The Brothers of Gwynedd (163 page)

Denbigh being the best base from which to control and guard all that long eastern march, Llewelyn made it his headquarters until David's party should again come north, and though we were often out patrolling the line of fortresses, and sometimes withdrew to Conway and Aber and the western cantrefs to deploy the incoming levies as they mustered, it was always to Denbigh we returned. Such fighting as we had was limited to testing raids along the border. It seemed that all the barons of the march were putting their followings on a fighting footing, but not yet making any move to attack, rather merely holding their defences. We heard, but not with certainty, that a royal muster was expected in May at Worcester, but had heard no word of the usual summons going out for the assembly of the feudal host.

  "He would rather by far raise his armies at his own wages," said Llewelyn. "I expected it. I wish we could get some word from Cynan. Wherever Edward is, there Burnell will be, and his clerks with him. Give him time, and he'll find a messenger."

  A week after he had left us, David sent word from the south that all was going well, the capture and partial dismantling of Llandovery and Carreg Cennen completed, and having left his nephews to keep a tight hold upon the vale of Towey, he himself was rushing with his own company to Llanbadara, to help the sons of Meredith ap Owen finish what they had begun there. In mid-April a second courier brought news that the castle of Llanbadarn was taken and slighted, and all the English forces in the south and west had withdrawn into their strongholds of Cardigan and Dynevor, and were pinned down there so securely that they dared hardly venture out even on foraging raids. A week or two more to make certain of his dispositions, said David, and he would be able to bring his own force back to the Middle Country and stand shoulder to shoulder with his brother, to withstand the inevitable main thrust of Edward's revenge.

  It was not until May, when the king's first army assembled at Worcester, that we got reliable news of Edward's counter-measures, for there Cynan found a trustworthy Welsh Franciscan on his way home to Bangor by way of Cwm Hir abbey, and confided to him a lone letter for the prince. The friar delivered the letter faithfully to David, who sent it on to Llewelyn in advance of his own return. About the twentieth of May it reached us at Denbigh.

  "Your thunderbolt," wrote Cynan, "struck us at Devizes some three days after it was launched, and shattered the Easter mood with a vengeance. No question but it was a thunderbolt. If any tells you the king had planned to provoke the storm, don't heed him. But he'll make use of it to the last drop of blood now it has fallen on him. If he had anything of the kind in mind, it was not expected to catch fire this year. Probably gradual encroachment was intended, as costing less in money, though more in patience. Take warning! One of his first measures, when he was able to speak and breathe for rage, has been to open negotiations with his Italian bankers, for loans so huge that he must intend to buy enough mercenaries to settle with Wales once for all. Put no faith this time in winter. His hate is such that neither frost nor snow will stop him, and the opportunity he has been offered he has already recognised, and will not lightly relinquish.

  "I write in comparative safety at this time, and therefore at length, for God knows when I may next find the means. To present you all I know: At Devizes he enacted a number of furious orders and writs, giving instant command to his justiciars, but Gloucester has now been appointed to take command in the south. His Grace has not so far called out the feudal host. He sent instead to six earls and a number of crown tenants to raise their forces and meet him here at Worcester in the middle of May, as now they have done. These to be paid at his wages, mark. But the earl of Hereford is up in arms already, claiming his feudal right as constable, and I foresee the king will be forced to raise the host according to custom, much as he chafes at its carthorse paces. Further: he is calling out the whole fleet of the Cinque Ports at once to provision and fit out for sea, and he has sent out for supplies, horses and arms to Ireland, Gascony and Ponthieu, which province he now holds in right of the queen, as you know. He is asking in particular for Gascon crossbowmen. Every omen shows that he will spare nothing, drive every man but himself to death, and if need be himself after, to take his revenge, and in particular on the Lord David, the serpent he warmed in his bosom.

  "That he has prevailed on his archbishop to send out letters ordering the excommunication of all the rebels, notably the lord prince and the Lord David, will be no surprise to you. Thus far I hear that our Welsh bishops have been in no haste to promulgate these letters. I pray their dullness of hearing may long continue, but they are also men, and subject to Canterbury and Rome.

  "The best I have kept for last, that some good may show out of this much ill. Archbishop Peckham has urged the necessity for showing a front of justice and reason before the Holy Father, if his goodwill is to be invoked in this conflict, and has preached once again on his old text, that the detention of the Lord Amaury de Montfort is an offence and a scandal against the papacy, hardly likely to incline his Holiness to look with favour upon his captor, or any enterprise of his captor. And the king has at last agreed—it was like drawing a tooth!—that Amaury shall be free to sail from England when he will, and return to Rome, or to any place he pleases out of these islands. He is already loosed, and by the time this reaches you he may well be at sea, or even landed in France. Peckham has stood by him manfully.

  "The king will certainly come himself to Chester, to confront the only enemies worthy of him. I may well be among those who follow him north, but in the expectation that I must be silent a while, until time again serve your ends and mine, I wish you a fair deliverance, and pledge you my service to the death."

