I was standing just within the gate, one among a crowd of people watching the lords of parliament ride out to the session at the king's hail on the fifteenth day of June, when one standing close at my back said into my ear in good Welsh: "As fitting a place to meet as any, Master Samson!" And seeing that I stood sturdily and made no start he commended me in English, mentioning Meurig's name freely, for there were Welsh scholars in Oxford as well as English, and we were surrounded by so many other loud conversations, and so little to be distinguished from those about us, that openness was the safest method. He moved forward a little to be at my side, and so for the first time I saw that chancery clerk whom Meurig had encountered at Shrewsbury.
He was younger than I, and very well found, in a good gown, and his hands ringed. It was a sharp, clever, smiling face, shaven smooth as an egg, and lit by wideopen but guarded grey eyes.
"I have been following you," he said, "for a day and a half, to make sure no one else was following you. To be honest, I think they are so intent on their own business they have no further interest in ours. At least no one has shown any in you. We may walk together, two clerks with minor business about the court."
His name was Cynan, and he was in very good repute with his masters. We walked together as he had said, elbowed by the Oxford crowds, among which we were anonymous and invisible, and I told him how far the discussions had progressed, and he told me what went on in parliament itself, for momentous things were happening, there in the king's great hall.
"Behind the scenes," he said, "the council of twenty-four, the king's twelve and the barons' twelve, are hard at work on plans for a new establishment to replace their own temporary power. What form it will take I cannot yet tell you, but before you leave it must come to a head. For the present, I can tell you that the envoys are back from Paris, with the terms of the French peace settled and agreed, but for a lot of complicated details, no doubt most concerned with money. It's a family quarrel and a family peace, and that means not one of them is going to part with a grievance or a claim without getting paid for it. But since they all want it, so it will be. You may tell your prince there will be a treaty with France within the year."
I asked what had been said in parliament concerning the Welsh truce, for I knew it could not be pleasing to those marcher lords who had lost land to us. He hoisted his shoulders and smiled.
"You may say so! There are those who came to this town armed and ready, believing still in the king's writ and pointing their noses towards Chester. Now they find that is a dead issue. If there ever was union in this land, as some truly believed, Wales may be one factor that breaks it apart. Come," he said, suddenly quickening his stride and drawing me towards the gate, "I will show you one enemy at least, inveterate and venomous."
So I went with him, and we joined the gapers about the precinct of the royal hall, watched the lordly arrivals, saw the horses led away by grooms, and the nobles of the land striding into the hall one after another, the rulers of this realm of England.
Cynan said: "That one, the burly man with the frown and the measured stride and the harassed air—no, he's no enemy to any man, he wills well to all, too well! That is the new justiciar, Hugh Bigod, brother to the earl of Norfolk. Yes, they already have the first thing they demanded, a justiciar. And this one following, this is Gloucester."
Earl Richard de Clare was a debonair person in his middle thirties, handsome and fair. And I had thought of the earl of Gloucester as a looming thundercloud over the southern march of Wales. Surely men are magnified and diminished by the circumstance into which they are born, and I wonder if they themselves are not malformed and even broken by that accident of birth, being forced into forms for which their hearts and minds have no desire. I looked upon this man and was drawn to him. He had a proud but not a vicious face, rather troubled and open to wounds.
"He is here!" said Cynan in my ear. "Observe him!"
It was a man of much the same age as de Clare who came stalking into the doorway, dropping his bridle into the groom's hand without a glance, and discarding the retinue of three or four squires and valets who rode behind him. He was of middle height, slender and sudden of movement, with a narrow, fierce, arrogant face, made to look still more elongated by a trimmed and pointed beard and a thin, high-bridged nose, and the sweeping glance of his black eyes was like the circling of a sword, so that I hardly wondered that men made haste to step back out of its range.
"That is William de Valence," said Cynan, "the eldest of King Henry's Lusignan half-brothers, and the most dangerous. And the hottest enemy of your prince in this land, if words be any guide. It seems he has been the latest to feel the goad—the men of Cemais have plundered and raided his earldom of Pembroke, that he holds through his wife, and he blames the example and encouragement of the prince of Wales for all his trials. He came here all whetted and ready for the muster and his revenge, to be told the Welsh war is already a dead issue, and a truce in the making. He got up in a fury and told parliament it had no business to be baring off after domestic reforms that could well wait a better day, that its proper work was to march into Wales and avenge his wrongs on Llewelyn. And when he found but lukewarm backing, he turned on the new council and the prime movers of the new order, and denounced them as little better than traitors. That went down badly with many, but it was the earl of Leicester who answered him, and it ended in a burning quarrel. Valence is well hated, by English and Welsh alike."
"And yet," I said, "when they cry out against the foreigners, are they not striking at Earl Simon no less than at Valence?"
