The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  "Your life," said Llewelyn coldly, "is as safe with me as mine has been with you. Safer!"

  "My liberty, then! You have your victory, keep all the fruits of it. I accept the second place under you. I pledge you my word."

  "I cannot take your word. Nor has any man in Gwynedd a second place from now on, above his fellows. I do not believe you could ever accept that truth, and I do not intend you should ever again be able to disrupt this land. There is nothing I can do with you but hold you prisoner perpetually, out of harm's way and out of mine. I commit you to the charge of my castellan at Dolbadarn, and I set no term to your stay there. It may depend," he said sombrely, "on others besides you and me. Take him away!" he ordered, and Owen went out from him stunned and silent, for he had tasted imprisonment already, passing several years of his young life behind bars, and even I, who knew him dangerous and disordered, too erratic to be trusted, felt pity for him.

  This castle of Dolbadarn was among the most inaccessible and impregnable in the land, being set on a great rock between two lakes among the mountains of Snowdon, and hard indeed it would be to conceive and execute an escape from it.

  "Let David come in," said Llewelyn then.

  They brought him in between them, not a hand being actually laid on him. I do not know how it was that he was always able to emerge from any rough and tumble, any privation, even from being hunted shelterless through the mire, looking a thought more polished and pure than any that came against him. But so it was, his life long. He bore the mark of one shallow wound down the left side of his neck, and was bruised about one cheek, and he moved with a little more care than usual to maintain his presence and grace, for he was stiff with the fall Llewelyn had given him. But what I noted in him at once was that his eyes were quick, live and easy, that had stared up at his brother in the field, in the moment of realisation of what he had done, blanched and stricken. And the voice that had barely found breath enough to husk out its anguished warning then came meekly and mellowly now, again ready to beguile, as he said:

  "I am here, and I know my fault. Dispose of me as I deserve."

  It fell upon my ears like a strange echo, as though his intelligence had taken that smothered cry of dismay and prophecy, and translated it into this deceptive submission, asking again for his deserts, but with intent to escape, not to embrace them. Then I was sure of him in my own heart, though proof there was none.

  "But I entreat you," he said, with eyes downcast and voice subdued, "to show mercy on my brother, and hold him less guilty than I. It was on my behalf he made this stir. I own I did complain that I was starved of my due. I take the blame upon me."

  All this he said with slow, deliberate humility, as though it cost him pain he knew well-earned, and yet so simply and innocently that it gave me no surprise to see that Llewelyn accepted all as the chivalrous gesture of misled youth, it is an art to tell truth in such a way that it cannot be seriously believed.

  "You did not complain to me," said Llewelyn hardly. "Why not? Do not pretend you went in such awe of me that you dared not make the assay."

  "No," admitted David, and raised his head and opened wide those clear eyes of his upon his brother. "You never gave me cause to fear you. Only cause to be ashamed, in your presence, to admit to such a grievance. But to him I could, without shame."

  He said no more. I think he was feeling his way, for he could not know what Owen had said of him. But if that was his difficulty, Llewelyn said then what eased him of his load:

  "But why did you listen to him, when he urged war against me?"

  "Out of ambition and greed," said David readily, sure now of his ground. And the hot blood rose in his cheeks, perhaps in the surge of relief that filled him, but it answered well for penitence and shame. "I have no defence," he said, and stood in submission. I do not know if he had hoped to be forgiven so lightly as to regain his liberty on the spot, but Llewelyn was not so deluded as that, nor could he afford the gesture.

  "Ambition and greed are poor recommendations for a brother," he said. "Can you promise you are cured of them by this fall, or must we expect another attempt?"

  "To what purpose," said David steadily, "if I did promise, promises being so cheap after such an act? At some future time, when I have purged my offence, I trust to show you whether I am cured."

  "You will have time enough and leisure enough to consider it well," said Llewelyn grimly, and forthwith committed him, also, to imprisonment in the castle of Dolbadarn, among the crags of Eryri. And David, as decorously as he had entered, went out between the guards without complaint. I would have wagered he had come to a satisfactory judgment then that it would not be for long. The droop of his head was eloquent of resignation, and that manner of pride that saints have in embracing their trials as just, and not beyond their bearing.

  "Let him cool his heels for a year or so," said Llewelyn when he was gone. "It will do him no harm. But for him there may well be a use in the future. Did you see how he came at me yesterday? How he stood off half a dozen good men, surrounded as he was? One born fighting-man, at least, our father bred."

  "You have done right," said Goronwy ap Ednyfed gravely. "His offence was too gross to be overlooked. And he is not a child, he knows what he does. But yes, I own he is gallant enough. He may do you good service yet, if you can keep him from Owen Goch."

  "We'll take care of that," said Llewelyn.

  I was busy with my lord about all the letters he found needful after this great change, the first and most difficult of them being to the Lady Senena, who was then at Aber, when one of the guards came to say that David, before he was taken away to Dolbadarn, entreated that he might see me for a few moments. Llewelyn hesitated, but then said yes, go to him, for he respected the tie that was between us two on account of my mother Elen, whom David had truly loved. So I went to the cell where he was guarded, and they shut me in with him.

