The Brothers of Gwynedd

by Edith Pargeter

  They were there in the hut, blocking out the faint light at the doorway, two braced lances fronting us, and several bared swords, and behind them others, too many by far for us to kill and break loose through their ranks. And the little boys came crowding behind their father, and their sisters peered fearfully, clasped in the women's arms. He could have struck then, and forced them to give him a quick death, but he would not, with those beloved creatures watching. He laid a hand about the head of his heir, who bristled at his hip with his own small dagger in hand, and drew the boy close against his side, and said: "Hush, now! Put up your bodkin, no need for that." His voice was soft and even for reassurance.

  He regarded the men before him, black against the paler space of sky, mere shapes to him, and said: "You are looking for me, I think. Have the goodness not to alarm the women within, and my daughters." And the hand that caressed and gentled his son pointed the exception he made for his menfolk, who were not of a mettle to give way to alarm.

  "You are David ap Griffith, the king's rebel and felon?" said the foremost shadow, gravel-voiced.

  "I am David ap Griffith, prince of Wales and lord of Snowdon," said David, and with a deliberate movement, made slowly to be seen and understood as well by us as by them, he reversed the sword in his hand and proffered the hilt in surrender.

  They herded us out at lance-point, man, woman and child, to the half-circle of firm grassland, where the men of the body-guard were already overpowered and disarmed, two of them dead, others dripping blood from gashes got in the sudden onset, Godred among them. There must have been thirty at least of Edward's men in that hunting party, and others stationed at those points across the bog where the path turned, marking the way for the return journey. This was no chance discovery, someone who knew the track had taught them every step of the safe crossing.

  They mounted us, the men with hands tied, the women free, of necessity, since they had to carry the babies in arms. Elizabeth, pale as death but mute and proud, never uttered complaint, and her sons did as she did. Some of the English troopers took up the other children to ride with them, and to their greater honour than their master, were gentle and soothing to them, even playful. But David they bound hand and foot with leather thongs, lashing his feet together under the horse's belly. Throughout that journey, Elizabeth never took her eyes from him, pouring towards him the whole force of the pride and courage and love that was in her, when she herself went in such dire need. Thus we set out on our dolorous ride into captivity.

  We saw the three men of the outer guard as we passed, tossed bloodily among their hide of bushes, knifed down in the darkness by men who knew where to find them. The traitor had taught these English everything they needed to know. David marked the discarded bodies as he passed, and the frozen stillness of his face shook with grief and anger. And before we had gone far, the first rays of the sun broke clear of the peaks, and levelled like lances across the upland, glittering on David's golden torque, and gilding all the doomed beauty of his countenance, and all those hapless, lovely echoes of his grace that followed him, all those dark girls, fit brides for princes, and the two boys, heirs of the royal line of Gwynedd, themselves princes if there had been any justice left in the world. All of them passing through this mocking radiance of dawn into the darkness of Edward's shadow, and the stony coldness of his prisons.

  CHAPTER XII

  They made a savage show of us in Rhuddlan, parading our chains through the town and into the castle, with the whole garrison, menials, hangers-on and all, crowding to gaze at the arch-enemy in thrall. But there was one who did not come to feast his eyes, whether out of haughtiness or fear and guilt I cannot say, and that was Edward. Surely he savoured his poisoned joy in private, but from first to last he never showed his face.

  In the wards of the castle, above the placid tidal waters of the Clwyd, we were torn apart, we men flung into tiny cells below ground, two by two where there was barely room for one, and the devil so contrived that I had Godred for partner. The women were also hustled away into close captivity, but above-ground, with the children to keep them living and believing in goodness, and with their needs supplied. It was but a veil of grace over an implacable purpose, but for all that we were glad of it then.

  As for David, he vanished out of our knowledge and out of our sight, loaded down with chains. They say that he urgently prayed the king to give him audience face to face, but if he did, it can only have been for the sake of wife and children. Edward refused him. From the first he was resolved on killing, and memorably, and proceeded accordingly, sending out writs for a parliament to meet in Shrewsbury on the thirtieth day of September, to deal with "the matter of Wales." But no writs were sent to the bishops and abbots, for they, as is well-known, have no vote in cases of blood, and "the matter of Wales" meant, first and last, the destruction of David.

  The only one who did find her way into Edward's presence was Elizabeth, for at his peremptory summons she was brought before him in chains. She stood alone and small in face of that giant, and pleaded with dignity for husband and children, though never did she acknowledge, life-long, that David had ever done wrong, since for her he could do no wrong. All the king had to say to her was to upbraid her savagely for her treachery and ingratitude to him, and her guilt in countenancing David's rebellion, and not repudiating the sinner and blasphemer. And she reared her head and looked him in the eyes, that little brown mouse, once so demure and silent with others, and so loud and gay with David, and said in her mild, steely, deliberate voice:

  "How have I offended against your Grace? You yourself gave me to my husband, with your own hand, when I was still a child, and taught me that my duty was to love and be serviceable to him all my days, to cleave to him loyally and be obedient to him. And so I have loved, according to your orders, and so will love him while I have breath. It was your gracious bidding I did throughout. How, then, have I been false to you?"

