The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  For at the end of the six-month delay on which he had insisted, it was he who offered her an escort to take her to Dolbadarn, before she had asked it. And it was she who volunteered him, very gruffly, her troth that, however much she desired and hoped for their release, she would not convey into the castle with her anything that could help the prisoners to escape, or in any way connive at such an attempt. And he took her word without hesitation, and bade her go in freely and alone to her sons, with whatever gifts she pleased, for her bond was enough for him.

  A busy year we had of it, we who served Llewelyn, that year of his accession to power. From the autumn he began to send us out with overtures of friendship to all the independent princes and chiefs of middle and southern Wales, to exchange news and views, to collect what reports we could of feeling everywhere, not only towards Gwynedd, but towards England, too. He had even a man in Chester, and very close to the justiciar's household, who sent word of all that went on in the Middle Country and the marches, where discontent and distrust were almost as hot and widespread on the English side of the border as on the Welsh. For the men of the four cantrefs were close to revolt because of the iniquitous exactions of the royal officer, that same Geoffrey Langley once of the forest courts, and his arrogant overriding of Welsh law and customs, while even the marcher lords watched this essay in turning marcher country into tamed English shires, bound by county administrations, with deep suspicion, aware of a threat to their own palatine powers.

  "What did I say?" said Llewelyn, watching this seething unrest with satisfaction and hope. "The man recruits for me better than I could do it myself."

  But when at length the angry Welsh tenants of the Middle Country went so far as to send a delegation to him, inviting his sympathy and advice, and plainly hoping for his leadership, he counselled patience and stillness a while longer, for the time was not yet ripe. Moreover, the autumn was then drawing to a close, and winter coming on, and though he had no objection to undertaking winter campaigning if the need arose, yet he had not stores enough in barn and hold to feed an army in the field this year.

  "You have borne it some years now," he said, "it is worth waiting a little while longer to take the tide on the flood. What I counsel for this time is that you wait for Prince Edward's first visit to Chester, for as I hear, he's back in England some ten days ago, and has brought home his new young wife to Windsor. Let him at least have time to show whether he has wit enough to listen to Welshmen on Welsh affairs, and respect their manner of life, and put some curb on his officers, who have no such respect. And in the meantime, with another breeding season to come, and another harvest to be sown and reaped, make sure of every grain and every bean you can, and look well to your beasts. And so will I. Then, if he will do nothing to lighten your load, you are in better case to lighten it for yourselves."

  And though they went away disappointed, and were not, perhaps, all provident enough to pay heed to what he said, yet some surely remembered, and thought no harm to be as ready as a man may be, whether for a good or an evil outcome.

  This news of Prince Edward's return we had from our man in Chester, who was a smith, and a skilled horse-doctor, often employed by the justiciar himself and the officers of the garrison. Through this man all the news of the court came to us. So we heard that King Alfonso of Castille, King Henry's new ally, had an ambassador at court discussing the next moves to be taken in their treaty of friendship. He was still anxious to secure King Henry's promise to join him in his crusade against the Moors, but the feeling among many of the court officials was that this expedition would never take place, or at least not with Henry's aid, for he was hoping to have his crusading vow further commuted to the pursuance of his Sicilian adventure. Though there was a new pope now, this Alexander would certainly hold him to his bond over Sicily, but if that kingdom could truly be achieved it would count to Henry as a crusade, while absolving him from the expense and inconvenience of sailing for the Holy Land, or even crossing the middle sea to Africa. And the prospect of making good his vow at a profit, instead of a loss, must appeal greatly to Henry, who was always optimistic, and always, in intent, thrifty, though his economies usually cost him dearer than if he had spent freely.

  "But he has no hope in the world," Llewelyn said roundly, "of ever enjoying the kingdom of Sicily. And he's committed to paying off the papal debts incurred in the war already, under pain of excommunication. It bids fair to cost him more than sending troops to Jerusalem. And Pope Innocent with his own armies had little enough success against the Hohenstaufen, why should King Henry expect to do better?"

  "So a great number of the king's magnates are thinking, too," said Goronwy drily, pondering the smith's despatches. "It seems there's a deal of unrest over the whole project, it's bringing King Henry's very government into question. His brother had the good sense to decline the honour of pulling the pope's cakes out of the fire for him, only to see Henry fall into the trap in his place, and flounder in deeper and deeper now he begins to show signs of wanting to get out. This whole matter may yet be serviceable to us."

  "Yet it's been the cause of a friendly advance towards King Louis," Llewelyn said dubiously, "and that's no benefit to me."

  "That's barely begun yet. It will take years to bring them to terms, if that's what they do intend. And if both keep their eyes fixed upon Naples and Sicily," Goronwy said reasonably, "so much the better for us here in the west."

