Fitzempress was less graceful: ‘It was my land in the first place,’ he said. Up in the gallery, a travel-stained watcher groaned. ‘Llandovery was my castle and you keep your hands off it in future. I thank you, I thank you all; let us hope that we can live in peace from this day forward. Anybody want to go hunting?’
The man in the gallery turned away. Fitzempress had done it now; to anybody such a dismissal would have been unwise; to these particular princes to whom, if they were like their Irish compeers, courtesy was an immutable law, it was an insult that could only be wiped out by death – theirs or Henry’s. Sir John of Sawbridge found it difficult to understand how his master could be a wizard of diplomacy in his dealings with other lands and so ham-fisted with the Celtic nations. He wished he’d got back from Ireland sooner; he would have advised another approach altogether.
He waited for his king in an anteroom which had walls of roughly planed tree trunks, so that it was like a glade in a wood. Why the hell had the king insisted on the princes submitting to him here? Why not at one of his rich, stone palaces? For that matter, why did he consistently refuse to have Woodstock modernised?
Then it occurred to him. It was to keep Eleanor of Aquitaine away, to make it his own, uncomfortable domain, because somewhere in the vicinity was the scented bower of the Fair Rosamund. The words ‘scented bower’ went from his brain to his gut, and twisted. Damn all women.
The king stamped into the room without greeting. ‘You’re thinner.’
‘Pleased to be back, my lord. So are you.’ He was shocked; without gaining a single line on its skin, the king’s face had aged. The first thing he’d been told on landing in Bristol was of the quarrel between Henry and his Archbishop of Canterbury. At Westminster the justiciar, Richard de Luci, had warned him: ‘You won’t find him as easy-going as he was. He can face anything but the defection of a friend; he trusted Becket, which was why he made him primate against the wishes of the Church. He thought he’d found the man who would help him forward his reforms. Instead he created his own stumbling block. Becket is fighting every move, however reasonable – and they are reasonable – which will take away the slightest privilege from the Church.’
‘Wants to become a saint?’ John had asked.
‘Wants martyrdom,’ De Luci said. ‘He’s lucky, or unfortunate, in that he’s opposing the one king in the world who won’t give it to him.’
‘Tired?’ Fitzempress whistled for a page who came running. ‘Give Sir John wine.’
‘Thank you, my lord. No, not tired.’ He was nearly dropping, but you didn’t sit down if the king didn’t sit, and Henry never did.
‘All right, tell me about Ireland.’
Sir John was a first-class spy. He detached his contempt, his anger, his admiration, all the personal feeling he had poured out to Finn, from his report to his king. ‘You have to think differently to understand it,’ he said, ‘It has no political system we would recognise, no centralisation. It works on a social, almost family basis, tipping this way and that with wars which to us would seem like anarchy, but which keep a fine balance and have kept a fine balance since time began. However, it’s a balance that wouldn’t survive invasion.’
‘What would happen then?’
‘To be honest, I don’t know. The clans might combine against the invader, or they might regard him as just another clan to fight, or to make an alliance with against the others.’
‘Let’s go outside.’ Henry was getting interested and he did his best thinking in the open air. There were no gardens at Woodstock, just grounds with fine oaks and sheep nibbling the grass smooth about them.
John breathed deeply; it was good to be in England again, sniffing air he could understand, where there was no magic, no strange lakes…
‘Can it be conquered?’
John detached himself again. ‘Not in the sense that William conquered England. It’s too elusive. There’s no standing army to beat, no real capital to install yourself in. The clans would slip away into the trees and the bogs and emerge somewhere else. I suppose if you cut down all the forests and starved the population into submission… oddly enough, I think you could conquer it without it knowing it had been conquered.’
‘Creep up on it?’
John looked at his king. ‘Well, yes. They’d probably accept a High King from outside who had no clan affiliations. No show of force, just sweet words.’ He said meaningfully: ‘You have to be very careful with Celtic honour.’
‘And you think I offended it just now? I saw you watching.’
‘A trifle brusque, my lord.’
