Llewelyn set the pace, and well for us we had hardly done more than walk our horses on the way, while the company pursuing us may well have ridden further than we, certainly if they came from Radnor. But there was no way of knowing, for they wore no distinguishing livery, and the man I had killed bore no badge. For some time we rode hard and kept to the track to increase our lead, but we knew they were no great way behind, though blessedly out of sight, when Llewelyn struck off to the left, hoping to make a circle in cover and come out upon the road again as soon as we dared. But they had spread out their forces, some to the right of the track, some to the left, the main body keeping to the open where speed was possible. We heard them crashing between the trees at no distance behind, and had the choice of turning again and running ahead of them, or continuing our course at dangerous speed and hoping to cross them undetected and draw clear. Llewelyn chose the former, rightly, for we should surely have run into the arms of the most widely deployed of them. We ran again, weaving and gained on them, and turned left again, and so gradually bore round across their flank by stages, as the hare runs, until in deep forest we were suddenly aware how the sounds of them were passing us by. Then Llewelyn reined in, and I beside him, and we sat like stone until we were sure. We had drawn clear by so short a distance, their out-stretched arms had almost brushed us as they passed. The clash and clamour of the hunt drew away, keeping its forward course. And we turned and bore left again, until we found a foot-track that eased our going, and must lead us back, certainly not to the road above the Wye, but by a much greater circle to reach our camp from the west.
"They meant no killing," said Llewelyn, now that we could draw breath and talk again, "or they would have had bowmen and used them. No, I was to be taken alive. Edward would be glad of such a triumph." And he asked: "Whose men were they? Did you see any trace?"
But they could have been any from among the ranks of our enemies, there was no way of knowing.
"I do not believe," he said firmly, "that my young cousins had any hand in this. It is not Mortimer fighting. What if the messenger at Aberedw wore Edmund's badge? It need not have been Edmund who sent him. Far more likely to be Giffard or Lestrange. Both have Mortimer troops with them. Both are in Edward's confidence, and not above using underhand ways to do his will and get his gratitude."
As to this, I doubt if the truth will ever be known. It was a foul trick, and its dirt has clung to the name of Mortimer in the popular tale, but considering how Edmund showed later, I, too, doubt if the guilt was his. It may not even belong to Lestrange or Giffard or any of the king's captains, but to some ingenious regional officer of his who saw how the Mortimer dudgeon might be exploited to betray the prince and end the war. Of only one thing do I feel certain, that Edward knew of it and had sanctioned it. I do not believe any man of his would have dared, without
that assurance of approval.
"Well, so may all treacheries fail," said Llewelyn, and shook the ugliness of it from his shoulders, and pressed ahead, for we had lost the middle part of the day, and had many more miles to go than by the way we had come.
Nevertheless, he thought no further evil, nor did I, until we broke out of the forest into fields we recognised, and were back within a mile or two of our camp. The short day was drawing down into murk and mist an hour or more ahead of twilight, and out of the river valley drifting clouds of vapour coiled. And then, clear of the muffling trees, we heard in the distance the muffled echoes of voices bellowing and horses screaming, and the clash of weapons and stamping of flight and pursuit, fitful and far and terrible, the noises of battle, and battle already as good as lost and won.
He uttered a great cry of grief and understanding and loss, knowing at last for what purposes, besides his own capture, he had been lured away. "Oh, God!" he said. "They are here among us! But how have they crossed? They cannot have stormed the bridge. Oh, God, what have I done?" And he set spurs to his horse and rode headlong for those places, invisible in the murk of distance, where the lamentable sounds cried out for him. And I after him as hard as I could go, but even so he drew ahead of me, and for the coils of mist, that shifted and spun, sometimes I saw him clear, and sometimes he showed as a wraith of mist himself, and sometimes was lost.
So we came into those fields below the camp, and in the snow about us there were men lying scattered here and there, huddles of raes hardly swelling the drifts where they lay, and blood spattered along the soiled whiteness, and now and again a horse heaving and crying, or a broken lance. And still before us, but receding, the clamour of fighting, shrill and bitter with despair. Towards that he rode, seeing but twenty yards or so before him clear at any time, wild to get back to his own and live or die with them.
They had come at us two ways, for the sounds encircled the place where the camp had been, closing in both from the river valley and from the heights beyond. And in great force, or so we judged as best we could, for we came too late to serve or save. All we knew was that they had swept all this slope from Orewin bridge clear of life, and only the dead and the wounded and the stragglers remained, scattered round us in the soiled and bloody snow. Even the clash of arms receded before us, mocking his desperate pursuit.
Men, living men, rose out of the mist ahead of us, English lancers prowling the slopes after the main army had passed on, killing and looting. Three of them there were, bent over a tumbled body, when Llewelyn burst upon them hardly even aware when these puny creatures started up between him and his broken army. Two of them sprang clear and ran in terror before the galloping horse. The third, caught on his knees, half-rose too late, and then dropped again, according to his training, and braced his lance in the blood-stained earth, and leaned his body on to it to hold it fast. He closed his eyes and his mind, and made himself all dogged weight, seeing no other escape.
