Y Llyn Llwyd
by Michael Arram
XVIII
The boy Cynan ap Morgan often chose to ride in Urban's company on the road through England, rather than with his father. In part this was because Gruffudd Goch, the boy's tutor in arms, rode with his lord, the bishop. But it was also because they were encountering many strange things and places and Cynan liked to resort to Urban for explanations.
'This is a very straight road, my lord,' he observed as they were riding down along the course of the Fosse Way to the River Trent at Newark. It was a fine fresh late January day. The first of the new year that carried the promise of spring, with high scudding clouds in a blue sky. Snowdrops shone in the grass of the verges.
'Indeed, young prince,' Urban smiled. 'I would have thought that a youth of your education would know the signs of an old Roman route. Their legions were active laying road beds in our homeland too. There are upland Roman roads you can see not far from Llantrisant and Caerleon where the paving is intact and as smooth as when it was first laid, with mileposts still standing to inform travellers of the distance to the next Roman town. And you must have observed how the Roman roads out of your native Caerleon are lined with Roman tombs and sepulchres. For their authorities would not allow adult burials within their cities and towns, so their dead were interred alongside the roads where they left the houses and walls.'
Cynan pondered the wisdom of this. 'I have read, my lord, that the Romans and the Greeks of old burned the bodies of the dead but did not bury them in coffins in holy ground as we do. So it was not to avoid the offensive smell of the decaying corpses that they buried their remains outside their towns, for they must have entombed the burnt remains in sealed canisters or vases.'
'Indeed, young man. Well observed. Christian peoples do things differently. Master Dewi will no doubt have told you the tale of Lazarus, who was entombed unburnt in a sepulchre after he died in the manner of the ancient Jews and so could walk out of the tomb when Our Lord raised him from the dead, and indeed Our Lord himself was entombed in a cave which was blocked with a stone.'
Cynan nodded. 'The bodies of our saints, such as the blessed Dyfrig, are displayed after death, and their relics perform miracles. I have read the list of his wondrous deeds which is kept by Master Grono at the shrine in our church of Llantrisant. And …' Cynan dried up abruptly, causing Urban to look at the boy trotting thoughtfully alongside him on his white pony.
'Er … you were saying …?' he ventured.
Cynan shot him a sharp glance. 'It is said around Coedwen that Dyfrig has come again amongst his people … in you, Bishop Urban.'
'Indeed?' he mused, somewhat astonished. 'Master Dewi will tell you, my lord Cynan, that death is final for Christian folk, other than for Christ himself. Resurrection of the body is promised, of course for every soul, but that will be for us as we are raised to suffer judgement on the last day.'
'And what of my forbear, the great King Arthur, who sleeps on the mystic Isle of the Apple Trees, and will one day return to rule the British people in justice and glory?'
'Eh? Have you been reading Geoffrey of Monmouth's History of the Kings of Britain, my boy?'
'No, my lord, it was a tale told me by my brother Cyngwin. And he says that not just Arthur and his warriors are returning, but his court also. And you are his bishop Dyfrig returned, as can be seen in the marvellous restoration of the Church in Gwent under your leadership.'
Urban shook his head, half flattered and half alarmed. It seemed that the warnings that some had murmured to him about the poetic and wistful Cyngwin were to be taken seriously after all, more so perhaps than the cautions he had received about the youngest brother Cyngen's animal wildness. Words in irresponsible minds were sharper than blades in reckless hands, it seemed. He pondered the Latin proverb Osse carens lingua quandoque teri facit ossa, meaning that the tongue was an organ which lacked a bone, but it could easily cause bones to be crushed. There was a sermon there, Urban reckoned, which might be much supported by texts from the book Ecclesiastes.
Earl Robert and Earl Ranulf pressed the army on past Newark, and Urban watched the towers of Lincoln cathedral on the city's tall hill grow steadily closer as the winter evening closed in. The army camped on the Fosse Way on meadows next to the River Witham, which Urban was told was the river that flowed past the southern defences of the city. It was no more than two miles away now.
