Strongbow put out his arm to beckon Aoife forward and Dermot put a hand on Aoife’s arm to urge her towards him. It was the colour of fungus against the white cloth. Aoife kept staring after her sisters though the Hy Kinsella blocked them from her view. Finn put up her hand. Aoife’s eyes shifted towards the movement, and recognition came into her face. Finn’s hand made the sign of the cross, then she gave the signal which Scathagh had taught them to use when the hags needed a diversion.
Beauty returned to Aoife for a moment as she smiled at Finn. Then she threw back her head and screamed.
The choir stopped, its singers’ mouth still open in chant. The congregation, which had turned its head to watch Aoife come up the aisle, stayed in that position. Strongbow’s hand remained outstretched. It was as if a disastrous drop in temperature had frozen everybody into ice figures, except Aoife who kept on screaming. Even Finn couldn’t move for a second, then she pushed her way to Slaney and Dervorgilla. ‘It’s time to go.’
They didn’t hear her, they could only hear Aoife. Finn took her daughter by her shoulders and shook her. Nobody noticed; she could have gone out into the nave and danced and nobody would have noticed. ‘You’ve got to come with me. Listen to her. Listen to what she’s saying.
Aoife’s screams were formulating words. ‘Go. I. Don’t. Need. You. Go.’
Slaney sobbed. She took Dervorgilla’s hand and Finn took hold of hers and together they pushed their way through to the back of the Lady Chapel. Nuns stood on tiptoe as they got in the way of their view, so that they could see what was happening in the nave. Aoife was still screaming but as her sisters disappeared through the door in the wall, she turned the scream into an ululation of triumph.
* * *
Outside there was rain and grass, a wall and Brother Pinginn. They hauled each other up, hardly aware they were doing it. Aoife’s voice clanged through their heads. Vaguely Finn noticed it was still light; she’d hoped it was night by now. They’d stand a better chance.
Lief had found only four horses. In the hope that she’d look the part of a military escort Tailltin had put on a leather hauberk and wore a helmet, but her slightness compared with Lief robbed them both of conviction; one too small, the other too big. Finn and Slaney got up on the bigger of the two spare horses and Pinginn, oohing with nerves, was pushed into the saddle of the other. Dervorgilla steed-leapt up behind him and held on.
‘Trot,’ commanded Lief. ‘Not walk, not canter, trot. More official.’
The lane was cobbled and the shod hooves stuck like hammers. Some soldiers who were lounging on the cathedral wall jumped down in front of them. ‘Give us one of the girls, mate. You got two spares.’ They were drunk. One of them put his hand on his hip and minced. ‘I’ll have the fairy.’ They made a grab at Finn’s bridle, but she put her horse at them and knocked them out of the way so that they rolled on the cobbles, shouting abuse. As they trotted away Finn glanced at the grey bulk of the cathedral. How long had they got before somebody, Dermot, Murchadh, noticed the girls were gone?
Lief paused at the end of the lane; left, Fishamble Street went past the fish market and down to the wharves, right, it followed the wall of the cathedral. They went left and turned into the market heading for Dames Gate. They had to slow to a walk because of the rubble which littered nearly every yard of ground. ‘There’ll be a curfew,’ called Tailltin. They would lock the gates.
They passed more soldiers staggering from looted liquor. In the aftermath of capturing the city, they were free to take what they could; conquerors’ perks. Some of them had boxes under their arms with furs and dresses thrown across their shoulders. Dazed from killing and rape, they didn’t question the odd cavalcade that passed them, though frequently they stopped it, offering comradely wine to Lief and Tailltin, grabbing the girls’ skirts. It was getting darker by the minute. ‘They’ll lock the gates, they’ll lock the gates,’ Finn whispered to herself.
In the absence of orders, the army was disorderly; so it was the cavalcade’s back luck to come across one of the few men in Dublin who had been given a command and insisted on carrying it out. He was the soldier in charge of the Dames Gate guard. ‘Can’t come through,’ he said.
‘Open up, mate,’ said Lief. ‘Got to escort these people to Mary’s Abbey. Orders of Earl Raymond.’
The sergeant picked his teeth. ‘Gate’s closed. Orders of Earl Miles.’ He looked closer. ‘Who are they, anyway?’
