It was early in August that we got what we wanted, and in the early evening made our attack. Llewelyn had sent a company of archers ahead along the half-made road to make a feint at attacking the workmen there, and draw the guards to defend them, and by this means though at some loss, for they never relaxed their watchfulness altogether, we did break through them and get across the road close to Flint, and drove down upon the palisades in strength. We had bowmen placed in cover as near as we dared, who loosed fire-arrows before us into the camp, and there was a good blaze within and a stir of wild activity before we reached the walls.
That fight was short and very fierce, and there were men killed on both sides, but they had such numbers that we never broke through to the ships. Surely we left much damage behind us when we withdrew, but not as great as we had hoped, for the traitor wind dropped with the gathering evening, instead of freshening as we had expected, and the blaze merely opened a large gap in the outer defences, and destroyed some supplies within. But what I chiefly remember of the clash is David marshalling the guard as they mounted in haste to meet and break our charge.
He was but lightly armed, and his face uncovered, and I saw him before he had discovered Llewelyn, and realised who led the attack. David's movements in action were always as sharp and cutting as lightning-stroke, but cold, if a kind of keen happiness can exist hand in hand with coldness. He was a born fighter, and could scent battle like a hound, but it was informed delight, not passion, that dictated what he did in battle. So he began this defence, very briskly and practically deploying his men and holding station with his line as they rode at us. Then he saw his brother. His face so changed, it might have been another man. Every line of his fine bones sharpened and burned deadly white, and the blue of his eyes dilated into a steely blaze, and from keeping his purposeful pace he suddenly spurred forth from the line, wrenching out his sword, leaned forward in the saddle and drove at the prince like a madman. So I had seen him do once before, very long before, on the field of Bryn Derwin, the field of his first treason. Now, as then, I saw in his blanched face and desperate eyes a terrible anguish of hate and love, and the more terrible hope of an end to it. Towards that end he drove with all his might, and he might have achieved it, if the young Llewelyn ap Rhys Fychan, his nephew, had not deliberately wheeled in between them, with a defiant scream of anger, and confronted David with the younger, purer mirror-image of his own face, spitting generous rage.
I think he could have killed the boy very easily, and perhaps would have done, almost without thinking, but for that likeness between them, as if God had flung the fresh, sweet remembrance of his own youth in his face. He let his sword-arm fall, and checked so violently that his horse reared and swerved aside. And then his own ranks had overtaken his rush, and the two lines clashed and intermingled in a close, confined melee, in which the brothers were swept apart.
Twice thereafter, in the press, I caught glimpses of David's ice-pale face, straining towards Llewelyn, but the other Llewelyn kept always jealously close at his uncle's flank, and in any case, that fight was nearly over. Something we had done, as yet at little loss. But if we did not draw off soon our losses would be great, for the camp was pouring out against us great numbers of reserves, and all surprise was over. Llewelyn signalled the withdrawal, and we massed and drew off in good order, gaining enough ground to wheel and storm across the road at speed, and so gain the shelter of the trees, where the advantage was ours. We put a mile or more between us and the borders of the Flint before we checked, but they did not pursue us into cover. They never did. Edward's will had decreed it, and they did his will with a confidence we could not but admire.
We left the stockade burning, but alas, it did not burn long. We also left a number of dead behind us, and took several wounded away, including the boy Llewelyn, who had a long gash in his forearm, of which he was proud, for he was exalted with the air of battle, and still enraged for his adored uncle.
"I hate traitors!" he said, quivering still when we bound him up in camp, and made him comfortable.
"So do we all, child," said the prince sombrely, "though not so sorely, perhaps, as they hate themselves. You had no call to fling this body of yours in between, very prettily as you did it, and much as I'm beholden to you for the thought. I could have satisfied him."
And he praised and teased and soothed the excited young man into charmed quietness, and left him with the one brother he still acknowledged.
"We are beset by brothers, every one of us," he said, when he came out to me by the campfire in our clearing, in the onset of the August night. "It is the whole story of Wales, this blessing and curse of brotherhood, the spring of loyalty, of jealousy, of murder, of all the heroisms and the villainies of our history." And he lay down on his belly in the rough grass, and gnawed on a spray of sorrel, with its hot, spicy taste, and pondered long on what we had both seen. "In God's name," he said, "what is it he wants? To kill, or to be killed?"
I said: "Either. He wants an end, it hardly matters which. He wants to offer you the chance you would not take at Bryn Derwin, or else to make an end of you, and so cut the knot that binds him. But he cannot do it, and you will not. I doubt his end is ordained otherwise."
"And mine?" said Llewelyn, and smiled.
