The Brothers of Gwynedd (63 page)

  And he dug his hard fingers into my shoulder, and so slipped away from me without looking back. And I went to watch by Llewelyn's bed with a chill of misliking about my heart, for there was something changed in Godred and not for the better, something that went even beyond his shameful urging of me towards his wife. That I had heard from him before, but in a fashion somewhat different, lightminded and fulsome at the same time, anxious to have my favour and stand well with me, by whatever means served. All this was present still, but with a bitter after-taste, all the sweetness somehow underlaid with a note of cruelty and spite. Towards her? I could not think so. Towards me, then? He had no occasion more than before, and if he had spied on us at Carreg Cennen he knew it. Nor should he have any occasion this night, or any night to come.

  So I put him out of my mind, and went to my duty. And I forgot him in my lord and my love, those two people I most revered in this world. Llewelyn lay uneasily between waking and sleeping, now and then babbling into his pillow and tossing weakly, great beads of sweat gathering and running on brow and lip, but this time he was not turned inward away from us. He knew us, and at moments spoke to us, feebly but with knowledge, even with kindness and humility, begging pardon for the trouble he gave us, and the grief, and thanking us for our care of him. Towards midnight he panted and sweated most, and I lifted him into my arms and held him so, while Cristin bathed his face and neck and shoulders and breast with a cooling infusion of herbs, time after time until his shivering stopped, and he breathed more deeply, and lay more easily in my arms. And so he fell asleep as before, truly asleep, the fever ebbing away. Cristin spread a clean linen pillow under him, and I laid him down, never breaking his sleep.

  "It is passing," she said almost silently over his body. "Now he will rest."

  In that bedchamber, small and bare enough, there was a little rushlight burning, set back behind his head that it might not trouble his eyes. The hangings on the walls were of woven wool, and we had young branches of pine fastened there, to make the air sweet and spiced. The summer was mild, with little troublesome heat, but the curtained door we left open, to let in air. The window-opening was full of stars. There she and I hung over Llewelyn's sleep together, one on either side of the bed. And by the grace of God we thought not at all of each other, but only of him, until his sleep deepened and eased into a wondrous freshness and grace, and the fever ebbed even out of his bones and left him clean. Then we looked up, our faces but a little way apart, each into the other's eyes.

  In the anteroom to the bedchamber, scarcely wider than a passage, there was a brychan drawn close up to the doorway, put there when first Llewelyn began to mend, so that whoever watched with him overnight could get some rest and yet hear any sound from within the sickroom. I said to Cristin in a whisper, rather by signs than by words, that she should go and lie down there, for she was weary, and I would sit up with the prince, and call her if there were any need. But she only smiled at me and shook her head, feeling no need to give any reason, as I felt none to ask for any. I could as well have withdrawn into the outer room myself, for the protection of her good name, even though none but the one person in all the household would ever have dreamed of calling it in question, and there watched out the night at her call, but I did not do it. For such moments as we might have together lawfully were beyond price, and the gift of a night was food for a hungry year to come.

  So we trimmed the name of the rushlight low and clear, and sat with him all night long, his body and bed the sheathed sword between us. Twice he roused a little, not quite awake, and made the wry movements of dry lips that signified his thirst, and then I raised him, and she put honeyed water to his lips, and a fresh, cool cloth to his forehead, and he swallowed and slept again. Such words as we spoke to each other were not of ourselves, but of him, and they were wonderfully few. All night long I never touched her hand. And all night long we were in peace. To be in her presence, unassailed and sinless, was more of bliss than I had believed possible.

  In the dead of night the silence was so profound within the llys that every murmur of wind in leaves from without came to us clearly, and towards morning, but long before light, bird-song began in a sudden outburst of confidence and joy, so loud and brave that I marvelled how such fragile instruments could produce such notes without shattering. Then the first pre-dawn pallor appeared in the east, and the first footsteps were heard in the bailey, the creakings and murmurings of men arising unwillingly from rest. And Llewelyn opened his eyes, sunken but clear, and asked for wine.

  I went to fetch it. If I had not leaped so gladly to answer his wish I should not have seen the curtain of the outer door of the anteroom still quivering from the hand that had just let it fall hurriedly into place, or heard the light, furtive footsteps fleeing, tip-toe, along the stone passage without.

  The brychan was drawn close against the open door of the bedchamber, its head shielded by the tapestry hanging. I stooped and felt at the blanket draped upon it, and in the centre it was warm to the touch.

  I did not linger then, but did my errand, neither seeing nor expecting to see on my way that person who had kept us company unseen and unheard during the night. For there were many ways out into the bailey and the wards from that passage, and outside in kitchens and stables and byres the household was already stirring. But afterwards, when I came again, and when the Lady Senena had bustled in to take charge, the first ray of sunlight piercing clean through the bedchamber and the open door showed me two more evidences of what I already knew. A tiny mote of sun danced upon the blanket, where all else was still in shadow, for there was a small hole in the tapestry, low towards the head of the brychan. And in passing through that chink, the light irradiated a single shining thread among the dark colours still further darkened by smoke, and I drew out in my fingers a long, curling hair, pale as ripe barley-silk.

  I said no word to Cristin or any other. Nor to him, when I met him in the armoury, and he greeted me gaily after his usual fashion, and asked me how the prince did, and if we had had quiet watch. I answered him simply, as though I took him and all his words and acts for honest. Better he should never be sure that I knew anything more of him than the sunlit outer part. Nor could I discern anything in him changed towards me, in voice or face, until I left him there and, leaving him, for some reason looked back. Still he stood smiling after me, all innocent goodwill, with no more of parody in his manner than was usual with him. Only his eyes, so wide and round and brown, and full of speckled golden lights like the shallows of the river where I had first encountered him, were become blind brown stones in his comely face.

