The Brothers of Gwynedd (79 page)

  I said then, not with any great foreboding, but knowing that all things were still uncertain, that he might yet need a close liaison with Wales again before long, and that if he desired it and Llewelyn permitted it, I would return to him.

  Then he bade me sit down with him, and told me what further moves the council of England had in mind, that Llewelyn might be fully informed without the committal of such vital matters to writing. The first need had been to establish reliable wardens of the peace in all the shires. The second, he said, was to call parliament as quickly as possible, and to ensure that those who attended it truly spoke for the people, and to that end writs had already been sent out. These were the first days of June, and before the month ended parliament must meet and ratify what had been done in the name of the whole realm, or demur and amend it.

  "On the lesser people of the shires," said the earl, "much has depended, as you have seen, and much will depend on them in the future. I have learned to know them as staunch to their faith, and have leaned upon them hard in contention and battle, and they have not let me fall. Surely their voices should also be heard in peace, and their loyalty remembered. We are calling to this parliament, from every shire, four knights chosen by the shire court to stand spokesmen for their people. With their aid some form of council must be chosen to advise and direct the king's actions, until we can achieve a permanent peace and a proper constitution."

  I asked after the fate of the remaining prisoners of Northampton.

  "You touch on a sore and tangled matter," he owned. "The marcher lords are being called to parliament and told to bring their prisoners with them, to be exchanged man for man against those we took at Lewes. We cannot leave good men rotting in cells while all the legal arguments are hammered out to the end, but the exchange will certainly be bedevilled by questions of ransom and right. If need be they will have to be released on surety for their price, but we must have them out." He caught my eye and smiled, reading me well. "True, before the summer's out I may need every sword and lance I can muster. Neither King Louis nor the cardinal makes any move to call off the pack they have raised against us in France. Well, if we lean only on ourselves, no one can let us fall. Perhaps we should give thanks for threats from without, if they bind us so firmly together within."

  And that was truth, for even before council made any appeal, the men of Kent and Hampshire had risen themselves to patrol the coast and watch for alien sails, and the shipmen of the Cinque ports were prowling the seas on guard. And when later he called, every man answered.

  "Yet I will not believe," he said steadfastly, "that it need be so. We are an organ of Christendom, how can we live and to what purpose, cut off from the body that nourishes us? No, we must prevail! When God has spoken for us so clearly, surely his vicar on earth cannot for ever shut his ears against the truth."

  When I was with him I shared his faith, so potent it was. Yet I knew, as he knew, that beyond the narrow seas more and more ships and arms were massing even as we spoke, and that the mood of the exiles was most bloodily bent on invasion. At Boulogne Cardinal Gui threatened excommunication and interdict, and although King Henry in his anxiety had written again to Louis, urgently begging for a conciliatory attitude and a helpful spirit, for the sake of the hostages if for no other reason, still the thunderous silence continued. Earl Simon had enemies more than enough, and none of them impressed by the vehemence with which God had stood his friend.

  Nevertheless, and whether he willed it or no, this man who sat quietly talking with me was the master of England then, towering above kings.

  He gave me his hand when I took my leave of him, and his safe-conduct to get me service and security wherever his writ ran. And so I left him still embattled, since

Llewelyn was at Knighton, keeping a close watch on his cousin Mortimer's lands and movements, for it was clear to him that the march was no better resigned to submission than before Lewes, and though he had not yet all the details with which I could provide him, he already foresaw that all those turbulent young men might find their parole easier to give than to keep, even if they had begun in good faith, which was by no means certain in all cases. He welcomed me eagerly, and when I had told him all, as I thought, still found me many questions.

  "You have been at the heart of things," he said, "while I have been sitting here like a shepherd guarding a fold." And he took from me again and again the story of Lewes, and said that he envied me.

  "But he will need us again," he said with certainty, "and soon, and in my country, not in the south. Even his virtues fight against him. He could not leave the march in disorder, for the sake of right and justice, where another would have let right and justice fend for themselves, and the barons of the march lie safe in prison, until all was better secured for his own cause."

  "His cause
is
right and justice," I said, "whatever errors he commits on the way. How, then, can he defend them by abandoning them?"

  "I know it," said Llewelyn, "and he is discovering it. He wills to have all the estates of the realm taking their due part in its governance, and he finds himself forced by the times to take more and more power into his own hands. And I see no remedy. We have already heard how they are standing to in the south, all those sea-coast pirates and fishermen, and the archers of the Weald, expecting the fleet from France, while Louis holds aloof and the cardinal-legate threatens damnation. And I think in his heart the earl of Leicester knows, as I guess, that for all his offers and concessions upon the one part, there will be none on the other. What can he gain by all this to-ing and fro-ing of envoys across the sea, when all they will accept is his surrender or his death?"

  "Time," I said.

