‘I’ve watched you sail over to it. Are you really a Partraige woman?’
‘Yes. Why?’
‘I don’t know. Scathagh has the eternal wisdoms, if you know what I mean, but you’ve got all the other sort. What did you do with your life after you were qualified?’ The girls used ‘qualification’ as an ironic euphemism for rape. Finn had obeyed the Academy rule and given them a censored account of how she had become a previous candidate.
‘I opened an inn in Dublin with some other hags.’
‘Didn’t you want to marry?’
‘Do you?’
‘I did. I was going to marry Censellach Mac Brain – he was a hostage at our court for years, but Father regarded him more as a foster-son. He’s gone back to his clan now and, I don’t know, do you think he’ll still want me? Since my qualification, I mean?’
Tell her, Finn commanded herself. Tell her what Dermot did to the boy. Wean her away from the bastard she thinks is her father. She longed to let the girl know she was her mother. But it was too soon; the child still had periods of depression and Finn wasn’t going to make them worse. She said merely, ‘It’s best not to set your hopes too high.’ She watched her daughter’s eyes go dull.
Sometimes it was the three daughters of Dermot who came and joined her on Swan Island in the evenings, but more often it was Slaney on her own. It was a shock to find that the girl admired her as sophisticated and mysterious and wanted to talk. She, who had never been chatty, found herself engaged in woman-to-woman conversations which were at once delightful and exhausting. ‘Talk more,’ Slaney would say, ‘You don’t tell me things.’
‘What do you want me to tell you?’
‘You know, things. Have you ever been in love? Did any man love you after your qualification? Like that.’
‘You’re man mad. Well…’ Because it was so pleasant to do, she told Slaney about the Pilgrim, and deluded herself that secretly it was a ‘how-your-father-and-I-met’ story that an ordinary mother might tell. Slaney loved it. ‘Why didn’t you go back to England with him?’
‘Reasons. I didn’t want to leave Ireland.’
‘Tell me how you ployed him again.’
‘I won’t. It’s your turn to provide the entertainment, then it’s time you were going back.’
Always before she sent her home, she got Slaney to sing. The girl’s voice was extraordinary, mature, strong, yet catching a remembrance of being very young. Hearing it echo across the water was heart-rending – and it wasn’t only Finn’s heart it rended.
Watching the girl as she sang outlined against the late sun, Finn saw her conjure a memory into form; a horse with a man bending low against its neck swimming across the lake towards her island out of the past. Time circled and then jinked; this one came out of the present. The horse was smaller, a pony, and the man was taller, younger and darker. His eyes were on Slaney, not her. A birthmark covered his left hand. The pony scrabbled up onto the tiny beach and its rider dismounted and led it up to the fire they had lit on this warm night to provide light and keep the mosquitos away. ‘There should be a law against a song that drags men across lakes,’ he said. ‘I think I’ll make one.’
Slaney looked back at Finn, glowing and amused. ‘Shall I give him Scathagh’s Number One?’
‘It’s not obligatory. Try “Hello”. I’ll go and get him a drink.’
She stayed in her hut a long while, giving them time to talk and herself some room for recovery. For one moment she’d thought God had suspended the laws and given her back an option on happiness. This time she wouldn’t have turned it down. But it wasn’t a God for second chances. She was being greatly obliged in seeing it perhaps offered to her daughter. Well, well. He’d be about Slaney’s age. What had she done with the years? The last time she’d seen that birthmark it had been on a baby’s fist. She’d heard he’d been officially acknowledged as a prince of Connaught by the O’Conor, now that the jealous queen was dead. He’d be home on a visit to his mother, Cuimne.
There were raised voices outside. Slaney stamped into the hut, grabbed the beaker of mead from Finn’s hand and stamped out. Finn went out just in time to see her throw it after the retreating Cathal. Together they watched him and the horse swim back into the dusk. ‘And don’t come back,’ shouted Slaney.
‘What happened?’
‘He’s a stinking Connaughter. He asked where I came from. When I said I was a Leinster woman he said he was sorry for me. Me. Because an evil man was my king. Stinking Connaughter.’
