The Brothers of Gwynedd (131 page)

  Llewelyn called his council that same night, for his mind was made up.

  "You have heard," he said, "what Edward intends for Wales, to hack even its heart into two pieces, to take one for himself and again part the other between two lords. Never again would Gwynedd have any power to draw the fragmented princedoms of Wales into one. No, they shall not have it! I would rather go on my knees to Edward and offer him fealty and homage on his terms than let this thing happen. But we are not yet come to that. There is but one way to prevent the king from dealing as he has promised with Owen and David, and that is to force him still to deal with me. If I submit, he is at least robbed of his excuse for destroying me and turning this land into a mere appendage of his English shires. I can still bargain. If he asks too much, I can still fight, but that shall be my last resort, since it is the frailest hope. Tomorrow we'll send a flag of truce across the estuary to Degannwy, and ask the king to receive envoys and talk terms for peace."

  In mourne silence they accepted his decision. Only his young nephew and worshipper, mastering his quivering face and resolutely swallowing his tears, protested at the injustice, that his uncle should be forced to submit to indignity and humiliation in defence of what was his by right, for he feared King Edward's vengeful mind.

  "It is what I do," said the prince harshly, "not what is done to me, that shows to my credit or my shame. There is only one man born who can humiliate me, and his name is Llewelyn ap Griffith. And I will see to it that he shall not."

Before we slept he sent for me, and told me that if the king agreed to negotiate, and received his envoys, he wished me to go with them as one of their clerks, and be their messenger back and forth to him.

  "For these will not be brief or easy bargainings," he said, "and though I know I must lose much of my state, I am resolved not to lose my honour. There are things I will not do, and things I will not forgo, and the chief of them I would rather not have written into any agreement or discussed as a bargaining counter publicly. It is enough if there is an understanding about it between Edward and me."

  I knew then of whom he was thinking, and I knew he chose me to be his voice because I already understood his mind. But I will not pretend I thought it an easy thing, or greatly to be desired, to approach Edward in my lord's name.

  "Tudor's business," said Llewelyn wryly, seeing my dutiful but dubious face, "will be with the king's officers. Yours with the king. I will give you my personal letter to him and my small seal for a token. I do not think he will refuse to see you. I think it may even appease him if I advance a plea of my own, apart from the hard terms he may seek to impose. In view of the whip hand he holds, my condition—for it is a condition, and I stand fast on it—may seem light and easily granted now. It cannot threaten him any longer, or even seem to threaten."

  I said I would go to him, and do whatever was required of me.

  "You know it already," he said. "I want his promise that my wife shall be restored to me. On every other point I will listen to him and meet him. But unless I have his word that Eleanor shall be released, there are no terms he can offer me that I will accept."

  In the morning following, Llewelyn with his court and his chief command returned to Aberconway, and the prince sent a boat with a herald across the estuary under flag of truce to Degannwy, and before the morning was over the herald returned with letters of safe-conduct from the king. We drew no hopeful conclusion from this promptness, for we had no proof yet that he felt any relief or satisfaction in being approached. But no sensible man turns aside what may well be the offer of what he wants, with less trouble, cost and loss to him than taking it by force. And his expenses to that point were extreme, though how much we had cost him we did not find out until much later, and would hardly have believed if anyone had told us the sum then.

  The king, as soon and as decisively as he had replied to our approach, at once retired to Rhuddlan, shortening his lines while leaving a working guard behind him, and took the opportunity to dismiss a great part of his foot soldiers, though he kept reasonable forces in Anglesey and at Rhuddlan, while Reginald de Grey continued as warden and commander at Flint. The fleet he kept with him until the end of the month. We knew it could easily be recalled, but his sending it home was a sign that he took the negotiations seriously and had cautious hopes of them.

  Tudor was the prince's chief envoy, as was right and proper, and the high steward had with him a young lawyer and clerk who was then coming into prominence in Llewelyn's service, Goronwy ap Heilyn of Rhos, while on the king's side they had to deal with Brother William of Southampton, the prior provincial of the Dominicans in England, Robert Tybetot, who had been on crusade with Edward and was his close friend, and the king's clerk, Anthony Bek. All these were closeted together with their advisers for long and arduous hours of argument and bargaining at Aberconway, breaking off at intervals while messengers went back and forth, from mid-September to early November, and long before the end we were assured that an agreement would be hammered out, however bitterly, for it suited both parties, and neither was willing to break off and resume fighting but for the most grave and desperate reasons, which accordingly neither provided. Indeed, it grew clearer as we went that those two opponents, though they fought each other over every point as stoutly as in the field, and the fight was just as much in earnest, understood each other very well upon these terms of honourable enmity, and felt no remaining rancour, as though the encounter in battle had been an absolution.

