Strongbow

by Morgan Llywelyn

  I didn’t need anyone to tell me that the man in the battered armour was –

  ‘Strongbow!’ cried my father, hurrying forward.

  Strongbow was not what I expected. In my mind, a man with that name should have been a splendid giant, more mighty than anyone, with lightning flashing from his eyes. A warrior like Cuchulain, who could freeze his enemies’ blood with a glance.

  Richard de Clare wasn’t like that at all. He was just a man, almost as old as my father, a tired-looking man with grime on his face. He had taken off his iron helmet and held it cradled in one arm. His hair was sandy-red, and thinning. When he spoke his voice was almost as high as a woman’s.

  ‘I see you’ve brought one of my rewards,’ he said to Father. Then he looked into my eyes, and smiled as if pleasantly surprised.

  Chapter 18

  RICHARD

  A Strange Irish Custom

  Waterford town had been bravely defended by its people. Fear made them fight even harder. They were afraid of us because of what my uncle had done to their most important men. It had been a brutal act, and when I learned of it I wasn’t pleased. I don’t think it’s wise policy in time of war to make people hate you too much. That can make peace impossible, later.

  My uncle and I argued over it, and over the fate of the two chieftains of the town. At last we had come to an agreement. One was executed, to satisfy Hervey de Montmorency and those who thought like him, and the other was spared to balance the scales. I wanted these strangers to know that I could show mercy.

  Waterford was ours. The first step was taken, there was no going back.

  Dermot Mac Murrough arrived with the first of my rewards, the one that would assure me of the others. ‘Strongbow!’ he called as he came striding towards me through the ruined town.

  Beside him was a very young woman, with heavy red hair and Dermot’s own wilful expression. She was surely the daughter he had promised me as a wife. I liked the look of her. Her mouth was shaped for laughing.

  She was not laughing now, however. She didn’t look happy, she looked more like a shy child. For a moment she put me in mind of my sister Basilia, though they were not in any way alike.

  I smiled at her gently, as I would have smiled at Basilia.

  A spot of colour came into her cheeks then. She raised her chin and drew a deep breath. Her fists were clenched, but she held them down at her sides as if hoping I wouldn’t notice. I watched her put on her courage like a cloak, and meet me with her head up.

  ‘This is the princess Aoife of the Red Hair,’ said Dermot Mac Murrough.

  He was proud of her. His eyes told me.

  There was soot on her face and her clothing was stained with mud and cinders, but Aoife was like a bright light in that dark place. She was tall and strongly built for a girl, and in her face was the pride of kings.

  I was very pleasantly surprised. In marriage a man takes what he gets, because marriage is arranged to unite powerful families or to make new allies, and the daughters of important men are often plain. I hadn’t expected anything more of this one.

  But one thing was more important to me than her beauty.

  Dermot had told me I would be his heir, I would succeed him as King of Leinster. Under English law, my marriage to his daughter made that certain. His crown would pass to me, I thought, and he had given me Aoife just as he would give me the crown. The two went together. Or so I thought.

  I didn’t know anything yet about Irish law.

  Having seen and admired my bride-to-be, I began talking with Dermot Mac Murrough. The tall red-haired girl stood between us for a few moments, then added her voice to ours. Her Latin was just as good as mine, I was startled to discover.

  ‘Why are you discussing my marriage as if I weren’t here?’ she wanted to know. ‘I haven’t yet said I would marry this man, Father.’

  ‘Of course I’ll marry her,’ I told Dermot over her head.

  Aoife stamped her foot. ‘But I mightn’t marry you!’ she said directly to me.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. How could a woman refuse to marry the man her father selected for her?

  I looked at Dermot Mac Murrough. He wouldn’t meet my eyes. ‘What is this?’ I asked.

  My uncle coughed. ‘Ah … there’s something you should know, Richard. About these Irish.’

  ‘What is it?’ I asked impatiently. My men were staring at us.

  ‘A woman must give permission to the marriage, you can’t force her,’ my uncle told me.

