The Brothers of Gwynedd (45 page)

  They crossed the Clwyd into Rhos near to Rhuddlan, and among these rivers they lost a considerable number of horses and men, and especially baggage beasts, in our pitted fords. But still we forebore from encountering them in pitched battle, which would have been their desire and gain, their superiority in numbers being so great. So they came, the ships keeping pace with them, along the north coast to Degannwy by the twenty-sixth day of August, and lifted the siege of that castle also, as Llewelyn had foretold they would and allowed them to do. One ship at least they lost for some days, grounded in Conway sands, until a high tide lined her off, though only at the cost of throwing overboard much of the provision she carried, in order to lighten her. And there at Degannwy Ring Henry camped ingloriously, and sat inactive day after day until the fourth of September. We could not make out why they should sit there so still and ineffective, but it seemed that they were waiting for their promised reinforcements from Ireland, and these never came. Nor did we see any sign of ships in the offing, our sea patrols off Anglesey keeping constant watch, for we were determined not to lose our harvest in that island granary without a fight. But the need never arose. The weather then was breaking, and on the fifth of September the English struck camp, and began the long withdrawal to Chester, with little accomplished.

  For Llewelyn these were ideal conditions, for there is nothing better suited to our Welsh manner of fighting than a retreat in formal order by a larger force. Withdrawal then can easily be turned into rout, measured speed harried into flight, and order broken apart into disorder. But here we attempted not too much, but only hung on their skirts all the way back to Chester, lopping off such as fell behind or ranged too far ahead. And on the hither side of Dee we drew off and let them go.

  "He calculates too warily," said Llewelyn in judgment on the king, without prejudice or malice, "he begins too late, he gathers way too slowly. In short, he is not a soldier. There are things he does excellently well, but not this."

  Thus ended King Henry's last great expedition into Wales, with little gain and less glory. All those too thorough preparations we had made were needless, though the experience was useful. The mountains of Snowdon remained inviolate, and our women and children and old men came cheerfully back to their villages in the lowlands before the autumn descended. Llewelyn's conduct of this defence, though not gravely tested, had been immaculate, sparing of our men and resources and countryside, and even chivalrous towards the enemy, for we could well have done them far greater damage at little more cost to ourselves. But the prince would not have it so, being more intent on conserving our own forces than destroying theirs.

  All this time, as we moved about the Middle Country on the fringes of the English host, I had half-expected Godred to appear among us and offer his lance to add to ours, but he never came. And when the enemy had all crossed the Dee and withdrawn into Chester, there to disperse, and I returned with Llewelyn first to Aber, and then to Dolwyddelan, we heard there from the castellan left in charge that Godred had taken his wife, and ridden south for Dynevor.

  "For though the knight would rather have stayed and come to Aber to join you," he said, "the lady strongly entreated that he would take her home, and could not wait to be away."

  "It's no marvel," said Llewelyn. "She has suffered anxiety and sorrow among us—what could we do against it, until Samson found her husband for her? But surely she'll be glad to be home with him, where she has been happy, and with my sister who values her. And a good lance in the south is as sound value to us as a good lance here in Gwynedd. It is all one."

  As for me, I said not a word.

So was I sealed into my own silence that I wanted for fellows, as though a curtain had been drawn between me and other men, and it was both affront and relief when that one creature came back, some ten days after us, from whom nothing that passed within me was secret, and to whom nothing was sacred. For I had seen little of David while the fighting lasted, he having his own command and I being always with Llewelyn, so that when he rode into Dolwyddelan from Chester he had still all to learn concerning the coming and passing of Godred, and having learned some part of it in easy innocence from Llewelyn himself, kept his mouth shut upon his thoughts, but came flying to me. I was at my work, and had not known of his arrival, but before I could rise to greet him—and indeed I was glad of him—I saw that he was in a great rage with me.

"What's this I hear," he said, "of Cristin leaving us? You've let her slip through

your fingers, after all this coil? And you—can it be true?—
you
brought the fellow here to fetch her away? Fool, did I not as good as tell you, the first time I set eyes on the pair of you together, that she was yours for the taking? And when you were too deaf and blind to take the drift, did I dot
show
you she was steel proof against all others, and would go with you to the world's end if you lifted your finger? When she would not give one thought to me, but followed you into the snow as she had followed you from Brecon to the north? Could you never conceive, in your priestly modesty, that a woman might set her heart on you for her own good reasons, and throw the rest of the world to the winds? One night it took Cristin to make up her mind, and a year was not enough to open your eyes! And now see what you have done to her!"

  I was startled and stricken out of all conceal, and told him, as though confessing a sin, that I had had no choice, that even if I had known then what her true desire was—though he had no right to name it for her with so much certainty!—yet it was the will of God that I should chance upon the man, and that finding him alive I could do no other but tell him truth, and render up his wife to him again. But strangely, the pain David gave me, and that without mercy, was like a reviving fire, and to have that spoken of which could not be spoken of with any other was a deliverance like the escape from a dark prison.

