He kept turning it over and over, not seeing it. All these past months, years, he’d been trying to fit a figure and face to the personality of the somebody in Ireland who’d been causing problems for him and his king, the personality he’d come to think of as ‘the green fleck’. They had eluded him, so that he’d been able to envisage only a black, person-shaped hole. Slowly, in his mind’s eye, he slid a body he knew into the gap and saw it nestle home. It was her. Now it had struck him it was obvious; she was about the only person in Ireland with enough cosmopolitan knowledge – and the audacity – to do it. She’d used women, the hags probably. That’s what had fooled him, he’d been thinking in the masculine when all along the feminine had kept cropping up. The O’Cornor wouldn’t have had the brains. It was her. She might be working for the O’Conor, but it was her.
Because of her, the best king in the world had been troubled nearly to madness. Because of her, lesser men had risen against their ordained overlord. Because of her, some of his own best agents had disappeared. Rebellion, war, murder had taken place – because of her. Judas priest, because of her he had been within an inch of losing his position.
And the smell of her hair was still in his nostrils and his body was still warm from hers.
‘I’ll have her guts,’ he said, quietly. ‘Stay here.’
The door rocketed open as Finn was adjusting her respectability and veil. Her lover stood again in the doorway, not so beautiful.
‘It was you,’ he said. He had the Fitzempress seal in his hand.
She was shaken by the viciousness of him. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Then allow me to tell you.’ The compartment in his brain that he had kept secret from her in Lough Mask was in charge, making his voice steady, showing the calculation that reduced his emotion, his love, and now his dreadful rage to subsidiaries. It had made him Fitzempress’ spymaster and it put her in mortal danger. She didn’t know this man, except as a long-range enemy. She had made love to somebody else. This man she couldn’t reach.
‘It all fits. There’ve been Irishwomen in it all through. It was you and the hags. The letter in Scotland. The woman who gave Irish gold to Jehane in Brittany…’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘The mysterious woman who bribed the Exchequer clerk.’ His rage burst through the control for a moment and he slammed his fist against the wall. ‘I should have known.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He paid no attention. He was a good, intuitive spymaster. He knew. She could protest until she was black in the face; he still knew.
‘You’ve fooled me all along, you bitch. You got me to trust you. I trusted you in Ireland and you drugged me into Glendalough. Were you working for O’Conor then? Were you working for him at Lough Mask, you treacherous bitch?’
She didn’t care then whether she gave herself away, or gave Ireland away; she’d give the whole world away to vent at long last the pain and resentment she’d carried since Lough Mask. ‘Trust? And who are you to talk about trust, you bastard. I trusted you. I loved you. It wasn’t until the end of Lough Mask that I found out you were Fitzempress’ spy. You gave yourself away.’
‘Keep your bloody voice down.’ Without looking behind him, he slammed the door shut, nearly taking off the ear of the man who had crept up the stairs behind him and was listening from outside.
FitzStephen walked back down the stairs, rubbing the side of his head reflectively.
Behind him the two spymasters fought face to face the battle they had waged over the Irish Sea, both too furious and too hurt to notice that it had more to do with personal betrayal than the war of countries.
‘That was why I drugged you into Glendalough. And you were lucky: I should have killed you. Treachery. How can it be treachery? You want to conquer Ireland, you and your filthy king. But it’s mine, and I fought for it clean.’
‘Who killed my agents, you murderous bitch?’
‘Who tortured that little clerk, you stinking butcher?’
‘So you admit it was you?’
‘Yes. And I’d do it again.’ She leaned her head back against the wall, voided of all emotion; the only beautiful thing she’d ever had was Lough Mask, and she’d lost it. Now she would probably lose her life as well. Let him hang her; she’d given him a run for his money. She’d go with the whole truth between them at least. She opened her eyes. ‘And do you know the worst? I went on loving you. Right up to when I found out from the clerk that you were the one I’d been fighting all along. I didn’t know until then that you were Duckweed.’
‘Who?’
‘Duckweed. It’s what I called you.’
He blinked. ‘Bit bloody undignified.’
God damn him, he’d always been able to make her laugh; even here, even now. ‘Oh bugger you,’ she said hopelessly.
