There was a heavy silence before Donal eventually sighed, ‘It is, Aoife. It is.’ His despair weighed heavily on everyone. No one spoke. The state of disrepair of the walls from the damage of the fire ruled out any chance of holding the town against an army of that size. Given the winter, we could have strengthened the walls and dug the ditches; there was no time for that now.
‘Well then, we must meet them in the Dark Wood again,’ I said, breaking the silence. There was little enthusiasm for this either amongst the kinsmen. They were the lucky ones who had escaped the slaughter just twelve months ago in this very sport, facing the same enemies.
I didn’t see that we had a choice. ‘We can conceal our numbers from them there. Show them the Norman knights and make them believe we are many,’ I insisted.
‘But we can never win against a force this size,’ Donal said, shaking his head.
‘No, but we can sow enough doubt to bring them to negotiations. O’Connor doesn’t want to weaken his army if he can avoid it.’
There was sense in what I said but even more in how I continued: ‘There isn’t any other choice. We can’t meet them in the open field, and we can’t defend Ferns against an army this size. The Dark Wood is our only choice.’
There was one last option, and I knew nearly every man in the room would be thinking it. We could abandon our cause and run for the coast and take a boat to Wales. How I wished that was possible. In doing so, we would be abandoning these kinsmen to their fate with our enemies. O’Connor would not look kindly on those who had declared for the MacMurroughs. An example would be made of some as a lesson to others who might oppose him here and in the other provinces of Ireland.
But our kinsmen would know they could gain O’Connor’s favour if they were to seize and surrender us to him. Why wouldn’t they, having come to my father’s side and he then abandoning them? They would be rightly justified in doing so. They would have nothing to lose and everything to gain. Running to the coast was not an option.
Turning to the shaken young scout, I asked gently, ‘How long do we have? When will they get here?’
‘They’re already on the move, so I’d say four days for the army. The scouts will be quicker; I’d reckon they’ll be here in three.’
‘OK, then. If this is to work, we have to be there, ready for them in two days.’ I looked to Donal. ‘Can you do that?’
Nodding, he straightened himself and replied, ‘I don’t see that we have a choice, sister.’
And so it was agreed, my father grunting his approval and shouting for the preparations to begin immediately.
The summer showers had been swept east by the light wind as our small army left in the cover of night. The stars shone weakly behind the bright moonlit sky. It would be a warm day, rising a ghostly haze to blanket the meadows and pastures which surrounded the long stretch of road to be crossed before the safe cover of the forest. We were wary of enemy scouts and spies.
I loved these mornings, but today a deep bleakness hung on me. I suspected Mac Giolla Patrick would bring Eanna, as he could prove useful to them in any bargaining that was to be done. Whatever purpose that served would probably not be good for Eanna. I longed to see him, but a chilling dread gripped me as to what I might find. Mac Giolla Patrick was known to parade his maimed hostages in front of his enemies to goad them.
I had been forbidden by my father from accompanying them as they set off to the northwest, with Donal in the vanguard with his mounted troop of cavalry. The only sound was the plodding of the horses’ hooves and the muffled footfalls of Rob Smith’s archers and the foot soldiers.
I remembered Chepstow, where the mounted Normans moved in a loud cacophony of clinking bridles and body armour jostling against an array of metal weaponry. Their heavy stallions, bred for their weight-bearing strength, stamped impatiently and snorted noisily. Their cavalry was not a stealth force used to surprise an enemy in silence. FitzGodebert and his companions had not brought their mounts to Ireland and walked alongside their men-at-arms.
In contrast, Donal’s men rode quietly in the Irish fashion. Here we mostly used no saddles or spurs, using a short cropped stick to drive and guide the horse. The reins were formed from tightly wound rope to shape the headpiece—no bridle or bit. Our horses were trained to respond to the pressure from the rider’s leg and thighs. The silence of the horses cloaked them in a ghostly gloom as they stretched away across the pastures towards the depths of the forest.
Later, having crossed the plains when the army was well enveloped by the stillness of the tress, I gently squeezed my legs around the horse’s belly to ride abreast of Donal. Deep in thought, he was startled as I drew back the hood of my dark, heavy cloak.
‘What!? What the hell are you doing here?’ he said, but quietly, checking his horse. There was a low grumbling from the men following as they pulled up.
‘I told you,’ I whispered, ‘I want to see Eanna. I wasn’t going to stay behind.’
‘Does father know you’re here?’ he said, looking over his shoulder. ‘He will not be happy.’
‘What does he care? And anyway it’s done now. I’m here.’
‘Christ, Aoife, you’re a stubborn, wilful . . .’ he searched for the words.
‘Go on, what? What am I?’
‘You’re stupid, that’s what you are,’ he said, just as he noticed the handle of the battleaxe under my cloak. ‘And what the hell is that? What are you going to do with that? You’ll get yourself killed.’
I wheeled my horse away as he made a lunge for the axe. ‘No, it’s a spare one, just in case you drop yours.’
‘Christ! Here, Rob, take that off her before she hurts herself,’ he said to Rob Smith, who had appeared at my side. He seemed to shadow my every move these days.
I looked down at Rob, who looked hesitant. ‘You can try, Rob, but I wouldn’t recommend it.’ He didn’t seem at all keen to take me up on my offer.
‘If you don’t mind, I’ll leave that in your capable hands, Donal.’ He grinned and dropped back as Donal, exasperated, urged his horse forward and we crept silently, ever northward, through the forest.
The bluish grey of sparrow hawks flashed through the trees that skirted our path, pursuing the smaller birds we disturbed from their nests. The midday sun clung to the wind-sheltered forest trail, allowing no merciful cooling gusts to relieve the heat or clouds of flies which tormented the horses. By mid-afternoon we’d crested a low hill where the trail opened into a broad pasture surrounding a scattering of homesteads known as Cill Osnadh, Kellistown. A broad-winged eagle drifted patiently on the rising heat from the meadow but, disturbed by our appearance, turned east and, with a single, languid sweep of its white-tipped wings, headed for other hunting grounds. At least the hares would not die here today.
‘Not here. We must find somewhere else to meet them. It can’t be here,’ my father said as we emerged into the sharp sunlight from the gloom of the forest.
‘It was the best place then, and it remains so now,’ Donal insisted and turned to Sir Richard FitzGodebert and Rob, who had joined us.
‘You know this place?’ Sir Richard asked. ‘It’s the best I’ve seen today for what we plan.’
‘And it is the best we’ll find,’ Donal said and went on sombrely, ‘and we have paid a heavy blood price in battle in this place not twelve months past.’ He gazed across the meadow to the long mound of disturbed earth that betrayed the presence of the many graves of the kinsmen they had left here. He went on to describe how they had faced the same enemy at this very place in a decisive battle where betrayal by our own kinsmen of North Leinster resulted in the destruction of the power of the MacMurroughs. The bracken had run red with the blood of the elite veterans of my father’s force, and the tattered remnants of our army had fled and limped back through the forests to Ferns.
‘I would have won that battle but for their scheming treachery. The Uí Brian cowards deserted me here, and those dog shits, the Uí Failge, joined O’Connor and O’Rourke. The bastards led their vanguard against us here,’ my father said.
‘There isn’t much loyalty amongst these lords,’ Rob said, surprised by the squalid nature of how men readily broke loyalties and oaths here.
‘And so has it ever been, Rob.’ Donal nodded. ‘A man’s loyalty is determined by his fear of retribution should he break his oath. And that’s why today we must make them believe we are stronger than we are.’