  He did not strike her. No, not quite that, but he made her pay for her defiance, and dearest of all for the love she proclaimed and gloried in, even in her anguish. For he took away from her not only the children, but also Cristin and Alice, and every other soul who was familiar and dear to her. David she never saw again in this life. Edward knew how to punish. Her chains, after that public display of her servitude, were removed, but she remained solitary in close confinement.

  Two months we lay thus out of the world, knowing nothing of what was happening outside our prison, not even whether David still lived, nor what had become of the children. And Godred and I, perforce, learned to sit side by side and exchange words without sickening or snarling, and I could feel at last nothing but grief and kindness for him, now we were both severed from Cristin and both prisoners. Sometimes he even sounded like the Godred I had first met, sharp-eyed for his own interests, wry in comment.

  "God knows," he said, "I must have lost my gift for self-preservation, or I should have been off out of this long before it got to this pass. Why did I not take to my heels while the going was good?"

  But he had not, and that was commendation enough. Truly I began to feel to him as to a brother, and even that was a possession to be valued, the awareness of another living creature. For there was nothing left after David was taken, nothing to hope for, nothing to fight for. In the south his three nephews, exhausted and forlorn, at last surrendered to the earl of Hereford, and were sent to imprisonment in the Tower of London. Everywhere the cause of Wales was lost, and in the bright summer the winter darkness fell upon us.

  There was but one burning, bitter desire left in the heart of every true Welshman, and that was to hunt down the traitor who had betrayed the last prince of Gwynedd, and tear him apart. We even debated in our dungeon, sometimes, who it could have been, and could only suppose that it was some solitary countryman of those parts who had watched us come and go, and thought what he had learned worth a high price. Strange it is that the men of Wales were flighty and changeable, and turned their coats openly for security, or
pique, or dudgeon, but never, or almost never, furtively for gain. And for that sin there was no forgiveness.

  In early September we were haled forth and allowed to cleanse ourselves of the muck of our fetid cell, and brought out into dazzling light in the castle ward, again chained. And there for the first time we saw Cristin and Alice again, and the girl children, pale, mute and wary, all girded for travelling.

  Last they brought out David, for we were bound into England, to Shrewsbury for his trial. He came forth emaciated and pale, but straight and immaculate as of old, with that gift he always had of emerging pure out of any contamination, but now so withdrawn that he seemed already to have abandoned this world. Only so could he pass through it for what was left of his course, unbroken. He wore the same golden jewellery he had on him at his capture, and his wrists were loaded with chains. Sixty archers were his escort through the town of Rhuddlan, no less, so high they prized him, and so greatly they still feared him. All we followed, the children with their nurses, the two knights and five troopers of the bodyguard, and I, his clerk and friend. I saw with my own eyes, and I say this was a more royal progress than many in which Edward played the chief part, and the bearing and grandeur of the prince excelled the mere overbearing bodily menace of the king. But of the ending there could be no question.

  We went where we were driven, and we came where we were bound, into Shrewsbury, where all this history concerning Wales and England began. There David, five years old and handsome and clever, first confronted King Henry of England, and charmed him with his wit, and passed into his care, to become the companion and idol of the king's own son, three years younger. In the refectory of Shrewsbury abbey, where that meeting took place, Edward the king caused his sometime darling to be brought to trial of high treason, murder, and sundry other grave charges, before the lords of parliament assembled, and judges duly appointed by the king himself, presiding in his own cause, though in absence. They say he spent those days as guest of his chancellor, Robert Burnell, who had a princely mansion not far from the town. Certain it is that Edward never confronted David after his capture, never once encountered him eye to eye. He hung aloof at Acton Burnell, devouring his own gall and savouring the messages that brought him degree after degree of triumph over his enemy.

  Yet what monarch who feels himself triumphant need exact what he exacted? I judge rather that he felt himself eternally bested, by what infernal arts only Llewelyn and David knew. How else to account for his malignant venom?

  All we of David's train were shut in close hold within Shrewsbury castle, we saw nothing of that trial. Yet I see him behind my eyelids whenever I remember, still chained, and marked by his chains, still disdainful in his beauty, for what other resource had he but disdain? God knows where Elizabeth was then, not in Shrewsbury, at least he was spared that torture. He stood to be judged, knowing Edward had already decreed what the judgment should be. That he had done homage to Edward, and was in vassalage to him, that he would never be allowed to dispute. That he had revolted against that homage was plain to be seen. He had known, from long before, that he was a dead man. The means he had not known, but I doubt if even they astonished him. There was no barbarism invented by man and speciously justified by legal ingenuity that was enough to satisfy Edward's vengeance. He was forced to find something never before wreaked upon man by the courts of England, and to have his lawyers devise a formula by which it could be sanctioned. Thus for the first time, by awarding a separate part of sentence for every charge they alleged against the prisoner, they fashioned that frightful weapon Edward afterwards used freely against all who offended him, even boys barely grown, a death after his own heart.