  As for me, I rode to Rhuddlan and sought an audience of the king on the second day, by which time he had surely been told that the envoys appeared to be sincere, and were not attempting delays for mere reasons of policy. I presented my letter to his chamberlain, and showed the prince's seal, and after an hour of waiting in the anteroom I was summoned to Edward's presence. It no longer mattered that he might remember me, indeed the likelihood was but small, for it was a long time since last he had spoken to me at the parliament of Oxford, far longer still since I had been attendant on David when they were children together. And at Windsor, in Eleanor's retinue, he had never noticed me.

  Nevertheless, when I went in to him and made my obeisance he looked at me hard and long, as though some corner of his memory retained a picture of which I was a faint reminder. But he did not pursue it. He was alone in the room when I entered. Possibly Llewelyn's letter had requested that the audience might be private, for he summoned no one while I was with him, and no one entered to trouble him with any other business. It seemed to me that even his giant body and great strength showed signs of wear and weariness. The droop of his eyelid was marked, but beneath it the brown eye glittered. He spoke to me very civilly but coldly, saying he was informed that I bore a private request from the prince of Wales, to be considered apart from the negotiations proceeding elsewhere, and giving me permission to expound the matter freely.

  "It concerns," I said, "the lady who is close kinswoman to your Grace, and closer still to my prince. The princess of Wales is detained at your Grace's pleasure. The lord prince has no desire now to revive any complaint or ill-feeling upon that score, the time for such considerations being long past. But he bids me tell you that while he means and intends to come to terms of peace with you, and will do everything to that end, his wife's freedom and her right to join him are matters on which he cannot bargain, and should not be allowed to influence those issues which others are now debating. It is more fitting that her two kinsmen should behave with grace and consideration towards her, and towards each other. He asks, and I ask for him, that your Grace will promise that she shall be restored to her husband, when these talks have borne fruit and the peace is made."

  "I have yet to see," said the king abruptly, "how sincere the prince is in his wish to make and keep peace."

  "That," I said, "your Grace will see in due time. But I know it now. He is not asking that you shall make any concession until you are satisfied of his good faith. He is asking that this one most dear and most vital wish shall be granted as soon as you are satisfied."

  "And if I refuse to give him that assurance?" he asked, not angrily or arrogantly, rather as truthfully wishing to know.

  "Then there will be no agreement. There are no other graces nor clemencies that can make any peace acceptable to him, if this is denied. Your Grace can say yes or no to peace and war in this one answer. Everything else is debatable. This is not."

  He accepted this from me as if Llewelyn had spoken it in person, gravely, even dourly, but quite without offence. He thought for a while, darkly and heavily, watching me but not seeing me. Then he said:

  "And he wants, you say, only my word?"

  "Yes. Your Grace's word is all."

  "And he will take my word? Unwritten, unsealed, without witness?"

  "As he expects you to take his," I said.

  "The satisfaction I require," said Edward, "may not be short or easy. I have had good reason to withhold my countenance from this marriage, and I shall not be in haste to believe better of it. But if the lord prince makes treaty with me on terms acceptable, and shows by his keeping those terms faithfully that I no longer have reason to doubt him, then I give my word, the Lady Eleanor shall be delivered to him in marriage. The burden of proof lies upon him."

  "Your Grace will have your proof," I said.

  And that word I took back across the estuary to Llewelyn in Aberconway. And when I had delivered all, I asked him, for truly I was in need of being sure: "And do you verily trust in his word? For so I swore to him, and for my life I do not know if I could swear the same upon my own account. I am not in two minds about him, I am in ten. He is a man I cannot reach, but the fault may well lie in me. He has given his promise. Not easily, not immediately, not warmly, not kindly, but he has given it. Do you trust in that word?"

  Llewelyn was silent for some time before he answered me, but I could detect in his silence no disquiet at all, only a kind of probing wonder, as if he peered into his own mind as well as Edward's.

  "Yes," he said softly, like one reaching a hand delicately to touch an image in his mind that was still a source of astonishment to him, "yes, I trust in that word."

When, therefore, they clawed out from laborious hours of contention the terms of the treaty of Aberconway, one week into the month of November, Llewelyn at Aberconway considered them dispassionately, with an equable mind, endured what was injurious to his person and state, weighed what was hopeful for Wales, and rested content in Edward's word for the consummation of his love. On the ninth day of November he accepted the text agreed. On the following day, at Rhuddlan, King Edward did the same. Guardedly, and with mutual reservations, I think both were glad, and both, perhaps, with reason.

  These were the main items of this agreement:

  Item: The Prince submitted himself to the will and mercy of King Edward. Though stated as an absolute, it was well understood by both sides that this clause hung together with all the detailed conditions that followed, and was effective only when all were effective. The formula was necessary to Edward's position in relationship to his own barons, and he was careful to insist upon it. As fine for the insurrection and damage done by himself and all his people, Llewelyn was required to pay to the king fifty thousand pounds sterling. But the understanding concerning Eleanor was not the only clause not stated in the text, for it was agreed beforehand that this great fine was merely a gesture to be recorded, and payment would be immediately remitted, as indeed it was. Edward was well in need of money—there never was a time when he was not—but even he knew he could not get it in that quantity from a prince he had just deprived of half his lands and a year's harvest.