The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  Item: All lands which had been occupied during the war because their lords had defected to the king were to be restored to them.

  Item: The king gave over freely to Llewelyn all the lands David owned by hereditary right in Gwynedd, and would compensate David with equal lands elsewhere. But on the death of David or Llewelyn those lands were to revert to the crown. This, I think, was less at David's plea than at Edward's discretion, for he felt it easier and more prudent to keep those two brothers apart, and the simplest way was to remove David's interests and holdings completely from Gwynedd. Though in fact he was less wise when it came to allotting the lands concerned, for he gave him the two inland cantrefs of the Middle Country, and thus placed this divided creature, torn in two between England and Wales, in the marches between the two, where the dissension within could most desperately rend him.

  Item: The king granted to the prince the whole of Anglesey, which was to be handed back to him by the royal army then in possession. Nominally he was to pay an annual rent for the island of a thousand marks, payable at Michaelmas, but this, again, was remitted. The clause was put in to assert formally the king's acquired right there.

  Item: The holders of land in the Middle Country, and the other territories formerly Llewelyn's and now taken over by the king, were to continue undisturbed in their possessions, and enjoy their liberties and customs as before, except for any among them who were regarded by Edward as malefactors, and refused such grace.

  Item: Any legal contentions arising between the prince and any other person were to be determined and decided according to marcher law if they arose in the marches, and by Welsh law if they arose in Wales. So simple-sounding a clause ought not to give rise to complications and entanglements, but indeed matters of law and land are never simple, and here in these few lines endless troubles lay waiting to be hatched.

  Item: Such lords as happened to hold lands both in those portions held by the king and those remaining with Llewelyn should do homage for the first to the king, for the second to the prince.

  Item: The king confirmed to Llewelyn all the lands which the prince then held, without prejudice or threat, and to his heirs after him, except for Anglesey, which was confirmed to Llewelyn for life and afterwards only to the heirs of his body, no others.

  Then followed the guarantees to ensure the keeping of the treaty. The prince was to hand over as hostages for his good faith ten of his noblemen, who would be honourably treated and need fear no penalties. The king promised an early release of these hostages if all went well, and he kept his word. Further, in every cantref held by the prince, twenty good men were to be guarantors annually of his good faith, and withdraw their fealty from him if he defaulted.

  No question but this was a grievous constriction upon the prince's greatness, and bound him hand and foot to his dependence henceforth upon Edward, yet it still left him prince of Wales, not shorn of his right and title, not holding his land from Edward, but only, as before, under the power of the king of England. Had David been set up in his place, he would have held his lands directly from the king, and been a prince only by Edward's courtesy. Llewelyn was prince by right, and acknowledged right, that held good on both sides the borders. And though the terms and the safeguards were iron-hard, and meant to be, yet there was in all Edward's conduct of this submission a kind of harsh, unbending tenderness that spared to hurt or abase while he made all fast.

  "I am back where I began," said Llewelyn, facing the truth stonily. "Well, I was

  not ashamed to be prince of half Gwynedd-beyond-Conway once, and now I am prince of the whole of it, and why should I be ashamed?"

  For him there was no repining. He set himself to fill the place he had accepted open-eyed, and to maintain it, and for all his losses it was still a place any earl of England would have envied him.

  Immediately on the sealing of the treaty he set to work to execute all the necessary deeds to put all its clauses into effect, and on the day of the ratification, the tenth day of November, Llewelyn rode in state to Rhuddlan to meet the king and take the oath of fealty. The king's plenipotentiaries, Robert Tybetot and Anthony Bek, with others of the king's council and the bishop of St. Asaph, escorted him to within three miles of Rhuddlan, and there he was met by Edward's chancellor, that same Robert Burnell who had once brought the prince the homage of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg at Edward's request, and now came with all ceremony and honour to lead a prince to a king, rather than a vanquished man to the victor. With him came the earl of Lincoln, Henry de Lacy, who was as close a friend to the king as was Tybetot. And this noble escort was to be in attendance on the guest in Rhuddlan, and accompany him safely back to his own country afterwards.

  Resolute and practical as he was, I knew well that not even Llewelyn could swallow so bitter a draught as this treaty without pain. To have half his lands hacked away from him, to lose all but five of his vassal princes and all his present hope for the Wales of his vision, was to be lopped of half his heart and drained of half his blood. The hurt of this coming ordeal might have been terrible indeed, had Edward been in a mood for vengeance. Instead, nothing could have been done that he did not do, to make it endurable. Whatever happened afterwards, whatever he did to others, I remember the Edward of that day with gratitude, for he was tender of Llewelyn's face as of his own, and paid him all the honour and deference due to an equal. Set it to the balance of his account in the judgment. To the end of my life I shall always be in more than one mind about Edward.