  I was astonished. That was like asking a cow’s permission before you bought it!

  Raymond le Gros snorted with laughter. I turned to glare at him. Then I looked back at Aoife. She was watching me very closely. I felt as if she was weighing me in her mind.

  I was in a strange country, among people with strange customs. It would be so easy to make a mistake and not even know I had done so.

  If it was the custom among the Irish, it would surely do no harm to ask Aoife to marry me, I decided. It would be just a formality, of course. The marriage had long ago been agreed between her father and myself.

  Or so I had thought. Watching her, I wasn’t sure. She had a mind of her own, her eyes told me. She might well refuse me. This was a young woman who might well turn on her heel and walk away from me, leaving me alone with the men laughing at me.

  I had never been in such a position before, not with a woman. I didn’t want her to turn her back and walk away. Chewing the inside of my lip, I tried to think of the right words to say.

  ‘Please,’ I began. That sounded all right. ‘Please.’ It was easier the second time, but I mustn’t beg. I was Strongbow, Norman knight, conqueror of Waterford. I swallowed hard. ‘Marry me,’ I said.

  She was still looking at me with that measuring look. She unclenched her fists, and began playing with her long braids. For the first time I noticed something else, and I thought it was an Irish custom too. Long, narrow stones had been pushed through her plaits here and there. I wondered if the Irish thought that was beautiful. What an odd people!

  I smiled at Aoife again, hopefully. I didn’t know what else to do.

  The silence had grown very long when at last she smiled back. Her face was indeed made for smiling. ‘I shall marry you, Richard de Clare,’ she decided.

  Suddenly I felt as if I was standing in a beam of sunlight.

  Until he let it out in a sigh, I didn’t realise that Dermot had been holding his breath. She could have refused me, then, and he couldn’t have forced her. The choice had been hers!

  I had had a narrow escape.

  There was talk then of the marriage to take place tomorrow. Aoife had her own ideas, and said what she thought. Irish women must be like that, I told myself.

  ‘I want to be married in the cathedral, with the bishop,’ Aoife said firmly.

  ‘This cathedral?’ Dermot asked.

  ‘I would rather be married in Dublin, with Archbishop O’Toole giving us his blessing, Father, but Dublin is in the hands of your enemies,’ Aoife replied. ‘So Waterford will do.’ She turned toward me. ‘You’re going to capture Dublin though, aren’t you?’

  ‘Of course I am. Er, we are,’ I assured her.

  She nodded, satisfied, and stopped toying with her hair.

  That evening, while Waterford still smouldered, we held a council of war and agreed to march on Dublin next.

  After my marriage to Aoife of the Red Hair.

  Chapter 19

  AOIFE

  The Marriage of Aoife and Strongbow

  Long afterwards, people claimed I was radiantly beautiful on the day I married Richard de Clare. I don’t remember what I looked like. I remember that the sun shone, and there were crowds of people. Even the defeated citizens of Waterford lined the lanes, hoping for a glimpse of the two of us. It would have been like a fair, had there not been the smell of smoke and death still hanging over the town.

  There were no stones in my plaits on my wedding day. Indeed, my hair wasn’t brai
ded at all, but had been washed in water scented with French oil, and combed until it fell down my back in deep waves. My gown was of pale linen, set in a hundred pleats, and my shoes were of kidskin, soft and fine and sewn with gilded thread.

  The bishop of Waterford, a stout man with a tonsure, married us. I don’t remember the words he said. My mind kept playing tricks on me, thinking of other things. I recalled the day of Urla’s wedding, and Conor and me eating stolen food and making ourselves sick. Thinking about it, I chuckled.

  Richard heard me. He was standing beside me in his armour, polished for the occasion, and he was looking very serious.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ he asked me in a whisper.

  My Father, and the bishop, and so many noble warriors were all around us. I couldn’t tell Richard about the stolen food, not then. So I merely said, ‘Because I’m happy.’ And to my surprise, it was true.

