The Brothers of Gwynedd (68 page)

  I said, and it was true, that it would be simple to send a courier and examine in David's household, without accusing any, at what hour he and his knights had returned, and whether he or any of them could possibly have been in touch with Rhodri's company after they left Aber. For surely this attack had not been planned beforehand, and we knew that Rhodri had ridden away in dudgeon before ever David left the prince's presence. Llewelyn shook his head and smiled.

  "No, we'll not send spies to question my brother's grooms and servants against him. We have not come to that. Unless Rhodri accuses him, in my eyes he is clean. Guilt is no simple thing. It may be my own hands are in need of washing as much as any, and that's a salutary thing to have learned. I shall never again be sure— altogether sure—of any man."

  He halted there for a moment, and I thought and dreaded that he was about to add: "Not even you." Though my deserts were never more than other men's, yet my need of his trust was extreme. But as I waited he ended, as one accepting, wryly but without grudge, what he saw and recognised: "Least of all, myself."

About Easter the Lord Edward came hurrying back to England in answer to his father's plea, and was ordered promptly to go and look after his intended heritage of Wales, and he did indeed hasten to Shrewsbury, where he made his headquarters and kept contact with the justiciar of Chester, and tried to enforce the better stewardship of the marcher castles. But all he did in Wales, and that we let him do, was to relieve and reprovision his islanded castles of Diserth and Degannwy. The time of the proposed February muster had gone by unhonoured, for no one stirred to carry out the order. And it was not long before King Henry hastily called his son back to his side, and left us watching from a distance the mad dance of events in England.

  At the feast of Pentecost, towards the end of May, a young man rode along the coast road into Aber, watched from a distance as he came. When he drew nearer the watch recognised his arms, and sent word in to the prince. For the second time he welcomed into Aber young Henry de Montfort.

  He came unattended, and on urgent business, and Llewelyn received and made him welcome. Goronwy was then not long back from the south, having seen the Welsh gains consolidated as far as the borders of Gwent. I was present with them at that meeting as clerk, as was usual.

  "My lord," said the young man, "I come to you this time as envoy not from king and council, but from an assembly of those lords, knights and free men who stand firm in support of the Provisions. An assembly most fittingly held at Oxford, where first those principles were set forth and agreed. We are a party believing strongly in that fair and ordered form of government, we desire to uphold it still, according to oath, and to see it established in the realm for the good of all. We have many of the younger nobility with us, and the yeomen of the shires solidly behind us. And that you may know who leads us—my father, the earl of Leicester, is back in England, and presided at this gathering. Those who hold with him begged him to come home and be their leader, and he has again taken up the burden. It is in his name that I come."

  "In his name and in your own," said Llewelyn, "you are very welcome. What the earl of Leicester has to say to me I am all goodwill to hear."

  "My lord, when once we spoke of these matters I do believe you were interested and moved. I think we had your sympathy. Do we still hold it?"

  "My position," said Llewelyn, "is as it was then. As between king and commons I do not presume to intervene. As between ideas I may certainly choose and prefer.

But my business remains, as it always was, Wales."

  "Then I am sure you, of all men, know," said the young man eagerly, "that the present chaos in the march cannot in the end benefit Wales, whatever short-term gains there may be to be had. Also that King Henry came home at the year's end looking upon you as his arch-enemy, by reason of your campaign in Maelienydd, and bent upon making war upon you, and even now has not abandoned that theme. It is no secret that he is still contemplating calling out the feudal host against you this summer, having failed in February."

  "I have been expecting it," agreed Llewelyn, smiling. "And you do not regard me as an enemy?"

  "No. Your business is Wales, ours is England. We will not betray ours, but neither will we fail to respect yours. And those who have a common enemy have much to gain by being friends." He caught the import of what he had said, and blushed, as it seemed he still could, amending with dignity the ill-chosen words. "It is not the king who is the enemy, it is the old order, and those about the king who seek to fend off all changes. The king is a victim, manipulated by some whose whole concern is to protect their own interests."

  "And how do things stand at this moment," asked Llewelyn, "with your own strength?"

  De Montfort named names, very lofty names, and strange to note so many of them young. This was no old man's party. There was hardly a man among them of Earl Simon's own generation, except for his faithful friend Peter de Montfort of Beaudesert. The old, those who dug in their heels against change and resented that great lords should be asked to curb their privileges, or common men seek to enlarge theirs, were all with the king. "The Earl Warenne is with us, Gilbert of Clare, Henry of Almain, Roger Clifford, Leyburn, Giffard of Brimpsfield…" The list was long. "We return absolutely to the Provisions, declaring all who oppose them, but for the king and his family, to be public enemies. And these demands we are sending to the king."

  "He will not agree to them," said Llewelyn with certainty. "And what then?"

