The Firedrake

by Cecelia Holland

  “Normandy?” Murrough said. “Normandy? Are we really going to Normandy?”

  “Yes.” Laeghaire picked him up. “You sleep. You’re sleepy.” He grinned. He grinned at Hilda also. He put Murrough into the bed and went out. He went up to the armory and got his shield and sword. He took them down to the smith’s forge, at the back of the stable, and pounded the dents out of the sword. The smith came to watch. He asked about the ball on the pommel and how it was set in. They talked about swords for a while. Laeghaire took the horses and rode out, down south to the open flat land.

  When he came back in, he was hungry, and he put the horses up and went to the kitchens to get something to eat. He was sitting there with a bowl of stew when Hilde came to him.

  “Laeghaire. I can’t find Murrough.”

  “When did he wake up?”

  “I don’t know. I left right after you did—I had to sew some things.”

  “And he’s not in the room?”

  “He isn’t anywhere. Nobody has seen him.”

  “Did you look in the armory? He goes there sometimes.”

  “He isn’t there. I looked there, in the stable, everywhere.”

  Laeghaire got up so quickly that the bench fell over. He ran out of the kitchens and down the corridor. The courtyard was empty. He ran across it. His boots rang on the stones. He threw open the stable door.

  “Murrough.”

  The stableman came from behind a stall partition. “What?”

  “Have you seen my son?”

  “No. When was he here?”

  “How long have you been here?”

  “I just came back.”

  “Murrough!”

  He looked in all the stalls but Murrough wasn’t in any of them. He looked by the haymow and under the saddles. In all the long stable there was no sign of Murrough. Maybe he had gone to the kitchens. Maybe he was in the armory. Laeghaire went slowly to the cleft in the floor. The boards seemed to bend under him. He kicked his heel and the echo came up to him, softly. It was dark down there. There would be spiders. The vault gave horses thrush. He went slowly out to the courtyard and got a dead torch and went back to the stable. The cleft grew wider under his eyes. The stableman stood silent in the middle of the stable. He crossed himself suddenly. Laeghaire knelt and swung himself into the cleft. He rammed the torch through his belt and lowered himself down. He hung at the length of his arms. The darkness swallowed up his legs and hips. He dropped. His boots struck the stone floor and he went to his knees. It was a long drop. The noise echoed softly, slowly. He took the torch and lit it. He saw cobwebs dripping from the ceiling of the vault, and the great shadows racing away from the torchlight and the dark floor, damp and solid stone. He saw Murrough. He went slowly down and laid the torch on the floor and picked him up. He was cold already, damp and cold as the stone.

  “Did you find him?”

  Laeghaire shut his eyes tight. The darkness slithered in around him. It was a slimy darkness. He tasted it lapping at his mouth. He rocked a little.

  “Sir Laeghaire.”

  He crushed Murrough against his chest and pressed his face against Murrough’s neck. The skin was unyielding and smelled of the dank vault and the cobwebs. The creeping darkness giggled in his ears. The torch guttered and died.

  “I’ve found him.”

  His breathing filled the vault and came back to him, almost covering the gibbering of the darkness and the clammy dribbling of its fingers down his spine. He heard many feet on the ceiling over his head and bodies sliding down over the edge of the cleft. They could not reach him. He felt himself walled in by the thick stinking body of the darkness, pressing in on him, damp and horribly smooth. Their torchlight rebounded away from him and never touched him, and their hands only moved the darkness around him. He opened his mouth and swallowed up the darkness, and in the light but with the darkness inside him he let them help him up.

  “He’ll be happier where he is,” Hilde said.

  He wheeled on her.

  “That’s what you said to me. We’ll get another, you said. That’s what you said to me when my baby died.”

  “Get out.”

  “Laeghaire, oh Laeghaire, I’m sorry, please, let me be sorry too? Don’t shut me out. I was his mother, Laeghaire.”

  He stared at her. She floated above the ground. She floated in the light from the window. It was still afternoon, afternoon of a million days.

