Free The Brothers of Gwynedd by Edith Pargeter Page B

comfortable and well-fed as we were, and like the children we drew perilously near to being content with it.
      But not the lady. She closed her lips upon her great grievance, but in her heart she thought of nothing else. I think she hoped at first that David would blaze up again in revolt, and cause her husband to be taken hastily out of his cage and sent with a strong force to draw off Welsh allegiance from him. But as the slow year wore away, and the uneasy peace held fast, she lost hope in this, and fretted after some other way. And she took into her confidence the only Welshman left her, but for myself, still a boy, and that was my mother's husband.
      It was fitting that those two should cleave together, for next to her, and doubtless the Lord Griffith himself, whom now we never saw, my mother's husband was the unhappiest among us. For that slothful ease of mind under which the rest of us laboured in this well-furnished prison was impossible to him. There was no taste but wormwood ever in his mouth, and no weather but winter and cold about him, his torment being perpetual, for my mother was ever before his face and by his side, and even in his bed, and at all times submissive and dutiful, and at all times indifferent to him, and by this time he was assured, whether he admitted it or no, that there was nothing he could do, between this and death, to change her or himself. He had her, and he would never have her. Her hate he could have borne, but as she could not love, so she could not hate him. She was now thirty-four years old, and even more beautiful than as a girl, and he could neither live happily with her nor without her.
      So it was some relief at least to his restlessness when the Lady Senena began to employ him as news gatherer for her about the Tower. I was not in their confidence, but I saw that he spent much of his time wandering about the fortress, observing at what hours the guard was changed at every gate, and when the wardens made their rounds, and every particular concerning the daily order of this city within a city. To this end he made himself agreeable and useful to the guards, and made himself out, surely truthfully enough, as weary and discontented for lack of work, so that after some weeks he had a few regular familiars among them who were willing to use him as messenger, and would talk freely to him. So patiently was all done that there were some he might truly call his friends. From them he brought in morsels of news from Wales more than were to be heard about the court, where the Lady Senena might pick them up for herself. Also, being very wise with horses, he made himself well accepted in the stables, and was several times among the grooms who went out to buy or to watch at the horse sales at Smithfield on Fridays. And as I know, after the second such occasion the Lady Senena gave him money for some purposes of her own.
      It was late in the autumn of the year twelve hundred and forty-three when he came back from the outer world after a trip to buy sumpter ponies, and was closeted a while, as was usual, with the lady. It was as they came out into the hall where I was sitting with my mother and the children that he turned and looked again, and closely, into her face, and said: "Madam, I have heard mention made of your son Llewelyn."
      It was the first time that name had been uttered openly among us since we had left Shrewsbury, though what she had told her lord in private I do not know. She halted as though she had turned to ice, and in her face I could read nothing, neither hostility nor tenderness.
      "What can the horse-traders of London know of my son Llewelyn?" she said, in a voice as impenetrable as her countenance.
      "From a Hereford dealer who buys Welsh mountain ponies, and trades as far as Montgomery," he said. He did not look at her again, and he did not speak until she asked.
      "And what does this dealer say of my son?"
      "Two drovers came down from Berwyn with