The Brothers of Gwynedd (165 page)

  Llewelyn gripped and snatched him to his feet, and jerked up the boy's streaming face to stare into the drowned despair of his eyes. "The princess! What has befallen her?" Such grief threatened the worst of terrors. "S
he is not dead?"
he cried.

  "No, no, not dead, but very sick…and growing weak…Two days in labour, and still no birth! Oh, my lord," he wailed, "they are afraid for her, we are all afraid!"

  Llewelyn took his hands from him so abruptly that the child almost fell, and whirled towards the stables, and David, who had come out from the hall at the sound of the messenger galloping in, met and caught his brother in his arm, aghast at the sight of his face. "What is it? What ails you?"

  "Eleanor!" said the prince. "You must manage here alone. I must go to my wife. Two days in labour, and no child—a bad birth…Let me go!"

  "Oh, God!" said David, stricken, and followed him into the stables, and I went after. Even if my lord had bidden me to stay, I would not have let him ride alone. "No, it cannot be so grave," said David feverishly. "She has been so well, she's so mistress of everything she touches, how can she fail even at this? It will be well, you'll see! It will end with a son in her arms, and she in yours. But take my Saracen, he's fresh and fast.…"

  It was David who shook and stammered, Llewelyn was steady and silent. He put aside, not roughly, the groom who fumbled in his agitation, and himself saddled the horse, David's tall English horse that was Edward's gift, with sure, rapid hands. When I also saddled up beside him, he met my eyes briefly, not refusing me though he had no part of him left then to welcome me, he was so far flown already on the road to her. We led out the horses, and he kissed David, and said he would come back when he could. And when the boy who had brought the news came creeping, smudged with tears, to hold his stirrup, frantic for some look or touch of comfort, he looked down at him as though with astonished recognition, and then compunction, and laid his palm with brusque gentleness against the boy's cheek.

  "Take your earned rest," he said, "and follow me home tomorrow. And leave grieving, rather pray."

  In this manner, in mourne silence and leaving mourne silence behind us, we galloped out of Denbigh to attend the birth of the prince's first and only child.

They were watching for us on both roads, by the coast and by the upland track over the hills from Caerhun, which is the shorter way. It was late afternoon when we left Denbigh, but barely dusk when we came over the last ridge by the old Roman road, and dropped into the head of the wooded valley that winds down to Aber. I doubt if that ten-league distance was ever covered faster. The watchman on the hills signalled our approach to the watchman on the wall below, there was sun enough yet to catch the red and white flutter of his pennant and the steel of his lance. When we passed at a gallop he saluted us and fell in at our heels, and thus heralded and escorted we came down to the long wall of the maenol and the village under it.

  All that way he had not uttered one word to me, intent only on reaching her side as soon as he might. Nor had we any need of words, or, God knows, any matter for speech, being both in dread and doubt and hope so alike that I had nothing to offer him, and he nothing to ask of me. We rode towards her, and that was all we had mind or will for then. And prayed every mile of the way, as he had bidden the wretched boy to pray.

  There was no comfort to be found in any face that met us, though in every one was a desperate, heartfelt welcome. The guards at the gates opened for us before we drew near, and their eyes strained for our approach and followed after our passing. The grooms in the outer ward ran to take our bridles, and they had the same look, fearful of a word, a sound, a breath, that might tip the balance between life and death. So we knew what awaited us, even before the castellan came running out of the hall to greet his lord, and Llewelyn cried out to him: "The princess?" and all he could get out from a faltering throat was: "Living!" There was nothing better than that to be said.

  Llewelyn leaped from the saddle and went in through the hall, and I after him, and all the menservants and maidservants of the household, creeping wretchedly about their business, stood stock-still before him, and made their reverences as he passed with the same dazed and unbelieving eyes, many of the women smudging away tears. There had been little sound before we entered, only subdued voices and few words, but as we passed there was silence. Llewelyn clove through the midst as though he saw none of them, and had almost reached the door of the high chamber when it opened, and one of Eleanor's women came out. It was Alice, the older of those two who had been prisoners with the princess after their voyage from France, and felt her to be in a special way theirs. At sight of her Llewelyn halted abruptly at gaze, for she had a shawl-wrapped bundle in her arms.

  "It is come, then?" he said in a whisper, drawing careful breath of hope.

  Her face was white and tired, and her hair awry, as though she had not slept at all since her lady's labour began. She said tremulously: "Four hours ago. The lord prince has a daughter. She is whole and fine…"

  She leaned to hold out the child to him, and turn back the shawl from its face, but he never glanced down.

  "Then the worst is past?" he said, hoping and dreading. "Eleanor…?"

  She turned her head aside, and the tears came slowly rolling from under her closed lids, and for the weight and burning of them she could not speak. But without words she turned and went before him to the tower stairway. By the time we had climbed to the level of the guard-walk on the wall she had her voice again, though it struggled through aching grief.

  "We made the bed for her lying-in not in the great bedchamber, but in the room with a door on to the wall. It was so hot and dark and airless within, she was better there. She loves the sun." Her tears fell on the child's shawl. "Oh, my lord, it has been cruel! She is torn—she has lost so much blood…"

  I think he knew then that Alice, at least, had no hope, that her tears were already tears of mourning. He put her aside gently at the door, and went in.

  There were four of them about the bed, the prince's physician, the chaplain, and two of her women, and all of them turned their eyes upon him as he entered. In every face there was the same helplessness and resignation. They drew back from the bed as he drew near, and left her to him.

