestowed upon his magnates, nevertheless the prince's council, if peace is to be made at all, will not countenance any departure from the premise that these cantrefs are a part of the unquestionable holding of the prince, lying within the bounds within which the prince and his predecessors have held right since the time of Camber, son of Brutus. Further, they belong to the principality renewed to the prince by confirmation, at the instance of Ottobuono of blessed memory, legate of the apostolic see in the realm of England, with the consent of the lord king and his magnates, as is manifest in the treaty. Moreover, it is more equitable that the true heirs should hold the said cantrefs, if need be from the lord king for fee and customary service, rather than they should be given over to strangers and newcomers, even though these may have been powerful supporters of the king's cause.

  "Further, all the tenants of all the cantrefs of Wales declare with one voice that they dare not come to the king's will, to allow him to dispose of them according to his royal majesty, for these reasons: First, because the lord king has kept neither treaty nor oath nor charter towards their lord prince and themselves from the beginning. Second, because the king's men have used the most cruel tyranny against ecclesiastical establishments and persons. Third, that they cannot be bound by the offered terms, since they are the liege-men of the prince, who is prepared to hold the said lands of the king by customary service.

  "As to the demand that the prince shall submit absolutely to the king's will, we reply that since not one man of all the aforesaid cantrefs would dare to submit himself to that will, neither will the community of Wales permit its prince to do so upon such terms.

  "As to the king's magnates guaranteeing to procure an earldom for the prince, we say he need not and should not accept any such provision, procured by the very magnates who are striving to have him disinherited, so that they may possess his lands in Wales.

  "Item: The prince is no way bound to forgo his heritage and that of his forebears from the time of Brutus, and again confirmed as his by the papal legate, as is suggested, and accept lands in England, where language, manners, laws and customs are foreign to him, and where, moreover, malicious mischiefs may be perpetrated against him, out of hatred, by English neighbours, from whom that land has been expropriated in perpetuity.

  "Item: Since the king is proposing to deprive the prince of his original inheritance, it seems unbelievable that he will allow him to hold land in England, where he is seen to have no legal right. And similarly, if the prince is not to be allowed to hold the sterile and uncultivated land rightfully his by inheritance from old times, here in Wales, it is incredible to us that in England he will be allowed possession of lands cultivated, fertile and abundant.

  "Item: That the prince should place the king in seisin of Snowdonia, absolutely, perpetually and peaceably. Since Snowdonia is a part of the principality of Wales, which he and his ancestors have held since the time of Brutus, as we have said, his council will not permit him to renounce the said lands and accept land less rightfully his in England.

  "Item: The people of Snowdonia for their part state that even if the prince desired to give the king seisin of them, they themselves would not do homage to any stranger, of whose language, customs and laws they are utterly ignorant. For by so doing they could be brought into perpetual captivity and barbarously treated, as other cantrefs around them have been by the royal bailiffs and officers, more savagely than ever was wreaked upon Saracen enemies, as we have said above, reverend father, in the rotuli we sent to you."

  And last, I give my prince's letter, by contrast so brief, courteous, dignified and distant, for he was writing to a man who had been close to being loved. and was now dead to him, and waited only his last retort to be buried.

  "To the most reverend father in Christ, the Lord John, by the grace of God archbishop of Canterbury and primate of all England, from his devoted son in Christ, Llewelyn, prince of Wales and lord of Snowdon, greeting, with an earnest prayer for his benevolence towards his son, and all manner of reverences and respects.

  "Holy father, as you have counselled, we are ready to come to the king's grace, if it be offered in a form safe and honourable for us. But the form contained in the articles submitted to us is in no particular either safe or honourable, in the judgment of our council and ourselves, indeed, so far from it that all who hear it are astonished, since it tends rather to the destruction and ruin of our people and our person than to our honour and safety. There is no way in which our council could be brought to permit us to agree to it, even should we so wish, for never would our nobles and subjects consent in the inevitable destruction and dissipation which would surely derive from it.

