The Brothers of Gwynedd (181 page)

  In the last days of November the big snow came, the ally for which we waited. We saw it first glittering on the crests of the distant mountains, and then the heavy clouds came down and dimmed that shining, and all the sky was darkened, and in the night the fall began. It lasted fitfully into the first week of December, drifting strongly in the valleys, swept thin on the ridges, and driving the English back into their castles for shelter. A great snow it was, that buried unwary travellers and whole flocks of sheep, some of which we dug out before their shepherds ever got near them, and took for our own use. As for us, we were then encamped in the forests of the hills north-west of the river Irfon, perhaps three or four miles from the castle of Builth, close by which castle the Irfon empties into the Wye.

  Those are wild hills with few inhabitants, but we had found all those who had their dwellings within that region were good friends to us, and would open their huts to us freely as shelter at need, and for the rest, we were used to providing our own roofs, and made dug-outs of firboughs and bracken in the drifts, and the forests gave us both warmth and covering. All the land on our side the river we held, and had a strong party guarding the only bridge at Orewin, for in these conditions they had little hope of crossing by any other means to get at us. The drifted snow made any attempt at fording most dangerous, every hazard being concealed, and when a partial thaw set in, about three days into December, the perils were no way lessened, for that river drains very mountainous land, and in the thaw the waters come down furiously, and boil out wide over the fields of the lowlands, and where normally the stream might be forded with care, then it runs deep and fast. For that reason we had given the guard at Orewin bridge more than their fair share of our best archers, to prevent close approach from the other side. And we, from the hills above, raided wherever we could sight a party of the English in arms, harried such of their patrols and ambushed such of their stores as we could, and evaded any possibility of being brought to pitched battle in the valley.

  Westward we had contact with the sons of Meredith ap Owen in Cardigan, though over some of the bleakest uplands in all Wales, and across the Irfon by night we could still get word back and forth to Aberedw. Many of the local Welshry had risen and joined the prince's banner, and there were others who hesitated whether to dare, of whom we had word from time to time, and encouraged such leanings every way we could, even taking risks in the matter. So it seemed but one more similar approach, from Welshmen tempted but afraid to take the plunge, when a messenger slipped through to us from Aberedw in the night of the eighth of December, to say that a furtive stranger had come urgently begging to get word to the prince of Wales, from some who willed him well but were close under Lestrange's eye, and must tread softly, and therefore wanted a secret meeting. Of whom this very uneasy visitor was only the envoy, and knew little, but could promise that those who sent him might be of the greatest help, for they were no common farmers or troopers. So far, apart from this mention of higher personages, it was much what we had been receiving for ten days or more, in some cases to good effect. But it took quite a new turn when our man produced from under his cotte a written roll, brought and left by the stranger. We had not expected a letter. Most people were afraid to write even if they knew how, or could get a clerk to do it for them.

  Llewelyn held the roll to the light of our sheltered fire, but it bore no superscription, and the seal was deliberately mutilated, which was no wonder. The wonder was that anyone under Lestrange's eye would dare set quill to parchment at all. Nor did many of the troopers write, or have to do with clerks but very rarely.

  "And, my lord," said the messenger, "this man hid his face as well as he might, and was in haste to be gone, but he stayed long enough to say what he'd been told to say, that here you'll find the time and place where they hope to come safely to meet with you, and that they entreat you to come if by any means you can. Also that you will understand that those matters there mentioned are but tokens, from which you may guess at truth where others might miss. Then he went, and was glad to have his errand done. But I know one thing more that he did not tell. For he went in a hooded cloak like a countryman, but when he mounted the wind blew the fronts of his cloak apart, and I saw he had a stout leather coat under it, and a badge on the coat. The Mortimer badge!"

  "Mortimer!" said Llewelyn, arrested with the seal under his fingers. "You are sure?"

  "Sure, my lord. I know it well. And his horse was no country cob neither."

  "Is it possible?" said Llewelyn in a whisper, more to himself than to any other. And he broke the seal and read the letter, bending close to have the firelight on the leaf, and frowning in doubt and wonder.

  "No date or place or salutation. I should expect none. But the rest! The cause of Wales, they tell me, has friends here, where tenant and lord alike may be burdened with fealties that try them hard, and cross the natural bent of their blood and affections, no less than their faith in justice. I am bidden remember a bond of mutual support, never yet called upon but never repudiated, and to think on a double tie through father and mother. And if I trust as they trust me, I am to come two miles north from here, to the track that runs above the bank of the Wye, to a barn at the edge of the forest where three paths meet, as soon as I may after noon on the eleventh day of this month, when by God's grace they will be free of watching eyes, and there wait for me. To come out of mail and plain, like a countryman, as they must, for there are eyes everywhere. And not in force, but alone or with but one companion. And they entreat me, if I am there first, to wait for them in hiding, for they will surely come."

  "It is much to ask," said Tudor at his elbow, anxious and distrustful.

  "It is what they might well be forced to ask, for their own safety," said Llewelyn,

"if they are what they purport to be. Even a countryman may carry sword or dagger under his cloak, these days, but he would hardly be cased in mail. They ask but reasonably. Modest travellers do not go with armed escorts. And who else claims kinship with me on both sides his parentage? Who else is fast bound under Lestrange's eye on the one side, and Giffard's, according to report, on the other?"