  She lay under only a light linen cover, for it was indeed the height of a very hot summer. Her hands were spread upon the linen at her sides, transparent, bluish white, like broken lilies. Her hair was unbraided, for a braid might have caused her discomfort, and for the sake of coolness they had drawn it up from under her neck, and spread it back in a great aureole over a wide pillow. The very perfection of the halo, strand drawn out evenly by strand, showed that for some long time she had not moved her head. All that lustrous dark gold, darker than usual with the sweat of her anguish but radiant and vivid still, sprang aloft from a broad brow and smooth temples no longer of ivory, but alabaster, so crystal-clear that what blood she still had in her gleamed through in the softest of blues, like the tracery of veins in the petals of an anemone. Her closed eyelids—I had never before seen her so—had the same delicate texture, large, domed eyelids to cover great, candid eyes. Her mouth was folded firmly, like a budding rose, but a white rose, even the shadows that shaped it rather blue than rosy. Her cheeks were fallen and silver-white, her body under the linen cover lay straight and slight and frail, and so still that she might have been the carven woman she seemed, but for the dew of exhaustion and pain on her lips and her forehead, and the faint, slow rise and fall of her breast. If this was life, she still lived, and they had told us truth. But it was such life that to touch or breathe upon it would destroy it. Everyone in that room moved with slow and careful stealth, avoiding sound, for fear she should be startled through the doorway in which she hovered.

  Llewelyn went on his knees beside the brychan, and leaned and gazed at her in silence, hardly breathing. The old doctor came creeping to his shoulder and whispered brokenly in his ear, as if he fended off blame for her condition.

  "A bad birth, a difficult birth…The child lay awry. We have stopped the bleeding now, but it went on so long…"

  "And such pain!" whispered Alice, crouched on a stool with the child in her lap. "Day and night such pain, and never any respite, and hardly a moan out of her…But now she's worn out, she has no strength left."

  The chaplain said, as was his duty: "She has received her saviour. I thought it needful."

  Llewelyn was still, watching the shallow rise and fall of her breast over the most gallant and generous heart that ever beat in a woman's body, and he never turned his head, though I think he heard all. Presently he said in a low voice: "Leave us alone with her. If I need you—if she needs you—Samson shall call you." And then for a moment, as in a distant dream, he bethought him of the child, and asked: "There is a nurse? The little one is provided for?"

  Alice said yes, the tears still coursing slowly from under her eyelids.

  "Then leave us. One of you may sleep in the next room, in case of need. I shall watch with her through the night."

  They went away softly and closed the door after them. I asked if I, too, should wait without. He put his hands over his face for a moment, pressing hard as if to quicken tissues grown old, weary and stiff. "No," he said, "stay with me. Stay with
us! Yo
u knew her before ever I did, you first showed her to my soul's eyes. To no other but you can I uncover my heart now, and no other can I bear to have by, if she leaves me in the night without word or look. You need say nothing, but be with us. If God wants her, God will take her, but I can fight for her still. There were some in the old times, I have heard, wrestled with angels."

  On a table by the wall they had left a pitcher of red wine, and a bowl of cool, scented water, and soft cloths, and a little oil-lamp with a floating wick, that gave a dim, mellow light. He rose, and opened wide the door that gave upon the guardwalk, for even the night was hot. The sky was full of waking stars, and the air smelled fresh and sharp, of the salt marshes, and the sea. Then he came back to the bed, and remained on his knees beside her, looking earnestly into her face.

  The trance in which she lay was not quite sleep, and not quite unconsciousness. Sometimes her lashes trembled, and seemed about to rise from the sunken cheeks, and then were still again. Once her lips quivered and curved, as though to speak, or smile, or kiss. But so white, so white, no blood in her, a spirit, not a body.

  He took one of her wasted hands between his own, and caressed it. He bathed the sweat of weakness and fever from her lip and her brow as it formed, and drew back every strand of hair that seamed the smoothness of her neck. And time and again he spoke to her, laying his cheek beside her on the pillow, on the spread riches of her hair, whispering the endearments he kept for their bed. All night long he called her back to him from the perilous place where she stood hesitating whether to go or stay. But doubtless there was another voice calling her away.

  Whether it was his caresses that reached her, or whether the change in the light penetrated her dreamless withdrawal, in the dove-grey of dawn before the sun rose I saw her lips move and part, and her brows draw together, and then she drew deeper breath, and when he leaned over her and said her name she opened her eyes, but so slowly, as if the weight of the world hung on her lids. In the dimness of the room her eyes looked dark, but as they clung to the face that bent so close to hers, they summoned a gradual radiance from within, and the clear gold lights came back into them. She knew him. She had no strength to move or speak but even in its pallor her face grew marvellously bright, and when he stooped his head and kissed her with careful tenderness on the mouth, her lips answered him as best they could.

  He bathed her face with the scented water, and with the tip of his finger moistened her lips with wine, but for wine she made no effort, all the life she had left she poured towards him with her eyes. And as he ministered he spoke to her, patient and soft, calling her by the secret names he had for her, telling her that her daughter was whole and perfect and well-cherished, and that she need trouble for nothing but to rest and grow strong, and think of nothing but that she was loved, and that while she needed him he would never again leave her. And all the ways in which he loved her, and all the beauties he loved in her, he told over one by one, he who was so inexpert with words. There was never any of his bards made so sweet and desperate a song as he did for her, to hold her spellbound from taking the last step away from him. But I think he knew then that she had only paused a moment for love of him, to listen from very far off, hanging back on the hand that led her.