The Brothers of Gwynedd (14 page)

  "Goronwy," he said courteously to the old man's son, "will you take the Lord Owen in charge, and have food and a lodging prepared for him? He has had a long ride, and is weary. And, Meurig, make sure his horses are well cared for."

  The guard drew back obediently into the hall and closed the door. Owen, moving like a man indeed very weary, half-stunned by what he had done and the resolute way it was being buried and denied before his eyes, stepped forward unprotesting, and went where Goronwy ap Ednyfed led him. The old man, standing straighter now that he stood alone, but so frail that I seemed to see death, a good death, looking peaceably over his shoulder, looked at Llewelyn, and briefly at me, and back, without wonder or doubt, at Llewelyn.

  "All is well?" he said, in the clear, leaf-thin voice of age.

  "All is very well. There is nothing to trouble you here." He smiled. "Leave us. You can, with a quiet mind."

When they were all gone but we two, he made me sit down close to the warmth of the brazier, and himself slipped away for some minutes, very softly, and came back with another cotte on him, and warm water in an ewer, and linen, and helped me to peel the torn sleeve back to the shoulder from my bleeding arm. The gash was shallow but sliced, and had bled down into my waist as I hugged it against me to keep it from being seen. Ashamed to be so waited on by a prince of Gwynedd, I said I could very well bind it myself, and he told me simply and brusquely that I lied, and foolishly. Which I found to be no more than the truth when I obstinately made the assay, and he took back the task from me, tolerantly enough, and made very neat and expert work of it.

  When it was done, and I would have risen and withdrawn from him, conceiving in my weariness and confusion of mind that he was done with me now, and wondering sickly what was to become of me, and whether I had not put myself clean beyond the limits of mercy in Owen's household, I who had no kinsmen here in any group to take me in, he bade me sit down again, and himself sat long with his chin in his fists, gazing at me intently. And after a while he said abruptly:

  "You could have made your master the master of Gwynedd. Why did you interfere? You came here with him to serve his interests, did you not?"

  "Not that way," I said, and he looked at me sharply, and a little smiled.

  "Well, plainly you cannot now return to him. He would either make an end of his unfinished work, and kill you, or else discard you and leave you to fend for yourself." He leaned a little closer, and moved the torch to cast its light more directly on my face. "I know you!" he said. "You are the boy at Neigwl—the boy with the sheep!"

  It was the best part of five years gone, and he had not forgotten. I owned it, remembering how he had looked at me then, and found himself content.

  "And you never told?" he said.

  "No."

  "Neither did I," he said. "I knew then you would not. Afterwards, when it came out that my mother had taken the children and fled, my uncle asked me outright if I had known of it beforehand, and I told him the truth. And he said to me that if I could make as solitary a choice as that, well calculated to bring down on me the anger of both sides, then I was a good man for either side to welcome and value, if they had the wit. That is what he was like, at least to me. And he's gone! Fretted away to skin and bone in his bed in seven short days of fever! And my brother comes galloping to pick the bones!"

  He got up from his chair suddenly, and turned to walk restlessly between the brocaded wall and the shrouded doorway, to hide the grief and anger of his face, for even if he remembered me with warmth, this was a private passion. To do justice, all the more because it might bring him some shade of comfort, I said what was true: "He did come of his own will. The king and his officers had no part in it, we took the moment when they were shaken and distracted, and we ran. I don't say it could not have been done earlier. I do say the way offered then, and suddenly, and he jumped at it."

  "I take your words," said Llewelyn, still pacing. "I would not take his! Brother or no, it sticks fast in my gullet that he comes running now, when God knows we have troubles enough, even united, and with King Henry ready to prise his sword-point into every chink of disunity we shall crumble away like a clod after frost. But that's none of your doing," he said, shaking himself clear of the greatest shadow that hung upon him, and turning again to face me and consider me sombrely. "It seems," he said, "that you made a kind of choice of your own, a while ago. Are you willing to abide by it?"

  I caught his meaning, and my heart rose in me for pure pleasure. I said: "My lord, more than willing!"

  "If you enter my service there is none here will challenge or offend you, not even Owen. He will learn that he dare not."

  "But, my lord," I said, much afraid that this unlooked-for offer might yet be snatched away from me, "he has my pledged fealty."

  "I will ensure that he shall release you. If he values you no more than shows in him, he will not care over-much, and his grudge against you—as I remember him, he bore grudges!—can be bought off. What were you to him? In what service?"

  I told him then what I could do, for I think he had taken me simply for manservant and groom; and when he heard that I could read and write in Latin, English and Welsh, was now a fair horseman, and even had some mild practice in arms, though never otherwise than in play and exercise, he was astonished and pleased, and in pleasure he lit up into a child's unshadowed brightness.

  "You are what I need," he said gladly, "for I do well enough in Welsh, and have some Latin, but in English I go very haltingly. You shall teach me better. And you can also reckon, and have copied documents at law? English law I must learn to know, if I am to understand my enemies."

  "My lord," I said, still a little afraid of such good fortune, "I know very well that you must have clerks about you who have served your uncle well and will do as much for you, and I do fear that what you are now offering me is offered out of too much generosity for a very slight service I could not choose but do you. I would not wish to take advantage of a moment when gratitude may seem due, but only to take and hold a post in your service if I deserve and am fit for it. Take me on probation, and discard me if I am not worth my place."

