Swordland

by Edward Ruadh Butler

  Everyone turned to look at Robert FitzStephen.

  He knew that he wanted to go with them – for any of the children of Nest a tomb was better than a prison. But something was holding him back. Without intending to do so, FitzStephen’s eyes locked upon those of Rhys and he could not take them away. He was a hawk stuck in a cage, he knew, and Rhys was his keeper. The Welshman had utterly defeated him.

  ‘I will make it easy for you, Robert,’ the prince said as he climbed from his chair and sat down beside his cousin. ‘Who are you?’

  The question caught FitzStephen by surprise. ‘What do you mean?’ He could feel sweat beginning to form on his forehead and anger rise in his stomach.

  ‘You have told me again and again that you are not one of the Cymri. True?’ Rhys paused, waiting for FitzStephen to answer. Receiving nothing he tried again. ‘You call yourself Robert FitzStephen not Robert ap Stephen.’

  ‘I am no Welshman,’ he said defensively, not fully understanding where Rhys, his tormentor, was taking him. His eyes searched the room for support.

  Rhys barely heeded the conformation. ‘Are you English?’

  ‘English?’ he shook his head. Only the serfs of the field claimed that nationality or spoke that tongue, and then only ever amongst themselves.

  ‘Just because Jesus was born in a manger, it doesn’t make him a heifer,’ Walter de Ridlesford joked from the body of the hall.

  ‘Then you must be Norman?’ Rhys said, ignoring Ridlesford.

  ‘My father said that we were Normans,’ FitzStephen replied, ‘but I’ve never been to Normandy. Perhaps I still am a Norman.’ He shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘So who are you?’ Rhys’ eyes swept around the room, taking in all the men left in the hall, asking them the same question. ‘Who are you? Henry FitzEmpress has abandoned you here,’ he said as he turned and looked at David, Maurice, and Miles. ‘He has abandoned all of you to your fate.’ Rhys let the statement sink in. Not one of them tried to argue against his blunt assertion. The prince turned back to FitzStephen. ‘This will be the last time I offer you the chance to join me, cousin. But for your mother’s sake I implore you to fight for the land of your birth. Despite everything you have done against me, I still want you to help free Cymru. Fight for us and free Deheubarth from Henry of England!’

  FitzStephen, despite his imprisonment, was tempted and the Welshman knew it. Rhys had used many tricks, offers, and threats to tempt him to join his cause, but nothing had got close to breaking his resolve. But the prince could see FitzStephen struggling. Pride, desire, ambition, fear, an outsider’s yearning to belong, all the emotions poured into his mind at once.

  ‘So who are you?’ Rhys broke the silence in the great hall of Llandovery.

  Shocked by the suddenness of Rhys’ question, FitzStephen raised his chin and looked at his cousin. Behind him was the wall of the Norman-built castle; strong, steadfast, and stable. To FitzStephen a castle signified order and the rule of law. Suddenly he realised that this was what he craved most – order in an otherwise unpredictable world. The Church promised that it would unite all Christendom in its warm embrace but FitzStephen knew that the meek would never inherit the earth. However, equipped with a sword, a courser, and a castle, a strong man with the will and the skills to dominate could seize a piece of land and bring it to order. From the shaped stone to the dusty tapestries, his eyes flicked around the faces in the room: Maurice encouraging him with his deep, thoughtful eyes. Come to Ireland, they said, take the chance. Next to him David sat picking at a bread trencher of venison, and beside him Miles smiled encouragingly at him as if he recognised the pressure under which FitzStephen struggled. Miles’ grin offered support and constancy.

  FitzStephen’s eyes finally settled on Diarmait Mac Murchada, the exiled king, whose face gave nothing away. But his lightning-blue eyes flashed unblinking across the wooden table at him. They seemed to invite and repel FitzStephen at the same time. They told him that he had one last chance to prove his courage, one last chance to prove his character – that anything was possible. FitzStephen was enticed. And what a prize he offered! A hundred thousand acres for his own use; not held for some lord or king, but swordland – a huge domain ready to be claimed by anyone with skill in war and maintained by his ability to provide plunder to his followers. If Henry of England and Prince Rhys were trying to close the Welsh frontier then Robert FitzStephen would open up a new front in Ireland. And in that mysterious place he would be at the top of the tree, not just lord of farmland but also of a huge town with good trading links to England, Wales, and beyond. It was more than tempting.

