The Brothers of Gwynedd

  "I doubt if King Henry will," said David, grinning. "Are you sure he'll go tamely home to England?"

  "He'll go," said Llewelyn confidently. "Not only because he gave his word, but because he's seen how many we are, and how many more we can call out of the ground here. The men of these parts do not love him. And now we're rid of Roger, we'll settle Maelienydd first, and then push on towards Hereford. This border country," he said, looking across the rolling hills and cushioned valleys with appreciation, "is very much to my mind. Let's add as much of it as we can to Wales."

  And to that end we laboured, and with much success. The men of the land were with us, our numbers grew by their willing adherence, we had nothing to do but pick off, one by one, the English-held castles that were outposts in this marcher countryside, and that we did briskly and thoroughly. Bleddfa first, and then over the hills into the Teme valley, to take Knucklas, and so sweep down-river into Knighton. The castle there hangs over the town on its steep hillside and, below, the valley opens green and fair. That winter was not hard, there was but a sprinkle of snow before Christmas, and the meadows in that sheltered place were no more than blanched as in the harvest. Thence we moved south to secure Norton and Presteigne, and everywhere the chieftains and tenants came to repudiate their homage to the king and urge it upon Llewelyn, together with their soldier service. Like a ripe apple Maelienydd dropped into the prince's hand, grateful to be gathered so, and overjoyed to be Welsh.

  It was at Presteigne we heard, from a merchant who traded wool into Hereford, that King Henry had at last recovered sufficiently to make the sea crossing, and had dragged his still enfeebled body as far as Canterbury, where he meant to spend the Christmas feast, now close upon us.

  "Well, since Roger is so quick to call my name in question with him," said Llewelyn, "we'll repay the favour in the same terms." And he sent another letter, politely and formally complaining that Mortimer and de Bohun had occupied with a large force a castle within the seisin of the prince of Wales and, when surrounded and beseiged by the prince's army, had been generously allowed passage through the lines to withdraw to their base, though it would have been easy to compel their surrender. And again he offered amends for any proven breach of truce, provided the barons complained of would guarantee the same. And he ended with a sly reminder that it was wiser to hear both sides of a case before proceeding to judgment.

  With this whole region established behind us, we swept on to the south, into the Hereford lowlands as far as Weobley and Eardisley, fat country full of cattle that we rounded up and drove off with us, and barns that we plundered. Very easy farming these lowlanders have, and very well they live. We drew so near to Hereford that the Savoyard bishop, Peter of Aigueblanches, as well hated as any cleric in England, flew into a panic terror and ran for his life into Gloucester, groaning though he was, so they said, with an attack of gout, and from there wrote indignant letters to the king. Henry paid dear in his own convalescence for his glee over Llewelyn's supposed mortal sickness. In that winter the prince was at the peak of his powers, and blazed down that border like a chain of beacon fires.

  "He surely knows by now," said Llewelyn, "that I am man alive."

  At Hay-on-Wye came messengers from the chieftains of Brecknock, begging him to go into their country and accept their homage and fealty. Never before had we moved thus down the very fringe of the march, eating into those lands claimed and occupied by the marcher lords, where Welsh and English contended always. Surely he added one fourth part to his principality before the Christmas feast of that year.

  I think King Henry truly believed at that time that the Welsh intended a great invasion of England itself, but if so, there were few others who took the situation so seriously, and certainly Llewelyn never had any such intention. When the king issued feverish orders to the lords marchers to forget their quarrels and unite against the enemy on their borders, and called them to muster at Ludlow and Hereford in the following February, the exhortation fell on deaf ears. Pitifully King Henry wrote off to Edward in Gascony, reproaching him for his lethargy and indifference in face of Llewelyn's threat, and urging him to come home and lift the burden from his poor old father—as though he himself had not as good as banished the young man into France in disgrace, and ordered him to devote his energies to running his province there, and keep his nose out of English politics.

  Nonetheless, we had to pay heed to all threats of mustering the feudal host against us, whether we greatly believed in them or no. So at Christmas we parted company, half of our forces pressing on southwards towards the rich fields of Gwent under Goronwy, with the levies of the southern princes joining him, while Llewelyn with a sufficient company halted long enough to receive the homage of all the princes of Brecknock, and make dispositions to hold what had been gained, and then withdrew at the turn of the year into Gwynedd.

  Of how Goronwy fared with his force, that can soon be told, for in the first months of the new year he carried Llewelyn's banner to the very gates of Abergavenny, and only there was the victorious rush to the Severn sea halted, by the stout defence of that same Peter de Montfort who had once conducted us to the parliament of Oxford. He was King Henry's officer in that region, and the only one who held his own against us, until he was joined by John de Grey and a great number of other marcher lords hurriedly massed to his relief. After a skirmish with this army, Goronwy withdrew his men into the hills, where the English were reluctant to follow them, and even the local Welsh tenants, who otherwise would have borne the brunt of the inevitable revenge, took their chattels and made off into cover and into the monasteries, where they had sanctuary. Our thrust went no farther, but turned to consolidation of our great gains already made. And it should be said that in this gathering of the princes of the south once again Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, according to his renewed fealty, brought his levy and fought for Llewelyn and Wales alongside his nephew Rhys Fychan, at which Llewelyn was glad. But whether it was out of duty and good faith, or because the pickings in those parts were fat, I do not venture to judge.

