The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  "If they set out in such numbers, and so equipped," said Llewelyn, concerned, "it could still have been a grim business."

  "So it could, my lord, and we were taking it grimly, I warrant you. Not a man of us thought we should break them as we did, but we trusted stoutly enough we should keep them out and cost them dear. But hear what happened! At earliest dawn on the second day of June our lookouts suddenly cried a marvel, and we looked, and saw a small body of horsemen, who had gathered apart in cover of trees, ride out full gallop straight for the castle gateway, the foremost of them carrying a white surcoat threaded on the point of a lance. And it was Rhys and his Welsh knights, crying to the castellan to open quickly, and let them in, for they were sickened of their servility, and begged to be of our part, free Welshmen like us."

  David uttered a shout then that was half excitement and half derisive laughter. "And he did it? He opened the gates to such a bare-faced trick? How far were the English behind?"

  "My lord, I well understand you," owned Cadwgan warmly, "and I would not for my life have been in the castellan's shoes, for he had but a matter of minutes to make up his mind. You say right, the English had the measure of what was happening by then, and they came like devils after. But it was they who turned the trick, for by the very look of them Rhys would not have lived long could they have got their hands on him, and he had good need to batter at the gates and cry to have them opened. It was that, and knowing Rhys well by sight, and some of those with him, too. Whatever settled his mind for him, he opened the gates and they came tumbling and hurtling in and he got the gates to again in time, and loosed every archer he had until the English drew off. But the cream of the jest—and it was a good jest!—is that they had come out only to put Rhys back into Dynevor, and back in Dynevor he was, and the gates made fast behind him, so what were they doing there in the valley, on a fool's errand, and getting picked off by our bowmen as often as they stirred out of cover? I swear to God, if they had taken it the opposite way, and attacked then in a fury, we might have been hard pressed. But the ground had been cut from under them, and they let themselves be confounded. They began a retreat. And that was all we needed. All along the valley they drew off to Carmarthen again, and all along the hills on either side we went with them. First we cut off the heavier and slower, the baggage and the engines, the sumpter horses, and any stragglers who tired. And about noon, at Cymerau, where the Cothi comes down and empties into the Towy, we thought it time to make an end, for fear too many should get back to Carmarthen alive. We were either side of them, and our horsemen had followed lightly along, and were fresh, with the slope in their favour. We made our attack there. It was a slaughter."

  "How many," asked Llewelyn, glowing, "got safe away?"

  "My lord, if you mean in order, as a body of fighting men, none. As headlong fugitives, running every man for his own life, perhaps one in five who set out from Carmarthen won back to it alive."

  "And de Bauzan?"

  "We rode him down. I saw him unhorsed, I thought him wounded, and sorely. They got him away with them. It was the one ordered thing they did. But alive or dead, that we cannot know. They left arms and harness littering the fields. We made a great harvest."

  It was indeed a victory. My eyes were on David's face, and it was torn between delight and outrage, all his bones starting in golden tension, for the summer had gilded him over like precious metal. His eyes, blue and light and stony with rage, grieved helplessly that he had not been there at Cymerau, and I think in some sort blamed all of us for his loss. And I thought then that what Cristin had said of him was wise and true, that unless he was spent recklessly and constantly in action and passion he would turn that same wealth to bitter mischief, to his own hurt most of all.

  Llewelyn was other. He could take pleasure in another man's prowess, and never grudge that it was not his own, nor value it the less in the common cause because its credit shone on other men's arms. He sat with his chin on his fists and his eyes wide and thoughtful, and asked questions very much to the point.

  "And your losses? Our losses?"

  "My lord, a nothing! We were never exposed but in the last onslaught, and then we had the advantage. I count but eleven men dead, no more than twenty-five wounded."

  "Good! And this force was drawn from the castle garrisons in those parts? How far afield?"