Llewelyn had not even drawn his sword, there was no mail upon him, he was naked to death as men come naked to life. He rode full upon the embedded lance, taking it under the breast-bone. It seemed to me that he sprang erect and stood in his stirrups, tall as the heavens, and the terrified horse raced on from under him, and he was left impaled, upright and motionless in the air a long moment, and then crashed like a great and splendid tree to earth, his fall shaking it so that all that hillside shuddered and shrank at the shock. The lance-head, that had passed clean through him and stood out a foot and more behind his shoulders, snapped off short in flying splinters as he fell. He lay on his back in deep snow, his arms cast wide on either side his body, and the lance shaft erect from under his breast. And the lancer who had pierced him scuttled on all fours away from the impact, and picked himself up and ran headlong after his fellows, seeing me burst out of the murk and bear down upon him.
I over-rode him by some yards before I could draw rein and fall, rather than climb, out of the saddle. I let my bridle go, and dropped into the snow beside Llewelyn. All the sounds of fighting dwindled away and were lost, and that slope from the river was narrowed into a little place of cold and quiet and loss. It was so still I could hear the Irfon bubbling along its bed below us, between the piled stones and under the melting floes.
He lay with his hands braced deep through the snow beside him, his fingers digging down to clutch at the bereaved and bloodied soil of Wales. Blood welled slowly round the haft of the lance with every breath he drew, and the shaft quivered and leaned to the same measure, counting his remaining moments in labour and pain. His face was like a bronze mask, fixed and motionless, with open, anguished eyes. When I leaned close to be seen, and laid fearful hands upon him, his lips moved, saying: "Samson? I have spent what you saved for me…I am sorry!" And frantic tears sprang. "Oh, God, I have failed!" he said in a whisper. "Now you save!"
I felt about his body, and knew, as he knew, that he had his death-wound. Even for the breaking of the lance I thanked God, that he was not impaled in air, in indignity and worse agony, but lay like a king on his death-bed, though his pillows were the drifts of snow, thawed and again frozen into gr
eat cushions of white. I shrugged my cloak off me and wrapped it over him as well as I could for the jutting shaft, and all the time I wept like a madman who does not know he weeps. The blood spread gradually like a great, dark rose under him, in no haste, but there was life in him yet, and still he had a voice, soft, feeling and tranquil.
He said: "Samson…" and after a long gathering of his darkened powers: "I need you! Don't fail me now, you who never failed me." And then he waited, his eyes fixed upon the sky that leaned in heavy dusk over him. "A priest," he said. "Find me a priest. I have got my death, get me my peace with God." And again, after long silence, faint as a sigh: "I cannot go to her in my sins!"
I was loth to go even a pace away from him, all the more with those scavengers already prowling the field and despoiling the dead, but his wish was my law. Priests, like crows, come where battle has been, not to batten on the bodies but to salvage the souls. Where is there greater need of them? All our own people were scattered far, those who still lived, gone to ground in the deep forests until they could gather and form some ordered company once more. But from Builth there was free passage now across the Irfon, and Builth was not far, and here about this desolate hillside there must be English as well as Welsh at the point of most dire need, and they would not be left to die unshriven. Therefore I made a cast down towards the bridge, as close as I could without losing sight of my lord, and saw a small picket of four men keeping the crossing, stamping their chilled feet and pacing to keep their blood moving, and passing in, now and again, a handful of foot soldiers, or a mounted man. And at last what I waited for, a robed priest, distressed and in haste, with a little serving boy at his heels carrying cross and paten.
I let him get some way up the slope, away from the guards, before I stepped in his path and entreated him to come with me, where a man was dying. And he came, unquestioning. A young man he was, earnest and sad, and he said that he was in the service of the Lady Maud, and sent at her instance. When I brought him to the prince he knelt in the snow beside him, and looked long into the upturned face, and marvelled, though he said no word then but to do his office. He stooped low to take confession from Llewelyn's lips, for the prince's voice, though clear, was faint as a breath. I kneeled beside and covered my face. There is no man, not the best, is not better for unburdening his heart even of those matters no other would take for sins. And he was going to another and perpetual bridal, who had been unable to approach the first without first cleansing from his spirit the last shadow and the last bitterness.
But when he had ended and made his act of contrition, and the priest would have pronounced absolution, clearly and loud Llewelyn said: "No, that you cannot. I do not ask it. I am excommunicate." And at that the young man started up in wonder and dismay, and drew me a little aside to question.
"This man by his clothing is Welsh. He is unarmed, what was he doing here in battle without mail, to come by such a death? And excommunicate? All I can do for him I will do, and pray rest to his soul, for with God it makes no difference of what race he comes, or for what cause he fought. But to him it may, and to me, and to others. I must know, who is he?"
And I told him, for soon all men would know it, it would be cried from end to end of England with triumphant joy, and carried throughout Wales in terrible lamentation. "He is Llewelyn ap Griffith, prince of Wales. Let your lady know of it, for she is his cousin, and give her his thanks for this last grace."
