The Brothers of Gwynedd (164 page)

When we reached Denbigh David was there before us, the wards full of his troopers, and the children running hither and thither in excitement among them, tugging at the trophies they brought back with them, and demanding stories of their battles. Those were the late days of May, and quick with beauty to break the heart. From the walls of Denbigh on its lofty rock all that green countryside below looked new out of paradise, so fresh and vivid was the budding of the trees and the springing of the grasses, and the meadows so gold and purple with flowers and woollen white with lambs, and on the distant mountains the last fragile veils of snow against a sky blue as periwinkles.

  David came striding out to kiss his brother, with that blinding brightness about him that came to its fullness only in stress and danger and the challenge of combat. He made report of his doings in the south with the ardour of success, but also as dutifully as ever did newly-fledged knight to his lord, such care he had to maintain before all men the vassalage he had wrested from Llewelyn almost against his will.

  "I have left everything there in good order," he said, "but they will certainly be drafting in men as fast as they can, and the royal enclaves being sited as they are, with access from the south, they can reinforce Carmarthen without hindrance, and Cardigan they can provision from the sea. But Rhys Wyndod may be able to keep Dynevor isolated. He has it well surrounded, but they would have only a short way to cut a corridor if they get men enough. We shall be sent for if they need us there. And I got word as I came," he said, "of the feudal muster. It's called for Rhuddlan, in the first days of August. They say Edward has twenty-eight ships already in commission. But if the winds play our game, it may take them five or six weeks to make the circuit into the Dee. We have a little time yet."

  They rode the length of the front-line defences together. Llewelyn had his men strung in compact parties, each including some bowmen, along the edge of the forests, from close by Rhuddlan, overlooking the king's new coastal road, to Hawarden opposite Chester, thence southward by Hope and round the hills above the Dee to Dinas Bran, a line just within what we claimed as the border of Welsh land, but withdrawn only to the point where every company had safe cover at its back, either difficult hill country or deep forest, or indeed both together. South of the upper Dee our command passed to the men of Maelor and Cynllaith, and south again to the rebellious tenants of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn in Powys.

  In all this planned line, the only salient was the castle of Hope, jutting well out into the lands securely held by English lords.

  "We'll hold on to it as long as we may," said David, who had fought so furiously for it at law, "and make it cost them as high as we can, but it is not worth keeping it when it begins to cost us as dear. They'll not attack it on their march to Chester, but wait until they have all their army massed, and their communications secured. He'll want to come at you, brother, by Flint and Rhuddlan, as he did before, there's no other way. But I fancy he'll want to clip my wings here in Tegaingl before he dare turn his back on me. With me here he'll not find it so easy to guard his flank as last time."

  Never did he scruple to speak of that last time, or show any sign of shame in harking back to it, or, indeed, try to dissemble or forget that he had then fought on the side of the invaders. And never by word or look did Llewelyn remind him.

  "The king is on the move by now," said Llewelyn. "The earliest we can hope to hinder him is after he's passed Oswestry. From Dinas Bran something might be done." And for the first few days of June he took a small company of us south with him to that castle, and thence we pushed raiding parties as far to the east as we dared, and waited for King Edward's army on its way to Chester.

  In a high summer once I watched Prince Edward's army closing in upon Evesham, where Earl Simon in the sprung trap waited with dignity for his death. Now in the early summer, from a hill-top above the winding Dee, I watched King Edward's army advancing upon my country with the same cold, confident discipline, learned from Earl Simon and turned against him then, bearing down now upon my lord. A strange, unearthly sight it was. We in our forests made our sudden assaults and rapid marches unseen and unheard, so quickly that we were come and gone before there was orderly sight of us or distinguishable sound. Edward with far greater numbers, too many for speed or stealth, made his slow, methodical way by full daylight and in the open, plodding inexorably like a great armoured beast, and surrounding his main body with a cloud of probing outriders, in restless, darting flight like the clouds of flies that accompany a drove of cattle. For miles before we had sight of man or horse we could detect their progress, for there hung over them in the air a faint, floating veil of bluish vapour and dust, hardly thick enough to be called a mist, for the season was not arid, but moist and mild. This serpent of vapour moved towards us over the green, rolling land, weaving as it came, and presently, before there was any colour or detail, came the sound of them, distant, rhythmic and continuous, a strange, murmuring, throbbing jingle, compounded of all manner of small sounds, but chiefly the tread of innumerable feet of men and horses drumming the earth. The light jangling of harness was there, too, the faint creak of the wheels of baggage carts, the chink of mail and clash of plate, the squeak of leather rubbing against leather, and the murmur of voices. Then, some time after this human river-music had reached us, came the first colours and lights, points of brightness scintillating through the cloud, lance-tips and pennants and the flashes of the sun fingering steel, then the whole dancing crest of the column in gleaming reds and blues and golds of flags and banneroles, the mane of the dragon, and at last the serried shapes of men and horses, the flesh and blood of the fabulous beast.

  We kept pace with them northwards along the march, they below and we in the hills, and the rest of that journey we did them what damage we could, picking off any outrider who ventured too far west and let himself be encircled, in places favourable to us darting down upon their fringes in sudden raids, killing and looting, especially cutting out, where we could, one of the wagons, stripping its goods, and disabling it if we could not get it clean away. By night we tested the watch kept on their camp, and found it all too good, but made our way past it once or twice, and did them some hurt before we drew off again. There was not much we could do to so orderly and drilled an army, but every man and bow and horse, every morsel of food we could strip from them, counted as something gained. But never once did they break formation to follow us into the hills, where we should have had them at disadvantage. Edward's will ruled them all, and Edward was not to be trapped into any rash act, his plans were made and he adhered to them.

