The Brothers of Gwynedd (127 page)

  Llewelyn made one more reasoned attempt to forestall fate, but reason had little say left in this dissension, except the cold reason of Edward's resolution on conquest. The prince again sent envoys to the Michaelmas parliament, bearing letters offering fealty and homage on the terms due by treaty, and not otherwise. What Edward claimed he most wanted, Edward was offered, upon terms which did no violence to justice or to his rights, as he was doing violence to the rights of others. But this was not absolute submission, and that was the only answer he would consider.

  He took the last step, and took it deliberately and coldly. He called a full council of his chief prelates and magnates, and demanded and obtained from them the unanimous judgment that the prince's petition should not be heard, but that the king should go against him as a rebel and a disturber of the peace. The marches were to be put into a state of immediate defence—defence, being, of course, Edward's word—and the feudal host was summoned to muster on the day of St. John the Baptist of the following summer, at Worcester.

  These formal orders, being promulgated during that parliament, were common knowledge, and our envoys brought the news back with them. What lay behind we had to estimate for ourselves, for certainly Edward would not sit still through the winter.

  "This is no threat of war to come when the host gathers," said Llewelyn. "It is war now, and I fear we shall soon learn it. If he times his muster thus for midsummer, half a year away, he means to have a good part of his work done for him before ever he takes on that expense. This will be every marcher lord for himself with a free hand to raise what forces he can and take what land he can. And we with a long and uneasy border, laced with the lands of small chiefs who may well fear to be squeezed between two rocks, and rush to take cover behind the greater. We have seen it so often before!"

  In council and in camp, travelling the length of his land before the worst of the winter set in, he was resolute, cheerful and practical, improving wherever possible on the dispositions he had already made. But I know, who was always beside him, how his heart was eaten with foreboding and grief over those two springs of his life, Eleanor and Wales.

  "We'll still keep plying him with approaches," he said grimly, "as long as it's safe for bishop or clerk to travel into England, and as long as he'll issue safe-conducts. He shall not be able to say it was I who broke off all contact. I have never sought to avoid my obligations to him, but only when he performs his part will I perform mine. That I'll keep repealing as long as I can get an envoy within earshot of him. Whether he'll listen is another matter. I think his ears have been stopped all this year, if truth were told."

  I thought so, too, but if continued diplomatic missions could postpone action even for a few weeks more, we should have our ally, winter, on the doorstep, and frost and snow might hold back what Edward certainly would not curb willingly. And all the council agreed with the prince's consistent messages, patiently repeating that this was not to the purpose, that right should be done on both sides, and could not be one-sided. But Llewelyn had long ceased to believe in any success from reasoning.

  "If I am to pay now," he said to me once, as we looked out from the walls of Dolforwyn across the Severn towards Montgomery, "for what I failed to do for Earl Simon, God grant I may not be asked to pay it through his daughter!"

As for me, at this time I was torn so many ways that there was no rest for me night or day, for not only was I racked with all the cares that oppressed my lord, and troubled deep by the recollection of what Eleanor's distress must be, on his behalf rather than her own, but also I could not get out of my mind, waking or sleeping, the thought that the tale of Cristin's months was come to an end, and somewhere far from me, perhaps in Chester, where we heard David had taken his men to join the garrison, the time of her labour was come upon her, and she already turned forty years old, and bearing her first child, in peril of her life and of her peace, in hatred and despite, in fear and loathing, poisoning what should have been a youthful joy. And she was mine, heart and soul mine, and I would have died for her, and I could do nothing to help her.

  "You must forgive me, my lord," he said, when we had fed him and given him dry clothes, and brought him to Llewelyn, "that I bring no letters. What I bring you I carry in my head this time, and it's my head I risked to bring it. My good uncle has taught me a long list of what the king has in hand for Wales. Will you hear it?"

  And he delivered it word for word as he had learned it. How Edward had set up three commands along the march, the first at Chester, where the earl of Warwick was commander, with David as his lieutenant, the second here opposing us in the middle march, under Roger Mortimer, and the third in the south, where Pain de Chaworth commanded from Carmarthen. The king's own standing corps of knights and troopers was divided between the central and southern commands, and the commission of all three commanders was to collect supplies, recruit footsoldiers wherever they offered, and above all, to receive local Welsh princes to the king's peace, offering them protection in the future for their defection, should England and Wales again come to terms. And protection meant that once they had pledged their fealty to Edward, out of natural fear, that fealty should be retained in any agreement afterwards.

  "They are issuing proclamations inviting all the small men along the march to get out of the line of battle," said Morgan very earnestly, "and some are wavering, and may well fall. This is the king's first weapon, he will use it to the full, and even spend to make it effective. When the lion roars, even well-bred hounds, of good gallantry, take to the bushes."

  "Small blame to them," said Llewelyn ruefully, "when they have no better training yet. I have seen it coming, friend, I know what I face."

  "And further, my lord, my uncle bids me tell you that the king has sent overseas for war-horses, he is buying more than a hundred in France. He has sent to Gascony for crossbowmen, and approached the king of France to allow the shipping of men and horses from Wissant to England. In December he sent out writs for the feudal levy, for the first day of July, at Worcester. As to the bowmen from Gascony, this is but the beginning. He will get more. And he is furbishing all the ships of the Cinque ports fleet for sea service."

