The Brothers of Gwynedd (146 page)

  Llewelyn heaved great vindicated breaths at this reasonable response to his approaches. "I felt in my bones," he said, cheered and glad, "that it was the old trouble—so many officials and bailiffs between us, we cannot get to grips, and as soon as I am face to face with Edward the fog clears. Could he have spoken more directly than this? I am to send attorneys skilled in Welsh law—you see, he grants me my Welsh law!—and the rest lies with him. Even the day is a good omen," he said. For the thirteenth of October was the first anniversary of his wedding day, the day of St. Edward the Confessor, so sacred to King Edward and to his father before him.

  I remember still every word of that letter, and I tell you, it could not in any interpretation be made to mean anything but what it clearly said, and had Llewelyn been far readier to detect trickery than ever he was, he must have come to the same conclusion, that no man could commit himself so fully, and then draw back or move aside.

  So that summer passed in good hope, and in caring for a principality still prosperous in its ancient customs, and still growing in markets and towns, so far as its mountainous lands permitted. For the prince never lost sight of his aim, even now that he was curbed into half his former territory. There was still much to be done by good husbandry, and even within the limits of Snowdonia growth was possible. He had, moreover, the delight of taking his wife with him about this lovely, stony, glittering land of his, and watching his own love reflected in her face. There was in her a splendour that had waited, unaware of its hunger, for this wild, forbidding land, and found in it nothing daunting, but only liberty. She had a bardic strain in her, she brought the trouvère music of northern France to our western wilds, and found meaning echoes in our songs, and after a while she began to make her own songs, marrying those two in melodies to melt the heart.

  When we both had leisure from other matters, she would have me teach her something of the Welsh language, and studied earnestly and quickly, asking me at every lesson for ingenious words of endearment and love in her new tongue, to be used, surely, for Llewelyn's ears only, when they lay in each other's arms. In all things, great or small, she found by grace fresh means of giving him astonishment and delight.

  When the autumn drew on, and the appointed time for parliament was nearing, the prince wrote from Aberyddon to the king, repeating as a reminder almost the very terms Edward had used in bidding his envoys to the session, "in order," he said pointedly, "to pursue my claim to Arwystli in your Grace's presence, according to the law of Howel the Good, which is Welsh law." And he went on to beg the king to do justice without further delay, since the prince had already brought up the matter before both the king and the king's justices, and it had cost him high to send so many envoys all over England, and so far quite vainly. He did not know, he said, at whose instigation his cause at law had been thus obstructed.

  "You are severe with him," said Eleanor, cautiously approving.

  "That was not my intent. I put the case plainly, so that there can be no misunderstanding. I have quoted him his own bidding word for word, so that
he shall know h
e has not been misunderstood. Or if he claims he has, and his instructions do not mean what I have read them as meaning, he has time to say so before the case is heard."

  So this letter was sent ahead of the envoys, and brought no protestations in answer, which was reassuring. Llewelyn began to be confident of the result, for it seemed certain at last that his claim to have Welsh law over Welsh land was conceded without further argument. The prince therefore sent another letter over another matter, punctiliously thanking the king for declining to entertain in his court a plea that manifestly belonged in the prince's jurisdiction. This was but one among hundreds of cases then embittering the whole air of the borders. The widowed lady of Bromfield had for some time been suing her brother-in-law of Ial for certain lands which he held of the prince, but being a troublesome and mischievous woman she had sued first in the Welsh courts, then in the English, putting the unlucky lord of Ial in danger of offending both overlords, since if he answered in the king's court for lands he held of the prince, that would be insult to the prince, but if he failed to answer a summons to the royal court, that would certainly blacken his face with the king. Both he and Llewelyn had appealed for a ruling, and Edward firmly remitted the case to the prince's court, and that with very pleasing promptitude. Possibly he found the lady of Bromfield more trouble than she was worth, and was not sorry to get rid of her.

  "Well, let's at least give thanks where they're due," said Llewelyn, and wrote a warm acknowledgement. And this case also we took as encouragement, and began to believe that all was going smoothly at last.

  Llewelyn felt a particular responsibility in his dealings with this Margaret of Bromfield and her family, for her husband had been his ally and friend until the pressures of war broke him, for his lands were very exposed to English attack. He had left two young sons, still children, for whom Llewelyn felt a guardian's concern, and he took care to watch how their lands were administered during their infancy, and to intervene when he thought they were being abused. These lands were no longer a part of his principality, but fell under the king, and the prince could exercise only a friendly influence, but the king had been gracious and accommodating in the matter, and Llewelyn did not fail to send thanks for his consideration.

  "Everything I have incurred," he said, "I will discharge, whether it be the payment of the money due, the deference owing from vassal to overlord, or the simple acknowledgement of favour or kindness. If his pride is to exact all, mine is to render all. As I stand on my own rights, so I'll do full justice to his."

  This he said, and made good, and his annual payments of the money due under treaty were indeed made regularly, promptly and in full, and often allocated by Edward to this need or that in his kingdom, or to discharge one of his debts, long before they were due, so certain was he of getting them to the last penny.

