‘Now I might be going out on a limb here, but I know which side of that bargain I’d prefer.’ Cormac mischievously raised the eyebrow over his remaining eye. ‘What I mean is, world below sounds a bit vague to me, so let me be more specific . . . six feet below!’ The men laughed. They would have heard the myths. Cormac’s interpretation seemed to fit a lot more closely with their experience of the world. It was why he was known and held in such respect across every meadow, stream and forest of this island.
‘That’s the Gaels for you, Rory, the first foreigners to come here. Like the Norse, they blended and became one with those who were here before. They adopted the law, probably improved it. This place has a way of getting under your skin. You might come here, but it conquers you in the end.’
He continued to tell how the Gaels, who today seemed to be objecting to foreigners, were no angels themselves in this regard. These Irish Gaels, known as the Scoti to the Romans, had driven the Picts from the north of Britain to become the Scottish people that we know today.
‘You see, Rory, as some wise person said, or will eventually get around to saying at some time: when races are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are not always strong! He paused, inviting O’Connor to draw the parallels himself.
Hearing Cormac telling—no, performing—the story of our land, I came to understand the seamless blending of men over time, a garnish over the sensitive skin of the Goddess Danu, the earth, who lent her name to the first tribes, the Tuatha Dé Danann. From another goddess, Éiru, and the Norse word land, the very name of our island was a mix of two races—Ireland.
‘Before me today I do not see one race. I see a people, a strong people who are layered like the rings of a tree, building, becoming ever stronger with time as it grows out. The Tuatha Dé Danann first—and only the Gods know who was before them—then blending with the Gaels to form yet a stronger core. In turn, then, absorbing the Norse to become stronger still . . . and so it will continue,’ Cormac said.
‘Rory,’ he said gently, ‘if you’ll forgive me, that’s a fairly high horse you sit on, but don’t let it obscure your view.’
I was glad when he finished by reminding O’Connor that since the first Gaels had arrived, there had been five kingdoms on the island. As far as he was aware, where we were gathered today was Leinster, not Connaught, where O’Connor was king, and as such, he was pushing it a bit expecting a Brehon to chastise a king for inviting whomsoever he wished into his own kingdom. Particularly at the behest of another king who himself seemed to be trespassing. O’Connor wisely stayed silent.
‘Fine,’ Cormac continued. ‘Now, as I was saying, does anyone have anything relevant to say on these matters before I pronounce judgement?’
Finding no response, he paused to gather himself. Then, straightening his back and holding his long staff horizontally between his hands to signify the judgement of the ancient law was to be made, his voice boomed formally, ‘With the authority of the Brehon, as keeper of the laws of the Senchus Mór, as bequeathed in me by the people, I decree that you, Diarmuit MacMurrough, have committed an offence and broken the law of Cáin Lánamna. That law decrees that should a man rape or steal the wife of a high noble or king, the full honour price of the husband is owed by the perpetrator.’ He paused here for breath, and the crowd murmured a whispered approval. They had expected this. Brehon law relied on a clearly defined set of fines for nearly all crimes. The status of the victim was used to set the fine; that status was given a value known as the honour price, and only a brehon could set a person’s honour price. It carried great weight in society; men and women would measure their worth against others with it.
These fines would affect the kinsmen of an offender, as they would be expected to contribute should the offender not have the means to pay it himself. In this way, the Brehon law encouraged the wider tribe to temper any bad behaviour of their own kinsmen. An expectant hush held the air still as the Brehon was about to set O’Rourke’s price.
‘In recognition of the grave wrong, and the manner of its doing, I am setting Tiarnan O’Rourke’s honour price at five times that of Diarmuit MacMurrough.’ My father visibly staggered at this, but Cormac continued. ‘I am doing this because a man more often assesses his worth against that of his rivals. And this I think will be the most difficult part of the punishment for you, Diarmuit MacMurrough, your value as set against his.’ He gestured to O’Rourke. ‘So your honour price I set at twenty ounces of gold.’ There was a gasp from the crowd. ‘And you will pay, as éineach fine, one hundred ounces of gold to Tiarnan O’Rourke.’
This was a masterly twist by Cormac. It had not been necessary to set my father’s honour price in his judgement, but by doing so he knew O’Rourke would be more than pleased.
