The Brothers of Gwynedd (56 page)

  Howbeit, David would go home, and home we went, to recount to Llewelyn all that had passed. And he, though without any great surprise or expectation of exacting redress, nevertheless made a point of sending a letter of protest to King Henry over his seneschal's faith-breaking, that it might be known what were the rights and wrongs of the matter, and any attempt to put the onus upon the Welsh by a crooked story might be forestalled.

  The reply he got was conciliatory, and professed strong disapproval of de Chaworth's unaccountable act, of which neither the king nor any of his officers had had prior knowledge, nor would have countenanced it if they had. The unlucky lord, being dead, could not suffer further from being disowned, yet some of us wondered.

  While we were busy in the south, in England, it seemed, the dispute over the oath and the Provisions, so far from being reconciled, had begun to split the ranks of the baronage apart in good earnest. All four of the Lusignan brothers had refused the oath, and being offered in default only a choice between exile for all, or exile for the two who had no land claims or office in England, and safe-custody for William of Valence and the bishop-elect, who had, they had chosen all to leave, and sailed for France along with many other Poitevins. Certainly not to renounce their claims peacefully, to judge by Valence's temper, but rather to recruit sympathy among the powerful in France and from the pope in Rome. While we were fighting the battle of Cilgerran in the first days of September, Pope Alexander was sitting sourly entrenched against all the exalted arguments of the delegation from England, suspecting their ideas and aims of all manner of treason and heresy, and flatly refusing them countenance, or what they most earnestly asked of him, the despatch of a legate to preside over and regulate the re-making of the realm of England. They came home empty-handed.

  Nonetheless, the reformers continued their labours undaunted, and the great council worked tirelessly on the measures of renewal. And one thing at least Earl Simon had procured for the king, and that was the agreement with King Louis. Though the treaty was not yet signed and sealed, the long-awaited peace between England and France stood ready at the door.

  Until December I do believe King Henry still piously held to his oath, and meant to go hand in hand with his new council and his magnates, in spite of all the choler of his half-brothers. But in December came the bitter blow that soured his heart ever after against the lords who had forced his hand. Pope Alexander, seeing no hope of getting his way over Sicily with his present candidate, cancelled his grant of the kingdom to young Edmund, withdrew with it the threatening clerical penalties, and began to look round for a more effective claimant. If ever the time came when England could repay the papal debts in full, then Edmund might ask to be restored, but not before. And even so his application could only be made, naturally, if someone else had not been set up in the pretendership meantime.

  No doubt this came like a blissful release to most of the lords and barons, but it was a desolating shock to King Henry. He had agreed to the proposals of reform only because they were linked with the promise to help him succeed in the Sicilian enterprise. Now he was committed to the reform, but had for ever lost Sicily. Being Henry, and the man he was, this was worse than an irony, it was deceit and treason, for he could never be subjected to humiliation and embarrassment without looking round in fury for a scapegoat, and now he blamed the reformers for his loss, and was convinced they had deliberately wrecked his great project while pretending to assist in it. If he had ever been sincere in accepting the reform, and I think he well may have been, he ceased to be so from that moment, and began to burrow secretly after his freedom and his revenge.

  But for us in Wales this period of truce was quiet and prosperous. We tended our country and harvested our resources, and kept our ears pricked for the news from England, and one eye upon Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, still skulking in Dryslwyn, but growing weary now of his own caution. To do him justice, it was never fear that kept him quiet, but only a solid, practical sense that warned him when the stake was not worth the risk. But at last he judged that his part, without doubt the leading part, in the treachery of Cilgerran had drifted far enough down the river to be forgotten, as old grudges easily are where there are always new to be savoured. And he came forth from his seclusion and hunted and raided as was usual with him, leaving the king's new seneschal well out of his plans, and no doubt confident that such private inroads as he could make with his own Welsh forces on territory friendly to Llewelyn would not be at all displeasing to his patron, King Henry, provided the crown could not be implicated in any way.

