The Brothers of Gwynedd (28 page)

  "If you are in your right wits now," said Llewelyn directly, "there need be no next time."

  I saw the small, wary flames of doubt, and desire, and calculation kindle in David's eyes, and from cool burn into vehement heat. Until then he had been on his guard against us and against hope, clenching all his longing and frustration tightly within him lest it should show in voice or face. Now he began to quiver, and with bitter force stayed the trembling, too proud to let us see how desperately he desired his freedom.

  "Even in my right wits," he said carefully, "I am not good at riddles. If you want me to understand you, you must speak as plainly as to a child."

  "Some time since," said Llewelyn, "when for good enough reason I put you here, you declined to promise your loyalty in the future, rightly discounting the force of such a promise, so soon after disloyalty. At some time to come, you said, when you had purged your offence, you trusted to show me by deeds whether you were cured. The time is come now when I need good fighting brothers, when I would gladly have you by my side, and see you put your faith to the proof. If you are so minded."

  "Something has happened," said David, in a dry whisper, and moistened lips suddenly blanched white. "Tell me what you mean to do with me."

  He still was not willing to believe that he had any voice in the matter, but as Llewelyn spoke, telling him in simple words exactly what was toward, the colour ebbed and flowed in his throat like a wind-lashed tide, and slowly reached his cheeks, burning over the high bones. His eyes shone bluer than speedwells. I saw him swallow the dry husks of fear that silenced and half-strangled him, and in the piteous hunger and thirst that seized him he looked younger than his twenty years; he who had looked dauntingly critical and knowing at five years old. He did his best to restrain the hope that was devouring him, and not to grasp too soon at the vision of his freedom. But his heart was crying out aloud in him to rise and go, like a falcon clapping its wings.

  When it was told, he sat with his arms tightly folded across his breast and hands gripping his shoulders, as if to hold in that frantic bird until the cage was truly opened, and the clear sky before him, while his dark-circled eyes burned upon Llewelyn's face.

  "And you will take me with you?" he said, still fearful of believing.

  "If you are of our mind, if you will take up this warfare like a man taking the cross, and be faithful to it, yes, then come with us. And most welcome! You need have no fear of that."

  "And I may come forth? Into the light of day again?"

  "Into the dusk of a chilly evening, and with a long ride back in the dark," said Llewelyn smiling, "if you say yes at once."

  "Tonight? Dear God," he said, beginning to shake and to shine with the intensity of his joy, "the midnight will be brighter than anything within here." And he cast one wild, glittering glance all round the great chamber, and a stony, gaunt cavern of a place it was, for all its rugs and hangings. "Oh, I would say yes, and yes, and yes, to whatever you please, only to get out of here. Don't tempt me with too much, too suddenly. This, at least, I must not do lightly, nor you, either. There must be something to pay." He started suddenly forward out of the chair where he sat, and went on his knee in front of Llewelyn, and lifted his hands to him, palm to palm, so that his brother, surprised but indulgent, had little choice but to take them between his own, which he did warmly. "I make my act of submission to you as my prince and overlord," said David, in a voice ragged with passion, "and I do regret with all my heart those follies and treasons I committed against you. From henceforth I am your man, and you are my lord. And that I swear to you—"

  "Swear nothing!" said Llewelyn heartily, and clapped a hand over his lips to silence him. "Your word is enough for me," he said, and took him strongly under the forearms and plucked him to his feet.

  David stood trembling in his brother's hand, half-laughing, yet not far off tears, either, with the excitement and relief of this unexpected deliverance. "You should have let me bind myself," he said, "I thought you had learned better!"

  "Fool!" said Llewelyn, shaking him lightly. "If your word was not bond enough, why should your oath be? Nor do I want you bound. I want you free, and venturesome, and with all your wits about you. And we had best be moving, and take it gently on the road, for you'll find yourself stiff and awkward enough in the saddle after so long without exercise." Then he leaned and kissed his brother's cheek, and of solemn words there were no more.

