Glendalough Fair (3 page)

“What?” Thorgrim asked. His eyes were back on Kjartan.

“Skidi bid me tell you there are riders. Riders coming. Irishmen.”

Thorgrim let those words swirl around in his mind.
Riders. Irishmen.
That could be anything. Important. Mundane. But the one thing it could not be was ignored.

Thorgrim looked at the blade of his sword. The rain had washed it clean. He thrust the weapon back into his scabbard. He looked down at Kjartan, still supine in the mud. “I’m called away by other concerns,” he said. “We’ll see to finishing this later.” He turned his back on Kjartan and walked away. He did not wait for a reply.

The Monastic city of the western world

Is Glendalough of the Assemblies.

Féilire of Oengus, c. 800 CE

The country west of Vík-ló, the land that the Irish called
Cill Mhantáin
, rose quickly as it left the sea, climbing up into a series of high, rounded mountains that marched away inland. These were not the ragged and inhospitable cliffs of the Irish coast or those of the Northmen’s homeland, but altogether more gentle and welcoming hills. And in those days of early spring the high country did indeed seem to welcome the traveler and tempt him to weave his way through the lush valleys.

Twelve miles into those mountains, nestled in a valley where two lakes where held like water cupped in God’s hands, was the monastic city of Glendalough.

Christianity had come to Glendalough two hundred years before with the arrival of St. Kevin, who sought only solitude there. The valley of the two lakes was well chosen. Anyone standing by the placid water and looking out at the green rolling land above could see there was something eternal and mystical there. For two centuries since pilgrims had flocked to that holy place.

Glendalough had boasted no more than a simple clay and wattle church in the beginning, but it had become home to one of the great monasteries of Ireland, one of the strongholds of faith and learning that had preserved the cumulative knowledge of civilization when the unifying power of Rome had crumbled into warring chaos. Glendalough, rich in the monastic spirit, was now fat with wealth from the herds of cattle that grazed the surrounding fields and the gold and silver and the jewel-encrusted reliquaries that adorned the massive stone cathedral.

The church was Glendalough’s physical and spiritual center. As solid as a granite outcropping, it rose fifty feet above the trampled ground and stretched for one hundred feet on a line running east to west. The lesser buildings that supported the monastery, monastic cells and guest houses, a cloister made of heavy oak beams roofed with thatch, a library of sorts, the abbot’s house, gathered around the great church like courtiers around a king. The whole was enclosed by a
vallum
, a low wall meant not for defense but rather to mark the boundary of the sanctuary offered by the monastic community.

A second low stone wall, two hundred feet from the vallum, encircled the rest of the land that made up the monastery. Within its confines stood the more secular and prosaic of the monastic buildings: the bakery, the kitchen, the creamery, the stables. This outer wall was higher and more substantial than the vallum, but in terms of defense it was only marginally more impressive.

Beyond the outer wall and huddled up against it was the town that had grown in the shadow of the monastery at Glendalough, a town at least by Irish standards. A few dirt streets – mud now in the incessant rain – ran off like spokes and were crossed here and there by others that met them at various odd angles. Scattered along the streets were sundry small homes with their workshops attached, the blacksmiths and glass workers and butchers and leatherworkers and weavers, all the commerce that clung to the monastery and flourished like moss on a boulder.

Just as the church was the heart of the monastic site, so the town square formed the center of the outlying community. One hundred perches on each side, the square was filled with people and stalls on market day, and even more so on feast days and fairs. The wealthy merchants and landowners who chose to live in Glendalough enjoyed homes that looked out over the square. The best of those bordered the monastery’s outer wall which put them closer to the church and the sanctuary to be found there.

It was in one of those homes, the finest of them all, the biggest in Glendalough, that Louis de Roumois found himself. It was wattle and daub built, the construction no different than the miserable homes of the craftsmen, but it was well made with a high, steep-pitched thatch roof. It boasted a stone hearth and kitchen walled off from the main room and bed chambers in a loft overhead that took up half the length of the building. It had two small windows, high up, with glass in them. The front door opened onto the town square. A door in the back opened onto an alley that ran along the monastery wall and offered a fine view of the church on the far side.

