The Brothers of Gwynedd Read online

  "You cannot do right to my father or any," he cried, blazing up like a tall flame, "by doing wrong to Gwynedd! To Wales!"

  "You talk of fantasies," she overbore him, looming against him like a tower, "while your father rots in Criccieth, a reality, deprived of what is justly his. And you dare talk to me of right! We are going, and tonight. Go, sir, do as you are bidden, go and make ready, and no more words. I did not send for you to teach me my duty, I know it too well."

  Long before this I would gladly have crept away if I could, but I dared not move for fear of reminding them that I was there. And even he, I thought, wavered and blanched a little before her, for in his father's absence she was the law here, and he was still two years short of his manhood, and could not act against her will. Yet I think now he did not give back at all, and even his hesitation was nothing but a hurried searching in his unpractised mind for words which might convince without offending.

  "Mother," he said, low and passionately, "I do know my father's case, and know he asks but what he feels his right. But I tell you, if I were in his place, rather than get my sovereignty at the hands of King Henry, I would make my full submission to my uncle David as his loyal vassal, and put myself and every man I had into arms to fight for him against England. There should be no factions here when a war threatens, but only one cause, Wales. Do not go! Go rather to Criccieth, and beg my father to remember his own father, and the greatness he gave to Gwynedd, and urge him to offer the oath of fealty to his brother, and come out and fight beside him. Even at his own cost, yes! But I swear it would not cost him so high as you will make it cost him if you go on with this. Do not go, to make traitors of us all!"

  She had heard him thus far only for want of breath and words to silence him, and found no argument, for they had no common ground on which to argue. But then she struck him, on the word she could not endure. The clash of her palm against his cheek was loud, and the silence after it louder, until she found a laboured, furious voice to break it.

  "Do you dare speak so to me? You have been too long and too often at your uncle's court, it seems! You had better take care how you use the word traitor in this house, for it may well echo back upon your own head. You have been spoiled at Aber! They have bought you, foolish child as you are. Now let me hear no more from you, but go and make ready. You are the eldest son of this house at liberty, and should be doing your duty as its head."

  He stood unmoving, his eyes fixed upon her angry face, and he had grown pale under the sunbrown, so that the marks of her fingers burned clear and red upon his cheek. After a long moment he said, in a voice quiet and even: "You say truth, and you do well to remind me. I am the eldest son of this house at liberty, and I will do my duty as its head. Have I your leave to go and set about it?"

  "That is better," she said grimly, and dismissed him with no greater mark of forgiveness than that, for she was much disturbed, and still angry. Nor did he ask any. He went out as abruptly as he had come, and the back view of him as he passed from dark to bright in the doorway did not look to me either tamed or penitent.

  I saw him again towards dusk, when we brought in the stock. For all must go forward as usual and seem innocent after we were gone. He had chosen a horse for himself with care, and tried its paces about the courtyard, and professing himself but half satisfied, rode it out and round the llys to make certain of his choice. I had been sent out to bring down a flock from the hill grazing, north of Neigwl, and I came out of a fold of the track close to where the road swung away to the north, towards Carnarvon and Aber.

  He was walking his horse up the slope over the grass, away from Neigwl and the sea, and when he came to the road he halted a moment and looked back, motionless in the saddle. Thus, his back being turned to me, he did not see me until the first yearling lambs came down into the corner of his vision, and made him look round. He knew then that I was from the llys. Perhaps he did not know whether I was in the secret, or perhaps he did not care. He looked at me calmly, and did not recognise me, but he knew that he was known, and that I, whoever I might be, was reading his mind.

  That was a strange moment, I cannot forget it. He sat his horse, solitary and grave, examining me with eyes the colour of peat pools in the sun. He had brought away with him nothing at all but the horse, and a cloak slung loosely over his linen tunic. Whatever else was his he had left behind, to be taken or abandoned as others decided, for valuables are valuables, and we were going where we might soon be either in need or living on English bounty. He wheeled his horse and walked it forward deliberately some few paces along the road northwards, his eyes never leaving mine, and suddenly he was satisfied, for he smiled. And I smiled also at being read and blessed, for his confidence was as open and wide as the sky over us.

