The Brothers of Gwynedd (145 page)

  And on that the bench rose, and Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn rose after, with a swirl of his furred gown, and stamped gleefully out of court with his rookery of lawyers on his heels. And we went away irritated and disappointed, but not really astonished. It was ill news to take back to Llewelyn, though I did not think it would come as any great surprise to him, either, however arduously he had reserved his judgment. One thing I was sure of, and that was that he would not attend on the day appointed in April, for there was no course open to him but to stand on his Welsh right. If he once surrendered it, they had a precedent for ever after, and to use against other men. Or if he did send proxies, it would be only to state his position and stand immovably upon it, as he had done in Oswestry.

  Llewelyn and Eleanor were in Ardudwy at that time, and there we returned and reported what had passed. But we found David there before us, without his family on this occasion, for he had ridden west in haste and excitement, in the fresh flush of battle, to compare his own fortunes in litigation with his brother's and was half furious, half perversely gratified, to find his worst prophecies confirmed. I heard his voice uplifted in the high chamber before I entered the hall, and his law clerk, Alan of Denbigh, met me in the stables and gave me the whole story.

  "Oh, he made his appearance there in Badlesmere's court, as summoned, to the day and the hour, but not by his attorneys. He went in person, and took no one with him but me, and that only to have a witness both while he stayed and after he left, for he never had any idea of acknowledging the competence of the court, and he had no trust in them for what they might get up to behind his back. And right he was! He waited until the case was called and Venables put in his writ, and then he stalked out into the centre of the room alone, where no one could fail to see and hear him. You know him! He made a figure, there's none can do it better!" And he grinned, remembering, and so did I, imagining David bestriding the floor in his arrogance of beauty and disdain, to the eclipse of Badlesmere and all his assessors.

  "He said that he was there only out of reverence for the king's Grace, and to make plain that he did not own the competence of the court and was not bound to answer for his lands there, for they were a part of the true soil of Wales, and belonged in no way to Cheshire, where alone Badlesmere's writ runs. And then he pronounced his summoning there as illegal, and cried aloud like a trumpet that he committed the lands in question to the peace of God and the king. And stalked out, and left a dead silence behind him for a long while, till they got their breath back, and what was left of their legal dignity. Man, it was a massacre! But they'll make him pay for it! No royal officer likes to be outshone and outfaced in his own court, and if Badlesmere is no strong man, there's one strong enough and to spare behind him."

  "And after he left?" I asked.

  "It was pitiful law, they were hardly themselves, but it was very pointed spite. They let Venables proceed with his plea, as though nothing had happened, and brought in that David had refused to plead, though he'd made no formal appearance at all, only repudiated the competence of the court. It made him angrier than ever when I followed him with the news. Lucky I was there to see! There was only one assessor there who had the honesty to speak out against the judgment and refuse his agreement, and that was the earl of Lincoln's steward. He opposed them from beginning to end, and has had his opposition enrolled. That's one good man we can call to witness for us."

  We had fared no better, and so I told him. It behoved the princes to work together in these matters, and see that their efforts fortified each other.

  "They'll have their heads together now," said Alan. "The lord prince may allow himself a few days for thought, but my lord will certainly be drafting his letter to the king in his mind this minute, and it will be a strong one."

  Over the wording of that letter David haled me, too, into service. It was written that same evening after supper, in Llewelyn's high chamber, the prince sitting quietly by and forbearing from urging prudence or changing the fiery words David dictated.

  The facts of the hearing at Chester David recounted to the king briefly and truly, and with the same force demanded, rather than requested, a just remedy. It was a prince's letter, courteous enough but worded to an equal, who owed him fair treatment and could be called to account if he did less than justice.

  "Write," said David, staring before him across the glow of the brazier to where Alan sat at the table with his parchment and his pens, "write that in view of the illegality of the process, I beg his Grace to have the plea, the judgment and the persons of the doomsmen who gave that judgment, brought to his own presence. Further, I request that the pursuit of this plea in the shire-court of Chester be suspended."

