The Brothers of Gwynedd (92 page)

  He was close at Edward's side, as they said he was constantly, but he had eyes for no one but his brother. Very wide and blue those eyes were, in a face intent and still, and I could not tell what it was I read in them, whether love or hate, regret for his desertion or resentment that it had achieved so little for him, and that little only at Edward's urging, and lightly granted by Llewelyn out of his own rich plenty.

  Too lightly! I saw it then. So lightly that, though he knew as well as I that David must be present here in Edward's train, he had forgotten him utterly, and never looked for him among the bright cavalcade, even when he was riding up the broad track between the rising hills towards Montgomery, at the king's side. Not one thought did he give to him until in the hall of the castle, led by King Henry to the high table between the ranks of his barons and knights, he came face to face with his younger brother, and could not choose but see him.

  They were of a height, the two faces eye to eye, and Llewelyn checked for an instant, astonished and reminded, but his flushed and joyful countenance never lost its brightness. I watched David closely then, for he looked as I had seen him look once, years back, before he fell senseless on the field of Bryn Derwin, of which he had been the sole and deliberate cause. Unsparingly he kept his high and arrogant countenance, but behind the defiant stare of his eyes, blue and brilliant as sapphires, it seemed to me that there was another being gazing out from a private prison, and when he said, with the sweet insolence of which he was master: "My lord, after all I see you do remember me!" what I seemed to hear, in the thread of a voice, warning and entreating, was:
"Kill me! You were wise!"

  I think there were some in the hall who held their breath, expecting a rough exchange and a flare of ill will to besmirch the feast. But Llewelyn clapped a hand upon David's shoulder, and said: "Very heartily I remember you! Perhaps I can hope now to improve the acquaintance?"

  And suddenly he laughed, wildly generous in his triumph, and leaned and kissed the marble cheek that suffered his salute like a blow, and burned where his lips had touched. Then lightly he took his hand from his brother's arm, and passed on to his place of honour beside the king. And David blazed and paled, all the blood forsaking his face, and slowly turning his black, glossy head, watched his brother go to his seat, and never took his eyes from him thereafter all that evening. As I know, for very seldom did I take my eyes from David, smouldering in black and bitter resentment, but to glance for reassurance at Llewelyn, who shone like a golden lantern with his joy and fulfilment.

  There was much music that night in Montgomery, the king's music and the music of the bards. And we sat late, after the treaty was sealed and ratified, and as the wine flowed there were calls for this song, and that, and some of us went back and forth ordering the festivities as we were bidden. So I came late in the evening where David had withdrawn below his station and apart, altogether sober still, and from his shadowed place endlessly watching Llewelyn, with such fixed and famished eyes that I was drawn to go to him for pity and dread. Even then he was not aware of me until my shadow fell upon him, and then he shuddered, and his long gaze shifted and shortened to take me in, and was slow to know me, but knew me at last with such recognition as I found hard to fathom. There was compunction in it, and wonder, and a kind of drear self-derision. He said: "What? Is it you? Now of all times I least need you to set me right."

  I thought, and said, that he well might need me more than he knew. And then he truly looked at me, who had looked through me before, to continue seeing Llewelyn. His face shook. Very strangely minded he was, that night. A little, and I think he would have wept, if there had not been so much anger in him. He said: "Samson, how is it you haunt me still, seeing I slew you long ago?"

  "Slew me and saved me," I said. "If you wanted me to remain dead you should have drawn the covert you spared to draw, after Evesham."

  "Dear God!" said David. "Was it you taught him so to despise me?"

  I understood then the ground of his despair and rage. "Fool," I said, "do you not know how much that cost him?"

  "It cost him no more than a pat to a hound," said David bitterly, "and he lets me back to him good-humouredly, as he would a hound that had gone off on a false scent, coming back shamed with his tail between his legs. He sighs and bears with me, like an experienced breaker with a useless pup. He values me not a pin!"

  I began to exclaim against him that he judged well his own desert, but greatly misjudged his brother's largeness of mind and heart. But he cried me down with sudden breathless ferocity.

  "Fool, if he had cared a toss for my desertion, do you think he would not have struck me down before all this company, and ordered me out of his sight?" And he spread his arms upon the board before him and sank his head into the crook of them, and shook terribly, like a man in fever, with grief and laughter. "And I would have let him!" said David, groaning and cursing into his brocaded sleeves. "And I would have gone!"

  Even then, though daunted, I would have stayed with him and made him hear me, but when I laid my hand upon him he started up, very tall and erect, and made his face marble-calm and smiling in a breath, and so turned and stalked away from me towards the high table and his own place, and his gait as he went was long and lissome and soft as a cat's, forbidding all concern or question.

After Montgomery we went back in state to Aber, and David did not go with us, which caused no man wonder, for his offences had been gross, and the requital needed time and a certain ceremony. There were even many, English as well as Welsh, who held that Edward should have kept his favourite out of sight on this occasion. The forms of courtesy have their values and uses. No one took this to be an easy matter, and the delicate legal exchanges concerning his stipulated lands were to go on for more than a year, that being an aid to healing.

