She looked down at the serpent of river that marked the harsh limit of the lands left to her lord, and her face was bright and still and aware, and her eyes, wide-set under a lofty ivory brow, immense and attentive, golden-hazel, green-flecked, the colours of a radiant autumn in her early summer face. Eleanor's eyes were always mirrors through which God gazed. Those who looked into them saw themselves there, and all but the best turned their own eyes away, and dissembled. They mirrored and matched what she saw. The mountains of Wales did not bow their heads nor quench their golden light before her, and neither did Eleanor lower her eyes. Once she had lifted her head to behold their summits, there she was held. I saw the reflected gold colour her cheeks, and the parting of her lips widen into the promise of a smile.
When she had looked her fill, she turned her head the little way she needed to look into Llewelyn's eyes, and he was gazing at her with a face withdrawn and almost grim, but as for her, she never ceased to reflect unshadowed splendour. Once she glanced down again at the spilt ribbon of the Conway, before she spoke.
"All that lies beyond," she said, "is yours?"
"And that is all," he said, "that is mine. It is not what I had thought to bring you, when I plighted my troth to you. Nor am I the man I meant to offer you."
His voice was low and equable, for he had been resolute from the first in accepting his diminished state and making the best of it, as he had made the best of his remaining bargaining power to exact from Edward better terms of peace than many had thought possible. But the grief of loss, and especially the thwarting of his lifelong ambition for Wales, was none the less bitter for that, and all the more desolating now that he had brought his wife at last to behold for herself, on this journey through the ravished Middle Country, the magnitude of his deprivation, which was also hers. And for all he would not suffer his pain to appear in his face or shake the firmness of his voice, he could not be so wrung and she not know.
A moment she was silent, her eyes still upon the distant peaks, and the flush of the west reflected in her face. Then she said: "As to the lands, they may be narrower than once they were, but they are loftier than anything my cousin has in his realm, and there is room enough there for me. As to the man," she said, and turned and looked at him with burning certainty, "he has never been greater than he is now. My heart could hold no more."
"God willing," he said very quietly, "there shall be more, some day, when the time favours us and we have paid all our dues. If not for us, for those who come after. I will never cease from hoping to give back to you in honour all that I have failed to keep safe for you now. And there will be room in your heart for all."
"I need nothing more," said Eleanor. "I want for nothing. I have what I wanted."
Such a way she had with words, enlarging and glorifying them so that the briefest and simplest utterance spoke more than gilded phrases. A moment they sat eye to eye, caught away from us and we forgotten. Then he reached a hand to her bridle, and they led the way down together out of the hills to the Conway shore opposite Caerhun, and there we crossed the silver barrier into Gwynedd, and Eleanor had come home.
That evening we rode only as far as Aberconway, along the river-bank, and there at the abbey we spent the night, and the following day took the Coastal road to Aber. The weather was changing then, there was a wintry wind, and the touch of frost before the dawn. There was beauty still in the colours melting and changing over Lavan sands, under the vast steel-blue shoulder of Penmaenmawr, and mystery in the distant grey thread that was the coastline of Anglesey drawn along the horizon. Eleanor looked about her with wide, grave eyes of joy, at the sword-edges of the cliffs on her left hand, at the white curl of foam hissing along the sand on her right, at the far-off point of Ynys Lanog of the saints across the grey waters, at the tumbled, screaming flight of gulls all about the clouded sky. The grandeur of our land did not daunt her, rather it fulfilled her own greatness of heart and mind. She had said well, there was room enough for her in the mountains of Gwynedd. She was not made for the cloistered life, nor for a small, confined sphere of action, she with Earl Simon's blood in her veins.
Thus we brought her in great but sober happiness to Aber, and there made ready for the Christmas feast. And whatever loss Llewelyn still suffered, in her he knew nothing but gain.
David brought his family and a princely retinue to share the festival with us, as he had promised, and things were almost as in the old days. But he brought with him also a fine, Davidish fury over his usage at the hands of the justiciar of Chester, and would hold council with his brother and demand his sympathy. And that, too, was like old times, and did them both good rather than harm. David without a passion to occupy him had always been David looking for mischief, and if he could not have battle in the field, he would as soon have it in the justiciar's court as anywhere.
"You have already had sour experience of law under the treaty," he said. "What do you say to this? There's a claim out against me for lands I've held barely a year and a half, and had openly from the king's own hand. William Venables has taken out a writ of entry against me for possession of Hope and Estyn!"