  He gave me another smile then. ‘And so am I,’ he said wonderingly. ‘I’ll have a wife who laughs!’

  We knelt before the bishop and Richard promised on his sword and his name and his honour to defend the Faith and to observe the obligations of marriage. I had no sword to swear on, but the bishop held the Psalter for me and I swore on God’s words to be a good wife to my husband.

  Then we prayed. Irish and Norman and Norseman together, Christians together, we knelt in God’s house and prayed.

  When we went out under the sky again, I was a married woman.

  No sooner did I leave the cathedral than an attendant came running to me to bind up my hair. Married women shouldn’t wear their hair loose.

  But I hated having my hair bound. I pushed her away. ‘I’m the wife of Strongbow now,’ I said, ‘and if I don’t want my hair fastened, then I’ll wear it down my back for as long as I like.’

  The woman stared at me with wide eyes. But my new husband smiled. ‘You have spirit,’ he said.

  I think he wasn’t used to smiling. But every time he did, it came easier, so I tried to think of things that I could do to make him smile. When he wasn’t scowling and looking serious he seemed almost young.

  We held our wedding feast in what had been the hall of the executed Norse chieftain. This time I didn’t have to steal the food. All the best morsels were put on my trencher of bread. While people all around us were eating and drinking, I told Richard about Urla’s wedding and what had happened to Conor and me.

  He threw back his head and burst into a great laugh that rang through the room. Hervey de Montmorency put down the chunk of roast meat he was eating and said in surprise, ‘I never heard you laugh like that in your life, Richard!’

  The man I had married replied, ‘I never had such a woman beside me before, Uncle.’

  I met Father’s eyes across the table. He nodded his approval. ‘Well done,’ his lips told me silently.

  And so my life changed. One day I was a child, the next, a married woman. In the polished metal mirror Father had given me as part of my dowry, I looked the same. I was the same person inside, too. But people looked at me differently.

  I was Strongbow’s wife.

  When I went out into the streets of Waterford, people got out of my way. Wherever I went, a silence fell. Eyes followed me.

  Already, the name of Strongbow was a weapon in Ireland. Stories of the fall of Waterford had been carried throughout the land, as fast as fire through dry grass.

  There was one last meeting of the leaders of the invasion force, and Father, in Waterford. Women would not attend such a meeting, of course. But I did. When I told Richard that I meant to be present, he merely nodded.

  ‘That’s what Irish women do?’ he asked.

  ‘It’s what I do,’ I assured him.

  I sat on the bench beside him, although not too close, for as usual when he appeared in public he was wearing his coat of mail. He had his iron helmet with him, too, but he never put that on unless he was going into battle. When I asked him why he said, ‘It frightens people.’

  So his helmet sat between us on the bench, like an eyeless iron skull. It didn’t frighten me.

  I listened with interest to the plans being made to attack Dublin.

  ‘The High King claims the loyalty of Dublin and will try to protect it,’ Father warned us, ‘but I know a way through the mountains where no one keeps watch. We can march past Glendalough and be under the walls of Dublin before Rory O’Connor can do anything to stop us.’

  After Richard and I retired for the night, he said, ‘Your father is a clever man, Aoife. I hope I’ll be as good a King of Leinster one day.’

  ‘You? King of Leinster? What makes you think you could ever be King of Leinster?’ I asked in astonishment.

  It was his turn to be astonished. ‘Don’t you know? Under feudal law, by marrying you I become your father’s heir.’

  I was staring at him. ‘Don’t you know?’ I echoed. ‘Under Irish law – and you’re in Ireland now – no man can acquire a kingdom through a woman, be it mother or wife.’

  I thought his eyes would leap from his head. ‘What are you saying? I don’t believe you!’

  ‘You can believe me,’ I said smugly. ‘Father gave me a fine education and I know the law.’

  ‘He can’t promise me his kingship?’