  And we who had served under David and been true to him were made to witness it. I speak of what I know. They brought us out of the castle prisons in our chains and made us line the open square about the gallows, that was set up at the high cross. The second day of October this befell, and all the town crowded and chattered there where the chief streets met, making a holiday of slaughter. Our part was to be displayed as the object of abhorrence and mockery, and to observe and report to others the reward of the only possible treason, treason against Edward. But I remember rather a great and awful silence when it came to the act, and whispers of pity and horror. The very sight of the tools of slaughter there assembled was terrible enough to sicken the mind, all the more as swordsman, stone slab, knives and burning brazier seemed then inexplicable and monstrous under the shadow of the gallows, itself the instrument of death.

  What Edward had lusted after was done in full. They brought David out of his prison, and dragged him behind horses, bound hand and foot upon a hurdle, through the streets and lanes of the town to the high cross. I stood beside Godred, where we were posted, and for truth's sake and love's sake I would neither close my eyes nor turn them away. Everything he endured to suffer I endured to see, and if I still wake sweating and sobbing in the night after dreaming of it, he is at peace long since.

  I looked upon him when they unbound and raised him, and for all the dust and dirt of the ways, I swear to you, he still shone, his gift had not left him. It was dry weather. Even for that I was grateful, that he was not utterly soiled and spoiled when he put them off and walked unaided to the foot of the ladder, and there put up his hands, joined by a short chain, and himself unloosed the gold torque from his neck, and handed it like unregarded largesse to the hangman's man who stood at the ladder's foot. He turned back the collar of his cotte and shirt, and looked round him once at earth and sky, and then I saw his face full, an alabaster face from a tomb, and the early autumn sun caught the blue of his eyes still vivid in their bruised hollows, frantic life looking through the submissive stillness of death. He saw neither me nor any other among all those frozen hundreds, his gaze was fixed only on light and air and colour, the brightness of the world. Then he turned and climbed the ladder without faltering, and leaned his head to the noose. He had said truly, he was Llewelyn now, and he did not disgrace him.

  When he felt those below lay hand to the ladder to jerk it away, he did not wait to slip tamely into the strangling noose, but suddenly braced himself and sprang strongly out into air, and dropped with a great, shuddering shock that caused all those watching to gasp and groan. I pray, I pray God still, though it is all past, that he did what he willed to do, that he broke his neck in that leap, and all that passed after was contemptible to him and vain. They say it can be done, by a resolute man who has the heart, when he must go, to go quickly. Certainly he never uttered sound after. But I do not know! I do not know! I wish to God I did.

  Whether with a living body or a dead, Edward had his way with all that was left of David. They cut him down after barely a minute, they stretched him on the slab, they slit that fine trunk open, tore out heart and bowels and cast them bubbling into the brazier. Godred beside me stood with head bent, barely able to stand at all, he shook and swayed so, and retched and swallowed vomit, his eyes tight shut. I watched to the end. I owed it to David to know and to remember, to remain with him to the last, and if ever vengeance came within my grasp, to avenge. And I owed it to Llewelyn, who had sent me to him with his dying breath, to be to the last brother as I had been all my life through to the second.

  When the headsman at last struck off that raven head that had rested so often in half-mocking, half-jealous affection against my shoulder, and I knew that he was free, the rest, though unseemly butcher's work, mattered not at all. That was not David they quartered like meat to display as a dreadful warning in four of the cities of the realm. He heeded it no longer. He was far out of reach.

  "You can open your eyes now," I said to Godred, between comfort and contempt, "it is all over."

  After that day, King Edward had no further use for the women who had cared for David's children, for good reason. The two boys, Owen and Llewelyn, had already been sent away to close confinement in Bristol castle, and there or in some similar fastness they surely lie to this day, for never, never must that dreaded and
hated stock be left free to breed other princes to poison Edward's life. And the girls, it seemed, had also been disposed of in some way, for suddenly I was haled out of my cell and told that since I was but a clerk, and not a soldier, I was to be set free to return to Aber, and escort the royal nurses home to that maenol. The knights and troopers were held several weeks longer, until Edward was more secure in his administration of his newly conquered territories, and even we were required to take an oath of submission before we left. I was glad that Godred did not know why I was removed from him, but it would have been useless trying to win his release in my place, Cristin's husband though he might be, for Edward was very slow to set free any man who had borne arms against him. As I, indeed had, to the best I could, but a clerk should be a clerk, and so I was set down in his lists.

  I was given a letter of safe-conduct, permitting me and my companions to travel only to Aber, and reside only in Aber, for he had not as yet extended his administration, and for the time being the Welsh castellans who had submitted continued in office, only the major fortresses were held and garrisoned by English forces. The king wanted a settled people, and where he could compel residence in a fixed place, that he did. It made the task of his bailiffs easier.