The Brothers of Gwynedd (41 page)

  Rhys saw her and gave a cry of triumph and joy, and dropping his rein before the groom could reach him, ran like a deer to embrace his wife and child, which he did, after the impetuosity of his approach, with slow and reverent care. He kissed her above the child's head, tender of its smallness and softness, and then with a timid hand put back the shawl from its face and looked at it in wonder, as though he had not two children already, but this were the first ever to be born, and a miracle.

  He looked round then at us, and laid an arm about his wife's shoulders, and brought her to Llewelyn, who stood motionless where Rhys had left him, watching them draw near. At her face he gazed with earnest searching and deep wonder, as Rhys did at the child. He had not seen her for sixteen years, and through most of those years all he had known of her was her implacable enmity towards him. He had everything to learn. Something she had already learned, or so it seemed by her smile, which was faint, mysterious and radiant.

  "My lord," said Rhys, "I think you have long desired to be better known to your sister, who is my wife. She is here, and hale, and desires as much of you."

  She was the elder by a year, and a woman, and more over, a woman of great assurance, like her mother, yet even she did not know how to begin, for everything that had passed lay between them now, not as a barrier to be stormed, only as a ruinous waste to be clambered over before they could reach each other, and it was hard to find a way through without stumbling. David, who would have clasped and kissed her without a thought, stood back behind my shoulder and let them alone. I felt his hand close upon my arm as he watched them, and I knew that he was smiling. David had many smiles. This one, withdrawn and still, womanishly tender against his will, belonged only to Llewelyn. But it never lasted long.

  The child was their salvation. The prince looked down curiously at the tiny head, covered with dark hair, and the crumpled face all new infants wear, and said: "I am glad to see you so well and happy, and safely delivered. It is another son?"

  "It is," she said.

  "And healthy and strong? I grieve that it was I who sent you running from Dynevor with him, when most you needed to be safe at home."

  "He has taken no harm," she said, "and neither have I. He is whole and perfect." And she parted the shawl to show him, and Llewelyn touched the shrunken pink cheek with a large, marvelling finger, and then thrust the same finger delicately into the minute, questing fist that groped in the air. The child's fingers closed on it strongly, and clung. Thus held, he looked at her with innocent pleasure, and asked, as men do over children, valuing symbols: "What will you call this one?"

  "He is already named," she said. "And I trust he will grow up as gentle, valiant and magnanimous as his namesake." She looked up into her brother's face, and said, flushing deeply: "His name is Llewelyn."

I came to the Lady Gladys in the evening, when she had withdrawn to the high chamber and left the lords to their wine, and spoke to her of Cristin, for I thought it no blame to Llewelyn if he forgot this one small pledge among all his triumphs and cares of that day. And she was soft and warm and gracious, who had been a proud girl and a prouder woman, for she was much moved by what had passed, and utterly disarmed by all her husband had told her of Llewelyn's dealings with him. She spoke of her brother with wonder and gratitude, and said that she was glad he had by him so loyal and true a friend as I. And she talked of the years of her estrangement as of an ill dream past with the night.

  "Had we but met," she said, "I could not have held out against him all this time. I must surely have seen him as he is, honest and generous, better than wise. Oh, Samson how strange a childhood we had, that separated us so far and sent us into the world by such different ways. Ways," she said, "of which only he chose his own, and against great pressures, as now I see."

  I told her that exactly so he had spoken, grieving that she was his only sister, and he did not even know her. And she smiled, and said: "That shall be remedied."

  Then I asked her if my lord had thought to question her, or Rhys, as he had not until this visit had opportunity to do, concerning a certain landless knight who had been in Rhys's service at Cwm-du, one Godred ap Ivor. She said that he had not, which was small wonder considering the excitement they had been in, and their total absorption in each other. But even had he so remembered, she said with regret, she could have had nothing to tell him, for though many of Rhys's household army had made their way to one or another of the English-held castles in Ystrad Tywi, and thus the tale of the survivors had gradually been made up, and the war-band reformed, yet nothing had been heard again of Godred. True, she said, there were some of the fugitives from Cwm-Du who were thought to have drawn off over the wilds of the Black Mountain, southwards, and placed themselves in the hands of Earl Richard of Gloucester, and possibly some had stayed and entered his service in Glamorgan, but if Godred was among them, that she could not say.

  "And surely," she said, "if he lived he would have appeared again by now. I knew the young man well, for his wife was one of my women, and dear to me. And to speak truth, I might well say I am glad, if that is not a sin, to think that Godred may be dead, and grateful that I need never meet him face to face and have to answer his questions. For his wife," she said heavily, "died in the forest after we fled to Brecon, and I cannot get the load from my heart that her death lies at my door. I should never have let her take so mad a risk for me. It has been heavy on my mind ever since, and will be as long as I live."

  At this I was so stricken with wonder and so moved that I trembled before her and could not speak for a while. For this was one reason I had never thought of, why the lady had not sent after to enquire about Cristin. She had believed from the first that there was no need of questions to which she already knew the answer. Though what had so persuaded and convinced her I was foolish and slow to imagine.

  "Madam," I said, as softly as I might, "if you can find heart-room for one more joy in this day without surfeiting, I believe I can supply yet one more. With your lord, your possessions, your child all secured, your brother restored, can you yet bear another gift?"

  She could not fail to see where I led her, and her dark eyes grew great with incredulous wonder. She said: "No one ever died of joy. If you mean what you seem to mean, oh, Samson, quickly, tell me so! Is she truly living? Cristin, Llywarch's daughter?"