  “Laeghaire,” she said, and caught his arm.

  He threw her off. She fell against the wall. He stood watching her. If she got up he would kill her. She looked at him. She shook her head.

  “Please, Laeghaire—”

  “I’ll kill you if you don’t go.”

  “Laeghaire.” She stood up. She put her hands out. “Please, please …”

  He stared at her. He took a step toward her. She turned and ran. He heard her sobbing. She tore open the door and ran. He could hear her crying.

  He looked at the open door and the shadows. He raised his fist and took a step and hit the door and it slammed shut. His fist split open. The blood spat out and lay on his hand. He clenched his fist again. He turned wildly. He took a step and hit the chair and fell over it. He rolled over on the floor and got to his knees and stood up and sat in the chair.

  Church bells. Nothing. The bed and the wall and the way the wall ran up to the other wall. Three of them all gone. Murrough. The eyes looked at him. The face laughed at him. The flesh peeled back in strips and the bony skull lay beneath it and jaws laughed at him and maggots crept from the eyes. His throat was blocked. In Ireland the women keened but the men never keened. If he screamed they would all hear him. Hear him scream. His eyes blurred over. He put his hands to his face and drove his nails against his cheekbones.

  The door opened. He whirled up and jumped into a corner. It was Lanfranc. He stood in the door.

  “Your woman sent me.”

  “No.”

  “You cannot deny me that way. Sit down.”

  “Spiritual comfort for the bereaved? The aid of Holy Mother Church for the distraught father? Tell me, priest. Comfort me. Aid me. Tell me how he is gone up to Heaven and sitteth at the right hand of God.”

  “You don’t believe it.”

  “Believe it. Believe it. He was my son. He was my only son. He was three years old, priest. Why should he have to die? Why didn’t I die? Why strike me through my son?”

  “You fool.”

  “Don’t judge me, priest.”

  “I will judge you. Your pride cannot negate God’s law and God’s will. God has judged you.”

  “Damn God.”

  Lanfranc circled the table once and sat down. “Judge yourself, then. God is all-just. He measures all men. You cannot damn God.”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “You are already alone. You are a man living in a box, blind and deaf and dumb. But just because you can’t see doesn’t mean that everybody else is blind.”

  “They taught you all the words, didn’t they? All the pretty little answers strung like—I wish to Christ I were blind.”

  “Do you realize that she loves you?”

  “Stop asking me questions.”

  “You bought and paid for her. But she loves you. She is a human being, like you, and she is a creature of God, and she needs love. You need love. But you will not bend to that, you will not admit it, you will neither love nor live with her, you come to her when you are hungry.”

  “Shut up. Shut up, will you?”

  “I don’t think it’s my words that bother you. You need them. Do you know what kind of suffering you have put her through? Three children, all dead, a man who leaves when he wishes and never thinks of her, never talks to her, never shares anything with her—”

  “Leave me alone.”

  “If I stop talking, you’ll have nothing but silence, and you would be even more frightened of the silence. Come here, sit down. I know that you’re frightened.”

  “You know all the ans
wers. If something happens—there”—he jabbed his hand toward the ceiling—”if you want something, you know where to get it.”

  “The same is true for you.”

  “No.”

  “Laeghaire. Listen to me. Think about this. God is all-merciful. Perhaps He meant to teach you something. To instruct you. Learn from it. An animal is something that cannot learn. A man learns. The learning will be hard for you because you are a man perhaps valuable to God. Be worthy of being severely tried. There is comfort for everybody. There is a place and a time for everybody. You have a right to grief. You have no right to destroy yourself by it.”

  Laeghaire went slowly to the bed and sat down on it.

  “Grieve,” Lanfranc said. “But let her share it. And let God share it.”

  Lanfranc rose. He smiled. “And remember that he has an immortal soul.”

  He left. Laeghaire lay down on the bed. He shut his eyes.

