He did not know where the king was, though by then we did, and had a strict watch all round the Cluniac priory, where he had fled to sanctuary. Earl Simon stood between Edward and the same refuge, and even to that angry and embittered mind there was no sense in trying to fight over again, with a handful of tired men on tired horses, the battle already irrevocably lost. Edward turned tail and made for the house of the Franciscan friars, and there took cover with the remnant of his following. As much a prisoner of Earl Simon as if he had surrendered himself into his hands, there he was suffered to stay, and his father among the monks of Cluny, for neither of them could escape.
So ended the battle of Lewes, that many saw as a miracle and the direct judgment of God, so complete was the victory. Yet not without cost. Friars, clerks and monks went about the river flats and meadows and the shoulder of the down after the fight, and reverently took up and buried the dead, to the number of six hundred, and of those it may well be more than half were men of London.
As for us, we secured the castle and made our camps, and gathered the spoils of arms and armour, and set guards, and did all that men must do as scrupulously after a victory as before. We saw to our horse-lines, fed and watered, tended injuries, the smiths repaired dinted armour and ripped mail, and the cooks and sutlers found us meat and bread and ale, and we ate like starving men.
The furnishings of Earl Simon's chapel went with him wherever he went. And most devoutly, that evening, he heard mass and offered thanksgiving with a full heart for the verdict of God, delivered in the blazing light of day before all men, in token that it behoved all men to accept the judgment. For the award of heaven is higher than the award of kings or pontiffs, and even they must bow to it and be reconciled.
CHAPTER X
After the men-at-arms had done their part, and while they slept after their exertions, the clerks and friars began their work, and for them there was no sleep in Lewes that night. Those who were not tending the wounded or burying the dead, ran back and forth all night long between the parties that had been brought to a stand, and must now be brought to a settlement. For complete though the triumph was, it could not do more than determine who now put forth the terms to be met, and since Earl Simon was not and never desired to be a monarch himself, or to displace the monarch that England already had, he was greatly limited, in what he could propose, by his own nature and his conception of duty and right. He aimed always at that which had been his aim from the beginning, an order of government such as had been begun at Oxford, with the consent and co-operation of all the limbs of the state.
By morning they had drawn up a form of peace, and both King Henry and the Lord Edward had given their assent to it, having little choice. It provided for the royal castles to be handed over to new seneschals responsible to council and parliament, for the proclamation of peace in the shires and the strict enforcement of law, so that no partisan upon either side should now molest his neighbour of the other side without penalty, and for the immediate release of young Simon and of the lord of Beaudesert and his two sons, taken at Northampton. The whole immediate purpose of this urgent accord was to ensure the order and safety of the realm, against the uncontrolled malice of faction in the shires, the opportunism of malefactors who thrive on discord, and the threat of invasion from overseas, for everyone realised that the eternal problem of reaching a final amicable settlement still remained, and was as intransigent as ever. And for the sake of law and order, since half the nobility of England was now captive, indeed more than half of the chief persons of authority in the marches, Earl Simon made a gesture no other man could have made, and upon their acceptance of the form already sealed by king and prince, ordered the release to their own lands of all the lords of the march, and also of certain others, the Scot, John Balliol, the sheriff of Northumberland, and a baron of Hampshire who was needed along that coast. They pledged themselves to go home and keep peace and good order, and attend in parliament when called. But bound as he was to accept other men's oaths as his own was acceptable, Earl Simon did not let all the weapons out of his hands, and no blame to him. He named two hostages who should remain in captivity as surety for the observance of all the terms of the peace, and those two were the Lord Edward and his cousin Henry of Almain.
With what bitterness and resentment the Lord Edward accepted his subjection I guess, yet he did give his word. With what weariness, discouragement and timidity King Henry resigned himself to his, that I saw and understood. But I use the wrong word, for resign himself he never did, being unable to despair of his luck. But very piously he subscribed to the terms, his only present advantage lying in assent, and very heartily he wrote to King Louis with a copy of the form of peace, and entreated him to use his good offices with the exiles to persuade them to acceptance, for the safety of the royal hostages, and the preservation of his own precarious rights. All the more since Earl Simon declared himself willing, secure in heaven's verdict for him and the general adherence of the people of England, again to submit matters at dispute to the arbitration of King Louis and his best advisers. Believing as he did in the sacredness of Christendom and the common health of its component lands, no less than in the need for right and just government within each of them, he could do no other.
Thus far I saw matters unfold, with every promise of a good outcome. For shortly after the battle Earl Simon set out to take the king to London, and the young hostages to honourable confinement at Richard of Cornwall's castle of Wallingford, and that being my way also as far as the city, I went with them. But when we came to St. Paul's, where lodging was prepared for the king, I sought an audience with Earl Simon, the first time I had been alone with him since the May night under the stars at Fletching.