  "Living, and well," I said, "and safe under Llewelyn's guardianship in the north. We have been making enquiry after her husband for her sake all this time, but could not reach you in Brecon, to pair our half of the story with yours. And now for my life I do not see how you came to be so sure that Cristin was dead."

  "But they came riding hard after us," she said, bright and fierce with remembrance, "through the snow in the early morning. They were gaining on us, we should have been ridden down before ever we could reach the town, and Cristin offered to lead them off by the valley path and leave us free to go forward in safety if the ruse succeeded. She knew of a hut in the woods where she could hide from them and let them by. All this she did for me, and did well…"

  "I know it," I said, "for I was captain of that company that pursued you, and God knows for no ill purpose." And I sat down with her and told her all that story, while she sat still and silent, listening. And at the end she said, in a very low voice: "How strangely we deal with one another! Such horrors as I imagined, and yet they were only ordinary men who rode after, not monsters. If I had known that it was you, I should have been calmed and ready to trust. And yet I had not such trust in
him. An
d you know and I know that such things as I imagined have happened, and will happen again, wherever there is warfare. It is not so great a step from man to monster. And what I afterwards believed was not so hard to believe. For you see, she did not come. She said that if the way was clear, and the hunt passed by the hut without pausing, she would return to the upland way and follow us. She knew the country as well as any among us, and she was not afraid to ride alone. But if she had cause to feel it dangerous to come out of hiding, she would bide the night over, if need be, and wait for us to send for her. And in Brecon we waited, but she never came."

  "But in the morning," I said, "you did send out for her?"

  "We did. And surely you remember what there was for us to find?" She gripped her hands together in her lap and wrung them, remembering, for in grief remembered and changed to rejoicing there is very painful pleasure. "In the hut, the ashes of a fire, and the trampling of many feet, and blood. But no Cristin. Round the hut the hoof-marks of many horses. And when they hunted further afield round that place, there was the hollow silted with leaves and mould, and in it, covered over with stones, a new grave…"

  "You thought it
hers?"
I cried, suddenly pierced through and through with understanding.

  "What else could we think? It seemed as clear as day, and as black as night. We thought she had taken shelter there as she intended, only to be discovered by the men she had decoyed away from my trail. Oh, Samson, can you not see how it would have been, if they had been what I supposed? Cheated of their success, with their lord to face after their failure, and this creature in their hands, the girl who had made fools of them and loosed me safe away! We thought they had had their sport with her through the night, and at dawn killed her and buried her. Such things have been and will be again, to all ages. You know it as well as I," she said.

  I owned it, for it was truth. Though by the grace of God there may some day come a time when such things will cease. But in this world? Who knows!

  "You did not disturb the grave?" I said. For that also mattered to me.

  "We did not. And for two days thereafter there was heavy snow in the hills, and it was a week or more before we could go back there. That time I went with them. The grave had been opened. The stones were laid aside in a cairn, and the hollow was empty. The religious from Talley and Llywel and Llangefelach had been busy collecting and caring for the dead, and this was the work of men of reverence. We did not question any more."

  "He is buried at Talley abbey," I said, "Meilyr, my mother's husband. Where I pray he rests in peace, and his soul in bliss, for he had little enough bliss in this world. But Cristin is alive and well in Bala, or perhaps at Aber if Goronwy's family have moved there, and you need not mourn for her any more. If we come safe out of this summer's campaign, and if that is what she wishes, and what you wish, then she shall come back to you."

  And she was so glad, and so moved, that my own resolution to silence was shaken, and I would have told her, I know not how barely and poorly, something of what I felt for Cristin, Llywarch's daughter, as never yet had I told it to anyone, even Llewelyn, who knew the inmost of my heart upon every other matter. But while we were thus rapt into our remembrances and dreams, she most grateful and tender, I most in peril of self-betrayal, Llewelyn came in with his arm about Rhys's shoulders, and after them David with Rhys's second son riding on his back and driving him like a curvetting horse, and Rhys's eldest son, also Rhys, plucking at his brother's ankle and doing his best to bring him down. And there was so much laughter and noise that we were delivered from all solemnity until the children were borne away to bed, very unwillingly. David had always a charm for children, as for their elders. All the more if they were women, but men had no remedy, either.

  But afterwards we told this story over again to those three princes. And Llewelyn, counting days, said that we had still time to make some small foray into Glamorgan, not merely to carry the word to any men of Rhys's bodyguard scattered there, that they might return to their allegiance at Dynevor without fear if they would embrace the Welsh cause with their lord, but also to send a very different message to Earl Richard of Gloucester, who had lived too easy and too undisturbed a life heretofore in his southern lordship. And so it was agreed, though we were drawing near to the middle of July now, and the muster was called for the beginning of August at Chester.

  "We made full provision before we came south," said Llewelyn, unperturbed, "and Goronwy will have seen all carried forward ready for the day. We have still time for one more fling before we go to stand off King Henry and his host. And though I think it a very slender hope, if by some chance we can recover a lost husband for our shepherdess of Bala, that would be a fitting ending to this campaign, and a goodly gift to take back with us."

  But David was silent, who would commonly have been the first to applaud any such audacity. And his eyes were fixed upon me, as I knew before ever I glanced at him, and they had a chill and rueful blueness, and saw, as always they did, too much, too clearly, and too deep.