  “I want at least five thousand men,” William said. “But them—them I can get. I need you to run errands for me. I need men I can trust to handle some details of this.”

  Laeghaire said nothing.

  “Are you alone? Do you have a squire? I can quarter you with my retainers, if you wish.”

  “I have a woman with me.”

  “Oh? Ah. The yellow-headed wench.”

  “Yes.”

  “Camp-followers. Then make a camp somewhere, within the city wall. I—what’s the matter?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What’s wrong with you?”

  “My son died.”

  “Your little boy? What happened?”

  “He fell into the lower vault of the stable.”

  “He was very—”

  “I suppose he’s better off.”

  “Do you still want to fight?”

  “Yes.” Laeghaire raised his eyes. He looked up at William’s face. “Yes.”

  “A stupid question, perhaps.”

  “Yes.”

  “You have my condolences.”

  “Thank you.”

  William circled the broad table and sat down. He leaned back. He looked out the window.

  “It doesn’t ever really work,” he said. “A man knows that he has everything he wished for, but there is always something missing, or something gone. Even when you are happy you’re impatient for something.”

  “I was happy.”

  “Maybe. For how long? I say I will be happy when I have England. I don’t know.”

  “Maybe it’s not in us.”

  “You and me? Or the rest of the world as well?”

  Laeghaire reached over onto the table and took an arrow that was there. It was a crossbow bolt, new, with clean feathers. “You answer that.”

  “Why should we have to be different?”

  “God’s… will.”

  “God’s will. If I had waited on the will of God—Irish, I’ll give you land in England. I’ll give yon land in the south and in the north and the east. You can build castles and hold forests and every day you can ride out and watch your serfs working the land.”

  “You have that now. Are you happy?”

  “No. I want England.”

  “Why?”

  “I have blood right to it.”

  “Blood. A wolf has blood. And you won’t be happy.”

  “No. We’ll never be happy. But we can be great and unhappy.”

  “I dreamed about England. About riding in an English field. I met a witchwoman and took her.”

  “God’s Splendor. That’s a prophecy of a dream.”

  “Is it?”

  There was a knock on the door. William stood up. “I’ll summon you when I want you. I have much to do. Go pitch your camp.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  He went back and made his camp, under the shadow of the wall around Caen. Hilde went about building a fire. She went for water. When she came back, be said, “William will pay me for this in land.”

  She bent over the fire. “And you will be lord.”

  “Yes.”

  “And take a lord’s daughter for your wife.”

  “No. If I live to take the land, I will have you for my lady. I promise it. I owe it to you.”

  She turned. “Oh, Laeghaire. Laeghaire, thank you.”

  She put her arms around him. He held her. After a while she left him and made their supper.

  William sent him to the Dives’s mouth with Fitz-Osbern, to bring him information of the boats being drawn up there. Fitz-Osbern told Laeghaire a lot while they rode. He acted as if they had always been great friends. He told Laeghaire of how the old King of England had died of a long sickness, and how Harold had been named King by the Council of Ancients, but that many of the Saxon lords would not call Harold their master. This William’s spies had brought him.

  “It might have been better if he had attacked when the old man was King,” Laeghaire said.

  “No. The old man was holy. God would have struck us down. Why else was it that no raids, no wars, nothing, troubled his reign, and he a gentle king?”

  “There was a war. Godwin threw out the Normans.”

  “That wasn’t important.”

  Laeghaire grinned.

  “He holds much of the coast,” Fitz-Osbern said. “And all the men who come will have boats, too. Thousands of them.”

  At the Dives they inspected the boats that had been built and even went out in them, a little way from the shore, to see if they were sound. Laeghaire said that was stupid, because if the boats had holes in them he and Fitz-Osbern would drown. Fitz-Osbern only shrugged. They poled the boats out a little, into the mouth of the river, and they did not sink.