  "Yes," granted Llewelyn after a moment's thought, "that he may. If he can weather the summer, they'll be less likely to put to sea in a winter campaign. And all the coastal castles, those he holds. However great the numbers they gather, they'll find it hard enough to land them. And if paid mercenaries don't run away home for the harvest, they'll take themselves off fast enough when there's no more money to pay them. Yes, every week gained is precious. You say young Henry is keeping Dover for him?"

  I said that he was, and the Countess Eleanor was there also, with her two youngest sons and her daughter.

  "The other Eleanor," said Llewelyn to himself, and smiled. "You have seen this child? Does she resemble her brother?"

  I told him, as best I could, what manner of girl she was, of her radiance and simplicity as I had first beheld her, gracious, artless, as blazingly honest as her brother and her sire. He listened with a faint smile, as though half his thoughts were still upon the dangerous game being played along the marches, yet his eyes were intent and rapt. And at the end he said mildly, as if rather to himself than to me:

"And she is not yet betrothed, or promised to any, this lady?"

Before many weeks were out all Llewelyn's forebodings were justified, for in spite of ail their oaths the barons of the march did not obey the summons to the parliament in June, or send their prisoners, nor did they surrender such royal castles as they held, Bristol among them. In July, while one more arduous formula of agreement was being hammered out at Canterbury, in the hope of finding favour, however grudging, with King Louis and the legate, Earl Simon was forced to come himself, with the earl of Gloucester, to deal with the troublers of the march, who were raiding and plundering their neighbours and building up their household forces in defiance of law. The earl sent an appeal to Llewelyn to aid him from the west, which he was glad to do upon more counts than one, for the turbulence of the marcher rule threatened us no less than England.

  That was a short, brisk campaign, profitable to us and to Earl Simon also, for it added to his strength the castles of Hereford, Hay, Ludlow and Richard's castle, and gave us more land in Maelienydd, bringing Mortimer and Audley and their fellows to surrender at last at Montgomery, and to promise attendance at court with their prisoners. But so they had promised before, and broken their word, and so they could and did again.

  Perhaps this time they had truly intended to keep it, if the approaches so patiently made to King Louis and the exiles at Boulogne had met with any acceptance. But though the envoys sailed back and forth tirelessly, still amending, still making concessions on all but the sacred principles, never did legate or king take one small step to meet them. On the contrary, Cardinal Gui reverted to the pope's original denunciation of the Provisions, and ordered the bishops who came as envoys to observe the papal sentence promulgated against the earl and his followers. They as firmly refused, and departed. Late in October the legate formally pronounced sentence of excommunication and interdict against Earl Simon and all who held with him. So the saints fare always in this world.

  This utter rejection at Boulogne revived all the vengeful defiance in the march. In that same month of October a band of knights from Edward's castle of Bristol, all intimate friends of his, made a great dash across England to storm Wallingford castle and rescue the prince, intending to carry him back with them to Bristol and gather an army round him. They took the outer ward of the castle by surprise, but the garrison turned their arbalests against them, and even threatened to give them Edward, since they had come for him, by hurling him from a mangonel if the attackers persisted, so that he was glad enough to be brought up on to the walls to beg his friends to give up their mad plan and depart.

  The upshot was that Earl Simon, rightly alarmed at so daring an onslaught coming so near success, removed the two hostages into stricter keeping at his own castle of Kenilworth, sent peremptory summonses to all the marchers to attend at Oxford in November with their prisoners, and called up an army of barons and knights to muster there to ensure obedience. But in spite of all their promises, the marchers still did not come. Then the earl was forced to move against them a second time in arms, and sent again to Llewelyn to close in at their rear.

  "See how the year has slipped by," Llewelyn said, when we were in the saddle again, and marching east to match the earl's westward advance, "and ours the only fighting, after all. If he has done nothing else, he has got England through the summer. They'll not put a fleet to sea now. And next year will be too late, they'll all have gone off to better-paid service." For December was beginning, and a gusty, wild month it was, though with little frost or snow.

  Mortimer, the boldest of the lawless marcher company, made a bid to hold the Severn against the earl, but changed his mind when the chill of Llewelyn's shadow fell on his back. He drew off down the river, but we kept pace with him, and crowded him into Earl Simon's arms for the second time that year, forcing another submission at Worcester.

  So near we were then to the earl, and yet those two still did not meet, who were already so drawn to each other, and worked so well together. For time, of which we had enough, was then so wanting to Earl Simon that he was handling two or three desperate problems at the same moment, and we could not hamper his actions. We drew back and stood on guard for him, but he needed us no more then. He had made up his mind that the west could no longer be left to this endless chaos and misrule. All those lands held in the march by the Lord Edward, the palatinate of Chester and the town and castle of Bristol, he determined to take into his own hands, for they were too dangerous to be left to any other. In exchange for them he provided Edward with lands to the same value elsewhere, in less vulnerable counties.