The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  The house where David's family was lodged was towards the further end of the alley, its upper windows looking over the Long Ditch where it flows down into the Thames. It had a garden and a courtyard, and its own stable, and when I drew near it I heard the voices of children shrilling in the yard, and my heart leaped, for if they were there, loosed out to play in the winter sunshine, then Cristin would be there, too, watching over them.

  I could not forbear, I pushed open the narrow wicket in the yard-gate, and stepped through. Two little girls and a sturdy round boy were tossing a ball to one another round the courtyard, and a third girl-child, perhaps just turned two years old, was staggering in reckless runs between them to catch vainly at the flying toy as it soared well above her head. And on a stone bench against the stable wall Cristin sat wrapped in a blue cloak, holding in her lap the last-comer, still a month or two short of a year, a bright brown boy, with thick hair the colour of bracken, and large, bold, fearless eyes that lit on me as hers did, by that secret magic she had, the instant I passed the wicket, as though both she and the child had been waiting only for me.

  Her hair, still raven-black and smooth, was down in a long braid over her shoulder, and her head was uncovered, for the hood of her blue cloak had slipped back and lay in folds at the nape of her neck. With her clear white face, oval and pure as pearl, framed in that deep blue, and the little boy thrusting his strong feet against her knees and raising himself in the circle of her arm, she brought to mind all the fairest paintings in manuscripts or stained glass of the mother of God holding her child, and she had in her eyes all the foreshowing and foreknowledge of sorrow beyond the brief experience of joy. But there was none of that sick despair and grievous loneliness I had seen in her at Windsor, only a white and stoic calm, and a resigned, unquenchable gentleness. She looked like one who has touched hands with death, and on the very threshold felt the hand disengage, and has turned back without complaint or question to take what pleasure she may in the living, and in quietness, and abandoning all self-seeking, finds there more pleasure than she thought for.

  I stood unmoving to gaze at her, for she was beautiful as never before, finer drawn in every line, her lips, that smiled at sight of me, had regained their long, firm shaping, the white, arched lids of her eyes were smooth and clear. Thinner and older she was, worn away to pure spirit by that nine-months penance and the birth-death that ended it, but she was my Cristin in all her gallantry and force, unbroken.

  She saw me look from her to the child on her knee, and her smile deepened. There was no shadow in her eyes and no constraint in her voice, as she said: "Not mine! Only borrowed."

  "David told me," I said, "in Rhuddlan." I could not say that I was sorry. Now that I saw her healed I could not be sorry, my heart in me was crying out defiant joy. "Is this one David's?" I asked her.

  "He is." She knew already what was in my mind, and why I so stared at him. Beholding those big, fearless eyes, darker than peat water in the mountains but full of the sun, and that rich brown colouring, if only my lord's proxy marriage in Montargis had been a marriage completed I should never have thought to ask whose boy this was. He harked back three generations to his great-grandsire.

  "This face he had from birth," said Cristin, "and this colouring. And the name his father has given him," she said, "is Llewelyn."

  I sat with her on the yard bench in the fair winter day, watching the children play, we two together like well-blessed parents taking pleasure in our young, we who had nothing but our love, and that doomed never to bear fruit in this world, or never earthly fruit. I told all that had befallen me since she came to bring me word of deliverance in Windsor, and begged me to leave her for her sake. And she told me of how it was in Chester, with David active in war and frantic always to be of every party that ventured an advanced guard, or planned a perilous raid, all the more if it would take him face to face with his brother in arms, and how he took always a high and arrogant line with the king's officers, and would have a prince's rights among them, yielding to none but Edward himself. And how no word was ever spoken between them concerning what he had done and what he had tried to do, but never anything Edward could offer, no concession in taking all his men into royal pay, no promise of dominance in Wales after victory, no permission to retain what booty he took, nothing ever was enough for him, so high did he set the price of his treason. And that I understood, for the world was not enough to repay it. Only his death or Llewelyn's could have satisfied him, and they both lived on. And still there was not room in the world for both, never short of a miracle, to cast them back once for all into each other's arms.

  Thus we talked of those two brothers, and of the prodigies of creation and destruction they had wrought between them. We sat, as it were, in the shell of a noble castle not utterly ruined, but slighted by a passing enemy, with years of labour to be spent on it before ever it could be defensible again. But so have many castles been, time after time on the same site, and yet risen again, and again become seats of majesty.

  But not one word did she say of her suffering, and her miscarriage, not one word of Godred. Of him we never spoke in the old days, but since Windsor I was afraid for her, and I needed to know.

  "You have told me nothing," I said, "about yourself."

  "What should I say of myself?" said Cristin gently. "You see me, you touch me, I am here beside you. There is nothing you need to know of me that you do not know."

  "There is," I said. "I need to know that you are safe from harm. That he no longer persecutes you."

  "I am free from him here," said Cristin, measuring out words with care. "He is at the Tower with David's officers and troopers. I have not seen him for nine days and more. But you need have no fear for me. There'll be no more such births and deaths, even when we are under the same roof again. Since I lost him his son he pesters me no more. If he comes to my bed at all, he lies far off from me. He holds it against me that the child died. He will always hold it against me."

