Joy we had none then, in any relief or any mitigation, yet there was an aching thankfulness in me when I took my safe-conduct on the appointed day, and waited for Cristin and Alice to come out to join me. And only Cristin came.
She was thin, pale and quiet, with huge, dark-rimmed eyes that devoured half her face, but in their depths there was still the purple flame that kindled when we two came together. We stood a long moment simply looking at each other, after long severance and silence.
"Alice has found a household to take her in," she said, answering the first unasked question. "She is English, and some of Hereford's Bohun kinsmen have offered her service. There is no one but me."
So for us two it was like, and dolorously unlike, that first journey we made together, for we rode, as then, home to Gwynedd, to a royal seat, but now the home was ravaged, the princes dead, the mountains defiled, the land ravished. Yet we two rode together, and there was an anguished, elegiac sweetness in that. I asked her, as we mounted, what she had failed to answer without being questioned: "What has he done with the children, that he has taken them from you?" And I longed for her to say that Edward had given them back, the girls at least, surely the little ones, to their mother. But Cristin's eyes filled with tears, and she was slow in answering, for the strangling pain that closed her throat.
"He has sent them by some of the queen's women," she said at last, "to be brought up in the Sempringham convents. Not even together! They are scattered, they will grow up solitary, not even knowing their sisters. The twins will die of it."
But David's stock and Elizabeth's did not die easily, they were strong and splendid and sunlit. For such there is no escape into the grave.
"Gwenllian, too?" I asked.
"Gwenllian, too. She is gone to Sempringham in her cradle. They will none of them ever get out," said Cristin with bitter certainty. "He will see to it that none of his magnates ever look upon such beauty, to want them in marriage. They will be nuns before they are of age, and no choice offered them. Do you think he will ever let David's daughters, or Llewelyn's, bear children?"
I thought of all those bright beings, so apt for future courtship and love, shut up through long lives of silent rebellion, only to die in captivity at the end of it, and I thought that perhaps after all David had done well to die, even so barbarously. And I was sorriest of all for Elizabeth, who had possessed all possible joy and fulfilment for a time, and been robbed of all, and was barely twenty-six years old, with a life before her totally empty, a life I am sure she did not want. God knows what Edward has done or will do with her. I have not heard of her again. Yet she spoke her mind to her persecutor, and vaunted her love like a blow in his face, and for that I shall always love her, and always be glad.
Having the king's safe-conduct, we made no haste, and had no troubles on the way. Four days we rode leisurely together, my love and I, and there was no third with us, neither friend nor foe, and our tongues were loosened, and talked freely of all that had been, in a strange autumnal world all hush and afterglow, for October was soft, mellow and sad. We spoke also of Godred, a thing we had never done, for he was prisoner still, and we felt for him only pity and sorrow, for he was caught in this immense grief as we were, and with less means of surviving it. I told her how I had left him, not ill but in sorry enough condition. And she told me what David had not known, or he might have told me long before.
"I did not tell you," she said, "how I came to lose the child. Nor of the life he led me then, slavering over me, showing me off to the world, he who had never wanted a child for its own sake, but only as a weapon to strike at you and me. If he could have pretended the child was yours, he would have done it, while exulting that it was his. But he could not, it was conceived long after we were in England, and you were left behind in Wales. I suppose he began to value it, after his fashion, but mostly as a blow at you, and time and again he trailed your name before me, this way and that, tormenting me, until I was sick from containing the love I felt for you, and the loathing he gave me for what he had implanted in my womb."
"That is not true," I said. "You could not feel loathing for any hapless child, however conceived. I know you, and I know."
"That was my penance," she said, "if I could not help loving while I loathed. But in the end he went too far in his misuse of you, gloating that you were far away and left like a fool childless for your virtuous pains. And I turned on him, and went down to his level in my rage, and asked him how he knew, in his wisdom, that there were not other men even in England I might prefer to him, and men capable of getting a child. And he struck me," she said, remembering without hatred or regret, "a great blow with his fist, here in my breast. I was standing at the head of the steps going down from a gallery, and I fell all that flight, rolling and clutching and missing my hold. They picked me up in labour, and within two hours I miscarried. It was the only time he ever struck me, and he killed his son."
That was his judgment. And she had told no one how she came to fall, not even Elizabeth.
"Why speak of it?" she said, turning upon me her wan and grieving smile. "It was done and past. He blamed me, and in some measure I was to blame. He suffered, too. And I was free of him, for he troubled me no more. And now there's nothing left but pity and sorrow, now he is lost in this misery like the rest of us. How can I hate him now? And when he creeps home, how can I desert him if he needs me?"
"No," I said, resigned, "I see you cannot. Nor can I do him any injury. He held out to the end with the rest of us, I have shared his prison, and left him still buried alive now I am free. His rights are as safe with you and me as if he rode here between us."
"I shall be still his dutiful wife," she said implacably, "if that is what he needs for healing and help. There is nothing else I can do. It does not touch, it never did, it never will, the love I bear to you."
"So be it," I said. "But God has given us this respite in the time of our most need, a harvest to keep us alive through the winter to come, and it would be ungrateful not to use it."
