The Brothers of Gwynedd

  "Stop this!" he cried. "It is unworthy, and I will not witness it. I have said on what conditions Owen goes free, and the reason you know as well as I, and it is not a mere matter of land. There is one cause I care about, and it is Wales, and not for Owen, nor for you, nor for any other will I put Wales in peril after the old fashion. Only a few months since you saw yourself what King Henry intended, if I had been wiped out of the world—to divide and devour, to split up the land and consume it piecemeal, to play brother against brother in the name of Welsh law, which he despises but can still quote for his own purposes! He could not ask for better advocates than I have heard tonight! What does he need with armies if he can get his work done for him by Welshmen without ever unsheathing a sword? And for no pay but promises he need never fulfil!"

  "Are you saying," asked David, whiter than his shirt and stiff as a lance, "that England has bought me?"

  "Not so! There was no need. But if you had been bought, and at a high price, too, you would still be very good value to England. Half your heart," said Llewelyn unwisely, "was always in doubt where it belonged, between King Henry and me. I thought that severance had healed. Now I wonder! In the matter of Wales, he who is not for us is against us. It is time to ask where you stand!"

  If he had not been driven so hard he would not have said it, and it was done to put an end to a colloquy he could no longer bear, but it went in like a sword, all the more because there was, then as always, a degree of truth in it. David stood staring at him for a long, aching time of silence, while he gathered a voice so thick and heavy with outrage and grief that it stuck fast in his throat, and he had to heave the words out of him like gouts of blood. His face was ice, but within he burned, and his eyes were pale blue flames, both fire and ice.

  "I stand in the presence of my liege lord," he said, "and above the grave of my mother, and confronting the prison that holds my brother, whom I misled and cozened and abandoned. And you expect me to be whole? You understand nothing, you care for nothing, but Wales. Very well, keep your Wales, hold it together with your hands, bind it with your blood, marry Wales, beget Wales, have Wales for brother and mother and all, and cease to be troubled with us mortals. I have done!"

  He turned on that word, and flung away out of the room, so violently yet so silently that neither of us had time to say a word more or reach out a hand to him. I heard his footsteps in the stone passage outside the door, and they were swift and hard and steady, as though he knew what he had done, and where he was going, and did not repent of it, however mortal his pain.

  "Dear God!" sighed Llewelyn wearily, and passed a hand over his face. "Was it I did that, or he?"

  "Shall I go after him?" I said.

  "No. To what end? I am of the same mind still, and so is he, what can we have to say to each other yet? Nor have I any right to call him back. He is a free man. He is gone of his own will, and in time he'll come back of his own will. Have we not seen him stalk away in the same fashion many a time before?" And he looked at me very searchingly, and asked me: "Was he lying?"

  I said: "No." What else was there to say, and what to add?

  "The more reason," said Llewelyn heavily, "for letting him alone until he pleases to come to. I have been remiss. Too much a prince and too little a brother. Now there's nothing to be done but hope that Owen will think better of his refusal by tomorrow, and save David's countenance and mine."

  For whatever regret he felt, it was not for his decision, and whatever he might take back, it was not the sentence of continued imprisonment. David was right, he was married first to Wales.

  David slept at Aber that night, if indeed he did sleep, but in the morning early he collected all his household and rode, himself with a handful of knights going ahead while the rest followed later. The vanguard made no farewells. The rest were ready to march by midday. Rhodri had taken himself off with all his retinue overnight, and Owen, still obdurate, rode with a tight escort for Dolbadarn soon after Prime. For he utterly refused to abate any of his full claims under Welsh law. Aber was emptying fast, and for all it would have happened so even without the quarrel, still that disintegration seemed to me a sad, symbolic thing.

  Godred being with David's knights, I was able to speak with Cristin before she left with the main party, and I told her all that had passed. For she was as secret and stout as any man, and had always a steady fondness for David, alone of all women being able to meet him as equals and friends, without illusions and without reservations.

  "There are times," she said, "when he speaks with me almost as he does with you." And she flushed, as though by that notice he acknowledged, and she recognised, the bond there was between us. "If by any means I can help him," she said, "I will. For your sake and his."

  Other than that, we said never a word of ourselves. Or of Godred. Above all, never of Godred.

  It was towards night when the escort that had taken Owen back to his prison rode again into the maenol at Aber. They came three men short of their number, and several with the bruises of battle. Cadwallon, their captain, sought audience at once of Llewelyn, and made report to him.

  "My lord, first I make it plain, the errand you gave us is successfully done. But not without hindrance. When we came down towards the lakeside, where there is cover close about the track, archers in hiding among the trees loosed at us, and then mounted men rode out on us from either side the way. They were more than we, and had the vantage of surprise. Who looks for an ambush about the prince's business in Gwynedd itself? We lost one man killed, and three were wounded, before ever they closed. But we beat them off, none the less. My lord, this was an attempt to take away the Lord Owen Goch out of captivity. No question! They tried to cut him out from among us, but vainly. He is safe in Dolbadarn." And he said, to be just and make all clear: "He was not a party to it. Surely he would have gone with them if he could, but I saw his face when it began, and I know he was as much at a loss as we. There was no foreknowledge. It was the other who planned it."

