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Novelists
In recent years novelists have written about Llywelyn the Great and his grandson Llywelyn ap Gruffudd. Edith Pargeter The Brothers of Gwynedd The Green Branch Sharon Kay Penman Here Be Dragons The Reckoning Barbara Erskine Child of the 1230 (May 1230) And this was the end of it, this melancholy morning of the second of May in the field above the salt marshes, with the gulls crying along the tide, and a troubled wind ruffling the Strait and tumbling the broken clouds above the gallows. It rained in fitful scuds, light and vicious between the watery gleams of sunlight. The ladder glistened, and all the trampled grass was trodden into slimy mud outside the ring of armed men. The free Welshmen who had travelled many miles to watch him die sighed with fulfilment when he came riding down the track from Aber between his guards, the hated scion of a hated stock, whom they would never in their hearts have seen as an ally. He was bareheaded, and not even his hands bound, but one of the guards led his horse in case even at this late hour he should make a hopeless bid for his liberty. He was carefully and elegantly dressed, and calm with a remote, almost absent calmness. He had known for several days that he was going to die, and lived with the thought of it so closely that he had grown numbly used to it without growing resigned. He did not know how to achieve resignation, but he had managed exhaustion. He was in his thirtieth year, and even at this pass, deathly pale and fallen away as he was, good to look upon. There were not wanting a few women who pitied him. From the foot of the ladder he looked back toward Aber, and saw the clouds rolling over Moel Wnion, and the long dark line of the curtain wall receding into the cleft of the river valley beneath. He saw the hunched shape of the royal tower peering over the wall, but the place of his brief triumph and his everlasting fall meant nothing to him now because she was not in it. Somewhere in the narrow huddle of prisons, hidden from sight, she was walled in with her memories that were not of him. There was no gain for anyone, nothing but incurable and unbearable loss; and for him the ignominious death of a thief and a traitorous guest taken in the act. He climbed the ladder wearily but unfalteringly, because there was no other way left for him to go. If they had known, those irrepressible tribesmen down there muttering and howling for his blood, all his debts were already paid. What they were taking from him now was not so much; he was stripped to the bone already. Who would think a game so lightly begun could have such an appalling ending? He tilted his head compliantly to the touch of the hangman’s hands without fully realising what he did, still straining with all his senses towards the place where Joan was; and mercifully, his eyes being full of tears, he had no warning of the moment when they jerked the ladder away. She was past forty years old, at the turning point where the season begins its long decline, and he had appeared at her shoulder, ten years her junior, handsome and gay. Like a magical perpetuation of the spring that was leaving her forever. A year later and he would have meant nothing; she would have set her feet already on the downward path and been absorbed in the harvest. A year earlier and she would not have felt any need of him, or fallen into the anguished error that there was virtue in beauty and youth beyond their temporary and borrowed grace. But he had come prompt to his hour, filling the moment of desperation and uncertainty with the blinding charm of his laughter. And he was dead for it. ‘Only when I no longer had a choice’ she said, ‘only then did I understand that there had been a choice, and that I made it wrongly. For all of us. That was the inmost sin, and it was mine, not his. What do they say of me now? What do they say of Llewelyn’s justice? That he dared reach as far as King Henry’s vassal but stopped short of King Henry’s sister. The Green Branch Edith Pargeter William de Braose, a young Marcher Lord, having been found in Llywelyn’s chamber together with Joan, Llywelyn’s wife, was hanged by the irate Prince in the marshland, Gwern y Grog, at the foot of Garth Celyn. His body was taken two miles to the west and buried in a cave in the adjacent parish of Llanllechid. Princess Joan was held under house arrest for twelve months, and during that time gave birth to a daughter Elen. The baby was sent away to The pre-arranged marriage between Llywelyn son Dafydd and De Braose’s daughter Isabel went ahead. 