Lief wheeled his horse left and trotted off into the maze of devastation downhill, heading for the river. The others followed. Behind them the soldier called out the guard.
Following the city wall, making detours past collapsed buildings, they were heading north and west when all the time the only safety lay east. They’ll close the gates. They’ll be after us by now.
They had got so used to having smoke in their nostrils that the smell of the river was like the scent of home, but it came from over the wall. St Tulloch’s Lane was on their left; any moment they’d be at Fish Slip, the southern exit to the wharves. There were flares ahead of them and shapes moving.
The steep slope of Fish Slip had been lined with drinking taverns. Most of them had survived the fire and now they had attracted large numbers of Strongbow’s common soldiery. It had never been a salubrious area; tonight it was a scene from hell. At least three landlords were hanging by the neck from their own eaves like pub signs, swinging and dripping in the rain. The others were sensibly dispensing free drink as fast as they could hand it over to the crowd of soldiers, camp followers and city prostitutes who crammed the bars, sat in the windows and overflowed into the road to watch carts carrying corpses go by down to the river. The Dublin dead were being thrown into the Liffey.
Survivors ran alongside the carts searching for their relatives while watching Normans shouted joking encouragement. Every so often one of the soldiers would see a woman he fancied and rushed into the road to take her, struggling and shrieking, into an alley. A very young girl was being raped in front of one of the inns while a queue of men stood by waiting their turn.
Lief slowed to a walk, keeping his horse’s head well up, smiling, returning the jovial obscenities of the crowd as, slowly, the cavalcade threaded its way down the slip. They were halfway down, three quarters. They had an unobstructured view through an archway to the river. The open gate to the quay was blocked with carts. Beyond it each pony was being taken out of its shafts and the contents of its cart tipped over the edge of the wharf. More soldiers, more torches lighting green-white corpses as they splashed into the water and bobbed.
Lief’s teeth showed under his helmet. ‘Get the bloody carts out the way,’ he shouted amiably to the soldier in charge. He’d misjudged it. Slowly the man waved one of the carts through, leaving a small gap, but he stood in it, looking up at Lief. He had a sword in his hand and he was fed up. ‘Think I like this?’
Lief put his hands up, conciliating. ‘Sorry, mate.’ But the soldier still blocked the way: ‘Well I don’t.’ He was drunk, but not enough. ‘I don’t like you, come to that.’ He peered. ‘You look like one of those fucking Vikings from Waterford. Didn’t like them either.’
From up the hill behind them the great bell of the cathedral began to clang. Around them men laughed. ‘That’s old Strongbow getting his end away.’ But the soldier in the gap said, ‘It’s not. It’s the alarm. Got to shut the gates on the alarm. Orders.’ He turned to his detail. ‘Shut the gates.’
Lief’s mailed boot landed under the man’s chin and broke his neck. ‘Get through.’ They put their horses at the gap and were through. Behind them somebody shouted, ‘Bastards. Mount up. Get them.’
The wharf was crowded with carts, men and equipment. They turned right and galloped through, kicking at baskets, heads, everything in their way. Finn knew they wouldn’t make it. She got the dagger from her boot and slashed at a face. Slaney kicked out at another. They were at the end of the wharf, it was clearer here, but darker. They had to follow the narrow ledge of a walkwa
y right round, back the way they had come on the other side of the wall to Dames Bridge. There was a howl of recognition from the guards at Dames Gate, hooves clattering, orders to stop. A sentry on the bridge leapt into the water to get out of their way as they charged across it.
The blessed open space of Hogges Green was around them, but there were horses pounding behind. Finn tightened her grip on Slaney’s waist and looked back; there were a dozen torches at least flickering as they were galloped through the rain.
‘Where’s the boat?’
‘Opposite the convent.’
She wouldn’t know the tree she’d tied it to; in this murk all trees looked alike. The rain had turned the ground to marsh and their horses were slowing in the mud. Christ, Christ, where was the river? The tide was leaving it. It was in channels with wide stretches of slit between. They couldn’t make it.