Louis was a young man, twenty-two, and unlike most men in Glendalough he did not think the house particularly impressive.

This would be a fine place
, he thought,
if it were a sheep herd’s hut or some peasant farmer’s hovel.
But it was, in fact, the finest home in all that miserable town, and to Louis that was laughable. Still he continued to go there, and frequently, a thing he was strongly motivated to do.

The streets of Glendalough were crowded and busy that morning, and growing more so despite the rain that fell like a plague from God. Temporary stalls were going up around the perimeter of the town square and running in rows down its center, and stages were building in the open areas. Flocks of animals driven in from the countryside were herded into makeshift pens; merchants from all over the south of Ireland arrived in their carts or with their bundles on their backs, and sought out one of the few taverns with beds and ale or set up their own shelters in the fields. There was an air of anticipation that hung like smoke over the town.

The monastery at Glendalough and the town that rose up around it were nothing when compared to the great Norse longphorts of Dubh-linn and Wexford and others, but in a country made up of farmers and landowners and minor kings flung like barley seed across the land, Glendalough was an important point of trade. As such, Glendalough hosted market days and festivals through all the months when it was possible for the people to leave their homes and their farms and ringforts and gather in the town.

And of all of those, none was as important, as popular or as lucrative as the one for which the town was now readying itself: the yearly
Oénach
, the Glendalough Fair.

It was a springtime event, the first real chance for the people to emerge from the misery of winter and to indulge in something beyond mere survival. The fair would not begin for another three weeks, but already preparations were full underway.

In truth, people had been anticipating it for months, and it was not just the local craftsmen. Merchants from as far away as Frankia and Frisia sent their wares to the Glendalough Fair. At Fair time, pilgrims of a different sort - actors and jugglers and animal trainers and cutpurses and whores - made their way to the monastery town in hopes of grabbing up some of the silver that flowed through the streets during the week-long celebration.

The preparations were in full swing now, but the sound of the hammering and chopping, the shouts of the working men, the groan of the wagons and the lowing of oxen were barely audible to Louis, drowned out as they were by the driving rain and the gasping and moaning of the young Irishwoman who was at that moment writhing beneath him.

Her name was Failend and Louis guessed she was probably around twenty, not much beyond that, certainly. As beautiful a woman as any he had been with, and he had been with many. Her skin was white and smooth as butter, her hair long and black and at that moment spread out in a wild profusion over the fur on which she lay.

Louis began to move faster and Failend dug her heels into the small of his back and continued clawing his shoulders with her nails, a gesture that at first he had found arousing but now found simply painful. She gasped and shouted out something Louis did not understand. He had been in Ireland for less than a year, having arrived speaking nothing but his native Frankish. He could now speak the local tongue tolerably well, but he could not understand Failend’s words, spoken through clenched teeth as she bucked and twisted under him.

He didn’t think the words mattered. In his considerable experience, women under those conditions all said pretty much the same things, regardless of the language. He moved faster still and Failend wrapped her arms around him and pulled him down on top of her and pushed hard against him. They were both gasping for breath now as they worked themselves up to that final moment and then pushed one another over the edge.

For a long moment they just lay there, sunk deep in the thick furs that were spread out over the raised seating platform in the outer room. When he had first come by her house that morning, knocking lightly on the door and glancing around the square to make certain no one was looking in his direction, he had envisioned grappling in the bed chamber above as they had on past occasions. But they never made it that far.

Failend had opened the door, pulled him in from the rain, pulled him into her arms. She pressed her lips against his and he wrapped his arms around her thin body and soon they were pulling at one another’s clothes and grabbing handfuls of hair and pressing their mouths hard together. They fell onto the pile of furs by the hearth and abandoned themselves to it. They did not make it ten feet from the door.

Now Louis let his breathing return to normal and wondered about the servants who usually were bustling about.
She must have sent them away
, he thought. The girl planned ahead. He liked that.

