The Brothers of Gwynedd (86 page)

  Earl Simon asked urgently after any news of his son's coming with the reinforcements from the south, and the bishop's steward told him what he could.

  "All we know," said he, "is that the Lord Simon's muster was reported to be nearing Kenilworth two days ago, and that same day the lord Edward left Worcester with a large force and took them eastwards to try and intercept. Since then we have heard nothing, and last night I sent a groom to the city to gather what news he can. He'll set out for home again at first light."

  It is barely four miles from Kempsey to Worcester, and as we were breaking our fast after mass the groom rode in, and was brought to Earl Simon.

  "My lord," he said, "forgive me if I waste no words to better what is not good. Time is too short. The Lord Edward returned to Worcester with all his force last night. My lord, they brought prisoners with them—noble prisoners!"

  "My son?" questioned Earl Simon, low of voice and still of face.

  "No, my lord, not he. He escaped them, and is in Kenilworth with the remnant of his following. But I saw the arms of the earl of Oxford, and there were others, barons and knights, all brought into Worcester captive. As I heard it, they surprised your son's force outside the castle, at the priory, where they had lodged overnight, reaching Kenilworth in the early dark, and thinking themselves safe, so near to home."

  "Folly!" said Earl Simon in a harsh cry, and knotted his hands in exasperation. "To halt outside the walls, with such an enemy as Edward so close! He has lost me good men when I needed them most. How many got into the castle with him? Can you say?"

  But there was no way of knowing, or of being certain who was free and who prisoner, nor was there any time to lament longer over losses and opportunities thrown away.

  "He has not learned yet to recognise urgency, or to make sure of his intelligence," said Earl Simon grimly. "And Edward is already back in Worcester with all his force! I take that to mean he hurried back so soon for my sake. He believes me still on the far side of Severn, and thinks I must attempt to storm the crossing there, as my only way over. I have but one advantage left, that I am already on the English side. But only four miles from him! I could be happier if the four were forty. We are barely through his lines, we must move east as far and as fast as we may, clear of his shadow. In the middle of England I am his match, but here in the marches the power is in his hands." He thought some moments and said: "We march in three hours."

  They held brief council, and agreed it was our best policy to move rapidly, before it was realised that we were over the river and through the cordon. Eastwards we must go, and the earl chose to march for Evesham, to put his host on the best and easiest road either northeast from that town by Alcester, to join young Simon and the remnant of his force in Kenilworth, which was as near invulnerable as a castle could well be, or southeast by Woodstock to Oxford and London, for throughout those shires his following was strong and loyal, and there were enough scattered companies of his following to rally to him and make him invincible. Even though I dreaded that his treaty with Llewelyn might have angered some of his noble adherents, their pride being shocked at ceding so much to Wales, yet I knew that the hold he had upon the lesser nobility and the common people would not be shaken. Could he reach Oxford, then his cause was saved.

  Nevertheless, we did not march at the third hour, as he had said, for when the time drew near, King Henry was so fast asleep, and so like a worn-out infant in his helplessness, that they had not the heart to awake him. Earl Simon himself went and looked upon him, intending not to spare where he himself and everything he held dear were not spared, but the oblivious face of his king and brother by marriage, stained and loose and exhausted with being dragged up and down the marches, and showing innocent and piteous in sleep, held him at gaze a long time, and turned him away disarmed and resigned. Surely he knew what he risked with every hour lost, but he said: "Let him have his sleep out!"

  Every man among us needed rest, for though we had the better part of this day, little of it was spent in sleep, most in tending our beasts, as jaded as we, making good all that was amiss with arms and equipment, and darkening what little was left bright about us, for the sun was glaring and cloudless, and would be so until well into the evening, and could betray us at a mile or more. We had marched almost ceaselessly since leaving Llewelyn, and this after all those weeks of scouring the borders south and west and north again to find a way back into England. Still we kept order, discipline and pride. No army of Earl Simon's could let go of those. But for the rest, we were by then a dusty, travel-worn, hungry and footsore company. We had few remounts, or none, only the handful of beasts the bishop's grooms could provide us, and many of us went on foot with the archers and men-at-arms by choice, to ease our over-ridden horses.

  So we set out in the early hours of the evening, that third day of August, King Henry like a tired child still querulous and complaining, and those around him attentive and courteous but remorseless, for time trod hard on our heels, and we had learned to respect the efficiency of Edward's spies. From Kempsey on the Severn to Evesham on the Avon is roughly fourteen miles of rich, green, smiling country, full of cornfields and orchards, the grain whitening in the sun when we passed that way, and the meadows full of flowers. Laden as we were, we gave thanks when the sun declined and left us the cool of the night, and into the night we still marched, not knowing how far behind us the inevitable pursuit must be. It could not be long before word reached Edward that his enemy was across the river and brushing past his shoulder into freedom.

  So we came, halfway through the night, into Evesham, dropping down from the softly rolling upland fields northwest of the town into the wide meadows about the abbey. And there we halted and rested while Earl Simon conferred with his close council in the abbey itself. He knew, none better, how urgent it was to press on, but he was in doubt whether to cross the Avon and strike south-west for Oxford, or turn north towards his own Kenilworth, and in Evesham he hoped to get word whether Edward had yet moved, and in which direction. The best of our horses had gone to his scouts, and they were appointed to meet him again at the abbey. This alone would have caused him some short delay, but indeed many of his commanders urged that, danger or no danger, the men could not go on further without rest and food, and the king was again drooping and weary. When the first of his scouts rode in and reported that Edward had moved from Worcester in fiery haste, but towards Alcester, clearly expecting the earl to attempt to join his forces with those of his son at Kenilworth, Earl Simon accepted the verdict of all, and agreed to a stay of some hours for food and rest before pushing on towards Oxford, the road it seemed he was not expected to take.

