The Brothers of Gwynedd (184 page)

  He was out of mail, for he had his watch well posted, and had not been called to arms since we left him. He was watching the careful tempering of his own sword, and turned from it to stare upon me when I came in. The shadow of my news was in my face, for he said: "Come within!" and drew me in his arm into the high chamber, and shut us in together. And there I told him all I had to tell.

  David sat with white and carven face, and never took his eyes from me. At the end he was silent a long moment, walled within himself, and then he said: "And this charge he laid on me? Those are his words? There is still a prince in Wales. It is not over yet, because I am out of the fight. That is his message to me?"

  I said that it was, word for word.

  "God's pity!" said David very softly, as if to himself. And to me: "What have they done with him?"

  I said what I then believed, and after was justified in believing, that the lady in Builth would not suffer him to be misused, and her chaplain had tended him, and sworn to see right done to him.

  "God himself has fallen short of that," said David, "with less excuse than man, who labours with very faulty tools." His voice was low, burdened and bitter. "I speak who know," he said. "Who has done more or worse to him? I have been his downfall and his death."

  "You are now," I said, "his hope and his heir. The talaith he wore comes down on your brows now. It is no heavier than when he wore it."

  "It has hammered him into the earth," said David, and laughed, but with so curious and estranged a laughter that it did not jar. "For God's sake," he said, "give me leave to weep a while, you who know me best. I am lost, like you. I loved him out of all measure, and I have been his bane. And he is dead!" But if he wept indeed, it was within. He said aloud: "Lord, if it be possible, take away this cup from me. Nevertheless, not as I will but as thou wilt!" And he laughed again, very grimly, at his own blasphemy, for he was speaking not to his God, but to his brother.

  "Who knows but it may still be possible?" I said. "The king may be resolved on getting his way, but he may still be glad to get it without further killing or deeper debt. Llewelyn set you free once to buy your life at Edward's price, if you so chose. He would not blame you now. Send and try!"

  "You know better than that," said David. "I might have been tempted to forsake him, living, to keep my own life. But neither for that nor for any other cause will I forsake him, dead. I am my brother now. I cannot disgrace him."

So again we addressed ourselves to the war, as the year ended, at great disadvantage but not wholly without hope. Our losses in men and horses were great, and in our food resources still greater, but greater than all was the loss of Llewelyn, who alone could bind the Welsh together, and with whose death the heart was gone out of them. Edward, on the other hand, had had such huge expenses that he was then quite without money, besides owing some near thirty thousand marks to his Italian bankers. But kings have always some way of extorting money. His Gascons were then coming in in considerable numbers, probably as many as two thousand cavalry and foot, including large companies of crossbowmen, and soon we saw only too clearly that he was planning an immediate advance, without waiting for the snows to pass. He had sent his close friend Otto of Granson to reform the disorganised army in Anglesey, and was again amassing great numbers of woodmen and foresters, and putting his Gascons into the field as fast as they came, both in the garrisons of Rhuddlan and other castles, and also in Anglesey. In the first week of January he again moved up a strong force from Rhuddlan to establish an advanced post at Llangernyw, and though we sent out reinforcements for the troops already fighting there, and did our best to prevent, we had not the strength to hold them back for long. They paid heavily in men, but they set up their base. We could do nothing to cut the safe lines of communication they enjoyed with Chester, by which they brought up their newly raised English levies, and thus manned and overmanned Llangernyw became impregnable. We had expected an advance along the coast towards Aberconway but he chose instead to cross the uplands to these higher waters.

  "He is coming here to uproot us," said David. "He wants me out of Dolwyddelan."

  Edward's next move proved him right, for the strike that followed was towards the river at Llanrwst, and thence to secure a closer base at Bettws. David took the field then with all the troopers he could raise, to hold off the enemy from his castle, and there was very bitter fighting and great slaughter all the way, but nevertheless, they advanced. Again great numbers of archers guarded the woodmen as they felled, opening a great road towards Dolwyddelan. Some of the Gascon companies lost as many as half their men, but still they came on, having many more in reserve. We could afford no such losses.

  Then also began the inevitable since all those chiefs cut off from us in the Middle Country, and in Maelor and the south, found themselves facing impossible numbers, and had no choice but to fight to the death or come to the king's peace, and many surrendered on the promise of grace, only to find themselves under grave pressure to change their allegiance and fight for the English. Edward's grace was never freely given.

  Worse than these, who were helpless once severed from David's leadership, were those who began, as of old, to calculate where their interests lay, and deliberately change their coats accordingly. Tudor's sickness and melancholy were aggravated when his own son Griffith deserted David, turned to the besiegers, and aided them with his knowledge of the tracks around Dolwyddelan. In acknowledgement of which service he was afterwards made constable of that castle, a traitor in command of the birthplace of Llewelyn Fawr! For before the end of January we could no longer sustain the siege, but were forced to withdraw and hold the mountain ways that protected Dolbadarn. Edward had got his way, and again froze into armed and powerful stillness while he garrisoned and repaired Dolwyddelan to use as a forward base, and waited for the weather to improve. For he now commanded all the left bank of the Conway, and could make his way up and down the valley at leisure.

