They didn’t like it. They didn’t like being hemmed in by houses, they didn’t like the restrictive clothes and shoes which were provided to bring them into the fashion, and they didn’t like the male guests at Fitz Harding’s vast dinner table who excluded them from all the interesting conversation, patronised them with elaborate chivalry when they did talk, yet tried to pinch their bottoms in the darkness of the corridors as if they were serving wenches. ‘Sex mad, these Galls,’ said Dervorgilla. Yet, perversely, they resented the chaperonage which Lady Fitz Harding insisted on giving them. ‘But my dear young ladies, you can’t walk down the streets unattended. Look at the undesirables you’ve attracted already.’
It was true. The girls felt peculiarly watched. One morning when they’d been showing helpless solidarity to their father during his market square calvary, a Jewish woman in bright colours had said to them, ‘So you’re the Leinster ladies. And which one of you darlings is Slaney?’ It had given them all, particularly Slaney, a nasty turn. It was dangerous to be named by evil spirits, and if anybody looked like an evil spirit, that woman did. On the other hand, good spirits were also on guard over them for when a horse, maddened by flies, broke round the corner of Frome Street, its cart toppling in its traces, a huge blond man had stepped out of a doorway and calmly gathered Dervorgilla and Slaney, who were in its path, out of the way. When they thanked him, he looked at Slaney and said a strange thing. ‘Yust like your mother,’ he said, and went away.
They discussed the incident over and over. Everybody knew who Dervorgilla’s mother had been, the naughty thing, and Aoife’s, who was his latest wife, but there was a mystery about Slaney’s – probably some war prize who had gone back to her clan. Dermot acknowledged any child whose mother said it was his, but he insisted on having it brought to his court for rearing. Who had actually borne her had never bothered Slaney; she’d had all the mothering she needed – and sometimes more – from her eldest, and legitimate sister, Urlacam. Now she found herself unsettled.
‘I want to leave this creepy city,’ said Aoife, ‘Good or bad, these spirits are foreign. I want to go home.’ They ached for Ireland. That night they knelt before Fitz Harding in a rehearsed plea. ‘Good seigneur, in your puissance find aid for our father.’ To help his thoughts and because he liked her voice, Slaney sang to him the song with which she had said goodbye to Leinster, and the only one who didn’t cry at the homesickness in it was Dermot.
As the song came to a close and a green countryside faded out, leaving them in a carved, gilded room, Fitz Harding frowned. ‘I suppose there’s Strongbow,’ he said.
* * *
Dermot talked and Strongbow listened, biting his nails. Every so often he interrupted. ‘But did the king mean that?’ Or ‘Are you sure that was what he said?’ He got Fitz Harding’s scribe to come and read the letter from Fitzempress to him as if he didn’t trust what Dermot said it said.
Hidden in the gallery of Fitz Harding’s hall, their ears pressed to the balustrading, the sisters listened. Dervorgilla whispered: ‘Now how can a man with a nickname like Strongbow be so wet?’
It didn’t fit him. The girls knew it wasn’t his, anyway; his father, Gilbert de Clare, had won it fighting for Fitzempress’ grandfather, Henry I, as well as the earldom of Pembroke. Richard had attached it to his own middle-aged, balding person after his father died, to give himself grandeur. He needed grandeur. For Richard de Clare was not the second Earl of Pembroke as he should have been. He’d made one, colossal mistake – he’d been sure that Stephen would win the Stephen/Matilda war. He’d been so sure that a woman couldn’t win or rule England that he’d been one of the few marcher barons to persist in Stephen’s support all through. In one sense he’d been right; Empress Matilda didn’t win the war: her son did. When the battle dust cleared, Richard de Clare found himself without an earldom, with a king who didn’t love him, and in terror of another mistake.
‘Isn’t he the indecisive one,’ said Aoife, as her father persuaded, coaxed, cajoled and Strongbow wavered back and forth.
Heavy steps pounded up the stairs to the gallery and Lady Fitz Harding tracked her charges down. ‘Girls, girls,’ she said, shocked at their eavesdropping. So un-Norman. The daughters of Dermot stood up shamefacedly, showing themselves, and the men in the hall below looked up.
