The Brothers of Gwynedd (88 page)

  "Go safely, and give thanks to God!" said David, low-voiced, and was gone like a shadow, the forest hardly quivering after his passage.

It took us four days to get back into Wales, moving only at night, and we were twenty souls in company by the time we swam the Severn below Stoke, for we dared not go near Kempsey, knowing Bishop Walter must suffer by what had already passed, and could not and must not afford us any comfort now. Nevertheless, we came safely to Presteigne at last, and thence to Knighton. Some wounded we had, but them we sustained in the water between us when we were forced to swim, and nursed among us as we went on land. And often I thought how the news of Evesham must have gone before me, and pierced Llewelyn to the heart, and I not there to perform the duty that was mine. And yet I was bringing him twenty good men back for the price of my delay, and I could not but think that my debts were fairly paid.

  As for thinking of what I had left behind me, or of what I had to tell, I thought not at all. I could not. Everything I had seen, and suffered, and done, was live within me, and I so full of it there was no room for thought. I lived and acted, and that was all.

  Until I came at last into Llewelyn's presence in the hospice at the abbey of Cwm Hir, and saw his face, that was as ravaged as my own, and his eyes, haunted by what he had seen only within, in the anguish of his own heart, but I in the open light of day. Then indeed I thought on what was done and could not be undone, for the bare fact of it he knew, but it might well be that there was something within my knowledge apt to his need, and not yet known to him.

  "I know," he said heavily. They are dead, father and son both, dead and violated. All this land knows it. The heart is gone out of all those who followed and believed in him. It is over. And I let them go to their doom without me! I believed in him as in the Host, but for my own cause I denied his. And now I have destroyed by that denial, since justice there must be, both his cause and mine."

  I had never heard him speak so, or seen that look in his face before, as though he had seen the finger of God write his own doom fiery and plain across the bloody field of Evesham. I said "God forbid!" and shook like a sick man, for the end of one dream I had seen, and that was bitter enough.

  "God forbids," said Llewelyn, "that a man should hold his hand and forbear to commit his heart where he believes right and truth to be. How if God offered me that chance as a test, and I have failed it? Had I thrown in all my weight with his, I might have won both his battle and mine. Now it is but just if mine proves to be lost with his."

  All this he said with a fatal calm that chilled me, so far was it from any mood I had ever known in him. And strongly I set myself to compel him out of this darkness, all the more because there was some ground for it, for everything Wales had stood to gain by Earl Simon's friendship and recognition was indeed lost, or to win again. However tamely King Henry had set his seal to the treaty of Pipton, I had no faith in his will to honour his bond now that it was in his power to repudiate it. Yet Llewelyn's justification, if he needed any, was that Earl Simon had been the first to approve him, and so I said.

  "Even had you been there with all your host to aid him, you could not have saved him. That was no battle for your people and mine, they could not sustain it. Even for him it was the wrong battle. The time when he lost his fight was when he failed to storm through Gloucester into England as soon as he heard that Edward was gone. He knew it himself when it was too late. Of two visions one may yet be saved. Do you think he would not urge you to the work?"

  To that, as yet, he would answer nothing, but he asked me to tell him every detail of what had passed, and so I did, the whole sorrowful history from the moment we left him on the Hereford road. That narration took a great while, and the room darkened about us before it was done. Even so Llewelyn covered his face.

  Afterwards he said not a word, at first, of what he had heard, or what he had learned from it, but only asked me to go with him to hear mass in the abbey church, and after it to watch with him for a while, which I did gladly, for there was that working in him that comforted me for his soul and mine. Together we two watched out the greater part of that night, and the grief we shared became a living fire in place of a hellish darkness.

  When he came forth his face was clear, pale and bright. Under the stars he said to me: "Well I know his enemies made use of his dealings with me as a reproach to him, that he gave away England's rights for his own ends, though I asked of him nothing, and he gave nothing, that was not Welsh by right, and lost to England only by force. The guilt I bear in holding back from going with him, when my heart and will desired to go, I cannot measure. That God must do. But if they think to have put him away out of reckoning and out of mind by dismembering his body and befouling his memory, they have everything yet to learn. Others will take up his visions after him, and bring them to veritable birth in England. But I know of two things I can do here to honour him, and those I have sworn to do. I will wrest from King Henry at liberty everything he granted to me under duress. And I will make Earl Simon's daughter princess of Wales."

The heart and spirit of the reform was broken after Evesham, as well it might be. Castles were surrendered, towns sued to come to the king's peace. Weary and sick and seeing now no man to lead them, even young Simon and the garrison in Kenilworth listened to the first proffers made them, and were ready to deal. But though at first there were hopeful signs for conciliation and moderation, that soon changed.

  It was Edward who sent out the first call to all loyal prelates and barons to attend at Winchester in the first week of September, and issued orders to the sheriffs to maintain law, so that no man should despoil his neighbour under the pretext of loyal indignation, ordinances worthy almost of Earl Simon himself. For the king was so low, wounded and weary and dazed, that he was carried away to Gloucester, and thence to Marlborough, to recover from his ills. And only when the gathering at Winchester convinced him that he was again royal, and had real power in his hands, did he begin to feel his own man. Had he continued abased and frightened a little longer, things might have gone more wisely in England. For when Henry was no longer afraid, he would take vengeance on all those who had frightened him, as a braver and stronger man need not have done.

