She said to me, with the same still and starry face, her eyes never loosing their fixed bold of mine: "I take your word, for all as for yourself, and I do and will trust myself with you gladly. But will you not extend to me the same choice your lord offered to my lady?"
"You do not wish," I said, bewildered, "to go to Brecon?"
She said: "No!" as forcibly as before. And she said that she would have gone, with all her doubts, but for this chance that had opened for her another way. Duty she owed to her lady, and would have paid, however reluctantly. But God had brought her here to this place, and turned the world and her life about, and by that she would abide, very gladly. For she was Welsh, and of a line from which bards and warriors had sprung, and it was against her grain to flee from the Welsh and take shelter, as if by nature though against her nature, with the English, whose one aim, however they fostered one chieftain against another, was to devour Wales wholemeal.
"Then is it your wish," I said, "that we should see you safe back to Carreg Cennan, into the household of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg?"
"Not that, either," she said. "I have no father or brother left there to make me welcome, and I think it no wise move to put myself into the protection of a lord like Meredith, with grown sons around him. If I am to beg shelter and refuge, I'll beg it from the highest. If you will take me, I will go with you to your Prince Llewelyn, and if there is a place for me about his court, in service among his womenfolk, I will fill it as well as I may."
I was taken full aback at this resolution in her, and yet I did not question or advise, hardly knowing then why. It was not long before I knew. For on the face of it this was folly, for her to venture afield into Gwynedd, the one woman among ten men, and for us to burden ourselves with her when our passage might not be without troubles. And this folly I accepted and embraced, never asking a reason of myself or her. I asked her only: "Do you mean this in earnest? And is there none left here at all who deserves and waits for news of you? Not one person to be in distress for you?"
"To the best of my knowing," she said steadily, "not one."
So then I knew, by reason of the great flood of hope and joy that filled me, why I had no desire to examine or consider all the difficulties that might face us on her account, or the need we had of haste to overtake my lord. And I said to her only: "Come, then, if that is your wish." For God he knows it was mine.
We buried Meilyr, my mother's husband, in a deep hollow of the ground among the trees, where the mast and mould of years from the branches had made a loose, crumbling soil that would not harden like the open ground, even in the frost. We broke the soil with our daggers and hands to get deeper, and since we could make no very profound grave without better tools, we prised up rocks from the bed of the brook to pile over him, for fear wolves or foxes should dig him up again. Later we sent word to the canons of Talley, to bring him away and give him better burial. That day there was none but myself to speak the words over him. Yet I think he has not slept less well for that. Could I have laid him with my mother, I would have done it. As it was, I took her ring, when we moved and composed his body, for his hands had loosed their hold of it, and threaded it upon his little finger, that he might not lose it in the earth.
The woman stood with us by that graveside, not heeding the cold or the wind. And when I rose from kneeling beside him, I looked at her, and her eyes were wide and fixed, staring upon the silver band on his finger, where the little engraved hand held the rose. In her face there was nothing to be read, except the rapt solemnity of death's presence, for to be brought face to face with another man's death is to meet one's own death in the way, and this touched her nearly, for she had been the instrument of God in blessing his departure, and I think she grieved and marvelled, as at the loss of something she had not known until then for hers. And that was my case also.
Nor had dead Meilyr yet ended his work with me. But that I did not know when we piled the icy rocks over him, and left him to his rest.
We rode back into Dynevor as the light was beginning to fail, and made a stay overnight for her sake. And in the morning we took fresh horses and set out for the north.
Refreshed and resolute, she rode beside me out of the gatehouse and down the track from the mound. With kilted skirts she rode, astride like a man, and booted, for I think she was determined that she would not be a drag upon our speed, but keep mile for mile with us, untiring. All she had with her was a thin saddle-roll with a few clothes in it, and whatever else women will not leave behind when they leave most of what they possess. And since for the first few miles we faced the east and the dawn, there was a lustre upon her face and a brightness in her eyes, for the sun came up red and splendid across the wasting snow.
It came upon me suddenly that I did not even know her name, for though she must have gathered many of ours from our utterances, there had been no one to speak hers before us, and so positive was her presence that until then I had felt no need to find a talisman for her, as though such a woman could be shut into a charm and held in the hand. But now, realising, I spoke my astonishment aloud, and she looked round at me, and deep into me, as was her way, without a smile.
"Yours I know," she said. "They call you Samson. You are the private clerk and close friend of Llewelyn ap Griffith. And well I know I should have told you more of myself than I have, though God knows I have told you true. My name is Cristin, Llywarch's daughter, who was Rhys Mechyll's bard until his death."
"I have heard him spoken of," I said, "many a time."