  There were seventeen boats there, but some of them belonged to the fishermen. The fishermen made camps on the shore at night, hung their nets, and cleaned fish. The shore stank of fish. Laeghaire and Fitz-Osbern made a camp with the fishermen and ate fish. They talked little. The fires were big and made the darkness of the shore seem immense. The water boomed evenly on the shore. The foam glittered in the firelight and glowed white of its own light all along the beach.

  They slept wrapped in their cloaks. Laeghaire woke up in the night and went off to make water. He looked up at the sky. He cried out. Fitz-Osbern and the others woke and rolled out of their cloaks. They laughed at him, standing with his leggings down. He swore at them and pointed at the sky and they looked where he pointed.

  “What is it?”

  “Can’t you see it?”

  The fishermen knelt down and prayed.

  “It’s a star,” Laeghaire said. “It’s a star with a tail.”

  “I can see it.”

  He pulled up his leggings and tied the thong. “They can see it, can’t they? Back in Caen?”

  “It’s an omen.” Fitz-Osbern crossed himself.

  The fishermen were praying very loudly. He stared up at the monster star, with its huge tail all spread out like a cloak after it. He thought he could see it move. It was huge. It was brighter than anything else, brighter than the moon.

  “What is it an omen of?” Fitz-Osbern whispered.

  “I don’t know.”

  “The Duke will know. Perhaps—”

  “It’s about us. About the expedition.”

  “Us? How could God make something that great just for us?”

  “The Duke. God’s chosen. God is marking him. It’s for him.”

  “Do you believe that?”

  Laeghaire went off. He went down by the sea. He stood looking at the star. All out of nothing it had come. So huge out there. Maybe the wind just blew it together and it caught fire from the sun on the other side. Maybe it would be there forever. It was so vast, that sky, like the edge of another ocean.

  “There was a star like that when our Lord Jesus was born,” Fitz-Osbern said. He was beside Laeghaire again. “A special star, like that one.”

  “Yes.”

  “Maybe this is the same one.”

  “That one went away.”
/>
  “It could have come back. There are all sorts of stories in the old chronicles. Of stars like this one.”

  “Not like this one.” He went away from Fitz-Osbern again, watching the star.

  They prayed all night back by the banked fire. He watched the star. He lay down to watch it. He dozed off and woke starting up again. But by dawn he was so tired that he went to sleep on the sand. He dreamed of many things all pushed together, and over them all rode the star.

  “Did you see it?” Hilde said. “Did you see it?”

  “Yes.” He pulled the reins over the black horse’s head, looked up at the sky, and back to her. “Did you all see it clearly?”

  “Yes. It was terrible. I wanted you to be here.”

  She reached out her hand and touched his arm. “What did it mean, Laeghaire?”

  “A sign from God, perhaps. About this.”

  “Good or bad?”

  “Good.”

  “A boy came. From the Duke. I think he’s a Norman. I can’t talk to him.”

  “Where is he?”

  She turned and called, “Rolf.”

  A young boy, about as tall as Hilde, came from behind the tent. He stood awkwardly. “My lord Laeghaire?” he said.

  “Yes.”

  The boy began to speak rapidly. Laeghaire said, “Slow down. My French is not very good.”

  “I’m sorry, my lord. My lord the Duke said I was to attend you.”

  “Do you have a horse?”

  “No. But I have a dagger. He says I am to stay by your lady.”

  Hilde was watching him, waiting for him to explain. Laeghaire told her in German. She smiled. “Your lady.”

  “Good,” Laeghaire said to the boy. “Take this horse and put him to pasture.” He threw the boy the reins and went into the tent.

  “We’ll be going down to the coast soon,” he said to Hilde. “And half the knights in Christendom will be there. The Duke wants you protected when I’m off on his business.”

  “Is it dangerous?”

  “It could be.”

  “For me?”

  “Yes.”

  Rolf came in. “My lord, there is a man here from the Duke.”

  Laeghaire went out. Jehan, the big Burgundian, sat in his high saddle, in half mail. Jehan grinned. “So you did come. I thought it was you.”

  “Of course I came. Am I a man to let something like this go by? Come down and have wine.”