The Brothers of Gwynedd

  Whatever their reasoning, we heard later that the monks of Canterbury in solemn session had elected as candidate for the primacy their prior, a somewhat obscure person hardly known out of their own company, certainly with no great reputation for learning or doctrine. I have forgotten his name, and that in itself says most of what there is to be said about him. I do remember that the election caused anger at the king's court, and was received with cold disapproval in Rome. But the affair hung unresolved for two years after, and England was without an archbishop, because of a long and disputed interregnum in the papacy, and even when a new pope was chosen in the person of Cardinal Tedaldo Visconti, later to be known to Christendom by his chosen name of Gregory X, the new pope-elect was absent crusading in the east with the Lord Edward, and indeed had already become his close and loyal friend. When he returned to give his attention to his new duties, he examined the prior of Canterbury, and found him wanting in the qualities an archbishop should have, and chose instead the provincial of the Dominicans in England, Robert Rilwardby, a man of learning, purpose and character, who had never looked for the honour, and received it dutifully but with astonishment.

  But in this summer of twelve hundred and seventy all this was still to do, and we saw Robert Burnell at work as man of affairs and trustee for Edward his lord. And I think that affairs of state were more his province than matters of faith and doctrine, and as archbishop he would have been wasted. He went straight to the heart of an errand, worded clearly, made decisions firmly and sensibly, was not to be diverted or provoked. By the time all was agreed, the royal charters delivered, and the fee of Meredith's homage paid in full, I found it no wonder that Edward should choose this man as one of the regent-administrators of his affairs and lands in his absence, and in the event of Richard of Cornwall's death, one of the guardians of his children.

  He was of powerful build for his height, and moved like one in as firm mastery of his body as of his mind. His colouring was fair, with thick, short hair of a light brown, and eyes as light, flecked with green, and his smooth-shaven face was square and strong, every line sharply drawn. But all this force of decision and judgment he voiced in tones quiet, reasonable and brief. Llewelyn, as I saw, warmed to him, for good reason, being used to grappling with officials whose only intent was to avoid making any clear answer or bringing any doubtful matter to a conclusion. So it was no wonder that he took the opportunity of broaching with Burnell the issue of Senghenydd, and his grievance over the castle building at Caerphilly.

  "I know," said Burnell, "that both you and the earl of Gloucester have made out strong cases for your rival claims in those parts, both as to the commote itself, and the homage and fealty of its lord, who is now imprisoned in Ireland. You made representations to the king's Grace some time ago, to obtain his release."

  "I did," said Llewelyn, "for to my knowledge he has committed no treason against the earl, and it is no fault of his if two overlords both lay claim to him, and he prefers one of them. His Grace replied that it was open to me to bring action on his behalf in the king's courts against Gloucester, since the crown lawyers held that the lord of Senghenydd is of the Englishry. But I cannot bring such action without acknowledging the right of the court and the English dependence of Griffith, and this I do not acknowledge. The man is Welsh, and the land was his by hereditary right. I preferred the arbitration commission, old and good practice, drawn from both sides where disputed rights are concerned. But it moves not as such commissions used to do, but by legal delays and deferments which I find rather English than impartial. And meantime, Earl Gilbert continues to build. It is my contention that building should cease until we have agreement."

  Instead of bandying words to conceal art, Burnell spoke out freely. "It is truth, you will find the nature of such joint commissions changed. I will not deny it. I do not say it was ever intended, but it is implicit in your lordship's present relationship with the crown. Think how great is that change. Never before has Wales stood in this same interdependence. You are nearer now than you ever were to the crown, and I tell you freely, English officials, by the very nature of your treaty, think of you as reliant upon the royal courts for the maintenance of justice wherever it touches both countries. Law is slow. I trust it may also be sure and just, but slow it is, and I well understand how that may gall. I cannot offer you hope of a reversal there. But as to the ban on building until the case is settled, I think there you have a strong argument, and it can be looked into. Can and shall, if I can procure it."

  "I have waited," said Llewelyn, "a great while, but to wait until the fortress is complete would be too much to ask of me. The earl claims he is in fear of Welsh incursion, and means only to make his own defence possible. But Senghenydd was never his, though he did impose homage on its lord, and it is not his own he is defending, it is what he had taken unjustly."

  "But you do not claim Senghenydd as yours?" said Burnell with his small, dry smile.

  "Senghenydd belongs to Griffith, and should be restored to him, together with his freedom. Ultimately I claim Griffith as my vassal, yes. By treaty I was given acknowledged title to the fealties of all the Welsh princes, saving only this Meredith who is now also given to me. But the issue of Griffith's allegiance and Welshness can wait the slow processes of arbitration. What I claim now is that building at Caerphilly should cease. De Clare should not build, nor I destroy. But if he builds," said Llewelyn bluntly, "then I shall destroy. I have let the work go too far already."

  And Burnell smiled, and said that he valued the candour of the exchange. He did not say, but it was implicit in his manner, that he himself found Gilbert de Clare a difficult, slippery and insubordinate man, and the Lord Edward would not be gravely vexed to see him curbed.

