The Brothers of Gwynedd (64 page)

  It was as he had said, in every particular. How Cynan ever contrived to get a copy of the letter I could not guess; it may well be that he memorised it complete from another clerk's account, for he was not so close to the crown as to be dealing with such correspondence himself.

  "To be fair to him," said Goronwy, always the most temperate of us, "this is no proof he was in bad faith in talking of peace with you, or thanking you for your forbearance in his troubles at home. True, he may well have been pursuing that path because he saw no alternative while you lived. It's when he thinks you dead that he feels it a possibility to conquer Wales. After his fashion he is paying you a compliment."

  "A compliment I could well do without," said Llewelyn, between laughter and rage still. "How long is it since I heard much the same rumours of him, and held my hand from taking any advantage? When did King Henry ever make the least gesture of generosity towards me and mine? When we were hard-pressed, then he bore harder still on us and took whatever he could. Now I doubt not he would like this letter buried deep, knowing I am well alive. He shall know it even better yet. I tire of my own restraint, seeing he observes none. It is time to show King Henry how exceedingly alive I am!"

What plans the prince would have made, and where his deliberate blow would have fallen, had not others provided occasion, was never made plain. He summoned his host and his allies at leisure, calling David from Neigwl, while he considered the courses open to him, and weighed their advantages. This was the first time that ever he set out of intent not merely to breach the truce but to destroy it.

  Occasion, amounting in itself almost to prior breach, was not far to seek, though we did not then know what was toward. The many and increasingly grave raids on the borders had alarmed and enraged others besides the officers of Gwynedd. In particular the Welshmen of Maelienydd, in the central march, uneasy neighbours to Roger Mortimer, were angry and unhappy when they saw that he was thrusting his border forward into their territory and building himself a new castle on the hill of Cefnllys, and thinking it politic not to speak first, but to act, for fear Llewelyn should continue to counsel moderation, raised a force of their own and took the castle by a trick. They had no wish to occupy the site themselves, only to prevent it being used as a base against them, and accordingly they razed the walls and the keep, and so left it. As soon as he heard the fate of his fortress, Roger raised a strong force, helped by his neighbour Humphrey de Bohun, and rushed to Cefnllys to rebuild it. Too weak to attack so powerful a company, the men of Maelienydd did what perhaps they should have done earlier, and hurriedly sent a courier to appeal for aid to Llewelyn.

  By a happy irony the messenger arrived on the first day of December, a single day after the arrival of a letter from King Henry himself, still weak and ailing in France, but stirring himself to deal, even from that distance, with the many disorders that plagued his realm, and should, if he had been wise, have kept his mind off meddling with any other prince's territory. Among the many complaints to assail him was one from Mortimer, it seemed, bitterly accusing the Welsh of the assault on his castle, and indicting Llewelyn by name. Which accusation King Henry duly passed on to the prince, requesting explanation for the breach of truce.

  "Having got over his disappointment at finding me still alive," said Llewelyn, "he's forced back on the old approaches. How gratifying, to be able to write with a clear conscience and deny the impeachment. I have not laid a finger on the truce—yet."

  And he dictated a mild, noncommittal reply, acknowledging the letter, stating that as far as his knowledge went he had not in any way broken his truce with the king, and offering amends for any proven infringements to date, provided the same justice was done to him.

  Next day came the man of Maelienydd, in his turn complaining to his prince, defending the action of the Welsh with many and voluble legal arguments, some of them sound, and appealing for help to prevent the reinstatement of Cefnllys.

  "We have our occasion," said Llewelyn, and laughed. "We even have a case, should we need one. He had no more right to build contrary to the truce than I have to raze what he has built. Maelienydd is a very fair country, and we are courteouslyinvited in; it would be unmannerly to refuse."

  That was the first time that we had meddled so far east, except in our own northern lands, and it says much concerning the situation in those parts, and the fears and hopes of those who lived there, that we were indeed invited, not only by the men of Maelienydd, but after them by those of Brecknock, and welcomed like deliverers when we came.

