The Brothers of Gwynedd

  They put an armed crew aboard either of our ships, and rigged a makeshift steering-oar to get us into port. Our sister ship was not damaged, having been boarded without bloodshed in the consternation when we were crippled. All of us men aboard they disarmed, and transferred us to their own vessels, though Amaury bitterly complained of being forced to leave his sister in the hands of such fellows, and with only her servants and friars to guard her. I doubt if he truly feared any affront to her, for she was the king's cousin and the king's captive, and Edward would have required account of any injury done to her, however he himself injured her. It was rather a way of being insulting to our captors, since Amaury could do them no other harm, and a means of ridding his heart of some of the venom and frustration he suffered. For indeed our happy expedition had turned into disaster, and we had no way of getting word to anyone who might help us, Llewelyn least of all.

  In the larger of the Bristol ships they let us take exercise on deck under close guard at times, and that was the only glimpse we had, for the rest of that voyage, of Eleanor, the distant flutter of a scarf or the gold of her hair unbraided to the wind, on the stern-castle of Master Derenne's ship in line before us. She, I think, complained not at all. It would have altered nothing, as Amaury's ferocity altered nothing, and she was more concerned with ways of dealing that might, perhaps, lighten the burden for some of us, and better our sorry circumstances. She thought much, and was wary of both resentment and despair, neither of which could be profitable. Before we reached Bristol she had made slaves of most of those seamen who had been sent to capture her, and friends of more than one, though the knight who had planned the capture and been in charge of it she avoided and treated with cold civility.

  Concerning this man I have since learned something, though not much, and after we were landed in Bristol I never saw him again. It is possible that Edward, though willing to hire and pay for such dubious services, did not particularly desire to be reminded of them afterwards. The man's name was Thomas Archdeacon, and Cynan later kept close watch on the rolls, and discovered that in May of the year then beginning, twelve hundred and seventy-six, the sheriff of Cornwall was empowered to pay to a man of that name the sum of twenty pounds, to cover his expenses in carrying out some unspecified mission on the king's behalf off that coast. There cannot be much doubt what that commission was. I would not say he was very well paid for his trouble.

  The year was already in its first weeks when they put us ashore at Bristol, and we were hurried away into close confinement in Bristol castle, to await the king's orders as to our disposal. There, as I learned later but guessed even then, Eleanor exercised her reasoning, her firmness and her masterly good sense to support the power of her beauty, and so worked upon the governor of the castle that we were well used, as far as leniency could be taken without risking our escape, for none of us had given any parole, and it would have been worth the castellan's office if he had let us get away from him. She also procured the release of the ships, and saw to it that their expenses were paid at her cost. Truly she was Earl Simon's daughter, feeling and generous to the least, as to the greatest, who served her, perhaps more punctilious to the least because of their greater need. Nor would she owe a penny, nor rest until the last owing was paid.

  At the end of January we knew, from the activity about us, that King Edward had made clear his pleasure concerning us. Eleanor with her personal household was to be conducted to honourable captivity—such is the phrase of those who lose all honour by enforcing it—at Windsor. Her brother and her knights were bound for imprisonment in Corfe castle until it should please Edward to release them. Helpless to protect Amaury and his fellows, Eleanor turned her mind to enlarging her permitted household to contain as many of us as she could. She fought for the friars, with good hope, since the orders command a degree of reverence, and most men prefer not even to seem to be oppressing the church. And she fought also for me, insisting that I was her clerk, and she could not be adequately looked after without me. Edward might still have known me at sight, and left me to rot. But the governor of Bristol did not know me, and my Latin and French being adequate to convince him, he accepted her plea and added me to her company.

  The day I was restored, which was the eve of our departure under strong guard for Windsor, she talked with me very gravely and intently. It seemed to me that she had lived a year's experience in one month, and grown taller, more serene and of greater authority, all the lines of her glorious face drawn finer and clearer as though challenge made her doubly alive.

  "Samson," she said, "help me to understand, for I must know what is expected of me in order to be able to confound it, and what is believed of me if I am to refute it. Why has my cousin done this cruel and indefensible thing to me? He knows he has no right, law has no part in it. What does he hope to gain by imprisoning me? Or to prevent?"

  I told her then what Amaury believed to be true, and what he had hinted to me when I came to Montargis. "You realise how ill Edward may take this marriage?" In our crowded cells in Bristol he had elaborated on that theme with bitter venom.

  "Your betrothal to Llewelyn was made by Earl Simon when those two were allies with the barons of the Provisions against the king's power. It was a very potent alliance, though it failed in the end for other reasons. Amaury believes Edward sees the accomplishment of the marriage now as a deliberate step towards reviving a baronial party, again allied to Wales, against the crown. That he sees you as the focal point of a dangerous rebellion aimed at his sovereignty and his life."

