Lament for a Welsh prince

I am sure other events of historical significance occurred on December 11th, but for me, everything else is overshadowed by what happened at twilight on that frigid December day in 1282, the death of Llywelyn ap Gruffydd, the great Welsh prince whom the Welsh would remember as “Ein Llyw Olaf,” translated as “Our Last Leader.”

The Reckoning, page 534. Llywelyn has been found by English soldiers who are jubilant upon recognizing him, knowing how richly they’d be rewarded if they could deliver him alive into the English king’s hands.
* * *
Another of the soldiers was coming back. “Here, Martin, put this about him.”
Martin took the blanket. “He’s in a bad way, Fulk,” he murmured, as if Llywelyn ought not to hear. Fulk picked up the lantern, and swore under his breath at the sight of the blood-soaked snow.
“Christ,” he said, and then, to Llywelyn, almost fiercely, “You hold on, hear? We’re going to get you to a doctor, for the king wants you alive!”
Llywelyn gazed up at him, marveling. “Indeed,” he said, “God forbid that I should disoblige the English king by dying.” It was only when he saw that Fulk and Martin were uncomprehending that he realized he’d lapsed into Welsh. But he made no effort to summon back his store of Norman-French. A man ought to die with his own language echoing in his ears.
The English soldiers were discussing his wound in troubled tones. But their voices seemed to be coming now from a distance, growing fainter and fainter until they no longer reached Llywelyn. He heard only the slowing sound of his heartbeat, and he opened his eyes, looked up at the darkening sky.
* * *
I believe I’ve told this story before, for the memory remains very vivid to me even after so many years. I was driving along a mountain road in Wales, thinking about how I would write Llywelyn’s death scene. Such scenes are always challenging, as you’d imagine. Various ideas had come to me, only to be discarded. Suddenly I could hear a voice saying: A man ought to die with his own language echoing in his ears. I don’t really believe Llywelyn whispered his wishes in my ear. I know the voice was in my head. But it seemed so clear, so real, that for just a moment, I wondered….I will give the last word, though, to the Welsh bard, Gruffydd ab yr Ynad Goch, whose haunting lament for his slain prince has the power to tear away time’s veil and share with us the despair, the shock, and the raw pain of Llywelyn’s countrymen: “Ah, God, that the sea would cover the land! What is left us that we should linger?”