Strongbow

by Morgan Llywelyn

  ‘The kingship,’ I agreed. ‘The time has come for the transfer of power. Tell these men who stand by your bed that I’m to be the next King of Leinster.’

  Dermot tried to draw a deep breath, and coughed. Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh reached out and caught my arm.

  ‘Leave him alone,’ he said warningly.

  I lost my temper. ‘I brought this man victory!’ I roared. ‘I have a right to be here, and to ask a reward of him!’

  Dermot found enough breath to speak then. ‘Victory,’ he said in a hollow voice, as if he didn’t know what the word meant. ‘Victory? You’re wrong, Strongbow. My life has been … a disaster from beginning to end.’

  He closed his eyes, and died on the next breath.

  I presume his soul went to God. How his Maker judged him, I can’t say. But he was gone, and I was no nearer to being King of Leinster than I was the day I first set foot in Ireland.

  Aoife’s grief was terrible to see. The other women were all crying, but she didn’t cry. Her pain was in her eyes and wouldn’t spill out, but stayed there. Every time I looked at her I could see it.

  ‘I cried for Enna and Conor,’ she told me. ‘Father deserves something more.’

  The night Dermot died, she tore out great handfuls of her heavy red hair. I found them strewn about our chamber, like rushes on the floor.

  The next day Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh came to me. ‘If my father wanted you to be King of Leinster,’ he said, ‘I won’t vote against you.’ I never forgot that gesture. I realised then that he loved his father as much as Aoife did. Dermot was a man to envy, having children who loved him so.

  He was laid to rest in the churchyard of the cathedral at Ferns that he had supported in his lifetime. Once he was dead, many harsh things were said about him, some of them by the clergy. But I never heard his children say a word against him.

  I took my wife back to the south and tried to comfort her. But soon I needed comforting.

  Dermot had died on the first of May. The king to replace him was elected within a month. It was Dermot’s nephew, Murtough, who was of the noble line and a devout Christian man. The clergy wanted someone with a blameless reputation to succeed Dermot Mac Murrough, and their influence on the voting chieftains was very strong.

  The news hit me like a thunderbolt. ‘This isn’t what Dermot wanted! He promised me! He promised me!’ I raved to Aoife.

  ‘He promised what he had no right to promise,’ she reminded me. ‘You must be reasonable, Richard.’

  I couldn’t be reasonable. ‘I don’t care,’ I said like an angry child. ‘He promised me!’

  What could I do? How was I going to get back what had been taken from me?

  Then Raymond le Gros returned to Ireland with still more bad news. ‘King Henry wishes you to know that he insists on your return to England. It’s a command.’

  ‘Is it now?’ I folded my arms across my chest. ‘What Henry wants isn’t that important any more. The kingship of Leinster means more to me than a command from Henry Plantagenet.’

  ‘You defy the king at your peril,’ Raymond warned me.

  ‘This whole venture has been at my peril!’ I reminded him. ‘And the only way I’ll claim my reward for my danger is to stay here and fight. For Ireland, not for England. England’s little more than a memory to me now.’

  ‘It’s your home,’ Raymond said.

  ‘Not any more. If it ever was. I’ve built strongholds for myself around the borders of the land that I claim here, and those are my homes now. When I travel to Kilkenny, or Kildare, or Dublin, the natives treat me with respect.

  ‘No one in England ever treated me with that much respect, Raymond. Murtough might be King of Leinster, but the name of Strongbow is on every tongue. All Ireland is watching and waiting to see what I’ll do next.

  ‘Whatever it is, I won’t be going back to England,’ I assured him.

  In truth, I didn’t know what to do. Dermot’s death had left me in a most awkward position. While he lived, I could be considered his chosen heir. Now that he was dead and another man ruled Leinster, I was no more than a leader of foreign mercenaries.

  Aoife knew how miserable I was. ‘You should make your peace with my cousin Murtough,’ she suggested. ‘Our family has always stood together. Even when we quarrel among ourselves, we don’t break apart. You’re of my family now. Go to Murtough and offer to be his strong right arm as you were my father’s. Even if you aren’t King of Leinster, you can be a power in Leinster.’

