The Brothers of Gwynedd (176 page)

  "Yes," said the prince, pondering, "there are interesting possibilities there to be exploited, if needs must. While the truce holds and we have hopes of agreement, there's nothing more we can do. But I am sorry," he said, "that Roger's gone. He was a rough, fair enemy and a sturdy friend."

  In this great but fragile quietness that had fallen upon us, we needed all the information we could garner, whether or not there was any immediate use we could make of it. If there was disaffection even among the greater tenants round Radnor, and Edward in his single-minded fury against Wales had failed to understand how easily inflamed the Mortimer pride could be, then the central march might be a fruitful field for recruitment if the fighting had to continue, and even the young lords, stung by the king's neglect and delay in establishing the right feudal relationship with them in their father's place, might at least turn a blind eye to what their Welsh tenants did, though it was hard to believe their own loyalty was assailable. But the niceties of feudal usage cut both ways. Until the king gave Edmund seisin of his inheritance, no fealty existed, and no treason was possible and, the boy might well claim, no loyalty either.

  "I should be sorry to lure any man away from his faith," said the prince, "but what's offered I'll not refuse. Well, let it lie, we are at truce. We may yet have no need of such weapons." But I knew by his tone, that was steady, equable but joyless, that he had no great faith in Peckham's valiant offices.

  Howbeit, we waited, and nursed such resources as we had. And a day or so later one of our patrols brought in a solitary wretch, drenched and shivering, from the bleak hills the further side of Conway, and having heard his account of himself, delivered him to Tudor, who in turn brought him to Llewelyn.

  "For he came gladly into their arms instead of running from them," said Tudor, "and he has a parchment he says is for the lord prince. We have fed him, for he was famished, he'd been on the run from Rhuddlan for two days, he says, and all but fell into the clutches of a patrol from the outpost at Llangernyw."

  The man was young, no more than thirty, and sturdy, though soiled and unkempt after his solitary travelling. He said he was a borderer from Cynllaith, Welsh by blood, but drafted for the king's work by the constable of Oswestry. He was a carpenter, one of many pressed to serve in the making of the boat-bridge across the strait, and he had left a young wife at home, and sought the first opportunity of getting back to her. Many of the hundreds of carpenters had been discharged now that the bridge was ready, but he as a skilled man had been one of those retained to maintain the work, for the seas were growing rough there, and several times there had been damages to repair. And as he could not swim at all, let alone well enough to risk that passage, he had stowed away on one of the coastal ships returning to Rhuddlan after unloading a cargo of crossbow quarrels. It was going back to the lion's den, but there was no help for it, and he had trusted to his wits and judgment to get clear undiscovered when the ship docked.

  "And so I did, my lord," he said, "and would have made off upstream to where I could ford the Clwyd, but there was too much bustle about the dock, and I had to lie up among the stores until dark, and there, by what I thought then very ill-luck, I was spied by one of the clerks going back and forth with inventories of the arms and timber being loaded. But it turned out the best of luck for me, for he put a bland face on it, and gave me his scrip and schedules to carry for him, and so hid me until night by not hiding me at all. And by darkness he put me across the river with a bundle of food and this letter to the lord prince, and advised me to cut as briskly into Welsh-held land as I could. Which I have done, and gratefully. And here I deliver his letter, and keep my promise."

  The scroll was but a fragment of a leaf, and the hand not as precise or leisured as usual, but it was still recognisable. Llewelyn smiled as he unrolled it. "You owe him your liberty, and I owe him many years of staunch service."

  "Did I not say," said David, also knowing that hand, "that we should hear from him?" And he leaned at Llewelyn's shoulder to read with him. That was the briefest letter we ever had from Cynan:

  "Your advocate here labours hard for you, but against the grain. The truce holds fast, Tany in Anglesey has his orders not to stir unless the king gives the word. But hear what the bearer has to say, and be on guard accordingly. If I can find no further messenger, accept with this my fealty and valediction. God shield you, is the prayer of your servant."

  "What is this?" said David, startled and hushed. "He is saying goodbye! He is watched! No, or he would not be going freely about Burnell's business checking the loading of ships. If he had lost the chancellor's confidence they would have a man at his heels every moment, he'd have had no chance to help a fugitive out of Rhuddlan."

  "He went about as having authority everywhere," said the carpenter. "I could not see that any man questioned it, or looked sidewise at him."

  "He is Welsh," said Llewelyn dispassionately, "and feels the day drawing in." And he looked up calmly at the messenger, and said: "Tell us what it is you have to tell, concerning Tany and Anglesey. That part of his news he has left to you."

  "My lord," said the man, "what the clerk says is true, every man in Anglesey knew that Luke de Tany has his orders not to move until the king bids him cross his bridge. But when the news came that the archbishop had come to Wales, and was going back and forth trying to make peace, Tany flew into a bitter rage, and swore his meddling should not prosper, for he would put an end to it if the king would not. He said the king had set out to annex Wales to his realm, and he should do it, in spite of Peckham and pope and all."

  "Did he so?" said Llewelyn, drawing slow and thoughtful breath. "You heard this?"