  "Yet I doubt," said Llewelyn, after the envoy had departed with his strong entourage and his treasure, "if that gives us free leave to do the curbing. Gilbert is troublesome, but Gilbert is English, a marcher lord, one of their own. It would be folly for us to rely too much on new friendships, when they cross old ones."

  So he waited still for a while, measuring the days until the point should come when for the maintenance of his royal dignities he must act. And as I know, he was well aware that miscalculation might be exceedingly dangerous, whether he moved too soon, and inflamed old animosities, or too late, and encouraged insolent presumption of his weakness. And the danger of hesitation, of threatening action and then not acting, or of acting by derisory half-measures, was the most acute of all.

  I believe that Burnell did urge the king to impose a halt to Gloucester's building; he may even have succeeded in getting Henry to make some gesture of prohibition, but if so, it was ignored. And at the beginning of October Llewelyn judged his moment to be upon him, and struck.

  We went in force, led by the prince himself, for he would not make this assertion of his rights through any other hand, surrounded Gilbert's great earthwork, and drove the English guards, builders and all, south in haste for their lives, though it was done with such method and deliberation that they recognised the impossibility of preventing us doing what we would, and withdrew without offering battle. Gloucester himself was not there, for parliament was then in session, and he was present in full cry, urging his right to build and the danger that threatened his lands, for once truly, though he did not know it. At the very hour, perhaps, when King Henry was writing urgently to Llewelyn that he had impressed upon Gloucester the necessity for keeping the peace, and that the prince should also observe the like restraint, we were setting fire to Gilbert's timber keep, tearing down his boundary walls, and levelling his earthworks. We destroyed everything, and then, to mark our own reading of restraint, withdrew from the entire commote, making no attempt to occupy it and hold it, as we could have done.

  Of course there was great turmoil when the news reached the court, and Gloucester got something out of it in payment for his castle, for there was never any more said about his pledged duty to follow Edward to the Holy Land. Now he could settle venge
fully in his marcher lands and purport to be the guardian of the realm as well as of his own claims. Llewelyn was loudly blamed for taking action, but that moved him not at all, and it seemed he had not gravely misjudged his hour, for king and council continued to urge the use of arbitration, and to support the meetings of the commission, though these still tended to talk endlessly and arrive nowhere, as before. However, we had a breathing space, and kept Senghenydd under careful watch, in case of further attempts to build. Gilbert was an incalculable creature, given to bouts of breathtaking audacity, sometimes deservedly successful, sometimes undeservedly, and sometimes disastrous, but also to long periods of unruly and incompetent muddling, arrogantly sure of his rightness and tangling himself and everyone about him in quagmires beyond the capacity of other men. So one never knew what to expect from him. I do not know whether he had breathed in an emulous desire to outbuild King Henry, from his belated and sullen visit to the abbey at Westminster, but this year following found him at a high pitch of excellence rare in him, choosing men ably, appraising their plans modestly and sensibly, and giving ability its head to design such a castle as barons dream of. But until past the end of this year twelve hundred and seventy we had no hint of what went forward, for the site at Caerphilly remained desert.

  Christmas we spent at Aber, after the old fashion, for Llewelyn had still a strong attachment to that royal seat by the northern sea. David and Elizabeth came for the feast, in great content with each other. So wild, so tender, so playful was David with this gay girl of his, I saw again my breast-brother, the child who had been in my care years ago, and had me by the heart still, for all I could do. And I saw, I know not how, for her body was not yet changed—perhaps in his constant care for her, and the way he looked upon her mutely as upon a wonder and a dread, but perhaps rather in her large and radiant presence, that warmed the air about her even in the frosts—I saw that Elizabeth was with child.

  She was then barely fourteen years old, but more than that in her true being, body, mind and spirit, having loved so early, after being schooled earlier yet to the needs of marriage, at a time when both marriage and love were heathen and distant words to her. Whatever doubts and dreads David had, Elizabeth had none. She was all joy.

  "He frets needlessly," said Cristin, when I found myself some moments alone with her in the night, under a cold moon as we crossed from the buttery and kitchens to the hall. "She is ripe and ready, and without fear. But who would have thought he would so wear out his heart for her, and wrack himself to a shade with self-blame? What choice had he? She wooed him and won him, almost against his will, all against his conscience. If he seeks you out—he well may!—comfort him, and tell him not to be a fool. She has no need of any pity; she feels herself blessed."

  There was no word said, then or ever, of how her own years were running away in barren blossom from under her feet, of the great longing she had, and I shared, for the generation of the children of our own love, a happiness we could never have, and now saw shining so joyously in this strangely-matched pair. But at night in those feast-days, when Elizabeth with David led the dances, for all his vain wish to shelter and cosset her and force her to rest, then we felt to the full the ache of what we had never possessed, and surely never would in this world. As we valued and were grateful for those blessings we had, which were very great, so we saw clearly the magnitude of the last blessing we were denied. And Cristin's great eyes, iris-dark with longing, followed every movement as Elizabeth danced and sang and shone, and in the midst of her gaiety laid a hand so tenderly upon her girdle, where nothing yet swelled or quickened, caressing in rapture the very mystery of David's seed in her. Cristin watched like one famished, though her face was white and still and tranquil, and her hands folded in calm. Only to me did her eyes betray her, for even so I must have looked, envying David.

