The Brothers of Gwynedd
Edith Pargeter
Table of Contents
Copyright
Sunrise in the West
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
The Dragon at Noonday
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
The Hounds of Sunset
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Afterglow and Nightfall
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VII
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Glossary
About the Author
Copyright © 1974, 1975, 1976, 1977, 1989, 2010 by Edith Pargeter
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The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious and used fictitiously. Apart from well-known historical figures, any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.
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This novel was originally published in four volumes in hardback by Macmillan London Ltd in 1974, 1975, 1976, and 1977.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pargeter, Edith.
The brothers of Gwynedd : the legend of the first true prince of Wales / by Edith Pargeter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, d. 1282—Fiction. 2. Gwynedd (Wales)—History—Fiction. 3. Wales—History—1063-1284—Fiction. I. Title. PR6031.A49B76 2010 823'.912—dc22
2009049913
SUNRISE IN THE WEST
The chronicle of the Lord Llewelyn, son of Griffith, son of Llewelyn, son of Iorwerth, lord of Gwynedd, the eagle of Snowdon, the shield of Eryri, first and only true Prince of Wales.
CHAPTER I
My name is Samson. I tell what I know, what I have seen with my own eyes and heard with my own ears. And if it should come to pass that I must tell also what I have not seen, that, too, shall be made plain, and how I came to know it so certainly that I tell it as though I had been present. And I say now that there is no man living has a better right to be my lord's chronicler, for there is none ever knew him better than I, and God He knows there is none, man or woman, ever loved him better.
Now the manner of my begetting was this:
My mother was a waiting-woman in the service of the Lady Senena, wife of the Lord Griffith, who was elder son to Llewelyn the Great, prince of Aberffraw and lord of Snowdon, the supreme chieftain of North Wales, and for all he never took the name, master of all Wales while he lived, and grandsire and namesake to my own lord, whose story I tell. The Lord Griffith was elder son, but with this disability, that he was born out of marriage. His mother was Welsh and noble, but she was not a wife, and this was the issue that cost Wales dear after his father's death. For in Wales a son is a son, to acknowledge him is to endow him with every right of establishment and inheritance, no less than among his brothers born in wedlock, but the English and the Normans think in another fashion, and have this word "bastard" which we do not know, as though it were shame to a child that he did not call a priest to attend those who engendered him before he saw the light. Howbeit, the great prince, Llewelyn, Welsh though he was and felt to the marrow of his bones, had England to contend with, and so did contend to good purpose all his life long, and knew that only by setting up a claim of absolute legitimacy, by whatever standard, could he hope to ensure his heir a quiet passage into possession of his right, and Wales a self-life secure from the enmity of England. Moreover, he loved his wife, who was King John's daughter, passing well, and her son, who was named David, clung most dearly of all things living about his father's heart, next only after his mother.
Yet it cannot be said that the great prince ever rejected or deprived his elder son, for he set him up in lands rich and broad enough, and made use of his talents both in war and diplomacy. Only he was absolute in reserving to a single heir the principality of Gwynedd, and that heir was the son acceptable and kin to the English king.
But the Lord Griffith being of a haughty and ungovernable spirit, for spite at being denied what he held to be his full right under Welsh law, plundered and abused even what he had, and twice the prince was moved by complaints of mismanagement and injustice to take from him what had been bestowed, and even to make the offender prisoner until he should give pledges of better usage. This did but embitter still further the great bitterness he felt rather towards his brother than his father, and the rivalry between those two was a burden and a threat to Gwynedd continually.
At the time of which I tell, which was Easter of the year of Our Lord twelve hundred and twenty-eight, the Lord Griffith was at liberty and in good favour, and spent the feast on his lands in Lleyn, at Nevin where his court then was. And there came as guests at this festival certain chiefs and lesser princes from other regions of Wales, Rhys Mechyll of Dynevor, and Cynan ap Hywel of Cardigan, and some others whose attachment to the prince and his authority was but slack and not far to be trusted. Moreover, they came in some strength, each with a company of officers and men-at-arms of his bodyguard, though whether in preparation for some planned and concerted action against the good order of Gywnedd, as was afterwards believed, or because they had no great trust in one another, will never be truly known. Thus they spent the Eastertide at Nevin, with much men's talk among the chiefs, in which the Lord Griffith took the lead.
