The Brothers of Gwynedd (102 page)

  I asked if he had not been disappointed that she gave him a girl and not a son.

  "Not a bit of it," said Cristin, "nor she, either. She thinks it the easiest thing in the world to bear children, and the finest, and promises him all the sons and all the daughters he can wish for. Besides, he sees his own stamp here, in this black colouring, and the blue eyes—she has his eyes—and that's a very powerful flattery. I thought he might take fatherhood lightly, truly I believe he thought so, too, until it happened to him, but we were far out. He has had a revelation—about himself, and Elizabeth and all the world—and it has shaken him to the heart."

  As for Elizabeth herself, there was no need to ask after her health, she bloomed like a rose, and would have no proxy-mothers between herself and her daughter, but shared the child only with Cristin. And this first girl they named Margaret. She was life's answer to a year over-burdened with deaths already known, and the foreshowings of deaths to come.

That autumn Llewelyn took serious thought how to proceed about the new castle at Caerphilly, for so far from halting his building there, Gloucester was pushing hard to raise the walls into a defensible state before the winter, so that the place could be securely held. If we were to move in arms at all, it had to be soon, and in force. Protests and arguments had produced nothing but counter-protests and counterarguments, until we began to be certain that with the best of wills King Henry, in Edward's absence, was no longer able fully to control the earl's actions, while his council and nobles, who might have commanded formidable sanctions had they so wished, were some of them firmly on Gloucester's side, and privately anxious to help, rather than hinder, his consolidation of Senghenydd. Safe in Glamorgan, remote from the direct influence of Westminster, Earl Gilbert could do what he chose, in the certainty that his marcher neighbours approved, whether they dared say so openly or no.

  So in the end, when October came in, and the building continued, the prince was forced to take action. There had been times when he would have struck upon lesser provocation and without any heart-burning, but now there was so much more to be lost, and so much more due in sober statesmanship to the nation he was creating, that he was deeply reluctant to take any step that might burn up into war, and disturb the loyal peace he desired to preserve with England. But once his mind was made up, he had lost none of his force and fire. He called out his host and took a great company south with him to besiege Caerphilly. Among the rest, David brought his muster gladly from Lleyn, restive for action and more intolerant of delays and irritations than his brother. It was the first time those two had been in arms together since David's defection to England, and that was eight years before. There were dangerous reminders there, but in the pressure of the moment they passed without harm.

  I make no doubt we could have taken and destroyed Earl Gilbert's second castle, vastly as it was planned, as easily as we had done the first. But it was never put to the test. As soon as it was known that we had swept south and were encircling the half-built shell, King Henry in a great fright required equally rapid action from his council to bring about a truce before war could flare, and the council sent to Glamorgan the bishops of Coventry and Worcester, requesting a convention with Llewelyn. The prince was glad enough to accommodate them, though if need be he would have pushed his attack to a conclusion. On the second day of November they were brought into his camp and very courteously received. What they had to offer was sensible enough, and could well have been offered earlier if the will had been there. They were commissioned by the king to take Caerphilly into their care, and out of Earl Gilbert's hands. The site should be retained by the crown, and no further building should take place during the truce. But they required also that Llewelyn should withdraw his army from the commote, and be ready to conduct any further negotiations with his Grace's proctors at the ford of Montgomery.

  "I am, and have always been, ready and willing to meet his Grace's proctors at any reasonable and fair place he may choose," said Llewelyn, "and if you give me the pledge that this site shall remain in crown custody, with that I am content."

  The bishops were careful to add in admonition, as no doubt they had been bidden to do, that King Henry had issued orders to the musters of the march and the border shires to stand ready to aid the earl if the prince of Wales should refuse to withdraw his forces.

  "There is no need to tell me so," said Llewelyn with a curling lip. "If it is a threat, it does not affright me, and if a warning, it does not influence me. I will withdraw my army for a better reason, because I find the king's offer acceptable, and I take his word for its fulfilment."

  And he removed from Caerphilly at once, dispersed his southern levies, and took the men of Gwynedd home without so much as looking over his shoulder.

  "You are trusting," said David, dubious still.

  "Even if I were not—and I do believe him sincere—there's no point in half-doing things," said Llewelyn good-humouredly. "It's either form and go, and no second thoughts, or else stay and fight. And if the king fears that would mean outright war, so do I fear it, and neither of us wants it. Whom could it benefit but Gloucester? If I gained a commote, I should have lost two years of solid work and the beginning, at least, of a secure peace. No, I'll keep what I have, and stake Caerphilly on King Henry's word."

