‘Sydd yno?’ a man’s voice called out in Welsh before Aoife had taken one step. His voice was hoarse, and his manner suspicious and angry, and no wonder, Aoife thought, considering the activity which she had interrupted.
‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she babbled in French and made a move for the door. Aoife could feel her cheeks burning with humiliation.
‘Wait,’ the man replied in the same tongue as Aoife scampered through the door and back onto the stair. ‘Are you a Norman?’ he called, more distantly than before. ‘Please wait! Don’t leave me alone down here,’ the man managed before the cellar door closed behind Aoife. She galloped up the stairs and quickly darted through the door to the floor above. Leaning against the wall, the princess of the Uí Ceinnselaig breathed deeply and calmed herself. Two servants, one of them the women who had offended her earlier, entered the gatehouse from the fore-building and Aoife immediately stood tall, her chin proud and hands clamped together as the pair stopped close to her and stared anxiously in her direction. Neither could speak Irish or French, and nor could Aoife make herself understood in their native tongue. They babbled a few words before realising the futility of their attempts and continuing on their way.
Aoife allowed herself to relax and examined some of the embroideries which adorned the walls. She had barely begun when the noise that had so embarrassed her in the cellar began again. Strangely, it came from somewhere close-by and Aoife, now angry at being put in such an inappropriate position, stormed in its direction, determined to scold the man for his impropriety. The noise led her to a small grate in the floor, barely the width of Aoife’s outstretched arms, and through it she could see the sides of a chute. At the bottom, she could see a man punching the air as if in a fight with an unseen foe. She watched as he jabbed the air just in front of him with a vicious power, his long blonde hair and beard waving wildly as he moved from side to side. Before him were iron bars leading, she realised, into the cellar from which she had ran minutes before. It was a prison, though who the man was she could not tell. Nonetheless, Aoife watched him as he furiously fought, his hands a blur as he sent stroke after stroke outwards against a foe unseen.
‘If you are attempting to fight your way free, I think you will actually need to strike your cage,’ she joked suddenly.
The man came to a halt immediately, breathing heavily from his exertions. He tucked his matted hair behind his ears and looked upwards at her through the iron bars of the grate. His stare unsettled Aoife, but just as she was about to leave, he finally spoke: ‘You have no idea how long I have waited to hear someone speaking French.’
‘What did you do to end up down there in this …?’
‘Oubliette,’ the prisoner told her.
‘So how …’
‘Murder,’ he told her plainly and bowed his head.
Aoife scowled at the man, believing him to be trying to scare her. ‘Liar,’ she accused. ‘If you were a murderer they would either have hanged you, or you would have paid the honour-price for the crime and been freed …’
‘Perhaps I had no money,’ he interjected again.
‘Stop interrupting me when I am speaking,’ Aoife told the man, though she earned only a giggle of laughter as recompense. However, when she turned to walk away he barked a desperate apology.
‘I’m sorry, don’t go,’ he appealed. ‘I apologise, wholeheartedly. I have been down here for too long and I have lost my manners – I don’t even know how long I’ve been down here, for no-one is permitted to speak to me.’
Aoife considered leaving the man to his lies and his unhappiness. However, having explored most of the castle she knew that she had little choice but to return to waiting for her father or to join Prince Rhys’ wife in the solar. Neither option interested her in the slightest.
‘Are you still there?’ the man’s voice, full of desperation, echoed through the hatch in the stone floor.
‘Yes, I am here,’ she told him with forced exasperation evident in her voice.
‘Thanks be to God,’ the man said. ‘I apologise again, Madam, I forgot my …’
‘… manners, yes,’ Aoife interrupted, a hint of mischief in her admonishment. Thankfully, the prisoner understood her small joke and smiled. ‘It is spring,’ she told him, ‘of 1169.’
The man breathed out slowly. ‘Then I have been down here for two years.’ He bowed his head and shuffled out of the light which tumbled down the shaft to the oubliette. For many seconds he did not speak.
‘Are you Norman?’ Aoife asked.
