The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  "You are severe with him," said Eleanor, cautiously approving.

  "That was not my intent. I put the case plainly, so that there can be no misunderstanding. I have quoted him his own bidding word for word, so that he shall know he has not been misunderstood. Or if he claims he has, and his instructions do not mean what I have read them as meaning, he has time to say so before the case is heard."

  So this letter was sent ahead of the envoys, and brought no protestations in answer, which was reassuring. Llewelyn began to be confident of the result, for it seemed certain at last that his claim to have Welsh law over Welsh land was conceded without further argument. The prince therefore sent another letter over another matter, punctiliously thanking the king for declining to entertain in his court a plea that manifestly belonged in the prince's jurisdiction. This was but one among hundreds of cases then embittering the whole air of the borders. The widowed lady of Bromfield had for some time been suing her brother-in-law of Ial for certain lands which he held of the prince, but being a troublesome and mischievous woman she had sued first in the Welsh courts, then in the English, putting the unlucky lord of Ial in danger of offending both overlords, since if he answered in the king's court for lands he held of the prince, that would be insult to the prince, but if he failed to answer a summons to the royal court, that would certainly blacken his face with the king. Both he and Llewelyn had appealed for a ruling, and Edward firmly remitted the case to the prince's court, and that with very pleasing promptitude. Possibly he found the lady of Bromfield more trouble than she was worth, and was not sorry to get rid of her.

  "Well, let's at least give thanks where they're due," said Llewelyn, and wrote a warm acknowledgement. And this case also we took as encouragement, and began to believe that all was going smoothly at last.

  Llewelyn felt a particular responsibility in his dealings with this Margaret of Bromfield and her family, for her husband had been his ally and friend until the pressures of war broke him, for his lands were very exposed to English attack. He had left two young sons, still children, for whom Llewelyn felt a guardian's concern, and he took care to watch how their lands were administered during their infancy, and to intervene when he thought they were being abused. These lands were no longer a part of his principality, but fell under the king, and the prince could exercise only a friendly influence, but the king had been gracious and accommodating in the matter, and Llewelyn did not fail to send thanks for his consideration.

  "Everything I have incurred," he said, "I will discharge, whether it be the payment of the money due, the deference owing from vassal to overlord, or the simple acknowledgement of favour or kindness. If his pride is to exact all, mine is to render all. As I stand on my own rights, so I'll do full justice to his."

  This he said, and made good, and his annual payments of the money due under treaty were indeed made regularly, promptly and in full, and often allocated by Edward to this need or that in his kingdom, or to discharge one of his debts, long before they were due, so certain was he of getting them to the last penny.

  By the same messenger who carried Llewelyn's letters, Eleanor also wrote to the king, in response to some point he had raised concerning her mother's will. Scarcely a letter went from her without some courteous but insistent reminder about her brother Amaury, who was still a prisoner in Corfe castle at the king's pleasure, but all her pleas had so far failed to move Edward. Some of the servants of her former household were likewise prisoners, for no crime but that of accompanying their mistress when she sailed from France to join Llewelyn, already her husband by proxy, in Wales. Popes and bishops had interceded for Amaury, for he was a papal chaplain, but King Edward, for all his piety, was proof against popes, and ceded no grain of his rights to archbishops, and turned a deaf ear to all. It was the one sorrow Eleanor had, that all her efforts could not deliver her own men from their chains.

  But at that time, in the bright autumn at Aberyddon, we had high hopes that things were moving in a better direction, and soon we might be able to secure justice at law, and clemency for the captives.

  About the twentieth day of October David came riding in, in better spirits than we had seen him lately, for the rubbing of the royal officials in the Middle Country increasingly chafed him, but now he was glittering and full of news.

  "I'm tossed out of Hope to go and amuse myself elsewhere," he said. "Cristin tells me to get from under her feet, for the love of God, for she has her hands full without me." He flung an arm about my shoulders at the mention of her, for he had always known how things were with us. "She's very well, and very happy, with a child in either arm, and Elizabeth purring like a cat. Not one daughter this time, but two! And pretty as flowers, and loud as blackbirds!"

  "So they always are," said Llewelyn, hugging him heartily. "There's not one of yours but comes dancing into the world. I give you joy! And Elizabeth? All's well with them all three?"

  "Would I stir," said David, "until I was sure of it? Twin girls, and made in her image! There cannot be too many Elizabeths in the world. I speak who know best. Five daughters she's given me, and think of all those happy husbands, when the years have rolled round!"

  I do, I think of them now, remembering that prophecy. All those little girls of his, so vastly and indiscriminately loved, for David was gifted for fatherhood, go dancing before my eyes to their fate, and all the husbands who might well have exulted in them, as he did in their mother, are pale and void as mist, sucked empty of promised joy. But that belongs not here. Doubtless God has the whole account recorded.

  "One babe, and the women are still just sufferable," said David. "Two, and there's no holding them. I am not even allowed to choose names, they're already chosen— Eleanor and Elizabeth." He looked at the princess and smiled. "What else?"

