The Brothers of Gwynedd (139 page)

  He came back to his apartments silent, grave, immense of eye, as though he had seen a great light, but was not dazzled. And when all the remaining business in preparation for the morrow was done, and all his people dismissed, he kept me with him in his own chamber, and I knew there was something he wanted, though still pondering the wisdom of proceeding with it, but still more the impossibility of being at rest without it. Half I knew in my heart what it was, even before he turned to me, all graven in gold and bronze against sudden blanched white; for the blood left his face, and the dark pools of his eyes, withdrawn deeper now, in his middle years, into the pure, stark caverns of bone, burned from within with a fierce, fixed light.

  "Samson," he said, "my brother is here in this town, is he not?"

  At this depth he had, and always had had, but one brother.

  I said: "Yes, he is here."

  "And you know where to find him?" he said, never taking those deep eyes from me.

  I said yes, I knew.

  "Go to him, Samson," said Llewelyn, not ordering but entreating, "and ask him, of his grace, to come to me." He saw how I gazed, pondering the meaning of such a plea, when he was able to command if he would. "I have a great need in me," he said, low-voiced, "to be reconciled with all men, but most with one I have loved most, and smarted against most fiercely. The deeper the wrongs between us, whether mine or his, the more need I have of mutual forgiveness. If I am to go to her tomorrow with a quiet mind, I must have peace and absolution all about me. There is no other way of approaching perfection. I cannot touch her hand while I still have an ill thought in me. Once in a life comes this moment, I will not let it be defaced."

  I was more than willing, but I thought of David burning in defiance of his own chivalry and striding away out of the court at Rhuddlan, and I dreaded his obduracy. I said: "What if he will not come?"

  "I cannot call him on his fealty," said Llewelyn, "he no longer owes me any, he has given his fealty elsewhere. I am not his lord, and he is not my vassal. So much the better. I can only ask him, out of old kindness. The rest lies with him." And in a moment, when I was already at the door, he said, quite softly and certainly: "But he will come."

  I went down through the town to St. Wulstan's hospice, and it was clear dark, and all the sky above me was a moony stillness, hushed and windless. I had barely reached the doorway of the guest-hall when I met Godred in the passage, and at sight of me he stood squarely in my path, and made to halt me with the presence of his particular love and friendship, which still he kept up as of old, though every last vestige of goodwill in it was long since turned to gall. I saw then, in the torchlight, that the flaxen gold of his hair was dusted over, as it were with ash, and his comeliness dried and withered with malice, but still he liked his comfort and his finery, and took good care of his body, which was youthful still.

  "Samson!" he cried in high, glad tones of welcome. "They tell me you were here earlier in the day, looking for Cristin. A pity you should miss her! But why did you not come and spend an hour or two with me, brotherly as in the old days? We could have passed the time very pleasantly, you and I, talking of old friends. We all grow older year by year—even Cristin! You know we lost our child? And that she'll have no more?"

  Once he would have been handling me before this, but now he did not come within touch, only stood blocking my path with his smiling face like a mask, and his eyes gazing from far within his skull, like fine, furtive beasts peering out of ambush. He no longer cared even to trick or trap me into Cristin's arms, no longer grudged us the anguished triumph of our virtuous love, or lusted after the victory of dragging us down to his level, where we could be despised and forgotten, perhaps even forgiven. He had gone beyond that, into pure and perfect hatred of us both, but now that she had lost him his son, the child of his revenge, she had become as it were both holy and an abomination to him, and could not be touched, and all that immense hatred turned towards me.

  All this was in his face, like the growing shadow of deadly sickness. And him I could not hate. He was his own torment, and his own poison. I was sorry for him.

  "Not now!" I said. "I am here on the prince's business. Stand out of my way, or, better, bring me to your lord."

  "Endlessly dutiful, and never time for dalliance," said Godred, sighing, and turned and led me to the room where David was. "Some day," he said to me, with his hand at the door and his glance sliding along his shoulder to my face, "you and I will reach that quiet hour or two together that time has never given us, with no one else by to come between—not even Cristin." And he went away and left me to go in to David.

  Cristin and Elizabeth were sitting at a small inlaid board playing at tables. David was watching them moodily over his wine, his face in repose but not at ease, the black, winged brows drawn down into a tight line above half-closed eyes. They all looked up when I entered, surprised and enquiring, for the hour was getting late.

  "My lord," I said, "your brother sends me to ask you, of your grace, to come to him." It was my whole message, I saw no need to add one word.

  "Now?" said David, and drew his feet in under him and sat sharply forward in his chair, astonished. "Of my grace?" he said, and the contortion of a smile came and went on his lips in an instant, like a flash of stormy light.

  "Now?" said Elizabeth, echoing him, startled and distrustful, and reaching, as always, to stand between David and anything that might shape into a threat. "So late? Can it not wait until tomorrow?"

  "Hush, love!" said David, with quite another smile. "Who knows whether tomorrow comes for him? And think how full tomorrow is to be. It may well be tonight or never." And he looked at me, and through me, and very far beyond, perhaps back, perhaps forward, I could not tell. "My brother!" he said. "Not the prince?"

  "Your brother. Not the prince."

  "I will come," said David.

We went uphill through the streets with two of his attendants to light us with torches, and I brought him into the room where Llewelyn sat alone. The prince rose as soon as the door opened, but did not come to meet us, and when I would have stepped back and left them together, David laid a hand quickly and imperiously upon my arm. With his eyes on his brother's face he said: "Stay with me! God knows I may need my confessor."