It came as a true astonishment to Llewelyn, as his startled face bore witness. For whatever the prince's tangles at law might be, David had come out of the recent treaty as an ally of the king, and a favourite into the bargain, set up in life with two of the four cantrefs of the Middle Country, and granted the lands of Hope and Estyn, on the borders, to provide him with a second castle in addition to Denbigh. For any man to come forward and lay claim to those lands, in the teeth of that grant, was surely an instance of the litigious madness that was driving so many lords and tenants into follies that would prove both ineffective and costly. There were enough recent and genuine grievances to be set right, after a year of turmoil during which lands had changed hands three or four times, and the treaty of peace made provision for any man who felt himself to have legitimate claims to put them forward in whatever court was appropriate. But others had caught the acquisitive fever, and were digging up tenuous claims traced back to a grandsire who had once held a manor under very different circumstances, or an ancestor who had married a minor heiress and never succeeded in getting hold of her dower lands. The whole country on both sides the march seethed with lawsuits. But it was something new for one of the king's recent gifts to be challenged.
"Venables?" said Llewelyn, frowning. "On what grounds can he possibly put forward any such claim?" The Venables family was old and of importance in Cheshire, and as Mold had bounced in and out of Montalt hands a dozen times within a century, so at some distant point a Venables might have had a precarious hold on Hope.
"Do I know," said David impatiently, "until he opens his plea? Whatever his line may be, I'm ready to answer it. How can there be a better claim than mine? That is not the issue! Venables has sworn out his writ in the justiciar's shire-court at Chester, and the justiciar has accepted it and summoned me there to answer it. Into England! Into Chester! He cannot do it, and he knows it. It's plainly stated in the treaty that causes concerning land shall be tried according to the custom of those parts where the land lies, whether it be Wales or march land. Chester is an English shire-court, and Hope and Estyn are in Wales, and I will not appear to any plea concerning them in the justiciar's court. I blame Venables for the attempt, but Badlesmere more for abetting it."
"You and I, it seems," said Llewelyn with a wry smile, "are contending against the same monster. My case was exactly as yours when I opened my claim to Arwystli. Like you I was cited to Montgomery, a royal town, when the impleaded land is wholly Welsh."
"And you accepted it!" said David, between reproach and sympathy. "It was your mistake. You put yourself in their hands once you acknowledged such a court."
"I made a proxy appearance to present my writ, and that was all. And I wrote at the same time to the king, and made the very point you are making, that I should not have been cited there, and did not accept that it was proper procedure. You'll find, as I
found, that he has a legal answer to that. He'll tell you, if you challenge him, what he told me. He'll agree with you as to the clause in the treaty, but point out that in cases between two barons or magnates holding in chief of the crown it has always been customary, even where Welsh law is concerned, to hear them at fixed dates and places, appointed by the justices. He'll tell you you must not resent falling in with this procedure—just as he told me."
"I've not forgotten!" said David, glowering. "He himself appointed you a day at Oswestry, and you conceded the place but not the process of law. And little enough it got you! Only a reference back to the king himself, and a hearing before him at Rhuddlan."
"Under Welsh law," said Llewelyn.
"Granted! And he presided over a hearing by Welsh law, with the proper Welsh judges in court to hear the pleas, and by rights you should have got your verdict then and there. Edward had an answer even then! He adjourned the court, arbitrarily, on his own responsibility, without allowing the judges to pronounce a verdict. Did you not feel, then, that there would always be a legal answer, if your case showed signs of coming to a successful conclusion? Oh, I've followed the Arwystli case from the beginning," he said, "and learned by it. I can also devise answers—even to Edward's answers!"
"Granting they're in the wrong over this business of Hope," said Llewelyn reasonably, "you can hardly blame the king for that before you've informed him of it. You may well be wasting all this rage, he may take his officer's action as ill as you do. He gave you the lands, he'll surely do you justice if you do but apply to him."
"That I shall do, and profit by your example. But I'll deal with Badlesmere, too," he promised, gnawing his lip vengefully. For this Guncelin de Badlesmere, then justiciar of Chester, was no friend of his, and they had had high words before over other matters, David's lands lying so closely neighbour to the county of Chester. "I have not yet had any satisfaction out of him," said David, brooding, "for his thinning out my forests, as if they were on English land, and cutting great roads through them across the border. Half the cantref is up in arms about it. Those are our hunting coverts, and our pig-pastures, yes, and our protection, too. What right have they to destroy them?"
"You are not the only one," said Llewelyn drily, "to be breathing fire over that ordinance. The same thing is happening in our cousin Mortimer's lands in the middle march, and by the clamour he's making over it, it's no more pleasing to a marcher baron than it is to a Welsh prince. The king has a reasonable plea enough. You know yourself it's true that the forests are the best haunts of robbers and masterless men, and safe roads through will be to the benefit of trade on both sides."
"Well for you!" said David fiercely. "Your forests they cannot touch, yours is still a principality, and sovereign, if it is smaller than once. But even you would do well to keep a close watch on these new roads…" There he bit off whatever had been skipping so vehemently from his tongue, and prowled the room for some minutes in silence, to begin again abruptly upon another course. "You have been given another day to proceed with your plea on Arwystli, have you not?"
"The fourteenth day of January," said the prince, "at Oswestry."
"And will you go? And concede the place?"
