The Princes of Ireland

by Edward Rutherfurd

  As Osgar hesitated, Sigurd, taking no notice of the axe at all, took two steps up to the monk and, lowering his sword so that the flat of the blade caressed Osgar’s leg, brought his face so close to Osgar’s that their noses almost touched. His eyes stared into Osgar’s with a cold, terrifying menace. Osgar felt the sword blade slowly moving up his leg. Dear God, the pirate was about to stab it, with a terrible force, into his stomach. He would see his own entrails burst out. Only half aware of it, he vaguely felt a warm wetness running down his legs.

  And then, suddenly, without warning, opening his mouth wide as though he was going to bite him, Sigurd the pirate let out a huge, bloodcurdling roar, into his face.

  “Aarrgh! Aarrgh!”

  And before a third was even out, Osgar had turned and fled, fled for his life, running as fast as he knew how, his legs wet, his face cold with terror. He did not even hear the laughter of the men behind him, but ran northwards, away from Sigurd, away from the battle, away from Dyflin. He did not stop until, breathless and panting, he reached the edge of the Plain of Bird Flocks and realised that there was no one behind him and that all was silence.

  Brodar was bleeding badly; Brian’s blow had almost severed his leg. Down by the water, the Munster king’s forces had still not realised what had happened to him, but there was no time to lose.

  Sigurd looked around him. When Brodar had pointed to the enclosure and led the raiding party, Sigurd assumed that the warlord was looking for loot to plunder. That was certainly what Sigurd wanted. Morann had been wearing a gold armband and was carrying some coins. Sigurd had those in a moment. Brian Boru had worn a magnificent clasp on his shoulder. By rights this was Brodar’s, but Brodar was no longer in a condition to take it. Sigurd swiftly detached it. The other members of the party were taking what they could. One had snatched a rich damask; another had the furs on which the old king had been sitting. A third had picked up a little book of illustrated Gospels that had fallen to the ground. He had shrugged, but put it in his pouch, supposing it must have some value.

  “It’s time to go,” said Sigurd.

  “What about Brodar?” asked one of his men.

  Sigurd glanced at Brodar. The lower part of his leg was only hanging by a fragment of bone and fleshy tissue. The warlord was a pale grey colour; his face looked clammy.

  “Leave him. He will die,” he said. It was no use trying to go back towards Dyflin, but some of the longships there would probably put out and work their way up the coast, looking for survivors. “I will meet you on the beach north of Howth,” he said. “If you find a longship, keep it there until nightfall.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I have a piece of business to attend to,” said Sigurd.

  It was only a short walk to the tents of the Munster camp where, Sigurd knew, there would be plenty of horses. It was guarded, so he had to move stealthily; but before long he saw a horse tethered to a post, and quietly untying it, he led it away. Moments later, he was on its back and heading north. His sword hung from his belt at his side. For the time being, he took off his heavy metal helmet and let it hang by its strap down his back. The cool breeze on his face felt refreshing. At a stream, he paused and dismounted for a moment to drink. Then, at a walk, he rode on. There were still a few hours of daylight. And thanks to his informants in Dyflin, he knew exactly where Harold’s farmstead was.

  Only when he stopped running did Brother Osgar discover, to his surprise, that he was still clutching the axe.

  There was no danger in sight at the moment, but who knew what threat might be lurking out there in the landscape. The axe was rather heavy, but he decided not to let it go just yet. Where should he seek refuge? Nearby he saw a burnt-out farmstead. No shelter there. Anyway, those pirates might come up here. Tomorrow or the next day, when he was sure there were no more Vikings around, he would go to Dyflin; but for the moment, he would continue until he reached some place of safety. So as soon as he had caught his breath, he pressed on.

  He passed another ruined farm, crossed a patch of marshy ground, and had just emerged onto a track with a good view of the surrounding country when he caught sight of the woman and the two children riding some way ahead. When he first glimpsed them, he received a small shock. The woman looked like Caoilinn. Hardly realising he was doing so, he quickened his pace. The three horses reached a slight rise in the ground. Just as she was going over it, the woman half turned and he got a sight of her face. It was Caoilinn: he was almost sure of it. He called out, but she did not hear him and a moment later the three riders passed out of sight. He started to run.

