The Brothers of Gwynedd (130 page)

  We made Edward pay a high price both in men and money to get there. But we could not keep him out of it.

  For the feudal host had been but the beginning of Edward's resources. By this time in August he had paid reinforcements coming in, in such numbers as we had never known, we reckoned nearly sixteen thousand foot at this time, and probably three hundred lances. Where he got the money to pay such numbers, and how deep he sank into debt, I cannot guess, but we cost him a great sum, that I know. The number of the crossbow quarrels that his arbalestiers loosed on us was beyond our reckoning, and must alone have cost a fortune.

  Meantime, we also had a few strange reinforcements, deserters from Edward's army, a handful of foot soldiers and archers, but far more of his labourers on the roads. They grew weary of such hard work and peril of their lives, and fled into the woods, where we gathered and questioned them. Some wanted only to slip away and go home, being pressed men, some were Welsh, and desired to change sides, and we took them in gladly. God knows there were enough Welsh by that time shamelessly in Edward's pay. Welsh friendlies, the English called them. We had another name for them.

  Still the military road unrolled mile by mile through the forest ahead of Edward's main host, while Reginald de Grey commanded the base camp at Flint, and a second such strong garrison was established at Rhuddlan, thus protecting the king's rear and his supply lines. The detail that most surely opened our eyes to the gravity of our situation at that point was that the ships began to bring stone and other building materials as soon as the wooden fortifications were secure enough, and the workmen within the camp-sites began to dig foundations, both at Flint and Rhuddlan. This we beheld with deep disquiet. Neither the wide, cleared forest road nor this determined building accorded with our past experiences.

  "This I do not like at all," said Llewelyn. "He would not go to so much trouble and expense if he meant to use these bases only for a season and then withdraw from them. Surely he cannot mean to man them through the winter? I do not believe he has the money or the supplies to feed two such garrisons and fight a winter war."

  A campaign continued through the winter was something we had never had to contend with before, for with long lines of communication and many mouths to feed it was impracticable in the mountains. But given two strong bases open to the sea, and a fleet of ships well able to cope with coastwise sailing even in wintry conditions, it began to look like a daunting possibility.

  "Certainly," said the prince, gnawing his lip over the threat, "he seems to have plans for staying, even if he breaks off the fighting till the spring. No man cuts such a road or ships such loads of stone but to make a permanent stay." And that meant this time we might be hard put to it to regain any part of what we had yielded. Either we must storm their camps and utterly destroy them, a terrible undertaking, or else they would hold what they had gained, and renew the advance when season and weather made it possible.

  There was no sign of any slackening in their pressure on us, the road rolled on towards the Conway, clearly the king's objective, and moved with terrible speed. Nine days it took them to move their advanced base from Rhuddlan to Degannwy, and short of hurling ourselves at them in pitched battle there was nothing we could do to prevent. We could and did make them pay heavily in men and supplies for every mile, but we could not stop the march of that road. All we could do was fall back before it, and withdraw beyond the Conway, on the granite heart of our land.

  From Aberconway we could not so easily be shifted, having the great heights of Penmaenmawr at our backs, and all the complexities of Snowdon close at hand to shelter and hide us at need. So things stood at the end of August, Edward on the eastern side of the estuary, we on the western, and the ebb and flow of the tides between. But Edward had his ships, far too formidable for our smaller boats to tackle, and who has the mastery of the sea can cut off mainland from island, and draw a tight noose about such a prize as Anglesey.

  It may be that we should have foreseen it, but even if we had I doubt if we could have prevented, for we had no such fleet to move an army across the strait, nor dared we detach half our force, and so weaken the garrison of our beleaguered Snowdonia. But Edward had the numbers, even though he had dismissed many of the Welsh levies at this time, and kept a smaller army to feed, but all of picked men, both the cavalry and the foot, and notably all the expert archers. At the beginning of September, very shortly after he reached Degannwy, he shipped a strong division across to the island, where the corn harvest was still standing. Fighting there must have been, but the companies we had there could not withstand such an army. On the heels of this invasion force Edward shipped also a large number of scythemen and reapers, and gathered our harvest, the chief grain supply of all north Wales, for the use of his own men. Those two weeks of September were the most desolate blow he dealt us, and the most irresistible. When the news reached us, we knew our case was desperate.