  In early May a rider came into Bala from Rhys Fychan in Carreg Cennen, one of the lancers of his household, grinning so broadly his news could be nothing but a good joke. He was brought to Llewelyn in the mews, where the prince was busy with his hawks, and bent the knee to him very perfunctorily in his haste to get to his message.

  "My lord," he said, "I bring you brotherly greetings from Rhys Fychan, and sisterly from the Lady Gladys. And I am bidden to ask you where it will please you to take delivery of the person of your traitor, Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, to be tried by his peers?"

  There was a general outcry then of astonishment and triumph, and everyone within earshot dropped what he was about and listened without concealment.

  "What, has Rhys got the old felon into his hands at last?" said Llewelyn. "Now how and when did this come about? I thought he had gone to earth for life, and we should have to dig him out with siege engines."

  "My lord," said the man, broad-smiling with pleasure, "after the lambing Meredith began raiding our stock, and we lost a few yearlings to him and made no sign. Then a week ago Rhys Fychan pastured some of his best ewes with their lambs not far from Dynevor, where they could be seen from the towers, for we knew Meredith was there, the first visit he's paid there since Cilgerran. There was none but the shepherd with the flock, but we had a good strong company in cover close by."

  "And he took the bait in person?" said Llewelyn, marvelling. "He has herdsmen and lances enough. You might have got but a poor catch for your trouble."

  "Ah, but, my lord, Meredith's hatred to Rhys is such, he grudges letting even his knights into his feud. Rhys knew him well enough, he came himself to make his choice, he must show his hand in any stroke against his nephew. And he brought a pretty little company in attendance on him, good men, but few. We took them all, with no loss, and no hurt but a few scratches. It was brisk, but we had their measure. And we took Meredith. He is in Carreg Cennen, and he is yours to do with what you will."

  "Come," said Llewelyn, and helped him away to the hall, "we must share this with Goronwy and Tudor, and send word out to the rest. This is not my quarrel, but the quarrel of Wales."

  So they debated and made their plans, more gravely once the jest had been enjoyed, and rightly enjoyed, for it was bloodless and just, and there was no killing in any man's mind, as Meredith had brought about all that killing at Cilgerran. There was no doubt but that Llewelyn must move against Meredith as any monarch moves against the traitor, else his claim and style as prince of Wales was of no value. Also the time was approaching when our truce agreement would run out, and we knew that the formal summons to the summer muster against Wales was already issued, and thus far remained in force. We knew, or it came very close to knowing, that this was a matter of form, and the muster would never take place. But for all those who had not our knowledge of the pressures and persuasions in England, the demonstration of genuine power and confidence was essential. So was the right use of Meredith, my lord's first traitor, deep in his debt and absolute in ingratitude. We did not want him slain, we did not want him hurt, we wanted him disciplined, curbed, spared, and brought to submission.

  On the twenty-eighth day of May all the great vassals of Wales assembled to sit in judgment. Even Rhodri, the third of the princes of Gwynedd, came from his manor in Lleyn, where commonly he tended to hang aloof between scorn and jealousy, half minding his own lands, half envying the prowess of David, his junior, and wholly resentful of what outdid him, while he spared to attempt rivalry. He read much in Welsh law in those days, privately and secretly, and brooded on Llewelyn's admitted departure from it. But he said never a word.

  Before this great assembly Meredith ap Rhys Gryg was brought and charged with treason. And in this matter there was none, not even Rhodri, could charge breach of law against the prince. He presided, but he took no accuser's part, and the verdict was left to the assembly.

  Meredith was brought in pinioned, but loosed in the court at Llewelyn's order. He looked in bright, aggressive health and untamed, that square, bearded, loudmouthed, lusty man, fatally easy to like, and indeed his liking had proved fatal to more than one. He made no submission, and very volubly and fiercely defended himself by accusing all opposed to him. But he could not deny his oath of fealty, for most of those present had witnessed it. Nor could he well deny his breaking of it, which all had seen. The assembly convicted him and, against his obdurate refusal to submit, committed him to imprisonment at his lord's will in the castle of Criccieth.

