The Brothers of Gwynedd (24 page)
Llewelyn never reined aside or lifted his own weapon, but stooped under the blow, took David about the body in his left arm as the horse hurtled by, hoisted the boy violently out of saddle and stirrups, with a jerk that spilled one long-toed riding shoe, and flung him down, not gently, into the turf, where he lay sprawled and winded, the sword wrenched out of his hand and lighting far out of reach. There he lay, panting for breath, his chest heaving under the fine chain-mail and the soiled white surcoat, his wide-open eyes reflecting the blanched summer sky.
"Do off his helm," said Llewelyn, gazing down at him with a hard face and veiled eyes. And when it was done, and the black hair matted with sweat spilled into the grass, he lighted down from his horse and took the boy by the chin, and turned his face roughly up to the light, searching right cheek and left for the gash that bled, and sustaining without acknowledgement the blue, blank stare that clung all the time with wonder and rage upon his own face.
"Are you hurt?" he said, plucking his hand away and standing back a pace or two.
Still heaving at breath, David said: "No!" He said nothing more, but turned his face haughtily away from being so watched and inspected. And in a moment more he braced his fists into the turf and raised himself, and turning a little lamely on to his knees, thrust himself unsteadily to his feet, and stood with reared head and empty hands before his brother and conqueror. He stood very close. And I, who also had drawn close into my place at my lord's left hand, saw his lips move, and heard the thread of breath through them, as I swear none other there did, except Llewelyn.
"Kill me!" entreated David. "You were wise!"
His eyes rolled up into their lids, and his knees gave under him. Down he went in a sprawl of long limbs into the grass from which he had prised himself, and lay still, angular and sad, like a fallen and broken bird.
"Take him up," said Llewelyn to the captain of his guard, "and have his hurts seen to. Look well to him! Bring him as soon as you may to join us at Beddgelert. But gently! I look to you to deliver him whole and well."
We took up our wounded, none of them in desperate case, and our dead, of whom there were, God be thanked, but few, and also made disposition for the care of those wounded and killed upon the other pan, for from this moment Llewelyn was sole and unquestioned prince of Gwynedd, as he had always meant to be, and ruled alone, and those who had been loyal to his brothers as their lords had but done their true part, and deserved no blame, but rather commendation. They were now his men, and he wanted no waste and no vengeance, but rather that their truth to him should be as it had been to Owen and David. Why harass or maim what in the future you will need to lean on? So all those who were willing to abide the verdict of the day and give their troth to Griffith's son were despatched freely back to their trefs, and sent about their daily business without hindrance or penalty. And doubtless that word went round also to any who had fled and remained in hiding, so that they came back to their homes and took up daily living as before. There was no killing after Bryn Derwin. But at Beddgelert, where the good brothers of the settlement, saints after the old pattern as at Aberdaron, cared for the hurts of the living and said devout offices for the dead, there was a thanksgiving, subdued and solemn. Llewelyn had said truly, there was no vaunting after victory. The matter was too great for that.
I think he spent all that night in the church. For once I was dismissed. There was no man with my lord that night of the twenty-fourth of June. But doubtless God was with him, who had moved a hand and set him up in the estate he had so greatly desired, and not all for his own glory, but for that dream that went with him night and day, of a Wales single and splendid, free upon its own soil, equal with its neighbours, unthreatened and unafraid.
He had always about him this piercing, childlike humility, that walked hand in hand with his vast ambition. For the more he succeeded in exalting the dream, in whose pursuit he was strong, ruthless and resolute, and seemed a demon of pride, the more he marvelled and was grateful within him that he, all fallible and mere man as he was, should be made the instrument of a wonder. And I do know, who was his teacher many years in English and Latin, how eagerly and earnestly he studied to improve, how poorly he thought of his own powers, and how he chafed at his progress, but humbly, expecting no better. And I believe I tell truth, saying that when he came out to me from the church of Beddgelert on the morning after Bryn Derwin his eyes were innocent of sleep, but not of weeping.
After the practical matters had been taken care of, the weapons refurbished, the horses tended, the men rested, then we came to the question of the defeated.
They brought in Owen first and alone before my lord, according to the wish of both of them, for Owen had much to say in his own cause, and Llewelyn was ready to listen. Though I think his mind was already made up, for though some among his own council afterwards blamed him somewhat for his hard usage of Owen upon one offence, they did not know what cause he already had to distrust his elder, and hold him guilty not once, but twice, of the intent of fratricide. Nor did he ever tell that story in his own justification, and since he willed it, neither did I. But when those two spoke together, they understood each other.
Owen came in between his guards, limping and defiant. He had brought away from Bryn Derwin nothing worse than bruises, but his harness was dashed, and his surcoat soiled and torn. He was not bound, but sword and dagger had been taken from him, and even in desperation he could do no harm.
"We were two, somewhat ill-matched I grant you, who had worked in a yoke together many years," said Llewelyn, looking him steadily in the face, "and if you have chafed at it often, that I can understand, for so have I. But I did not take up arms, and come against you as against an enemy. Why have you done so to me?"