We never managed to destroy the base camp at Flint. They spent three weeks and more making it into a fortress. Edward came back from his pious labours at Vale Royal in mid-August, and by then the second part of his military road was extended well forward, for here the forest was less thick, and in parts they had only to fell and clear scattered trees, to open the field of fire for their defending archers. As soon as Edward came, the main army moved on. By the twentieth day of August it had reached Rhuddlan, from which our garrison withdrew into the hills, for Rhuddlan is among marshes on the right bank of the Clwyd, not far inland from the coast, a place tenable, perhaps, by an encroaching army moving in from the low land, but not by us who had to rely on the mountains for our heart-fortress. We did not forsake it gladly, for it covers two advances, one along the coast to Conway, one inland up the Clwyd towards Ruthin and Denbigh. But the dry season, not for the first time in our history, had laid it open to direct assault, instead of being inviolable behind marsh after marsh, and the truth is, we could not hold it.
We made Edward pay a high price both in men and money to get there. But we could not keep him out of it.
For the feudal host had been but the beginning of Edward's resources. By this time in August he had paid reinforcements coming in, in such numbers as we had never known, we reckoned nearly sixteen thousand foot at this time, and probably three hundred lances. Where he got the money to pay such numbers, and how deep he sank into debt, I cannot guess, but we cost him a great sum, that I know. The number of the crossbow quarrels that his arbalestiers loosed on us was beyond our reckoning, and must alone have cost a fortune.
Meantime, we also had a few strange reinforcements, deserters from Edward's army, a handful of foot soldiers and archers, but far more of his labourers on the roads. They grew weary of such hard work and peril of their lives, and fled into the woods, where we gathered and questioned them. Some wanted only to slip away and go home, being pressed men, some were Welsh, and desired to change sides, and we took them in gladly. God knows there were enough Welsh by that time shamelessly in Edward's pay. Welsh friendlies, the English called them. We had another name for them.
Still the military road unrolled mile by mile through the forest ahead of Edward's main host, while Reginald de Grey commanded the base camp at Flint, and a second such strong garrison was established at Rhuddlan, thus protecting the king's rear and his supply lines. The detail that most surely opened our eyes to the gravity of our situation at that point was that the ships began to bring stone and other building materials as soon as the wooden fortifications were secure enough, and the workmen within the camp-sites began to dig foundations, both at Flint and Rhuddlan. This we beheld with deep disquiet. Neither the wide, cleared fores
t road nor this determined building accorded with our past experiences.
"This I do not like at all," said Llewelyn. "He would not go to so much trouble and expense if he meant to use these bases only for a season and then withdraw from them. Surely he cannot mean to man them through the winter? I do not believe he has the money or the supplies to feed two such garrisons and fight a winter war."
A campaign continued through the winter was something we had never had to contend with before, for with long lines of communication and many mouths to feed it was impracticable in the mountains. But given two strong bases open to the sea, and a fleet of ships well able to cope with coastwise sailing even in wintry conditions, it began to look like a daunting possibility.
"Certainly," said the prince, gnawing his lip over the threat, "he seems to have plans for staying, even if he breaks off the fighting till the spring. No man cuts such a road or ships such loads of stone but to make a permanent stay." And that meant this time we might be hard put to it to regain any part of what we had yielded. Either we must storm their camps and utterly destroy them, a terrible undertaking, or else they would hold what they had gained, and renew the advance when season and weather made it possible.
There was no sign of any slackening in their pressure on us, the road rolled on towards the Conway, clearly the king's objective, and moved with terrible speed. Nine days it took them to move their advanced base from Rhuddlan to Degannwy, and short of hurling ourselves at them in pitched battle there was nothing we could do to prevent. We could and did make them pay heavily in men and supplies for every mile, but we could not stop the march of that road. All we could do was fall back before it, and withdraw beyond the Conway, on the granite heart of our land.
From Aberconway we could not so easily be shifted, having the great heights of Penmaenmawr at our backs, and all the complexities of Snowdon close at hand to shelter and hide us at need. So things stood at the end of August, Edward on the eastern side of the estuary, we on the western, and the ebb and flow of the tides between. But Edward had his ships, far too formidable for our smaller boats to tackle, and who has the mastery of the sea can cut off mainland from island, and draw a tight noose about such a prize as Anglesey.
It may be that we should have foreseen it, but even if we had I doubt if we could have prevented, for we had no such fleet to move an army across the strait, nor dared we detach half our force, and so weaken the garrison of our beleaguered Snowdonia. But Edward had the numbers, even though he had dismissed many of the Welsh levies at this time, and kept a smaller army to feed, but all of picked men, both the cavalry and the foot, and notably all the expert archers. At the beginning of September, very shortly after he reached Degannwy, he shipped a strong division across to the island, where the corn harvest was still standing. Fighting there must have been, but the companies we had there could not withstand such an army. On the heels of this invasion force Edward shipped also a large number of scythemen and reapers, and gathered our harvest, the chief grain supply of all north Wales, for the use of his own men. Those two weeks of September were the most desolate blow he dealt us, and the most irresistible. When the news reached us, we knew our case was desperate.
Llewelyn called a council in the mountains above Aber. We looked down from our crags to that best-loved court, and across Lavan sands to the island we had lost. A sombre gathering that was. There were some among his captains who were all for fighting to the end, but more who were not afraid to say what they saw, and what they saw, if we pushed this to the last, was the loss of all.