  I think that David had seen the end long before, but he did not waver in his undertaking. When we heard that Granson had crossed from Anglesey to Bangor, and there established a strong bridge-head, David sent to bring the royal child Gwenllian with her attendants to join Elizabeth at Dolbadarn, for once the English were on the northern coast, Aber would not long be safe. All that he could do, to make the best use of such forces as he had left, that he did, always with a calm and resolute face, but by then, God knows, there were some faces among us far from either calm or resolution, for not to put it more gravely, we were exhausted and half-starved, and living wild in the hills, in the wretched end of a cold winter, in continuing frosts. What wonder if a few deserted and made their way to more congenial places?

  I shared the shelter of a crevice of rock once with another unfortunate patrolling in a late snow-storm and a howling wind, and found I was sitting beside Godred, my half-brother, shoulder huddled to shoulder for warmth. In the stress of the time I had not thought of him at all, had seen him now and then among the rest and felt nothing, not even a memory of old envies and malices, for we lived only for one thing, life itself, the continuance of a desperate hope and a sacred defiance. And all I felt for him then was startled pity, so wan and thin and soiled he was. So were we all, but I had not realised it until I looked thus closely at him. He knew me, he could not choose but know me, but so little attention had he to spare then from his own miseries that he could not resent me, and had no energy to plague me. He was too empty of food and too full of himself, and even I was an audience.

  "We suffer here worse than hunted rats," he said, shivering. "Only an army of heroes could survive on meagre pay of a handful of grain and a drop of milk. Can you blame the ones who run? But that they're fools, all the same," he said bitterly, "for where is there to run? What use to scurry where there's food enough—and our food, at that!—if you're left no throat for swallowing?"

  I had a hunk of bread in my pouch, and broke it with him. He took his share almost greedily, not greatly caring whence it came. I saw as he handled it that he still had the silver ring on his finger, but now it hung slack between his jutting joints, he was so shrunken. I saw in him how we were all grown older, soon to grow old indeed, if we lived on at all. And I was seized with such a grief for us all that it was hardly to be borne. For Godred embittered and disappointed, for Cristin childless and cheated of love, for David driven and trapped in a duty he had never sought, for myself grown old in two loves and fruitful at the end in neither, for Elizabeth who cast all she had without thought into the scale of her loving, and was doomed to be robbed of all, and for Llewelyn and Wales indivisibly, for they were one, harried, cheated, wronged and martyred, the dream and the dreamer hacked down together. I could no longer sit there with my half-brother, my valid image, my bright part grown thus dimmed and withered. For but for his fair colouring and my darkness, his comeliness and my plainness, it was my own face I looked upon. I rose and left him, and rode into the snow.

  Yet strangest of all, we still had some who ran to us, and not away, and they were my justification and hope. And the least expected of them was a big, portly, ageing man in a fine, kilted gown and riding a tall, well-fed, stolen horse, who delivered himself into our camp above Llanberis the first day of March, St. David's day. He had a sword girt about him, and seemed to know its use, at least enough to be of service, and the horse itself, having sometime been Edward's, was a huge satisfaction to us, for ours were gaunt enough, for want of feed after such a winter. He had a smooth, clerkly face, and the tonsure time had given him, and he spoke very good and forthright Welsh when he was challenged.

  "If you want a guarantor for me," he said, "bring Master Samson and tell him Cynan is here to fulfil an old prophecy. I tire of the fleshpots. I have come to lay my bones in what is left of Wales."

  He was offhand with me when I questioned him concerning the occasion of his removal to us. He said that he had found himself full of tidings with no way of despatching them, and highly discontented with his isolation, and had worked his way with the commissariat and weaponry to Bettws, as being the nearest base to us, and there simply filched the noble horse he brought with him. To which asset we were welcome, since he had brought whatever he had to add to the common store. Though his wit, he dreaded, was little advantage at this stage, since he had just proved he had none. But even an unpractised hand might be of some worth. And if we were somewhat short of food, he had every hope he might benefit from the restriction, for unlike us, he was too fat for comfort.

  I think of Cynan often. I was beside him when he died, he, the arch-clerk, with a sword in his hand. It was in late March, after Edward had moved on to Conway, and there established his new forward base. He had then more than three thousand men in his army, cavalry, footmen and archers, and Granson had enlarged his bridge-head at Bangor, and pushed westward to Carnarvon, and thence crossed the shoulder of Lleyn and reached as far south as Harlech. The great mass of Snowdon stood encircled from every side, at last reduced to that castle under siege that Edward had desired, and now he had only to close in and strangle it. They had ships at their disposal, and kept touch by sea. We were slowly being walled into our lovely, fated mountains.

  If David did not find some means of breaking out of the circle, it was only a matter of time before it closed, and crushed him, and with him his wife and family, for they were still at Dolbadarn, and that fortress in the very womb of Snowdon no longer looked a safe refuge. David had a castle at Bere, in Merioneth, in the equally wild region round Cader Idris, and determined to move his family there and garrison the castle as his main base, and in the middle of March the move was made.

  That was a most wearisome journey for the women and children, but they made never a murmur, and never owned to need of rest on the way, and certainly got none until they were well through the cordon, and made welcome at Cymer abbey. To cover their withdrawal, which was made at speed and with a picked escort, the main army following to guard the rear against detection and pursuit, David led a raid in the opposite direction, towards Carnarvon, from which base Dolbadarn was most threatened. He would take with him only volunteers, and Cynan claimed a place.

  "You should not, you of all people," said David, frowning. "If you ever fall again into Edward's hands, you know what mercy to expect."

  "The better reason," said Cynan, "for inviting a different fate. Better a private blade than a public halter. By the same token, you should reason with yourself."