  Thus we accompanied the royal army almost to Chester, where they arrived about the tenth day of June, and then we drew off and left them, rejoining David in Hope. He had had fighting, too, in advance of the king's coming, for Reginald de Grey had sent out a strong company under one of his bannerets to probe up the valley of the Dee and establish a forward post some miles south of the city, and though the Welsh had contested the attempt and cost them heavy losses, Grey had reinforced the camp, and David had not been able to dislodge him.

  "He is already thinking he can cut me off here," he said, "and so he might, if I had any intention of staying here to fall into his hands. Hope has served its purpose. In a few days I think we must give it to him—what's left of it!"

  Three days we spent dismantling the defences, breaching the walls, undermining the towers, and the broken masonry and rubble we emptied into the two castle wells until they were filled up and useless. What David did to his well-loved fortress cost the English two months' delay, and a great sum to repair. When it was done, and the whole site desolate, we drew off into the hills to westward. We were there keeping guard when Grey himself rode into the shattered shell, and appointed a constable with a strong garrison under him. By our count he left there more than thirty horse, and about the same number of crossbowmen, with a great number, we guessed at more than a thousand, longbowmen. We saw the reason for such immense numbers when they began to bring in scores of labourers, carpenters and foresters, and set to work frantically on trying to clear the first well, and fetch down a tower that had been left perilously leaning. The archers were deployed all round the site to protect the workmen.

  "A pity," said Llewelyn, "if they should be disappointed since it seems they expect to be attacked. And a pity if they should begin to feel safe, and remove all those good bowmen to be used elsewhere."

  "Archers are useless by night," said David, "and there'll be no moon. And I have men here who know every way into Hope, and every way out, dark or light."

  Then some of his following proposed to test the new garrison that very night, and Llewelyn approved, for clearly if so many archers could be pinned down in this first capture, and prevent a further advance, or delay it for some weeks, it would be of the greatest service to us. There was ample cover in the hills around, small companies left to fend for themselves here and harry the repair work could easily lose any pursuit, even supposing the constable would countenance so rash a move, and could as easily be provisioned from the west, and rested at need. But he did not realise, until we missed David and looked for him in vain about the camp, that he had himself slipped away with his men to lead the foray.

  He came back to us three hours later, smelling of smoke and leaving an ominous red glow far behind him in the ruins of Hope. His teeth gleamed like ivory in a soiled face and there was blood on him, but not his own. Every one of his men came back with him, none bearing more than a scratch to show for the venture, and David was brought up sharply by Llewelyn's furious reproach.

  "Had you leave for any such folly, you who undertook this war in the name of Wales? It's easy to be daring, any fool boy can risk his head, but you are carrying the heads of all those you've committed to a life and death fight, and you may not indulge your vanity. Guard the life of every man who follows you, yes, as far as care can be carried, but guard your own for the sake of those who depend on you."

  I looked for a hot reply, or a haughty, dutiful, formal submission such as David had flaunted like an arrogant banner aforetime. But after a moment's shocked silence he stooped his head and kissed his brother's hand, so candidly and lightly that it passed for graceful penitence generously given, rather than a vassal's acknowledgement of rebuke.

  "That was just," he said. "Very well, agreed, an end to childish games. I promise you I'll leave this to others now. But it was well worth the testing. That fire you see down there in the shell is their store of grain, and all the cords and some of the timber they've brought in for the work. And if they stop up the hole by which we got in undetected this time, there are some of us know of others. So spare to rend me!"

  And he set to work, unchastened, to select a company of good, sound men, familiar with all the country round Hope as well as the castle itself, to remain behind when we withdrew to Denbigh, and by whatever means they found, to delay the repair of the defences, and so pin down all those archers in a constant alert. And an excellent job they made of it. Though Grey brought up as many as seven hundred woodmen, more than three hundred carpenters and forty stone-masons to the work, and kept about a thousand bowmen throughout to protect them, it took them until the end of August to clear out the wells and restore the walls, to make Hope a habitable base for an army's next move.

  The day following David's raid, the princes with their body-guards withdrew to Denbigh.

We had not been an hour inside the wards, barely time for David to kiss his wife and shed his mail, when there was a commotion of someone riding in at the gates in great haste, and clamouring for the prince of Wales. Llewelyn was just crossing the inner ward to the hall, and turned at the cry. A young page on a blown and trembling horse, and himself streaked with sweat and dust from a hard ride, fell rather than alighted from his saddle, and flung himself at the prince's feet.

  "My lord, my lord, pardon the bringer of ill news! Pardon!" he said, panting, and began to sob, with the hem of the prince's tunic pressed to his face.

  "Child!" said Llewelyn, startled and dismayed, and bent to take him by the arms and raise him, but the boy clung and wept. "What is it?" demanded Llewelyn in quick alarm, and the mild wonder dashed from his face. "Speak up! Tell truth, and you cannot be at fault. What has happened?"

  "My lord, I'm sent from Aber to fetch you. Come, come as quickly as you can! The princess…" He choked and swallowed.