And use it we did, in such ways as were allowed to us, living out together in shared tenderness and devotion all the love that had no other means of living, like a soul without a body. For those few days, at least, there was no need to contain the words for which we hungered and thirsted. I said to her all the things I had ever wanted to say, I touched her, went hand in hand with her, and at night, where we lodged, I sat with her late over the fire, and kissed her without sin when we parted. And we were middle-aged, stubborn, abstinent in the face of great longing, she forty-seven years old, I well past fifty, and love was as painful and wonderful as ever it had been in youth, more painful, more wonderful, by reason of that long, fasting loyalty, a love more intimate than passion and infinitely larger than lust.
We came to Aber towards the end of October. It was like a household of ghosts, from old habit learned in life still moving about tasks that no longer had meaning, a headless household, bereft of lord, and lady, and family. Cristin was lady-in-waiting to none, nurse to none, and I clerk to none, and bereaved of my friend. All we did was simply wait to know Edward's mind for us, and to receive Edward's seneschal and officers. The very hall rang emptily to our tread. The sea moaned along Lavan sands, and I noticed as never before how the crying of the seagulls over the shallows was more than wild and sad, desperate in defiance, like the shrieking of beings driven mad with grief.
Late in November the two knights and five troopers of David's bodyguard came home from their captivity, wretched, gaunt, half-starved, bearing the marks of their chains. Godred wept when he came into Cristin's presence, and went like a heartbroken child into her arms. Over his shoulder I saw her face, blanched and steadfast and without hope, her great eyes clinging to me as he clung to her, just as I had seen it in Dolwyddelan long before, when I brought her lost husband back to her, and watched the light of her face go out as he embraced her. And even as then, I turned and went away blindly, and left them together.
It was the secon
d night after the guards came home that I awoke suddenly after midnight, and she was standing beside my bed, white, mute and strange. I started up and reached to take her hand, in terror that something evil had happened to her, that he, perhaps a little demented from his hardships, had done her some cruel harm. She was cold and stiff, but her hand gripped mine hard, and before I could do more than whisper her name in alarm and dismay, she laid her free palm over my mouth to hush me.
"Let me in to you," she said, low and fiercely, "this once let me in! Take me into your bed! No, say no word!" she pleaded, gripping my cheeks with finger-tips icy-cold. "I entreat you, if you love me, ask me nothing, nothing, only take me in to you at last!"
She shook so, and was so strange, I could not believe she knew what she did, so to tempt me against all that she and I had understood and agreed long since. I held her, and drew her down to sit beside me, and asked her wildly: "What is it? What has he done to you?"
"Nothing," she said, and her white face smiled, but terribly, "to me, nothing! No one has touched or harmed me. I know what I am doing! I am not mad, I forget nothing. Ask no more questions, only trust me and take me into your bed. This once take me!"
I understood nothing, except that she was frantic like a bird trapped in a narrow room, and crying to me for rescue, and even at this pass I could not believe anything she did was without reason and virtue. And I am as much a man as any other man, and what she begged of me was what I most starved for, so that only then did I know fully the magnitude of my hunger. Confounded between anguish and joy, I flung back the covers and drew her in beside me, and at the passion of her embrace I embraced her again with all my heart and soul, and was lost and drowned in agonising bliss. Dismay and wonder I forgot, there was nothing left in the world but the desperation and discovery of our coupling, and the delight of feeling her grow warm and supple and young in my arms, and the mutual, measureless tenderness of her caresses and mine, and our two breaths mingling in silken endearments and fathomless sighs. We loved like frenzied creatures, as though not only for the first, but also the last and only time. And when we were exhausted, we fell asleep in each other's arms.
When I awoke the first light was already turning from grey to pallid gold, and she was gone.
I rose hastily and did on my clothes, for the memory of her passion made me fear for her, and still I did not know what had happened to bring her to my bed. I went to the room where her own bed was, where Godred had joined her on his return, but the door stood half-open, and there was no one within. The brychan was tumbled, as though someone had lain there, and Godred's frayed and tattered leather jerkin lay tossed on the floor beside it. I saw that the stitching of one seam gaped, and a needle with waxed thread was stabbed into it, as though Cristin in resignation and compassion had taken up the coat to mend it, after he was asleep. Godred had drunk deep in his misery, as did so many of us then, and might well have slept while she was still wakeful.
I do not know why this should have disquieted me, but so it did, for surely Cristin had dropped this jerkin where it lay when she came in stark demand and desperate hunger to where I was sleeping. But what there could be in a half-mended coat to turn her away from all former resolves was dark to me, nor could I guess where she was gone now, or Godred either. I went back very uneasily to my own chamber, and looked about for any trace that she had ever been there, and beneath the pillow where her head had lain was a linen wimple which I knew belonged to her, folded small about some coiled object that slid and unfolded heavily within the cloth, I shook it out upon the bed, and stood staring uncomprehendingly at a broad collar of links of gold, twisted and fitted together like leaves, fine work and known to me. There were not two such. I had seen it about David's throat when the English came and seized us all in the cavern beyond the bog. I had seen it last when with his chained hands he unfastened it from about his neck and handed it to the hangman's apprentice at the foot of the ladder.
