He looked up then and caught my eye, no doubt studying him very warily. I would rather he had not, but there was never any way of hiding from him what I was thinking. He laughed, a little hollowly, but without any bitterness or blame. "You are right," he said. "Who should know the way of it better than I, who first began it?"
Nevertheless, as April ran its course in sunshine and sudden squalls of rain, after its fashion on our northern coast, I began to disbelieve in that danger, at least while the oath of alliance was so new, and had brought nothing but good to any of those who joined in it. For it was Llewelyn's power that had set up his liegemen in their own lands, and his influence that held them secure in their tenure, and had even added to their holding newly conquered lands in the march, snatched back from the barons of England. What reason, then, had any to turn away from him?
Yet self-interest need not always be informed by intelligence, and the habit of generations dies very hard.
It was late in April, after we had sent out the last of the prince's deeds of protection and support to his new vassal, that Meurig ap Howel, Llewelyn's best scout from the middle march, came riding into Aber, a little, wrinkled dealer in ponies who traded as far as Oswestry and Montgomery, and regularly brought back to us word of what went on beneath the hangings even in Westminster. For our intelligencers were as wide-ranging and efficient as the king's, if less exalted. King Henry had at least one Welsh prince to be his spy, and that was Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys, that same man known to his English masters as Griffith de la Pole, from his castle of Pool, by the Severn town of that name. But we made better use of humbler men, Welsh law students and clerks and merchants, and notably our well-established horse-doctor in Chester, who was familiar and respected about the garrison, and on whom we relied for details of the king's muster and plans in his regular summer campaigns against us.
This Meurig was a dried-up little man, well on in years but hardy as a gorse-bush, so grey and so light of weight that he seemed to drift into Aber like a shred of thistledown blown by the silver shower that came in at the gate with him. Goronwy ap Ednyfed, the high steward, brought him in steaming to the brazier in the great chamber, to Llewelyn, for he was bursting with his news.
"You've had no word yet from Ryhs Fychan?" he asked; and being told that we had not: "I can be no more than a day ahead with it; he'll have a courier on the way to you this moment. My lord, the reconciliation you went to such pains to bring about along the Towy last year is broken. Meredith ap Rhys Gryg has accepted King Henry's peace, and forsworn the oath he took to you barely a month ago!"
At that there was a great rumble of anger and outrage from all those around, and Llewelyn chilled into stone for an instant before blazing into indignation.
"Meredith!" he said. "He, to be the first traitor! He of all people who owed us the most, who came here a fugitive, ousted from all his lands. And after I set him up again in everything he had lost!"
"I doubted him then," said David roundly. "When we took Rhys Fychan in and embraced him, that stuck in Meredith's gullet like a burr. For all he gave him the kiss of kinship like the rest of us, I felt then it had a sour taste to him. He could not stomach that we should accept and approve, and take him into the confederacy on equal terms. But most of all," he said, "he could not stomach that his nephew and rival should stand equal with him in your love."
"And what use," Llewelyn asked of Meurig, "has Meredith made of the king's peace? For peace will be the last thing he desires of it."
"My lord," said Meurig, "the very use you expect of him. King Henry has granted him leave to possess himself of Rhys Fychan's lands to add to his own, and has lent him the aid of the seneschal of Carmarthen and the royal garrison there. And they have seized Rhys Fychan's castle of Dynevor and manned it in Meredith's name, while Rhys with his family was at Carreg Cennen. All that you did a year ago between those two is to do again, restoring and reconciling if you can."
"Not all," said Llewelyn grimly, "and not as it was done before. Restore we will, but reconcile? For him to break his oath again as lightly? A pity!" he said. "I had a great liking for the man."
And that was not strange, for Meredith ap Rhys Gryg was a great, squat, powerful bear of a fellow, old enough to be the prince's father, a notable drinker, singer and fighter, very good company in hall and on the battlefield, except that it seemed he could change sides faster than most. "And what of Carreg Cennen?" Llewelyn asked.
"Well held and well victualled, and safe as doomsday," said Meurig. "Rhys and his wife and children have nothing to fear inside it."
This Rhys Fychan of Dynevor was husband to the prince's only sister, the Lady Gladys, a match made by their mother when she and all her children, with the exception of Llewelyn himself, were in the protection (or custody, for so it was, however sweetened) of King Henry of England. A hard struggle Rhys Fychan had had of it to get command of his own inheritance against his ambitious uncle, Meredith, who had kept him out of lands and castles as long as he could. No wonder, then, that when, under the king's protection, Rhys got possession of his own at last, he turned on his uncle and drove him into exile in Gwynedd. Thus those two had taken turns to harry each other, according as the fortunes of the time ran, and it was but chance that when Llewelyn made his bid for the freedom of Wales it should be Meredith ap Rhys Gryg who rode by his side, and Rhys Fychan, the ally of England, against whom he was forced to fight.
