Chapter Twenty
Llywelyn
The pungent smoke from the campfire spiraled upward with that peculiar tang that only filled the air before a battle. I didn’t know why, but when we traveled in times of peace, as we had from Criccieth to Brecon, the scent was never quite the same. I breathed it in, taking it for what it was—a sign that war was at hand and I would have to face it, yet again.
“Your brother, Dafydd, arrives.”
“The foolish bastard dares show his face here?” Hywel said, incredulity evident in his face as well as his voice.
“Thanks to King Henry, we appear to be stuck with him,” Goronwy said.
Dafydd meandered through the camp, raising a hand in greeting to one man and then another. I met Goronwy’s eyes and he nodded. I didn’t have to tell him what I was thinking: Make a note, Goronwy, of those to whom he speaks. It may serve us well to know who among my men he views as allies.
“I have so many enemies, I can hardly keep track,” I said. “A reduction by one, even temporarily, is a blessing.”
By the time Dafydd reached us, I’d tamed my expression. The grimace was gone. To know that I was angry would only serve as ammunition against me later. Better to swallow my pride and temper, and treat him as if I was glad to see him.
Dafydd dismounted and bowed, scrupulous in his obeisance. “My lord brother,” he said. “I bring you letters from both Tudur and Meg.”
I took the letters, glad to see them, though the thought of Dafydd in the same room as Meg brought the taste of acid to my mouth. I would not want her here; would never want to risk her, but it stuck in my craw that my absence left her vulnerable to my brother. “Thank you.” I unclenched my jaw to let the words through.
“Your woman is in blooming health,” Dafydd added. “But she has quite a mouth on her. I wouldn’t want her in my bed.”
“That’s good to hear,” I said, “since she’s in mine.”
I knew if I said anything more, I would have reproached him with the events of the winter, and now was not the time. The men were preparing for battle and it would do me no good to divide them before we started.
Goronwy came to my rescue. “How many men have you brought?”
“Thirty horse,” Dafydd said. “I know you have a plan. What is it?” In an instant, Dafydd slipped into his on-again-off-again role as counselor and confidant. Instead of back-handing him across the face, I replied in the same tone.
“Gilbert de Clare builds. He laid the foundation stone on the 11th of April. He has dozens of craft workers. He has masons, ditch diggers, and camp followers. They’re building him the finest castle in the realm.”
“And what are you going to do about it?” Dafydd said.
“I’m going to burn it to the ground,” I said. “I was going to wait until there was a little more to burn, but Goronwy convinced me we must attack immediately, before Clare gets wind of the size of our force.”
“Surely he must know you’re here.”
“He has few soldiers stationed in this region, surprisingly. I’ve had scouts make a fifteen mile circuit around Caerphilly. He has no standing army. His knights are spread thin across the whole of his lands. My fifty horse, plus your thirty, and our two hundred foot should carry the day.”
“If he’s not gotten very far in the building, it won’t take long,” Dafydd said. “One night. But then, he can rebuild it in a day too.”
I shook my head. “I have no intention of giving him that chance. I will strengthen the garrisons at my castles in the region and prevent him from moving into the area again.”
“When is this to begin?”
“Tonight,” I said. “You’re just in time.”
“Good,” Dafydd said. “I’ll inform my men.”
“I want you on the right flank,” I said. “Hywel on the left.”
“And Goronwy?” Dafydd asked. “Where will he be?”
I realized that the question he was really asking was, “Does Goronwy watch over me? Do you trust me to do my part?” I wasn’t sure if I could really trust my brother, but the odds of him being friendly with Clare were slim.
“He and Gruffydd ap Rhys lead the foot soldiers to Morcraig,” I said. “All should be under my control by morning.”
* * * * *
It isn’t that I enjoy battle, but I would say that the fire that lights in my belly at the start of every fight acts as a drug, a poison some would say. All I know is that it goes to my head. Goronwy was correct when he told Meg that I see every man I’ve ever killed in my dreams, but he’s wrong if he thinks I’ve never enjoyed killing. When the fury of battle takes you, there is a savage joy to it, as if your true self is finally let loose, and all notions of chivalry, stateliness, and civilized behavior are stripped away. What is revealed then, is the raw coil of a man, the essence of him that only cares about surviving, as if we were barbarians from the north who ate our meat raw. There are times when I understand why they do.
Just as dusk fell, the men gathered at the edge of the forest of Llanbradach, two miles north of Caerphilly. I’d already sent Goronwy, Gruffydd, and the men to their task. The people of the region and my scouts had reported that Clare had abandoned Morcraig when he started work on Caerphilly. Clare might not see the advantage in the half-built castle, but I wanted the heights.
Morcraig was built on a ridge on the south edge of the Glamorgan uplands. From the castle, a man was afforded uninterrupted views south across the coastal plain to Cardiff. Gruffydd ap Rhys, my vassal, would find himself reinstalled by morning. From his seat, he could control all his lands and keep an eye on Clare for me.
The foot soldiers were his men. While my knights were a formidable force, it was right that he was taking most of the risk in this endeavor. He had the most to gain, and as he’d already lost everything, there was an urgency in him that I’d not seen before Clare had driven him from his lands. He’d not realized what it meant, before, to be a lord without a castle.