Finn grabbed her daughter by her shoulders and shook her. ‘Don’t you dare, don’t you dare. You’re breaking Ireland into pieces between you.’ She took a deep breath and dropped her arms. The girl’s fury directed on her; she had, after all, been brought up a princess of Leinster – then it changed.
‘And I thought it was just a cup,’ she said.
What a nice child you are, thought Finn. More adult than I’ll ever be, and the Pilgrim’s your true father, whoever sired you.
‘What do you mean, breaking Ireland?’
They sat down. ‘There isn’t any time left for clan war. The world’s moved on. If we don’t start thinking of ourselves as Irish, rather than Connaught or Leinster or Breffni or whatever, we’ll soon be something else entirely, or not anything. England has its eye on us. I know, I’ve been watching it watching us. Dermot Mac Murrough has brought the Normans in and unless we combine against them they’ll never go away.’
Slaney said loftily, ‘Father is only regaining what is his by right.’
‘Just think about it. What they did to you and the others, they’ll do to Ireland. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.’
The girl’s scarred face had gone into a spasm of pain. Finn put her arm around Slaney’s shoulders and rubbed her cheek against her hair. ‘I know. But we survive.’
They sat together for a long time. Eventually Finn said, ‘If they’d just stop. All of them. Even Ireland and England aren’t important. Men and women together, equal and loving, that’s all that matters.’
* * *
In the winter, just as the new hags were beginning to investigate wolf traps, Art arrived. He looked older than ever and the journey had taken so much out of him that Finn put him to bed in her hut. She’d been doing it up so that it would be habitable all the year round. ‘Is everything all right?’
He nodded, gasping.
‘You silly old fool,’ she said, ‘why didn’t they send somebody else? Who’s looking after the pigeons?’
‘Thanks I get,’ wheezed Art. ‘See you’re all right. Away long time. That Belaset harpy. In Dublin. Wants… see you.’
‘She can wait.’ Whatever was happening it wasn’t more important than Slaney going out to get her wolf. Even now she wasn’t sure she could let the girl do it alone. She hadn’t been alone when she’d got hers.
She sat by Art’s bed all night, giving him sips of balm and honey to ease his cough, wrapping hot bricks in sheep’s wool to keed his feet warm. When she helped him out of bed to use the pot, he wanted her out of the room. ‘Oh, for God’s sake, don’t be so bloody prim.’ But he began to cry, so she went. At a point before dawn he broke into a sweat and then slept. She knelt and thanked God for the life of her oldest friend, settled herself back in the chair, covered herself in furs, and slept well.
‘Art,’ she said, when he was better. ‘I’m worried about the horse-breeding situation here. Iogenán’s letting the strain go. I want you to stay here for a bit and see to it. And keep an eye on Slaney – you know why, but don’t tell her.’
Art cast a ghastly eye on her. ‘Are you trying to keep me safe, woman?’
‘And Blat will come back to keep house for you.’
‘You’re trying to keep her safe. You know something. I don’t trust the look of you.’
She shrugged. She didn’t voice it because she didn’t dare admit to herself, that Ireland was seeing the beginning of its end. ‘Whatever happens I’m going to need a secure base here. Nobody’s goi
ng to be safe, but they’ll be a long time getting as far as this. I might need to come back in a hurry.’
‘Shan’t.’
She took his hand. ‘You looked after me. Look after my daughter.’
She’d defeated him. ‘Bloody women,’ he said.
On the night of the wolf hunt, it was bitterly cold, but clear and dry. Somewhere up in the Partraige mountains a granddaughter of Blat’s bitch was tied up in a hut, full of night-time promise. From Inis Cailleach a curragh set for the western shore and landed fur-wrapped figures who fanned out into different directions. Agonising, Finn was on the point of following Slaney when she spotted another, smaller curragh making for the same shore. The hands that rowed it had been left ungloved in his haste, but one of them was dark.
‘Ah well,’ she said, and consigned her daughter to the care of Cathal of the Wine Red Hand. He seemed a nice boy.
The next day, while a load of girls with wolf-tails pinned to their hair roistered in the tower of Inis Cailleach, Finn left Lough Mask for the last time.