‘I was,’ the man said sadly from the darkness. ‘But to be Norman is to be free – to be beholden only to your lord and the men under your command. I am a silenced sword now, nothing more.’
‘You are certainly a sullen one,’ Aoife remarked, earning a caustic snort of laughter from the man. ‘I have lost my freedom too,’ she told him. ‘It was taken from me, but I committed no crime.’
‘Then you have my sympathy and prayers that one day you will be able to revenge yourself on the person that wronged you,’ he told her. ‘Actually, I retract the last part,’ he corrected himself. ‘I will pray instead that you simply find your way home, Madam.’
Aoife scowled. ‘The life of a man is very different from that of a woman,’ she told him ‘I suspect that I will never go back to the place that I call home. My father has sold me, like a cow, to a man that I have never met, an old man, in return for soldiers. My father thinks that I do not know about his plans, but he can’t hide this from me.’
The prisoner climbed to his feet and stared up at the princess. ‘The same thing happened to my mother,’ he said. ‘I think that she found happiness for a little while, though I suspect not with my father. He was a hard man to like.’
‘My sister used to tell me how hard she prayed so she would become a good man’s principal wife. She did not pray for wealth or good harvests or for our family’s health. She prayed that she would not be a lesser wife, and I mocked her. She was taken from her home and delivered to the bed of a stranger. The only familiar faces belonged to her three slaves. But at least she was treated with respect. She told me the same would happen to me. From what I have seen of your Norman ways, I think I would be better throwing myself from the battlements.’
‘I don’t think that need happen to you,’ the prisoner told her. ‘Not every woman needs a man to command her.’
Aoife did not reply and neither spoke for many minutes.
‘What is your name?’ she eventually asked, but before the man could answer the noise of mailed feet and harsh voices sounded on the stone steps above her. They quickly passed by the door beside which she crouched and she looked down the chute into the oubliette to where the prisoner stood in the shaft of light.
‘They are coming for me,’ the man whispered. ‘Oh God, they are coming for me,’ he said, his voice full of fear. The noise of metal hinges scraping against stone issued up the chute to where Aoife stood, followed by the stomp of many feet in the cellar below.
‘What do you want?’ the prisoner shouted into the darkness as the metal bars of his cage were dragged open and men stepped into the cell with him. As Aoife watched the Norman backed away from the Cymri warriors who attempted to grab him by the arms. He fought back but he should not have. Punches rained down upon the man and he was soon overcome and dragged from the oubliette, kicking and screaming in the Welsh tongue.
‘Leave him alone,’ Aoife shouted down the chute. She did not know what the men wanted with the Norman, but he was the only one, apart from her father and Sir Maurice, to have spoken to her since they had arrived in Wales, and she feared for him. Soon the noise of his fight passed by the door and Aoife ran over and swung it open just as the man passed.
‘Leave him alone!’ she shouted again in the French tongue at the men but they just laughed and their leader, the Welsh prince’s son, forced her off the steps.
‘Go … away,’ the Welshman said in faltering French.
‘No,’ the Norman appealed from t
he steps above. ‘Please, girl, please! Whatever happens, tell my brothers that I was here and that I am sorry. My name is Robert FitzStephen. Find my brothers and tell them to pray that my soul finds eternal rest.’
Aoife’s last sight of the bearded prisoner was of his desperate eyes appealing for her help. But she could do nothing as one of the Welshmen stood in her way on the stair.
‘No,’ the Cymri warrior said. ‘No.’
Walter de Ridlesford, Hugh de Caunteton, and the two youngsters, William and Ralph, were all that remained in the main body of the hall and they exchanged nervous glances as they stared at the tangled remains of the man they had last seen five years before. Robert FitzStephen was so heavily bearded that they barely recognised him as he was held between two Welsh warriors in the doorway to the great hall. Clothed in little more than a brown shift and torn hose, his kinsmen could see a thin body wrapped in skin and sinewy muscle. His feet were bare and they made a distinctive slap as he was moved further into the hall towards the dais.
William the Welshman looked at the man but did not see his brother. Instead he saw a shaggy-haired wretch. In an instant he knew that this man held little of the swagger and confidence that had been such a part of his brother’s personality.