  "The other?" said Llewelyn, as tight as a bow-string, and his voice unnaturally gentle that it might not be unnaturally harsh.

  "My lord, pardon the bringer of unwelcome news! We took captive four of the attackers, before the rest broke and fled. Three are lancers of Lleyn. The fourth is the Lord Rhodri, your brother."

  I was by Llewelyn's side then, I saw all the lines of his face and body ease, warming slowly into life. He had expected another answer.

  "Rhodri!" he said. "These were Rhodri's folk, then?" And he drew cautious breath, and his hands upon the arms of his chair slackened, and flushed with blood over the stark bone.

  "Yes, my lord, no question. We have taken them into Dolbadarn with the Lord Owen, and there they are in safe hold. Also our wounded we left there to be tended. But for a few scratches the Lord Rhodri is not hurt. And your castellan holds him safe until he receives your orders."

  "He shall have them," said Llewelyn, "tomorrow. You did well, and shall not be forgotten. For the man you lost, I am sorry. Bring me his name and estate, and if he has a family, they shall be my charge. It was too much to spend," he said, more to himself than to us, "for my failure." And he dismissed Cadwallon kindly, and sat a long time brooding after he was gone.

  "Well," he said at last, "I must work with what I am and what I have. Rhodri shall have fair trial, and the law that he so loves, not I, shall say what is to be done with him. And till he has a day appointed him we'll keep him safe, but not in Dolbadarn. Two so like-minded in the one hold might be all too well able to buy a messenger and means. In Dolwyddelan he should be safe enough."

  He got up from his chair and paced a little between tapestried wall and wall, restless and troubled, and looking round at me suddenly he said: "Here I stand, to all appearances at the zenith, not a Welsh prince against me but one, all the reality mine, nothing remaining but to get England's recognition, and that no longer quite out of reach. Yet it seems, Samson, I have stripped myself of all my kin, mother, brothers and all, in one day. As t
hough a cloud had come over the sun. You remember Rhydderch's red-gold dragon in the noonday? It may be this is God's reminder to me that after the zenith there is no way for the sun to go but down."

  I said stoutly that he made too much of it, for to say the blunt truth, there was but one of his brothers had ever been of much value to him, and he was not at fault here. "You heard Cadwallon," I said. "David was not there."

  "Not in the flesh," said Llewelyn drily. "By his own admission and yours he knows how to get others to do his work, even in his absence. Why should he not use Rhodri, if he did not scruple to use Owen?"

  Then I understood the heart of his loss, and how it reached out beyond David to touch me in my turn, since I had known all these years, or possessed a conviction so strong as to be almost knowledge, of David's greater guilt at the time of Bryn Derwin, and had never said word to him about it, either in extenuation of Owen's crime or in warning against David. But neither could I speak a word now for myself, while he said none against me. Nor was there any blame or reproach in his face or manner.

  I said, and it was true, that it would be simple to send a courier and examine in David's household, without accusing any, at what hour he and his knights had returned, and whether he or any of them could possibly have been in touch with Rhodri's company after they left Aber. For surely this attack had not been planned beforehand, and we knew that Rhodri had ridden away in dudgeon before ever David left the prince's presence. Llewelyn shook his head and smiled.

  "No, we'll not send spies to question my brother's grooms and servants against him. We have not come to that. Unless Rhodri accuses him, in my eyes he is clean. Guilt is no simple thing. It may be my own hands are in need of washing as much as any, and that's a salutary thing to have learned. I shall never again be sure— altogether sure—of any man."

  He halted there for a moment, and I thought and dreaded that he was about to add: "Not even you." Though my deserts were never more than other men's, yet my need of his trust was extreme. But as I waited he ended, as one accepting, wryly but without grudge, what he saw and recognised: "Least of all, myself."

  Towards the end of that month of January the council of his peers brought Rhodri to trial for his treason, and committed him to imprisonment at the prince's pleasure until he should purge his offence. He was taken to Dolwyddelan, and there kept in secure hold. As for David, Llewelyn would not pursue him, but waited all the early months of the year for him to return as impulsively and vehemently as he had departed, and take his place among us as before. But even at the Easter feast, which we kept at Bala, we waited and looked for him in vain. David did not come.

  CHAPTER VII

  About Easter the Lord Edward came hurrying back to England in answer to his father's plea, and was ordered promptly to go and look after his intended heritage of Wales, and he did indeed hasten to Shrewsbury, where he made his headquarters and kept contact with the justiciar of Chester, and tried to enforce the better stewardship of the marcher castles. But all he did in Wales, and that we let him do, was to relieve and reprovision his islanded castles of Diserth and Degannwy. The time of the proposed February muster had gone by unhonoured, for no one stirred to carry out the order. And it was not long before King Henry hastily called his son back to his side, and left us watching from a distance the mad dance of events in England.