  "Wherefore we beg your fatherly holiness, as you are bound to pursue that renewed peace, honourable and secure, for which you have exerted such heroic labours already, to devise some expedient bearing a just relation to those articles we have submitted to you in writing.

  "It would surely be more honourable, and more consonant with reason, if we should hold from the king those lands in which we have right, rather than to disinherit us, and hand over our lands and our people to strangers.

  "Dated at Garthcefn, on the feast of Saint Martin."

  So read my lord's last letter to Archbishop Peckham.

  Archbishop Peckham's last letter to my lord was delivered some days later, combining in one long, voluble diatribe his rage and rejection against all the careful legal points we had urged. Now he had nothing to offer us but damnation, and the prospect of war to the death, and the distant spectacle of
his own wounded vanity at having his efforts undervalued, so that all the first part of his letter was an almost incoherent outpouring in his own praise, how he had laboured for us, taken compassion on us when none other would, ventured his very life among great perils to rescue his strayed sheep, been the advocate of our necessity—though in the first place he had invited himself into that role—dealt with the majesty and magnates of England, made his frail body a bridge by which we might again cross into grace, all to have the fruit of his labours scorned. It had not fully appeared until then how he rated us as some manner of breed a little below humanity, so that he could not well understand our resentment of subjection, which seemed to him our fitting state, a kindness for which we ought to be grateful.

  All the legal points we had made he dismissed as "pernicious subterfuges," and went on to produce some surprising law of his own. We should not, he said, vaunt ourselves upon being descended from Brutus, fools that we were and worse than fools, since Brutus was one of those Trojans who were dispersed and scattered because they defended the adulterous Paris, and such a descent as we claimed no doubt accounted for our notorious looseness in morals, and the small regard we paid to legitimate marriage, in that we did not bar children born out of wedlock from having a respected place in our kinships, and even inheriting property. He went further, and accused us of encouraging incest, but in the flood of words he could probably barely stop himself by then. And had not the Trojans, our ancestors, he said, invaded these islands and driven out the Scythian giants who then inhabited them?

  "Why, therefore, we ask, are the Angles and Saxons of this generation doing you any injury, if in the process of time they are now disturbing your enjoyment of usurped dominions? It is written: Ye who despoil others, shall not you be despoiled? Fools that you are, it is not wise to glory in origins stemming from adultery, idolatry and the plunder of usurpation!"

  Then he went on to dismiss our indubitable claim that in the treaty made by the papal legate Ottobuono all these Welsh territories had been confirmed to Llewelyn, with King Henry's consent. A frivolous allegation, said Peckham, for certainly Ottobuono had had no intention of thereby weakening the king's law, civil or canon, so as to render it invalid, and for the crime of lese-majeste of which we stood accused, all hereditary rights are forfeit and perish, so that even in Snowdonia, Llewelyn's by rightful inheritance, the prince was now stripped of all power, and we with him, having no rights at all still existent except the right to beg the king's clemency. And to this astonishing proposition he appended his legal references in full, verse and line, of English law! English law, to which Snowdon never had been subject, and was not subject now! English law, which with its encroaching claims where it had no right had begun this whole contention!

  As to our statement that we could not rely on the king's word, since he had not kept it in the past, Peckham demanded, who says so? Only from us, the Welsh, did this charge stem, and that meant we were presuming to be judges in our own cause. And he was not? As for the legal code of Howel Dda, the only authority Howel had had for it had been delegated to him by the devil.

  The whole would be wearisome, though I have not forgotten any of it. But thus the gentle prelate, with many threats of excommunication, damnation, and extirpation by total war, ended his favours to us:

  "While other men are freely adorned with the gifts of God, in your remote fastnesses these are cast utterly to waste, inasmuch as you give no aid to the Church in contending against its enemies, and confer upon your clergy no wise learning, except in the meanest degree, and the majority of your people wallow in idleness and lechery, so that the world hardly knows that such a people exists, but for the few of you who are seen begging their bread in France."

  And with that he consigned us to our fate and turned his back upon Wales.

