The Brothers of Gwynedd (74 page)
They said to me as soon as I alighted that their lord waited to receive me, and begged my indulgence that he could not come out to me on his two feet, for reasons I knew.
They brought me into a small but rich chamber in one of the minor towers. I remember tapestried hangings that warmed the nakedness of the walls, and a brazier glowing, that gave the most light in that dark apartment, even in the mid-afternoon, before the dusk fell. And a low couch along the wall beneath the hangings, where the great earl sat propped by furs, with his broken leg stretched along the cushions in a bundle of wooden brace and linen bindings, like a weathered log. And I remember how dead that one limb seemed, and how live all else, from the single foot thrust large and vehement against the flags of the floor, to the reared Norman head that turned towards me as I entered, to bring to bear upon me those marvellous deep-set eyes, yet so large and wide and fearless that they seemed to stand out like rounded gems from the sockets. To this day I do not know certainly of what colour they were, he was even ill-shaven and somewhat tired when I first saw him in his own house, yet do not know why I should think so, since what I most remember of him is the cleanness, the outline, of all his person, as if he had been chiselled out of some metal too pure to be taken out of the earth.
His voice when he spoke to me was as mild, direct and open as his gaze, pitched rather low, out of the centre of his body, which as I saw him then was but of middle size, sturdy and square but lean. I marvelled, for I had thought him a taller man, what was within him so towered above the flesh and bone.
"I ask your pardon," he said, "For not rising to receive you, but you see my condition. Prince Llewelyn's envoy is most welcome to me. I pray you sit down with me."
In this first of many audiences I had with him, I told him how I had left affairs on the border, and that Llewelyn's force would already be deploying its westward half-circle about Radnor, prepared to close in as soon as the earl's sons had drawn near enough to match the thrust from the east. He asked many and brisk questions concerning the land and the roads, and clearly he was well informed about the watch we already kept upon the fords and bridges over the Severn. In return he told me the latest news of the enemy, though never calling them so. Richard of Cornwall, the regent during the king's absence, was in Worcester by that time, and intended going on to Gloucester, where he meant to keep and hold the bridge if the remaining ones must be sacrificed. I asked after the Lord Edward, whose name, by consent, now took precedence of King Henry's in the tale of our foes.
"He is on the sea at this moment," said Earl Simon, "and the king with him. If this wind hold, they must land tomorrow, or very soon. He has sanction to strike now, he will not hold his hand."
We spoke of where that blow, when it came, was most like to fall, but in speculation upon Edward's actions there was little profit. Yet we were at one in believing that he would try to secure the marches, since he had already lured back to him so many of the young marcher lords, and that he would use the same bogey to bring the rest to heel now.
"The Welsh threat," I said, "will be his theme. And Radnor will be his text."
"No matter," said the earl, "so he comes too late to save it."
I told him then what had already been said through his son, that in my view Llewelyn would never willingly commit his army in out-and-out war against the crown of England, though his sympathies were engaged. Beyond the Severn he would not take them, unless those sympathies swept him away, for his first duty was to Wales, and his first concern to retain the power of bargaining, for her sake, with whatever regime ruled in England. However heartily he might pray the victory of the reform, yet he had to keep open his freedom to deal with whatever England he might find neighbour to him in the future.
"That I understand," said Earl Simon, "and respect. He has his cause as I have mine. He is right to pledge to it everything but his honour."
"And yet," I said, watching him with intent, "if you should ask him to take that plunge, and commit his cause to yours, I believe he might do it."
Earl Simon understood me well, that I was not prompting but appealing. He said: "Be easy! There are limits to my rights in any man. I shall not ask him."
Before I rose to leave him on this first occasion, since it seemed all had been done that at this moment could be done, I ventured to speak to him of those principles of kingship of which we had heard, and of which Llewelyn desired a better understanding. At that his eyes shone, and he began to speak with passion of the welldisciplined body in which every member bears its true part, and thence of the body politic, a realm in which the same balance and harmony obtain, where kingship is a sacred trust, and rale not for gain or glory but for the right regulation of the affairs of all men, from the highest to the lowest. And thence again it was but a deeper breath and a stretching out of the being to comprehend a body spiritual in which every realm should be a member performing still its just function, and this should be the true Christendom. And he told me that he had had copied for his own use the tract on kingship and tyranny written by the late, great Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, and he would lend it to me to make another copy, if time served, for Llewelyn's study. And so he did, and even marked for me those passages that most engrossed his own thoughts, in case there was too little time for copying the whole. And thereafter he spoke with me, whenever we had leisure from events, of those lofty ideas that so consumed his heart and mind.
