The Brothers of Gwynedd Read online

  He was gracious, he leaned forward and stretched out a hand to the Lady Senena, and she sank to her knees before him, and took it upon her own hand, and kissed it. And that she knew how to do without losing one inch of her stature or one grain of her grandeur, as plain as she was, and the mother of five children, in this court full of the young and beautiful. He would have lifted her at once, but she resisted, retaining his hand in hers. She lifted the roll of her petition, and held it up to him. And whatsoever I have been, and however shaken between conflicting loyalties, I was wholly her man then. And the child clinging to my hand stood the taller with pride, and glowed the more brightly.

  "My liege lord," said the Lady Senena, "I pray your Grace receive and consider the plea of a wife deprived of her lord by his unjust imprisonment and more disgraceful disinheritance, wholly against law. I commit myself and my children to your Grace's charge, as sureties for my lord's and my good faith and fealty to your Grace. And I ask you for the justice denied elsewhere."

  As he took the roll from her, and as expertly had it removed from his hand by a clerk almost before he touched it, he said: "Madam, we have heard and commiserated your plight, and are aware of your grievances. You are in safety here, and most welcome to us. You shall be heard without hindrance hereafter." For there would be no bargaining here, this was a time for measuring and thinking, before the fine script I had put into those clauses came to be examined by older, colder eyes than mine. But he raised her very gallantly, and sat her at his knee on a gilded stool they placed for her. And she, though I swear she had never played such a part before, played it now with so large a spirit that in truth for the first time I loved her. She folded her hands in her gown like a saint, and only by the motion of her head beckoned us forward one by one.

  "I present to your Grace my daughter Gladys…"

  The girl bent her lissome knees and slender neck, very dark and bright in every colouring and movement, and kissed the king's hand, and lifted her long lashes and looked into his face. It was curiosity and not boldness, but I saw him startle, attracted and amused. The young one saw nothing but a man's fair face smiling at her, and smiled in response, marvellously. She hung between woman and child then, the child having the upper hand. And truly she was very comely, more than she knew.

  "My son Rhodri. Your Grace is advised already that my eldest son, Owen, is prisoner with his father, in defiance of all honour."

  "I do know it," said the king. "Child, you are welcome." Not a word of Llewelyn, the second son. He could not advance her cause here, he was put out of mind, as though he no longer lived.

  "My youngest son, David."

  I loosed his hand, and gave him a gentle push towards the throne, but he did not need it, he knew all that was required of him, and went his own God-given step beyond. He danced, there is no other word, to the step of the throne, and laid his flower of a mouth to the king's hand. He looked up and smiled. I heard all the women there—they were not many, but they were noble and of great influence—breathe out a sound like something between the sighing of the sea and the cooing of doves, for he was indeed a most beautiful and winning child. And the king, amused and charmed, lifted and handed him gently to his mother, and he stood by her unabashed and looked all round him, smiling, aware of approval. I drew back very quietly into the shadows, for I was not needed any more, not until he remembered and wanted me, and that he would not do while his interest was held. He had never been happier, he knew every eye was on him, and every lip smiled on him, even the king's. For Henry left a finger in his clasped hand, and withdrew it only when the hand relaxed of itself, and let the royal prisoner go.

  They say he was a fond, indulgent father to his own children, though apt to tire of their company if they were with him long, and to grow petulant if they plagued him. His son and heir was then just past his second birthday, and the queen had a second babe in arms, but these were all left behind in the south, and I suppose it was pleasant to him to play gently for some minutes with a pretty child of whose company he could be rid whenever it grew irksome. For in that audience he spoke as often to the boy as to his mother, and got his answers just as readily. He asked after his adventures on this great journey, and David chattered freely about the ride, and about the wonders he had seen in Shrewsbury. And when he was asked what he would be and do when he was grown, he said boldly that he would be one of the king's knights. His mother gave him a swift, narrow look then, as doubtful as I if that was said in innocence, for clever children, even at five years old, know very well what will please. But since it did give pleasure she said no word of her qualms, then or afterwards. There is no harm in accepting aid where you find it.

  So this open audience went very well, and gave promise for the closed conference which was appointed to follow the next day, and the Lady Senena made her withdrawing reverence and led her procession back to its lodging reasonably well content.

  And for the hard bargaining that went on at this council at the abbey, the earnest after the show, I was not present, and cannot speak as to what passed. There were present at first only the Lady Senena and her steward on our part, and on the part of the crown King Henry himself for a part of the discussion, and with him his chancellor and his secretary. And after the terms were agreed certain of the marcher barons and the Welsh chiefs were called in to approve and to sign as guarantors. But the terms themselves I do know, for I was set to work making fair copies before ever the agreement was made public, two days later. They seemed to me curious enough, for I knew nothing of money, the minted money they valued, and could not conceive of a man's liberty and rights being reckoned in terms of the round pieces of metal they struck here in this town.

