The Brothers of Gwynedd (17 page)

  So I saw my breast-brother again, smiling and eager, no less beautiful than when he charmed the ladies of the court at six years old.

  He found Owen easily, and cried his name aloud in a crow of pleasure, and reining very lightly and expertly alongside, flung an arm about his eldest brother and kissed him.

  "You I'd know by your hair among a thousand," he said heartily, "and glad I am to see you again. But Llewelyn was not red, and it's longer, I might shoot wide." He laughed with pleasure, for whatever he did he did with all his being. His eyes roved, touched me for an instant and wavered, flashing with a recognition that must wait its time. He walked his horse forward to where Llewelyn waited, smiling but not helping him, for he was too careless of his dress to be known for the prince by his ornaments. "Yes! Not by your hair, but I know you!" He reached a long brown hand and touched very lightly the star-shaped scar at the angle of Llewelyn's jaw. "My mother—
our
mother told me, when she came from Woodstock. Did you think she had not noticed? You," he said, "among ten thousand!" And he reached both arms, loosing the reins, and Llewelyn embraced him.

  When the kiss was given and received, they drew apart, those two, and gazed at each other with something of wonder and curiosity, of which this quick, brotherly liking was but the blunted point. For they had been eleven years apart, and David now was but sixteen. And they said the most ordinary of words, because no others then would have had any meaning, their need of mutual exploration being so great.

  "Our mother is well?" said Llewelyn, looking over David's shoulder towards the approaching litters.

  "Well, but weary. Bear it in mind, for she'll never admit it, and draw the celebrations short tonight. Give her a day or two, and she'll be arranging all our lives for

us," said David irreverently.

"And Rhodri?"

  "He's there, riding beside her litter. We took it by turns, but he has more patience than I. Rhodri is very well, only a little tired of the bishop's supervision. He minds him, I do not. It pleases him better," said David, "not to be minded. Where would he find matter for homilies, if we were all like Rhodri? Will you go and meet them?"

  So we moved forward again towards the approaching procession, watching the gold-tinted dust eddy upwards, glittering, from the hooves of the horses. And as we went, David laid a hand softly on Llewelyn's arm, and said in his ear, but not so quietly that I did not catch the words: "Pardon me if I leave you a moment. There's one here I must greet." And without waiting for a reply he edged his horse very delicately from between his brothers, and brought him sidling and dancing alongside my pony on the edge of the escort.

  "Samson…? You are Samson, I could not be wrong." He curbed his horse in such a way that we two fell aside and a little behind, and did it very smoothly, until there was space enough between us and the rest for us to talk openly and alone. And for my life I could not understand this compliment he was paying me, though I felt it pierce to my heart. As he had a way of doing, for good or evil.

  "I am indeed Samson," I said. "I did not think you would remember me. I am glad from my heart to see you home."

  "I own," he said, "we have been apart some years now, and I was not very old or very wise, to remember well. Yet how could I forget
you
? We had one kind nurse, and she was yours, and only lent to me. Oh, Samson, I dearly loved her! How can I say what I need to say? My mother has it in charge to tell you, and I would spare you and her." He saw how I was straining ahead to try and see into the open litter, from which the curtains were drawn back fully to let in light and air in the radiant June. And he laid his hand on my arm and held me hard. "Don't look for her!" he said. "You'll not find her."

  I turned then to look at him fully, and the blue of his eyes was like the pale zenith of the sky over us, almost blanched with pity. Then I understood that I had lost her, that Meilyr, wherever he was and if he still lived, had been robbed of her whom he had never had but in a barren leash of law. And the strangest and best thing then was that this boy beside me, who could laugh, and play, and charm the hearts out of brothers and strangers alike, had tears in his eyes for her and me.

  "If we had sent you word," he said, "it could have come only a day or two ahead of us, it was better to bring the grief with us, and share it with you. She died three days before we left London, of some fever. God knows what. It made such haste with her, she was gone in a night. My mother labours and frets with it, let me tell her that you know. And if I have done my errand ill, forgive me! She's buried there in London. We did all we could do."

  I told him I had no doubt of it, that I was grateful, that he need not be in any distress, for this was to be his day of reunion. I said I had lived without my mother now for some years, that no man nor woman can be kept for ever by love, that he should reassure his own mother that all was well, that all was very well. Nevertheless, he kept his hand touching my hand upon the bridle until we came up with the litters. And it was a mile and more on the way home to Carnarvon before he was riding again in flying circles about us, and laughing into the wind.

Thus my mother's few poor possessions came back to me at the Lady Senena's hands, and she spoke with regret and affection of the years of service Elen had given to the royal children, and there was no distress between us, the boy having done her office for her. And so unlikely a messenger of mourning never lived, except that birds can sing in cloudy weather as loudly and bravely as in the sun. For he was like a darting kingfisher over a stream, wild with delight in his own energy, youth and brightness, preening himself in the new clothes provided for his homecoming, and inquisitive about everything that had once been familiar, and now had to be learned anew. And once, in the brief time while she was most softened and welcoming to me, the Lady Senena caught my dazzled eyes following his flight, and said to me, half in admiration, it seemed, and half in warning: "Do not think him as light and shallow as he seems. He is as deep as the sea off Enlli, and as hard to know."

  I thought her partial to Rhodri, as indeed she was, for in his childhood he had suffered occasional illness, and so attached her to himself more anxiously than any of his brothers. Moreover, he was of a somewhat dour temperament not unlike her own, and she understood him better than the youngest and most wayward of her brood, whose alien brilliance reached back to his grandsire.