For our part, the guards at Caerphilly would not be enough to stop our force. The addition of Dafydd’s thirty men was, in fact, most welcome. I preferred overwhelming odds whenever possible. My only fear, in truth, was that we’d fired up the men for battle and would arrive at Caerphilly to find none on offer. It was at such times that men become difficult to control.
“We’re getting close, my lord,” Hywel said. The outlines of the castle, still less than head high, were just visible through the darkening sky a hundred yards ahead. “Clare has cleared the forest for some distance all around. We’ll soon be exposed.”
We rode to the top of a small hill that gave us a slight vantage point. “Mother of God!” I said at the sight of the construction.
“It appears to be as they promised,” Hywel said. “It will be the largest castle in the whole of Wales.”
“Not if I have any say in the matter,” I said. I pulled out my sword and held it above my head; then stood in the stirrups and signaled to the twenty-five men in my company to form up.
“Ride, men of Wales!” Dafydd called, a distant figure to my right. He urged his horse forward and led the charge. I let him.
My men surged forward, flowing down the slope and across the clearing to the burgeoning castle. Every third man held a torch. Although it made us targets for archers, a fire-lit cavalry charge inspired fear in the most hardened of men and I counted the risk worth it. To the men in the craft houses surrounding the site, it must have seemed like a dragon had descended among them.
I trotted Glewdra across the clearing in front of what Clare had meant to be the front gate and met Hywel near what looked to be the beginnings of a dam for the castle moat. One of several.
“What hubris Clare has to build such a colossus!” Hywel said as he greeted me. Unlike mine, his sword had blood on it.
“I need you to see to the men, Boots,” I said. “I didn’t want more than a skirmish, but this is less of a fight than I hoped it would be.”
Hywel nodded and headed towards the mass of men who’d collected towards the eastern edge of the building site. They milled about, looking for targets, but none presented themselves. The builders and masons weren’t our enemy and my men herded them into the middle of the building site and set them to work piling wood and brush on the stones and half-walls. Burning them would destroy them and leave Clare with only wreckage.
Goronwy circled the perimeter of the grounds on the far side of the field, looking for riders or men on foot who might be trying to escape to warn Clare. I turned Glewdra in the opposite direction, intending the same. As I came around the corner of a stone block—this one soon to form the base of one of the castle towers—a boy stepped from behind it, brandishing a long stick as his only weapon.
“Don’t be a fool,” I said. I leaned down and with my left hand, yanked the stick from his hand.
“I’ll fight you to the death,” the boy shouted, now raising his fists, as if that would hold off a sword. I reined in fully, studying him in the flickering light of the fire from the buildings which my men had set on fire.
“Now, why would you do that?”
He blinked. “You are thieves and barbarians from the north!”
“You should speak respectfully when you talk to a Prince of Wales,” a voice spoke from behind me. I turned to see my brother riding up beside me.
The boy crouched, and then dashed to one side. Dafydd urged his horse after him and in an easy motion, leaned down and scooped him up. I followed, wanting to make sure Dafydd wouldn’t harm him, though I saw no anger in him tonight. “A man knows when to fight and when to save his energy for another day,” Dafydd said.
The boy didn’t answer.
Then, Dafydd slowed his horse. “But you aren’t a man, are you?” Even in the gloaming darkness, his quick grin was evident.
“Please let me go,” the girl said, and her voice came out sounding so much like Meg’s that first night at Criccieth that my heart twisted at the memory.
“I won’t hurt you, cariad,” Dafydd said.
The girl gazed at Dafydd, wide-eyed, but no longer cowering. Between one heartbeat and the next, Dafydd had transformed himself into the being that attracted women like flies to a pot of honey.
“My lord,” Dafydd said, bowing his head slightly in my direction. I nodded and let him ride away with his prize. Enough women had told me, such that I assumed it to be true, that Dafydd was an accomplished lover. Despite his obvious failings, he would not mistreat the girl, no more than I had Meg.
I returned to the center of activity.
As I expected, Hywel had set up a perimeter of guards around the castle. “No one got away, as far as I know,” he said. “Though in the dark, it’s difficult to say.”
“Good,” I said.
Hywel looked ruefully at the devastation. “It won’t hold Clare up for long,” he said. “It’s just going to make him angry.”
“Clare is a twenty-five-year old boy. I could not let him build unchallenged. The precedent such an act sets is unthinkable.”
“He will go to the King,” Hywel said.
“No. I don’t think he will. He doesn’t want King Henry to interfere in Wales any more than I; less so, in fact, because the rights of the Marcher lords are so much more tenuous than mine. He will attempt to settle this himself.”
“Shall we press on to Cardiff?” Bevyn, my young man-at-arms, pulled up beside us. He was breathing hard. He’d been in the forefront of the battle—just where he liked to be.
I looked south, to the sea I couldn’t see from where I sat, and pictured Clare’s castle on its hill overlooking the Severn Estuary. “I have neither the men nor the inclination for a long siege. We came to teach Clare a lesson. I’ll give Gruffydd my support until July, and then I must return north. I have a woman and child to see to.”
