The Brothers of Gwynedd (122 page)

  We were flung about the deck like leaves in a gale, and clung by whatever came to hand until our helpless ship partially righted herself in the water. By that time the larger of the two pirates had closed in on our other flank, until with a creaking and tearing of timbers she ground our remaining oars to pulp, and dragged groaningly alongside us. Then suddenly great numbers of men came surging up from where they had lain hidden, all along her side, dragged us close with grapples, and came swarming over the gunwale, with weapons naked in their hands, twice, thrice the number we had on board.

  The tall man in the cloak, red-bearded and armoured, advanced upon us at their head. We closed in a half-circle about the women, and drew in our turn.

  "Put up," said the stranger, halting ready, "and come to no harm, or fight, if you see fit, and take the consequences. You would be ill-advised."

  It hardly needed saying. We were a handful, and he had a small army. Nevertheless, Amaury in his rage, and perhaps seeing before the rest of us what lay behind this interception, launched himself forward and lunged at the man with all his might, but the other merely stepped back from him, not accepting single combat, and three or four of his henchmen closed as one on Amaury and bore him down by sheer weight, wrenching the sword out of his hand and clubbing him to the deck with the hilt of it. He lay stunned, with a trickle of blood flowing from his scalp, and then all his fellows leaned hand to hilt and would have flung themselves upon a like fate, if Eleanor had not caught two of them, the nearest, by the sleeve, and cried sharply: "No!"

  It drew all eyes to her. Until then she had been clinging unnoticed in the doorway of the cabin, shaken by the heaving and shuddering of the ship, and in deep shadow behind our ranks. But at her voice everyone fell still, and when she stepped forward we opened a passage for her, though watchfully, and keeping close on either side.

  "No," she said, "no more of that! I want no killing, and no violence." And she went to her brother, and so did the two Franciscans of her company, and raised him gently, dazed and bleeding. "Take him and tend him," she begged them. "I must speak with this man." There was no fear in her voice or her face. I think I never saw her afraid for herself. And the friars helped Amaury away to a pallet in the fore-castle, and she remained, facing her captor squarely, slender and straight and gallant, without pride or pretence. He looked at her beauty, and was struck dumb for a moment.

  "If you have business here," she said calmly and courteously, "your business is with me. All here are my people, I take responsibility for them. What is it you want with us?" And she added, in the same serene tone: "You do not look like a pirate, and I had not thought that pirates would be so well-found as you seem to be, or need so many men to crush so few. We are two unarmed ships on a lawful journey. Of rights you have none. Of demands clearly you have. Let me hear them."

  "I am armed," said the bearded man, "with authority enough, and have a commission to perform, and I intend to perform it. There is no intent to offer either offence or violence to you, madam, nor to any who serve you if they obey my orders."

  "Whose orders?" said Eleanor. "Let me know your name and title. Are you a knight?"

  "Madam, I am. But my name and rank are very little to the purpose. The orders I give, I have also been given."

  She smiled a little, not unkindly, as if she did not wonder that he preferred to keep his name out of the affair, but she did not press him. "Given," she said, "by whom?"

  "By the king's Grace, Edward of England."

  "Ah," said Eleanor, unsurprised, "I had begun to understand as much. I have never heard that my cousin had a trading interest in piracy, so I imagine his interest is in my person rather than in any ransom I could pay."

  Her opponent could have been in little doubt then with whom he spoke, but there were two other women standing there in the background, wide-eyed and pale, and he wished to be certain. "You are," he questioned, "the Lady Eleanor de Montfort?"

  "No," said Eleanor, looking up at him within hand's touch, with those wide, gold-flecked eyes that showed him the mirror image of his own diminution before her. "I am Eleanor de Montfort, princess of Wales."

  He was struck out of words, for this was not within his orders, but he could not disbelieve her, confronted with those eyes. "And what does a king of England require of the princess of Wales," she asked patiently, "that has to be extracted by these extravagant means?"

  "These ships," he said, recovering himself in some suppressed fury, "and all in them are taken into custody at the king's orders. You and your ladies shall not be molested, but the men of your household will be kept under guard until the king's pleasure is known."

  She frowned over that, and said carefully, no longer baiting him but bargaining seriously: "These ships are under charter to me, but their masters and crews have no responsibility in this matter. All Master Derenne has done is to hire to me his ships, his men and his skills, and the king has no right or need to exact any penalty for that, whatever he means to do with me and mine. Have I your word that as soon as we are on land I shall be allowed the use of my own treasury to pay what I owe, and that ships and crew will be permitted at once to return to France? It would be unjust to detain them."

  "I cannot give you such a guarantee," he said, uneasy, "it is not within my competence. It does not rest with me."

  "Be so good, then, as to make known to the king that I make that request for them. That at least, I suppose, you can do?"

  "I can and will," he said.

  "And may I keep my friars with me? They will attempt nothing to trouble you." She did not ask for her brother, for she knew by then that whoever was allowed to go unbound, he would not be. There was a heavy load upon her, and she had to think for all her people. The friars were allowed her. "Where are you taking us?"

she asked.

"Into Bristol, madam."

  "Very well," said Eleanor, and turned to leave him, as though that ended her need to endure his presence. But she looked back to add, thinking of the shattered oars and the broken steer-board: "They have good repair yards in Bristol, I understand. I hope the king will bear the cost of putting Master Derenne's ships in order." And she went away without a glance behind, to where the friars were cleansing and binding up Amaury's broken head.

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."