  "He may try to harm you, then, in some other way," I said, tormented, "if he has turned so against you."

  "No," she said, "you need not fear it. He speaks to me as he would to a servant keeping his house, civilly but coldly. He shows no anger and no hatred, he never touches me. I have peace from him. Since his son died, I also am dead for him, being useless. I shall never conceive again."

  Her voice was low and meditative and tranquil, and her face serene and plaintive. My heart ached for her, because of the little ones still tossing their ball about the yard, and the baby boy half-asleep and crooning merrily to himself in her arm. But her heart was at rest.

  "Never grieve for me," she said. "I do not grieve. I have what I prayed for. If it was a sin to pray for such a dark deliverance, I have sinned, and I will pay for it. But if ever I did Godred any wrong, it was in some way I could not help, not with my will, and it is not for me to apportion penance, only to bear it. It would have been a worse sin to bring his son into the world, when he wanted it only as the instrument of evil, against you, against me, against the innocent who is dead. True, he came to think of it with love before the end, and surely he would have loved it as well as he can love, but I think his love is a heavier curse than his hate. And now I am free of both, and so is the child."

  I said, trembling at this calm that passed so far beyond intensity: "It sounds but a drear world for you. I wish to God I had the means to fill it with brightness and joy."

  "So you do!" said Cristin, her voice burning into sweet, warm passion, and she turned fully to me, with her great eyes glowing purple as irises under the high white brow, and laid her hand over mine. "So you do, and will lifelong, from the night I first met you in the snow to the day of my death. Oh, I have other joys," she said, smiling. "I have children, even if I must borrow them. I have friends. But above all I have this, that I love you and you love me, beyond change, and safe, utterly safe, from any betrayal. I would not change with any woman on earth."

  I folded both my hands about h
ers and held it, and it was warm and firm and steady. And I said to her all those things we had never said to each other but once, when we made our compact, and it was such strange bliss to get the words out of my heart and string them like pearls for her to wear.

  As I reckoned the time of day afterwards, about this same hour that I sat clasping the hand of my love, so did Llewelyn at Windsor first see the face and touch the hand of Eleanor de Montfort.

  We were still sitting thus, hand in hand, when the yard gate was flung open, and David rode in, flushed and vivid on a grey horse. The children heard, and dropped their ball to run and meet him, and the elder boy, approaching four years old then, reached up fearlessly to his father's stirrup. David leaned down and took the boy under the armpits, and hoisted him to the saddle before him, and walked the horse gently into the stable with the three little girls clamouring after him. When he came out to cross to the house he had a girl by either hand, and the six-year-old Margaret trotting at his heels, but the boy had stayed to see the horse rubbed down and groomed. With all these blossoming creatures clinging about him, and himself glowing with exercise, David was like a fine tree bearing at the same time flowers and fruit.

  He said a word in the ear of the eldest girl, and put the hands of both her sisters in hers, and sent them dancing before him into the house, and then he turned and came to us.

  "My conscience and my confessor with their heads together!" he said. "I tremble for the fate of my poor soul." And smiling, he stooped and held out his arms for his younger son, and the boy crowed and went to him eagerly from Cristin's lap. "Come away in with him, Cristin," said David. "You'll take cold sitting here so long, and I dare say Samson will condescend to accept a place by my fire and a seat at my table, now we've all made peace. Without prejudice to your loyalties," he said to me, and filled a careless fist with my hair before he clapped me on the shoulder and walked away into the house, dancing his delighted son on his arm.

  So we arose and followed them in, David who had plotted Llewelyn's death, and the boy who bore Llewelyn's face, and at David's wish had been given Llewelyn's name.

  "Who is evil?" said Cristin, watching them. "Who is good? It is too hard for me. All I can do is love where love is drawn from me. That cannot be wrong."

  So all that day I stayed with my dear, and it was the most I had ever had of her since our first journey together. But before I went back to await the prince's return, David prayed me to come and speak with him privately. He asked me of Llewelyn, for since he avoided a direct meeting he was in want of reliable news, and he was right in saying that there was no placing any trust in the rumours of the court. I told him of the visit to Windsor, and of our cautious hopes that this was an indication of some unbending on Edward's part.

  "I had heard of it," said David, frowning and gnawing his lip. "He was in two minds about it, so it seems. Some days ago he was bent on holding her in reserve, in case my brother needed a touch of the whip. Now he's graciously bringing them together. Well, it's another way of using his weapons."

  I said truthfully that though the king had taken good care of his own interests, and exacted what he could out of the peace, yet he had not been ungenerous, and Llewelyn well understood that he was still being tested, took Edward's suspicions and precautions with good grace, and appreciated his magnanimity in showing so much favour.