  "As far as the coast, my lord. There were men there from Laugharne and Llanstephan. What remains of their force is in Carmarthen, and that they did not leave too ill-provided. Being so near us."

  "But the others! Meredith is following up his victory?"

  Cadwgan laughed gleefully. "My lord, by now I think we should hold Llanstephan at least, and some of the others will not be far behind. But Carmarthen we've let alone."

  "It was well done," said Llewelyn, and thought for a moment in silence. "And Rhys Fychan and his knights?"

  "They sat comfortably in Dynevor," said David bitterly and scornfully, "and had no fighting to do. And you, brother, are expected to extend your clemency to this so sudden change of heart." His voice was like an edge of steel, but more with his own deprived discontent than with any true hatred of Rhys or his sister. He could not endure that there should have been so glorious a turmoil, and he not in the centre of it. I could see with his eyes at that moment, and see the whole of our careful month's work, stiffening the bones of what we had won, drained of any worth or satisfaction for him.

  Llewelyn said mildly: "I asked a question of Cadwgan, lad, not of you," and looked at the messenger.

  "We also have been in great doubt," said Cadwgan honestly. "But one thing is certain. This rout would never have taken place but for what Rhys Fychan did. For it wholly overturned the minds of the English, and caused them to act like men defeated before defeat. And that I hold in credit. But what we should think of him, I vow to God, we cannot agree. And we would fain have you come and judge. But as for the present, he and his knights are honourably lodged in Dynevor, and have not been used against the English. Nor," he said frankly, "let out of the gates or out of sight."

  "Wisely!" said David. But Llewelyn took no heed of him.

  "Nor disarmed? Nor in any way confined, apart from being kept within the gates? And my sister has not been sent for, wherever she may be?"

  "Not yet, my lord."

  "That was also wise," he said with a wry smile. "We can ill afford to embrace false allies, but still less to discard true ones."

  "True?" cried David, smarting. "Need you debate concerning Rhys, after all that has passed? There is not a grain of truth in him!"

  "There is not a man on earth," said Llewelyn sharply, "of whom I would say such a thing. If we are never to write a quittance for things past, which of us will be out of prison?"

  He spoke still frowning over his own thoughts, and never so much as glanced at David, and I knew he meant no reference at all to what he had endured and forgiven from his brother. It was David's own heart that wrung the too apt sense out of the prince's words, and cast the hot colour suddenly upward from chin to brow in a burning tide. He was silenced. But Llewelyn was not looking, and noticed no change in him.

  "Say to your lord," said Llewelyn, when he had made up his mind, "and to Meredith ap Rhys Gryg also, that they should continue to hold Rhys Fychan and his men in honourable liberty within Dynevor, but allow them as yet no part in their campaign. He will know very well he is on probation, you may discover much by his bearing in the meantime. Before midsummer day I'll be with you. Until then he is, let us say, neither ally nor prisoner, but a guest, he and all his. So deal with him. Now take rest and refreshment, and I will write to Meredith."

  Then Cadwgan went away, content, to eat his fill, Goronwy taking charge of him, and Llewelyn sat down with me to write his letters to both Merediths, for he was always aware of the need not to set one before the other of those two kinsmen and neighbours, though indeed they worked in harness singularly well, as Cymerau was the proof. But David lingered, very pale now with intent, and v
ery grave, and came and sat down fronting his brother across the table.

  "Hear me a word," he said. "In season, this time! I know all too well I often speak out of season. I felt, as I deserved, that sting you gave me, minutes ago. Who am I to deny any man a right to grace?"

  "Sting?" said Llewelyn, astonished and gaping at him, half his mind still preoccupied. "What sting? I know of none. And surely I intended none!"

  "You sting best," said David with a rueful smile, "in innocence, and in your innocence I do willingly believe. But what you said concerning man's need of forgetfulness and forgiveness both, whether it touched Rhys Fychan or not, touched me shrewdly. I have taken much for granted these past months, God and you did well to remind me."