  Llewelyn called a council in the mountains above Aber. We looked down from our crags to that best-loved court, and across Lavan sands to the island we had lost. A sombre gathering that was. There were some among his captains who were all for fighting to the end, but more who were not afraid to say what they saw, and what they saw, if we pushed this to the last, was the loss of all.

  "At least we are not come to that yet," said Tudor. "But for Anglesey we hold all Gwynedd west of Conway, as we always did, and I cannot believe that Edward, however determined he may be, looks forward with any very high stomach to assaulting this eagles' nest in winter. It is possible it may suit him as well as us to talk terms for another ending."

  "It is true," said Griffith ap Rhys Fychan, the elder of the two nephews, though with a very reluctant face. "The lord prince still has enough bargaining power to be worth listening to. And the autumn begins to close in."

  His brother showed by the wryness of his face how bitter the thought of suing for terms was to him, but to do him justice, he kept his eyes fixed upon his uncle's face, and bit back whatever his passionate heart might have longed to say.

  Llewelyn said with deliberation: "We have contended on the wrong terms, yet I do not see what else we could have done. The one time when we might have upset the king's plans was at the beginning, by a total stroke against him before he could get his armies and his workmen into movement. But then we could not foresee so strange a war. No one has ever proceeded against Wales in this fashion. He has planned a march not merely to reach Degannwy, but to make a way which can be maintained and used again and again, and he has refused to be drawn into the hills and the forests after us, where we might have the advantage. He has left garrisons at all his bases, and patrols on the roads between, to ensure his lines, and he has taken our winter supplies from us, and added them to his own. And we had best realise that he has done more than snatch our granary from us in taking Anglesey. His next step, if we force him to continue, will be to put a fresh army ashore from Anglesey across the strait, and take us in a tightening cord from the west, and to send reinforcements up the Clwyd from Rhuddlan, and draw the noose about Snowdon from the east. But gradually and methodically as he does everything, because he may find it more practical to starve us out than attempt us by storm. I begin to see that it could be done. I would not have believed the day would come when one man could turn Snowdon into a single great castle under siege, to be starved into surrender."

  That was stark talking, and the more shocking because he weighed these considerations without rage, and without shutting his eyes to a single aspect of the grim truth. They looked at one another bleakly, and in their turn weighed his words.

  "It comes to this," he said, no less calmly. "If we fight on, we may cost him very dear to take, but if he proceeds as heretofore, my judgment is that he can take us, and he will. If we ask for terms, we can stand fast on keeping everything we now hold, and what we still hold is the heart and source from which everything else has been won. And may be won again, some day, when time favours us, and we have learned how to make better use of our wits and our resources. It is not a matter of abject surrender. We know we are not come to that, and be sure Edward knows it every bit as well. If I am wide awake to our situation, so is he to his. I do not think he wants to drag this warfare on into the winter. I do think he may be very glad if we offer him the chance to avoid that labour and pain. And I think it may be wise to do so, for if we force him, he will certainly strike back, and strike hard. I begin to know him."

  I heard then in his voice, harsh and grim as it was, the note of something beyond knowledge. He liked what he knew. This is truth, that those two were on their best terms of respect and regard when they were at each other's throats in honourable battle. I would swear that those worse suspicions they had cherished, each of the other, had died and been burned to ash in the fire of that summer war. Neither of them any longer believed that the other had coldly planned murder or treason. They were two strong creatures who had crashed forehead to forehead like rams or rutting deer, and could not by their very natures yield ground once the horns were locked. There was a huge respect in their enmity that neither of them had been able to appreciate while they angled and argued, but only when they clashed in thunder.