She saw Lief wheel between branches, dismount and fumble at a painter she had tied to a trunk in another life. There was a vast expanse of mud between them and flowing water. It gleamed in the wet. They couldn’t make it. They threw themselves off the horses and dragged at the boat, silt sucking their feet down into itself so that each step was a jerk of the knee and they moved like sleepy puppets. There’d been nightmares when she ran and ran on the spot like this as horror advanced at her back. Slaney slipped. Finn hauled her up. The boat was heavy but it glissaded over the silt as they pulled. Tailltin had an arrow sticking out of her leather arm and there was a spear rattling between the thwarts of the curragh.
She heard somebody, Pinginn, say crossly: ‘Oh, this is hopeless. I love you, Finn,’ and he’d gone. She had no breath to call him back. She would kill him when she got hold of him. They were splashing through water, they were up to their waists and the boat was floating. She pushed Slaney so hard that the girl went headlong into the curragh. Tailltin was in, and Dervorgilla. She was in and they were low in the water. Lief? She saw him swimmimg beside her, one hand pushing the boat. ‘Row.’
Somebody else rowed. She looked back and saw Pinginn, a small crab, wading towards the torches where men stood still, not pursuing, not now if the boat got away as long as they had somebody to kill. She heard his voice, artificial, pretending to be brave. ‘Now don’t be naughty, boys,’ before they closed in and held the torches high so that they could see what they were doing. ‘Where are you?’ she was shouting, ‘Where’s God?’ She heard Lief say something important but it didn’t register then. The scene on the mudflats got smaller and smaller as they pulled away from it. It had activity and from it came the scream of a hare being torn to bits. It followed them out onto the peace of the Liffey where dead bodies floated quietly alongside them.
‘I am very tired,’ said Finn to herself. ‘Very tired.’ There were things to be done and the shape of the Thingmount was travelling by her in the darkness. Ahead the tower of her inn stuck up against the clouds like an admonition. ‘Well,’ said Finn. She took a deep breath. Slaney and Dervorgilla were doing the rowing. She leaned out towards Tailltin’s helmet and tapped it. ‘You promised now,’ she said and saw Tailltin’s hands grip hard onto Lief’s wrist. Finn cupped her own hands round Slaney’s face.‘That’s my girl,’ she said, gently, ‘I must go home,’ and slithered overboard.
She heard Lief splashing and crying, and Tailltin shouting at him. Don’t let him come after me; he can get into the boat now. The current took her away from them towards the Stein where it would push her out into the river again and then back, with luck, into the undercroft cave, but it didn’t matter if it did or it didn’t. Her habit weighed her down and it wasn’t nearly as nice swimming here as in Lough Mask with Pilgrim, too many difficulties. Somebody tapped her on the shoulder and the corpse of a young man bumped against her. She pushed it away though she was quite polite about it. ‘I’m afraid I can’t stop.’
Elfwida and Perse waiting by the trapdoor saw another body float into the cave – there had been several – but this one talked gently to itself as it sank and rolled in the last stages of drowning. They hauled it in.
Chapter Fifteen
Alarmed by the glow of fire in the distance, and much too late, Ruairi O’Conor moved his ponderous army to Dublin. Even then he ringed it at a distance out of range of the enemy’s longbows for which the Irish had learned respect. They’d also learned not to face a Norman cavalry carge so they kept clear of the flat land around the city, like Hogges and Stephen’s Green in the east, and the Poddle marsh and the horse-market to the south and west. Nevertheless with the numbers at his disposal O’Conor was able to make his siege tight enough to stop any living thing bigger than a squirrel crossing its lines. That night he sent his herald to arrange a meeting.
Since he didn’t trust Dermot and Dermot didn’t trust anybody, the two sides met at the top of Lazy Hill, near the leper house, from which both contingents could see the other’s forces and, in case of treachery, retire easily back to their own.
Glimmering with jewellery and fine linen, the Irish outshone the Normans in their war-stained mail, although even they did not lower the tone as much as the lepers who had refused evacuation, knowing that they were sacrosanct, and leaned out of their windows jeering with even-handed animosity at both sides.
At first the O’Conor directed his remarks to Dermot. He still thought of Strongbow and the other Normans as transient mercenaries.
‘Contrary to the terms of our treaty,’ he said, ‘you have invited a host of foreigners into this island. So long as you confined your operations within your ancient kingdom of Leinster we bore it patiently, but now you have passed the limits assigned and insolently crossed even your hereditary boundaries. Either you restrain yourself and your foreign troops, or I shall certainly send to you the decapitated head of your own son.’