He walked less lamely by then, but he was not free of pain, and seeing him thus closely, after many days of seeing him in the seat of power, far removed from me and controlling kings and princes with a motion of his sword-hand, I started and checked at seeing him worn away so lean and steely-fine, as though the spirit had fretted away the flesh from his bones. Those bones had been to me a marvel from the first moment I set eyes on him in Oxford, so purely drawn were they, and so taut and polished and private beneath the skin. He had no soft lines that could be manipulated, no pliable mask like King Henry's. What he was he showed to every seeing eye, like mountain, flood and fire, most beautiful and perilous. And still, revealing himself mortal and vulnerable, subject to ills of body and mind, he favoured his new-knitted leg, and eased its weight with a hand when he shifted it. So close and so far he was, and so distanced, and so drawn, I had discovered how to love him.
"I guess your errand," said Earl Simon, "and your longing to be home I understand. When you elected to go with me to the judgment, you said you would carry the news to Wales yourself, and so you should. With my blessing and my thanks, to your lord and to you."
I said then, not with any great foreboding, but knowing that all things were still uncertain, that he might yet need a close liaison with Wales again before long, and that if he desired it and Llewelyn permitted it, I would return to him.
Then he bade me sit down with him, and told me what further moves the council of England had in mind, that Llewelyn might be fully informed without the committal of such vital matters to writing. The first need had been to establish reliable wardens of the peace in all the shires. The second, he said, was to call parliament as quickly as possible, and to ensure that those who attended it truly spoke for the people, and to that end writs had already been sent out. These were the first days of June, and before the month ended parliament must meet and ratify what had been done in the name of the whole realm, or demur and amend it.
"On the lesser people of the shires," said the earl, "much has depended, as you have seen, and much will depend on them in the future. I have learned to know them as staunch to their faith, and have leaned upon them hard in contention and battle, and they have not let me fall. Surely their voices should also be heard in peace, and their loyalty remembered.
We are calling to this parliament, from every shire, four knights chosen by the shire court to stand spokesmen for their people. With their aid some form of council must be chosen to advise and direct the king's actions, until we can achieve a permanent peace and a proper constitution."
I asked after the fate of the remaining prisoners of Northampton.
"You touch on a sore and tangled matter," he owned. "The marcher lords are being called to parliament and told to bring their prisoners with them, to be exchanged man for man against those we took at Lewes. We cannot leave good men rotting in cells while all the legal arguments are hammered out to the end, but the exchange will certainly be bedevilled by questions of ransom and right. If need be they will have to be released on surety for their price, but we must have them out." He caught my eye and smiled, reading me well. "True, before the summer's out I may need every sword and lance I can muster. Neither King Louis nor the cardinal makes any move to call off the pack they have raised against us in France. Well, if we lean only on ourselves, no one can let us fall. Perhaps we should give thanks for threats from without, if they bind us so firmly together within."
And that was truth, for even before council made any appeal, the men of Kent and Hampshire had risen themselves to patrol the coast and watch for alien sails, and the shipmen of the Cinque ports were prowling the seas on guard. And when later he called, every man answered.
"Yet I will not believe," he said steadfastly, "that it need be so. We are an organ of Christendom, how can we live and to what purpose, cut off from the body that nourishes us? No, we must prevail! When God has spoken for us so clearly, surely his vicar on earth cannot for ever shut his ears against the truth."
When I was with him I shared his faith, so potent it was. Yet I knew, as he knew, that beyond the narrow seas more and more ships and arms were massing even as we spoke, and that the mood of the exiles was most bloodily bent on invasion. At Boulogne Cardinal Gui threatened excommunication and interdict, and although King Henry in his anxiety had written again to Louis, urgently begging for a conciliatory attitude and a helpful spirit, for the sake of the hostages if for no other reason, still the thunderous silence continued. Earl Simon had enemies more than enough, and none of them impressed by the vehemence with which God had stood his friend.
Nevertheless, and whether he willed it or no, this man who sat quietly talking with me was the master of England then, towering above kings.
He gave me his hand when I took my leave of him, and his safe-conduct to get me service and security wherever his writ ran. And so I left him still embattled, since
there was only one victory that could satisfy him, and that was denied to him by the obduracy of his enemies. And I rode the same hour, and set out for Wales.
Llewelyn was at Knighton, keeping a close watch on his cousin Mortimer's lands and movements, for it was clear to him that the march was no better resigned to submission than before Lewes, and though he had not yet all the details with which I could provide him, he already foresaw that all those turbulent young men might find their parole easier to give than to keep, even if they had begun in good faith, which was by no means certain in all cases. He welcomed me eagerly, and when I had told him all, as I thought, still found me many questions.
"You have been at the heart of things," he said, "while I have been sitting here like a shepherd guarding a fold." And he took from me again and again the story of Lewes, and said that he envied me.
