The Brothers of Gwynedd (154 page)

  So I said, and Llewelyn considered it with me, and felt as I did. However cautiously, we should accept this proffer, and bring the claim for Arwystli once again before the Hopton bench.

  "And now I remember," he said, burning up eagerly, "that Roger has the fifteenth of this month appointed him to answer Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn over the vils in Cydewain. We shall see what comes of that. Arwystli is as Welsh as Cydewain, the situation is exactly the same. If Roger wins his plea for Welsh law, the message becomes clear."

  He therefore sent me to Montgomery to watch the process of his cousin's case, a pleasant enough jaunt in the June weather, with long days and fair skies, and a kind of hope in our hearts that all might yet be well, that Edward, when his stratagems were done, would not thwart justice to the end, that misunderstandings could be eased away from between two princes who still had, in spite of all, a high respect and regard for each other.

  I sat well back in the court at Montgomery, and watched Griffith, fierce and gaudy and loud as a turkey-cock among his rookery of black-gowned lawyers, come sweeping into the room armed for battle, and take his place centrally behind his spokesmen, ready to prod and prompt as always. The court was full, but Mortimer himself did not attend, being by no means so in love with litigation as his opponent.

  It was not a long hearing, since the bench sat mainly to deliver judgment held over from two previous sessions. But Griffith's lawyers stated in formal terms his claim to the lands, and to have them by common law, both parties being the king's barons. Roger's attorneys replied with his claim that the lands were undeniably Welsh, and entitled him to Welsh law, and by Welsh law he was not in default, as Griffith had previously claimed. Then it was for the bench to give judgment.

  There was no reluctance in the presiding judge this time to weigh claims equably and deliver a verdict he had withheld from Llewelyn. His face was placid and assured as he spoke out the considered view of his bench, undoubtedly approved in advance in higher quarters, or why those two adjournments? He found that the land claimed was Welsh, and should be impleaded by Welsh law, by which three defaults could be made without loss of seisin, therefore Mortimer was not in default, and Griffith's writ by common law brought him nothing. Mortimer was left without day, in possession of his lands, and Griffith was subjected to a fine and lost his claim.

  And this despite the undoubted fact that here was a plea between two parties both marcher barons of the crown. Welsh law was upheld, and judgment given by it. And past question, if Cydewain was Welsh, so was Arwystli, and so must be impleaded and judged. It was in all points the complete justification of the stand Llewelyn had taken from the beginning, and I was so elated, I hardly had time to enjoy the spectacle of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn glooming and storming out of court with lowered head and baleful brow, like an angry bull, all his train of lawyers scurrying after him with gowns flying, a thunder-cloud about a lightning-flash. Once, at least, that master-litigant met his match, though he did not therefore give up all hope, but clung by the edges of his claim, hungrily and vengefully, waiting for a new hold on his lost vils, such as might arise, for instance, if Roger, the immediate incumbent, died. Into the interstice between the lord's death and the heir's grant of seisin Griffith was willing and eager to crawl, like the worm that is drawn to the dead.

  But I rode home happier than I had been for many a day, because I could again believe there was justice to be found somewhere entangled in Edward's network of law. And I told my lord and my lady, we three privately together, all that had passed.

  "God be thanked!" said Llewelyn, heaving a great breath that eased him of a year of struggle and despondency. "At last we have Edward's cypher put into plain speech. Welsh land may have Welsh law, even where the dispute is between two barons of the King. Edward can hardly reverse his own decision now this is made public. The cases are exactly similar, and no less is due to a prince of Wales than to a baron of the king. Now I can go forward with my suit with a good heart. The way is open at last!"

  He resolved to prosecute his case at Montgomery in the October session of the Hopton bench, and at once wrote to Roger Mortimer and gave him joy of his victory, all the more heartily, as he freely owned, because it afforded the perfect precedent for what we hoped would soon be ours. Mortimer replied with a cordial invitation to the prince to visit him at Radnor while the lawyers argued the case at Montgomery. Thus he might be close at hand to watch events, and also Mortimer had certain matters to put to him that might be to the advantage of both cousins.

  That was a happy and hopeful time with us, a family alliance shaping with the strongest baron in the middle march, and every prospect of winning Arwystli, and with it a better promise of a just relationship with England. The treaty, our one protection, began to appear safer than for some years.

  Late in September we set out for the marches, and Llewelyn had but one disappointment, that Eleanor thought best not to come with us. "You will be altogether occupied," she said, "with men's business, both at Radnor and Montgomery, and though I should be very glad to meet with your cousin Mortimer, for this time I think I would rather not ride so far. You will not be long away. I'll come slowly south as far as Bala, and wait for you there."

  He was concerned at once, for she had always been so constant at his side. And though she smiled at him with clear eyes and open face, he held her by the hands and looked at her earnestly, and was uneasy.

  "You are paler than usual. It is not like you to sit at home. You are not ill, love?"

  "No," she said, and laughed, and I thought her glow was even brighter than of old, pale though indeed she was. "No, I am very well. All is as it should be with me. But this once I will to stay behind, and when you come back as far as Bala you shall find me there to greet you."

