The Brothers of Gwynedd (140 page)

  For answer, Llewelyn took three long strides across the room, certain now of his victory, gripped his brother by the shoulders, and kissed him, first on the right cheek, then on the left. In his grasp David shook terribly, like a beast in a fever. But at the second touch he heaved a great groan out of him, and caught Llewelyn fiercely into his arms, and returned the kiss with passion.

  A moment they clung thus, supporting each other. Then David slid from between the steadying hands, crumpling like an empty gown at his brother's feet, and with long palms clasping the prince's knees, broke into a storm of desperate and blissful weeping.

I went out with him when he left us, an hour later, flushed with assuaged grief, hushed with weariness and wonder, for a brief while purged of all ills, and docile and biddable as a child. A long while they had sat and talked together after that third peace was made, not of any great things, not disposing of old grudges or making more of penitence, but very simply, as memories stirred or thoughts blew them, like severed friends discovering each other afresh after long absence. In the autumn night the moon was still high, whiter and better than his servants' torches, and silvered his face in such daunting purity, as if he had just been born into a man's prime without sin.

  "No, come no further," he said, when I had brought him out as far as the gate. "I am confessed and shriven clean, I need my confessor no more tonight. Only pray for me, that I have heart for my penance, for this time it will be a life-long penance. I never shall quit him again, Samson. For what I am worth, he has won me. I only pray I may not do him worse injury with my love and loyalty than ever I did with my treason. I am two-edged, Samson! I dread I need not even turn in a man's hand to cut him to the heart."

  So he said, and the moonlight that blanched him was overcast for a moment by a drift of cloud, and shadow passed across his face. But when it was gone, and the light came again, he was tranquil as before, and if he moved like a man exhausted, it was the exhaustion of happiness.

  "Go and get your rest," I said, "if you mean to attend him in his glory at the church door tomorrow." The prince had not asked it, nor thought of it, but I knew it would make him glad, and it kindled David's eyes into pale blue flames, as though I had lighted a lamp.

  "Well thought of!" he said. "So I will, and be splendid enough to do him credit, too. I shall be the one gift of his marriage day that Edward cannot claim to have given him."

  And he laughed, with devilry in his laughter again, and by way of sealing the ceremonies of the night kissed me, too, in parting, and went away down through the town, to his bed and his Elizabeth.

The next day, therefore, when Llewelyn's groomsmen assembled before the hour at the great door of Worcester cathedral, one among them came unexpectedly, and he the finest and most glittering of all. And if some among the younger princes, notably Llewelyn ap Rhys Fychan of Iscennen, received him with dubious and offended faces and unflattering astonishment, Tudor and the elders were quick to grasp the meaning of his presence, and be thankful for it. One enmity the less, and one so close and damaging, was wedding gift enough. And when Llewelyn himself came to take his stand before them at the door, and the look those two exchanged made their reconciliation and their joy in it plain to be seen, even the young nephews, jealous for the prince's rights and burning with resentment of his wrongs, melted in the warmth of his high contentment, and were tamed.

  A fresh, bright day it was, after that clear night, with mild sunlight and a breeze blowing, and a fair scene that was, above the green meadows and the winding river. Before the great porch of the church the knot of glittering gallants waited, with Llewelyn standing alone at their head. That day he was all russet and gold and burning red, and on his hair the gold talaith, the crown of Wales, for he still had a principality to bring to his bride, and held it not from Edward but of hereditary right, and so would assert, for her sake even more than for his own, but most of all for the sake of his sons unborn, whose inalienable heritage it was. David glowed and smiled when he saw it, approving.

  Then came the court guests, a very splendid company, led by the queen and her noblewomen. This Spanish Eleanor was a slender lady, tall and fair, and in her manner very gentle, quiet and gracious, not beautiful or of assertive character, but in her own fashion steadfast and brave, as they say she had proved herself again and again in the crusade. After her party came the great officials of state, Robert Burnell, bishop and chancellor, the justiciar of Chester, the wardens of the marches, Mortimer, Clifford, Bohun, even William of Valence, the king's uncle and lord of Pembroke, and Gilbert de Clare of Gloucester. King Alexander of Scotland also came, a widower at that time after the death of King Edward's sister, Margaret. A fine man in the prime of life he was, and handsome. All the nobility of the land flocked into the cathedral of Worcester to do honour to the prince of Wales, and after them the lesser people of the court, and the attendants, until the vast church was full of colour and light and brilliance.

  I saw Elizabeth go by in the queen's train, and saw the look she exchanged with David as she passed, so full of pride and delight in him, and he of tenderness towards her, that their love was plain for all to see. And I thought again of the warning David had expressed only to me, and would not cast as a shadow, however slight, upon Llewelyn's day of happiness. These two Edward had joined in marriage, and though they seemed to move as free of him as the birds in the sky, how if he had never yet needed to collect the debt he conceived they owed him? And what if some day he did call in the bond they did not acknowledge, and demand payment in full for ail his outlay?

  I was thinking of it still when the king came crossing the green from the palace, with Earl Simon's daughter on his arm.

