SIX

STRONGBOW

1167

I

THE INVASION that was to bring eight centuries of grief to Ireland began on a sunny autumn day in the year of Our Lord 1167. It consisted of three ships which arrived at the small southern port of Wexford.

Yet had anyone told the two young men who eagerly disembarked together that they were part of an English conquest of Ireland, they would have been most surprised. For one was an Irish priest returning home, while his friend, though he owed allegiance to the King of England, had never called himself English in his life. As for the purpose of the mission, the soldiers in the ships had come because they had been invited, and were led by an Irish king.

Indeed, many of the terms found in reports of these events are misleading. Irish chroniclers of the period refer to the invasion as the coming of the Saxons—by which they mean the English—notwithstanding the fact that for three centuries, much of the northern half of England had been settled by Danish Vikings. Modern historians refer to it as the coming of the Normans. But that is also inaccurate. For although the kingdom of England had been conquered by William of Normandy in 1066, it had since then passed, through his granddaughter, to King Henry II—who belonged to the Plantagenet dynasty from Anjou, in France.

So who were these people—apart from the Irish priest—who were arriving in three ships at Wexford on this sunny autumn day? Were they Saxons, Vikings, Normans, Frenchmen? Actually, they were mostly Flemish; and they had come from their home in south Wales.

The young priest was enthusiastic.

“As soon as this business is done, Peter, you’ll promise to visit my family, I hope. I know they’ll be pleased to welcome you,” said the handsome young priest.

“I shall look forward to it.”

“My sister must be twelve now. She was a pretty, lively child when I left.”

Peter FitzDavid smiled to himself. It was not the first time his Irish friend had mentioned his sister’s charms or indicated that she would receive a handsome dowry.

Peter FitzDavid was a pleasant-looking young man. His light brown hair was cut short and he wore a small beard cut into a chiselled edge. His eyes were blue and set wide apart. His chin was square and strong. A pleasant face, but a soldier’s face.

Soldiers need to be brave, but as he prepared to step ashore, Peter could not help feeling a little apprehensive. His fear was not so much that he could be killed or maimed, but that he might somehow disgrace himself. There was, however, an even greater fear lurking in the background, and it was this fear which, in the times ahead, would drive him on. It was because of this fear that he had to succeed, to catch the eye of his commander and win fame. Even as the shore drew closer, his mother’s words were echoing in his mind. He understood her very well. The last penny she could spare had been spent on his horse and equipment. There was nothing else left. She loved him with all her heart, but she had no more to give.

“God be with you, my son,” she had said to him as he left. “But do not come back empty-handed.” Death, he thought, would be better than that. He was twenty.

To call Peter FitzDavid a knight in shining armour would not quite be correct. His chain mail, a hand down from his father that had been altered to fit him, was free of rust and if it did not shine, at least it gleamed. In short, like many of the mounted men of that age, Peter FitzDavid, who owned little more than what he carried, was a young fellow in search of his fortune.

And he was Flemish. His grandfather Henry had come from Flanders, that land of craftsmen, merchants, and adventurers which lay on the rich flatlands between northern France and Germany. He had been just one of a stream of Flemings that had flowed across to Britain after the Norman Conquest and had settled not only in England but in Scotland and Wales as well. Henry was one of many Flemish immigrants who were granted land in the south-western peninsula of Wales which, because of its rich mines and quarries, the new Norman kings were anxious to control. But the settlement in Wales had not gone well. The proud Celtic princes of that land had not submitted easily and now the Norman Flemish colony was in trouble. Several castles were taken; their lands were under threat.

Peter’s family had been especially hard hit. They were not important tenants in chief—vassals of the king himself—with holdings in many of the Plantagenets’ wide domains. They were vassals of his vassals. Their modest lands in Wales were all they had. And by the time that Peter’s father, David, had died, they had lost two-thirds of those. What remained was only enough to support Peter’s mother and his two sisters.

“You’ll have nothing to support you, my poor boy,” his father had told him, “except your family’s love, your sword, and the good name I leave you.”

By the time Peter was fifteen, his father had taught him everything he knew about the arts of war, and Peter was an accomplished swordsman. The love of his family was not in doubt. As for his name, Peter had loved his father and so he loved that, too. For just as in Celtic Ireland, the term “Mac” implied “the son of,” so in Norman England, the French term “fitz” had a similar meaning. His father had thus been known as David FitzHenry; and he was proud to be called Peter FitzDavid. Now it was time to seek his fortune as a fighting man for hire.

Warfare has always been an expensive and specialised business, conducted on a temporary basis, and so the instruments of war have always been for hire. Arms and equipment were traded. Transport in particular was hired for the occasion. Only two years earlier, the men of Dublin—as the merchants of Dyflin were usually calling the big port now—had offered their great fleet to King Henry of England for a campaign against the Celtic princes of Wales, a deal which fell through only when Henry changed his mind.

But above all, across the huge patchwork of tribal lands and dynastic lordships that, since the fall of the ordered Roman Empire, now made up most of Christendom, it was armed men who were for hire. When William the Conqueror came to England, it was not just his Norman vassals that he led but a whole collection of armed adventurers from Brittany, Flanders, and other places, and who were granted estates in the conquered country. After their defeat, a large contingent of English warriors travelled right across Europe and formed what was called the Saxon regiment in the service of the Emperor of Byzantium. Adventurers from England, France, and Germany had already gone on Crusade to get land in the kingdom of Jerusalem and other crusader colonies in the Holy Land. Celtic kings in Ireland had been hiring Vikings to fight for them for generations. It was not strange, therefore, that any young man from Wales in search of his fortune should have gone to the Plantagenet King of England to see if that mighty monarch needed some hired help.

When Peter FitzDavid first set out, it was to the great English port of Bristol that he had travelled. His father had once had some acquaintance with a merchant there.

“After I’m gone,” his father had advised Peter, “you could pay him a visit. He might be able to do something for you.”

Bristol lay more than a hundred miles away, across the huge estuary of the mighty River Severn which traditionally separated Saxon from Celtic Britain. It had taken Peter five days to reach the Severn, and another half day riding up its western bank to a place where there was a horse ferry across. When he arrived at the ferry, however, he was told that on account of the Severn’s swift and complex currents, he would have to wait some hours. Looking about he saw that on the slopes just above there was a small fort and, set in an oak grove nearby, there seemed to be some ancient ruins. Making his way up to these, he had sat down to rest.

It was a pleasant place with a fine view over the river. Without particularly thinking about it, he sensed that the ruins had a religious air. And indeed they had, for the site he had come upon was the old Roman temple to Nodens, the Celtic god of healing. Christianity had long since submerged the god as well as his temple: in England he had been quite forgotten, and across the sea in Celtic Ireland, under the name of Nuada of the Silver Hand, he had long since been converted by the monkish scribes from a deity to a mythical king.

And as he was sitting there, gazing across the river to the distant shore, it had struck Peter with a terrible force, that when he crossed the River Severn, he would be leaving everything he knew behind. For whatever his family’s troubles, Wales was his home. He had never lived anywhere else. He loved the green valleys, the coastline with its rocky outcrops and sandy coves. Though he spoke French to his parents, the tongue of his childhood was the Celtic Welsh of the local people with whom he had grown up. Once across the Severn, however, the people would speak English, of which he knew not a word. And after he got to Bristol and encountered the English, would he stay in that country or go farther away, across the seas, never perhaps to see his native land again? For a while he felt so sad he almost turned to go home again.

But he couldn’t go home. They loved him, but they didn’t want him. And late that afternoon, with a heavy heart, he had led his charger and his packhorse onto the big raft that would take them across the river.

Entering Bristol the following evening came as a revelation. He had seen some impressive stone castles in Wales and several great monasteries, but never before had he encountered a city. After London, Bristol was England’s greatest port.

He walked through its busy streets for a while before he found the house he was looking for and entered it with some trepidation, for the place had its own stone gateway, a cobbled court surrounded by timbered, gabled buildings, and a handsome hall with a high roof. His father’s friend, he saw at once, must be a man of great wealth.

And it was still more disconcerting when, on being ushered into the hall by a servant, it was immediately clear to him that the merchant was not entirely sure who he was. Some anxious moments passed while the merchant asked him not once but twice to repeat his father’s name. At last, while Peter felt himself blushing, the man seemed to recall who his father was, if not with great interest, and asked him how he could be of help.

The next two days were interesting, but not enjoyable. The merchant was a swarthy man. His father had been an Ostman, a Dane who had come from Ireland. With him he brought a Celtic name Dubh Gall—“the dark stranger”—which in Bristol they pronounced as Doyle. Though born in Bristol, the merchant had been given neither an English nor a Norman name, but instead had been christened Sigurd. No one used his first name, though. All Bristol referred to him as Doyle.

The dark stranger: he was certainly that. Dark and silent. He was hospitable enough: Peter even had an entire chamber to himself beside the hall. To Peter, as he would to any nobleman or substantial merchant, he spoke in the courteous tongue of Norman French. But he spoke little, and smiled not at all. Perhaps it was because he was a widower, Peter thought. Perhaps when his married daughters visited, or his sons returned home from their business in London, he would show a better humour. But for the two days that Peter was there, conversation was minimal. And since the numerous servants, grooms, and underlings spoke only English, he felt rather lonely.

The first morning, Doyle took him round the port. They visited his countinghouse, his warehouse, two of his ships down by the slave pens on the waterfront. Doyle was certainly still in full possession of his vigour; his dark eyes seemed to be everywhere; he spoke very quietly, but men watched him apprehensively and jumped to obey his orders when he gave them. By the end of the day, Peter had learned a good deal about the business of the port, the organisation of the town with its courts and aldermen, and its trade with other ports from Ireland to the Mediterranean. But he had also decided that Doyle was rather frightening.

This feeling was reinforced by a small incident that evening. He and the merchant had just sat down in the big hall and the servants were about to bring the food, when a young man of about his own age entered and, after bowing respectfully to them both, seated himself at some distance from them. Doyle, having given the young man a curt nod and grunted to Peter, “He works for me,” took no further notice of him. The young man, who was wearing a hood which he did not remove, was served a goblet of wine, which was not refilled; and as his host continued to ignore him, and the young man himself never once looked up, Peter did not know how to address him. As soon as he had eaten, the young man left; he looked depressed. I should think I’d look depressed, too, if I worked for Doyle, Peter thought.

It was later that evening, when he had retired to his chamber, that he heard their voices out in the courtyard. At least, it was certainly Doyle’s voice, low and menacing, that murmured something he could not catch, and then: “You’re a fool.” It was said in French. “You can never repay.”

“I’m completely in your power.” The voice was that of a young man, urgent and plaintive. It must be the fellow he had seen that evening. This was followed by a harsh murmur from Doyle. The words were indistinct, but the tone was threatening. “No!” the young man cried. “Don’t do that, I beg you. You promised.”

They moved away after that and Peter heard no more. But one thing was very clear to him: Doyle was sinister, and the sooner he left the better.

The following morning, without warning, Doyle told him to saddle his horse, take his weapons, and accompany him to an exercise yard near the eastern gate. There he found several men-at-arms practising swordplay, and after some words from Doyle, he was invited to join them. The dark merchant watched him for some time and then quietly departed, leaving him to make his own way home later on. Peter did not see him again until the evening.

It was that evening, however, that Doyle remarked to him, in his usual saturnine way, “There is talk of an expedition. To Ireland.”

If nobody had succeeded in dominating all Ireland since the days of Brian Boru, it was not for lack of trying. One after another the great regional dynasts had tried to gain supremacy; Leinster and Brian’s grandson from Munster had both had their turn. The ancient O’Neill were always watching for a chance to regain their former glory. At present, the O’Connor dynasty of Connacht claimed the High Kingship. But no one had truly achieved mastery, and the chronicles of the time adopted a telling formula to describe the position of most of these monarchs: “High King, with Opposition.” So while the rulers in the huge patchwork of Europe began to amalgamate territories into ever greater holdings—the Plantagenets now controlled a feudal empire consisting of most of the western side of France, as well as Normandy and England—the island of Ireland continued to be split between ancient tribal lands and rival chiefs.

The latest Irish dispute concerned the kingdom of Leinster.

For some time now, the ancient province of Leinster had been controlled by an ambitious dynasty from Ferns in the southern, Wexford part of the territory. But ambitious King Diarmait of Leinster had made enemies. In particular, he had humiliated a powerful king, O’Rourke, by eloping with his wife. Now this cheated husband, together with others, had turned on Diarmait of Leinster and forced him to flee.

It was a considerable surprise to Plantagenet King Henry, who was down on his domains in France, when they told him: “King Diarmait of Leinster has arrived here to see you.”

And it was with some curiosity that he answered, “An Irish king? Bring him to me.”

The meeting was certainly strange: the Plantagenet monarch, sandy-haired, clean-shaven, quick and impatient in his movements, dressed in tunic and hose, sophisticated, French in language and culture, face-to-face with the provincial Celtic king, with his thick brown beard and heavy woollen cloak. Henry actually spoke some English—an achievement of which he was rather proud—but no Irish. Diarmait spoke Irish, Norse, and some French. But there was no difficulty in communicating. For a start, Diarmait had brought with him his interpreter—Regan by name—and failing that, the clerks employed by both sides spoke Latin, as did every educated churchman in western Christendom. The two men also had things in common: both had eloped with another man’s wife; both had uncertain relationships with their own children; both were self-centred and cynical opportunists.

King Diarmait’s request was simple. He’d been driven out of his kingdom and he wanted to get it back. He needed to raise an army. He couldn’t pay them much, but there would be property and land to be distributed if he was successful. It was the usual deal, upon which the present aristocracy of many parts of Europe, including England, had been founded. He also knew, however, that he couldn’t raise men in any of the Plantagenet dominions without getting Henry’s permission.

King Henry II was a very ambitious man. He had already built up an empire and his main occupation now was in taking territory away from the rather ineffectual king of France, whom it amused him to bully. As it happened, a dozen years earlier, he had briefly considered the possibility of annexing Ireland as well, though he had dropped the idea and had little interest in the island now. But he was also an opportunist.

“Are you offering to become my vassal?” he gently enquired.

His vassal. When an Irish king recognised the supremacy of a greater monarch and submitted to him, he “came into his house,” as the expression was. He gave hostages for his good behaviour and promised to pay tribute. When a French or English feudal lord became the vassal of another, however, the obligations were more comprehensive. Not only did he owe military service, or payment in lieu, but when he died, his heirs had to make payment to inherit their land, and if the inheritance was in dispute, the overlord decided it. In conquered England, moreover, the Normans had been able to take an even stronger line. For if any vassal there gave trouble, the English king could take his lands away and give them to another. A feudal vassal could not, theoretically, fight or travel without his overlord’s permission. Beyond even this, Henry Plantagenet was constantly extending the royal power. In England, he wanted to give ordinary freemen the right to go past their own lords and appeal directly to his royal courts for justice. It was the start of a centralised administration undreamed of in the informal world of the Celtic Irish kings.