‘There, there,’ cried Dermot in his madness, reaching out an arm like an actor. ‘There is your prize if you throw in with me. My eldest daughter, my fair daughter, heiress to all my lands. You shall have her and all my inheritance after me if you throw in with me my lord.’
‘Which one?’ said Strongbow, while his brain made calculations.
* * *
‘That was very naughty of you, Father,’ said Aoife, later. ‘I’m not your eldest daughter and how can the poor man inherit anything through marriage to me, or any woman? It was false pretences.’
The girls were in the large bed of their own private bedroom in Fitz Harding’s wonderful house, the linen sheets drawn up to their chins and their heads, one fair, one red, one black, sticking over the top. Dermot sat down the end of it, looking more normal than he had in days. ‘How is he to know that? Women can inherit land here, in abroad. Men marry them for it. It’s the law.’
‘They can do what they like,’ said Dervorgilla, ‘it’s not the law back home, thanks be to God.’
‘And I wouldn’t marry a balding old vacillator like him if it was,’ said Aoife, sternly.
Dermot leaned over and tugged her long, fair plait. It was lovely to see the father they knew come back to them. ‘You look like a row of toffee apples, the three of you,’ he said. ‘So Aoife won’t help her poor old father trap this innocent Norman into helping him win back Leinster? Not one teeny little worm of a lie to drag the poor fish to Ireland so that we can throw him back later, unmarried? Even though God overlooks fibs when they’re made to barbarians? You wouldn’t do that for an old man who loves you?’
Aoife smiled her beautiful smile. ‘You know I will,’ she said.
* * *
Dermot had to pile offer on ludicrous offer before the pact was agreed; his daughter, riches, Ireland on a plate decorated with parsley. At last Strongbow said carefully, ‘Very well, my lord. From henceforth your honour is mine and together we shall fight to defend it.’ They embraced. Then Strongbow said, ‘But, of course, I shall have to ask the king’s permission first.’
When the girls heard, Slaney said, ‘That’ll take forever.’ But Dermot was buoyed up by hope. ‘We’re going into Wales in the meantime. Strongbow says there are landless men there who will join us. He’ll come over later with the main army.’
‘When all the fighting’s done, I suppose,’ said Aoife. ‘Mother of God, that’s a fine betrothed you’ve landed me with. I’d not marry him if I was sainted for it.’
‘You won’t have to,’ said Dermot, ‘When they’ve done their work, we’ll get rid of these foreigners.’
‘Will it be easy to do that, Father?’ Slaney was doubtful.
‘Sure it will, sure it will,’ promised Dermot. ‘And when he finds out he can’t inherit as much as a stone from the marriage, Strongbow won’t want it anyway. Who’d want to marry an ugly old lump like any of you?’ The girls threw themselves on him and scuffled him to the ground in delight. Their father was back in his old self, the man who could make everything all right and trick the sun into thinking it was night-time.
* * *
Standing on the healthy side of the bars of the deepest dungeon in Wales, Dermot called out, ‘Is there a Robert FitzStephen among you?’ Shapes stirred and scrabbled in the darkness his eyes couldn’t penetrate and he covered his nose against the smell of urine and faeces.
‘I’ll tell the butler to fetch him,’ said a voice. ‘Who shall I say it is?’
‘Dermot, King of Leinster. With his release.’
‘Now you’re talking.’ A tall scarecrow emerged into the light of Dermot’s flare, brushing down his rags as if he’d been taking his ease on a
haystack. The gaoler unlocked the gate and the scarecrow nipped through, just avoiding the rush of other prisoners to get out. ‘Bye, lads,’ sang FitzStephen, helping the gaoler club them back, ‘Don’t let’s be dog-in-the-manger about this.’ The screaming and babble drowned any further conversation and, after mouthing and bowing to each other for a moment, Dermot led FitzStephen up the staircase which circled the hole in the mountain until it reached the floor of the tower of Aberteivi castle.
