The Brothers of Gwynedd (22 page)

  "Take care!" flared Owen. "I can very well take it to the council over your head. I made concessions enough for the sake of peace, I, the eldest son. If it come to a reassessment, I shall not again be so easy."

  "Ah!" said Llewelyn, fiercely smiling. "Now I begin to see what reward you expect. It is not the rights and wrongs of Rhodri and David you have on your mind, it is the hope of a revision, on new terms, at a council where you can hold me up as the grasping tyrant who will not do right, and end by asserting your seniority, and getting your hands on the lion's share. It would be worth sacrificing something to the young ones, would it not, to be rid of me? Them you might dominate, me you know you never will. What you want of me is not my consent to this idiot proposal, but my refusal, and a court at which you can arraign and dispossess me. If I will not go by the old Welsh way, then you will concede something—oh, very reluctantly!—and agree to what I seem to desire, the practical way of setting up the eldest son as single overlord and keeping Gwynedd one! Out of my own mouth I am to be snared! Go to the council, then, try your influence. You will find they will not sell you Llewelyn so cheaply. Make the assay! I will abide it. You have put your plan and your conscience before me, I have said no. Take it further, and let them declare which of us they value more."

  Owen came to his feet in loud indignation, protesting that he had no such devious thoughts in mind, that he came honestly, prepared to reduce his own state in order to do justice to his brothers, and that there was no man living had the right to cast such accusations in his teeth, far less Llewelyn, whom he had accepted as an equal to his own detriment. Yet I could not help feeling that he made too much noise and fury about his defence, and that he was, in some curious and secret way, not displeased with the way this interview had proceeded.

  "What justification can you have," he said with deep injury, "for charging me with seeking to be rid of you, when I have worked faithfully with you all these years?"

  "The justification," said Llewelyn, "of a dagger in my back once! Or have you forgotten, as I have not? Now, it seems, comes the second knife you had concealed about you—but no doubt, not until I turn my back again. Strike, then, what do I care? You will get a very different reception than you expect from the council of Gwynedd."

  Until that moment, I believe, Owen had been satisfied with his answer, and had truly intended what Llewelyn had divined as his purpose. If he was to bring up again the whole matter of sovereignty in Gwynedd, it had to be done in a way which was plausible, such as this scruple over Welsh law and a fair portioning, and also in a way which displayed him in the better and more virtuous light, and placed Llewelyn in the situation of a man accused. It was, in theory, a sound enough plan. But the absolute security of Llewelyn's voice shook him to the heart. For the first time he began to be afraid of putting it to the test, for fear it should react against himself. I saw the tremor of doubt and dread go over his face, and his acted rage break uneasily into a real fury, the only refuge he had when he lost his certainty.

  "I will not stay in your house," he cried, "to suffer insult upon injury." And he flung away from us and out at the door in terrible haste. And though he did not gather his retinue and ride that night, in the early hours of daylight next morning he and all his folk were gone.

  When we were left alone, Llewelyn said to me, softly and wearily: "Come and sit down, Samson, and bring the wine with you. God knows I need it. Would you have thought this was brewing? After all this time?"

  I said what I believed: "He'll take it no further."

  "To the council? No, I think not. He is not sure enough of his welcome, though why my confidence should shake his I cannot see. If he was to give up so easily, why and how did he bring himself to begin?"

  I said, which was true, that the Lord Owen was not a very subtle or clever man, and did indeed begin things he could not finish. And at that Llewelyn laughed, with real amusement, but the next moment frowned in deep puzzlement. "That is true. And to do him justice, this assay had a certain devious skill I would not have expected from him. It was more like him to take fright halfway, and let it drop. He'll say no word, to Goronwy or any, not even his own counsellors. We shall hear no more of it."

  In this he was right, for April passed into May, and May into June, and not a word was said more concerning the partition of Gwynedd. It was in a very different way that we heard again of Owen's quarrel.

In early June we were at Bala, in Penllyn, and in the second week of that month a messenger came spurring from the west in great haste, with despatches from Carnarvon for Llewelyn. Goronwy haled him in to the prince at once, for his horse was lathered and his news urgent.

  "My lord," he said, spent for breath as was his beast. "I come from your castellan at Carnarvon. There's treason afoot in Lleyn! The Lord Owen has gathered all his fighting men in arms, and means to move against you before the month's out. The letter tells all, and how we got the news so soon, I hope soon enough to serve well! And my lord, there's more yet! A shepherd who remembers you from a lad has slipped away from Neigwl to warn us—the Lord David is putting his own household guard into the field along with his brother's men, the two of them have conspired to make war against you."

  Llewelyn uttered a brief, bitter sound between a laugh and a shout of pain, and struck his hands together with the parchment in them, the seal newly broken.

  "David, too! He has corrupted the boy, into the bargain. This is his way out of the deadlock, is it? David! This is certain? No possible mistake?"

  "None," said the messenger heavily. "It was one Peredur brought the word. He said you would know him well, my lord."

  "So I do, and trust him. And he's safe in Carnarvon now?" he asked urgently.

  "No, my lord, he went back. He said if he stayed with us it would be known, and they would hasten the attack. He was out in the upland pastures, he trusted to make his way back again without question."

