The Princes of Ireland

by Edward Rutherfurd

  Osgar glanced quickly around. There was smoke drifting up the valley. He could hear the crackle of flames.

  “Brother Osgar.” The abbot sounded impatient.

  Behind him, the monks were going up the ladder into the round tower—a quite unnecessary precaution, the abbot had told them. But their faces looked white and scared. Perhaps he looked like that, too. He didn’t know. He suddenly wondered if the brothers would pull up the ladder as soon as he and the abbot were out of sight. How absurd. He almost smiled at his own foolishness. But the image remained—he and the abbot, running back through the gateway with the Munster men chasing behind, reaching the round tower, looking up, seeing the door closed and the ladder gone, and running round the sheer walls helplessly until the swords of the plunderers raised, and flashed, and …

  “I am coming, Reverend Father.” He hurried towards the gateway, noticing as he did so that all the monastery’s servants had miraculously vanished. He and the abbot were alone in the empty precinct.

  He had heard that Brian Boru’s raiding parties were sweeping the countryside as the Munster king came north to punish the Leinster men, but he had never supposed that they would come here, to disturb the peace of Glendalough.

  He caught up with the abbot at the gateway. The track was deserted, but from down the little valley he saw a flash of flame.

  “Couldn’t we bar the gates?” he suggested.

  “No,” said the abbot. “It would only annoy them.”

  “I can’t believe that King Brian’s men are doing this,” he said. “They’re not pagans or Ostmen.” But a bleak look from the older man silenced him. They both knew from the chronicles of the various houses that more damage had been done to the island’s monasteries in princely disputes than had ever been inflicted by the Vikings. He could only hope that Brian’s reputation as a protector of the Church would hold good on this occasion.

  “Look,” the abbot said calmly. A party of about twenty men was coming up the track towards the gateway. They were well armed. In the centre of the group walked a handsome, brown-bearded man. “That’s Murchad,” the abbot remarked, “one of Brian’s sons.” He stepped forward, and Osgar kept by his side.

  “Welcome Murchad, son of Brian,” the abbot called out firmly.

  “Did you know it’s the monastery’s property you’re burning down there?”

  “I did,” said the prince.

  “You’ll surely not be wishing to do harm to the sanctuary of Saint Kevin?” said the abbot.

  “Only if it’s in Leinster,” came the grim reply, as the party came up to them.

  “You know very well that we’ve nothing to do with this business,” said the abbot reasonably. “I have always held your father in the highest regard.”

  “How many armed men have you?”

  “None at all.”

  “Who is this?” The eyes of the prince rested on Osgar with a level stare.

  “This is Brother Osgar. Our finest scholar. A wonderful illuminator.”

  The eyes looked at him sharply now, but then lowered with, it seemed to Osgar, a hint of respect.

  “We’ll be needing supplies,” he said.

  “The gates are open,” the abbot replied. “But remember this is a house of God.”

  They all started to walk through the gateway together. Osgar glanced at the round tower. The ladder had disappeared. The door was shut. At a nod from the prince, his men began to move towards the storehouses.

  “You will give my respects to your father,” the abbot remarked pleasantly, “unless he means to favour us with a visit himself.” He paused a moment for a response, which was not forthcoming. “It’s wonderful how he keeps his health,” he added.

  “Strong as a bull,” the prince replied. “I see your monks have run away,” he noted. “Or more likely all in the tower with your gold.”

  “They do not know your pious character as well as I,” the abbot answered blandly.

  While his men collected a small cartload of cheeses and another two cartloads of grain, the prince went round the monastery with the abbot and Osgar. It was soon obvious that he was looking for valuables. He eyed the golden cross on the altar of the main church, but did not take it, nor any of the silver candlesticks he saw; and he was starting to mutter to himself irritably when at last, making a desultory inspection of the scriptorium, his eye fell on something. “Your work?” he suddenly enquired of Osgar, and Osgar nodded.

  It was an illustrated Gospels, like the great book at Kells, though much smaller and less elaborate. Osgar had only started it recently and hoped to complete it, including all the decorated letters and several pages of illumination, before the next Easter. It would be a handsome addition to the minor treasures of the Glendalough monastery.