  "Don't be afraid," he said, grinning at the sight of my wary face as I sat down with him, "I will not ask you to intercede with Llewelyn for me. That's not my purpose. I wanted only to see you, once before I go, since it may be a long while before I have the chance again. And perhaps to discover if you would come—and if he would let you come. And both I know now. I am glad you have not shaken me off as utterly damned."

  "There is only one who can damn you," I said, "and that's yourself."

  "And I came near it, did I not?" He caught my doubting eye, and the defiant smile left his face, and he was unwontedly grave. "You think I am still playing the devil now, I saw it in your face. A speaking face you have, Samson—or I know how to read it. As you read mine, all too clearly. But what would you have? I am nineteen years old, I want my freedom, I want to escape punishment if I can—who but a liar says anything else? Threaten me with pain and punishment, and I will do all I may to avert it. To a point, at least," he said, frowning over his own words as though finding his way through a labyrinth. "There may be a place and a time when I cannot escape the doom I've brought down on myself, and when all there is left to do is stand erect and let it fall on me without a cry. But not when it's Llewelyn who threatens. Tell him, if you love him—you do love him, do you not?—tell him not to be too easily appeased, not to melt towards me too soon, not to forgive too recklessly, if he wants to hold me. But tell him—no, do not tell him, only bear with me if I tell you!—that he could hold me, better than any other, if he can keep the respect I bear him, as well as the love. But if he lose the one, the other is not enough."

  "I am not empowered," I said, for I still distrusted this seemingly artless bleeding of words, "to offer you any hope of a short sentence or an early release. Nor am I willing to do what you take such good care not to ask, and plead for you."

  At that he laughed, not quite steadily, and threw his arm about my shoulders and leaned his head against me. "Fair, sweet Samson, how did you come by so much knowledge of me? And how is it that I still escape you when you have almost grasped me? No, I want my freedom, but not at that price. And w
ith you I play no tricks. Will you believe that? Never, never! Because it would be useless, for Elen gave you her sight. And because I want no such dealings between you and me."

  "In the name of God, boy," I said, "I understand you not at all, for nothing can explain to me why you did this thing to both your brothers. Oh, something of what ailed you I do know. You were restless and wretched when you came back from court, all we had here became small and rustic and mean to you, your world too narrow for your energy. All this I know, and it explains nothing. You are far too sound in wit to think doubling your lands would satisfy you, or provide you the kind of field you wanted for your soul to work in. Was it pure mischief only, the will to destroy others because you could not have what you desired? And to destroy which of them? You have made Llewelyn now, and undone Owen, but not even you could have foreseen that end. What was it you intended?"

  "Do I know?" said David, ruefully sighing into my shoulder. "Owen would have come to it in the end, even without me. I bore no more ill-will to him than I did to the sword I drew on Llewelyn. And cared for him as little, I suppose. Do I know what drove me? Yes, I do know! A child's reason! Llewelyn had taken from me something I thought of as mine, and like a child deprived I struck at him." He shifted his head, and his eyes blazed into my face, and I knew what it was that had been stolen from him. "Does the child care then whether he has a dagger in his hand?"

  I heard again in my mind his voice saying softly: "I see you are his man!" I remembered his particular affection for me from a child, when I was his slave and familiar. And I knew for how much I, too, had to answer in this matter. He had come to me in his torment of frustration, and I had wanted nothing but to get on with the work I did for his brother. We are all victims one of another. Yet I took comfort in this, that the present trouble had passed with no great damage, rather a hopeful issue, and I was warned now, and could be on guard for both of them. For both I loved. And this being an occasion for speech and not for silence, I told him that his reason, reason enough and forgiven at this moment, was no reason hereafter, for he was my breast-brother, the only one I had, and that was a life-long tie, and dearly welcome to me. That I loved him, and should not cease from loving him. I did not say: "no matter what folly or what wise wickedness you commit in the future," for it seemed better to assume that this spleen was now ended.

  He embraced me, between laughing and weeping, and pressed his smooth forehead against my breast, shaking with this sorrowful mirth. "Oh, Samson," he said, quivering, "always you do me good! Always you leave something unsaid. Must I not promise to amend?"

  I told him that love had no right to demand amends.

  "You should have been left at Aberdaron," he said, "to work out your doom. You

  would have made a most formidable priest. A little more, and you would have me on my knees, promising an amended life—if I were subject to penitence!"

  He had recovered that secret, baffling assurance that set me, like other men, at a distance, and I thought that an ill ending, my time with him being almost spent. Therefore I said what otherwise I would have kept to myself.

  "You are as subject to penitence," I said, "as I, or any other creature. Why else did you cry out to my lord, whom you had so wronged: Kill me! You were wise!?"

