The Brothers of Gwynedd (182 page)

  "And no man stirring there?" I said.

  "No. We are early. I shall be first at the meeting-place Stay in cover," he said, "but keep close. I doubt if I shall need your help, but I shall be right glad to know it's within call."

  So we held station as before, and went on at this soft pace, and soon I caught between the trees, where they thinned, glimpses of a large timber building, black against the fretted snow. Nothing moved about us as we drew near to it. Llewelyn sat his horse for some minutes, watching, and he and I might have been the only creatures in the world. The great door of the barn hung open, its heavy bar jutting. Within was only a darkness and a silence.

  "I am going in," he said, when he was satisfied. "Keep within cover and keep watch for me, and do whatever seems best to you."

  I came as close as I could to where the forest path crossed me, and watched him ride up to the open door, and hitch his horse to a solitary sapling that grew from the foot of the wall. A moment he stood in the open doorway, and then, finding the place empty, passed within.

  There was a long, judged moment of delay after he vanished, and then suddenly and silently a man broke out of the bushes, above the right-hand path that climbed obliquely from the Wye, and ran to the door and heaved it to, slamming the wooden bar into its socket and shutting the prince within. One man only, for no more followed, and this one was so intent on his task that I was upon him and riding him down before he heard me, and turned with a cry, plucking out a dagger from his belt. A second great shout he uttered, loud and defiant in warning, and flung towards the downhill track, before my sword took him in the hollow of neck and shoulder, and half-shore head from body, and he dropped into the snow, and jerked like a broken spider away from under my horse's hooves, leaving red smears behind him, and after a few crippled writhings, lay still.

  I leaped down and dragged back the bar, and Llewelyn burst out into daylight, and grasping the need without words, raced to unhitch his horse, and was in the saddle beside me even before we heard the thudding of hooves and flurry of voices climbing out of the valley.

  "He called them," I said, "as I struck him .…God knows how many of them."

  The first rose into view, labouring furiously up the slope from the copse below, where they had lain hidden, and though they were not yet upon us, they were between us and the way by which we had come. Ten of them in view, perhaps even more behind them. There was but one way for us to go, if we were not to fight our way through them, and that was by the forest path and into the hills to westward, and there we headed, crouched low in expectation that they would have archers with them, but there were no shots, only the great shout they launched after us before we vanished into the darkness of the trees.

  Llewelyn set the pace, and well for us we had hardly done more than walk our horses on the way, while the company pursuing us may well have ridden further than we, certainly if they came from Radnor. But there was no way of knowing, for they wore no distinguishing livery, and the man I had killed bore no badge. For some time we rode hard and kept to the track to increase our lead, but we knew they were no great way behind, though blessedly out of sight, when Llewelyn struck off to the left, hoping to make a circle in cover and come out upon the road again as soon as we dared. But they had spread out their forces, some to the right of the track, some to the left, the main body keeping to the open where speed was possible. We heard them crashing between the trees at no distance behind, and had the choice of turning again and running ahead of them, or continuing our course at dangerous speed and hoping to cross them undetected and draw clear. Llewelyn chose the former, rightly, for we should surely have run into the arms of the most widely deployed of them. We ran again, weaving and gained on them, and turned left again, and so gradually bore round across their flank by stages, as the hare runs, until in deep forest we were suddenly aware how the sounds of them were passing us by. Then Llewelyn reined in, and I beside him, and we sat like stone until we were sure. We had drawn clear by so short a distance, their out-stretched arms had almost brushed us as they passed. The clash and clamour of the hunt drew away, keeping its forward course. And we turned and bore left again, until we found a foot-track that eased our going, and must lead us back, certainly not to the road above the Wye, but by a much greater circle to reach our camp from the west.

  "They meant no killing," said Llewelyn, now that we could draw breath and talk again, "or they would have had bowmen and used them. No, I was to be taken alive. Edward would be glad of such a triumph." And he asked: "Whose men were they? Did you see any trace?"