As I went out from him the door of his chamber opened before I reached it, and I was face to face with a startled girl on the threshold. Her lips were parted, about to call to him even as she came into the room, and thus on the verge of speech she halted, half-smiling, astonished to be gazing up so closely at a stranger. She was tall for her years, and slender, and bore herself with the simplicity and assurance of her birth, so that it took me some seconds of wonder and admiration to realise that she was hardly past childhood, surely no more than eleven or twelve years old. All that brave candour and innocence that showed so excellent in her brother came to perfection in her. Such warmth and rounded sweetness of line I never saw in any face but hers, such wide, generous shaping of lip, such grand, gallant honesty of eye. She was fairer than her brother, the long braid of her hair a deep, muted gold, and the brow it crowned was ivory-smooth and great with gravity. But the lashes that fringed her clear, gold-flecked eyes were dark almost to blackness.
I stepped back out of her path and made my bow to her, almost too bemused to move or speak, and she, childlike in her courtesies, made me in return the reverence due to older people, however lofty or humble, and looked from me to the earl for guidance. He was smiling upon her, as well he might, if such a jewel was his.
He held out his hand, and she went to him, laying her own small hand in his palm, and looked back gravely at me.
"Be acquainted, Master Samson," he said, "with my youngest child and only daughter. This is Eleanor."
In that teeming household of his, among the thousand souls and more that gathered in hall to meet, knights, squires, lawyers, friars, clerks, men-at-arms, armourers, scholars, gentlewomen and damozels, I learned to know the other members of his family, and knew his imprint even when I met it stripped to the waist in wrestling, or soiled and tousled in leather, whistling over the grooming of a horse in the yard. For the mintage was unmistakable, that face repeating itself with but trivial changes in all that came of his blood. His two eldest sons, Henry whom I knew, and the younger Simon who was as yet unknown to me, were away in the march, and within a few days of my coming they were inside Radnor town, and busy with Llewelyn about the razing of Radnor castle. But three more he had here with him, Guy, already a man grown and in his twentieth year, ready and eager to bear arms, Amaury and Richard still boys of about fifteen and thirteen. The same welcoming and challenging eyes gazed from every one of those Roman heads, yet there were differences between them. Amaury had the sharpest tongue and the most scholarly inclinations, Guy, I think, the most formidable wits and the least governed impulses.
The Countess Eleanor, whom I saw only in hall, and seldom spoke to, was a very handsome woman, as tall as her husband and as fierce and impetuous, but without that deeper part of him that could school even his own fire into humility. All his dreams and lofty aims she shared, but only because they were his, and often without understandings what she nevertheless would have defended to the death. She had a life-long grievance over her dowry, which had never been paid, and doubtless she was extravagant and had good need of plenty of money, but I think it was her right rather than the gold itself that she fought for. And in that she was like Earl Simon, for he would not abate one mark of what was due to him, though he was even more punctilious in paying other men their due. I grew to know and welcome those foibles in him, and those moods of depression and bile, that brought him down to the same earth as ordinary mortals.
To Llewelyn I wrote despatches as often as we had news of movements upon the king's side, and Cadell carried them at speed, with Earl Simon's safe-conduct to shelter him and get him horses in England, and Llewelyn's in Wales. Thus we got word to both English and Welsh forces in Radnor when King Henry and his son landed, and Edward with all the men he could muster rushed westwards, while the king followed more slowly as far as Oxford, where he entrenched himself and gathered all his supporters about him. We were even able to get word to the march when Edward diverted his attack, and instead of charging upon Radnor as we had expected, struck deep into Brecknock, into the lands of young Humphrey de Bohun, one of the few marcher lords who continued on the side of the reform. Earl Simon's sons had therefore to expect his attack upon them, which must follow, from the south instead of the east, and with the importance of the Severn always in mind, they drew back their force towards that river, with Edward in pursuit. They had done what they had set out to do in Radnor, and left Mortimer's lands in disarray; they withdrew out of immediate range of Edward's force, and moved upon Gloucester ahead of him.
Our couriers were in furious activity then, for the whole of the march was in motion, and we were occupied in conveying to every force in the field upon our side the movements of every other, as well as of Edward's army. For Robert Ferrers, the young earl of Derby, one of Earl Simon's most daring and ingenious allies, but also one of the most self-willed and moody, brought his muster sweeping south to storm Worcester, intending to join forces with Henry de Montfort after the fall of Gloucester. This we made known instantly to the de Montfort force, for if the move succeeded we held the vital stretches and crossings of the, Severn.
I observe that I have begun to say "we," though my own lord was now left behind nursing the western rim of the march as before, to afford cover for his friends at need. So closely had I then identified myself with Earl Simon's ends and dreams, yet I felt no divided loyalties within me, as if the two I served were one.
And ever, when chance offered, I bathed my eyes and refreshed my heart in the delight of watching that other Eleanor, artless child and great lady in one fine, fair body. And sometimes I had speech with her, for she had a child's licence to make friends where she would, with a woman's grace to hold the acquaintance in balance. And whether her brother had talked eloquently to her of what he had seen in Wales, or whether her curiosity was native to her by reason of her generous heart, and she desired both to please me and to benefit by the presence of the stranger; however it was, she would know what I could tell her of the ways and customs of Wales, and soon, caught by my decided attachments she asked particularly of our prince. Doubtless I presented him as an object for love, seeing I loved him.
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