The Brothers of Gwynedd (55 page)

  I could think of nothing I had omitted, to convince him that he had no choice but to accede. And if he accepted, then Meredith had no choice, either, since he was completely dependent upon the English muster to counter the force we could loose against him. It seemed to me that Patrick was relieved at being offered this way out of an uneasy situation, and brightened very thoughtfully as he read and considered. He took the scroll that was superscribed to Meredith, and did not deny that he knew very well where to find him. For all I know, he may have been behind the hangings of the dais that moment, with both ears stretched.

  Patrick said what it was incumbent on him to say, paying lip service to the king's will and the sacredness of the king's peace, and after some pondering named Cilgerran as the spot where we should meet, as being between our two stations along the river Teifi, and to that I agreed.

  "And as to the day," he said, "it is now the last day of August; let it be the fifth of September, then, if that is agreeable to your lord."

  "In his name," I said, "I close with that day. At Cilgerran on the fifth of September the conference shall be, and there shall be nothing attempted in arms before that day."

  Thereupon he offered me refreshment while he dictated a letter of acceptance on his own part, and a guarantee that the like would be forthcoming from Meredith ap Rhys Gryg as soon as possible. And before evening I rode back into our camp with the fruit of my embassage, and reported everything to David and his council.

  "The castle of Cilgerran is held for the Lord Edward," said Meredith ap Owen cautiously. For the heir of the Cantilupes, whose stronghold it was, was still only a boy, and Edward was his guardian during his minority.

  "That should be a guarantee," said David. "Edward may not like the truce, but for his father's sake he will not break it. And surely de Chaworth will never dare misuse a castle Edward holds." Then he asked me of all I had seen in Cardigan, and I told him as best I could judge what numbers they must have, by the great plump of knights he had about him there, all the more as Meredith ap Rhys Gryg had kept himself and his men well out of sight.

  "Double our numbers they may be," said David, "but double our worth I doubt. But we'll be first in Cilgerran and choose our ground."

  So we marched in time to make camp on the evening of the third of September, and chose a raised site among trees outside the vil of Cilgerran, with a sweep of the river to cover our right and rear, and good lookout spots from which the approaches from town and castle could be governed. Our forward scouts brought word that de Chaworth himself was not yet in either, though the town was full of his first companies. And early the next day the leaders rode in, for we were now but two or three miles from Cardigan, having gone more than halfway to meet them. A courier came before noon, a middle-aged squire of de Chaworth's household, to appoint our meeting to take place next day in the meadows before the town, where they were setting up tents to give the council shelter at need.

  "Patrick has a mature taste in couriers," said David, frowning after the rider as he departed. "No sprightly page, but a seasoned man-at-arms, and with his eyes wide open and roving. What need was there for this visit at all but a gesture of courtesy, the prettier the better compliment? The hour was already set in advance."

  Nevertheless he shrugged off this doubt, and we sat out the day with strung patience. When the late dark came down David and Rhys Fychan circled the camp and made sure all was well, and every outpost wide awake. A dark night it was to be, without a moon, but on such summer nights there is always a glimmer of stars. It was very silent and still, the freshening wind of evening already dying, barely a rustle of leaves to be heard.

  "My thumbs prick," said David, straining erect to listen, and shivered, not with fear, rather as a hound quivers, snuffing the wind after quarry. And he sent forward two more men, well beyond the limit of the camp on the road to the town, to lie in cover, and two more in our rear along the river-bank. Nonetheless he let the camp take its rest as though he felt no qualms, only ordering that every man should keep his weapons and harness close to hand while he slept.

