‘Anyway,’ said Slaney, ‘We’re not the women he sent away; we’re hags.’
But only three hags. And there wasn’t another woman in the column, unless you counted the camp followers who dragged along in the rear. Aoife kept coughing, as she always did when she was nervous. ‘Any trouble and I’ll give them Scathagh’s Number Three,’ she said.
* * *
When Dermot’s army joined Strongbow’s and turned towards Dublin, it took with it Dermot’s daughters and one prisoner who, although he was a Norman, was kept in chains.
The chances that the Normans could conquer all Ireland and set up their own kingdom over it were becoming better and better, though none of them mentioned it to Dermot. But as their expectations rose, so did their fear that Fitzempress would come over and stop them before they were ready. ‘And that, my dear old soul,’ explained FitzStephen as his men bound the arms of the lord of Llanthony behind his back, ‘is why we can’t allow you to send him any messages.’
‘What the hell do you mean? I’m not Fitzempress’ man. We quarrelled.’
FitzStephen smiled at the struggling figure. ‘Oh, yes you are, oh no you didn’t. You’re his spy and always have been. A little bird told me… well, she told you actually, but I was listening behind the door. That was before you let her go.’
‘Fuck you.’
‘Naughty,’ said FitzStephen and put a gag in the spymaster’s mouth. ‘I’m going to hand you over to Strongbow with your full history. He won’t find it amusing, but then, he’s got no sense of humour. He may keep you alive because he’s also a timid bugger and won’t want to offend Fitzempress even more by killing his favourite marshal. And he may have a use for you. On the other hand he may not.’
* * *
The inertia of indecision had settled over a Dublin divided between belief that because nothing dreadful had happened so far, it never would – the ‘Ruairi-O’Conor-will-save-us’ school – and the conviction that something was going to happen but it wouldn’t be as dreadful as all that – the ‘God-will-save-us’ school.
Asgall came more than once to the Swan during those days of waiting so that he could drink and worry and beg for reassurance in the privacy of Finn’s tower room, freed of the necessity to display confidence and courage before his court.
‘Have you heard anything?’ he’d ask. Ever since his secret negotiations in that very room with the O’Conor’s agent he had regarded Finn as his pipeline to underground information.
‘Only that the High King is camped with most of Ireland at Clondalkin, ready to intercept Strongbow,’ Finn told him, ‘but you know that.’ There had been no news from Lough Mask and she was worried.
‘Why isn’t he here?’ moaned Asgall, ‘Strongbow doesn’t have to come via Clondalkin. Dermot can lead him through Wicklow like silver-finned salmon leap a fall. Yet my assistance-pleas bring no High King to my aid.’
Finn poured him more wine. He was right. The O’Conor had entrenched himself across the major roads leading to Dublin and was apparently ignoring the fact that Dermot knew the backways to it like his own hand. She’d begged him to ring the city, but he’d said it was cleverer to catch the Normans at Clondalkin. She lost all faith in him; she suspected his obtuseness was a subconscious fear of a confrontation he might lose.
‘If they come I shall go to my brother-king of Orkney for reinforcements,’ said Asgall. ‘Our combined Viking blood shall smite the upstart Norman.’
Finn raised her eyes. So far Viking blood had combined to smite bugger-all, but the idea comforted Asgall in his terror that Waterford could be re-enacted at Dublin. He drained his cup and then stood up to fling it away. ‘And where is Dervorgilla now? Has the harlot hanged herself in shame at bringing this disaster on our shores?’
‘Dervorgilla?’ Finn tried to understand him. ‘You mean O’Rourke of Breffni’s Dervorgilla?’
‘Who else is so blameworthy?’ roared Asgall and ticked off his reasoning on his stout, chewed fingers. ‘Did the bitch not betray her husband with Dermot of Leinster? Therefore did not her husband in his righteous desire for revenge force Dermot into exile? And was it not that which sent Dermot into the arms of the Normans? Her name shall be written with dishonour in the annals of Ireland.’
‘That was eighteen years ago,’ Finn shouted back at him. ‘How could you possibly…?’
‘Time does not rob an act of its infamy.’
‘Oh,’ said Finn, ‘Oh… go away, you stupid oaf.’