He shook his head. "Never look for logic, at least among crowds, you shall not find it. Aliens, they say, but it means more than being born in France. The earl of Leicester after his fashion is as French as King Louis himself, but when he came here to take up his earldom—and it came to him through an Englishwoman, fairly and honestly—he took up the burden of Englishness without undue self-seeking, and put down roots he meant and means to send deep. Count Peter of Savoy has not even that degree of native blood, but no man rails at him. He puts into this land more than he takes from it, and gives honest counsel to the king. But the Lusignans came to make their fortunes when their house fell into some disfavour in France, they marry land, they accept church office, wherever there's money and advantage, there are they, and all their Poitevin hangers-on come flooding in after them. They see themselves somewhat at risk now, since King Henry feels them to be a liability to him at this pass. But they will cling tooth and nail to what they have, and if they feel it threatened they will not hesitate to break apart this present consent and unity. For what is being said and thought and hoped concerning the earl of Leicester, you may bear it around you."
And so I did, after we had parted, going about the streets and keeping my ears open. Surely those I heard talking had but a hazy idea yet of what the reform of the realm could mean, or how it was to be brought about, since the makers of the new England were even then only beginning their own consideration of ends and means. But they had suffered for want of a just order, or so they felt, and they had grasped the promise of it now that it was mooted, and their hope was real and urgent and would not be easily satisfied, or easily quenched. Oxford, perhaps, was peculiarly alive to such issues, by reason of the schools, but even in the countryside it impressed me greatly that the simple were following with fierce intelligence the turmoil in the state, and from this troubling of the waters looked for a miraculous cure.
Thus far I had seen many of the great men engaged upon the enterprise, bishops, barons and knights, and those great clerks—for truly some I think were most able men—who served the king. Once I caught a glimpse of Henry de Montfort riding out from the town gate, and with him a younger boy, by the likeness his brother. But I had not yet set eyes on their sire, whose name I heard ever more frequently and ardently on the lips of the people.
It was two days after this first encounter with Cynan that Abbot Anian again took me with him into the final meetin
g with the English negotiators, for they had secured the best terms they could get, and the agreement was ready to be copied, sealed and exchanged. Peace we could not persuade them to, Ring Henry stubbornly resisting, but a truce was ours, to run until the first day of August of the following year, thirteen months of grace for Llewelyn to consolidate without hindrance all his gains. And a mere one hundred marks to pay for it! Not one foot of the ground won were we called upon to surrender. The only concession was that the king's officers in Chester should have unhindered access to the Lord Edward's isolated castles of Diserth and Degannwy, to provision and maintain the garrisons, and that we took for granted. For if the truce prohibited us from taking them by storm, then someone had to feed them meantime, and better at the king's expense than at ours. Such were the terms the abbot was taking back to Llewelyn.
King Henry himself appeared for the ceremonious sealing of the agreement, somewhat forcedly gracious, still with one wistful eye on the war of conquest he had intended, as the possibility passed from him. Then the proctors withdrew together, and we clerks were left to gather up all the documents and exchange the needful copies. Master Madoc and the abbot were to stay yet some nine or ten days in Oxford, until all the personal contracts had been prepared, and the letters of guarantee for the payment of the indemnity, and various other details for which their approval was necessary, and that afforded me time to meet again with Cynan, whose account of how things went in parliament would be more exact than what could be gathered in the streets.
I was still in the chamber where the committee had met, copying the last "datum apud Oxoniam decimo septimo die Junii," when the door opened behind me, and someone came into the room. I took it to be one of the royal clerks returning, for they, too, had left documents lying, and had still work to do. But when the incomer first stood a moment motionless, and then came round between me and the open window-space, then I did look up, and with a start of something like alarm, for this being loomed so large that he cut off the light from me, and the June day was suddenly dark, and my vellum overcast as though clouds had gathered for thunder.
He was a good head taller than any I had seen about the court, head and shoulders above the middle make of man, with broad breast and long arms, and narrow flanks that tapered strongly into long, powerful legs. He stood and looked down at me with a wide, brown stare, unwavering and undisguised by either smile or frown, and the unthinking arrogance of that look said that he had the right to stare so upon any in this land, and ought not to be evaded. His forehead was massive, his features large and regular and handsome, and his dress, short riding tunic and chausses of fine brown cloth stitched with gold, all carelessly royal. But his size alone would have told me that I was looking at the Lord Edward, the heir of England.
I rose and louted to him, and waited his pleasure, since he did not at once lose interest in me and withdraw. And as he looked upon me, so did I upon him, for in many ways he was startling and strange to me. It was thirteen years since I had seen him, and then he had been but six years old, a tow-headed child, already very tall for his age, following our David like his shadow. Now he had hair very darkly brown, almost black, a curious change, and, whatever he might still retain of youthful awkwardness and inexperience, most markedly he was already a man. I made him nineteen, and astonished myself by recalling, out of what hidden place in my memory I cannot tell, that this very day, the seventeenth of June, was his birthday.
