The Brothers of Gwynedd (65 page)

  As for us of the prince's party, we returned to Gwynedd in the first days of January, and at Bala we were met by a messenger from Rhodri, who had been left nominally in charge with Tudor in the north.

  His news was in his face, for envoys bearing word of sickness and death have a special way of approaching those to whom they are sent. The Lady Senena, who had brought her immediate suite to Aber in the prince's absence, convinced that no one but she could properly oversee the affairs of Gwynedd, had been taken with a falling seizure on the night of Innocents' Day, and though she still lived, she was helpless in her bed, unable to move any part of her left side, foot or hand, and her countenance fixed. She mended not at all, and her time could not be long.

  Thus the third sally death made that year, after discarding Llewelyn and King Henry both, was made against the lady. And the third sally was mortal.

They gathered by her bed, those three brothers, as helpless as most men when the hour strikes that cannot be avoided. She lay stiff and still, like a figure already carved on a tomb, though she could move her right arm, and the right side of her face still flushed and paled, and was human flesh to view. It was marvellous to see, now that she lay still who had seldom been still when she stood, how small she was, to have borne all those tall sons. Her grey hair was braided, to save her from irritation where it touched, and she was warmly wrapped against the winter cold in fine wool and under well-cured sheepskins. Her level brows were still black and formidable, and the eyes under them bright and wise. Also bitter, for death she resented, as all her life she had resented what curbed or enforced her will.

  Cristin stood at the head of the bed, and she was in command within that room, as if she had received into herself some measure of the lady's mastery to add to her own. "My lady's mind is clear as it ever was," she said, "and she sees plainly, and knows all that passes. She can speak, but it gives her trouble and wearies her. You must listen well."

  Llewelyn went straight to the bedside, and stooped and kissed his mother's forehead. David came more slowly, his eyes great, and I saw the fine beads of sweat stand on his lip, and remembered how he had said, not retreating from it: "Samson, I am afraid of death!" He also kissed her, on the cheek that still lived. It cost him more. He had not Llewelyn's bold simplicity.

  The Lady Senena's eyes followed all their movements until they drew too close, or went beyond her range, and those eyes burned with intelligent purpose still. When she spoke, half her mouth moved freely, the other half resisted, like a log dragged by a strong tide. Her voice was a fine thread, but a clear one. She said: "Where is Owen?"

  Llewelyn said: "He will come. We'll send for him." He never flinched or avoided her eye, that was accusing enough.

  "Soon!" she said, and it was an order.

  "This hour," said Llewelyn, and smiled at her without shame or dread. "I leave you," he said, "only to do what you wish." And he turned about and went out of the room on the instant, and sent an escort to bring Owen Goch out of his prison at Dolbadarn to bid farewell to his mother. And then he came back to her, and told her that it was done, and within a day she should have her eldest son with her to close the circle. When he addressed her it was without constraint. Truly I think that while she had her full wit and senses she knew herself nearer to him than to any, for he alone reverenced, loved, challenged and defied her, ever since he was twelve years old, and went his own way without ever grudging her hers.

  Owen Goch had been held in Dolbadarn castle then for more than seven years, so long that it was often all too easy to forget that he lived, and his coming to Aber was an event calculated to shatter our peace of mind. Llewelyn had occasionally visited him in captivity, but of late years infrequently, and usually at Owen's own instance, for the prisoner was quite capable of proffering vehement requests and complaints concerning his comfort and well-being. The Lady Senena had visited him regularly, and never ceased to plead his cause, though it was the one thing on which Llewelyn would not be persuaded or softened. Perhaps she was even surprised at his instant acquiescence now, for she was not of a temperament to use her own death-bed to wring concessions out of him. What he denied her, sure of his own justice, when she was hale, she would not find it unreasonable or unfilial in him to deny when she was sick.

  However, she accepted his gift without comment, and by mid-morning of the next day Owen rode into the maenol, unbound but strongly guarded. In the years since he rose in civil war against his brother, and so lost his liberty, he had grown soft and fat, being confined for exercise to the castle baileys, no very extensive ground, but he looked in good health, if somewhat pallid in the face, and was princely in his dress, and very well mounted. Like his father before him, he was a heavy, large-boned man, liable to run to flesh, the tallest of the brothers, and his hair and beard were still of the flaming red of poppies, untouched by grey. He had also his father's rash and violent temperament, though without his redeeming openness and generosity, for Owen brooded and bore grudges where the Lord Griffith would have forgotten and forgiven. So even after seven years he would in no wise accept Llewelyn's lordship or agree to any terms, standing obdurately on his total right in Welsh law. Indeed, he had grown more irreconcilable during his imprisonment, and long since ceased to remember that he owed it in large part to his own act.

  Llewelyn went down into the courtyard to meet him as he dismounted, approaching him directly, without pretence that their relationship was other than it was, without relenting, without constraint, certainly without any affectation of love. The long ride, on a fine wintry morning with only a touch of frost, must have been most grateful to Owen, and had brought fresh colour to his face. He eyed Llewelyn warily and coldly, but he accepted the wine that was offered on alighting, and asked: "Our mother still lives?"

  "She lives and is waiting for you," said Llewelyn.

  They went to her together, but Llewelyn came out at once, and so did Cristin with him, and left those two alone.

  "She cannot last the day out," said the physician. And before nightfall all those four sons were gathered about her bed, for it was clear she had not long, and her will was the thing about her now most alive, and struggling with bitterness against the compulsion of dying. At that last meeting I was not present, but Cristin was, in constant attendance on her lady, and from her I know what I know of the last hour.