The king kicked a twig into the middle distance. ‘Bloody right, I was. These sodding Celts get on my nerves. Did you know that bloody Welshman attacked Llandovery? Had to come all the way back from fighting in France to take it away from him.’
Odd, thought John, that the king attached so much importance to France and so little to the lands which were his nearest neighbours and could cause so much greater trouble in the long run. Oh well, he was an Angevin, born in the very heart of Europe. It had given him a different perspective.
‘I was wrong, wasn’t I?’ said Fitzempress, unexpectedly. ‘Well, I’ll tell you what we’ll do. I’m extending my Ferrets. It seems to me that an inch of secret intelligence can save an “ell” of a lot of warfare.’ He grinned at his own joke. ‘I’m going to put a lot more spies on the royal expenditure. And you, my son, since you understand the Celtic mind so well, are going to be my chief of intelligence over the section devoted to Brittany, Wales, Scotland and Ireland.’
‘No!’ John had shouted before he could stop himself and remember he was in the presence of an emperor.
‘Let’s walk back,’ said Fitzempress. ‘Why not?’
‘My lord, I’m not… fit for it. You know I’d lay down my life for you, but… Can’t I serve you some other way? I don’t like them. They’re an awful people, treacherous, untrustworthy. They enchant you and then they stab you in the back.’ All detachment gone, he knelt. It was when the king walked on past him that he realised what he was doing. He was throwing away all chance of the advancement for which he had hankered; Henry didn’t make alternative offers. It was the Celts or nothing. ‘Oh God,’ he said, and ran after Fitzempress and took his place by his side. ‘I’m sorry, my lord. Of course, I am yours to command in any way you wish.’
Henry nodded. He knew that.
Back in the antechamber, the king said: ‘I’ve found you your heiress, John. And she’s pretty. But we can’t have her marrying a mere knight.’ He whistled and the page appeared. ‘Pour more wine for my lord Baron of Llanthony.’
Overwhelmed onto his knees again, John calculated his gains. He’d got his advancement, his heiress, his lands. All he lacked was the pleasure which should have gone with each. Well, it would come. In time he’d start feeling joy in things again. ‘Thank you, my lord.’ Fitzempress looked down at the bowed head of his chief of Celtic intelligence. ‘She must have been quite a woman,’ he said.
* * *
As Finn and Art moved into the west they caught up with cavalcades of gorgeous lords, brehons and abbots of the clans of Connaught heading for a gathering with their king at Tuam. It wasn’t the usual aenacht. Something was Up. It was spring, the season when young men’s fancy turned to thoughts of war; in between showers there were stirring smells of new grass, new flowers, new blood. ‘The O’Conor’s wanting another try at the High Kingship,’ said Art.
Locating the king was therefore not a problem but, as Finn began to realise, getting to talk to him would be. In the first place she was reluctant to appear at Ruairi’s palace on a well-attended and notable occasion; there would be enquiries as to who she was at a time when she should remain in the background. Then again, O’Conor’s queen was notoriously jealous and would not welcome a lone woman who wanted private audience with her consort.
‘I’ll take him a message,’ said Art, ‘and he can meet us at Lough Mask. It’s only twenty miles on from Tuam.’<
br />
‘He won’t be able to leave all those guests for so long,’ said Finn. Lough Mask was another place she was reluctant to visit, though she had messages to deliver there on Blat’s behalf.
Eventually she put up at the ferry house at Corofin, telling the ferryman and his wife that she was on a pilgrimage to Croagh Patrick but needed to rest. She had to wait there for three days which she spent staring out of the loft window at the rain, fighting another depression and a sense of worthlessness, which she thought she had conquered.
She was well into her twenties, she had found a grey hair in one of her plaits. She was an ageing tavern-keeper. A dowdy, ageing tavern-keeper, an unnecessary woman. Her only commitment was to a country, and countries didn’t keep you warm at nights or gather round your knee. ‘And am I only committed to give myself something to live for? Am I making myself ridiculous in this activity to give myself some importance? And does it bloody matter anyway?’