  As for us of the prince's party, we returned to Gwynedd in the first days of January, and at Bala we were met by a messenger from Rhodri, who had been left nominally in charge with Tudor in the north.

  His news was in his face, for envoys bearing word of sickness and death have a special way of approaching those to whom they are sent. The Lady Senena, who had brought her immediate suite to Aber in the prince's absence, convinced that no one but she could properly oversee the affairs of Gwynedd, had been taken with a falling seizure on the night of Innocents' Day, and though she still lived, she was helpless in her bed, unable to move any part of her left side, foot or hand, and her countenance fixed. She mended not at all, and her time could not be long.

  Thus the third sally death made that year, after discarding Llewelyn and King Henry both, was made against the lady. And the third sally was mortal.

  CHAPTER VI

  They gathered by her bed, those three brothers, as helpless as most men when the hour strikes that cannot be avoided. She lay stiff and still, like a figure already carved on a tomb, though she could move her right arm, and the right side of her face still flushed and paled, and was human flesh to view. It was marvellous to see, now that she lay still who had seldom been still when she stood, how small she was, to have borne all those tall sons. Her grey hair was braided, to save her from irritation where it touched, and she was warmly wrapped against the winter cold in fine wool and under well-cured sheepskins. Her level brows were still black and formidable, and the eyes under them bright and wise. Also bitter, for death she resented, as all her life she had resented what curbed or enforced her will.

  Cristin stood at the head of the bed, and she was in command within that room, as if she had received into herself some measure of the lady's mastery to add to her own. "My lady's mind is clear as it ever was," she said, "and she sees plainly, and knows all that passes. She can speak, but it gives her trouble and wearies her. You must listen well." r />
  Llewelyn went straight to the bedside, and stooped and kissed his mother's forehead. David came more slowly, his eyes great, and I saw the fine beads of sweat stand on his lip, and remembered how he had said, not retreating from it: "Samson, I am afraid of death!" He also kissed her, on the cheek that still lived. It cost him more. He had not Llewelyn's bold simplicity.

  The Lady Senena's eyes followed all their movements until they drew too close, or went beyond her range, and those eyes burned with intelligent purpose still. When she spoke, half her mouth moved freely, the other half resisted, like a log dragged by a strong tide. Her voice was a fine thread, but a clear one. She said: "Where is Owen?"

  Llewelyn said: "He will come. We'll send for him." He never flinched or avoided her eye, that was accusing enough.

  "Soon!" she said, and it was an order.

  "This hour," said Llewelyn, and smiled at her without shame or dread. "I leave you," he said, "only to do what you wish." And he turned about and went out of the room on the instant, and sent an escort to bring Owen Goch out of his prison at Dolbadarn to bid farewell to his mother. And then he came back to her, and told her that it was done, and within a day she should have her eldest son with her to close the circle. When he addressed her it was without constraint. Truly I think that while she had her full wit and senses she knew herself nearer to him than to any, for he alone reverenced, loved, challenged and defied her, ever since he was twelve years old, and went his own way without ever grudging her hers.

  Owen Goch had been held in Dolbadarn castle then for more than seven years, so long that it was often all too easy to forget that he lived, and his coming to Aber was an event calculated to shatter our peace of mind. Llewelyn had occasionally visited him in captivity, but of late years infrequently, and usually at Owen's own instance, for the prisoner was quite capable of proffering vehement requests and complaints concerning his comfort and well-being. The Lady Senena had visited him regularly, and never ceased to plead his cause, though it was the one thing on which Llewelyn would not be persuaded or softened. Perhaps she was even surprised at his instant acquiescence now, for she was not of a temperament to use her own death-bed to wring concessions out of him. What he denied her, sure of his own justice, when she was hale, she would not find it unreasonable or unfilial in him to deny when she was sick.

  However, she accepted his gift without comment, and by mid-morning of the next day Owen rode into the maenol, unbound but strongly guarded. In the years since he rose in civil war against his brother, and so lost his liberty, he had grown soft and fat, being confined for exercise to the castle baileys, no very extensive ground, but he looked in good health, if somewhat pallid in the face, and was princely in his dress, and very well mounted. Like his father before him, he was a heavy, large-boned man, liable to run to flesh, the tallest of the brothers, and his hair and beard were still of the flaming red of poppies, untouched by grey. He had also his father's rash and violent temperament, though without his redeeming openness and generosity, for Owen brooded and bore grudges where the Lord Griffith would have forgotten and forgiven. So even after seven years he would in no wise accept Llewelyn's lordship or agree to any terms, standing obdurately on his total right in Welsh law. Indeed, he had grown more irreconcilable during his imprisonment, and long since ceased to remember that he owed it in large part to his own act.