“Best wishes on his birth, my lord,” Bevyn said.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be counting on you to teach him as he grows.”
Bevyn’s eyes brightened. “It’ll be my pleasure, my lord. It surely will.”
* * * * *
“Damn the man!” I said as I burst through the door into the kitchen garden. “Why can’t he be predictable?”
“What is it?” Meg sat against one wall, soaking up the last heat of the mid-October day. We’d had rain every day for a week, and the bright sunlight that spilled through the branches above her head was very welcome. Her hand rested comfortingly on her belly, while Anna sang from the other side of a bush as she dug in the dirt with her little shovel. I came to a halt and drank her in. Since Caerphilly, I’d been more absent than not, seeing to my lands and marshalling every man I could to my side. But for the first time in my life, I resented my responsibilities.
“It’s Clare again. Apparently our meeting a month ago wasn’t enough. Now he wants to meet me south of here.”
“Where?”
“The old Roman road follows the Usk to the standing stone at Bwlch. Remote.”
“I thought you’d resolved your dispute for now?” she asked. “I thought you agreed that you would rule the north of Senghennydd and he would control the south and wouldn’t build further on his castle at Caerphilly.”
“That’s what I thought too.”
“So what changed?”
“I don’t know.” I sat, stretched out my legs to their full length, and crossed my ankles, leaning back against the garden wall.
“What do you think he wants?”
“He wants me out of Senghennydd,” I said. “It’s that simple. Barring that, he wants to start building his castle at Caerphilly again. What I wonder is to whom he has spoken in the weeks since Tudur hammered out the latest agreement. Why does he need to see me face to face?”
“There hasn’t been any fighting, has there?”
“Not that I know of. I would have thought that Gruffydd would have sent me word if there had.”
“If he were free to do so,” Meg said.
I turned my head to look at her. “You have a point. And before you say it, I can see a trap opening between my feet too.”
“I’m afraid to say it at all,” I said. “You need to meet him in person? You just saw him at Castell Dinas; and your emissaries will meet again in the new year. Why this meeting? Why now?”
“Because he wants it resolved sooner and requests me, face to face, to hammer out our differences.”
“Is that usual?”
I shrugged. “I’ve met King Henry at the Ford of Montgomery. I would meet Edward, if need be. I can speak to Clare again.”
“Okay, I’ll say it,” Meg said. “Cilmeri.”
“It’s a long time from now,” I said. “I’ve no reason to believe Clare treacherous.”
Meg pursed her lips. “Send Clare a letter and say you’ve urgent business in the north and wish to proceed with the arbitration as planned.”
“He would know I wasn’t telling the truth.”
“Would he? Why? And why does it matter? You rule in Wales and can do as you please.”
“I wish it were that simple. I do have the right to defend my lands and have done so against the Marcher lords, but everything I do has consequences.” I studied her. “You recall that Bohun says Mortimer hates me?”
“I do,” Meg said. “I also recall that he tried to take Brecon from you—and kill you—not long ago.”
“And failed on both counts,” I said. “Do you think his ire has faded? Can you see how his failure this year might fester within him such that fourteen years from now his sons lure me to Cilmeri and kill me?”
“Gilbert de Clare is not Roger Mortimer.”
“But he could be,” I said, “given time. Besides, this wasn’t the first time I’ve defeated Mortimer. I’ve decimated his army twice. The first time was in 1262 at Cenfylls, and the second was only two years ago when he marched on Brecon and we stopped him at the ford, just to the northeast of the castle. The man has reason for a grudge.”
“And if you can avoid making Clare into another Mortimer, it is worth the effort,” Meg said.
“Yes,” I said. “That is it exactly.”
“How far is it? Can I come?”
I looked at her for a heartbeat and a half. “Meg.”
“All right, all right,” she said. “You don’t need to tell me why I shouldn’t.”
“It’s day’s ride. No more. I’ve a castle close by and we’ll make our base there before our meeting with Clare.”
“Why Bwlch?”
“Clare’s new mistress, since his marriage to Alice de Lusignan ended last year, is a Picard of Tretower Castle, located only a few miles away.”
“That’s just great,” Meg said. “And what happened to his first wife? I thought you couldn’t get a divorce in England.”
I smiled. “I think he’s going for an annulment, which might be hard to prove given that they have two daughters. You do have to pay a lot for it, and convince the Pope of your utter sincerity—though the fact that she has had a relationship with Prince Edward for many years may eventually aid Clare’s cause.”
Meg stared at me, aghast. She shook her head. “I don’t understand that.”
“That’s not surprising,” I said, “since nobody else does either. But as you may have observed, when a Prince wants something, he tends to get it.”
“I had noticed that.” She wrapped her arms around her belly as the baby kicked again.
“Don’t be like that,” I said. I put my arm across her shoulders and pulled her in to kiss her. “Am I really such an ogre?”
“I just don’t want you to go away again, not so close to the baby’s birth. I hate worrying about you.”
“I’ll take extra precautions,” I said. “There will be no Cilmeri at Bwlch. Don’t worry.”