The Brothers of Gwynedd (150 page)

  It was a square stone room, not great, but with hangings on the walls and rugs on the floor, and a small brazier burning red in the centre over a great flat stone. There was a round table and two cushioned chairs, and a high-built bed against one wall, and a chest for his linen and gowns, better provision than many had in Edward's hold, but no fair price for the wrong done him. And as soon as he rose from his chair and dropped his quill beside his half-written parchment, turning to face us, I saw that he had not changed at all, nor ceased to keep due account of all his wrongs, and his father's wrongs, and the wrongs of his brothers dead and his one brother living, and the wrongs of his sister, whom he loved, alone of all human creatures, almost as well as he loved Amaury de Montfort.

  This youngest son of Earl Simon was not greatly like his brothers, had not their broad, brown nobility, the eyes wide-open and wide-set, the large, candid gaze. The great forehead, that he had, and the mind within was a match for any, but he was made in a leaner, hungrier mould, and darker-coloured, his face gaunt, his eyes deep-set, black and brilliant, quick to anger and to scorn. Unjust confinement had made him burn still blacker and more bitterly, but taught him to contain his rage and wait for the hour when it could be loosed to better effect. He looked at us without welcome, as though we had interrupted him in the composition of important work. Then he knew me, and for an instant bright golden sparks flared in his eyes. I saw him cast one glance at Cynan, and douse the betraying flames. Cynan saw it, too, and smiled.

  "They told me," said Amaury, "that I had a permitted visit. I appreciate the courtesy to a prisoner, but you must forgive me if I am slow to understand. They told me nothing more."

  "Be easy," said Cynan comfortably, "for Samson knows me as well as you know him, and there's no need here for discretion. Keep your voices low, if you will, though I think there's nothing to be feared." His own voice was soft but serene. He plucked up the stool that stood by the bed, and set it down against the door, and there he took his seat, his ear inclined to the latch. "What enters my left ear, within here, goes out at my right," he said, "but never a word unchecked from my mouth, I promise you. And whatever my right ear picks up from without, you shall hear of.

  "You are Peckham's man?" said Amaury curiously, for he had expected no such usage. "You are not likely to hear me slander him, he has been kind after his fashion. And I have learned to save my curses, they are wasted in this solitude."

  "Burnell owns my time and labour," said Cynan, hoisting the collar of his gown against the draught from the door, "but he has not bought my blood, nor tried to, to do him justice. You may forget I am here, unless some over-zealous warder creeps about the passage outside." He closed his eyes. "Use your time," he said.

  So Amaury and I sat down together, he still silent and wary for a while, but coming gradually to life, and finding the tongue that had been stilled for want of company through most of his days and all his nights. "Samson!" he said, tasting a known name, and drew long breaths. "This is better than I looked for. Afterwards I shall miss it more. For God's sake, talk to me of my sister. I am starved of news and of voices. You may croak, and you will still be music to me."

  I delivered him the gown and the gifts she had sent him, and the purse, the books being detained for examination before he could be allowed them, and he took and handled all slowly and long, for pleasure that they came from her. "I have little need of this," he said fingering the purse, "for I am not stinted, at least, nor cold, nor threadbare as yet, but I take it gladly for her sake, and will use it when I may. Has my cousin relented towards me so far? It has taken long enough. It must be at her entreaty. I could loathe him less if I could believe he has a real kindness for her."

  I told him we had to thank Archbishop Peckham, though Eleanor had asked and asked times without number, and still continued her entreaties whenever she could get a hearing. And I told him how the archbishop was to visit Wales after the present parliament, and there was hope, at least, of persuading him to use his influence still further, for which reason this visit must pass without arousing the least regret or suspicion in the king's mind.

