The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  It was in a dark but noble place, Earl Simon's tomb. Dark, for this was an old and massive church, not lofty like King Henry's building at Westminster, and the thick walls and narrow windows let in little light to the chapel where he lay. But the plain stone tomb was large and spare and grand, like his mind and spirit, a pure flame in an unrelenting austerity. There was a double step before it, each level worn into a deep hollow—dear God, in how short a time, and by how many humble feet!—and a place on the level surface of the gold-grey stone smoothed and polished into darkness, and also hollowed, somewhere in the region of that immense heart, but higher than by rights a heart should be, as the hewn stone was shorter than a middling-tall man should be, for there was no man living in England who did not know that the body within that tomb was headless. I know not who was the first who mounted the two steps and used his own judgment to know where to plant that first reverent kiss, but I bless him and envy him, and where his lips rested thousands upon thousands followed him and kissed, and after them, all in good time, Llewelyn and I.

  When he had done so, Llewelyn kneeled upon the upper step, and I drew back from him to leave him private. There was a lamp burning at the head of the tomb, and on a narrow wooden prayer-stool there one of the monks kneeled. I suppose that there were two or three who shared this vigil among them, perhaps older brothers with infirmities to be nursed, for the one who kneeled, there when we came was shrivelled and bowed, and bulked no larger than a handful of fragile bones inside his habit. Men and women came and went as I waited, mounted beside the place where Llewelyn prayed, kissed the glossy, mouth-shaped hollow in the slab, and humbly withdrew to pray apart. But when Llewelyn arose from his knees and stepped back, so did the ancient monk who tended the lamp, and turned his head towards my lord, and then I saw his face, which was tiny and old, and worn to bone and spirit, and sweet and calm beyond measure, and his eyes, which were wide open and silver as the moon, whitened over with the veil of age and blindness. Some twenty years, I judge, he had not seen even the light of day, never a shade of difference between dawn and midnight. But he turned his face towards Llewelyn, who moved as silently as a cat, and he smiled with a strange, radiant smile, and came towards him with the careful, accurate gait of the blind who are certain of their ground. He came until he had only to stretch out his hand to touch Llewelyn's breast, and reached out delicately short of touching, and so stayed, his hand spread like a blessing and an entreaty.

  "You are the man," he said, in a voice as thin and small as a bird's chirping. "My heart turned in me when you entered the chapel. I cannot be deceived. You are of his blood."

  "No," said Llewelyn, wondering and moved. "I am only one whom he touched in passing, like all the rest."

  "That cannot be true," said the old man, shaking his grey tonsure, and drawing down his brows over the blind eyes as if to stare more intently into the face that fronted his own. He advanced his hand yet a little towards Llewelyn's breast, and laid it very lightly over the prince's heart. "This—this declares you his. I know not of my own knowledge. I am told what is needful. I am told that I touch the son of my saint."

  "Father," said Llewelyn, shaken, "I do not lie to you. There is no drop of the earl's blood in me. All his sons are dead or gone out of this land."

  "You have your knowledge," said the blind monk, faintly smiling, "and I have mine, and what is mystery and paradox to us is not so to God, who is the maker of truth as of all things. I tell you, I do but as I am instructed, and it is not possible that my knowledge should be deceitful. I say you are the son of my saint, and I bless you in his name, and in God's name." With the hand that had warmed at Llewelyn's heart, dry and frail on its withered wrist like a dead flower on its stalk, he signed the air between them with a cross before the prince's forehead. "May the prayers you have made here be answered, and the vows you have renewed come to perfect fruit."

  After a long silence Llewelyn said: "Amen!" And so in my own mind I said, also, for I knew what pledge had been reaffirmed at Earl Simon's tomb. After I carried back to Wales the full story of the earl's death, Llewelyn made two vows in his memory, the first to extract from King Henry everything Earl Simon had granted him freely, recognition of his right and title to Wales and to the homages of all the Welsh princes. And that he had done. And the second vow was to bring to fruition the marriage he had asked and been granted gladly by the earl, and to make Simon's only daughter princess of Wales. That yet remained to do. Twice he had sent envoys to reopen the matter with the earl's widow, but the Countess Eleanor would not entertain his plea because of her promise to abstain from all moves that could vex her brother the king, or her nephew the Lord Edward. Withdrawn into France, and living retired at the convent of Montargis, she wanted nothing but to have peace, and dreaded the suspicion with which Edward might look upon any alliance between Earl Simon's friend and ally and Earl Simon's child. And very patiently and obstinately had Llewelyn waited for the passage of time to put that scruple and that fear out of mind, for who could believe, four years after Evesham, that any man or conspiracy of men could again revive a strong baronial party in England? Without Simon it was a dead cause. There was not a lord in the land who wanted the past even remembered. The present tired peace and slow and cautious healing was all they desired. But the countess held to her purpose and would not be moved. Neither would Llewelyn. He would have Eleanor de Montfort or he would have none.

  "Amen!" he said again, very softly. "Father, pray that prayer for me in this place now and again, and how can I fail?"