She gazed straight before her into the rising sun, and said: "There is more. Among the men who went out from Dynevor to meet Llewelyn at Cwm-du there was one Godred, a younger son of one of Rhys Mechyll's knights, in Rhys Fychan's service now. Like many another, he has not come back. They have no word of him here at Dynevor, except that one who did come in safely from that fight saw him unhorsed and fallen in the forest, and doubts if he got away with his life. Yet some will make their way alive into Carmarthen, surely, and some into Brecon, and only God knows the names of the spared."
She turned her head again to look at me, and her eyes in the low, radiant light were burnished silver-grey, and large as moons, but her face was quite calm and still.
"I am Cristin, Godred's wife," she said. "Or his widow."
CHAPTER IX
In the cantref of Gwerthrynion we found the traces of Llewelyn's passage clear, for he had possessed himself of most of that goodly land, ripping away all the western borders of Roger Mortimer's lordship on the march. And only this cantref, out of all he had taken into his power that winter, had he retained for himself, using all the others to bind various of his allies to him, that it might be seen that the deliverance of Wales would be also the enlargement of all those who took part in it. So we passed in peace, with remounts where we needed them, and lodging at request, and came to the Cistercian house at Cwm Hir, always dear to Llewelyn Fawr, and always loyal to his line.
They were gone from there before we came, but only by one day. So we took a night's rest, and went on after them. It was then some five days before the Christmas feast.
Cristin, Godred's wife, rode with us grimly, without complaint or nagging, though often I know she was very weary. At every halt I took care to make provision for her privacy and rest, and at every uprising she came forth fresh and neat, with her youth like armour between her body and any failure or faintheartedness. For she was a very strong-willed lady. And though there was much about her I did not understand, I understood only too well that it might be my irredeemable loss if I questioned her concerning what she had seen fit to tell me, and afterwards had told me no more. And whether she had loved this Godred, and been happy with him, I could not know, for on that subject she had closed both her lips and her heart. But chiefly I told myself that she had cause to believe the word of the soldier who had reported him fallen and wounded, and was sure in her own mind that he was dead, and that being so, she wished to escape from the scene of her loss, being now utterly alone
, into some new expectation of life in another country. But whether I believed this because it was the most probable truth, or because I greatly desired it to be so, that I do not know. I do know that daily I prayed earnestly without words that I might be delivered from the sin of praying for his death.
And yet in those days we rode together in such precious comradeship as I had never known with any woman, or ever thought to know. And being forbidden by her silence to speak of her secrets, I found no such prohibition upon my own. In the hospice at Cwm Hir, before I left her to her rest, we sat some while together, and were at peace, and suddenly I desired above all things to tell her all that she must, in her heart, desire to know about the man she had helped to die in blessedness in the foothill forests of the Black Mountains. And I told her all the story of my mother and my mother's husband, and my mother's brief and nameless love, out of which I was born.
"I knew," said Cristin, "that it was no simple matter of an errand undertaken, or you would have given him the ring at once, as soon as you knew him, and so discharged it. Then you have sacrificed to his peace of mind all those hopes you had of finding a place for yourself among your father's kin."
"I sacrificed nothing," I said. "I gave him, with good-will, what he valued and needed more than I. As for the hope that I may some day find someone who is kin to me, what have I lost by the gift? I shall not forget the hand and the rose. If I see it again, I shall know it."
"But you have buried," she said, "the only proof you had to give you rights among them, even if you find them. Have you thought of that?"
I had not, for the truth was that long ago I had let go any ambitious idea I had had of establishing myself with my father's house. For now that I had a place in Llewelyn's confidence and an ambition all the dearer and more consuming because it was his, and mine only in reflection from him, I had no need in this world of any other kin.
"Well for you," she said, watching me with deep gravity, "if you bury with the ring everything that it signified, and rest content with the present and the future, forgetting the past. What need have you of any man's hand to raise you, when you have a prince as lord and friend? And what of brothers when he uses you as a brother? You have made for yourself a valuable and enduring place which you owe to no man's patronage, and no man's merits but your own. And you tell me you would not change, and have no regrets. Cut off the father you never knew, for he will only eat away a part of your mind that you cannot spare. Better to think rather of sons."
I said that she was surely right, and to say truth I was shaken and moved that she felt so deeply and spoke so earnestly of my affairs. Indeed there was nothing left in me of feeling towards my lost father, by this time, but a small, disturbing core of curiosity, for from him I had in part the blood that ran in my veins, the impulses that drove me, the wits with which I served my prince, and some share in my face. Desiring knowledge of him was desiring knowledge of myself.
But as for any need to make claim upon his blood and his household, if I did discover it, or to make myself known to any scion of that house, I felt none. The most I wanted of them was to know, not at all to be known. And so I said.
"You are wise," she said, and I thought she drew breath as though in ease of mind, and let fall a long, soft sigh.