"But he will need us again," he said with certainty, "and soon, and in my country, not in the south. Even his virtues fight against him. He could not leave the march in disorder, for the sake of right and justice, where another would have let right and justice fend for themselves, and the barons of the march lie safe in prison, until all was better secured for his own cause."
"His cause is right and justice," I said, "whatever errors he commits on the way. How, then, can he defend them by abandoning them?"
"I know it," said Llewelyn, "and he is discovering it. He wills to have all the estates of the realm taking their due part in its governance, and he finds himself forced by the times to take more and more power into his own hands. And I see no remedy. We have already heard how they are standing to in the south, all those sea-coast pirates and fishermen, and the archers of the Weald, expecting the fleet from France, while Louis holds aloof and the cardinal-legate threatens damnation. And I think in his heart the earl of Leicester knows, as I guess, that for all his offers and concessions upon the one part, there will be none on the other. What can he gain by all this to-ing and fro-ing of envoys across the sea, when all they will accept is his surrender or his death?"
"Time," I said.
"Yes," granted Llewelyn after a moment's thought, "that he may. If he can weather the summer, they'll be less likely to put to sea in a winter campaign. And all the coastal castles, those he holds. However great the numbers they gather, they'll find it hard enough to land them. And if paid mercenaries don't run away home for the harvest, they'll take themselves off fast enough when there's no more money to pay them. Yes, every week gained is precious. You say young Henry is keeping Dover for him?"
I said that he was, and the Countess Eleanor was there also, with her two youngest sons and her daughter.
"The other Eleanor," said Llewelyn to himself, and smiled. "You have seen this child? Does she resemble her brother?"
I told him, as best I could, what manner of girl she was, of her radiance and simplicity as I had first beheld her, gracious, artless, as blazingly honest as her brother and her sire. He listened with a faint smile, as though half his thoughts were still upon the dangerous game being played along the marches, yet his eyes were intent and rapt. And at the end he said mildly, as if rather to himself than to me:
"And she is not yet betrothed, or promised to any, this lady?"
Before many weeks were out all Llewelyn's forebodings were justified, for in spite of ail their oaths the barons of the march did not obey the summons to the parliament in June, or send their prisoners, nor did they surrender such royal castles as they held, Bristol among them. In July, while one more arduous formula of agreement was being hammered out at Canterbury, in the hope of finding favour, however grudging, with King Louis and the legate, Earl Simon was forced to come himself, with the earl of Gloucester, to deal with the troublers of the march, who were raiding and plundering their neighbours and building up their household forces in defiance of law. The earl sent an appeal to Llewelyn to aid him from the west, which he was glad to do upon more counts than one, for the turbulence of the marcher rule threatened us no less than England.
That was a short, brisk campaign, profitable to us and to Earl Simon also, for it added to his strength the castles of Hereford, Hay, Ludlow and Richard's castle, and gave us more land in Maelienydd, bringing Mortimer and Audley and their fellows to surrender at last at Montgomery, and to promise attendance at court with their prisoners. But so they had promised before, and broken their word, and so they could and did again.
Perhaps this time they had truly intended to keep it, if the approaches so patiently made to King Louis and the exiles at Boulogne had met with any acceptance. But though the envoys sailed back and forth tirelessly, still amending, still making concessions on all but the sacred principles, never did legate or king take one small step to meet them. On the contrary, Cardinal Gui reverted to the pope's original denunciation of the Provisions, and ordered the bishops who came as envoys to observe the papal sentence promulgated against the earl and his followers. They as firmly refused, and departed. Late in October the legate formally pronounced sentence of excommunication and interdict against Earl Simon and all who held with him. So the saints fare always in this world.
This utter rejection at Boulogne revived all the vengeful defiance in the march. In that same month of October a band of knights from Edward's castle of Bristol, all intimate friends of his, made a great dash across England to storm Wallingford castle and rescue the prince, intending to carry him ba
ck with them to Bristol and gather an army round him. They took the outer ward of the castle by surprise, but the garrison turned their arbalests against them, and even threatened to give them Edward, since they had come for him, by hurling him from a mangonel if the attackers persisted, so that he was glad enough to be brought up on to the walls to beg his friends to give up their mad plan and depart.
The upshot was that Earl Simon, rightly alarmed at so daring an onslaught coming so near success, removed the two hostages into stricter keeping at his own castle of Kenilworth, sent peremptory summonses to all the marchers to attend at Oxford in November with their prisoners, and called up an army of barons and knights to muster there to ensure obedience. But in spite of all their promises, the marchers still did not come. Then the earl was forced to move against them a second time in arms, and sent again to Llewelyn to close in at their rear.
"See how the year has slipped by," Llewelyn said, when we were in the saddle again, and marching east to match the earl's westward advance, "and ours the only fighting, after all. If he has done nothing else, he has got England through the summer. They'll not put a fleet to sea now. And next year will be too late, they'll all have gone off to better-paid service." For December was beginning, and a gusty, wild month it was, though with little frost or snow.
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