The Brothers of Gwynedd (18 page)

  "You have no right," said the Lady Senena severely, "to speak so of either the king or the earl. It would do you more credit if you showed a greater respect for your elders."

  He smiled at her placatingly, but he was unmoved. "They are men," he said, "like other men."

  Now this Earl Simon was a French nobleman of the de Montfort family, who had come into the earldom of Leicester by right of his grandmother Amicia, there being no male heir left in England to the Leicester honour. He was the second son of his father, but his elder brother Amaury held by his French possessions, and surrendered the English right to the next in succession. And this young man had not only come to take up his estates in England, but taken the eye and the heart of King Henry's widowed sister Eleanor, so that she married him, and to that marriage the king was privy. The story caused much scandal, for the lady, who was but sixteen when her first husband died, had rashly taken a vow to remain chaste for life, and for love of Earl Simon she broke that vow, against all pressure upon her from chaplains and archbishops, and wed where her heart was. But all this happened when I was but a child, and I had the story only long afterwards, while we were close to the court in London. King Henry had always geese that were swans, and Earl Simon was high in his regard then, but when he found that the match had brought his own countenance into some disrepute with the clerics the king was affrighted, and though he made no break with his new brother I think he held that embarrassment greatly against him thereafter, and never quite forgave it, so that any new dissension between them had in it the seeds of greater hostility than appeared in the matter itself.

  "So Edward's to have Gascony," said Llewelyn, musing. "Is it just a way of getting out of the difficulty with no broken heads, do you think, or is the king setting him up already in a court of his own? He's barely turned thirteen."

  Rhodri was confident that it had been but a convenient close to the dangerous dispute with Earl Simon, allowing him to withdraw honourably and gracefully, though doubtless it had been intended that some day young Edward should indeed rule the Gascon possessions. But David shook his head at that, very sure of himself.

  "This is but the first move in another game. King Henry has a great many other lands marked down for his heir, and very soon, too. He's being fitted out with a great appanage in readiness for his marriage, though only a handful of people even at court know of the plan. You've heard there's a new king in Castille? This Alfonso has a half-sister, only a child as yet. King Henry is making the first advances to marry Edward to her."

  "And takes you into his confidence before he even sends proctors!" scoffed Rhodri. "Don't listen to him, he's flying his hawk at the sun!"

  "King Henry may not," said David, unperturbed, "but Edward does. Where else should I get it?" He looked round with a sudden flashing glance at us all, and said in a lower voice: "And there's more, and nearer to us. King Henry intends his son shall have all the crown's lands in Wales, into the bargain."

  Curbed and hemmed in as we then were, it sounded no worse than what we had already, and offered promise of something better, for if a separate court and council were set up for the crown's Welsh lands there was a hope, at least, that the administrators might draw upon experience and wisdom from among the better marchers, who knew how to deal with their Welsh neighbours as with men deserving of respect. The Welsh tenants under the present jurisdiction of the justiciar of Chester had complaints enough, that their customs and laws were disregarded, that they were being increasingly squeezed under heavy taxation, and that unjustly administered into the bargain, their lands bled to help supply London, while London turned a deaf ear to their needs. So we heard what David reported thoughtfully, but kept open minds concerning the event.

In the middle days of July, having set up Rhodri already on his portion, we brought David with ceremony home to take possession of his lands in Cymydmaen, in Lleyn, that very commote from which the Lady Senena had set out with her children for Shrewsbury, so long before. The lady went with us, escorted still by Bishop Richard of Bangor, that small, soured, querulous priest, who was desirous of seeing right done to all the brothers before he returned to his see, and thence to his chosen retirement in St. Albans.

  So we rode back, all together, over the inland roads and the rolling pastures to Neigwl, and came in sight of the sea, pale almost to whiteness in the bright sunlight, with the island of saints gleaming offshore, Enlli, where the holy come to die and be buried in bliss. When we passed by that spot where we had met on the evening of the lady's flight, Llewelyn turned his head and looked at me, smiling, and I knew that he was seeing a boy coming down from the fields with the lambs, as I was seeing a boy on horseback, who turned to look a last time at the home he was forsaking.

  But David, who rode between us, reared up tall in his saddle to gaze with bright and hungry eyes down into the wails of the maenol that was now to be his court, the first over which he had ever ruled alone. There were his servants, his councillors, his cattle and horses, and in the hills and trefs around, his tenants, his men in war and peace, owing him service according to Welsh law.

  "And all this is mine!" he said, but softly, only for our ears, seeing it was a child's cry of triumph and delight, not fitting the public utterance of the lord of a commote. When we brought him down to the gates, to give his hand to all those who came crowding to attend him, then he was princely and composed enough, and did all with lordly dignity. Nevertheless, that day I think he was utterly fulfilled and content.

  So, at some bright peak of their lives, must all men be. The grief is that it lasts not long.

King Henry, just as David had said, went in person into Gascony the following year, and there he found it by no means so simple as he had supposed to put right everything he claimed the earl of Leicester had put wrong, for that Count Gaston of Béarn whom he had expected to find a grateful and affectionate kinsman, having championed him in his complaints against the earl, turned out a difficult and rebellious vassal, as obdurate against the king himself as against his viceroy, and there was great to-ing and fro-ing of letters between Bordeaux and England before the king got all into control, the troubles in those distant parts, and the matter of his son's marriage, keeping him absent all the following year.