  I watched them often, during those few days spent at Carnarvon, as they sat side by side at the high table in hall, for that was the first and only time that I saw all those four brothers of Gwynedd together, grouped like a family about their mother. And very earnestly I studied all those faces, so like and so unlike, for all had something of both parents in them, but all shaped that essence differently. Owen Goch most resembled his father, being the tallest and heaviest of the four, with florid, russet face and opulent flesh. Only his dark-red, burning hair set him apart. He was very strong, and a good man of his hands, though too ready with them in and out of season, like the Lord Griffith before him, and with the same hot temper. With weapons he was fearless, but too rash and therefore a little clumsy. And for all his ready furies he also, as Llewelyn had once said of him, bore grudges which he never forgot, so that often I had wondered how he contrived to put away the memory of being worsted and having the dagger wrested out of his hand, that night at Aber, and how he could stomach that defeat and work mildly with his brother in court and council. As for me, he had never given me a reminder of it by word or look, hardly met my eyes since that day, and I had kept out of his way to avoid touching, even by the sight of me, a spot that might still be sore. Yet I felt some shame in doing him what I thought must, after all, be an injustice.

  Llewelyn, sitting beside him, was well-nigh as broad in the shoulder, and not much shorter, but brown and lean and hard, for he lived a rough outdoor life by choice, as often involved with cattle and fields as with court and council. Eryri is a harsh, stony, untilled land, yet it has fields in some sheltered valleys that can be made to bear beans and pease, if not corn, and he had good reason to remember the winter of hunger after the rape of Anglesey. His brown face, all bone and brow, looked lively and good-humoured in company, and sturdily thoughtful in repose. My lord at this time was twenty-three years old, body and mind formed fully, and both under large and easy control. Often I was aware that he was consciously waiting, and employing his days to the best effect until his time came, for he knew how to wait.

  Rhodri was the slenderest of the four, but of resource in getting by device what he could not get by force. His face was fair and freckled, a condition usual with hair of such a light, reddish colour. As a child I remembered him as capable of spite, and capricious in his likes and dislikes as in his interests, blowing all ways in one day, and in and out with everyone about him too quickly to follow his turns. Beside those other three he seemed of light weight, but that weight might be thrown into the scale so wantonly as to upset all. At the manly exercises which showed David at his burning best Rhodri was but mediocre, though he could hold his own with the lump. He was attentive and gentle with his mother, who loved him dearly, and fretted over him constantly.

  And David sparkled and shone upon all, the youngest and the most radiant, for to him everything was new and strange, and he was about to enter into the possession of lands of his own, and bright with the excitement of it. He, of them all, knew how to approach all, though his calculations were civil, heartening and kind. And I loved him for the wisdom of which his mother had warned me, for deep he was, as the sea, but better governed, and more sparing of poor men.

  Both those young princes were full of the news of the English court, and both talked like men of the world, familiarly naming far places, and great men whose dealings came to us in Wales only as distant legends, though we knew they lived and moved in the same world with us, and could bring about changes that affected our lives, too. The more voluble and loud was Rhodri, the elder, who looked upon David still as little more than a child. But what David had to say was more sharply perceptive, and often critical.

  "King Henry has a finger in so many affairs abroad," Rhodri said, "I doubt he has no time or attention to give to Wales nowadays. He's very close with Pope Innocent, since he took the cross, two years ago. You knew of that? It eased his situation with Innocent that the old Emperor Frederick died. It was all very well having a sister married to the greatest man in Europe, even if he had had other wives before, and kept hundreds of concubines, as they say, in his court in Sicily. But since the pope has turned against the whole house of Hohenstaufen as the devil's brood, it's well to have Isabella safely widowed, and the whole adventure forgotten."

  "He bids fair to have trouble enough with the sister's husband he still has," said David, "and nearer home. There's been the devil to pay ever since Easter, with the Gascons charging the earl of Leicester with God knows what mismanagement in their province, and the earl on his defence, and hard-pressed, too. King Henry hit out at him more like an enemy than a brother—he never could keep his temper when he felt himself measured against a larger man. Earl Simon never raised his voice but once, and then but for a moment."

  "You speak too impudently of his Grace," said the Lady Senena frowning. "And what do you know of the matter, a child like you?"

  "Everything," said David, undisturbed. "I was there in the abbey refectory four

days running when the fighting was at its best. I heard them at it."

  "You?" she said indulgently. "And how would you get admission to a grave court hearing? You are making up vain stories."

  "Edward got me into the room with him. I was curious, and put it into his head. It all ended in a compounded peace," said David, "as everybody knows, but Earl Simon had the best of the argument, to my way of thinking. True, he brought it on himself, for from all I hear the man is mad who believes French law and order can be imposed on Gascons. He never understood them, and they would not abide him. In the end the king has imposed a truce, and promised to go himself to Gascony next spring, or to send Edward, and Earl Simon has given up his command voluntarily, on his expenses being paid. They got out of it with everyone's face saved by having Gascony formally handed over to Edward, for he's to have it as part of his appanage in any case. And the earl has gone back to France for the time being, free of his province. He never wanted it in the first place," said the boy positively. "He wanted to go on crusade with King Louis, and only gave it up because King Henry begged him to take charge in Gascony. And all it's done is cost him a great deal of money out of his own purse, made him hated in the south, and spilled a whole sea of bad blood between him and the king."