But King Diarmait needed men. Besides, he knew very well that whatever King Henry’s views about feudal vassals might be, Ireland lay far beyond the Plantagenet monarch’s reach.

“That would be no trouble at all,” he said.

And so the deal was struck. King Henry of England gained for the first time a provincial Irish king who recognised him, however cynically, as his overlord. It might be of no practical value at present. “But,” he could point out, “it has cost me nothing.” And King Diarmait got a letter in which the ruler of the sprawling Plantagenet empire gave permission to any of his vassals to fight for Diarmait if they wished.

There hadn’t been a mad rush. The prospect of helping a dispossessed provincial chieftain from an island out in the western seas was not a great attraction. But one of King Henry’s magnates—the mighty lord de Clare, best known to fighting men as Strongbow—met the Irish exile and took an interest. Strongbow had land holdings in several parts of the Plantagenet domains, but the ones in south-west Wales had been under pressure. It was clear that King Diarmait was ready to let him name his own price.

“You could marry my daughter and inherit my entire kingdom,” he wildly suggested. As Diarmait had sons, and at present controlled not a yard of his former kingdom, this offer was worth just about as much as his oath of fealty to the Plantagenet monarch. But Strongbow decided to take a calculated gamble. He told the Irish king to recruit in the territories of which he was overlord in south Wales. Perhaps a contingent could be raised which would serve as an advance party. After all, he concluded privately, if they all get killed, it really doesn’t matter.

It had been Peter’s good fortune that Doyle should have encountered Strongbow that day on one of the magnate’s periodic visits to the great port that lay so close to his territories. Strongbow had been speaking to a group of merchants about the Irish king’s desire to raise troops in the region.

“There’s a young man in my house, the son of a friend, who might like to go along,” the Bristol merchant mentioned. “I’m wondering what to do with him.”

“Send him,” said Strongbow. “Tell Diarmait I chose him.”

And so it was that Peter FitzDavid, having crossed the sea in ships supplied by Doyle, found himself disembarking with King Diarmait of Leinster and a contingent of assorted fighting men in Wexford on this sunny autumn day.

The horses were coming ashore now. From where he was standing on the beach, Peter had a good view of King Diarmait, who had already mounted a horse, and the lord de la Roche, the Flemish nobleman who was directing operations. They were disembarking at some distance from the town of Wexford. Roche had already taken care to set up a defensive position, but no one so far had come out of the town to challenge them. It was a small port with modest ramparts not unlike the ones he had known in south Wales. Compared to a proper castle, or the great city of Bristol, it was nothing: they’d take it easily. For the time being, however, there was nothing for Peter to do but wait.

“Well, goodbye then.” His friend was bidding him farewell. While the soldiers set up their camp, it was time for him to depart. During their journey together, Peter had had cause to be very grateful to young Father Gilpatrick. The priest was only five years older than Peter, but he knew far more. He had spent the last three years at the famous English monastery of Glastonbury, south of Bristol, and now he was returning home to Dublin, where his father had secured him a position with the archbishop. He had joined the ship to Wexford because he wanted to go up the coast to Glendalough for a brief stay at that sanctuary before he arrived in Dublin.

Seeing that Peter was young and perhaps lonely, the kindly priest had spent much time in his company, learned all about him, and in return told him about his family, Ireland, and its customs.

His learning was impressive. From his childhood he had spoken Irish and Norse, and also become a good Latin scholar. While at Glastonbury in England, he had made himself familiar with English and Norman French.

“I suppose I could be a ‘latimer’—that’s what we churchmen call an interpreter,” he had said with a smile.

“You’re probably better than King Diarmait’s interpreter Regan,” Peter suggested admiringly.

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Gilpatrick laughed, though not unpleased.

He was able to reassure Peter that he would be able to learn the Celtic that the Irish spoke without much difficulty. “The languages of Ireland and of Wales are like cousins,” he explained. “The principal difference is in a single letter. In Wales, when you make a ‘p’ sound, we make a ‘q’ sound. So in Ireland, for instance, if we say ‘the son of,’ we say ‘Mac.’ In Wales you say ‘Map.’ There are many differences of course, but in a while you’ll find you can understand what is said easily enough.”

He gave Peter some account of Dublin—it sounded to Peter more like “Doovlin” when the Irishman said it. The Irish port was almost on a scale with Bristol, it seemed. And he explained some of the politics of the island.

“Whatever success you bring King Diarmait against his enemies, he will still have to go to Ruairi O’Connor of Connacht—that’s the High King now, you know—and O’Connor will have to recognise him and take hostages before Diarmait can call himself king of anything in Ireland.”

As for his own ambitions, it seemed that they were bound up with the great Dublin bishop to whom he had been recommended.

“He is a saintly man, and of great authority,” Gilpatrick declared. “My father is a senior churchman himself, you see.” He paused. “My mother is also a kinswoman of Archbishop Lawrence. That’s what we call him in the Church. We Latinise his name to Lawrence O’Toole; in Irish that would be Lorcan Ua Tuathail. The Ua Tuathail are a princely family in north Leinster. In fact, the archbishop is actually a brother-in-law of King Diarmait as well. Though I don’t know that he much likes him,” he added confidentially.

Peter smiled at this complex web of relationships.

“Does this mean your family is princely, too?” he enquired.

“We are an old Church family,” Gilpatrick said, and seeing Peter look a little puzzled, he explained. “The custom in Ireland is somewhat different to that of other countries. There are ancient ecclesiastical families, greatly honoured, with ties to monasteries and churches; often those families are the kinsmen of kings and chiefs whose histories go back into the mists of time.”

“Your family is linked to a particular church?”

“We endowed our monastery, as you would say, at Dublin.”

“And your family history goes back into the mists of time?”

“The tradition,” Gilpatrick said impressively, “is that our ancestor Fergus was baptised at Dublin by Saint Patrick himself.”

It was the mention of the saint that had prompted Peter to ask another question.

“Your name is Gilla Patraic. That means ‘the Servant of Patrick,’ doesn’t it?”

“It does.”

“I wondered why your father didn’t give you the saint’s name without any addition. Why not just ‘Patrick’? My name is a single Peter, after all.”

“Ah.” The priest nodded. “That is something you should know if you are going to spend time in Ireland. No good Irishman would ever be called Patrick.”

“They wouldn’t?”

“Only Gilla Patraic. Never Patrick.”

So it had been for centuries. No Irishman in the Middle Ages would dare to take the name of the great Saint Patrick for himself. It was always Gilpatrick: the Servant of Patrick. And so it would remain for centuries more.

He was a slim, dark, handsome young fellow. His grey eyes were unusual for they were curiously flecked with green.

It would have been hard not to like the priest, with his kindness, his not quite hidden pride in his family, and his obvious affection for them. Peter learned a little about his brothers, his pretty sister, and his parents. He did not quite understand what sort of senior churchman the priest’s father could be if he were married, nor what he meant by “our” monastery, but when he began to raise this subject, Father Gilpatrick hurried on to another subject and Peter had not pressed the matter further. It seemed clear not only that the friendly priest liked him personally but that he by no means disapproved of the presence of these Plantagenet vassals on his native soil. Peter was not sure why.

But it was one night on the ship that Peter saw something more, a deeper side to the Irishman. It turned out that Gilpatrick was a fine harpist, and that he could sing. He proved to be versatile. He knew some popular English ballads. He even gave them a saucy song of the troubadours from the south of France. But finally, as the night had grown deeper, he had turned to the traditional music of Ireland, and another kind of quiet had fallen over his listeners, Flemish though many of them were, as the soft, mournful melodies had come from the strings and floated out to haunt the waters of the sea. Afterwards, he had remarked to the priest, “It seemed to me that I was listening to your soul.”

His friend had given a quiet smile and responded, “They are traditional tunes. It’s the soul of Ireland you were hearing.”

And now the young priest was walking rapidly away. Peter watched him until he was out of sight, then remained on the shore observing the horses, glancing up from time to time at the hills that rose in the distance, and thinking to himself that the place was really not so unlike his native Wales. Perhaps, he considered, I might be happy if I settled here. When the opportunity arose, he would certainly pay a visit to the priest and his family in Dublin.

So he was most surprised, half an hour later, to see his friend returning.

Father Gilpatrick was smiling broadly. Beside him, on a small but sturdy horse, rode a splendid and rustic figure: he had a long grey beard; over his head he wore a hood that came down to his chest; he had a loose shirt, not too clean after his journey, and woollen leggings with feet. If he had any boots with him, Peter couldn’t see them. He was riding the little horse bareback without saddle, stirrups, or spurs, his long legs hanging down to the horse’s knees. He seemed to be guiding the horse with taps from a crooked stick. His face was curious: with its half-closed eyes and sardonic expression, it made Peter think of a wise old salmon. He supposed the fellow might be a shepherd or a cowman whom his friend had hired to guide him up into the mountains.

“Peter,” the priest said proudly, “this is my father.”

His father? Peter FitzDavid stared. The senior churchman? Peter had known men who had taken vows of poverty, but he did not think that Gilpatrick’s father was one of them, nor was he wearing any sort of clerical dress. Wasn’t he supposed to be a large landowner? He didn’t look like any lord that Peter had ever seen. Had his friend lied to him about his father? Surely not. And if he had, he’d hardly bring him back to meet like this. Perhaps Gilpatrick’s father was an eccentric of some kind.

He greeted the older man respectfully and the Irishman addressed a few words to him in his native tongue, some of which Peter understood; but their conversation did not go further than this, and it was clear that Gilpatrick’s father wished to depart. As they were leaving, however, Gilpatrick took Peter by the arm.

“You were surprised by my father’s appearance.” He was smiling with amusement.

“I? No. Not at all.”

“You were. I saw your face.” He laughed. “Don’t forget, Peter, I’ve been living in England. You’ll find a lot of men like my father, here in Ireland. But his heart’s in the right place.”

“Of course.”

“Ah,” Gilpatrick smiled. “Wait till you see my sister.” Then he was gone.

“Well?” Father Gilpatrick waited until they were some distance from the port of Wexford before he asked his father’s opinion.

“A nice young man, no doubt,” his father, Conn, allowed.

“He is,” the priest agreed. He glanced at his father to see if the older man was going to say anything more on the subject, but it seemed he was not. “I still have not asked you,” he continued, “how you came to be here yourself.”

“A Bristol vessel arrived in Dublin last week. They said that Diarmait had set off to pick up men in Wales on his way to Wexford. So I came down to take a look.”

Gilpatrick eyed his father shrewdly.

“You thought you’d see if King Diarmait would be getting his kingdom back.”

“You saw Diarmait,” his father asked, “on your ship?”

“I did.”

“Did you speak with him?”

“A little.”

The older man was silent for a moment.

“That’s a terrible man,” he remarked sadly. “There were many in Leinster who were not sorry to see him go.”

“Are you impressed with what you have seen?”

“These ships?” His father pursed his lips. “He’ll be needing more men than that when he meets the High King. O’Connor is strong.”

“Perhaps there will be more. The King of England is behind this business.”

“Henry? He has given permission. That is all. Henry has other things to think about.” He shrugged. “Irish kings have been hiring fighting men from over the sea for hundreds of years. Ostmen, Welshmen, men from Scotland. Some stay, others go. Look at Dublin. Half my friends are Ostmen. As for these,” he glanced back towards Wexford, “there aren’t enough of them. By next year most of them will be dead.”

“I was thinking,” Gilpatrick ventured, “that Peter might like to meet Fionnuala.”

This was greeted with such a long pause that Gilpatrick was not even sure if his father had heard, but he knew better than to press the matter; so for some time they continued on their way in silence. Finally his father spoke.

“There are things you do not know about your sister.”

II

1170

“You aren’t going to do anything stupid today, are you?” Fifteen-year-old Una glanced at her friend nervously. It was a warm May morning and it ought to be a perfect day.

“Why would I do something stupid, Una?” Her green eyes wide, innocent, laughing.

Because you usually do, Una thought; but instead she said, “He really means it this time, Fionnuala. He’ll send you home to your parents. Is that what you want?”

“You’ll look after me.”

Yes, thought Una, I always do. And perhaps I shouldn’t. Fionnuala was loveable because she was funny and good-hearted—when she wasn’t quarrelling with her mother—and somehow when you were with her, life seemed brighter and more exciting, because you never knew what was going to happen next. But when a man as kind as Ailred the Palmer ran out of patience …

“I’ll be good, Una. I promise.”

No you won’t, Una could have screamed. You won’t at all. And we both of us know it.

“Look, Una,” Fionnuala suddenly cried. “Apples.” And with her long, dark hair flying behind her, she was running across the little marketplace towards a fruit stall.

How could Fionnuala behave the way she did? Especially when you considered who her father was. The Ui Fergusa might long ago have ceased to be a power in the land, but people still looked up to them with respect. Their little monastery on the slope above the dark pool had been wound up some while ago and the chapel converted into a small parish church for the family and their dependants; but as head of the family, Fionnuala’s father, Conn, was the priest and was much respected. With his ancient position and his ancestral lands in the area, he was treated with courtesy by the King of Dublin and by the archbishop equally. With his tall, stately presence and his dignified way of speaking, Una had always held him in awe. But she was sure he was kindly. She couldn’t imagine him mistreating Fionnuala. How could Fionnuala think of doing anything to let him down?

Her mother, admittedly, was another matter. She and Fionnuala were always fighting. She wanted her daughter to do one thing; Fionnuala wanted to do something else. But Una wasn’t sure she blamed the mother for the constant rows. “If I were your mother I’d slap you,” she’d several times told her friend. Two years ago, however, the friction in the household up by the little church had become so bad that it had been agreed that Fionnuala should reside during the week with Ailred the Palmer and his wife. And now even Ailred had had enough.

Una sighed. It would be hard to imagine any nicer people. Everyone in Dublin loved the rich Norseman whose family had owned the big farmstead out in Fingal for so long. His mother had come from a Saxon family who’d left England after the Norman conquest and she had given him the English name of Ailred; but she was blue-eyed like her husband, and Ailred looked just like his red-haired Norwegian ancestors. He was generous and kindly. And he was religious.

