The Brothers of Gwynedd (16 page)

  "I had thought," I said to him once, when we spoke of that first visit to England, "that the Lady Senena would come home now and bring your sister and brothers with her. Why does the king still detain her?"

  "She is still a hostage," said Llewelyn sombrely, "though I doubt if she knows it. Hostage for Owen's good behaviour and mine. Not until we've kept his sorry peace another year or two will he let go of my mother. When he's sure we are tamed, then he'll unlock the doors for her. But whether she'll choose to walk out is another matter. For all my father's death, she's grown used to the comfort of an English court now, and to English policies, too. For Owen, if he asked her, she might make the effort to take up her roots again and replant them here. But Owen won't ask her," he said with a wry smile. "He wants no elders lecturing him on his duty or telling him how to run his commotes. And for me I think she would not stir."

  There was a one-sided effect of this peace with England, in fact, that continued, though without direct attack, the work of undoing what remained of the unity of Wales. For Gwynedd's submission and the tightening of the royal grasp on the Middle Country made many another small princeling consider that it might be safer to make direct contact and peace with this king, and many did so, settling thankfully under the shelter of his cloak. These he used against those who still continued recalcitrant, and divided and ruled in most of the southern parts of Wales. And by this time there was no one so hot in condemnation of those who voluntarily allied themselves with England as Owen.

  Towards the end of the autumn he came riding into Bala, where we were busy making sure of the last of the harvest, for we had there some good fields, and had been at pains to extend them. Owen was full of news, having received letters from England, and fuller still of patriot rage.

  "Do you know what she has done? Without a word to us, let alone asking our leave!"

  "By the look and the sound of you," said Llewelyn, watching the gleaners raking the last stubble, "she would not have got your leave if she had asked it. What she? And what has she done to set you on fire?"

  "Why, our mother, of course! Have you heard nothing? She has married our sister, at King Henry's expense and with his goodwill, as if the girl had no male kin to be responsible for her! And to one of the king's Welsh hounds, one of the first of the pack, Rhys Fychan of Dynevor."

  This Rhys Fychan was son to Rhys Mechyll, of the old heart-fortress of Deheubarth, and had come to his inheritance when his father died, three years gone. I suppose at his accession he was about eighteen, which was my lord's age and mine when Owen came with this word, and he had had many difficulties to overcome, an ambitious uncle and a hostile mother not the least of them, so that he had done well to survive and keep his hold on his own, and it was no marvel to Llewelyn or to me that he had made his peace with England and done homage to King Henry a year previously. His was an old and honoured line, going back to the great Lord Rhys, whose last and least descendant was not to be despised as a match. But Owen was Welsh now from the highest hair of his head to his heel, and intolerant of everything tainted with English patronage.

  "She might have done worse," said Llewelyn mildly, and stood for a moment staring back into his childhood, for the Lady Gladys was little more than a year older than he, and came between those two brothers, but he had not so much as seen her for six years. "She must be turned nineteen," he said, pondering, "and he's hardly two years older. And he was there at court last year, paying his respects, and not a bad-looking fellow, either. What would you have? If he took her fancy, and she took his, what could be more natural? I wish them heartily well."

  "The man is a traitor," said Owen, smarting. "And she must know it, as our mother surely does! But she grows old, she forgets with what intent she went to England. She has taught our sister to turn with the wind."

  I will not deny there was something in what he said, had it come from one less compromised himself. For whatever human creatures undertake, however purely, with whatever devotion, the ground turns under them and brings them about, facing where they never meant to face, and hard indeed it is to keep a clear eye to the north, and right oneself from such deflecting winds. And the Lady Senena had suffered much, and was weary, so that now I saw what Llewelyn had seen without effort, by pure instinct, how she was lost to us, and lost to her old self, the whole ground having shifted under her.

  "Oh, come!" said Llewelyn tolerantly. "We live among realities, Rhys Fychan is a man caught in their devil's web and doing his best with what he has, just as we are. God knows, there may come a time when we have to treat him as an enemy, but his is no case for hatred. Or overmuch righteousness!" he said, and gave me a smile, knowing Owen would never take the allusion. "Much less our sister's! If she likes him, God give her joy of him. At least he's her own age, and belike every bit as innocent."

  Owen stamped off to the stables in dudgeon, to see his horse cared for, and left us to follow when the last cart was drawn in. He had no interest in such occupations.

  Llewelyn walked beside me with wide eyes fixed upon the bowl of Bala and the mirror of the lake beyond. "She is my only sister," he said, marvelling, "and I do not know her, or she me. Samson, what have we done with our childhood, or what have others done with it, to leave us strangers now?"

The next event of note I remember during these years of slow recovery is the bringing home of the Lord Griffith's body, in the year following the peace of Woodstock. When a year had passed since that treaty, in exemplary quietness and submission on our part, Llewelyn judged that the time might be ripe to advance an intent he had always cherished since his father's death.

