The Brothers of Gwynedd

  King Henry conceived that at last he had an opportunity to seize his enemy, and sent in haste to order the citizens of London to close the city against "the troublemakers." And certain of the rich men of the town did indeed plot to close London bridge behind the earl, who had entered Southwark, thus leaving his force exposed while the royal army encircled and captured him. But the common people of London, discovering his danger, broke down the gates and brought him safely out of the trap. Virtuously the king denied all ill intent, or any design of bringing in foreign soldiers. But I think it was this adventure that convinced Earl Simon that without reconciliation England was lost to chaos, and he must make all possible sacrifices to obtain a compromise in which all could work together. So he was the first to agree, when the mediators proposed that the final arbitration should be referred to King Louis, and his judgment on all points should be faithfully accepted by both parties.

  But he would never, I think, have accepted this but for the king's assurances that the Provisions themselves were not at issue, being generally accepted by all. Less surprising, King Henry also jumped at the proposal, and the road was prepared for a solemn assembly at Amiens in January of the coming year.

  As for us, we guarded the march and waited for word, receiving news of all these things after the event, and the fate of England was decided before we knew anything of it. And in singular contrast to that sad confusion beyond the border, the fate of Wales shone steady and bright as a lamp, its unity crowned at last. For about the same time that the men of London were escorting Earl Simon out of the king's net, Llewelyn at Aber received a visitor he had hardly expected, and one who came in state and bearing gifts, with outriders going before him to smooth his entry, for he was a stranger to Llewelyn's court, and bent on ensuring his welcome now that he had made up his mind to come.

  His herald came into hall where we were at meat, and made his reverence before the whole household.

  "My lord and prince, the Lord Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, prince of Powys, desires audience and grace at your court, for he comes to speak with you concerning his reception into your peace."

  Llewelyn rose from his place, astonished but wary, and asked: "How far behind you does the Lord Griffith ride?"

  "My lord, in a breath he will be at your gates," said the herald.

  "Then he shall not enter ungreeted," said Llewelyn, and went out to meet him and bring him within, and there was haste to lay the place for him at the prince's right hand.

  I saw him ride in, a big, thickset man in English harness and apparel, with a heavy, handsome face and greying hair and beard, for he was about fifty at that time. He had quick, roving eyes and a wary, calculating mouth, and in all his accoutrements he was very fine, and in all his speeches very smooth and formal, for he came to heal up and swathe into forgetfulness an ancient enmity, having, as I suppose, summed up our situation and that of England, and come to the conclusion that fortune was on our side, and his best interest to make his peace with us. So thought Llewelyn, past doubt, but he willed to make the move as easy as it might be, for Powys was precious, and Wales needed it. Also it was his way to meet every conciliatory gesture with impulsive warmth, for he was by nature generous to a fault, and the first motion of appeal drew him into a response sometimes over-rash, and laid him open to betrayals in spite of all his wit. So while he smiled at himself and Griffith, nevertheless he sprang in person to hold the suppliant's stirrup, and hand him from the saddle.

  At that time neither offered the kiss, which was too sacred for policy. But Llewelyn brought him in with his guest's hand upon his shoulder, lodged him, sent him water and wine, and waited upon him at the door of the hall, to bring him to his seat.

  After the banquet, that same evening, they came to stark talk in private, Griffith being bent on an early understanding. He was a little uneasy in bargaining, being unsure of his reception, but melted soon, finding himself met with so much candour. It came to hard terms and firm guarantees, and so to an agreement. At a formal meeting two days later, Griffith offered homage and fealty, and received therefore all those lands by heredity his which Llewelyn had occupied. And as for the future, they entered into a compact against the English of the march, based upon the little river of Camlad, by which Griffith was to have all those conquests north of that stream, and Llewelyn all those to the south. For Griffith's chief neighbour and rival, Corbett of Caus, held to the north of the line, and it was not long before he felt the shock of the alliance. There was an old grudge there, that surely had urged Griffith to his submission.

  However that was, he had submitted. And the year twelve hundred and sixtythree ended gloriously with Wales truly one, while England was torn in two. So we had our hour.

  Whether things might have turned out differently if Earl Simon had been present at the great conference at Amiens is mere conjecture, and lost pains now even to wonder. But he never crossed the sea that winter.

  On his way from Kenilworth to embark he turned aside to visit the house of Cistercian nuns at Catesby, where there was a chapel to the blessed St. Edmund of Abingdon, and as he departed he was thrown from his horse and broke his leg, so that he was forced to have himself conveyed painfully back to Kenilworth, and there lay crippled and burning while others pleaded his cause in France. But his son Henry was there among the leaders of the baronial party, with Peter de Montfort, and Humphrey de Bohun and others, and no doubt they put their arguments well enough. They had expected a patient process of discussion upon detailed points, and were prepared to give and take. What they got was very different. In a few bare days, and without overmuch consideration, King Louis gave judgment against them upon every point, and declared everyone who was party to the case absolved from all obligation to maintain the Provisions. The pope had already annulled them, King Louis pronounced them void and illegal.

