The Brothers of Gwynedd (53 page)

  King Henry himself appeared for the ceremonious sealing of the agreement, somewhat forcedly gracious, still with one wistful eye on the war of conquest he had intended, as the possibility passed from him. Then the proctors withdrew together, and we clerks were left to gather up all the documents and exchange the needful copies. Master Madoc and the abbot were to stay yet some nine or ten days in Oxford, until all the personal contracts had been prepared, and the letters of guarantee for the payment of the indemnity, and various other details for which their approval was necessary, and that afforded me time to meet again with Cynan, whose account of how things went in parliament would be more exact than what could be gathered in the streets.

  I was still in the chamber where the committee had met, copying the last "datum apud Oxoniam decimo septimo die Junii," when the door opened behind me, and someone came into the room. I took it to be one of the royal clerks returning, for they, too, had left documents lying, and had still work to do. But when the incomer first stood a moment motionless, and then came round between me and the open window-space, then I did look up, and with a start of something like alarm, for this being loomed so large that he cut off the light from me, and the June day was suddenly dark, and my vellum overcast as though clouds had gathered for thunder.

  He was a good head taller than any I had seen about the court, head and shoulders above the middle make of man, with broad breast and long arms, and narrow flanks that tapered strongly into long, powerful legs. He stood and looked down at me with a wide, brown stare, unwavering and undisguised by either smile or frown, and the unthinking arrogance of that look said that he had the right to stare so upon any in this land, and ought not to be evaded. His forehead was massive, his features large and regular and handsome, and his dress, short riding tunic and chausses of fine brown cloth stitched with gold, all carelessly royal. But his size alone would have told me that I was looking at the Lord Edward, the heir of England.

  I rose and louted to him, and waited his pleasure, since he did not at once lose interest in me and withdraw. And as he looked upon me, so did I upon him, for in many ways he was startling and strange to me. It was thirteen years since I had seen him, and then he had been but six years old, a tow-headed child, already very tall for his age, following our David like his shadow. Now he had hair very darkly brown, almost black, a curious change, and, whatever he might still retain of youthful awkwardness and inexperience, most markedly he was already a man. I made him nineteen, and astonished myself by recalling, out of what hidden place in my memory I cannot tell, that this very day, the seventeenth of June, was his birthday.

  It was not until he turned a little, and drew away from the window, and the light fell brightly upon his face, that I saw that this splendid creature was flawed, for as soon as the roundness of his stare was relaxed, his left eyelid drooped over the brown eye with that same dubious heaviness always so noticeable in his father. It gave me a shock of wariness and surprise, for though in the father it seemed fitting after a fashion, in this grand countenance such an ambiguity had no place. It contradicted all that glow of openness and boldness and nobility that he projected about him. It was one more minor shadow after the sudden stormcloud his bulk had cast upon the day.

  When he had looked his fill upon me he said, in a voice youthful and light of tone, but measured and assured: "You are the Welsh clerk the abbot brought with him, are you not?"

  And when I owned it: "I saw you pass with him the other day, and thought that I should know you," he said. "If I remember well, your name is Samson. You were David's groom and servant when he was a child in my father's care."

  I said: "Your memory is better, my lord, than I had any right to expect. I am indeed that Samson. It is kind of you to keep me so long in mind."

  "So you are still in the service of the princes of Gwynedd," he said. "I trust all goes well with the Lady Senena? And David—I pray you, when you return, commend me to him. He will remember that we were good friends in childhood."

  "I thank you, my lord, Prince David is well, and so is his mother. He has not forgotten the time spent with you. If he had this opportunity your Grace has afforded me," I said, "on this day of all days, he would wish your Grace all happiness and blessing for your natal day."

  He was surprised and disarmed, and the sudden smile was strange and brief on that monumental countenance. "I see there is nothing amiss with your own memory," he said. And he looked at the parchment I had before me, and said, with an unreadable face: "I trust it may be a day worthy of celebrating for both of us. It should be so, since it is also the day we were appointed to muster at Chester." And with that, as suddenly as he had come, he withdrew, and left me to finish my work.

  Such was the Lord Edward at nineteen, sufficiently gracious to one so insignificant as myself, yet with something ominous about him. I made my way back to the Dominican priory in no very settled mind about him. That he had truly felt affection for David I knew from of old, that the memory of that affection might still warm him I could believe. But always I saw again the left eyelid drooping and veiling the brown eye, and that could not but remind me of King Henry benevolently promising what afterwards he never fulfilled, as though he closed that eye to be blind to his own double-dealing. A small thing of the body, but so slyly apt. In the father, a weak and amiable man by and large, it could be accepted as no more than a timely warning. But if strong men and giants study also to close one eye to their own false intents, then where are ordinary human creatures to look for refuge?

The last meeting that I had with Cynan was on the last day of June, for we stayed the month out in Oxford. And that time we met in the meadows by the river in the cool of the evening, when many scholars and townspeople were strolling there for enjoyment at the end of the working day. Something of what had befallen in the assembly was already common knowledge, criticised and commended in the town. As, that the form of government had been remade in a practical shape, and still by general consent, which was achievement enough. These agreed principles came to be known as the Provisions of Oxford.

  After the election of a justiciar, some twenty of the royal castles had been put in the hands of new and trusted castellans. Out of the king's twelve in the council, two had been chosen by the magnates' twelve, and from the magnates' twelve two by the king's men, to elect a new permanent council of fifteen. King and council were to rule together and respect each other. The dates of three parliaments were laid down for every year, though others could be called at need. No one found fault with all this. Since unity had called us there to make truce instead of dispatching the host to Chester to make war, it seemed that for the moment English unity was as great a benefit to us in Wales, and I could be cautiously glad that it continued unbroken.

