The Brothers of Gwynedd (29 page)

  As for us, being so close, and having resolved on carrying the assault against those Welsh princes who had voluntarily allied themselves with King Henry aforetime against their own country, and benefited by their desertion, we swept down from Mold into the two Maelors of Griffith ap Madoc, to the very border of England itself. "For he forsook the old faithfulness of his house to my grandsire," said Llewelyn, "and allied himself with England against my uncle when he was worst beset with lawsuits and wranglings, before ever the war began. And he got a pension out of the king's exchequer for his services, too, and is growing fat in the king's favour."

  "He holds fat lands, too," David reminded us shrewdly, "and will have had a good harvest. And if they do succeed in fielding an army against us, there's corn enough in his barns and cattle enough in his byres to lighten their load. Shall we leave him all that plenty?"

  So we moved down into the softer land of Maelor and Maelor Saesneg, dispersed the fighting men Griffith ap Madoc raised hurriedly against us, and sent him running into Oswestry for shelter. We drove off to the west all the cattle and horses we found that were worth the taking, and much of the stored grain passed into the hands of our allies of Dyffryn Clwyd, and what we could not remove we burned in the barns. Before the end of the month we had secured all the northern march as far as the Tanat, and so stripped it of food supplies that no royal army could well live off that countryside to do us annoy. We made some raids even into England itself, towards Whittington and Ellesmere, to make known the power we had to hold what we had taken. But by then I think they needed no more proof.

  "I tell you, Samson," said David to me in the onset of the last night of November, as we rode back from one such raid, the sky to eastward sullen and smoky with our fires, "I am sorry for Edward! It was not he who penned us on the further shore of Conway, and it is not he who has driven the men of the Middle Country to this fury. But here is he newly installed in his honour, to have it snatched out of his hands before he has even enjoyed it. And I am sorry," he added soberly, "for any of Welsh blood who come in his way if ever he does find himself with men and money to take his revenge. For his nose has been rubbed well into the mire," he said, "and that was never a safe thing to do to Edward, boy or man!"

  I said it was the fortune of war, and other men had had to bear the like with a good grace, not least David's uncle and namesake. For I well remembered the bearing of Prince David at Westminster, when his fortunes were at their lowest.

  "Other men," said David very gravely, "are no measure for Edward. Neither for the value he puts on himself, nor for the extremes he will use in exacting his price."

  I said that as far as the north-eastern approaches of Wales were concerned, and for this year at least, we had effectively denied him the means to exact anything, even the more legal of the taxes Langley had been levying for him. And David laughed, and owned it.

  "But remember what we have scored up against us," he said, "for very surely Edward will remember it, every heifer and every grain."

  We drew off westward then to Bala, to rest briefly and reorganise our forces, which had grown greatly with the accession of allies from all sides, so that it began to seem a live possibility that Wales should indeed be welded into one. Llewelyn had sent also in advance to Aber, and had them bring south some of those engines of war he had been preparing and testing.

  "We'll take them with us," he said, "or they shall follow after us, south into Cardigan. For we'll go and take back Llanbadarn, if we get no further this year."

  This was that part of the Cardigan coast which had also been given to Prince Edward in his appanage, together with the castles and lordships of Cardigan and Carmarthen, formerly part of the earldom of Gloucester, but held back by King Henry after the death of Earl Gilbert, when the other castles and lands of that great honour were regranted to the heir, Richard. Those two strong castles the crown had long coveted, and so took this means of retaining them. And truly if we had set out to invest or storm them we might have wasted all our substance and our men before making any mark upon them, they were so strongly manned. Such fortresses were better isolated, at little cost, like Diserth and Degannwy, than besieged at the price of long months of bloodshed and tedium together. For us it was ever best to keep on the move. If they could pin us down they might have a hope of dealing with us.

  Between us and Cardigan lay the cantref of Merioneth, held by a distant kinsman of Llewelyn, for both were descended from Owen Gwynedd. And this young man was also named Llewelyn, and had but lately come into his inheritance by the early death of his father, who had been an ally of King Henry, and whose loyalty his son, who was not many years past his majority, had assumed along with his lands. We had no great quarrel with him, indeed the prince was loth to harm the boy, but he sat squarely between us and our aim, and moreover, he was himself, however admirably, what we had set out to punish, a willing adherent of England in the teeth of his own birth and breeding, and we could not well spare him and strike at others who were but doing the same as he.

  "At least let's send him a herald and offer him the chance to choose Wales," Llewelyn said, and sent on a messenger to talk with his kinsman. "Though if he is what I think and hope," he said to me privately, with some doubt and sadness, "he'll not change his allegiance now at a breath, when all goes wrong with his master and well for Wales. No, if he comes to us, as he should, it will be later and without leaving a passage open to the enemies of his old lord. It will be of his own choice, and with due warning given, when the scales are not weighted."

  And so it proved, and he was glad and sorry for it. For soon after we had marched across his borders the boy met us in arms, in a narrow valley among the high hills, and for all his forlorn state against so many, would not give place until we broke the formation of his men, and they scattered to save themselves, and in so doing saved their young lord also, for even he had wit to know he could not stop our way alone, and let his friends hustle him away in haste into the mountains. We, for our part, made no haste about pursuing them, and since we pressed on towards the coast, they were forced to withdraw eastward, and I think found refuge in Pool castle after much riding, and there, though still in Wales, were as safe as in the king's court, for Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn was King Henry's man from head to foot, and with him, as yet, we had not meddled. His time was yet to come.