  They had cantered across some level terrain and were farther away from him when he caught sight of them again, but he managed to catch glimpses of them for some time. Then he lost them. But he continued in the same direction and, a little while later, passing through a small wood, he realised that he had come to the place where he had been attacked by the robbers when he was a youth. Sure enough, moments later, he saw spread out ahead of him, not a mile away, a large farmstead. The big wooden barn, the thatched storehouses, and the hall were all standing unharmed. They happened, at that moment, to be in a broad patch of sunshine, and bathed in its gentle evening light they seemed to him to glow like an illuminated page. It was Harold’s farmstead. A place of refuge. Caoilinn must have gone there. He went forward, joyfully.

  The track to the entrance was of short, green turf. In his growing excitement, he felt a new spring in his step.

  He was approaching the gateway when he saw her. She was standing in the open space in front of Harold’s hall. Her children were waiting by the horses. She was looking around. Apparently nobody was there. Her dark hair had fallen to her shoulders, just as he had pictured it a thousand times. His heart leaped. As a widow, now, she was even more beautiful, more alluring than he had remembered. He hurried forward.

  She did not see him. She seemed still to be looking for someone. She came towards the gateway to look outside. And then he saw her staring towards him. He waved. She stared blankly.

  He frowned, then smiled. Of course, a bedraggled figure in a monk’s habit, carrying an axe: he must look a strange sight. She probably hadn’t recognised him. He called out.

  “Caoilinn. It is Osgar.”

  Still she stared. She looked puzzled. Had she understood? Then she pointed at him. He waved again. She shook her head, pointing once more, urgently, to something behind him; so he stopped and turned.

  The horse was only ten yards away. It had stopped when he did. It must have been walking behind him, but in his excitement at seeing Caoilinn, he had not heard its hoofs on the grassy track. Sigurd was riding it.

  “Well, Monk, we meet again.” The pirate gazed at Osgar, apparently considering what to do with him.

  Instinctively, clutching the axe, Osgar started to back away. Sigurd moved his horse slowly forward, keeping pace with him. How far was he from the gateway to the farmstead? Osgar tried to remember. He dared not look behind him. Could he make a run for it? Perhaps Caoilinn was closing the gate, trapping him outside with Sigurd. Suddenly he realised that the pirate was talking to him.

  “Run away, Monk. It isn’t you I’m interested in.” Sigurd grinned. “The person I want is in that farmstead.” He waved him away. “Go on, Monk. Run.”

  But Osgar did not run. For Caoilinn was there. The memory of that miserable day when he had let Morann go into Dyflin alone to save her flashed into his mind with bitterness. He had failed to strike a blow then. He had chosen his monk’s vocation over her, just as he had been doing for most of his life. And now this devil, this monster was going to take her. Rape her? Kill her? Probably both. The time had come. He must kill. He must kill this Viking or die in the attempt. Terrified of Sigurd though he was, the fighting spirit of his ancestors stirred within him, and calling loudly to Caoilinn behind him, “Close the gate,” he took a step back and raising the axe over his head, barred the way.

  Slowly and carefully, Sigurd got down from his horse.
He did not trouble to cram the helmet back on his head, but he drew out his double-edged sword. He was not going to argue with the monk, but Osgar was in the way. Would the fool really strike? The monk did not know it, but his stance was all wrong. His weight was so distributed that one of two things might happen. Sigurd would make a feint, Osgar would swing down and, meeting only thin air, probably cut off his own leg. If he didn’t swing then, Sigurd would take one nimble step to the right and plunge his sword straight into the monk’s side. It would be all over before the axe was halfway down. Osgar was about to die, but didn’t know it. If he tried to fight, that is.

