The Brothers of Gwynedd (97 page)

  He was then thirty years old, this Lord Edward, a giant just coming to his prime, hardened and experienced in political contention and civil war, a man well-proportioned, long-limbed, moving with confidence and certainty in his body. He had large, heavy, handsome features, a great cliff of a brow, and his hair, which in childhood, as I remembered, had been flaxen, almost silver, was now so dark a brown as to be almost black, and his long, level brows appeared quite black. He affected rich but dark clothing, and little jewellery, having no need of adornment to draw eyes to him, his stature alone making him known wherever he walked. In repose, as I saw it then, his face was severe to grimness, attentive to the mass but not moved, as if his mind was on other business. His left eyelid drooped over the dark brown eye. I thought the flaw in him more marked than when I had seen him previously. Closed up in armour I had seen him last, dealing sharply-judged and unrelenting death at Evesham. But long before that, at Oxford, I had seen him close and spoken with him. He had the heavy lid then, but when he was moved or intent it hardly showed. When he followed Earl Simon and hung on his words it showed not at all. He was not moved now, or else the trick had grown on him unawares. I do believe he was devout, I believe his heart was set on his crusade in absolute and devoted duty, taking upon him both his father's oath and his own. But when I looked again at the king, I saw how far the father had outstripped the son.

  He had no such grand abilities, no such stature or prowess in arms, no force such as Edward had, and God knows he had many faults and weaknesses, and had led his own baronage, and us, and all who ever had to do with him, a devious and unkingly dance, as quick to turn and twist as any fox, being a timorous man who used what weapons he had. And yet to the end, and more than all at the end, there was a kind of innocence about him, as of a clean creature soiled by running in fright against obstacles that dirtied his robes but could not corrode his being. Often had I hated him and blamed him, and called him forsworn and devious, and so he had often been, and yet I watched his rapt and dedicated face there in St. Peter's church on St. Edward's day, and it was washed clean and pure like a child's, and yet deeply sorrowful and humble like a penitent's, and it seemed to me that in his supreme act of devotion he was confessing and repenting all the unworthinesses of his life, and from the heart paying for them as best he could, until God should show him a better and surer way.

  I looked at Llewelyn, who was not far away, and saw that he also was contemplating King Henry's face, though I think he had a narrower profile to study than I. His was a countenance I knew far better than my own, broad at the wide-set eyes, that were very straight of gaze and darker and deeper than Edward's, broad at the jutting bones of cheek and jaw, and these bold planes of bone all outlined by the spare curves of clipped golden-brown beard he wore. Not a face to confide too readily, but neither did it evade or conceal. I had seen it once as fixed and devoted as King Henry's was now, when he kept vigil with the sword he had sanctified to the service of a Wales which was then uncreated, as though he set himself to assemble from a scattering of shattered shards a single vessel of gold. And so he had done, and he was acknowledged prince of the nation he had made. It was another kind of achievement, but he knew and respected another man's apotheosis when it shone before his eyes.

  So this one passionate devotion looked upon another as single and pure as itself, however different, and recognised and saluted it generously, smiling. And I remember thinking to myself that, if God was of Llewelyn's mind, King Henry was assured of his absolution.

We stayed in Westminster for some days after the festival was over, and Llewelyn had two meetings with the king and the Lord Edward and their closest advisers, to discuss the vexed matter of Senghenydd, and put his own case as to which party was infringing the treaty there. Certain minor disputes concerning the borders were not difficult to resolve, with goodwill on both sides. But though King Henry, two days after the feast-day, had sent letters of safe-conduct to the earl of Gloucester, with the plain intimation that his presence was required as a matter of feudal duty, still Gilbert made no haste to obey. We could not wait his pleasure, but did make natural, though I think fair, use of his absence to emphasise our own case. Then we left for home, taking a very cordial farewell. And this time we went not by the same way we had come, but by Oxford and Worcester, at Llewelyn's wish.

  I had no clear idea then of what was in his mind, but when we drew nearer to Evesham, and he took his party for lodging not to that abbey, but to Richard of Cornwall's foundation of Hailes, I did guess at his reason, and when he announced that he meant to spend two nights in that hospitable place I was sure. Not as Llewelyn, prince of Wales, in royal progress of state, would he approach the place of the death and burial of Earl Simon, or make himself known to the monks who had buried his friend. But Evesham is but a little way from Hailes, and with a day in hand he might go there unrecognised and unexalted, like other men. I was ready when he sent for me to him, on the first evening, and shut himself up with me alone.

  At the thought of an idle day David had frowned, restless for home once he was away from the court, and asked with his chill formality what he might as freely have declared as his intent, to ride on ahead, with the prince's leave, and be about his proper responsibilities in Lleyn. And I think Llewelyn was glad, for whatever had to do with Earl Simon's memory was tension and disquiet between them, recalling old discords not yet fully forgiven, even upon Llewelyn's side, much less on David's. So we were private, we might go where we would, as humbly as we would, and none to question us, even with his eyes.

  "I have a consecration of my own to make," Llewelyn said. "Will you ride with me tomorrow, after David has taken his people off? They'll be away early; he's impatient for home now. Unhappy the man with two homes, born Welsh and bred English, and no fault of his own. He tears a string from his heart when he leaves the one, but once that's broken he cannot wait to get to the other, and bind it up again there. And he thinks I do not know!"

  Unwilling to speak for or against David where we touched too near the grief he had helped to make, and the warfare in which he had taken the opposing side, I asked him where we rode. At that he smiled, but very gravely.