"I shall send my attorneys," said the prince, "and bear with the king's ruling that causes in chief are heard where the justices appoint. I shall make no other concession. The plea must be heard by Welsh law, and no other."
This matter of Arwystli was becoming increasingly important to him by reason of the delays and prevarications he felt he had encountered in pursuing it. Most of that cantref, which lies in the very heart of Wales, remained in the hands of his arch-enemy and traitor, Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn of Powys, who had plotted against the prince's life in peace and taken the opposing side against him in war, and like most gross offenders, could never forgive the man against whom he had offended, but now from the safety of King Edward's overlordship and favour pursued every possible means of pestering and wounding him. Arwystli had had a troubled history, sometimes held by Gwynedd, sometimes by Powys, but in ancient times it had been considered unquestionably as belonging to Gwynedd, and Llewelyn grudged it bitterly to a renegade Welsh lord who now aped and flattered the English and did all possible offence to his own Welsh neighbours, besides his spite against the prince himself. So there was far more at stake in this matter than the worth of the land in question.
"And you?" said Llewelyn, watching his brother with wary affection. "What will you do? There's this to be thought of, neither you nor I can wish to seem obdurate against the authority of the king, and even when his officials are at fault, the summons comes in his name. To enter a formal protest is fair, even necessary. To make an equally formal appearance in answer to the summons, while rejecting the court's authority, might be wise."
"I had thought of it," said David. "That I might even enjoy," he said, with a dark and mischievous smile.
"By your attorneys, I would advise," said Llewelyn hastily, foreseeing David's enjoyment dropping into the smooth surface of Badlesmere's shire-court like a stone into still waters. But he smiled.
"In person," said David, "or where's the sport? Oh, never fear, I can be discreet where my own good's involved. But I'll make Badlesmere sweat!"
"Whatever the case," said Llewelyn mildly, "you need not fear the result. What plea can Venables possibly put up, to compare with your right, when the king himself gave you the lands, and so recently? The man's a fool to waste his time in the attempt."
At that David looked at him long, and seemed to debate within himself whether to say what was on his mind, or leave well alone. In the end he did not speak, but shrugged off the matter for the time being, and returned to his wine and his Elizabeth, who was as fierce in the cause of Hope and Estyn as he was, and eternally confident of his wisdom and rightness in all he did. As for Eleanor, she listened with a thoughtful face but a silent tongue, and left them to dispose of their legal problems as they saw fit. Out of deference for her, I think, David had somewhat curbed what otherwise he might have said outright against Edward, for not only he, but half the lords and chief tenants of the Middle Country were seething with resentment at the arbitrary ways of the king's bailiffs, and their encroachments on ancient Welsh rights which had never before been threatened. In a single year the administration had made malcontents of those who had gladly sheltered under its shadow when war loomed, and enemies of those who had fallen away from Llewelyn to serve the king and save themselves. There was a kind of rough justice in it, that they had rushed to embrace English protection, leaving Wales to its fate, only to find out, and so soon, that they did not all like the governance they had invoked, and were already looking round for someone to rescue them from it. In vain, if they looked to Llewelyn. He had set his seal to a treaty, and his word was his bond. The men of the Middle Country lay in beds they themselves had made, and found them beds of thorns.
I met David again later that evening in the inner ward of the maenol, taking a breath of the night air before he went to his rest. He was standing under the stars, gazing up with a still face at the guardwalk above the postern gate, where once he had kept vigil by night, waiting for the men of Powys to ride in silently to the work of murder, and set him up as prince in his brother's place. As soon as he was aware of me, I knew he was remembering that time, and he knew as much of me. I never had asked him, I never was to ask him, anything concerning that night. When Llewelyn called him back to him, asking nothing, and he came in desperate and rebellious love, making no confession and expressing no penitence, all question was for ever put out of my power. But when David was alone, he remembered, and so did I.
I would have passed by and let him be, but he spoke me softly and calmly: "Samson!" and I stayed. "Samson," he said, laying his arm in the old way about my shoulders, "after that hearing at Rhuddlan, when Edward adjourned my brother's plea so strangely, that same month he set up a commission to enquire into how barons of Wales had been accustomed to plead in land disputes. I remember t
hey sat at Oswestry towards the end of the month. Reginald de Grey had the commission, and one of the king's clerks with him—Hamilton, that's the man. William Hamilton. Edward claimed it was set up to make doubly sure of proceeding justly. But I have it in mind, Samson, that it was for exactly the opposite reason. Tell me this, since the commission sat two full months ago, and reported its findings immediately, can you think of a reason why those findings have never been made known? Did anything ever come of them? Nothing! Yet the record of that inquisition is lying somewhere in the king's treasury, very quietly. It is on my mind, Samson, that it will never be heard of again, at least, never in Wales. For good reason! It must have found absolutely for Llewelyn's claim, that Welsh land is ruled by Welsh law, and no other."
The Brothers of Gwynedd Page 103