The Irish had always made pilgrimages to holy places. There were many holy sites in Ireland. If they went across the seas, they might journey as far as the great shrine of Saint James at Compostela in Spain. But a few, a very few, had gone all the way on the perilous journey to the Holy Land, and if they reached Jerusalem they would enter the Holy City holding a palm. Upon their return, such a pilgrim would be known as a “Palmer.” Ailred had done this.

And God it seemed had rewarded him. As well as the big farmstead in Fingal, he had other lands. He had a loving wife. But then their only son, Harold, had gone on pilgrimage, it was said, and never returned. Five years had passed. No word had come; and his unhappy parents had finally accepted that they would not see him again. Perhaps it was to compensate for this loss that Ailred and his comfortable wife had started a hospital on a piece of land he owned just outside the city gate where the ancient Slige Mhor came in from the west. As a pilgrim he had often seen such places, where the sick could be tended and weary travellers could rest; but until now there had never been such a facility at Dublin. He and his wife spent much of their time there nowadays. He named it the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist.

But despite all this activity, Una suspected that Ailred and his wife were still lonely. So perhaps it was that reason as well as their natural kindness that caused them, when Fionnuala’s father was lamenting his difficulties with his daughter one day, to offer to take her into their home.

“There will be plenty to keep her busy helping us in the hospital,” Ailred had explained. “She’d be like our daughter.” And so it had all been arranged. On Saturdays Fionnuala returned to her parents’ house and spent Sunday with them. But from Monday to Friday she lived with Ailred and his wife and helped at the hospital.

The arrangement had worked admirably for nearly a week.

Una remembered so well the day when the Palmer had come to see her father. Fionnuala had been at the hospital only a week. “But it’s wrong for the child to be alone in our house with nothing but old people,” the Palmer had explained. “We’d like her to have a companion, a girl of her own age but a sensible girl, who could help to steady her.”

Why did everyone always call her sensible? Una knew they did and she supposed it was true. But why? Was it just her nature? Or was it because of her family? When her eldest sister had died while her brothers were still little boys, she had known that her parents had relied on her. In a way, it had always seemed to Una that her father needed her most of all.

Kevin MacGowan the silversmith was not strong. With his small, spindly body, he was certainly nothing much to look at. And then there was his face: when he was concentrating hard on his work, he would unconsciously twist it into a grimace, so that one of his eyes seemed to be bigger than the other. It made him look as if he were in pain, and she suspected that he sometimes was. Yet within this fragile body lay a fiery soul. “Your father’s a strange, poetical fellow,” a kindly friend had once said to her. “I only wish he was stronger.” Others saw it, too. They certainly respected his work. For that was when Una loved to watch him—while he was working. His fingers, slim and bony like his body, seemed to take on a new strength. His twisted face might be tense, but his eyes shone, and he became transformed into something else, something so fine it was almost like a spirit. Unaware that she was watching him, he would work on, absorbed, and she would be filled with love for her little father and a desire to protect him.

MacGowan. The family name had made a gradual transition down the generations. Some scribes would still have written it MacGoibnenn, in the old manner, but it was mostly written and pronounced MacGowan now.

In the last few years, her father’s hard work had brought the family some prosperity. Outside Dublin, men still measured their wealth in cattle. But the wealth that Kevin MacGowan had saved was the little hoard of silver that he kept in a small strongbox. “If anything should happen to me,” he would tell Una with gentle pride, “this will see the family through.”

He had planned for his family so carefully. The old church in the centre of Dublin had been raised, some years after the battle of Clontarf, to the rank of cathedral and since then transformed into quite a noble building. Western Europe might be moving to the light and delicate Gothic style of architecture, but in Ireland, the heavy, monumental Romanesque style of former times, with its high blank walls and thick curved arches, was still in vogue, and the cathedral in Dublin was a fine example. With its thick walls and its high roof, it towered over the little city. Officially it was the Church of the Holy Trinity, but everyone called it Christ Church. And it was to Christ Church Cathedral that, at least once a month, Kevin MacGowan would take his daughter.

“There is the true cross on which Our Lord was crucified,” he would say, pointing to a small piece of wood encased in a golden casket. Christ Church was becoming famous for its growing collection of relics. “There is a portion of the cross of Saint Peter, a piece of the vest of Our Lady, and there, that is a bit of the manger in which Christ was born.” The cathedral even had a drop of the Blessed Virgin Mary’s milk, with which she had fed the baby Jesus.

But even more revered than these sacred objects were the two treasures that every visitor to Dublin came to see. The first was a great crucifix which, like some ancient pagan stone from earlier times, would sometimes speak. And greatest of all, was the beautiful staff that, it was said, an angel had given to Saint Patrick from Jesus Christ himself: this was the famous Bachall Iosa, the Staff of Jesus. It was kept at a shrine to the north of Dublin but was brought into Christ Church on special occasions.

And as she gazed at these marvels with awe, her father would say to her, “If ever the city is in danger, Una, we shall bring the strongbox to the cathedral monks. In their keeping it will be as safe as are these relics that you see before you.” It gave them both comfort to know that their little worldly treasure would be protected by the keepers of the true cross and the Bachall Iosa of Saint Patrick.

Every day, Una knew, her father carried the thought of that box of silver around with him in his mind like a talisman or a pilgrim’s amulet.

Thanks to his efforts, her father had an assistant now, and her mother had an English slave girl to help her in the house. Her two brothers were healthy, lively boys. There was no reason, therefore, why Una couldn’t spend three days a week at Ailred the Palmer’s hospital which, in any case, was only a few hundred yards from her own home. And before long, she was coming in on Mondays and leaving on Fridays. Since Fionnuala was required to spend Sundays with her parents, this meant that the Palmer and his wife only had to keep her under control for one day of the week which, they bravely declared, was no trouble at all.

They were such a loving couple, the tall red-haired Norseman and his quiet, grey-haired, motherly wife. Una guessed what a blow the loss of their son, Harold, must have been; she never mentioned the subject and nor did they. But once, as they were folding blankets in the hospital, the older woman smiled at her gently and said, “I also had a baby daughter, you know. She died when she was two; but if she’d lived, I think she would have been just like you.” Una had felt so touched and honoured. Sometimes she would pray that their son would return to them after all; but of course he never did.

Una loved the Hospital of Saint John the Baptist. It contained thirty inmates at present; the men in one dormitory, the women in another. Some were elderly, but not all. They cared for every kind of sickness there, except lepers whom no one would come near. There was plenty to do feeding and nursing the inmates, but above all Una loved to talk to them and listen to their stories. She was a popular figure. Fionnuala’s reputation was different. She could be funny when she chose. She would flirt harmlessly with the old men and make the women laugh. But it was not in her nature to work very hard. She might surprise and delight the inmates by suddenly appearing with a delicious fruit tart; but as often as not, in the middle of some tedious chore, Una would find that her friend had vanished, leaving her with all the work to do. And sometimes, if something had annoyed her or if she thought Una wasn’t paying enough attention to her, she would suddenly have a temper tantrum, throw down the work she was doing, and rush away to some other part of the hospital where she would sulk. On these occasions, Ailred the Palmer would shake his long red beard, and his kindly blue eyes would look sad, and he would turn to Una and say, “She is good-hearted underneath, my child, even if she does foolish things. We must all try to help her.” But Una knew very well that, though they certainly tried, it would be her own efforts which generally brought Fionnuala round.

The last few months had tried even the Palmer’s patience. And this time the problem wasn’t temper tantrums, though Fionnuala still had those. It was men.

Fionnuala had always looked at men, ever since she was a little girl. She would stare at them with her large green eyes, and they would laugh. It was part of her childish charm. But she was no longer a child; she was almost a young woman. Yet still she looked at them, and it was no longer the wide-eyed gaze of a child. It was a hard, challenging stare. She stared at young men in the street; she stared at old men in the hospital; she stared at married men in the market in front of their wives, who were ceasing to be amused. But it was a visiting merchant who was residing in the hospital after breaking his leg who first complained to Ailred. “That girl’s making eyes at me,” he said. “Then she came and sat on the end of the bench where I was sitting and opened her shirt so I could see her breasts. I’m too old to play games with girls like that,” he told the Palmer. “If I hadn’t got a broken leg, I’d have reached over and slapped her.”

Last week there had been another complaint, and this time Ailred’s wife had heard about it. Una had never seen that kindly woman so angry.

“You ought to be whipped!” she cried.

“Why?” Fionnuala had answered calmly. “It wouldn’t stop me.”

She had nearly been sent home there and then, but Ailred had given her one more chance. “There must be no more complaints, Fionnuala,” he told her, “of any kind. If there are,” he had promised, “you will have to go home. You cannot come here anymore.”

That had shaken Fionnuala. She had been very quiet and thoughtful for a day or two. But it hadn’t been long before her usual spirits returned; and though she took care not to cause any complaints from the men they encountered, Una could see the flash of mischief back in her friend’s eyes.

The market where the two girls now found themselves lay just inside the western gateway. In recent generations, the old ramparts from the days of Brian Boru had been extended westwards and they had all been rebuilt in stone. Besides the cathedral rising over the thatched roofs of the city’s busy clusters of timber-and-wattle houses, there were now seven smaller churches. Across the river on the north side of the bridge an extensive suburb had also arisen. The Norse-Irish kings of Dublin now ruled over a walled city quite as impressive as most others in Europe.

Though not as big as the market where the slaves were sold down by the waterfront, the western market presented a lively scene. There were food stalls of every kind: meat, fruit, and vegetables. And there was a colourful collection of people crowding the place. There were merchants from northern France: they had their own church, called Saint Martin’s, that overlooked the old pool of Dubh Linn. There was an English colony from the busy port of Chester that lay due east across the Irish Sea. The Chester trade had been increasing in recent generations. They had a Saxon church in the middle of the town. The Scandinavian sailors had their chapel, called Saint Olave’s, down by the waterfront. And there were often visitors from Spain or even farther off adding brightness and colour to the marketplace. Even the native population were a very mixed people now: huge burly fellows with Nordic red hair and Irish names; Latin-looking men who would tell you they were Danish—you could speak of Ostmen and Irishmen, Gaedhil and Gaill, but the truth was that you could hardly tell one from the other. They were all Dubliners. And they were proud of it. There were at this date between four and five thousand of them.

Fionnuala was standing by the fruit stall. Una watched carefully as she followed after her. Was Fionnuala flirting with the stall holder, or the people close by? She didn’t seem to be. A handsome young French merchant was strolling towards the stall. If Fionnuala made eyes at him, Una supposed it wouldn’t matter. But as the young man came close, it seemed to her that for once Fionnuala wasn’t taking any notice. Una gave a little prayer of thanks. Perhaps Fionnuala was going to behave herself today.

For several moments after she saw what Fionnuala did next, Una didn’t understand. It seemed the most natural thing in the world. All that Fionnuala had done was to stretch out her hand and take a large apple from the stall, inspect it and put it back. There was nothing strange about that. The young Frenchman was speaking to the stall holder. For a few moments, Fionnuala hung around by the stall, then she moved away. Una caught up with her.

“I’m bored, Una,” said Fionnuala. “Let’s go down to the quay.”

“All right.”

“Did you see what I got?” She looked at Una and gave her a slow mischievous smile. “A nice juicy apple.” She reached into her shirt and drew it out.

“Where did you get that?”

“From the stall.”

“But you didn’t pay for it.”

“I know.”

“Fionnuala! Put it back at once.”

“I can’t.”

“Why?”

“Because I don’t want to.”

“For God’s sake, Fionnuala! You stole it.”

Fionnuala opened her green eyes wide. Usually when she did that and made a funny face it was difficult not to laugh. But Una wasn’t laughing now. Someone might have seen. She had a vision of the stall holder rushing towards them, of Ailred being called.

“Give it to me. I’ll put it back.”

Slowly and deliberately, her eyes still wide in their fake solemn look, Fionnuala raised the apple as if she were going to hold it out to Una; but instead of proffering it, she calmly took a bite. Her mock-serious eyes were fixed on Una.

“It’s too late.”

Una turned on her heel. She walked straight over to the stall, where the stall holder had just finished speaking to the Frenchman, and took an apple.

“How much for two? My friend’s already started hers.” She smiled pleasantly and indicated Fionnuala who had followed her over. The stall holder smiled at them.

“You work at the hospital, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Fionnuala gazed at him with her large eyes.

“That’s all right. Have them for nothing.”

Una thanked him and led her friend away.

“He gave them to us.” Fionnuala gave Una a sidelong glance.

“That’s not the point and you know it.” They walked a little farther. “I’m going to murder you one day, Fionnuala.”

“That would be bad. Don’t you love me?”

“That’s not the point either.”

“Yes, it is.”

“You don’t know the difference between right and wrong, Fionnuala, and you’ll come to a bad end.”

Fionnuala didn’t answer for a moment.

“I expect I shall,” she said.

It was fortunate that Fionnuala’s father was unaware of her behaviour, since it might have spoiled a very pleasant morning. For at the same time that the two girls were leaving the marketplace with their apples, that eminent churchman was walking at a dignified pace towards the hostel where his son Gilpatrick now lived. His mood was serious, because there was important family business to discuss. But the business was not unpleasant, the morning was fine and sunny, and he was looking forward to seeing Gilpatrick. As he came in sight of his son, therefore, he raised his stick in a solemn but friendly greeting.

The hostel of Saint Kevin’s was a small fenced enclosure containing a chapel, a dormitory, and some modest wooden buildings, which lay only two hundred yards south of the family’s ancient monastery. It belonged to the monks of Glendalough, who used it when visiting Dublin, and Gilpatrick had often resided here in the last two years. He was standing at the gateway and now, seeing his father approach, he moved forward.

But was there something in his manner, some hesitancy, which suggested he was not as glad to see his father as he should have been? It seemed to the older man that there might be.

“Are you not pleased to see me, Gilpatrick?” he enquired.

“Oh I am. Of course. Indeed I am.”

“That is good,” said his father. “Let us walk.”

They could have taken the roadway south, through the orchards. To the east, crossing a footbridge over the stream, they would have come out onto a large area of marshy meadows, dotted with trees. Instead, however, they took the roadway northwards that followed the gentle curve of the family’s ancient monastic enclosure before it continued, past the dark pool, towards the Thingmount and Hoggen Green.

Walking this route with his father, Gilpatrick thought, was always rather like a royal progress. As soon as they saw his father coming, people would smile and bow their heads with respect and affection, and his father would acknowledge them like a true tribal chief from ancient times.

