Strongbow (15 page)

Chapter 29

AOIFE

Faded Hopes

When Richard had heard my story, I took him outside and showed him the pit beyond the walls of the castle where we had buried his enemies. Together he and I put stones on their cairn. He was very proud of me.

He brought gifts for me from France, silks to wear and tapestries to hang on the walls of my chamber. I was to live like a queen, even if I wasn’t one.

In my heart I was a queen. And Strongbow was King of Leinster.

The warring never ended. Knowing that Henry was kept busy with his own problems, some of the Irish princes rose against him and Richard had to fight again and again. He had learned the lessons of battle well. The Irish warriors, each fighting in his own way, were no match for our knights and ordered columns of foot soldiers. Richard held Leinster, Hugh de Lacy held Meath. In time, the old High King, Rory O’Connor, treated for peace with the King of England. With Laurence O’Toole as witness, a treaty was drawn up between them. The High King of Ireland gave his daughter to Hugh de Lacy in marriage – the same daughter who had once planned to marry my brother, Conor.

The Normans were becoming very thickly interwoven into the tapestry of Ireland, like the threads of red and blue and yellow and brown on the hangings on my walls.

Even this treaty did not stop the fighting, however.

We learned of a revolt in the west, where Irish warriors were attacking a Norman garrison established at Limerick. Richard and I were in Dublin at the time for the christening of our newest son. Raymond le Gros and his wife Basilia were with us, to stand as godparents to the boy.

‘You must take a force of men to Limerick,’ Richard ordered Raymond after the ceremony.

‘You’re not going yourself?’

‘I’m tired,’ Richard said. ‘I’m very tired. And I have an ulcer on my foot that won’t heal.’

Suddenly I was worried.

Raymond departed with a large company of men, and I put my husband to bed in the timber palace that had been built for the English king. There I watched over Richard as his strength faded, day by day. It wasn’t just the ulcer on his foot. It was a total weariness of body and spirit.

I remembered how weary my father had been, at the end.

I refused to leave Richard’s side. My attendants brought me food and drink, even my favourite, mushrooms with roasted hazelnuts. But I only nibbled, and sipped the French wine Richard liked. I could taste nothing.

Sometimes during those long hours my husband and I talked.

‘What’s happening beyond the walls of Dublin?’ he wanted to know.

‘We hear the usual things. The Irish are fighting the Irish, the Irish are fighting the Normans, the Normans are fighting each other. Everyone wants to grab some piece of land, some prize someone else claims.’

Richard sighed. ‘It’s always like that, Aoife. I hoped …’ His voice faded away.

I bent closer. ‘You hoped what?’

‘I hoped Ireland would be different,’ he said.

He lay quietly for a long time. I held his hand and wiped his brow and watched the shadows grow longer. Pain was growing in me like a flower, waiting to bloom.

At last I knew I must send for the priest.

Leaving my husband alone with his confessor, I went outside. After the stale air of the chamber, it was good to fill my lungs with the wind off the sea and the smells coming from the smoky cooking fires in the tiny houses thronging the laneways.

I looked up. The first stars were just appearing. They swam in a sky as deep and blue as the sea Richard had crossed to come to me.

I stared at them for a while, then I went back inside.

The priest looked up as I entered the chamber and shook his head. My husband lay with his eyes closed. A rosary was threaded between his fingers.

Strongbow had changed my world so much it could never be changed back, and now he was dead.

It hurt too much to cry.

The Norman knights left after him, whom the English king had made barons, would begin quarrelling at once over his lands. I knew them well enough for that. And news of his death would encourage new risings among the Irish as well. Those who had feared Strongbow would make the most of their chance.

We had to keep his death a secret from them for as long as we could, while we prepared to defend what was ours.

I thought fast. Richard would expect it of me. ‘Send word to your husband to return here from Limerick with all speed,’ I ordered Basilia. ‘We must have Raymond’s army on this side of the country, in Leinster. Send the message in code, in case it should fall into the wrong hands.’

‘In code?’ Basilia stared at me with wide eyes. ‘But I can’t even write my name!’

I lost my patience. ‘I’ll write it myself and sign your name for you,’ I snapped at her. She nodded meekly. I think she was afraid of me.

A priest carried the message. Escorted by a picked band of my husband’s most trusted men, he slipped from the gate in a covering fog and set off for Limerick. The message for Raymond read, ‘Your wife Basilia desires you to know that the large molar tooth that was in so much pain has fallen out. So I beg you return quickly and without delay.’

Raymond understood. He had known Richard was unwell before he left.

As swiftly as he could, he withdrew his men from Limerick and brought them east to guard the ports and Leinster. Then he came in person to Dublin to be with us for Richard’s funeral.

When we released the news of Strongbow’s death, both Norman and Irish nobles came flooding into Dublin. Men in chain mail suspiciously eyed men in saffron tunics. They were as different as chalk and cheese.

Richard and I had been very different too, yet we had made a marriage. We had learned to respect and support one another. Could Ireland make a marriage of what was left after Strongbow? I didn’t know the answer.

Archbishop O’Toole, at my request, conducted my husband’s funeral rites. He didn’t mention the quarrel between them. He spoke
only of Richard’s courage and courtesy, and his Christian generosity. The barons and the princes listened gravely. Their eyes were on the long body stretched out on its funeral bier. The hands were folded over a sword that would not be used again.

Strongbow had found peace.

In the Year of Our Lord 1176, Richard de Clare was buried in a tomb in the cathedral he had built.

Every day for the rest of that sorrowful summer I wreathed his tomb with flowers.

Epilogue
Red Eva

Some of you may wonder what became of Aoife after Strongbow’s death. She was still a young woman when her husband died, and she was to live for many years afterwards. She devoted herself to raising their sons and to defending the territory Strongbow had claimed in Ireland.

Aoife built a fortress tower at Cappamore, from which she conducted a long feud with members of Clan Quinn, who refused to grant the Normans any rights to their lands. The
Kilkenny Chronicles
describe Aoife’s chambers as being hung with silk and wool, with furs spread on the couches and floors. To the end of her days, Aoife would live as an Irish princess, enjoying life and defying her enemies.

We do not know the year in which she died, but we do know how she died. Well into middle age, she was planning to leave her tower at Cappamore and was talking in the courtyard to the captain of her guards when one of the Quinns shot her through the throat – with an arrow from a strong bow.

Red Eva MacMurrough sleeps in the crypt of Kilkenny Castle now. At her feet is a red Irish deer, carved of stone.

About the Author

Morgan Llywelyn

 

Morgan grew up in Texas and took up writing after missing the final selection for the USA Olympic dressage team in 1975 by just half of a percentage point. Her second novel,
Lion of Ireland,
was a bestseller, and was sold around the world in twenty-seven different countries.

Morgan now lives in Ireland, and her historical fiction titles continue to sell all over the globe.

Morgan has won numerous prestigious awards, including: Best Novel of the Year (USA, National League of Penwomen); Best Novel for Young Readers (American Library Association);

National Historical Society Award (USA).

Her first children’s novel was
Brian Boru
, which was widely acclaimed and won a Bisto award. She has also written
Pirate Queen
and
Star Dancer.