"We shall see."
"I pray you desist. He may be useful to us; but it must not be suspected that he is in treaty with us."
"There is some reason in this. I shall find out without his aid."
"Do nothing till I have seen the bishop. He will be very distressed—angry. For I assured him that a miracle had been wrought. It was such an important miracle. It showed to all that Heaven was on our side."
Rogier laughed.
"We can cut and carve for ourselves without the help of miracles," said he.
"I shall go at once," said Cadell; "the bishop must be communicated with immediately—and his pleasure known."
Bernard of St. David's was at his castle of Llawhaden, near Narberth. He was there near his Norman friends and supporters. He had no relish for banishment to the bare and remote corner of Pembrokeshire stretching as a hand into the sea, as though an appeal from Wales to Ireland for assistance. Moreover, Bernard was by no means assured that his presence where was the throne would be acceptable, and that it might not provoke some second popular commotion which would cost him a further loss of teeth. Llawhaden lay in a district well occupied by Norman soldiers and Flemish settlers. The residence there was commodious in a well-wooded and fertile district. The castle was strong, secure against surprises, built by architect and masons imported from Normandy, as were all those constructed by the conquerors throughout the South of Wales.
In Llawhaden Bernard lived like a temporal baron, surrounded by fighting men, and never going abroad without his military retinue. It was said that he ever wore a fine steel-chain coat of mail under his woolen ecclesiastical habit. In his kitchen, as about his person, no native was suffered to serve, so suspicious was he lest an attempt should be made on his life, by poison or by dagger.
Happily, he was not required to perform any ecclesiastical functions, for he was profoundly ignorant of these; but the situation was such that he was not required to ordain clergy or consecrate churches. Clergy were not lacking. The ne'er-do-weels of England, men who were for their immorality or crimes forced to leave their cures, hasted to Wales, where they readily found preferment, as the great object in view with the invaders was to dispossess the natives of their land and of their churches.