* * *
The madder Dermot Mac Murrough became, the more beautifully he played his game. Like a chess master he moved each piece, bishop, castle, knight, queen and pawn with remorseless clarity of purpose, knowing he would win. And he did. The flaw in his strategy was that in his madness he had played the wrong opponent.
John of Llanthony sent a message to his king by one of the agents he’d brought with him. ‘My lord, every week more men come to join FitzStephen, and yet Dermot of Leinster still believes they are playing his game and that when he has won it he can return them whence they came, but he cannot.’
It was still the middle of the game, when he’d overrun most of Leinster, that Ruairi O’Conor decided Dermot had gone far enough and again brought the army of Ireland to meet the swelling mixture of a force that was Dermot’s. There was no question of a pitched battle; the O’Conor’s men outnumbered Dermot’s and FitzStephen’s rag-bag to an extent that merely by advancing – longbows, armour, stirrups notwithstanding – they could have crushed it to death. Smiling to himself, Dermot made a tactical retreat to the fastness of Mount Leinster and produced his bishop. Actually, it was an archbishop, Laurence O’Toole, that good, sainted, peace-loving, silly man.
‘Let us avoid blood, O’Conor, in the name of Christ,’ pleaded Laurence O’Toole to the High King. ‘Mac Murrough has won no more than was his orginally. Forgive his sins, recognise him as King of Leinster and he will abide by all your terms.’
‘He must acknowledge me as High King of Ireland,’ said the O’Conor of Connaught.
O’Toole rode up to the barricades of Mount Leinster. ‘Will you acknowledge the O’Conor as High King of Ireland if he lets you keep Leinster?’
‘I will and gladly,’ shouted Dermot.
‘He swears he will,’ reported back O’Toole.
‘Will he send away all the foreigners he has brought into Ireland?’
Back trooped the archbishop to Mount Leinster. ‘Will you send back all Galls from the land of the Gael?’
‘I will and gladly.’
‘Then come down to make oath on your assurances, and give the kiss of peace to your rightful overlord.’
Dermot went down. He swore on bibles and the bones of saints that he would not look beyond Leinster ever again, that he acknowledged the O’Conor as High King, and that he would send all the foreigners he had invited into the country back to where they had come from. Then he went back to Ferns and ordered his scribe to write a letter to Strongbow urging him to hurry up and come, so that between them they could win Ireland for themselves.
Down in Wexford FitzStephen, far from going home, cut down an entire area of woodland and built a strong tower on the very vantage point of Ferrycarrig from which the nobles of Ireland had watched Dermot go into exile four years before. It was the first Norman castle in Ireland.
* * *
In Dublin Asgall confessed his uneasiness to the landlady of the Swan. Did these proceedings mean that the High King had abandoned Dublin, the city which had supported him? And even if he hadn’t, would he protect it if Dermot moved against it? He certainly hadn’t protected anywhere else in Leinster – Dermot was building a small pyramid out of the eyes and testicles of the men who had deserted him four years previously.
‘I don’t know,’ Finn told him, miserably, ‘I don’t know the O’Conor any more. He won’t listen to me. All we can do is take precautions.’
Acting on that advice, Asgall made sure that the walls of Dublin were fortified as never before and contingents of archers practised at the Hogges Green butts.
The Lady Belaset hurried to the Swan Inn as soon as she heard of Finn’s return home. ‘You take my advice, you’ll pack your traps and all these funny people of yours and come to Bristol,’ she said, ‘I’m getting mine out. I don’t like the breeze that’s blowing.’
‘Vives is going?’ Finn felt a pang of loss; the Jew had seemed a rock. Although she had paid off her mortgage years ago, they kept up their weekly meetings. He had given her a vat of kosher wine so that he could drink with her.
‘Vives, rabbi, the whole ball of wax,’ said Belaset, and Finn saw that under the belligerent make-up, her face was shrivelled with concern. ‘Not for always maybe, but definitely for now. You know why?’ Finn shook her head. ‘Because it’s got big and getting bigger. Raymond Le Gros and another army of half-breeds has landed to join his uncle FitzStephen down in Wexford. And Strongbow’s finally made up that mind of his and he’ll be coming over with two thousand men any day.’