  And at that he laughed at me, frankly and without offence. "You also make very lofty speeches," he said, "and I may yet make good use of your eloquence, but I am not obliged to take your advice. There is the small matter of a life I owe you." The laughter vanished very suddenly. He said seriously: "He meant killing."

  "I have good reason to know as much," I said, shaken by the recollection. "And to remember that that debt is already paid, and with somewhat over."

  "So much the better, then," he said, "that you and I should remain close together, close enough to go on bandying the same small favour about between us the rest of our lives. Yet if you do refuse me, I can but offer you my hospitality here as long as you choose, and a horse to carry you wherever you will thereafter. But I had rather you would not refuse me."

  It was ever his most disarming gift that he had a special humility, the very opposite of his youngest brother, and never took for granted that he should be liked, much less loved. Confident he was of his judgments and decisions, but never of the effect he had on those about him, and I swear he did not know that by then there was nothing within my giving or granting that I could have refused him. So there was eternally renewed pleasure in making him glad. And I said to him: "With all my heart, if it were for that reason only, I will come to you, and be your man as long as I live. But it is not only for that reason, for there is nowhere in this world I would rather take my stand than here in Aber, and no one under whom I would more gladly serve than you."

  So it was sealed between us. And he put away ceremony, and began to speak of finding me food, and a bed, and fresh clothes to make away with the blood-stained cotte I wore, for we wanted no rumours and curiosity about the llys concerning an ill encounter between the brothers, to add to the load of uncertainty and disquiet the court already bore. And last, as we were about to leave that room, he asked me: "One thing I have forgotten—I never asked your name."

  I said it was Samson.

  At that he gave me one quick, bright look, and began to say: "I once knew another Samson…" And there he halted abruptly, and looked again at me, very closely and in some wonder, and for a while was not sure of what he thought he saw.

  "Not another," I said. "The same."

  "You? Was it you? My mother had a tirewoman was left with a child…You are Elen's son?" He did not wait for an answer, for how he was all but certain without any word for me. "Yes, you could well be! But then, if you are my Samson, I saw you here at Neigwl that day, bringing down the sheep, and did not know you again!"

  "You had not seen me," I said, "for more than six years, and you saw me then but a moment."

  "Yes, but there's more to it! I never thought of you then, nor dreamed it could be you. They sent you to Aberdaron long before."

  "When your mother fled to England," I told him, "my mother would not go without me. They sent to fetch me back that very day that you saw me."

  "And I had thought they would make a canon or a priest of you, and now I get you back thus strangely and simply. I have not forgotten," he said, the deep brown of his eyes glowing reddish-bright, "the years we were children together. We had the same birthday, the same stars. We were surely meant to come together again. I missed you when they sent you away. And now you come back with an omen—the dagger that strikes at one of us strikes at both. We are linked, Samson, you and I, we may as well own it and make the best of it."

  To which I said a very fervent amen, for the best of it seemed to me then, and seems to me now and always, the best that ever life did for me, whatever darkness came with the bright.

  Thus I became confidential clerk and secretary to the Lord Llewelyn ap Griffith, prince of Gwynedd.

There was never any mention made of what had befallen between Llewelyn and Owen, and that was at Llewelyn's wish and silent order. For the situation of Gwynedd, even though King Henry held back from committing an army to so positive an adventure as the previous year, was weak, exhausted and in disarray, and every additional burden was to be prevented at all costs. So this matter of the rivalry between those two was put away. Llewelyn did it as disposing of a difficulty, and Owen was very glad to do it, since it reflected no credit on him either in the treacherous attack or in its ruthless defeat.

  I was present at the meeting of the council, the last but one such meeting Ednyfed Fychan ever attended, there in the hall of Aber. The old man, waxen and frail but with his long and honourable devotion burning in his eyes, presided at the table, his son Goronwy on his right side. The old man had hands that lay on the table before him like withered leaves, and a voice as light and dry as the autumn wind that brings them down, but a spirit like a steady flame. I will not say that there was no high feeling between the brothers at that meeting, for they urged their claims hard after their own fashion, Owen with the more words and the louder voice, since very strongly he felt himself at a disadvantage as the newcomer, and under some suspicion of being King Henry's willing pensioner, Llewelyn in very few words but bluntly and bitterly. But perforce they listened, both of them, to the arguments of the council, for there was no future for any man in claiming the sovereignty over a ruined land. And there was not a man present there, by that time even I, who did not know how grim was the plight of Gwynedd, however defiantly she stood to arms.

  "Children," said Ednyfed, in that voice like the rustling of dried leaves, "there is no solution here but needs the goodwill of both of you. For past question the Lord Owen is his father's eldest son, nor was he to blame for his imprisonment in England, since it stemmed from imprisonment here in Wales, before he was of age. And he has given us his word that he made his escape when he might, to return here to his own land and take up the defence of Gwynedd. But the Lord Llewelyn, younger though he may be, is known to all here, has never set foot in England, and has fought faithfully for our lord and prince, David, without personal desire for his own enlargement, for never has he asked lands for himself, though lands have rightfully been granted to him. The Lord Llewelyn's wounds speak for him, those who served under him at Degannwy speak for him. He needs no advocate here. And therefore I say to him first, and after to his brother, that the land of Wales has great need of all the sons of Griffith, not as rivals but as brothers, if the land of Wales is to live. Children, be reconciled, divide Gwynedd between you only to unite it in your own union, for unless you fight together you will founder apart."