Owen looked him over from head to foot with a smouldering stare from under his fell of red hair. "I came to you in good faith," he said, "asking for justice for our brothers, and you would not hear me, or join in what I proposed. Truly I bore with you for years, but with our peace undisturbed for so long, and unthreatened now, I thought it a great wrong to hold Gwynedd together thus by force, on the plea of King Henry's enmity. I urged what I thought right, and you refused me. I put it to the issue of arms, wanting another way."
"There was another way," Llewelyn said. "I myself told you that you were heartily welcome to take the matter to our council, and ask them for a judgment. You preferred the judgment of the sword. Have you any complaint of the answer the sword gave you?"
Complaint, perhaps, he had, but his sheer unsuccess he could hardly urge against Llewelyn, and he did not think to blurt out what I had half expected, the direct accusation against David. For such a man as Owen Goch can never perceive, much less admit to others, that his aims and actions have been directed, persuasively and derisively, by another person, and that person his junior, and still looked upon almost as a child. So he was voluble about the unselfishness of his intentions, and his generous indignation against Llewelyn's unreasonable obduracy, but never said: "It was not my idea, the boy worked on me!"
In the end he began to draw in his horns, and if not to plead, at least to offer a measure of submission.
"I have done nothing of which I am ashamed. Yet any man, the truest of men, may be in error. I don't ask to be readmitted to the old equality. If I was wrong to resort to arms, let me pay for that fault, but in reason. My life may still be of service to you as it is dear to me…"
"Your life," said Llewelyn coldly, "is as safe with me as mine has been with you. Safer!"
"My liberty, then! You have your victory, keep all the fruits of it. I accept the second place under you. I pledge you my word."
"I cannot take your word. Nor has any man in Gwynedd a second place from now on, above his fellows. I do not believe you could ever accept that truth, and I do not intend you should ever again be able to disrupt this land. There is nothing I can do with you but hold you prisoner perpetually, out of harm's way and out of mine. I commit you to the charge of my castellan at Dolbadarn, and I set no term to your stay there. It may depend," he said sombrely, "on others besides you and me. Take him away!" he ordered, and Owen went out from him stunned and silent, for he had tasted imprisonment already, passing several years of his young life behind bars, and even I, who knew him dangerous and disordered, too erratic to be trusted, felt pity for him.
This castle of Dolbadarn was among the most inaccessible and impregnable in the land, being set on a great rock between two lakes among the mountains of Snowdon, and hard indeed it would be to conceive and execute an escape from it.
"Let David come in," said Llewelyn then.
They brought him in between them, not a hand being actually laid on him. I do not know how it was that he was always able to emerge from any rough and tumble, any privation, even from being hunted shelterless through the mire, looking a thought more polished and pure than any that came against him. But so it was, his life long. He bore the mark of one shallow wound down the left side of his neck, and was bruised about one cheek, and he moved with a little more care than usual to maintain his presence and grace, for he was stiff with the fall Llewelyn had given him. But what I noted in him at once was that his eyes were quick, live and easy, that had stared up at his brother in the field, in the moment of realisation of what he had done, blanched and stricken. And the voice that had barely found breath enough to husk out its anguished warning then came meekly and mellowly now, again ready to beguile, as he said:
"I am here, and I know my fault. Dispose of me as I deserve."
It fell upon my ears like a strange echo, as though his intelligence had taken that smothered cry of dismay and prophecy, and translated it into this deceptive submission, asking again for his deserts, but with intent to escape, not to embrace them. Then I was sure of him in my own heart, though proof there was none.
"But I entreat you," he said, with eyes downcast and voice subdued, "to show mercy on my brother, and hold him less guilty than I. It was on my behalf he made this stir. I own I did complain that I was starved of my due. I take the blame upon me."
All this he said with slow, deliberate humility, as though it cost him pain he knew well-earned, and yet so simply and innocently that it gave me no surprise to see that Llewelyn accepted all as the chivalrous gesture of misled youth, it is an art to tell truth in such a way that it cannot be seriously believed.
"You did not complain to me," said Llewelyn hardly. "Why not? Do not pretend you went in such awe of me that you dared not make the assay."
"No," admitted David, and raised his head and opened wide those clear eyes of his upon his brother. "You never gave me cause to fear you. Only cause to be ashamed, in your presence, to admit to such a grievance. But to him I could, without shame."
He said no more. I think he was feeling his way, for he could not know what Owen had said of him. But if that was his difficulty, Llewelyn said then what eased him of his load:
"But why did you listen to him, when he urged war against me?"
"Out of ambition and greed," said David readily, sure now of his ground. And the hot blood rose in his cheeks, perhaps in the surge of relief that filled him, but it answered well for penitence and shame. "I have no defence," he said, and stood in submission. I do not know if he had hoped to be forgiven so lightly as to regain his liberty on the spot, but Llewelyn was not so deluded as that, nor could he afford the gesture.
"Ambition and greed are poor recommendations for a brother," he said. "Can you promise you are cured of them by this fall, or must we expect another attempt?"
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