  Some miles along the great sea-road from Aberconway the men of the royal household of Aber came out to meet us, all the garrison and the bodyguard but for a few duty men, and among them came also Godred, my half-brother, my fair mirrorimage, to remind me that my life had still a secret side where there was no victory and no achievement. I was aware that as soon as they met us he looked for me at Llewelyn's left hand, which was ever my place. And since we rode those last miles at joyous ease, keeping no formal order, he made his way to my elbow very soon, and clung there, close to my ear, out of reach of Llewelyn's. And there he spoke with his blithe, serpent voice, and smiled his smooth, guileless smile all the way into Aber.

  "Now at last," he said, "I trust we may see more of you, now your missions are all done and the peace secured. Once before we hoped for it, and no sooner had we followed you into Gwynedd than you must be for ever wandering out of it. You became such a great traveller, there was no keeping pace with you. Now you and I are in the same service, with time and ease to live close and brotherly."

  I said that David might be returning to his old lands in due time, and would certainly require his old following. This with mild malice, seeing he had deserted David's service for his own advantage, and not at all out of any devotion to Llewelyn. But he laughed openly at that, sure that where the master's treason was wiped out the man's would not be allowed to count against him, especially as it could be represented as loyalty to the higher power.

  "That will be a new beginning, for both high and low," he said, "with old scores wiped out. I don't know but there's something to be said for living in Lleyn." And I think he began then, in cold blood, to weigh the advantages, as ready to leave one lord as another. "I hear there's talk," he said, "of the Lord Edward making a rich match for David, now we're all at peace. There's some little kinswoman of his own, left widowed after one of Earl Simon's barons, before she's even properly a wife. They say he has it in mind to give her to David, along with the English knighthood he's already bestowed on him. If he sets up with a noble English wife, she'll need a household of her own. And David thinks highly of Cristin, and would be glad to have her companion to his bride. But it would be shame," said Godred, wantonly smiling and son-voiced at my shoulder, "to take her even so far from you as Neigwl, now
you're
home."

  We were nearing the maenol then, and the women came out to greet us and bring us home in triumph, and I was so intent on looking for her among them that I made him no response, and hardly heeded his baiting. Yet I heard him whisper even more stealthily into my ear, a thread of sound, like a sharp knife slicing through the shouting and singing: "You know, do you not, that she chose to come north with the old dame only for
your
sake?"

  If I had not known it I might have made him some sign then of the depth of that wound, but I did know it, from her own lips, and there was no way he could move me. Moreover, I found her at that moment, a star among her fellows, half-grave, half-bright, wholly beautiful, all the more because she had found me first, and her eyes, like irises wide-open and glowing in sunlight, were waiting to embrace me.

  Into that liquid light I fell and drowned, drawn into her being and one with her. How many times have I not died that blessed death! I think I did not halt nor check, nor did my face change, and I do not know how much Godred saw of what we two became before his eyes, or heard of what we spoke to each other in silence. But when I drew back into my body the soul she gently returned to me, and opened my own eyes to those about me, Llewelyn at my right hand rode softly with his chin upon his shoulder, and his gaze wide and deep and reflective upon me, as darkly brown and still as the peat-pools of his own mountains. When he saw me awake and aware he stirred and looked before him, and spoke me freely and cheerily, putting the moment by. But there was nothing he had not seen.

  After the feasting and the mirth and the singing of the bards in Aber that night, I went out into the mild darkness of the courtyard, and there was so golden a moon that the sight of it was like a benediction. I walked through the cool stillness to the chapel, and there made my prayers, for that night was to me a home-coming of such power and magic that nothing on earth seemed out of my reach, not even my love, Cristin, Godred's wife. I had only to wait and be still, and everything would be added to me. Yet in humility I consented to forgo what I might not desire, having the inexpressible bliss of what was already granted. For she loved me, and no other. And I prayed passionately grace and mercy for Godred, my brother, who had not that bliss, and only by its bestowal on me had learned to covet and begrudge it.

  When I had done, I rose from before the lamp that burned on the altar, and turned towards the darkness, and there was a still and man-shaped shadow in the open doorway, that moved towards me as I moved, as the image advances in a mirror. So used was I to meeting my demon that I halted where I stood, and called him by his name: "Godred!" Not dreading nor questioning, only in recognition, that he might have peace, if there was the means of peace in him.

  "Not Godred," said the shadow, very low, "but Llewelyn."

  He came towards the light, and took shape as he came, and within reach of me he stayed. I think he had hardly touched mead or wine all that evening long, the burning within him was the fire of one aim achieved, and one still distantly beckoning.

  "I did not follow you," he said, "but it was in my mind to send for you. And you were here before me. The dagger that strikes at me strikes also at you, the stars of our birth shone on us both. I have been blinded by my own concerns, but now I see. Forgive me that I did not see from the beginning. I must have cost you dear in your silence many a time."

  I told him what was true, that he had no need to reproach himself or compassionate me, that I had no complaint against man or God that I would not change my fate if I could, that there was but one thing lacking to me, and that was not my love's love, for that I had in fullest measure.

  "I know it," he said. "I saw her face, also. Did I say we shared one fate? Come here to the light, look on
this
face. I have shown it to no one but you."

  He laid a hand upon my arm, and drew me with him to the small, steady lamp upon the altar, and there he slid from the breast of his gown and laid beneath the light a small silver circlet, the size of a woman's palm, threaded upon a cord that he wore about his neck. The disc was enamelled with soft, bright colours and gleamed like a jewel, and I knew it for the talisman Earl Simon had given him beside the road to Hereford, a year and a half ago.