  Yet my heart smote me suddenly, warning that there was one other who had good cause to know how to read the signs in her face and in mine. And I looked about me in haste and wariness, to find if Godred was there in the hall.

  I found him among a group of the troopers of David's retinue, at one of the trestle tables drawn along the walls, easy and at leisure over their wine. He was standing, graceful and slender, with his shoulders braced against one of the timber pillars, and his fair head leaned back against the smoky wood. The large, smooth lids drooped half over his full brown eyes, but I saw the bright gleam of interest and content and malice burning below his light lashes, and his lips were curved in a small, acid-sweet smile. He was staring steadily upon Cristin, but as I watched, as though my attention had drawn his, he turned his head and opened his eyes wide into mine, and his smile broadened into that comradely affection he used upon me, poisoned honey, yet God knows more deadly to him than to me.

  I knew then that there was nothing he had not seen and appraised, no part of her longing or mine that he did not recognise, and was not willing to use against us. Slight and light he was, and found no fault with that and made no pretence about it, until he found he could neither tempt nor trick me into wallowing with him in the kennel, nor drag her down to the level of his own loving. He could not endure it that we had between us the one thing he had never valued or wanted, another manner of love, that could even live in abstinence.

  Yet even then, when he had discovered jealousy by reason of the value another set on his wife, whom he himself never valued, he seldom resorted to her, or frequented her company, except as a means of tormenting me, or keeping David's goodwill. Other women he had in plenty, and his interest was small indeed in favours he owned by right. It was the one thing in him for which I was devoutly grateful, that his usage of her was civil but indifferent, and she could endure it without distress. It was myself he hated, and lived in the hope of destroying, and as one weapon blunted without effect he was for ever looking about him for another.

  I dreaded he might have found one that night.

  There was one other who had watched the happiness of David and Elizabeth with open pleasure and private pain, and that was Llewelyn. He carried about his neck the painted image of a girl twelve years old, only a year or two younger than Elizabeth now. It was more than five years since Earl Simon had betrothed her to the prince, by this she was eighteen, and still out of his reach overseas, and the years of his prime were ebbing one by one while he waited for her. And here he saw his youngest brother in joyous wedlock with this eager child, and the fruit of their love, the desired heir, already promised, while he was barren and alone.

  He watched them, smiling and tormented, and I saw both the pleasure and the pain clear into resolution, for he had received his third sign.

  When I was alone with him in his own chamber, late in the night after the hall was quiet and the household asleep, he told me what I expected to hear, and I was the first he told.

  "It is time to put my fortune to the test again," he said. "I should be ungrateful if I neglected the clear signs heaven has given me. When Edmund of Lancaster sails with his force, to join the Lord Edward in Tunis, two of the brothers from Aberconway have petitioned to sail under his protection to France. They have missions to Clairvaux and certain other houses there. They can as easily be my envoys to Montargis. Surely by now the countess must be reassured. I mean to renew my suit for her daughter. You and I will prepare gifts and letters, and trust in the word of the blind monk of Evesham. He has promised me success, and I will not believe in failure."

  I was glad for him, for the simple act of determining upon action had warmed and liberated him, and while we made our preparations it was eager anticipation he felt, and the deprivation fell away from him. We drew up letters very courtly and persuasive, recalling how Earl Simon had exchanged vows with Llewelyn at Abbey Dore, and we sent for the countess a mass-book very delicately bound, and illuminated in gold, and for her daughter a rose of enamel and gold-work, with the renewed pledge of Llewelyn's faithfulness to his bond, and desire and prayer for its fulfilment. The brothers of Aberconway were trustworthy and l
oyal, and so had been always to the royal house of Gwynedd, and above all they could be secret, for clearly he did not wish their errand to be known until he had his answer. It remained only for Edmund to fix a date for his departure, and though he was delayed a few weeks into the year by various vexatious matters and by King Henry's frail health, he got his levies away before the spring came. Then we drew breath and waited for news.

  That was a quiet and prosperous spring for us in Wales, troubled only by the word that Gilbert de Clare was again busy building at Caerphilly as soon as the weather was favourable after the early frosts, and this time he had somehow gathered about him masons and planners of quality, and was bent on the erection of a fortress in stone. This at least had the merit, for us, of being a slower enterprise, so that we could afford to sit back and concentrate on formal protests to the court, invoking law and demanding a halt to this new infringement. Though Llewelyn kept tight hold of the borders of Senghenydd none the less, and got word very rapidly, wherever he happened to be, of what went on there.

  For the rest, he steadily pursued his policies of settlement, of extending our cultivated fields wherever it was possible, of encouraging the growth of towns, and the founding of markets, and the use of minted money, all measures borrowed from England, truly, and necessarily so, since we had both to compete and cooperate with England. Those years since Montgomery were years of strong development towards a state, not feudal like England, yet learning from feudalism, and most beneficial to all his people. He had an eye, also, to the exact location of his castles, for the best control and protection of the whole land, and it had to be admitted that in the marches there were gaps not yet filled.