The Brothers of Gwynedd (3 page)

  Yet I am not sure, even then, how right she was to trust in the innocence of her son Llewelyn. For even without art, news can flow two ways. And at what age art and wisdom begin is a mystery, and at what age those who will some day be men achieve the courage and the clarity to judge and choose and resolve, that is a greater mystery. And this was no ordinary child, with no ordinary grandsire. And they namesakes. There is magic in names.

  Howbeit, on the tenth day of April of the year twelve hundred and forty the great Prince Llewelyn, feeling the heavy darkness draw in on him again, and this time believing it an end, had himself conveyed into the abbey of Aberconway, which he loved and had shielded so long, and there took the monastic habit, after the manner of great kings going to their judgment. And wrapped in this blessed cloth he died on the day following, and there his great body lies buried. And doubtless his greater soul has room enough now, even beyond that reach he had in this world. For he was the true friend and patron of the religious, wherever they preserved the purity and austerity of the faith, and whatsoever he did was done with grandeur and largeness of mind, and for Wales, which he loved beyond all things.

So David ap Llewelyn was Prince of Aberffraw and Lord of Snowdon in his father's room. And in May of that same year he attended King Henry's council at Gloucester, became a knight at the king's hands, after the English fashion, put on the talaith, the gold circlet of his state, and did homage for Gwynedd, pledging himself liegeman of the king of England as overlord, saving only his sovereign right within his own principality. All which had been many times done before, and was no surrender of any part of his due, but his own side of a covenant, of which the reverse was King Henry's sworn acknowledgement of his firm status as prince of North Wales. And the other great magnates of Wales did homage in their turn on the like understanding.

  What did not appear was how wide a gulf yawned between the two conceptions of what that status meant. It was not long before all those lords marchers who had lost land to Llewelyn, however long ago, and all those border Welsh who held themselves aggrieved at surrendering to him commotes and castles forfeited for disloyalty, or taken in open battle, began to resort to law and to force, demanding from David the return of losses they would not have dared reclaim from his father. Thus the earl of Pembroke went with an army, in the teeth of the lord of that cantref, to rebuild his lost castle of Cardigan and plant a garrison there, while lawsuits came thick and fast over Mold, and Powys, and the lordship of Builth, which came legally to David as his wife's dower, but not without all possible resistance from her de Breos kin. Any and every disaffected lord, English or Welsh, who could bring a legal plea for the possession of land lost to the father, fairly or unfairly, turned now to rend the son. And King Henry, always maintaining his good faith in recognising his nephew's status, connived at all the activities of those who were bent on plucking his principality to pieces.

  Nor was he so rich in solid friends on the borders as his father had been, for the line of Earl Ranulf, Llewelyn's lifelong ally and sympathiser, was extinct in Chester, and that earldom had gone back to the crown, laying bare all the northeast of Gwynedd to the assaults of the enemy.

  David in this storm, perhaps not all unexpected but breaking upon him too soon, did his best to delay, after the English fashion, those lawsuits the English brought against him, and as a better instrument to his hand, chose rather than law to submit the impleaded lands to a council of arbitrators nominated from both sides, with the Pope's legate in England at their head. But this measure also he found to be acting against him, and fell back once more upon delay, sending excuses for failure to attend the meetings of a commission he now saw to be no more than a dagger in King Henry's hand. For this whole issue had now been channelled through the king and his council, making a quarrel between two countries rather than between mere men at odds over land. Thus he held off the pack for a year, his envoys, his father's old, able men, going backwards and forwards many times and using every art of persuasion and disruption, but in the end to no purpose. For King Henry saw that he had many allies, so many Welsh princes being either disaffected over land, or aggrieved by Griffith's captivity and disinheritance, and that all that was obstinately being withheld from him by legal means he could acquire by force at little cost, something he dared not attempt beforetime. Having summoned David to appear before the commission at Montford on the Severn in June, and well knowing that he would not come, he made preparations for an attack in arms. And David, though he had word of the martial movements behind the summons, had no way left open to him but to absent himself, and let what must follow, follow.

  I tell all this not as I saw it then, being little more than a child, and without understanding of many of the tidings I heard, but as I understood it later, when I had seen more of the world than the clas at Aberdaron. But I was not so young or so ignorant that I could not feel the threat as touching even me, when they spoke of the king of England moving into the marches at the end of July with a great force of men in arms, and setting up his court in Shrewsbury. For what could he be doing there in the borders but preparing the undoing of Gwynedd? Shrewsbury was a great way off, further than I could then imagine, but not so far that the English could not reach even this last corner of Lleyn with fire and sword if war once flared.

  Yet I had no notion that events outside our enclosure and our fields and coast could ever touch me as a person, or draw me out of this haven I had grown to love and think of as my lifelong home.