  "I pray he may! Goronwy," said Llewelyn, unrolling his castellan's scroll between his hands, "send my penteulu here, and bid him call the muster before he comes. In one hour we'll hold council. I want the captains present, too." He had a standing guard of a hundred and forty men, and could call up many more at need, and there were good allies on whom he could draw, among his chief tenants. "See to the messenger," he said, and dismissed the man with his commendation. "And have three more ready to ride as soon as we have held council."

  All went forward then according to his will, for his men understood him, and he knew his own mind, which is great comfort to those who follow and serve a prince. So the ordered frenzy of preparation made no great noise or excitement, however strange the event that had launched it. And Llewelyn, in one still moment, leaned for an instant on my shoulder, and drew breath to think, and select, and see his way plain.

  "It is not ill done," he said, catching my eye, and responding with a tight and thoughtful smile. "It is very well done. There was no way in which I could have dismissed him with a clear mind and a clean heart, however he hampered and vexed me. Now he has written his own dismissal."

  "Yet Owen's forces and David's together," I said, "are a formidable army."

  "I am not afraid of the issue," he said. "Owen is. He takes up his quarrel with me in the only way he dare. He was afraid to put it to the judgment of the wise, but in avoiding the council he has judged the case himself, and given me best. He may draw his second dagger, but it will be no more effective than his first. Once I overlooked the stroke, for the sake of Gwynedd. Now I will repay it, with a vengeance, for the sake of Wales. Only," he said, and suddenly his voice ached, and I knew with what pain, for I shared it, "I wish he had not dragged the boy into it. I wish he had let David alone!

  Not until that moment had I thought to look back, and compare those two, Owen with his hot, impetuous, blundering bravery, and his stupidity that undid all his better qualities, and David in his lustrous, secret, restless brilliance, deep as the sea off Enlli, and as hard to know. And I was flooded with a burning doubt and a terrible dismay, recalling now how David had gone from me, that night after the Christmas feast at Aber, closing up his affection from me because I had answered him as Llewelyn's man, I to whom he had come for warmth and counsel in his extremity, for so I now knew it had been. Which of those two minds, I questioned my own heart, was more like to have conceived that circumambient approach, tempting Llewelyn with a proposal to which one of them, at least, knew he would never consent? Which of them was more capable of the snare thus baited, to arraign Llewelyn out of his owe mouth before Welsh opinion? Or, when he was unmoved, and showed his strong contempt for the trap, unmanning Owen and frightening him away from the attempted challenge, which of them had the force and boldness to transfer the attack to this clash in arms, a shorter and surer way to the same end? The tongue that could not have seduced Llewelyn would know how to work upon Owen.

  Yet I knew nothing, there was nothing certain in this, only within me a hollow place full of doubt, wonder and pain. It could as well be true that David's restlessness and unhappiness had left him easy prey to Owen's dangerous solicitations, and caused him to wish to end his self-torment at all costs, even by this extreme road. I had no evidence to show, no certainty to share. And I held my peace. It was bitter enough to Llewelyn to know his youngest and dearest brother had been beguiled into turning against him. Why should I twist the knife in him by suggesting that it was David who had done the beguiling?

  But if I could not accuse David, neither could I defend him. I said: "I am coming with you. I can use a sword now as well as some who earn their bread by it. I will not let you go to Lleyn without me."

  "I should like nothing better," he said, and smiled again, for this grief was also the opportunity of his life, and there was no way he wanted to go but forward. "We have the same stars," he remembered, "you and I. We shall stand or fall together."

  But the manner and tone of his voice was such, that our standing together was assured.

We rode from Bala in the morning early, in the bright June weather, and we rode light, for it was full summer, travel pleasant and fast, and living easy. We had with us the full number of the household guard, one hundred and forty archers and lancers, and some five and twenty knights mustered from the chief nobles, those who habitually followed the court in its progresses, and those tenants who could readily be reached by messenger in so short a time. For it was Llewelyn's intent to move the battlefield, since battlefield there must be, as far westward as possible. Since they could not very long be unaware of our movements, the rapid use of these first two days was invaluable to us, to transfer the field nearer their borders, and select the ground where we might wait for them, rather than letting them, once they knew we had word of their gathering, take their stand on ground of their own selection, and there wait for us to make the onslaught.

  We went with all our lances and harness blackened, for the sun would find a blade over miles of country if the enemy had look-outs posted in the right places, though we did not expect such forethought until we drew nearer to their lands. We, for our part, had runners out before us to form a chain as far as the western hill-roads Owen would use to come at us, so that news could be passed along from hand to hand, and keep us informed of all that went on in the camps of Lleyn. Thus we knew when Owen began to move, and knew we had time to spare, for we had been quicker in the launching than he. And having a night to pass, we drew aside to camp near Beddgelert, where Llewelyn and his officers had lodging with the brothers, and heard services in the church.

  In the shining dark of the summer night he went out, taking me with him, and made the round of his men encamped within the enclosure, speaking a word here and there of criticism or commendation, and again I saw the good reasons that made him confident of the issue. For all was calm and orderly and eager, and all his men spoke with him as knowing their business very well, and trusting him to know his. Truly all his waiting had not been to no purpose, nor those years wasted or fretted away without profit.

  Our second messenger came in before midnight, with word that the household armies of Owen and David had massed at Nevin, and would move up into the plain of Arfon with the dawn. There were some among the cottagers of those parts who had no great reason to love Owen, and were well-disposed towards Llewelyn, and our forward riders had made contact there without danger. So we got some estimate of the numbers the two had mustered, and together they amounted to somewhat more than we had with us.