  ‘Of course not. Irish kings are elected. The king who replaces him when he dies will be chosen from one of the royal line, either his most promising son or a kinsman of equal ability. Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh would probably be the first choice, because he’s very popular with the Leinstermen. If not Donal, perhaps my uncle Murrough, who was named as King of Leinster in my father’s place when –’

  ‘Dermot lied to me!’ cried Richard in a fury.

  Now I saw his eyes flash with lightning. Now I saw the Strongbow who could freeze his enemies’ blood with a glance!

  Chapter 20

  RICHARD

  A Golden Land

  The discovery that Dermot Mac Murrough had tricked me was a shock. He was a cheerfully cunning man, that I knew, but I hadn’t expected he would deceive an ally he needed as he needed me.

  ‘I suppose he had no choice,’ Aoife told me. ‘He would have offered you anything, I heard him say so.’

  I didn’t like to see my new wife taking her father’s part. ‘He promised me land he had lost, a daughter he didn’t own, and a kingdom that wasn’t his to give!’ I was deeply shocked.

  Aoife nodded. ‘But you’ll win that land back for him, the daughter has given herself to you, and every king must fight for and take his own kingdom, Richard. That’s always the way. Surely your Henry has done the same?’

  ‘How can one young head be so old in wisdom?’

  ‘Father taught me that knowledge is power,’ Aoife replied.

  Ah, I thought. I should have learned that lesson myself, before I began this reckless adventure. I should have made a point of studying the Irish law. But I couldn’t read. I would have had to rely on others to teach me, and where would I have found such a teacher?

  And how would I have paid him?

  Everything came back to my poverty. Aoife was right. I was in Ireland now, and a king must fight for and take his own kingdom. If I wanted to end my poverty I would have to do it myself, in spite of the treachery of other men.

  I couldn’t even punish Dermot for his lie without hurting my wife, for I saw that she loved him. And I needed him to help me. He knew this land, I did not.

  I didn’t yet have a stronghold of my own to be the home of my new wife, and I didn’t like to send her back to Dermot’s stronghold. Nor did I dare leave her in Waterford.

  ‘What am I going to do with you while we attack Dublin?’ I wondered aloud.

  Aoife grinned. ‘I can go with you.’

  ‘Women don’t go to war,’ I told her.

  And then – as I was later to discover – she lied to me just as cheerfully as her father had done.

  ‘They do in Ireland,’ she said.

  She was young and strong and determined, and there
was really no reason to deny her. So I agreed, and named a company of guards to stay with her and protect her at all times. A leather tent was set aside for her use and we prepared to march on Dublin.

  True to his word, for once, Dermot knew of an unguarded pass through the mountains south of that town. Word of our undertaking had already reached the High King, Rory O’Connor. O’Connor gathered an army of warriors from Brefni, Meath, and Connacht, and hurried toward Dublin. But we were there ahead of him.

  Dermot sent word to the Archbishop of Dublin, Laurence O’Toole, who was his wife’s brother, and urged him to persuade the Dubliners to surrender.

  ‘When that happens, my uncle Laurence can give our marriage his blessing!’ Aoife said happily.

  She was still young enough to see things in the best possible light. But I knew the capture of Dublin would be no simple matter. Still, if it could be done without too much bloodshed I would be thankful. The people of Waterford already hated us. I didn’t want to give the people of Dublin reason to hate us also.

  Speed was important. We must have Dublin’s surrender before the High King’s forces arrived in large enough numbers to overcome us.

  Dermot Mac Murrough, as always, was cunning. ‘I’ve asked the Archbishop to tell the Dubliners that while we have arrived, the High King has not. Let the townspeople think the High King is not coming to their rescue. They may well be willing to give up the town to us then.’

  Some of my men were unhappy with this plan. ‘If they just hand over the town to us, we can hardly loot it,’ they complained to me.

  ‘The whole purpose of this exercise is not to loot Dublin!’ I exploded. My men were never easy to control, and now I felt them threatening to get away from me altogether. Seeing the wealth of Ireland, they had become greedy. Some of them enjoyed burning and smashing and destroying for its own sake. I worried about the damage they could do in this land, and the additional enemies they could make for me.