The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  "No!" said David in a low, fierce cry, though until then he had moved no finger and made no sound. "That is not true!"

  "It is true. I am pledged to keep the treaty and the peace with England, and both lie in broken shards about my feet. But worse than what you have done to me is what you have done to Wales. This is too soon, and dishonourable, and disastrous, and it is you, you who have dashed Wales out of my hands and out of my son's hands. Do you not realise even now what it is you have done?"

  "I know what I have done," said David, his voice labouring in his throat, "and you do not. I have done it with open eyes, and alone. I have listened to the wrongs and complaints of Welshmen all through the Middle Country, and borne them, as they have, until I cannot bear them any longer. Not only my own people, but the men of Rhos and Tegaingl have come running to me with their injuries. Where else could they go? To Badlesmere and Grey in Chester? As well to the devil himself! And to you, almost secure here in Gwynedd? What I have done is to travel this burdened land and seek out all the princes of like mind, and find bitter discontent and bitter wrong everywhere, justice delayed or denied, English law thrusting out Welsh law, and English custom Welsh custom. Until I was clear in heart and mind that Edward had broken treaty time after time after time, and there was no breach of treaty to be made now that had not already been made, except the last, the resort to arms. So then I had to weigh every care, every end that might arise from what I began. And that I have done, and I found no other way but this."

  "Having first," said Llewelyn, with deep bitterness, "sounded me out and found me determined to keep faith. And gone away from me like a secret thief, with a smooth, compliant face and a submissive voice, pretending honest patience, and carrying my honour away in your hands. You have lost me my honour, and you have lost me Wales!"

  "No!" cried David, quivering. "I have asked nothing of you! You have pledged nothing to me! I left you clear of what I did for this very reason, that you might not be touched. There is not a shadow or a stain upon your honour, all you have pledged you have kept, and so you may still. Am I asking you to break treaty? I have acted, and I shall continue to act, and on my head be it! You remain aloof and immune. What have you done? Nothing! You are innocent. Mine is the guilt! Hold your principality still, and leave me to end what I have begun. Whatever we can add to your realm we will add, and if we lose it will be our loss."

  There was a silence between them then, that came down upon all our hearts like the weight of a kingdom or a world, and I stood trembling where all my life I had stood, between those two and torn towards both. For though that love was not even, yet on both sides it went very deep, into my blood and my memory and my bowels, rending me. And for awe of the drawn-out anguish that bound and severed them, I could say no word. But at last Llewelyn stirred a little out of his stony stillness, and took up the struggle again, so low and gently that his voice was like the voice of prophecy that troubles the sleep of sinners and saints, but leaves common mankind alone.

  "Fool!" he said, without heat. "Do you think fate allows any neutrality to me? I have sworn fealty to Edward. My choice now is not between insurrection with you on the one hand, and cold neutrality on the other, hedging about what I have. Have you not understood what homage and oath mean? Or do they never mean anything to you?" Even this he said gently, as one explaining fidelity to some untutored alien soul unacquainted with the codes by which noble spirits live. "My choice," he said, "is between insurrection with you, and taking arms to suppress your insurrection in the king's name. There is a vow binding us, and I owe him service. If he call me, what am I to answer? That is all my choice! And either way is dishonour! A manner of death! This is what you have done to me."

  I looked at David, and his face, all soiled and weary from the night ride, was drawn so pale and bright that the bones stood out like knives, and his eyes burned bluer than periwinkles in the sun at the edge of forests. He stood straight and held up his head, but all within he was wrung like a twisted clout. Still he put up his planned and foreshadowed fight, and never took his eyes from the ending he desired.

  "If you come with us," he said, hoarse with passion, "you will have wronged no man. The treaty has been breached time and again, twisting words, loading legal scales, backing away from solemn oaths—Edward has trampled it underfoot long since, and you know it. You are absolved from it ten times over. If I have forced your hand, as you say I have, it was done because there is no other way open to us all, everyone who calls himself Welsh. Oh, cry out on me, as you have every right, that I of all men should be silent and bow my head when the cause of Wales is cried aloud, and the standard of Wales is raised, yet still God help me, I am Welsh, birth and blood urge me, the very air I breathe wrings my vitals, and tells me I am Welsh! I cannot get away! We can look for no justice now from Edward. We cannot hope to preserve, under him, our own laws, our own manner of life, our own ancient customs, not by patience and reason, not by law. Edward is the law! He moulds it in his hands, he interprets it at will. You know it, as well as I. He has practised it upon you as he has upon me. There is no way now but war, and every Welshman in the Middle Country, in the south, in the west—everywhere—cries out for justice and freedom by the only means that is left. Look!" he said in a hoarse cry, and flung himself forward on his knees under the dais where Llewelyn stood, and wreathed his hands about his brother's ankles. "This is your call to arms, above all! Edward has given you what you have worked and prayed for, a Wales united at last! If you do not seize that weapon and strike with it now—now, when it is offered!—you will never have another chance. This—this is what I have done for you!"