An interpreter murmured a translation to the Normans. It all seemed very procedural, nothing to do with life and death. A soft, damp breeze moved the bannerets as courteously as the words had been uttered. Those standing beside Dermot shifted upwind; he was beginning to smell awful.
‘These are my ancestral lands.’ Dermot’s voice was cracked and seemed to be laughing. The arm he swept around at the river, the forests, at Ireland, shook like his nodding head. There was a gold bracelet on it in the shape of a snake. ‘I am the rightful Ard-Ri of this land. I am High King.’
Ruairi raised his eyebrows. Then he gestured to the herald in turn who gestured down to the Irish tents. Out of them were pushed two young men with their arms tied behind them. ‘Do you recognise them, Mac Murrough? Your son? Your grandson?’ Ruairi asked the question because there was doubt whether Dermot did; he peered down the hill briefly and then looked beyond it.
‘They are my hostages, Mac Murrough,’ insisted Ruairi O’Conor, ‘You gave them. You broke our treaty and it is my right to kill them.’
‘How beautiful Tara is,’ said Dermot.
Helplessly, the O’Conor said, ‘He thinks he really is High King.’
‘He isn’t.’ Strongbow stepped forward. ‘But I am. I inherit Ireland through his daughter whom I have married.’
The O’Conor was amused. ‘You own nothing of Ireland, not even the bits of coast you presently occupy. Dermot should have told you, there is no inheritance through the female line in Irish law.’
‘There is no Irish law,’ said Strongbow.
Perhaps at that point full realisation came to Ruairi O’Conor, perhaps not, but from then on he addressed himself to the Norman.
Raymond Le Gros stopped listening; it didn’t matter what was said anyway; he and the others would possess Ireland sooner or later. He liked Ireland. He liked the way the Irish dressed and the way they spoke and the ridiculous way they thought, their funny music, even the bloody weather. He didn’t mind killing them, but he liked a rest between doing it. The two hostages down there were about his own age: they probably wanted to live as much as he did; if it was up to him, he’d let them. He switched his attention back. The O’Conor tribesman was getting ruffled. He was saying, �
��Why should I talk terms? A nestling has more ground for negotiation than you, who are outnumbered twenty to one. If you won’t go, I shall starve you out.’
‘You can try,’ said Strongbow.
* * *
Ruairi O’Conor was a kind man, but he was a traditionalist.
Later that night two heavy leather-wrapped balls were thrown across No Man’s Land to Le Gros’ men who were holding the lines along Lazy Hill. ‘What the hell are they playing at?’ said Captain Jacques, picking them up. ‘Oh, Christ.’ He took the heads of Dermot’s son and grandson down to his commander at the inn.
The sight of them made Raymond cross. ‘Bloody unnecessary,’ he said. ‘What’s the point of revenge on a man who doesn’t count any more? Barbaric bloody carry-on.’
He was already in a temper from having found, on retrieving his staff from the undercroft, that one of them was missing. ‘And it was the scribe, the only bloody useful one among ’em,’ he complained to Captain Jacques.
‘Where’d he go?’
‘God knows. I slapped the rest about a bit, especially the miller, but they wouldn’t say. There was a bloody chute into the river down there all the time, hidden under the wine. He got out that way, little bastard, hope he drowned. The rest were too scared to follow him. Anyway, the older woman’s ill. Get her over to the mill. I’m not having the bloody plague in my inn.’
‘She’ll get away.’
Raymond looked at his second-in-command and asked God to give him patience. ‘Where’s she going to go? Across the lines? If O’Conor’s got any sense, which I doubt, he’ll shoot anything that tries to get through his lines. Friend or foe. To encourage the others. He’s going to starve us, you stupid sod. He’ll want every mouth to stay inside the perimeter and eat up our food. That’s what he’ll do if he knows anything about war. That’s what I’d do. That’s what Fitzempress did at Verneuil.’ He stopped short. It had been a nasty moment on that hilltop when Strongbow had revealed his hand. It didn’t matter about the Irish, but if Fitzempress ever learned that one of his earls was making himself king of a neighbouring country…
Daughter of Lir Page 47