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Senena's face grew darker and bleaker and angrier with every moment. But he did not come, and he was not found. He was the eldest man of his house at liberty, and he was gone to do his duty as its head, according to his own vision.
      Even when she cried out on him at last that he had turned traitor, had abandoned and betrayed his own mother and brothers, I said no word. Unable to understand, she would have been unable to believe that he could go on his own way and not block and prevent hers. She feared pursuit, and therefore every hour became more precious, and she ordered our departure in great haste, and extended our first forced ride as far as Mur y Castell, where her advance guards had fresh horses waiting for us. She would not risk taking the old Roman road across the Berwyns, but had planned a route further south, to give all David's favourite dwellings a wide berth, and our first rest was at Cymer. Thence, with a greatly increased company, we made two easier days of it by way of Meifod to Strata Marcella, and crossed the Severn at a ford below Pool.
      And all the way she complained bitterly of her second son's treachery and ingratitude, until she went far to make her daughter Gladys, who was his elder by a year, hate him and decry him even as she did. Being the only daughter, this girl was very dear to her, and much in her confidence. Yet I think there was so much of grief and smart in their blame of him that even hate had another side, and in their softer moments they could not choose but wonder and harrow over old ground, marvelling how he had come to that resolution against all odds, incomprehensible to them, and blameworthy, but surely hard indeed for him, and therefore honest. And this all the more when the journey was nearly over, and no breath of suspicion or pursuit followed us. For if he had not garnered all the favour he could by setting his uncle's huntsmen after us, what was his own welcome likely to be after our flight was discovered? He was known to have been summoned by his mother, and obeyed and returned, the very day of the defection. The revenge that could not reach his mother might fall on him for want of larger prey. And sometimes those two women, a moment after cursing him, wondered with anxiety how he was faring now, and whether he was not flung into Criccieth with his father and his brother.
      As for me, I learned painfully to ride, if not well as yet, doggedly and uncomplainingly, I tended the two little boys, I wrote one or two letters of appeal for the Lady Senena to such English lords as she best knew by contact or reputation, urging her cause, and I did whatever clerking there was to be done by the way. But familiar as I became with her argument, I could not forget his. And for which of them was in the right, that I could never determine. For both were honest, and both spoke truth, though they went by opposite ways. Yet being of the party that went one way, I heard now nothing but this side of the case, and matter repeated again and again without opposition grows to fall naturally on the ear. So I doubt I veered with the wind, like other men older than I, and came to be much of the lady's way of thinking before we reached Shrewsbury, which we did, with safe-conducts from the king's council, on the fourth day of August of this year twelve hundred and forty-one.

CHAPTER II

    This Shrewsbury is a noble town, formidably walled all round and everywhere moated by the Severn, but for a narrow neck of land open to the north, for the whole town lies within a great coil of that river. It has three gates, two of them governing the bridges that lead, one eastwards deeper into England, one westwards into Wales, and the third gate lies on the tongue of dry land, under the shadow of a great castle. I have seen larger towns since then, though none fairer. But when we came in by the Welsh gate, over that broad sweep of river and beneath the tall tower on the bridge, that August day in the heat, I