The Brothers of Gwynedd (82 page)

  With all his burdens, Earl Simon did not forget to keep us informed. We heard from him when the bishop of Worcester, eternally hopeful and ardent in the cause of peace-making, undertook to try and bring Gilbert de Clare to a meeting, and felt some relief when news followed, on the fifth day of May, that the young man was softening towards the idea, and had agreed to come down into the city if certain conditions were fulfilled.

  "So it may pass over, after all," said Llewelyn, glad but scornful. "He's satisfied with the trouble he has caused, and flattered at having great men and reverend bishops running after him, and no doubt he'll enjoy being gracious after the wooing. We were wrong about him, he's lighter than we thought." For he himself, at twenty, had been joint prince of Gwynedd, tried not only in battle but in the hard discipline of submission for the sake of preserving his constricted birthright, and labouring hard to restore its derelict fortunes. He had no time for tantrums.

  So our minds were eased, and Llewelvn hawked and hunted over the uplands that day, without expectation of hearing more until the promised meeting should take place. And we were astonished when another messenger from Earl Simon rode into our narrow bailey the next morning, his horse ridden into a sweat, and his clothes whitened with the dust and pollen of a dry May. He stooped in haste to Llewelyn's hand.

  "My lord, Earl Simon sends you word he is gone to Hereford with all his retinue, and begs you will attend him south on your side the border, for he may have good need of you.

  "I will well!" said Llewelyn heartily. "But why to Hereford, and so suddenly? Is Gloucester at some new trick?"

  "No, my lord, this is no contrivance of Gloucester's; he is still in camp, and has not moved a man. But William of Valence has landed from France in his lordship of Pembroke, with the earl of Surrey and a hundred and twenty fighting men. There'll be others following unless we turn back this onslaught at once. The earl is gone to block the roads into England and stay the flood."

  "You go to join him in Hereford?" said Llewelyn. "You may tell him we shall not be far behind him." And he sent the man in to get food and rest, while a fresh horse was saddled for his onward journey. When the prince turned upon me, I knew what was in his mind before ever he spoke, for it was in my mind, too.

  "Samson," he said, and his voice was so quiet and so current that it was strange to hear in it what I heard of doubt and entreaty, "will you go back to Earl Simon with his messenger, and be my voice with him as before? I am not easy among these shifting tides. Go to him, and I'll keep pace with you my side the border. For I cannot go myself!" he said, crying out against what drew and denied him.

  I said I would go. What else could I say? I did not say, gladly, there was then no gladness, though there may have been gratitude. I cannot tell. Within the hour I rode for Hereford with Earl Simon's messenger, and with Cadell beside me to be my courier with good tidings and ill.

The king's court was installed in the house of the Black Friars in the city of Hereford, and the strange retinue of officials and army filled the town, from the castle to the enclosure of the Franciscans, and spilled into encampments outside the walls. Something of Earl Simon's rigid discipline of body and mind had bled into the veins of those who served him, and there was order and purpose even then, when the foundations of their brief and splendid world were crumbling.

  When they let me in to him, on the morning of the seventh day of May, he greeted me with a faint gleam of pleasure that burned through his black preoccupation for a moment, and warmed both him and me. I saw him greyer than before, the close fell of brown hair, like a beast's rich hide, silvered at the temples and above the great cliff of forehead, and his eyes sunk deeper into his skull than I remembered them.

  He said: "It is barely a year since you left me, after Lewes. I have found that a man may do ten years' living in one year. But you are not changed. I trust your lord is well?"

  I said that he was, and of his own will had again sent me to be his envoy and hold the link close between them. And he made me sit down with him, and told me how the matter stood as at that time. As yet there had been no move from the force which had landed in Pembroke, his only information concerning them was that William of Valence and the earl of Surrey had made very correct and peaceable overtures to the religious houses in Dyfed and Gwent, and seemed to be contemplating an appeal through some such go-between towards the restoration of their lands and right of residence in England. Their numbers were not great, and in themselves they were not a great danger, provided entry could be denied to any others hoping to follow them.

  I told him that Llewelyn proposed to be ready to match any moves the earl might make, and keep pace with him on the Welsh side of the border, where he could be very quickly reached at any time. But I repeated yet again that his first concern was the unity and stability of Wales, and that he needed and deserved to have his position made regular by formal acknowledgement, which he would not jeopardise by military adventures into England itself. His stand, as one having no covetous designs on any soil that had not been Welsh from time out of mind, could not be abandoned.

  Earl Simon smiled. "I remember," he said, "you told me so once before, and warned me that it might be in my power to tempt him from his resolve. Be easy! I will not lure any man from his own crusade to accomplish mine. It is good to have such a man as the prince keeping my back for me. I ask no more."

  In those days of May letters patent and letters close poured out from the city of Hereford, first to the Cinque ports and all the coastal castles, alerting them against the possibility of further attempts at landing troops, then to all the sheriffs of the shires, to hold their forces on the alert to keep the peace, arrest preachers of sedition and rumour-mongers, and insist on the maintenance of the settlement. Then, as stories began to come in of local levies massing in the marches, and brawls and disorder resulting, the sheriffs along the border were ordered to search for and seize those marcher lords who had promised to withdraw for a year of exile to Ireland, but on one excuse or another had contrived to evade keeping their word, and were now openly repudiating it. Rumours were spreading like brush fires along the borders that there was discord and enmity between the earl of Leicester and the earl of Gloucester, and these Earl Simon was intent upon suppressing.

