The Brothers of Gwynedd (39 page)

  Then Cadwgan went away, content, to eat his fill, Goronwy taking charge of him, and Llewelyn sat down with me to write his letters to both Merediths, for he was always aware of the need not to set one before the other of those two kinsmen and neighbours, though indeed they worked in harness singularly well, as Cymerau was the proof. But David lingered, very pale now with intent, and very grave, and came and sat down fronting his brother across the table.

  "Hear me a word," he said. "In season, this time! I know all too well I often speak out of season. I felt, as I deserved, that sting you gave me, minutes ago. Who am I to deny any man a right to grace?"

  "Sting?" said Llewelyn, astonished and gaping at him, half his mind still preoccupied. "What sting? I know of none. And surely I intended none!"

  "You sting best," said David with a rueful smile, "in innocence, and in your innocence I do willingly believe. But what you said concerning man's need of forgetfulness and forgiveness both, whether it touched Rhys Fychan or not, touched me shrewdly. I have taken much for granted these past months, God and you did well to remind me."

  Understanding dawning on him then, Llewelyn said in indignant amazement: "I meant no such nonsense! What devil possessed you to take me so amiss?" And he reached across the table, and cupped a hand round the nape of his brother's neck, and shook him heartily, until the black hair fell down over David's eyes, and though reluctantly, he could not help laughing.

  "Fool!" said Llewelyn, releasing him. "I have
your
past deeds in very good remembrance—seven months of hard campaigning, and never a sour word. You have earned the same right as any other to speak your mind in my counsels, and argue against me wherever you think I am going astray."

  "And so I will," said David, pushing back his disordered hair from a face wiped clean of laughter, "though forgetting nothing now. I tell you that you go astray, or may do so, in forgiving too easily, and settling accounts too cheaply. Think about it! I say no more."

  He rose, and turned abruptly towards the door, but there as suddenly he halted and looked back. "Yes, one more thing, the gravest. I pray you believe and remember that in saying this I do not speak only of Rhys Fychan."

  Then he went quickly away, and left us to our letters.

One week more we spent in making secure those lands in Powys, and then left Goronwy to continue and complete that necessary work, while Llewelyn and David took the greater half of the army south through Builth to Dynevor as he had promised. But before we left we had already received a message from the horse-doctor in Chester, no way surprising in its tidings, but useful in its detail. King Henry, shocked out of his querulous attitude of protest and disbelief by Cymerau—for there had been no such disastrous blow to royal power in South Wales in his lifetime—had sent out his writ to call out the feudal host for a campaign in full array against us. The muster was set for the first day of August, and the meeting-place was Chester.

  "There's no justice in the man," said Llewelyn, reading. "It seems he's giving me the credit for what the two Merediths have done against him, for it's still at me he aims. They'll be complaining of that, small blame to them."

  In the event, as we learned later, King Henry himself, while knowing well enough by this time who was the head and spirit of Welsh rebellion against him, was torn two ways as to how he might make the best use of his projected muster, and later amended his writ to divert a minor portion of his knight force to the south, though their enterprise there never came to anything.

  "We have time," said Llewelyn, "to get through a deal of work before the beginning of August." For he was certain that this time the king would contrive, whether on borrowed money or his own, to mount the great assault he planned, the Welsh situation being now even more desperate for him than in the previous autumn. And even if there were great difficulties surrounding and hampering him, we dared not take the threat lightly. Therefore the prince sat down with Goronwy and his council, before riding south, and worked out most thorough plans for placing Gwynedd in a state of readiness for siege. Our common defence of goods, gear, stock and people was to remove all into the mountains, an operation to which our folk were accustomed, and which could be accomplished in very short order. Other measures were considered this time to frustrate all movement on the enemy's part. Bridges could be broken, tracks and meadows ploughed up, mills and such establishments destroyed, even fords turned into death-traps by excavating great pits in the hitherto safe shallows, which the water would conceal. All these things were planned in detail, together with instructions to those men of the neighbouring trefs who would carry out their execution, but nothing was to be done until shortly before the day fixed for the muster. Events sometimes change even the plans of kings, and we wanted no wasted destruction. Indeed, Llewelyn had encouraged in Wales, after his grandfather's example, the new centralised institutions which must perforce be borrowed from the English in order to resist the English, the use of money and trade, the exaction of feudal dues in return for land, even the founding of a few towns and the award of charters and markets, so that we had more to leave than aforetime in these withdrawals into the hills. But still we could do it at need, and as quickly as before.

  Then, having confided this system of defence to Goronwy, and left him to send out the necessary orders in our absence, we rode for Dynevor.

  Meredith ap Rhys Gryg came out to meet us as soon as we were heralded, and was close at Llewelyn's side, and voluble, all the last mile of the way. It was no marvel that he was anxious to get in his word first with his overlord, for he was the uncle and rival of Rhys Fychan, and all those good lands in the vale of Towy had been bandied about between those two with equal violence and injustice, each when in power depriving the other, though for Rhys Fychan it had to be said that his uncle had been the first to do unjustly, and for Meredith that he had never yet gone over to the English against his own people.