  King Henry's voice at Amiens spoke another language from that he had used in England, where he had professed again and again his devotion in principle to the reform. Before Louis he claimed the right to choose his own justiciar—or indeed to dispense with him if he chose—and to nominate his ministers, judges, local officials and castellans without reference to council or parliament. He vowed that acceptance of the Provisions was not consistent with his coronation oath, and insistence upon them violated his barons' oaths of fealty. And king holds with king as against the people, however they may tear each other over territory and conquest.

  At the news of that award such a howl of joy went up from all the exiles crowding the French shore that almost we heard it in the march, for now pope and king had declared for them and against the reform, all legality was stripped from it, and what was to hold them back now from mounting an invasion of England with the blessing of state and church, a holy crusade? The pope hurried to reaffirm his agreement with the judgment, and reassert the mortal spiritual danger of all who resisted it. But in England, when the word came like a wave of the sea inland over the shires, the common people and the small gentry, the friars and preachers, the wardens of the peace, all those who had pinned their fervent faith upon the new order, gave vent to a great cry of rage and bitterness, declaring, surely with justice, that King Louis had exceeded the powers granted him, and moreover that they had never been parties to the decision to make him judge, and were not bound by his award. Everywhere they rose to attack those who held against them, and threatened them with the king's displeasure or the pope's ban. They had looked for a judgment that would restore peace, they got a crude blow that could only mean war.

  In vain King Henry, upon Louis' advice, hastened to publish his willingness to receive to his peace all those persons who would accept the decision. His peace was not the peace they wanted, and they did not come. They looked towards the sea that alone held off from them the legate's menaces and the exiles' ships and mercenaries, and they began to band themselves together into companies, and exercise in arms, not at all quenched but perilously inflamed.

  We in the march soon saw some local flares, for R
oger Mortimer, most powerful of the royalist faction in those parts, began to make rapid raids upon certain of Earl Simon's manors in the west, and Llewelyn moved a company of his men to Knighton and another to Presteigne, in the expectation that they might soon be needed. It was not for us to assume the defence of what the earl was quite able to take care of himself, but Roger's lordship of Radnor was open to attack, and offered a way of relieving the pressure upon the baronial position if such a diversion should be needed.

  We were at Knighton when a courier brought a letter from the earl. More than one such exchange had passed during that month of January, while Earl Simon seethed and fretted helplessly in Kenilworth. This letter came at the end of that month, and thus it was from the earl's own hand that we heard the news of the award of Amiens. He had but just heard it himself. His sons were newly landed and making for the west to fend off the encroachments of Mortimer, and his request was that Llewelyn would move to meet them, and close in with them upon Radnor. As long as we kept the west, Earl Simon's army in those parts was ensured of supplies, a safe retreat when pressed, and support sufficient to protect it from pursuit.

  "There is one more thing the earl of Leicester asks of us," said Llewelyn in council. "This combat that now bids fair to burst into the open has shifted its ground, and here are we back at the old game, the Welsh on one side, the marchers on the other, the strongest group King Henry has at his back. It's in the west this war will begin, and we shall have need of a very close understanding if we are to make it prosper. Earl Simon asks that I will accredit to him a trusted officer to represent me at his court, and with him a good messenger who can carry his reports back and forth between us while this stress continues."

  Goronwy and the council agreed that it was a wise move, for our own protection as well as for Earl Simon's, for much might depend upon an instant understanding if the threatening fire burned up in earnest.

  "Samson," said Llewelyn, looking up at me, "I would have you go. A clerk it should be, to have the safe-conduct of his office, so far as any man is to be safe in such a realm. Will you go?"

  I said what he knew, that I would do whatever he asked of me, and serve him wherever he willed. And so it was settled, and he gave me Cadell, a sturdy, reliable young man-at-arms to be my companion, and bade us choose what horses we would, and sent us forth on the journey to Kenilworth, with the earl's courier to guide us and give us cover by his lord's writ. That same day we rode. But before I set out, Llewelyn drew me aside, and very earnestly and hopefully asked me to do more than was in my commission.

  "While you are with him," he said, "and if you may without offending, for God knows he has his hands full with all the weight of England, study of him these views he holds on kingship and right rule, for I am curious to know more of them."

  So indeed was I, and this charge I undertook most willingly. We were hungry, both, for a deeper comprehension of this great man my lord had not yet even seen. We knew of him that he had been and was the friend and confidant of saints, if not himself a saint, and that he found in kingship an element as purely sacramental as in priesthood. We knew his pride and rigidity, but had heard also of his unexampled humility and patience under reproof. And this was but one pair among the many seeming contradictions in him which I think were no contradictions, any more than the right hand denies the left, but rather the exquisite balances that kept him so whole and so upright. His high and overbearing temper with the strong, and his delicate courtesy to the weak, his unbending insistence on his own rights and devout concentration upon the discharge of his obligations to others. So much we knew of him, and desired to know far more. And I was grateful and bound to him all the more because, the nearer we had drawn to his cause, the less did Llewelyn look hungrily towards Chester, where David was, and the more towards this irresistible heat and brightness that drew men as the sun draws up dew.

