Then flame was applied, and the draught carried the fire with a roar within.
By break of day Llawhaden Castle was in the hands of the men of Caio. They chased its garrison from every wall of defense; they were asked for, they gave no quarter. Those who had so long tyrannized over them lay in the galleries, slain with the sword, or thrust through with spears. Only Rogier, hung by the neck, dangled from a beam thrust through an upper window.
CHAPTER XXV
THE WHITE SHIP
The rebellion extended, castle after castle fell; those of the Normans who remained maintained themselves within fortresses, like Pembroke and Aberystwyth, that could receive provisions from the sea. Powys was seething—a thrill of excitement had run through Gwynedd, and the aged King there quaked lest his people should rise, dethrone him, and call on Griffith to reign over them, and combine north and south in one against the invader.
It was in the favor of the Welsh that King Henry was out of the country. He was warring against the French King in Normandy, and the malcontents in the duchy.
In order to punish the Welsh, he had sent Owen ap Cadogan at the head of a body of men into the country. Owen was furious because the people of Cardigan had greeted Griffith as their prince. Cardigan was the kingdom to which Owen laid claim, but he had done nothing to maintain this claim against Strongbow. Yet no sooner did he hear that a cousin, Griffith ap Rhys, had been welcomed there as its deliverer and prince, than in uncontrolled rage he gathered a troop of ruffians, and aided by the men afforded him by King Henry, he invaded Dyfed, and took an oath that he would massacre every man, woman, and child he came across till he had cut his way, and left a track of blood from the Usk to the Atlantic.
Thus a Welsh prince, with a mixed host of Welshmen and English, had come among the mountains that had cradled him to exterminate those of his own blood and tongue.
The horrors he committed, his remorseless savagery, sent men and women flying before him to the wastes and heaths of the Brecknock mountains, and they carried with them the infirm and feeble, knowing well that Owen would spare neither the gray head nor the infant.