  He said to me: "You have seen nothing." Confirming not ordering.

  "Nothing," I said.

  "And I know nothing," he said. That, too, I understood. The Lady Senena could

  never be told, nor perhaps would she believe it if any tried to tell her, that the son who would not go with her to England would not send out an alarm after her, either, or betray her intent in any way, having made his own decision yet still allowing her hers. No, it was for me he said it, that I might be satisfied as he was satisfied, and feel no guilt in keeping his secret, as he felt none in keeping hers. And that was no easy way to take, alone, for a boy twelve years old.

  He shook the reins, and dug his heels into the horse's flanks, and was away from me at a canter along the track towards the north. He had ridden much, and rode well, erect and easy, as I would have liked to ride. I watched him until he breasted the next rise and vanished into the dip beyond, and then I took the lambs down to Neigwl, and said never a word to any of that meeting.

  So when the dusk was low enough, and the hour came for our departure, when the sumpter horses were loaded and sent ahead, and the litters for the lady and her children stood ready, and the horses were being led out saddled from the stables, there was great counting of all the heads, and the word began to go round: "Where is Prince Llewelyn? Has anyone seen him?" No one had, since he took out his chosen horse to try its paces. We waited for him more than an hour, and men hunted in every possible and impossible place about the maenol, while the Lady Senena's face grew darker and bleaker and angrier with every moment. But he did not come, and he was not found. He was the eldest man of his house at liberty, and he was gone to do his duty as its head, according to his own vision.

  Even when she cried out on him at last that he had turned traitor, had abandoned and betrayed his own mother and brothers, I said no word. Unable to understand, she would have been unable to believe that he could go on his own way and not block and prevent hers. She feared pursuit, and therefore every hour became more precious, and she ordered our departure in great haste, and extended our first forced ride as far as Mur y Castell, where her advance guards had fresh horses waiting for us. She would not risk taking the old Roman road across the Berwyns, but had planned a route further south, to give all David's favourite dwellings a wide berth, and our first rest was at Cymer. Thence, with a greatly increased company, we made two easier days of it by way of Meifod to Strata Marcella, and crossed the Severn at a ford below Pool.

  And all the way she complained bitterly of her second son's treachery and ingratitude, until she went far to make her daughter Gladys, who was his elder by a year, hate him and decry him even as she did. Being the only daughter, this girl was very dear to her, and much in her confidence. Yet I think there was so much of grief and smart in their blame of him that even hate had another side, and in their softer moments they could not choose but wonder and harrow over old ground, marvelling how he had come to that resolution against all odds, incomprehensible to them, and blameworthy, but surely hard indeed for him, and therefore honest. And this all the more when the journey was nearly over, and no breath of suspicion or pursuit followed us. For if he had not garnered all the favour he could by setting his uncle's huntsmen after us, what was h
is own welcome likely to be after our flight was discovered? He was known to have been summoned by his mother, and obeyed and returned, the very day of the defection. The revenge that could not reach his mother might fall on him for want of larger prey. And sometimes those two women, a moment after cursing him, wondered with anxiety how he was faring now, and whether he was not flung into Criccieth with his father and his brother.

  As for me, I learned painfully to ride, if not well as yet, doggedly and uncomplainingly, I tended the two little boys, I wrote one or two letters of appeal for the Lady Senena to such English lords as she best knew by contact or reputation, urging her cause, and I did whatever clerking there was to be done by the way. But familiar as I became with her argument, I could not forget his. And for which of them was in the right, that I could never determine. For both were honest, and both spoke truth, though they went by opposite ways. Yet being of the party that went one way, I heard now nothing but this side of the case, and matter repeated again and again without opposition grows to fall naturally on the ear. So I doubt I veered with the wind, like other men older than I, and came to be much of the lady's way of thinking before we reached Shrewsbury, which we did, with safe-conducts from the king's council, on the fourth day of August of this year twelve hundred and forty-one.