  But would he? Sigurd took his time. He slowly raised the blade of his sword, showing it to Osgar as he had done before. The monk was trembling like a leaf. Sigurd stood two paces away from him. Suddenly he let out a roar. Osgar quivered. He almost dropped the axe. Sigurd took one more step forward. The poor fool of a monk was so frightened that he had closed his eyes. In the gateway behind, Sigurd could see a dark-haired woman with a pale face. Handsome, whoever she was. He measured the distance. No need even to make a feint. He gripped his sword for the thrust.

  And just at that moment, coming round the outside of the farmstead fence, he saw Harold. What luck.

  Osgar struck. He had sent a single, fleeting prayer to heaven, half opened his eyes, seen the pirate, just for an instant, shift his gaze elsewhere and known that God, for all his sins, had granted him one chance. He struck with all his might. He struck for Caoilinn whom he loved, he struck for his hesitating life, his chances lost, his passion never practised. He struck to end his cowardice, and his shame. He struck to kill Sigurd.

  And he did. Distracted for an instant, the pirate did not heed the blow until it was too late. The unexpected blade bit through the bone, cleaving the skull with a sickening crunch and a splatter of brains, shattering the bridge of his nose and smashing the jaw before it buried itself with a thud in the neck bone. The tremendous force of the blow drove the body onto its knees. It knelt there for a moment, like a strange creature with an axe for a head, the haft sticking out in front like a yard-long nose, while Osgar stared in disbelief at what he had wrought. Then it keeled over.

  Harold, who had come in from a nearby field, unaware that he had any visitors, gazed at the scene before him with great surprise.

  Three weeks later, Harold and Caoilinn were married in Dyflin. At Harold’s suggestion, it was a Christian ceremony, the bridegroom, with great good humour, having allowed himself to be baptised beforehand by the bride’s cousin Osgar, who also officiated at the marriage. Just before the ceremony, Osgar silently handed the bride a little antler ring. Despite many renewed requests, Osgar did not take up the position of abbot at the family monastery but preferred to return to the peace of his beloved Glendalough. There he produced another book of illustrated Gospels, which was very fine; but it lacked the genius of the one which was lost.

  The Battle of Clontarf is rightly regarded as the most important of Celtic Irish history. It has often been depicted as the decisive encounter between the Celtic Gaedhil and the Nordic Gaill: Irish Brian Boru against the invading Vikings, by which Ireland was triumphant against the foreign aggressor. Such was the foolish propaganda of romantic historians. Although it may well have deterred further Viking raids at this unstable time in the northern world, Dyflin itself was left in the hands of its Viking ruler, just as before. The Nordic element in Ireland’s ports remained strong and the two communities, the Hiberno–Norse as they are often called, became indistinguishable.

  The real significance of the Battle of Clontarf was probably twofold. First, Clontarf and the events surrounding it made clear the strategic importance of the island’s richest port. Never a tribal nor a religious centre, its trade and ramparts meant that, while the holding of ancient Tara was symbolic, to rule all Ireland, it was Dyflin that was crucial.

  Secondly, and sadly, far from being a triumph, Clontarf was Ireland’s great missed opportunity. For though Brian Boru had decisively won the battle, he had also lost his life. The descendants of his grandchildren, the O’Briens, would earn high renown; but his immediate successors were unable to unite and hold all Ireland as, for a decade, the old man had briefly done. Twenty years later, the High Kingship would pass back to the O’Neill kings of Tara; but it was and remained only a ceremonial shadow of the kingship of Brian Boru. Disunited Ireland, like the fragmented Celtic island of ancient times, would always be vulnerable.

  So Brian Boru won, but lost; and Harold the Norseman and Caoilinn the Celt, who were not in love, married and were very happy; Morann the Christian craftsman, having received a pagan warning, died like a warrior in battle; and Osgar the monk killed an evil man, even if he did not understand why.

  SIX

  STRONGBOW

  1167

  I

  THE INVASION that was to bring eight centuries of grief to Ireland began on a sunny autumn day in the year of Our Lord 1167. It consisted of three ships which arrived at the small southern port of Wexford.

  Yet had anyone told the two young men who eagerly disembarked together that they were part of an English conquest of Ireland, they would have been most surprised. For one was an Irish priest returning home, while his friend, though he owed allegiance to the King of England, had never called himself English in his life. As for the purpose of the mission, the soldiers in the ships had come because they had been invited, and were led by an Irish king.