"At least we are not come to that yet," said Tudor. "But for Anglesey we hold all Gwynedd west of Conway, as we always did, and I cannot believe that Edward, however determined he may be, looks forward with any very high stomach to assaulting this eagles' nest in winter. It is possible it may suit him as well as us to talk terms for another ending."
"It is true," said Griffith ap Rhys Fychan, the elder of the two nephews, though with a very reluctant face. "The lord prince still has enough bargaining power to be worth listening to. And the autumn begins to close in."
His brother showed by the wryness of his face how bitter the thought of suing for terms was to him, but to do him justice, he kept his eyes fixed upon his uncle's face, and bit back whatever his passionate heart might have longed to say.
Llewelyn said with deliberation: "We have contended on the wrong terms, yet I do not see what else we could have done. The one time when we might have upset the king's plans was at the beginning, by a total stroke against him before he could get his armies and his workmen into movement. But then we could not foresee so strange a war. No one has ever proceeded against Wales in this fashion. He has planned a march not merely to reach Degannwy, but to make a way which can be maintained and used again and again, and he has refused to be drawn into the hills and the forests after us, where we might have the advantage. He has left garrisons at all his bases, and patrols on the roads between, to ensure his lines, and he has taken our winter supplies from us, and added them to his own. And we had best realise that he has done more than snatch our granary from us in taking Anglesey. His next step, if we force him to continue, will be to put a fresh army ashore from Anglesey across the strait, and take us in a tightening cord from the west, and to send reinforcements up the Clwyd from Rhuddlan, and draw the noose about Snowdon from the east. But gradually and methodically as he does everything, because he may find it more practical to starve us out than attempt us by storm. I begin to see that it could be done. I would not have believed the day would come when one man could turn Snowdon into a single great castle under siege, to be starved into surrender."
That was stark talking, and the more shocking because he weighed these considerations without rage, and without shutting his eyes to a single aspect of the grim truth. They looked at one another bleakly, and in their turn weighed his words.
"It comes to this," he said, no less calmly. "If we fight on, we may cost him very dear to take, but if he proceeds as heretofore, my judgment is that he can take us, and he will. If we ask for terms, we can stand fast on keeping everything we now hold, and what we still hold is the heart and source from which everything else has been won. And may be won again, some day, when time favours us, and we have learned how to make better use of our wits and our resources. It is not a matter of abject surrender. We know we are not come to that, and be sure Edward knows it every bit as well. If I am wide awake to our situation, so is he to his. I do not think he wants to drag this warfare on into the winter. I do think he may be very glad if we offer him the chance to avoid that labour and pain. And I think it may be wise to do so, for if we force him, he will certainly strike back, and strike hard. I begin to know him."
I heard then in his voice, harsh and grim as it was, the note of something beyond knowledge. He liked what he knew. This is truth, that those two were on their best terms of respect and regard when they were at each other's throats in honourable battle. I would swear that those worse suspicions they had cherished, each of the other, had died and been burned to ash in the fire of that summer war. Neither of them any longer believed that the other had coldly planned murder or treason. They were two strong creatures who had crashed forehead to forehead like rams or rutting deer, and could not by their very natures yield ground once the horns were locked. There was a huge respect in their enmity that neither of them had been able to appreciate while they angled and argued, but only when they clashed in thunder.
"If we are to ask for truce and talk terms," said Tudor with certainty, "it must be at once, while we are still whole, and before he can even suppose that we are weakened by loss of the harvest. If the worst befalls, and we can get no honourable terms, we shall have lost nothing and committed ourselves to nothing, and gained time for the winter to close in on him as well as on us. We can still fight to the death if we must."
"True," said Llewelyn, "but I will not even enter into negotiations but in good faith." And when he had heard all that they had to say, he
said: "I will give myself this one night. Tomorrow I shall have decided."
He took horse and rode out that night alone over the uplands of Moel Wnion, looking over the sea, and I went after him, unseen, to the rim of the camp and beyond, and sat on a hillock in the bleached autumn grass and watched him from far off. He walked the horse gently, riding slack and easy, in solitary thought, alone with the lofty rocks and immense skies of his Gwynedd, which he stood to keep or lose, according as he played this game aright. A bitter choice it was he had to make, but one many a good man had had to make before him, in conditions even more galling and grievous, though this was sorrow enough. I think the few scudding clouds above the sea spoke with him, and the wheeling falcons that hovered like black stars against the sunset, and the folds of the uplands under their long, seeding grasses, the colour of the stubble Edward's reapers had left on Anglesey. For if the south had crumbled and fallen away from him, and the marches shattered as soon as English hands tore at them, this pure rock of Gwynedd remained, and was still inviolate. It never yet had belonged to any but its own princes. And when it came to the last allegiance, Llewelyn was not only prince of Wales, but prince of Gwynedd, too, and prince of Gwynedd first, and if all else deserted him, Gwynedd would not, and he must not desert or imperil Gwynedd. So I think his decision was made before ever he came trotting gently home again into camp. He was never one to cast the load of choice, where it hung so heavy and hard to bear, upon other men.
The Brothers of Gwynedd Page 94