Post by Kendrick Seithfed on Apr 19, 2009 13:10:34 GMT -6
The battle was over and Machynlleth won. The bodies were buried or burned, and the grass grew green again under a weak spring sun. Wales was once again for the Welsh, and all her heroes returned. Save the two who could not stay -- Eirian, a woman he had come to respect over their weeks together, and the son of Llewellyn Bren, who had lit the country on fire and died like Wallace defending the right of his countrymen to a bit of bread and land.
Of the seven sons, only three now survived. They gathered at Rhys's fresh grave and stood silently as the wind coursed along the grass and rippled the nearby water in the pond. The birds were returning to the land, skipping from pool to pool on their northerly routes, for even they could not stay long. Bees stopped at flowers heavy with pollen, early buds that shown gaily even if the skies overhead were leaden and gray. There were no poetic words to say for Rhys ap Llewelyn. He would not have wished to hear them anyway.
Rhys had been a practical youth who had grown up into a pragmatic man. He'd had a family with a woman who now must be told her children's father would not return from this battle. Dark-haired and dark-eyed, he had very nearly had a twin in his brother, born within the same year as himself. But when they were both twenty-four, and biding time in the Tower of London, that twin had not even said farewell before disappearing. Rhys had mourned like the other brothers, though he always wondered if his lost little brother had somehow escaped, when the family had agreed Gruffydd's disappearance was a symptom of bureaucracy gone awry. Their father, after all, had disappeared shortly after Gruffydd, only to be tried before the Despenser, hanged, drawn, and quartered, to the outrage of the Marcher lords.
Rhys had believed in justice. Those same lords had gone to battle against his father when they ransacked Caerphilly and all the villages along the southern edge of Cymru. They met Llewelyn Bren as equals and took him as honest prisoner. When one of their peers rebelled against the process of justice, they fought on the side of Llewelyn's sons, against their own king, to free the South of such grotesque mismanagement. They installed Lleucu at Brecon, and gave land to each of the surviving boys, that there would be no cause to quarrel in the future, and Senghenydd would be managed by the Welsh. Justice had been served, though at a terrible cost.
Gruffydd, for he went by that name here, quietly looked at each face of his remaining brothers. Meurig had always been impossibly older than he and Rhys, already an adult when they were mere boys. But he had turned into a good and decent man. He had made a proper career for himself. He knew his letters, could hold a sword, and was every inch the natural leader that Llewelyn Bren had been.
Llewelyn was mad, but he was still his most beloved brother. He held the weight of too many responsibilities on his shoulders, but never did those burdens show in his eyes, which remained lively, if hooded now, as he stood at the foot of Rhys's grave.
They were both strangers. He had not seen them in nearly fifteen years or more. In that time, he had become an Italian gentleman without any discernible cracks in the mask. He had become a sometimes-pirate on the run from one of the most powerful men in Italia. He was now a husband, and though settled in life, it was not in the life of Gruffydd ap Llewelyn. That life only existed here, now, in the between-times of the seasons. He must soon return home to his princess, to the Pope he had served well, and a dangerous man he was bound to displease.
He crouched down beside Rhys's grave and closed his eyes. God, he missed Rhys's laugh. He missed how they had nearly beaten each other bloody as children. How they caught frogs for their unappreciative mother, and when they grew older, engaged in a constant war of pranks even on the eve before battle. Rhys and his partner in crime had spent many an evening leaning up against the fence in the yard, yelping as their father doled out punishment. He bet that fence still had imprints of their hands on the top rail. But to hear Rhys's laugh -- he supposed every blow had been worth it, even if they had trouble sitting down the week following.
He felt Meurig put a hand to his back, the broadness of it easily spanning between his shoulder blades, and the weight of it a good, solid feeling that brought him to the present. He wished he had been able to say goodbye to Rhys. He wished Rhys had known that his brother was neither a coward nor a casualty, that everything he had done, was done to keep his family safe. But some conclusions were never tidy. Some words had to keep. Rhys was at peace in the hereafter; it was Gruffydd's duty, then, to make amends with those still alive.
Eventually, he would have to stand up and go find the horses they were using to take them to Brecon, where their mother lived. She had lost one son. But another had come back from the dead, and perhaps there was a note of redemption to this song. She was not interested in the tales of her prodigal son. He did not have a plausible explanation for her even if she was interested in knowing the events of his life. His path was so inconceivable for the son of a poor landowner, it would sound silly even in a fairytale. The son of a Welsh rebel married the Queen of Naples, was now a commander of the Navy, and a Protector of the Church for keeping His Holiness from harm at the confused battle of MacRuari Keep. It was absurd.
Mostly, he hoped to prove to Lleucu that he had grown into a good and decent man. He had tried to be like his father. She had raised him right.
Meurig patted his back gently. It was time to go. The three brothers, all that remained of the seven, walked slowly down the hill toward their waiting horses.