  At that word David's smile turned very sour. "Edward's favour is never magnanimity. For God's sake get that into my brother's head if you can. He spends favours to get his own ends, and he expects value for all. If he has graciously led Llewelyn to his wife, it means he has decided to take them over, both, to move them where he wants them, as he moves his other dolls, to place them under an unescapable obligation to him for life. Others give to give, Edward gives to get. It is a new kind of villeinage. Warn my brother so!"

  I protested at this that the king had never attached any conditions to those concessions he had made previously, and none were attached to this.

  "They are understood," said David grimly. "By Edward at least, and they had better be understood by all those he takes under his wing. If he does not get value for his money he will take it, and with interest. It is better not to be in his favour. But if a man must, let him learn to fend for himself, and see to it that he sells nothing of himself in the process. Take what's given, by all means—since he makes no conditions, force him to stand to that. But never think he'll be outbargained easily. It is Edward who makes the rules. We break them at our peril."

  "And you?" I said, for this was a man deep in Edward's debt now speaking, at least in the world's eyes and Edward's.

  He smiled at me without resentment, though somewhat sombrely. "I have not broken the rules—yet! If ever I do, it will be at my peril. All I have done as yet is to make my own rules in return, and stick to them. If he lavishes favours on me, I put up my price still higher. If he bestows a rich bride on me, and thinks to own the pair of us, we join hands and form a league of our own. He has bought neither of us. He has not enough resources to afford us."

  "Neither could he ever come near the price of Llewelyn or Eleanor," I said with certainty. "They are neither of them for sale. When they give, it is a gift, not a price. They expect the same dealing from him."

  "You know that, I know that," said David readily, "but Edward does not know it. By all means keep them in innocence and him in delusion, but watch over them, Samson." He saw how I looked at him, and flinched, and as suddenly laughed, rising to herd me to the door with an arm about my shoulders. "For God's sake go back where you belong. I do not know if I threaten your peace, but God knows you are perilous to mine. Go see as deep into Edward as you do into me, and Llewelyn may be safe, if there's any safety."

  At the doorway Cristin was waiting, and for her sake he relinquished me, clapped me loudly on the cheek by way of farewell, and left us together. We went without a word said. At the gate I took her hand and kissed it. "God go with you, and God bring you back," she said, and with that blessing I went from her.

  Llewelyn came home with the onset of dark, but went away again to the king's table, and I had no speech with him then. His face was bright but distant, like the face of a man who has seen the Sangrail of all legend, though he moved and spoke as briskly as ever, and went to the royal board as in duty bound. I thought then of all David had said, and wondered how true it was that in Edward's mind every motion of hospitality, every cup filled at that board, every gesture of friendliness, was scored as a debt, a link in a chain binding a slave.

  To a Welshman the guest is holy, all that is in the house is his, he must not be questioned or prompted, when he leaves is his own concern. Blood feud, as of right, follows any violation of the sacred relationship. The home is not a spider's web, spinning gummy threads to bind and confine, but a hearth and a board open to guests and God.

  When he came back from the meal in hall it was late, but he asked me to attend him for a while before he slept. It was the hour when we talked together most freely, and I think he wanted with all his heart then to talk of her, but he was so full of her that his wonder and gratitude and joy found no words fitting, and his voice would cease in the middle of speaking, and his mind go away from me silently, back to the chamber in Windsor castle, and the woman rising to come to meet him.

  "I have lost and won," he said. "By God's goodness I see my gain outweigh my loss. Oh Samson, I only half-believe this grace is meant for me."

  He told, though haltingly, how the king brought him in to her, and when they were formally made known to each other, left them together. It might be true that Edward, having decided to permit the marriage, had also decided to take possession of it and make it his own festival, but it was not true that he used no discretion or consideration in so arranging matters. I said nothing to the prince of what David had said to me, for mention of the very name would have darkened the brightness of that healing evening. I resolved rather to watch how this thing developed, and speak out only if I must.

 
"He will not be in any haste to give her to me," said Llewelyn, wryly smiling. "I know I must prove my good faith, he takes no man's on trust. But now I am sure that in the end all will be well. No, all is well now! I have seen her, I have looked into her eyes, and seen Earl Simon's eyes looking through them, the same nobility, the same truth, and accepting me as generously as he did. She was glad, Samson! It was with her as it was with me. Now I have seen her look at me as sometimes I have seen Cristin look at you, and beyond that no man can go. Such a spirit, and in a vessel of so much beauty!"

  Then in his rapture of humility and exaltation, so moved by his joy in her that he felt a saint's tenderness towards all things living, he bethought him of what he had said, and caught impulsively at my hand, reproaching himself for having so little regard for the deprivation I suffered, when he was promised such blessedness.

  "God knows," he said, "I wish I could share with you, whose waiting has been longer even than mine, the happiness that is held out to me. If I could lay Cristin's hand in yours, by any means in my power, I would do it. I am learning how much the happy owe their fellows."

  "You need not grieve for me," I said. "We were born in the same night and under the same sky. All the while that you have been with Eleanor at Windsor, I have been with Cristin. I have seen her, and held her hand in mine. In the same hour! Our stars have not betrayed us."