  We went out hushed and thoughtful from the church, and the rain had ceased, and a watery sun peered feebly through the mist and cloud over the valley. In rapt silence we rode back half the distance we had to go, and only then did he say suddenly, in a voice low and diffident and hopeful: "Samson, I have had a sign from heaven, have I not? A son, he called me!"

  "So he did," I said, "and held by it. And blessed your intent in Earl Simon's name and in God's name. And surely such old, good men, drawing to their end after a holy life, cannot lie."

  "It must and shall come to pass," he said, and he was speaking to the dead we had left behind us as surely as to me. "A son to him I shall be, though not by blood. I shall be his son when I exchange the marriage vows with Eleanor, and take her home to Wales. God willing, his grandsons shall be princes."

  CHAPTER II

  It was August of the following year before Edward got his crusaders and their stores aboard his ships, and finally set sail to meet King Louis in the east. He should have joined him and sailed with him from Aigues Mortes, but the dispute with Gloucester and other matters delayed his departure, and he followed more than a month behind the French king's fleet. They never did meet again in this world. When Edward reached the crusader camp at Carthage in November, King Louis was more than two months dead. Not in battle, but of the terrible plague that swept through his army in Tunis, killing in swathes, and lopping off the head and the heart of that great enterprise. The king died only a few days after Edward sailed from Dover. Men remember him as a great and good man, and so I think he tried to be, yet I cannot think of him but with the memory of his judgment at Amiens bitter in my mind, and often I think how much of the anger and grief and violence of the world lies at the door of good men, and how much injustice and wrong they do in their certainty of good intent. Howbeit, he is long dead, and no doubt there is judgment for kings and popes as surely as for poor men, and a judgment not of this world, but with unweighted scales.

  As for Earl Gilbert of Gloucester, he fought off all arguments and pleas, and evaded setting out with the rest on this crusade, and Edward sailed without him, and in great anger against him, but in the belief that he had him securely bound to follow with his own force somewhat later. Gilbert, on the other hand, breathed more freely once Edward was on the high seas, and had no intention of quitting his building of his new castle to go hunting Saracens or mamluks in the east. So Llewelyn's vexatious problem of how long to be tolerant and trust to arbi
tration to hold him, and when to lose patience and take action for want of law, remained acute during that summer. It was galling to be held up as Gilbert's excuse for not being able to quit his border honour, when we had done nothing to accost him, and he did much to affront us. On the other hand, Llewelyn did not wish to be, or even to seem to be, the first to resort to arms, whatever the provocation. So we still held back and waited.

  It was barely two weeks after the Lord Edward had left England with his companions that we had an official visitor from King Henry, bearing royal letters, which in courtesy were delivered to Llewelyn in advance of the envoy's arrival, for he came well attended, and was of such importance that the court of Wales would naturally desire to have word of his coming, and be ready to do him honour. The king wrote recalling that by the terms of the peace between England and Wales the crown had retained one, and only one, Welsh homage, that of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg of Dryslwyn, at Meredith's urgent wish, but with the provision that should it ever please the king to cede that homage, also, to Llewelyn, the prince should pay for it the price of five thousand marks. His son Edward, said the king, had often pleaded with him to grant the said homage to Llewelyn, according to the prince's earnest wish, and at Edward's request his brother Edmund, to whom the homage had been given, was willing to cede it again in Llewelyn's favour. The king had therefore yielded to his son's entreaty, and was ready to grant Meredith's fealty to the prince of Wales, if Llewelyn would pay the promised five thousand marks at once, and to Edward, not to the crown, for the king wished the money to be a subsidy for the crusade. And because of the importance of the matter, King Henry was sending Robert Buraell, the lord Edward's most trusted confidential clerk and adviser, to explain in person whatever needed to be explained further. So confident was he not only of acceptance, but of getting the money in full on demand, that he sent with Burnell the necessary charters for the exchange, his own grant of the homage, the Lord Edward's concurrence, and the Lord Edmund's willing cession of the fealty heretofore granted to him, all these to be handed over as soon as the money changed hands.

  "So Edward has stood my friend," said Llewelyn, elated and encouraged at this news. "He would not have argued for me if he had still entertained any doubts of my good faith." And I knew that he was seeing this move as one more sign that he might proceed with his design of pursuing the match with Eleanor de Montfort, without fear that her mother's doubts and reservations need be taken seriously. If Edward had no hesitation in trusting and working with the prince, the countess must realise that there was no longer any need for her to stand in the way of the marriage.

  David, who happened to be in attendance by reason of council matters when the letter arrived, curled his lip at his brother's innocence. "Edward has stood Edward's friend, as usual," he said bluntly. "He is to have the money for his crusading expense, is he not? He—not Edmund, who surrenders Meredith ap Rhys Gryg to you. He got his twentieth from all free men, or he got at least part of it, and what's yet to come will go into his hands, too, but it's not nearly enough for his needs. He's over head and ears in debt now, when he's barely got his men out of England, and he'll be living on his creditors for years after he comes home. Edward's warm friendship for you is of recent growth, and serves a very useful purpose. Where else could he lay hands on five thousand marks on demand, and get a blessing with it? Oh, take what's offered, by all means, if you want the old bear, and be glad of it—but not grateful! You are paying handsomely for your purchase."