  Llewelyn went down into the courtyard to meet him as he dismounted, approaching him directly, without pretence that their relationship was other than it was, without relenting, without constraint, certainly without any affectation of love. The long ride, on a fine wintry morning with only a touch of frost, must have been most grateful to Owen, and had brought fresh colour to his face. He eyed Llewelyn warily and coldly, but he accepted the wine that was offered on alighting, and asked: "Our mother still lives?"

  "She lives and is waiting for you," said Llewelyn.

  They went to her together, but Llewelyn came out at once, and so did Cristin with him, and left those two alone.

  "She cannot last the day out," said the physician. And before nightfall all those four sons were gathered about her bed, for it was clear she had not long, and her will was the thing about her now most alive, and struggling with bitterness against the compulsion of dying. At that last meeting I was not present, but Cristin was, in constant attendance on her lady, and from her I know what I know of the last hour.

  "She could still speak," said Cristin, "and be understood, if you attended closely. When the priest had blessed her to God, she blessed them all, one by one, and commended them to behave brotherly to one another, as they hoped for God's mercy. Then she fell into a wandering of the mind for a while, her one good hand straying about the covers, and she talked more clearly then—it might be better if she had not! For she was back in the old days, and they were children to her, and she babbled of David and Edward in the same breath, and so reminded them of the days they spent at court that Llewelyn was like a stranger among them, the only one speaking a different language. She even reproached him, that he forsook his father and his mother, and brothers and sister and all, to go with the uncle that wronged and disparaged them. Is this all true history?"

  I said that by the Lady Senena's measure it was, and told her how it befell, and how in my eyes it did him great credit and honour, for he was but a child when he chose and acted like a man.

  "And he bore all, and gave no sign," she said, "though I know he felt it deeply. For in dying men return to what holds them most, and she was in Westminster with all her brood, excepting only Llewelyn, and he was the outcast, and alone."

  I said that in those days so he was, but it did not turn him from what he meant to do.

  "Nor now," she said, "right or wrong. For Rhodri was in tears, and David too wrung for any such easy way as tears, but Llewelyn sat by her and watched and listened, and took all as it came, as though he never expected any other. Or perhaps—it may be so—he has an understanding with her that the others have not, on his own terms. His father I never knew, but I think he is her son, through and through."

  That was truth, and so I told her. The two who most favoured their father were Owen and Rhodri. As for David, God alone knew from what mysterious forbears, from what perilous and resplendent women, he took his being.

  "And then," said Cristin, "she rallied, and was with us again, out of the past. She left dandling Edward and riding in the queen's retinue, and came back very sharply to this day, and then she looked for Llewelyn, and even moved her good hand towards him, so that he took it up and held it. Her eyes were fierce and bright again, able to match with his. She said: "Son, do justice to your brother!" and he said: "Mother, I will do right to all my brothers, according to my own judgment." And he smiled at her, and I think, however twisted that mouth of hers, that was a smile I saw upon it. It was the last fling of her spirit, and she challenged him, and he stood like a rock and let her take or leave him as he is. And I do believe she took him, all his offences and failings and all, and was glad of him. But what they made and will make of it, God knows. She has shaken them to the roots."

  It was not strange. So forceful a person could not be withdrawn suddenly out of the world without some tearing of the living tissues, and every one of those four, as various as they were, was fonder of her and more deeply twined into her being than he knew.

  "She never spoke word again," said Cristin, "nor uttered sound. I think there was another such stroke passed through her, for she stiffened, and her hand gripped on his suddenly, and all the flesh of her face seemed to be drawn in like shrivelled leather to the bone. Her eyes rolled up, and she died."

  She was filling her arms with fresh linen from a chest in the great hall when she told me this, and with these sheets and with knotted bunches of dried sweet herbs she went back to the death-chamber to make the Lady Senena decent and comely for her coffin, which the masons were even then cutting. But as she left she said: "If she had known they would be her last words, would she have spoken them?
'Son, do justice to your brother!' Perhaps! She was bred in the old ways, and lived and fought by them, and at the end she clung to them. But what a stone to cast into that pool among those four, at such a time!"

  There was but one place then where the royal women of Gwynedd were fittingly laid to rest, and that was in the burial ground of Llanfaes, in Anglesey, that Llewelyn Fawr dedicated to the memory of his great consort, Joan, lady of Wales, and founded beside it the new house of Llanfaes for the Franciscan friars, the closest of all the religious to the old saints of the pure church.

  There we bore the Lady Senena on a grey, still January day of the new year, twelve hundred and sixty-three, down from Aber over the salt flats and the wide sands of Lavan, and ferried her across to the Anglesey shore, there to rest after all her triumphs and tragedies. The sea was leaden that day, the tide heavy and slow, and in the stillness of the air the voices of the friars were dulled and distant, as though the world had receded from us as far as from her, though outside this solitude of sand and sea and vast, shadowy sky the tumult of events thundered and shook, waiting to devour us when we returned across the strait, and even followed us there secretly like a smouldering fire in the hearts of those four brothers. For she was gone into the earth, who after her fashion had held them tethered into a loose kind of unity, however they strained at it, and in departing she had turned back to invoke the very spell that severed them.