* * *
She had learned to kill. She had spread her net, laid her plots. All she could do now was watch and wait for the time to act. And learn to write.
‘…our friend “p” is a commoner, as in Pinginn,’ chanted Brother Pinginn, ‘so he goes below the salt on our table – that’s the line – but he’s a merry little fellow and he pops his head up to nod at lady “l”, who sits above the salt. There, like that. Hello, Lady L.’
‘Hello, Lady L,’ mocked Elfwida, drawing a perfect letter ‘p’ on her slate.
‘Bugger you, Lady L,’ said Finn, whose ‘p’ had gone into spasm.
‘Clerk Finn can wash her mouth out with soap,’ said Brother Pinginn, ‘and work on friend “p”. Clerk Elfwida can go on to our little serving maids, the vowels.’
She had reserved the mornings for lessons with Brother Pinginn, imagining they would be oases of calm and erudition in which she would become a female wizard in that magical, male mystery, literacy.
It hadn’t worked out like that. Certainly she was lucky in her teacher; remembering, and loathing, the harshness with which the monastic masters had beaten the arts of reading and writing into him, Brother Pinginn had eschewed the technical terminology of ‘serifs’, ‘descenders’, ‘perpendicular ascenders’ and the like, and evolved his own peculiarly juvenile, but effective, method. ‘We won’t bother about the formal script,’ he’d said; ‘presumably you’re not going to write charters or royal letters. You just want legibility. I’m going to teach you a cursive style known throughout Christendom as “Bastard”.’
And that, Finn decided, was a good name for it. She found transposing the oral word into the written – and in Latin, which she hadn’t used for a long while – harder than she’d dreamed it would be. Furthermore, she resented in having as a fellow-pupil the former whore, Elfwida. Most of all, she resented Elfwida being a better pupil than she was.
Because it was the only place with a good light, the top floor of the tower where the two girls still had their bedroom had been chosen as the schoolroom. On the first day Brother Pinginn and Finn had set up the tilted wooden board and slates under the north light, scraped their chalk into points, and sat down to begin the lesson.
Perse showed not the slightest interest, but lay looking at the ceiling. Elfwida, however, had been instantly curious. ‘What you doing?’ she asked sharply, ‘I want to learn.’
‘Well, you can’t,’ said Finn.
‘Why not?’ The question came from Elfwida and Pinginn simultaneously, and Finn, who was flouting all convention in learning herself, had no answer to it. The former English prostitute became the second pupil in the Swan school. She spoke fluent, though crude, Irish, but her knowledge of Latin was restricted to such dirty bits of the Bible as her clerical clients had liked to murmur in moments of arousal, so Pinginn taught her to write a form of Latinised Irish. Her progress was astonishing and soon he’d begun to employ his spare time in teaching her Latin itself. His only problem was in stopping her from working too hard.
‘It’s a wonderful thing,’ he said joyfully, ‘to fill that dear little bucket with the clear water of knowledge.’
‘I’ll give her dear little bucket,’ grumbled Finn. There was something about Elfwida that repelled her.
But the possible disgrace of falling behind an English harlot pushed her into a fury of study. At nights she lit a candle in the dead middle room and forced her tired hands to practise her letters, and her tired eyes to study the primer Pinginn had written. Her literacy improved daily but her temper worsened.
‘She loves you, Finn,’ said Pinginn, unexpectedly as they went into the common parlour after one such session. ‘That child’s working like she is because she wants to do everything you do. She’d like to be a hag – she’s already asked Bevo to teach her the Ploys when she’s better. Poor little thing, she humbles me. You and I think we’ve known horror, but that girl has been into the Pit, and come out of it. Of course she loves you. You’re the only true mother she’s ever had.’
Finn’s hand came out and hit Brother Pinginn’s face so hard that his head rocked. ‘I’m nobody’s mother,’ she said, ‘Not hers. Not anybody’s.’
* * *
As her net became more fine it seemed to become part of her own physical system, as if her veins and nerves were spread in extended branches over countries and seas, able to communicate itches, tickles, vibrations, aches back to her brain where they became translated into pictures. She saw the Celtic world restive and waiting to move at the extended ends of her arms when she gave the impulse.