  "For," said he, "King Henry may be satisfied by now, surely, that we have passed our probation, and the granting of a matter so small to him, especially where it touches the church, may appear very good policy." For his estimate of the king, which proved accurate enough, was that he was an amiable person apart from his crown, and by no means bloodthirsty, but where his royal interests were concerned liable to look all round every concession or request in suspicion of hidden disadvantages, and incapable of any gesture large and generous. And often, in searching so narrowly for the insignificant march that might be stolen on him, he failed to see his best and truest interest when it was large under his nose. "If he can read any malevolent intent into an act of filial piety," said Llewelyn, "let him argue it with ecclesiastics better versed in piety than he is. Or, for that matter, than I am!"

  So first it was put to the council, who approved it to a man, Owen most loudly and perhaps with the most surprise and chagrin that it was the unfilial son, the deserter of his family's cause, who put it forward, rather than he, the fellow-sufferer with his sire in Criccieth and in London. And then the formal letters were drawn up, with all ceremony, both to king and archbishop, and committed to the willing and reverent hands of the abbots of Strata Florida and Aberconway, and a splendid escort provided to bring them to Westminster. For with all the abbots of the Cistercian houses Llewelyn was ever on the warmest terms of friendship and regard, like his grandsire before him, and the very echo of that name stood him in good stead.

  To these letters, which were sent in the name of both brothers, and to the

persuasions of the reverend abbots, King Henry listened, and saw that it could reflect nothing but radiance upon him to accede to the request, while he parted with nothing but the body of a broken tool, and might even a little salve his conscience and silence persistent rumour concerning that death by being gracious now to the remains. He therefore gave his permission and countenanced the removal of the Lord Griffith's corpse from its alien resting-place, and the abbots brought the prince's coffin in slow and solemn procession home to Aberconway, and there interred him with all appropriate rites beside his father and his half-brother. So those two sons of Llewelyn the Great lay together in peace at last.

It was four years more before the Lady Senena came home to Wales. Reassured by so long a period of calm and enforced order in Wales, King Henry declared himself willing to equip the lady and let her take her two remaining children to receive their allotment of land under Welsh law, even the youngest being now of age. It suited very well with the king's designs that even what he had left us of Gwynedd should be parcelled out among as many rival lords as possible, for the more and the more trivial the titles to land there, the less likely was any kind of unity in the future. And it suited well with the Lady Senena's old-fashioned leanings that ancient right should be observed at all costs. She was not yet old, being but five and forty, but experience and care, and especially the long years of being eaten by a sense of bitter grievance, had aged her greatly, and she longed to see all her sons established before she retired into the secluded life which was now increasingly attractive to her. So the agreement was made that Rhodri and David should receive lands of their own, though the supreme rule over Gwynedd remained as before with their two elder brothers. And in the early summer Owen and Llewelyn sent an escort to bring their mother and brothers home.

  Doubtless King Henry was also spared a considerable expense once they were gone from his court, and that was some relief to him, for he had difficulties of his own with his council and magnates over his expenditure, and to be able to point to one economy was at least a step in conciliating them. So all in all it suited everyone, though I am sure the Lady Senena felt pain by then in any upheaval in her life, and suffered doubts and depressions of which no one else knew, unless it might be Bishop Richard of Bangor, who accompanied the royal party on their journey, making one of his rare visits to his see.

  This Bishop Richard had formerly been a strong supporter of the Lord Griffith's cause against David. After the treaty signed at Woodstock he had forsaken Gwynedd and preferred to make his home in the abbey of St. Albans, and came only now and then to visit his flock. But in England he had taken an interest in the fortunes of the Lady Senena and her family, and she had a great respect and reverence for him, though many found him a difficult and thorny priest. Doubtless she was glad to have his support and consolation in setting out on this return journey to her own country, after eleven years of absence.

  It was at Carnarvon that the princes received their mother and her retinue, that court being convenient to the commotes the council had agreed to give to Rhodri and David, and also to the bishop's own town of Bangor. Both Owen and Llewelyn rode out a mile or two on the road when they got word that the cavalcade had been sighted, and I went among their companions, for Llewelyn knew that I was eager to get sight of my mother after so long, and bade me leave whatever work I had to do, for it would not spoil with keeping.

  It was a slow procession we went to meet, for they had made a fair distance that day, and the horses were tired. The bishop, like the lady, rode in a litter, being already in his elder years, and frail. But a bright spark of blue and white played and darted about the group, now spurring ahead, now whirling to make a circle round them, now dancing along the green verge of the road on one side, now on the other. Restless and eager, this one young horseman fretted a silvery lace of movement about the slow core of the party, hard put to it to restrain himself from outrunning them all and coming first to Carnarvon.

  He saw us, and for one moment reined in abruptly, on the crest of a hillock by the roadside. Then he came at a canter, and wheeled broadside before us, his eyes sweeping over us all, eyes the misty blue of harebells, and yet bright, under straight black brows. His head was uncovered and his breast was bare, the linen shirt turned back from his neck, for the June sun was hot. The wind had blown his blue-black hair into a tangle of curls, and stung a bright flush of blood over the cheekbones high and wide like wings.