‘My lord…’ began Dermot but FitzStephen raised a long, filthy hand and stopped him. ‘Just a minute, my lord.’ He crossed to a niche in the wall in which stood a crucifix and knelt before it, shaking, sobbing prayers of gratitude. ‘My lord…’ began Dermot when he’d finished, but again FitzStephen stopped him. ‘Would you mind if we went outside? I’ve rather gone off walls.’
They went through the bailey where guards allowed them out of the gates to the grass slope with its view of mountains and river. It was an overcast day, but FitzStephen squinted against the light. ‘Now, my lord, who did you say you were? The Archangel Gabriel?’ he said.
‘I am Dermot, King of Leinster.’
FitzStephen nodded kindly. ‘I’ve heard of it. Did Fitzempress send you?’
‘In a way.’ Dermot explained his mission. FitzStephen listened carefully and was then silent for a while. ‘So Fitzempress didn’t send you to get me out?’
‘No,’ said Dermot, ‘I heard of your predicament through my lord Strongbow, and since your… host… Prince Rhys has shown me kindness and hospitality, I bargained with him for your release. He is prepared to let you go if you leave Wales and don’t come back.’
‘Three years,’ said FitzStephen, gently, ‘I’ve been in his fucking prison for three years because I tried to hold these bits of rock for England and failed. Our glorious King Henry doesn’t believe in failure. Prepared to let me rot, was he? He should try fighting these fucking Welshmen and then he’d see.’
‘I thought you were half-Welsh yourself.’ FitzStephen was tall like a Norman, his carefully laconic speech was Norman, but the emotion which had shaken it just then, like his sallow skin and curly, black hair, was British.
‘Unavoidable accident,’ he said, ‘Mother was an accident waiting to happen to practically every Norman who set foot on her bloody mountains. A Welsh counter-attack all by herself, was Nesta. Well, my lord Leinster, your intervention was timely and your invitation timelier still. It appears I’m no longer welcome in my mother’s country and Fitzempress’ silence indicates I’m not welcome in my father’s any more either.’
‘You can have Wexford and two cantreds of land,’ said Dermot, generously. Wexford and its environs belonged to the Irish-Norse who’d jeered him out of Leinster.
‘Done,’ said FitzStephen, ‘and thank you. It’ll take until next spring to gather a good force together, but not longer. Thanks to my mother, I’ve got more half-brothers, uncles, nephews, what-nots – especially what-nots – all hungry for land, than you could shake a stick at. And talking of hunger, my lord, you haven’t got on your person something really valuable, have you? Like a piece of cheese?’
* * *
‘And may I present somebody or other, another nephew. He begs to be allowed to show you ladies how he hunts larks with a sparrowhawk, a custom I believe is unknown to you in Ireland.’
The daughters of Dermot bowed and whoever it was leered at them, thick fleecy curls hiding the eyes. ‘Sparrowhawk or not, I’m not moving a step with it until I hear it speak,’ muttered Dervorgilla. In the past weeks they had made dizzying forays to Welsh mountaintops to enlist pack after pack of FitzStephen’s cousins, half-brothers, half-nephews, full brothers, full nephews, legitimate, bastards, tall and blond, short and blond, tall and dark, short and dark, all of them called Fitz something or something Gerald but all of them with the rapacious mouth they had inherited from their common denominator, the ubiquitous and fecund Nesta. Whatever education they had picked up in their windblown, straw-littered keeps had not, except in a very few cases, included the social graces. Some grunted lustfully at the girls and grinned at them with lupine teeth. Others just grunted and turned away to a more interesting occupation which usually involved killing something. FitzStephen tried to invest each with some charm as he presented him, but privately the girls categorised all of them into ‘wolves’ or ‘pigs’. This one was a pig. Although the girls still stood he sat down, spat onto the head of the sparrowhawk on his wrist and rubbed the saliva into its feathers.
‘He’s shy,’ said FitzStephen, shooing some hens off a bench so that Dermot and his party could be seated, ‘And over in the corner, my lord Leinster, is my most distinguished cousin. May I present Archdeacon Gerald de Barry?’ A young man with ginger eyebrows put his forefinger in the book he was reading and looked up. ‘Giraldus Cambriensis, if you please,’ he said. ‘Let us by all means use the civilised tongue.’