  "You know as well as I, Samson. How could you or I pass so close, and not draw in to pay him honour? And I in particular, who have never yet seen that place. We will go to Evesham, you and I, and go as rustic and plain as any of the country people who frequent his grave. I want no honour, none of the respect given to princes, where he lies, until I have fulfilled both the oaths I made to his memory."

  I said I had somewhat of my own to vow to Earl Simon, and would go with him gladly. And Llewelyn thanked me as though I had done him great courtesy, which was his way.

  When I left him, I met with Cristin in the hall of the hospice, coming from her lady's bed-chamber with a blue brocaded gown over her arm, to have some pulled threads of the embroidery stitched back into the pattern. She looked upon me with the radiant stillness that was better than any smile. Her night-black hair was loosed about her shoulders from its day-time braids. Silken and bright and heavy it was always, but absolute black, raven-black, with never a sheen of David's steely blue. It made her brow so white beneath that my eyes dazzled. Cristin went in the sun and the wind freely, and the sun would not burn nor the wind abrade her.

  "She is asleep," she said, seeing me eye Elizabeth's gown. "She was tired out from the ride today. So much air and such a brisk breeze."

  "Asleep," I said, "until he wakes her?"

  "He will not wake her," said Cristin. "He can be patient and tender to little things; it's with the great he has no forbearance. They tell me," she said, "we are to leave you in the morning early."

  "It is true," I said. "David wants to get home. And my lord has other needs."

  "At Christmas," she said, "doubtless I shall see you." For those brothers kept the feasts always in strict form, all the more because of the constraint between them, and the tie of kinship was sacred, so that at the Nativity or soon thereafter they must meet.

  I said I trusted so, and wished her and her mistress a blessed journey home. And so we parted, as every meeting and every parting went with us, going from each other without a touch of hand or a turn to gaze. Of such small doubts and pleas we had no need. But with her image before my eyes I went out into the late October night, in the hush of the cloister, to breathe the chill and the darkness. Llewelyn, I knew, was gone to make his evening devotions in Richard of Cornwall's great church, for he was as devout as ever was King Henry, though the small, solitary holiness of the Celtic church, so spare and so sweet, haunted his mind and kept him safe from the worldly charm of such foundations as Hailes. God is somewhere within earshot of every altar, but nearer to our hermit-saints than to the lords of the English church. Yet a brave, demanding voice can reach him everywhere. So Llewelyn went alone to make his prayers for the morrow. And I left him to his vigil.

  In the morning early David took his people forward for home, and Godred would embrace me fondly before Cristin's eyes, who might not do as much. He took delight in this brotherly close, and was adroit in so handling me, indifferent as I was, as to turn his ring inward upon his finger and leave the imprint of the hand and rose in the flesh of my arm, as though he stamped his ownership upon me with a brand, like a slave, a reminder of how I was tied to him by my bastardy, and she was his possession. But Cristin was not moved, or if she was he could get from her no sign of it. And then they were on their way out from the gates, and I was both delivered and bereft.

  Then Llewelyn and I, in plain country brown like any village travellers, took two of the Welsh ponies and rode for Evesham, which lies to the north of Hailes, and about eight miles distant. A pleasant way enough we had, beside a little river, but the day was clouded over, and before we were halfway it began to rain, the soft, warm, wetting rain of the lowlands, and Llewelyn laughed, and said we should be well able to pass for poor, bedraggled pilgrims among the rest. For this tomb to which we were bound was become a place of great holiness and the resort of the common people in their need, as deeply revered as St. Thomas's shrine at Canterbury by all the poor and unprivileged who had hoped so much from the living man. And even we knew, as far away as north Wales, that there had been miracles. The nobility of England, weary of discord and anxious to have their old errors put away out of mind, might accept the crown's verdict that Earl Simon had been rebel and felon, Edward might shun the abbey that held that abhorred body as a place unclean—though his avoidance might as well have been from shame as from hatred!—but to the common folk of England this was the resting-place of a saint, and they frequented it for their comfort, and made sad songs and joyful songs about it, publishing Earl Simon's miracles by word of mouth throughout the whole land.

  We entered the town by the bridge over the Avon, that same bridge that Mortimer closed against him and brought him to his death. Busy and tranquil we found the place this October morning, and very fair and fat in its loop of river, the ground climbing towards the unmoated side, the north, where the walls of the abbey rose between us and the battlefield. At every step I drew nearer to that unhealed grief, with none of the duties and vexations and pinpricks of everyday to fend off from me the devastation of loss. For I had known Earl Simon, closely and well, all the last months of his life, and left him only when the head was hewn from his shoulders, and he lay dead beside his eldest son on the upland fields of Evesham. His advice and request that I should avail myself of my clerkhood and take refuge in the abbey with his attendant bishops I refused. But my little skill in arms could not weigh the balance in his favour, and what had I out of it but the grief and the grievance of seeing him die? Yes, something more I think I took away with me, a whole memory that did not turn back short of the last extreme, and so could live with the unforgettable talisman of his face, and need not turn its eyes away.

  We were within sight of the great abbey gateway when Llewelyn said, in a voice that called me back from my own vindication to consider his thirst: "Is this town much changed?" For he had never before seen it, except through my eyes.

  I said no, not greatly. There were some new houses, as I remembered it, and peace had brought its own increase, and befriended a market surely always rich in goods, but now easy of access for buyer and seller even from far afield. But, no, not greatly changed. It was as I had known it. The abbey, also. A great and generous house, that had not turned its back upon its slaughtered saint.