It was not the courtesy which the landlady of the Swan usually accorded her guests, but Finn had completely lost her temper and Asgall was so put out by it that he weaved down the stairs and left, making a rift between him and his favourite inn.
Finn slammed the door behind him and paced her room. The idiot, the great, swag-bellied, jelly-hearted, pose-striking, booze-brained… male. Realisation made her go cold.
That’s what they would say. In this room she had heard the verdict of male history. With their ambition and conniving and the blood of their filthy wars still on their hands, they would look around for a scapegoat so that they did not have to blame themselves and find their oldest, deepest fear. Not Dermot, not O’Rourke, not O’Conor, not the Normans, all these had only been misguided in the way of man. They would blame a woman, a romantic, gentle, silly woman.
‘I’ll give them scapegoat,’ said Finn and fetched the Word of Woman from Vives’ box. She would write it as it was, now, quickly, so that the truth could exist somewhere. Where was the harlot now? Finn knew where she was. The Abbess of Kildare had told her, and on her way back from Lough Mask this last time she had called in at the monastery of Clonmacnois sprawling its great size along the flat, wide, banks of the Shannon. She had skirted the long wall to the causeway where waders bobbed their beaks into the mud, and climbed up the rise between trees to the tiny church and its outbuildings that were out of the monastery’s sight and there, in the habit of a nun, she had found Dervorgilla and told her that her daughter was alive and well.
Dervorgilla smiled. ‘She was my sin, you know. They took her away from me. I do penance for her every day. Do you think God hears the prayers of a wicked woman?’
‘Yes.’
‘O’Rourke let me build this church so that God would not think so ill of me. He’s been very kind. I was allowed to help the mason with the design. Do you like it?’
‘Very much.’ Miniature, beautiful, its perfectly-proportioned doorway and roof were a feminine placation of a disapproving god. The nuns who looked after Dervorgilla stood at a distance, watching like wardresses.
‘I hope they let me stay here.’ Dervorgilla’s little face under its veil had not aged but its vagueness had become impenetrable, like a mist between her and a harsh world. From behind it her pansy eyes stared at Finn. ‘I know you, don’t I? We met somewhere.’
‘Once. A long time ago. I did you a great wrong and I beg your forgiveness.’
Dervorgilla nodded. The nuns were signalling her to come away; she had talked long enough. ‘Everything was a long time ago,’ she said.
‘Men begin to say, now that affliction has come upon them,’ wrote Finn in her tower room, ‘that Dervorgilla of Breffni by her adultery with Dermot of Leinster brought down God’s wrath upon Ireland, but this is the alteration of reason by which men excuse their own actions, for Dervorgilla was a victim…’
She wrote for a long time, experiencing her usual difficulty, until exhaustion forced her to break off. She sprinkled sand over her manuscript, cleaned her quill as Brother Pinginn had taught her, blew the sand off the words, rolled up the vellum and put it back in Vives’ box. Having begged God to safeguard all who were precious to her and made special mention of a nun of Clonmacnois, she blew out her candle and went to bed.
Crouched in the centre room of the tower at the foot of the stairs leading to the upper story, Elfwida saw the light go out. As she always did, she waited until Finn’s breathing became regular, then she climbed up the stairs and crossed on bare
feet to Vives’ box, opened it and took out the vellum. Back in her own room she lit her candles from the brazier and set it by the board which Pinginn had made for her, wriggled her hand down inside her dress and took out a membrane which she had scraped and prepared by herself.
Putting Finn’s manuscript by the side of hers she began to copy it.
* * *
Because Finn didn’t know what to do, she did very little. She wanted to be at Lough Mask but was afraid that if she set off she would miss the arrival of Lief and Tailltin; besides, she would be out of the way if any news came in of the Pilgrim’s whereabouts. She made some preparation for an emergency, provisioning the tower with food and arms and keeping a curragh moored in the secret cave beneath the tower. Thinking of every possible scenario, she and Pinginn dragged the Jews’ vat of still-untouched kosher wine over the trapdoor so that intruders into the tower wouldn’t see that there was an exit and intruders from below couldn’t use it as an entrance. She got Gorm to make slots and a bar on the inside of the tower door leading to the inn – its only other entrance.