  Understanding dawning on him then, Llewelyn said in indignant amazement: "I meant no such nonsense! What devil possessed you to take me so amiss?" And he reached across the table, and cupped a hand round the nape of his brother's neck, and shook him heartily, until the black hair fell down over David's eyes, and though reluctantly, he could not help laughing.

  "Fool!" said Llewelyn, releasing him. "I have your past deeds in very good remembrance—seven months of hard campaigning, and never a sour word. You have earned the same right as any other to speak your mind in my counsels, and argue against me wherever you think I am going astray."

  "And so I will," said David, pushing back his disordered hair from a face wiped clean of laughter, "though forgetting nothing now. I tell you that you go astray, or may do so, in forgiving too easily, and settling accounts too cheaply. Think about it! I say no more."

  He rose, and turned abruptly towards the door, but there as suddenly he halted and looked back. "Yes, one more thing, the gravest. I pray you believe and remember that in saying this I do not speak only of Rhys Fychan."

  Then he went quickly away, and left us to our letters.

  One week more we spent in making secure those lands in Powys, and then left Goronwy to continue and complete that necessary work, while Llewelyn and David took the greater half of the army south through Builth to Dynevor as he had promised. But before we left we had already received a message from the horse-doctor in Chester, no way surprising in its tidings, but useful in its detail. King Henry, shocked out of his querulous attitude of protest and disbelief by Cymerau—for there had been no such disastrous blow to royal power in South Wales in his lifetime—had sent out his writ to call out the feudal host for a campaign in full array against us. The muster was set for the first day of August, and the meeting-place was Chester.

  "There's no justice in the man," said Llewelyn, reading. "It seems he's giving me the credit for what the two Merediths have done against him, for it's still at me he aims. They'll be complaining of that, small blame to them."

  In the event, as we learned later, King Henry himself, while knowing well enough by this time who was the head and spirit of Welsh rebellion against him, was torn two ways as to how he might make the best use of his projected muster, and later amended his writ to divert a minor portion of his knight force to the south, though their enterprise there never came to anything.

  "We have time," said Llewelyn, "to get through a deal of work before the beginning of August." For he was certain that this time the king would contrive, whether on borrowed money or his own, to mount the great assault he planned, the Welsh situation being now even more desperate for him than in the previous autumn. And even if there were great difficulties surrounding and hampering him, we dared not take the threat lightly. Therefore the prince sat down with Goronwy and his council, before riding south, and worked out most thorough plans for placing Gwynedd in a state of readiness for siege. Our common defence of goods, gear, stock and people was to remove all into the mountains, an operation to which our folk were accustomed, and which could be accomplished in very short order. Other measures were considered this time to frustrate all movement on the enemy's part. Bridges could be broken, tracks and meadows ploughed up, mills and such establishments destroyed, even fords turned into death-traps by excavating great pits in the hitherto safe shallows, which the water would conceal. All these things were planned in detail, together with instructions to those men of the neighbouring trefs who would carry out their execution, but nothing was to be done until shortly before the day fixed for the muster. Events sometimes change even the plans of kings, and we wanted no wasted destruction. Indeed, Llewelyn had encouraged in Wales, after his grandfather's example, the new centralised institutions which must perforce be borrowed from the English in order to resist the English, the use of money and trade, the exaction of feudal dues in return for land, even the founding of a few towns and the award of charters and markets, so that we had more to leave than aforetime in these withdrawals into the hills. But still we could do it at need, and as quickly as before.

  Then, having confided this system of defence to Goronwy, and left him to send out the necessary orders in our absence, we rode for Dynevor.

  Meredith ap Rhys Gryg came out to meet us as soon as we were heralded, and was close at Llewelyn's side, and voluble, all the last mile of the way. It was no marvel that he was anxious to get in his word first with his overlord, for he was the uncle and rival of Rhys Fychan, and all those good lands in the vale of Towy had been bandied about between those two with equal violence and injustice, each when in power depriving the other, though for Rhys Fychan it had to be said that his uncle had been the first to do unjustly, and for Meredith that he had never yet gone over to the English against his own people.

