The Brothers of Gwynedd

  "I thank you for your errand. It shall not be vain. Tomorrow I promise I will ride with you to where the lord prince is, and I will satisfy him of my troth."

  Well content, we went at length to the chambers prepared for us, two small tower rooms upon different floors reached by a stone stairway in the wall, Cynfric and I in the upper room, our three colleagues below. From this sleeping-place all the noise and bustle of the hall was so distant as not to be heard. I marvelled how soon the whole castle fell silent, and since we had ridden much of the day, and sat content and well-fed in smoky hall all the evening, I fell asleep and slept deeply.

  Too deeply! Even when the sounds of nocturnal activity did draw near, they failed to rouse me. Not until the sudden weight of hands bearing down out of darkness pinned me to the brychan, and a great palm gripped my mouth, did I start out of sleep, and try to spring up in alarm, but by then it was too late to do more than struggle fruitlessly under the heavy body that held me down. I heard the threshing of Cynfric on the other side of the room, and someone cursed him horribly, and then two bodies fell crashing to the stone floor, and all the time there was a muted grunting as of a man gagged with cloth, or a smothering sleeve. How many there were of them it was hard to tell, but enough, six at least to deal with the two of us. Griffith took no chances. They had brought no lights into the room with them, they knew where to find us without benefit of torches.

  It took them some time to subdue Cynfric, and they were not gentle, for he had awakened more readily than I, and done some small damage to one or two of them, even with no weapon but his hands. But they had us both pinioned at last, and muted, and hobbled our feet, too, before they dragged us out to the stairway. There were two or three others waiting there with torches, men of Griffith's guard, and all of them as blown and exercised as those who had fallen upon us. The door of the room below was standing open. We had little doubt that our companions had been overpowered first, and that we were being hauled away to join them in captivity. And I remember thinking even then that Griffith was mad to toss away so viciously his own best hope, one he was lucky to be offered.

  Pool castle was strange to me, I knew only the hall and those tower chambers, and we were dragged down so many staircases and along so many stony passages that I was lost. But I knew we were down beneath the level of the hall, and it needed very little guessing to expect some lightless prison below ground, without window, where too curious visitors could be tossed for security, and have no notion what went on in their absence, or why they were so disposed of. Killing I did not look for. He had little to gain that I could see even by throwing us into his dungeon, but nothing at all by killing us. Nor, in fact, did our captors do us any great hurt, however unpleasant the hole into which they finally thrust us.

  A narrow door opened on a steep flight of steps, down which we were rolled hastily when they had unbound us, and we fell among other bodies in darkness. Hands reached to prop and steady us, and voices hailed us by name, challenging and anxious, for they had feared worse for us. We in our turn, ridding ourselves of the cloth that gagged us, told over all their names. We were five sorry ambassadors, and five very angry prisoners, but prisoners we were, and there was nothing to be done about it, against a garrison of hundreds, and without even a dagger among us.

  "The more fools we," said I, smarting, "to put any trust in any promise or oath of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn. We should have known he had some lying trick up his sleeve."

  "If we are fools," Cynfric said, groping for a wall for his back in the stony darkness, and stretching out his legs resignedly before him, "Griffith is a worse fool. He has tricked himself out of Powys now. He could have kept all he had at the price of renewing his oath and leaving his son a while longer as hostage for him. Now he has beggared himself and abandoned his son. Grace will not be so easily come by after this."

  Seven days we spent in that stinking hole, but at least after the first day they gave us some light, and regularly they fed us, even if they did thrust our meat in to us like feeding hounds. The dungeon folded into three cells opening one from another, which at least, when we could dimly see, gave us a measure of decency. There was but the one way out, and as often as they opened the door at the stairhead they set it bristling with long lances to fend us off. But to say truth, we saw no profit in compelling them to complete Griffith's work by killing us, whether in desperation or by accident, when we were as certain of Llewelyn's eventual coming as we were of dawn, though neither could we see. And after we had once tried questioning the guards who brought us food, and found them charged not to answer, and afraid to ignore that charge, we ceased from questioning, and sat down doggedly to wait. The misuse of ambassadors was something Llewelyn would not endure, that we knew. And as he had shown great patience, so he could show equally great vehemence and vigour at need.

  We counted the days by the meals they brought us, and by our count it was the seventh day of December when the narrow door above us opened without three or four lance-heads immediately bristling through it like the spines of a hedgehog, and opened wide to the wall instead of gingerly by a hand's-breadth, and further, remained open. The guards we had begun to know did no more than peer in and then draw back respectfully out of the light. A head we knew far better leaned in and narrowed its eyes into our stinking darkness.

  "Cynfric?" said Tudor's voice dubiously. "Are you all safe below there? Come forth and be seen!"

  "Here!" said Cynfric, mounting towards his brother as the first of our line. "What kept you so long? We feared we might have to keep Christmas without you."

