The Brothers of Gwynedd (89 page)

  During those autumn days Llewelyn kept anxious watch in particular on the distant fortunes of those de Montforts who were left. For the Countess Eleanor, still fiercely loyal to her dead lord, held the castle of Dover, and her daughter was still there with her. Her two youngest sons she had succeeded in shipping away to France, fearing captivity for them if they should be taken. The third son, Guy, wounded at Evesham, lay sick and prisoner at Windsor, and young Simon still defied siege in Kenilworth, though later he slipped away out of that fortress, leaving it well manned and supplied, to join the gathering at Axholme, in the fens.

  All this year through we had had no word from Cynan, for we had been nearer to events than he, and moreover, left behind among the minor household clerks in London, at such a time of malice and suspicion, he had been forced to look to his own life and observe absolute caution in his dealings. Now with the monarchy re-established he breathed again, however regretfully at least more easily, and finding a venerable and reliable messenger in a Franciscan of Llanfaes on his way home from pilgrimage to Rome, he sent us in September a full and enlightening account of what went forward in the south.

  "They are waiting, it seems," said Llewelyn, reporting Cynan's news in council, "the arrival of the new cardinal-legate at Dover. There's no bar to his landing now, he'll be welcomed with open arms. God knows they have need of good and sane counsel to bring order out of the wicked chaos they have made. And this man, since he took over the mission, has at least hurled no more thunderbolts and curses across the sea." For Cardinal Gui, who had been kept so long in holy wrath at Boulogne, had been called away some months since to become pope under the name of Clement, the fourth so styled, and in his place a new man was appointed, of whom at that time we knew nothing. "The exiles are on their way home, the queen is expected to make the crossing in the legate's company, and soon. A Genoese, a lawyer, and of good repute," said Llewelyn, pondering Cynan's usually acute judgment with interest, "and he comes with wide authority, to preach the crusade, to make peace and reconcile enemies and assuage grudges in all the land of England. And why not in Wales, too? I will gladly use any man of goodwill, and be thankful for him."

  In this manner we first heard of the approach of Cardinal Ottobuono Fieschi, who did indeed enter England with goodwill, and with very good sense, too as we later found, though he had a hard struggle of it. Had the most implacable of the victors paid heed to him, England could have been pacified very quickly. But then he was no more than a name to us.

  "Cynan writes further," Llewelyn said, "that Edward has left the king resting at Canterbury, and is setting out for Dover himself, not only to meet his mother when she lands, but to try if he can get possession of the castle from Countess Eleanor, first. By persuasion!" But he made a wry face over that word, for something we had seen of Edward's persuasion.

  "She is his father's sister," said Goronwy sensibly. "He cannot for his good name offer her any offence. But he will not need to. What can she do but make her peace? There is nothing left to defend."

  He spoke truth, there was nothing, except a memory and an ideal, and the integrity of her love. Yet I know that Llewelyn feared for her, and waited in great uneasiness for the next news of her forlorn and solitary stand. There was no possibility as yet of making any approach to her on his own behalf, her situation was so piteous and so difficult that even if there had been a means of sending to her, he would not have done so. She had lost a husband most deeply and passionately loved, and her firstborn son, and was separated from two more sons whose fate she could not aid. It was no time to send proffers to her for her daughter.

  "She is very young," said Llewelyn, steadily looking towards the south-east. "As yet it could have been only a betrothal. And I can wait. Until her mother is free of this last burden, and has her remaining children back, or at least knows them safe and free. There will be a right time for it!"

  So he waited with patience. And in the early days of November Cynan sent another letter. I was at work among the documents of a dry civil case at Mold, when he came into the room with the parchment unsealed in his hand. His face was bleak and still, but his eyes were wide, far-looking and calm. The wound he had received was sharp enough, but short of mortal, because he would not acknowledge it. The first thing he said to me was simply: "I have lost her!"

  I looked up at him in some doubt and wonder, for he had not the look of one admitting loss.

  "I have lost her—for a while," he said. "Edward is in Dover castle, and the Countess Eleanor is out of it. The prisoners she held there broke out and captured the keep against her, but even if they had not, what could she have done? If she had fought, it would have been the worse for her and for others. And for whom should she hold it, now Earl Simon is dead? Edward has received her into grace, but all she has asked of him is that the gentlemen of her household shall be maintained in all that is theirs, and not held felon for their loyalty, and that he grants. She has accepted his peace, and undertaken to withdraw herself from all activity against him and against the crown and government of England. I doubt if she can love, but she will not oppose him. Poor lady, what is the world, and justice, and the well-being of the realm of England to her, now Simon is gone?"

  "It is safely over, then," I said. "You would not have had her resist?"

  "No, God knows! I dreaded she might," he said.

  Yet I saw that it was she who had dealt him the blow that was twisting his heart

so sorely at that very moment, while he kept his will and his countenance. This pain was not all for her. And in truth, deprived though she now was of all her rights, since the king had already bestowed the earldom of Leicester upon his second son, Edmund, and though she stood bereaved of husband and son, solitary in her grief, yet I thought her rich and exalted above all her sisters. Better Earl Simon, dead and abused, the king's felon and the pope's pestilence, the people's hero and the poor men's saint, than all the living and vengeful lords that served in King Henry's retinue and enjoyed his favour.