  "If we are to ask for truce and talk terms," said Tudor with certainty, "it must be at once, while we are still whole, and before he can even suppose that we are weakened by loss of the harvest. If the worst befalls, and we can get no honourable terms, we shall have lost nothing and committed ourselves to nothing, and gained time for the winter to close in on him as well as on us. We can still fight to the death if we must."

  "True," said Llewelyn, "but I will not even enter into negotiations but in good faith." And when he had heard all that they had to say, he said: "I will give myself this one night. Tomorrow I shall have decided."

  He took horse and rode out that night alone over the uplands of Moel Wnion, looking over the sea, and I went after him, unseen, to the rim of the camp and beyond, and sat on a hillock in the bleached autumn grass and watched him from far off. He walked the horse gently, riding slack and easy, in solitary thought, alone with the lofty rocks and immense skies of his Gwynedd, which he stood to keep or lose, according as he played this game aright. A bitter choice it was he had to make, but one many a good man had had to make before him, in conditions even more galling and grievous, though this was sorrow enough. I think the few scudding clouds above the sea spoke with him, and the wheeling falcons that hovered like black stars against the sunset, and the folds of the uplands under their long, seeding grasses, the colour of the stubble Edward's reapers had left on Anglesey. For if the south had crumbled and fallen away from him, and the marches shattered as soon as English hands tore at them, this pure rock of Gwynedd remained, and was still inviolate. It never yet had belonged to any but its own princes. And when it came to the last allegiance, Llewelyn was not only prince of Wales, but prince of Gwynedd, too, and prince of Gwynedd first, and if all else deserted him, Gwynedd would not, and he must not desert or imperil Gwynedd. So I think his decision was made before ever he came trotting gently home again into camp. He was never one to cast the load of choice, where it hung so heavy and hard to bear, upon other men.

  But had there still been doubt, as I think there was none, it would not long have survived that return. For by then we had received into our camp one more deserter from among Edward's labourers, a forester from Hoyland, one of three hundred pressed men who had stubbornly sought their freedom throughout, so persistently that a force of cavalry was drafted to guard them at work. Edward's pressed labour, though well enough paid, was not popular, especially with married men who were forced to leave their wives and families. This man wanted nothing more than to get home, but his only means of evasion at this stage was to take to the Welsh hills, and in expectation of probable questioning he had armed himself with all the information he could gather, as fair pay for our helping him on his way by a safe route.

  When Llewelyn came back we were waiting to bring this man to him, and willingly he repeated what he had already told us.

  "My lord, I've kept my eyes and ears open, and this was no secret about Degannwy. They say the king issued it in open letter. If he destroyed you, my lord, if you were killed or dispossessed, he promised to divide a half of Snowdon and Anglesey and Penllyn between your two brothers, the Lord David and the Lord Owen—or the whole of Snowdon and Penllyn if he made up his mind to keep all Anglesey."

  "Did he so!" said Llewelyn, drawing in breath hard. "Half to himself, and the other half between those two! When was this agreement made?"

  "A good three weeks ago, my lords, when the king came back from Vale Royal."

  "And published, you say? Made letter patent?"

  "So I heard it."

  "And upon what terms," asked the prince quite gently, "were my brothers to hold this land of mine?"

  "Why, from the king, my lord. And to do him the service all his barons owe, and attend his parliament if he calls them."

  "So I supposed," he said, as if to himself. "Barons like any other barons, holding of the king in chief. And Gwynedd parted into a crown province and two diminished honours at Edward's good grace! No, there is no humiliation could be visited on me so bitter as that. Even if he had lavished all on David, and left it whole, that would have been more bearable. But it is the old story, divide, and divide again, and part into fragments, the better to swallow all piecemeal." He roused himself from his deep and grievous dream, and courteously thanked and rewarded the forester, and we gave the man shelter for the night, and fed him, and next morning set him safely on his way.