The Brothers of Gwynedd (78 page)

  He spurred his horse, sent his standard forward, had his trumpeter sound, abandoned his foot force to follow as they could, and launched all his mounted strength headlong up the severing hollow and crosswise into the advancing Londoners, driving them eastward across the foot of the ridge, to scatter like spray before his hurricane into the river flats beyond.

  For Earl Simon gave the order to sound, and we set spurs to our horses and drove down the hill into King Henry's central battle, labouring up the first slope towards us. We struck them hard and truly, and swept them back down the hill with us until we hit the first houses of the town. Crushed between us and the adamant walls, they fought back as long as they could, but were gradually shattered into particles that drew back among the buildings as they might, and thus were hunted along streets and alleys, first hotly, then without haste, later even with moderation, seeking to pen rather than to kill or harm. It went not so rapidly as I have made it seem, for so we laboured until near noon, though it passed like a breath, for we were exalted above ourselves, and knew no want nor weariness. I remember marking with astonishment, towards the middle of the day, how hot the sun was, and that the grass was no longer wet with dew.

  I think I killed none in that battle, wounded but few, as I got but a scratch or two in return. And truly I was glad it should be so, for there was about our cause some holy reluctance to hurt or hate, even though we could not give ground. The foot soldiers had heavier losses, but few knights died in the onset, the first among them Earl Simon's standard-bearer. The life of such an officer is always at any man's disposal, seeing his devotion is towards that he carries, and no more to his own defence than it is to the slaying of those that come against him. William le Blund died with the standard still aloft over him, and another took it from his dying hand and bore it forward. Thus we drove into Lewes, and gripped and held it.

  Then I saw no more of Earl Simon for a while, for he drew back to watch the progress of the battle, and make use of his reserve to the best effect. The morning passed, and Edward still absented himself, hunting his unhappy Londoners about the marsh-land and into the river, and killing as long as he had strength in his arm, or his driven horse could go. We neither saw nor heard of him, and them we could not help. We combed the fringes of Lewes, pricking out at sword-point lord after lords, all those lofty names, Hereford, Arundel, Basset, Mortimer, even names more outlandish to me, for they came from beyond the border of Scotland, vassals out of their own country, Balliol, Comyn and Bruce, the keepers of the northern marches.

  King Henry had given his left battle to the king of the Romans and his son, Henry of Almaiin, and only they, with a handful of their followers, made any headway up the slope of the down, and succeeded in breaking through to its crest, only to find they were cut off from all the rest of their numbers, who were still entangled with the centre and pinned down in the low ground outside the town. Earl Simon's reserve closed the circle about those who had penetrated, and drew in upon them until they were forced to take refuge in a windmill which stood in a high spot there to take the weather. And there, encircled and under threat from the archers if they tried to break out, they at last surrendered and were made prisoner.

  Then all was centred around the town, where baron after baron and knight after knight was severed from his support, surrounded and taken. Where we wearied, the reserve came in to relieve us, and Earl Simon used a part of the force, and especially the archers of the Weald, who knew their business and their country, to fling a cordon round Lewes and stop the ways out of it towards the south, for that way lay the easiest escape to the sea, and what was most to be feared was that King Henry might be whisked away, or some of his allies more dangerous than himself might reach France by that route, and add their strength to the invasion force we all knew to be massing there. As indeed a few did break through before the circle closed, and got away by sea from Pevensey, two of the king's half-brothers among them, William of Valence and Guy of Lusignan, together with Hugh Bigod, who had once been a de Montfort man and justiciar of England, and the Earl Warenne, the lord of Lewes himself. For the rest, we made a clean haul of them, all those great lords who parted England among them fell one by one into Earl Simon's hands.

  To the north-east of the town he left the approaches open, but with reserves in wait wherever there was cover, for in the early afternoon Edward brought his gorged and sated troops back into the field, and no doubt expected that the day would have gone with his father and uncle as pleasingly as with him. Earl Simon let him in, and the circle closed behind him. Too late he saw the battle-field swept clear of all but puny, scattered clashes, like the last sputtering flames of a dying fire and marked and understood the litter of harness, banners and arms that was left of King Henry's army, and knew that in gratifying his own revenge he had lost his father the battle.

  He did not know where the king was, though by then we did, and had a strict watch all round the Cluniac priory, where he had fled to sanctuary. Earl Simon stood between Edward and the same refuge, and even to that angry and embittered mind there was no sense in trying to fight over again, with a handful of tired men on tired horses, the battle already irrevocably lost. Edward turned tail and made for the house of the Franciscan friars, and there took cover with the remnant of his following. As much a prisoner of Earl Simon as if he had surrendered himself into his hands, there he was suffered to stay, and his father among the monks of Cluny, for neither of them could escape.

  So ended the battle of Lewes, that many saw as a miracle and the direct judgment of God, so complete was the victory. Yet not without cost. Friars, clerks and monks went about the river flats and meadows and the shoulder of the down after the fight, and reverently took up and buried the dead, to the number of six hundred, and of those it may well be more than half were men of London.