And indeed, Conn probably had more prestige now than any chief of the Ui Fergusa had enjoyed before. His mother had been the last of the family of Caoilinn who had held the lands at Rathmines. Through his mother, therefore, the two strands of the descendants of Fergus were rejoined, and he inherited the blood of the ancient royal house of Leinster. As well as the family’s ancient drinking skull, his mother had also brought, as her dowry, some of those valuable Rathmines lands. By his own marriage, moreover, to a kinswoman of Lawrence O’Toole, he had allied himself with one of the noblest princely houses of northern Leinster. The Viking settlement might have taken over Fergus’s final resting place and the Church might have encroached upon many of the ancient grazing grounds in the region, but the present chief of the Ui Fergusa could still run his cattle over a huge tract of land down the coastal strip towards the Wicklow Mountains. More than this, the generations of family rule of the little monastery had given the chiefs a sacral role. And although the little monastery had been wound up and its chapel turned into a parish church, Gilpatrick’s father was still the vicar and as such he was, his son thought, that curiously Irish phenomenon, the druidical chief. No wonder his parishioners treated him with a special and tender respect.

Since he was dreading the conversation that was to come, Gilpatrick was glad that, as they walked down the roadway, his father seemed to feel no need to converse. When his father did speak, it was only to make a casual enquiry.

“Did you ever hear from that friend of yours, FitzDavid?”

At first, Gilpatrick had been a little disappointed that no word had ever come from Peter FitzDavid, and as time went by he had almost forgotten about him. Perhaps he had been killed.

The progress of King Diarmait and his foreign troops had been slow. The O’Connor High King and O’Rourke had gone down to Wexford to deal with him; there had been two skirmishes, neither very decisive. Diarmait had been forced to give hostages to the High King and pay O’Rourke a large fine in gold for the theft of his wife. He’d been allowed back into his ancestral lands in the south, but that was all. For a year he’d stayed down there and nobody had heard a squeak from him.

Last year, however, he’d managed to procure another, larger contingent of troops—thirty mounted men, about a hundred men-at-arms, and more than three hundred archers. They included several knights from prominent families that Gilpatrick had heard of, such as FitzGerald, Barri, and even an uncle of Strongbow himself. FitzGerald and his brother had been given the port of Wexford, which probably hadn’t pleased the Ostmen merchants there; and thanks to the mediation of Archbishop O’Toole of Dublin, the High King had agreed to a new deal.

“Send me your son as hostage,” he’d told Diarmait, “and—excluding Dublin, of course—you can have all Leinster.” To which he had quietly added, “If you can get it.” Diarmait had also had to promise that once he’d secured Leinster, he’d send all his foreigners back across the sea again.

But that had been a year ago, and still Diarmait hadn’t ventured into the northern part of the province. “You’ve no friends here,” he was firmly told.

“I doubt,” Gilpatrick’s father now remarked, “that you’ll be seeing your Welshman any time soon.”

They rounded the bend in the roadway above the pool and gazed down to the old burial ground. It was, Gilpatrick thought, a pleasant prospect. For if in former times the waterside site of Hoggen Green had been starkly bare, the spirits of the dead, perhaps, almost too free to wander as they liked, the Church had now placed its own sanctuaries beside the place, enclosing the spirits, as it were, with invisible barriers so that, if wander they must, they would have to go eastwards, past the old Viking stone and into the Liffey’s waters to be carried, no doubt, on the ebb tide, out into the long draw of the estuary and the open sea. To the left, just across the pond from the city wall, stood the small church of Saint Andrew’s, attended by a sprinkling of timber houses. To the right, a little above the Thingmount, lay the walled enclosure of the city’s only nunnery; and on the bankside of the Liffey, on reclaimed marshland, a small Augustinian friary.

“I dare say,” his father remarked, indicating the nunnery, “that I should put your sister in there.”

“They wouldn’t keep her,” Gilpatrick replied with a smile.

If only his wayward sister were the subject for discussion. That would have been easy. The real business of the day, however, had still not been mentioned; and they had walked out onto the old graveyard and were almost at the Thingmount before his father finally brought it up.

“It’s time your brother married,” he said.

It seemed such a harmless statement. Until the previous year, Gilpatrick had been blessed with two brothers. His elder brother who had been married for some years lived several miles down the coast and farmed the family’s great tract of land. He had loved his farm and seldom came up to Dublin. His younger brother, Lorcan, who had helped on the farm, was still unmarried. But at the start of the previous winter, after getting chilled on his way back from a journey into Ulster, his elder brother had taken a fever and died, leaving two daughters with his widow. She was a pleasant young woman and the family loved her. “She’s a treasure,” they all agreed. She was only twenty-three and clearly she should marry again. “But it would be a terrible pity to lose her,” as Gilpatrick’s father had very truly said.

And now, six months after the sad event, a solution had presented itself that promised to be satisfactory to everybody. Last week, his younger brother had come up from the farm and spoken to his father. An understanding had been reached. All the parties were agreeable.

The young man was to marry his brother’s widow.

“I couldn’t be happier, Gilpatrick,” his father said. “They’ll wait until the year has passed. And then they will marry with my blessing. And yours, too, I hope.”

Gilpatrick took a deep breath. He’d been preparing himself for this. His mother had told him about it two days ago.

“You know very well that I can’t,” he now replied.

“They will have my blessing,” his father repeated sharply.

“But you know,” Gilpatrick pointed out reasonably, “that the thing is impossible.”

“I do not,” Conn replied. “You know yourself,” he continued in a conciliatory tone, “that they are perfectly suited. They are the same age. They are already the best friends in the world. She was a wonderful wife to his brother and will be to him, too. She loves him, Gilpatrick. She confessed it to me herself. As for him, he’s a fine young man, sound as an oak. As good a man as ever his brother was. There can be no reasonable objection to the marriage.”

“Except,” Gilpatrick said with a sigh, “that she is his brother’s wife.”

“Which marriage the Bible allows,” his father snapped.

“Which marriage the Jews allowed,” Gilpatrick patiently corrected. “The Pope, however, does not.”

It was a much disputed passage. The book of Leviticus actually enjoined a dutiful man to marry his brother’s widow. The medieval Church, however, had decided that such a marriage was against canon law, and throughout Christendom such marriages were forbidden.

Except in Ireland. The truth was that things were still done differently in Christendom’s north-western corner. Celtic marriages had always been fluid affairs, easily dissolved, and even if it did not quite approve, the Celtic Church had wisely learned to accommodate itself to local custom. The heirs of Saint Patrick had not withheld their blessing from the four-times-married Brian Boru who was their loyal patron; and to a traditional Irish churchman like Conn, such canonical objections as this question of the brother’s widow seemed like nit-picking. Nor did he feel any sense of disloyalty to his church when he remarked a little sourly, “The Holy Father is a long way away.”

Gilpatrick looked at his father affectionately. In a way, it seemed to him, the older man represented all that was best—and worst—in the Celtic Irish Church. Half hereditary chief, half druid, he was an exemplary parish priest. He was married with children, but still a priest. These traditional arrangements extended to his ecclesiastical income as well. The lands with which his family had anciently endowed the monastery—and Conn had added those valuable lands at Rathmines as well—had passed into the parish, and so they technically belonged to the Archbishop of Dublin now. But as the parish priest, his father received all the revenues from these lands himself, as well as those from the family’s large estates down the coast. In due course Gilpatrick himself might succeed him as priest, and in all likelihood one of his brother’s children, assuming this uncanonical marriage produced sons, might follow on after. It was so in churches and monasteries all over Ireland.

And, of course, it was a scandal. Or so, at least, thought the Pope in Rome.

For during the last century or so, a great wind of change had been sweeping across western Christendom. The old church, it was felt, had become too rich, too worldly, lacking in spiritual fire and passionate commitment. New monastic orders dedicated to simplicity, like the Cistercians, were springing up. The Crusades had been launched to regain the Holy Land from the Saracens. Popes sought to purify the Church and to extend its authority, even issuing peremptory commands to kings.

“You have to admit, Father,” Gilpatrick gently reminded him, “that the church in Ireland lags behind our neighbours.”

“I wish,” his father replied gloomily, “that I’d never let you go to England.”

For one country in particular that had felt the force of this vigorous new wind had been the kingdom across the water. A century ago, the old Saxon Church had been notoriously lax. When William of Normandy began his conquest, he had easily obtained a papal blessing by promising to clean it up. Since then, the Norman English Church had been a model, with archbishops like the reforming Lanfranc and the saintly Anselm. Not that Gilpatrick was the only Irishman to catch the reforming contagion there. Quite a number of Irish churchmen had spent time in the great English monasteries like Canterbury and Worcester. The ecclesiastical contacts were many. For a while, indeed, the bishops of Dublin had even gone to England to be consecrated by the Archbishop of Canterbury. “Though they only did that,” Gilpatrick’s father had remarked with some truth, “to show that Dublin was different from the rest of Ireland.” As a result, many of the leading churchmen in Ireland now had a sense that they were out of step with the rest of Christendom and that they ought to do something about it.

“In any case,” the older man said irritably, “the Irish Church has already been reformed.”

Up to a point, it had—the administration of the Irish Church was certainly being brought up to date. The ancient tribal and monastic dioceses had been redrawn and brought under four archbishoprics: the ancient seat of Saint Patrick at Armagh, Tuam in the west, Cashel down in Munster, and lastly Dublin. Archbishop O’Toole of Dublin had set up new monastic houses, including the one at Christ Church, which followed a strict Augustinian rule that couldn’t have been bettered anywhere in Europe. In Dublin, at least, many of the parishes now paid taxes, known as tithes, to the Church.

“We’ve made a start,” Gilpatrick said. “But much still needs to be done.”

“You would consider my own position needed reforming then, I dare say.”

It was a tribute to Gilpatrick’s filial respect that he had always managed to avoid discussing this issue with his father. There had been no need to discuss something that wasn’t going to change anyway. It was the realisation that the discussion of his brother’s marriage might lead to such larger issues that had made him dread this meeting with his father in the first place.

“It would be hard to defend outside Ireland,” Gilpatrick said gently.

“Yet the archbishop has made no objection.”

It was one of the great wonders of the rule of Lawrence O’Toole that, like many great leaders, he had the genius—there was no other word for it—to live in two contradictory worlds at once. Gilpatrick had been given a number of tasks by the archbishop since his return and had had the opportunity to study him. He was saintly—there was not a doubt of that—and Gilpatrick revered him. O’Toole wanted to purify the Irish Church. But he was also an Irish prince, every inch of him, a poetic soul, full of a mystical spirit. “And it’s the spirit that matters, Gilpatrick,” the great man had often said to him. “Some of our greatest churchmen, like Saint Colum Cille, were royal princes. And if a people revered God through the leadership of their chief, there surely can be no harm in that.”

“That is true, Father,” Gilpatrick now replied, “and until the archbishop does object, I shan’t say a word about it.”

His father looked at him. On the face of it, Gilpatrick was being conciliatory. But did he not realise, his father wondered, how patronising that answer was? He felt a flush of anger. His son was patronising him, telling him he would tolerate his position in life until such time as the archbishop called it in question. It was an insult to him, to the family, to Ireland itself. He felt like hitting out.

“I’m beginning to see what it is you want for the Church, Gilpatrick,” his father said with a dangerous gentleness.

“What is that, Father?”

The older man looked at him coldly. “Another English Pope.”

Gilpatrick winced. It was a low blow, but telling. The previous decade, for the first and only time in its long history, the Catholic Church had had an English Pope. Adrian IV had been unremarkable, but for the Irish at least he had done one thing that made him remembered.

He had recommended a Crusade against Ireland.

It had been at a time, just after his accession, when King Henry of England had briefly considered an invasion of the western island. Whether to please the English king, or whether he had been misled about the state of the Irish Church by Henry’s ambassadors, Pope Adrian had written a letter telling the English king that he would perform a useful service in taking over the island “to increase the Christian religion.”

“What could you expect from an English Pope?” men like Gilpatrick’s father had asked. But though Pope Adrian had now departed this life, the memory of his letter still rankled. “We, the heirs of Saint Patrick, we who kept alive the Christian faith and the writings of ancient Rome when most of the world had sunk under the barbarians, we who gave the Saxons their education, are to be taught a lesson in Christianity by the English?” So Gilpatrick’s father would storm if ever the subject came up.

Pope Adrian’s letter, of course, had been an outrage; Gilpatrick wouldn’t deny it. But that wasn’t really the point. The real issue was larger.

“You speak as if there were such a thing as a separate Irish Church, Father. But there is only one Church and it is universal: that is its great strength. Its authority comes from the one Heavenly King. You speak of the past, when barbarians were fighting over the ruins of the Roman Empire. It was only the Church which was able to bring peace and order because it had a single, spiritual authority beyond the reach of earthly kings. When the Pope calls upon the knights of Christ to go on Crusade, he calls upon them from every land. Disputing kings set aside their quarrels to become warriors and pilgrims together. The Pope, the heir of Saint Peter himself, rules all Christendom under Heaven. There must be only one true Church. It cannot be otherwise.”

How could he convey the vision which inspired him and so many others of his kind—of a world where a man might walk from Ireland to Jerusalem, using a common Latin language, and finding everywhere the same ordered Christian empire, the same monastic orders, the same liturgy. Christendom was a vast spiritual machine, an engine of prayer, a universal brotherhood.

“I will tell you what I think,” said his father softly. “The thing which these reformers love is not a matter of the spirit. It is power. The Pope does not take hostages like a king, but takes spiritual hostages instead. For if a monarch disobeys him, he excommunicates him and tells his people, or other kings with a power to do it, that he should be deposed. You say such things are done to bring the nations of the earth closer to God. I tell you they are done from a love of power.”

Gilpatrick knew that his father had a point. There had been many clashes of will between popes and monarchs, including the kings of France, England, and even the Holy Roman Emperor about whether the Church’s vast lands and its army of churchmen were subject to royal control. At this very time King Henry of England was locked in a furious dispute with Archbishop Thomas Becket of Canterbury over just this issue—and there were senior churchmen in England who thought that the king was in the right. It was the ancient tension between king and priest that was probably as old as human history.

“And I will ask you one thing more,” said his father. “Have you seen a copy of Pope Adrian’s letter in which he tells the king to come to Ireland?”

“I believe I have.” The letter had become widely known.

“What is the condition that the Pope makes, what thing must the King of England do to obtain a blessing for his conquest? It is mentioned not once, but twice,” he added nastily.

“Well, there is the question of the tax, of course …”

“A penny to be levied upon every household in the land, and sent to Rome each year. Peter’s Pence!” the older man cried. “It’s the money they want, Gilpatrick. The money.”

