The Brothers of Gwynedd (70 page)

  At Mold they had no word of him. I had to be adroit with my prevarications, not to betray him before the game was played. So now, was I ahead of him, or not? Or had he chosen not to be seen so close to this border, and circled the town in cover, to move towards Chester still ahead of me? In doubt as I was, I pushed on towards England as though I knew what I did, though by this time I was so weary and sore that I reeled in the saddle, and dismounting was great trouble and pain. By God's grace I knew the road here very well, and knew of a place close to the border where it threaded a low but abrupt outcrop of rocks among woods, before the last descent into the levels of Dee began. For this spot I made with ail the force and faith I had left. And on the way to it I saw, thin and silver and tail out of the woods on the left of the road, the smoke of a camp-fire going up erect as a larch into the blue morning air.

  It was July, the highest of the summer, and still as sleep, hardly a breath of wind. The column of their fire was no more substantial than a hair, but stood braced straight as a plym-line and high as heaven. Then I rode by with a thankful heart to my little defile among the woods, certain that I was between David and England.

  I had not long to wait, which was as well, for as soon as I halted and took station in the shade, sleep crowded in on me. I dared not stay in the saddle, or sit down in the grass when I had painfully alighted, but paced stiffly back and forth in cover, at a spot where I could watch the road without myself being observed. A packman went by on his pony, and a local cart, creaking and slow, but there was no other traffic until they came. I heard the broken, soft thudding of many hooves, the mounts of riders going purposefully but at ease. They were close to the border now, they had no reason to hurry or fear, there was no force in these parts, after Mold, that could stand in their way. It was not force that could stop David, even had there been enough men to match his. Either he would turn of his own will, when the time came, or he would not turn at all.

  I saw them emerge in loose file from the trees, some way from where I was, David in the lead and alone. He had perhaps some thirty well-mounted and well-armed men in his company, a considerable gift, for I knew what the English court paid for good horses, and what pains they took to import them. And no doubt he had selected his men well, to lend added weight and stature to his own person. And yet he rode, as I saw when they drew nearer, with a face as bleak and dark as midwinter, all his brightness caged and battened within, into a smouldering ferocity. What he did was done with bitter resolution, but quite without happiness. And at that I felt some hope within me.

  At the right moment I clambered again into the saddle and rode out, clumsy and dull with weariness as I was, into the middle of the track, and there took station facing them.

  He saw me, and his hand gripped and tightened on the rein, and his knees clamped close, every muscle in him stiffening, so that his horse checked and tossed in a shiver of uneasiness. His head was uncovered to sun and breeze, a squire carrying his helm, and he wore only the lightest of hauberks. The wind had ruffled his black hair into curving feathers about cheeks and brow. Though he was burned brown as a nut, all the bones of his face were drawn in golden pallor that chilled into the blue-white of steel or ice as he stared at me. I think he was not surprised at seeing me, only enraged. Beneath the black and level brows his eyes were sharp and mortal as sword-points. And after a moment he shook the rein and edged his horse forward towards me, until we sat almost within touch of each other, but not on a level, for he always liked a very lofty horse, and my rounsey borrowed at Denbigh was sturdy and fast, but not large.

  I gave him greeting as I would have given it at any other time, and it was no lie that I was glad to see him, though he had no such feeling then towards me, and pretended none.

  "What are you doing here?" he said blackly.

  "I am sent to you," I said, "with a message from the prince, your brother. He bids me tell you that they have marched on Bridgnorth, and entreats you to come soon where you are missed and wanted."

  I thought the lines of his icy mask blanched still paler, but his look did not change.

  "I am going," he said, "where many are missed and wanted, and I, perhaps, not at all. But I am going. Where he told me my heart hankered to be, and secretly belonged."

  "You wrong him," I said, but very low, for I wished to speak only to him, since speak I must. "You wrong him, and you injure yourself, for he never said so. I heard, as you heard, what he did say, and a part of that was ill-judged from weariness and grief, yet it was not what you make of it. He did not send me to spy or rebuke in his name. He sent me to call you to him as his valued brother. And if you betray him, you betray your own heart. You know it as well as I, it is in your face, in your eyes, in the very bowels that knot and ache in your belly. Turn back now! It is not too late. There is no one knows but Cristin and I, both your true servants and lovers, and both devout in secrecy. You still have your freedom."

  I could no more, for they were too close. I said in a whisper: "Call them off, send them back a little! At least talk with me!"

  They were all eyes and ears at his back, greedy with curiosity. Perhaps some were shaken, and pondered their best interests. Only he, however tortured, was never turned from his chosen path. How great love, envy, reverence and hate there was in him for Llewelyn I never knew until then. There was no other could so drive David to despair, or inflame him to murder. There was no other could so draw him by the heart that in defence of himself he would tear himself and go the opposing way. And also to be reckoned with here was that Edward, with the giant frame and the furtive, drooping eyelid, the companion of his childhood, driven and hunted from Windsor to Bristol and back again, a demigod born, and now harried and derided and witness to his mother's humiliation, such a heroic, outcast figure as might well fire David into partisan action. I do not know the half, even now. Not the half. He was so deep, there was no plumbing him.

  He made a gesture of his left hand, without turning his head. He said aloud: "Go back! Wait on my order!"

  I heard the horses stamp and sidle, edging backwards, heard them turned and walked to a distance, doubtless with many a rider's chin on his shoulder. David said: "It is for you, not for him, I offer this respite. Say what you have to say to me. I am listening."