At this time the Lord David had been acknowledged as sole heir to his father's princedom by King Henry of England, his uncle, and also by an assembly of the magnates of Wales; but some, though they raised no voice against, made murmur in private still that this was against the old practice and law of Wales, and spoke for Griffith's right. Therefore it was small wonder that Prince Llewelyn, whose eyes and ears were everywhere, took note of this assembly at Nevin, and at the right moment sent his high steward and his private guard to occupy the court and examine the acts and motives of all those there gathered. David he
did not send, for he would have him held clean of whatever measure need be taken against his brother. There was bitterness enough already.
They came, and they took possession. Those chiefs were held to account, questioned closely, made to give hostages every one for his future loyalty, and so dispersed with their followings to their own lands. And until their departures, all their knights and men-at-arms were held close prisoner under lock and key, and the household saw no more of them. As for the Lord Griffith, he was summoned to his father at Aber, to answer for what seemed a dangerous conspiracy, and not being able to satisfy the prince's council, he was again committed to imprisonment in the Castle of Degannwy, where he remained fully six years.
In those few days at Easter, before the prince struck, the Lady Senena conceived her second son. And my mother, the least of her waiting-women, conceived me.
My mother came of a bardic line, was beautiful, and had a certain lightness of hand at needlework and the dressing of hair, but she was never quite as other women are. She was simple and trusting as a child, she spoke little, and then as a child; yet again not quite as a child, for sometimes she spoke prophecy. For awe of her strangeness men fought shy of her, in spite of her beauty, and she was still unmarried at eighteen. But the unknown officer whose eye fell upon her among the maids that Eastertide had not marriage in mind, and was not afraid of prophecy. She was young and fair, and did not resist him. She spoke of him afterwards with liking and some wonder, as of a strange visitant come to her in a dream. He took her in the rushes under the wall hangings in a corner of the hall. The next day the prince's guard rode in, and he was herded into the stables among the other prisoners until all were dismissed home. She never saw him again, never knew his name, or even whose man he was, and from what country. But he left her a ring by way of remembrance. A ring, and me.
That same night, for all I know that same moment, in the high chamber at Nevin, in the glow of vengeful hope and resolution, the Lord Griffith got his third child and second son upon the Lady Senena. Certain it is that we were born the same day. Nor was the lady more fortunate than her maid. For six years she saw no more of her husband, for he was held fast in the castle of Degannwy, over against Aberconway, and she here in Lleyn, on sufferance and under surveillance, kept his remaining lands as best she could, and waited her time.
At the beginning of the year of Our Lord, twelve hundred and twenty-nine, in January snows, in the deepest frost of a starry night at Griffith's maenol of Neigwl, we were born, my lord and I. The Lady Senena named her son Llewelyn, perhaps in a gesture of conciliation towards his grandsire, for beyond doubt it was in her interests to woo the prince, and she had more hope of winning some favour from him in the absence of her husband's fiery temper and haughty person. Certain it is that she did bring the child early to his grandfather's notice, and the prince took pleasure in him, and had him frequently about him as soon as the boy was of an age to ride and hunt. With children he was boisterous, kind and tolerant, and this namesake of his delighted him by showing, from the first, absolute trust and absolute fearlessness.
As for me, my mother named me after that good Welsh saint who left his hermitage at Severnside to travel oversea to France, to become archbishop of Dol, and the friend and confidant of kings. As I have been told, that befell some five hundred years ago, and more. Perhaps my mother hoped for some sign of his visiting holiness in me, his namesake, for I had great need of a blessing from God, having none from men. I think that at first, when she found her innocent was with child, the Lady Senena made some attempt to discover who had fathered me, that he might be given the opportunity to acknowledge me freely, according to custom, and provide me when grown with a kinship in which I should have a man's place assured. But my mother knew nothing of him but his warmth and the touch of his hands, not even the clear vision of a face, much less a name, for it was no better than deep twilight in the hall where they lay. And those who had visited, that Easter, were so many that it was hopeless to follow and question them all. And the ring, as I know, she never showed. For even to me she never showed it until I left her for the last time.
It may be that had not the prince's raid put an end to all play he would have looked for her again, and not grudged her his name, whether he meant a match or no. But that bold stroke put an end to more things than my mother's brief love, and I was fatherless.