  So in the onset of the night we took fresh horses, and rode back to Aber under a bright, cold moon, three instead of two.

We mustered at Aber on the last day of October, and on the first of November we crossed the Conway at Caerhun. Llewelyn had mounted as many of his men as possible, amassing great numbers of hill ponies, for speed was at the heart of his plans, and he did not intend the royal castles or the small local offices from which the cantrefs were administered to have any warning of our coming. Beyond the river we split our fastest cavalry into two parts, one to strike directly north-east to the coast, under David, and so sever the Creuddyn peninsula and the castle of Degannwy from all possibility of reinforcement or supply from Chester, while a part of our little fleet kept tight watch over the Conway sands and the sea approaches, to prevent any ship from making in there to the fortress with food or men. The other half of our horsemen, under Llewelyn himself, swept on as fast as possible to the east, to cross the Clwyd at Llanelwy and push ahead to the coast beyond Diserth, thus isolating that castle, too, in lands once again Welsh. Diserth, not having an approach by sea, could more easily be held fast once it was encircled, nor did we have to sit down around it for so much as a day, for by then the young warriors of Rhos and Tegaingl were up in arms and out to join our slower foot soldiers, who followed hard at our heels, and all that was needed was to furnish them with commanders and the core of a disciplined warband, and leave them to hold down what we had repossessed.

  It was no part of the prince's plan to waste time and men in attacking the castles, strong as they were, and heavily manned. Nor was there any need, once the garrisons were penned tightly within them and denied any relief. What harm could they do to us? Far better to press onward to the very walls of Chester, and recover all the lost land, thus putting a greater and greater expanse of enemy country between the castles and their base, and securing ever more of our own soil, and ever more firmly. Should it be necessary in the end to reduce the fortresses and raze them, for that there was no haste. No man could now help them without encountering our armies by land or our ships by sea. And though by English measure, and certainly by comparison with the Cinque Ports navy, ours were but poor little boats, yet the mouth of the Conway was better known to our seamen than to the English, and navigable far more easily with our small, shallow craft than with the king's ships.

  Of fighting we had some fleeting taste here and there, but disordered and scattered, for the surprise was complete, and even after the first days we moved so fast that hardly a messenger could outride us, and none by more than an hour or two. The garrison at Diserth ventured a sally at us, but mistook our numbers and the nature of their own encirclement, and were glad to withdraw within the walls again with their wounded, leaving a number of dead behind. They came forth no more, but the young men of Tegaingl kept station about the castle and waited hungrily for another clash with them.

  Elsewhere, those few places where there was a small force of English stationed made some resistance, but were either overwhelmed and scattered, or drew off and ran for the shelter of Chester. Some minor officers of the royal administration we took prisoners, but most fled, though even some of these, lost in a hostile countryside, were later either taken, or killed by the people of the villages. We had half expected an army to be put into the field from Chester to meet us, and were ready for a pitched battle should it come to that, but nothing stood before us. We had reckoned, too, on some show of retaliation from the lords of the march, however disaffected themselves, when the Welsh broke out in rebellion, but they sat sullen and vengeful in their own castles, and lifted not a finger to hinder us. And that was the greatest surprise of this entire northern campaign, and perhaps made us too optimistic in similar case thereafter. We were not used to being smiled upon by the marcher barons, our uneasy neighbours.

  "It seems," said Llewelyn, astonished, "that I had even undervalued the dislike and suspicion they feel towards this new order in Chester. God knows how long it may last, but now they hate the spread of royal power in the borders, it appears, more than they hate us."

  And indeed it was clear, by their continuing complacency even after Geoffrey Langley came rushing back into the county from Windsor, that they held us to be fellow-sufferers, who were now busy fighting their battle for them. Hardly a view that would be welcomed by those who lost lands to us, like Robert of Montalt. But those who were not personally at loss looked on our encroachments with no disfavour, seeing the threat of effective royal administration in the marches recede. There was laughter, rather than tears, along the English side of the border when Langley came back into the county just in time to be chased ignominiously into the safety of Chester.