We overtook Llewelyn and the main part of his force at Bala, for there he had halted to disperse for Christmas those of his army companies recruited from Penllyn and Merioneth, before the ranks from the north moved on to their homes. He had kept his word to bring the young men of the four cantrefs back safely, almost to a man, and many of them with booty to show for their campaign. And at Bala, before the chieftains separated, they held council concerning the next moves, for it was certain that the force and impetus we had gained ought not to be allowed to die down again while the winter season again grew wet and wild, with little frost. Even if harder cold should come, we now held the whip hand where food supplies were concerned. By the time my party rode in, the princes had agreed among them how soon they should muster again, the place and the target.
It was my intent to go alone to Llewelyn before I presented Cristin to him, for the sight of a straight and comely young woman entering the hall with me would surely raise his hopes that it was the Lady Gladys I brought to him. But someone had observed us before ever we reached the gate of the Uys, and carried him word, and he came out in haste from the high chamber to meet us. He had just come in from riding, and now came from the fireside, unarmed, belting his gown about him, and he was flushed and bright from his exercise. At this time, shortly before his twenty-eighth birthday, he had let his beard grow, being much preoccupied with other matters in the field, and thereafter he kept it so, but close-cropped so that it left his mouth bare, and drew golden-brown lines along his upper lip and round the strong, sharp bones of his jaw, as though some cunning artist had engraved him in bronze. In his eager expectation his eyes also had centres of gold. And even when they lit upon Cristin he was still in hope and in doubt, for he had not set eyes upon his sister for fifteen years and more, and any woman riding in with me then, young and slender and dark, could have passed for the Lady Gladys. Nevertheless, he was quick to perceive that this one was too young.
I lifted Cristin down, and she made a deep reverence to him, but he stopped her quickly, taking her by the hands and raising her, for the courtyard was muddy with melted snow. He said that she was welcome, and turned to embrace me.
"I am glad to have you safe back with us," he said. "I feared you might have run your head into more trouble than I bargained for when I sent you out. You've had no losses?"
"None, my lord," I said. "Delayed we were, but not by any disaster to ourselves. And though I'm sorry I could not bring you the Lady Gladys, yet she is safe in Brecon with her children. And someone else I have brought, who can give you more news of her than I can, for she has been in your sister's service, and was of her party when she left Dynevor. This is Cristin, daughter of Rhys Mechyll's bard Llywarch. She is left without a protector, and has chosen to be of your party rather than take refuge with the English."
"This is a story I must hear," said Llewelyn, "but out of this cutting wind. Come in to the fire, and I'll have meat and drink brought for you." And he took her by the hand and led her through the hall of the llys to his own great chamber, where there was warmth, and furs to nest in, and the soft grey smoke of the brazier drifting high in the roof.
"So you have chosen to be wholly Welsh," he said, when she was seated close to the fire, a horn of wine in her hand and the glow of warmth bringing a mirrored glow into her face, "when my own sister fled from me. I grant you she might well feel she had good cause. But you, it seems, were not afraid to venture."
There is more in it than that, my lord," she said. "I fear I have been the cause of your plans going awry, for it was I who drew off Master Samson's pursuit and let my lady get safe into Brecon. As he will tell you. It was well-meant, but I have deprived her of the choice of which I was only too glad to take advantage, and I fear you may think less well of welcoming me when you know all."
"That," said Llewelyn, eyeing her steadily, "I doubt. But if you want Samson to be your advocate, you could hardly do better."
So I told all that story, how Cristin had played the hart to our hounds, and then gone to earth in the forest, how we had ridden on, in time only to see the Lady Gladys and her company cross the bridge into Brecon, where we could not follow, how we had returned by the same road to look for the woman who had deceived us, and how she had come forth to us out of the woods to lead us to a dying man. There was very little Llewelyn did not know of my grief with Meilyr, and his with me, for in these years of our close companionship we had talked of everything that linked and divided us in the past. He sat listening very intently as I told him of that death and burial.
"Rhys Fychan and I between us," he said soberly, "have much to answer for. That was cruel waste at Cwm-du, of Meilyr and many another. Meredith has promised to send me a courier if anything i
s heard of Rhys himself, whether he lives or is slain. We found some wounded, and a few dead, on our way north again from Dynevor, but of Rhys no sign. For my part I think he was luckier than this man of his, and is with the English now, somewhere in one of those castles they hold along the Towy. I wish he had seen fit to come in with us and own his Welsh blood, and spare so many deaths."
Cristin looked up with the flush of the wine in her face, holding off sleep now that she was in from the cold, and said doubtfully: "But as we heard it in Dynevor, you came south to set up Meredith in all his own lands and Rhys's, too. To cast out Rhys as Rhys cast out his uncle."
"It need not have been so. To set up Meredith again in his own, yes, that I had sworn and have kept. But there was enough there once for both, and could be so again. The tale of their holdings in Cantref Mawr and Cantref Bychan is long enough, and the vale of Towy could very well hold both, if they would but be allies instead of enemies. But a brother who takes the English part when he has a choice I will not endure there. He made his own decision."