by Wayne Grant
The man turned to strike at a defender from behind, raising his long blade overhead for a killing stroke. Too late, he saw a blur of motion as Roland’s short blade drove in under his armpit. The sword slid in and out in the blink of an eye. The man screamed, staggering backwards and sat down hard on the grass. Blood foamed at his mouth as he slowly toppled over, a surprised look still on his face.
The gap in the line sealed, Roland looked to his left and saw Margaret Maelchallain , still clutching her shield and holding the bell of Saint Patrick to her breast with a free hand. There was a look of horror on the young woman’s face. Courage she had aplenty, but butchery such as this she had never witnessed. He hurried to her side.
“My lady,” he shouted. “You’ve done your duty here.”
He pointed to the bloodbath a few yards to her front.
“We cannot afford to lose the bell or its Keeper just yet. Please get to the rear.”
The girl didn’t seem to hear him, her gaze fixed on the chaos before her. She turned to Roland and tried to say something but no words would come. To her front a man staggered backwards and fell at her feet, a spear in his chest.
“Go!” Roland screamed and shoved her toward the rear. She dropped her shield and ran for the church as Roland turned back to the fighting.
Here and there along the line, de Courcy’s men were breaking through, but each breach was quickly closed. Off to his left, Roland saw Hugh O’Neill twice use his battleaxe to strike down men who had managed to hack their way through the ranks of defenders and into the rear. Near the clan chief, he watched Keiran O’Duinne kill one of the Irish levies with a vicious one-handed slash of his sword.
At the foot of the hill, he saw that de Courcy had waited for the assault to begin before sending his heavy cavalry up the road to the west. He caught sight of the last few riders disappearing around the hill. The English mercenaries followed them at a steady trot up the muddy road. Soon they would be striking the defenders at the western barricades.
From where he stood, Roland could see that the O’Neill line, was bending, but not yet breaking, though the sheer weight of numbers was pushing the defenders back. The rear rank was already standing on the level ground of the hilltop.
Time to fall back, he thought.
***
Down the hill and to the west, men stood anxiously behind hastily built barricades of overturned water troughs, farm carts, barrels of ale, benches from the nave of the church and any other solid objects the monks could find to block the spaces between the buildings. An hour before, they’d all knelt beside these barriers as Margaret Maelchallain paraded Saint Patrick’s bell before them and Archbishop O’Connor called upon almighty God to give them strength.
Now, from up the hill and beyond the church, they heard the chants for O’Neill and the sound stiffened their resolve. Then the chanting on the hill ceased, replaced by a sound like a thousand swords being forged on a thousand anvils, a chaotic wall of noise that heralded a battle being joined.
The fight for Armagh had begun.
Along the barricades, men stood to their posts, gripping their spears and axes and waiting for the assault they knew would come. Declan stood next to his father atop an overturned bench. Forty men stood with them to guard the longest of the barriers, thrown up between the lay monk’s dormitory and the stable. It was here that the Dungannon Road entered the abbey grounds and ran right up to the square. Smaller barricades blocked alleyways and farm paths that ran between the buildings south of the stable.
To his front were green pastures and a few patches of rye and oats, no doubt to brew the abbey’s ale, but his attention was fixed on the road coming in from the northeast. It was from that quarter that trouble would come. He did not have long to wait as a tall man on a white charger came over the low rise where the road swung around the hill of Armagh. Behind him came a column of heavy cavalry. The men were spattered and smeared with the mud of the road, but they were still a splendid sight, clad in mail and mounted on the finest English-bred horses in the north of Ireland.
They followed the road south as it ran along the western edge of the abbey, passing in front of the O’Duinne and O’Hagan clansmen as though on parade. When the lead rider reached the Dungannon Road he held up his arm and the column halted. At another signal, the riders wheeled their horses to the left to face the abbey. The man on the white horse edged his mount forward, studying the barricades that had been thrown up between the buildings.
Declan watched him turn in his saddle and look to the north where over the rise came a thick column of foot soldiers marching up the muddy road. These were the English mercenaries Roland had seen at Carrickfergus, the same men who’d taken his trench at the ford on the River Bann. He doubted a few carts and barrels would stop them, but it was better than nothing. He drew his broadsword as the English infantry formed up in front of the horsemen.
***
Brother Cyril rooted through his few belongings in the dim interior of the wattle and daub hut he shared with eight other Augustinian monks until he found what he was looking for. It was a short sword he’d carried with him all the way from Chester—a gift from the men of the Invalid Company. Until this moment he had not felt a need to take it from its leather wrapping, but he had just seen the English mercenaries forming on the Dungannon Road and thought it was time.
He was a man of peace and would not go out of his way to kill another man, but neither would he stand about like some sacrificial lamb to be slaughtered. Sir John Blackthorne, the finest swordsman in the Invalid Company had given him some rudimentary lessons in blade work and he had once been forced to defend himself during a bloody melee on the banks of the River Conway. Since then, there’d been many prayers of penance for the man he’d killed there, but he made no apologies to God for having survived the encounter himself.
