The Brothers of Gwynedd (118 page)

Late in the evening I looked for him and could not find him, though he had presided at the high table as always, with a calm face and a commanding eye, and been gracious to the young man, Cynan's nephew, who had brought him two such momentous and perilous messages. Not a word had he yet said to us of either, gone beyond indecision, beyond exultation or despair, forgetful of the king in the sudden sense he had of being near to Eleanor, as though the miles of air between had shrunk, so that he could all but stretch out his hand and touch her cheek. I should have known from old experience where to find him, and there he was, when I thought on the certainty at last, alone in his chapel before the small altar light, not on his knees but standing erect, his eyes upon the little silver glimmer that flowed reflected down the cross, and in his cupped hands before him the painted and enamelled medallion that Earl Simon had given to him long ago, the image of a child's grave and marvellous face in profile, with the heavy braid of dark-gold hair coiled upon her shoulder. Twelve years old she was when that portrait was made, hardly older when her father betrothed her to the prince, and now she was a woman grown, twenty-two years old, and I had not seen her for those ten years, and except in this image, Llewelyn had never seen her.

  "God forgive me," he said, very low, for he knew who came in to him without looking round, "God forgive me that I can be glad, when she has lost a mother she surely loved. But if she has waited, as I have—oh, Samson, if she has indeed waited for me with a single heart, as I for her—then even she may be glad at the heart of her sorrow. And when I see her face to face, and take her hand, it shall be my life's work to make her glad, and fend off from her every sorrow and every doubt. At Evesham I was promised I should be his son. The blind man blessed me, in Earl Simon's name and in God's name, and wished me fulfilment. It cannot fail!"

  I wondered then if there had ever been times when he had doubted of winning her, for he was human like other men, and could not be always constant in faith. But it is all one, for I believe, whatever the exaltations and despairs of his spirit, he had never contemplated giving up the fight, and to die still pursuing an ideal is not defeat, but victory. Now it was so near that his extended hands touched the hem of her garment.

  "I must not take her consent for granted," he said, "nor her brother's approval, either. She has never seen me, I am only a name to her, remembered for the sake of her father. But now at least I may send and offer for her in good faith, and she may say yes or no to me, and at no other person's leave but hers will I take her. There is a wine-ship of St. Malo lying in Caergybi now, and ready to leave. My envoy and notaries shall sail with her, and with good weather they may be in France within the week. This Montargis is south of Paris, is it not?"

  "Twenty leagues or so," I said, "perhaps twenty-five."

  "And Montfort l'Amaury, from which her family came?"

  "Closer still, very close to the city."

  I had never been over the sea, but often, in the days when I was Llewelyn's envoy in Earl Simon's retinue, I had talked with his son Henry, and sometimes with the earl himself, about the lands in France which they had left to put down deep and powerful roots in England. As for Eleanor, I think she had never seen France until her mother took her away after Earl Simon's death at Evesham. She was born in Kenilworth, the youngest of her line, and the only daughter after five sons, three of them now dead, one just absolved from excommunication but still right-less and landless, one, the last, a scholar of Padua and a papal chaplain. To his care she was now committed, and with his goodwill, in no way bound by promises made to Edward, as her mother's had been, she could be married.

  "In a month," said Llewelyn, his eyes steady and bright upon the flicker of silver light on the altar, "I may get her answer. I would to God I could go myself, if she consents, and bring her home, but I dare not turn my back here. It is her dower, and her son's inheritance, I am nursing now, and I must hold it safe for them. But, Samson, if she consents—you knew her, she will not have forgotten! -I would have you go as my proxy, and speak the words for me at our first wedding."

Not until the wine-ship had sailed, and with it Cynfric and the prince's best notaries, with his proposals and gifts, did Llewelyn turn his attention to King Edward's summons to Chester. But when he did, it was clear that a part of his mind had been busy with it in secret. For things had changed greatly since he set forth to meet the king at Shrewsbury on the same errand, and illness prevented. He had then had no complaints or grievances against the king, and no suspicions of his motives and intentions. Now he had all these, and to a grave degree.

  "Since we have some weeks of grace," he said, "this shall be done in proper form, and not I, but the council of the princes of all Wales, shall make the decision." And he called such a council to assemble in the next month. All the magnates of his realm received his writs, and all attended.

  Llewelyn read out to the assembly the king's summons, and laid it on the table before them.

  "Less than a year ago," he said, "I received such a summons to Shrewsbury, and set out to obey it and keep that appointment. But then it was at a place and date agreed between us, and I had nothing to argue against it. I will not keep secret from you that I would gladly see Wales free of all obligation to any other monarch, if I might do so upon terms of peace with our neighbours, and without breaking faith. But that I cannot do, as yet. I made a treaty with King Henry, and I am bound by it still, and do not wish to repudiate the bond. Provided the king, as the other party to the agreement, keeps its terms and performs his own obligations, I have promised him homage and fealty and I shall pay it. But a treaty requires the keeping of faith by both sides. As to my own part, I have not until this time, as I see it, defaulted in any point. I have held back the recent moneys due under treaty, but I have said repeatedly that it is ready to be paid as soon as reparation is made for violations of my borders and acts of aggression against my men. Until a year ago I would have said, also, that King Edward has kept to terms, and respects the treaty. Now I am less certain. Hear my reasons, and tell me honestly if I am making much of little, and finding malice where none is.