After that day the prince mended and this time he paid better heed to advice, and waited for his strength to come back before he tested it too far. By the time September came in, and we were busy with the harvest, he was himself again, a little leaner but as hard and vigorous as ever. And the Lady Senena, satisfied with his progress and his promises, returned to Neigwl and took Cristin with her, and shortly was followed by David and all his retinue. So I was rid of Godred, whom I was farther than ever from understanding, and robbed of Cristin, whom day by day, in presence or in absence, it seemed to me that I knew better, understood more profoundly, and loved more irrevocably.

  During the prince's illness, of which rumour had spread far and wide as it always does, the state of lawlessness in the marches had grown worse, and the breaches of truce were many. And still, by Llewelyn's order, his officers held them in check as best they might, and refrained from turning the frequent incidents into major battles. True, the Welshmen along the border were not saints, either, and from stoutly defending themselves may well have passed, where a tempting opportunity offered, to local revenges, and even to raids of their own. But by now the retinues of the marcher barons had very little to restrain them, and the prince's patience, no more inexhaustible than that of any high-mettled man, soon wore perilously thin.

  I think what held him back, where it might well have urged on another man, was the news that came through to us from France of the disaster that had fallen upon King Henry's court there. For in Paris there was a great epidemic of plague, which someone had unhappily carried in among the king's officers. Many died there, and King Henry himself and young Edmund, his son, were also stricken, and lay dangerously ill for some weeks. Rumours that the king was dead, or likely to die, did nothing to restore order in the marches. But late in October we heard that he was out of danger, and allowed to get out of his bed and walk a little.

  "Poor wretch!" said Llewelyn. "I have been in the same case myself. Why should I add to his troubles? As long as he forbears with me, so will I with him."

  But that was before Meurig rode into Aber from Shrewsbury in the early days of November, making for his winter nest earlier than usual because he carried urgent letters that concerned Wales very closely and bitterly.

  He did not know what it was he carried, for the roll was sealed; he knew only that it had been brought to him secretly by a Welsh friar, the last of a chain of messengers conveying it not from Westminster, but from King Henry's own court in Paris. Thence it had travelled by the same ship that brought reassurances and orders to the justiciar in London, but in the care of a Welsh seaman. The covering letter was from Cynan, greeting us fresh from a sick-bed which had barely missed being his death-bed, for he was among the royal clerks in attendance on the court, and had been brought down with plague like almost all the rest, though by the grace of God he was mending well when he wrote. There were two enclosures, both copies in Cynan's own hand, though shaky still from his illness, so that Llewelyn frowned over the cramped Latin, and followed a slow finger along the lines.

  "He says only his sickness has kept him from sending these earlier, for he could not trust them to any other, or let any other know he possessed copies. The first is not dated. The second, he says, follows it and will date it for us."

  The first letter enclosed was short, and for want of its original seal Cynan had written the name of the sender at the foot, and the name was Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys. Llewelyn read it through with a frown that changed as he went into a grin of somewhat sour amusement.

  "Listen," he said, "what Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn writes to his patron King Henry. He greets his lord, and informs him that he has been making enquiries about Llewelyn's health, and it is bad. The prince rallied enough to take exercise, but then twice relapsed into the same sickness, and is said to be very weak, and unlikely to recover. Griffith will send further reports if he should grow worse." He laughed, disdainfully rather than angrily, for there was nothing unexpected in this. We knew from long since that Griffith was the royal spy on our borders, just as we had Cynan and others in England. Yet there was all the width of the world between a Welsh-born prince slavishly reporting to England on the health of the prince of Wales, and a Welsh clerk in London risking livelihood and life itself in the service of his own country.

  "Poor Griffith," said Llewelyn, "he has no luck, for all his industry. Here am I alive and dangerous, and the king laid low in his turn. Griffith must be biting his nails now which way to go."

  He unrolled the second scroll, which was longer, and raised his brows at sight of the superscription.

  "It is from King Henry himself to his justiciar. The date is the twenty-second of July."

  It was the day he first walked out into the sun again after his relapse. I remembered it, and so did he. He leaned on my arm that day, looking out over the salt flats to the sea.

  He read with a darkening face, that struggled with its own betraying thoughts, but mirrored most of them. A long, dour reading it was, and at the end of it he suddenly cursed aloud, and then as abruptly laughed even more loudly, though there was outrage and anger in his laughter.

  "His Grace has heard the news of Llewelyn's death! He writes in great haste—he was whole and well himself, then, his turn was still to come!—to make plain his plans for the succession in Wales. Llewelyn is unwived, and without issue, but with a vigorous brother named David ready to pick up the burden he let fall, and that must never be permitted, no, at all costs not David, who would be as single and vehement as his elder. His Grace has an answer to David. Owen Goch is to be freed from his prison and set up in half of what the king proposes to leave of Wales. But he'll gain very little, for Henry means to recover for himself the homages of all the other Welsh princes, leaving Gwynedd at its narrowest to be divided between Owen and David. And how is he to contrive all this? By force of arms! This, while he writes to me piously of peace! The barons of the march are to assemble their arms at Shrewsbury to conquer Wales. He looks for help from certain impressionable princes, not forgetting Meredith ap Rhys Gryg. Well? Those are King Henry's plans for Wales, when he thinks me on my death-bed, or dead already. It is not my word, it is his. Here in plain script. Under his own seal."