  "I am paying what I undertook to pay, and getting what I have always wanted," said Llewelyn, not at all moved by David's sour wisdom. "If he has no cause for complaint, neither have I, each of us is getting what he wants, it's a fair exchange. But I do not believe this is only self-interest on Edward's part. It is not the first instance he has shown me of his goodwill. I would rather deal with him on the borders than with any other of the king's men. He has a better understanding, and longer patience."

  "So he has," said David readily, but with the same dry tone and disdainful halfsmile, "and both in the service of his own interests, and no others. Take what he offers, if it suits you, but have the wit to realise that you owe him nothing, for it would not be offered if he was not getting full value for it after his own fashion."

  Said Llewelyn, amused and tolerant, but with some chill disapproval, too: "You have had no cause to sharpen your tongue on him, to my recall. I thought you had great liking for him. There have been times when you have so indicated."

  David's dark and beautiful face did not change, but by the sudden light flush that stained his high cheekbones I knew the mild sting had gone home. It was not so long since David had forsaken Llewelyn in time of war to join Edward, though God knows his motives may not have been near so simple as Llewelyn or any of us supposed. But he said only: "So I have great liking for him. Too great for my good, perhaps. But not because I see him as big in the soul as in the body. He is a man, faulty like other men, and the more dangerous because born to so much power, and so largely gifted. I take him as he is. And you had better do the same, and enjoy what part of him you can."

  "You have had better opportunity to study him than I," Llewelyn owned generously, open-minded but unconvinced, "but my experience is all I can use. Yours is yours, and there's no borrowing. And now there'll be no more studying him for a while; he's bound for the Holy Land, and for my part I wish him good use of my five thousand marks, for he shall have them, and I'll take back my old bear of Dryslwyn."

  "You were a fool else," said David. "I never said there was anything wrong with the bargain. But see it as a bargain, for so it is."

  So it was done, with no pretence or reluctance on either side, and the fealty and homage of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, the old lord of Dryslwyn, the only Welsh prince then out of Llewelyn's jurisdiction, was restored to him.

  The consultations that accompanied the transfer were brief and businesslike indeed, since the exchange suited all parties, except, perhaps, the over-persuaded and overdevoted Edmund of Lancaster. And what I chiefly remember of them is the person of this same confidential clerk, Robert Burnell, already of formidable reputation, and to be ever greater thereafter. He arrived without great ceremony, attended well but not ostentatiously. I noted his seat and manner in the saddle before he alighted, for he rode like a merchant or a farmer, that is to say, as one who rides on his own errands, and not to be seen and admired by others, and therefore must ride well, sensibly and durably, to last out long days and hard ways, rather than to dazzle other men and wear out mounts. He had no affectations, but lighted down unaided, himself handed over his bridle to the groom, and eyed the way it was handled, even so, until he was content. So I saw, before ever I truly looked at the man and made note of his stature and visage, that here was one who had mind and eye and heart for every detail, and was not interested in the flowers of his office, however interested he might be—and he was, shrewdly!—in its fruits.

  He was above the middle height, and straight as a fir tree. His dark gowns were always of the finest cloth, never of the showiest cut. He was, I suppose, of much the same age as Llewelyn and myself, though I never enquired. If I am right, he was then around forty-one years of age, ten years older than his lord and friend, Edward. He had been in that prince's household since it was formed, when Edward was fifteen years old and being prepared for his marriage to the princess of Castille, and therefore fitted out with an appanage suitable to a married prince and heir to a throne. Burnell was from a small border family of no great importance until he graced it. His abilities were his appanage, and equipped him well enough to found a house and an honour, if he had not been a priest. As it was, there were great horizons open to him in another sphere.

  "Old Boniface is dead," David said to me, coming into my copying-room from the hall, that first evening, flushed and restless with wine, but not drunk. There was a core in him then, I dread of brotherly bitterness, that would not let him get drunk, his wits so raged against surrendering their edge. "We lack an
archbishop of Canterbury, and Edward has made his mind known. Did you not hear of it? Before he took his legions out of England he made a rush to Canterbury, to tell the monks what heavy responsibility they bear, having the election of the high priest in their hands. It was hearing of the old man's death in Savoy that sent him there, with a candidate ready chosen. He told them plainly he wanted Burnell. What could suit him better? Burnell is his man, heart and soul. That's why he's left here, ready and waiting, instead of sailing with the crusaders, as he intended. We shall see, we shall see, what the monks of Canterbury think of Edward's nominee."

  It seemed to me then that the chapter of Canterbury would hardly be likely to flout the wishes of the Lord Edward, but it had to be remembered also that he was now out of the country, and likely to be preoccupied with other high matters for some time to come, so that they had not to confront him face to face if they chose to ignore his orders. Nor was he yet king, at least not in name. In all else I must say his was the ruling will in England, and King Henry was content to have it so, finding his giant son a shield and comfort rather than a tyrant.