The Brothers of Gwynedd (129 page)

  About the same time that the host was moving up from Shrewsbury to Chester, we had word from our patrol boats, keeping watch off Anglesey, of the ships of the Cinque Ports navy being sighted rounding the island, holding well off from the land, and clearly sailing to rendezvous with Edward and lie at his orders in the estuary of the Dee. Gradually their numbers were reported, as they were sighted, to the number then of eighteen ships. Somewhat later others followed them, bringing the tally to twenty-seven, and one of them at least was French. The masters and sailors owed the king fifteen days of service without pay, from the day they came into effective action, and from the beginning of August he must have taken them into full pay, and very dear they would cost him. Our scouts also reported great numbers of men assembled at Chester who appeared to bear no arms, but to be workmen massed for some prodigious task, as though Edward intended extensive building, or something equally unusual in such a campaign. We began to see the full, daunting extent of his preparations, the like of which had never been used against Wales before, and I confess it chilled us.

  "He is willing to beggar himself," said Llewelyn, "to break me."

  We had our line of outposts, the first defence, along the forest land above the Dee, and the mass of our northern forces well in cover inland, ready to act upon whatever word we received. The forest there was of great extent and very thick, a sturdy protection to us because we knew it well, and could penetrate it where we would with small, fast-moving raiding parties, while the royal army could not hope to operate well in such country, or bring us to open battle. It was our design to harry their every move by raids, and draw them as far into the forest as we could, where we could pick off any stragglers very easily, and hamper all their movements, especially since we expected them to be laden with all their baggage and supplies once they moved from Chester. And this was the first miscalculation, for they had now a large and powerful fleet lying in the estuary, and when they marched from Chester they marched almost as light as we, the ships carrying their supplies and keeping pace with them along the coast. Nor did Edward advance deep into the forest at all. He moved with method along the coast, his ships alongside, and all that great army of knights, troopers, archers and labourers went with him, north-westward towards the abbey of Basingwerk.

  We in the forest moved with them, too, picking off any unwary enough to stray, and by night local knifemen silently stalked and killed such as they could of the sentries guarding the camps. But soon we saw how different this war was to be from any we had known. Edward's burdening himself with all those labourers was explained within two days, for they were felling trees ahead of the host, strongly guarded as they worked, and opening up a great swathe to make a road which an army could use. Unless we could prevent, we should be robbed of one of our greatest advantages, the difficulty the English always had in bringing up their supplies. Now they had the ships on one hand, and were tearing apart our forest to make a highroad on the other.

  By day and by night we harried and raided them, and took heavy toll, but with our cover stripped in this wide swathe between us and them, and their picked companies of archers, more than three hundred of them, constantly on guard while the labourers worked, we had lost much of our sting. We tried every means of luring them into the thicker woods, but plainly Edward's plans were absolute and his orders were obeyed, and there were very few rash sallies, and only when we pressed them hard at some risk to ourselves. In ten days they had cut their way to within a few miles of the abbey of Basingwerk, where there was a great level plane of rock jutting out into the estuary, and there the main army made a strong camp, cleared about on every side so that we had no cover to approach them undetected. And there they stayed, so arraying their forces that it was clear they meant to fortify and hold that spot as a base. This rock we called the Flint.

  An advance guard, strong in archers, still pushed on along the coastal edge of the forest with the woodsmen, who continued their felling, digging and levelling, and burned the underbrush as they went. Our scouts brought back word that the king had taken up residence at Basingwerk, and seemed prepared to stay some time, and that there was great activity at the main camp at the Flint. Several of his Cinque Ports ships were observed going back and forth to Chester, and bringing up and unloading cargoes of timber, while other materials, cords, wooden planking, lime, were already being carted along the new road in an endless chain of wagons. Within a few days we heard what was toward, though we had guessed it before. Edward's labourers were building there a very large and strong base post, which would surely be well garrisoned even when the main army moved on.

  This was the first time that Llewelyn turned to tactics the Welsh seldom used, and made one attack in force against the half-built stronghold. We did not then know it, but at that time Edward was not with his army, but had taken ship and crossed the estuary to return to Chester, partly to ensure that his transport lines in Cheshire were working properly, partly to meet his queen at a spot where he had decided to build a great abbey, to be called Vale Royal. This was the time he chose to see the foundations of that church laid, so confident and resolute was he, and such deserved trust did he place in his captains in the field, Warwick, Montalt, de Knovill, the warden of the Cinque Ports, who commanded the fleet, and many more. Yes, and David, too, for David was always close about his person and first among the defenders wherever we attacked. Thus it happened that in Edward's absence David with his own guard and other troops was in command of the defences of Flint the day the prince made his strongest bid to destroy the fences and walls they had raised. It was to be then or never, before too much work had been done, and too much ground cleared about it.

  It was all timber, and might be fired if the wind was right. A wind driving up the estuary was what we wanted, for our best approach was from seaward, where the road was still in the making and less open, and with good fortune we might even fire any ships that happened then to be lying alongside, and destroy their landing-stage.

  It was early in August that we got what we wanted, and in the early evening made our attack. Llewelyn had sent a company of archers ahead along the half-made road to make a feint at attacking the workmen there, and draw the guards to defend them, and by this means though at some loss, for they never relaxed their watchfulness altogether, we did break through them and get across the road close to Flint, and drove down upon the palisades in strength. We had bowmen placed in cover as near as we dared, who loosed fire-arrows before us into the camp, and there was a good blaze within and a stir of wild activity before we reached the walls.