  Indeed, many of the terms found in reports of these events are misleading. Irish chroniclers of the period refer to the invasion as the coming of the Saxons—by which they mean the English—notwithstanding the fact that for three centuries, much of the northern half of England had been settled by Danish Vikings. Modern historians refer to it as the coming of the Normans. But that is also inaccurate. For although the kingdom of England had been conquered by William of Normandy in 1066, it had since then passed, through his granddaughter, to King Henry II—who belonged to the Plantagenet dynasty from Anjou, in France.

  So who were these people—apart from the Irish priest—who were arriving in three ships at Wexford on this sunny autumn day? Were they Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Frenchmen? Actually, they were mostly Flemish; and they had come from their home in south Wales.

  The young priest was enthusiastic.

  “As soon as this business is done, Peter, you’ll promise to visit my family, I hope. I know they’ll be pleased to welcome you,” said the handsome young priest.

  “I shall look forward to it.”

  “My sister must be twelve now. She was a pretty, lively child when I left.”

  Peter FitzDavid smiled to himself. It was not the first time his Irish friend had mentioned his sister’s charms or indicated that she would receive a handsome dowry.

  Peter FitzDavid was a pleasant-looking young man. His light brown hair was cut short and he wore a small beard cut into a chiselled edge. His eyes were blue and set wide apart. His chin was square and strong. A pleasant face, but a soldier’s face.

  Soldiers need to be brave, but as he prepared to step ashore, Peter could not help feeling a little apprehensive. His fear was not so much that he could be killed or maimed, but that he might somehow disgrace himself. There was, however, an even greater fear lurking in the background, and it was this fear which, in the times ahead, would drive him on. It was because of this fear that he had to succeed, to catch the eye of his commander and win fame. Even as the shore drew closer, his mother’s words were echoing in his mind. He understood her very well. The last penny she could spare had been spent on his horse and equipment. There was nothing else left. She loved him with all her heart, but she had no more to give.

  “God be with you, my son,” she had said to him as he left. “But do not come back empty-handed.” Death, he thought, would be better than that. He was twenty.

  To call Peter FitzDavid a knight in shining armour would not quite be correct. His chain mail, a hand down from his father that had been altered to fit him, w
as free of rust and if it did not shine, at least it gleamed. In short, like many of the mounted men of that age, Peter FitzDavid, who owned little more than what he carried, was a young fellow in search of his fortune.

  And he was Flemish. His grandfather Henry had come from Flanders, that land of craftsmen, merchants, and adventurers which lay on the rich flatlands between northern France and Germany. He had been just one of a stream of Flemings that had flowed across to Britain after the Norman Conquest and had settled not only in England but in Scotland and Wales as well. Henry was one of many Flemish immigrants who were granted land in the south-western peninsula of Wales which, because of its rich mines and quarries, the new Norman kings were anxious to control. But the settlement in Wales had not gone well. The proud Celtic princes of that land had not submitted easily and now the Norman Flemish colony was in trouble. Several castles were taken; their lands were under threat.

  Peter’s family had been especially hard hit. They were not important tenants in chief—vassals of the king himself—with holdings in many of the Plantagenets’ wide domains. They were vassals of his vassals. Their modest lands in Wales were all they had. And by the time that Peter’s father, David, had died, they had lost two-thirds of those. What remained was only enough to support Peter’s mother and his two sisters.

  “You’ll have nothing to support you, my poor boy,” his father had told him, “except your family’s love, your sword, and the good name I leave you.”

  By the time Peter was fifteen, his father had taught him everything he knew about the arts of war, and Peter was an accomplished swordsman. The love of his family was not in doubt. As for his name, Peter had loved his father and so he loved that, too. For just as in Celtic Ireland, the term “Mac” implied “the son of,” so in Norman England, the French term “fitz” had a similar meaning. His father had thus been known as David FitzHenry; and he was proud to be called Peter FitzDavid. Now it was time to seek his fortune as a fighting man for hire.