  Neither he nor any other amongst us had yet experienced the speed and wit and ferocity with which Edward could think and move. It was true that he had made straight for Alcester to cut the road to Kenilworth, but at such a pace that even with this detour he gained ground on us, and hearing reliably that we had not passed through Alcester, immediately turned south and began to close in on Evesham, racing to cut us off also from the road to Oxford and London. We did not know it then, though the storm of his pursuit was in the air, a troubling of the night.

  Howbeit, we rested in Evesham, and with the dawn we heard mass and broke our fast. And in the early light the watchman on the tower of the great abbey church sounded the alarm, and cried down to us that the sun on the uplands to the north had caught for a moment a distant glitter of steel. Then we mustered in haste and made ready to move, for the way to Oxford should still be open to us, and every mile that we gained along it would add to our strength.

  But before we so much as moved off through the town, a messenger came galloping in wildly from that direction, and cried from the saddle: "My lord, the road's blocked against us beyond the bridge! A yeoman from Badsey came in by that way not ten minutes since. He has seen them, a great force, moving round from the west to shut us in. He barely got by before they straddled the road. He saw the banner and livery of Mortimer!"

  Then we knew that we were taken in a trap from which there was no escape, if Edward was driving down upon us from the north to pen us into the loop of the river that encircles the town, and Mortimer waiting for us on the southern bank. Between the moat of Avon and the ring of marcher armies the noose about us was complete.

  I watched Earl Simon's face then, and I saw in it no surprise at all, as though in the inmost places of his soul he had already known this ending beforehand, and learned to contemplate it without lowering his eyes. The grief I saw in him was strong and stable and calm as a rock. And from that moment there was, in a sense, no more urgency. For all that it was now possible to do, we had time enough.

  "I had thought to bring you safely to a better stand," said the earl, "without committing you to a fight here against the odds. But since there's no other way now for us, let us see what manner of ending we can make. If we have nothing else, we have the choice of ground."

  As deliberately as at some noble exercise he might marshal the lists, so he led his army to the higher ground north of the abbey, to deliver that holy place from his too close presence, and there set out his array, mainly directing his strength against the north, from which Edward must come, but so contriving that we should be able to fight on all sides, for Mortimer surely would not stay out of the battle, though he might come too late to get much glory out of us. Such archers as he had, no great number, the earl placed flanking the lancers, to give what cover they might, for it was certain that Edward had far more knights and heavily armed troopers than we had, and it is ill for light-armed foot soldiers to stand up to cavalry charges. King Henry he set in the midst, with all his own chivalry ringed strongly about him. And when all was ready, he asked absolution for us all from the prior of Evesham, and bade us take what rest we could while we could, for since we could go nowhere, but were arrived at that place to which we had been travelling without our knowledge, there was now no haste to strain beyond, for what was beyond would come to us.

  Then there was indeed a calm, however ominous, yet sound and true, and rest they did, on the grass in their stations, while they quietly whetted their edges and strung their bows, and hitched scabbard and quiver ready to hand, and the lancers dug themselves firm grounding for the butts of their lances. Earl Simon took some of his closest companions with him, and went up to the tower of the abbey church to view the approach of the army from the north, and happening to see me among his swordsmen, paused and frowned for a moment, and then called me also to go with them.

  The sun was fully risen and high in the sky by that time, and clear in the distance along the dappled fields of the uplands we could see the faint, hanging curtain of glittering dust that moved steadily towards Evesham, and the sparks of colour, still tiny, that flashed through the haze. It was like the steady surge of a long wave on a beach, thrust by the incoming tide, as gentle and as irresistible. As it drew nearer, the colourings and the quarterings grew distinct to the eye, Edward's banners, and Gloucester's, Giffard's, Leyburn's, all those same young men who had banded themselves together in the marches in their hot discontent, and called Earl Simon back from France to lead them, not so long ago.

  And yet I think they were not turncoats, nor traitors, though they could not keep the earl's steadfast mind. I do believe they tried to do what they saw as right, however hot blood and inexperience and self-interest and tangled loyalties confused them. And I know that he could find in him no hate or great blame for them as he watched them close about him like a mailed fist to crush him. When they opened their ranks, as they drew nearer, and formed their orderly array on the march, he looked upon them with approval, and smiled, and said: "I taught them that." And as if to himself he said, wondering and hopeful: "If he can learn the discipline of battle, he can learn the discipline of statecraft, too. From his enemies, if need be. But even to a felon a prince should not break his word." And I knew that he was making his last estimate, both just and critical, of Edward.

  Then he shook himself, and turned to us whom he had called to attend him. To the justiciar, Hugh le Despenser, and his kinsman, Ralph Basset, who was warden of the shires in that region, he said seriously that they ought, and he so advised them, to take horse and escape out of this trap, for that was still possible for solitary riders, whom Edward would not break ranks to pursue even if he detected them. He said that they should remove in order to provide a voice for their cause at a better place and in a happier time, so that it should not be utterly silenced. And as one man they smiled, and refused him. He had said what he meant, but he would not urge or persuade. They had their way, and stayed with him.

  As we went down again from the tower, leaving a watch behind to signal us from the distance the movements of those approaching, he took me by the arm, and said in my ear: "Master Samson, this is not your fight nor your lord's fight, and he has a use for you for many years to come. Well I know I can give you no orders, you are not my man, but Llewelyn's and your own. But you are a clerk, and you have a right to sanctuary with the clerks that I have sent into the abbey. Go with them, and stand upon your right, and return whole to your lord. There is nothing better you can do for me."

  But with that fair example before me, out of which I believe he took as much comfort as grief, I also denied him.