Strongbow (13 page)
Authors: Morgan Llywelyn
‘Come with me to Murtough and help make peace between us,’ Richard had urged me. But I wouldn’t. It was the first thing I’d ever refused him. But I couldn’t bear to go back to Ferns so soon, there were too many sad memories there. So I insisted on staying behind.
Robert FitzStephen was happy to have Strongbow’s wife as his guest, and promised to lift my spirits with feasting and entertainments until Richard returned to me. But when the days dragged by with no word from my husband, I began to worry.
FitzStephen laughed at me. ‘What sort of man reports to his wife? Come, Aoife, put on that smile of yours and I’ll take you out hunting with my new falcon.’
I went to please him, but in truth I didn’t like the Norman sport of falconry very much. It seemed unnatural. We Irish hunted the red deer with hounds, which the hounds enjoyed as much as the hunters did. But falconry was different. The poor falcons were bound with thongs and kept blinded most of the time with hoods over their heads. They didn’t even get to eat any of the meat they caught. Like the poorest captives, they were given only a hunk of rotten horsemeat.
And there were so many laws and rules about falconry! All those petty details didn’t make any difference, as far as I could see. Yet the Normans got very upset if even the tiniest rule was ignored.
It was a ridiculous amount of trouble to catch one sparrow that any good Irish slinger could have brought down with a stone. But when I said as much to FitzStephen, he scowled at me.
‘You people simply don’t understand,’ he said.
After that I stopped trying to please him. I spent my days waiting for Richard. At last a passing Leinsterman told us he and his captains had gone on to Dublin. Then for a while longer we heard nothing else, until we learned that the High King was marching toward Dublin with an army.
The marrow froze in my bones. ‘He means to kill my husband!’ I told FitzStephen. ‘You must go to Dublin at once with all your men!’
The Norman knight agreed with me. But before he could gather his warriors, we were attacked ourselves!
The Norsemen came out of the night. They surrounded the earthwork fort FitzStephen was holding and kept us penned inside like animals.
When I first arrived in Dublin, the Archbishop greeted me and took me aside to speak to me privately. He talked about the Synod of Armagh, and said very harsh things about the actions of my men in Ireland. ‘You’re looting our land,’ he said, ‘and it must stop. You should return to your own land.’
‘This is mine,’ I told him. ‘Dermot meant me to be King of Leinster.’
Laurence O’Toole grew angry. ‘Even building a cathedral does not give you a right to Irish kingship!’
That night, without my knowing, he sent word to the High King, asking Rory O’Connor to bring an army to Dublin and drive out the Anglo-Normans.
During the following days, while I was inspecting parts of Dublin and the area outside the walls, the Archbishop avoided me. When I visited the new cathedral he was nowhere in sight. I should have wondered about this, but my mind was busy with many things.
Then we learned that the High King was marching toward us with an army. The clever old fox had also sent word to some of his Norse allies, who were approaching Dublin from the sea. We were to be caught between them and destroyed!
I sent a hasty message to Robert FitzStephen, ordering him to
gather his men in the south and come to our aid at once.
But I got no reply.
I had to work swiftly. Gathering my own men together, I gave strict orders. No one was to act on his own. Each person was to follow the chain of command in the Norman style, acting according to one plan.
Our enemies didn’t work to one plan, however. That was not their way. The Norse arrived long before the High King, and swept into Dublin Bay in their longships, carrying battle axes and thirsty for blood. Our sentries on the wall of the town counted as many as sixty ships, and thought there might be a thousand men.
We were ready for them. When they stormed the eastern gate, we met them with two companies of horse. We caught them between one company and the other and broke their attack. My knights on horseback simply ran over them.
The Norsemen fled back to their ships, defeated. But we had no time to celebrate. The High King’s forces arrived almost at once, in much greater numbers, and encamped along the Liffey.
I called my captains together.
‘I think the High King will do what I’d do in his position,’ I told them. ‘He’ll lay siege to the town. He’ll try to deny us food and water and starve us out. Go to the storehouses of Dublin and see what supplies we have.’
They came back to me with long faces.
‘There’s enough food for the townspeople until the harvest is in, but no more.’
It was then July. And with the High King’s army waiting outside the walls, the harvest of the countryside couldn’t be brought to us when it was gathered at the end of summer.
I ordered no man to eat more than he must to keep body and soul together, and we waited. Beyond the walls, Rory O’Connor and his allies waited. From time to time my men stood atop the walls and we hurled spears and curses at each other.
The High King allowed no messenger into Dublin. I had no word of FitzStephen, or of my wife. I had no word of anything beyond the walls. It was like being in a dungeon. Every day I paced through the town, unable to be still, and the Dubliners stood in their doorways and stared at me. Their dogs ran out to yap at me and tried to bite my legs.
When I came across the Archbishop I gave him a glare of cold fury and said nothing to him. He retreated inside his cathedral – that I had built for him – and said nothing to me.