‘Two thousand? Are you sure?’ Her spies had given her no such information.
‘Who’d you think lent him the money?’
‘Bela!’ She couldn’t believe it; the Jews, especially this raddled old woman, had seemed her allies.
‘Sure, Bela, Bela. Finn, you listen. If it hadn’t been me gave him the money he’d have gone to some other Jews, the damned Ashkenazim maybe, and why should they have all the profit? Besides, this way I keep tabs on what’s happening so I can I tell you. And I’m telling you get out. Sure as God made little apples, them Normans is going to take Ireland over. One time I thought that High King Ruairi of yours would stop ’em, but if he ain’t stopped ’em so far he never will. They’re going to rape and pillage this little country, and then they’re going to ask God to forgive ’em for it. And you know that Normans do to get God’s approval?’
Finn shook her head. She couldn’t bring herself to speak to the woman.
‘They build churches and they kill Jews. So I’m taking mine out. And they ain’t going to like you much neither.’
‘They haven’t won yet,’ said Finn, coldly.
‘They’re going to.’
They parted without warmth, something for which Finn was sorry when she had time to reflect. Like all Jews, Belaset was a permanent exile; she did not truly belong even to the part of Spain where she had been born, so why should she feel any patriotism for Ireland? Besides, she had done what she could in warning Finn of Strongbow’s invasion.
Almost hopelessly, Finn sent on the news to the O’Conor; but the panic she had seen in Belaset’s eyes infected her. If he hadn’t stopped Dermot’s and the Norman’s advance yet, would he ever?
She began to make arrangements to get her staff to safety before the worst came to the worst, and, because she was in a panic, she did it badly.
‘I’ve decided that the time’s come to start thinking about a strategic withdrawal,’ she announced at the next staff conference, ‘Perhaps we’ll open a new Swan Inn over in Connaught somewhere. On the coast, near a pilgrim route. Dublin will be the next place the Normans and Dermot make for, and Dermot’s not going to treat it kindly for having fought against him. So I’m going to divide up the profits so far between us all. Tailltin, Bevo, Blat, Lief and Brother Pinginn can go ahead and make their base at Lough Mask for the time being. Aragon goes on her next trading trip soon and when she comes back she can make harbour in Galway.’
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She looked at them sharply. Everybody was staring into space. ‘Well?’
‘And what are you going to be doing all this time?’ asked Tailltin.
‘I shall run the inn with Perse and the Elf and the servants until I hear from Muirna.’ They hadn’t heard from Muirna for some weeks and were worried about her. ‘Then I’ll come and join you.’ She didn’t add that she was also waiting for news of the Pilgrim; she had the feeling that he was in Ireland or in trouble, or both. She’d tried contacting her agents down in the south-east, but they had disappeared; dead, perhaps.
‘Well, Lief and I aren’t going without you, are we Lief?’ said Pinginn, waggling his shoulders.
‘No.’
Eventually she had to tackle them individually. ‘I beg you,’ she said to Tailltin, ‘I must have somebody I can trust keeping an eye on Slaney,’ and because her anxiety was touching, Talltin agreed to go ‘for the time being’.
Blat also agreed when Finn begged her to go and look after Art. ‘To be honest with you, Finn,’ she said, ‘I’ve been dying to set me eyes on Connaught before I die. Not that I wouldn’t stay if I was of use, but I’m getting old so I’ll go and keep house for that ugly little man of yours, though how the Swan’ll get on without me marrow pudding is more than I can answer for.’
Bevo’s big-boned face went puce as she refused to join the exodus to Lough Mask. ‘Actually, Finn, I’m getting married.’
It was so unexpected that Finn’s astonishment was almost insulting until she recovered herself. Why shouldn’t the hags find love? ‘I’m happy for you,’ she said, ‘who’s the lucky man?’
Bevo blushed some more. ‘Ragnar.’
‘Ragnar?’ On the few occasions that Finn had seen him since her return from Connaught, the jarl had been better behaved than formerly, but he was so fixed in Finn’s mind as a drunken nuisance that she couldn’t have been more surprised if Bevo had said she were marrying Dermot.
Daughter of Lir Page 42