After a night with little sleep Urban celebrated mass on an improvised altar for King Morgan's household and troops at dawn the next morning. It was Candlemas, and he distributed the surplus candles in his baggage to members of the royal family, to hold while he blessed them. Before concluding the mass he solemnly offered absolution to all the ranked soldiers in front of his altar for the deeds they must do that day, and to send them into eternity suitably shriven if it must be that their lives were to end on the field. He reflected with a certain solemn awe that many of those bright eyes looking back at him over their clasped hands might be extinguished in death in a matter of hours.
Nicholas his brother came up as Urban was packing up his temporary altar. 'I said mass for Earl Robert,' he said. 'He seems in good spirits. Another Welsh king has arrived, Madog of Powys. More spearmen for the line of battle. The earls and kings are having a war council just now. I listened in. The troops are to cross the river and march along its left bank to the eastern city walls. The plan is to use the Welsh spearmen to hold off the royalist cavalry onset while the Glamorgan bowmen pick them off. And, when the English cavalry breaks, to let loose our own horse, knights and uchelwyr, to drive them back into the city.'
Urban cocked an eyebrow. 'How are they so sure they know what the English are going to do?'
'Ah, that would be because Earl Ranulf's agents in the city have been happy to send out covert messages about the king's dispositions. As to the cavalry onset, those same agents have been putting it about that the Welsh infantry is undisciplined and weak. Nothing like appealing to English prejudice. And the king's earls are of course over-confident in the striking power of their elite knightly mesnies. They forget all too easily that old King Henry won his battles by dismounting the knights of his guard and adding them to stiffen his infantry line, counting on his mercenary crossbowmen to shoot the enemy cavalry to pieces. That's how he bested King Louis at Brémule in 1119, and so saved Normandy from a French invasion.
'But Earl Robert is not so forgetful of his father's victories, for he was captain of the royal guard before he was made earl of Gloucester. He and King Morgan think alike on strategy and both have trained up their forces to execute just such a plan. The only uncertainty is whether the infantry King Madog and King Cadwaladr have brought have quite the same level of discipline as King Morgan's to be able to assist them.'
Urban was impressed at his brother's military know-how. 'For a bishop and a Benedictine monk, Nicholas, you seem to have absorbed a lot of military strategy.'
Nicholas laughed. 'Gloucester abbey's library has shelf upon shelf of chronicles and works of history, and I passed a lot of spare time outside the choir perusing them, works in Latin and Old English alike. And as subprior my job was to entertain our lay visitors, many of whom were of course warriors. I once had the pleasure when I was but a novice myself of a conversation with the late King Henry, a frequent guest, about his teenage memories of the Battle of Hastings. He remembered me and used me later as a translator when he was conducting an affair with a Welsh princess, which is not a memory I much cherish.' Nicholas quirked a most unepiscopally boyish grin, and added, 'Where shall we watch the engagement, Urban? Our memories of it will be needed to add to our diocese's chronicles.'
The two bishops mounted up and turned their horses' heads to follow the teulu of King Morgan, amongst whom were Gruffudd Goch and Cynan ap Morgan, which was fording the shallows of the River Witham. They hung back as the troops marshalled, Nicholas indicating a wooded knoll half way up the ridge jutting out and making an admirable view point. 'Just like a natural pulpit to view what's to come,' Urban said.
The two bishops gained the wooded knoll as the army finished its passage over the Witham, and from that modest height the whole field opened before them like a page awaiting its script. A pale winter sun had risen, thin and cold, and the frost still clung in the hollows of the ground, so that the breath of men and horses hung about them like incense not yet dispersed.
Below, King Morgan's line was already forming with a deliberation that spoke of long training and stern expectation. His spearmen stood close-ranked upon the gentle slope, their shields locked and their long ash shafts angled forward in a bristling hedge. They were well-appointed men, many in mail shirts or stout brigandines, their helms plain but serviceable, and there was about them a stillness that Urban, watching, thought almost monastic in its discipline.
Behind them, on slightly rising ground, the bowmen of Gwent took their stations. Each man set a sheaf of arrows upright in the frozen earth before him, so that the field was pricked with iron heads like a second, winter crop. They bent their bows experimentally, the tall yew staves creaking softly, and then stood at ease, awaiting the signal.
To the right, the contingents of King Cadwaladr and King Madog of Powys were assembling, and here the contrast was stark. Their spearmen were many, but ill-matched to the work before them—barelegged beneath their tunics, without mail or toughened jerkins, their shields lighter, their line less ordered. No archers stood behind them, and gaps showed where men shifted or spoke or looked about them uneasily.