There was no other hand could have placed this thing under my pillow but Cristin's hand. There was no other place she could have found it, but hidden inside the padding of the leather jacket she had been mending, Godred's jacket. This was what sent her half-mad to my bed, and this she had left for me to decipher after she was gone. Having found it, how could she remain one moment with the man who had provided the goods for which this was payment? But neither could she speak out his eternal shame, only in this way, silently, after she was gone. Who but the betrayer is rewarded with the adornments of the betrayed?
Only for a moment, half-stunned as I was, did I reason stupidly that Godred had been taken with the rest of us, even wounded, though it was but a scratch, that he had rotted in prison beside me, been held like the rest of the troopers when I was released. So he had, and how better bargain to escape all suspicion? His confinement had been no more than tedious, doubtless after I was removed he fared reasonably well, but it was expedient that he should await his dismissal in meek submission like the rest of the household, for his protection. He was sure of his pay. Small chance the executioner's boy had ever had of keeping that princely largesse, it was already promised.
There was no other way this could have been. But now where was Cristin? Where was Godred? She left him sleeping there, snoring, perhaps, but not so drunk but that he awoke after she departed, to find the bed unpressed beside him, no Cristin there. With his conscience that would fetch him clean out of sleep and out of drink, rumbling for his secret and finding its hiding-place ravished of treasure. If David's torque was gone, Godred's security, Godred's very life, was gone after it. What could he do then but run? He had planned to walk humbly and innocently in Wales like the rest of us, until his advancement in the new administration could pass for acceptable, but now that road was stopped and his gains gone. He would run, yes, knowing his secret would not long be a secret, and only the English could now guarantee his safety. But empty-handed? Perhaps he also had David's ear-rings somewhere in hiding, but they were a small prize compared with this splendid collar from round my breast-brother's mangled throat.
I remembered everything, and understood everything, all his monstrous duplicity, how he had sat beside me in Edward's prison sourly mourning his failure to flee from his allegiance while there was time, and I like a fool had warmed to him for staying at his peril, how he had stood by me sick and shivering at the death, and had not had the hardihood to look on at the abomination he had not scrupled to bring about. I knew why he had chosen this devious way, sharing our captivity and returning with us to Aber, rather than taking service with one of Edward's captains and openly casting in his lot with England. And I knew where he was gone. All we were bereft of our treasure, our princes, our liberty, even our land, what were a few bits of gold and coin abandoned in the sand to us? But his treasure was of this world. He had come back to dig up the balance of his thirty pieces of silver, and he was off in haste now to secure it, before he fled to safety in some English garrison.
I knew then what I had to do. But first I had to find Cristin, and satisfy myself that no harm had come to her, that she would wait here for me and trust me. For I was still confused, and had not yet realised the meaning of her action in full. I understood only after I had hunted through Aber and failed to find her. She came of a long line of bards and warriors, the honour of Wales was her honour. And when I came to belt on sword and dagger, I found I had no dagger, it had been unclasped from the straps sheath and all, and no one but Cristin could have taken it. She had taken upon herself the vengeance of Wales. I had not mistaken that shattering union of ours in the night, it was indeed to be the first, last and only time.
Godred had a good grey horse, and it had been returned to him for the journey home. In trivial matters Edward was honest. There was but one of that colour among us, and it was gone from the stables. The sleepy boy who was just rolling out of the hay of the loft said that he had not heard anyone come or go in the night, but there had been someone saddling up below about an hour before I came. He had not come dow
n to see, but he had looked out at the loft door, and seen a young fellow canter away towards the postern gate, no more than a boy by the cut of him, and his voice below when he gentled the horse was light and young. Then I knew that I was right.
I took the best horse I found, and saddled and rode, inland from the postern gate like Cristin before me, like Godred before Cristin. She had left him sleeping, and come to me to give and receive but once what was her due and mine, and before first light had risen softly from beside me, and taken my dagger, to awake him and do justice upon him face to face, and if need be die in doing it. I knew her. She would never have struck a sleeping man. But he had already fled, and like me, Cristin knew where he would go. She was his wife, a traitor's wife, and there was no way of cleansing herself of his shame but in his blood.
That was no very long ride, but a hard one, by the upland way that she had taken, and it was Cristin I had to overtake, rather than Godred. For I reasoned as I rode that if he reached the cave before full daylight, as he well might, he would lie up there in hiding until the darkness came down again, rather than risk being hunted by day, as he surely would be once the word went out that he was Judas. One more night ride, and he could be safe in Carnarvon, which was strongly garrisoned by the English. They might not countenance Welsh traitors as approvingly as Edward did, but they would not let Edward's lap-dog be handed over to Welsh vengeance. There was time, therefore, for Godred, but little time to forestall Cristin, since she had an hour's start of me. I pressed hard, but saw no horseman ahead. Cristin had been in no less haste.
The Brothers of Gwynedd Page 136