The Brothers of Gwynedd (161 page)

  "Fight it and win it!" he said, shaken half into laughter and half beyond into astonished grief, for there was never any of Earl Simon's sons, not even the eldest and best, looked and sounded so like his sire as did then this only daughter, this ivory dove among the eagles, with her world in peril, and the seed of kings and heroes quickening in her womb. He opened his arms and drew her down into his heart, circling all his dreams and labours and hopes within the compass of her rounding waist.

  And I, who had held still for fear of troubling their immense solitude, slipped away out of the room unnoticed while they clung together in that three-fold embrace, and waited without, not far, until he should call me. For those two, having no comfort but in each other, and having accepted a war they had not sought and did not want, would not now be long inactive about it, even for love's sake. They would pursue it, rather, with all their gallantry and force, most of all for love's sake.

  Nevertheless, for all the deeds he did thereafter, and all the pride and sovereignty of his leadership in the cause of Wales, I testify that a part of him died that day, when he tore himself free perforce from his plighted fealty and troth, and followed his brother and ill-demon into the last of his wars against England.

It was not ten minutes before he opened the door. And she was gone; and he was calm and hard as stone, and his eyes had deep fires burning in them, no passing sparkle, but the slow, enduring heart-red that burns through days and nights without failing or changing. His voice was low, brisk and mild. He said: "Samson, call David back to me, and wait until he leaves. I need you here."

  So I called David, who was sitting with his head in his arms, asleep upon a trestle table in a corner of the hall, with the common bustle of life passing him by this way and that. At my touch on his shoulder he awoke and fell into a brief, strong shuddering, and started upright with a hand to his hilt and a wrung smile on his mouth, but his eyes still innocent and dazed and blue, a waking child's eyes. Then he knew me, and the frost of awareness clenched the blue into spearhead sharpness, and the lines of his face into sword-edges, and he was wide awake with a leap, as was usual with him, and laughed, for laughter was his armour.

  "I thought you were Edward," he said, "and here's not my judge, but my confessor. Well, have I sped? God knows I left nothing to chance that I could ensure, to nail him to what he finds a cross. Oh, Samson, the first true gift ever I tried to bring him, and I throw that and myself at his feet, and look up at him, and his face, oh, God, is the face of a murdered man before he dies. Oh, Samson, must I be fatal still?" And by that he had left laughing, and his eyes were huge and veiled. But the next moment he laughed anew, for he, who derided most things, derided most of all himself. "I should have stayed in Denbigh getting handsome daughters," he said. "It is what I am best at. At least a whole company of young men will have reason to praise me."

  I could not choose but note how he named Edward, and yet thereafter, meaning his brother, found no need to say other than "he," for there was but one he who so occupied the whole ground of his heart and mind. So I said only: "He bids you to him." And he looked with unwonted earnestness in my face, to find what I had seen in his brother's face, and he came with me.

  When we entered the high chamber Tudor was there before us, and the captain of the prince's household guard with him, and two clerks sat at a table below the dais. Llewelyn turned from them to meet us. I saw David's eyes noting these presences, and the parchments already strewn on the board among them, and the single brief glance they gave to him, such of them as looked up at all. He knew then that his cause had taken a great leap forward while he snatched his few minutes of exhausted sleep, and things were now gone far past any further argument or reproach. Never again would there be mention of what he had done. The blame for disaster would never be shaken off on to his shoulders, if the end was disaster, nor could he ever lay claim to the whole glory if the venture ended in glory. I think he knew with what deep anguish and shame Llewelyn accepted the destiny forced upon him, I do believe that in his rebellious and audacious heart he felt it almost as deeply that he was the cause, but his eyes were fixed upon the end he had set before him, and by comparison with that, no pain of his or his brother's was of any consequence.

  "My writs go out within the hour," said Llewelyn. "I require from you an account of all your planned moves as they stand now, and the disposition of what forces you count on. But briefly!"

  David dictated, and one of the clerks took down the list of those actions planned in secret, in various parts of Wales, to take place all in the same day, the eve of Palm Sunday. All these, he said, should now be under way. Also he told which princes and chiefs had committed their armies to the enterprise, and what numbers they represented.

  "You did your work thoroughly," said Llewelyn, without any word of blame but without any warmth, either. "Very well!" he said. "In two days my first levies shall be with your men at Rhuddlan. In three I myself shall join you. If you move your main base within that time, send me word where I shall find you. One of us may need to go south. Also there should now be consultation. Only a national council can speak for a nation."

  Thus he made it plain that the whole nobility of Wales ought at this crisis to stand as one, and utter with one authoritative voice its declaration of injury and its resort to the remedy of war. And David said at once, and submissively: "If it please you to call your magnates to a parliament, and if it can be done quickly enough, I offer Denbigh. If they come there they will see for themselves what is in train already, and that we are at one in setting about it. There can be no factions."

  "As good a place as any," said Llewelyn. "They shall be called there. Six days from now? As much as possible must be done before Edward ever gets word of the rising."