  "As to the infringements of our borders, they began before the king returned to England, and in part I know they are to be expected, and cannot be charged against him. Nor dare I claim my own men are invariably guiltless. But see how these troubles have increased during this year since he came home, when I expected them to be strongly taken in hand. I have written letter after letter, detailing every violence, every offence; he cannot say he is not informed. There has been offered no remedy.

  "Again, and still closer to the mark, those traitors who conspired against my life fled at once, when charged, to England, and that in David's case when he had every opportunity to defend himself in court, and in Griffith's case even after his son's confession, and after clemency had been twice offered to him if he would come to my peace. They were sure of their welcome, or why make such a choice? Do all princes welcome their neighbours' traitors with open arms? Princes of goodwill, with no evil intent? Even if they shelter and maintain and tolerate them, do they leave them at large on the borders of the land they have offended, and allow them to raid across those borders at will? I think not. Yet this is what King Edward has done. He cannot say he was not told the full truth about their conspiracy, he cannot say he has not been told of their depredations from Shrewsbury. Still there has been no remedy, and no change.

  "I have been long in looking beyond this point, but I am come to it now. In all that Edward now does, and all that he deliberately refrains from doing, I see the gradual erosion of the treaty of Montgomery. I am driven to believe that he means, when he has weakened it enough, to repudiate it, and be free to conduct the old enmity against Wales, in the hope of conquest, and that he will use my brother, and Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, and any other such powerful tools as may fall into his hands, to that end.

  "Now consider, and tell me, in the light of all this, how am I to reply to this summons to Chester?"

  They hesitated long, pondering, all watching him with doubt and anxiety, his young nephews of Dynevor most earnestly. The elders among them, I think, had reached the same suspicion long before Llewelyn opened his mind to it. But it was Tudor who took up the argument, and very gravely.

  "I have gone this road," said he, "a stage further even than the lord prince. This murder was planned for February of last year, while King Edward was still away from his kingdom—true enough. But how far away? In Gascony, and then on the road to Montreuil and Calais. For a good year before he came home there were couriers running back and forth to him across the sea, and half the business of England was in his hands, and half the court of England overseas in his company. Was it so hard for those who planned our lord's death to send their messages back and forth among the rest? How if the assassins were sure of their welcome in England because it was promised in advance?"

  I was watching Llewelyn's face when this was said to him, and I knew then past doubt that such a thought had never so far entered his mind, being so alien to his own nature, which he was all too apt to attribute as candidly to his enemies. I knew, too, that now, at Tudor's instance, the notion struck deep as a sword-thrust, and would not be easily dislodged, however he contended against belief.

  He sat roused and startled. "Are you saying," he asked with care, "that the king may have been a party to the plot to kill me?"

  "I am saying more. I am saying that the king may have instigated it," said Tudor stoutly.

  "I cannot believe it," said Llewelyn. "He may be willing to go far in his lust for conquest, but he could not stoop so low as to suborn murder. It is impossible!"

  "How so, my lord? Only in the sense that this king regularly performs the impossible. It was impossible a noble prince should pledge his good faith time and time again in Earl Simon's war, and time and time again break it, but he did it. It was impossible he should give his parole, with the most solemn oaths, and callously discard it, but he did that also. Consider the circumstances! Has he not all his life been close to your brother? Has not David once before deserted Wales for England, and served Edward, even in arms, to the best of his power? Who was it wrote into the treaty the provisions for David, that he should be re-established in at least the equal of what he had before? Did Edward scruple to make use of a traitor then? To reward a traitor? You know he did not! Strange, indeed, if such an attempt on the lord prince's life were timed so carefully to herald the king's home-coming without implicating him, and he unaware of it, who had the most to gain. Stranger still, when it failed, that those who did the work should fly so directly into his arms, unless he owed them protection for their services. It would suit King Edward very well to have David installed in your place. David is his creature. You belong to yourself and to Wales."

  "You make too strong a case," said Llewelyn, very pale, "though I won't deny a certain logic. It may not be as you say, but only that circumstances give it colour."

  "True," said Tudor, "that it
may
not be as I have said, but not true that I make too strong a case. I make the case we must make, and must consider fully, before we can know what it is wise to do now. For the end of it is, that it very well
may
be as I have said. And that is more than enough. Has he behaved all this year as if intending justice, or has he nursed the murderers, given them aid and protection, allowed them to run riot over his borders with impunity, against your rights and your lands? You know the answer better than any!"

  Then Madoc ap Griffith of Maelor spoke up. So many of the older princes had passed from the world in those last few years that Llewelyn's council showed as a circle of young men, with only a few of Tudor's generation to add experience to their ardour, and Madoc, who was the eldest of four brothers, ranked almost as an elder of Wales among these glowing boys. He was shrewd, reasonable and provident, a good man in council.

  "There is one further point to be made," he said. "The king summons the lord prince into Chester to do his homage, and while Chester is a border town, it is also a royal garrison town, and to enter it is one thing, to leave it may be quite another. I have in mind the precedent of the lord prince's father, who accepted a king's word and went into the Tower as his guest, but never left that place again alive."

  "The king has offered safe-conduct," said Llewelyn fairly.

  "So he may, and he may even be honest in offering it. At the best, let us say he is. Even so, he puts no restraints upon your traitors and would-be assassins in Shrewsbury. We know he allows the Lord David access to his own court and person, what reason have we to suppose the king will curb his freedom if he attend him to Chester? A murderer can just as well strike in Chester as in Aber, once he is sure of the king's indulgence. And that's to put the best construction upon it. At the worst, if the king set them on once, or sanctioned what they suggested, so he can set them on again, and still, in public, wash his own hands."