‘Robert?’ William asked of the skeletal man who approached the table, screwing up his eyes at the light which poured into the room. Hugh, Walter, and Ralph all stood as FitzStephen advanced close to them.
‘William?’ FitzStephen replied, his brow creasing in confusion. His younger brother stood staring at the shambling mess that had been his hero and who he had not laid his eyes on in so long. He nodded slowly but could not find the words to greet his brother. Walter de Ridlesford had no such problem with his old friend’s desperate condition and pushed the two Welsh warriors out of his way as he threw his arms around FitzStephen’s shoulders and battered his back with his right arm. Ridlesford then punched his cousin hard in the stomach.
‘There’s more meat on a bishop’s table at Lent than on you,’ Walter said before hugging him again. Bishop David scowled at the joke.
‘Robert?’ William asked again, disbelieving.
FitzStephen nodded nervously. ‘What is happening?’
‘We are here to get you back, you dope,’ Ridlesford laughed.
‘Get me back?’ FitzStephen seemed confused by his cousin’s statement and did not join in his mirth.
‘The enterprise,’ Ralph blabbed in answer to his father’s question. The esquire was lost somewhere between anger and happiness at seeing the man who had left him alone, who now looked at him without any paternal recognition.
‘Robert,’ Prince Rhys growled across the hall and immediately FitzStephen turned away from his kinsmen to look at the figure silhouetted against the coloured window. ‘Come up to the dais and greet your brothers. They have a proposition for you.’ FitzStephen looked angrily at the man who had put him in the oubliette and he felt hatred course through his bones. He tapped William reassuringly on the shoulder before approaching the dais, his eyes locked on Rhys. Beside him, FitzStephen noticed Tewdwr’s fingers dancing on the hilt of a dagger in his belt. He was ready to strike should the need arise.
Miles was the first of the Norman leaders to greet FitzStephen with a strong grip upon his forearm. He was followed by a smiling Maurice and then by Bishop David who scolded FitzStephen on his sinful indiscretion which had led to yet another bastard, Maredudd, to whom he had been introduced to earlier in the day. ‘Another bastard, Robert? Another?’ he exclaimed. The bishop then introduced his brother to Diarmait Mac Murchada. Few Normans, English, or Welsh were as tall as Robert FitzStephen, but the thin King of Laighin towered over him.
‘Are all the men of your country as tall as you?’ FitzStephen’s voice scratched his throat, forcing him to cough and gave him time to consider what was going on. He was not really sure where Laighin was nor what the strangely clothed man was doing alongside his brothers.
If Diarmait seemed shocked or disappointed at FitzStephen’s appearance he did not show it and just grinned at his question. The fact was that the King was thrown off by FitzStephen’s build just as the Norman was of his; Diarmait had met many of the brood that were the descendants of Princess Nest by her many lovers – FitzGerald, FitzHenry, Carew, and Barri – and all were short, stout, and dark-haired. But here was a trim, tall, and fair man who looked more like an Ostman from Dubhlinn or Veðrarfjord than the Normans he had met in Wales. Something about the prisoner also reminded Diarmait of himself as a younger man; the blond hair, blue eyes entwined with desperation and ambition.
‘I am tall, even for an Irishman,’ Diarmait said in answer to Robert’s question. ‘Before we begin negotiations I want to know if you are the right man for me,’ he stated.
‘My Lord?’ asked a confused FitzStephen.
‘I must know everything,’ the King continued. ‘Tell me about your life. Have you seen much war?’
FitzStephen looked around the room for support, finally settling his eyes on Maurice. His brother gave him the smallest nod. ‘I have seen nothing else,’ FitzStephen said and shrugged. ‘War and life? What is the difference? What is this about?’ he asked his half-brother.
‘Just tell him what he wants to know, brother,’ Maurice urged with a small smile.
FitzStephen shook his head and thought back to his childhood. ‘I served Sir Henry FitzRoy at Wallingford and I saw some action during King Henry’s attack on Mona …’
‘“Saw some action?”’ Miles Menevensis blurted out with a sarcastic laugh. ‘He saved King Henry’s life and the whole army from the screaming horde of Gwynedd –’ he told Diarmait Mac Murchada.