She missed the hags. Most of all she missed Brother Pinginn. When she was with Pinginn, irritating and silly as he could be, she lost some of her certainty in the godlessness of the universe. Without him the lid of the coffin came down. On the third day Art practically had to drag her out of the loft in order to keep the appointment he had made.
They rode up a river path through a dull, rain-soaked empty countryside to an ash tree which had been split in two by lightning. One half still sprouted black-tipped buds, the other half was dead. After an hour they were joined by a truant young man on a breathless horse.
‘I told the hunt I’d join them later. They think I’m wenching.’
‘Huh.’ Some wench. In her misery she barely had the energy to curtsey to him.
‘And if they saw those eyes of yours, they’d know I was,’ said the King of Connaught.
Droplets of rain twinkled on a bunch of small, pale daffodils growing out of a cleft in the dead trunk. On the soft, westerly breeze came a scent that for a second carried a memory of Lough Mask. Dear, dear, she thought, one compliment from a handsome man and the sun comes out. She was ashamed of her invigoration. They walked beside the river as she talked with energy, telling him what had happened since they last met and what she had been about. He liked the stories about the hags and the inn and Brother Pinginn. But especially he wanted to know what had happened to the Pilgrim.
‘He has gone back to Henry of England, who sent him,’ said Finn, ‘My lord, I warned you. He was a spy.’
‘I liked him,’ said Ruairi O’Conor. ‘We got on.’
‘That’s beside the point,’ said Finn harshly, refusing to remember how she too had got on with the Pilgrim. ‘He was an agent of Fitzempress sent to gather information about Ireland, and the only reason one country wants information about another is if it intends to annexe it. We are in danger, O’Conor.’
‘Not necessarily. Our brother England may merely wish to trade with us.’
Finn counted to ten. ‘Your brother England is gobbling up countries like a pig with acorns,’ she said, ‘Wales, Normandy, Brittany, Scotland, Touraine, Maine, Anjou, Aquitaine. If your brother France doesn’t look out, he’ll go the same way. Fitzempress owns more of Europe than he does.’
‘Then he’s got more than enough to keep him occupied,’ said the O’Conor comfortably. It was a point that Finn had already considered. If Fitzempress was kept busy enough quelling the revolts of the many dukedoms, baronies and principalities which had never belonged to the Angevin Empire before and didn’t want to start now, his mind and resources could be kept away from the little island off Britain’s west coast. She began telling the O’Conor what the Jews with their network of information had told her of the international situation. Of Louis of France’s jealousy of Fitzempress, the man who had married his divorced wife, Eleanor. Of Eleanor’s duchy, Aquitaine, which was in a state of uproar against its new duke – Finn had hopes of Aquitaine being a perennial thorn in Fitzempress’ flesh.
The O’Conor listened politely and let his eyes stray. He knew some of this but found global politics uninteresting. He perked up when Finn began on the quarrel between the Archbishop of England, Thomas Becket, and Fitzempress – personalities were what fascinated him.
‘The Jews say that Fitzempress and Becket loved each other when they were king and chancellor but, as archbishop, Becket is a changed man. He has given his love solely to the Church, and resists every change Fitzempress wants to make.’
Finn had hopes of Becket as another distracting thorn. Since she was trying to impress Fitzempress’ villainy on O’Conor’s mind she did not point out that in the Jews’ view it was Becket who was the villain.
‘Fitzempress is a reasonable man,’ Vives had said, ‘He uses Jews well. He milks us for all he can get, but he’s clever enough to know that only contented cows give good milk. Becket…’ Vives deliberately made his voice non-commital ‘…Becket is an anti-semite. He would have us all exiled or worse. He is a man of passion, some say unbalanced.’ In the Jews’ opinion Henry II was fighting the crime wave in England left over from the civil war by introducing laws of common sense. Among them, all clerics were to be subject to that law and, if they committed a crime, were to be handed over to the civil courts for punishment. ‘At the moment,’ said Vives, ‘any villain with a tonsure can rape, steal, murder and get away with it because the Church courts cannot punish him. All they can do is reprimand him, perhaps strip him of his clerkly status and send him out to sin again. But Becket is refusing to recognise the right of the king in this matter, and is opposing the Constitutions of Clarendon as if they were an attack on God Himself.’