  "I am proud!" said Eleanor, and leaned and kissed his cheek. It was the first time she had so touched him, for truly she did not commit herself easily, as Llewelyn was prone to do, though never did she shut out any who approached her with entreaty. And it seemed to me that by that salute David had gained a kind of credit, considered and bestowed with open eyes, as when a seal is appended to a document until then invalid. He had, I believe, had some doubts of his standing with her, not without reason. She was not bound to him by blood, as Llewelyn was, in the inescapable tie that fetters love hand and foot. And she was wise from the heart and mind together, the best wisdom in this world. I think David had feared her. Her eyes were mirrors of truth, and he knew what his truth was, and leaned aside and avoided. But where she sealed with her own ungrudging seal, I trusted, and was glad.

  David had then almost forgotten his grievance over Hope and Estyn in his family joy. Also his second protest to the king had secured, if not a suspension of the Venables plea in the Chester shire-court, at least an indefinite delay, for the case had been adjourned sine die, pending a decision by Edward, as to the findings of his own commission. So when we showed David the king's letter, clearly asking for envoys versed in Welsh law, even he, after reading and re-reading the lines with close care, could find no flaw, no way by which any man of honour, much less a king, could extricate himself from what was there set down.

  It turned out very differently when Master William and his companions came back from Westminster in the last days of October, and made their way to Aberyddon. As soon as they rode into the bailey, wearied and dusty from the journey, our thumbs pricked, and when they came in to Llewelyn all of us present there knew from their faces and the discouraged sag of their shoulders that they had nothing good to tell.

  "So we have not sped!" said Llewelyn heavily. "Well, speak freely, it's best to know how we stand, and there's no man doubts you have done your part well and ably."

  "My lord," said the old man, "I had rather you learned the king's mind from the king's own mouth than from mine. Here is his letter. What words he has used to you I do not know. All too many he has used to me, and with all possible patience and consideration, but I am as far off from knowing his inten
t as I was before. I can guess at it many ways, and fear it one way in particular, but determine and be sure of it I cannot."

  "Yes, this is familiar!" said David bitterly. "This is Edward! Yet how could he get out of what he wrote to you?—even he? Or was it some unpractised clerk who wrote that last letter, and forgot to leave the boltholes open? He said it in so many words—"the law of Howel the Good"—no "buts," no "ors," no "unless"…Some honest fellow in the chancellery will be in trouble for that."

  "Do you tell me," said Llewelyn, breaking the seal of the scroll with a sharp pluck, "that Edward does not read over and ponder before he sends? I think not!" And he unrolled the parchment and read, with set face and darkening brows, but without outcry, once in silence, then aloud to us all.

  "'We have listened attentively in our present parliament to all that the lord prince's attorneys have put forward on his behalf in the cause between him and Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn, concerning Arwystli and certain other lands. We find that the lord prince's attorneys had not been given full powers to act for him in the case, and though we might, therefore, have ruled this as a default and proceeded to judgment in our court, and indeed perhaps ought to have done so, we have instead adjourned the case to our next parliament at Westminster, to a date three weeks after next Easter. Since the peace between us declares that disputes in the march must be decided according to march law, and such as arise in Wales according to the laws and customs of Wales, we order the prince of Wales to appear before us, either in person or by his lawyers, fully empowered by him and well versed in that law which the prince desires, or in the law which the aforementioned Griffith prefers, that justice may be done as God and right decree, and our council approve, and there may no further delays.

  "'Dated at Westminster, the twenty-fifth day of October, in the seventh year of our reign.'"

  He looked up over the scroll. "Not given full powers! How can he say it? He knows you were fully empowered, and fulfilled every condition he laid down. Now he demands you shall come with authority to deal in either law, where before he spoke only of Welsh law. "That law which the prince desires, or in the law which Griffith prefers…" He is not asking simply for men versed in both laws, and able to dispute over which applies—no, he is saying I am to authorise you to go to him prepared to plead by whichever law he claims applies! To submit in advance to having my case tried however he decrees, when he knows and I know that Arwystli is Welsh to the bedrock, and never has been subject to any law but Welsh."

  "It is a means of delaying for another half-year," said David, smouldering, "and after that he'll find yet another means, and always paying lip-service to justice and law. Still professing he wants no more delays, as if you were the one to blame, and still luring you on to hope, with his virtuous testimony that march law applies to the marches and Welsh law to Wales, as though he were not standing in the way of that very principle. No fox could twist and turn better. Whatever words he uses will always serve his purpose, for he will always reserve to himself the sole right to expound what they mean, in the teeth of language, in the face of truth."

  Llewelyn looked at Master William, whose weary old face was as grim as his own. "Did you gather anything, from all he had to say in court, to give us a better opinion of what he is about? I myself could put a dozen different interpretations upon this letter, and doubtless I have put the worst. Let me know your mind."

  "In my view," said the old man, "his Grace uses words not to expound, but to conceal his meaning. The conclusion I could draw from one sentence he refutes in the next. But one thing was clear. His Grace did not intend to permit the case to begin at this session, whatever pretext might be needed to halt it. No, still one more thing is certain—Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn was in no fear or concern at all, from the first."