In the past summer we had seen the climax of that struggle, for Rhys Fychan had sickened of his subservience to England, and come over at his testing time to the side of Wales. And Llewelyn had been the first to vindicate, accept and welcome him into the alliance, making peace between those two enemies. In that southern part of Wales were many such instances of bad blood between kinsmen, and fratricide and worse were not unknown, chiefly because of the old customary law that all land was divisible, and where there were many sons their portions must be equal, and therefore equally meagre.
In Gwynedd we had some measure of reform from this debilitating system, and out of no princedom but Gwynedd could a prince of Wales have emerged.
"This example," warned Meurig, "if it continues unpunished, may sway certain other feeble trees. They say there are some who bend."
"The wind may blow them to bend the other way before long," said Llewelyn. And he said to Goronwy, who waited to know his will: "Send out the writs for two days hence, and have the captains muster in one hour. I stay here. Meurig has yet more to say."
"There is more," said Meurig, when Goronwy had gone about his errand. "This I heard in Shrewsbury, where I ventured without safe-conduct, the garrison wanting horses. There was a royal official lodged at the abbey, on his way between London and Chester, and he had Welsh servants in his train. One was a clerk, in good odour with his master and with other functionaries about Westminster. I was lucky to meet with him. By his tale, my lord, King Henry has been wooing your traitor Meredith ever since last year, when Rhys Fychan repented his servility and turned to Wales. The uncle was a handy way of striking at the nephew. That very month he offered him seisin of all his own lands and all his nephew's for his fealty and homage, and two commotes belonging to his neighbour Meredith ap Owen into the bargain. So easy it is to give away what you have not, if you are a king, my lord!"
"This is sooth?" said Llewelyn. "Your Welsh clerk has seen this deed?"
"Not that, but he has spoken with one who has. The man he quotes is in the king's own chancellery, and the assault on Dynevor bears him out. Moreover, there is another detail. I believe you will recognise the note! Meredith has held out for safeguards on his own terms. King Henry promises that he will not take into his grace and peace either Rhys Fychan or Meredith ap Owen of Uwch Aeron, without first consulting his new vassal. And for you, my lord—he promises further that he will never receive you into that same grace and peace, without the courtesy of getting Meredith's leave first! The traitor fears both you and his kinsmen, he will have the whole protection of the royal writ ag
ainst you."
"He has good need to fear me," said Llewelyn grimly, "and if he thinks the king's forces along the Towy can stand against mine he has yet something to learn. And you say King Henry has been trailing this lure before him ever since last autumn?"
"The document of grace, remitting all Meredith's past transgressions against either the king or the Lord Edward, is dated the eighteenth of October, and letter patent, at that. And the charter granting him the commotes of Mabwnion and Gwinionydd, in the teeth of their proper lord, bears the same date."
"He has the devil's own impudence," said David, with a shout of angry laughter, "give him that! He has known all these months what he meant to do, and he came to the assembly with the rest and took his oath like a man, and no doubt swallowed it down without gagging. I could almost admire the man his brazen face!"
"He lives in the past," Llewelyn said, for Meredith was indeed of an older generation, and came of a stormy line. "Give him the grace of the doubt, he may not have made up his mind when he came to the assembly. Oaths to him are meant at the moment of swearing, but the heat of a quarrel or the smart of being slighted are sanction enough for breaking them a day later. If the offence had been only against me I might have let it pass, but he betrays what he cannot grasp, the common cause of Wales. For that he shall pay. And for the gross offence against my sister's husband, who has kept the peace with him loyally."
"We march, then?" said David, his face bright at the offer of action, and his eyes alert and glad, for when we took the field, and he had all the fighting his heart craved, that restless energy that festered into mischief when he was curbed had a channel for its flood-tide, and ran violent and clean, sweeping all before it, and he fought and laboured, and gave and took wounds, and went hungry and weary, all with a child's zealous innocence.
Llewelyn looked not at him, but at Meurig, and asked: "How long have we?"
"King Henry sent out his writs on the fourteenth day of March. The host musters on the seventeenth of June at Chester. 'To go against Llewelyn!'"
This we had expected. The brief truce the king had made to tide him over the winter, when campaigning in Wales was too hard and costly, was drawing to its close, and certainly his constant intent against us had not changed. It was a matter of course that he should again attempt a summer war.
"Six weeks is all we need," said Llewelyn, "to teach Meredith the meaning of treason. We'll call the fullest muster we may in two days, and go south and make it plain to him that he has no right in Dynevor, that his neighbour's lands are not in King Henry's gift, and that from henceforth any who break their oath to Wales and betray the common cause will pay a heavy price for their treachery."
"Do we take engines?" asked David, glowing.
"Not this time, we cannot move them fast enough. We must do as much as we may, and be back in time to meet the king's muster. For Dynevor we may hope, but even Dynevor may have to wait a better opportunity if he has it garrisoned too strongly. No, we can do more and more profitable hurt to Meredith by harrying his lands and lopping him of all we can. We'll send to Meredith ap Owen, too, and bring him into the field. He has a score of his own to settle, for those two commotes of his. And now let the captains come in," he said to Goronwy, "and, Meurig, we'll talk further when you are rested and fed."