  This letter Llewelyn read with a face of indifferent distaste, and by the end of it his already dead regard for this narrow and unperceptive priest was also buried deep, to be thought of no more. He himself read it to his assembled council, and dusted his hands and left it lying when he had done.

  "I had expected to be cursed," he said, "but not in the language of the city kennels. Well, that is over. Back to the cleaner business of war!"

  CHAPTER X

  We held urgent council that same day how to proceed, for the next two or three weeks might be invaluable to us if well used. We knew already that great numbers of carpenters had again been shipped in haste to Anglesey, where the earl of Hereford was now in command, so plainly an attempt was to be made to repair the bridge of boats, but even that enterprise would take some time, and the great loss of men and armour and horses in the strait would not be easily replaced. The king remained at Rhuddlan, and had even withdrawn his advanced outposts, so that now none of his garrisons, apart from that in Anglesey, was further west than the Clwyd valley.

  "By the number of foot soldiers he's dismissed," Tudor said, "he could be abandoning the fight for this season, but I doubt it. I think he's waiting for his Gascons, and meantime saving money and stores. Feeding such an army as his is no light matter, even with our corn harvest, and when he's ready, and some prospect of the Anglesey division being ready to move with him, he can easily send out fresh writs, and pay whatever numbers he can raise, if he thinks the period of service need not be long."

  Llewelyn heard them all out, and pondered the courses open to him. "What we must not do," he said, "is to be shut up here with no way of linking hands with those allies we have to the south, and no channel by which we can move to help them, or they to help us. David, can you hold everything here for a while, if I go south?"

  David grimaced, calculating the possible term of his security. "I shall be safe enough for a while, and have nothing to do but keep watch. As long as four weeks, surely, perhaps longer. He cannot make good his losses earlier than that."

  The young Llewelyn said, earnestly watching his uncle's face: "Are you coming to us? My brothers have gone to ground there. If you come, we might do much."

  "I am going into the waist of Wales," said the prince, "but you shall come with me, and go home to help your brothers. I shall be holding hands one way with you, and the other here with David, and keeping the ways open. I am going into Maelienydd and Builth, to see what recruiting Edward has done for me there in Mortimer country."

  "Good!" said David, "it's a right choice. Of all things we need a highway north and south. Go with God, and leave the north to me for four weeks, and if the need arises, I'll send to you."

  So we made ready to march within two days, and the winds that had torn apart Edward's bridge sank submissively into stillness now that Edward was embattled in Rhuddlan with his rage and his hatred and his temporary helplessness. Halfway through November the sun came through, as it does freakishly, gilding all the mountain tops and filling all the valleys with fine blue mist, like a meadow full of harebells. And in this hush we massed and marched.

  The parting of those two brothers was as spare and brief that day as their dangers were great, their resolution unbending, and their need extreme. While we were gathering in the bailey they spoke but few words to each other, and those to the point, of arms and supplies, and how the forces each had could best be used. There were clouds massing again to the north, though the rest of the sky was fair, and David said that in two or three days there would be a change, and we might look for snow. And all the while they eyed each other steadily and hard, with great eyes, but never spoke one word from beneath the guarded surface of their minds. But when the prince went to mount, David himself stooped to hold the stirrup for him, and when he was in the saddle, kissed the hand that held the bridle, and Llewelyn leaned down and kissed him brotherly on the cheek. And then we rode, and did not look back.

  We made south for Bala, crossing the upper Dee, to keep the great bleak ridge of the Berwyns between us and the forces from Oswestry. Not until we were well south of the river, and I was riding in my own place close at his left side, did Llewelyn say suddenly, as a
n honourable man grieving over his debts unpaid: "I have missed telling him so many things! But doubtless he knows." And no more did he say then of David, but I knew his mind was on the old days before ever discontent and treason came between them, when this youngest was by far the best loved of his brothers, who had after cost him the most loss, danger and grief, and in the end drew close again and made reparation for all, in this final union that not even the fear of death could dissolve. So his evil genius ended loved as he began, and those two were one as never before had they been one.