‘This is our royal visitor from Ireland, the King of Leinster, Giraldus,’ said FitzStephen gently, ‘and the princesses.’
Giraldus got up, his finger ostentatiously marking his place, ignoring the girls. ‘Do you intend, sir, to root out the weeds of vice in your barbarian country, to establish in it the holy Roman Church and the jurisdiction of blessed Peter?’
His daughters’ heads turned to Dermot and saw that for the first time in this whole humiliation, their father showed displeasure. ‘I intend to win it back,’ he said, softly, ‘and to remind the world that there would most likely be no Church of Peter had not the saints and scholars of my country kept it alive during the Dark Ages.’
‘Good for you,’ whispered Slaney.
‘Well answered, my lord,’ – nothing could dint the patronage of Giraldus’ self-satisfaction – ‘and the noble valour of the FitzGeralds will be the sword of Christ in that land of darkness. For while I myself tread the harder, lonelier path of learning, we are all descended from the heroes of Troy and the celebrated prophecy of Merlin Silvester will clearly be fulfilled by my cousin, FitzStephen here, that a knight sprung of two different races will be the first to break through the defences of Ireland by force of arms. But I would remind you all that it is better for any prince to be loved by his subjects than to be feared. For it follows that whatever is loved with human love is also feared…’
The girls’ eyes were watering with boredom halfway through and, since he’d shown them no courtesy, they showed him none either and went outside to look out across the sea at the ill-defined smudges like clouds which were the hills of Ireland.
‘“If I had seven tongues in seven heads I could not sing all the beauty of Leinster”,’ said Slaney softly. ‘Oh Mary, Mother of God, when can we leave these terrible people and go home?’
Above them, where sheep the size of cats with long coats cropped the thin grass, somebody else had left the keep and was also looking at the smudges on the horizon. The knight sprung from two races was finishing Merlin Silvester’s prophecy. ‘“Break through Ireland’s defences by force of arms,”’ said FitzStephen, ‘“and conquer it for himself.” Why not? Why not?’
* * *
One by one the Breton, Welsh and Scottish rebellions failed against the overpowering efficiency of Fitzempress’ army. But Aquitaine had exploded again, and so it was there that Finn spent most of her resources.
Her staff saw that she had lost the energy which had once fuelled her spying activity. With the going of Dermot she had achieved one of her goals, but it had brought its own loss. Also it had brought its own dangers. She concentrated on what Dermot was doing, worrying about his search for allies, however ineffectual it was proving to be. She watched through her web for the threatened invasion by Fitzempress with the old intensity, but her hope now lay in the trouble that Becket was creating for his king, in Aquitaine. Not in herself.
Time had leached out of Finn the disgust at giving birth to a baby that had been forced into her. She had gone to Kildare to find out what had happened to it from a terrible, compulsive curiosity. When the
child took shape, the distant shape of the girl in the boat, there came the realisation that she had not just been the receptacle for a man’s semen but that, in receiving it, her body had been activated into the function for which it had been built and that her blood, not just the man’s, had gone into the baby. The child looked like her. She had exiled her own daughter.
Finn’s mind teetered on an edge, then looked back. In that moment of choice the option of breakdown was foregone. She couldn’t afford its luxury. She couldn’t abandon her child for a second time.
The whole world changed. Instead of being flat, as she knew it was, it rounded into a sphere in which there were no ends or beginnings or disconnections, but only a cycle to which war, ambition and nations were irrelevancies; time-fillers pursued by men to disguise uncreativity. With the agony of her own irrelevant years came a dreadful and overwhelming compassion for all parted things, a crying baby, every lost duckling, Mary at the foot of the cross, and, more importantly, for herself. She could have wailed at wasted time but she let even herself off that hook in her new pity. It was as if only now she had become a mother and while her love was centred on a girl seen just once, the edges of its vortex gave a kinder understanding of everyone else.
Daughter of Lir Page 38