  We made our usual vehement descent, outrunning our own report, with a force greater, as we found, than that Mortimer and de Bohun had furnished for their rebuilding. They were encamped within the broken walls of the castle, and we came so suddenly and unexpectedly that though Cefnllys stands on one end of a lofty ridge, we were able to occupy positions all round it without hindrance, and settled down to hold them under close siege.

  It was plain that they had only limited supplies, and that they were advanced so far from Mortimer's base at Wigmore as to be very badly placed for breaking out of our trap, all those miles of hostile Maelienydd separating them from reinforcements. We could starve them into submission in a week or two. But Llewelyn had a better use for those seven days.

  "Now let's see," he said, "how practical a man Roger can be. For he knows his situation as well as we do, and I think has the good sense to recognise and admit it. I have no great ambition to fight with him, and I would as lief have him out of here and out of my way while I secure Maelienydd."

  He told us what he proposed, and David laughed, and begged to be the ambassador to the besieged. He rode into the enclosure attended by a single squire, and laid before Roger Mortimer, no doubt with a demure and dignified face, the prince's offer. Since it was clear that surrender was only a matter of time, and relief exceedingly improbable, why expend men and resources in postponing the inevitable? Llewelyn had no wish to fight with his cousin. If Mortimer would accept it, he and his army were offered free and unimpeded passage through Llewelyn's lines and across the border, intact to a man, with all their gear.

  That was no easy decision to make, but Mortimer was a big enough man, and honest enough with himself, to shrug off what many a younger and rasher captain would have seen as disgrace and dishonour. Indeed, later he was plagued with suggestions in many quarters that he had been in league with the Welsh in this matter, which I can testify was quite false. He could have stayed and fought, and seen many of his men wounded and killed, only to surrender in the end. Instead, he chose to take his whole force home in good order when he was given the chance. For my part, I respected his common-sense, and so, I think, must the wives of his soldiers have done when their men came home unmarked.

  We opened our ranks to let them out, and saluted them as they marched by, for we had nothing against them, and the message they were taking back to King Henry was more galling than a bloody defeat would have been.

  "I call that good housekeeping," said Llewelyn, watching their ranks recede towards Knighton. "We've spent little to gain much, and he's preserved what could be preserved. No fool squandering of men for spite or stubbornness, as your thickheaded heroes would have done. I approve him."

  "I doubt if King Henry will," said David, grinning. "Are you sure he'll go tamely home to England?"

  "He'll go," said Llewelyn confidently. "Not only because he gave his word, but because he's seen how many we are, and how many more we can call out of the ground here. The men of these parts do not love him. And now we're rid of Roger, we'll settle Maelienydd first, and then push on towards Hereford. This border country," he said, looking across the rolling hills and cushioned valleys with appreciation, "is very much to my mind. Let's add as much of it as we can to Wales."

  And to that end we laboured, and with much success. The men of the land were with us, our numbers grew by their willing adherence, we had nothing to do but pick off, one by one, the English-held castles that were outposts in this marcher countryside, and that we did briskly and thoroughly. Bleddfa first, and then over the hills into the Teme valley, to take Knucklas, and so sweep down-river into Knighton. The castle there hangs over the town on its steep hillside and, below, the valley opens green and fair. That winter was not hard, there was but a sprinkle of snow before Christmas, and the meadows in that sheltered place were no more than blanched as in the harvest. Thence we moved south to secure Norton and Presteigne, and everywhere the chieftains and tenants came to repudiate their homage to the king and urge it upon Llewelyn, together with their soldier service. Like a ripe apple Maelienydd dropped into the prince's hand, grateful to be gathered so, and overjoyed to be Welsh.