Then he heard the voice behind him, calm, measured and cold. “Done now, are we?”

Failend gasped and Louis rolled over, the warm, luxuriant feeling entirely gone. Standing by the door that led from the kitchen, having apparently come in through the back, was Colman mac Breandan, owner of the house, likely the wealthiest man in Glendalough, and, largely because of that fact, Failend’s husband.

Colman was not a pretty man. He was twice Failend’s age at least, of middling height and stout, his hair thinning and mousy where it had not turned gray. His fine clothes could not hide the general lumpiness of his physique. But Louis’s attention was drawn not to his appearance but to the long, straight sword he held in his hand. Louis was not so transfixed by the weapon, however, that he failed to wonder just how long Colman had been standing there watching.

Maybe he likes that
, Louis thought.
Maybe I do him a service.

But like it or no, Colman did not appear to be in a grateful mood. He took a step in their direction and Failend gasped again and Louis’s eyes darted off to the side, looking for his own weapon.

And then he remembered that he did not have one.

“You don’t have a sword,” Colman said in the same instant that Louis realized that fact. Colman took another step forward. Louis sat more upright.

“Do you recall
why
you don’t have a sword?” Colman asked. Louis did, but he remained silent.

“It’s because you’re a man of God,” Colman said. “Have you forgotten?”

Many a sweet maid when one knows her mind
is fickle found towards men…

Hávamál

Louis rolled over and onto his feet, landing in a semi-crouch, a fighting stance. It was a nice, athletic move, and Louis would have been impressed with his own easy grace if he had not been so acutely aware of his nakedness and vulnerability.

He saw Failend snatch up the fur and cover herself but he had no such cover to grab. There was nothing he could say to Colman other than to beg the man for his life, and he was not about to do that, so he said nothing. Instead he backed away, glancing left and right, looking for something he might use as a weapon.

Then Colman stopped advancing and lowered his sword. “You can stop running, you cowardly shit,” he said. “I’m not going to kill you for rutting with my slut wife. If I did that I’d have killed half of Leinster by now. Just get out.”

Louis remained silent. He took a step sideways, his eyes on Colman, his arm outstretched as he reached for his clothing, which consisted of a monk’s robe and belt, nothing more. Colman’s sword came up again.

“Leave it,” he said. “I’ll keep that as a trophy. Or maybe my wife can wear it when I send her to the convent. Now go.”

Louis stepped back again, making for the front door, unwilling to turn his back on the man with the sword, regardless of the safe conduct he had been offered. He pictured himself stepping naked into the rain-drenched square. When he arrived the place had been crowded with people. He wondered how he would get back to his cell unseen, or how he would explain the loss of his only robe to the abbot.

“Stop,” Colman said. He stepped sideways and pointed with his sword to the back of the house. “Out the back door, you Frankish turd.”

Louis was happy to acquiesce to that demand. He moved cautiously in the direction the sword pointed, making a wide arc around Colman and the wicked blade. It seemed incredible that Colman was willing to spare him the humiliation of being tossed naked from the house. And then he understood. Colman was in fact sparing himself the humiliation of being so publicly shown off as a cuckold.

He moved around Colman, who stepped back to make way, and then he was lost in the gloom of the dark kitchen. The back door was still ajar, the dull light of the deep overcast sky framing the oak boards. Louis pushed it opened and stepped out into the rain. His bare feet sank half an inch into the mud, or what he hoped was mud. It was cold, but that at least kept at bay the flies and the fetid stench of the household waste heaped in the narrow alleyway.

The instant he stepped from the house he was soaked, his shoulder-length hair plastered on his neck and forehead, rain running down his naked flesh. He shivered and hugged himself. Over the monastery’s low outer wall, which was no higher than Louis’ chest, he could see the church standing like one of those rocky outcroppings one saw where the land met the sea. Just beyond it he could see the corner of the small, ugly building in which his cell was situated, that tiny room with its straw-filled mattress, single chair, and the desk at which he was expected to make painstaking copies of scripture and other ancient texts. It was not more than five hundred feet away, but with the open ground he had to cover it might as well have been five hundred miles.