She gained insight into the subtle, terrifyingly wonderful character of her enemy, Fitzempress, and knew that she was up against genius and strength that made her puny. Her hope lay in its instability; in the way it was overstretched, its greed and impatience.
But as time went on she came to recognise another character active within her web; a mind that concentrated on her sphere, working to counter all that she could bring about, probing the Celtic mists to find her, as she was reaching out of the mist to blind it. She could recognise the pattern of the agents this person used, all of them male and all of them paid informers; men who had position in the courts of Wales, Scotland and Brittany and who were prepared to betray their ancestral lords to the new, overwhelming power of the Angevin.
She knew that Rhys of Deheubarth had a nephew who hated him and gave information to this other spider. She knew of a blacksmith whose smithy stood on the pass between Gwynned and Chester who sent messages along this enemy web whenever Owen of Gwynned moved in the north. She knew that William the Lion was being made promises by this controller of agents if, when he inherited it, he would suppress Scotland into obedience to the Angevin Empire. She knew the promises would not be kept.
Gradually, she began to know her opponent, whoever he was. The way he used agents, how much he paid, what importance he attached to which area, gave him a personality. She ‘felt’ him through her web like a blind woman passing her hand over somebody’s face; he was clever, with some understanding of Celtic thinking, and he had resources not open to her. But he was limited. He built his web by offering money and playing on envy. Her web was better because it had a common cause, a love of country and it was feminine and therefore unexpected.
She gave him a name – ‘Duckweed’.
‘We’ve got to get closer to William of Scotland,’ she told Pinginn, ‘and break the hold Duckweed’s got over him. I’m going to send Tailltin to see what she can do there.’
‘Why do you call whoever-it-is “Duckweed”?’ asked Pinginn.
‘I don’t know.’ Subconsciously she was intimidated by this controller of Fitzempress’ Celtic spies; he was formidable and she needed to belittle and domesticate him in her own mind.
‘He’s at the centre of everything,’ she complained, ‘and I’m stuck here on a bank of the Liffey. If only Muirna would hurry up and make contacts at court. I don’t even know who bloody Duckweed is. But when I do he’d better look out.’
She was sleeping badly, disturbed by the vibrations of her web. The sound of the confluence of the rivers beneath the tower remained bothersome. It would wake her up in the early hours to lie worrying over Aragon and Muirna, her web and petty details of the Swan’s administration. The only cure was to creep up the stairs of the tower, through the top room to the roof and pace its four sides as the dawn came up.
At first it was just an exercise; the night breeze from the estuary acted like smelling salts and cleared the mind. For a long time, when the moon provided her with a view, she had perceived her surroundings merely as Not Lough Mask and ached for the summer scents of inland water. But then habit enforced familiarity, even affection. There was a lone seal which came up the Liffey estuary on the tide, twisting an apparently boneless body through the water after fish, occasionally turning over on its back to clap leisurely flippers.
She became accustomed to certain landmarks, counting on them; the tall, unnatural shape of the Thi
ngmound to the west and, beyond it, the Abbey of St Mary’s on Hogges Green, the castle and the walls of the city, the uncluttered Dublin mountains which partly scalloped the edges of her flat, river-infested world. She could see the shadows of deer across the river moving among the trees of the north bank. There was always something new on the Liffey, a boat moored in one of its channels waiting for the tide to take it into the wharfs, a curragh on some nefarious pre-dawn purpose.
It became a drug to see the first gleam come up over the seaward horizon of the bay and with it wild geese, honking their way inland. As the year wore on they were joined by thousands of knots which landed to ripple over the mud-banks like a grey carpet. Dunlin rushed over the estuary looking like wisps of smoke against the grey sky, skimming the water, sweeping upwards in bunches and then spilling out into a long, wavering line. As if they were a signal, a dog would bark somewhere in the city, a cock crowed, the geese in her own garden woke up, and the bells of the convents clanged out for prime. Just across the Stein, there was the sound of rushing water as Molling released his mill race, his paddle wheels turned and the deep echo of the mill machinery began its daily grinding.