  ‘So tell me, Robert, who are you?’ Rhys asked as the silence again began to stretch throughout the room.

  ‘I am …’ FitzStephen started but seemed to not be able to find the words to describe what he felt in his soul at that moment. ‘I am an invader,’ he said finally. ‘My father was at the forefront of our invasion of Wales, my grandfather took England,’ he shook his head, eyes on the table in front of him. ‘Perhaps it is right that I am the invader of Ireland, for war is all that connects me to my forefathers.’ From any other man it would have been a ludicrous statement but each of the noblemen, kings, princes, and knights, duly nodded along with the sentiment of the unshaven and half-starved wretch dressed no better than a beggar. ‘At any rate, I am done with Wales,’ he told Rhys. ‘Or rather it has done with me. I must find my fortune elsewhere.’

  ‘We could have freed all Cymru, Robert, and been remembered in the songs of our people,’ the prince shook his head. ‘And perhaps I will still do it,’ he bowed so that his chin touched his red surcoat. ‘You are free, cousin. Go and find your fortune in Ireland. My father told me it is a most beautiful place; harsh and untamed, but beautiful.’

  FitzStephen nodded to his cousin and jailer, unsure of whether to thank him or scream at him. He suddenly remembered again the stories his father had told him of the famous Norman hero, Robert Guiscard, after whom he was named. Robert the Fox; Robert the Cunning; a younger son of a minor knight who had risen from nothing, carved himself a kingdom in a faraway land and founded a dynasty that still ruled vast estates in Italy, Sicily, and Antioch. But even Guiscard had served the Pope, he thought as he walked around the vast table towards the King of Laighin and knelt before him, taking Diarmait’s worn hands in his own tattered, dirty paws.

  ‘Lord King, before you is a poor man, who has defeat and dishonour in his past. I am bastard-born and a murderer. I embody sin.’ He bowed his head. ‘But once I was a great warrior and lord of battles,’ FitzStephen looked up into the Irish king’s blue eyes, ‘and I swear it on St Maurice’s great spear, I will succeed in returning your lands or I will die trying. And all I want from you is a promise that you will be true and loyal to me in return for that service. I can ask no more as you have offered my brothers a mighty prize.’

  Diarmait looked at FitzStephen and remembered himself as a younger man. He had been desperate, brow-beaten, and defeated by his enemies after the death of his father and brothers. But he saw the same depth of determination in the Norman and not even the rags could hide the muscle that would provide prowess in battle. Ambition pumped through this man, Mac Murchada thought. The Irish king jerked his head back and barked an unexpected laugh.

  ‘Stop being miserable, young man, and get up off your knees.’ Diarmait leant forward and pulled him to his feet. ‘We are never truly defeated,’ the older man said, ‘but nor should we ever truly think ourselves victorious. We are born, we fight, we win, we lose, we recover, and then we die. That’s life so don’t pretend it is too complicated.’ Diarmait nodded to Rhys who stared momentarily at FitzStephen before marching out of the great hall. The Norman watched him go but could not bring himself to speak. Instead the Irishman walked him towards the oaken doors.

  ‘Look at me, for example,’ Diarmait continued, ‘I am a penniless exile now, but I was a king of the most beautiful and bountiful country on God’s green earth, and I mean to be again. But
to do it I will need men like you and your brothers.’ He removed his hands from FitzStephen’s shoulders. ‘So I ask you this, have you the skills to help me retake Laighin? Have you the spirit to see it through to the very end?’ They were on the steps and as they spoke and wandered into the fore-building below the massive FitzPons crest and the main gate.

  Pulling open the gates he hauled FitzStephen into the bright sunshine where they were met by the most beautiful girl that Robert FitzStephen had ever seen. He could only stare at the woman, astonished by her loveliness. Her red hair was unfurled and glittering in the sunshine.