1277 From Aberconwy we could not so easily be shifted, having the great heights of Penmaenmawr at our backs, and all the complexities of It may be that we should have forseen it, but even if we had I doubt if we could have prevented, for we had no such flee to move an army across the strait nor dared we detach half our force, and so weaken the garrison of our beleagured Snowdonia. But Edward had the numbers, even though he had dismissed many of the Welsh levies at this time, and kept a smaller army to feed, but all of picked men, both the cavalry and the foot, and notably all the expert archers. At the beginning of September, very shortly after we reached Degannwy, he shipped a strong division across to the island, where the corn harvest was still standing. Fighting there must have been, but the companies we had there could not withstand such an army. On the heels of this invasion force Edward shipped also a large number of scythemen and reapers, and gathered our harvest, the chief grain supply of all north Llewelyn called a council in the mountains above Aber. We looked down on from our crags to that best-loved court, and across Lavan sands to the island we had lost. A sombre gathering that was. There were some among his captains who were all for fighting to the end, but more who were not afraid to say what they saw, and what they saw, if we pushed this to the last, was the loss of all. ….. He took horse and rode that night alone over the uplands of Moel Wnion, looking over the sea, and I went after him, unseen, to the rim of the camp and beyond, and sat on a hillock in the bleached autumn grass and watched him from far off. He walked the horse gently, riding slack and easy, in solitary thought, alone with the lofty rocks and immense skies of his Gwynedd, which he stood to keep or lose, according as he played this game aright. A bitter choice he had to make, but one many a good man had to make before him, in conditions even more galling and grievous, though this was sorrow enough. I think the few scudding clouds above the sea spoke with him, and the wheeling falcons that hovered like black stars against the sunset, and the folds of the uplands under their long, seeding grasses, the colour of the stubble Edward’s reapers had left on Anglesey. For if the south had crumbled away from him, and the marches shattered as soon as English hands tore at them, this pure rock of Gwynedd remained, and was still inviolate. It never yet had belonged to any but its own princes. And when it came to the last allegiance, Llewelyn was not only prince of Wales, but prince of Gwynedd too, and prince of Gwynedd first, and if all else deserted him, Gwynedd would not, and he must not desert or imperil Gwynedd. So I think his decision was made before he even came trotting home again gently into camp. He was never one to cast the load of choice, where it hung so heavy and hard to bear, upon other men. ….. Llewelyn called his council that same night, for his mind was made up.‘You have heard,’ he said, ‘what Edward intends for Wales, to hack even its heart into two pieces, to take one for himself and again part the other between two lords. Never again would Gwynedd have any power to draw the fragmented princedoms of ….. …to submit to indignity and humiliation in defence of what was his by right…‘It is what I do,’ said the prince harshly, ‘not what is done to me, that shows to my credit or my shame. There is only one man who can humiliate me, and his name is Llewelyn ap Griffith. And I will see to it that he shall not.’ The Hounds of Sunset: The Brothers of Gwynedd Edith Pargeter The Prince of Wales, faced by such an overwhelming show of force, had little choice but to submit to the King of England. The terms were agreed at Aberconwy on 9 November 1277 and the following month Llywelyn made homage, most reluctantly, to Edward. On the feast day of St. Edward, October 1278 Llywelyn ap Gruffudd, the prince of Wales, and Eleanor de Montfort were married on the steps of the cathedral church at Worcester. Edward gave the bride, his cousin, in marriage and provided the wedding feast. Immediately before the mass however Edward exorted from the Prince of Wales his agreement to additional clauses that had been inserted into the contract made the previous year at Aberconwy. Llywelyn in the circumstances had no option but to put his seal to the document. A moment they sat eye to eye, caught away from us and we forgotten. Then he reached a hand to her bridle, and they led the way down together out of the hills to the Conway shore opposite Caerhun, and there we crossed the silver barrier into Gwynedd, and Eleanor had come home. That evening we rode only as far as Aberconway, along the riverbank, and there at the Abbey we spent the night, and the following day took the coastal road to Aber [Aber Garth Celyn]. The weather was changing then, there was a wintry wind, and the touch of frost before the dawn. There was beauty still in the colours melting and changing over Lavan sands, under the vast steel-blue shoulder of