  But to us, watching from Wales, the first important act that followed Edward's victory was his prompt march to Chester. Llewelyn smiled sourly at that, and went quietly to Mold to keep a watch on events. But at least it proved that Edward considered us still to be reckoned with, and was in haste to secure his city and county again on our borders, and put his own men back into the seats of power there. At Beeston castle, in mid-August, Luke Tany surrendered Chester to him, and relinquished his office to a new justiciar, James Audley. It was the reversal of the scene we had witnessed less than a year before, in the meadows by the Dee, and as we heard from our ageing friend the garrison horse-doctor, who kept his place through all reversals, David was close at Edward's side when he entered the city, and known to be in the highest favour and intimacy with him.

  "I hear he did well at Evesham," said Llewelyn bitterly. "And got his pay for it! The king rewarded him with all the lands forfeited by some poor wretch called Boteler. Well, I never doubted his gallantry. And at least he has preserved some kindness for you."

  "Even for Wales," I said, "seeing he knew very well there were more of us, and all Welsh. "Go safely," he said, "and give thanks to God!" And a grain of thanks I gave heartily to him, also."

  "I have not forgotten," said Llewelyn, and almost smiled. "For that and other reasons, I grudge him to Edward. But this Edward himself—I see qualities in him that speak for David, too. To fight well and to think well is surely a promising beginning."

  In this I think he was right. For it was only at Winchester, where King Henry began to rule again, that the tone of the victors changed, and in place of conciliation there was nothing better than vengeance and spite, and hatred had its way. For there were too many others of smaller quality, like the king, who had felt themselves humiliated and disprized, and yearned to climb back into their own esteem by debasing those who had outmatched them. So tragedy was compounded for two years to come, and a great opportunity lost.

  Young Simon in Kenilworth received letters of safe-conduct to go to Winchester, as speaker for all his garrison, and he went with a fair hope, for Edward's first approaches had been generous and large-minded. But at Winchester hatred prevailed, and the terms presented to him were such as he could not tolerate. So he returned unreconciled to his father's castle, and prepared it for a long siege, and so held it in defiance. And I think he achieved his full growth only then, when he was left to uphold that lost cause without hope, but still with dignity.

  At Winchester, too, it was concluded, and I do not quarrel with that conclusion, that whatever deeds, acts, grants, charters and other documents King Henry had enacted since Lewes, when he fell captive into Earl Simon's hands, were enacted under duress, and thereby invalid, and all were repudiated. So passed among the rest, as we had foreseen, the treaty made at Pipton.

  "More than that I lost at Evesham," said Llewelyn. "So be it! Better by far I should bring him to such an act voluntarily. And so I will!"

  For us this was the most meaningful of the business at Winchester. Yet we could not be unmoved by the ordinance made on the seventeenth day of September, the triumph of the vengeful, by which all the lands and tenements of all the adherents of Earl Simon were seized into the king's hands. That was the only test, that the defaulter should be ally to the earl, and who was to be the local judge of that adherence? Every man who coveted could cast the accusation. No manner of pure principle was a defence, no clear uprightness of life. All those of one faction were damned, whatever their virtue and goodwill. There was raised at Winchester a great, ghostly company of the dispossessed, by this infamous act of disinherison that was opposed, vainly, by all the wise and humane men on the king's side, Edward, I think, among them. They were outnumbered five to one by men neither wise nor humane, bitter for their former losses, and insatiable for their possible gains.

  "Well," said Llewelyn with grim calm, "they have Chester secured, their treaty and the royal seal dishonoured and discarded, my ally disposed of and me, as they think, checked and subdued into caution. They think they can turn their backs on me and set about the despoiling of others. I have two ends to serve. Once before King Henry wrote me off his accounts as dead, and found me very much alive. It's time to remind him once again."

  Deliberately he called up the local muster to add to his own guard, enough for his purpose, and rode out from Mold towards Hawarden, that same way we had ridden a year ago to see Edward's garrison march away and give place to Earl Simon's men.

  "Hawarden I was promised," said Llewelyn, "in his name, and if they deny it now to me, so will I deny it to them. Edward's garrison there threatens my valley."

  In one swift and unexpected assault we took that castle, drove out the household, such as were not worth keeping as prisoners, and stripped roofs and walls low enough to make it uninhabitable. It was done with economy and precision, and it was a hoisting of his standard on his border, as a warning that he had suffered no setback, and had a power that could stand of itself, without confederates.

  When it was done, we drew back to Mold, and he called in a reserve force, expecting that some action must soon be taken against him. And in the month of October it came, a very strong army loosed against us from Chester under Hamo Lestrange and Maurice FitzGerald, two marcher lords both experienced and able. But Llewelyn struck hard before they had reached the position they desired, or ordered their array to the best advantage, and broke and scattered them so completely that they fled back into Chester piecemeal, we chasing them to the very gates. They began to talk anxiously of truce with us, and though in the general confusion in England this came to nothing, what we had was as effective as truce, for wherever anything was attempted against us it was quenched at once and without difficulty or loss. So he taught England that Wales had lost no battles, nor been defeated in

any wars.

  London had submitted to the king before that time, and been fined and penalised and plundered like a conquered city. Disputes and lawsuits over lands seized from the disinherited arose even among the victors, and in many parts of England companies of rebels betook themselves to lonely and difficult places like the eastern fens, and there held out month after month against the king's peace. Worst of all, there was a bitter division between those of the victors who were for mercy and moderation, and those who wanted to crush the defeated utterly and drive them into the wilderness. So the state of England in those days was worse than before Evesham, and though the old cause was hopelessly lost, its surviving adherents had still to put up a rearguard fight for their lives and livelihoods and lands, and some remnant of justice.