  But they could have been any from among the ranks of our enemies, there was no way of knowing.

  "I do not believe," he said firmly, "that my young cousins had any hand in this. It is not Mortimer fighting. What if the messenger at Aberedw wore Edmund's badge? It need not have been Edmund who sent him. Far more likely to be Giffard or Lestrange. Both have Mortimer troops with them. Both are in Edward's confidence, and not above using underhand ways to do his will and get his gratitude."

  As to this, I doubt if the truth will ever be known. It was a foul trick, and its dirt has clung to the name of Mortimer in the popular tale, but considering how Edmund showed later, I, too, doubt if the guilt was his. It may not even belong to Lestrange or Giffard or any of the king's captains, but to some ingenious regional officer of his who saw how the Mortimer dudgeon might be exploited to betray the prince and end the war. Of only one thing do I feel certain, that Edward knew of it and had sanctioned it. I do not believe any man of his would have dared, without

that assurance of approval.

  "Well, so may all treacheries fail," said Llewelyn, and shook the ugliness of it from his shoulders, and pressed ahead, for we had lost the middle part of the day, and had many more miles to go than by the way we had come.

  Nevertheless, he thought no further evil, nor did I, until we broke out of the forest into fields we recognised, and were back within a mile or two of our camp. The short day was drawing down into murk and mist an hour or more ahead of twilight, and out of the river valley drifting clouds of vapour coiled. And then, clear of the muffling trees, we heard in the distance the muffled echoes of voices bellowing and horses screaming, and the clash of weapons and stamping of flight and pursuit, fitful and far and terrible, the noises of battle, and battle already as good as lost and won.

  He uttered a great cry of grief and understanding and loss, knowing at last for what purposes, besides his own capture, he had been lured away. "Oh, God!" he said. "They are here among us! But how have they crossed? They cannot have stormed the bridge. Oh, God, what have I done?" And he set spurs to his horse and rode headlong for those places, invisible in the murk of distance, where the lamentable sounds cried out for him. And I after him as hard as I could go, but even so he drew ahead of me, and for the coils of mist, that shifted and spun, sometimes I saw him clear, and sometimes he showed as a wraith of mist himself, and sometimes was lost.

  So we came into those fields below the camp, and in the snow about us there were men lying scattered here and there, huddles of raes hardly swelling the drifts where they lay, and blood spattered along the soiled whiteness, and now and again a horse heaving and crying, or a broken lance. And still before us, but receding, the clamour of fighting, shrill and bitter with despair. Towards that he rode, seeing but twenty yards or so before him clear at any time, wild to get back to his own and live or die with them.

  They had come at us two ways, for the sounds encircled the place where the camp had been, closing in both from the river valley and from the heights beyond. And in great force, or so we judged as best we could, for we came too late to serve or save. All we knew was that they had swept all this slope from Orewin bridge clear of life, and only the dead and the wounded and the stragglers remained, scattered round us in the soiled and bloody snow. Even the clash of arms receded before us, mocking his desperate pursuit.

  Men, living men, rose out of the mist ahead of us, English lancers prowling the slopes after the main army had passed on, killing and looting. Three of them there were, bent over a tumbled body, when Llewelyn burst upon them hardly even aware when these puny creatures started up between him and his broken army. Two of them sprang clear and ran in terror before the galloping horse. The third, caught on his knees, half-rose too late, and then dropped again, according to his training, and braced his lance in the blood-stained earth, and leaned his body on to it to hold it fast. He closed his eyes and his mind, and made himself all dogged weight, seeing no other escape.

