The Brothers of Gwynedd (100 page)

  Christmas we spent at Aber, after the old fashion, for Llewelyn had still a strong attachment to that royal seat by the northern sea. David and Elizabeth came for the feast, in great content with each other. So wild, so tender, so playful was David with this gay girl of his, I saw again my breast-brother, the child who had been in my care years ago, and had me by the heart still, for all I could do. And I saw, I know not how, for her body was not yet changed—perhaps in his constant care for her, and the way he looked upon her mutely as upon a wonder and a dread, but perhaps rather in her large and radiant presence, that warmed the air about her even in the frosts—I saw that Elizabeth was with child.

  She was then barely fourteen years old, but more than that in her true being, body, mind and spirit, having loved so early, after being schooled earlier yet to the needs of marriage, at a time when both marriage and love were heathen and distant words to her. Whatever doubts and dreads David had, Elizabeth had none. She was all joy.

  "He frets needlessly," said Cristin, when I found myself some moments alone with her in the night, under a cold moon as we crossed from the buttery and kitchens to the hall. "She is ripe and ready, and without fear. But who would have thought he would so wear out his heart for her, and wrack himself to a shade with self-blame? What choice had he? She wooed him and won him, almost against his will, all against his conscience. If he seeks you out—he well may!—comfort him, and tell him not to be a fool. She has no need of any pity; she feels herself blessed."

  There was no word said, then or ever, of how her own years were running away in barren blossom from under her feet, of the great longing she had, and I shared, for the generation of the children of our own love, a happiness we could never have, and now saw shining so joyously in this strangely-matched pair. But at night in those feast-days, when Elizabeth with David led the dances, for all his vain wish to shelter and cosset her and force her to rest, then we felt to the full the ache of what we had never possessed, and surely never would in this world. As we valued and were grateful for those blessings we had, which were very great, so we saw clearly the magnitude of the last blessing we were denied. And Cristin's great eyes, iris-dark with longing, followed every movement as Elizabeth danced and sang and shone, and in the midst of her gaiety laid a hand so tenderly upon her girdle, where nothing yet swelled or quickened, caressing in rapture the very mystery of David's seed in her. Cristin watched like one famished, though her face was white and still and tranquil, and her hands folded in calm. Only to me did her eyes betray her, for even so I must have looked, envying David.

  Yet my heart smote me suddenly, warning that there was one other who had good cause to know how to read the signs in her face and in mine. And I looked about me in haste and wariness, to find if Godred was there in the hall.

  I found him among a group of the troopers of David's retinue, at one of the trestle tables drawn along the walls, easy and at leisure over their wine. He was standing, graceful and slender, with his shoulders braced against one of the timber pillars, and his fair head leaned back against the smoky wood. The large, smooth lids drooped half over his full brown eyes, but I saw the bright gleam of interest and content and malice burning below his light lashes, and his lips were curved in a small, acid-sweet smile. He was staring steadily upon Cristin, but as I watched, as though my attention had drawn his, he turned his head and opened his eyes wide into mine, and his smile broadened into that comradely affection he used upon me, poisoned honey, yet God knows more deadly to him than to me.

  I knew then that there was nothing he had not seen and appraised, no part of her longing or mine that he did not recognise, and was not willing to use against us. Slight and light he was, and found no fault with that and made no pretence about it, until he found he could neither tempt nor trick me into wallowing with him in the kennel, nor drag her down to the level of his own loving. He could not endure it that we had between us the one thing he had never valued or wanted, another manner of love, that could even live in abstinence.

  Yet even then, when he had discovered jealousy by reason of the value another set on his wife, whom he himself never valued, he seldom resorted to her, or frequented her company, except as a means of tormenting me, or keeping David's goodwill. Other women he had in plenty, and his interest was small indeed in favours he owned by right. It was the one thing in him for which I was devoutly grateful, that his usage of her was civil but indifferent, and she could endure it without distress. It was myself he hated, and lived in the hope of destroying, and as one weapon blunted without effect he was for ever looking about him for another.

  I dreaded he might have found one that night.

  He watched them, smiling and tormented, and I saw both the pleasure and the pain clear into resolution, for he had received his third sign.

  When I was alone with him in his own chamber, late in the night after the hall was quiet and the household asleep, he told me what I expected to hear, and I was the first he told.

  "It is time to put my fortune to the test again," he said. "I should be ungrateful if I neglected the clear signs heaven has given me. When Edmund of Lancaster sails with his force, to join the Lord Edward in Tunis, two of the brothers from Aberconway have petitioned to sail under his protection to France. They have missions to Clairvaux and certain other houses there. They can as easily be my envoys to Montargis. Surely by now the countess must be reassured. I mean to renew my suit for her daughter. You and I will prepare gifts and letters, and trust in the word of the blind monk of Evesham. He has promised me success, and I will not believe in failure."

  I was glad for him, for the simple act of determining upon action had warmed and liberated him, and while we made our preparations it was eager anticipation he felt, and the deprivation fell away from him. We drew up letters very courtly and persuasive, recalling how Earl Simon had exchanged vows with Llewelyn at Abbey Dore, and we sent for the countess a mass-book very delicately bound, and illuminated in gold, and for her daughter a rose of enamel and gold-work, with the renewed pledge of Llewelyn's faithfulness to his bond, and desire and prayer for its fulfilment. The brothers of Aberconway were trustworthy and loyal, and so had been always to the royal house of Gwynedd, and above all they could be secret, for clearly he did not wish their errand to be known until he had his answer. It remained only for Edmund to fix a date for his departure, and though he was delayed a few weeks into the year by various vexatious matters and by King Henry's frail health, he got his levies away before the spring came. Then we drew breath and waited for news.