O’Rourke was also shocked at the sum. But it wasn’t that which had him grinning; it was the humiliation of my father by the staggering difference in their honour prices. It was the worth of a man. This would reverberate throughout the land and be seen as a crushing humiliation for my father and a full and remarkable retribution for him.
My father’s clouded face showed the same. It was an enormous sum, even for him, but it was the shame. I think he would have preferred death to this, but it was done now. The law was made. He would live and we would pay. And, as no king had done previously in Irish history, no future king would abduct and abuse the wife of another. But not from fear of his enemy. His own kin would forbid it.
Chapter NineA BLEAK WINTER
Winter can be bleak in Ireland, and this one certainly was. It was as if the gods had abandoned us. Low grey clouds hung in a stifling thick sky before being swept away by angry winds that veered endlessly from north to south, east to west, throughout the day. It was impossible to get good shelter. Incessant sheets of rain swept level across the sodden ground, leaking under the doors and rising through the sunken floors. We stayed indoors but shivered in the dull, damp foul-smelling gloom of the few rooms the monks had made available to us in the Augustinian monastery in Ferns. The food the monks served seemed to taste of the mud that was everywhere.
It was a dreary place. I was sure in time it would become something like the fine monasteries I had seen in Wales, with their stone buildings and churches, rich lands, full barns and meadows bulging with cattle and sheep. That winter, it was a poor place, with the monks housed in wood-built hovels, no better than the animal house and grain stores.
The winter had been spent in the painful task of gathering the éineach fine which my father had had to pay to O’Rourke. My father had demanded that our kinfolk pay a heavy part of it, as was his right in Brehon law. There were bitter men and women who had surrendered long-hoarded coin and heirloom necklaces and broaches to pay for his stupidity. There would now be many of our own kin who would be more than happy to see the end of Diarmuit MacMurrough, so we were safer in the relative obscurity of the monastery, where would-be assassins would be reluctant to violate sacred ground. But that wasn’t our biggest worry.
While O’Connor and O’Rourke were occupied with the suppression of Munster, we had some hope of being left alone. However, sooner or later they would come, and as winter moved through spring and into summer, there was still no news from Wales. We worried and wondered if Strongbow would come at all. Since FitzGodebert had returned there with his followers after our defeat at Cill Osnadh, we had heard nothing. Only Rob Smith had insisted on remaining behind when they left, having given his oath to Myler to protect me. Myler had in turn sworn that he would come no matter what came to pass.
But as the year darkened, I could see Rob, with no word coming from Myler, brooding over the gruel we ate from coarse wooden bowls. Like me, he was beginning to doubt if we would ever see them; we also knew it was dangerous for messengers, as spies were watching the ports to make sure there was no sign of the Normans returning.
Rob had kept himself occupied by adopting a group of strong young lads to train in the skills and practice of longbow archery. I accompanied them as they went into the forest to select the yew trees from which he taught them to make the bowstaves. The tall trunks of the trees were cut into man-sized sections, the length of the longbow. Rob showed how the bowstaves were cut from the band where the hard inner core, the heartwood, merged into the softer outer layers of the tree. In that way, the bowstave was softer on the inner side, which was drawn towards the archer. The stiffer outer side was then straining to right itself and would snap powerfully to the vertical again once the archer released the bowstring. It was this tension that gave the longbow its formidable power. Too much softwood and there would be no power; too much hardwood and no archer would have the strength to draw the bow.
Carving small notched endpieces from cow horn, he fitted them to the tips of the dried, smooth bowstaves. ‘This is where we loop the bowstrings,’ he said, attaching the hemp cord which he had looped at both ends. ‘But don’t do it until you’re ready to use the bow, or it’ll take on the bend and lose power.’ Stringing the bow at one end, he braced it against his foot and bent the bowstave to loop the other end. None of the others had the strength to bend the bowstaves to attach the cord, and it was funny to see the staves flying, catching one or two in places where it hurt.
‘You’re more danger to yourselves than anyone else.’ Rob laughed. ‘But it’ll come in time. Practice and eat your gruel,’ he chided them. But they did get better, and soon most of them could string their bows without too much difficulty. ‘Well, it’s a start,’ Rob said, ‘but remember to keep your bowstrings dry. If they get wet, they’re useless.’ He was serious now. ‘Archers don’t wear armour; we need to be nimble and quick. And we’re also useless with swords because we spend all our time using this.’ He held up his own magnificent longbow. ‘So that’s what your hat’s for. Not to keep your stupid heads dry’—he took off his hat to reveal a couple of bowstrings—‘but to keep your strings dry.’