  At the feast of Pentecost, towards the end of May, a young man rode along the coast road into Aber, watched from a distance as he came. When he drew nearer the watch recognised his arms, and sent word in to the prince. For the second time he welcomed into Aber young Henry de Montfort.

  He came unattended, and on urgent business, and Llewelyn received and made him welcome. Goronwy was then not long back from the south, having seen the Welsh gains consolidated as far as the borders of Gwent. I was present with them at that meeting as clerk, as was usual.

  "My lord," said the young man, "I come to you this time as envoy not from king and council, but from an assembly of those lords, knights and free men who stand firm in support of the Provisions. An assembly most fittingly held at Oxford, where first those principles were set forth and agreed. We are a party believing strongly in that fair and ordered form of government, we desire to uphold it still, according to oath, and to see it established in the realm for the good of all. We have many of the younger nobility with us, and the yeomen of the shires solidly behind us. And that you may know who leads us—my father, the earl of Leicester, is back in England, and presided at this gathering. Those who hold with him begged him to come home and be their leader, and he has again taken up the burden. It is in his name that I come."

  "In his name and in your own," said Llewelyn, "you are very welcome. What the earl of Leicester has to say to me I am all goodwill to hear."

  "My lord, when once we spoke of these matters I do believe you were interested and moved. I think we had your sympathy. Do we still hold it?"

  "My position," said Llewelyn, "is as it was then. As between king and commons I do not presume to intervene. As between ideas I may certainly choose and prefer.

  But my business remains, as it always was, Wales."

  "Then I am sure you, of all men, know," said the young man eagerly, "that the present chaos in the march cannot in the end benefit Wales, whatever short-term gains there may be to be had. Also that King Henry came home at the year's end looking upon you as his arch-enemy, by reason of your campaign in Maelienydd, and bent upon making war upon you, and even now has not abandoned that theme. It is no secret that he is still contemplating calling out the feudal host against you this summer, having failed in February."

  "I have been expecting it," agreed Llewelyn, smiling. "And you do not regard me as an enemy?"

  "No. Your business is Wales, ours is England. We will not betray ours, but neither will we fail to respect yours. And those who have a common enemy have much to gain by being friends." He caught the import of what he had said, and blushed, as it seemed he still could, amending with dignity the ill-chosen words. "It is not the king who is the enemy, it is the old order, and those about the king who seek to fend off all changes. The king is a victim, manipulated by some whose whole concern is to protect their own interests."

  "And how do things stand at this moment," asked Llewelyn, "with your own strength?"

  De Montfort named names, very lofty names, and strange to note so many of them young. This was no old man's party. There was hardly a man among them of Earl Simon's own generation, except for his faithful friend Peter de Montfort of Beaudesert. The old, those who dug in their heels against change and resented that great lords should be asked to curb their privileges, or common men seek to enlarge theirs, were all with the king. "The Earl Warenne is with us, Gilbert of Clare, Henry of Almain, Roger Clifford, Leyburn, Giffard of Brimpsfield…" The list was long. "We return absolutely to the Provisions, declaring all who oppose them, but for the king and his family, to be public enemies. And these demands we are sending to the king."

  "He will not agree to them," said Llewelyn with certainty. "And what then?"

  "I do not accept that his refusal is certain. But we are prepared for it. If need be, we shall move against those who urge the refusal upon him."

  "In arms?" said Llewelyn, eyeing him steadily.

  "In arms."

  "And what is it," Llewelyn asked mildly, after a moment's measuring silence, "that you want from me?"

  "The chief part of our confederacy is in the marches, and from this base we must move. If it comes to war, we must secure the march behind us, with all the passages of the Severn in our hands, before we move east into England. Your presence in arms on the west bank of the river would be worth an army to us."

  Goronwy looked at Llewelyn and smiled, knowing his mind. "The bridges at Gloucester and Worcester and Bridgnorth would need to be held," he said, "and certain fords. It could well be controlled from the west. It is in our interest to keep ward on that border for our own sake, in such troublous times."

  "You shall
have what you ask," said Llewelyn. "I will take my host and hold station along the border, within your reach whenever you call on me. And in the south Rhys Fychan shall keep ward in the same way. We had best arrange codes and signals I can send out to my allies, we have a long frontage to guard, and you may have need of us in haste, at any point."

  So we were committed, and yet not committed, for out of the confines of Wales he would not pledge more than raiding units of his army, and within Wales he moved upon his own land, and could not be questioned or held to account. But with that the young man was content, it was what he had come to gain. And he dined with us, and was good company when he could call back his mind and spirit from where it habited by choice, somewhere far away in the city of London, in that Tower which I remembered from my boyhood, where that very day, perhaps, Earl Simon's envoys confronted the king with the high demands of the reform.