They tell me, and I believe it, that in those first years in Lleyn I was the constant companion of the young Llewelyn, that we played together and slept together, and that sometimes, even, I was the leader and he the follower, and not the other way round, as I should have judged invariable and inevitable. But this part of my life lasted not long, and the memory of it which I retain is of a sunny, disseminated bliss, void of detail. It ended soon. When I was five years old one of the Lady Senena's grooms took a fixed fancy to my mother, and offered marriage, and though she was without any strong wish one way or the other, she did always what her mistress desired, and to the lady this seemed a happy way out of a problem and a burden. Others aforetime had been caught by my mother's beauty, but all had been frightened away by her mute and mysterious strangeness. This man—he was young and strong and good to look upon—wanted her more than he shrank from her. So she was married to him, she acquiescing indifferently in all.
Me, as it proved, he did not want. Before marriage, though he knew of me, I had counted for nothing. But now that he had her, and could in no wise move her to any show of passion, whether of love or hate or fear, or get from her any response but the calm, uncaring submission she showed him always, he began to look round everywhere about her for whatever could touch where he could not, move where he was but suffered, strike a spark where his fire and tinder failed. And he found me.
That year I had with him I do remember still, as one remembers a distant vision of hell. I have been hated, and that most thoroughly. What he could do to avenge himself upon me he did, with every manner of blow and bruise and burn, with every skill of keeping me from the sight of my betters and the company of my prince-playmate. Whatever comforted me he removed, or broke, or soiled and ruined. Whatever I loved he harmed, so that I learned to hide love. And though he never maltreated me before the Lady Senena, he took a delight in letting my mother see my misery. He thought by then that she had not that core of life in her that others have, to make any voluntary action possible, and that she could do nothing to save me.
That he did not know her is not a matter for wonder, for I think none ever did know her, certainly not her son. She was a secret from all men, and she held more possibilities than any man thought for.
When the Lord Griffith had been six years in prison he made an act of submission to his father, and was released, and restored at first to the half of his old lands in Lleyn, and then, when he continued in good odour, to the whole of that cantref. It was the occasion of great joy to his wife and her court, life was set in motion again in the old manner, and it was a time for asking favours. My mother knew the moment to approach her mistress, and did so in my interest, though thereby losing me. For she begged her lady to take me in charge for my protection, and said that she had a great wish to see me lettered, and a priest.
Now the Lady Senena was herself royal, for she was great-granddaughter to Rhodri, lord of Anglesey, and came of a race which had been lavish in gifts both to the old Welsh colleges of lay canons and the new Cistercian abbeys and Franciscan friaries. Therefore she had but to indicate, to whatever community she thought best, her wish that I should be accepted into care and taught, and it was as good as done. She placed me with the lay canons at Aberdaron, in her own Lleyn, and gave a generous sum for my endowment there. And thus I escaped my purgatory and got my schooling at her expense, and her name was shield enough over me, even if the brothers had not been the saints they were.
Nevertheless, I wept when I parted from my mother. But then I thought of her husband, and I did not weep. And Nevin was not so far that she could not visit me now and again, or I her. So
I went without more tears, though a little afraid of the strangeness before me. I was then six years old, within a month. It was shortly before the Christmas feast.
Now the clas at Aberdaron was one of the best regarded and richest of all the colleges of North Wales, which were themselves the flower of all the land, unsullied by Norman interference. For it lay on the mainland directly opposite the blessed isle of Enlli, that men begin now to call Bardsey, and there the hermits have kept the old austere order pure to this day, and the very soil is made up of the bones of thousands of saints. Those who would withdraw to Enlli to die in holiness must come by Aberdaron. There they halt and enjoy the hospitality of the canons, and bring with them all the learning and piety and wisdom of mankind to add to the store. There could be no better place for a boy with a great thirst for knowledge. Even one who came with no such thirst could not choose but quicken to the fire of those visitors passing through.
There were twenty lay canons then at Aberdaron, and three priests, besides the abbot: a strong community. Because of the great number of travellers entertained there, the enclosure was large and fine, and there were many officers, among them, besides the scribe, a teacher. Into his hands I was confided. I slept in the doorway of his cell, and later had a cell of my own beside him. I had my share of work about the lands the canons tilled, according to my age, and I took my part in the services of the church, and learned my psalter in Latin by heart. But in the time that was left to me I had never enough of the marvel of studying, and once blessed with the first letters I ever learned, could not rest from adding to them. Finding my appetite was genuine, and not feigned in order to please, my teacher Ciaran took very kindly to me, and came as eagerly as I to the lessons we had together. In opening books to me, he opened the world, and he was good and gentle, and I loved him and was happy. From him I learned to read and write in Welsh and in Latin, and later also in English. And I began to help the steward who kept the books and accounts, for these values and amounts and reckonings were also strong enchantment to me.