He popped out of the opening to the hut and was met by one of his new friends among the monks of Armagh. The man looked askance at the blade in Cyril’s hand.
“No need for that, brother,” Brother Cormac said. “Stay with us. We will hide you.”
Cyril was touched by the man’s offer, but knew that to accept it would only get them both killed. De Courcy would suspect that the monk who had lied to him and engineered the theft of Saint Patrick’s bell would be somewhere here in Armagh and would leave no stone unturned to find him. Better to die a swift and honourable death than to fall into that man’s hands!
“No, brother,” he said, giving the blade a few tentative swipes. “It’s an Englishman who’s about to sack your abbey. It’s my duty as an Englishman to stop him!”
***
The downpour had eased to a light rain as Captain Charles Oliver halted his column in front of de Courcy’s cavalry and looked at the flotsam stacked between the buildings. He was not impressed. He trudged through the ankle deep mud to de Courcy’s side to await the man’s orders. The Prince pointed to the barricades.
“Captain, it seems our Irish friends insist on putting impediments in my way. I would like your men to clear a path through that rubbish. You can manage that—can’t you?”
Oliver gritted his teeth and bit back the angry retort he wanted to deliver. He looked up at De Courcy.
“We’ll clear the way for you, my lord,” he said grimly.
For an moment, John de Courcy wondered if this was what he had looked like twenty years ago when he had led a handful of his fellow knights into the north to find his destiny. He expected it was and the thought did not displease him. He beckoned the man closer and leaned down to issue his orders.
“Once you clear a path for my cavalry, Captain, you are to move with your men up toward the church. If the O’Neill men on top of the hill have not yet broken, you will take them in the rear. I will lead my cavalry into the square behind you and that will be the end of Hugh O’Neill!”
Oliver looked up at the man and had to suppress a shiver. There was a gleam of madness in de Courcy’s eyes that unsettled him.
&nb
sp; “And, Captain,” the Prince continued, “as I told my Irish troops, I want no prisoners. After this day, I want the power of the Cenél Eoghain broken forever!”
“No prisoners, my lord?”
“You heard me, Captain. Together we will kill them all. Is that clear?”
Oliver drew his sword and looked at the thin line of clansmen peering over the top of the barricades.
“Aye, lord, kill them all,” he agreed. “And the church? Its treasures are ours?”
De Courcy nodded.
“But only at the end of the day, Captain, only after all the Irish are hunted down. Then you may take what you will, though any holy relics are mine.”
The Englishman nodded. This would be a fine bonus for a day’s work. Perhaps enough to make him forget the bloody work he’d been ordered to perform and the insults he’d had to swallow.
He turned and called his sergeants to him. These were men who’d stormed castle walls. He was certain these pitiful barricades would not stand long before them. He divided his force into two, the smaller group to test the barricades south of the stable. He would command the bulk of his men assaulting the barricade on the Dungannon Road. Before he released the sergeants he beckoned them in close.
“No prisoners,” he said.
Abbey Square
Declan glanced down the line of men mustered at the barricade across the Dungannon Road. The gap between the monk’s dormitory and the stables where the road entered the abbey spanned a good thirty yards, but only forty men manned the makeshift barrier there. With smaller barricades to defend south of the stables, it was all that could be spared to block this main entry into the abbey grounds.
He had picked his way carefully up the jumbled pile of benches and barrels and found a spot with good footing and a clear line of sight. The view was not encouraging. To his front, he watched a tall man striding in front of the assembled English mercenaries and barking out orders. A small group peeled off from the formation and moved to the south—no doubt to assault the barricades there, but the main body—well over a hundred strong—stayed formed-up on the Dungannon Road.
Up the hill behind him, the roar of battle waxed and waned, but he paid little mind to what was happening elsewhere. He had trouble enough to his front, where out on the road the leader of the English mercenaries was pointing a sword directly at him and screaming a battle cry. With a roar, the mercenaries charged the barricade.
Declan shoved his steel helmet down snuggly on his head. It looked to be a hard morning ahead.
***
Archbishop O’Connor stood in the doorway of the church and saw Margaret Maelchallain come running around the corner of the building. He anxiously beckoned for her to join him and shelter inside. She saw the churchman and started to run to the doorway, but stopped. She looked down at the shrine she still held in her hands then back at the Archbishop. He was waving frantically at her to hurry, but she did not move.
Behind her she could still hear the sounds of the bloody mayhem at the crest of the hill. Across the abbey square, a new roar rose up as the English began their assault on the barricades there. She knew Declan was down that way and felt a wave of concern and a pang of guilt. If not for her theft of the bell, the young Irish knight and his companions would likely be on a boat bound for England now instead of facing death in a fight not of their own making.
O’Connor was shouting something at her, but she could not hear his words. She felt frozen with indecision. It would be very easy to run to the church, to hand the thing to the Archbishop and seek sanctuary there, but she knew in her bones that would be futile. A man like de Courcy would respect no sanctuary that stood between him and what he wanted.
She looked again at the bell and found herself wishing Saint Patrick had lost the damned thing in a bog. She wished she had not stolen it, wished she had not brought it here to Armagh along with the carnage that followed in its wake. The bell and its shrine only weighed a few pounds, but at this moment it felt like she was carrying an anvil.