They came for me on the last day of July, two grooms of the Lady Senena's household, bringing a third pony for me.

  I was raking the early hay in the field above the shore, about noon, when Ciaran sent one of the brothers to call me in, for I had visitors with the abbot. A clear, bright day I remember it was, with a fresh breeze bringing inland the strong, warm scent of kelp from the beach below me, and the southward sea innocently restless, sparkling with the sun and its own motion. So beautiful a day that I went unwillingly, even believing it would be only for an hour, I who have never seen Aberdaron again.

  Abbot Cadfael was waiting for me in the antechamber of the guesthouse within the enclosing walls and with him two men in the Lady Senena's livery. I saw their horses in the stable as I passed, not blown nor sweated, for it was no long ride from Neigwl, where the lady then had her household. The younger of the two riders I did not know. The elder it took me some minutes to know for my step-father. I had not seen him for six years, half my lifetime, and he was changed by double as many summers and winters, for men age by curious lurches and recoveries, now standing still in defiance of time for a dozen years, then sliding downhill by a decade in one season. These years with my mother had been his breaking time, for I think she had won, without fighting, that long battle between them. It was not that she could not love, but that he could not make her love. There was grey in his shaggy dark hair, and his face was hollow and hungry, with deep-sunken eyes. He had been a very comely man. Yet in one thing he was unchanged. I saw by the way his eyes hung upon me in silence that he hated me as of old. But it is one thing I can never forget to him, that as long as he lived he could not cease from loving her. And when I was old enough to understand that purgatory aright, and had myself some knowledge of the pain of love, then I forgave him all, for he was paid over and over for any injury he ever did me.

  "Son," said Abbot Cadfael very gravely, "there is here a call for you to go out from among us, to another duty."

  At that I was clean knocked out of words and breath, as if one had attempted my life, for Aberdaron was my life, and I had thought it should be so always. I knew by rote already the vows I was to take, and waited for the time without impatience only because I was sure of it. And in one sentence all was taken away from me. I went on my knees to him, and when I could speak I said: "Father, my heart is to this life and none other. My home is here, and all that I am is yours. How can I go hence, and keep any truth in me?"

  He looked at me closely and thoughtfully for a long time, for I think I had not spoken as he had expected of a boy twelve years old. But he said only: "Truth is everywhere, and your truth will go with you. Child, you were but lent to us a season, and she who lent you requires you of us again. It is not for you to choose, but to accept with humility. I have no right to deny you, nor you to refuse."

  I would have wept, but not with those deep eyes of my mother's husband watching me, for I still hated him then as he hated me. And I knew that the abbot spoke truth, for the Lady Senena had been my provider and protectress all these years, and by rights I belonged to her, and not only could not, but must not refuse her commands. She could cut off my endowment and have me put out of this refuge when she would, but that I knew she would not do. For though she was austere and hard of nature, she was also faithful to whatever she undertook, and would not avenge herself upon an underling. Therefore my debt to her was all the greater, and whatever she asked of me I must do. But to discover, if I might, the magnitude and the duration of my loss—for even losses can be regained after

years—I questioned humbly after the cause of my recall.

  "That," said he, "I cannot tell you. I have received the indication of her wishes, which are that you should return at once with these men, and rejoin your mother at Neigwl. It is your mother's wish also. They have need of you, and to be needed and to fill the need is the greatest privilege in life. Bearing God and his grace in mind always, go and give as you may. There is nothing to regret."

  I asked him, quivering: "Father, if God will, may I come back?"

  He raised his old, weak eyes from me, and looked beyond those men who had come to fetch me, out through the wall of the anteroom, through the high wall of the enclosure, and as far as the inward eye can see. "Come when you may in good conscience, son," he said, "and you will be welcome." But I knew by the sad calm of his face that he did not expect to see me again.

  I asked him for his blessing, and he blessed me. A little he questioned me as to my knowledge, and the skills I had gained to take away with me, and commended me to maintain them all diligently. Then he kissed and dismissed me.

  I put together what little I had, my copy of the psalter, a spare shirt, my ink-horn and pens, and the few little brushes I had for illuminating. And I said my farewell to Ciaran, so barely that the poverty of words hung heavy on me all the way, and I doubted if he knew what I had within me unsaid, but doubt it not now, so long afterwards. Nor doubt that he prayed for me without ceasing, as long as he lived. And then we went. By the upland road we went, turning our backs on that blessed sea that leads outward over the watery brightness to the beauteous isle of Enlli, where the saints are sleeping in bliss. We went towards the rib of Lleyn, that leads into Wales as an arm leads into the body; from rest into turmoil, from peace into conflict, from bliss into anguish. Side by side we rode, my mother's husband and I, and the young groom a few paces behind us. And for three miles of that ride we never said a word for heaviness, however bright was the noonday sky over us.