  Llewelyn now wrote to appoint a meeting with Meredith ap Owen, to whose rightful holding those lands about Llanbadarn, bestowed by the king upon his son, had formerly belonged. On the way to that meeting, which took place on the sixth day of December of this year of our Lord twelve hundred and fifty-six, some miles south of Llanbadarn, at Morfa Mawr by Llanon, which was a grange of the great abbey of Strata Florida, we conquered without much resistance all that stretch of coast that pertained to Edward, and cast out his officers and garrisons from it. At this same time David, with Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, had made south by a different way, and overrun and possessed the cantref of Builth, while letting alone the town and the castle, which lay on the eastward extreme of the cantref. Thus we all met again at Morfa Mawr, having freed much of mid-Wales. And there came also Meredith ap Owen, true to his time, and greatly moved by so sudden and glorious a change in the fortunes of his country. And there Llewelyn, constant to his policy of securing his allies in their rights, and rewarding their loyalty by making yet greater demands upon it along with great rewards, bestowed upon him the lordship of Llanbadarn and its district, and of the whole cantref of Builth, and Meredith ap Owen gladly received them and acknowledged the prince as his overlord and sovereign.

  He was a fine vigorous man, perhaps ten years older than Llewelyn, of grave dark countenance and cool judgment, and as he proved shortly, a formidable fighting man for all his gentle manner, whose allegiance was well worth cherishing.

  Thus in somewhat less than six weeks from leaving Aber we had re-possessed and united much of North Wales and mid-Wales, and bound them firmly to Llewelyn as supreme prince, and surely that great man, his grandsire, knew and blessed the achievement. And always the winter weather continued murky, moist and baffling, covering us like a veil from our enemies, and with gales and squalls confounding all that they contemplated against us.

In this two-day stay we made at Morfa Mawr the fletchers and armourers were busy re-flighting arrows and repairing dinted mail, and those engineers who had brought south the siege engines from Llanbadarn caught up with us, having made very good time of it on that journey. We could afford no prolonged rest, for we must make the best use of what remained of this year before the feast of Christmas. And Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, now so near to his own ground and his own castles, fretted even at so short a delay, and looked out always towards the south, where beyond the hills of Pennardd lay the green, rich vale of Towy, and the heart fortresses of Deheubarth. And Llewelyn, seeing him narrow his eyes to gaze so far, and stroke and tug at his bushy beard for want of other occupation for itching hands, laughed and clapped him on the shoulder.

  "I have not forgotten," he said, "nor am I going back from what I set out to do. Before Christmas you shall be lord in your own lands again. But I have also to remember certain family complications of my own. I have a sister there, and one I would gladly have as a brother if he would come round to our way of thinking. I will not hold back for that, but I want no slaughter if we may avoid it."

  For now we were come to the most vital passage of this war, and one that could not be avoided or postponed. And at night, when we were out alone, walking the outer horse-lines, as he did regularly before sleeping, he said to me, almost in wonder and with some sadness: "My sister has two boys, and I have never seen them. Fine boys, my mother says. It's a hard thing that I should be a stranger to them, and an enemy."

  But I knew that he would not, for that cause, hold his hand, or let it fall any less heavily on Dynevor, if Rhys Fychan defied him, than on Maelor or Llanbadarn. For he was in no doubt at all where his road lay, and those doubts he had of his own personal actions and intents could not cast any shadow upon the path laid down for him. That he saw always clearly, and pursued it with his might. For there was but one Wales, that must be made truly one if it was to survive. Also he said, more than once on this long and roundabout journey: "Truly I never knew how various and beautiful was this land of ours!" For like me, he had never before been south so far, never looked out, as we looked now, over Cardigan Bay, or seen the great, rolling, dappled green hills of the south, racing with cloud-shadows like fast ships upon a tranquil sea, so different from the burnished steely crags of Snowdon which were his home. He rode always with wide eyes and a startled smile hovering, between the fighting and the ruling, like a lover discovering ever new and unforeseen beauties in the beloved.

  "It may be," I said, though hardly believing it, "that Rhys Fychan will be willing to listen to argument, and be reconciled with his uncle."

  "And with his brother?" said Llewelyn, and smiled ruefully. "I think my sister will not let him, even if he would. But what we did for the boy yonder in Merioneth we'll also do for Rhys, and he must make his own choice."

  Accordingly a herald, went before us, though not too far before, for if Rhys had time, and were ill-disposed, he could send for help to the royal garrison of Carmarthen, which was not far away, and it was no part of my lord's plans to attempt at this stage either Carmarthen or Cardigan castle, both of which were very strongly held, and easily reinforced and supplied from the south, where we had as yet no means of intervening, and no effective allies. We marched, therefore, hard on the herald's heels. And when we had reached Talley abbey with no sign of our man returning, Llewelyn smiled grimly, and said that we surely had our answer. From then on, certain in his own mind that the messenger had been detained in Dynevor to avoid giving us warning of Rhys's intentions, he read them no less plainly, and put out before us well-mounted outriders to keep watch against interception, and particularly against ambush.

  The hills declined towards Cwm-du, dipping to cross a brook, and on the slight rise beyond the forest began. We were between the trees, in the dim light of a December afternoon, when we heard the distant sound of a horn from the hanging woods somewhere before us, and knew that Rhys had chosen to come out and fight us in the country he knew, rather than wait for us in Dynevor. He had had time to bring out his muster some five miles from his castle. Doubtless he had been warned of our presence in mid-Wales days since, and made his preparations accordingly, so that when the hour struck he had only to march his men out and take the station he had chosen. And in this tangled woodland, even the ground thinly dappled with snow and baffling to the eye, this could be no planned and ordered battle, but a confused hunt, every man seeking his own adversary, and the advantage with those who knew the ground.