  "Not I, but the lads who were working at the end of the bridge, they heard it, for the despatches were carried to him there. My lord, I had friends among them I trust. They have not lied. If I did not hear his ravings, I saw his face not an hour later, and it was still black."

  "He was Edward's seneschal in Gascony," said David. "He sees another province within his grasp. I believe it."

  "I, too," said Llewelyn, and re-rolled Cynan's letter in his hands. "Take a day and a night of rest here," he said to the carpenter, "and then you shall have food and a cloak, and my safe-conduct to pass you south round-about, by the Berwyns, back to your home. You'll be safe enough on the way. But how will you fare in your own village, if you're within the English pale?"

  The man grinned, stocky and resolute, no way intimidated at the prospect. "Let me alone, my lord, to take care of that. My village is two men out of three Welsh, and a good reeve to fend for us, and no such tight hold now, I judge, as when I was pressed. God grant your Grace as hopeful a way before you."

  "Amen!" said Llewelyn, and smiled and dismissed him.

  "Very well," he said to David, leaning and quivering at his elbow, "send at once to Bangor, let them know what's said of Tany and his grievance, and have them double the watch on the bridge. But not move until I so bid, or Tany brings it headlong on his own head by treachery. I will not be the one to break this truce. You hear me?"

  "Nor I, believe me," said David. "I value my life too high to toss away the hope of keeping it. But if he strikes, so may we, and harder. But this half-Gascon courtier will never really venture?" he said, marvelling and rejecting. "Against Edward's orders?"

  "Who can tell," said Llewelyn, "what men will dare do? I see no limits to human rashness." He looked into his brother's face, bent most earnestly, brow and eye, to search his heart and mind. He smiled, bewildered and rueful, as one who stakes nothing of value, and sees others dear to him hurl their souls away. "I teach where I have learned," he said. "Go and set your snare, David, but leave Tany to spring it. Edward will not forgive that, and the guilt will not be yours. We have a mediator, and a truce. It is not time yet to think of how to die."

Thus we manned our defences above Bangor, and held reserves ready in the hills behind the strait, and made no further move, bound by that autumnal silence that was heavy and still as the lull between storm-winds. While Brother John Peckham argued and sweated both for us and for England, and for his pope and his God, who hated, the one as the other, dissent among believing creatures, and the shedding of Christian blood. I do acquit him whom sometimes I have resented, reviled and damned, of any insincerity. He did as he saw right, he never lied, he never left grieving. It was not his fault if he could not see beyond the end of a very short nose, or stretch his academic mind into the bleak, bare summits of our mountains, and comprehend the love we had for our barren, beautiful land. He came from a softer soil and a narrower learning. He did his best.

  In the afternoon of the sixth day of November, in that year twelve hundred and eighty-two, Brother John of Wales rode into our outposts from Rhuddlan, bearing the desperate and devoted fruit of his archbishop's labours on behalf of peace. In camp at Garthcefn, in the highlands of our Snowdon, Llewelyn received Archbishop Peckham's envoy, and the terms of peace he brought us.

  When the prince took his place, his countenance was stone-still but calm. The grey that had salted his temples was now a silver dust over the thick autumnal bracken- brown of his whole head, and this gradual frost had overtaken him since Eleanor died. He stood at the threshold of a double winter, of the year and of his own glory, unless God willed a miracle to Wales. I saw, as suddenly I was seeing for the first time clearly all the signs of his advancing age and mine, that he had lost flesh, and the bones of his face stood clear and hard and polished, rather bronze than stone. The chill winds of war and death had driven him past the bright summer of his prime. There was no way now to go but towards old age and the dark. What mattered was the manner of the going.

  I looked at David, who sat close at his side, very pale and grim, and noted how from time to time he watched his brother with strained and passionate attention, as though he, too, was seeing the threat of ruin as great as the former glory. But he saw it as in part his own work, and was aghast and stricken mute before that knowledge.

  "By favour of Archbishop Peckham and Brother John of Wales," said the prince, "we have received replies to those articles we sent in our defence, asking for justice. Before I put them before this council, I must tell you what Brother John reports of the reception our letters received in Rhuddlan. The archbishop presented to the king my reply that I am willing to submit myself to his will, saving always my sovereign dignity and my duty to my people. King Edward refuses to allow any conditions. We must submit to his will absolutely, without reserve. I am grateful to the archbishop for this, that he understood and said that unless we were offered honourable terms we would not surrender, and as Brother John reports, he persisted until he induced the king to agree that he might consult the magnates present at Rhuddlan, and with them try to draw up terms which should be mutually acceptable. For what the king's own magnates agreed to could hardly be derogatory to the king's sovereignty and honour. What I now hold is the fruit of those discussions, and to these terms the king has given his consent, though I am told not gladly." He looked round about at all the intent faces, and said with slow emphasis: "I make it clear—if this form is not accepted, we may very well ask the archbishop to continue his efforts. But whether he will again prevail upon the king to allow another form to be put forward, that I question. It is fair," he said, "that you should know what is at stake."