  "Stay with us," said Llewelyn, echoing and amending. "We may both need a witness, we could not have a better. What is there you do not know already about us both?"

  So I remained in the room with them, standing apart, and what passed that night I know, and none other knows it now in this world.

  "You sent for me," said David as the silence grew long. "I am come."

  "That was kind, and I am grateful," said Llewelyn. "David, of all the needs I have now, the greatest is to be at peace with you. I am going to a new beginning and a great happiness, and I cannot go without an act of purification, and the peace of absolution. While I am in enmity with you I am not whole. For my part, I ask pardon for all I have done amiss towards you, for too much preoccupation with other things and too little regard to your wants, for failures of understanding and of kindness. I ask your forgiveness. Will you take my hand, and be my brother again?"

  The candles were low and dim in the room, the twilight kind to those two, but even so I watched the colour drain away out of David's face until he burned whiter than the puny flames, and the blue of his eyes was both bright and blind, as though he looked equally at Llewelyn and deep into his own being. But his voice was even and low as he said: "It is generous in you to make the first move, but beware of being too hasty."

  "I have not made the first move," said Llewelyn, and smiled. "You did that, at Rhuddlan, when you would not let me seem, even for an instant, to be without a guarantor."

  The first ease of blood returning came faintly into David's face. "I dislike insolence," he said, "in underlings, but hate it in kings. You would be justified in believing that was done against Edward rather than for you."

  "So I might," said Llewelyn, "if you had not fled me so resolutely when I came looking for you. I am ashamed that I did not do then what I am doing now, and pursue you until I had you safe in hold. Well? May I have an answer?"

  "Not yet!" said David, recoiling. "There is much I have to say before I let you take me back into your favour. Forgive me if I rehearse again what you already know, but if you will not call it to mind, I must. Have you forgotten Bryn Derwin? The first time I played you false? It was I who stirred up Owen to play my game for me, I who put the arguments into his mouth, and when that came to nothing, the sword into his hand and the treason into his mind. I told you then you would do well to kill me, while you could, before I did worse to you, but you would not do it. Within the year you took me back into your grace, mistaking me for the innocent tool. You gave me land and office, and trusted me, and I took and took from you all that you offered. But I had warned you! Why would you not be warned?"

  "This is foolish," said Llewelyn gently. "I have not asked you for any promises or any recantations. There are no conditions. Let the past alone, we have all been at fault."

  "No!" said David. "Let me speak. If you have needs, before you can go clean and whole to Eleanor's love, so have I before I re-enter into yours. I have not finished yet. There was a second time—do you remember? When you went to keep the border for Earl Simon, and called me on my fealty, and because of some high words between us, and because of my will to take them in the worst meaning possible, I withdrew myself and my best men from you, and went over to the king's side. Have you forgotten that? Samson will not have forgotten! He tried to bring me back to my duty, and I all but slew him and left him lying. The second treason! No, wait!" he said in a sharp, wrung cry when Llewelyn would again have hushed him. "I have not finished yet. There was a third betrayal, the worst. I cannot claim I hatched that plot myself, it took a woman to do that. But when Owen ap Griffith came to me with the bait, I swallowed it. There was I with children, and you barren and unwed, and Wales to be won for the son I was sure of getting. We planned your death! Have you forgotten so soon? But for the floods we should have accomplished it."

  All this he said without any visible pride or shame, without any expression of regret or plea for pardon, without one word of excuse or explanation, without dwelling on or hastening past loathsome details. For him the healing was in uttering these things and laying them open without conceal. But even then I could not be certain, nor, I think, could he, whether he would ever have let it come to the proof, that night in the February storms, whether it was success or failure he prayed for in the chapel at Aber.

  "Leave this!" said Llewelyn. "It is too grievous. And I have not asked you anything of all this, and feel no need to hear it."

  "But I need to say it, and to be sure that you have it well in mind. I am what I am! I make no pretence to show better or worse. I
know
what I am. And if you want to make peace with me, it must be with open eyes, without any promises or pledges of amendment. God may amend me! I doubt if I can."

  "One question, then, I will ask, and only one," said Llewelyn. "Do you not want to be reconciled with me?"

  Very mildly and simply he said it, and David writhed, and tried three times to answer, and each time withdrew and swallowed the words, unable to get out the severing lie, unwilling to pour out the aching truth, because if once he showed his longing he knew it would be supplied out of hand. Shamelessly he had taken from both Llewelyn and Edward whatever was offered, as I think despising Edward for welcoming and making use of a traitor, and even in some degree disdaining Llewelyn for so rashly forgiving and harbouring one to his own danger. Shamelessly he had taken, and acknowledged no debt in return, but this one thing, and on this one night, he could not accept without feeling himself bound for its full price. The sweat stood on his forehead and lip, and he was mute. And Llewelyn read him rightly for once, and smiled.

  "There have been others," he said mildly, "have betrayed three times, and yet in the end died for the cause they betrayed."

  "But, by your leave," said David, wrestling with his devils, "you are not yet the son of God, only of Griffith, like me. And it will be some while yet to cock-crow. True," he said, with a tormented grin that was like a contortion of pain, "I am come by night and with torches to salute you—worse than Saint Peter! Would you not do well, even yet, to avoid and denounce while you may? After the kiss it will be too late!"