“It’s only right and proper, Father, that …”

“Peter’s Pence.” The older man raised his finger and stared so fiercely at his son that Gilpatrick could almost imagine that he was being admonished by a grey-bearded druid from ancient times. “Peter’s Pence.”

And then, suddenly, the older man turned away from his son in disgust. If Gilpatrick did not understand even now, then what could he say? It was not the money. It was the spirit of the thing which offended him. Could Gilpatrick really not see that? For seven centuries, the Irish Church had been an inspiration to all Christendom because of its spirit. The spirit of Saint Patrick, of Saint Colum Cille, Saint Kevin, and many others. Missionaries, hermits, princes of Ireland. It had always seemed to him that the Irish had been touched in some special way, like the chosen people in ancient times. Be that as it might, Christianity was a mystic communion, not a set of rules and regulations. It was not that he was ignorant of the ways of other countries. He had met priests from England and France in the port of Dublin. But he had always sensed in them a legalistic mentality, a love of logical games that repulsed him. Men like these did not belong in the beloved silences of Glendalough; they could never fashion the Book of Kells. They might be priests but they were not poets; and if they were scholars, then their scholarship was dry.

It was therefore with a sense of bitterness towards more than just his son that the old man now, standing in front of the Thingmount where Fergus himself lay buried, hotly declared, “You will come to Lorcan’s wedding, Gilpatrick, because he is your brother and he will be hurt if you do not. You will come also because I order you to do so. Are you understanding me?”

“Father, I cannot. Not if he marries his brother’s wife.”

“Then you needn’t trouble,” his father shouted, “to enter my house again.”

“Surely, Father …” Gilpatrick began. But his father had turned on his heel and walked away. And Gilpatrick knew, sadly, that it was useless to follow him. A week later, the wedding was announced. In June it took place, and Gilpatrick was not there. In July, seeing his father by the entrance of Christ Church, Gilpatrick started towards him; but his father, as he saw him coming, turned away, and Gilpatrick, after a moment’s hesitation, decided not to follow him. August passed and they did not speak. September came.

And then there were other, more urgent matters to think about.

It was still quiet when Kevin MacGowan awoke that September morning. The sky was grey. His wife was already up; from the oven in the yard came the faint smell of baking bread. The slave girl was sweeping near the gate. The two boys were playing in the yard. Through the open doorway he could see the steam of their breath. Autumn had come to Dublin. There was a chill in the morning air.

Automatically, as he always did, he reached under the bed and felt for the strongbox. It was reassuringly there. He liked to sleep with it close to him. There was another place, under the bread oven, where he usually concealed it. Only his wife and Una knew about that. It was a good hiding place. Not as secure as the cathedral perhaps, but cleverly disguised. You could look there a hundred times and never guess there was a hiding place. But when he slept in the house, he kept the box under his bed.

He looked across the room. In the far corner, in the shadows, he could see another form gently stirring. It was Una. Normally she would have been at the hospital, but with all the recent events, she had preferred to remain at home with her family today. She was sitting up now. He smiled. Could she see his smile from over there in the shadows? He wondered if she knew what happiness her presence gave him. Probably not. And probably better if she didn’t. One mustn’t burden one’s children with too much affection.

He got up, went over to her, and kissed her on the head. He turned, felt a slight constriction in his chest, and gave a little cough. Then he walked to the entrance and looked out. It was certainly getting cold.

His gaze went out towards the gateway. He saw a neighbour go past with a wooden bucket of water from the well. The fellow seemed in no hurry. He listened. Some sparrows were chattering in the branches of the apple tree in the yard next door. He heard a blackbird. Yes, everything seemed to be normal. There was no hint of any commotion. That was a relief.

Strongbow. Nobody really thought that he would come. His uncle and the FitzGeralds had stayed down in the south all summer and the people of Dublin had reasonably assumed they would be there for the rest of the year. But then in the last week of August the news had arrived.

“Strongbow is in Wexford. He’s arrived with English troops. A lot of troops.”

Two hundred fully equipped mounted men and a thousand foot soldiers, to be precise. They were mostly drawn from the family’s huge holdings in England. It was a force that only one of the greatest magnates in the Plantagenet empire could have collected. By the standards of feudal Europe, it was a small army. By Irish standards, the armoured knights, the highly trained men-at-arms, and the archers, who shot with mathematical precision, represented a disciplined military machine beyond anything they possessed.

Within days, news came that the port of Waterford was in Strongbow’s hands as well; then that King Diarmait had given Strongbow his daughter in marriage. And soon after this: “They’re coming to Dublin.”

It was an outrage. The High King had allowed Diarmait to take Leinster; but Dublin was another matter, specifically excluded from the agreement. “If Diarmait wants Dublin, then he means to take all Ireland,” the High King judged. “And didn’t he give me his own son as hostage?” the O’Connor king continued. If Diarmait broke his oath under such circumstances, O’Connor had the right under Irish law to do what he liked with the boy, even execute him. “What kind of man is it,” O’Connor cried, “that sacrifices his own son?”

It was time to put a stop to the ambitions of this turbulent adventurer and his foreign friends.

There was no doubt about the feelings of the Dubliners either. Three days ago, MacGowan had watched the King of Dublin and some of the greatest merchants ride out to welcome the High King as he came down to the Liffey. It was said that even Diarmait’s brother-in-law the archbishop was disgusted with him. The O’Connor king had brought with him a large force, and it was quickly agreed that the Dubliners would prepare to defend their city while the High King would march a day’s journey to the south and block the approaches up the Liffey Plain. A day later, MacGowan heard that not only was O’Connor camped across the route but he had ordered trees felled to make every track in the region impassable. Dublin made preparations, but the consensus was clear; even with Strongbow and all his men, King Diarmait would give them no trouble. “They’ll never get through.”

Except on the coldest winter days, when he might be forced to retreat indoors, Kevin MacGowan always worked in an open-sided shed in the yard. That way he had daylight to see what he was doing. To stay warm he kept a small brazier at his feet.

He sat down at his workbench that morning with a contented smile. He never ate much, but his wife had given him fresh bread, piping hot from the oven and served with honey. The smell and the taste of it lingered in a delightful way as he set to work. His wife and Una were spinning wool in a corner by the oven. His two sons were busy with a wood carving. It was a perfect family scene.

A merchant came in to talk about a silver brooch for his wife. Kevin asked him if all was quiet in the town and he said that it was. After a while the man left, and for some time Kevin went on with his work in silence. Then he paused.

“Una.”

“Yes, Father.”

“Go to the south wall, by the main gate. Tell me if you see anything.”

“Couldn’t one of the boys go? I’m helping Mother.”

“I should prefer it if you went.” He trusted her more than the boys.

She glanced at her mother who smiled at her and nodded.

“As you wish, Father,” she said. She put a saffron-coloured shawl over her head to keep out the cold and set off along the street.

She was glad to be at home. Perhaps she had been spending too much time with the sick at the hospital, but it seemed to her that her father had not been entirely well recently. Normally she would have been busy at the hospital that day, but Fionnuala had agreed to take over her tasks. She believed that recently she had managed to persuade Fionnuala to adopt a more responsible attitude to life and she felt rather proud of that.

She saw nothing unusual along the way. People were going about their business. She passed a cart carrying timber, and she had just reached the Saxons’ church when, from the king’s hall nearby, she heard a clatter of hoofs and a dozen riders came out towards her. In front rode the king himself. She noticed that none of the riders were dressed for battle, though one or two carried the Viking battle-axe that was a favoured weapon in most parts of Ireland now. The rest, including the king, only had daggers in their belts.

As she drew against the wooden fence to let them pass, the king smiled down at her. He was a handsome, kindly-looking man. He certainly didn’t appear in the least worried.

When she went up onto the wall, she found herself quite alone. Although the sky was grey, the day was clear. Beyond the fields and orchards to the south, the rounded humps of the Wicklow Mountains seemed to loom so close that you could almost touch them. She was a little surprised not so see any lookouts posted on the wall, but there was certainly no sign of any enemy approach. The gateway nearby was open. Away on the left, she could see a ship coming in from the estuary. The port had been particularly active of late. Everything seemed to be normal.

Kevin was busy at his work when she returned. A short while ago, he had felt a need to cough and had gone into the house; but that had passed. He smiled as she returned and told him all was well, and the household resumed its peaceful routine.

It was late in the morning that the silversmith put down the piece he was working on and listened. He did not say anything, just sat there very still. Was something wrong? Nothing that he could put his finger on. Could he hear anything out of the ordinary? No, he could not. But still he sat there, puzzled. His wife glanced at him.

“What is it?”

“I don’t know.” He shook his head. “Nothing.”

He went back to his work for a short while, then paused. The feeling had come to him again. A strange sensation. A sense of coldness. As if a shadow had passed just feet away from him.

“Una.”

“Yes, Father?”

“Go up to the wall again.”

“Yes, Father.” What a good girl she was. Never a word of complaint. The only one he could completely trust.

Although the view at the wall was the same as before, Una did not return at once. There had been no need for words between her father and herself. She understood him. If he was worried, she would take good care to check every possibility. For some time, therefore, she scanned the south-western horizon where the Liffey made its winding way towards the city. Was there any sign of dust, any glint of armour, any hint of movement? There was nothing. Satisfied at last, she decided to go back. She glanced towards the estuary, gave a last brief look at the Wicklow Mountains, and then she saw them.

They were pouring out of the hills like a mountain stream. They were flowing down from a small valley that led up into the wooded hills to the south and spreading out onto the slopes above the hamlet of Rathfarnham, less than four miles away. She could see the glimmer of the chain mail of the knights, scores of them. Masses of men, marching in three columns, followed after. At that distance, the columns looked like three huge centipedes. Behind them came still more columns of men; from their slightly bobbing motion she supposed these must be archers.

She understood what must have happened at once. Diarmait and Strongbow must have come over the mountains instead of up the Liffey valley. They had given the High King the slip entirely. In all likelihood, this was the whole army. In a quarter of an hour they would be at Rathmines. For several moments she watched in horrified fascination; then she turned and ran.

There was no need for Una to raise the alarm. Others also had seen the army on the slopes. People were starting to run in the streets. By the time she reached her own gate, the family had already heard the shouting, and it only took a few moments for her to tell them all she had seen. The question was: what to do?

The lane in which they lived ran into the Fish Shambles. They were not far from the quays. When Una went into the street again to see if there was further news, she discovered that their next-door neighbour was loading a handcart. “I’m going to get on a ship if I can,” he told her. “I’ll not be waiting here if the English come.” On the other side lived a carpenter. He had already built a barricade around his house. He seemed to think that he could keep an army out by his own handiwork.

The MacGowan household was hesitant. Her father had closed up his strongbox and her mother had wrapped some possessions in a cloth which she had slung over her back. The two boys and the apprentice were standing beside her and the English slave girl seemed more anxious to go with them than to be liberated by her fellow countrymen.

Kevin MacGowan had never liked taking chances, and he had always tried to plan for every contingency that might threaten his little family. Faced by this crisis now he found himself well able to think rationally. The carpenter might be absurd, but surely his neighbour planning to go down to the quay might be panicking too soon. Even with his English allies, it seemed unlikely that King Diarmait would be able to penetrate stone-walled defences. That meant a siege—days or weeks of waiting, and plenty of time to leave from the quays if necessary. On balance, it seemed to the silversmith that it might be foolish to run down to the waterside now. Less easy was the question of what to do with the strongbox. He did not like to trouble the monks at Christ Church until there was good reason. If there were a siege, he’d probably continue working; so he’d need to keep some of the valuable pieces in the house anyway. If the family had to leave, he might want to take at least some of his silver with him, and perhaps leave the rest in the strongbox at Christ Church. It would depend on the circumstances.

“Go to the Fish Shambles, Una,” he instructed. “Find out what’s happening.”

The sloping market street was full of people hurrying in every direction, some towards the quays, others up the slope to Christ Church. She stopped several people, but no one seemed to have a definite view about what was happening; and she was wondering what to do when she saw Father Gilpatrick coming swiftly towards her. They knew each other slightly and he gave her a friendly nod. She asked his advice.

“The archbishop is already riding out to talk to them,” he told her. “He’s determined to avoid any bloodshed. I’m going to join him now myself.”

When she returned with this news, Kevin MacGowan pondered.

It seemed to him that the chances were good. Whatever you thought of him, even King Diarmait was hardly going to ignore his saintly brother-in-law.

“We can wait awhile to see what happens,” he told his family. “Una, you’d better go back to the wall. Let us know at once if anything starts to happen.” It was a shock when she got to the wall this time. She could hardly believe they could have come so close, so soon. The nearest line of men was not three hundred yards away. She could see their faces as they stared sternly towards the walls. Detachments of knights, men-at-arms, and archers were drawn up at intervals and seemed to stretch all the way round the walls.

Straight ahead a quarter mile down the main road, she could see Archbishop O’Toole. He was mounted in the Irish style, without a saddle, on a small grey horse. Behind him were several other churchmen, including Father Gilpatrick’s father. The archbishop was in deep conversation with a bearded man, whom she took to be King Diarmait, and a tall man with long moustaches and an impassive face. That would be Strongbow. All the way along the lines, the men stood motionless. Towards one corner of the wall, some of the mounted men seemed restless, but she supposed that might be their horses. Occasionally one of the knights would wheel out of the line and make a circle before coming back. She saw Father Gilpatrick ride out from the open gate and join his father and the other priests. Still nobody moved. The archbishop was dismounting now. So were King Diarmait and Strongbow. Men were bringing stools for them to sit on. Obviously the negotiations were going to take some time. She looked away from the scene for the moment and glanced down into the lane behind her. And then she stared in shock.

Fionnuala was walking down the lane below the wall. She wasn’t alone either. There were half a dozen boys with her. They were laughing, and she was flirting, too, by the look of it. She’d ruffled the hair of one of the boys and she was just putting her arm round another. They couldn’t possibly be unaware of the danger outside the walls. Perhaps they didn’t imagine the English would get in. But it wasn’t their stupidity, nor even Fionnuala’s flirting, that really shocked her. It was the fact that Fionnuala was supposed to be at the hospital. She had promised. Who was looking after the patients? She felt a surge of indignation.

“Fionnuala!” she cried out. “Fionnuala!”

Fionnuala looked up in surprise.

“Una. What are you doing there?”

“Never mind that. What are you doing? Why aren’t you at the hospital?”

“I was bored.” Fionnuala made a funny face. But it wasn’t funny.

Una only glanced over the wall long enough to see that the archbishop was still deep in his discussions. Then she raced to the steps, flew down them, and, ignoring the boys entirely, made straight for Fionnuala. She was in a fury. She had never been so angry. Fionnuala, seeing that she was serious, started to run, but Una caught up and grabbed her hair.