  So we took comfort, but cautiously, in these distant doings of which we began to understand something, at least, during that winter. The old Emperor Frederick, Barbarossa's grandson, dead some years, had left a young son, Conrad, to inherit his crown and his feud with the papacy. Now Conrad also was dead of a fever, some months before Edward's marriage in Burgos, so that throughout that year the project of setting up young Edmund in his place must have seemed reasonably hopeful. But there was another son, of a kind those nations call bastard, one Manfred, who had been named as heir to his brother in the event of the direct line being extinguished, and who had been regent for Conrad in Sicily, and this Manfred was said to be very strongly in possession of the disputed kingdom, and would certainly not be easily displaced.

  Very strange these names seemed to me, and much I wondered about those far-off cities and plains where the armies of emperor and pope contended and tore each other, and the still more distant land where that same Frederick, the wonder of the world, had treated with the paynims for the deliverance of the holy places of Christendom. It seemed more than a world away from the rocky pastures of Eryri, and yet the battles and complots of those great men sent echoes even into our mountains, and ripples into the mouths of our rivers.

  "I have a crusade of my own," said Llewelyn, turning his back upon such dreams, "nearer home."

  And with all his might he pursued it. While the days were favourable he was busy about the better equipping of his fighting men, and in particular the raising of companies of well-mounted and well-armed horsemen, which had never been the custom in Wales, though his grandsire had also made good use of knights in his day. Llewelyn would have as many as he could mount, and procured good horses, able to carry heavily-armed men, wherever he could happen upon them. He encouraged the smiths, also, to make more substantial armour, both mail and some plate, than we were accustomed to, and took great interest in the training of archers and fletchers. And beyond these matters, he studied the making of siege engines, and had workmen build him arblasts, mangons and trebuchets all things foreign to our usual manner of warfare, for the siege was something we rarely attempted in force, preferring to pass by and isolate castles rather than storm them. For the English by custom feared being shut out of walls, and we, when pressed, rather feared to be shut within them.

  "My grandsire knew the use of these devices," he said, "and profited by them, too. God knows my uncle had little enough chance to use them, he was always the besieged. And in the end we may hardly need them. Effective they may be, but slow to move around the country they surely are.
You could lose a battle elsewhere while you shifted these into position about a castle. But let's at least have them. Who knows, there may be a need some day, and we have timber enough."

  And one more thing he would have, and that was a fleet. "Not again," he said, "shall they sail round from the Cinque Ports or put over from Ireland, and burn our corn in Anglesey while we starve." And he collected skilled men, shipwrights and others, and at his court of Cemais and at Caergybi, in the sheltered waters between Anglesey and the island, he founded boat-yards, and had them lay keels and begin to build him small ships, such as could be put in commission quickly, some masted, for rapid sailing, and a few built for rowers, and sturdy enough to have trebuchets mounted in the middle aisle between the banks of oars. There were coastal fishermen enough to man such craft, men wise in winds and tides. He took delight in this work, and went often to see the progress made.

  And in the dark winter nights, when we were shut indoors perforce, we read together in Latin and in English, debated law, and heard music, the great poetry of the bards in hall, and my little crwth in the high chamber when he was weary, for I had learned to play for his pleasure and my own.

  So passed the first year of his unchallenged rule in Gwynedd, and the spring and the summer came on again, and we were a long stride nearer to readiness.

  During that following spring there came a distant kinsman into Gwynedd as a dispossessed fugitive, who was to prove thereafter a very formidable ally, though at times a wayward and unreliable one. This was that Meredith ap Rhys Gryg who was younger brother to the late lord of Dynevor, Rhys Mechyll, and uncle to Rhys Fychan, who had married the Lady Gladys. There had always been rivalry between uncle and nephew, and as a youth Rhys Fychan had been kept out of his lands for some time by his uncle, who possessed broad lands and many castles in the same region of Wales. And by way of vengeance, now that he was established firmly in the favour of the English, and no longer afraid of his kinsman, Rhys Fychan had enlisted the help of his marcher neighbours and the royal forces in South Wales to oust his uncle from all his lands and drive him into exile. It was a mark of my lord's growing standing and influence among the Welsh chiefs that Meredith should flee into Gwynedd and make straight for Llewelyn's court, and there both ask for asylum and offer his services in war. And Llewelyn took him in gladly and graciously, not all for policy, for there was much that was likeable about Meredith, and of his courage, daring and ability in battle there was no doubt.

  He was a thickset, sturdy, bearded man in his late fifties, loud-voiced and genial, good company at table and a notable singer. As a swordsman he was famous, and for the sake of his lost lands he was a good hater of the English, and an eager conspirator in council when the issue of England came into consideration. I think Llewelyn was in no need of a spur, for all his patience, which some took for timidity, yet Meredith surely confirmed him in all he had in mind to do, and weighed down the balance in favour of action when it might otherwise have hung level. So his coming was an omen, his loud voice among us like a trumpet sounding to battle.