  CHAPTER II

  This Shrewsbury is a noble town, formidably walled all round and everywhere moated by the Severn, but for a narrow neck of land open to the north, for the whole town lies within a great coil of that river. It has three gates, two of them governing the bridges that lead, one eastwards deeper into England, one westwards into Wales, and the third gate lies on the tongue of dry land, under the shadow of a great castle. I have seen larger towns since then, though none fairer. But when we came in by the Welsh gate, over that broad sweep of river and beneath the tall tower on the bridge, that August day in the heat, I saw such a town for the first time in my life, and thought it more marvellous than I can tell. For we in Wales had then borrowed very little from this crowding English life that pressed in on our flank, that used coined money, and markets, of which we had scarcely any, and lived in stone houses that could not be abandoned at need, for they were too precious, and grew ordered crops that tied men to one patch of soil. And above all, few of us had ever seen what the English called a city.

  The Lady Senena had sent her steward ahead to deal with the bailiffs of the town, being armed already with a recommendation from John Lestrange, who was sheriff of the county. And we were met at the gate, and conducted to a great house near the church of St. Alkmund (for this town has four parish churches within its walls) where we were to be lodged. There was fair provision for the lady and her children and officers within, and those of her escort and servants who were married were given the best of what remained, while the young men had reasonably good lying in a barn and storehouse in the courtyard. And it was mark of some respect that our party got so much consideration, for Shrewsbury was crowded to the walls. King Henry and his court and officials had been in the town three days, and many of his barons and lords were installed with him in the guest halls of the abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul, outside the walls by the English gate. The chief tenants and their knights were quartered in the castle, or wherever they could find room in houses and shops inside the walls, and the main part of the army, a great host, encamped in the fields outside the castle foregate.

  But this numbering, vast though it was, was but the half of the stream that had poured into Shrewsbury. There were plenty of clients eager to enlist King Henry's favour, besides the Lady Senena. All those marcher lords who had lost land to Llewelyn the Great, and had been trying through legal pressures to regain it from his son all these past months, had come running to the royal standard, waiting to pick the bones. Roger of Montalt, the seneschal of Chester, who had been kept out of Mold for many years, Ralph Mortimer, who had trouble with his Welsh neighbours in Kerry, and Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, who laid claim to most of southern Powys by right of his father, these were the chief litigants. This Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn was a man twenty-seven years old, and had been but an infant when his sire lost all to Llewelyn of Gwynedd. He was married to Hawise, a daughter of the high sheriff, John Lestrange, who had three border counties in his care, and was justiciar of Chester into the bargain, a very powerful ally. The English called this Welsh chief Griffith de la Pole, after the castle of Pool, which was his family's chief seat; and indeed, this young man had been so long among the English that he was more marcher baron than Welsh chief, let alone the influence of his wife, who was a very strong and self-willed lady. But apart from these, there were not a few of the minor Welsh princes here to join the royal standard, some because they felt safer owing fealty to England than to Gwynedd, some with grievances of their own over land, like the lord of Bromfield, some because they upheld the Lord Griffith's right, and had conceived the same hope as had his lady, some in the hope of snatching a crumb or two out of David's ruin for themselves, with or without right. Which was cheering indeed for the Lady Senena, who found herself not without advocates and allies in this foreign town.

  But if the outlook was bright for her, it seemed it was black enough for David, with all this great force arrayed against him, and in this summer when the world was turned upside-down. For scarcely ever was there a year when the rivers sank so low, those waters on which Gwynedd counted for half her defence. There had been no rains since the spring, the sun rose bright every morning, and sank cloudless every night, pools dried up, and swamps became dry plains. And all those supporters of the Lord Griffith whetted their swords and watched the skies with joy, waiting for the order to march.

