The Brothers of Gwynedd (183 page)

  But when he had ended and made his act of contrition, and the priest would have pronounced absolution, clearly and loud Llewelyn said: "No, that you cannot. I do not ask it. I am excommunicate." And at that the young man started up in wonder and dismay, and drew me a little aside to question.

  "This man by his clothing is Welsh. He is unarmed, what was he doing here in battle without mail, to come by such a death? And excommunicate? All I can do for him I will do, and pray rest to his soul, for with God it makes no difference of what race he comes, or for what cause he fought. But to him it may, and to me, and to others. I must know, who is he?"

  And I told him, for soon all men would know it, it would be cried from end to end of England with triumphant joy, and carried throughout Wales in terrible lamentation. "He is Llewelyn ap Griffith, prince of Wales. Let your lady know of it, for she is his cousin, and give her his thanks for this last grace."

  "God sort all!" said the chaplain, awe-stricken. "She shall know it, and she shall be the first to know it from me." And he went back to pray with the prince, and courteously begged his forgiveness that he might not give to him the sacrament he carried to others. Yet he blessed him to God before he left us and went to all those other sad duties that waited for him. And then we two were left alone.

  Llewelyn's eyes were closed, and from the effort of speech a few flecks of blood dewed his lips. I watched the great rose of blood, in the heart of which he lay, spread its wine-red petals and melt the snow until the soiled green of grass showed through. I took his hand between mine, that he might be assured, who could, as I thought, no longer see me, that I was still beside him. But at that touch he opened his eyes, and they were bright and fierce, and he gripped my hand hard.

  "Samson!" he said, and I leaned down to hear. "You can do better for me than grieve," he said, reading my face. "There is still a prince of Wales. Go to my brother, Samson. Be to him as you have been to me. It is not yet over, because I am out of

the fight."

"As long as you live," I said, "I will never leave you."

  "Yes," he said, "you will. I bid you, and you cannot refuse me. When did I ever ask anything of you in vain? Now I want three things of you, on your allegiance. No, on your love! The first…Her picture is round my neck. Let me have it in my hand!"

  In terror of aggravating his pain, I raised his head enough to lift clear the medallion of the child Eleanor, and laid it in his right hand, closing the fingers over it. In all that bleak expanse of cold and darkness, this one small thing was warm from the great, failing fire of his heart.

  "And the second and third are my last commission to you, and then I thank God for you, and take my leave. Pull out the lance—"

  I cried aloud that I neither could nor would, for that was his death, and the end of a world for me.

  "Dear fool Samson," he said softly, "I am a dead man already. I grow weary of this waiting. Pull out the lance, and go to David!"

  He was my lord, and I did his bidding. First I kneeled and kissed him on the brow, and then I laid hold on the shaft of the lance, and dragged it out of his body, streaming tears like heavy rain. He was lifted from the ground with it, like a man starting up from sleep, but even then he never uttered cry or moan. Then the shaft came away, and his body fell back and lay still upon crimson, and crimson came boiling out of his riven breast and covered him royally, and still it seemed to me that he smiled.

  They say he was still breathing, and lived some few minutes more, when Lestrange's men found him and knew him at last. If so, they must have come very soon after I left him. I let fall the broken shaft out of my hand, and turned and went stumbling and groping up the slope towards the forest, fleeing that field of Orewin bridge as once I fled the field of Evesham, and leaving, as then, a great piece of my own being dead beside the body of a man I loved and revered above all others. And I cried silently to God in the darkness of my spirit and the darkness of the night, as I had cried for Earl Simon, that in this world there was no justice, but the best were calumniated and betrayed and brought to nought, as God himself was when he ventured among the sons of men.

Concerning Orewin bridge and what followed, I tell now, to make all plain, those things I learned only long afterwards, by laborious gleaning from many sources, for I could not rest until I knew to the last what had befallen even the poor body of my lord. To this day I do not know who sent the letter that drew him away from his army, but I do know it was written as part of the plan of attack that trapped the Welsh forces into pitched battle at last. For the English had found a local man who knew a secret and safe fording-place upstream from the bridge, and sheltered from view, and on the appointed day, aided by the drifting mist, they put a strong company across the Irfon there and took the outpost at the bridge from the rear, and killed every man. Then they brought all their force across by both routes, and sent one company of cavalry and men-at-arms by a great circuit to the rear of the Welsh position, and only when they had taken station, launched their frontal attack at speed up the slope. They had many archers, who held by the stirrup-leathers of the troopers and ran with them, and as they came within range, dropped aside and began to shoot at will. Without the prince, the Welsh fought savagely and well, but in disorder, being surrounded and greatly outnumbered. In the end they broke, and each man sought his own escape. Had Llewelyn been there, I do not believe it could ever have happened so. He could both plan, and work by instinct when plans fell apart. But he was not there. He came too late to save, only in time to die.