For both of them the anger in the room had diffused into something she was too tired to analyse. Acceptance? But the echoes were still there and she heard the words: Love. Trust. Betrayal. Relationship words. Marriage words. They might be espoused to different sides, he had gone through a wedding ceremony with somebody else, but God, who always got the last laugh, had inextricably and eternally mated them to each other.
She knew he’d had the same revelation because he sneered at it: ‘Our first quarrel.’
She could have wept for him, for both of them. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘So you bloody ought to be. Why couldn’t you have been an ordinary woman?’
‘You wouldn’t have loved me.’
‘No.’
He walked to the window. ‘Well, this is a fine bloody mess.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I ought to hang you.’ He saw her with a rope round her damned neck. Mentally he locked her up in prison with rats and, for a second, enjoyed the vision and then didn’t. They’d question her. He remembered the men he’d had questioned and what they’d looked like when the inquisitors he’d employed had done with them. They hadn’t intended the Exchequer clerk to die, but his heart had given out under the torture. She’d always had lovely skin, even the freckles.
Tonelessly he asked, ‘If I got you away, would you promise not to work against Fitzempress again?’ and heard her say, ‘No’ because she wouldn’t lie to him any more.
‘Sod you.’
Movement down in the bailey caught his eye. Men were unsaddling horses. FitzStephen and the FitzGerald were talking hard, glancing up at the window. They wouldn’t wait much longer. In a minute they’d act, shut the gates, send guards up. They wouldn’t have any mercy on her and he didn’t blame them. But she wasn’t their woman. She was his, God damn her to hell. He wished he wasn’t going to do what he knew he was going to do. He wished he could reflect and put her in the balance against his country and everything that was really important. But he didn’t have time.
‘Come here.’ He put his arm round her shoulders and pointed. ‘See that horse there? Still saddled? We’re going to walk down the stairs in a moment and across, as near as we can get to it. When I tell you, you bloody run. Get on it and go like hell. Can you still ride?’
‘Pilgrim, they’ll kill you.’ Would she have let him go if the situation was reversed? Yes, she would. He was right, it was a bloody mess.
‘No they won’t. They think I’m on their side.’
‘Aren’t you?’
‘Mind your own business, woman. Can you still ride?’
‘I could still beat you.’
‘I beat you. Can you make it?’
‘If I get to the Severn. They’re waiting for me there in a boat.’
‘For Christ’s sake, move.’ As they went down the steps he said: ‘One thing. Did we have a child?’
‘What?’
‘I used to wonder. I’m a very potent man. Did we have a child?’
Oh God, I love you, she thought, and that cosy wife of yours has given you sons, and I have a daughter whom I love and
love is indivisible and I must give you something and we may both die in the next few minutes.
‘A girl. I called her Slaney.’
‘Bloody awful name. A daughter.’
‘Yes.’
They were out in the air now, going down the outside steps to the bailey, and heads had turned to look at them. His hand was holding her arm as if he were a gaoler but they were moving diagonally, away from the men towards the still-unsaddled horse. ‘Go.’
She broke away from him, and despite her skirts did a steed leap Art would have been proud of, and was galloping out of the gates and down the steep track to the Wye. Behind her the lord of Llanthony turned to face FitzStephen. ‘Damn the woman,’ he said, ‘she was too quick for me.’
‘Shoot,’ screamed FitzStephen to the guards on the gate. ‘Shoot her.’
What saved her was that it was Strongbow’s castle and FitzStephen only the temporary castellan. Strongbow’s men were unused to taking orders from him, especially when they involved bringing down a nun. They havered until it was too late to hit anything. By the time they’d re-saddled the remaining horses, it was also too late to catch up with a woman who could ride like the bloody wind.
* * *
The Swan drew her in lovingly. The staff treated her as if they knew she’d left most of herself in Wales. But they couldn’t protect her from the latest news. Eventually they took her up to the tower room to tell her.
‘Dermot’s back.’
‘Mother of God.’