  For the Mortimer brothers, who might well recall their father's recent pact of mutual aid with Llewelyn—in peace or war, saving his duty to the king!—had a paternal grandmother who was Llewelyn Fawr's daughter, but also a mother who was sister to the wife of Llewelyn Fawr's son David, from whom my lord inherited. And the elder, Edmund, now newly in seisin of his lands, was attached to Lestrange's force working from Montgomery, and no doubt under close tutelage, since he had made plain his displeasure at the king's neglect of his right. And Roger, the younger, was said to be serving with Giffard from Builth. Moreover, the messenger had certainly worn the Mortimer badge.

  Tudor in his turn asked: "Is this possible?"

  Llewelyn thought, and said: "It is possible. I would not have said it of their father, however warmly he had pledged me support and aid, that he could ever have swerved from his fealty to Edward, for my sake or any other man's. But after Edward has kept this young man landless and owing no fealty and receiving no royal countenance for a month, I would not say but Edmund might consider his faith and service to be slighted and undervalued, and be more inclined to sting in return."

  "Now, when seisin has been granted, and he newly owes his homage for it?" said Tudor.

  "But has not yet paid it," said Llewelyn. And that was true, for homage could not be paid for the lands until Edward and Edmund Mortimer met face to face, and the king was in Rhuddlan, and Edmund here in the middle march.

  They discussed it long, not blinking the possible dangers, but the upshot was that he would go. For the promise of reinforcements he thought the risks worth taking, and rated them no higher than many he had taken lightly enough in the past. No man rushes headlong into what may be an ambush, but in this affair he took what precautions were sensible, and then ventured boldly. I myself took the letter by daylight, and scrutinised the defaced seal with care, and I thought that by such traces as were left I was justified in believing it Mortimer's. And whatever we could credit of those two young men, we could not credit that they would lend themselves to personal treachery. A high-spirited young nobleman smarting at neglect and humiliation may take his sword over to the opposing side. We held him less likely to connive at deceit and murder.

  "And if I go," said Llewelyn, "I go upon the terms held out. I will not put them in peril by any cheat, as I do not believe they would imperil me but in open battle, and fairly. I go alone."

  I said no. And then he looked at me as though he had awakened out of a short and troubled sleep, and stood at gaze. "Or with one companion," I said.

  "True!" said Llewelyn, and smiled. "I am allowed to have you with me, now as ever. So be it!"

On the tenth of December there was fresh snow, but moist and fitful, lying wetly over that already fallen, that was dimpling into holes like frayed cloth, and the grudging waters of the slow thaw dribbling down to swell the already swollen river. We rode the hills and surveyed our defences, and made due inspection of the guard at the bridge below, and all was dank and chill and still, not a soul stirring out of Builth. They said that the lady was there, Dame Maud, come hither with her husband when he took over this command, and now held there by the snows from returning to her more congenial Llandovery. A sad lady I think she was, widowed from her first husband, William Longspée, a son of the earl of Salisbury, whom she had loved, and married now to this greedy, ambitious creature whom I fear she loved not at all, and who used her and her royal descent and claims to further his own desires, as often as not against her will. She did not love litigation, and had to suffer his insistent use of her name beside his in case after case, since he had few pretensions but through her. She did not love war, but was trapped within it like so many women before her, her heart-strings drawn out upon both sides.

  In the night it froze again, but not hard. We rose to a leaden sky, and made ready.

  The prince had with him on this campaign, as always, the full trappings of his chapel, that with us were perhaps more modest than those of the English crown, and could be carried more easily. And let it not be thought that the general excommunication levelled against his person, had deprived him of the consolations of his faith. There was never wanting priest or brother to sing his mass. The bishop of St. Asaph, cited by Peckham to answer for his failure to issue the letters of excommunication against the prince, had risen in anger to demand the excommunication of the English soldiery who burned his cathedral. And the Cistercians, closest of all brotherhoods to the defiant austerity of Wales, followed, served, harboured him wherever he showed his face, loved him and all his to the last. We had with us then a Cistercian brother who sang mass for the prince that eleventh day of December, in the half-frozen snows in the forest above the Irfon, in the murk of a morning hovering between ice and tears.

  Then, when the day was well advanced, with time and to spare for the distance we had to go, he and I rode, dun and plain in homespun cloaks and without armour, but keeping our swords. We had one stream to cross on the way, that drained down into the Wye in the town of Builth, like the Irfon, but here in the uplands it was but a swollen brook, and no stay to us. Some miles to the north there was a bridge over the Wye, too distant to be of value to them in approaching the present position of the prince's army, for we could withdraw long before they got near us, but we guessed that those who planned to meet us at the barn would come by that way, all the more certainly if, as we thought likely, they were coming from Radnor. We made for the track that kept the shoulder of the hills, overhanging the river valley, and rode openly until we judged we must be nearing the place. Woodlands skirted the way on the upland side, and on the river side the slope dipped steeply, and was open grass beneath the snow, but for occasional clumps of trees where the folded ground gave shelter. Here Llewelyn bade me take to the forest and keep pace with him there unseen, while he kept the open track.

  "Let me seem to be coming alone, if that is what they want, and still have a friend

in reserve to guard my back."

  So I wove my way in the trees, sufficiently withdrawn not to be seen from the road, and at a rise of the track Llewelyn checked, gazing before him, and I guessed that he could see, though without emerging I could not, the spot ahead of us where the three tracks met, and the barn to which we were bound. I drew somewhat nearer, and he turned his head and said clearly: "It is the place. One track comes up from the Wye, by the valley of some small brook, I judge. There are trees in the cleft. One track moves off to the north-west, into the hills, and the forest swallows it. The barn is there on the edge of the level ground, between those two roads."