  Our fires were turfed down to a glimmer, and it was almost fully dark, as dark as it would be that night, when David lay down in his cloak to sleep. It was hard to know if he believed in his own precautions, for he had done off all harness, though he kept it by him, and stretched himself out in comfort to his rest. There had been no call from our outposts, no movement from the town. The first owl I heard calling, called from upstream, well in our rear, and I like a fool took it for a real owl, so hushed and still was all the night about us. But David, who, I swear, had been fast asleep, started up out of his cloak and was on his feet in an instant, stretched and listening, his eyes two pale blue flames, and when the call came again he kicked out at the turfed fire and set it blazing high. Men boiled silently out of the grass and the bushes, reaching out for sword and knife before they were well awake, and David's squire sprang out of the shadows into the glare with his lord's hauberk and sword in his arms. And but for the crackle of the fire the silence had barely trembled as yet. We waited, but facing up-river, away from Cilgerran.

  "They cannot be there," said Rhys Fychan in a whisper.

  "They are there," said David, just above his breath. "They have spent this whole day making a great circle about us, while we watched them deck their tents for us in the fields. A great circle through the forests on this side the river, to come round on our quarter. And a great circle on the other bank, to cross again upstream from us. The rest will come out from the town to help them finish the work. So they think!"

  "Shall I sound?" asked the boy with the horn, quivering.

  "Not yet. Between us and them every man knows already. It's only those towards the town may need an alarm, and they are not threatened yet. Let them close in."

  It was long minutes more before they struck the eastward rim of our camp, expecting to fall upon sleeping men, and clashed hand to hand among the scattered trees with men armed and waiting. The first shuddering clang of metals and shrill of cries went through the dark like lightning tearing it, and then David cried: "Sound!" and the horn pealed higher above the confused din, and we surged forward like leaves blown by its breath, towards the attack, while behind us, back and back to the rim of the open meadows, our comrades started up to keep our circle unbroken. There, at the first advance across the meadows from the town, the archers would have their targets clear. For us it was swords and knives, and every sense sharpened to pick out friend from foe.

  They had their night eyes then, as well as we, but we closed our ring to hold them out, and so fought pressing forward rather than giving back, for as long as we could keep our ranks. They were very many, and they came in heavy waves against us, but the shock of surprise was lost. All these who had spent the day closing their trap round us had gone on foot; we were spared the horrid confusion of mangled horses threshing among us and turning our cover into bone-breaking hazards. Man to man is fair odds, night or day, and if they had sent a spy out to view our dispositions, still we had possession of the ground we had chosen, and to take it proved beyond their power.

  I kept at David's side as well as I might, as always it was my custom and privilege to keep Llewelyn's left flank when we were in the field together. And hard and hot work it was to keep pace with David, for he was so violent and agile there was no matching him, and in the wildest of the labour I heard him laughing, and a sound like light singing that spilled out of him much as a cat purrs, for pure pleasure, not in the killing itself, though indeed we had not sought it and had no need to feel shame at it, but in his own readiness and skill and prowess, and the mastery of his body. And I also exulted in him, for he was like a living fire in the darkness and din and chaos of the night.

  There was then no time to beware of anything beyond arm's-length, the range of a sword or dagger was all the room each man had. But after a while I knew that we had moved forward, while they had made no advance, for we were trampling the dead and wounded, and that frightful floundering, and the cries from under our feet, and the gushing groan of breath as we trod the air unwillingly out of a living man, these were the worst things of that night.

  It lasted until the east, towards which we faced, began to grow pearl-grey before the dawn, and then we could see more of what we had done and what had been done to us, and then men began to turn from us and run, slipping away between the trees and plunging into the river. As for the expected attack by mounted knights from the town, we did not know until full daylight whether it had ever been ventured or no, and found it then but a minor part of the battle, for it had been designed only as the final blow, and the archers had dealt with it by starlight before ever it reached our encampment.

  So the dawn came, and what was left of the chivalry of de Chaworth and the English lordships of South Wales broke away from us and fled back into Cilgerran to lick its wounds there. And we went somewhat wearily and numbly hunting among the trees for prisoners worth taking, for Welsh worth retrieving and grafting into our own forces if they were so minded, and for our own wounded and dead. As the light brightened we saw that of the enemy the number left here was great, and among them many knights. And it seemed to me that Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, who surely had persuaded de Chaworth to this disastrous madness and treachery, had also let the English bear the brunt of the assault, and kept his own men in reserve. For it was the English who had suffered worst. The tangle of them in the broken and ravaged undergrowth was full of bright devices now smutched and bloodied and buckled, like the flesh beneath the surcoats. We made up the tale of them as well as we could. And combing the soiled grasses low towards the river, David came suddenly to a halt before me, and leaned, gazing long at the ground.