  They embraced, for all the stench we brought up with us. There were other known faces crowding in behind Tudor, first reaching to touch us and be sure we were whole and well, then laughing at us, for we must have been a forlorn sight, unshaven, unwashed, draggle-tailed and cold. They brought us triumphantly into the inner ward of the castle where Llewelyn was posting his men, not for the garrisoning of Pool, but for its destruction. They were already bundling faggots to his orders, laying logs and brushwood under the walls, and marshalling the garrison and the fragments of the household to be despatched into the world for refuge.

  For no good reason, except that I was just emerged from darkness, I looked up into the December sky, chill and distant with frost, and very still, and against that pallid grey I saw at the top of the tower Griffith's war-banners fluttering limply down to wither over the merlons of the wall. He had not stayed to lend his own defiance to that barren gesture, I knew it then. Once we were underground, and the castellan and his men ordered to stand to for siege, Griffith had taken his leave in haste, and there was but one way he could have gone. As often as I hear of the power and prowess of this lord of Powys, I remember how he ordered up the flag of war, bade his seneschal stand fast and defy the world, and then took to his heels into England with all his family, and all he could carry of his wealth. I have the measure of Griffith, having known him. Whatever the dominant, Griffith would find a means of ingratiating himself with it. Whatever the climate, Griffith would grasp a place in the sun. Even if he mistook the hour and missed his hold, Griffith would find a means, and quickly, to amend his standing. Whoever died, for personal passion or for a cause larger than personality, Griffith would survive.

  Llewelyn came leaping down from the guard-walk on the wall, in leather hauberk and booted to the thighs, to reassure himself that we were all sound and whole. He was alight like a flame, very bright and steady-burning in the December gloom, but it was an angry brightness, and until he had spent it in action he would have no inner peace. Too much patience and forbearance had eaten him from within, and now his indignation at least had room to range.

  "I delayed too long," he said, smouldering, "and bore too much, and at your cost. I thank God you have come to no harm. When ambassadors are so used, there's an end of tolerance. I should have struck the moment the word reached me. I marvel I did not. I'm grown so used to holding back, I delayed yet again, and sent the abbot and prior of Cyme
r to hunt out Griffith in his new lair and offer him a last chance to return to his fealty and renew the unity of Wales, with the promise of mercy still. I began to dread," he said, and shivered, "that I had lost the power to strike hard. Now I feel like a man restored."

  "Regret nothing," said Tudor firmly. "You did right to make even that last bid for his allegiance, if only to let the world see where the right is, and how far you have gone to reconcile him. Now, if he has eyes, King Edward must know these are obdurate traitors who have gone to earth in his borders. Time and time again they have been offered the chance of return, and still refused."

  "Well," said Llewelyn, heaving up his shoulders largely, "whether I did well or ill, it's done. Now we have other things to do. Since Griffith refuses to restore the unity of Wales, I will, without leave or aid from him. Now everything he has is doubly forfeit, for this offence is worse than the other."

  We asked if they had had fighting, for in our prison no sound from without reached us.

  "Very little, and halfhearted at that," said Llewelyn. "Griffith's castellan had no great appetite for the defence, small blame to him, when his lord had none! He surrendered at the first assault. The place was well manned and provisioned, too, and the outer buildings cleared and burned for action—that's part of our work done for us. Take your ease, for we'll bide the night here before we send the castle after its barns."

  So all we who had come out of the dark went to cleanse ourselves and find or borrow fresh clothing, to stretch our cramped limbs and take exercise, or rest in better comfort bones bruised and stiff from stone. And that seemed to us a delectable day, not only because we were alive and free, but because the sovereignty of Wales was also at large, justifiably and manifestly, and the happier for it. For action can be happiness, whether it turn out in the end to be ill-judged or well, after long and frustrating abstinence.

  That night after we had eaten in hall the prince held a field council, having with him more than half of his own council of Gwynedd, though not of the other lands of Wales. And there he told us what was in his mind to do, which was to proceed through all the lands and tenements of Powys, if possible peacefully, if necessary with the sword, to take over all manors and strongholds of those lands, and set his own officers over them, annexing Powys to his own inheritance. Legally he had every justification in the deed executed by Griffith and Owen at Bach-yr-Anneleu in April, by which they ceded everything to him if they again offended against their troth. Morally he had every right even without that deed, since Griffith had himself needlessly abandoned both his oath and his lands, piling fraud on fraud and felony upon felony. And during that month of December it pleased me to see Llewelyn forget, in the flush and purposeful haste of conquest, the bitter inward sadness and desolation of David's treachery. I knew that ease could not outlast action, but at least it renewed him for a while.

  The following day we packed and marched, having first seen Griffith's garrison out of the castle, to be distributed among certain of the maenols under the control of officers of our own. And the castle of Pool, once empty, we fired behind us, and left a party in the town to complete the destruction after the fire died and cooled.

  We went like an east wind through Llanerch Hudol and Caerinion and Griffith's remaining portion of Cyfeiliog, proclaiming the prince's lordship everywhere, installing his officers, planting his garrisons wherever they were needed. There was little resistance, no more than a scuffle here and there, and no bloodshed. Yet so deep is the sense of hereditary possession in Wales that this procedure, however justified and however sound in law, seemed to the bishops shockingly drastic, and they wrote to the prince in mid-December urging moderation. Though plainly, since the lord of Powys had deserted his lands and refused the generous offer of freedom to return to them, his forfeiture was a matter of practical management as well as of law, for someone had to administer Powys. Griffith had swept away into exile with him his wife, his second son Lewis and his younger children, and an estate without a head can very rapidly rot into disorder. We had annexed the whole of Powys by then, making a circle northward through the cantrefs of Mochnant and Mechain, and withdrawing gradually into Gwynedd, leaving the land firmly settled.