  "The man has his grievances, and has said so freely," he said, "and I have promised him redress if I am held to have done him any injustice. God knows I am not so infallible that he may not have just complaint against me. But he is a true man to the Provisions and the settlement, and I will not have his faith called in question because he finds fault with me."

  In this he was utterly sincere, for Bishop Walter of Worcester had indeed been successful in bringing de Clare to consent to a conference, but that the landing in Pembroke had caused that matter to be postponed in favour of more urgent business. Yet I could not get it out of my head that Earl Gilbert had been holding off for weeks from such a meeting, as though time, and not a hearing, was what he wanted. Time, perhaps, for the ships from France to put their cargoes ashore in Pembroke? He had not yielded to persuasion until the day before their coming was known, and to him it might have been known before the news came into Gloucester. I said so to young Henry de Montfort, on the one occasion when I saw him in the courtyard of the Dominicans. He bit on the suggestion with some doubt and consternation, as on an aching tooth, but shook his head over it after thought.

  "How could he have foreknowledge of it? All the ports are under guard; you see they attempted nothing in the south, but went afield as far as Pembroke. And then, he has not made any move to try and join them, or they to make contact with him. We know he is still encamped where he was, close to Gloucester. I cannot believe he is in conspiracy with the exiles, or in sympathy with them, whatever his differences with my father."

  "Yet Pembroke's lands were in his care," I said, "and he should have been prepared to repel any such landing."

  "True," said Henry, "and he is certainly guilty of negligence, but surely of nothing more. He has neglected his duty to pursue his own quarrel, but he cannot have abandoned the cause he has fought for like the rest of us."

  So I pressed the matter no more, but I was not easy, for that very aloofness and stillness of Earl Gilbert caused me, as it were, to listen and hold my breath, as though both he and I were still waiting for some future event. However, there was nothing then to bear me out. The general alert continued, and so did the flares and raids in the marches, and the rumours of secret gatherings, but Gloucester made no move, and all the newly-landed exiles did at that time was to send the prior of Monmouth on a mission to the king's court, to plead for the restoration of their lands. A chill reply was sent from the council, saying that justice was open to all in the king's courts, and could be sought there at will.

  That was a strange, sad Whitsuntide, in spite of the fair and sunny weather. The king, tired and unresisting, did as he was bid, and hated his own acts, council and ministers; Llewelyn patrolled his own side of the border, round Painscastle and Hay, and passed word back to us regularly, but there was no sign of any move from Pembroke. Earl Simon kept both hands upon the workings of chancery, and began to raise money where he could, from the Hospitallers and any who would loan it, foreseeing an urgent need to come. And Edward went to and fro in a controlled silence that was new in him, taking no part in any of the business of state unless his seal was expressly required upon some document, and then permitting its use with a bland but stony face, all his will and intelligence refraining from what was done with his supposed consent. And for the rest, he read, took exercise, rode, heard mass and music, as though what went forward in England then was nothing to do with him. In some such fashion, I suppose, he justified to himself his oath-breaking and faithlessness, his will and spirit having absented themselves when his tongue uttered all those vows. After all this time I believe I begin to understand even Edward.

  On the morning of the Thursday in Whitsun week I saw him ride out of the city to take air and exercise, closely attended, as always, by Henry de Montfort and Thomas de Clare, his keepers, and several grooms, and with a string of lively horses for his testing. They went out in sunshine by the north gate, towards Leominster, and what I noticed as they trotted out from the Dominican friary was that Thomas de Clare leaned to Edward, and said something lightly and gaily into his ear, and that Edward laughed aloud, and rode out laughing. The only grave face among them was Henry's, who did not love his wardship or his ward, and was showing the signs of his unhappiness in that unpleasant duty.

  But it was Edward's laughter that lingered in my mind all that morning, for I had not seen him laugh since the days when I had known him as a long-legged fouryear-old running wild at our David's heels. And what he should find to laugh about on this particular day, in a situation in which he so dourly maintained a face of grim indifference through all other days, was more than I could fathom.

  Before that day ended, all was made plain.

  It happened that I was in attendance on Earl Simon in the afternoon, one of several clerks standing by in case he should wish to consult us, for he had matters in hand involving both Wales and England. Bishop Walter of Worcester was at his side, as constantly he was in those days. If the earl found few men constant to his measure, those he did find were worth the keeping. Peter de Montfort of Beaudesert was also among them, and also with us that day. About mid-afternoon there was a flurry of voices in hurried and agitated speech outside the door, and then young Henry came bursting in and confronted his father with a stricken face and staring eyes. His riding clothes were dusty and disordered, and there was a long graze down one cheek, and a smear of blood on his forehead. Earl Simon rose from his chair at the sight of his son, even before the boy gasped out between gulps for breath:

  "The Lord Edward—he has escaped us! He is gone, and Thomas of Clare with him. The thing was plotted between them—them and others!"

  He had not got so far, when every man there was on his feet. The earl stood stiff and still, gripping the table before him. Yet he did not exclaim, and his voice was low and even as he questioned:

  "Where did this happen?"

  "About five miles north, climbing up from the Lugg to ride over the commons there. I left a groom at the place. Beyond the ridge there are woods between the river and the old road. I have guards and archers beating the woods now," he said, but without much hope.