The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  There was so much bitterness in him that it filled the veins of his spirit like blood. But at least prison had not dulled his brain, nor rotted his body, nor in any way unfitted him to bear a masterly part among other men, if ever he could get free. His person was princely rather than clerical, and he was but thirty-two years old, with a life before him. Only Edward stood in his way. And what could I promise him, but that Eleanor and the prince would never cease their efforts for him until he was set at liberty?

  "That I never doubted," he said, "of her at least. She was always loyal, and never could rest while any of her acquaintances were abused or cheated. I doubt if I deserved her fondness, but that I came from the same sire. He had but one daughter after his five sons, but she is his best imprint and his nearest match."

  Whatever else this difficult man failed and fell short in, for his sister he had a deep and constant reverence and affection, and for that alone, even if I had not felt and sometime shared his manifest wrongs, I keep for him a kindness owing nothing to his merit or mine.

  So I spoke of her, seeing it was the best gift I could give him, who could not give him any assurance of liberty. I told him how she lived among us prized and worshipped, what delight she took in her new country, and how it fitted with her spirit and welcomed her into its heart, and how his injuries were the only thing that marred her immense happiness. For in Gwynedd nothing fell short of her hopes, but rather exceeded them, and her married joy was excelling.

  "She will bear him princes," said Amaury, and in his tone I read all his thirsty hopes that her sons would take back from Edward all that Edward had taken from their father, all that Edward had taken from their grandfather, who had been Edward's paragon and then Edward's antichrist. I said that was also Llewelyn's hope, for which he would die gladly if he could not achieve it living, and that both Eleanor and Llewelyn waited without impatience upon God's will and God's time to grant them children.

  "You comfort me!" said Amaury, and I knew he was foreseeing, whether he fully believed in it or not, rather Edward's loss and chagrin than Llewelyn's triumph. For he had never met this brother on whom so much depended for his fitting vengeance. But Edward he knew, and with all his being hated. "I would I could have met him face to face, my Welsh kinsman," he said, and when I would have protested that so he surely would, he met my eyes and laughed and I was mute. "Oh, no," said Amaury, "if ever Edward find it expedient to let me out of his cage, it will be to hurry me overseas, not to turn me loose to roam in Wales. He will never feel safe while there's a male of my race at liberty in his realm."

  It was no more than truth, however hard to believe that a monarch so unshakably fixed on his throne should still fear the very name of de Montfort, fifteen years after the threat of its power had passed from England, and even in the person of a young cleric who had been only a child when the old conflict ended.

  "Though I grant him his grudge against Guy," said Amaury ruefully, and asked after news of his one remaining elder brother, that unfortunate and misguided Guy de Montfort who had murdered the king's cousin, Henry of Almain, at Viterbo, and kindled again a hatred that might have died naturally but for his act. He had paid heavily for a deed done in bitter passion, being shut up in an Italian prison, excommunicate, deprived of all lands and offices and even the common human rights other men enjoyed for many years, notwithstanding there were many influential men about Europe, kinsmen and friends, who felt sympathy for him, and from time to time tried to procure some relief for him. At this time he was already absolved from excommunication, but landless and rightless still, but there were rumours in Paris, so we had heard, that he had escaped from his prison in Lecco and was in hiding somewhere, probably under the unacknowledged protection of his former lord, the king of Sicily, who had every reason to hope that a most able general and governor might some day be reinstated in the Church's grace, and could be used again in office. The French de Montforts, for all their high favour with King Philip and the pope, had pleaded in vain for his restoration.

  "Who knows?" said Amaury with a sour smile. "Guy may be a free man again before I am, and I have slaughtered nobody. Though I will not say I have never thought of it, nor that it might not have been a satisfaction." And he plied me with many more questions about his family, and charged me with many commissions to Eleanor, who was concerned about his lands and affairs while he was captive, and supplied me with a list of matters on which she wished to know his will. His replies I committed to memory. It seemed that the very act of recalling his lands and offices and asserting his will concerning them was refreshment to him, as exercise is to the body. So in the end we left him cheered and revived when our time ran out.

  Cynan signed to us when he heard footsteps in the stone passage, and the heavy jangle of keys at the lock. He rose and put the stool back in its place, and was standing at my elbow when the king's castellan came in to tell us that the visit must end. Before these witnesses Amaury arose with me, darkly composed and again bitterly grave, and took leave of me with his thanks, and his loving greetings to those who had sent me.

  The last thing he said to me, as we left him, was: "Say to my little sister that my prayers and my blessings are always with her. For I do not think I shall see her again in this world."

  And though I knew that he meant only, as he had before said, that Edward would never release him but to hustle him out of Britain, yet the words stayed with me long after the door closed between us, and hung heavy on my heart all the way back to London, as though he had prophesied a death.