  At Rhydcastell, which is a grange of Aberconway, we drew breath on the twentieth day of December, and Llewelyn chose to pass the Christmas festival there. From that place he replied to the bishops, pointing out that their appeal for an accommodation and peace between the parties had much better be addressed to Griffith and David, who had both resisted the prince's efforts to achieve just such a consummation, and obdurately refused to return to their sworn fealty. It was not he who had prevented a reconciliation, nor he who first caused the breach by plotting murder.

  In the stillness after action he was suddenly at loss, brought face to face again with the reality of betrayal, which he had done nothing to deserve. He was always hard put to it to comprehend the curious, secret, complex jealousies and hatreds and motives of those whose natures were not open like his own. Where he saw reason to complain, he complained at once and forthrightly, where he had a grievance he blazed it out of him, and then it was done. Also he listened to the complaints of others, not always with understanding, but always willingly. I never can discover in my own mind how he and David came from the same seed and the same womb, or how they came to love so much, and claw each other so deep.

  Rhydcastell was a pleasant enough manor, sheltered and close to the rich, wooded valleys of Conway and its tributaries, but I cannot say the Christmas we spent there was a happy one. It had a certain sense of achievement to celebrate, not without satisfaction, but quite without joy. There were too many reminders of the disaster which had begun, unrecognised, a year ago, and of the false serenity we had felt then, and the brightness of Elizabeth and her children making the court at Aber gay. Now they were somewhere in England, in an exile that could please no one, and dependent on patronage for their maintenance. Such an inheritance had David laid up for his new-born son by snatching at the future too soon.

  But until the beginning of the new year we had no certain knowledge of where they were. Then on the second day of January came a friar of Llanfaes, who had been on pilgrimage to other Franciscan houses, and halted some days at Westminster, and he brought a letter from Cynan.

  "They are in Shrewsbury," said Llewelyn, when he had read. "David and Griffith both, with all their households. And their heads are together as before, and their men are still in arms. So says Cynan. More, he says it is known that they have sworn a new oath of mutual support against whom, we hardly need ask. Once they had burned their boats, there was little left for them to do but turn on me and make me pay for all—that I understand. But listen what Cynan has to say further! This is the meat of the matter! This is what caused him to write, for the rest I could have learned by other means very shortly. "The king has issued a mandate, not made patent, to the sheriff of Salop, instructing him to allow the fugitive Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, with all his household, to dwell in peace in the town of Shrewsbury until he should receive any contrary order. And your brother, the Lord David, who is in Griffith's company there, has certainly written to the king appealing for aid and maintenance for himself and his family. The families of these two lords are large, and include, as you know, many well-armed men They may not be the easiest of neighbours to your borders."

  So blunt and open a warning, sent from the court by one of Edward's own chancery clerks, I had not expected, even though the bearer was also a good Welshman. It seemed to me that Cynan was not far from the moment of choice, and it was clear, when that breakage came, what his choice would be.

  "I take the point," said Llewelyn grimly, "and I will secure my borders in the middle march, and be ready. From David, from Griffith, I look for nothing but growing hatred and despite now. Since they have refused return, and there's never any standing still, they have no way left to go but deeper into their own venom. But that Edward should give them protection and countenance! You see what Cynan sa
ys—'not made patent'! With good reason, for by that sign he must know he does vilely to harbour traitors. I would not have believed he could bear to signify approval to treason."

  "Don't judge too hastily," said Tudor. "Do we know what gilded story the king has been told? Would David go to him with the truth? No, he'll have made it a very different tale, with himself the wronged and persecuted brother driven out of his lands into exile. You know him, how fatally plausible he is. The king is his only hope of advancement now, he'll play on him with every device and charm he has."

  And so I said, too, and his charms and devices were many and seductive, and from childhood he had kept some hold and claim on Edward. And yet I was not satisfied, for all the story of that conspiracy to kill, unearthed by painful stages over a year of searching, was by then notorious through the whole of Wales, and could not have failed to penetrate into England and reach the court, since they had their agents everywhere, just as we had. It was hard to believe that Edward did not know where the truth lay. But it could still be believed that he withheld judgment until he had heard all sides of the matter, and the order to let the felons live openly in Shrewsbury might be only a temporary measure. So I said, and Llewelyn heard me with a dark and doubting face.

  "There is more in it than that. Fugitives is the word Cynan uses, surely of intent. It was Edward's word to the sheriff. He might well keep his mandate close! The treaty made at Montgomery forbids either England or Wales to receive and harbour the fugitives of the other. He knows he is breaking treaty. He cannot choose but know. Never tell me there's a line of any document concerning his rights that Edward does not know by heart."