  "No choice!" said he with furious scorn. "No
choice
! Had you not a dagger you could have slipped between his ribs there in the forest, and no one the worse or the wiser? Wives can become widows overnight. If you are too nice to do your own work, there are others could do it for you—"

  "Never speak so to me!" I said. "I have been that road, and stopped in time. I will not have you or any other walk it for me." But I did not tell him, not even David, that Godred was my brother, my father's lawful son.

  "Well, as you will! What profit now in harrowing over old ground, what you've done is done. But, man, what you have thrown away! Llewelyn knows nothing, surely, of all this? He seems to take this reunion as a blessing from God! And you have left him in that delusion?"

  "I have," I cried, flaring back at him in my turn, "and so must you. The prince has great matters on his heart, and a great undertaking one long stage towards its accomplishment, and I will not have even so slight a shadow as my distress cast athwart his brightness, nor one thought of his mind turned aside from the enterprise of Wales to be spent upon me. Is that clear enough?"

  At that I saw the flames in his eyes grow tall and pale in the old fashion, and steady like candles in still air as he peered through and through me, half in jealousy, half in impatience, wholly in rage. "Still his man, I see!" he said. "As deep committed as ever. What, do you even believe you can buy him a smooth walk through this world by swallowing your own tears? Fool, do you really think God should be grateful to you for flinging his good gifts back in his face? But if you want me silent, I'm silenced. I'll not overcast my brother's sunrise. And since you're such a chaste and upright fool, I have done. I wash my hands of you!"

  And he flung out of the room and left me quivering to the racing of my own blood and the sharp, indignant vigour of my own breath, a man alive again. But in a little while he was back, just as impetuously, to fling his arm about my shoulders and ask my pardon for things said and not meant. And whether in anger or in affection, his was a life-giving warmth.

  "God knows," he said, "you do exasperate me with your too much virtue and devotion, but who am I to be the measure? If I tried to close such a bargain with God, he might well strike me dead for my impudence, but
you…
Who knows, he may have taken you at your word! What would you say if there were signs and omens I could read for you, earnests of heaven's good intent?"

  I looked at him speechlessly, and waited for his word, for though his voice was light again and his smile indulgent, he was not in jest.

  "Omens come in threes," he said. "Two I have brought with me from Mold, one I find coming to birth here. First, Griffith ap Madoc of Maelor has withdrawn his fealty and homage from King Henry, and pledged it henceforth to the confederacy of Wales, like his fathers before him. There is but one Welsh prince now who still denies his blood and clings to England, and that's Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys, and between my brother and the men of Maelor his chance of holding Powys much longer is lean indeed. Second, King Henry has proposed a truce to last through the winter, and better news to us even than to him, a truce there will surely be. Time to mend all our sheep-folds and sharpen all our swords. And the third—Llewelyn may have opened to you already the scheme he has in mind, of approaching the Scots with a proposal for an alliance?"

  I said that he had. For the king of Scots was a boy of fourteen years, and married to King Henry's daughter, a circumstance which had offered a means of placing a great many of Henry's henchmen, both English and Scots, close about the boy's throne, and greatly incensed and alarmed those patriot lords who feared the growth of English power. Two countries threatened by the same encroachment may well make common cause against it.

  "Think, then, that if such an approach is to be made, it must be made not for Gwynedd, not for Powys, not for Deheubarth, but for Wales! And all those voices that speak for all those princedoms must be united into one voice, and given utterance through one overlord. I prophesy," said David, taking my head between his hands and holding me solemnly before him, "that in the new year the summons will go out throughout this land, to every prince and magnate, to an assembly of Wales, where that one voice will first be heard to speak, and that one overlord will be acknowledged and acclaimed. And his name," said David, "I think I need not tell you!"

As he had prophesied, so it befell.

  Not many weeks into the new year we rode to that assembly, of all the lords of Wales from north to south, from the marches to the sea. From Gwynedd we came in a great party, David the foremost at his brother's side. Rhodri also came, though Rhodri kept much to his own lands, and had stayed out of trouble and out of the battle-line in the lands of Lleyn while we waited for King Henry's attack, I think not so much out of fear as out of a narrow and suspicious jealousy that he was not prized enough or sufficiently regarded, which kept him usually in a huff against one or other of his brothers, and caused him to refuse such openings as they would have offered him, while complaining that they did not advance him to greater things. As for Owen Goch, he was still prisoner in Dolbadarn, and so continued many years, though with a lightened captivity once his first intransigence ebbed and allowed it. But Llewelyn would never trust him loose again.

  Of those others who came, from the south I mention Meredith ap Rhys Gryg of Dryslwyn and Rhys Fychan of Dynevor, from the west Meredith ap Owen of Uwch Aeron, from central Wales Madoc ap Gwenwynwyn of Mawddwy and the three grandsons of Owen Brogynton, Owen ap Bleddyn and the two sons of Iorwerth, Elis and Griffith. From the marches to the east came Griffith ap Madoc of Maelor, with his brother Madoc Fychan, Owen ap Meredith of Cydewain, and the three sons of Llewelyn of Mechain, themselves Llewelyn, Owen and Meredith. In great state they came, and all the noble guest-house of the abbey was filled with their splendour.