From where he crouched behind the stone wall he could see men in black robes moving back and forth along the trampled church yard or under the roof of the cloister, and, worse still, sisters from the nearby convent. He had no notion of how he would ever reach his cell and its blessed if illusionary privacy. The irony of using the monastery wall as a sanctuary to hide his nakedness and sin was not lost on him. Reflexively he crouched lower still and looked around, but there was no one else in that alley between the rich houses and the wall.

A gust of wind buffeted him. He shivered again and his teeth began to chatter. He hugged himself tighter, and with the misery of the cold and the wet came a wave of despair and self-pity.

How, by the grace of God, do I find myself thus?
he wondered.

Failend looked up at her husband who in turn was looking back through the kitchen to be certain that the Frankish novitiate Louis
de Roumois
had indeed left. Apparently satisfied that he had, Colman slid his sword back into its scabbard.

Colman was a Lord of Superior Testimony and had command of the defenses at Glendalough. But that was more of an honorary title bestowed by the local
rí túaithe
to whom Colman gave allegiance, a sinecure that allowed him to indirectly shift wealth from the lower castes of Glendalough to himself. Colman may have been a warrior once, but those days were past, and his physique had been lost to the good living only a man of his means could afford.

Failend could not help but reflect on the difference between her husband’s appearance and that of the lean, well-muscled Louis de Roumois. Had Louis been armed, and had they crossed swords, Failend guessed that the young Frank would have killed her fat whore monger husband, though she was not certain.

And it seemed she would never find out. Colman had let Louis go. It was as much as saying that she was not worth the trouble that a charge of murder would bring, or the price of a wergild.

She wondered if Louis
de Roumois would have been willing to kill Colman if given the chance,
if he would risk his life or freedom for her honor.

Maybe if Colman had arrived before he finished humping me
, she thought,
but probably not after he was done.
Failend was not a woman given to romantic notions.

Colman swiveled around as he sheathed his sword and their eyes met and Failend felt an ugly brew of emotions swirling around in her head: disgust, contempt, hatred, anger. Regret was not among them, nor was sorrow or humility.

“Don’t think I’m ignorant of how long this has been going on,” Colman said, his voice a menacing calm. “Don’t think I don’t know how often you’ve fornicated with that little bastard.”

Failend glared at him. “If you were man enough, maybe I wouldn’t have to look to other men for satisfaction,” she spat, but she knew she had missed the mark. Colman was too wealthy, too powerful and too old to be much bothered by attacks on his brusque efforts in bed.

She had been a virgin when they wed, of course, four years past. Her father was not a poor man. He was one of the more prosperous merchants in Glendalough, one of the
aire déso,
a Lord of Vassalry, an important man, but nowhere near Colman’s standing. He saw the marriage of his daughter to
Colman mac Breandan as a way of greatly elevating his family’s position, not just in the monastery town but in all of that part of Ireland and beyond.

Colman had hundreds of head of cattle and received a hundred and fifty more each year from the clients over whom he was lord. He owned forges and breweries and half a dozen ships that carried his goods to England and beyond. He made generous contributions to the church. He was respected and powerful. He was an ideal husband, his age, appearance and occasional mendacity notwithstanding.

Failend, young and knowing nothing of the world, had not been opposed to the marriage, and any revulsion she might have felt at the thought of laying with Colman she dismissed as a natural fear of losing her maidenhead. Her wedding night was as painful and unpleasant as she imagined it would be, but she told herself it would get better as time went on. And it did, though not by much.

The first year passed and Failend, maturity thrust upon her, found herself growing restless and increasingly curious about the wider world. Through the judicious use of shouting and the withholding of favors she convinced her husband to take her with him as he made a tour of his holdings beyond Glendalough. For weeks they traveled the country around. Failend enjoyed nearly every moment of it, but it did not sate her restlessness. Quite the opposite. Her curiosity grew, and with it a craving for something she could not quite define.

