Finn, burdened by Boniface’s convent upbringing, found this exercise particularly burdensome. It seemed to her that although she was no longer answerable to God she was still answerable to her own honour and that she was telling too many lies. She had lied to the priest when she’d said that Niav’s death had been an accident. What bothered her most of all – and puzzled her – was that she had lied to the Pilgrim when she’d told him Scathagh had said that friendship could exist between men and women. Scathagh had said no such thing. What Scathagh said was that men could be used and exploited if possible, or avoided and fought if not. You could sleep with them to gain your own ends when necessary, but you could never, never be friends with the bastards.
Irritated, Finn discovered that she was waiting.
With so many of the men gone to the war, the Partraige women were working twice as hard as usual, but even as they whisked through the fields, and in and out of the houses, their heads turned most frequently not to the lake, but to the road that ran down to Lough Corrib where news would come from. To her chagrin Finn found herself in a similar state of suspension.
‘Are all men the enemy?’ she asked Scathagh privately, and Scathagh had answered: ‘All.’
One beautiful spring day, she walked up to where Baccaugh was weeding ragwort out of his donkey’s paddock. He looked up nervously at her approach. ‘If it’s tweaking my nose, or stealing things that you’re after, you can tell Scathagh I’ve had enough of it.’
‘I’m off-duty.’ She put her arms on the top of the wall and loitered, feeling the sun on her back, wondering why she had come. Strictly speaking she should have been on the other side of the Lough, practising knife-throwing under Dagda’s tuition, but she had rebelled; it just wasn’t a day for knives, it was a day for smelling grass and passing under the various shades given by budding trees and watching nice little priests weeding in hats made of rushes.
She was a whole woman now; physically fitter than she’d ever been, so that she had an adolescent compulsion to run even when there was no reason; to jump a gate rather than open it. And today, particularly, she felt adolescent, with an excited longing for something, but she didn’t know what.
They talked horses, leaving long gaps in the conversation to be filled in by blackbirds in the hawthorn tree and the unexpected heat. The Fitzempress colt had turned out well, slightly shorter than his dam with her well-balanced neck and head but with his sire’s compact back, a good cavalry horse. She had arranged with Iogenán to take some of his mares out of the herd and keep them separately serviced by her stallion when he was ready to go to stud.
After a sufficient interval, she asked casually: ‘Have you had any news of the Pilgrim?’
To her surprise Baccaugh turned on her: ‘Now don’t you be pursuing that poor lad. Didn’t he have enough trouble getting free of you and your enchantments as it is? If he dies fighting for the O’Conor it’ll be on your conscience, and him a guest in this land.’
Finn stared. ‘I didn’t enchant him.’
Baccaugh savaged another root of ragwort. ‘Maybe you didn’t and maybe you did, but he left here as if all the devils in hell were after his blood, swearing he’d never be back.’ He glanced up at the young women leaning on his wall watching him with eyes that were a deeper blue than any eyes had a right to be, and the poignancy of all springtimes caught at his throat so that he added: ‘But I’d put money on it that he will be, the poor bastard.’
The young woman was still for a while and suddenly she stretched, raising her arms into the warm air as if she reached for the sun, unconscious of anything but the well-being of a young body in tune with the spring, and sending the priest back to his weeding as if his soul depended on it.
Finn turned to look down on Lough Mask, idly hitching her elbows over the wall and squinting against the brightness of twinkling water. Beneath it were Niav and Boniface and a dragon. And dragons were always dangerous. But not today. Today it had let her off its hook, restoring a circulation through which swam a fish blowing bubbles that exploded in every extremity she had.
From the trees behind Blat’s house came the first summer call of a cuckoo and the priest swore because he had heard it while standing on a patch of bare earth, which meant that his crops wouldn’t flourish this year. Finn turned her head to smile at him: ‘Don’t worry. It wasn’t a cuckoo.’
‘What else was it then?’
‘It was a soul on holiday from hell.’