One of the many burdens on her during those waiting days was the Word of Woman. Apart from the fact that it gave away who she was and what she had done, that it should exist, a tiny, whispering descant to the deafening roar of men, became daily more important. She started carrying it in her sleeve by day and tucked it under her pillow at night. ‘If anything ever happens to me,’ she told Brother Pinginn and Elfwida, ‘try and get the manuscript to safety.’
‘What do you want done with it?’ asked Pinginn.
Elfwida asked, ‘Why, what’s in it?’
* * *
That night she was back in Lough Mask but a fog was over the lake and the dead were moving in it, laughing at her. Niav; her mother; Scathagh; were laughing at her inability to move. ‘Wake up,’ they jeered at her, ‘wake up.’
She woke up. It was Elfwida. ‘The geese are cackling.’ She could hear them.
It could be a fox, or a dog, or one of the lepers after her chickens again. ‘You and Pinginn and Gorm get down to the boat,’ she said, dragging on her boots and putting a dagger down the sheath she’d sewn into the right one. The rest of the staff had taken to going back into the safety of the city at nights. But Elfwida was looking out of the north window. ‘There’s movement on the other bank.’ Finn pushed her out of the way. There was a weak moon but enough to show her, who knew every tree on the bank, that there were shapes where no shapes should be.
They might still get out to sea, but she didn’t know what lay behind the hill on the south bank. It could be O’Conor’s army come to defend Dublin properly at last. She dressed the rest of herself. ‘Well, stay here. Fetch the others and lock yourselves in and don’t answer until I tell you.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Elfwida, following her down the steps into the dark inn. Pinginn and Gorm were already there. ‘The geese are upset.’
She gave up trying to keep them safe and led them out onto the quay and round to the orchard by the inn’s gable end. To have gone out by the kitchen door would have silhouetted them against the banked-up fire. Scathagh-craft. You’ll need it. The milch cows were moving restlessly in the byre.
Lazy Hill and the leper hospital were outlined against a dark-grey sky by the beginning of dawn. The hill had sprung crocuses overnight, hundreds of them, colourless steel crocuses which rose up in accelerated growth to become helmets with bodies underneath, advancing down the slope.
‘Back.’ They ran for the kitchen door but more shapes stood in their way and then surrounded them so that the four of them became the sepals in a flower of swords.
Chapter Fourteen
If she hadn’t been sure the Normans were going to do it for her anyway, Finn would have cut her own throat. She deserved to die for her criminality in allowing Elfwida and Brother Pinginn to fall into their hands. While the Normans searched the inn and she stood under guard in her own kitchen with her arms round the girl and the priest, she was terrified only for them.
‘Don’t be frightened God is with us I’m not frightened,’ babbled Pinginn. Finn hugged him closer. ‘Stop being silly.’ These metalled men would kill him for being silly. They would rape Elfwida. She’d kill them first; she still had the dagger in her boot. If they got a chance to reach the tower they could still get away, if the vat hadn’t been moved to expose the trapdoor. Oh Jesus, the Word of Woman was underneath her pillow.
Disinterested eyes watched them from the shadows of the guards’ helmets.
A bigger, rounder metal figure came through the door from the common parlour. ‘Nice inn, this,’ it said in Norman French. ‘Too many arms in the tower, though. What have we got here, Jacques?’
‘The staff, I reckon,’ said one of the helmets, ‘and a priest.’
‘Get the interpreter.’ The big figure put up its hands, took off its helmet and became a fat-faced young man whose fair, curly hair stuck to his scalp in sweaty leaves. He ran his fingers through it. ‘Anything to eat?’ One of the soldiers took down a ham and began carving it with his dagger, another brought the bread jar and a cheese. ‘Give me a plate and then fill yourselves.’
The were disciplined, thought Finn; they hadn’t touched the food until the fat man told them, though now they fell on it like starving dogs. The fat man turned up his nose at the offer of ale. ‘There’s a vat of goodish wine in the tower cellar. Bring a couple of jugs.’ The prisoners stood very still.
The interpreter who came in looked like an ex-sailor and certainiy wasn’t Irish, though he spoke it adequately, if without refinements. ‘Yes, my lord Raymond?’