  He was so shaken that his fine, long hands were clasped close on the prince's feet, and even in the low candle-light his knuckles stood out white as frost. His face was uplifted, the tangle of black hair still erected by his ride strained back from his temples as though he had flown down to his abasement out of the skies. And still Llewelyn stood unmoving, if not unmoved, and looked down at him eye to eye, without remorse or compunction, but without anger, either, as though his eyes saw clean through flesh and bone and into his brother's mind, as it may well be they did at last.

  "So you did know," he said, "what you were doing to me. And now you come with this talk of my standing apart in my innocence, knowing as well as I know that it is impossible. You are not even honest!"

  "You would not listen," cried David, his voice thick and laboured in his throat, "you would not act! I saw the Wales of your vision offered to you at last, I, who had never before been able to see and desire it with a whole heart, far less believe in it! I heard it crying out to you. And all you would say was that you were bound! I could not bear it! I have cut your bonds. Now for God's sake rise up, take arms, be a prince again! It is too late to undo what I have done. By this Llanbadarn is in flames, like Flint, our nephews are out in the vale of Towey, the Middle Country is roused from Dee to Conway. If you choose to go with Edward, and keep the bondage of your seal, you could hold and kill me now, and doubtless Edward would bless you for it, but that would not put out the fire I have started."

  His voice by the end of this was loud and defiant and glad, that had begun choked and wild. He had no doubts and no regrets, and he was never going back, that he knew. But still he clung with wide, blazing blue eyes to Llewelyn's face, and could not look away, and even so fiercely his brother looked down upon him. Neither of them saw or heard anything outside their two selves. But I, for the sheer pain of watching them, turned my head aside to fix upon the dark, worn figures in the tapestry hangings behind the dais, the carving of the arm of the prince's chair, the blackened candle-sconce in the wall. And there, mute and still at the back of the room, where she had entered from the narrow door that led to their sleepingchamber, Eleanor was standing.

  I do not know how long she had been there, for the curtains cut off any draught from the door when it opened, and always she moved very surely and softly. Certainly she was incapable of stealth, and had entered in in
nocence, and the sight of those two locked in their death and life contention had halted her as soon as she came in, and held her unwilling to break the spell that bound them. She had come but two or three paces into the room, and the curtains still shadowed her, but silently and carefully she had closed the door behind her, that no one else might hear what passed between the brothers. And then she stood and waited, for had she tried to withdraw, that would have been as shattering a disturbance as if she had advanced to walk between them.

  She was entering the seventh month of her pregnancy, and her body rounding, so that she stood with her hands lightly braced along her high girdle, and leaned a little backwards, and being so beautiful, she had that strange and royal grace that the Mother of God has in paintings and statues that show her in the time of the visitation. Her face was grave, considering and aware, and her eyes were on Llewelyn's face, and never left it but to look once full into mine, and though she gave me then no smile and made no sign, her glance acknowledged and was glad of me as one always and wholly, like her, a true lover of her lord. We stood apart, but we waited together, for those two to resolve the battle between them.

  "There is no need to remind me," said Llewelyn, staring down upon his brother with a darkened and shuttered face, "that you have left me no choice but between two dishonours." And he made one strong step back, and tore himself out of David's clasping hands. "Now get out of my sight," he said with terrible gentleness and more terrible despair, "while I make that choice."

  David got up from his knees slowly, like a wounded man, and turned and went out from him reeling a little, as though exhausted, but still his face was bright and resolute as he passed me. When he was gone, Llewelyn sat down slowly in the great chair, and then Eleanor moved from her place and came to him out of the shadows. Released from his bitter concentration upon David's presence, he felt hers, and turned to her as plants turn to the sun, knowing who came before ever she stepped into the light.

  Confronting this cataclysm that threatened her fortune, her peace and everything she loved, she looked as I saw her look once when she stood between the knights of her household and Edward's Bristol pirates, and addressed the chief of her captors with the fearless courtesy of queens, and the large, involuntary contempt of the noble for the base. Never did she protest at what was done and could not be undone, never turn her back on what must be faced and dealt with, never repine over what was past remedy. She looked the hour in the face, whether it smiled or frowned, and chose her course with a single-hearted gallantry, seldom in doubt, never in fear.

  He watched her draw near, and when she was close he reached out and took her hand, and drew it into his breast. Always her approach reflected light over his face, but then it was a still and solemn light. He asked gently: "How much have you heard?"

  "Enough," she said.

  "I am glad. I would have told you, but now there is no need."

  "None," she said. "It is no choice at all. Between betraying Edward and betraying Wales there can be no choice."

  He drew breath long and deeply, eased of uttering what was inevitable, and had been from the moment David struck at Hawarden. "They are two ways of dying," he said, "and both with dishonour. But he says truly, nothing I now do can undo what he has done. With me or without me, Wales is at war. Of all the things I cannot do, the furthest out of my scope is to take the field for Edward against my own people. And after that, hardly less impossible, to let them fall helpless into Edward's hands, and never draw sword to aid them."