  “I think my father would like to receive it,” the prince said, gazing at the work thoughtfully.

  “It is really for monastic—” Osgar began.

  “As a mark of your loyalty,” the prince continued with emphasis. “He’d like it by Christmas.”

  “Of course,” said the abbot smoothly, “it would indeed be a fitting gift to so devout a king. Do you not agree, Brother Osgar?” he went on, giving Osgar a look.

  “Indeed,” said Osgar sadly.

  “So there we are then,” said the abbot with a smile like a benediction. “This way.” And he led his royal visitor out.

  It was after the prince and his men had departed and the monks had started to come down from the tower that a thought had occurred to Osgar. “I was supposed to have been going down to Dyflin to marry my cousin,” he remarked to the abbot, “though with all this going on, I suppose it may be delayed.”

  “Out of the question anyway,” the abbot cheerfully replied. “Not until you have finished the book.”

  “I’ll have to send a message to Caoilinn, then,” said Osgar.

  She received it just as the gates of Dyflin were closing. And if, in the weeks that followed, she was unable to send any message in return, it was because she was trapped inside.

  It was September 7, the feast of Saint Ciaran, when King Brian, at the head of an army drawn from Munster and from Connacht, arrived before the walls of Dyflin. No attempt was made by the Dyflin defenders to give battle; instead, with a large contingent of Leinster men to help them, they fortified the ramparts of the town and dared the Munster High King to fight his way in. Brian, ever cautious as he was bold, inspected the defences thoroughly and camped his army in the pleasant orchards all around. “We’ll starve them out,” he declared. “Meanwhile,” the ageing king remarked, “we’ll take in their harvest and eat their apples while they watch.” And that, as the warm weeks of autumn passed into a pleasant October, is what the besieging army proceeded to do.

  In Dyflin, meanwhile, Caoilinn had to confess that life was rather boring. In the first days, she had expected an attack. Then she had at least supposed that the King of Dyflin or the Leinster chiefs would make some attempt to harass the enemy. But nothing happened. Nothing at all. The king and the great men kept mostly to the royal hall and the enclosures round it. The lookouts maintained their lonely vigil on the ramparts. Each day in the open space of the marketplace in the western corner the men practised with their swords and spears, in a desultory fashion; the rest of the time they played dice or drank. So it went, day after day, week after week.

  The food supplies held up well. The king had shown foresight and brought a large quantity of cattle and swine within the ramparts before the siege began. The granaries were full. The wells within the town supplied ample water. The place could probably hold out for months. Only one important part of Dyflin’s usual diet was missing: there was no fish. Brian’s men were watchful. If anyone set foot outside the defences to place nets in the river, by day or night, they were unlikely to return. Nor, of course, could any boats enter or leave the port.

  Each day, Caoilinn would stand upon the ramparts. It was strange to see the wood quay and the river empty. On the long wooden bridge a shor
t way upstream, there was a guard post. Looking out towards the estuary, she could see a dozen masts on the north side of the water, where a stream called the Tolka came down to the Liffey. Brian had placed his longships there, with a command post at a fishing hamlet called Clontarf close by. The longships effectively blockaded the port and had already turned away dozens of merchant vessels trying to enter. She had never realised before how entirely the life of the place depended upon the arrival of ships. The unending silence was eerie. She would also go round to the rampart on the southern side and gaze towards her home at Rathmines.

  It had been her eldest son, Art, who had insisted that she and the younger children stay with her brother in the greater safety of Dyflin while he remained at Rathmines. A mistake probably. She felt sure she could have saved the livestock from that cursed Brian just as well, probably better than he. She had looked towards Rathmines every day and never seen any sign they were burning the place, but since the Munster men’s camp lay across the orchards and fields between them, she didn’t know what was happening. What annoyed her particularly was that she had a suspicion that her son had not been entirely sorry to get her safely out of the way. Anyway, here she was, trapped in Dyflin.