So this would be Earl Raymond – they all called themselves ‘Earl’ – the nephew of FitzStephen, another Geraldine, and known to his contemporaries as ‘Le Gros’. He’d come over in the second wave of invaders.
‘Tell these people they’re lucky. They’ve been occupied by the kindest man in Christendom if he’s obeyed. Tell them he’s a demon from hell if he isn’t.’
While the man translated, Finn thought, ‘You’re all bastards, whoever you are.’ Raymond had been one of the attackers at Waterford. Now he distorted his fat face as he jumped about, scratching his armpits, to show how terrible he could be. Under their helmets a couple of his men smiled.
‘Right. Ask them where the owner of the inn is.’ He turned to his men. ‘Nice inn. I’ll take this land, I think. Might build a castle here. Good position up on the hill.’
Brother Pinginn answered in Irish. ‘We don’t know.’ He sounded dull-witted.
‘They probably don’t,’ Raymond said, ‘I expect he got out days ago, Irish scum. Ask them who is it in this place who can scribe. We found two writing boards upstairs and a manuscript under a pillow. Wouldn’t think it, would you?’
There was a silence. ‘I can,’ said Pinginn.
‘Irish? Norman? Latin?’
‘Irish and Latin.’
‘Good enough. You can scribe for me. Never thought to bring a bloody secretary and I don’t trust Strongbow’s. Or Dermot’s. Ask them what a nun’s habit is doing here? Found it in the cellar.’
Pinginn was at a loss and so was Finn, but the interpreter saved them. ‘The innkeeper’s probably got a relative who’s a nun. Terrible, isn’t it, a nun in an inn, but that’s the way these Irish carry on.’
Raymond jutted his jowls at Elfwida and Finn. ‘Can’t you two talk?’
‘That’s Irishwomen all over,’ the interpreter said, ‘Faces intelligent and minds as thick as pigshit. Good workers, though.’
‘Tell them they’re now working for me,’ said Raymond. ‘Tell them if they look after me and my soldiers properly, they won’t be harmed. And I mean that, Jacques. If one bugger so much as looks up their skirts I’ll have him flogged. They can make do with the camp followers and any willing girls in the city when we get there. You hear me? If we’re going to live here I don’t want to keep looking over my shoulder for a dagger in the back.’
‘Yes, my lord.’
There
was a disturbance in the nobles’ parlour and more soldiers brought in Perse and Molling. The miller looked appalled, Perse looked just the same.
‘Says he owns the mill over the creek, sir. We got them crossing the bridge – I think they’d heard the troops and were coming to the tower for safety.’
Raymond smiled. ‘Wrong on both counts. Tell him it’s my mill now. He just runs it.’
Perse saw that the inn had visitors and reacted accordingly. ‘I got nice soup ready,’ she said, ‘I’ll heat it up. Persingly, I think hot soup’s always better when it’s heated up.’
As they watched her stoke up the fire and hang a cauldron over it, the interpreter translated. Raymond looked at Pinginn. ‘What does she do here? Apart from push back the frontiers of thought for the rest of us?’
‘She’s the cook.’
‘I like her. Right. I now annexe this inn in the name of God, Earl Richard of Striguil also known as Strongbow, the King of Leinster and me. I’ll want hot meals and palliasses for fifty. The women can sleep, when they do sleep, down in the tower cellar. Locked in. Safer. My quarters are at the top. You, sir priest, can start taking dictation. Jump to it, the lot of you.’
It was a long day. Elfwida, Perse, Finn and Gorm worked like slaves, preparing food, cooking, serving, filling mattresses. Each one could have escaped twenty times over, but alone. Only one of them at a time was ever allowed into the tower by the sentry at the door. Most of the soldiers spoke Welsh, a few Flemish, even fewer Norman. There was no doubting the efficiency of Le Gros for whom his men – even if they called him ‘Fatty’ among themselves – had respect and liking. The soldiers guarding the hill and the river were relieved regularly for food and sleep. Captain Jacques had relayed the order that the women were to be treated with propriety and it was obeyed; anyway, most of the men were too tired to be anything but surly. Finn gathered the forced march through Hy Kinsella country had been hard going. Bitterly she admired the achievement in encircling Dublin while the Irish army which was supposed to protect it was still unaware the city was besieged.
Daughter of Lir Page 44