‘And then I was rewarded,’ Robert butted in as if the memory of his glory under Henry of England’s banner pained him, ‘by being made Constable of Aberteifi. I served the Earl of Hertford in Ceredigion for seven years.’
‘Adequate,’ Diarmait said and nodded to Bishop David.
‘Wait,’ FitzStephen said, turning to his brothers, ‘what are you all doing here? Tell me what is going on.’
Bishop David began to recount the story of Diarmait’s journey and Robert’s place in it. FitzStephen sat amazed, drinking only water as he listened first about the Irishman’s exile, before the bishop described the political situation in Ireland, finishing with the conditions of their negotiations with Rhys so far.
‘So who has agreed to make the journey?’ FitzStephen asked the group as he shook his head in disbelief at the amazing turn of events. He was visibly shaking with excitement. Was this it? His two years of praying in the oubliette rewarded by God with freedom? For what else could this news mean? Would he be sprung from prison and given command of an army? Or had he finally succumbed to madness and this was some grand flight of fancy as his mind collapsed? Nonetheless, he felt something rise in his chest. It was a feeling he had not experienced since the day he was knighted by the young King Henry; that he was on the brink of something momentous.
‘The FitzHenrys are with us as usual,’ Miles Menevensis told him. ‘William de Barri’s two boys are keen, and obviously Walter de Ridlesford and Hugh de Caunteton will stand with us. The other knights of the March will only follow our banner to Ireland if you commit to leading it.’
FitzStephen nodded. ‘Might I see King Henry’s licence?’
Bishop David quickly clicked his fingers at one of the priests who had accompanied him north. The man produced a copy of the document and handed it over nervously to the prisoner. FitzStephen examined the seal which showed the two swaggering lions of Anjou. The animals on the wax badge sent disdainful glares at FitzStephen. Henry’s symbol made him angry as he uncurled the crisp folded parchment, allowing the seal to dangle from the bottom.
‘Henry, King of England, Duke of Normandy and Aquitaine, and Count of Anjou,’ he read aloud, ‘to all his liegemen, English, Normans, Welsh,’ he paused and scowled, ‘and Scots, and to all other nations subject to his dominion, sends greeting. Whensoever these ou
r letters shall come unto you, know you that we have received Diarmait, Prince of Laighin, unto our grace and favour, wherefore, whosoever within the bounds of our territories shall be willing to give him aid, as our vassal and liegeman, in recovering his territories, let him be assured of our favour and license on that behalf.’ FitzStephen studied the letter silently a second time to make sure that he had got the correct meaning of every single word. ‘Does anyone trust Henry’s word?’ he asked.
‘Not one little bit,’ Maurice spoke quietly from the window ledge, ‘but the licence makes it legal, and with all due respect,’ he nodded towards Diarmait, ‘that is our king that you are talking about, brother.’
FitzStephen snarled suddenly and aggressively at his half-brother. ‘He discarded his allegiance to me easily enough; abandoning me in Llandovery …’ he stopped suddenly and closed his eyes to bring calm learned in solitary confinement. ‘So I consider my duty to Henry finished too,’ he said quietly before turning back to the document in his right hand. ‘But what other option do I have?’ he asked. ‘To stay here and rot? Rhys will not countenance my going to the Holy Land and he will not allow me to stay in Wales unless I fight for him. It is to Ireland or to death in his oubliette.’
The room went silent for many seconds and the hush was only broken when Prince Rhys closed his eyes and breathed out slowly, shaking his head in sadness. ‘If he leaves Wales, I will release him for the same price which you offered to pay five years ago,’ he nodded towards Maurice FitzGerald. ‘But he must swear it on the Holy relics of St David that he will never come back.’ Rhys was small of stature, thin, and bookish, but he looked indomitable. Even surrounded by the famous warriors, no-one contradicted his proclamation. ‘If he stays in Wales, he will remain here as my guest or he will fight for me. The choice is his to make.’
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