It was not until he turned a little, and drew away from the window, and the light fell brightly upon his face, that I saw that this splendid creature was flawed, for as soon as the roundness of his stare was relaxed, his left eyelid drooped over the brown eye with that same dubious heaviness always so noticeable in his father. It gave me a shock of wariness and surprise, for though in the father it seemed fitting after a fashion, in this grand countenance such an ambiguity had no place. It contradicted all that glow of openness and boldness and nobility that he projected about him. It was one more minor shadow after the sudden stormcloud his bulk had cast upon the day.
When he had looked his fill upon me he said, in a voice youthful and light of tone, but measured and assured: "You are the Welsh clerk the abbot brought with him, are you not?"
And when I owned it: "I saw you pass with him the other day, and thought that I should know you," he said. "If I remember well, your name is Samson. You were David's groom and servant when he was a child in my father's care."
I said: "Your memory is better, my lord, than I had any right to expect. I am indeed that Samson. It is kind of you to keep me so long in mind."
"So you are still in the service of the princes of Gwynedd," he said. "I trust all goes well with the Lady Senena? And David—I pray you, when you return, commend me to him. He will remember that we were good friends in childhood."
"I thank you, my lord, Prince David is well, and so is his mother. He has not forgotten the time spent with you. If he had this opportunity your Grace has afforded me," I said, "on this day of all days, he would wish your Grace all happiness and blessing for your natal day."
He was surprised and disarmed, and the sudden smile was strange and brief on that monumental countenance. "I see there is nothing amiss with your own memory," he said. And he looked at the parchment I had before me, and said, with an unreadable face: "I trust it may be a day worthy of celebrating for both of us. It should be so, since it is also the day we were appointed to muster at Chester." And with that, as suddenly as he had come, he withdrew, and left me to finish my work.
Such was the Lord Edward at nineteen, sufficiently gracious to one so insignificant as myself, yet with something ominous about him. I made my way back to the Dominican priory in no very settled mind about him. That he had truly felt affection for David I knew from of old, that the memory of that affection might still warm him I could believe. But always I saw again the left eyelid drooping and veiling the brown eye, and that could not but remind me of King Henry benevolently promising what afterwards he never fulfilled, as though he closed that eye to be blind to his own double-dealing. A small thing of the body, but so slyly apt. In the father, a weak and amiable man by and large, it could be accepted as no more than a timely warning. But if strong men and giants study also to close one eye to their own false intents, then where are ordinary human creatures to look for refuge?
The last meeting that I had with Cynan was on the last day of June, for we stayed the month out in Oxford. And that time we met in the meadows by the river in the cool of the evening, when many scholars and townspeople were strolling there for enjoyment at the end of the working day. Something of what had befallen in the assembly was already common knowledge, criticised and commended in the town. As, that the form of government had been remade in a practical shape, and still by general consent, which was achievement enough. These agreed principles came to be known as the Provisions of Oxford.
After the election of a justiciar, some twenty of the royal castles had been put in the hands of new and trusted castellans. Out of the king's twelve in the council, two had been chosen by the magnates' twelve, and from the magnates' twelve two by the king's men, to elect a new permanent council of fifteen. King and council were to rule together and respect each other. The dates of three parliaments were laid down for every year, though others could be called at need. No one found fault with all this. Since unity had called us there to make truce instead of dispatching the host to Chester to make war, it seemed that for the moment English unity was as great a benefit to us in Wales, and I could be cautiously glad that it continued unbroken.
"No longer," said Cynan. "The shell begins to crack, and what will hatch is hard to guess. This reform was never meant to raise the cry "Out with the aliens!" but the winds are blowing it in that direction, whether or no. There's been the devil to pay in the assembly, and the Lusignans have refused the oath that's being required of all the baronage. Those who drafted it added a clause that has frightened away more than the Lusignans. It was all very well holding men
by consent, but it stuck in their gullets to have to add at the end: And he that opposes this is a mortal enemy of the commonweal! All the timid and moderate are taking fright, and some have fallen away besides the Poitevins. But there's another solid reason for their defection— with the king so short of money, the lords of the reform have ordered the return to the crown of certain royal lands and castles he has given away to others, and who holds more of them than his half-brothers? Whatever the cause, they have not only refused the oath, but tried to persuade King Henry to break his, and abandon the new Provisions. I've heard, though God knows yet if it's true, that Aymer of Lusignan, the one that's bishop-elect of Winchester before he's old enough to hold the office, has run off and shut himself in his castle at Wolvesey, and rumour says his three brothers will not be long behind. Now the magnates have no choice but to deal with this dissident brood somehow, and whatever they may do will please neither king nor pope. Aymer is, after all, a bishop-elect. If they try to rid themselves of him, that's hardly likely to endear them to Pope Alexander. And they need his goodwill sorely."
The Brothers of Gwynedd Page 38