It couldn’t go on forever. At last a messenger came from the High King, offering to talk through Archbishop O’Toole.
An offer to talk was better than starving in silence, so I sent for Aoife’s uncle. ‘Go to Rory O’Connor,’ I told him, ‘and offer him these, my terms for surrender. Tell him I shall recognise him as my king, and in return shall hold my own kingdom of Leinster for him.’
O’Toole was shocked. ‘You are not King of Leinster! You cannot hold it for anyone!’
My friend, Maurice FitzGerald was shocked. ‘You’re already holding Leinster for the King of England!’ he reminded me.
‘Just do as I say,’ I told the Archbishop, ‘or see the people of Dublin starve to death and know it’s your fault.’
He set out to talk to the High King. We waited, not knowing what to expect.
In time the Archbishop returned. ‘I am instructed to tell you that unless you surrender everything you hold and agree to depart from Ireland on a given day with all your forces, the High King will attack without delay and destroy Dublin, and you in it. All will be burned to the ground, yourselves included.’
I had to plan. But men were pressing around me, urging this action and that, making it hard to think.
Then someone else slipped into the town through the small gate that had been opened for the Archbishop.
It was Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh!
I was desperately glad to see him, though less so when I heard his news. ‘Robert FitzStephen is also under siege in the fort of Carrick, and can’t come to you,’ he said. ‘My sister Aoife is with him.’
‘Is she safe?’
‘I don’t know. She was, when last I heard, but that’s been several days.’
What to do? Now that the Norsemen had left the harbour, I could perhaps have got a ship out and sent word to King Henry, pleading for help. But I doubted that he would help me. To him I was a traitor. I had refused his command to give up the adventure in Ireland.
Unable to decide what to do, I consulted my most trusted knights. ‘Shall we try to get word to Henry?’ I asked them.
Maurice FitzGerald replied, ‘Can we expect any aid from our own country? I tell you we can’t. The truth is, to the English we’re Irish now, and to the Irish we’re English. Whatever is done we must do for ourselves.’
There spoke a man who had no home to return to, a man who, like myself, meant Ireland for his home now.
FitzGerald’s bold words put the heart back into me.
‘Very well. We’ll fight,’ I said. ‘And if we’re to have any chance of winning, we must be the first to attack. They won’t expect that of us, after this long siege.’
We slipped out of Dublin by the east gate shortly before midday. Raymond le Gros led the way with twenty mounted knights, followed by a company of foot soldiers, then thirty more knights on horseback. The rest of our foot soldiers came next, then I brought up the rear with forty more knights.
We swept around to the southwest, then at my order split into two groups, attacking the High King’s armies at encampments at Castleknock and Kilmainham.
We fell upon them like hornets.
Far from expecting us, they were relaxing in warm autumn
sunshine. Some, including the High King himself, were bathing in the Liffey. He had a very narrow escape and fled with his dignity in tatters.
I fought as I had never fought before. I was fighting for everything that mattered to me, my new land, my new wife, my new life. It would be better to die than to lose them.
When a man is not afraid to die he becomes a terrible warrior indeed.
We savaged the High King’s army. We killed them in the river, we killed them on the shore. We killed them as they sat on the ground beside their cooking fires, with food in their mouths.
The High King’s army broke and ran.
We took their abandoned supplies, we took the weapons they left scattered on the grass.
We took everything we wanted.
My half-brother, Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh, tried to visit me and discovered our danger. Somehow he got through the enemy lines, and was welcomed into the fort.
‘You’re being besieged by Norsemen from Wexford,’ he told us. ‘They’re loyal to the High King these days. They hate the Normans and reject their claims to Wexford.’
‘I don’t have enough men to fight them off,’ FitzStephen said. ‘Can you get back through their lines and send word to Strongbow?’
Donal shook his head. ‘That’s why I’m here. I came to tell you that Strongbow is also under siege by the High King, in the town of Dublin. That’s probably why you’re trapped here, to keep you from going to his aid.’
How I hated the High King in that moment!
‘If you got in to us, you can get out,’ I told Donal. ‘You must go to Dublin. Find a way to join my husband and help him fight. He’ll win, I know he will. Then he can rescue us.’
Donal was uncertain.’I don’t like to leave you in such a desperate situation.’
‘We’ll be all right for a while,’ FitzStephen assured him. ‘These walls are thick and my archers are deadly. Just hurry, will you? In the name of God, hurry!’
The next time I saw Donal Mac Murrough Kavanaugh he came riding boldly up to the gates of the fort beside my husband and Maurice FitzGerald, all of them under triumphant Norman banners.
‘We’ve defeated the High King of Ireland, Aoife!’ Richard cried as soon as he saw me. Our besiegers had scattered in every direction at his approach, and now the fort stood open in welcome to the victors.
How we celebrated that night!