  "You are taking a high line," said Llewelyn, but without disapproval.

  "If I fail in that now, how can I begin after? Wait still, Alan, I have more to say. If this matter is to move at all, and not be deferred and delayed and lost by creeping inch upon inch, I must find the answer to what Edward's answer will be, and spare at least one letter. Write this, Alan! 'Since your Grace, by the ordinance of God, is king of many countries, speaking varying tongues and administered according to varying laws, which your Grace has seen no cause to change, let the laws of Wales, also, if it please your Grace, remain unchanged and respected as are those of the other nations under your crown.'"

  I saw Llewelyn's eyes open wide and dark under his deep brow, and a faint and private smile touch his lips and vanish again. For David had wrested out of his own heart the very principle, almost the very words, Master William had advanced in court, and yet no one had recounted to David in detail, at that time, what had passed in Oswestry. The outcome he knew, but certainly not all the arguments. He had come to the same lofty place of his own passion, and seen the same vision, he who had exchanged his rights in Gwynedd for lands of the king's gift, and fought for the king against his own people. True, this high flight was in defence of his own possessions, yet the cry he uttered was not only for himself.

  And he had said more even than he knew. It was Llewelyn who had heard and marked the true meaning. In a moment naked and unguarded David, three times renegade, had cried out for the rights of Wales, and cried from the heart, with all the patriot authority of the prince his brother.

Now as to the progress of these two lawsuits, so fatal in themselves, and so ominous as they represented hundreds of others, that plagued and maddened lesser men throughout all those lands no longer in Llewelyn's principality, what happened to both during the remainder of that year can be easily told, for though many letters passed, and many men sat and deliberated, or seemed to deliberate, the sum total of what befell is, nothing!

  David sent his letter, and I will not claim that nothing at all came of that, for King Edward instructed the justiciar of Chester to hold an inquisition among the men of the lands neighbour to Hope and Estyn, to determine whether those impleaded manors were in Wales or England. That inquisition was duly taken, and the men of the neighbouring parts confirmed with one voice that the lands were Welsh, and no law but Welsh had ever applied to them. But David's vengeful joy was curbed by sour disbelief, and wisely so, for in spite of this judgment, taken at the king's wish and published openly, Venables continued his plea in the Chester court as though nothing had changed, and was allowed to do so. Soon David was writing another peremptory letter to Edward calling attention to the anomaly, and demanding a remedy. Thus he persisted in his part as a spokesman for Welsh rights, and saw no illogic in it, and no bad faith, as indeed there was none. He had a party at his back by then, all those in the Middle Country who smarted under the same whip, and saw in him the champion who burned all their inarticulate complaints into one fiery utterance, loud enough to be heard even in Westminster.

  As for the prince, he proceeded with less noise, and more forbearance, feeling himself tied as David was not. He did not wait for the date Hopton had appointed
coram rege
, but wrote well in advance to Edward, setting out his own view of the process to date, and why he would not and could not, pending a decision about the process of law to be followed, obey the summons to appear on the last day of April. He asked the king to receive an envoy to explain personally all that was involved. Edward replied courteously and willingly, inviting the approach. And the prince sent Brother William de Merton, the warden of the Franciscan friary at Llanfaes, to be his advocate at court.

  Friar William was elderly and austere, well versed in law and of honest and forthright mind, though he knew how to furnish his severities with a courtly dress. He was also devoted to the prince and his house, and undertook the office with goodwill. But when he reached London, in the first days of April, it was to find the king making ready in haste to go to France, where he had business with King Philip, and also other matters concerning his many and quarrelsome relatives in those parts, and all Friar William was able to bring back with him was the king's verbal acknowledgement that he had done his errand well and prudently, that the matter was understood, but was too complex to be dealt with summarily, and must await his return, when he would give it his full attention. So when the day appointed by the Hopton bench came, the suit was not pursued, and the prince sent no attorneys, though Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, as I heard, did put in a formal appearance to keep the issue alive, and the official record favourable to him.

  "No help for it," said Llewelyn, sighing. "Not even King Edward can be everywhere and deal with everything at the same time."