  "She could still speak," said Cristin, "and be understood, if you attended closely. When the priest had blessed her to God, she blessed them all, one by one, and commended them to behave brotherly to one another, as they hoped for God's mercy. Then she fell into a wandering of the mind for a while, her one good hand straying about the covers, and she talked more clearly then—it might be better if she had not! For she was back in the old days, and they were children to her, and she babbled of David and Edward in the same breath, and so reminded them of the days they spent at court that Llewelyn was like a stranger among them, the only one speaking a different language. She even reproached him, that he forsook his father and his mother, and brothers and sister and all, to go with the uncle that wronged and disparaged them. Is this all true history?"

  I said that by the Lady Senena's measure it was, and told her how it befell, and how in my eyes it did him great credit and honour, for he was but a child when he chose and acted like a man.

  "And he bore all, and gave no sign," she said, "though I know he felt it deeply. For in dying men return to what holds them most, and she was in Westminster with all her brood, excepting only Llewelyn, and he was the outcast, and alone."

  I said that in those days so he was, but it did not turn him from what he meant to do.

  "Nor now," she said, "right or wrong. For Rhodri was in tears, and David too wrung for any such easy way as tears, but Llewelyn sat by her and watched and listened, and took all as it came, as though he never expected any other. Or perhaps—it may be so—he has an understanding with her that the others have not, on his own terms. His father I never knew, but I think he is
her son, throug
h and through."

  That was truth, and so I told her. The two who most favoured their father were Owen and Rhodri. As for David, God alone knew from what mysterious forbears, from what perilous and resplendent women, he took his being.

  "And then," said Cristin, "she rallied, and was with us again, out of the past. She left dandling Edward and riding in the queen's retinue, and came back very sharply to this day, and then she looked for Llewelyn, and even moved her good hand towards him, so that he took it up and held it. Her eyes were fierce and bright again, able to match with his. She said: "Son, do justice to your brother!" and he said: "Mother, I will do right to all my brothers, according to my own judgment." And he smiled at her, and I think, however twisted that mouth of hers, that was a smile I saw upon it. It was the last fling of her spirit, and she challenged him, and he stood like a rock and let her take or leave him as he is. And I do believe she took him, all his offences and failings and all, and was glad of him. But what they made and will make of it, God knows. She has shaken them to the roots."

  It was not strange. So forceful a person could not be withdrawn suddenly out of the world without some tearing of the living tissues, and every one of those four, as various as they were, was fonder of her and more deeply twined into her being than he knew.

  "She never spoke word again," said Cristin, "nor uttered sound. I think there was another such stroke passed through her, for she stiffened, and her hand gripped on his suddenly, and all the flesh of her face seemed to be drawn in like shrivelled leather to the bone. Her eyes rolled up, and she died."

  She was filling her arms with fresh linen from a chest in the great hall when she told me this, and with these sheets and with knotted bunches of dried sweet herbs she went back to the death-chamber to make the Lady Senena decent and comely for her coffin, which the masons were even then cutting. But as she left she said: "If she had known they would be her last words, would she have spoken them? 'Son, do justice to your brother!' Perhaps! She was bred in the old ways, and lived and fought by them, and at the end she clung to them. But what a stone to cast into that pool among those four, at such a time!"

There was but one place then where the royal women of Gwynedd were fittingly laid to rest, and that was in the burial ground of Llanfaes, in Anglesey, that Llewelyn Fawr dedicated to the memory of his great consort, Joan, lady of Wales, and founded beside it the new house of Llanfaes for the Franciscan friars, the closest of all the religious to the old saints of the pure church.

  There we bore the Lady Senena on a grey, still January day of the new year, twelve hundred and sixty-three, down from Aber over the salt flats and the wide sands of Lavan, and ferried her across to the Anglesey shore, there to rest after all her triumphs and tragedies. The sea was leaden that day, the tide heavy and slow, and in the stillness of the air the voices of the friars were dulled and distant, as though the world had receded from us as far as from her, though outside this solitude of sand and sea and vast, shadowy sky the tumult of events thundered and shook, waiting to devour us when we returned across the strait, and even followed us there secretly like a smouldering fire in the hearts of those four brothers. For she was gone into the earth, who after her fashion had held them tethered into a loose kind of unity, however they strained at it, and in departing she had turned back to invoke the very spell that severed them.

  It began in the hall that night, before all the household, and I think it was David who began it, though the voice that set the note was that of Rhydderch Hen, the oldest of the bards, who played and sang the lady's commemorative hymn. I may be wrong, the spark may well have come from Rhydderch himself. But David sat so tense and strung that night, and himself spoke so little, that I cannot but wonder. For he knew how to put thoughts in men's minds and actions into their hands that they never fully intended. Moreover, these three days spent again in the company of his eldest brother, brought from prison inevitably to return to prison, had pierced David deep in the conscience softened and rent by his mother's passing, and the words with which she left this world.

  Rhydderch began with the praise of the Lady Senena, and the recital of her troubled fortunes in her marriage and her chosen exile with her children, all that old story made gentle and acceptable now even to those who had been torn by contention then. He sang her faithfulness to her sons and her lord, her great strength of mind and will. Then he turned to the subject of filial duty and family loyalty, of the sacredness of a mother's last wish and prayer, and the obligation of a son, prince though he might be, and the greatest of princes, to reverence and observe it. For he sang that even where wrong had been done, brother should forgive brother, as he hoped for forgiveness.