  "No longer," said Cynan. "The shell begins to crack, and what will hatch is hard to guess. This reform was never meant to raise the cry "Out with the aliens!" but the winds are blowing it in that direction, whether or no. There's been the devil to pay in the assembly, and the Lusignans have refused the oath that's being required of all the baronage. Those who drafted it added a clause that has frightened away more than the Lusignans. It was all very well holding men by consent, but it stuck in their gullets to have to add at the end: And he that opposes this is a mortal enemy of the commonweal! All the timid and moderate are taking fright, and some have fallen away besides the Poitevins. But there's another solid reason for their defection— with the king so short of money, the lords of the reform have ordered the return to the crown of certain royal lands and castles he has given away to others, and who holds more of them than his half-brothers? Whatever the cause, they have not only refused the oath, but tried to persuade King Henry to break his, and abandon the new Provisions. I've heard, though God knows yet if it's true, that Aymer of Lusignan, the one that's bishop-elect of Winchester before he's old enough to hold the office, has run off and shut himself in his castle at Wolvesey, and rumour says his three brothers will not be long behind. Now the magnates have no choice but to deal with this dissident brood somehow, and whatever they may do will please neither king nor pope. Aymer is, after all, a bishop-elect. If they try to rid themselves of him, that's hardly likely to endear them to Pope Alexander. And they need his goodwill sorely."

  "But they still intend," I said, "to send a delegation to Rome to try to get easier terms for the king? And to ask for a papal legate to come over and help in the settlement?"

  "They intend, yes. But the pope has shown no relenting yet, and if Aymer is turned out of his bishopric that won't sweeten him. On the whole," said Cynan with chilly cynicism, "the pope has done very well out of holding our poor wriggling king to his bond. If he has not ousted the Hohenstaufen from Sicily, he has got half his crippling debts in the business paid by English tenths and aids. Never trouble about English pockets and English grievances, but leave them to it, take your truce home, and hope to keep it refurbished every year at their expense. What has Wales to do in this dispute but profit from it?"

  That was good enough sense, but either I had outgrown my own ideas of the world and the state during this stay in Oxford, or else some disturbing new vision that troubled our content had journeyed to Aber with young Henry de Montfort, and caused both Llewelyn and me to sicken with the same obscure longing. For surely those weighty men who had tried and were still trying to amend the England they lived in had seen a vision that had application even for us in Wales. True, our society was utterly different in its organisation from theirs, yet it could not remain utterly separate. The England we rubbed shoulders with in the marches was an abrasive force, and it mattered to us what manner of England it was. All the more since we must, in a changing world, adapt to it and borrow from it, for no border severs man from man, or one manner of living totally from another.

  So I asked what was ever on my mind: "And the earl of Leicester? What is his stand?"

  "His stand is upon the whole reform, and nothing less. He sees an England remade, where all members work together for the common good, guided by a ray of the spirit emanating from the pope, and one in a Christendom made in the same mould of service and selflessness. Never stare so," said Cynan, smiling somewhat bitterly, for indeed I had turned to examine him narrowly at this unexpected utterance. "I can recognise a saint when I see one, and a demon, too, and Earl Simon is both—or just falls short of both, and fits together the two halves of him into something unique among men. This is a man who will be cheated of a hundred marks rather than owe one. But also he will exact the last mark owing to him, or, even more strenously, to his lady, or die still dunning the debtor. He has had saints to his teachers, like Bishop Robert of Lincoln, and both his saint and his demon have drunk deep of them, and been exalted. He is all pride, and all humility. The king dreads him, and Friar Adam Marsh reproves him for his moods and his depressions, and is heeded as reverently as by a raw novice. But what can the common human experience do with a force of nature but take refuge from it? He will stand fast, but in the end he will stand alone."

  I said: "And I have never seen him!" Almost I added that I had never seen Cynan until now, for he spoke with a tongue not his own, inflamed by the spirit. And I had thought him a clever, loyal, limited exile, holding fast to an ideal of home for his own self-respect. "I must see this man," I said, "before I leave Oxford."

  "You shall," said Cynan.

  He took me—so simple it was—to the great church of St. Frideswide, to the chapel where her tomb was, forbidden to kings. That same night we went there, the light already failing, and the lamps about the tomb made a clear reddish radiance. We stood in the darkest corner of the chapel, and there were others going and coming, so that we were in no way significant, and no man marked us.

  A man came in from the evening, through the dark of the church into the ruddy light of the lamps, and went without haste to kneel at the tomb. Though he was unattended, there was no need to question if he were noble, and though he was soberly clad, dark-coloured and plain, his plainness had its own splendour. And when he was kneeling, upright and still with linked hands before his face, I had him in profile and saw him clearly. He was no taller than your middling tall man, he had thick shoulders and a powerful body, compact and at peace with itself, at least at this hour. For all his movements, and after, his stillness, were whole and harmonious. When he was not at worship, I could well imagine that same sturdy body knotted into tensions lesser men never know. The linked hands held so still I saw every sinew. They were large, strong and intense, of a braced sensitivity that caused my own hands to clench and quiver. And the head was a bronze head, cropped, naked, marvellous, like a Roman emperor of the nobler sort, with large, bright bone thrusting through flesh and skin and brown, glowing hair, that clung like a beast's rich fell upon the quiet skull. His face was shaven clean like a monk, and it seemed that it could not be otherwise, so pure was the line that framed it, and so fiercely still. He had great, loftily-arched eyelids closed over large eyes, like a prince already carven on a tomb, and a wide, austere, feeling mouth that formed the measured phrases of prayer with fine and private movements, and under this generous mouth a generous jaw graven in gold by the lamps about him.