  So Llewelyn was faced with no easy judgment here when he sat in council in the great hall of Dynevor that evening of our coming, with all his allies of the region about him, and their stewards and officers and clerks at their backs to speak in their support. Already there was none in the whole of Wales who disputed his supremacy, but there never was Welshman yet who was not prepared to argue his case endlessly even in the teeth of his lord, and I knew we should have a long and contentious session. Next to David at Llewelyn's right hand sat Meredith ap Owen of Builth and Cardigan, and he was both strong in his prestige from Cymerau, equal to that of Meredith ap Rhys Gryg, and free of those motives of personal greed and personal venom that were likely to unbalance his namesake's opinions. On this able, faithful and incorruptible man Llewelyn greatly relied.

  It was, I think, his uncle's doing, since this castle was now in his possession which had been by inheritance the nephew's, that Rhys Fychan was brought into the hall only when the whole council was assembled, as though he had been a prisoner coming in to be judged, which by his bearing he surely felt to be true. Though Llewelyn greeted and seated him courteously, there was no help for it, he knew the business before us set his liberty and possessions at risk, as well as his honour, and it was a very pale, defensive and erect Rhys Fychan who sat down in our circle to weather the storm.

  It was the first time I had ever set eyes on the Lady Gladys's husband, and I studied him with much interest while the castellan, who had taken the responsibility of admitting him with his following, set forth the bare facts of his coming. Rhys was some three years older than my lord, which made him at that time thirty-one years of age. He was medium tall, and of a good, upright carriage, his hair and his short beard of a light brown, and his features fair for a Welshman, and well-formed. He looked both proudly and fearfully, which was no marvel in his situation, and the set of his mouth I judged to be at once resolute and resigned, as though, no matter what we made of it, he had taken the step on which he had determined, and was prepared to abide the consequences. He did not therefore have to accept them with any pleasure! And I take it as no reproach to him that he was afraid, and as credit that he gave no expression of his fear. I saw how David watched him, with drawn brows and jutting underlip, and I think his interest was engaged by Rhys's bearing as was mine, and his mind, however doubtful, was open.

  When the castellan had ended his brief recital, Llewelyn asked him of himself: "And you…I judge what your opinion was from what you did, for i
ndeed there was heavy responsibility upon you, and yet you did open the gates. Tell me, were you formerly in the service of the Lord Rhys, when he held Dynevor?"

  "No, my lord," said the knight simply. "I am from Dryslwyn, I came here as the Lord Meredith's man, and his man I have been all my days."

  "Then you took this risk upon the evidence of your own eyes and senses, without prejudice or favour. That I find impressive."

  "My lord, it was plain to me they were in fear, and the English who came after them were in great fury. There was no doubt in my mind the Lord Rhys did what he did without their knowledge and against their interest. I could not let Welshmen be cut down under my walls and never raise a finger to help them."

  "My lord," said Meredith ap Rhys Gryg roundly, "there's no dispute over letting them in, and we can take it as true, as my man swears, that this was no plan to bring in his English masters with him. I can think of other motives no more noble, and no better calculated to make us accept him back into our ranks. And the simplest is that he changed his coat because he saw the old looking somewhat threadbare. He was not the only one taken aback by the reception we gave them. De Bauzan liked it no better, but he could hardly run for the gates and demand to be taken in. No, there's no mystery here. Rhys found himself of the losing party, and had no appetite for our archery. He made a leap for safety and the winning side. It's a landmark, I promise you. We've reached the point of being successful enough to draw in the waverers. You'll find he'll not be the last. The fealties that swung slavishly over into King Henry's purse when we were down, will be swinging back, mark me, now we're up again with a vengeance."