  We had halted for a night in Mold to let David and his force catch up with us, having established what was almost siege order round Degannwy. David was in high feather, and in very fair favour with his men, though I think there were a few among the captains who were wary of him as yet, unsure how much truth there was in his new fealty to Llewelyn. But by the time we were patrolling opposite the walls of Chester he had won them all, for he was dashing, intelligent and without fear in battle, and in his own person, eye to eye, he could charm birds out of the trees.

  Everywhere we had passed, the chiefs and princes, restored to their free holding, declared themselves as allies of Llewelyn, and placed themselves willingly in fealty to him. Nor did he seek to keep under his own direct hold any part of what he freed, but set up the high men of that country in possession of their own, or where there was no Welsh claimant by reason of the past history of the marches, but either a marcher lord at distance or the crown itself as sole overlord, bestowed the land upon one or another of those allies of his most able to maintain it, thus keeping the full strength of Middle Country loyalty fixed in his own person. And so within one week, no more, we had freed the four cantrefs, and enlarged Gwynedd to its old bounds, and won valuable allies wherever we touched.

  And it was but halfway through the month of November, and so much changed, in our fortunes and in our aims. For this rapid and almost bloodless advance could not but open up the possibility of further conquests.

  "It is true enough, as the Lord David says," said Goronwy in council, "that it would be waste and shame to halt here, but I am for pressing on for another, perhaps a better, reason. To halt now would be to put in danger even what we have already done. It can be secured only by taking it further."

  "I know it," said Llewelyn. "All we have done—though I grant you it was done with less risk and less loss than I had dared believe possible—is to take back what was taken from us by the English crown and bestowed upon the prince. But how long can that or any Welsh land be held safe from England, while Welsh chiefs are divided, and can be picked off one by one? I want back not only the Welsh commotes, but even more the Welsh fealties that have been stolen by King Henry. They count for more than land, for they are the only means of protecting the land. Very well, let us learn from our enemies, and pick off the crown's Welsh allies one by one, now, before King Henry can raise the money to come to his son's aid. Let them learn that it is safer to keep their homage at home, as well as more honourable. I wish no ill to any Welshman who has been pressed and daunted into pledging himself to Henry against his own wish. But I think it time to offer such at least a demonstration of the consequence, and if they cannot learn, to set up in their place those who know of what blood they come."

  For the first step he had taken was so great and so vehement that there was no way of keeping his balance now but to go forward and match that step, checking as he went, until he reached a strong and favourable stay. And so said we all.

  That was a wet and stormy winter, but for the most part not severe in frost and snow. Such weather always served us Welshmen well, for it fitted our habit of ambuscade, and night raid, and lightning attack and withdrawal, and was very evil for the massed fighting and ordered battles the English preferred. So we felt confident enough to hold our own, even if they should yet put an army into the field against us. But they did not, leaving all to their officers and allies in the threatened commotes. Langley was not a soldier, and though he had a great enough garrison in Chester to hold that town and county, he was afraid to risk an advance to the west against us, lest he should lose half the force he had, and lay even the border towns of England open to attack. So he kept still and mute within the city, and perforce left the forward castles to fend for themselves. As for Prince Edward, I think he had no money in hand to raise a force of mercenaries, as was becoming the English habit, or even to pay the expenses of mustering the feudal host against us. And his father was as poorly furnished at this time, having his own troubles at home with his magnates. The king's brother, Richard of Cornwall, did, as we heard afterwards, provide borrowed money for a campaign, but the weather and the harassments at home, and the speed of our movements, made all null and void, and the money raised was never even spent. Most vital of all, the marcher barons would not lift a finger to aid the administration they themselves feared. So everything Henry attempted came to nought.