The Brothers of Gwynedd (187 page)

  There was but one burning, bitter desire left in the heart of every true Welshman, and that was to hunt down the traitor who had betrayed the last prince of Gwynedd, and tear him apart. We even debated in our dungeon, sometimes, who it could have been, and could only suppose that it was some solitary countryman of those parts who had watched us come and go, and thought what he had learned worth a high price. Strange it is that the men of Wales were flighty and changeable, and turned their coats openly for security, or pique, or dudgeon, but never, or almost never, furtively for gain. And for that sin there was no forgiveness.

  In early September we were haled forth and allowed to cleanse ourselves of the muck of our fetid cell, and brought out into dazzling light in the castle ward, again chained. And there for the first time we saw Cristin and Alice again, and the girl children, pale, mute and wary, all girded for travelling.

  Last they brought out David, for we were bound into England, to Shrewsbury for his trial. He came forth emaciated and pale, but straight and immaculate as of old, with that gift he always had of emerging pure out of any contamination, but now so withdrawn that he seemed already to have abandoned this world. Only so could he pass through it for what was left of his course, unbroken. He wore the same golden jewellery he had on him at his capture, and his wrists were loaded with chains. Sixty archers were his escort through the town of Rhuddlan, no less, so high they prized him, and so greatly they still feared him. All we followed, the children with their nurses, the two knights and five troopers of the bodyguard, and I, his clerk and friend. I saw with my own eyes, and I say this was a more royal progress than many in which Edward played the chief part, and the bearing and grandeur of the prince excelled the mere overbearing bodily menace of the king. But of the ending there could be no question.

  We went where we were driven, and we came where we were bound, into Shrewsbury, where all this history concerning Wales and England began. There David, five years old and handsome and clever, first confronted King Henry of England, and charmed him with his wit, and passed into his care, to become the companion and idol of the king's own son, three years younger. In the refectory of Shrewsbury abbey, where that meeting took place, Edward the king caused his sometime darling to be brought to trial of high treason, murder, and sundry other grave charges, before the lords of parliament assembled, and judges duly appointed by the king himself, presiding in his own cause, though in absence. They say he spent those days as guest of his chancellor, Robert Burnell, who had a princely mansion not far from the town. Certain it is that Edward never confronted David after his capture, never once encountered him eye to eye. He hung aloof at Acton Burnell, devouring his own gall and savouring the messages that brought him degree after degree of triumph over his enemy.

  Yet what monarch who feels himself triumphant need exact what he exacted? I judge rather that he felt himself eternally bested, by what infernal arts only Llewelyn and David knew. How else to account for his malignant venom?

  All we of David's train were shut in close hold within Shrewsbury castle, we saw nothing of that trial. Yet I see him behind my eyelids whenever I remember, still chained, and marked by his chains, still disdainful in his beauty, for what other resource had he but disdain? God knows where Elizabeth was then, not in Shrewsbury, at least he was spared that torture. He stood to be judged, knowing Edward had already decreed what the judgment should be. That he had done homage to Edward, and was in vassalage to him, that he would never be allowed to dispute. That he had revolted against that homage was plain to be seen. He had known, from long before, that he was a dead man. The means he had not known, but I doubt if even they astonished him. There was no barbarism invented by man and speciously justified by legal ingenuity that was enough to satisfy Edward's vengeance. He was forced to find something never before wreaked upon man by the courts of England, and to have his lawyers devise a formula by which it could be sanctioned. Thus for the first time, by awarding a separate part of sentence for every charge they alleged against the prisoner, they fashioned that frightful weapon Edward afterwards used freely against all who offended him, even boys barely grown, a death after his own heart.

  And we who had served under David and been true to him were made to witness it. I speak of what I know. They brought us out of the castle prisons in our chains and made us line the open square about the gallows, that was set up at the high cross. The second day of October this befell, and all the town crowded and chattered there where the chief streets met, making a holiday of slaughter. Our part was to be displayed as the object of abhorrence and mockery, and to observe and report to others the reward of the only possible treason, treason against Edward. But I remember rather a great and awful silence when it came to the act, and whispers of pity and horror. The very sight of the tools of slaughter there assembled was terrible enough to sicken the mind, all the more as swordsman, stone slab, knives and burning brazier seemed then inexplicable and monstrous under the shadow of the gallows, itself the instrument of death.

  What Edward had lusted after was done in full. They brought David out of his prison, and dragged him behind horses, bound hand and foot upon a hurdle, through the streets and lanes of the town to the high cross. I stood beside Godred, where we were posted, and for truth's sake and love's sake I would neither close my eyes nor turn them away. Everything he endured to suffer I endured to see, and if I still wake sweating and sobbing in the night after dreaming of it, he is at peace long since.

  I looked upon him when they unbound and raised him, and for all the dust and dirt of the ways, I swear to you, he still shone, his gift had not left him. It was dry weather. Even for that I was grateful, that he was not utterly soiled and spoiled when he put them off and walked unaided to the foot of the ladder, and there put up his hands, joined by a short chain, and himself unloosed the gold torque from his neck, and handed it like unregarded largesse to the hangman's man who stood at the ladder's foot. He turned back the collar of his cotte and shirt, and looked round him once at earth and sky, and then I saw his face full, an alabaster face from a tomb, and the early autumn sun caught the blue of his eyes still vivid in their bruised hollows, frantic life looking through the submissive stillness of death. He saw neither me nor any other among all those frozen hundreds, his gaze was fixed only on light and air and colour, the brightness of the world. Then he turned and climbed the ladder without faltering, and leaned his head to the noose. He had said truly, he was Llewelyn now, and he did not disgrace him.