Reassured that it was worth guarding, the watcher on the tower would go down to her inn to begin her day.
‘I can hear her footsteps going round and round,’ Elfwida reported to Brother Pinginn. ‘They stop longest over there…’ she pointed a skinny finger to the east, ‘what’s she looking for?’
‘Invasion. She thinks the Normans will attack Ireland.’
‘I could look out for it. I’d do that for her. Why don’t she ask me? But it don’t take that long to see the coast’s clear. She’s watching something.’
‘She’s worried about Muirna and Aragon.’
‘Is there a man?’
Brother Pinginn sighed. ‘Yes. On the opposite side.’
‘She hit you, didn’t she? I saw the mark. What did she hit you for? Do you hate her for it?’
‘Release. No, I don’t. She was put into my hand by God and I must look after her.’
‘I’d look after her if she asked me to. She won’t. She hates me. Why does she hate me? I wish I was a hag. I want to be a hag.’
Brother Pinginn dug his pupil in the ribs. ‘So do I. But we’re happy, aren’t we? Et ego…’
Elfwida grinned back at him. ‘Sciant qui sunt et qui futuri sunt quod ego in Arcadia vixi,’ she said fluently.
* * *
The Liffey rippled the months out to sea and lost them. Their passing was marked on the Swan Inn promontory by acquisitions and departures.
Finn now occupied the middle room alone. Even when the others were in residence they preferred to use the staff dormitory off the gallery in the inn. They found the tower creepy, they said.
There was the day, just before the seas closed for the winter, when Aragon came home. Her ship limped up the main Liffey channel on the evening tide, so battered by a storm in the Bay of Biscay that Blat, who had gone up Lazy Hill to gather hazelnuts, didn’t recognise it at first. Then the old ululating yell of triumph that had rung through the tower on Inis Cailleach sounded over the peaty-brown river, to be answered by another from the ship.
That night bales of silk, tuns of wine, and exotically-shaped bottles of scented unguents were passed up by the light of candles through the trapdoor in the tower’s undercroft. Down in the parlours the guests grumbled at the slow service as Brother Pinginn, Gundred the serving maid, and Art sweated to keep them happy while the hags gathered in the tower room to hug Aragon, drink her health and gloat over her success. She had made contact with the rebels in Aquitaine and had brought back a full report. ‘Fitzempress is in for trouble down there,’ she said.
The next morning she took her ship upriver and unloaded what remained of her cargo onto Wood Quay, paying the toll without complaint. The hags didn’t want to make the royal officials in Dublin suspect that they were smuggling, and, anyway, the sale of even the legal cargo – mainly wine – enabled them to pay off most of their debt on the Swan, while the illegal profit outfitted Aragon for another voyage in the spring.
Aragon was home, and in the spring Bevo came back, also with news. The staff of the Swan gathered in the tower to hear it. On the social side Muirna was homesick but well, having been adopted by Eleanor with the sort of amused affection she reserved for monkeys, parrots, little black boys and other foreign exotica.
But as an agent, Muirna had already made a useful contact. Since the queen was acting as Regent of England during her husband’s absence, there was more coming and going between her personal court and the king’s various administrative departments. ‘Basically, Eleanor’s just a figurehead and a signature,’ said Bevo, ‘the real power is in the hands of Fitzempress’ chief justiciar, a man called Richard de Luci. Funny old man, looks like a turtle. Anyway, out of courtesy he keeps the queen informed and there’s a lot of to-ing and fro-ing with documents for her to sign. I think she’d like to play a bigger part in running the country, but they think she’s only fit for all that courtly love and poetry and such.’
‘Get on with it,’ said Finn, shaking with impatience.
‘Aren’t I telling you? Anyway, there’s this clerk who works for the Exchequer – that’s the name given to the accounting department at court; it deals with every penny coming into Fitzempress’ treasury and every penny going out. He’s fallen in love with Muirna – honestly, they’re a decadent lot in Eleanor’s court, all drooping about with love, even the servants can hardly move for unrequited, hopeless passion for some lady or another.’ Bevo’s unromantic, stolid face showed digust.
‘And this clerk’s fallen for Muirna?’