  "I hope he may never have to make that good!" said Llewelyn when he had read this most helpful despatch. "Well, thank God there is a least one good thing come out of it all. I have not thrown away my oath quite for nothing. Now Eleanor may take some comfort from her brother's release, if we have nothing more to offer her. And we know what we have to face. Edward will not wait for the feudal muster, even if he must call it now. He'll have them follow him north, and come north himself at once with what he already has."

  "He is quick enough to call for excommunication," said Tudor bitterly, "for treason to his own head, did ever you hear him even censure treason against you?"

  But that was possibly the sanction Llewelyn, within his own country, had least reason to fear, and in balance against his Christian efforts for Amaury he held it against the archbishop not at all. The good news he sent at once to Eleanor at Aber. He could not then go himself, for we had much to do before David returned and Edward set out on his march to Chester, where by our reckoning Grey was already in command of some hundred and fifty lances, possibly more, and a great number of foot, of whom all too many were archers.

  "He is arming half his footmen with bows—longbows or crossbows," said Llewelyn, gnawing his lip as we made up the tale of our enemies. "And according to the rumours from the south, they're bringing up crossbow quarrels by the thousand from Bristol. There's no relying on Edward to make war twice alike."

  "There are things that will not change," said Tudor soberly. "His best way in at us is still by the coast, and there he has his new roads, and so he has at a dozen places where he has hacked a way through the forests down the march. And he will still have an eye on the harvest in Anglesey, if he can come at it by any means, and we can neither hurry that forward and garner it now, nor bid it hold back until the winter. And he has the ships."

  "It is true!" said Llewelyn. "I have been remiss in not providing more and better ships of our own. All those years of peace I could have done more, and saw no need." And that was true, for those small craft that we used for shorewise traffic and for fishing were ample to our normal needs, and though he had been provident enough in the old days of constant vigilance and uncertainty, and done more to provide Gwynedd a navy than any prince before him, yet after the peace of Montgomery, during the years when he lived in amity with King Henry, he had not continued his precautions at sea, or more accurately, he had not extended them as he might have done. He had not planned for war then, nor foreseen what manner of war it would be when it came, never having faced Edward in the field until then. And after the harsh peace of Aberconway he had intended long endurance, endless patience, and honest labour to husband the peaceful resources of Wales, putting war far out of his mind. It was not a mistake Edward ever made. I could not choose but remember David's warning, how those forest roads would be Edward's last argument, after all his legal pleas were exhausted.

  "At least," said Llewelyn, "we'll make the best use possible of what ships we have." And he compiled a list of what was in service, and we made a rapid dash across into Lleyn and Anglesey, to set a coastal watch and commission our sea-captains, though we did not expect the Cinque Ports ships for some weeks yet, for they had to fit and provision, and had a long voyage to reach the Dee. And on our way back to Denbigh we stayed one night at Aber.

  Once more those two lay the night through together, and when she came out on his arm in the dawn, to see us away again, she was as she always was, calm, resolute and kind, though pacing heavily now by reason of the child so near its entry into this turbulent but beautiful world. Never did Eleanor live upon the heart and courage of any other, or take from any other one particle of his strength, but always she gave, always she added, and her bounty was never exhausted. She was happy then because of her brother's restoration to liberty, seeing it was for her sake he had fallen into the king's hands, to be the scapegoat for all his hated race, six years a prisoner for no offence.

  "You see, Amaury is already on his way to Rome," she said, "and only a month ago I would have said we might have to wait a decade yet to prise him out of our cousin's clutches. So may other matters resolve themselves before we look for the resolution, and more happily than we dare believe. It is not Edward alone who orders the future. Archbishop Peckham has played his pan once, and may again."

  Llewelyn was troubled for her, and marked with anxious eyes every movement she made, her slower gait and careful balance, and he would have her remove to Llanfaes, which was certainly not threatened for some time to come, and would have been quieter for her. But she laughed at him and shook her head.

  "I will not go one step further from you than here," she said. "I would rather come nearer, but that would only divide your mind when most it needs to be single, and you see there is no need, I am marvellously well. Go with a light heart, and never doubt me." And she linked her hands behind his head and drew him down to her, and kissed him on the mouth. "Nothing you do can wrong me," she said. "Nothing you do can be done without my hand joining its will and its weight to yours. For twenty years of peace I would not give up one day of my sharing with you, come war, or danger, or hardship, or whatever God send."

  He was never so ready with words as she, but he had his own eloquence. Silently he embraced her and kissed, and I think she had her reward in full, though she was never so concerned with getting as with giving.

  Then we mounted and rode, and she stood to watch us go, with her women protectively about her on either side. Those two who came with her from France were always closest, feeling her belong to them in a particular way because they had been prisoners with her in Windsor. They were Englishwomen both, in her mother's service from the time when Eleanor was a child at Kenilworth, and exiled with her to the retirement of Montargis. Close at her shoulders they stood as she waved us away to the war. He looked back at the last, and so did I, and she shone erect and bright in her yellow gown, the colour of marsh marigolds, with one hand cradling the leaping child, and one raised high in salute to us, and the gay colours of her women like an embroidered hanging framing her. That is how I remember her best.