  Llewelyn had not even drawn his sword, there was no mail upon him, he was naked to death as men come naked to life. He rode full upon the embedded lance, taking it under the breast-bone. It seemed to me that he sprang erect and stood in his stirrups, tall as the heavens, and the terrified horse raced on from under him, and he was left impaled, upright and motionless in the air a long moment, and then crashed like a great and splendid tree to earth, his fall shaking it so that all that hillside shuddered and shrank at the shock. The lance-head, that had passed clean through him and stood out a foot and more behind his shoulders, snapped off short in flying splinters as he fell. He lay on his back in deep snow, his arms cast wide on either side his body, and the lance shaft erect from under his breast. And the lancer who had pierced him scuttled on all fours away from the impact, and picked himself up and ran headlong after his fellows, seeing me burst out of the murk and bear down upon him.

  I over-rode him by some yards before I could draw rein and fall, rather than climb, out of the saddle. I let my bridle go, and dropped into the snow beside Llewelyn. All the sounds of fighting dwindled away and were lost, and that slope from the river was narrowed into a little place of cold and quiet and loss. It was so still I could hear the Irfon bubbling along its bed below us, between the piled stones and under the melting floes.

  He lay with his hands braced deep through the snow beside him, his fingers digging down to clutch at the bereaved and bloodied soil of Wales. Blood welled slowly round the haft of the lance with every breath he drew, and the shaft quivered and leaned to the same measure, counting his remaining moments in labour and pain. His face was like a bronze mask, fixed and motionless, with open, anguished eyes. When I leaned close to be seen, and laid fearful hands upon him, his lips moved, saying: "Samson? I have spent what you saved for me…I am sorry!" And frantic tears sprang. "Oh, God, I have failed!" he said in a whisper. "Now
you
save!"

  I felt about his body, and knew, as he knew, that he had his death-wound. Even for the breaking of the lance I thanked God, that he was not impaled in air, in indignity and worse agony, but lay like a king on his death-bed, though his pillows were the drifts of snow, thawed and again frozen into great cushions of white. I shrugged my cloak off me and wrapped it over him as well as I could for the jutting shaft, and all the time I wept like a madman who does not know he weeps. The blood spread gradually like a great, dark rose under him, in no haste, but there was life in him yet, and still he had a voice, soft, feeling and tranquil.

  He said: "Samson…" and after a long gathering of his darkened powers: "I need you! Don't fail me now, you who never failed me." And then he waited, his eyes fixed upon the sky that leaned in heavy dusk over him. "A priest," he said. "Find me a priest. I have got my death, get me my peace with God." And again, after long silence, faint as a sigh: "I cannot go to her in my sins!"

  I was loth to go even a pace away from him, all the more with those scavengers already prowling the field and despoiling the dead, but his wish was my law. Priests, like crows, come where battle has been, not to batten on the bodies but to salvage the souls. Where is there greater need of them? All our own people were scattered far, those who still lived, gone to ground in the deep forests until they could gather and form some ordered company once more. But from Builth there was free passage now across the Irfon, and Builth was not far, and here about this desolate hillside there must be English as well as Welsh at the point of most dire need, and they would not be left to die unshriven. Therefore I made a cast down towards the bridge, as close as I could without losing sight of my lord, and saw a small picket of four men keeping the crossing, stamping their chilled feet and pacing to keep their blood moving, and passing in, now and again, a handful of foot soldiers, or a mounted man. And at last what I waited for, a robed priest, distressed and in haste, with a little serving boy at his heels carrying cross and paten.

  I let him get some way up the slope, away from the guards, before I stepped in his path and entreated him to come with me, where a man was dying. And he came, unquestioning. A young man he was, earnest and sad, and he said that he was in the service of the Lady Maud, and sent at her instance. When I brought him to the prince he knelt in the snow beside him, and looked long into the upturned face, and marvelled, though he said no word then but to do his office. He stooped low to take confession from Llewelyn's lips, for the prince's voice, though clear, was faint as a breath. I kneeled beside and covered my face. There is no man, not the best, is not better for unburdening his heart even of those matters no other would take for sins. And he was going to another and perpetual bridal, who had been unable to approach the first without first cleansing from his spirit the last shadow and the last bitterness.