  He came, God knows how, always so clean and bright out of every testing, as though the elements that bruised the rest of us had no power over him. In that dawn he should have been streaked with sweat and smoke and blood, if not his own blood, and wearied to stumbling, and here he moved immaculate and light, his black hair only a little damp on his temples, and his eyelids a little heavy over the jewelled blue of his eyes. And close at his feet, where he stared thus ungrieving and unexulting, there was the wreckage of a man, broken and trampled, with a slashed face turned up to the morning light, and a caved breast holding a pool of blackened blood. A tall man once, handsome and dark, with black brows touching, and black beard finely pointed. And very nobly equipped, if so many had not fought over his accoutrements in the dark.

  David looked up at me, his eyes like blind blue stones. "This is he?" he asked. For he had never seen the king's seneschal close before.

  I said: "It is." I had spoken with him but a few days since; even at this pass I could not mistake him.

  So we took up Patrick de Chaworth, persuaded to his death, and had him borne away under flag of truce into Cilgerran.

  "A pity!" said David, grim. "It should have been the one who talked him into this betrayal."

  But though we searched the whole day among the wreckage of that night's work, we found no trace of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg. Could Rhys Fychan have laid hands on his uncle then, I believe he would have killed him, though he was in general a temperate man. But though we found some dead of Meredith's following, the man himself was escaped clean, and the next we heard of him was that he was barricaded into his castle of Dryslwyn with the strongest garrison he could muster, and braced ready for attack, and very unlikely to show his nose out of those walls again until the echoes of Cilgerran had passed away on the wind, men having such short memories.

  I think David would have been happy to attempt the storming of Dryslwyn, but Meredith ap Owen and Rhys Fychan said no, and reluctantly he owned that they were right, and there was no credit in breaching the very truce we had just asserted and defended. So he contented himself with sending into Cilgerran, to the dead lord's lieutenant, a formal protest against the breach of faith, and a flat statement, for want of the promised conference, of the demarcation he proposed to observe, and to recommend to the prince of Wales and his chief vassals in the south. And so demoralised were the survivors in the fortress, and so willing to bury the unhappy and unblessed venture, that they accepted David's proposed line hastily, grateful to get out of it so lightly.

  David raised his brows and laughed when he read the reply, somewhat startled by his own success. "So we have come out of it with our own demands met, with limited losses, and with little prospect of further trouble in these parts while the truce lasts," he said. "But I wish we could have taken Meredith ap Rhys Gryg back with us in chains, to stand his trial for treason. Small chance of that now. He'll lie still in Dryslwyn like a hare in her form, the rest of the year. We must wait another opportunity."

  Then the canons of Cenarth came and ministered to the dying and buried the dead, doing their merciful office humbly and sadly. And we, declining Rhys Fychan's pressing invitation to linger at Carreg Cennen on our way, made by the shortest route for Gwynedd, keeping company with Meredith ap Owen through his lands along the Aeron, and so coastwise into Merioneth. I think David was sorely tempted to pay the desired visit to his sister, but Carreg Cennen would have taken us too far out of our way, and he wished to render full account to Llewelyn as soon as possible. Therefore he excused himself. And I was mortally glad, for by the grace of God I had been spared Godred's close clinging on this occasion, he being left with the castle garrison, and I had no wish to seek him out when I was delivered from his seeking of me, much less to see him in proud possession of Cristin whom he did not truly value, and had dangled before me, unless love had made me mad with suspicion, like bait to some personal trap in which he essayed to take me. My desire was never to see him again. And truly it should have been, no less, never again to see her, but that I could never quite command.