Nicholas, shading his eyes, said quietly, 'There is courage amongst the Gogleddwyr maybe, but not any habit of discipline in the Northern ranks.'
Urban did not answer at once. His gaze had been drawn instead to the mounted companies forming in reserve: the mailed knights of Earl Robert and Earl Ranulf, their horses barded, their banners stirring faintly in the cold air; and beside them, no less formidable, the uchelwyr of the Welsh teuloedd under King Morgan's command. The king himself rode amongst them, his son at his side, speaking here and there, pointing, ordering, binding by his formidable presence the whole into a single intent.
It was a noble, if ominous, sight, and yet, even as Urban took it in, a murmur rose along their own lines. From the western gates of Lincoln there issued now the host of King Stephen.
They came on not in haste, but in some splendour, as though for a tourney rather than a reckoning of blood. The mesnies of the English earls rode out in ordered ranks, their surcoats bright with colour—scarlet, azure, gold, white or vert—so that the whole hillside seemed suddenly alive with moving banners. Steel flashed, trumpets sounded, and the ground trembled faintly beneath the weight of so many horses.
'They are very many,' Urban said softly.
Nicholas inclined his head. 'More than we, and better furnished in horse. They trust in it, maybe too much. But we will see, no doubt.'
At a little remove from the advance, upon a low knoll, the king in red and gold himself took his station amongst his guards beneath the red dragon standard of England, flapping high above the royal army like a windsock, golden wings stitched to its side seeming to flap. There, in full view of both armies, the king dismounted and stood, his gilded mail glinting pale in the winter light. Beside him a baron—Nicholas named him as Baldwin fitz Gilbert—rode forward and began to harangue the host, his voice carrying faintly across the field like the cry of a herald at games.
Nicholas scoffed. 'Stephen is no orator and his voice is gentle so he has delegated the labour of rousing his men to blood lust to Baldwin, a savage old warrior, brother of that Richard fiz Gilbert who died at Grwyne Fawr, and so a man who hates the Welsh with a vengeance.'
As Urban watched, something in the posture of the king, alone upon that rise, stirred a memory in him unbidden: the still waters of Llangorse, grey under a gentler sky; the quiet of its margins; and the brief season of peace he had known there with Leofric and with Morgan Ddu, before the world had resumed its harsher course. The recollection passed as swiftly as it came, like breath upon glass, and he returned his gaze to the field.
A trumpet sounded. The English line stirred. From their van rode forth the cavalry under Waleran of Meulan, his banner of imperial blue and yellow check which proclaimed his lineage back to the Emperor Charlemagne snapping sharply above him. They formed with practised ease and then, without delay, advanced at a steady trot that soon lengthened into a charge, the whole mass bearing down upon the Welsh right where Madog's men stood.
The crashing impact, when it came, was terrible and swift. The unarmoured spearmen of Powys wavered at the last, their line bending and spearpoints dipping, then breaking outright as the mailed horses crashed among them. Men were thrown aside, trampled underfoot, cut down where they fled. What had been a line dissolved into a scattering of bodies, and the field there was lost in moments.
Nicholas closed his eyes briefly. 'May God receive them as his own,' he murmured.
But the charge did not carry on unchecked. Waleran's men, having overthrown that first resistance, drew up and wheeled, reforming with admirable discipline. Before them now stood the line of King Morgan's own levies, and beyond them, visible between the ranks, the poised archers of Gwent.
A horn sounded from the Welsh line. At once the air was filled with the hiss and whisper of arrows. The bowmen loosed not in haste but in measured volleys, their shafts rising and falling in dark arcs that seemed almost leisurely until they struck. Horses screamed and reared; men pitched from the saddle; the ordered ranks of the cavalry faltered under the remorseless rain.
Still they came on, urged forward, the front ranks lowering their lances. Yet when they met the spears of Morgan's line, they did not find the yielding they had encountered before. The Welsh stood firm, shields locked, spearpoints unwavering, receiving the shock with a steadiness that turned the charge aside rather than absorbing it.