  Thus that year ended in truce and the resumption of the wearisome legal arguments, but with nothing lost, and the castle in crown hands. And though the affair took an ill turn in the first weeks of the following year, and in effect Llewelyn lost the game, yet I am still sure that he did right to believe in the king's promise. Both Henry and his bishops acted in good faith, but the truth is that Gloucester was then possibly the most powerful man in the kingdom, and certainly the most lawless, and the old and ailing monarch had no means of mastering him, short of calling out the feudal host to make war on him, and if he had done anything so drastic it is certain they would not have obeyed. Marcher hangs with marcher, baron with baron, and Henry was not the man to overbear his troublesome vassals at the best of times, much less now in his old age.

  Exactly how it befell we never did learn, but doubtless the force left to garrison the shell of Caerphilly during that winter was not strong, since Llewelyn had taken his army home, and the march was in any case alerted. However it was, Gloucester got possession of the place again, and manned it with such force that no one cared to try to wrest it from him. He may have raised an alarm of attack as his excuse to seize the castle, or he may have produced some devious point of law. However he contrived it, he was back in Caerphilly in January, and though the prince sent a formal protest to the king, and indeed got back from him, in February, a somewhat lame and apologetic letter attempting explanation and excuse, there was nothing more that could be done about it. David took fire and urged instant action, but Llewelyn would have none of it.

  "To repeat what we did in November? To what end? You heard the bishops. Do you think that order has ever been rescinded? No, if I resorted to arms now it would mean the whole border aflame; it would mean war with England. The king could no more prevent it than he could prevent this move Gloucester has made. Caerphilly is not worth it, and I will not do it. I will not do it to Wales nor to England, and I will not do it to King Henry. His brother Richard is dying at Wallingford, and God knows how long after him Henry will be. My business is to conserve what I hold, and make the ground firmer under it. I choose to let Gloucester preen himself on his cleverness and keep his castle. But if he stir out of it to move against me he shall find out how little he has gained."

  And so this matter was left, in a manner satisfactory to none of us, but better than the ruin of war between two countries so recently brought to a peace still fragile. In these years Llewelyn had always a sure sense of how far he might go without wreck, and how much he should endure without outrage, and to this point I do not think he had ever made a mistake. His eyes were always on his ultimate object, which was the firm establishment of the principality of Wales, founded upon rock, and linked by ties of friendship and respect with England. Bound as we were to that powerful and ambitious nation by a border half as long as our frontier with the sea, there was no possibility that we could live and rule ourselves in isolation from our neighbour. But equally, if we surrendered ourselves too lavishly to that alliance we were doomed to be swallowed up. This was both his peril and his opportunity, and between the two there was but a tiny step, to be crossed whenever his balance faltered. To this day I do not know, to my life's end I shall never be sure, when, or if ever, he failed of keeping that balance, or whether from the beginning of the world our doom was written, and with it his, however wise, gallant and devoted. When all is said, this is but the first of worlds, the last is yet to be; and what overturning of emperors and exalting of captives there shall be then, what abasement of victors, what laurels for the vanquished, all this is in the hand of God.

In the same month of April, for us in Wales, arose the business of my lord's next brother, Rhodri, who came between Llewelyn and David.

  It was then the ninth year that Rhodri had been in the prince's castle of Dolwyddelan, imprisoned after his attempt to rescue Owen Goch, the eldest of the four brothers, who had been far longer in confinement because of his early attack upon Llewelyn in arms, at a time when they shared the rale in Gwynedd equally between them. Equality was not enough for Owen. He fought for all, and lost all; and at this late time I think there were not many among the ordinary people of this new land of Wales, so much greater than merely Gwynedd, and Llewelyn's unaided creation, who gave a thought to him any longer. But the scholars of the old school, and the ancient lawyers, and the bards, still raised their protests for him from time to time, for they could not get used to the notion of a Welsh state, but still thought of the old law as irrevocable truth and right, and of all Welsh lands as partible between all the sons of the royal house, though they knew as well as the rest of us that a return to the old way would soon tear the country into puny commotes and cantrefs ready to fall at a touch into marcher hands.