“You liar!” she screamed. “You stupid, useless bitch!” She slapped Fionnuala’s face as hard as she could. Fionnuala slapped her back, but this time Una hit her with her clenched fist. Fionnuala screamed, broke away, and started running again. Una could hear the boys laughing behind her. She didn’t care. She ran after Fionnuala. She wanted to hurt her and she wanted to hurt her badly. Such a thing had never happened to her before. She forgot King Diarmait, Strongbow, even her father. She forgot everyone.

They ran towards Christ Church, then left past the skinners’ booths and across town towards the market. Fionnuala was running faster, but Una was determined. She was shorter than Fionnuala, but she reckoned she was stronger. When I’ve given her a good slapping, she thought, I’ll drag her back to the hospital—by the hair if I have to. Then she realised that the western gate might be shut. She’ll be lucky if I don’t throw her over the wall, she thought grimly. She saw Fionnuala run into the marketplace. The stalls were being closed. A moment later Fionnuala had vanished, but Una knew she must be hiding there somewhere. She’d find her.

Then Una stopped. What was she doing? It was all very well to be getting worked up about Fionnuala and the inmates of the hospital, but what about her own family? Wasn’t she supposed to be keeping watch on the wall? She cursed Fionnuala, and turned.

The sounds first reached her when she had gone about a hundred yards along the street. She heard shouting, several big bangs, more shouts. Ahead, people were starting to run in her direction. Then suddenly, from the marketplace behind her, she heard a similar racket, and a moment later saw half a dozen knights in chain mail dash into view. They must have come through the western gate. There were men-at-arms behind them. Fionnuala was there somewhere, she knew, and for an instant she felt an urge to run back and save her friend; but then she realised the uselessness of it. If she can hide from me, she thought, then she can hide from them. She saw horsemen in front of her now. She had to get to her family. She dived into an alley.

It took her some time to reach home, working her way across the town. She didn’t know how it had happened, but the English troops were obviously taking the town. They seemed to be all round Christ Church and the king’s hall. Their arrival inside the walls had been so sudden that there was scarcely any resistance. She had to go down almost to the waterfront to avoid them.

Her family were waiting anxiously by the gate. Mercifully the English had not come that way yet. She had expected reproaches but her father only seemed relieved to see her.

“We know what happened,” her mother said. “Those cursed English. While they talk to the archbishop by the south gate, they break in at the east and west. Shameful, it was. Did you see them?”

“I saw them,” said Una, and then blushed. In all her life she had never told a lie. Strictly speaking, it was true. She had seen them in the street. But it wasn’t what her mother had meant. Nobody noticed. “It was hard to get here. They’re all round the cathedral,” she added.

“We’re going to the quay,” said her father. Una noticed that he wasn’t carrying the strongbox. “The cathedral’s already surrounded,” he explained, “and I daren’t carry it through the streets now. So I’ve hidden it in the usual place. Please God no one will find it.” He indicated a pouch tied inside his shirt. “There’s enough in here to see us through our journey.”

The quay was crowded. The English were flooding through the gates of Dublin now, but they were still in the upper part of the town. People were already swarming across the bridge to the suburb on the Liffey’s northern side, but it was far from clear that they would be any safer from the English over there. On the quay, the shipmasters were doing a brisk trade. It was lucky, Una thought, that there were so many vessels in the port that day. A Norse ship had already pulled out into the stream. That would probably be going to the Isle of Man, or the islands of the north. There was a ship ready to leave for Chester. That would be closest, but the ship was already full. Two more were Bristol-bound, but their masters were holding out for such high fares that her father had looked doubtful. Another was going to Rouen in Normandy. A French merchant that MacGowan knew slightly was embarking. The fare was less than it was to Bristol. The silversmith hesitated. Rouen was a longer voyage, more dangerous. He spoke no French. He looked back towards the Bristol boat, but the sailors were already turning people away. There seemed to be no other choice. Unwillingly, he went to the Rouen boat.

He was just paying the captain of the vessel when a familiar figure came in sight. Ailred the Palmer was striding along the quay in the direction of the hospital. As soon as he saw MacGowan, he came swiftly towards him.

“I’m glad to see you safe, Kevin,” he said. “Where are you going?”

The silversmith quickly explained the situation and his misgivings.

“You may be right to go.” Ailred glanced up the hill. Fires had broken out in one or two buildings. “God knows what kind of people these English are. You’ll surely find work in Rouen to tide you over and I’ll get word to you of what is happening here.” He was looking thoughtfully at Una. “Why not let Una remain here with me and my wife, Kevin? She’ll be safe in the hospital. We’re under the protection of the Church. She can prepare your house for your return.”

Una was horrified. She loved the Palmer, but she didn’t want to be separated from her family. Above all, she was sure her father needed her. But both her parents seemed in favour of the idea.

“Dear God, child, I’d sooner you were safe in the hospital than out on the wild seas with us,” her mother cried, “and no knowing that we mightn’t all be drowned.” And her father put his arm round her and whispered in her ear, “You could rescue the strongbox, if you get the chance.”

“But Father …” she protested. Everything was happening too fast. It was hard to think.

The ship’s master wanted to leave.

“Go with Ailred, Una. It’s for the best.” Her father turned so quickly that she guessed the decision hurt him as much as it did her. But it was his final word, and she knew it.

Moments later, guided by Ailred the Palmer’s firm but kindly hand, she found herself moving swiftly in the direction of the hospital.

As it turned out, King Diarmait and Strongbow had not instigated the sudden attack on Dublin. Indeed, they had been rather embarrassed when, in the middle of the negotiation with the archbishop, some of the more hot-headed knights, impatient with the delay, had made a rush at the gates and burst through before the defenders had time to realise what was going on. Of course, it worked out well for them: neither Diarmait nor Strongbow could deny it. While they and the archbishop watched, the city had fallen with scarcely a blow. After apologising to O’Toole, the Irish king and his new English son-in-law had ridden into the city to find that there was nothing left to do. The place was theirs.

A few buildings were burned and there was some looting going on, but that was to be expected. Soldiers must be allowed the spoils of war. They didn’t let it go too far, though, and they made sure that none of the religious houses were touched.

More significant was the exodus of inhabitants from the town. This had its good side and its bad side. On the good side, there was accommodation to quarter the whole army. On the bad side, half the craftsmen and merchants in the town had fled across the river or over the sea, and they were a big part of the city’s value. It also turned out that the King of Dublin had slipped away. The best information was that he had taken a Norse ship to the northern islands. That was bad news because it seemed likely that he would try to collect forces for an attack. But for the moment, at least, the city was quiet.

It was four days after the occupation when Una MacGowan set out from the Hospital of Saint John to visit her home in the city. The hospital had not been troubled: indeed, two days ago, King Diarmait and Strongbow themselves, accompanied by several knights, had paid a brief visit to inspect the place. Una had been struck by the tall English nobleman. With his finely drawn, oval face and his splendid bearing, he seemed to her quite as impressive as his kingly father-in-law. They had all treated the place with the same respect as if they had been in a church, and Diarmait had politely asked Ailred to take in half a dozen people, two of them English, who had been hurt during the taking of the city.

Una had certainly been busy in the hospital, as Fionnuala had not appeared again. Her father had sent word that he wished her to stay with him for the present; but Una suspected that there was an additional reason for her absence. She’s heard that I’m here, she thought, and she doesn’t want to face me.

As she passed through the market by the western gate, she noticed that nearly half the stalls were open again and doing a quiet trade. Walking up towards the cathedral, she saw that most of the houses now had troops in them, and some had obviously been abandoned entirely by their owners. The Englishmen seemed strange. With their harsh accents, stout leather jerkins, and padded tunics, they somehow seemed tougher, more compact than the men she was used to. Some of them gave her looks which made her uncomfortable, but nobody molested her. In an open space by the cathedral, a group of archers had set up targets for practise, the arrows thudding into the packed straw with a precision that was almost mechanical. She found it disturbing. Passing down the slope of the Fish Shambles, she turned into the lane that led by her home.

She hesitated. Why had she come here? To see what had happened to the house? What if it had been burned? It was sure to be full of English soldiers anyway. She felt suddenly miserable and had half a mind to turn back. But she couldn’t do that. For her family’s sake, she had to find out what had become of it.

The lane was rather quiet. She could see behind the fences that most of the houses were being used as quarters for the soldiers. In one yard several of them were sleeping; another seemed to contain only an old woman. When she reached the fence in front of her own house, she glanced nervously at the gateway. It was open. As she drew level, she looked inside. There was no sign of damage, anyway, nor could she see any occupants. She stopped and glanced along the lane. No one was coming. She put her head through the gateway and looked round the yard.

It was a strange sensation, to be peering furtively into her own home. From the wood glowing in her father’s brazier, which had been moved a little, and from the scattered possessions in the yard, it was clear that the place was being used. Perhaps the men were asleep inside the house. In any case, she had better move on. But she didn’t. Instead, after glancing down the street once more, she stepped into the yard. It was silent.

The strongbox: what a chance! It was sitting there, waiting to be rescued; and no one was looking. If she could just slip through the yard to its hiding place. It would only take a moment. She knew she could carry it. The woollen cloak over her shoulders would cover it. How long would it take to walk up to Christ Church and bring it to safety? Moments. No more. And when might she get another chance like this? Perhaps never.

But were there men in the house? That was the question. To get to the hiding place she would have to go past the open doorway. If anyone was awake in there she’d probably be seen. There was only one thing to do. She started to cross the yard, past the brazier, past the bread oven. She would have to look in through the doorway and see if anyone was there. If they caught sight of her, she’d have to run. She didn’t think they’d catch her. But if no one was there, she could get the box and be gone. Her heart was pounding, but she forced herself to keep calm. She reached the doorway.

She looked in. It was hard to see anything, since the only light came from the doorway and the small opening in the roof. Were there eyes in there, watching her, hands reaching out? She strained to see into the shadows. There was no sound. After a few moments, she could make out the benches along the walls. There did not seem to be any human forms on them. Very cautiously, she stepped inside. Now she could see better. She looked at the place where her parents always slept, then at her own corner. No. Nobody was there. She felt a sudden urge to go over to her place, to feel its comforting familiarity again; but she knew she must not. With a sigh, she turned round and stepped back into the yard. She wondered whether to look outside the gate again and decided there was no need. Better not waste time.

She went quickly to the hiding place under the bread oven. If you knew how to push the little stone panel aside and reach in, it was only the work of a moment. She pushed her arm in. Farther. She felt around with her hand. And encountered …

Nothing. She couldn’t believe it. She felt again, frowning. Still nothing. Surely there must be some mistake. She pulled back her sleeve until her whole arm was bare and tried once more, moving her hand this way and that, pushing it through until she touched the end of the hiding place.

There was no doubt about it. The hiding place was empty. The strongbox had been stolen. She felt a sudden, cold panic, then a sickening sense of misery: someone had found her father’s treasure. Her family’s entire wealth was gone. She pulled back, glancing around. Where would they have put it? Inside, perhaps? It was worth a try, at least. She glanced at the gateway, still empty. She ran back inside, into the darkness.

She didn’t worry about the mess. There was no time to think of that. It didn’t even matter that the room was dark: she knew every foot of it with her eyes closed, every crevice and hiding place. With furious speed, she went round the walls, pulling benches back, throwing off cloaks, blankets, and even a chain mail shirt, scattering them on the floor. In her irritation, she even sent two metal bowls flying with a clatter across the room. She worked rapidly and thoroughly, and at the end of it all, standing with her back towards the doorway and gazing miserably around at the silent shadows, she knew for a certainty that the strongbox was not there. She had come too late. The cursed English troops had found it and she would never get it back. Her father had lost all that he had. Her head fell forward. She wanted to cry.

And wasn’t there something even worse? She suspected there was. What if, instead of chasing after that stupid Fionnuala, she had watched on the wall and seen the English attack? What if she’d run, then, straight to her father? Mightn’t he have had time to get the box safely to Christ Church? Or at least, if she’d got home earlier, he might have felt safer taking the box with him down to the quay. It was waiting for her that had caused him to panic and make his disastrous decision. Even if her brain told her that all these suppositions might be false, her heart told her otherwise. It is my fault, she thought. My family is ruined because of me. She stood there in the quiet emptiness of her home, stunned by grief. And so, for a moment, she did not even feel the hand upon her shoulder.

“Looking for something?”

The voice spoke in English. She didn’t completely understand, but it made no difference. She whirled round. His grip shifted instantly to her arm and tightened.

A studded leather jerkin, a jagged scrape on the right-hand side. A face covered with several days’ dark stubble; a large brutal nose, bloodshot eyes. He was alone.

“Looking for something to steal, are you?” She didn’t understand him. He held up a silver coin in front of her face. She wasn’t sure, but it looked like one she had seen in her father’s strongbox. He chuckled as he put the coin away. She saw a strange, soft gleam in his eyes. “Well, you found me.”

Holding her arm in one hand he started to loosen his tunic with the other. She might not understand the words, but there was no doubt about what he wanted. She struggled to get free. His hand was large and calloused. As he jerked her back, she felt how easily he did it and realised how much stronger he was. She had never known the fear of feeling physically powerless before.

“The punishment for stealing’s much worse than what I’m going to do to you,” he said. He could see that she didn’t understand, but that didn’t stop him going on. “You’re lucky, that’s what you are. Lucky to be getting me.”

Una had been so startled and frightened that she had forgotten even to scream.

“Help!” she shouted, as loud as she could. “Rape!” Nothing happened. She shouted again.

The soldier didn’t seem to be bothered. His jerkin was loose now. Una suddenly realised that, even if they cared, no one would be taking notice of her cries. The nearby houses were probably all taken by English troops, and they wouldn’t even understand her. She took a deep breath, to scream.

And then he made one mistake. Stripping off his jerkin, just for a moment, he let go of her arm. It was only a moment, but that was all she needed. She knew what she must do. She had never done such a thing before, but she wasn’t a fool. He saw her opening her mouth to scream, but he didn’t see her kick until it was too late.

She gave it everything she had. He felt a sudden, searing flash of pain in his groin. He doubled over, his hands clutching his stomach in agony.

She fled. Before he could even straighten up, she was through the gate. She started to run down the street, hardly knowing which way she went. She saw a group of soldiers in her path. It seemed they were parting to let her through. She heard his voice behind her.

“Thief! Stop her!”

Powerful arms were holding her. She tried to get free, but they lifted her off the ground. There was nothing she could do. The soldier was coming along the street now. He was limping and his face was contorted with fury. She didn’t know whether he was going to try to rape her again, but he obviously meant to get even. He had come up with them now. He was thrusting his face into hers.