  "He cannot have heard yet," said David. "We should have two or three days of grace, but we cannot hope for more."

  "Then you had best take what rest you need, and go back to your siege," said Llewelyn, and would have turned from him without a word more, to get straight to the business of sending out his writs, at which the clerks were penning away busily. But David, with a face suddenly blanched beneath its dust, started forward so sharply as to halt the movement, and clashed to his knees again before his brother.

  "As the lord prince orders," he said, and lifted up his joined hands, palm to palm, towards Llewelyn, and so kept, unfaltering and unrelenting, though for what seemed a great while there was no move made to acknowledge or respond to his challenge. Deliberately he did it, before witnesses, remembering and reminding us how not an hour previously Llewelyn had told him that his hands were not worth any prince's while to enclose within his own, nor his oath of fealty worth recording. With those words still in his ears, and his sworn fealty to Edward but one day dead, nevertheless he kneeled and demanded, so motionless that it seemed he would grow into a praying stone monument there if he was refused.

  There was a stillness and silence in the room, even the pens unmoving, while those two eyed each other long and hard, probing after a surer ground and a clearer understanding. So long it continued, and so remote and chill was the prince's face, that I thought he would end by turning away and leaving the petitioner to stay or go, live or die, as he saw fit. But the uplifted hands never quivered nor sank, but continued their silent clamour for admission to grace and subjection, and the fixed, passionate face implored and confided, and presently Llewelyn advanced his own hands slowly, and took his brother's between them, and held them hard. And David opened grey lips into which the red flowed back impetuously with the returning blood, and drew breath and began in a high, clear voice, like a priest exalted and translated by his office:

  "I become your man from this time forth, and to you do homage, and shall be faithful and true during my life…"

  Once before, very long ago after his first defection, he had offered this, and been plucked rashly from his knees and embraced with the words unspoken. This time he went on steadily to the end, and without pause or tremor passed over those phrases excepting the duty he owed and had promised to the king, for now at last he had but one sovereign lord, as the prince had none, but only God as overlord. And Llewelyn held him steadfastly to the end.

  Thus David, who had pledged many fealties up to this time, and kept none, entered of his own will and at his own insistence into the last homage of his life, and having so entered, rose instantly from his knees and went out, taking no leave and no rest, chose himself a fresh horse from the stables, and rode out of Aber with a lighter heart than when he entered it, and went to begin the long labour of making good what he had sworn.

The prince's writs went out throughout the land that same day. With far happier hearts than their prince the men of Gwynedd rose. Only when the north was already ablaze, and all men could cry out their grievances and hatreds aloud, did I fully understand how bitterly deep went their sense of fellowship with their own kinsmen outside the principality, where no Llewelyn stood between Welshmen and their English bailiffs.

  "There's nothing for bringing quarrelsome kin together," said Eleanor ruefully to me, the day before we rode from Aber, "like a common enemy whose arrows strike at them all. But it does not always last even through the battle. The longer I live, the more I see, Samson, that many men may have heroism in them, but few have constancy, and very few have it so at heart that when they feel it defaced, they may die of it. And for those very few, I think, this world has little use."

  It was not like her to sound disheartened or despairing, nor did she then, she was but measuring the possibilities of the future, and finding them bleak, and assessing also her own endurance, which did not fall short.

  "I do not know," she said, "but David may be justified, and Edward has breached the treaty time and time again. But even if we are forsworn and recreant, as
he
believes, and our cause dishonoured, still the cause of Wales is not, and if a man can die for that and be proud, perhaps he can also offer up for it what is dearer than life, and not be ashamed. If we venture it, he and I, we shall discover how God looks upon it, shall we not? If he knows Llewelyn as I know him, he will not undervalue the sacrifice."

  In those days of preparation she took a full and active part. And when all was done that could be done before action, and we mustered to ride for Rhuddlan, she came out confident and serene, with her ladies at her back, and kissed her husband as if he were leaving for a day's hunting, and waved us away as long as we were in sight, in case he should look back at the last moment.

  After we were gone, it may be she wept. I doubt it, but I do not know, I never saw her weep. If ever she did, it was in solitude.

We joined forces with David south of Rhuddlan, where he was encamped to wait for us, having ringed the castle from every landward approach, secured the town, and done what damage he could to the Clwyd frontage and the little port where sea vessels put in. Time was then the most precious and effective ally we had, to waste it on winning such a castle as Rhuddlan would have lost us weeks, if not months, that we could not afford. There were other strongholds more vulnerable, and of greater use to us, and Llewelyn had already marked them down.

  "Ruthin is not so firmly held, and they never look to see us there, the coast roads being their best approach and our greatest weakness. Now the men of Maelor are up, we have allies there to help us. We should do well to move up the Clwyd, and send ahead to them to meet us, you at Ruthin, me at Dinas Bran. If we move fast enough we may get both, and have a line of castles down the march."