  "Oh, report me tamed, submissive and resigned!" said Amaury, with a short, hard laugh that proved him none of these things, but was nevertheless live laughter, however sour its note. There was colour burning his lean cheekbones, and a spark in his eyes. I doubted I had sounded too hopeful, and led him to a peak from which he must fall with some pain, and yet he was not the man to believe easily in any good fortune, after all this while. "Say I pray constantly for Edward's Grace—so I do, that he may meet his favourite, Justice, brow to brow, and get his deserts in full. Your witness beholds me, meek as a lamb and obedient to the king's will. It will give him pleasure to believe that even a de Montfort may be chastened."

  There was so much bitterness in him that it filled the veins of his spirit like blood. But at least prison had not dulled his brain, nor rotted his body, nor in any way unfitted him to bear a masterly part among other men, if ever he could get free. His person was princely rather than clerical, and he was but thirty-two years old, with a life before him. Only Edward stood in his way. And what could I promise him, but that Eleanor and the prince would never cease their efforts for him until he was set at liberty?

  "That I never doubted," he said, "of her at least. She was always loyal, and never could rest while any of her acquaintances were abused or cheated. I doubt if I deserved her fondness, but that I came from the same sire. He had but one daughter after his five sons, but she is his best imprint and his nearest match."

  Whatever else this difficult man failed and fell short in, for his sister he had a deep and constant reverence and affection, and for that alone, even if I had not felt and sometime shared his manifest wrongs, I keep for him a kindness owing nothing to his merit or mine.

  So I spoke of her, seeing it was the best gift I could give him, who could not give him any assurance of liberty. I told him how she lived among us prized and worshipped, what delight she took in her new country, and how it fitted with her spirit and welcomed her into its heart, and how his injuries were the only thing that marred her immense happiness. For in Gwynedd nothing fell short of her hopes, but rather exceeded them, and her married joy was excelling.

  "She will bear him princes," said Amaury, and in his tone I read all his thirsty hopes that her sons would take back from Edward all that Edward had taken from their father, all that Edward had taken from their grandfather, who had been Edward's paragon and then Edward's antichrist. I said that was also Llewelyn's hope, for which he would die gladly if he could not achieve it living, and that both Eleanor and Llewelyn waited without impatience upon God's will and God's time to grant them children.

  "You comfort me!" said Amaury, and I knew he was foreseeing, whether he fully believed in it or not, rather Edward's loss and chagrin than Llewelyn's triumph. For he had never met this brother on whom so much depended for his fitting vengeance. But Edward he knew, and with all his being hated. "I would I could have met him face to face, my Welsh kinsman," he said, and when I would have protested that so he surely would, he met my eyes and laughed and I was mute. "Oh, no," said Amaury, "if ever Edward find it expedient to let me out of his cage, it will be to hurry me overseas, not to turn me loose to roam in Wales. He will never feel safe while there's a male of my race at liberty in his realm."

  It was no more than truth, however hard to believe that a monarch so unshakably fixed on his throne should still fear the very name of de Montfort, fifteen years after the threat of its power had passed from England, and even in the person of a young cleric who had been only a child when the old conflict ended.

  "Though I grant him his grudge against Guy," said Amaury ruefully, and asked after news of his one remaining elder brother, that unfortunate and misguided Guy de Montfort who had murdered the king's cousin, Henry of Almain, at Viterbo, and kindled again a hatred that might have died naturally but for his act. He had paid heavily for a deed done in bitter passion, being shut up in an Italian prison, excommunicate, deprived of all lands and offices and even the common human rights other men enjoyed for many years, notwithstanding there were many influential men about Europe, kinsmen and friends, who felt sympathy for him, and from time to time tried to procure some relief for him. At this time he was already absolved from excommunication, but landless and rightless still, but there were rumours in Paris, so we had heard, that he had escaped from his prison in Lecco and was in hiding somewhere, probably under the unacknowledged protection of his former lord, the king of Sicily, who had every reason to hope that a most able general and governor might some day be reinstated in the Church's grace, and could be used again in office. The French de Montforts, for all their high favour with King Philip and the pope, had pleaded in vain for his restoration.