  By the same messenger who carried Llewelyn's letters, Eleanor also wrote to the king, in response to some point he had raised concerning her mother's will. Scarcely a letter went from her without some courteous but insistent reminder about her brother Amaury, who was still a prisoner in Corfe castle at the king's pleasure, but all her pleas had so far failed to move Edward. Some of the servants of her former household were likewise prisoners, for no crime but that of accompanying their mistress when she sailed from France to join Llewelyn, already her husband by proxy, in Wales. Popes and bishops had interceded for Amaury, for he was a papal chaplain, but King Edward, for all his piety, was proof against popes, and ceded no grain of his rights to archbishops, and turned a deaf ear to all. It was the one sorrow Eleanor had, that all her efforts could not deliver her own men from their chains.

  But at that time, in the bright autumn at Aberyddon, we had high hopes that things were moving in a better direction, and soon we might be able to secure justice at law, and clemency for the captives.

  About the twentieth day of October David came riding in, in better spirits than we had seen him lately, for the rubbing of the royal officials in the Middle Country increasingly chafed him, but now he was glittering and full of news.

  "I'm tossed out of Hope to go and amuse myself elsewhere," he said. "Cristin tells me to get from under her feet, for the love of God, for she has her hands full without me." He flung an arm about my shoulders at the mention of her, for he had always known how things were with us. "She's very well, and very happy, with a child in either arm, and Elizabeth purring like a cat. Not one daughter this time, but two! And pretty as flowers, and loud as blackbirds!"

  "So they always are," said Llewelyn, hugging him heartily. "There's not one of yours but comes dancing into the world. I give you joy! And Elizabeth? All's well with them all three?"

  "Would I stir," said David, "until I was sure of it? Twin girls, and made in her image! There cannot be too many Elizabeths in the world. I speak who know best. Five daughters she's given me, and think of all those happy husbands, when the years have rolled round!"

  I do, I think of them now, remembering that prophecy. All those little girls of his, so vastly and indiscriminately loved, for David was gifted for fatherhood, go dancing before my eyes to their fate, and all the husbands who might well have exulted in them, as he did in their mother, are pale and void as mist, sucked empty of promised joy. But that belongs not here. Doubtless God has the whole account recorded.

  "One babe, and the women are still just sufferable," said David. "Two, and there's no holding them. I am not even allowed to choose names, they're already chosen— Eleanor and Elizabeth." He looked at the princess and smiled. "What else?"

  "I am proud!" said Eleanor, and leaned and kissed his cheek. It was the first time she had so touched him, for truly she did not commit herself easily, as Llewelyn was prone to do, though never did she shut out any who approached her with entreaty. And it seemed to me that by that salute David had gained a kind of credit, considered and bestowed with open eyes, as when a seal is appended to a document until then invalid. He had, I believe, had some doubts of his standing with her, not without reason. She was not bound to him by blood, as Llewelyn was, in the inescapable tie that fetters love hand and foot. And she was wise from the heart and mind together, the best wisdom in this world. I think David had feared her. Her eyes were mirrors of truth, and he knew what his truth was, and leaned aside and avoided. But where she sealed with her own ungrudging seal, I trusted, and was glad.

  David had then almost forgotten his grievance over Hope and Estyn in his family joy. Also his second protest to the king had secured, if not a suspension of the Venables plea in the Chester shire-court, at least an indefinite delay, for the case had been adjourned
sine die,
pending a decision by Edward, as to the findings of his own commission. So when we showed David the king's letter, clearly asking for envoys versed in Welsh law, even he, after reading and re-reading the lines with close care, could find no flaw, no way by which any man of honour, much less a king, could extricate himself from what was there set down.

  It turned out very differently when Master William and his companions came back from Westminster in the last days of October, and made their way to Aberyddon. As soon as they rode into the bailey, wearied and dusty from the journey, our thumbs pricked, and when they came in to Llewelyn all of us present there knew from their faces and the discouraged sag of their shoulders that they had nothing good to tell.

  "So we have not sped!" said Llewelyn heavily. "Well, speak freely, it's best to know how we stand, and there's no man doubts you have done your part well and ably."

  "My lord," said the old man, "I had rather you learned the king's mind from the king's own mouth than from mine. Here is his letter. What words he has used to you I do not know. All too many he has used to me, and with all possible patience and consideration, but I am as far off from knowing his intent as I was before. I can guess at it many ways, and fear it one way in particular, but determine and be sure of it I cannot."

  "Yes, this is familiar!" said David bitterly. "This is Edward! Yet how
could
he get out of what he wrote to you?—even he? Or was it some unpractised clerk who wrote that last letter, and forgot to leave the boltholes open? He said it in so many words—"the law of Howel the Good"—no "buts," no "ors," no "unless"…Some honest fellow in the chancellery will be in trouble for that."

  "Do you tell me," said Llewelyn, breaking the seal of the scroll with a sharp pluck, "that Edward does not read over and ponder before he sends? I think not!" And he unrolled the parchment and read, with set face and darkening brows, but without outcry, once in silence, then aloud to us all.