More years passed and Failend decided that the missing thing she was looking for might be a lover, one with more patience and skill, with less hair on his body and more on his head than her husband possessed. So she found one, and then another. Then
Louis
de Roumois, best of the lot. And that satisfied her. Somewhat. But she knew it was not all she was looking for.

The thrill she had experienced with this current ugliness, her husband and Louis, the brandished weapons, was closer to the mark. It took her thoughts back to the time when she and Colman had been set on by bandits during one of their journeys through the countryside. It had not been any great affair. In the life of a real man-at-arms she imagined it would hardly have warranted mention. But to her, innocent of such things, it might as well have been a great clash of armies.

They had spent the night at an inn at a crossroads, the sort of place where the shadows and the smoke were welcome because they hid whatever else was lurking in the dark corners. They left at first light, riding on horseback. Colman never traveled with less than a dozen men in his guard, but that morning five of them had been delayed over some matter, Failend could not recall what. Sent to collect some overdue rent, she thought. With those men left behind their party consisted of only eight riders alone on the road, and one of them clearly a woman. It was probably those small numbers that had given the robbers the courage to fall on them when they did.

They came out of a stand of trees set back from the road. They came running, with clubs and axes and one man with a sword raised high, ten of them she thought, though she had been far too panicked to count. The guards drew their swords and Colman drew his sword. Failend reigned her horse to a stop, and before any of them could do more than that the brigands were on them.

The captain of Colman’s guards spurred his horse and charged the robbers, slashing with his sword, and he was pulled from his saddle. He went down with a shout, sword flailing as the robbers’ crude weapons finished him. Failend heard the stomach-turning sound of bone being crushed and the man was silent, and the others spurred forward into the press of outlaws. Another man was pulled from the saddle and the outlaw with the sword killed him as he hit the ground.

It was madness. Screaming men and panicked horses, steel hitting wood and flesh and mail, horses and armed men whirling around. Colman plunged into the fight, sword raised. Failend was happy to see that, because up until then she had only heard stories of his courage and prowess in battle, and those from Colman himself. Now he roared like a proper fighting man and slashed with his blade and jerked the reins of his horse left and right. Failend saw his sword come down on one of the brigands’ head, saw the long spray of blood, the man’s eyes wide as death came even before he fell.

The fight did not last long. When Failend thought about it sometime later she guessed it had all been over in about five minutes, if that. The rest of Colman’s guard had been riding to catch up, and when they heard the shouting they came at a gallop. Seeing their approach, the robbers who could still run did so. Those who could not run and had not had the good sense to die in the fight were killed where they lay. The little bits of silver and whatever else of worth they possessed were divided up among Colman’s men.

Two men of Colman’s guard had died. Their bodies were wrapped in blankets and strapped to their horses to be given a Christian burial at the next village church the riders reached. The bodies of the brigands were left to the ravens and crows, which were already taking tentative stabs at the still-warm flesh as Colman, Failend and the guard rode away.

It was no epic battle, just a sharp fight between a gang of robbers on the road and men-at-arms protecting their rich employer. The sort of encounter that happened a dozen times a week in Ireland. But in the year since it had taken place, not a day had gone by that Failend had not seen it all again in her mind. She knew that the memory should have filled her with horror and revulsion, but it did not. She knew she should tell her confessor about the perverse pleasure she took in recalling the event, but when the time came to do so it always slipped her mind.

Colman took a step in her direction. “Get up,” he said. Failend pulled the fur further over her and glared up at him. “I said get up,” Colman repeated, the menace thick in his voice.

It was pointless to resist him. Failend knew that. She was five feet two inches tall and weighed not much more than seven stone. Colman might have been old and fat, but he was not weak.

She threw the fur aside, got to her feet and stood facing him, not trying in any way to hide her nakedness. She could not stop him from doing what he would. The best she could do was to make her contempt and defiance clear, to show no fear. So she stood and held his eyes and did not move at all as his fist swung around in a wide arc and slammed into the side of her head.

Failend fell sideways, sprawled out on the rush-covered floor, landing just inches from the fire in the hearth. But she would not know that until she regained consciousness forty minutes later
.