  She thought that over for some minutes in silence, and then shook her head with decision. "I do not believe any sane man could entertain such a fear. It is ten years since the party of the barons was broken. What signs of life has it shown since? After the first disordered years of revenge, everything has been at peace, and everyone has been glad of it. If you raised the cry of de Montfort now, not one magnate would rally to it. Not one! If I know it so clearly, Edward would have to be a little mad not to know it. He has nothing to fear from that quarter."

  "Amaury would say," I told her, "that on that subject Edward is a little mad. Especially since the death of Henry of Almain."

  "Yes," she owned sadly, "For that indeed he may hate us, but it surely gives him no cause to fear us. I could believe that he might strike against me for his revenge, if I was the nearest de Montfort. But out of genuine fear of some conspiracy against him…? Amaury believes this," she said, considering. "Do you believe it?"

  "No. Edward is as shrewd a judge of possibilities as most men, he knows he is as firmly seated on his throne as any man who ever occupied that seat. He knows the old baronial cause is dead, he cannot be genuinely afraid of its revival. But he may very well use that as his pretext for what he wants to do."

  "And that is?"

  "To break Llewelyn," I said. "To force him to concede everything, to swear fealty and do homage without guarantee of any recompense, any reaffirmation of the treaty, any correction of the present abuses. He has tried already with threats and demands, but he lacked a weapon terrible enough. Now he believes he has one."

  "So I am to be the means of bringing my husband to his knees in total submission, am I?" said Eleanor, opening her gold-flecked eyes wide. "My cousin may even expect me to add my own pleas to his open threat. Does he know how long we have waited already, without being broken by worse threats than his? A year or two in Edward's prison I can bear. I could not bear it if Llewelyn so mistook me as to think I valued my freedom above his honour and dignity. If we had some means of getting word to him!"

  I said that with patience and care, so we might have, once we were in Windsor, for the court must come there now and again, and even in the king's retinue there were quiet Welshmen like Cynan and his nephew, who had not forgotten their origins.

  "If only I could send you back to him," she said, "I would, but I dread there'll be no chance of that. We shall be well guarded. I must deal as best I can. I could be angry, but anger is waste of time and
passion, when it changes nothing." And by some steely magic of her own she did abjure anger, she who was Earl Simon's daughter, and had inherited his scornful intolerance of the devious and unjust. She steered her solitary course with resolution and method, winning over one by one those persons who came into close contact with her, and who, from castellan down to turnkeys, had surely expected very different usage from her. As at Bristol, so at Windsor, when they brought us there, Eleanor conducted herself as would a state guest, gracious and gentle to all, with never complaint or mention of her wrongs, as though they fell beneath her notice. Nor was this course one merely of policy, for as she said, these simple people who brought her food, tended her fire and guarded the enclosed courtyard where her apartments were, were none of them blameworthy, but forced into this confinement as she was, and they deserved of her, and received always, the great sweetness of address and courteous consideration which were natural to her. It was not long before they began to love her.

  Within the suite of rooms in that closed yard, the princess's household moved about freely, for it was a corner walled in every way, with but one gate in and out, and that strongly guarded. Escape was as good as impossible, unless someone among the guard should turn traitor, and there was no hope of that. There was a little patch of grass, wintry and bleached in that January weather, and a shrubbery and garden. Some care had been taken to ensure her comparative comfort while keeping a very fast hold of her. The comfort she acknowledged with grace, the precautions for her safe-keeping she never seemed to see. When she asked for a lute, they brought it, and also at her request, a rebec for me, since I had told her I could play the crwth, which is not so different. If she wanted books, they brought those, also. For freedom she did not ask, or appear to notice her deprivation. There was only one person to whom she would prefer that request.

  She had her own chapel there, and was provided a chaplain, though she preferred the company and service of her own Franciscans. There she lived a confined and tedious life with her two ladies, and waited for Edward to acknowledge by his appearance in person the deed he had countenanced, and to demonstrate by his approach that he was not ashamed of it. I know that she wanted him to come, that even in such circumstances—in particular in such circumstances!—it was a discourtesy that he did not visit and face her after what he had done.

  "He must come," she said, reassuring herself when she doubted, "he is too proud to shun the ordeal for ever and leave me to his underlings. He will get no peace until he has faced me. Neither shall I. I want to make plain to him, to his face, what I took care to tell his jackal the moment he seized me, that I am already a wife. Whatever Edward can alter, and spoil, and frustrate by keeping me caged here, he cannot undo my marriage."

  But it was two months and more before the court came to Windsor. We had no news all that time, we lived in a bubble cut off from the world, like all prisoners, and for us, seeing in what situation I had left Llewelyn in the autumn of the previous year, it was an anxious matter to have this sinister silence veiling all. Unknown to us, his envoys were still at the papal court, but Edward's ambassadors had followed them there hot-foot with a long ex pane account of the worsening relations between England and Wales, including the statement that the summons to Chester had been at Llewelyn's request and to suit Llewelyn's convenience, which I knew to be untrue, for it came quite unexpectedly, without consultation, and Edward had already broken off in advance all his pretences at making amends in the borders. Pope Gregory took the Welsh complaints seriously, and did intervene with Edward, advising further arbitration and deprecating any hasty action. But that was a year of misfortune in Rome, and in the first few months the pope fell ill, and died, and the resulting interregnum left Wales without a protector at the highest court in Christendom.