  I said, I doubt not with some taint of blasphemy: "'Blessed art thou among women…'" and Llewelyn said: "Truly! But the greater the blessing withdrawn, the deeper is the desolation left behind. She knows little of me, and nothing of this betrothal. He never saw her again. My bride is only a child. I cannot touch or trouble either the one or the other in their sorrow."

  I said that the lady might be glad, for what future was there now for her daughter? And he laughed, rather ruefully than bitterly.

  "Glad? She, whose whole peace now depends on the sanction of brother and nephew? She who wants nothing but to turn her back on the world as it is, and remember it in secret only as
he
wanted it? No, she will never be glad of me. But in time—in time, God knows, not now!—she may learn to bear with me. When I am no longer a reminder to Edward of an old alliance that cost him dear, and a marriage with me ceases to be the imagined threat of a new alliance as perilous as the old. No, I can wait! The time will come when she will forget, and he will cease to suspect and fear. But not yet. Even if I could reach her now," he said in a soft and grievous cry, "and I cannot!"

  I asked him in dread: "What has she done?"

  "She has shaken off the dust of England for a witness against them," said Llewelyn, "and set sail for France with her daughter, one day before the queen landed with Cardinal Ottobuono at Dover. They say she did not want to see her brother's detestable wife, and has said she will never set foot in these islands again. She is gone to Earl Simon's sister at the convent of Montargis, and has taken the other Eleanor—
my
Eleanor!—with her!"

When he had thought long, and come to terms with his situation, he said: "I have two vows in my heart, both debts due to his memory, and if I cannot yet do anything about one of them, let's see how quickly the other may be brought to fruit. One thing at a time!" And he turned his every waking thought to the re-establishment of the settlement he had briefly enjoyed after Pipton, absolutely resolved to compel the recognition of the unity and sanctity of Wales.

  Cardinal Ottobuono came to London and set up his office there without delay. On the first day of December he held a clerical council to declare his mission and display his authorities, and to receive oaths of obedience from bishops and abbots, though four of the most saintly bishops of the realm were soon suspended by reason of their devotion to Earl Simon's cause, and so would Bishop Walter of Worcester have been, but that he died, old and tired as he was, before his case ever came to be examined. Howbeit, it did appear that the legate truly intended generosity and mercy, and desired to ensure that justice should not be defiled by malice and selfinterest. Llewelyn, encouraged, called his council and proposed, with their approval, to present the Welsh case and his desire for an amicable settlement, without waiting to be invited to do so, the cardinal's brief being all-embracing.

  "He'll be beset with petitioners clamouring for their own ends," he said disdainfully, "and we'll not press him, but at least we'll let him know that we are here, with both offers and claims to make, civilly waiting for his attention when the time serves." All which the council heartily endorsed. So he wrote requesting letters of safe-conduct, that envoys from Wales might come to pay his respects, and in the middle of December they were granted.

  "If I am to seek a friend at court," he said, "it shall be the highest." And he chose the best and wisest of his lawyers and clerics to go as envoys. Before Christmas they came back to report a very willing hearing, and a degree of interest and sympathy, though the legate's preoccupations at that time were naturally with the most pressing distresses in state and church. "The more pleasure it must be to him," said Llewelyn hopefully, "to hear of one petitioner who has learned how to wait, and who desires peace on present terms, and not the slaughter and ruin of all his enemies. And he shall not forget us, we'll make sure of that!"

  In this same month of December young Simon and his company in the fens at last submitted to Edward, who had them securely penned there at a disadvantage, and who, to do him justice, promised, and this time kept his promise, that if they placed themselves in the king's grace they should have no fear for life, limb or liberty. Lands they might and did lose, and they had to find sureties for their submission, and await the king's pleasure, but they fared better than many others later, who still held out in forests and hills.

  Having done all that could be done at this time, Llewelyn turned homeward to Aber for the Christmas feast, according to custom, feeling secure enough to remove his forces from the border for the first time in many months. Since my return from Evesham I had scarcely been twenty miles into Wales. Now at last I came at his side along the coast road once more, and under the mountains, gazing across Lavan sands at the shore of Anglesey, with a sprinkling of snow over the salt marshes, and the gulls wheeling and screaming above the tide.

  It seemed to me then that I had been away from this place far longer than a year, and had travelled an infinite distance across the world to make my way back to it again. It was even strange to me, like a country seen in a dream, for the soft, rich green and soiled and sorry red of the vale of Evesham filled all the landscape of my mind. I had almost forgotten the faces of people here, and the very echoes were unfamiliar to me. I came as a stranger.

  We rode into the gateway of the maenol, and out of every doorway the household came running to welcome us. And the first person I saw, crossing from the mews to the hall with her arms full of fir-branches, and a hood drawn over her black, silken hair, was Cristin.

  I was speaking to Llewelyn at that moment, and I broke off mute and stricken in the midst of a word. I know I drew hard on the rein and my horse baulked in offence, marking the break. I had thought she was in Neigwl, safe, distant, delivered from my shadow and delivering me from hers, while I died a little with Earl Simon, and grew a little English in desperate, perverse tribute to him. Last Christmas she had not been here either to trouble or fulfil me. I had not seen her for two whole years. For many months I had not thought of her consciously, but with my blood and bones, she being for ever part of me. The compact we had between us was for all time, and did not waver, but the sudden vision of her was more than my heart could bear of bliss and pain, I was not large enough to contain it. Face and voice failed me. And Llewelyn saw. I knew it then, though he never said a word until later. His mind, also, had ventured into far places among alien people, he was shaken as I was, and he saw with newly-opened eyes.