  The king's hall at Rhuddlan was a great structure of timber then, but the stone foundations of his new castle were already in, and the walls beginning to rise. Edward's knights were gathered to welcome the prince's party, squires came to hold his stirrup and take his bridle. The earl of Lincoln and Bishop Burnell—for he was bishop of Bath and Wells as well as chancellor—ushered Llewelyn into the hall and into Edward's presence, and the glitter of that military court, spare and deprived of the grace of women, made a fitting setting for the meeting of those two men. War was the business that had brought them together, war lost and won, and soldiers know the fickleness of victory and defeat, and the narrowness of the gap between them. A man does not mock what may be his own fate tomorrow, or a year hence, at least, no wise man.

  The king was seated in state, with his officers about him, when Llewelyn entered the hall. Edward was in rich, dark colours as always, very properly and carefully royal, and wearing a thin gold coronet, and at all points prepared to dominate, if not to daunt. His heavy-featured face, never given to smiling, remained aloof and stern throughout. Yet when Llewelyn advanced up the hall to him with his long, straight stride, weathered and brown and sombre, Edward suddenly rose from his seat and came to meet him those few paces that counted as a golden gift in my eyes, and astonished the prince into smiling. They stood a charmed moment face to face, quite still, each of them held. Edward was the taller by a head, but so he was among all those who surrounded and served him. And it disquieted Llewelyn not a whit that he must tilt back his head to look up at him, any more than it awes a noble child, who must do as much for the meanest grown man.

  "The lord prince is very welcome to our court," said Edward, and gave him his hand, and Llewelyn bent the knee to him briefly, and kissed the hand. "I hope this day," said Edward, "instead of an ending, may be counted as a new beginning between us."

  "That is my intent," said Llewelyn. "I have accepted these dues, and I shall pay them. The proof shall not be in words, but the first earnest well may."

  In due form before that assembled court he rehearsed the oath of fealty, in a loud, clear voice, and with wide-open, deep eyes upon Edward's face. And after that they sat down together, and went forward with the business of the day with due ceremony but briskly. There the king formally remitted the great fine, and the annual rent for Anglesey in perpetuity, and Llewelyn was left to pay only the residue of the old debt under the treaty of Montgomery, the money he had been withholding as a means of getting his grievances set right. Edward p
romised release for the hostages within half a year, which showed that he was relieved and reassured thus far in his meeting with his defeated enemy. And Llewelyn, seeing that the king, whatever his successes and prospects, was direly in need of ready money, paid two thousand marks of the money due from him on the spot, to the keeper of the royal wardrobe.

  In such mutual considerations and such a strange but true accord did this halfdreaded meeting pass. Those two had met several times in old days, at conferences on the border, but briefly and upon precise business, and since Edward became king they had never met at all, and that was a strange metamorphosis, creating a new Edward. Now they came face to face, sat elbow to elbow at the board, and the enemies they had hated and confronted at distance were only illusions and dreams. At Rhuddlan they were new-born, each to the other. The business of the treaty, though heavy and grave and blotting out everything else until it was done, seemed but the veil that waited to be withdrawn from between them.

  Afterwards they feasted the prince, and he was set at Edward's right hand at the high table, and they came to the open, easy talk of host and guest together. From my place lower in the hall I watched them, and marvelled, and yet did not marvel, for the world is full of exaltations and basements, but men are men, and each is the man he is, and neither height nor depth changes the soul of a steadfast man. And what they said to each other I never knew, but for some few utterances that carried in a quietness.

  "I never yet got a fair fall from a better lance," said Llewelyn clearly, "that I was not able to rise up, bruises and all, and give him credit for his skill. I might curse my own ill-judgment, but I should never grudge him his glory."

  The king turned to look at him with close attention, reserved of feature still, but with no droop to that tell-tale eyelid of his. And though I missed whatever he replied, it seemed to me that this forthright declaration gave him both satisfaction and thought.

  I was seated at one of the side-tables, no great distance from them, but withdrawn into shadow near the curtained passage by which the squires and servers went in and out. I had not heard anyone enter and halt at my back, until a low voice said in my ear: "If you are thinking, Samson, that his Grace the king could say as much, put it out of your head. He never took a fall from any man but it poisoned his life until he had paid it back with a vengeance."

  I knew who was there, before I turned my head to see David leaning at my shoulder, with the small, devilish smile on his lips, and the hungry, mocking blue brightness in his eyes. He had a cloak slung on his shoulder, with a fine shimmer of rain upon it.

  I said drily that the king had looked his approval, and should know his own mind.

  "He does approve," said David. "He approves such chivalrous usage in every other man breathing, but it does not apply to Edward. Others may fall, and rise again without malice and without disgrace. Edward must not be felled, ever. Bear it in mind for my brother's sake. The price would be too high for paying."

  He drew up a stool at my elbow and leaned in the old familiar way upon my shoulder, and smiled to see me search his face in mortal doubt and distrust. "And never think it was Edward who had the delicacy to find me duties to keep me out of sight at this feast. No, that was my doing. Doubtless we shall have to meet, before my brother goes back to Aberconway, but for tonight at least I can spare him the sight of me." He said it as one quite without shame, merely making sensible dispositions to avoid embarrassment on either part. "Well, we are both losers, are we not? He is back within the palisade of his mountains, and I am exiled."