  Beside his huge figure she looked tiny, fragile and delicate, for the crown on her head came well short of his shoulder, and she had to reach up to lay her hand upon his arm. Beside his magnificence of black and scarlet and ermine she walked like a pale candle-name carried very steadily, for she was all ivory and gold from head to foot. Those who had not seen her before, for she had been kept in virtual retirement still, drew breath deep and long as they set their eyes on her, for the beauty she always had, which was indeed excelling, was doubled in this deliverance, and made of her a blinding light that dazzled the eyes. To watch them come, at distance, you would have said she was an exquisite image he had bought, and could have been carried aloft on the palm of his hand. But to look closely into her face, as she fixed her eyes upon Llewelyn and advanced towards him, looking neither right nor left, as to a lodestar, was to see her larger than Edward's grandeur, and more durable than his majesty, and to know that he had not money nor jewels enough in his treasury, nor lands enough in all his dominions, to buy the jewel that she was.

  They mounted the steps towards us, and came to Llewelyn. And there before the doorway the king laid Eleanor's hand in Llewelyn's hand, and I wondered if he saw as he did it that neither the one nor the other gave ever an eye to him, or was any longer aware of his great shadow falling across their joined hands. They had eyes only for each other, the prince's deep and dark and full of secret light, and Eleanor's wide and clear in gold-flecked green, like sunlight in spring forests. Their faces were pale and serene, the one as rapt as the other, and they did not cease to gaze upon each other thus in wonder and bliss as they turned together, and went hand in hand into the cool dimness of the church, to their second marriage.

  That was not the end of the king's favours. At the steps of the altar, before they were blessed, he laid his own personal gift upon the open pages of Llewelyn's prayer book, a bookmark of woven gold and silk, intricately made. And over their marriagefeast, that night in the bishop's palace, he himself presided, in vast good humour, and bore the expense of all. And I saw the small curl of David's lip, and knew that he was reckoning how lavish the sum laid out to buy what could not be bought, and saw, too, the stern, straight line of his black brows over aloof and critical eyes, and knew he resented the very suggestion of such a purchase, where for himself he had merely shrugged and despised, taken all and conceded nothing. But Llewelyn, I am sure, saw nothing but somewhat possessive kindness, and a desire to seal the peace with promise of a friendly future, and for the sake of Wales that was a good omen.

  When the long evening ended, they brought bride and groom in procession to the prince's apartment, where the bedchamber was decked for them, and the candles lighted. And there the bridal pair said their thanks and their goodnight, with that same rapt composure that had possessed them ever since their hands touched, but with such authority that even the king accepted it as dismissal, and drew off his retinue and left those two together.

  When the door was closed upon them and all was quiet, I went out into the cloister and walked in the cool of the night, and saw the last candle go out in their chamber, and thought of Cristin, who had been left behind with the children. All that day I had not seen her, but now my heart was the lighter because David was reunited with his brother, and would surely join his household with Llewelyn's on the morrow, and ride to Oswestry in the wedding company.

  So my lord came at once to an ending and a beginning, and the loss he had sustained was compensated with as great a gain. And, I, too, sat alone in the night, weary but cautiously content, measuring my own losses and gains, and found a good hope in the omens of that day.

  But the best and strangest omen was yet to come. For when I had been alone there in the silence a great while, and was about to rise and go in from the chill of the air, suddenly I heard from the window above me the paired murmur of two voices, in words too soft to be distinguished, and needing no interpreter, two threads of sound that interwove and caressed like the strands of a song. And then the deeper voice pealed out in a cascade of exultant bronze laughter, and over it the other soared like a silver fountain of sparkling drops. And I sat lost in amazement and giving thanks to God, as I listened to the sweetest sound ever I heard, the prince and princess of Wales laughing aloud together for joy, and in each other's arms at last.

I, Samson, clerk, servant and friend life-long to Prince Llewelyn, born under the same roof and in the same night as my lord, have told how he laboured steadfastly to make of Wales a noble sovereign state, peer to England and in peace with her, how for a few years that aim was achieved, when after the treaty of Montgomery he lived side by side in amity with King Henry the Third until that monarch's death, and how thereafter, with the succession of King Edward, all things changed, and England and Wales were again driven to war.

  Of that year of struggle I have told, when the lesser Welsh princes, not yet ready for the vision of nationhood and clutching each at his own local right, fell away before the king's lance, and a hard-fought war ended perforce in a hard-fought peace. By that treaty, drawn at Aberconway, my lord was forced to relinquish half his realm, won with his own hand, in order to keep inviolate his hereditary stronghold of Gwynedd-west-of-Conway, the mountain fastness of Snowdon. And having accepted with fortitude this grievous diminution, he did homage and swore fealty to Edward, accepting also the bond of his pledged word.

  Yet in this great loss there was also great gain, for in sacrificing the labour of many years he achieved also the desire of many years, his promised wife, Eleanor de Montfort, the great earl's daughter and the king's own cousin, whom Edward had not scrupled to seize by piracy at sea and hold prisoner as his cruellest weapon of war, but whom now, appeased by victory, he brought forth to her bridal.