  That was a quiet and prosperous spring for us in Wales, troubled only by the word that Gilbert de Clare was again busy building at Caerphilly as soon as the weather was favourable after the early frosts, and this time he had somehow gathered about him masons and planners of quality, and was bent on the erection of a fortress in stone. This at least had the merit, for us, of being a slower enterprise, so that we could afford to sit back and concentrate on formal protests to the court, invoking law and demanding a halt to this new infringement. Though Llewelyn kept tight hold of the borders of Senghenydd none the less, and got word very rapidly, wherever he happened to be, of what went on there.

  For the rest, he steadily pursued his policies of settlement, of extending our cultivated fields wherever it was possible, of encouraging the growth of towns, and the founding of markets, and the use of minted money, all measures borrowed from England, truly, and necessarily so, since we had both to compete and cooperate with England. Those years since Montgomery were years of strong development towards a state, not feudal like England, yet learning from feudalism, and most beneficial to all his people. He had an eye, also, to the exact location of his castles, for the best control and protection of the whole land, and it had to be admitted that in the marches there were gaps not yet filled.

  So my lord had enough and to spare to occupy his mind, and with the business of local justice he dealt always in person and with great care for detail. And as I remember, we were in session with a difficult family dispute involving the moving of boundaries and the abduction of a girl, in the prince's court at Carnarvon in the first days of April, when a messenger came in from Cynan in London, bringing both letters and a verbal report, he said of great importance. But he waited, none the less, until Llewelyn had the case before him judged and brought to agreement, if not wholly amicably, at least in such a shewd knot that the parties could not break the accord without peril, and the girl restored to her parents undamaged. Then the prince withdrew, with none but myself in attendance, and in his own apartments the messenger came in to him.

  He was a groom about the court, Welsh like Cynan who sent him to us, a lusty young man who made his living where he could, but kept one foot fast-rooted on our side of the border. So do all good Welshmen, for this soil is not as other soil, its stony austerity holds all its sons by the heart. Short and thick and dark was this young man, the very pattern of his kind, even to his tongue, which was not short nor thick nor dark, but long and sinuous and silver. But his matter was nothing for our comfort.

  "My lord prince," he said, standing before Llewelyn still dusty from his ride, "I am the voice of princely events, and lack the art to tell them. My lord, it is no good news, pardon the bearer. Master Cynan's letter will bear out what I have to tell."

  "Speak out," said Llewelyn. "You are not the first to be burdened with an ungrateful errand; it shall not be your loss."

  "My lord," said the groom, taking him at his word, "on the thirteenth day of March, at a city called Viterbo, in Italy, Guy de Montfort, Earl Simon's third son, fell upon the lord Henry of Almain, the Lord Edward's cousin, as he was hearing mass in the church of San Silvestro, slew him with the sword, and dragged the body out of the church to be mutilated in the square. Master Cynan said you should know of it, for your better advising."

  Cynan could not have known, when he sent that dire message, that Llewelyn's envoys were at Montargis, nor with how fell a sound the news of Guy's catastrophic vengeance came upon our ears. He sent the word to avoid what now was beyond avoiding. We had chosen the worst of times.

  Llewelyn said, with a mute and mastered face: "Tell me all you know. How did this meeting ever come to pass?"

  "My lord, the new French king, Philip, was on his way home northwards through Italy with his crusaders, bearing back to France the bodies of his father, King Louis, dead of plague on the crusade, his young wife Isabella of Aragon, who died on the voyage home, his brother, the count of Nevers, and his brother-in-law Theobald of Champagne, the king of Navarre. All these high titles I learned from Master Cynan, who also writes them to you in the letters I brought. And with King Philip was also his brother, Charles of Anjou, whom the popes helped to the throne of Sicily some years past. This Guy de Montfort is now in his service, and his chief officer in Tuscany, so that he came to Viterbo to meet his liege lord. But when he heard that Henry of Almain was in that city with the French king's retinue, he was greatly disturbed, and came the next day to the church where he was, and killed and dragged him out, and so left him lying. My lord, this is all I know. Master Cynan has written more."

  With a mild voice and a shuttered face Llewelyn thanked him for his errand, and dismissed him to be fed and rested and remounted, with his reward in hand. His reward for a blow to the heart. Cynan's letter was indeed fuller.

  "God he knows, my lord," he had written, "what possessed the man to take his revenge thus, or, indeed, what possessed the Lord Edward to send his cousin with King Philip into Italy, where it was certain the vicar-general in Tuscany of Charles of Anjou must come to welcome his lord. There are those here who say that the Lord Edward sent his cousin, who was most dear to him, and once was a Montfort man, expressly to try to make peace with the Montfort brothers, and bring them to the king's grace, and it may be true. If so, he was sadly amiss in his judgment. Those two brothers, for Simon was in company with Guy when they entered the town, though he was not present at the church, did not know when they came to the meeting that Henry of Almain would be there in the royal retinue. This killing was not planned. They came, and then they heard of his presence. And Guy has sought him out and killed him. I know no more. It may be that you can read this riddle better than I."