  He had, however, one implacable enemy among us, and that was the Lady Senena, who was a whole-hearted champion of her daughter and her daughter's husband, and therefore found only satisfaction in Meredith's expulsion, and was greatly affronted that her son should welcome him into Gwynedd as an ally. For these family relationships with their hates and loves were the trammel and bane of Wales as they were of the marches, and indeed, from all I could ever learn, of England and France and those troubled realms beyond the sea no less. And the more the great laboured to make dynastic marriages, the more they tied their own hands, and put into other hands knives for their own backs. Their history and ours was ever a chronicle of such expulsions and revenges, the tide of fortune flowing now this way, now that, and never safe or still. But the ladies and the waiting-women about the llys at Aber had reason to thank Meredith for some relief, for while he was with us the Lady Senena withdrew in dudgeon to Carnarvon, and her strict and increasingly cantankerous supervision of the household was withdrawn with her.

  Doubtless Meredith thought her a harridan, as she thought him a villain, neither being of a temper to acknowledge that there may be some substance even in an opponent's viewpoint, and some justice in his complaint. So it was as well that they should be separated. Surely that lady was destined always to be torn in pieces between those people she loved most, for now she saw her son, the one who had least obeyed or supported her, but also the one who had best fulfilled in his own person the ambitious dreams she had cherished for her line, preparing undoubted rebellion against the English, under whose protection her dear daughter, with her husband and children, enjoyed the peaceful possession of their estates. It may be that she confessed, in her own heart though never to any other, her sad responsibility for these divisions, for if she had stayed in Gwynedd and maintained, in the teeth of all deprivations, the loyalty of her family to Wales, they might now have been all in unity upon one side, if not in total harmony. And it may also be that she had learned somewhat from all these trials, for whatever her own hope in the matter, she kept silence, and gave no warning to any party of what the others intended, but retired into her own helplessness, determined not to do further harm where she doubted her ability to do any good.

  So the year went on, with due attention to lambing, and the cultivation of the fields, and the hope of harvest, and the building of boats and fashioning of armour. And in the high summer Prince Edward as earl of Chester paid his first ceremonial visit to that city and shire, and sent out formal proclamations announcing his coming, and appointing times and places where he would receive the homages due to him in the four cantrefs of the Middle Country. He came to Chester on the seventeenth day of July, and towards the end of that month he was conducted by the justiciar and his officers on a tour of his Welsh possessions, making a stay of two or three days at his castle of Diserth, and again at Degannwy, where the chieftains and tenants of the region once Welsh would attend to offer him their fealty.

  "Now," said Llewelyn, reading the smith's despatches with the first spark of excitement in eye and voice, "we shall see of what he is made." And when some of the men of Rhos and Rhufoniog sent secretly to ask him whether they should attend or no, he advised without hesitation that they should. "For," said he, "it's well always to see for yourselves whether he means justly by you or not, and whether he has wit and understanding to listen to you, as well as ears to hear you."

  So they went, and we had more than one report thereafter, hopeful and doubtful both. For this was, they said, a very comely and upstanding young man, very tall for his years, which were just seventeen, and in audience gracious and welcoming to all, so that they had been encouraged to open to him their grievances, though with care, and ask hopefully for a more considerate tenderness towards Welsh custom, which was daily flouted. All which he had heard with debonair patience, though whether any of it had sunk in, or whether it was to him the mere tedious business of making a royal appearance, the more cautious among them were not prepared to say. As we heard, there was a great train of young nobles in attendance on him, very gay and frivolous, more interested in the pretty tourneys the prince held in Chester than in the administration of the four cantrefs or the welfare of their inhabitants. There was much money spent on the lavish entertainment and courtly show of those round tables and jousts in Chester, by all accounts, and the prince himself was a very fine lance already, and could hold his own with any who came.

  "Before the winter," Llewelyn prophesied, following this pageantry from a distance with a calculating eye, "he may well be wishing he had again every mark spent and every lance broken. He will need them."

  The royal party left Chester and rode south on the third day of August. Whether the prince had made any easy promises, or whether the hopeful among his tenants had deceived themselves into believing that he had, I cannot be sure. But for some weeks after his departure there was an expectant quiet, while they waited for the meeting between benev
olent lord and dutiful vassals to bear the good fruit it should. Only in September did they begin to give up hope of betterment, for Edward was gone, seemingly, without a glance behind, or a thought to spare for remembering them, and the exactions of the chief bailiff continued as before, and the acts of tyranny in the enforcing of English law, county law, upon Welsh commotes, without regard for local feeling or respect to tradition.

  "Let be," said Llewelyn, when the young men of the bodyguard grew impatient, and looked to him expectantly, "a month or two yet, till the corn's all in, and safe stored. If an army's to starve this coming winter, it shall not be mine."

  By the same token he took particular care to see to the late autumn salting of the slaughtered beasts that had not fodder for the winter, for he had been buying in salt as much as he could get. And this last was still in the doing when the unrest in the Middle Country broke out into scattered acts of rebellion, and two of the high men of Rhos crossed the Conway and came riding to Aber to appeal for Llewelyn's aid.

  "For," said they, "we cannot live longer in this fashion, deprived of our right as free Welsh landholders, our young men forced to give armed service to the English, and our land taxed to keep our own people in chains. Come and make Welsh land Welsh again, for we will die rather than to go on in bond to Langley and his kind. Come and lead us, and we will be your people, in war and peace the same."