“What is this?” Another voice. Peremptory. From behind her. The men were drawing apart.

“A thief.” Her accuser’s voice, shaken but surly. She saw a dark robe, looked up.

It was Father Gilpatrick.

“Rape.” It was all that she could say. She indicated the man with the unshaven face. “He tried … I’d gone into our house …” It was enough. The priest turned on them furiously.

“Villains!” he shouted. She did not understand all of what he said, because he was speaking in English. But she heard several things she recognised. Hospital of Saint John. Archbishop. King Diarmait. The men were looking confused. Her attacker, she saw, had gone very pale. Moments later, Father Gilpatrick was leading her away.

“I told them you’re under Church protection at the hospital. I shall complain to the archbishop. Are you hurt?” he gently enquired. She shook her head.

“I kicked him in the groin and got away,” she told him frankly.

“Quite right, my child,” he said. Then she told him about the missing strongbox and the coin in the soldiers hand. “Ah,” he said sadly. “I’m afraid there’s nothing to be done about that.”

He accompanied her all the way to the hospital, talking to her quietly as they went, so that by the time they got back, she was not only feeling better but even had the chance to observe, which had never struck her before, how uncommonly handsome the young priest was. When they arrived at the hospital, the Palmer’s wife put her straight to bed and brought her warm broth and comfort.

By the next morning, Una was over her fright and seemed to all the inmates at the hospital to be her usual self. But she wasn’t. Nor in the weeks and months that followed would she ever feel easy with herself again. It was not the near escape she had experienced that troubled her: that was soon enough forgotten. It was another thought, insidious as it was unfair, which would not leave her.

My father has lost everything he has. And it is all my fault.

III

1171

Peter FitzDavid smiled. A summer’s day. The soft, warm light seemed to be rolling down from the Wicklow Mountains and drifting in from the wide blue curve of the bay. Dublin at last.

He’d been waiting a long time to come to Dublin. Last autumn, when Strongbow and King Diarmait had come up here, he’d been left down south guarding the port of Waterford. Peter had performed his tasks well, but by the time Strongbow had retired to Waterford in the winter he seemed to have nearly forgotten who Peter was.

The port of Waterford stood on a handsome site overlooking a large river mouth. The original Viking settlement there had been nearly as old as that of Dublin and traders came there from the south-western ports of France and even farther away. Strongbow had set up extensive winter quarters there but the very size of the camp had only reminded Peter of his next problem. The English lord had so many knights—relations, followers, friends, and sons of friends—to look after that it was going to be a long time, or take some extraordinary deed on his part, before his own turn came to share the rewards. By late spring, moreover, some of the young men like himself were wondering what the future of the expedition was going to be. There were two opinions in the camp.

“Diarmait and Strongbow are going to take the whole island,” said some. Peter thought it quite likely that the Irish king hoped to do this; and with Strongbow’s well-equipped army, he probably could. The Irish chiefs, fine fighting men though they were, had nothing that could withstand the devastating effect of an armoured cavalry charge; nor had they anything like the massed archers. Even the High King, with all his followers, might have difficulty stopping them.

But equally there were others who thought that the mission might be near completion. If so, then most of them would be paid off and sent home. And I’ll be sure to be sent back, Peter thought, with little enough for myself or to give to my mother. He wondered where he’d find employment after that. But then, in the month of May, an unexpected change occurred.

King Diarmait of Leinster, having regained his kingdom, suddenly fell sick and died.

What would happen next? It was true that when he gave Strongbow his daughter, the Leinster king had promised to make him his heir. But was that promise worth anything? Peter had learned enough of the customs of the island by now to know that any new king or chief in Ireland was chosen by his people from amongst his close kin. Diarmait had left a brother and several sons, and under Irish law there should be no question of their sister’s foreign husband taking their inheritance. Yet it soon became clear that Diarmait’s sons, at least, were going along with the idea.

“They’ve no choice,” a Waterford merchant had remarked to him. “Strongbow has three hundred knights, three hundred archers, a thousand men. He has the power. Without him they’re nothing. If they stick with him, they’re still in with a chance of keeping part of what they lost.”

“But I can see another difficulty,” Peter had replied. By the feudal law of Plantagenet England, a great lordship like Leinster would pass to the eldest son; or if it devolved upon an heiress, there would be no question of her marrying without the king’s permission—and kings usually made a point of giving such heiresses to their faithful friends. Since Diarmait had actually acknowledged King Henry of England as his overlord, and Strongbow was in any case a vassal of the Plantagenet king, the English magnate would be placing himself in a dangerous legal position by taking up this Leinster inheritance. “He would really need King Henry’s permission,” Peter had explained to the Waterford merchant. “And I wonder if he has it.”

Just at that moment, however, King Henry II of England had other things to worry about. Indeed, it seemed to Peter that the English king would scarcely dare to show his face.

The shocking news from England had come quite early in January. By the following month it had spread all over Europe. The King of England had killed the Archbishop of Canterbury. No one had ever heard of such a thing before.

The quarrel between the English king and Archbishop Thomas Becket had been the usual one over the Church’s power and jurisdiction. Henry had insisted that those in religious orders should answer to regular courts if they committed crimes like murder or theft. Becket, his former friend and Chancellor, who owed his position as archbishop to King Henry, had obstinately set his face against the king in a bitter and long-running dispute. Some of the senior English clergy actually thought that Becket had let his new position go to his head. But after years of strife, a group of Henry’s knights, supposedly hearing the king burst out in irritation “Who will rid me of this turbulent priest!” thought it was an order to kill him and went and did so in front of the high altar in Canterbury cathedral.

All Europe was scandalised. Everyone blamed Henry. The Pope denounced him. People were saying he should stand trial and that Becket should be made a saint. Peter supposed that the English king was far too busy dealing with this crisis to pay much attention to events in a place as far away and marginal as Leinster.

Strongbow had wasted no time. He had gone straight to Dublin. But Peter, once again, had been left behind. The news from Dublin had sounded exciting. The ousted King of Dublin had returned with a fleet from the northern isles, but the Norsemen had botched the whole business: as they started to attack the eastern gate, the English had raced out of the southern gate, caught them in the rear, and cut them to pieces. They’d killed the King of Dublin, too. But though the former Dublin king might have failed to grab his city back, nobody imagined that the High King of Ireland was going to stand by and see this English intruder take over a quarter of the island and its greatest port.

“The High King won’t be long coming,” the messenger from Dublin had told him. “All possible reinforcements are to go to Dublin right away. And that includes you.”

So here he was at last, on a sunny summer day, coming into Dublin. And as soon as he had reported to Strongbow and quartered his men, he knew what he would do.

He would call upon his old friend Gilpatrick and his family. Did his friend still have a pretty sister, he wondered?

It was not often that Gilpatrick’s mother had to find fault with her husband; but sometimes she knew it was necessary to put pressure on him. When Gilpatrick failed to come to his brother Lorcan’s wedding, she had been as angry as her husband. It was a public insult and a humiliation for the entire family. If her husband wouldn’t see Gilpatrick after that, she didn’t blame him. But at some point the rift had to end. After a year she had finally decided that it was better for everyone if the priest allowed his son to visit the house again; and following some weeks of judicious coaxing and tears, she had persuaded her husband, somewhat grumpily, to allow him to visit once more. “And you’re lucky,” she had told Gilpatrick firmly, “that he does.”

Nonetheless, as he awaited the arrival of his son and his son’s friend three days later, old Conn was not in a very good humour. Perhaps it was partly the weather, which had been strangely changeable in the last two days. But the priest’s mood had been irritable for much longer than that.

It had been one thing to have English mercenaries in the pay of Diarmait, but it was quite another to have Strongbow himself and his army setting up as a power in the land. He knew that some people in Dublin were quietly cynical about the situation. “We’re probably no worse off with Strongbow than we were with that rogue Diarmait,” a friend had remarked to him the day before. But the chief of Ui Fergusa was not so sure. “There’s been nothing like this in Ireland since the Ostmen first came,” he grumbled. “Unless the High King can stop them, this will be an English occupation.”

“Yet even the Ostmen never really went beyond the ports,” his friend reminded him.

“The English are different,” he had retorted.

Now his son Gilpatrick, with whom he had only recently begun to speak again, was bringing this young soldier of Strongbow’s to his house. Irish courtesy and hospitality demanded that he give the stranger a polite welcome, but he was hoping that the visit would be short.

And if all this wasn’t enough, his wife was choosing this day to bother him again with a subject he didn’t wish to discuss.

“You’ve done nothing,” she was saying, with perfect truth. “Though you’ve been saying you would for these last three years.”

They were a curious couple to look at: the priest, tall and rangy, his wife short and stout; but they were devoted to each other. Nor did Gilpatrick’s mother blame her husband for putting off this part of his duty for so long. She understood very well that he was afraid. Who wouldn’t be, when the problem was Fionnuala?

“If we don’t marry her soon, I don’t know what people will say. Or what she’ll do,” she added.

It should have been the easiest thing in the world. Wasn’t she good-looking? Wasn’t she the daughter of the chief of the Ui Fergusa? Couldn’t her father afford to give her a handsome dowry? It wasn’t as if she had a bad reputation. Yet.

But in her mother’s view it was only a matter of time. If when she first returned from the Palmer’s, her father remarked that Fionnuala seemed to have improved, her mother had watched her with more scepticism. She had tried not to quarrel with her daughter and she had kept her busy; but after a few weeks the signs of stress had begun to occur again. There had been tantrums and sulks. More than once Fionnuala had run out of the house and not come back all day. Her parents had suggested she should return to the Palmer’s, but she had refused; and on the occasions when they met Una in the town, it was clear that a coolness had developed between the two girls. “We’d better get her safely married,” her mother declared.

It wasn’t as if no thought had ever been given to the subject. Fionnuala was sixteen now. Her father had been talking about finding her a suitor for years. But if he’d been lazy when she was younger, she suspected he was nervous now. There was no knowing how Fionnuala would react to anyone they proposed. “She’ll certainly know how to put them off if she wants to,” her father remarked glumly. “God knows whom she’ll insult.” There was also the question of dowry. Negotiating with the future husband was always an anxious process. If word got out that Fionnuala was difficult, “twelvescore cattle won’t be enough,” her father said bitterly. The whole business seemed so likely to lead to costly embarrassment that the priest had to admit he had been secretly putting it off every month.

“Anyway,” his wife now said coaxingly, “I might have a candidate.”

“You might?”

“I was talking to my sister. There’s one of the O’Byrnes.”

“O’Byrne?” This was promising news indeed. His wife’s sister had done well when she married into that family. The O’Byrnes, like the O’Tooles, were one of the finest princely families in northern Leinster.

“It wouldn’t be Ruairi O’Byrne?”

“It would not.” Even the O’Byrne family, amongst its many members, had the occasional weak link. Ruairi, as it happened, belonged to the senior branch of the family; but young though he was, he had already acquired a dubious reputation. “I am speaking,” she continued, “of Brendan.”

This was quite another matter. Though only a junior member of the princely clan, the priest had always heard that Brendan was a sound fellow. For his daughter in her present state to marry any O’Byrne, apart from Ruairi, should be counted a blessing.

“Have they ever met?” he enquired.

“He saw her once in the market. It seems he asked my sister about her.”

“Let him come here,” said her husband, “as soon as he likes.” And he might have said more had not one of the slaves appeared to tell them that Gilpatrick was approaching.

Of course Gilpatrick had been glad to see his old friend when Peter had turned up at his door.

“You told me to come to see you if ever I came to Dublin,” FitzDavid said with a smile.

“I did. Aha. I did,” said Gilpatrick. “Once a friend, always a friend.”

It wasn’t quite true. You couldn’t ignore the fact that things had changed. Even amongst the churchmen with the closest English connections, the murder of Becket had soured their view of the English king. Gilpatrick’s father never missed the opportunity to remark to him, “Your English king is still a friend to the Church, I see.” And the disturbing new presence of Strongbow and his army had begun to worry many of the bishops. Gilpatrick had accompanied Archbishop O’Toole to a council up in the north where the elderly Archbishop of Armagh had declared, “These English are surely a curse sent by God to punish us for our sins.” The assembled churchmen had even passed a resolution suggesting that all the English slaves in Ireland should be freed. “For perhaps,” some had suggested, “it is our making slaves of these English that has caused offence to God.” Gilpatrick hadn’t noticed many people freeing their slaves on this account, but the perception remained in the community: the English were a penance. Nonetheless, it would have been unnatural not to greet his former friend and he did so warmly.

“You haven’t changed at all,” he cried.

That wasn’t true either. And now, as they made their way up to his parents’ house, he glanced at Peter FitzDavid and thought that, though he could see the same boyish face and innocent hope, there was something else in his friend now. A hint of anxiety. For the fact was that, although Peter had been on active service for three years, no one had rewarded him with so much as a single cow.

“You must get yourself some land, Peter,” he remarked kindly. It was strange, he realised, that he, an Irishman, should be saying such a thing to a foreign mercenary. In traditional Ireland, of course, a warrior would be rewarded with livestock which he could pasture on the open lands of his clan; but at least since Brian Boru, Irish kings like Diarmait of Leinster had been known to reward their followers by granting them estates which lay on what would formerly have been considered to be tribal lands. Yet if you failed to obtain material rewards, he reflected, the traditional system was kinder. A brave warrior returned to his clan with honour. A feudal knight, though he might have a loving family, had no clan system to support him. Until he got an estate, though he might be a man of honour, he had no substance. The Irish priest felt a little sorry for his foreign friend.

If Gilpatrick had also been a little uncertain what sort of reception FitzDavid would receive from his father, he needn’t have worried. His father welcomed Peter with stately dignity. And for his part, Peter observed that the priest’s stone house was well furnished and comfortable enough, even if he did notice with wry amusement that the churchman kept a gold-rimmed drinking skull in the corner.

No mention was made of Becket. His parents asked the visitor about his family and his experiences with King Diarmait in the south. And when at last his father couldn’t resist remarking that, as a priest, he felt a little nervous of the English king, “seeing what he does to archbishops,” Peter passed this off by laughing. “We’re afraid of him, too.”

If any proof of his father’s friendliness were needed, it came when he remarked to his son, “I would not really say your friend was English.”

“My family was Flemish, in fact,” Peter said.

“But you were born in Wales? And your father before you?”

“That is true,” Peter agreed.

“You speak Irish almost like one of us, I would say. That would be because you speak Welsh?”

“All my life.”

“Then I think,” said the Irish chief, “that you are Welsh.” He turned to his wife.