  Yet so it was, for money entered into every transaction. After all their conferring, King Henry undertook, in the campaign he intended against the prince of Gwynedd, to bring about the release of the Lord Griffith from imprisonment in consideration of the sum of six hundred marks, and to restore him to his rightful share of the inheritance for three hundred more, one third of the whole sum to be paid in coin, and the remainder in cattle and horses. And a commission of lawful appraisers was to view the stock so rendered in payment, when they were delivered to the sheriff here in Shrewsbury, to make doubly sure that their value was equal to the sum due. To this document many of the marcher lords and Welsh princes also added their signatures as security. And the Lady Senena placed herself and her children under King Henry's protection, and her two youngest sons specifically in his charge, as hostages for her and her husband's future fealty.

  Whether she was fully content with this arrangement I do not know, but it was the best she could get, and I think she felt secure that it would be of short term and soon resolved, and the restoration of half Gwynedd to her lord would make payment a light matter. For she listened with great eagerness to all the talk within the town, and paid attention to all the news she could get of the king's preparations, which indeed were impressive. And the season still continued bright without a cloud, and the rivers shrank into mere trickles in the meandering middles of their beds, even the Severn so low that a man could ford it where no fords were at other times. So all men said it was but a matter of marching into Wales, and the elusive warfare the Welsh favoured and excelled at would be impossible, for an army could go in force where normally marsh and mountain stream would prevent. And in a month all would be over. And for once men said truth, for in a month all was over.

  We stayed in our lodgings in Shrewsbury, King Henry's pensioners, when the army marched. After they were gone, the town seemed quiet indeed, but with a most ominous quietness, and for some time no news came. They marched to Chester, where the nobles of the north with their knights were ordered to join the muster, and from there advanced westwards into Tegaingl without hindrance, and reached the river Clwyd, which was no let to them, and crossed the great marshes that surround Rhuddlan dry-shod as on a drained field, so rapidly, that Prince David was forced to withdraw or be cut off from his mountains. But eve
n the mountains betrayed him, for they provided him neither rain nor cloud nor mist to cover him. Such a season had never been known in Snowdon. He razed to the rock his castle of Degannwy, on the hither side of Conway, when it was plain that he must abandon it, and he kept his army from the direct clash which must see it shattered. In the end he preferred to sue for peace rather than continue a war which could not be won, but only lost with great bloodshed or with none.

  At Gwern Eigron on the river Elwy, the twenty-ninth day of August, the prince of Gwynedd made a complete surrender on terms to the king, and in King Henry's tent at Rhuddlan the pact was confirmed two days later. And a hard and bitter meeting that must have been between these two, uncle and nephew but very much of an age, kinsmen and enemies. And very hard and bitter were the terms of the surrender, though David kept his rank and the remnants of his principality.

  Rumour of the end of the fighting came back to us in Shrewsbury early in September, while the army was still at Chester. The Lady Senena sent daily to the sheriff or the bailiffs for news of what most concerned her, her lord's fortunes, and I well remember the day when her steward came back from the castle glowing with the details at last. She was in the hall when he came, and I was taking down for her one more letter of the many with which she had throughout continued to solicit the favour of the powerful, especially those lords who held along the northern march. Therefore I was present when she received the word for which she waited.

  "Madam," said the old man, flushed with joy and importance, for it is always good to be the bearer of news long-desired and wholly welcomed, "the Lord Griffith is freed, and handed over to his Grace at Chester, and your son with him. They will return here with the king's Grace within the week."

  She clasped her hands and coloured to the brow with delight, like a young girl, and said a fervent thanks to God for this deliverance. And fiercely she questioned him of those other matters, for she was a good hater as well as a loyal lover.

  "And the terms? What becomes of all thpse impleaded lands, Powys, Mold, all those conquests held from their father? Does David give up all? All?"

  "All!" he said. "Everything Llewelyn Fawr took by force of arms goes back to those who claim it. Montalt gets back Mold after forty years. Gwenwynwyn's son will be set up in Powys, and Merioneth returns to Meredith's sons. All the Welsh princes who used to hold directly from the crown are to come back to the crown. Everything he fought for, he has lost!"

  A strange thought came into my mind then that I was not listening to a Welsh princess and her officer speaking, but to English voices exulting over a defeated Wales.

  "What, all the homages that belonged to King John are to come back to the crown again? A great loss!"

  And I thought how the Gwynedd she looked to see divided now by force between the Lord Griffith and his brother was shrunken by all those fealties, and marvelled how she could be glad of it, even for her lord's own sake, for surely he was also a loser, or at best stood to gain only a meagre princedom. But she saw no false reasoning.

  "And David will pay!" she said with passion. "The expenses of this war, also! King Henry will not let that go by default."