  He stiffened in my arms, and his forehead froze against my heart. The words he knew all too well, he did not know until then that I had heard them, for indeed they were but a breath, a thread in the wind. He shrank into himself, drawing by secret, slow degrees away from me, and closing as he went those channels of affection and comfort he had suffered to open between us. When he raised his head from me and sat back, his face was in the chill of a deliberate calm, and he smiled at me with veiled eyes.

  "A stunning fall indeed I must have had! Did I verily say so? I thank God my brother did not take me at my word, I have a fancy to go on living many years yet."

  I had overstayed my time already, and the guard was at the door. He was withdrawn from me as never before, and it was I who had driven him.

  "I am glad," he said as they opened the door upon us, "that my brother has you to read for him where he is unlettered. He will need you!"

  The prisoners were gone from us, haled away under escort into the wilds of Snowdon, and we in our turn moved away to our various duties, the chosen castellans into the lands Owen and David had left masterless, my lord and his court back to Bala first, and then, following the letter I had taken down at Llewelyn's dictation, to Aber on the northern coast.

  "She will have had time," said Llewelyn, with somewhat sour good-humour, "to sharpen her claws."

  The Lady Senena gave us, as he had foreseen, a dour welcome. She had become stout, and was less active than of old, her hair was grey, and at times she spoke of retiring to a hermit's cell, as many other royal women had done in their old age, but I think her energy, however confined now into the activity of the mind, was too great ever to allow of such a withdrawal. Could she have ruled a large household of nuns, that might have provided her what she needed, but the anchorite's life was not for her. She kissed Llewelyn in greeting, but it was as like a blow as a kiss, and when he rose from his knee and relinquished the hand he had saluted with equally perfunctory devotion, she looked him up and down with those deep eyes, under black, locked brows, in so formidable a fashion that he smiled suddenly, remembering another such occasion, when she had thought herself in command of him, as perhaps she thought now.

  "What is this you have been doing with my sons?" she said pointblank.

  "Which sons, madam?" he said, in a voice patient and equable, for there was neither profit nor pleasure in quarrelling with her, but even less in submitting to her. "Your second son I have been making into the prince of Gwynedd. That should please you, it was a title you coveted for the father of your sons."

  "And at what a cost!" she said. "Two of your brothers shamefully used, arraigned like felons and cast into prison. Is that brotherly?"

  "Was it brotherly in them to muster an army secretly and come against me in war, without challenge or justification?" he said mildly.

  "I want to hear nothing," she said fiercely. "You'll tell but one side of the story."

  "You mistake, madam. I will tell neither. I am under no obligation to refer what I see fit to do to you, or to any but my council. Those orders I please to give will be carried out, by you as by others. In courtesy I wrote to you all that you needed to know. If that is not enough for you, enquire of others. Me you will not question."

  All this he said very placidly, but with such authority that she was moved to withdraw into a lengthy silence, while she examined him afresh, and made a more detached assessment of what she saw. Her hands, which were grown knotted and thickened at the joints with the stiffness of middle-age, folded together in her lap, and lay clasped and still.

  After a while she said, as if beginning again, and in a voice very little more conciliatory, but still with a new note in it: "You cannot leave them in Dolbadarn, it is too remote and bleak."

  "Remoteness is its virtue," he admitted readily. "That, and the staunchness of the castellan. But they shall be well looked after, I promise you. We cannot, perhaps, provide all the luxuries Owen enjoyed in King Henry's prison, but we'll see to it he's warm and fed."

  "I should prefer," she said, "to see as much for myself. I shall visit them in Dolbadarn at once."

  At that he smiled, though grimly. "No, mother, you will not. Not for six months or more will you be let into Dolbadarn. And even then you will not be left alone with either one of them. I have too sound a respect for your stout heart and sharp wits to allow you even the narrowest chance of letting loose my brothers and enemies on me again so soon. I have work to do before I take the slightest risk of another Bryn Derwin."

  She fumed at this, and said that it was monstrous a brother should not only make captive his brothers, but rob their mother of the very sight of them in their most need and hers. And yet I had the thought in me all the while she scolded him that t
here was in her voice a note of strange content, almost of pleasure. And he, it may be, felt it in his heart also, if he did not discern it with his ear, for he laughed aloud suddenly, and stooping, caught up her hand again, and kissed her heartily on the cheek, she still glowering but making no demur.

  "Oh, mother," he said, "if you but knew it, you and I are as like as two peas, and if you rail at me you are but storming at a mirror. Where do you think I got the stubbornness that makes you so angry? Or the force that I need to make Gwynedd great again? Now, make peace with me, for you cannot win if you make war!"

  And though for a long time after this she did her best to get concessions from him by trickery, and nagging, and even by seeking to shame him with her portrayal of a poor woman robbed of her children—though tears she could not command, or even feign with any conviction—she never could move him, for always he smiled and refused her, or, if he was preoccupied, failed to notice her, which was worse. But for all that, it seemed to me she liked him better, now that he was her master and she without privilege or influence, than ever she had liked him before, and in their cross-grained way they achieved a cautious, respectful companionship, neither ever admitting it.