Penmaenmawr, and mystery in the distant grey thread that was the coastline of Thus we brought her in great but sober happiness to Aber, and there made ready for the Christmas feast. And whatever loss Llewelyn still suffered, in her he knew nothing but gain. Afterglow and Nightfall: The Brothers of Gwynedd Edith Pargeter 1282 In April 1282, Edward Longshanks issued writs making demands for supplies and provisions from Edward personally supervised the planning of the entire operation. No detail was overlooked. [June 1282] Lying as it does in a cleft of the northern hills, with the great mountain mass of Penmaenmawr to the east, Moel Wnion to the west, and Foel- Fras to the south, the morning sun never enters Aber [Aber Garth Celyn]. But to look out at dawn to the north, over the narrow salt marshes to Lavan Sands and the sea, that is wonderful. The deepening light, first tinted like feathers of doves, then flushing into rose, then glowing like amber, comes sweeping westward from Conway over the sea, to strike in a glitter of foam and sand on the distant coast of Anglesey across the Strait from us, as if a golden tide had surged across the sea-green time, and flooded the visible world with light. That was such a morning. The only time that Eleanor’s eyes left Llewelyn’s face was to gaze at the morsel of sky seen through the open doorway, and he divined the last thirst that troubled her, she who loved the sun. If he could not take her where it would shine upon her, at least she might still look upon its beauty from the shadows. He sat down beside her on the edge of the brychan, and lifted her against his shoulder, and carefully gathering the blankets of the bed about her, took her up in his arms. She made no sign or sound of pain, but only a soft sigh, and with his cheek pressed steadyingly against her hair he carried her out onto the guard-walk, and the few yards around the stony bulk of the tower to the northern parapet and stood cradling her as the sun rose, their faces turned towards the sea. There in the open the air sweet and cool, and below us, beyond the shore road, the reeds and grasses of the marsh stood erect like small bright lances, every one separate, going down in lush tufted waves to where the sands began, with a great exultation of sea-birds filling the air above. The level sunrays made all the surface of the Strait a dance of fireflies, but beneath the glitter the deeps shone green as emeralds, and darker blue in the centre, and the shallows where the sand showed through were the colour of ripening wheat. Along the distant shore was the Franciscan Friary of Llanfaes, the burying-place of the princesses of Gwynedd. In the morning light it appeared as the distant harbour of desire, absolute in beauty and peace. She lay content in his arms and on his heart, her cheek against his cheek, and her eyes drew light from the picture on which she gazed, and grew so wide and wise in their hazel-gold that there was a moment when I believed he had won the battle. He knew better. ….. ‘Cariad!’ she said, and her breath caught and halted long, gently began again, and again sank into stillness. He held her for a great while after that, but there was no more sound, and no more movement, and that was all her message to him. She did not leave him without saying farewell. Yes! Cariad! ….. When he went out from the chamber where she lay, his face was a better likeness of death than hers. ….. ‘Thirteen years I waited for her,’ he said, looking down upon her still face, ‘and less than four years I have had her, and I suppose that was reward beyond my deserts. Now for me, as a man, there is nothing left to lose, what is there Edward or any other man can do to me that I cannot laugh to scorn?’ ….. We buried Eleanor de Montfort, Princess of At night in hall the bards made music in her honour, lamenting the rose of the world fallen untimely to a killing frost, praising her as the noble daughter of a noble sire as indeed she was, and prophesying the gift of her beauty and goodness to her own child in the days to come. And he sat erect and grave through it all, and did all that was required of him that day, taking pains to make all necessary dispositions for the care of his little daughter. He named her Gwenllian, for it was a name in which Eleanor had found a pleasing music. Afterglow and Nightfall: The Brothers of Gwynedd Edith Pargeter Eleanor de Montfort, Lady of Wales, died in childbirth at Garth Celyn on 19 June 1282. Her body was carried across the Lafan Sands to the The infant, a daughter, was christened Gwenllian. In July, Edward transferred his base and headquarters to Rhuddlan; he made provision for the needs of his wife, Elinor of Castile, to enable her to witness, in comfort, his conquest of Welsh Wales. |
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