  ‘You speak wisely,’ I admitted, ‘but it’s hard for me to bend the knee to the man who’s king in my place.’

  ‘Had you rather go back to England and bend your knee to Henry?’ Aoife asked shrewdly.

  So I left her in safekeeping on the Slaney with Robert FitzStephen and rode for Ferns, as she wanted.

  Murtough welcomed me most kindly. He knew what I was feeling. But he was indeed a good Christian man, he didn’t gloat. We had a long talk together and parted as friends, though several times I had to bite my tongue to keep from saying bitter words I would regret later.

  When I left Ferns, I felt better. Murtough was not as strong a man as Dermot had been. When the time came, he could be shouldered aside gracefully.

  From Ferns we rode to Dublin to learn how work was progressing on the new cathedral. Seeing Christ Church rise, Irish timber upon a foundation of Irish stone, I began to feel more hopeful. I was building for the future in a number of ways.

  I knelt in the unfinished cathedral amid the smells of raw timber and stone dust, and bowed my head. I didn’t speak to God, but to my father. What I said was not a prayer, but one last plea for my father’s approval.

  ‘I defended our property and name as best I could in England,’ I told him. ‘But now I’ve won new land and new honour in Ireland. Be proud of me.’

  The church was very silent. My words to my father in heaven echoed in my head.

  As I left the cathedral, a sentry shouted from the wall that surrounded Dublin, ‘The High King is said to have left Connacht! He’s marching this way with a mighty army!’

  Chapter 23

  AOIFE

  Waiting for News

  ‘Come with me to Murtough and help make peace between us,’ Richard had urged me. But I wouldn’t. It was the first thing I’d ever refused him. But I couldn’t bear to go back to Ferns so soon, there were too many sad memories there. So I insisted on staying behind.

  Robert FitzStephen was happy to have Strongbow’s wife as his guest, and promised to lift my spirits with feasting and entertainments until Richard returned to me. But when the days dragged by with no word from my husband, I began to worry.

  FitzStephen laughed at me. ‘What sort of man reports to his wife? Come, Aoife, put on that smile of yours and I’ll take you out hunting with my new falcon.’

  I went to please him, but in truth I didn’t like the Norman sport of falconry very much. It seemed unnatural. We Irish hunted the red deer with hounds, which the hounds enjoyed as much as the hunters did. But falconry was different. The poor falcons were bound with thongs and kept blinded most of the time with hoods over their heads. They didn’t even get to eat any of the meat they caught. Like the poorest captives, they were given only a hunk of rotten horsemeat.

  And there were so many laws and rules about falconry! All those petty details didn’t make any difference, as far as I could see. Yet the Normans got very upset if even the tiniest rule was ignored.

  It was a ridiculous amount of trouble to catch one sparrow that any good Irish slinger could have brought down with a stone. But when I said as much to FitzStephen, he scowled at me.

  ‘You people simply don’t understand,’ he said.

  After that I stopped trying to please him. I spent my days waiting for Richard. At last a passing Leinsterman told us he and his captains had gone on to Dublin. Then for a while longer we heard nothing else, until we learned that the High King was marching toward Dublin with an army.

  The marr
ow froze in my bones. ‘He means to kill my husband!’ I told FitzStephen. ‘You must go to Dublin at once with all your men!’

  The Norman knight agreed with me. But before he could gather his warriors, we were attacked ourselves!

  The Norsemen came out of the night. They surrounded the earthwork fort FitzStephen was holding and kept us penned inside like animals.

  Chapter 24

  RICHARD

  Siege at Dublin

  When I first arrived in Dublin, the Archbishop greeted me and took me aside to speak to me privately. He talked about the Synod of Armagh, and said very harsh things about the actions of my men in Ireland. ‘You’re looting our land,’ he said, ‘and it must stop. You should return to your own land.’

  ‘This is mine,’ I told him. ‘Dermot meant me to be King of Leinster.’