  It was at Presteigne we heard, from a merchant who traded wool into Hereford, that King Henry had at last recovered sufficiently to make the sea crossing, and had dragged his still enfeebled body as far as Canterbury, where he meant to spend the Christmas feast, now close upon us.

  "Well, since Roger is so quick to call my name in question with him," said Llewelyn, "we'll repay the favour in the same terms." And he sent another letter, politely and formally complaining that Mortimer and de Bohun had occupied with a large force a castle within the seisin of the prince of Wales and, when surrounded and beseiged by the prince's army, had been generously allowed passage through the lines to withdraw to their base, though it would have been easy to compel their surrender. And again he offered amends for any proven breach of truce, provided the barons complained of would guarantee the same. And he ended with a sly reminder that it was wiser to hear both sides of a case before proceeding to judgment.

  With this whole region established behind us, we swept on to the south, into the Hereford lowlands as far as Weobley and Eardisley, fat country full of cattle that we rounded up and drove off with us, and barns that we plundered. Very easy farming these lowlanders have, and very well they live. We drew so near to Hereford that the Savoyard bishop, Peter of Aigueblanches, as well hated as any cleric in England, flew into a panic terror and ran for his life into Gloucester, groaning though he was, so they said, with an attack of gout, and from there wrote indignant letters to the king. Henry paid dear in his own convalescence for his glee over Llewelyn's supposed mortal sickness. In that winter the prince was at the peak of his powers, and blazed down that border like a chain of beacon fires.

  "He surely knows by now," said Llewelyn, "that I am man alive."

  At Hay-on-Wye came messengers from the chieftains of Brecknock, begging him to go into their country and accept their homage and fealty. Never before had we moved thus down the very fringe of the march, eating into those lands claimed and occupied by the marcher lords, where Welsh and English contended always. Surely he added one fourth part to his principality before the Christmas feast of that year.

  I think King Henry truly believed at that time that the Welsh intended a great invasion of England itself, but if so, there were few others who took the situation so seriously, and certainly Llewelyn never had any such intention. When the king issued feverish orders to the lords marchers to forget their quarrels and unite against the enemy on their borders, and called them to muster at Ludlow and Hereford in the following February, the exhortation fell on deaf ears. Pitifully King Henry wrote off to Edward in Gascony, reproaching him for his lethargy and indifference in face of Llewelyn's threat, and urging him to come home and lift the burden from his poor old father—as though he himself had not as good as banished the young man into France in disgrace, and ordered him to devote his energies to running his province there, and keep his nose out of English politics.

  Nonetheless, we had to pay heed to all threats of mustering the feudal host against us, whether we greatly believed in them or no. So at Christmas we parted company, half of our forces pressing on southwards towards the rich fields of Gwent under Goronwy, with the levies of the southern princes joining him, while Llewelyn with a sufficient company halted long enough to receive the homage of all the princes of Brecknock, and make dispositions to hold what had been gained, and then withdrew at the turn of the year into Gwynedd.

  Of how Goronwy fared with his force, that can soon be told, for in the first months of the new year he carried Llewelyn's banner to the very gates of Abergavenny, and only there was the victorious rush to the Severn sea halted, by the stout defence of that same Peter de Montfort who had once conducted us to the parliament of Oxford. He was King Henry's officer in that region, and the only one who held his own against us, until he was joined by John de Grey and a great number of other marcher lords hurriedly massed to his relief. After a skirmish with this army, Goronwy withdrew his men into the hills, where the English were reluctant to follow them, and even the local Welsh tenants, who otherwise would have borne the brunt of the inevitable revenge, took their chattels and made off into cover and into the monasteries, where they had sanctuary. Our thrust went no farther, but turned to consolidation of our great gains already made. And it should be said that in this gathering of the princes of the south once again Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, according to his renewed fealty, brought his levy and fought for Llewelyn and Wales alongside his nephew Rhys Fychan, at which Llewelyn was glad. But whether it was out of duty and good faith, or because the pickings in those parts were fat, I do not venture to judge.