  ‘Father,’ the woman said to Diarmait Mac Murchada before turning to look at the man at his side. ‘This,’ she said as she looked FitzStephen up and down, ‘is the man you came all this way to get?’

  ‘He is, daughter,’ Diarmait nodded and turned to his new ally. ‘I have found the warlord that will take us home.’

  FitzStephen nodded to Diarmait but his eyes were only for Aoife. ‘I will do it and I will not fail,’ he told her. ‘You are going home.’

  Diarmait cackled and his blue eyes shone. ‘Then I have found my taoiseach.’

  The fighter was free and Ireland was his target.

  Part Two

  The Frontier

  Chapter Six

  England

  April 1169

  There was no sudden change to tell Sir Robert FitzStephen that he and his half-brother had moved into the Jewish Quarter, but within a few hundred yards all but the most downtrodden of merchants had disappeared from view. In a city famous across the kingdom for its iron-working and leather-crafters, it became apparent to the mounted Norman warrior that some time had passed since he had seen any sign of any tradesman amongst the quiet hovels. Nails, armour, horseshoes, mattocks and spades, arrows, utensils, anchors, and all manner of iron tools had been on display outside every other house back towards St Peter’s Abbey, but FitzStephen could not remember when he had last seen an iron-worker’s abode as they rode east towards the patched Roman wall. They may have left the Welsh frontier behind, but within the ancient city they had found another border between two warring peoples.

  ‘Why would you need to find a Jew?’ the Sheriff’s bailiff asked, spitting on the cobble and grass road to underline his feelings on the inhabitants of the city. Some of the spittle struck FitzStephen’s horse’s hooves, making the rouncey bounce uncomfortably away from the balding soldier.

  ‘I wouldn’t talk to them at all if it wasn’t my job,’ the man claimed as he stared suspiciously at the two chainmailed warriors. ‘They killed that boy last summer, you heard that?’

  The tall Norman warrior lied and shook his head, repeating his request for directions to the house of Yossi the Moneylender. Even in the twelve years since he had last been to the city it had changed enormously and FitzStephen had become lost in the confusing little streets, which peeled off in every direction between the dirty thatched houses and tiny wooden shops.

  ‘They crucified him in their temple, little Harold, that’s what I heard,’ the bailiff continued unabated. ‘Then they all fed on his flesh in their synagogue.’ The man looked at both horsemen for encouragement but received none from their stern-featured faces. ‘Well, I don’t have to tell you that the sheriff told us to keep an eye on them,’ he continued in Robert FitzStephen’s direction.

  Robert’s companion, Sir Maurice FitzGerald, had heard all about the blood libel case brought against the Jews of Gloucester and had told him of it on the long road from Pembroke, just one in a number of stories to get FitzStephen up to speed with recent events. The boy’s remains, Maurice had told him, had been found in the river with a hundred cuts and the signs of Christ’s crucifixion on his hands, feet, sides, and head. The Jews, of course, had been blamed for the death, and an unsuccessful case had been brought before the sheriff. The morbid distrust between the opposing citizens of the city remained with the peace ostensibly held together by the small band of royal bailiffs.

  ‘Yossi the Usurer?’ FitzStephen asked of the sheriff’s man again. His French had become heavily flavoured with lilting Welsh and sounded foreign to the man of Gloucester who stared at him distrustfully. He knew little about the turbulent fighters from the frontier, but what he did know made the bailiff uncomfortable. None were more dangerous or untrustworthy than the men who scraped a living from un-Christian and violent conquest on the very edge of the kingdom.

  ‘Well, I suppose you two know what you are about,’ he finally said, obviously disappointed at FitzStephen’s unwillingness to chat in the street. ‘But I warn you, keep your eyes open. You can’t trust them Jews,’ the man said again before acquiescing to Robert’s request with a shrug. ‘You keep dead ahead for a hundred yards and then take a right into the Jewry by Job the Goldsmith’s shop. You’ll have to ask again and no doubt the penny-pinchers will want paying,’ the bailiff said with a sniff but did not move off. When it was apparent that neither FitzStephen nor Maurice was going to offer him recompense for his trouble, he continued on his way back into the city cursing the two troublesome men from Wales and all cheapskates who associated with damned Jews.