  The Lady Senena sent a messenger at once to the abbey, to ask for an audience of the king, and his officers appointed her to come on the twelfth day of August. So we had time enough to wait, and to draw up in detail the petition she intended to present, together with her proposals for an alliance which should be of benefit to both parties. This kept her steward and clerk busy for some days, and I was employed to help in preparing fair copies of the clauses, for I had learned to write a good clear hand. I had also to help my mother take care of the two young princes, for now it was part of my mother's own duties to be waiting-maid to the Lady Gladys, so that I came in for much of the work of minding the little boys. And as they were full of curiosity and wonder at this strange and busy town, I was able to go with them sometimes about the streets, gaping at everything as simply as did the children, for it was as new to me as to them. So many fine buildings, such shops and market stalls, and such a bewildering parade of people I had never imagined. Those four noble churches were of stone, the houses mainly of timber, but large and splendid, the streets so full of life that it seemed the whole business of the kingdom had followed the court here, and London must be empty. And all the while this blue, unpitying sky over all, very beautiful, very ominous.

  When the day came, the lady had her daughter, who was growing up very handsome, dressed with great care to adorn her beauty, and the two little boys also made as grand as might be. Rhodri, the elder, was a capricious and uncertain-tempered child, but not ill-looking when he was amiable, and David had always, even then, at five years old, a great sense of occasion, and could light some inward lamp of charm and grace at will, so that he truly shone, and women in especial were drawn to him like moths to flame. I do not know why it was, for I paid him no more attention than I did his brother, but David was much attached to me, and it was because he would have me with him that I was of the party that went before the king.

  We went on foot, for it was not far. Only the Lady Senena and her daughter rode in a litter, for it was not fitting for them to arrive at the king's audience on foot. The road was by a fine, curving street that dropped steeply to the bridge on the English side, where there was a double gate, the first a deep tunnel in the town wall, and after it a tower set upon the bridge itself, of which the last span was a draw-bridge. And beyond the bridge, where a brook ran down into the river, the abbey
mills stood, and the wall and gatehouse of the great enclosure loomed bright in the unfailing sunshine, with the square tower of the church over all. We went in procession over the bridge and along the broad road to the gateway, and so to the guest-houses where King Henry kept his court. In the anteroom his chamberlain met us, and went in before us to announce the lady.

  She took the petition, carefully inscribed and rolled and sealed with the Lord Griffith's private seal, which she kept always about her, and marshalled us in order at her back, and so we went into the glow and brilliance of the royal presence, she first and alone, her daughter after her with my mother in attendance, Rhodri led by the steward, and I with David clinging to my hand. And of all of us he was the least awed and the most at ease.

  It was a great room, draped with tapestries and green branches and bright silks, and full of people. The lady halted just within the doorway, and so did we all, and made a deep reverence to the throne. Then, as we moved forward again at the chamberlain's summons, I lifted my eyes, and looked for the first time upon King Henry of England, the third of that name.

  He was seated in a high-backed chair at the dais end of the hall, with a great plump of lords and secretaries and officers on either side of him; a man not above medium tall, rather pale of countenance, with light brown hair and beard very carefully curled, and long, fine, clerkly fingers stretched out along the arms of his chair. He was very splendid in cloth of gold, and much jewelled. I saw the glitter before I saw the man, for he was like a pale candle in a heavy golden sconce, and yet he had some attraction about him, too, once I could see past the shell. I suppose he was then about thirty-four years old, and had been king from a child, among courtiers and barons old, experienced, greedy, and cleverer than he, and yet many of them were gone down into disaster, and he was left ever hopeful among the new, who might well prove as ruinous as the old, but also as transient. He had a kind of innocent shrewdness, light and durable. I never knew if it was real or spurious, but it made for survival. He had, as it turned out, other qualities, too, that taught him how to shed others and save himself, as slender trees give with the wind. But that was not in his face, it remained to be learned in hard lessons by those less pliable. That day he smiled on us with great gentleness and grace, and was all comfort and serenity. The only thing that caused me to tremble was a little thing of the body, that he could not help. He had one eyelid that hung a little heavier than the other, drooping over the mild brownness of his eye. It gave me a strange shock of distrust, as though one half of him willed to be blind to what the other half did, and would take no responsibility for it hereafter. But that was an unjust fancy, and I forgot it soon.