‘Now listen to me. If there’s a lad on a horse waving a sword about and coming for you, this is what you do.’ Rob turned to Padraig, one of the young lads who stood with the others.
‘What do you call an arsehole around here?’ he asked.
‘A what?’ Padraig responded, smirking.
‘An arsehole! You arsehole! You’re one, most of the time.’
‘Oh. Well, that’d be a thóin,’ Padraig answered sullenly, bridling at the goading in front of his friends.
‘As in Póg mo thóin?’ Rob looked perplexed. ‘I thought that meant Yes, sir.’ The bunch of young lads sniggered at Rob’s gullibility. They had been using it with Rob when he berated them in the archery drills.
‘Oh . . . I see now. Well, aren’t you a bunch of jokers,’ he shouted. ‘Well, stop your sniggering and pay attention, this is important. It could save your arseholes.’ He was serious now. ‘If there’s a horseman coming at you and you’ve no arrow in your bow—this is the drill.’ The lads knew their lives could depend on this and stopped their messing.
‘Hold the bow out level in front of you, like this.’ Rob crouched down onto his hunkers, and the boys followed, concentrating. ‘Keep your feet planted square.’ They all shifted their weight to ground themselves solidly. ‘Good, now watch the horse, and when he’s no more than three or four strides out . . .’ Rob stood and examined their positions. ‘Very good. Now here he comes . . . now quickly drop your heads as low as you can between your knees.’ Their heads dropped, and now a long pause from Rob. The lads strained to hold the awkward position. ‘And kiss your thóin goodbye.’ He collapsed against the wall, roaring with laughter.
But not for long. Grasping that they had been had and feeling the safety in their numbers, they went for Rob, who, not fancying the odds, took off across the paddock. Still shaking with laughter, he was barely able to run. They caught him easily and hoisted him to the deep mill pond and fired him in.
‘You’re only a bunch of thóin mórs,’ he roared, surfacing and spitting water. ‘You see, Aoife, I’m learning the lingo,’ he shouted to me but disappeared again under a hail of potatoes from his laughing apprentices.
There was considerable commotion when the abbot’s ceremonial embroidered cloak was stolen. Suspicion was firmly placed on us, the newly arrived guests, and my father ordered that the culprit should immediately return the vestment and there would be no more made of it. Miraculously, the garment was discovered in the far dairy the following day, but devoid of a large silk embroidered hem, which had skirted the lower part. I remember the abbot looking rather foolish with his spindly legs showing when he wore the garment after that. It was a mystery as to what had happened.
Coincidentally, it was around then that Rob happened to come into a good source of silk thread for fletching the arrows. ‘We could use gut, but God had been good to us and decided, in his infinite wisdom, to bestow us with good silk for his own divine purposes.’ He winked at the lads, mimicking the high-pitched voice of the abbot. Carefully he wound the delicate silk thread around the three goose feathers he attached to each of the long ash shafts. He coated the shaft between the fletch with a beeswax and pine resin mixture to bind it firmly in place. Finally, he glued the forged arrowheads he had brought from Wales to the tapered ends of the shaft using animal tallow boiled from the hoof of a cow.
‘This long sharp one is called a bodkin,’ he said, holding up two arrows with different arrowheads attached. ‘It can cut the best armour at one hundred and fifty paces like it was butter. Lethal! This one is the broadhead,’ he said, indicating a flatter head with slightly barbed points at the edges. ‘That I’d use for hunting or horses. It buries deep, won’t come out easily, and cuts the innards to shreds if the beast runs or thrashes about.’
I suppose it was the first masterclass in war bows that the Irish had ever received, and the lads learned quickly, as Rob spent his days drilling them in the meadow outside the monastery. He was very happy with this, as he could avoid the monks, who, he said, stank worse than the latrine outhouse.
And that was why I was surprised to see him one July day as I walked among the swooping swallows as they harvested the flies on a gentle breeze, chattering joyously. I loved these graceful, beautiful creatures. They always seemed on hand to comfort me in my sorrows and share excitedly in my joys. Rob beckoned me into the thicket; I could see a tall, hooded monk standing behind him.