  "Self-exiled," I said, "and to a fat barony."

  "Ah, but it was not a barony I wanted for my son! It was a kingdom. Will you teach me, Samson, how to take a fair fall as ungrudgingly as he does it?"

  I said he had no choice but to be content, and resign himself to a lesser estate. And once begun I said much more, how it was he who had made this war, how he was his brother's curse and demon, undoing all that Llewelyn did, unmaking wantonly the Wales that Llewelyn had made, bringing down all that splendour into the dust, so that the work was all to do again, if not by Llewelyn by his son or his son's son, when an honourable way opened. For now the prince was bound by his word and faith, and the dues he had acknowledged he would pay in full. Very softly I said it, so that no other ear should hear, and truly there was nothing to be gained now by anger or denunciation. And he leaned upon my shoulder and listened to all without resentment or defence, and though I could not bear to look at him then, I felt that all that time he was watching Llewelyn, and with what passion there was no guessing, but the ache of it was fierce and deep, and passed from his flesh into mine through the hand laid about my neck.

  "Sweet my confessor," he said, when I had done, in that soft voice that was music even in its malice, "never labour to find me a penance extreme enough to pay all my score. I have already done that. A kingdom is not all I have lost!" And in a moment he said, lower yet: "Do you hate me?"

  "No," I said, despairing. "I would, but it is not in my power. As often as I come near to it, I meet you again, and though all is changed, nothing is changed."

  "Does he?" said David.

  "God knows! He believes he does."

  "It would be something," said David ruefully, "even to be hated as is my due." He gathered his cloak over his shoulder with a sigh, and drew back his stool, rising to return to his watch, or whatever duty it was he had appropriated to himself. "I must be about my work. It was only to see you that I came."

  I knew better than that. It was to look at Llewelyn from afar, himself unseen, and to steel his heart before the ordeal of meeting face to face. Nor could I let him go like this, for my heart also had its needs. I caught at his arm and held him, before he could leave me. I said in entreaty: "But one word more! For God's sake give me some news of Cristin! How is it with her now—with her and the child?" The word so stuck in my throat, it was no more than a croak, but it reached him. He was still in my grasp, eye to eye with me, shaken out of all pretences.

  "The child!" he said, his lips forming the word without sound. "Oh, Samson, I had forgotten," he said with sharp compunction, "how much you must have seen in Windsor—and how little news of her can have reached you since…"

  "It must be a year old by now," I said, labouring against the leaden weight on my heart. "Is she well? Was it hard for her?"

  "Cristin is well," said David, with the swift, warm kindness I remembered in him from long ago, when he brought me the news of my mother's death, as now he sprang to ward off any dread of another death as dear. "Safe and well with my wife in Chester, you need not fear for her. Neither Elizabeth nor I will ever willingly let harm come to her. But the child.…She miscarried, Samson. The child was born dead."

  CHAPTER XI

  There was enough to be done, in that last month of the year, to keep us all from fretting over losses and deprivations. Llewelyn had a great deal of business with the royal officers concerning the release of both Welsh and English prisoners, the handing over of Anglesey, and other such matters, as well as the necessary adjustment of his own administration to his new and straitened boundaries and circumstances. There was no time for repining, for at Edward's invitation—he might have made it an order, and it was understood to have the force of one, but he used the more gracious term—the prince was to make his state visit to spend Christmas with the court at Westminster, and there perform his homage to Edward with all due ceremony, and before that visit it was expedient that he should be rid of his prisoners, have the matter of Owen Goch settled, and be ready to make a fresh start.

  As for me, I had at least the peace David had granted me. I knew that Cristin was alive and well, and by a strange grief and a stranger grace delivered from her incubus, and that no guilt lay upon her, for the fault was not hers, only the peril and the suffering. And in London, God willing, I might see her and speak with her again. Of Godred I thought not at all, for there was no profit in it. I dreaded to think of him still pursuing her with his hatred, and trying t
o get her with child yet again, since this one poor imp had escaped him. I feared to consider the possibility that even Godred suffered, and could love a child of his own body, even one got for devilish purposes. In remembrance of my half-brother there was no comfort and no rest, nothing to benefit him or me, much less Cristin. My comfort was that she was dear to David, and David's loyalty, where it existed, was immutable. His own brother was not safe with David, but Cristin was safe. So I gave my mind and heart to helping Llewelyn in all that he had to do, to satisfy the terms of the treaty.

  "At least," he said, when he had sent for Owen Goch to be delivered out of Dolbadarn, "perhaps I shall get peace from all my brothers now. David is a baron of England, and what small adjustments need to be made to him for the land rights he's quitting in Gwynedd can be made and sealed by the king, and let him quarrel with that arbitrator if he dare. The matter of Rhodri's quitclaim and its price is in Edward's hands, too, and Rhodri has a wealthy wife in England, and employment in the queen-mother's service, where he's surely more use than ever he was to me or to Edward in war. Now let's lean on Edward for help with Owen! Why not? I shall have some good out of the evil, after all. It is not I who must confront Owen with the choice before him."