I pushed Conor into her arms and moved forward through the belly of the boat, calling for Donal to fetch Eanna from the bow where father stood facing the shore. The boat glided through the narrow channel between the island and the headland. Smoke rising from the houses in the village of Bannow was swept eastward in the favourable wind.
‘He’s not there!’ Donal returned, ashen faced.
‘What do you mean? Where is he? Father brought him.’ I said.
Donal shook his head just as a piercing wail from my mother caused us to look to the headland where she pointed.
In front of a group of mounted riders, one man stood. Helmet removed, he wanted us to know it was him, O’Rourke. He was unmistakable, a squat barrel of a man with bowed legs from a life in the saddle. The wind whipped his long, flame-red hair to expose the twisted sneer through his matted beard. Kneeling in front of him was a small boy, weeping, on whose shoulder O’Rourke rested his bloodied longsword.
‘Eanna!’ I screamed and turned to find my father.
‘Father, Father! He was with you…’
He stared impassively at the scene on the headland, aware that the deafening silence of the boat was focused on him.
‘Father?’
Turning to me, he shook his head. ‘He slipped from my saddle. I couldn’t…’
‘You left him! You left him! You saved yourself and left him!’ And for the second time that day I was ready to kill family—this time willingly.
‘Bastard!’ I lunged at him, snatching at Fáinleog to free her from her scabbard. But Donal moved quicker. ‘No, Aoife! No! Stop. You can’t,’ he said, holding me tightly, pinning my arms. I thrashed wildly, my fury needing to vent, but Donal’s firm clasp would not be broken. As my strength ebbed into a sobbing despair, he gently eased me free and, brushing the hair from my face, kissed my forehead softly, his own tears welling from his pale blue eyes, MacMurrough eyes.
‘We will come back for him, Aoife. I promise you.’
‘Eanna,’ I cried, louder and louder. A howl that carried to the small boy, shivering on his knees on the shore as we rounded the headland and Amlaib turned the tiller to point the prow eastward.
But O’Rourke did not lift his sword. He did not do so as the seamen shipped the oars and hoisted the sails. Hanging limp, the sails shimmered and then bellied with a snap as the wind filled the enormous square linen cloths. I could feel the powerful surge as the boat lifted over the waves, ploughing due east for Bristol at the mouth of the Severn River on the Welsh-English border. There we could expect some sympathy and hopefully a welcome from the English king’s appointed reeve of the town, Robert Harding, who governed the important port on his behalf.
Harding and my father had built a strong, mutually beneficial relationship over the years as trade between his town and Leinster had flourished. Trading barques plied the short sea routes to Bristol, and the wharves in the port had continually expanded to accommodate their ever-increasing numbers and size. The reeve’s coffers benefitted substantially from the tariffs levied on the shipped goods, and the English king’s treasury gained accordingly. Both men would be keen to ensure that this important source of finance would not be put at risk by the turmoil overtaking Leinster.
I watched until my eyes strained as our boat sailed steadily in the following wind. I knew that Eanna lived. O’Rourke would have killed him there for the pleasure of it, but he was a clever man; he knew Eanna was more valuable as a hostage. He was a son of the once great king, Diarmuit MacMurrough, a bitter enemy on whom O’Rourke had sworn vengeance for the humiliation he had brought to him these fifteen years past. Although fugitives now, the MacMurroughs were not without support. O’Rourke knew that, like him, my father would not care who he had to kill, evict or blind to regain his throne. Somehow, somewhere, he would return. So, for now, until MacMurrough power was forever broken, Eanna would live as a bargaining tool. And in that calculation by O’Rourke, there was hope for me to save my brother.
While my father wanted his kingdom, I wanted Eanna. I knew then that my path to saving him was through my father’s lust for power and revenge. He would seek the support of the English king, Henry II, to regain his throne. Henry had long sought the pretext to add Ireland to his dominions; the profusion of feuding, petty kingdoms there were ripe for conquering and unification.
However, there would be a heavy price to pay for this help, but whatever that price, I would stop at nothing to make sure my father secured that army to return to regain his kingdom. I would use that army to bring Eanna home.
As the receding shore faded into the sea mist, my despair turned to anger—a bitter anger at the man standing at the bow of the boat. Was there no price he was unwilling to pay for his own gratification? I knew he was a ruthless man, as all kings with many rivals must be. But did that price now include the lives of his own children? This was not the father I knew. The father I had loved and who I know had loved me, as he had cherished all his children. While he had never been overly affectionate, I had always sensed his devotion to us, and sometimes as I grew and began to notice things in people, I saw the burden he carried in his desire to keep us free from harm in this turbulent world. Being a man of his time and more importantly a king, he was not one to express his deep-felt thoughts. While others could regard him a cruel man, bordering on a tyranny that had alienated his enemies and kinsmen alike, I had seen him as a child wishes to see her father: as a caring man of deep sensibility in a depraved world, dedicating himself selflessly to the protection, wellbeing and future of his family.