  "There is no need to tell me so," she said with resolute serenity. "There is but one way to go, for you and for me. We go with Wales. Nor can we launch into this war with half our hearts and half our forces. Since we must go, let's go with our might,

  and triumph if we can."

  "Since I am throwing my honour into the scale," he said with bitter resolve, "I may well throw everything else in after it. The lot was cast for me without my will, but what I make of it now is on my own conscience. I had not thought, my heart," he said, laying his cheek against the hand he held, "to have dragged you into such a wilderness for love of me."

  "Never say so!" she said, and her green-gold eyes flared, and her long fingers curled and closed over his mouth, caressing him with passion. "There is more in it than that! I go with you not only because I would go with you to the ends of the world, no matter how barren, and find there all the roses I want or need, and beyond that into hell, and think it a cool and pleasant place with you beside me—though so I would! No, this is my war no less than yours. I have a mind and a will, and honour to be staked and lost, like you, and in this matter I judge as you do. If you are Edward's liege-man, so am I his liege-woman. If you must bear the burden of a guilt you have not earned, then half that load is mine, and I claim it. Everything that is yours, whether it be glory or shame, is also mine. But your son whom I carry is guiltless. If you and I by staking our two souls can win for him a free Wales to be his inheritance, then I say let us submit our own dishonour gladly to the judgment of God, and pay whatever penalty is exacted with a high heart. So we sin together," she said, "and atone together! We can neither avert nor avoid this war. It only remains to fight it."

  "Fight it and win it!" he said, shaken half into laughter and half beyond into astonished grief, for there was never any of Earl Simon's sons, not even the eldest and best, looked and sounded so like his sire as did then this only daughter, this ivory dove among the eagles, with her world in peril, and the seed of kings and heroes quickening in her womb. He opened his arms and drew her down into his heart, circling all his dreams and labours and hopes within the compass of her rounding waist.

  And I, who had held still for fear of troubling their immense solitude, slipped away out of the room unnoticed while they clung together in that three-fold embrace, and waited without, not far, until he should call me. For those two, having no comfort but in each other, and having accepted a war they had not sought and did not want, would not now be long inactive about it, even for love's sake. They would pursue it, rather, with all their gallantry and force, most of all for love's sake.

  Nevertheless, for all the deeds he did thereafter, and all the pride and sovereignty of his leadership in the cause of Wales, I testify that a part of him died that day, when he tore himself free perforce from his plighted fealty and troth, and followed his brother and ill-demon into the last of his wars against England.

  It was not ten minutes before he opened the door. And she was gone; and he was calm and hard as stone, and his eyes had deep fires burning in them, no passing sparkle, but the slow, enduring heart-red that burns through days and nights without failing or changing. His voice was low, brisk and mild. He said: "Samson, call David back to me, and wait until he leaves. I need you here."

  So I called David, who was sitting with his head in his arms, asleep upon a trestle table in a corner of the hall, with the common bustle of life passing him by this way and that. At my touch on his shoulder he awoke and fell into a brief, strong shuddering, and started upright with a hand to his hilt and a wrung smile on his mouth, but his eyes still innocent and dazed and blue, a waking child's eyes. Then he knew me, and the frost of awareness clenched the blue into spearhead sharpness, and the lines of his face into sword-edges, and he was wide awake with a leap, as was usual with him, and laughed, for laughter was his armour.

  "I thought you were Edward," he said, "and here's not my judge, but my confessor. Well, have I sped? God knows I left nothing to chance that I could ensure, to nail him to what he finds a cross. Oh, Samson, the first true gift ever I tried to bring him, and I throw that and myself at his feet, and look up at him, and his face, oh, God, is the face of a murdered man before he dies. Oh, Samson, must I be fatal still?" And by that he had left laughing, and his eyes were huge and veiled. But the next moment he laughed anew, for he, who derided most things, derided most of all himself. "I should have stayed in Denbigh getting handsome daughters," he said. "It is what I am best at. At least a whole company of
young men will have reason to praise me."

  I could not choose but note how he named Edward, and yet thereafter, meaning his brother, found no need to say other than "he," for there was but one he who so occupied the whole ground of his heart and mind. So I said only: "He bids you to him." And he looked with unwonted earnestness in my face, to find what I had seen in his brother's face, and he came with me.

  When we entered the high chamber Tudor was there before us, and the captain of the prince's household guard with him, and two clerks sat at a table below the dais. Llewelyn turned from them to meet us. I saw David's eyes noting these presences, and the parchments already strewn on the board among them, and the single brief glance they gave to him, such of them as looked up at all. He knew then that his cause had taken a great leap forward while he snatched his few minutes of exhausted sleep, and things were now gone far past any further argument or reproach. Never again would there be mention of what he had done. The blame for disaster would never be shaken off on to his shoulders, if the end was disaster, nor could he ever lay claim to the whole glory if the venture ended in glory. I think he knew with what deep anguish and shame Llewelyn accepted the destiny forced upon him, I do believe that in his rebellious and audacious heart he felt it almost as deeply that he was the cause, but his eyes were fixed upon the end he had set before him, and by comparison with that, no pain of his or his brother's was of any consequence.