* * *
The Irish rules of war were beautiful, rigid and archaic, like those for every other Irish ceremony. Men died as nastily as in lesser countries, but while they watched their arteries spurt or wiped their brains out of their eyes they had the comfort of unalterable tradition behind them.
John of Sawbridge had meant to act merely as a detached observer, but the inefficiency he saw around him offended his sense of order. Even at the last minute, before the decisive battle at Ardee, he was still begging the O’Conor: ‘At least give yourself the edge; let your cavalry use stirrups.’
But the Ruairi he’d known in Partraige country had gone, to be replaced by a regal and, in John’s view, idiotic stranger who forgave his guest’s vulgarity by smiling gently at him and quoting the old brehon saying: ‘To hold any new thing fair – this is the way of folly.’
There was no ambushing of the enemy, no use of spies – a deserter who came over with information from the Ulster side was instantly beheaded for ungentlemanly conduct. Instead the O’Conor sent a herald to MacLochlainn giving him his army’s position and inviting him to meet it in pitched battle.
As the Flemish mercenary captain, who stood watching with John and other foreign guests on the rise outside the O’Conor’s pavilion, said: ‘It’s not war, but it’s the most elegant way of killing people I’ve ever seen.’
A herald with a voice like a bull-roarer gave out the identity of the Connaught clans marching onto the field as if he were announcing arrivals at a banquet: ‘The O’Flannagan, the O’Mulrenin, the O’Finaghty, the Mageraghty, the Partraige, the O’Flynn, the O’Hanly, the O’Fallon, the O’Beirne, the O’Concannon, the O’Heyne, the O’Shaughnessy, the O’Malley, the O’Flaherty…’ Thousand on thousands of men took up their positions, each clan almost dancing to the sound of its own trumpeter, and every man throwing a stone onto a growing pile of stones as he passed it.
‘What are they doing that for?’ asked John.
De Boeuf, the Fleming, said: ‘It’s one of their better ideas. Every soldier puts a stone into that cairn; if he survives the battle he takes it away again. That way they can estimate their losses, and also have a monument to the dead.’
Half a mile away across the plain where other trumpets made a fainter counterpoint, John could see another cairn rising among the Ulster activity. He nodded towards it: ‘That one looks bigger to me.’
De Boeuf shrugged: ‘The O’Conor’s outnumbered. I told him, but he wouldn’t listen.’
Defensive armour was another vulgarity Irish armies dispensed with; the minority wore leather helmets with iron bands round them, but the majority had their hair flowing as free as their beards. John, who’d spent the night in the O’Conor’s pavilion and had seen him dressing, happened to know that he was wearing a metal box strapped over the parts ‘which,’ he’d said, ‘I would most hate to lose,’ but other than that the commander-in-chief of Connaught, like the commander-in-chief of Ulster, was going into battle wearing linen and silk.
Sir John, objecting to nakedness in battle even as an observer, had borrowed an iron helmet and a mail corselet from De Boeuf, as well as a saddle with stirrups.
What they lacked in protection, the hosts gained in colour. Tunics and battle standards were clashes of rainbows. Each clan carried a shield of the same colour so that it could be recognised. John could see the small contingent of Partraige standing out with shields that had been freshly limed into a dazzling white.
As the marshals of both sides rode to the front of their armies, the ran
ks behind them looked like hundreds of lines of washing hung out to dry in the breeze of a fine day. It seemed a pity to spoil it.
‘We proclaim Ruairi O’Conor,’ roared Mac Dermot of Moylurg, O’Conor’s marshal, across the distance which separated him from the roaring Ulster marshal, ‘descendant of the elder brother of Niall of the Nine Hostages, flood and dignity of Erin…’
While he elaborated on the perfections of his king and the slimy unworthiness of his opponent, and the marshal of Ulster did the same, a small contingent of priests, led by the Bishop of Tuam, was carrying the lovely, jewelled Cross of Cong, which contained a piece of the True Cross, round the Connaught army to provide it with an invisible ring of Christian protection.
‘This’ll take hours,’ said De Boeuf, ‘Let’s go and have a drink.’ They chose one of the pavilions at random and found a hogshead of good Bordeaux standing beside a table on which goblets had been laid out in full assurance that their owner would come back for a victory celebration.