  CHAPTER III

  By the time we came back to Westminster I had somewhat put by the chill of Amaury's farewell, and on the whole was fairly content with my own errand, for the prisoner surely could not be held for ever, when pope after pope had complained of his detention, and many friends whose loyalty Edward could not doubt had advised and urged his release. When we reached London I was anxious, rather, to hear how the delegation to parliament had fared, and made haste, as soon as I had parted from Cynan, who had his own report to render to the chancellor, to hunt out Master William's clerk, Adam, and hear what he had to say.

  "Whatever else it may be," he said, "it is certainly delay, and no period put to it this time. There was a very full session yesterday, after Brother William de Merton had had several interviews with the king in council, and all the attestations we brought with us had been studied, or at least handled and looked at, for hang me if I know whether any man paid attention to them, or whether the answer we got was already determined on long since. All the written word we have to take back with us is a brief letter to the effect that his Grace has presided in parliament to consider the Welsh articles, that a decision was reached with general agreement, and we are to report it fully to the prince by word of mouth. Not a word more, except, no doubt, a pious ending about his Grace's tireless endeavours to do the prince all possible justice! And the devil of it is, it may still be true! A more earnest and benevolent face you never saw. But his eyelid was more than usually heavy, over the eye he sometimes chooses to blindfold from spying on his own proceedings."

  "But what was it he had to say?" I asked, for Adam was apt to run on when he was aggrieved, and there was enough of the lawyer in him to come to the point only after many circlings. "What is this decision reached with general agreement?"

  "Why, the king began with an avowal that his intent is to observe the treaty in all points—as far as the royal majesty and duty allow. Mark that, it's the text and no mere rider. For he went on to say that not by that nor by any other treaty could he, even if he wished, surrender any prerogative or liberty handed down to him by his forebear kings of England as free custom in time of peace. So his treaty clause becomes: "according to the laws and customs of those parts in which the disputed lands lie, and according to the manner of procedure observed by his forebear kings in similar case." It says but the half of that, but according to the king it means the whole. Oh, he quite accepts, he says, that the Welsh should have their own laws�
��such as are just and reasonable and don't infringe the rights of the crown. Such he'll keep faithfully. But he has no right and no power to do anything that derogates the rights of the crown or the kingdom of England, for these belong not merely to him, but to the kings who'll come after him. A sacred trust! So if any Welsh laws and customs seem to him unjust or bad or senseless, then his regal dignity will not allow him to countenance them, for he took a solemn coronation oath to root out all such from his kingdom, and no later oath or agreement can possibly relieve him of that sacred vow. But all our Welsh ways that don't offend, those he'll keep faithfully—so far as they're in harmony with justice. Make what you can of so many words, what I make of them is that he alone is to be the judge of what is good and what is bad, and can bless or discard Welsh law exactly as it suits him, without appeal. And holding up his coronation vow as a shield! The words of the treaty are all subject to an unwritten saving clause—'saving always my royal interests.'"

  It might have been David speaking, but that David would have been in a piercing, princely rage, and Adam worded with the sour humour lawyers acquire from long experience of justice and injustice dressed alike and indistinguishable.

  "At the end of it all," I said, "he must have declared some intent. What follows now?"

  "Why, he intends to send a commission into the Welsh lands and the marches, to enquire into exactly what are the laws and customs of those regions, by taking evidence on the spot. And also to cause the rolls of his own reign and the reigns of his predecessors to be searched for precedents that may be applied to this case. Though God knows they'll find none, for there are none. And when he has all the evidence from both enquiries before him, then he'll accept their findings and do justice!"

  "And when," I said, "is this commission to begin its work?" Though I knew already that this detail had been omitted. For I was becoming by degrees as black a cynic as Adam or David.

  "Ah, that is not yet stated! From parliament to parliament can be half a year. From the announcement of intent to the sittings of this enquiry can be stretched as far as Edward pleases!" said Adam. "And that is all we have to take back with us to the prince. But I tell you this," said Adam, suddenly both graver and brighter than throughout this exposition, "if he has not yet found a legal way of flatly refusing us Welsh law, but only delaying it, in my eyes that's a sign that in the end he has no way out but delay, for he knows he cannot, without showing as rogue and contemptible, declare Arwystli to be English or march land. If he could find against us he would have done it long ago. All he can do, with any appearance of decency, is fend us off with pious pretexts. And all we have to do, to win in the end or force his hand to plain roguery, is outlast him in patience."

  It was a good, sound legal thought, and went with me gratefully all that day. But also it put it into my mind that there had already been one such enquiry, taken in the year of Llewelyn's marriage, that inquisition of which David had spoken, held by Reginald de Grey and the king's clerk, William Hamilton. Its findings had never been made public. Because, said David, they must have proved simply that to Welsh lands Welsh law applied, and no other did or ever had.

  So I sought out Cynan again before we rode, the next morning, and asked him, if he might without risk to himself, to probe into the treasury records and discover what Grey's commission had reported, and send me word in simple code whether the verdict they gave was white, that being Welsh, or black, or some shade of grey between. It could neither hasten nor influence this new inquisition, but it could provide us with good armaments, if David's suspicion proved true, against any slanted verdict Edward might produce from his latest device.