  Laurence O’Toole grew angry. ‘Even building a cathedral does not give you a right to Irish kingship!’

  That night, without my knowing, he sent word to the High King, asking Rory O’Connor to bring an army to Dublin and drive out the Anglo-Normans.

  During the following days, while I was inspecting parts of Dublin and the area outside the walls, the Archbishop avoided me. When I visited the new cathedral he was nowhere in sight. I should have wondered about this, but my mind was busy with many things.

  Then we learned that the High King was marching toward us with an army. The clever old fox had also sent word to some of his Norse allies, who were approaching Dublin from the sea. We were to be caught between them and destroyed!

  I sent a hasty message to Robert FitzStephen, ordering him to gather his men in the south and come to our aid at once.

  But I got no reply.

  I had to work swiftly. Gathering my own men together, I gave strict orders. No one was to act on his own. Each person was to follow the chain of command in the Norman style, acting according to one plan.

  Our enemies didn’t work to one plan, however. That was not their way. The Norse arrived long before the High King, and swept into Dublin Bay in their longships, carrying battle axes and thirsty for blood. Our sentries on the wall of the town counted as many as sixty ships, and thought there might be a thousand men.

  We were ready for them. When they stormed the eastern gate, we met them with two companies of horse. We caught them between one company and the other and broke their attack. My knights on horseback simply ran over them.

  The Norsemen fled back to their ships, defeated. But we had no time to celebrate. The High King’s forces arrived almost at once, in much greater numbers, and encamped along the Liffey.

  I called my captains together.

  ‘I think the High King will do what I’d do in his position,’ I told them. ‘He’ll lay siege to the town. He’ll try to deny us food and water and starve us out. Go to the storehouses of Dublin and see what supplies we have.’

  They came back to me with long faces.

  ‘There’s enough food for the townspeople until the harvest is in, but no more.’

  It was then July. And with the High King’s army waiting outside the walls, the harvest of the countryside couldn’t be brought to us when it was gathered at the end of summer.

  I ordered no man to eat more than he must to keep body and soul together, and we waited. Beyond the walls, Rory O’Connor and his allies waited. From time to time my men stood atop the walls and we hurled spears and curses at each other.

  The High King allowed no messenger into Dublin. I had no word of FitzStephen, or of my wife. I had no word of anything beyond the walls. It was like being in a dungeon. Every day I paced through the town, unable to be still, and the Dubliners stood in their doorways and stared at me. Their dogs ran out to yap at me and tried to bite my legs.

  When I came across the Archbishop I gave him a glare of cold fury and said nothing to him. He retreated inside his cathedral – that I had built for him – and said nothing to me.

  It couldn’t go on forever. At last a messenger came from the High King, offering to talk through Archbishop O’Toole.

  An offer to talk was better than starving in silence, so I sent for Aoife’s uncle. ‘Go to Rory O’Connor,’ I told him, ‘and offer him these, my terms for surrender. Tell him I shall recognise him as my king, and in return shall hold my own kingdom of Leinster for him.’

  O’Toole was shocked. ‘You are not King of Leinster! You cannot hold it for anyone!’

  My friend, Maurice FitzGerald was shocked. ‘You’re already holding Leinster for the King of England!’ he reminded me.

  ‘Just do as I say,’ I told the Archbishop, ‘or see the people of Dublin starve to death and know it’s your fault.’

  He set out to talk to the High King. We waited, not knowing what to expect.

  In time the Archbishop returned. ‘I am instructed to tell you that unless you surrender everything you hold and agree to depart from Ireland on a given day with all your forces, the High King will attack without delay and destroy Dublin, and you in it. All will be burned to the ground, yourselves included.’

  I had to plan. But men were pressing around me, urging this action and that, making it hard to think.

  Then someone else slipped into the town through the small gate that had been opened for the Archbishop.

  It was Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh!

  I was desperately glad to see him, though less so when I heard his news. ‘Robert FitzStephen is also under siege in the fort of Carrick, and can’t come to you,’ he said. ‘My sister Aoife is with him.’