  As the bailiff tottered off, FitzStephen clicked his tongue to get his rouncey moving and followed Maurice down the road away from the city proper. His new lease of life had been somewhat dulled by the stuffy city atmosphere. He had spent just one frantic week in Pembroke overseeing the preparations for the adventure but, with their numbers almost doubling thanks to news of his release, it had become clear that the brothers would need extra materials and workers if their enterprise were to be the success of which they dreamed.

  ‘Are you sure we should not get more silver?’ he asked his older half-brother. ‘We may not get another chance.’

  ‘Forty marks should be enough, brother,’ Maurice said as he dusted off his white surcoat, resplendent with the red saltaire of the Geraldines.

  FitzStephen grimaced. It was hardly a fair price for what his family offered, he thought, but if you conspire with Jews what should you expect? The journey across South Wales to Gloucester had given him the opportunity to reacquaint himself with horsemanship in the lovely soft land bathed in a beautiful spring. Sixteen warriors had ridden with Maurice and FitzStephen through Carmarthen, Kidwelly, and Cardiff into Gwent – or Wentland as the English called it – to Striguil, Strongbow’s fortress. There they had stayed a night with Maurice’s jovial nephew, Raymond de Carew, before making their way across into the soft rolling countryside of England. Camping overnight in the Forest of Dean, ten miles to the west, FitzStephen had again dreamed of the oubliette. In the small world of his prison he had prayed for little else other than freedom, but now that he was liberated he could not stop returning to his captivity. His confessor had told him that there was only one rationale for his unexpected liberty: God had forgiven him for his many sins perpetrated during his rule of Ceredigion. FitzStephen was not sure whether he believed that he deserved forgiveness, but he was determined to live up to the chance given to him, and to a Norman that meant only one thing: triumph by conquest.

  Gloucester was a city which FitzStephen thought he knew as well as any man. He had spent many years there as a page in the household of Sir Henry FitzRoy during the wars between the Empress Matilda and the usurper Stephen de Blois. The city had been built by the Romans, occupied by the Anglo-Saxons and now, under the Normans, had become the biggest and most important settlement in the west of England, the last major town before the Welsh March. Gloucester fed the needs of the warring barons who scraped a living from the land beyond the Severn in the old Norman fashion. The city had become rich by feeding the unremitting conflict to the west.

  As he and Maurice walked their horses through the streets, FitzStephen suddenly recalled the day when the Earl of Gloucester had brought the captured Stephen de Blois, the usurper of the throne, back to the city. FitzStephen had been a scared child brought to Gloucester by his father to serve in the earl’s household, but the jubilation of the people
had been infectious as the sad figure of the defeated king, blond hair and beard untidy and his hands bound, sat in a cart as the people of the city taunted him. All had believed that the war was over and the Empress Matilda, Henry of England’s mother, would be crowned Queen. But fickle fate had intervened and just months later Sir Henry FitzRoy’s brother, the Earl, had been captured in a poorly thought out attack on Winchester. The civil war had continued on and off for another thirteen years, and that time had been the making of Robert FitzStephen as a warrior as he progressed from page to esquire to knight under the tutelage of Sir Henry FitzRoy. It seemed such a long time ago, he thought, but it had made him the man he was today. Or the man he had been before his incarceration, he supposed. He shook loose another suffocating image of the oubliette and looked at the houses which surrounded him.

  Back in the main market place of Gloucester, around the docks and St Peter’s, every street had been teeming with people. The quayside had been all hustle and bustle, a sea of cloth tents covering tables full of wares brought from around the West Country, but the steamy, suffocating marketplace between the walls of the old Roman city and the crowded banks of the River Severn had been almost too much for FitzStephen. It was the opposite in the areas between the Jewry and those of Gloucester’s Christians. Not that any right-minded person would come out of their house when two well-armoured Normans from the frontier were in the streets, FitzStephen thought with a smile. The surcoated warriors were killers and bullies known up and down the island of Britain for the horrors which they left behind, and few would have anything to do with the misfits from the dreaded land of Wales.