  Osgar’s message, arriving the day she had gone into Dyflin, had come as a surprise. The truth was that with so many other matters on her mind since the summer, she had forgotten all about him.

  Since the day she had thrown Harold out of her house, she had not seen the Norseman. She was not sure that her son had been pleased about her break with Harold. The worse for him then. Every day now, as she looked out at the hateful Munster king’s camp, her fury was rekindled. She wished she had stayed at Rathmines if only to curse Brian as he passed. What could he have done to her, the snake? Let him kill her if he dared. And for Harold to have supposed she would lend support to such a devil—it made her white with anger to think of it. Even her own son had tried, once, to argue with her about it. “Harold is only doing his best for you,” he had dared to suggest.

  “Are you forgetting who your own father was?” she snapped back. That had silenced him.

  The only mistake she admitted to herself was her choice of parting words to the Norseman. To have called him a pagan and a traitor was no more than the truth. But telling him not to limp into her house again—calling him a cripple—that was wrong because it was beneath her. She would even have wished to apologise, if the circumstances had been different. But, of course, that was impossible. No word had come from Harold since that day; in all likelihood, she thought, she would never see him again.

  Morann Mac Goibnenn was still uneasy. As the next months passed, he had ample opportunity to observe the forces ranged against Dyflin, and he was still convinced that his own estimation of the situation had been correct.

  When, back in the late summer, he had taken his family north to the O’Neill King of Tara, he had been well received. Tall, handsome, with a flowing white beard, the old king had a noble air about him, though his eyes, it had seemed to Morann, were still watchful. It had not been difficult to secure a protection for the farmstead of his friend Harold; but his plan to stay safely out of trouble with the O’Neill king had not been so successful, since the old monarch had required him to accompany the party that had gone, in August, to summon Brian to his aid. So anxious was he that the craftsman should go, and so fervent were his expressions of loyalty to Brian, that Morann suspected O’Neill was using him to convince the Munster king that the call for help was genuine.

  Brian Boru had welcomed him warmly. “Here’s a man who keeps his oath,” he had told the chiefs around him. It was ten years since Morann had seen the Munster king in person. He found him still impressive. He was grey; his teeth were long and yellow, though remarkably he had kept most of them. A quick calculation reminded Morann that Brian must be more than seventy years old, but even so, a sense of power exuded from him. “I am slower, Morann,” he confessed, “and I get aches and pains that I never had before, but this one,” he indicated the young woman who was now his wife, “keeps me younger than my years.” This was the fourth wife, by Morann’s count. You had to admire the old man.

  “You shall accompany me,” Brian told him, “on my way up to Dyflin.”

  It had been early in September, on a bright day when Brian’s advancing army, on its way to Dyflin, had just emerged onto the Liffey Plain. Morann had been riding not far from the Munster king, in the vanguard of the army, when to his surprise he saw, coming towards them, the splendidly mounted figure of Harold, quite alone. He had been even more surprised when he had learned why the Norseman was there.

  “You want me to ask King Brian to spare Caoilinn’s estate? After all she has done?” He had been shocked, the previous summer, by the treatment his friend had received from Caoilinn. At first Harold had only given him a general idea of the interview; but it was his wife who, after a long walk with the Norseman, reported back, “She as good as called him a cripple and threw him out.” Freya had been furious. “Whatever her reason,” she had declared, “she had no cause to behave so cruelly.” And it soon became obvious to Morann that his friend had been seriously hurt. He had even wondered whether to go and see Caoilinn himself. But Harold had been so definite in saying that the affair was over that Morann had concluded that there was nothing to be done.

  The Norseman had only shrugged.

  “It would be a pity to destroy what she built up.”

  Morann wondered if perhaps the two of them had made it up and that Harold had a stake in the business; but the Norseman explained that this was not the case, that Caoilinn and he had never spoken and that even now, she was behind the ramparts of Dyflin.

  “You are a generous man,” Morann marvelled.