"God sort all!" said the chaplain, awe-stricken. "She shall know it, and she shall be the first to know it from me." And he went back to pray with the prince, and courteously begged his forgiveness that he might not give to him the sacrament he carried to others. Yet he blessed him to God before he left us and went to all those other sad duties that waited for him. And then we two were left alone.
Llewelyn's eyes were closed, and from the effort of speech a few flecks of blood dewed his lips. I watched the great rose of blood, in the heart of which he lay, spread its wine-red petals and melt the snow until the soiled green of grass showed through. I took his hand between mine, that he might be assured, who could, as I thought, no longer see me, that I was still beside him. But at that touch he opened his eyes, and they were bright and fierce, and he gripped my hand hard.
"Samson!" he said, and I leaned down to hear. "You can do better for me than grieve," he said, reading my face. "There is still a prince of Wales. Go to my brother, Samson. Be to him as you have been to me. It is not yet over, because I am out of
the fight."
"As long as you live," I said, "I will never leave you."
"Yes," he said, "you will. I bid you, and you cannot refuse me. When did I ever ask anything of you in vain? Now I want three things of you, on your allegiance. No, on your love! The first…Her picture is round my neck. Let me have it in my hand!"
In terror of aggravating his pain, I raised his head enough to lift clear the medallion of the child Eleanor, and laid it in his right hand, closing the fingers over it. In all that bleak expanse of cold and darkness, this one small thing was warm from the great, failing fire of his heart.
"And the second and third are my last commission to you, and then I thank God for you, and take my leave. Pull out the lance—"
I cried aloud that I neither could nor would, for that was his death, and the end of a world for me.
"Dear fool Samson," he said softly, "I am a dead man already. I grow weary of this waiting. Pull out the lance, and go to David!"
He was my lord, and I did his bidding. First I kneeled and kissed him on the brow, and then I laid hold on the shaft of the lance, and dragged it out of his body, streaming tears like heavy rain. He was lifted from the ground with it, like a man starting up from sleep, but even then he never uttered cry or moan. Then the shaft came away, and his body fell back and lay still upon crimson, and crimson came boiling out of his riven breast and covered him royally, and still it seemed to me that he smiled.
They say he was still breathing, and lived some few minutes more, when Lestrange's men found him and knew him at last. If so, they must have come very soon after I left him. I let fall the broken shaft out of my hand, and turned and went stumbling and groping up the slope towards the forest, fleeing that field of Orewin bridge as once I fled the field of Evesham, and leaving, as then, a great piece of my own being dead beside the body of a man I loved and revered above all others. And I cried silently to God in the darkness of my spirit and the darkness of the night, as I had cried for Earl Simon, that in this world there was no justice, but the best were calumniated and betrayed and brought to nought, as God himself was when he ventured among the sons of men.
CHAPTER XI
Concerning Orewin bridge and what followed, I tell now, to make all plain, those things I learned only long afterwards, by laborious gleaning from many sources, for I could not rest until I knew to the last what had befallen even the poor body of my lord. To this day I do not know who sent the letter that drew him away from his army, but I do know it was written as part of the plan of attack that trapped the Welsh forces into pitched battle at last. For the English had found a local man who knew a secret and safe fording-place upstream from the bridge, and sheltered from view, and on the appointed day, aided by the drifting mist, they put a strong company across the Irfon there and took the outpost at the bridge from the rear, and killed every man. Then they brought all their force across by both routes, and sent one company of cavalry and men-at-arms by a great circuit to the rear of the Welsh position, and only when they had taken station, launched their frontal attack at speed up the slope. They had many archers, who held by the stirrup-leathers of the troopers and ran with them, and as they came within range, dropped aside and began to shoot at will. Without the prince, the Welsh fought savagely and well, but in disorder, being surrounded and greatly outnumbered. In the end they broke, and each man sought his own escape. Had Llewelyn been there, I do not believe it could ever have happened so. He could both plan, and work by instinct when plans fell apart. But he
was not there. He came too late to save, only in time to die.
As for the forces that took part in that battle, certainly all Giffard's troops from Builth were there, and both the Mortimer brothers with their followings, and part of the Montgomery garrison, though I could never hear that Lestrange himself was present. In the evening certain of his men, as he reported to Edward, found and knew the body of the prince, some said they were there before he died. In the pouch he wore inside the belt of his chausses they found the letter that betrayed him, and his privy seal, and in his hand the little enamelled portrait of his wife, the gift of Earl Simon. These Edmund Mortimer took into his keeping. By the very fact that Edmund preserved the letter, and was not ashamed to show it, to notify the archbishop and have it copied for him, I am sure that he was not guilty of uttering it, and of that I am glad. There are also other proofs speaking for him.
It was not to be hoped that those enemies who came upon the prince at his death should respect his body, more than Earl Simon's body was respected after Evesham. Some man of Giffard's or Lestrange's struck off the head, and Lestrange sent it to Edward at Rhuddlan for his comfort and reassurance, and thence it was sent to be displayed at the Tower of London, the brow wreathed in ivy as a mocking crown. For a brow that could no longer bleed or feel pain, ivy served as well as thorns.
The Brothers of Gwynedd Page 132