‘What annoys me,’ said De Boeuf, pouring generously, ‘is that this won’t change anything. They’re just fighting over the title of High King. If the O’Conor loses, and the probability of numbers says he will, all that’ll happen is that he’ll prostrate himself in submission in front of MacLochlainn with a sword in his teeth, give him a few hostages, pledge that he’ll be a better boy in future, and go home. MacLochlainn will go home and call himself High King of Ireland for a bit until somebody challenges him again, and nobody will have won any ground. Or lost it. When I win a battle I want some land out of it, with rents and loyal serfs and permanent possession for me and my sons. Give me good old feudalism – but they don’t see it like that.’
‘They’re a funny lot,’ said Sir John, ‘I like them, though.’ He held out his goblet for a refill.
‘Oh charming, charming,’ said De Boeuf, ‘I could settle here permanently. I could. The women alone… but it’s the land thing, I’d never really own it. They just don’t see land as something you can own. And they’re such bloody amateurs about war. I’ve persuaded the O’Conor into having a small detachment of my mercenaries for emergencies, but he seems to think we’re not really playing the game. “Look,” I said to him, “have a standing army of mercenaries who can be summoned immediately, without having to wait until they’ve put their bloody crops in, and who won’t go home for the bloody harvest.” But would he listen?’
‘That’s one thing about Fitzempress,’ said John, filling up again.
‘Now you’re talking,’ said the Fleming with enthusiasm. ‘Fitzempress is a professional and he understands professionals. He’s a bloody marvel. Now I’ve seen…’
They swapped Fitzempress war stories and drank more wine, deaf to the change in tone of the trumpets and the shouting from the great plain outside, until a spear pierced the roof of the pavilion, caught in a tent rope and hung downwards, circling over their heads. De Boeuf finished his goblet, ‘Nice talking to you.’
Staggering slightly, John followed the Fleming out. From the look of it the battle wasn’t going to last half as long as the ceremonies which had preceded it; everything was in full swing and a square mile of air whirred with arrows, missile stones, battle cries, death howls, the rubbing of drums and the calls of trumpets, but the Ulster army was bigger even than he and De Boeuf had estimated and it had pushed the Connaughtmen nearer the O’Conor’s tents, leaving the middle ground where the two hosts had first rushed on one another a deserted ploughland of mashed earth and bodies.
John did his best to stuff away mental notes into his brain to report to Fitzempress; the accuracy of the stone slingers, even more deadly than the Majorcans he’d once seen fighting under Fitzempress’ banner; the unusual string handle on the spears of the spear-throwers; the small amount of cavalry. And if the Irish lacked professional tactics, there was nothing amateur about their courage.
But he’d been brought up to fight, he was drunk, his pulse beat to the coughing drums and he could see, far off on the right flank, little puffs of powdered lime like smoke signals coming off the shields of the hard-pressed Partraige and even while he was telling himself: ‘You’re an observer, John, so observe,’ he’d weaved over to his horse and was galloping off to get the stupid buggers out of the mess they’d got themselves into.
When he sobered up, the Connaught lines had been torn down and their wonderful washing had failed into dirty heaps in mud made by mixing earth with blood. Ulster had won. Ruairi O’Conor was in the MacLochlainn’s pavilion on his belly with a sword between his teeth. Sir John himself was surrounded by wounded Partraige. Niall of the Poems was already composing an edited version of the battle, and some of the others were gently singing a lament for the dead they had already lost, and for the Partraige lad who was coughing blood as he lay across Sir John’s knees and whom they were about to lose.
While they waited the sun began to go down; doctors and stretcher-bearers moved quietly over the field, rooks flapped in the sky, hoping it was safe to come down to feed on the open eyes below them and a couple of golden eagles circled on warm thermals watching the crawling wounded, being sporting birds who liked to eat prey that moved. The long shadows and the scent of bruised grass remembered other, completed days.