Again the arrows fell. Again the horses recoiled, those that did not fall. Urban saw confusion ripple through the English ranks, saw banners waver, saw men look behind them rather than ahead. And whether it was memory or instinct—whether Waleran recalled, as Nicholas later suggested, the ruin of his charge years before against King Henry's dismounted guard and their biting volleys in Normandy—yet something gave way.
The cavalry drew off. Then, unmistakably, they turned.
A sound rose from the Welsh line—not a cheer at first, but a deep, gathering roar, as of wind in a forest. It broke at last into a cry that seemed to shake the very ground.
'Now,' Nicholas said, gripping Urban's arm.
From the rear the knights of Earl Robert and Earl Ranulf spurred forward, and with them the uchelwyr of King Morgan, their horses leaping into the descent. Down they came upon the disordered English horse, which was already giving ground, and the field, which moments before had hung in balance, tipped suddenly and irrevocably towards the Welsh.
The mass of King Stephen's army surged back toward the city, but the king himself remained upon his knoll under his standard.
'He stands like a rock,' Urban said, almost in wonder.
'He must,' Nicholas replied.
Around the dragon standard his household knights gathered, forming a ring of steel about him. There they made their stand, fighting not for victory now but for honour, and for the person of their lord. One by one they were struck down or borne away; others cast aside their arms and yielded; yet still the king fought on foot amongst them, striking and parrying, his great longsword broken at one point, but still he fought on with a discarded axe he had picked up from the field. He was a valiant and indomitable figure marked always by the great standard flapping above him as if it were a genuine guardian dragon. 'Now that is how a king should conduct himself in battle,' said Urban in admiration.
It was into this tightening circle that the foremost of the Welsh burst at last. Urban saw, though indistinctly through the press, a figure he knew well enough—Morgan Ddu—moving with a force that seemed almost beyond the ordinary measure of a man. There was in his hand, incongruously, a stone, a small boulder, wrenched from the frozen ground or from some broken wall. With it he closed upon the king, and before any could stay him, he hurled it across to land on the king's steel helm with a violence that felled Stephen where he stood.
The ring collapsed.
Into the sudden quiet space around the captured king Gruffudd Goch, with the boy Cynan at his side, pushed their way to the standard. Together they dragged it down, the great red silk dragon banner falling into the mud and trampled, and then, lifting it between them, they bore it back through the shouting ranks Up the slope they came, breathless and wild-eyed, until they stood before King Morgan and the two bishops upon their height. There they cast the standard down at the king's feet. For a moment there was silence as the boy's grandfather received it with a smile and blessed the boy who offered it to him. Y ddraig goch ddyry cychwyn, yelled another boy's voice, the high voice of another of his grandsons, the boy bard Cyngwin ap Morgan, hanging round his brother's neck and kissing him. 'The red dragon leads the way! Royalty returns to the Britons! Long live King Morgan! Long live Prince Cynan!' And the army took up the shout as it followed at the heels of its enemies within the walls of Lincoln.
Urban, looking upon the fallen emblem, felt the weight of what had been done settle upon him like the chill of the morning air. Then he raised his hand, almost without conscious thought, and began to speak the great prayer of thanksgiving, Te Deum Laudamus.
The battle being done, and the field given over to the gathering of the wounded and the stripping of the dead, word came to Bishop Urban before noon that King Stephen had been taken within the castle.
At first this was no surprise to him. That a defeated king should be held secure until terms were made was the common course of war. Yet as the report unfolded in the mouths of those who brought it, a disquiet took hold of him.
'They have set him in irons,' said one of Earl Robert's clerks, with a certain relish not wholly concealed. 'Chains upon his wrists, stripped of his royal clothing and barefoot, and a guard as though he were a common felon. It is said he is to be sent to Bristol under close confinement.'
Urban stood very still. 'In irons?' he said.
'So it is ordered, lord bishop. By the Empress herself.'
For a moment Urban said nothing. Around him the sounds of victory continued—the calling of captains, the neighing of horses, the distant cries of men seeking comrades or kin—but they seemed suddenly far off, as though muffled.
Nicholas, watching him, said quietly, 'It is a hard thing, but remember what she has long suffered at his hands.'
Urban turned his head. 'And so she would teach the realm what manner of queen she will be?' he said. He did not wait for an answer. Gathering his cloak about him, he mounted at once and made for the castle.