  "Grey is a solid English baron, and true to Edward as any man in England," said Cynan, "but an honest man for all that, no liar. Hamilton—well, he's a crown clerk, a king's man. But if this enquiry was taken when you say, then he had no cause to believe his brief was other than it seemed. The treaty was new, the sides had not hardened, the arguments were legal, not partisan. None of the manipulators had yet got his bearings. I suspect people told truth, and truth was written down. Yes, I will get you these findings, these crossbow quarrels, if I can. But be careful," said Cynan, "how you shoot them! There may be fat, comfortable, cowardly men like me between you and your target!"

  I had hoped that we might return to Wales by way of Denbigh, but it did not happen so, for Llewelyn had sent word that we should join him in Carnarvon, and thither we rode by the nearest and most convenient way, and for that while I had neither sight of Cristin nor speech with David, to tell him what I had asked of Cynan.

  Brother William de Merton reported to the prince all that had been said and done in Westminster, and more sourly, what had been said over and over while nothing was done. And I, more happily, gave him the archbishop's letter, heartily accepting his invitation and promising to come to Wales in June, and went on to render a full account of the conditions under which Amaury was held at Corfe, and all the messages he had sent by me, and the wishes he had expressed with regard to his lands and benefices, and his cousins in France.

  Eleanor took great comfort from all I had to tell, and found pleasure in writing his greetings and his commissions to John de Montfort in Montfort l'Amaury, happy to have something positive to do for her brother, and encouraged to believe that with Archbishop Peckham's help more might yet be achieved.

  I told them, also, of the undertaking Cynan had given me, to try to discover what report had been lodged and carefully forgotten in the treasury, after Grey's commission of two years earlier.

  "That was well thought of," said Llewelyn. "Provided he does not expose himself to suspicion with his probing! Even to have those parchments in my hands, I would not put Cynan's life in danger."

  He had swallowed Brother William's faithful recital of Edward's declaration in parliament with a wry face and a burst of exasperated anger, but certainly without much surprise.

  "He'll run out of the means of delay in the end," he said, grimly recovering himself, "and however he may wish to keep me penned into my present bounds, and have Arwystli held by a time-server deep in his debt, I fail to see how he can possibly deny me Welsh law in the end. He winds about the clear words of the treaty with so many more, and so obscure and devious, as to hide their meaning utterly, but he cannot change what he agreed, and I still do not believe he is prepared to go so far as to break his oath and dishonour his seal, when all his subterfuges are exhausted. I have only to counter every move he tries, and wait out every delay. I am skilled at waiting. I have studied the art for years."

  Sometimes the princess came to my little copying-room to try over music with me, for that was one of the ways she had of making unexpected gifts to Llewelyn, all the more if he was weary, or vexed. And then she would talk freely, as once when I was in her captive household at Windsor, and the only servant she had there who knew the land to which her heart inclined, and the lord she longed to reach. So I had entered once and for all into her confidence, and that lady was gifted for friendship as she was for love.

  Thus she came to me on a June night, shortly before Archbishop Peckham was expected among us, and after we had tried over the song she was perfecting, she with voice and lute, I with the crwth, she sat considering our performance and nursing her instrument like a loved child, and then she smiled, and said: "I have become a maker of love-songs. That is his doing." A moment she was silent, then she said: "Samson, if my cousin held an enquiry only two years ago into the manner of pleading for barons of Wales in Welsh and marcher-land cases, why does he need to set up another one now?"

  I said honestly: "Not for anything it can uncover, only for the time it will take enquiring."

  "So I thought you would say," said Eleanor, and smiled. "And so says Llewelyn, and can even laugh, and own that sometimes he has not been above prevarication himself, when an immediate reply was inconvenient. But whether it is that I have an uncommonly black view of humankind, or whether I know my cousin too well for comfort, I see more in this new move
than a simple means to delay. I think he needs a new commission because the first one did not provide him the answers he wanted, and this time he must and will take all the necessary steps to ensure that this one shall. There'll be a carefully selected bench, well-chosen witnesses, sessions will be held in the places most likely to be favourable to the king's wants, and the questions asked will be drafted to draw the right responses. I think, Samson, we should be well advised to be thinking out, and drawing up, a schedule of questions of our own, to supplement Edward's. Will his judges, for instance, ask whether there are in Arwystli duly appointed Welsh judges, properly authorised to administer Welsh law there, and exercising those duties regularly? I doubt it! But there are, and if Welsh law did not apply there, those judges would never have been placed in office, they would not be needed, and they would have no authority. I think," she said, stroking the strings of her lute with a small, wry smile, "we could be of the greatest assistance to his Grace in the matter of drafting apt and useful interrogatories. We might put them in as a petition from the prince, out of pure goodwill to be helpful."