So we went every man about his particular business in preparation for that campaign, the first stroke of Llewelyn's power as overlord. With the spring so fair, and the land fresh and drying after the passing of the last snow and the early April rains, going would be easy, and at all times we could move so quickly, and needed to carry so little provision with us, that we could pass from north to south and back again, and appear in many places where no man looked for us, all within the space of two or three weeks.
Afterwards, when the council was over, Llewelyn had another hour's talk with Meurig, for he would know more of what the Welsh clerk from Westminster had to tell about affairs at court. For many weeks seething rumours had been reaching us of a growing dissension between Ring Henry and his magnates.
"It is true enough," said Meurig, "the king has troubles at home, and they are growing fast. As I heard it, some of the greatest earls of the land, and some high churchmen, too, have been driven to despair by the chaos the king has made in his rule, bankrupt of money, beset with all the brood of his Poitevin half-brothers, and in particular burdened with this bad bargain he has made with the pope. With the last pope, true, but this one pursues it just as inflexibly."
I was brought up in the old Celtic tradition of the saints, and I confess the distant actions and arbitrary decrees of popes were always alien to me. Popes drive hard bargains. Of this trouble that plagued King Henry, and yet promised him so much, I knew by rote, yet the image of Pope Alexander, who held out the bait and the trap, remained to me as a strange heraldic beast on a blazon, no kin to my Welsh flesh. The papacy, for reasons but half-known to me, had long hated and desired to be rid of the imperial house of Hohenstaufen, and spent years beating the bushes for a champion to overthrow them and dispossess them of the kingdom of Sicily. And King Henry, when the prize was dangled before him for his younger son, Edmund, could not resist the lure. He had taken the oath, and under pain of excommunication he was pledged to bear the whole vast burden of the debt past popes and present had incurred in this contention, and to carry their banner to victory.
"The king's magnates detest and regret the business of Sicily," Meurig said, "but most reluctantly they feel that for his honour, and England's, and their own, they have no choice but to help him out of the pit he has digged for himself. They'll grant him aids, since needs must, to try to win this throne for his boy, and fulfil his obligations under oath, but they want something from him in return, the better ordering of the country's affairs, or why pour their efforts into the void?"
"And what of his parleys with France?" Llewelyn pressed him keenly. "Whether the pope abates his terms or no, the king cannot get far in this enterprise without making his peace with King Louis."
"He still desires it, and it becomes ever more urgent. But that, too, may be a long tussle unless fate cuts the knots. At his last council the king had to tell his lords that the pope has refused any change in his demands; the agreement must stand, in full. That means there's interdict hanging over the land and excommunication over the king unless he stirs himself. But desperate ills make desperate remedies, and it may be a dozen earls and barons of England can change the pontiff's mind, if the king cannot. There's no sense in even emperor or pope demanding the impossible."
"Or prince of Wales, either," said Llewelyn, and smiled. "So it stands, then. Not yet resolved on methods or means?"
"So it stood. Like a hanging rock lodged on a mountainside. By now it may be in motion," said Meurig, blinking his shrewd old eyes. "Once launched, who can guess where that fall will come to rest?"
"Not in Wales," said Llewelyn, slowly considering, and increasingly sure of what he said. "Can he fight that battle, and ours as well? He may get his muster into arms and harness, but can he get them to Chester and into Wales? Not this year!"
"It is not impossible, though I would not say it is likely. But when a mountain slides," said Meurig, twining a finger in his silver beard, "I have known men felled who thought they walked out of range. And I have known nuggets of gold to be picked up by fortunate souls who kept their wits about them."
"You say well," said Llewelyn, and laughed. "Pray God I keep mine!"
There was then no clarity in our expectations from that landslip that quivered above England. We rode from Aber, in rapid but orderly muster, two days after this visit, still ignorant that the first move had been made in the avalanche. For after the council at Westminster, seven great lords met and conferred, on the Friday after the fortnight after Easter, that is, the twelfth day of April of that year twelve hundred and fifty-eight, and compounded among them a sworn confederacy, every member taking a solemn oath to give aid and support to all the others in the cause of justice and r
ight and good government, saving the troth they owed to king and crown. And then these seven, doubtless, sat down together to define what they desired for England, as we dreamed and argued and fought for what we desired for Wales. And, having defined it, they set out, even as we, to encompass it. For on the last day of April, while we rode south to the avenging of Meredith's treason, those seven led a band of earls, barons and knights, all armed, to confer with King Henry in the palace of Westminster. And disarming at the door, in token of their plighted loyalty, they went in to him and with all reverence but with great firmness set before him the body of their complaints and the sum of their remedies. To take or to leave. And the king, half-reluctantly and half-thankfully, and Prince Edward, his heir, with deeper suspicion and affront, perforce took them.