  "I do not accept that his refusal is certain. But we are prepared for it. If need be, we shall move against those who urge the refusal upon him."

  "In arms?" said Llewelyn, eyeing him steadily.

  "In arms."

  "And what is it," Llewelyn asked mildly, after a moment's measuring silence, "that you want from me?"

  "The chief part of our confederacy is in the marches, and from this base we must move. If it comes to war, we must secure the march behind us, with all the passages of the Severn in our hands, before we move east into England. Your presence in arms on the west bank of the river would be worth an army to us."

  Goronwy looked at Llewelyn and smiled, knowing his mind. "The bridges at Gloucester and Worcester and Bridgnorth would need to be held," he said, "and certain fords. It could well be controlled from the west. It is in our interest to keep ward on that border for our own sake, in such troublous times."

  "You shall have what you ask," said Llewelyn. "I will take my host and hold station along the border, within your reach whenever you call on me. And in the south Rhys Fychan shall keep ward in the same way. We had best arrange codes and signals I can send out to my allies, we have a long frontage to guard, and you may have need of us in haste, at any point."

  So we were committed, and yet not committed, for out of the confines of Wales he would not pledge more than raiding units of his army, and within Wales he moved upon his own land, and could not be questioned or held to account. But with that the young man was content, it was what he had come to gain. And he dined with us, and was good company when he could call back his mind and spirit from where it habited by choice, somewhere far away in the city of London, in that Tower which I remembered from my boyhood, where that very day, perhaps, Earl Simon's envoys confronted the king with the high demands of the reform.

  The council conferred long that night, and when the planning was done those two, Llewelyn and Henry de Montfort, sat privately over their wine even longer, and talked of all manner of things, growing close and eager, for they had much in common, being of that open part of humanity that does not hoard its light, but gives it forth upon other men, sometimes too rashly. And so I heard, for I attended them for a brief while, how they spoke also of that letter King Henry wrote when he believed Llewelyn dead, and the plans he made for supplanting him. And young de Montfort said, after some thought:

  "But surely he has put his finger upon your weakness, the only one he could find, saying you are unwived and without issue. With such a princedom as you have to conserve, I do marvel that you have not married and got sons. If I presume, rebuke me but forgive me. For I do know of marriages made, and marriages that could not be made, for reasons of true affection. My father," he said, with that ardour that possessed him always when he spoke of his parents and kin, "never thought to aspire to the king's sister, when he came to England, and she in her child-widowhood was pledged to life-long chastity. A wicked folly, I think, to induce a young girl to swear to such a penance, with the whole world before her! But when they met it was a fatal thing, for each desired the other, and no other thing in this world. And she was gallant enough to withstand all the pressures put upon her, and to be forsworn of her oath for his sake. I am their firstborn, and I tell you, whatever the churchmen may say, I think God did not disapprove their love." So he said, and flushed with pride in those two who begot and bore him. So he well might. They say she was a proud, demanding, difficult lady, this boy's mother, but none ever dared to say that she fell short in her devouring and devoted love to that man she chose and married.

  "I would wish to you and to any man that I revere," said young Henry, "so proud and single a choice. It may be that you are also waiting for an Eleanor." And he laughed, softly and hazily, for he was a little in wine, and because of Llewelyn's silence he feared he had trespassed on an unwelcome theme, where indeed I believe the prince was mute only in surprise at his own want of forethought, that he had never before given serious consideration to a matter of such patent importance as his marriage, and the provision of heirs after him. So the boy went on talking to fill a moment's silence and escape into safer pastures.

  "My only sister," he said, "the youngest of us, is also Eleanor, after my mother. She'll be eleven this year." And he looked at my lord with a face like a flower wide open to the sun, ardent and vulnerable, and I, for one, considered and marvelled what the sister of such a one might not promise of beauty and gallantry.

Llewelyn had judged rightly, King Henry in the Tower indignantly refused the demands of the reform. He was still so blind to the real enormity of what was happening in his own land that he even persisted in sending out his writs for the muster against Wales at Worcester on the first day of August, but long before that day came, the tide of events had swept on and left the summons awash in its beached pools, like weed cast ashore on Aber sands. For as soon as the word was received of the king's rejection the young marcher confederates struck in arms against their enemies down the border, capturing the bishop of Hereford, shutting him up with all his Savoyard canons in Clifford's castle of Eardisley, and plundering his rich and coveted lands. He was the first and the most hated of the implacable foreign royalists, but after him they turned to others, long since marked out for vengeance.

  By then we were on the border as had been promised. Llewelyn sent out his writs to all his vassals and allies on the day that young de Montfort left us, and by the middle of June we marched. Within one week more we had companies deployed from Mold in the north to Glasbury in the south, from which positions we could move easily into action anywhere in the middle march, according as we were needed.