  As for us, we secured the castle and made our camps, and gathered the spoils of arms and armour, and set guards, and did all that men must do as scrupulously after a victory as before. We saw to our horse-lines, fed and watered, tended injuries, the smiths repaired dinted armour and ripped mail, and the cooks and sutlers found us meat and bread and ale, and we ate like starving men.

  The furnishings of Earl Simon's chapel went with him wherever he went. And most devoutly, that evening, he heard mass and offered thanksgiving with a full heart for the verdict of God, delivered in the blazing light of day before all men, in token that it behoved all men to accept the judgment. For the award of heaven is higher than the award of kings or pontiffs, and even they must bow to it and be reconciled.

After the men-at-arms had done their part, and while they slept after their exertions, the clerks and friars began their work, and for them there was no sleep in Lewes that night. Those who were not tending the wounded or burying the dead, ran back and forth all night long between the parties that had been brought to a stand, and must now be brought to a settlement. For complete though the triumph was, it could not do more than determine who now put forth the terms to be met, and since Earl Simon was not and never desired to be a monarch himself, or to displace the monarch that England already had, he was greatly limited, in what he could propose, by his own nature and his conception of duty and right. He aimed always at that which had been his aim from the beginning, an order of government such as had been begun at Oxford, with the consent and co-operation of all the limbs of the state.

  By morning they had drawn up a form of peace, and both King Henry and the Lord Edward had given their assent to it, having little choice. It provided for the royal castles to be handed over to new seneschals responsible to council and parliament, for the proclamation of peace in the shires and the strict enforcement of law, so that no partisan upon either side should now molest his neighbour of the other side without penalty, and for the immediate release of young Simon and of the lord of Beaudesert and his two sons, taken at Northampton. The whole immediate purpose of this urgent accord was to ensure the order and safety of the realm, against the uncontrolled malice of faction in the shires, the opportunism of malefactors who thrive on discord, and the threat of invasion from overseas, for everyone realised that the eternal problem of reaching a final amicable settlement still remained, and was as intransigent as ever. And for the sake of law and order, since half the nobility of England was now captive, indeed more than half of the chief persons of authority in the marches, Earl Simon made a gesture no other man could have made, and upon their acceptance of the form already sealed by king and prince, ordered the release to their own lands of all the lords of the march, and also of certain others, the Scot, John Balliol, the sheriff of Northumberland, and a baron of Hampshire who was needed along that coast. They pledged themselves to go home and keep peace and good order, and attend in parliament when called. But bound as he was to accept other men's oaths as his own was acceptable, Earl Simon did not let all the weapons out of his hands, and no blame to him. He named two hostages who should remain in captivity as surety for the observance of all the terms of the peace, and those two were the Lord Edward and his cousin Henry of Almain.

  With what bitterness and resentment the Lord Edward accepted his subjection I guess, yet he did give his word. With what weariness, discouragement and timidity King Henry resigned himself to his, that I saw and understood. But I use the wrong word, for resign himself he never did, being unable to despair of his luck. But very piously he subscribed to the terms, his only present advantage lying in assent, and very heartily he wrote to King Louis with a copy of the form of peace, and entreated him to use his good offices with the exiles to persuade them to acceptance, for the safety of the royal hostages, and the preservation of his own precarious rights. All the more since Earl Simon declared himself willing, secure in heaven's verdict for him and the general adherence of the people of England, again to submit matters at dispute to the arbitration of King Louis and his best advisers. Believing as he did in the sacredness of Christendom and the common health of its component lands, no less than in the need for right and just government within each of them, he could do no other.

  Thus far I saw matters unfold, with every promise of a good outcome. For shortly after the battle Earl Simon set out to take the king to London, and the young hostages to honourable confinement at Richard of Cornwall's castle of Wallingford, and that being my way also as far as the city, I went with them. But when we came to St. Paul's, where lodging was prepared for the king, I sought an audience with Earl Simon, the first time I had been alone with him since the May night under the stars at Fletching.

  He walked less lamely by then, but he was not free of pain, and seeing him thus closely, after many days of seeing him in the seat of power, far removed from me and controlling kings and princes with a motion of his sword-hand, I started and checked at seeing him worn away so lean and steely-fine, as though the spirit had fretted away the flesh from his bones. Those bones had been to me a marvel from the first moment I set eyes on him in Oxford, so purely drawn were they, and so taut and polished and private beneath the skin. He had no soft lines that could be manipulated, no pliable mask like King Henry's. What he was he showed to every seeing eye, like mountain, flood and fire, most beautiful and perilous. And still, revealing himself mortal and vulnerable, subject to ills of body and mind, he favoured his new-knitted leg, and eased its weight with a hand when he shifted it. So close and so far he was, and so distanced, and so drawn, I had discovered how to love him.

  "I guess your errand," said Earl Simon, "and your longing to be home I understand. When you elected to go with me to the judgment, you said you would carry the news to Wales yourself, and so you should. With my blessing and my thanks, to your lord and to you."