  "Let him stew a while," said Llewelyn, after he had been taken away, "and he may come to his senses and his fealty again. I would not let so gross an offence pass, for the sake of Wales, but I cannot altogether forget how he fought at Cymerau. If he returns to his troth it shall not be made hard for him, but securities I must have."

  But for a long time Meredith ap Rhys Gryg maintained his obstinacy in his prison, while his men in the south, led by his sons, held fast to all his castles but otherwise lay very low, not anxious to provoke an attack which the king, in time of truce, could not prevent or censure. Perhaps he hoped that King Henry would refuse to renew the truce now that it was about to lapse, and would come to his vassal's rescue in arms. If so, he was soon disillusioned, for very shortly after he was shut up in Criccieth the expected approach was made on the king's behalf, and Llewelyn sent out letters of safe-conduct for the royal proctors to meet his own envoys at the ford of Montgomery, at the hamlet called Rhyd Chwima, chief of the traditional places of parley on the border. There the truce was extended in the same form for another full year. Once again Llewelyn offered a large indemnity, as high as sixteen thousand marks, for a full peace, but King Henry remained stubborn, and refused the wider agreement.

  The king's mind was then on France, rather than Wales, for in the winter of that year he set out for Paris, and there the great treaty between France and England was sealed at last. After, they said, much haggling over family details, just as Cynan had foretold. But signed and sealed it was, and King Henry duly did homage to King Louis for those Gascon possessions he held on the mainland of France, and became a peer of that country.

  Now it was while the king was still absent in France, and laid low with a tertian fever at St. Omer, that the thing happened which was ever afterwards railed at by the English as a breach of the truce, but which we saw in another light. Truly the truce was broken, but not first by us. And this is how it fell out.

  Early in a hard January a messenger came riding into Aber from the cantref of Builth, where the royal castle was held for Prince Edward by Roger Mortimer, the greatest lord of the middle march. Roger, through his mother, who was a daughter of Llewelyn Fawr, was first-cousin to my prince, and there was a free sort of respect and even liking between them, though they seldom met. But inevitably they were also rivals and in a manner enemies, and neither would yield a point of vantage to the other, or to the relationship between them. Indeed it was impossible they should, Mortimer being on his father's side, where his inheritance and his obligations lay, all English, and the king's castellan into the bargain, while Llewelyn was utterly bound by his duty and devotion to Wales. But between them there was no ill-feeling, each acknowledging the other's needs and loyalties. But no quarter, either. An honourable but a difficult bond.

  The messenger came in a lather and a great indignation, clamouring that Mortimer had expelled from their holdings the Welsh tenants of Meredith ap Owen, our loyal Meredith, in the cantref of Builth, desiring to have English holders about the castle there. Granted he was responsible for the trust he had taken on, but he had no right to turn out local tenants who had done no wrong.

  "Be easy," said Llewelyn to the envoy from the injured Welshmen, and clapped an arm about his shoulders. "Go eat, and rest, and follow us at leisure; you shall find your homestead ready to be occupied again."

  "Not so!" said the fellow, burning and happy. "If you ride, my lord, so do I ride with you."

  And so he did, when we drew in the muster at short notice, left orders to the outlying chieftains to follow, and rode south into Builth in the January snow.

  They were never prepared for the speed with which we could move, and that even in the winter. We burst into Builth like the blizzard that followed us, and swept it clear as the north-west gale drove the frozen snow. Those raw English tenants of Mortimer's tucked up their gowns and ran like hares, and the exiled Welsh farmers—for that is land that can be farmed, not like our bleak and beautiful mountains—came flooding back on our heels with knife in one hand and wife in the other and the children not far behind, padding through the drifts with their dogs at heel. In every homestead and holding from which they had been driven, we replaced them, restoring a balance that had been violated in defiance of troth. Where, then, was the breach of trace?