The Brothers of Gwynedd (116 page)

  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 Cymer 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 says—'not mad
e
patent'! With good reason, for by that sign he must know he does vilely to harbou
r 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.