  That fight was short and very fierce, and there were men killed on both sides, but they had such numbers that we never broke through to the ships. Surely we left much damage behind us when we withdrew, but not as great as we had hoped, for the traitor wind dropped with the gathering evening, instead of freshening as we had expected, and the blaze merely opened a large gap in the outer defences, and destroyed some supplies within. But what I chiefly remember of the clash is David marshalling the guard as they mounted in haste to meet and break our charge.

  He was but lightly armed, and his face uncovered, and I saw him before he had discovered Llewelyn, and realised who led the attack. David's movements in action were always as sharp and cutting as lightning-stroke, but cold, if a kind of keen happiness can exist hand in hand with coldness. He was a born fighter, and could scent battle like a hound, but it was informed delight, not passion, that dictated what he did in battle. So he began this defence, very briskly and practically deploying his men and holding station with his line as they rode at us. Then he saw his brother. His face so changed, it might have been another man. Every line of his fine bones sharpened and burned deadly white, and the blue of his eyes dilated into a steely blaze, and from keeping his purposeful pace he suddenly spurred forth from the line, wrenching out his sword, leaned forward in the saddle and drove at the prince like a madman. So I had seen him do once before, very long before, on the field of Bryn Derwin, the field of his first treason. Now, as then, I saw in his blanched face and desperate eyes a terrible anguish of hate and love, and the more terrible hope of an end to it. Towards that end he drove with all his might, and he might have achieved it, if the young Llewelyn ap Rhys Fychan, his nephew, had not deliberately wheeled in between them, with a defiant scream of anger, and confronted David with the younger, purer mirror-image of his own face, spitting generous rage.

  I think he could have killed the boy very easily, and perhaps would have done, almost without thinking, but for that likeness between them, as if God had flung the fresh, sweet remembrance of his own youth in his face. He let his sword-arm fall, and checked so violently that his horse reared and swerved aside. And then his own ranks had overtaken his rush, and the two lines clashed and intermingled in a close, confined melee, in which the brothers were swept apart.

  Twice thereafter, in the press, I caught glimpses of David's ice-pale face, straining towards Llewelyn, but the other Llewelyn kept always jealously close at his uncle's flank, and in any case, that fight was nearly over. Something we had done, as yet at little loss. But if we did not draw off soon our losses would be great, for the camp was pouring out against us great numbers of reserves, and all surprise was over. Llewelyn signalled the withdrawal, and we massed and drew off in good order, gaining enough ground to wheel and storm across the road at speed, and so gain the shelter of the trees, where the advantage was ours. We put a mile or more between us and the borders of the Flint before we checked, but they did not pursue us into cover. They never did. Edward's will had decreed it, and they did his will with a confidence we could not but admire.

  We left the stockade burning, but alas, it did not burn long. We also left a number of dead behind us, and took several wounded away, including the boy Llewelyn, who had a long gash in his forearm, of which he was proud, for he was exalted with the air of battle, and still enraged for his adored uncle.

  "I hate traitors!" he said, quivering still when we bound him up in camp, and made him comfortable.

  "So do we all, child," said the prince sombrely, "though not so sorely, perhaps, as they hate themselves. You had no call to fling this body of yours in between, very prettily as you did it, and much as I'm beholden to you for the thought. I could have satisfied him."

  And he praised and teased and soothed the excited young man into charmed quietness, and left him with the one brother he still acknowledged.

  "We are beset by brothers, every one of us," he said, when he came out to me by the campfire in our clearing, in the onset of the August night. "It is the whole story of Wales, this blessing and curse of brotherhood, the spring of loyalty, of jealousy, of murder, of all the heroisms and the villainies of our history." And he lay down on his belly in the rough grass, and gnawed on a spray of sorrel, with its hot, spicy taste, and pondered long on what we had both seen. "In God's name," he said, "what is it he wants? To kill, or to be killed?"

  I said: "Either. He wants an end, it hardly matters which. He wants to offer you the chance you would not take at Bryn Derwin, or else to make an end of you, and so cut the knot that binds him. But he cannot do it, and you will not. I doubt his end is ordained otherwise."

  "And mine?" said Llewelyn, and smiled.

We never managed to destroy the base camp at Flint. They spent three weeks and more making it into a fortress. Edward came back from his pious labours at Vale Royal in mid-August, and by then the second part of his military road was extended well forward, for here the forest was less thick, and in parts they had only to fell and clear scattered trees, to open the field of fire for their defending archers. As soon as Edward came, the main army moved on. By the twentieth day of August it had reached Rhuddlan, from which our garrison withdrew into the hills, for Rhuddlan is among marshes on the right bank of the Clwyd, not far inland from the coast, a place tenable, perhaps, by an encroaching army moving in from the low land, but not by us who had to rely on the mountains for our heart-fortress. We did not forsake it gladly, for it covers two advances, one along the coast to Conway, one inland up the Clwyd towards Ruthin and Denbigh. But the dry season, not for the first time in our history, had laid it open to direct assault, instead of being inviolable behind marsh after marsh, and the truth is, we could not hold it.