  During this long absence his queen, together with his brother Richard of Cornwall, acted as regents in his room. And it was they who summoned David to court in the first week of July, shortly after the king's departure, to do homage to them as the king's proxies for his commote of Cymydmaen. He had held it then for a year, and I think his pleasure in it was still keen, if he had not received this friendly call back to a wider and more worldly court. Moreover, this was to the queen, with whom he had always found great favour because of her son's attachment to him. He had less fondness for the king, indeed to some degree he showed a certain disdain for that less resolute and dependable personage, though he had been much indulged by him. Certain it is that he received the summons joyfully, almost like one startled out of a comfortable but confining dream to his real waking life. He made great preparation, and provided his party royally for the journey, intent that there should be none about the queen's person more splendid than himself and his retinue. This I bear witness, having visited him on my lord's business shortly before he left for England. I think indeed, however gilded and jewelled, no young man more beautiful graced the court that year, or any year. And so thought many a Welsh lady he left behind him, and I doubt not many an English lady who greeted him.

  Who first had his favours I do not profess to know. But by this he was no stranger to women. Nor did any ever complain of him, save perhaps of his absence.

  I think the Lady Senena would have liked to travel with him to court on that occasion, but he was not so minded. He was fond of her, but fonder of his own new and heady freedom and dignity, and it must be admitted that she was a managing woman. He persuaded her that his commote of Cymydmaen could not flourish in his absence without a touch as firm as hers, and that there was no one to whom he would so happily confide it, and that sweetened her exclusion from his party. So if he was ruthless in ridding himself of her company, at least he did it in a way that flattered instead of affronting.

  Thus he went south from us at the end of June, in great splendour, at least to our eyes. Llewelyn laughed to see how fine he had made himself, and how formally attended, but without unkindness, for the boy was still only seventeen, and in his pride and determination to outshine the nobility of the English court he was making a stand for the good name of Wales, however childishly. Indeed, he laughed at himself, but never relaxing his resolve to show like the sun. And always he had this seeming ability to stand aside from himself and make a mockery of what that self did in all solemnity, either part of him as real and formidable as the other. So he went to his reunion with the queen and the earl of Cornwall, and with Edward, his play-fellow.

  He did not come back until the end of July. Most of his escort he sent on ahead to Neigwl, and himself, with only a few attendants, came visiting to us at Carnarvon. He was lively and full of news, but as it were something distracted, as though but half his mind had returned with him, and the remaining half lagged somewhere on the way, reluctant to catch up with him. And he spoke—I noted it, and so, I know, did Llewelyn—of the queen, and Richard of Cornwall, and the two boys Edward and Edmund, and other of that company, very familiarly yet not with any air of boasting his familiarity. Had it been Rhodri we should have seen him plume himself as he spoke. David used their names as simply and naturally as ours, and only from time to time seemed to catch the strange echo of his utterance, and to be startled and shaken by it. For it was that very familiarity that was so strange. And then his eyes would open wider in their blue brilliance, and look round the solar where we sat, at every skin rug and smoky hanging, as though starting out of a dream, or falling headlong into one.

  "And this Castillian marriage," Llewelyn questioned intently, "that goes forward?"

  "So Edward says. At least his proctors are appointed, before the king left England, and they're busy dealing now over terms. If the marriage and the treaty come to fruit, then Alfonso could be the best protector of King Henry's interests in Gascony, where he's in very good odour with even the Béarnais."

  "I'd as soon see King Henry still on thorns, and looking towards Gascony," Llewelyn said drily, "as comforted and easy in his mind, and looking my way. The less care he has to lavish on me, the better."

  "Take heart, then," said David, "for as fast as he gets out of one morass he's into another. He's barely got clear of the whole dangerous race of the Hohenstaufen, from Barbarossa down, than he swings too far towards the pope in his relief, and finds himself mired to the knees in the opposite swamp. Innocent hates that family and all who are allied to it, and his one desire left in life is to uproot the last of them from the kingdom of Sicily, and set up an emperor more to his taste. Last year he began sounding out candidates for the honour of supplanting him. He began with the earl of Cornwall, but our Richard took very little time to refuse the compliment. As well try to pluck the moon out of heaven, he said, as turn Conrad out of Sicily. King Louis's brother thought a little longer about it, but the answer was the same. And now, it's rumoured, Innocent has mentioned the matter cautiously to King Henry, with young Edmund in mind. The king has not closed with the offer yet, but trust me, he's too deeply tempted and too incurably hopeful to resist, if a firm offer is ever made. It would mean paying off the pope's debts in the enterprise to date—well above a hundred thousand marks, they say—and putting troops into Sicily. If he can so much as land them there! But it might induce Innocent to commute his crusading vow to undertaking this act of cleansing nearer home. All in all, there are those at court who are mightily disturbed about the prospect, for to them it looks like the short road to ruin. Not many are wise to the danger yet, but Richard of Cornwall is, since it was first offered to him, and he had good sense enough to refuse. So you may rely on it, King Henry is more than engrossed in his own plans, and soon will be in his own troubles."

  He said all this without flourishes or hesitation, not afraid to speak as statesmen and councillors do. And while his wits were thus engaged in this enlarged world, peopled by popes and emperors and the paladin brothers of kings, his eyes were brilliant and his cheeks flushed, as though he entered into a kingdom of his own.