Still, that morning she’d watched as men prayed and wept at the sight of it. Burden or not, it could still inspire men to fight and she would not be the one to hide it away in some sacristy when it was needed most. She turned away from the church door and walked to the centre of the square. There was a high cross there, tall and weathered and older than any in Armagh could recall. Margaret climbed up on its pedestal and stood there, the bell cradled in her arms.
Come what may, she was the Keeper.
***
North of the church, the steady pressure from below had finally forced O’Neill’s line back to the hilltop. Roland waited to hear the signal to fall back, but none came. He looked off to his left and saw no sign of Hugh O’Neill. For a dreadful instant, he thought the clan chief had fallen, then he saw that the man had forced his way into the front rank of defenders, wielding his axe with a savage fury.
He’d seen this before—leaders getting caught up in the battle fury and losing themselves in the fight. Richard of England was famous for leading from the front rank in battle and men loved him for it, but there was a time and place for personal valour and this was not one of them. The O’Neill men needed a commander, not another axe man.
He ran down the line toward the clan chief but saw O’Neill was too entangled in the fighting to be distracted. He caught sight of Keiran O’Duinne who had fallen in behind his chief, protecting the man’s flanks in the melee. Roland grasped the herald by the arm and pulled him to the rear.
“Give the signal!” he screamed over the din.
Keiran hesitated. He looked back at O’Neill, desperately hoping for some sign from the clan chief. Roland grasped his tunic.
“Blow the damn thing or we’re all dead men!” he shouted.
Keiran O’Duinne had been at Tandragee. He’d seen what happened when a line was broken and men put to panicked flight. He drove his short sword into the ground at his feet, raised the horn to his lips and blew three long wailing notes.
All along the crest of the hill men had waited for the sound of the horn. When it came, scores of O’Neill men in the rear rank pulled their last throwing spears from the ground and hurled them at the attackers. This sudden rain of missiles felled dozens of de Courcy’s men and caused others to draw back. As the enemy recoiled, the men at the top of the hill began a slow withdrawal toward the church and the abbey grounds.
Hugh O’Neill heard the horn as well and the sound seemed to break the spell of the battle madness that had fallen over him. He backed away from the line and turned to Keiran O’Duinne, raising his bloody axe in salute
“Good lad!” he shouted. Kiernan plucked his sword from the ground and returned the salute.
In the brief respite granted by O’Neill’s spearmen, the clansmen of the Cenél Eoghain slowly fell back, with O’Neill and Seamus O’Cahan bellowing at them to stay together. The hail of spears had forced de Courcy’s Irish troops to recoil, but the sight of their enemy retreating helped rally them. Over the crest of the hill they poured now, sensing the O’Neill men were breaking.
Roland watched as O’Neill and O’Cahan formed their men into shorter lines between the church and the abbey buildings on either side. The Cenél Eoghain clansmen locked shields as the men of Antrim and Down came howling across the hilltop and crashed into them. The lines staggered but held—for the moment.
Across the square, Roland could hear that the battle had been joined along the barricades blocking the western approaches. He turned and ran toward the barricade blocking the Dungannon Road where he’d last seen Declan. As he sprinted across the square, he saw Margaret standing at the foot of the high cross holding the bell shrine, but did not pause to speak. He reached into his quiver as he ran and found only three arrows left there.
When he turned the corner of the monk’s dormitory, he saw Declan standing atop the barricade, a shield in one hand and his broadsword in the other. The shield had two crossbow bolts embedded in its face. He cursed. At close range,
those bolts could penetrate mail. The crossbowmen had to be dealt with.
He looked for a vantage point where he could have a clear shot and settled on the roof of the dormitory. He darted through the door to find a hallway that ran the length of the interior with small, windowless cells for the monks along the outer wall. He turned left and hurried to the last cell. There were four straw pallets on the floor, marking the tiny space as home to four monks. Through the walls, Roland could hear the sounds of battle only a few feet away.
Above his head were pitched beams covered in thatch. He set aside his bow and drew his short sword. There was a tiny stone ledge against the western wall that held a candle and a crucifix. He used it like a step to hoist himself up and began hacking at the dense mass of straw. As it started to loosen, he set the sword aside and pulled handfuls of the thatch down into the cell until he could see grey sky through a hole.
He widened the opening enough for his shoulders to pass through then dropped back inside to take up his bow. As he turned to climb up, he was startled to see a face peering down at him. The man was squinting as his eyes tried to adjust to the dim light of the interior. He did not see the horn-tipped end of the longbow that took him under the chin and sent him tumbling backwards off the roof.
Roland hoisted himself back up and poked his head cautiously through the hole in the thatch. The roof of the dormitory was empty. Pulling himself halfway through the opening, he peered over the south edge of the roof. It was a chaotic scene, with a solid mass of English warriors jammed into the space between the dormitory and the stables. Scores of men were clambering up the outside of the barricade, though few were taking their chances at the centre where Declan stood. Roland counted five dead or wounded men draped across the barricades at the Irish knight’s feet.