The Brothers of Gwynedd (185 page)

  "I twisted the halters that wait for all of us," said David with his drear smile, but argued with him no more. So Cynan went with us.

  For once we had luck that day, and broke through into the very outskirts of Carnarvon, and fired the outlying houses and barns. When they massed hastily to beat us off, in greater numbers than we could well stand and fight, David drew us away as though in headlong flight into the hills, and there waited for them in a wooded place, where we might pass for more than we were, and give them the impression that Dolbadarn was still strongly held, and dared take the offensive. The English approached confidently in the open, and we loosed our few archers at them, and then rode their first ranks down between the trees, and did disproportionate slaughter. And while they were in confusion we drew off and rode hard for the castle.

  Cynan was beside me for more than half the homeward ride, but before we reached the lake he pitched suddenly sidewise over his horse's shoulder, and crashed to the ground. There was blood upon him, but we had not thought it his, and indeed most of it was not, for he had shown a very apt hand with a sword since he took to it. But when I lighted down to him, and cut away the, matted folds of his gown at the left side, I saw that he had taken an arrow close under the heart, and part of the head had broken off in him. I do not believe he had even known, in the heat of fighting, that he was wounded, but the rough ride had shaken the steel into his heart, and he lived but a handful of minutes after. I never knew that man surprised, or at loss for a word. With barely time for a prayer, he said, knowing me and hoisting his brows as I bent over him: "Write of me that my career in arms was glorious but brief." And with that he choked on blood and died. And his bones are indeed laid in the land of Wales, as he chose, for we bore him on with us, and buried him at Llanberis, And what few possessions he had brought with him we took to Bere when we abandoned Dolbadarn, and gave to his nephew Morgan, who was among the garrison there.

  In Castell-y-Bere we had certainly broken out of the iron ring into more remote mountains, within reach of Cardigan, where Meredith ap Owen's one remaining son at liberty, Griffith, was maintaining his outlaw warfare, but if he was close, he was fully as weak as we, and Valence was almost as close, installed in Llanbadarn castle with formidable forces, and Lestrange at Montgomery had so cleared his own region that he could be spared to come hunting us in the west. Though Bere was withdrawn into a narrow valley, on a shelf from which it covered all the passes, and could be approached in force by only one way, we had not the provisions to stock it for long siege, nor the men to operate at distance from it. There was no escape for us.

  Lestrange with his Shropshire men was the first ordered to come and hunt us out, and him we held off successfully for two weeks, but by the middle of April Valence was moving up from the south with fourteen hundred reinforcements, and David, desperate for his family, resolved to take them with a protective force out of the castle, and maintain a roaming army in the mountains, from which he hoped he might yet help the garrison left in Bere by drawing off the attackers, or at least so hampering their movements that they could not effectively storm the place. David was so far Welsh on this point, at least, that he had a horror of being shut up in castles.

  Again we took them secretly, all those beautiful, gallant children, still further into the recesses of Cader Idris, thanking God that at least spring was beginning, and the days not severely cold. Elizabeth never questioned, but what he required of her, that she did, and required as much of others, proud, capable, even-tempered, though God knows her heart was eaten hollow with fear for those chicks of hers, and for David. She rode a mountain pony nursing her youngest daughter in her arms, for the child was not yet a year old. Cristin carried the two-year-old. The rest were shared among us. The elder ones, who understood very well in what straits we laboured, bore themselves like royalty conscious of their rights and their wrongs. The little ones, who understood nothing, looked to their parents and trusted, and took these furtive nights and wanderings as great adventures, riding them buoyantly. I had David's second boy, Llewelyn, on the saddle before me, six years old, with eyes like the peat-pools of the mountain bogs in sunlight. He slept confidingly on my heart when he grew tired, and all my body warmed from the warmth of his leaning cheek and russet hair, and for a little while I believed in the future, I believed in truth again, and justice. David himself carried his heir, Owen, nearly nine years old, and too proud to ride double with anyone but his father. Somewhere among the bodyguard, Godred also nursed one of the little girls. We had contrived but one litter, and that was given to Gwenllian, born princess of Wales, ten months old and fast asleep in Alice's arms. What could we do with her but take her with us wherever we were driven?

  Cristin brought her pony close to mine, when we were clear and covered by twilight, and could speak. The child rode lightly in her arm, wound securely in her cloak. The hood had slipped back from her braided black hair, that showed no thread of grey, and her windflower face, only clearer and whiter and finer because she had gone so long hungry, like all of us. In that thin, translucent countenance her eyes had grown huge and deep. I never glimpsed her across courtyard or hall, even in these months when we passed speechlessly because there was all to be done and nothing to be said, without being enlarged and refreshed and agonised, never saw her but I saw her for the first time, young, solitary, voluntarily in peril for her lady and friend, and pleading for a dying man.

  "For God's sake," she said softly over the nestling child, "stay close to David. I go in terror for him."

  I understood then that her compassion and her prayers were still for a dying man. She knew it, and I. And he knew it also.

  "And what's to become of all these?" she said, grieving.

  I said all those things that remained to be said by way of reassurance without lying, for it was impossible to lie to Cristin. I said that we were not yet at the end, nor near it, for the most difficult territory in all Wales still lay unconquered, and with the coming of spring and summer, we, light-moving and assured of stubborn support among the people, at least in Gwynedd, would have the advantage over troops hunting us in force. Time and endurance might, after all, fight on our side. And I said that even at the worst, the children were Edward's own kin, and guiltless even by his grim measure, and he did not eat children. But to say truth, I myself saw that this last attempt at comfort wiped out the first, for already I was contemplating the worst as though it had become the inevitable. I said in despair: "I misuse words, and am of no comfort to you at all!"