‘He landed in August near Wexford,’ said Bevo, ‘He had a tiny force with him, some Welsh and Flemings. Our system worked well – we got a pigeon almost at once, and Art went to tell the O’Conor. He moved fairly quickly, for him, and marched with Tighernan O’Rourke against them and fought them at Cill Osnadh. Twenty-five of Dermot’s force were killed and the rest sent back where they’d come from.’
Finn saw something in Bevo’s face. ‘And?’
‘I don’t know how to tell you this, Finn. Against O’Rourke’s advice, our High King O’Conor refused to re-exile Dermot. Seemed to be sorry for him. He took two of Dermot’s sons hostage and made him pay one hundred ounces of gold to O’Rourke for having abducted Dervorgilla all those years ago. But he allowed him to stay as lord of the Hy Kinsella as long as Dermot recognised him as High King and foreswore his claim on the rest of Leinster, which remains under Donough MacGiolla Phadraig.’
There was silence in the tower. Then Tailltin said, ‘Why didn’t Ruairi give him the High Kingship while he was about it?’
Finn thought, ‘We’re fighting for his life, and he’s treating it like some gentleman’s game.’ The she thought of her daughter.
Censellach Mac Brain spoke from his corner: ‘We can kill him now.’
‘Where’s Slaney?’ asked Finn.
‘Don’t look like that. She’s all right. Dermot left the girls with Fitz Harding in Bristol. They’ll be safe with Fitz Harding.’
Finn began to shake. They gave her wine and comfort. MacGiolla Phadraig was Dermot’s great enemy, they said; he’d never let him get the rest of Leinster. At least the O’Conor had done something. It would be all right. Finn fought for control and tried to believe them, but she couldn’t stop shaking.
* * *
It was a winter of storms and high, treacherous seas which formed a wall between Ireland and the world. Finn spent it in love and terror. She sent extra pay to her agents in Wexford and Ferns to redouble their watching. She would have gone herself to see Dermot’s every move, but, having nearly lost her in Wales, the Swan staff persuaded her it was too dangerous. Besides, Dermot was doing nothing.
She had changed. She was kinder to all of them, and especially Lief to whom, when he’d brought her, Pinginn and Tailltin back from Wales, she had said, ‘I’m sorry.’ He shrugged: ‘The best man won, he better be.’
‘I don’t know best any more. I’m just sorry.’
She began writing. At nights after the inn had gone to bed she sat in her top room with a candle near her board, first putting the shapes on a slate with chalk and then, when she’d got them right, scratching them onto Pinginn’s vellum with the crow quill. ‘Know all who live now and who will be,’ she wrote, ‘that I am Finola of the clan of Partraige, once Sister Boniface of Fontevrault, once Abbess of Kildare whom Dermot of Leinster had raped for the evil of his self-gain.’ It was dreadfully difficult. She ran after words like a dog trying to enfold errant sheep. Brother Pinginn offered to do the writing for her, but she thanked him and refused. It would be a form of forgery. This was her resurrection from the oblivion of male history into which the chroniclers of the monasteries had consigned her. But it was to be more than that. This was to be the Word of Woman.
Once, when she heard whimpering from the room below, she got up and went down to stand beside Elfwida’s bed, hesitating, then she knelt on the floor and took the girl’s unconscious, twitching hand in her own and put it against her neck. ‘Comfort my daughter wherever she is, dear God,’ she prayed, ‘Comfort this daughter and all daughters. Comfort the Pilgrim and all pilgrims.’
* * *
The daughters of Dermot Mac Murrough were polite to Bristol society all that winter, wearing the foreign clothes they had been given, eating sparingly of the massive meat dishes which the foreigners loved, and ravishing the too-few vegetables, worrying about their complexion in public and their father and the messages he sent them when they were alone. ‘What does he mean by he’s all right but we’re to stay here?’ said Aoife. ‘If he’s all right, then we can go back. We ought to be near him. We could stay in the Hy Kinsella mountains.’
‘Och, Och, I can’t stand this place much longer,’ sobbed Dervorgilla, punching her pillow in place of the latest insulting Norman lordling.
It was Slaney who said, ‘How much money have we got?’