  We were likewise ignorant that the king had again cited Llewelyn to go to Winchester to do his homage, late in January, at that very time when Master Derenne's crippled ship was limping into Bristol. Again the prince had replied that it was not customary to demand that he should go into England, that it was not safe for him, and that his council would not permit it. He had not then heard of the fate

  that had befallen Eleanor.

  Edward's response was to summon the prince again at once, to appear three weeks after Easter, at Westminster, for which season and place a parliament had been called. Llewelyn as steadily repeated his conditions, and his refusal until they were met. But this time he did know of the gross offence offered to Eleanor, and wrote denouncing it, and demanding that she should be released and sent safely to him. If Edward had counted on forcing his submission by this means, he had judged very badly. It was impossible, after that monstrous illegality, for the prince to give way by one inch, or have any dealings with the author of such a crime but upon arrogantly equal terms of armed enmity, or finally with the sword in the field.

  But none of this did we then know. And when, in mid-March, the bustle of great preparations and the coming and going of many officers about the castle of Windsor made itself heard even in our fastness, we stretched our ears and gathered what we could from the servants who attended Eleanor, and guessed that King Edward was bringing his queen and his court to spend Easter there before parliament sat at Westminster.

  "Now," said Eleanor, "he cannot slight me further by leaving me unvisited, as though he had had no part in bringing me here. He must come!"

  Never until then had I known her to let her hunger and grief sound in her voice, and even then it was for no more than a moment, and she was almost ashamed of it, and flushed as she shook the weakness away from her. But I knew that her sorrow and longing were very great, as great as the acknowledgement she allowed them was small, and the crisis of meeting Edward face to face and maintaining her position was to her the first great step towards her ultimate victory, in which she never ceased to have faith.

  From beyond our walls we heard bustle and haste, fanfares and music and commotion all that day, and in the evening the merry-making in the royal halls sent its echoes to us in waves on the wind, but no one came visiting to our island.

  Not until the third evening did he come. She was pale with waiting then, and wanted to fill up the moments that brought no arrivals with whatever came to hand, for fear of their echoing emptiness. We were making music, she and I, and the girls with their sweet, light voices, playing and singing a French tune they knew well, I following by ear on the rebec, when the door of her parlour opened, and the doorway was filled with a man's giant shape. There had been so little noise, and we, perhaps, were making so much, that for some minutes we did not mark his entry, but went on with the song, and though that was honest, and not designed, yet it fitted very neatly with Eleanor's needs. Her head was bent with love over the lute, and her hands on the neck and strings were fleet, devoted and beautiful, when doubtless she should have been instantly at the king's feet with her mouth full of entreaties. By the time one of the girls observed him, and fell mute, we were close to the end of the refrain, and we three who were left finished it neatly, and looked up at one another, smiling, before we understood that we were observed, and by whom.

  That was an ample enough room, though small as palaces go, and its doorway just large enough to let in giants. His thick brown hair scarred the stone of the arch above him, and his great shoulders filled the opening from side to side. That night he was all sombre brown and heavy gold, with a thin gold coronal in his curls because it was a festival, and he presiding in state. In these years of his maturity his features were large, heavy, smooth and handsome, with a monumental stillness when he was not in anger. Of grace he had none, but he had a grand, practised command over every part of his vast body that caused him to move majestically, and passed for grace. His drooping eyelid was very clear then, and shocking in its furtive meanness. I understand that I do him injustice, but I do so in the truth of what I saw. So did nature do but dubiously by him, marking him with this flaw. And perhaps she knew her business!

  I never was so aware of
the grand, wide honesty of Eleanor's eyes as when she laid aside her lute, that evening, and rose to meet him. Never so aware, and never so proud and glad. She barely came up to his breast, and she overmatched him with those great, golden eyes that mirrored to him, without any design of hers, his inescapable imperfection, where she was perfect.

  God knows what he had expected, but whatever the expectation, she would always come as an astonishment. She made him the deep reverence due, as did we all, but he had eyes for nobody but Eleanor.

  "I am glad," she said, "your Grace has the charity to visit your prisoners, since it is at your pleasure we are here. Your Grace's invitation to England would have been more appreciated if it had been rather more formally phrased."

  "Madam," said the king, in some constraint, as well he might be, considering the sting of her words and the sweetness of her voice. "I much regret the necessity for putting you to this inconvenience."

  "So do I," said Eleanor, "and I have no possibility of amending it, but your Grace has that option, if you care to use it. It would be a much simpler matter to unlock the doors and lend me an escort and horses, than to commission Bristol pirates to seize me in mid-ocean. And I think it would be more likely to win you whatever it may be you want of me and mine." Her voice was both brisk and serene. I would even say there was a faint, rueful smile in it.