  "Ah, but you are!" said Cristin, flashing sudden fire from hollow grey eyes. "It is my comfort that we ride here knee to knee, as we did that first time—do you remember?—on the way from the south to Llewelyn at Bala. That now I see you daily, even if we seldom speak and never touch, and now we shall be close until the end, and nevermore deprived of this unity. I tell you, I would not be anywhere on earth but where I am, with the remnant of Wales, with Elizabeth and these innocents, and with you. I would not change this honourable station for peaceful palaces, nor one stone of Snowdon for all the fat fields of England. So he said, and so I say. But above all, I lean on your nearness to sustain me, for without you even Wales would not be enough to keep up my heart."

  I had no words to answer her that did not sound too poor to be worth offering, so grievously I loved her, and had loved her from our first meeting. My life drew its last courage only from her, since my lord was lost to me. She was the one spring left me when all other wells had run dry. But I said never a word.

  In a remote forest holding, difficult of approach, we bestowed the women and children, but such respite as they had there could not last long. The guard left to watch over them could be but small, and had to rely on secrecy rather than strength, but David with all the main part of his forces held ground between them and Castell-y-Bere, covering both as best he could. For ten days more he circled and raided, hindering all attacks upon the castle, picking off any unwary parties that ventured aside from the camps of the besiegers. He had lost none of his fire and audacity, but men he was losing with every exertion, as a wounded man loses blood, while Sprenghose was bringing up new levies to aid Valence, and the English had sufficient numbers to detach one army to link hands with Otto of Granson at Harlech, whence they could provision their camp by sea. There was no way we could get more food into Bere, and we knew they could not last long unless we broke through. On the twenty-fifth of April the starving garrison surrendered. They could do no more. We had left all our sick and wounded there, unable to keep pace of our movements. Only surrender could give them any chance of mercy. So our last castle was gone from us, and we were left a, homeless rabble hunted here and there in the mountains. And bitterest of all, the English appointed as constable of Bere the second son of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, Llewelyn's enemy, traitor and would-be assassin. Lewis de la Pole this young man called himself, after his family's new English style.

  For a whole month following, both Valence and Lestrange remained on guard, repairing the defences of Bere and sending out search parties everywhere to hunt for David. By the end of April it was clear that the English grip on Merioneth was tighter than on Snowdon, and we could not hope to keep a way to the south open against so many. It was better to remove again, while we still had a shrunken but faithful army, into the north, to the heart of our land.

  And so we did, bringing off Elizabeth and her household successfully, back to Llanberis, and thence, since the king's companies were everywhere probing cautiously along the valleys, and Dolbadarn, though still not occupied by the English, was too obvious a place of shelter, we took them up into the wilds of the mountains. Even the forests were too accessible. But there was a place we knew of, high in the bleak marshlands on the tree-line, withdrawn into cliffs behind, and covered by a mile of peat-bog in front, through which only those who knew the safe path could hope to pass without the risk of drowning or being sucked under. There were two huts there, where once hermits had chosen to live apart from the world, and one of these was but a wooden cell built directly on to the rock, but with a great and roomy cavern behind. Such places, utterly withdrawn from the world, the old saints of the Celtic church had loved, and now this hermitage made a primitive court for the last prince of Wales. So David had twice styled himself, in letters of credit he issued at Llanberis, though owning his right was irregular.

  "It is only a pennant flown against the wind," he said. "For Llewelyn's sake I will not let them say there was no claimant after him, nor that he ever ceded what was his."

  Such treasure and valuables as he had he bestowed in hiding in the cave, and we made that and the two cabins habitable for the women and children, and left them a household guard under Godred and two other captains, and posted always a look-out at the outer end of the path, which was not marked out in any way for strangers, but had to be learned by heart. The remnant of the army kept aloof from this place, to avoid drawing attention to it, and was usually on the move, evading notice, striking where it could with secrecy, fighting now for little more than to remain at liberty. For Edward held all Snowdonia in his death-grip, and was piercing it at every point where penetration was possible. Scattered and isolated, Welshmen surrendered in despair everywhere, and the king made their pardon conditional on their joining in the hunt for his arch-enemy.

  "He has almost everything he wanted," said David, lying in the turf with me one night above the head-waters of one of Conway's western tributaries, at the rim of his camp. "Only one thing he lacks—my heart to eat. He will be hungry until he gets it."

  Could I deny it? More vehemently even than with his soldiery, all the land and the air of Wales was filled and aching with Edward's hatred, all its rivers already poisoned by his venom.

  "Oh, I know my fate before," said David, staring unblinking upon his downfall and death, "I knew it when I loosed this war upon Llewelyn, and when I refused the terms Peckham brought me—God knows how he got from Edward any offer that could bear to leave me alive! I cannot complain, I knew what I did. I do not repent! Of many things I repent, but not of this. And of one thing, Samson, I am so glad I thank God every hour. That Llewelyn is dead, safe for ever, cleanly slain with his war still in the balance, neither lost nor won. Edward cannot get at him in the grave. He will never be paraded in chains to satisfy that monstrous malice. As I shall," he said, in the driest and grimmest of voices.

  "It is not yet over," I said, "and he has first to get you into his hands."

  "No, not over yet. And we'll make him work for his triumph. But where is there left to run that his shadow does not fall? It is only a matter of time," he said, "and time is no longer on our side. I have done what I could, but I am not Llewelyn. To be killed in battle and never surrender is victory. My ending will not be like that."

  I cannot have meant it, but I said what men say to fend off certainty, that nothing is ever quite certain, that Edward had grown up in David's company, and time after time showed him favour…

  "As a weapon aimed at Llewelyn," said David, bitterly grinning.

  …and that when he had his victory, and had his foe at his mercy, he might be appeased and relent. But there I stopped, for not only was that impossible, but in putting it forward as a thing to be hoped I was affronting David.