They watched the Bristol weather above the rooftops that enclosed them and, on the first clear, early spring day when the swans were flying they followed them, dodging their chaperone and making their way down to the harbour to look for a friendly, Irish boat, and took passage in it. As they passed Lundy Island where conscientious monks kept a beacon alight to warn shipping of its dangerous brown cliffs, the master of their ship pointed out the little sea-parrots which inhabited the ledges, but the girls’ eyes were on the swans, going home.
* * *
In the bleak, beautiful, red-rocked harbour of Milford Haven three ships were at anchor, rocking chaotically as nervous horses were pulled and pushed aboard them. The cursing that laid their ears back were in strata of tones, screech of Welsh, full, rich Devonian, hoarse Flemish, thin Norman and, deep under, the grunts of the sons of Nesta. With horses and provisions, a longboat could take one hundred and twenty men. In fact, only about ninety men filed up each gangplank. They were under strength. FitzStephen’s eyes flickered back and forth. ‘How many do you reckon have come?’ he asked his cousin, more for comfort than counsel because few of Nesta’s sons could count. The FitzGerald took a stab at it: ‘Three hundred,’ and stumped off to kick his men into embarking faster.
‘Innumerate bastard.’ FitzStephen looked at the lord of Llanthony, who had come to wave them goodbye. ‘I’d prefer it if you came with us now.’
‘I’ve got to gather my own men. I’ll join you within the month.’ He’d been in danger ever since he’d let Loon go; they hadn’t liked it, but they hadn’t been able to prove anything, except negligence. He’d put himself in even greater danger by trying to delay their departure; they were suspicious that he wasn’t going with them. But he had to get word to Fitzempress that this unauthorised invasion was under way. He would join them later. ‘Keep an eye on them,’ Fitzempress had said. And, like the good spymaster he was, he would keep an eye on them. And while he was about it, he’d look for his woman.
Now that he’d admitted to himself that she was vital to him, he couldn’t return to the distance he’d kept between them. He’d gone back to see his wife once since then, and had found he
r so tedious, poor thing, that he’d had to cut short his visit. The bloody Irishwoman was everywhere, in his bed, in his office, roaming his estates, confusing the job he had to do.
Up at the pier Giraldus Cambriensis was holding his arms out to the tiny fleet, howling prayers of victory and the prophecies of Merlin.
Beside him, he heard FitzStephen muttering, ‘Can I rely on Merlin? Should I wait for Strongbow?’ And he envied him for his ambition. There was a man who wasn’t encumbered by a woman. Straight and simple, this man was out to get himself an empire. But he’d stop him. The only one who was going to include Ireland in his empire was Fitzempress. Loon or no Loon, Fitzempress should have Ireland if he wanted it, not this rabble. And if he did and when he did, well, then the Loon would have to stop fighting for it. She’d be beaten and they could be together.
Suddenly FitzStephen vomited into the sand. John could almost have pitied him. The risk he was taking was colossal. When the attack was over he crooked his helmet in his elbow and sank onto one knee. ‘Dear God of hosts, Jesus and Mary the Virgin, St David and St Ann, take us into your hand this day and prosper this venture for the sake of your Holy Church – and me.’ He got up. ‘You’ll join us?’
‘I’ll join you.’
FitzStephen raised his voice: ‘Let’s go.’
John watched the ships move easily down the haven and stood, even when they were out of his sight and encountering the currents of the sea which surge with energy between the islands of Skokholm and Skomer where they would bob like corks.
‘Madmen,’ he shouted after them, and then rode to tell Fitzempress that, whether he wished it or not, the invasion of Ireland had begun.
* * *
They were on horses larger than any ever seen in Ireland, the spring sun glinted on mail and pointed iron helmets with nasals which, to those who knew no armour, made them uniformly sinister. Back in Europe, where the pot helm, closer-linked mail and wider shields had come in, they would have seemed old-fashioned and rather comic. In Ireland, the shepherds who looked round at the sound of their hoofbeats saw a machine, a multi-headed juggernaut, and they fell on their faces in terror. They were so outside the experience of one old hermit whose beehive they passed, that when he looked straight at them his brain rejected them as impossible and he didn’t see them at all.
Daughter of Lir Page 40