  So he was in the flesh, but in the spirit not at all, he was fixed and damned, unable to return. Nevertheless, I said what I had to say, with all the urgency I could command, calling him back to us not only in Llewelyn's name, that most wounded and most alienated him, but in mine, and Cristin's, and above all in the name of Wales, the mother of us all. But he said he had had a mother, and knew word for word what she had demanded in dying. Then I prayed his regard for his own fealty, freely given, and his own homage, never forced on him, but forced by him upon Llewelyn, who would have left him free. I cried upon his blood to compel him, and his breeding to make his way clear, and he said that he was bred as English and royal as Edward, and his mother who bore him found no fault in it. Then I was left with nothing to plead but Llewelyn, who meant more to him than Wales, who was the source and stumbling-stone in all this coil of loyalties. And in his eyes Llewelyn had failed and rejected him.

  Then I was out of words and arguments, and he was like an unquenchable fire on which I played but a little, helpless sprinkling of rain.

  "Are you done?" he said, with that terrible patience that was more malevolent than rage. And since I was mute: "Then stand out of my way."

  "Never of my own will," I said, and kept my place and though I was but a symbolic barrier between him and his own irrevocable act, he did not thrust by me and leave me standing. "I keep my troth, if you do not. I tell you in your teeth, your place is here. Either turn back with me to your duty, or kill me."

  "Stand out of my way!" he said again, even lower and more gently. "Or I take you at your word." And he loosened his sword in the scabbard and half drew it out, then as deliberately slid it back again and unslung the thongs that tethered the scabbard to his belt, and hefted sheath and all in his right hand, like one trying the balance of a mace.

  "Do what you must," I said, at the end of my resource. "As long as I have breath and force I will not take my body from between you and treason."

  He moved so suddenly and violently my eyes never followed what befell, though I know he rose in the stirrups to loom tall as the trees, and the blow itself I saw and did not see, as though a great wind had hurled a broken bough past me too fast for vision. He struck me with all his skill on the left side of the head, and swept me out of the saddle into the dust of the road, and under that thunder-clap mind and eyes darkened. I felt the grit and stones score my cheek. I heard him snap his fingers and call peremptorily to those who waited and watched at a distance: "March forward!" And doubtless he himself set manner and pace, riding past me without a look behind. I remember there was a kind of distorted light for a few moments, in which I saw the hooves of the horses stamping past my face, before I went wholly into the dark.

When I awoke to the thunder in my head, and the burden of pain that told me plainly enough I was still in the world, it was night, but not darkness, for the nights of midsummer after glowing days are full of a light of their own. I saw trees arching over me, and stars between their leaves, and I was lying in my own cloak on thick, dry grass. There was the smoke of a wood fire in my nostrils, and the glimmer of its flame, bedded low with turfs, nor far from my left side. I heard the soft stamp of hooves in mossy ground, and the lulling sound of a horse grazing at leisure. In the glow of the fire there was a man sitting cross-legged with his chin in his hands, gazing steadily at me, but my eyes were not seeing clearly, and I could not tell who it was, except that it was not David.

  He did not observe that I was awake and aware until I tried to lift one hand, heavy as lead, to feel at my head. Then he slid forward to his knees beside me, and put the wandering hand back to ground.

  "Let be!" he said. "He has broke your crown for you, but not past mending. I have cleaned the wound and bound it, and the best you can do for yourself now is sleep the night round, if you can, and let time help you past the smart. Here, drink some wine! There's bread, if you can swallow. If he had struck lower he could have snapped your neck, but he was gracious enough to leave you a throat to drink with."

  He brought a flask and held it to my lips, raising me with a hand indifferent but deft. It was then, when he leaned close to me, that I knew him for Godred. As fair and subtle and smooth as ever, smiling in the firelight, Godred nursed me.

  "I see you have your wits and your eyes again," he said as he laid me down. "Six hours, after I moved you here into cover, you lay snorting like a bull, so that I feared your skull was broke in good earnest, and then you slid off sidelong into sleep. He never meant to kill, or you'd be a dead man this moment. Never stare so," he said, grinning at me, "I'm flesh, and damned to this world, and so are you. No vision, either of heaven or hell."

  In some surprise to hear my own voice clear and firm enough, I said: "You were with his force, bound for Chester."

  "So I was," he said, "and none too happy about it, either. I owe you yet another debt for the reminder how long the prince's arm is. I have thought better of my allegiance. I have read the omens, and made my propitiation accordingly. Here am I, the saviour of Llewelyn's own familiar. I look for a handsome welcome."

  I thought then that he was in some mistake about the state of my faculties, or he would not have talked so airily and bitingly at large in my hearing. He was talking rather to the night and his own reason than to me, breathing out his doubts, his spleen and his pleasure in his own skills aloud, sure that none but a stupefied clod heard him, and safe and satisfied with that audience where he could not have been content with none. And I was unhappy in the role he assigned me, and to appraise him of my, perhaps, too acute attention, I said: "How did you slip your collar and win back here?"

  "Very easily," said Godred, unabashed, and giggled over the bread and meat he was breaking. "Every man has his needs. As soon as we were well in cover and the afternoon ebbing, I went aside to attend to mine. By the time any one of them looked round to wonder why I delayed, I was halfway back to where he left you lying. A pity I had not the best of his horses, but the one I have is none so ill, he'll be welcome where we are going, you and I."

  "And I was still where he had left me lying?" I asked.