The Fleming, De Boeuf, lumbered through the fallen washing in search of his Norman drinking companion, and squatted down beside him. ‘Well, it was a good battle if I only knew what it was for. Pity about our side. Is he dead yet?’
John looked down at the Partraige boy in his lap. His name had been Dubthach; they’d gone hunting together. ‘Nearly.’
‘Are you hurt? There’s blood on your face.’
He put up his hand to his cheek where an Ulster dagger had reopened the scar the loony had given him. ‘You ought to see the other fellow.’
De Boeuf’s face, blank like everybody else’s, did its best to smile. Out of Dubthach’s young, adam-appled throat came the last sigh and his hold on John’s hand went limp. The other Partraige lifted him up and took him away. ‘God rest his soul,’ said De Boeuf, automatically, ‘I don’t what it is, Sawbridge, but at times like this I want a woman. I don’t mean to screw, though that as well, but I just want to hold one, if you know what I mean.’
‘I know what you mean.’ The lament the Partraige had sung had reminded him of the night he’d waited for the drowned hag, when he’d thought it was the loony who was dead.
‘So shall we go off and find a couple, you and I?’
‘Another time,’ said Sir John. ‘It’s a kind thought, De Boeuf, but I’ve already got one in mind.’
* * *
A news vendor brought the announcement of the Connaught defeat to Lough Mask. He was one of the unwashed, curiously-dressed little men who did juggling on the side. Since he couldn’t tell them the names of the survivors or the dead, the women paid him the minimum, sent him off and redoubled their work.
‘If that bastard Niall is going to be killed, now’s the time for him to do it,’ Blat said angrily, ‘before I divorce him, so I can get widow status,’ and she kept going to the window of the tower which overlooked the shore. She no longer loved him but, as she said, you couldn’t rid yourself of twenty years of worrying about a man just because of that.
Two days after the news vendor had been and gone, Finn played truant again. ‘If you don’t mind, Scathagh,’ she said, and took the small curragh to the shore. She tied it up, nodded to the women who were fishing from the holm, and walked up the track until she was out of sight of the lake and had reached the road. She sat down under a rowan tree on the verge where sheep were cropping the grass.
There had been an interval of rain between spring and summer, but an unusually hot sun was drying out the earth again. She picked some stones out of the roadway and practised throwing them at a clump of foxgloves thirty feet away; she stripped a flower off every time. ‘I needed a day off,’ she said to herself. A couple of Partraige sheep watched her nervously. She considered them and decided that their legs
looked like black knitting needles stuck into a ball of wool. There was no reason for her to feel as gauche and out of her depth as she did: she had a perfect right to sit by a roadside to look at sheep if she wanted to.
‘It’s nice, just sitting here. He may be dead. And what if he does come? What are you going to do then, you stupid woman? Where does he fit in with killing and writing?’ But the adolescent longing that had come to her so late persisted and she stayed where she was.
The first sound of hooves was Baccaugh and his horse, bringing back fresh supplies of communion bread from Cong. ‘Do you think they’ll be back today then?’ he asked her, ‘it takes longer than that from Ardee.’
‘How do I know?’ she shouted angrily at him, ‘I’m taking a day off, that’s all.’
The second set of hooves carried a tired young man who looked as if he was expecting to see her. There was no greeting; John dismounted and put his arms round her, rubbing his face against the top of her head. ‘Don’t you ever let me do that again.’
* * *
Even if they’d known that the next eight days were all they were going to have together and that the memory of them was going to have to last the rest of their lives, they wouldn’t have done anything different. They went to Swan Island and made love, swam, caught fish, cooked it over the open fire and ate it with stale bread because they couldn’t be bothered to go and fetch fresh, and made love again. It wasn’t so much that time stopped for them as changed its shape, no longer demarcated by meals or work that had to be done, or the bells of the monastery down the lake which uselessly tried to regulate it. Instead daytime went into night-time in a spiral in which they could slide back and recapture the high moments, most of them spent on the pile of skins in Finn’s hut, or profitably wasted in inanities.
Daughter of Lir Page 21