  "Who knows?" said Amaury with a sour smile. "Guy may be a free man again before I am, and I have slaughtered nobody. Though I will not say I have never thought of it, nor that it might not have been a satisfaction." And he plied me with many more questions about his family, and charged me with many commissions to Eleanor, who was concerned about his lands and affairs while he was captive, and supplied me with a list of matters on which she wished to know his will. His replies I committed to memory. It seemed that the very act of recalling his lands and offices and asserting his will concerning them was refreshment to him, as exercise is to the body. So in the end we left him cheered and revived when our time ran out.

  Cynan signed to us when he heard footsteps in the stone passage, and the heavy jangle of keys at the lock. He rose and put the stool back in its place, and was standing at my elbow when the king's castellan came in to tell us that the visit must end. Before these witnesses Amaury arose with me, darkly composed and again bitterly grave, and took leave of me with his thanks, and his loving greetings to those who had sent me.

  The last thing he said to me, as we left him, was: "Say to my little sister that my prayers and my blessings are always with her. For I do not think I shall see her again in this world."

  And though I knew that he meant only, as he had before said, that Edward would never release him but to hustle him out of Britain, yet the words stayed with me long after the door closed between us, and hung heavy on my heart all the way back to London, as though he had prophesied a death.

By the time we came back to Westminster I had somewhat put by the chill of Amaury's farewell, and on the whole was fairly content with my own errand, for the prisoner surely could not be held for ever, when pope after pope had complained of his detention, and many friends whose loyalty Edward could not doubt had advised and urged his release. When we reached London I was anxious, rather, to hear how the delegation to parliament had fared, and made haste, as soon as I had parted from Cynan, who had his own report to render to the chancellor, to hunt out Master William's clerk, Adam, and hear what he had to say.

  "Whatever else it may be," he said, "it is certainly delay, and no period put to it this time. There was a very full session yesterday, after Brother William de Merton had had several interviews with the king in council, and all the attestations we brought with us had been studied, or at least handled and looked at, for hang me if I know whether any man paid attention to them, or whether the answer we got was already determined on long since. All the written word we have to take back with us is a brief letter to the effect that his Grace has presided in parliament to consider the Welsh articles, that a decision was reached with general agreement, and we are to report it fully to the prince by word of mouth. Not a word more, except, no doubt, a pious ending about his Grace's tireless endeavours to do the prince all possible justice! And the devil of it is, it may still be true! A more earnest and benevolent face you never saw. But his eyelid was more than usually heavy, over the eye he sometimes chooses to blindfold from spying on his own proceedings."

  "But what was it he had to say?" I asked, for Adam was apt to run on when he was aggrieved, and there was enough of the lawyer in him to come to the point only after many circlings. "What is this decision reached with general agreement?"

  "Why, the king began with an avowal that his intent is to observe the treaty in all points—as far as the royal majesty and duty allow. Mark that, it's the text and no mere rider. For he went on to say that not by that nor by any other treaty could he, even if he wished, surrender any prerogative or liberty handed down to him by his forebear kings of England as free custom in time of peace. So his treaty clause becomes: "according to the laws and customs of those parts in which the disputed lands lie,
and according to the manner of procedure observed by his forebear kings in similar
case
." It says but the half of that, but according to the king it means the whole. Oh, he quite accepts, he says, that the Welsh should have their own laws—such as are just and reasonable and don't infringe the rights of the crown. Such he'll keep faithfully. But he has no right and no power to do anything that derogates the rights of the crown or the kingdom of England, for these belong not merely to him, but to the kings who'll come after him. A sacred trust! So if any Welsh laws and customs seem to him unjust or bad or senseless, then his regal dignity will not allow him to countenance them, for he took a solemn coronation oath to root out all such from his kingdom, and no later oath or agreement can possibly relieve him of that sacred vow. But all our Welsh ways that don't offend, those he'll keep faithfully—so far as they're in harmony with justice. Make what you can of so many words, what I make of them is that he alone is to be the judge of what is good and what is bad, and can bless or discard Welsh law exactly as it suits him, without appeal. And holding up his coronation vow as a shield! The words of the treaty are all subject to an unwritten saving clause—'saving always my royal interests.'"