  One more reason I had to be glad of my mission to Kenilworth, and that was that it freed me for a while of the unrelenting companionship of Godred, who had wormed his way into a secure place among Llewelyn's guard. True it is that he could do whatever was required of him, and do it well enough, and was quick of wit and without fear, but also true that he did no more than was required of him, and necessary to keep him in good favour. And with the rest of his time and energy he frequented me, unswerving and tireless, waiting and watching for I knew not what, for me to die, or succumb to his proffered temptations, or to confide in him and give

  him power over me—no, I cannot tell. I know only that his absence was to me as a spring of fresh water in a burning day.

  By Ludlow and through the forest of Wyre we rode to Kenilworth, such soft and gracious country even the late spite of winter seemed lulled by it, and bit but toothlessly, like a puppy. I never saw such green grass in the first days of February, or such a sun in the heavens, lowly though it lay and briefly though it stayed. And when we came to that great pile that stopped up the roads like a mountain, and fenced itself in with one broad, chill water defence after another, I was struck dumb with wonder, for such a castle I had never seen. I doubted then if it could ever be taken, but by starvation over many months, and later it proved so to the letter. I know no way by which it could ever be stormed or mined, for there was a lake, made by man, that covered three sides of it, and the fourth approach was so menaced by shot and cross-shot that no army could ever draw near enough to do it hurt. Guided and guaranteed by Earl Simon's courier, Cadell and I wound our way through the many guards into the wards of the castle. On all sides its towers soared over us, and the great keep blotted out the noonday. And yet it was a most fair spot, ringed round with softly rolling country like a maze of rich meadows in paradise.

  They said to me as soon as I alighted that their lord waited to receive me, and begged my indulgence that he could not come out to me on his two feet, for reasons I knew.

  They brought me into a small but rich chamber in one of the minor towers. I remember tapestried hangings that warmed the nakedness of the walls, and a brazier glowing, that gave the most light in that dark apartment, even in the mid-afternoon, before the dusk fell. And a low couch along the wall beneath the hangings, where the great earl sat propped by furs, with his broken leg stretched along the cushions in a bundle of wooden brace and linen bindings, like a weathered log. And I remember how dead that one limb seemed, and how live all else, from the single foot thrust large and vehement against the flags of the floor, to the reared Norman head that turned towards me as I entered, to bring to bear upon me those marvellous deep-set eyes, yet so large and wide and fearless that they seemed to stand out like rounded gems from the sockets. To this day I do not know certainly of what colour they were, he was even ill-shaven and somewhat tired when I first saw him in his own house, yet do not know why I should think so, since what I most remember of him is the cleanness, the outline, of all his person, as if he had been chiselled out of some metal too pure to be taken out of the earth.

  His voice when he spoke to me was as mild, direct and open as his gaze, pitched rather low, out of the centre of his body, which as I saw him then was but of middle size, sturdy and square but lean. I marvelled, for I had thought him a taller man, what was within him so towered above the flesh and bone.

  "I ask your pardon," he said, "For not rising to receive you, but you see my condition. Prince Llewelyn's envoy is most welcome to me. I pray you sit down with me."

  In this first of many audiences I had with him, I told him how I had left affairs on the border, and that Llewelyn's force would already be deploying its westward half-circle about Radnor, prepared to close in as soon as the earl's sons had drawn near enough to match the thrust from the east. He asked many and brisk questions concerning the land and the roads, and clearly he was well informed about the watch we already kept upon the fords and bridges over the Severn. In return he told me the latest news of the enemy, though never calling them so. Richard of Cornwall, the regent during the king's absence, was in Worcester by that time, and inten
ded going on to Gloucester, where he meant to keep and hold the bridge if the remaining ones must be sacrificed. I asked after the Lord Edward, whose name, by consent, now took precedence of King Henry's in the tale of our foes.

  "He is on the sea at this moment," said Earl Simon, "and the king with him. If this wind hold, they must land tomorrow, or very soon. He has sanction to strike now, he will not hold his hand."

  We spoke of where that blow, when it came, was most like to fall, but in speculation upon Edward's actions there was little profit. Yet we were at one in believing that he would try to secure the marches, since he had already lured back to him so many of the young marcher lords, and that he would use the same bogey to bring the rest to heel now.

  "The Welsh threat," I said, "will be his theme. And Radnor will be his text."

  "No matter," said the earl, "so he comes too late to save it."

  I told him then what had already been said through his son, that in my view Llewelyn would never willingly commit his army in out-and-out war against the crown of England, though his sympathies were engaged. Beyond the Severn he would not take them, unless those sympathies swept him away, for his first duty was to Wales, and his first concern to retain the power of bargaining, for her sake, with whatever regime ruled in England. However heartily he might pray the victory of the reform, yet he had to keep open his freedom to deal with whatever England he might find neighbour to him in the future.