As for the forces that took part in that battle, certainly all Giffard's troops from Builth were there, and both the Mortimer brothers with their followings, and part of the Montgomery garrison, though I could never hear that Lestrange himself was present. In the evening certain of his men, as he reported to Edward, found and knew the body of the prince, some said they were there before he died. In the pouch he wore inside the belt of his chausses they found the letter that betrayed him, and his privy seal, and in his hand the little enamelled portrait of his wife, the gift of Earl Simon. These Edmund Mortimer took into his keeping. By the very fact that Edmund preserved the letter, and was not ashamed to show it, to notify the archbishop and have it copied for him, I am sure that he was not guilty of uttering it, and of that I am glad. There are also other proofs speaking for him.

  It was not to be hoped that those enemies who came upon the prince at his death should respect his body, more than Earl Simon's body was respected after Evesham. Some man of Giffard's or Lestrange's struck off the head, and Lestrange sent it to Edward at Rhuddlan for his comfort and reassurance, and thence it was sent to be displayed at the Tower of London, the brow wreathed in ivy as a mocking crown. For a brow that could no longer bleed or feel pain, ivy served as well as thorns.

  And for that dear body, it rests headless, like Earl Simon's body, felon and saint, yet it rests, in the unrelenting memories of men as in the gentle earth. The young chaplain kept his word, and reported faithfully to Dame Maud Giffard the news of her cousin's death, and before worse slight could be put upon his person she sent and had the corpse delivered with all reverence into the care of the Cistercian brothers of Cwm Hir abbey, and forthwith wrote to Archbishop Peckham, requesting absolution for Llewelyn, that he might be buried in consecrated ground. Peckham replied, and dutifully notified Edward that he had so replied, that he could not without sin do as she asked, unless she provided proof that the prince had shown sign of penitence before he died. Whereupon she showed that he had asked for a priest, and that her priest had indeed ministered to him. And further, Edmund Mortimer testified that his servants, present on the field, had also borne witness that the prince had made confession to a priest, while his brother Roger said that a Cistercian had sung mass for the prince the day he died, and the furnishings of his chapel, and the vestments, were in Roger's care, and could be seen.

  So they spoke for him, and they prevailed, and he is buried in blessedness at Cwm Hir, in a spot so remote and fair and still, they who are laid there cannot but sleep well.

  And for these reasons here set out, I absolve the Mortimers of that cruel treachery that slew Llewelyn and stripped Wales of its shield and sword. And I am glad, as he is glad, where he abides. For they were his kin, and he had a kindness for them.

As for us, the remnant, desolate, broken and bereaved, we crawled westward into the hills and forests as best we could, licking wounds that healed over vainly, since they covered one great wound that would never again be healed, for the heart was riven out of us with his going, however we might still fight for the shell of our hopes. Once we were out of reach of the huntsmen we paused to look for our fellows, and recovered with shame the discipline of an army, gathering in companies, even making war when the chance offered. I found such a party that night, Tudor among them, wounded, shattered and old in a day, and dealt him what I think was his death-blow, for though he lived to reach his northern lands again, he never bore arms more, and his hurts were never cured. The word went forth throughout Wales that the great prince was dead, and the laments the bards made for him cried to heaven that without him we were left orphaned and forsaken, robbed of our only shield and stay. And I could not but think how some of those who thus lamented had turned their coats nimbly enough in the past, and left him naked to the storm, and how, if they had been always as steadfast as he, Wales might have been a nation indeed, and Llewelyn might have lived to see his dream stay with him as the sun rose, instead of vanishing with the dark.

  But we are men, faulty and weak and foolish, and we were back in the chaos of the past, and threatened by worse than all the past had ever done to us, and he was dead who was more than my prince to me, my star-brother born in the same night, with whom I should have died also.

  So many of the best were dead, or left behind wounded on the field of Orewin bridge, or prisoner to Giffard in Builth, that we were but a remnant, unable to hold the centre of Wales to make a highroad north and south. Rhys Wyndod and his brothers in Ystrad Tywi, Meredith's sons in Cardigan, must fend for themselves. All we could do was withdraw into Gwynedd, for if that heartland was lost, all was lost. So we returned, limping and hungry, to rejoin David in Dolwyddelan, and I, having my lord's charge heavy upon me, took horse and rode ahead at speed, to carry the news to David that he was the heir to his brother's right and his brother's burden.

All was as we had left it when I rode in by the steep track, and climbed to the ward. They had had no fighting beyond occasional brushes between patrols. Edward had kept fast in Rhuddlan, grimly debating whether to force the fight through the winter or lie up and nurse his present gains until the spring. But I think he had made up his mind to press on at all costs, even before he heard of Llewelyn's death. Certainly he felt his load lightened as by a miracle, and his war as good as won, when Lestrange's letter and the envied, respected, hated head reached him together, which may well have been about the time that I went with the same word to David in the armoury of Dolwyddelan.