Within Lincoln's walls the air was thick with the press of men and the confusion of triumph. The gates stood open, the courtyards crowded with soldiers, servants, prisoners, and the curious. Yet even there a kind of hush seemed to follow the bishop as he passed, for his face was set in a manner that few who knew him had ever seen. He was admitted without hindrance to the presence of Earl Robert.
The earl stood in a chamber off the inner ward, still in his armour though the helm had been set aside. There was upon him the look of a man who has done what was required of him and finds no ease in it. When he saw Urban, he inclined his head with courtesy, but there was already something like apprehension in his expression.
'My lord bishop,' he said. 'You come upon me swiftly, and with no friendly look.'
'I came as swiftly as I heard,' Urban replied. 'Is it true, my lord, that the king is held in chains?'
Robert did not answer at once. 'It is true,' he said at last.
Urban took a step nearer. 'You fought him this day,' he said, 'and saw how he bore himself. You saw him stand when others fled, and fight on when all was lost. Is this how you would have such a man kept?'
A flush rose, faint but unmistakable, upon the earl's face. 'No,' he said plainly. 'It is not.'
'Then why is it done?'
Robert's mouth tightened, and for a moment the soldier in him gave way to the courtier. 'It is the command of the Empress,' he said. 'She has ordered that Stephen be secured in irons and conveyed to Bristol. She will have no risk of his escape, nor any soft dealing that might strengthen his cause.'
Urban regarded him steadily. 'And you obey?'
'I must,' Robert said, though without force in his assertion. 'I am her man and her captain. The kingdom is not yet won. While he lives in honour, it is not hers at all.'
Urban's gaze did not soften. 'Nor will it be hers, because of this deed,' he said.
Robert looked at him sharply. 'My lord?'
There came upon Urban then a stillness that was not of the moment, but seemed rather to descend upon him, as though he had stepped for an instant out of the present into some older, deeper current. Nicholas, who had followed and now stood at the threshold, felt it and did not speak.
Urban stood very straight, his pastoral staff in his hand, and when he spoke again his voice was not raised, yet it carried with a weight that stilled the chamber. 'You have this day,' he said, 'overcome a king in fair battle, and taken him by the strength of your arms and the providence of God. In that there is honour, and the realm might yet have been healed.'
He lifted his hand slightly, as though marking a boundary. 'But to cast him into chains—to treat a crowned and anointed lord as though he were a thief taken in the night—this is not strength, but fear. And fear breeds not obedience, but hatred.'
Robert said nothing. Urban's eyes were fixed upon him, but it was as though he spoke beyond him also, to one not present. 'Tell your lady,' he said, 'that she has won a battle, but despite this she has already begun to lose the kingdom. For the hearts of men are not bound with iron as their limbs are. They will see what is done to their king, and they will remember it.'
The silence deepened.
'She may have her will,' Urban went on, more quietly now, 'and he shall be carried to Bristol in chains. But I tell you this, as one set to watch over the souls of this land: she shall not ever now be queen of this land.'
Robert drew breath, as though to speak, but did not.
'She shall come near to it,' Urban said, 'near enough to taste it. Yet royalty shall not rest upon her brow. For a realm is not held by right alone, nor by victory, but by grace—and this day she has set that grace aside.'
For a long moment neither man moved. At last Robert bowed his head. 'You speak hard things, my lord bishop,' he said.
'I speak what I must,' Urban replied.
The earl looked up again, and there was in his face now not resentment, but a grave and troubled respect. 'I would that it were otherwise,' he said.
Urban inclined his head, the moment of that other presence already passing from him. 'As would I,' he said.
When he came out again into the light of the courtyard, the sounds of victory had resumed their full measure. Men laughed, called to one another, boasted of what they had done. Yet to Urban it seemed that something fine and invisible had already been broken, even as the triumph was at its height.
Nicholas came to his side. 'Well?' he said.
Urban mounted without answering at once. Then, as they turned their horses toward the gate, he said only:
'We have won a battle.'
Nicholas glanced at him.
'And the war?'
Urban looked back once toward the keep, where within its walls a king sat in chains.
'That,' he said, 'remains yet in the balance.'
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