‘He certainly has. And Muirna eggs him on, and listens to his troubles – he’s very unhappy about the situation between Fitzempress and Becket. He’s a Becket-admirer, so there’s no love lost for his king. And one day he asked Muirna if she realised that Fitzempress had got her country in his pocket. He was showing off. And Muirna said what did he mean, and he said there was a document in the State archives which showed that Ireland belonged to the King of England. Muirna made him copy it out – he didn’t want to, but she said he could prove his love for her if he did, all that nonsense. And, well, here it is.’
‘It’ was a torn, scraped membrane, obviously discarded for official purposes which Muirna’s informant had used as, greatly daring, he had copied the document in Fitzempress’ archives.
‘Read it,’ Finn told Brother Pinginn. Although her literacy was advancing, she was still slow making out words.
Pinginn skimmed through, reading it to himself, and went pale. ‘This is awful.’
‘Are you going to tell us or not?’
He looked up, all his usual artificiality gone. ‘It’s a privilege from the previous Pope. It gives Ireland to Fitzempress.’
There was silence in the room; downstairs they could hear shouts for ale – but nobody moved.
‘It begins Laudabiliter… Laudably and profitably does your magnificence contemplate…’
‘Skip the courtesies,’ said Finn, ‘We’ll read those later.’
‘You have indicated to us, most well beloved son in Christ, that you wish to enter the island of Ireland, to make that people obedient to the laws, and to root out from there the weeds of vice…’
Finn got up. ‘I was right. God help us all, I was right. Fitzempress can take us over any time he likes. With the Church’s blessing.’
The magnitude of the business paralysed them. The massivity of church sanction gave weight, a duty, to Fitzempress’ invasion if and when it took place that would make it impossible to dislodge. He would be not a conqueror but a saviour, snatching Ireland from the fire of barbarism.
‘If ever he needs to save his soul,’ said Pinginn quietly, ‘Ireland will be his salvation.’
‘Perhaps Fitzempress doesn’t intend to invade,’ said Tailltin in desperation. ‘The document’s old, after all.’
Finn turned on them. ‘You haven’t
met him. I tell you he means to. If he hasn’t invaded yet it’s because he’s got too much on his plate elsewhere. Well, Scotland and Wales and Brittany and me are going to heap more on it. If he thinks he’s had trouble with the Celts so far, it’s nothing to what he’ll get now.’ All compunction had gone. She would give the signal for war.
‘We’re with you,’ said everybody.
Finn paced the room. ‘I’ll leave for England tomorrow,’ she said.
* * *
It was late that night before they had finished laying plans. They were to disperse at once. Tailltin to Scotland, Bevo to Wales, Aragon back to Aquitaine and Finn herself to Brittany after she’d visited London. As they prepared to go to bed, Finn called Bevo back into the room. ‘Did you see him?’
‘No. He was away on the king’s business. Muirna says she isn’t sure what his position is, but he’s away a lot.’ Bevo shuffled her big feet. ‘He’s married, Finn. Fitzempress awarded him an heiress for his services in Ireland. A Lady Isabel, daughter of a deceased Welsh marcher lord. She’s got property in Cumberland, Kent and Wales. Her mother was Welsh. She was at court for a while when I was there.’
‘And?’
‘Bad cess to her. She’s fat and middle-aged and dull, a typical Norman. The Pilgrim’s welcome to her, for all her wealth.’
Finn smiled. ‘You’re a rotten spy, Bevo. I happen to know she’s young, fair and pregnant. The Jews told me.’
Bevo reached out and eveloped her fellow-hag in her large arms. ‘She’s dull anyway. He’s still welcome to her.’
It was cold in the tower that night. Eventually Finn got up and took her primer to read down by the still-glowing fire in the common parlour. The table had been cleared and wiped, but the sand on the floor was still scuffed from the guests’ feet. The room smelled comfortably of peat, ale, herbs and long eaten dinner. Irritably she picked up an empty beaker that had fallen to the floor and been overlooked, then went to huddle by the grate. On the other side of it a long pair of legs shifted. ‘God damn it,’ swore Finn, ‘what are you doing here?’
Daughter of Lir Page 33