  "Madam, he is to give up the whole cantref of Tegaingl, and Ellesmere also, these go to the crown. And there will be a further payment in money, a heavy fine."

  "His justice returns on his own head," she said. "And will my lord truly be here within the week, shall I see him again?"

  "Madam, he is already with the king, they return together. Your son also."

  "And what provision is made for him? What lands are allotted to my lord?" She shook suddenly to a frightening thought. "He'll hold them from the king, in chief? Not from David! Say not from David!"

  "Direct from the crown, madam. It's agreed that the question shall be determined by his Grace's own court, according to Welsh custom or strict law, as may be decided. Our lord will be there to speak for himself."

  "Then no division is yet made. No," she said, but with some doubt and reluctance, "I see there could be no judgment yet. It is a matter for the court, in fairness. Then all will be well. And I did right to come. I tell you," she said, for her humbly, "sometimes I have wondered. Am I now justified?"

  "Madam," he said, "my lord is on his way back to you and to his children, and the Lord Owen with him. What other answer do you need? They are free, and you have freed them."

  She was so abashed, and so glad, that briefly she shed tears, she who never wept. And she called the children, and told them their father was coming in a few days. At which David only stared and pondered with little understanding, for he hardly remembered his father.

  I remember also the day that they came. All the citizens of Shrewsbury were out on the streets to see the army return, though the main body of men did not enter the town walls. But the king and his officers and barons rode through from gate to gate, from the castle to the abbey, where they halted again for two nights. The house where we lodged was very close to the street where they passed, and we went down into the crowd to watch, while the Lady Senena and the Lady Gladys had a place in the window of a burgess's house overhanging the route, and took the children with them.

  That was a brave show, bright with pennants and surcoats and colours, the horses as fresh and fine as the riders, for there had been no great hardship or exertion in that brief war, no armour was dinted, and no banners coiled. We saw the king go by, a fair horseman, and at his fairest when he rode in triumph, for he swung ever between the rooftops and the mire, higher and lower in his exaltation and abasement than ordinary men, and this was an occasion unblemished by any doubts. I had not yet learned to know the faces and devices of those closest about him, though they all looked formidable enough and splendid enough to me. I saw them as a grand cavalcade of bright colours and proud faces, not as men in the manner that I was a man. Or almost a man, for I had not yet my years. These lived on another level. I knew no parallel for it in Wales, where no man felt himself less a man than another, or bridled his tongue for awe of the great. Great and small surely we had, and every man knew his place in the order, and respected both his own and every other soul's, but not with servility. In this land I felt great wonder and pleasure, but I was never at ease.

  I stood with my mother and her husband—for I never thought of him as father to me in any way—among a hot and heaving throng, pressed body hard against body, watching these great ones ride by. And suddenly my mother gave a soft cry, and struggled to free a hand, and as ever, to touch me, not him. And never did this happen but he was aware of it, and I aware of his awareness, as a pain most piercing and hard to sustain. But she never knew it, as though what he felt could in no wise touch her. So she handled me eagerly by the shoulder in his sight, and cried: "He is there! It is true, he's free!"

  I doubt if I should have known the Lord Griffith for myself, for I had not seen him since I was five years old. He rode among a group of lords not far behind the king's own party, on a tall, raw-boned horse, for he was a massive man, full-blooded and well-fleshed, and had lost no bulk in his imprisonment. He towered almost a head over King Henry, and though he was white in the face from being so long shut away from the sun, he looked otherwise none the worse in health, and was now, like his lady, in very good spirits. At whose expense he was provided for this ride, both with clothes and mount, I do but guess, yet take it that as yet all he had came from King Henry. For he was fine in his dress, and his hair and beard, which were reddish fair like Rhodri's colouring, very elegantly trimmed. Close behind him rode a big boy of about fourteen, massively made like his father, but his thick crop of hair, which was uncovered to the sun, was fiery red, almost as red as the poppies in the headlands of the English fields. And that was Owen Goch, the firstborn son.

  They passed by us, pale from their prison but bright with joy in their triumph, and people pointed them out for the Welsh princes, and waved hands and kerchiefs. The Lady Senena sat at her upper window motionless and silent, with tears on her cheeks, but her daughter leane
d out and shook a silk scarf streaming out on the breeze, and called down to the riders so shrilly and joyfully that the Lord Griffith looked up, and saw his womenfolk weeping and laughing for pleasure at seeing him again live and free and acknowledged joint-heir of Gwynedd. Then the men below waved and threw glances and kisses as long as they were within sight, their chins on their shoulders, until the curve of the Wyle took them away, and the women embraced each other in floods of tears, and hugged the two little boys, and urged them to wave and throw kisses after their father's dwindling figure. For this was but the public presentment, and soon, when King Henry was installed at the abbey, there could be a private reunion even more joyful.