‘I think what I shall do,’ said Ruairi O’Conor, ‘is to send my brother England some friendship gifts, to establish good relations. Then, when I am High King of Ireland, as I shall be, he will know that he has nothing to fear from us.’
‘He knows that, for God’s sake,’ said Finn. She was appalled by O’Conor’s inversion of the situation. He had absolutely no idea. Ireland was the entire world to him and he could not set it in context with any other world. It was impossible to transfer to him her awareness of Fitzempress’ quality because it had no parallel in Ireland; the greed for power of the Irish kings stopped at Tara: Henry II’s was limitless. For all his youth, Ruairi was aged by the weight of the culture behind him: Fitzempress was a raw, fresh, vulgar upstart to whom everything was possible. Even the blindings and murder with which Irish kings got their own way was provincial stuff compared with the Angevin’s global criminality in blinding whole countries out of his conviction that they would be best under his rule.
‘O’Conor,’ she said, ‘you once asked if you could do anything for me. You can. Give me permission to be your agent, your watcher. From my inn I intend to spin a spider’s web of information, so that if the King of England or anyone else makes a move against you I shall know it.’
He smiled at her, not because she was a woman making a fantastic suggestion, but because he just didn’t understand the urgency with which she made it. ‘Now why would anyone want to invade Ireland?’
‘The Vikings did.’
He became less complacent. Though the Viking invasion had taken place three hundred years ago, it had burned a scar into the Irish soul. ‘It’s an idea,’ he said.
‘A very good idea.’
‘What would you want me to do?’
She moved quickly. ‘I want some money for the web, to pay other agents. And when you send those gifts to Fitzempress, send one of my hags with them. Send Muirna, say you would like one of your relatives to learn the ways of a European court. She’s fourth cousin to you on your mother’s side, after all, and she sings like a lark. A good ambassadress. They’ll think it’s one of our customs. They know nothing about us.’
Ruairi O’Conor frowned. ‘I don’t want her spying. It would be against my honour.’
‘She won’t spy,’ lied Finn, ‘she’ll, well, just watch your interest. Please, my lord, indulge me. Remember who I was. I know these foreigners, I was brought up a
mong them. Everything I do now is in your interest.’
He smiled down at her. ‘My little watcher by the sea.’
All right, you amiable, vulnerable young bastard, thought Finn, patronise me. But do it.
‘And you really think it’s necessary?’
In that question Finn saw the reason why he infuriated her nearly to madness and why she gave him the loyalty of her heart and soul; he was politically childish enough to doubt the value of having a spy network, but he was more mature than any man she knew in being prepared to take the advice of a woman about it. There, in that one question, was Connaught. There was the Ireland she intended to defend. ‘Yes.’
‘In that case, my spider cousin, spin your web.’
She kissed his hand. ‘And, my lord, will you insist that the Ui Maille gives us Aragon’s ship money? We’re paying back every penny we make at the inn to the Jews, and I want to start a trading fleet. It’s a good way of getting information.’
‘The O’Malley is under my roof at this minute. But he’ll probably pay you in fish from the smell of him.’
‘Tell him to make it hides.’ She could sell hides to England. ‘And if that’s the case, make him throw in the boulder of ambergris he keeps in his hall.’ She told the O’Conor its potential, ‘…but let the O’Malley think Aragon needs it for good luck. What’s happening up at Tuam anyway?’
As she’d thought, it was preparation for war. ‘Even Ulster won’t put up with the MacLochlainn for much longer,’ said the O’Conor. ‘Connaught’s time is coming, and when it does a certain ally of MacLochlainn, namely Dermot of Leinster, will pay for what he did to a certain abbess.’
‘Take care of yourself, O’Conor.’
‘I’ll be riding up to that Dublin inn of yours one of these days as High King with my conquering army behind me, asking for a drink.’
Daughter of Lir Page 31