“He is Welsh.” She smiled.

“You’re Welsh.” Gilpatrick grinned.

“I am Welsh,” Peter wisely agreed.

And it was just as this fact about his identity had been established that a new figure appeared in the doorway.

“Ah, Welshman,” said the chief, his voice suddenly lowering, “this is my daughter, Fionnuala.”

It seemed to Peter FitzDavid, as she stepped through the doorway, that Fionnuala was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen in his life. With her dark hair, her pale skin, her red mouth: wasn’t she the perfect object of any man’s desire? If her brother Gilpatrick’s eyes were curiously flecked with green, Fionnuala’s were an astounding pure emerald. Yet what struck him most, after only the briefest acquaintance, was her modesty.

How demure she was. Most of the time her eyes were downcast. She spoke to her parents and her brother with a respectfulness that was charming. When he addressed her himself, she answered him so quietly and simply. Only once did she allow a little animation to creep into her voice, and that was when she spoke about the Palmer and his good works at the hospital where, until recently, she had been working. He was so fascinated by this virtuous young woman that, if any looks of surprise passed between her family, he did not see them.

Gilpatrick’s parents indicated after a while that they wished to have some words with their son alone, so it was suggested that Fionnuala should show their guest round the little church. He duly admired it. Then Fionnuala took him across to Saint Patrick’s Well, and pointing to the dark pool and to the Thingmount in the distance, she told him the story of her ancestor and Saint Patrick and explained how old Fergus was buried there. Listening respectfully, Peter now understood what Gilpatrick had meant about his family’s ancient status. Looking at the girl, observing her beauty, her gentle seriousness, and her piety, he wondered if she might be contemplating the religious life—and hoped that she was not. It seemed a waste that she should not be married. He was sorry when it was time to return.

It had been agreed that this was to be only a short visit, but Gilpatrick’s parents were warm in their invitation that they should both return to be feasted and entertained in the Irish manner in the near future. Gilpatrick’s mother pressed a gift of sweetmeats upon him. As he escorted them to the gateway, Gilpatrick’s father gazed out over the estuary and remarked, “Take care tomorrow, Welshman, there’ll be a mist.” As the sky was entirely clear, Peter thought this unlikely, but he was too polite to say so.

As he and Gilpatrick walked away, Peter could not help bringing up the subject of Fionnuala.

“I see what you mean about your sister.”

“Oh?”

“She is altogether remarkable. A pious soul.”

She is?

“And very beautiful. Is she to be married soon?” he added, a little wistfully.

“Probably. My parents were telling me they have someone in mind.” He sounded rather vague.

“A lucky man. A prince, no doubt.”

“Something like that.”

Peter secretly wished he were in a position to ask for her himself.

When he opened his eyes the next morning, Peter glanced towards the open doorway and frowned. Had he woken too early? It seemed still to be dark.

There were six people in the place where he lodged. He and another knight occupied the house. Three men-at-arms and a slave slept in the yard outside. He’d heard that the place had belonged to a silversmith called MacGowan who had left the city when it was first taken. Nobody seemed to be stirring. Beyond the doorway there was a strange, pale greyness in the yard. He got up and went out.

Mist. Cool, damp, white mist. He couldn’t even see the gate a few yards away. The men were awake and sitting huddled under their blankets in the little shelter where the silversmith had presumably worked. They had stoked up the brazier. The slave was preparing some food. Peter found the gate. If there was anyone about in the lane, he could neither see nor hear them. The mist clung to his face, kissing him wetly. He supposed the sun would burn the mist away later; there’d be nothing much to do until then. Gilpatrick’s father had been right. He shouldn’t have doubted him. He returned to the yard. The slave had some oatcakes by the oven. He took one and munched thoughtfully. The oatcake smelled and tasted good. He thought of the girl. Though he had no recollection of dreaming during the night, it seemed to him that she had been in his thoughts while he slept. He shrugged. What was the point of thinking about a girl who was unattainable? He’d better put her out of his head.

There hadn’t been many women in Peter’s life. There was a girl with whom he’d spent some happy nights in a Wexford barn. In Waterford, he had experienced some weeks of vigorous lovemaking with a merchant’s wife while her husband was away on a voyage. But in Dublin the prospects did not look good. The place was full of soldiers and half the inhabitants had fled. The knight he shared the house with had told him about his exploits across the river in the suburb on the northern bank.

“Ostmanby they call it, because so many of the Norse families went over there when we arrived. They had to build shelters beside the existing houses. Some of the poorer craftsmen and labourers are struggling to feed their families, so their wives and daughters come over here … I had a delicious one last week.”

Peter had soon come to the conclusion that most of his companion’s exploits were invented. Certainly the women he had seen on his brief visit across the bridge to Ostmanby hadn’t offered themselves to him, and the few loose women he had seen in the streets hadn’t looked very appetising. He’d decided he’d sooner do without.

The morning was spent sitting by the brazier playing dice with the men. He had expected the summer sun to burn off the mist, but though by late morning there was a faint brightness overhead, he couldn’t see thirty paces down the lane. As for the girl, her image was still there, floating vaguely like a spirit in his mind. And partly in the hope that this vaguely unsettling presence would float away and get lost in the mist, he decided at noon to go for a walk.

As he left the Fish Shambles, he intended only to go a short distance, keeping careful note of how he went, so that he could find his way back again; but he soon realised that he had failed to do so. He was fairly sure he was going westwards and after a while he supposed he might be getting close to the market by the western gate. The hospital where Fionnuala had been working lay outside that gate, he remembered. He might take a look at it. He’d probably get a sense of the place, even in the mist.

But after a while, he still hadn’t found the market. From time to time, figures appeared in the mist and if he’d been sensible he could have asked the way. But he hated asking directions. So he continued until at last he saw it. There were a couple of men-at-arms on sentry duty.

The mist outside the gate was so thick that he decided that, in order to see anything of the hospital, he’d have to go inside it. He almost turned back, but the sentries were watching him, so sooner than admit his mistake he continued past them casually, remarking: “I think I’ll see if the mist is lifting across the river.” And he made his way down the track towards the river.

It was silent on the bridge. He was alone. He could hear his own footfalls sounding dully on the timbers over the water. On his right, the ships by the wood quay appeared in the shrouds of mist like insects caught in a dewy spider’s web. He could see a hundred yards down the river, but as he went over he realised that the mist was finally starting to lift. Halfway across, he saw a patch of blue sky. Then he could see the mudflats on the Liffey’s northern side, and the scattered thatched roofs of the suburb beyond. To the left of the bridge end he caught sight of green, grassy banks in the sunlight. There was a sprinkling of yellow flowers. Then he saw …

Horsemen. All along the bank, coming out of the mist. Scores of them. Then footmen, carrying spears and axes. Hundreds. God knows how many. And in a few moments, they would be on the bridge.

It could mean only one thing. The High King had come. And he was about to take Dublin by surprise.

He turned. He started to run. He ran faster than he had ever run before, back across the misty bridge. He heard his own footfalls and he thought he heard his heart. Did he also hear the drumming of hoofbeats on the timbers, too? He didn’t think so but he didn’t dare look back. He reached the end of the bridge, raced up the track, came to the gate, and saw the two sentries staring at him in surprise. Only when he was through the gate did he turn, glance back at the empty path behind him, and order the sentries, “Close the gate. Quick.” And he told them what he’d seen. Then he set to work.

In the next few minutes, Peter FitzDavid acted quickly and decisively. Gathering some men-at-arms, he sent them flying to their tasks. One he despatched immediately to Strongbow. “Go straight to him. Don’t stop.” Two more went to alert the riverside defences and the eastern gate. Taking one more as a guide, he set off for the southern gate himself. If the High King’s men used the ford as well as the bridge, it would be the big western gate they made for. When he arrived, no troops had yet come in sight. He got the gate closed and barred and, stirring up the garrison there, he hurried along the street towards Christ Church and the royal hall.

When he reached the old hall where Strongbow had taken up residence, he found the magnate, accompanied by a dozen knights, about to mount his horse to find out what was going on. He was looking angrily round, demanding answers and receiving none.

“Who started this alarm?” he had just demanded of a nervous-looking commander.

“I did,” Peter called out as he came towards him.

A pair of cold blue eyes fixed upon him.

“And who the devil are you?”

It was his moment.

“Peter FitzDavid,” he said boldly. Quickly and succinctly he told Strongbow what he’d seen. “I’ve closed the bridge and western gate and sent men to all the others.”

“Good.” The great man’s eyes narrowed. “You were with Diarmait, weren’t you?” He gave Peter a nod to let him know he was remembered. Then he turned to his knights. “You know what to do. Raise the garrison. Go!”

By midafternoon the weather was clear and bright. The people of Dublin looked over their walls to see the forces of the High King on every side. As well as the clans under his direct control, there were those of the great chiefs who acknowledged his authority. The ancient Ulaid of Ulster were camped out at Clontarf. The O’Brien, descendants of Brian Boru, had their forces on the city’s western boundary. King Diarmait’s brother, who had decided not to support Strongbow like Diarmait’s sons, had brought his forces and was camped across Dublin’s southern coastal approaches. Every supply route to the city by land or sea was blocked. The High King’s army was camped in a great ring round the walls with forward posts to watch each gate for any sign of an English attempt to break out.

Late in the afternoon, from a vantage point above the wood quay, Peter saw Archbishop O’Toole ride across the bridge with a party of priests to begin the negotiations. He noticed that Gilpatrick was one of them.

The next morning the city was shrouded in mist again. Strongbow had every wall manned. Peter was sent out on foot with a scouting party to look for any sign of the besiegers mounting a surprise attack. When he’d asked Strongbow if he meant to mount a surprise breakout himself, however, the magnate had shaken his head.

“No point,” he said. “I can’t direct an army if I can’t see it.”

Peter returned from his patrol without finding any sign of enemy movement. It was eerie walking about in the city afterwards. Though the sentries on the wall were silent, every time a figure loomed out of the mist in the street, he half expected it to be an enemy. News came that once the mist cleared, the archbishop would go out to negotiate again. Peter went back to his lodgings and found them empty. He sat down by the brazier, and waited.

Time passed. The mist did not seem to be lifting at all. In the quietness, everything felt slightly unreal. As he looked across the yard to the gate, Peter could see only the whiteness beyond, as if the little yard had been transported, by some strange magic, into a separate world that was hidden in a cloud.

When the shape appeared outside the gateway, he assumed it was the knight. When it hovered there like a ghost instead of coming in, he wondered if it might be a thief, and glancing across to the bench where his sword was lying, he prepared to spring. Sitting where he was, he realised that he was not easily visible from the gate, so he kept still, making no sound. The figure continued to hover, obviously looking into the yard. Finally, it glided in. It had a hood over its head. It came towards the brazier. Only when he could almost reach out to touch it did he recognise the figure.

The girl. Fionnuala. She gave a little start as she saw him, but nothing more. He admired her control. She smiled.

“I thought I’d see if you were here.” She was amused, it seemed, by his astonishment. “Gilpatrick told me where you were lodging. It was my friend’s house, until this year.”

“But how did you get into the city?” He thought of the guards on the city gate.

“I came in by the door.” There was usually a small door in the big gates, through which single people could pass. “They know I’m the priest’s daughter.” She glanced around. “Are you all alone?” He nodded. “Can I sit by the fire?” He placed a stool for her and she sat on it. She peeled back her hood and her hair cascaded down.

“Gilpatrick says you gave the alarm.” She gazed into the embers in the brazier. “So now the High King will sit outside Dublin, and you will sit inside, and he’ll wait until you starve.”

He watched her, wondering what she wanted and why she had come, and how it was possible to be so beautiful. Her assessment of the situation was probably right. The High King had all the rich produce of Leinster in his hands. He could feed his army for months. But the city was well stocked with provisions. It could be a long siege.

“Perhaps your brother and the archbishop will negotiate a peace with the High King,” he suggested.

“Gilpatrick says the archbishop wants to avoid bloodshed,” she agreed. “But the O’Connor king doesn’t trust Strongbow.”

“Because he’s English?”

“Not at all.” She laughed. “It’s because he’s Diarmait’s son-in-law.”

Why was she there? Was she a spy of some sort, perhaps sent by her father to find out about Strongbow’s defences? Gilpatrick could do that better, but perhaps as a mediator he would refuse such a role. He decided that, beautiful and pious though she might be, he had better keep a careful eye on her. Meanwhile they talked of this and that, she spreading out hands and her slim, pale arms towards the fire, and he answering when required and watching her.

After a time, she stood up.

“I must go back to my home now.”

“Shall I accompany you to the city gate?”

“No. There’s no need.” She gave him a curious little look. “Would you like it if I came to see you again?”

“I …” he stared at her. “Why certainly,” he stammered.

“Good.” She glanced at the gateway to the street. It was empty. “Tell me, Peter FitzDavid,” she said quietly, “would you like to kiss me before I leave?”

He gazed at her. The demure priest’s daughter, the Irish princess, was asking to be kissed. He checked himself. He was being stupid. Politely he kissed her on the cheek.

“That wasn’t what I meant,” she said.

It wasn’t? What was all this about? He almost blurted out, “Aren’t you about to be married?” Then he told himself not to be a fool. If she was asking, who but an idiot would refuse? He moved closer. Their lips met.

Una was surprised the next day to find Fionnuala at the entrance of the hospital, and still more so when Fionnuala informed her why she’d come.

“You want to work here again?”

“I’ve nothing to do at home, Una. I can’t just sit around being useless. My parents want me to live at home, but I could spend the days here and some nights. That is,” she smiled ruefully, “if you don’t mind.” She paused, and then continued seriously, “You were quite right to be angry with me, Una. But I think I’ve grown up a bit now.”

Had she? Una stared at her. Perhaps. Then she told herself not to be stupid. Didn’t they always need help at the hospital? She smiled.

“The floor needs washing,” she said.

The only person who was doubtful was Ailred the Palmer. He was concerned for her safety. But Fionnuala was able to convince him without too much difficulty.

“I can come down through the small gate into the town,” she told him. For there was a small gate in the city wall almost directly below her father’s church. “Then I can come out of the west gate and walk across to the hospital. Nobody’s going to hurt me coming from the church or going to the hospital.” It had to be said that neither the English nor the High King’s forces had troubled any of the religious houses round the city. The priest’s daughter could go about unmolested even in the middle of a military siege.

“I will talk to your father,” the Palmer promised.

And so by that evening it was agreed. Fionnuala would come down several days a week to the hospital. Sometimes she would sleep there.

“Who knows,” her father remarked to Ailred, “perhaps she is growing up.”