  He drew breath, after so much talking of matters learned by heart, a ruddy, wellmade young man, bringing with a good heart news that might be bad or good to us, according as we made use of it. "I am finished, my lord, I know no more."

  "We're bound to you for your trouble," said Llewelyn, smiling at him, "and something troubled because we are bound. You did very well by us in getting here. But how can we ensure that you get back as safely?"

  "Never fret for that, my lord," said Morgan cheerfully. "I am not going back. My uncle does not expect me. I am a Welshman, and I can use sword or lance, as you please to employ me. I have come to add one more, for what he's worth, to the forces of Wales."

  With a full heart the prince made it clear to him that his worth was as great as his welcome was warm, and prayed that Cynan, who remained behind to bear the possible vengeance for his nephew's defection, had made provision for his own safety.

  "It was he who bade me go freely," said Morgan, "and he can very well take care of himself, he is not answerable for my follies, and has my leave to disown me as hard as he will. He said he might yet be of service where he is, now that he has made his choice, and of messengers God will provide at need."

  Such crumbs of honest comfort and gladness we had, and not a few. But those who thus came to join us at the risk of their lives were the poor and landless, who had nothing but their lives to lose. With those minor chieftains, especially those who inherited but little by reason of having many brothers, it was another story, and we knew from the beginning that it must be so. The smaller their patrimony, the less possible was it for them to raise men enough to defend it by force, and Wales was but a word still, there was hardly one among them who was prepared to let go of a commote in the borders in order to help his neighbours inland to preserve the heart of a country.

  Before the year ended, Mortimer had raised so great a force at the king's pay at Montgomery, and had so many added companies from Lestrange and Clifford and Corbet, all with lands there to enlarge, that we were pressed back in a number of skirmishes from the borders of Salop, and soon they were encroaching into Powys. Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn had naturally remained sitting hungrily there on the fringes of his own lost lands when David went to join the earl of Warwick at Chester, and was more eager even than the king's own men to recruit and mass supplies, and push the advance into southern Powys, to get back his own, however justly forfeit. And before the first month of that year twelve hundred and seventy-seven was over, the earl of Lincoln had brought a strong force to join Mortimer's command, and they were rolling us back far into Powys, and setting up Griffith again in his lordship of Pool, though as a vassal holding from the king, a mere baron of England.

  Wherever Llewelyn himself fought, the fortunes of the conflict were stayed, at least for a time, the magic of his presence was such, but he could not be everywhere, and when his back was turned the fainthearted began to count their chances after the old manner.

  "It begins," said Llewelyn grimly, when we heard of the first defector in Maelor, and he left the middle march as well held and supplied as he might, and went north to try to secure other waverers in the parts near Chester. He also sent his last embassage to Edward, who still graciously gave safe-conduct, to preserve his own appearance of patience, though with no intention of listening, to present once again his offers of terms to avert out-and-out war. The only response was Archbishop Kilwardby's commission to his brother of York, certainly at Edward's direct order, to pronounce sentence of excommunication against the prince, and this was done. It meant little in practical terms to us in Wales, but it did express Edward's final and absolute refusal to listen to any terms but abject surrender, or consider himself longer to have any human obligations to the rival he desired to overthrow.

  As for the progress of this war that was not yet officially a war, the king's strategy during the period of preparation was clear. He reserved his use of the feudal host for the final blow, and spent the months between in such a campaign of recruitment and reinforcement as had never been used against us before. His officers built up, chiefly at Chester, but also at Montgomery and Carmarthen, great reserves of food, arms and horses, and provisions of all kinds, and also took on large numbers of men at royal pay both as workmen and soldiers. Thus while no war had begun, from three bases, widely spaced, three considerable armies were gnawing away, as opportunity offered, great pieces of Welsh land, and either turning them over to marcher barons to be held and garrisoned, or fortifying them for the crown. At the same time crown officers were busy proclaiming, as Morgan had foretold, Edward's willingness to receive Welsh chiefs to his peace upon favourable terms.

  Now this may seem to be invitation only to cowards and traitors, but indeed it is not necessarily so, and Llewelyn never quite condemned those who succumbed. Consider the position of such a one as Madoc of Bromfield, one of four brothers, whose lands south of Chester jutted perilously into English territory, being surrounded more or less on three sides, and situated between two very strong English bases. Such a promontory of Welsh ground he could not defend against the crown forces alone, nor could the support of his overlord long maintain it. He had a choice between fighting for it until he was driven back out of it or killed in the fighting, abandoning it and withdrawing with all his forces to join Llewelyn and make a stand further west, or else accepting the king's offer and transferring his allegiance in order to keep his lands. He need not thereupon promise also to fight on Edward's side—though some did—it was enough if he ceased to fight against him. And to make his choice in this dire situation such a young man had only the guidance of a long past of holding and preserving a man's own small principality, a tradition barely changed as yet by Llewelyn's proffered vision of a Welsh nation. It was no great wonder that so many, in the most dangerous and exposed positions, gave way and made their peace. What was wonder was that so many stood out, and refused the bait.