  So Llewelyn was faced with no easy judgment here when he sat in council in the great hall of Dynevor that evening of our coming, with all his allies of the region about him, and their stewards and officers and clerks at their backs to speak in their support. Already there was none in the whole of Wales who disputed his supremacy, but there never was Welshman yet who was not prepared to argue his case endlessly even in the teeth of his lord, and I knew we should have a long and contentious session. Next to David at Llewelyn's right hand sat Meredith ap Owen of Builth and Cardigan, and he was both strong in his prestige from Cymerau, equal to that of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, and free of those motives of personal greed and personal venom that were likely to unbalance his namesake's opinions. On this able, faithful and incorruptible man Llewelyn greatly relied.

  It was, I think, his uncle's doing, since this castle was now in his possession which had been by inheritance the nephew's, that Rhys Fychan was brought into the hall only when the whole council was assembled, as though he had been a prisoner coming in to be judged, which by his bearing he surely felt to be true. Though Llewelyn greeted and seated him courteously, there was no help for it, he knew the business before us set his liberty and possessions at risk, as well as his honour, and it was a very pale, defensive and erect Rhys Fychan who sat down in our circle to weather the storm.

  It was the first time I had ever set eyes on the Lady Gladys's husband, and I studied him with much interest while the castellan, who had taken the responsibility of admitting him with his following, set forth the bare facts of his coming. Rhys was some three years older than my lord, which made him at that time thirty-one years of age. He was medium tall, and of a good, upright carriage, his hair and his short beard of a light brown, and his features fair for a Welshman, and well-formed. He looked both proudly and fearfully, which was no marvel in his situation, and the set of his mouth I judged to be at once resolute and resigned, as though, no matter what we made of it, he had taken the step on which he had determined, and was prepared to abide the consequences. He did not therefore have to accept them with any pleasure! And I take it as no reproach to him that he was afraid, and as credit that he gave no expression of his fear. I saw how David watched him, with drawn brows and jutting underlip, and I think his interest was engaged by Rhys's bearing as was mine, and his mind, however doubtful, was open.

  When the castellan had ended his brief recital, Llewelyn asked him of himself: "And you…I judge what your opinion was from what you did, for indeed there was heavy responsibility upon you, and yet you did open the gates. Tell me, were you formerly in the service of the Lord Rhys, when he held Dynevor?"

  "No, my lord," said the knight simply. "I am from Dryslwyn, I came here as the Lord Meredith's man, and his man I have been all my days."

  "Then you took this risk upon the evidence of your own eyes and senses, without prejudice or favour. That I find impressive."

  "My lord, it was plain to me they were in fear, and the English who came after them were in great fury. There was no doubt in my mind the Lord Rhys did what he did without their knowledge and against their interest. I could not let Welshmen be cut down under my walls and never raise a finger to help them."

  "My lord," said Meredith ap Rhys Gryg roundly, "there's no dispute over letting them in, and we can take it as true, as my man swears, that this was no plan to bring in his English masters with him. I can think of other motives no more noble, and no better calculated to make us accept him back into our ranks. And the simplest is that he changed his coat because he saw the old looking somewhat threadbare. He was not the only one taken aback by the reception we gave them. De Bauzan liked it no better, but he could hardly run for the gates and demand to be taken in. No, there's no mystery here. Rhys found himself of the losing party, and had no appetite for our archery. He made a leap for safety and the winning side. It's a landmark, I promise you. We've reached the point of being successful enough to draw in the waverers. You'll find he'll not be the last. The fealties that swung slavishly over into King Henry's purse when we were down, will be swinging back, mark me, now we're up again with a vengeance."

  I confess there was something in this, as we found thereafter, not to our surprise. Yet to come back to one's allegiance cautiously, after due approaches and guarantees given, is one thing, and to tear oneself out of the ranks in the field and make that exchange without guarantees of any kind is quite another. And Rhys was not such a fool as to suppose that he would be welcomed with open arms. I expected the prince to ask him at once to speak as to his own motives and in his own defence, but he thought it better to let those who carried grievances and had doubts speak them out now and get relief, before he brought the matter to the issue.

  So he called on one and another, and brought them gradually to the point of declaring whether Rhys should be fully accepted into the confederacy or not, though not in such positive terms that they could not veer later if they so wished. And some said one way, and some the other, Meredith ap Rhys Gryg the loudest in opposition. It was not all a matter of the castles he would be required to restore, but also of the long enmity between them, and doubtless some genuine mistrust.

  "All we have risked our lives and fortunes," he said, "to bring Wales into this ascendant, while he has pledged and maintained his allegiance to England all these years. And are we now to take him into favour, and restore him all that was his? At a gesture, at the first word of repentance, without one act to give it substance? I say no! We cannot throw him back to the English, but we need not therefore embrace him as a brother. What has he done to deserve it?"

  Llewelyn looked then at Rhys, who had sat with a face of ice to listen to this, and asked him equably:

  "What have you to say in answer?"

  Rhys opened his lips as though they were indeed stiff and cold, and said: "That what my uncle says is just. I pledged fealty to King Henry eleven years ago, when I saw no security and no hope anywhere else. If that was a craven act, then we were many craven souls in those days. That I have maintained what I undertook ever since, for that I make no apology. I was taught to abide by my word, and so I have done, until loyalty seemed to me worse than treachery. Now I am doubly a traitor, and not proud of it, and all I want is to change my coat no more. Whether you accept or reject me, I am back among my own. Here I will die."

  Llewelyn looked quickly from him to Meredith ap Owen, that grave, quiet man, and again back to Rhys. "And in the future," he said mildly, "I doubt not you will offer us acts substantial enough, to pay your indemnity?"