My anger on that day reflected a more profound grief—grief at the loss of my belief in the basic goodness of my father. If he could abandon Eanna to the clutches and depraved appetites of a man like O’Rourke, he was not the father I had believed him to be. It was as if a veil was lifted and I saw the world anew. I felt horribly alone, unanchored from my past self. A biting, bitter coldness crept within me, which took no comfort as I grasped the heavy woollen cloak against the cold wind. The salt from the sea spray mingled with my silent tears as I watched the disappearing land. I was leaving more than my beloved brother on that shore that day; in the floatsam I saw my shattered home, the father I thought I knew and my very childhood itself.
Chapter ThreePOLITICS
Chepstow Castle, Wales
Spring 1167
‘Must I give my time to meeting her now? Don’t we have enough to do, Sir Raymond?’ Strongbow didn’t look up from a list of supplies he was studying. As he rose from his seat behind a long oak table, the scrape of the chair on the flagstone floor was lost in the vast hall. Retrieving another parchment from the mass of orderly documents along the length of the table, he resumed his seat while seeming to cross-reference the contents. Without lifting his head, he instructed an attendant to close a window against the chill from the early morning spring breeze drifting across the River Wye. The seven high, round-headed windows were all arranged on the north-facing wall, opposite from where Strongbow sat. The south-facing wall gathered scant light, and the candles on the long table burned incessantly, throwing a shifting light on his work. The Great Tower—built by his ancestor, Gilbert FitzGilbert—stretched over a hundred and twenty paces, had high sandstone walls and was capped with a low gabled timber roof. The pure white plaster and decorative tiles made the most of the weak northern light that seeped into the hall.
‘M’lord,’ Raymond tried again, leaning into a touch of flattery. ‘It is a great honour for MacMurrough that you have accepted his daughter’s hand in marriage.’ He paused, carefully weighing his next words. ‘Which means you will, in all probability, wed the princess within months. With all that that entails…’ He purposefully stopped now, letting the silence finish his sentence, hoping it was enough to get Strongbow’s attention.
Not seeming satisfied with what he was reading, Strongbow reached for his quill and, scratching some alterations, remained engrossed in the papers. He was rare amongst the Norman nobility in his mastery of reading and writing. A militaristic race, the Normans valued the skills of the sword far more than those of the quill, and while Strongbow was no delinquent in matters of arms, his father had taught him that the stroke of a quill could, at times, carry far more power than the stroke of a sword. At his father’s insistence, he had been tutored by monks from a very young age. In time, albeit reluctantly at first, he had learned the wisdom of his father’s words.
‘Sir Raymond. The clerks’ manifest for bodkin arrowheads for the second transport ship does not accord with what we ordered from the smithy.’ He held up the two lists.
Raymond wished he had learned his letters. He had not wanted this position as Strongbow’s secretary for the campaign. His place was in the saddle, not buried in books. But Strongbow had insisted. ‘It’s never too late, Raymond. If you can’t learn, then sharpen your memory. That’s what I did before I could read. A sword only cuts so deep,’ he had said, ‘but a quill wins wars and holds kingdoms.’
Raymond would berate the clerks again—they should know Strongbow by now.
Strongbow placed the lists on the table and looked through the windows over the river, as if first noticing the morning. ‘A pleasant day, Raymond,’ he observed.
Raymond tensed. Strongbow was not one for pleasantries in the morning. ‘Indeed, m’lord.’ He waited.
Strongbow turned to him. ‘A morning made even more enchanting by the silence which accompanies it,’ he said. He rose and walked to the window, pulling the shutter open. The scene was dramatic. A sheer drop, the height of forty men, to the slow-moving broad river. Heavy wooden quays stretched along the riverbank around the eastward bend in the Wye. The town, Chepstow, had developed around the castle and priory which sat just outside the walls.
It was a prosperous town. Benefitting from the deep river, which could accommodate the largest of ships, it also had the advantage of the presence of the large garrison the castle afforded. The quays normally bustled with the noisy chaos of the thriving port trade, while the river crowded with trading barques and merchant ships carrying wine, grain, wool, hides and all manner of goods. The boats were sometimes tied three deep along the quays.
Just after dawn, it was still quiet this morning. ‘That silence, Raymond,’ Strongbow continued, ‘is costing me time and money. The shipwrights are contracted to work from dawn to dusk.’ He gestured at the sun, already clear of the low hill across the river in the east. ‘Last chance; if it happens again, cancel the contract.’
‘I’ll see to it immediately, m’lord. It won’t happen again.’ He was sure of that. It wasn’t the contract the master shipwright had to worry about; it was removing Raymond’s dagger from his arse if he had to suffer this from Strongbow again.
However, now he had to contend with Aoife MacMurrough. For Raymond, the Earl of Pembroke was his liege lord, the man who had his oath and loyalty. Known to his followers as Strongbow, the nom de guerre the earl had inherited from his father, whose renown in his skill with the Welsh longbow had not passed to his son. He was not one for frivolity or coarse words. Any suggestion touching upon what Strongbow considered highly private matters would provoke instant reproach. But Raymond needed his attention.
‘M’lord,’ he tried again, adopting a tone of bonhomie, ‘not wishing to sound like a crass purveyor of goods, but I’m sure a man of your appetites would wish to cast his experienced eye on the spoils…to see what intimate joys the girl has in store for your attention, so to speak. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.’ He forced a conspiratorial laugh, paused and dearly hoped he hadn’t gone too far.