  To his relief, when he explained the matter to King Brian, the king was not angry but amused. “This is the Ostman who hit my fellow over the head in Dyflin? And now he wants me to save a lady’s farm?” The king shook his head. “It is more, perhaps, than I should have done.” He smiled. “Men with great hearts are rare, Morann. And they are to be cherished. In times of danger, keep big-hearted men about you. Courage brings success.” He nodded approvingly. “What sort of place is this Rathmines and where exactly?” Morann gave him an account of Caoilinn’s estate and its handsome hall. The situation, he explained, was close by Dyflin, and her herd of cattle was large. “The cattle will all be hidden in the hills by now,” Brian remarked.

  “Where your men will sooner or later find them,” Morann pointed out.

  “No doubt.” Brian nodded thoughtfully. “Very well,” he continued briskly, after a short pause. “I will stay at Rathmines myself. The estate will supply me and my personal household. The sooner Dyflin is given to me, the sooner I leave and the more of this lady’s livestock will be left. Those are my terms, Morann. Will you agree to them?”

  “I will,” said the craftsman. And he rode ahead with Harold to prepare the house at Rathmines. Caoilinn’s son might not have relished having Brian Boru in the house, but he could see the merit of the deal. “You can thank Harold if you have any livestock at the end of this,” Morann told him.

  Brian kept Morann with him at Rathmines until nearly the end of October. During that time, Morann had the chance to see how the great warlord conducted himself—his ordered camp, his well-trained men, his patience, and his determination. Then Brian sent him back to the King of Tara with some messages.

  “This game will play out peacefully in the end,” he remarked to the craftsman as he was leaving. But Morann was not so sure.

  The message did not come until December—in the form of a single horseman arriving on a cold, grey day at the gates of Glendalough. Over his shoulder was slung an empty leather satchel which he laid on the abbot’s table as he announced: “I have come for the book.”

  The prince’s book: the present for Brian Boru. Christmas was approaching. It was due.

  “Unfortunately,” said the abbot with some embarrassment, “it is not quite ready. But wh
en it is,” he added, “it will be very fine.”

  “Show it to me,” said the messenger.

  Osgar had been working hard. By the end of October he had prepared the vellum, laid out the book, and copied the entire Gospels in a perfect hand. The decorated capital letters came next. He had left spaces for each of these and in the first ten days of November he planned a schema: while each letter would be treated differently, certain details—some purely geometric, others in the form of serpents, birds, or extended human figures—would subtly repeat themselves or balance each other in an exotic counterpoint, thus producing a hidden, echoing unity to the whole. He also intended to add little decorations to the text, as the spirit moved him. Finally, there would be four, full-page illuminations. He had rough sketches for three of these pages, and knew how they would come together; but the fourth was more ambitious, and about this he was more uncertain.

  By mid-November Osgar had made a good start on the drawing and painting of the capitals, with more than a dozen completed by the end of the month, and when the abbot had inspected the work he had pronounced himself pleased; but the abbot had nonetheless made one complaint.

  “Every year, Brother Osgar, you seem to take longer to complete each illustration. Surely with so much practice, you should be getting more proficient, not less.”

  “The more I do,” Osgar had answered sadly, “the harder it gets.”

  “Oh,” said the abbot, irritably. It was at times like this that he found the perfectionist calligrapher tiresome and even rather contemptible. And Osgar had sighed because he knew that he could not explain such things to any man, however intelligent, who had not practised the druidic art of design himself.

  How could he explain that the patterns the abbot saw were not the result of simple choice or chance, but that often as not, as he worked upon them, the strands of colour would mysteriously refuse to conform to the pattern he had first envisaged. And that only after days of obdurate struggle would he discover within them a new, deeper, dynamic pattern, far more subtle and powerful than anything his own poor brain would have been able to design. During these frustrating days, he would be like a man lost in a maze, or unable to move as though caught in a magic spider’s web, trapped within the very lines he drew. And as he came through, each discovery revealed to him new rules, layer upon layer, so that like a ball of twine that is slowly growing, the artefact he was making, simple though it seemed, had a hidden weight. Through this exhausting process, from these unending tensions, were the elegant patterns of his art constructed.