  So he let her have her way, though not quite easy about her. But she shone so bright in those last days before we left that he was cheered and reassured. Whatever she wanted he would do, even if it severed him from her for as long as ten or fifteen days. As for me, I wondered, for it needed a powerful motive to cause her to leave his side, however little he, in his humility, questioned her ability to live without him so long. And perhaps I watched her even more devoutly than usual in those days, and noted that she kept her own apartment until well into the morning, upon various pretexts. But on the morning that we rode for Radnor she came down early to speed us on our way, and I saw her at the turn of the stairway pause and hold by the wall a moment, and marvelled at her look, for her cheeks were pale and her eyes heavy, and yet her lips so smiling, and her eyes so glad and hopeful when she believed no man was watching her.

  And as I gazed, she laid her hand upon her body under the heart, and that was so tender and protective a caress that my heart opened and swelled with knowledge, and I stood so lost in enlightenment that I forgot to take myself out of her sight, but was still standing like a man in a dream when she came on down the stair.

  Seeing me, she checked only for an instant, startled, and then smiled in content, and came on more slowly. And as she came she opened her eyes wide and wonderfully to let me into her mind, and laid a finger to her lips. So I understood what she felt no need to say, that she was not yet sure, that by the time he returned to her in Bala she would be sure, and then her news would crown his joy if he came triumphant, and be the blessed consolation for all losses if fate and Edward still denied him justice.

  Thus she passed by me silently, and went out into the inner ward to kiss Llewelyn and speed him on his way. And I, as she had entreated me, held my peace and followed after like a biddable child.

At Radnor we had a hospitable welcome from Roger Mortimer and his lady, who was a de Breos, marcher through and through, like her husband. This cousin of my lord's, his elder by some years, was a gaunt, dark, fiery person, loud-voiced and impetuous, but large of mind, too, with true feeling for his lands and his people, who lay between Wales and England, torn both ways when there was dispute, and never utterly at home in either camp. There were two sons of the house, Edmund the heir, and Roger the younger, able, unchancy young men, like so many marcher sons not yet possessed of their own lands, and therefore full of all the enterprise and daring necessary to their kind, without the responsibility their father carried. They featured rather their mother, being fairer in colouring and slighter in build, while the lord of Wigmore and Radnor himself showed a strong resemblance to his Welsh grandsire, Llewelyn Fawr, in the shaping of his bold, thrusting bones and the taut flesh that covered them, in his hawk-nose, and the deep, bright caverns of his eyes. He was the blacker of the two, and the leaner, but when he sat beside Llewelyn at the high table the mark of their great forebear was clear in them both, and they might almost have been brothers.

  What the lord of Radnor had to propose to his cousin we did not at first learn, though clearly he was blazingly scornful and bitterly resentful of Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn's overweening presumption, and the liberties that highly successful renegade took even with chancellor and king. But Roger's approaches were held in check until we who were bound to appear at Montgomery on the sixth of October had set out for that royal town. We went in high hopes, not because we were too easily elated and too trusting of Edward's honesty, but because we had that invaluable precedent of Mortimer's successful defence by Welsh law to prop us, and were willing to whip it out and flourish it before Hopton or any other royal justice if he barred our way. It was so recent that it could hardly be outweighed by any other precedent. We felt we had a shield that could not be penetrated even by Edward's arrows.

  In this high mood we rode, I but a private observer for my lord, up the winding hill through the town of Montgomery, and out on to the high rock where the castle stands, and into the wards, and thence, having committed our mounts to the grooms, into the great hall.

  There was no knowing from Hopton's bland face whether he had his orders in advance, as we thought probable, or even if he had, what they were, and we held our breath when Master William got up to make his formal claim on Llewelyn's behalf to the whole land of Arwystli, and the land between the Dovey and the Dulas, and that by Welsh law, as was implied from the opening of the cause, now nearly four years past.

  When he sat down, that was the moment for Griffith to make his protest and claim the common law, so setting the old cycle revolving helplessly once again for four years more, or for the bench to demur that the rival claims of the two systems had never yet been settled. We waited, and Hopton sat mute, courteously waiting for the defendant to reply, either in person or by his attorney. The pause was long, I think now intentionally long, and we drew cautious breath and knew that one peril had passed. The Mortimer precedent was too recent and too famous to be denied, every man in the court knew of it. We felt safe then. No one was going to deny us Welsh law, and invite the obvious rejoinder. Yet I wondered, even before a word was said, why Griffith, hunched and hugging himself behind his sombre troop, had a small tight grin on his face, as though he enjoyed a joke very private and sharply sweet of taste.

  For my part, I was shaken when he got up himself to make his counter-plea, instead of leaving it to his attorney. He hitched his furred gown about him at leisure, and ran a sharp glance along the line of us where we sat, and I dreaded then that after all he had something still hidden in that wide sleeve of his, but could not guess what it would be.

  "If it please the court," he said, all reason and sweetness, "I am willing and ready to answer to the plea, in the proper form, and will not dispute the manner of procedure but in one point. Since the prince of Wales and I myself are both barons of the king, I ought not to answer unless the lord prince brings a writ to court."

  We did not at first understand why he should be in such secret glee at having this defence in hand, for it sounded feeble enough and Master William rose to answer it, I think, in as great innocence as we.

  "The prince's writ," he said, "was duly taken out and delivered into this court when this plea was begun. The date was the seventeenth day of February of the king's sixth regnal year. I myself delivered it."

  Hopton pondered the date, or affected to, and said: "That was not, I think, before the present bench? I was not then in office."

  "It was before Master Ralph de Fremingham," said the old man, still confident. That was the first presiding justice of this commission for east Wales, who held office but a few months, and was removed in somewhat dubious circumstances.