  Friar William had brought personal letters for Eleanor with all the news from court. The queen's mother was recently dead, and the county of Ponthieu, in the north of France, which she had held, now came to her daughter. "Which is to say, to Edward," said Eleanor, "and though he has indeed business with King Philip, trying to keep the peace between him and King Alfonso of Castille, yet I think my cousin will be spending half the time of his visit making sure of his hold on Ponthieu."

  "Compared with which," Llewelyn owned honestly, "Arwystli may seem a very small manor, and my claim of little consequence. But justice is not a small thing, nor of little consequence."

  "And we are not the only people suffering from his passion for order in all things," said Eleanor, still pondering the news from London. "It seems he has set in motion a great inquest into the tenements and liberties of all his shires, and drafted panels of commissioners to do the probing. There'll be indignation enough in England, without looking westward into Wales. Every man who holds land to the value of twenty pounds a year is to be distrained by the sheriffs to accept knighthood, whether he wants the honour or not. That will set them by the ears! It's more burden than honour, these days. A strange man," she said, frowning, "my cousin Edward!"

  "I do believe," said Llewelyn, "that you feel some affection for him, even after all that has happened."

  "I
know
," she said, smiling, "that
you
do! Of myself I'm never quite so sure. I am not as crystal-clear as you, and not as generous. I do not forget, because he showed us such marked honour and such lavish entertainment at Worcester, that we both suffered for it over and over beforehand, against all right, and that paying a blooddebt, though it goes some way to repair a wrong, does not bring back to life what was killed. Three years of my life with you Edward stole from me, and from you those three years and more. It is over now," she said, "and I am too happy by far to bear any grudges or want any revenges, but I remember, and I have learned. I can look at Edward as he is, and find much to like, and still keep my distance and stay on my guard."

  I was there in the high chamber with them, that summer night at Llanfaes, at a desk in the corner of the room, copying music for Eleanor, for she not only played two or three stringed instruments herself, but also took a great interest in the music of the prince's chapel, and eagerly sent for new compositions when chance offered.

"Samson knows," she said, appealing to me, "for he was with me then, how

Edward first came to me in Windsor, when I was his prisoner. No way ashamed, and yet he was not easy. I had not seen him since I was a small child, and beneath his notice."

  She had not been beneath his notice in Windsor, but every way a match for him and more, for she had nothing to be ashamed of, and much to accuse him of, had she so chosen.

  "Well, it is past," she said. "I could get nothing from him, but neither could he from me. Once we had made certain of that, and set our jaws to face it out, we got on very well together. Like two enemies who respect each other, brought together in the prison of a common enemy, and making truce between them in order to make life more possible. I got to know him very well, my cousin Edward, the best of him and the worst. The strength and the weakness. He is very strong. And very weak," she said.

  "There are not many would say that of him," said Llewelyn, amused, "who have fought against him, as I have. Or watched, even from a distance, his handling of men and events. Whatever else he may be, I see him as a giant."

  "You have not done the fighting over a chess-board, brow to brow," said Eleanor, "as I have. At such close quarters you hear the hard breathing, not the fanfares, and see the sweat and not the banners."

  "And were you victorious?" he asked, laughing, but marking her words very attentively for all that.

  "I wish I could say so! I would have given every mark I had to be able to beat him," she owned, reflecting his laughter, "but I am not good enough. But once I came very near it, and brought him up short in stalemate at the end. For half an hour he dreaded I might defeat him. If you had seen him then, stiff to the finger-ends, and his jaw set like a man-trap, you would know Edward as I know him. If he could laugh at himself or bear that others should, if he saw any other human creature as having quite the same rights as he has, if he could take a fair fall and give fair credit ungrudging, then he would be great indeed. But he cannot and he does not. A giant he is, his ability is towering. But inside the giant there's a dwarf, fearful of being uncovered, and if ever his armour is pierced, to him hatred would come easy. I do not fear the giant," said Eleanor, suddenly grave and vehement, "but of the dwarf I could be very much afraid."