  When he felt those below lay hand to the ladder to jerk it away, he did not wait to slip tamely into the strangling noose, but suddenly braced himself and sprang strongly out into air, and dropped with a great, shuddering shock that caused all those watching to gasp and groan. I pray, I pray God still, though it is all past, that he did what he willed to do, that he broke his neck in that leap, and all that passed after was contemptible to him and vain. They say it can be done, by a resolute man who has the heart, when he must go, to go quickly. Certainly he never uttered sound after. But I do not know! I do not know! I wish to God I did.

  Whether with a living body or a dead, Edward had his way with all that was left of David. They cut him down after barely a minute, they stretched him on the slab, they slit that fine trunk open, tore out heart and bowels and cast them bubbling into the brazier. Godred beside me stood with head bent, barely able to stand at all, he shook and swayed so, and retched and swallowed vomit, his eyes tight shut. I watched to the end. I owed it to David to know and to remember, to remain with him to the last, and if ever vengeance came within my grasp, to avenge. And I owed it to Llewelyn, who had sent me to him with his dying breath, to be to the last brother as I had been all my life through to the second.

  When the headsman at last struck off that raven head that had rested so often in half-mocking, half-jealous affection against my shoulder, and I knew that he was free, the rest, though unseemly butcher's work, mattered not at all. That was not David they quartered like meat to display as a dreadful warning in four of the cities of the realm. He heeded it no longer. He was far out of reach.

  "You can open your eyes now," I said to Godred, between comfort and contempt, "it is all over."

After that day, King Edward had no further use for the women who had cared for David's children, for good reason. The two boys, Owen and Llewelyn, had already been sent away to close confinement in Bristol castle, and there or in some similar fastness they surely lie to this day, for never, never must that dreaded and hated stock be left free to breed other princes to poison Edward's life. And the girls, it seemed, had also been disposed of in some way, for suddenly I was haled out of my cell and told that since I was but a clerk, and not a soldier, I was to be set free to return to Aber, and escort the royal nurses home to that maenol. The knights and troopers were held several weeks longer, until Edward was more secure in his administration of his newly conquered territories, and even we were required to take an oath of submission before we left. I was glad that Godred did not know why I was removed from him, but it would have been useless trying to win his release in my place, Cristin's husband though he might be, for Edward was very slow to set free any man who had borne arms against him. As I, indeed had, to the best I could, but a clerk should be a clerk, and so I was set down in his lists.

  I was given a letter of safe-conduct, permitting me and my companions to travel only to Aber, and reside only in Aber, for he had not as yet extended his administration, and for the time being the Welsh castellans who had submitted continued in office, only the major fortresses were held and garrisoned by English forces. The king wanted a settled people, and where he could compel residence in a fixed place, that he did. It made the task of his bailiffs easier.

  Joy we had none then, in any relief or any mitigation, yet there was an aching thankfulness in me when I took my safe-conduct on the appointed day, and waited for Cristin and Alice to come out to join me. And only Cristin came.

  She was thin, pale and quiet, with huge, dark-rimmed eyes that devoured half her face, but in their depths there was still the purple flame that kindled when we two came together. We stood a long moment simply looking at each other, after long severance and silence.

  "Alice has found a household to take her in," she said, answering the first unasked question. "She is English, and some of Hereford's Bohun kinsmen have offered her service. There is no one but me."

  So for us two it was like, and dolorously unlike, that first journey we made together, for we rode, as then, home to Gwynedd, to a royal seat, but now the home was ravaged, the princes dead, the mountains defiled, the land ravished. Yet we two rode together, and there was an anguished, elegiac sweetness in that. I asked her, as we mounted, what she had failed to answer without being questioned: "What has he done with the children, that he has taken them from you?" And I longed for her to say that Edward had given them back, the girls at least, surely the little ones, to their mother. But Cristin's eyes filled with tears, and she was slow in answering, for the strangling pain that closed her throat.

  "He has sent them by some of the queen's women," she said at last, "to be brought up in the Sempringham convents. Not even together! They are scattered, they will grow up solitary, not even knowing their sisters. The twins will die of it."

  But David's stock and Elizabeth's did not die easily, they were strong and splendid and sunlit. For such there is no escape into the grave.

  "Gwenllian, too?" I asked.

  "Gwenllian, too. She is gone to Sempringham in her cradle. They will none of them ever get out," said Cristin with bitter certainty. "He will see to it that none of his magnates ever look upon such beauty, to want them in marriage. They will be nuns before they are of age, and no choice offered them. Do you think he will ever let David's daughters, or Llewelyn's, bear children?"

  I thought of all those bright beings, so apt for future courtship and love, shut up through long lives of silent rebellion, only to die in captivity at the end of it, and I thought that perhaps after all David had done well to die, even so barbarously. And I was sorriest of all for Elizabeth, who had possessed all possible joy and fulfilment for a time, and been robbed of all, and was barely twenty-six years old, with a life before her totally empty, a life I am sure she did not want. God knows what Edward has done or will do with her. I have not heard of her again. Yet she spoke her mind to her persecutor, and vaunted her love like a blow in his face, and for that I shall always love her, and always be glad.