  ‘Is she safe?’

  ‘I don’t know. She was, when last I heard, but that’s been several days.’

  What to do? Now that the Norsemen had left the harbour, I could perhaps have got a ship out and sent word to King Henry, pleading for help. But I doubted that he would help me. To him I was a traitor. I had refused his command to give up the adventure in Ireland.

  Unable to decide what to do, I consulted my most trusted knights. ‘Shall we try to get word to Henry?’ I asked them.

  Maurice FitzGerald replied, ‘Can we expect any aid from our own country? I tell you we can’t. The truth is, to the English we’re Irish now, and to the Irish we’re English. Whatever is done we must do for ourselves.’

  There spoke a man who had no home to return to, a man who, like myself, meant Ireland for his home now.

  FitzGerald’s bold words put the heart back into me.

  ‘Very well. We’ll fight,’ I said. ‘And if we’re to have any chance of winning, we must be the first to attack. They won’t expect that of us, after this long siege.’

  We slipped out of Dublin by the east gate shortly before midday. Raymond le Gros led the way with twenty mounted knights, followed by a company of foot soldiers, then thirty more knights on horseback. The rest of our foot soldiers came next, then I brought up the rear with forty more knights.

  We swept around to the southwest, then at my order split into two groups, attacking the High King’s armies at encampments at Castleknock and Kilmainham.

  We fell upon them like hornets.

  Far from expecting us, they were relaxing in warm autumn sunshine. Some, including the High King himself, were bathing in the Liffey. He had a very narrow escape and fled with his dignity in tatters.

  I fought as I had never fought before. I was fighting for everything that mattered to me, my new land, my new wife, my new life. It would be better to die than to lose them.

  When a man is not afraid to die he becomes a terrible warrior indeed.

  We savaged the High King’s army. We killed them in the river, we killed them on the shore. We killed them as they sat on the ground beside their cooking fires, with food in their mouths.

  The High King’s army broke and ran.

  We took their abandoned supplies, we took the weapons they left scattered on the grass.

  We took everything we wanted.

  Chapter 25

  AOIFE

  Holding Out

  My half-brother, Donal Mac Mu
rrough Kavanaugh, tried to visit me and discovered our danger. Somehow he got through the enemy lines, and was welcomed into the fort.

  ‘You’re being besieged by Norsemen from Wexford,’ he told us. ‘They’re loyal to the High King these days. They hate the Normans and reject their claims to Wexford.’

  ‘I don’t have enough men to fight them off,’ FitzStephen said. ‘Can you get back through their lines and send word to Strongbow?’

  Donal shook his head. ‘That’s why I’m here. I came to tell you that Strongbow is also under siege by the High King, in the town of Dublin. That’s probably why you’re trapped here, to keep you from going to his aid.’

  How I hated the High King in that moment!

  ‘If you got in to us, you can get out,’ I told Donal. ‘You must go to Dublin. Find a way to join my husband and help him fight. He’ll win, I know he will. Then he can rescue us.’

  Donal was uncertain.’I don’t like to leave you in such a desperate situation.’

  ‘We’ll be all right for a while,’ FitzStephen assured him. ‘These walls are thick and my archers are deadly. Just hurry, will you? In the name of God, hurry!’

  The next time I saw Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh he came riding boldly up to the gates of the fort beside my husband and Maurice FitzGerald, all of them under triumphant Norman banners.

  ‘We’ve defeated the High King of Ireland, Aoife!’ Richard cried as soon as he saw me. Our besiegers had scattered in every direction at his approach, and now the fort stood open in welcome to the victors.

  How we celebrated that night!

  Chapter 26

  RICHARD

  A Rival to Henry II

  With one bold stroke, I had won an unexpected victory against the High King of Ireland himself. He and his allies were thrown into confusion. Only Dermot’s old enemy Tiernan O’Rourke still had some fight left in him. He mounted another attack on Dublin, but was soundly defeated by my men and his oldest son was killed.