  "No, for he had his assurance in advance," said David sourly. "He was contending in a match he knows he will not be allowed to lose."

  "Yet he himself has pleaded Welsh law when it suited him," said Master William. "Last year the men of Montgomery brought suit against him that his fair and market at Pool were to the damage and loss of the king's market at Montgomery, and he retorted with a plea that he need not answer for anything concerning Pool in the king's court, for the town lay in Wales, and every lord having a town in Wales could hold market and fair in his own lands without hindrance. It's true he lost his case then, for it was the king's profit at stake, but nonetheless he stood fast on his Welsh status, not a word then of pleading as a baron holding from the king. This case I cited before his Grace, but I was silenced by the ruling that I was not properly empowered. I was not allowed to proceed."

  "You could not have done more," said Llewelyn consolingly. "Where ears are shut, your eloquence and knowledge are wasted. Never fret for that, it's no fault of yours. So have others pleaded Welsh law," he said, laying the letter by, "and been allowed it. My cousin, Mortimer, for one. It seems the same privilege is not to be allowed to me, unless I fight hard for it. As I will!"

  "What do you mean to do?" asked David, quivering. "Fight, you say! With what weapons?"

  "Law," said Llewelyn emphatically, divining his night and plucking him to earth. "However it may be loaded against me, I have no other permissible weapon, and I shall use none. But whatever the unbalance, I'll contend as long as I have breath, in whatever court Edward may sanction, and by one law and one law only, and we shall see who has the longer endurance. I'll wait his half-year, and send my envoys, empowered to argue to the death in both laws, but not to proceed with my plea in any law but Welsh. And whatever the next shift may be to silence me and sicken me into withdrawal, I will never withdraw. There's more at stake than Arwystli, and for more Welshmen than Llewelyn."

  It was from that day that the prince's faith in King Edward's honesty was first shaken. If he fought on, as he was determined to do, in the name of Welsh rights rather than for any gain he could expect in the matter of Arwystli, it was in the conviction that the scales were weighted against him. But in a sense this was still a legal game, which might be won even against unfair odds. It was not a life and death matter.

  It became so, I believe, that same December, just after we kept St. Nicholas' day. There was a session of the Hopton commission held at Montgomery on the ninth, and Master William's clerk Adam attended, in the case of a Welsh tenant of Mortimer who had a grievance there. He came back in great excitement and indignation, and would see Llewelyn at once.

  "My lord," he said, "I was in court when Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn brought in a plea against the crown for certain lands that were taken from him when he was your vassal, and after the war held by the king. Griffith claimed hereditary right to them, and Mortimer and the bailiff of Montgomery appeared against him for the king, and pleaded Welsh law."

  "So may every man, Welsh, marcher or English, it seems, even the king," said Llewelyn with a wry smile. "Every man, but me. And what had they to urge by Welsh law?"

  "Why, my lord, that a man who claims hereditary right to any land, and fails to prosecute his right for a year and a day, he has forfeited his right. And then Griffith ap Gwenwynwyn rose up in person, and said outright that Welsh law, this so-called law of Howel the Good, ought not to have any force against him, for the king's Grace had it in mind to annul it wholly."

  Llewelyn was still as stone for a moment. Then he said, and his voice was quiet and mild: "Did he indeed say so? Loud as ever?"

  "Loud, my lord, and certain, and without shame. As one having official knowledge. Wherever the king's writ now runs, he said, law is to be the king's law. And then the justices were horribly disturbed and out of countenance and Hopton spoke up in a great hurry, and said they did not believe, for their part, that the king wished to annul the law in toto, but only to correct certain parts of it which were not wholly in accordance with right, and to remove some which were no way acceptable, and manifestly ought to be removed."

  "Yes," said Llewelyn, with the dry rustle of a laugh, "doubtless Griffith has spoken too soon. It is his way." H
e was silent for a moment, deep in black and brooding thought, and then he roused himself to thank Adam and dismiss him. "You have done me good service," he said, "and it shall not be forgotten. Let Master William know what you have heard."

  When we were alone he said ruefully: "Out of the mouths of infants and fools truth drops at the wrong moment. I should be grateful to Griffith for letting me know the worst."

  I said, though without certainty, that I would not take Griffith's word, thus used in court argument concerning his own interests, for what was in King Edward's mind.

  "Neither would I," said Llewelyn, "if Hopton had not rushed so hastily to put a better gloss on it. He tried to sweeten it liberally, but note, he did not deny it. There must be truth in it! He means to bring all Wales, all that he holds, all that is not my principality and safe from him, into the jurisdiction of English law, as well as into his shire order and under his bailiffs. And yet he promised to all Welshmen, as he promised to me, our own law unviolated. It is written into the treaty, and it should bind him, as God knows it does bind me. And I still cannot believe," he said, fretting at old memories and doubts, "that all the time that treaty was making, clause by clause, he was in deliberate bad faith. I cannot believe it! It never showed in him or in his envoys. There was hard bargaining to hold what we held, and when it was ceded, I believe that was done as honestly as it was grudgingly. Had it been light to give, he would have given it lightly."